WiC Watches: Good Omens

Episode 6: “The Very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives”

You can tell that the people behind Good Omens loved making it. That’s the overpowering sense I got from the finale, particularly the back half, after Adam banished the devil back to hell and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had been felled with Aziraphale wayward flaming sword. All of that was fun, but in the lengthy tail to the series, Good Omens gets back to its best quality: its warm, ooey-gooey heart.

I loved Aziraphale and Crowley switching places to baffle heaven and hell into leaving them alone, and ending their journey dining at the Ritz toasting their freedom. At the end of the day, Good Omens is really a love story between these two; no wonder there’s so much fan-fiction written about them.

Although it was a bit odd that the show ended on a pun about “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” I mean, it’s a pretty song but you’d figure a show with as much on its mind as Good Omens would pull out something a little more profound.

The show takes care of the secondary characters, too. I still don’t think Newton and Anathema ever really popped as characters — it’s hard when Aziraphale and Crowley are bulldozing over you — but they had a sweet ending, opting to live their lives without further guidance from The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. Even Shadwell and Madame Tracy get to settle down and talk about getting a place in the country. Miranda Richardson and Michael McKean are perfectly tender as two strange people choosing the make the best of it. It’s heart-warming, dammit.

Really, I was so taken with the last half that I almost forgot that not 20 minutes earlier Satan himself burst through the pavement at the Tadfield Air Base to scold his son for refusing to end the world. (I liked Satan’s quiet voice, by the way; it contrasted nicely with his towering body and fire-red eyes and demon wings and such.) Throughout, Gaiman and Pratchett put a lot of stock in the power of belief to alter reality. Crowley can drive through flames because he thinks he can. Adam’s friends can fell the Horsemen because they believe in making the world a better place, which was kinda hokey but whatever. And of course Adam can rewrite reality as he chooses. It all reminded me of how Shadow can alter the world with his will in American Gods, another Gaiman joint.

But man, this series was a lot more enjoyable than Starz’s American Gods adaptation. It wasn’t perfect. I dunno if we needed Frances McDormand’s almighty narration interrupting the flow, and there were choices that seemed very of their time, like Newton’s incompetence with computers being what averted nuclear war — tell me that wasn’t written in the late ’80s by a couple of bibliophiles unsettled by the oncoming digital revolution. But all that means little in the face of the show’s well-measured good cheer.

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