Ash vs Evil Dead Recap with Spoilers: El Jefe

Note: This show is rated Mature, or would carry an R rating in theaters. The recap reflects that.

The episode starts with Bruce Campbell getting his mojo going again as Ash, the titular character. He puts on a girdle to suck in the old gut, grabs a condom and his wooden hand, and heads down to the bar.

Sidling up to the bar, he slams his wooden hand down, and tells a story about saving an 8 year old boy from the front of a train to impress a woman at the bar.

Jump cut to Ash banging the woman doggy style in the women’s room, slapping her ass with his wooden hand. Just as she’s yelling “I’m coming!” she spins her head around and it’s in full-on deadite demon mode saying, “We’re coming for you!” He stops and starts making an excuse, then finishes anyway.

Ash heads back to his mobile home and gets out is evil grimoire, the Necronomicon – there’s some pot jammed in there, and he has a flashback. He invited a lady friend over to get high. She asks him if he knows any poetry. He doesn’t – but he has that lovely book of the dead, so they start reading from it. Because that’s never done anything bad in Ash’s life. Cut back to present day Ash who’s just remembered all this, and he just says, “F*************CK.”

Next we meet Amanda Fisher and her cop partner, answering a call about a woman screaming for her life at an old, abandoned house. Amanda finds said woman, dead and in a frozen scream state. Her partner, John, is downstairs with his gun pointed at an empty rocking chair, that was rocking. “Something’s not right here.” There’s someone covered in a sheet, crying. She stands. They take the sheet off her – it looks like it’s the girl that was smoking pot with Ash in the flashback. Oh, boy. Yup, it definitely is. She starts speaking wors from the Necronomicon, then turns her head all the way around, Deadite style. She spins her arms too, and starts running at the cops, knocking down John. “We know who you are,” she says to Amanda before stabbing her with a pair of scissors. Amanda unloads a full clip into her chest and it does nothing. John shoots her in the head, blowing half her head off, but that doesn’t work either. She throws John into a pair of antlers on the wall – yeah, he dead. Amanda shoots her in what remains of her head with a small, high caliber gun. Looking at the antlers, he’s not there anymore. She hears skittering on the ceiling, and finally sees John- now a Deadite, of course, up there. The two tussle, but she does get her gun back. He changes back to John and begs her not to shoot him. He goes back to Deadite mode, and she blows his head off.

Back to Ash, he’s looking at a business card of someone named Lionel who has a shop called “Books from Beyond.” Ash tells his neighbor he might half to leave town for awhile, and asks her if she can do some tidying of his trailer while he’s gone. She agrees – then goes Deadite. I mean, we didn’t think this was just going to be Ash’s retirement story, did we? “We are near. Your time comes again,” she says, then zaps back to normal.

Ash pulls up to his job at a generic big box store called Value Stop. He asks if he can grab his check and go, and his boss ain’t having it. “You get your pay at the end of the day.” Comic affect time, when Ash breaks an entire box of lightbulbs he was just told to take out back. His pal Pablo comes up and says he’ll clean it up. He tells Pablo he’s going to leave, and he tells him he has to meet his friend that just started working there. Ash thinks she’s hot, naturally. “She haunts my dreams,” Pablo says. The girl is Kelly, and he hits on her ruthlessly. “I’m old, greying, ten pounds overweight – okay thirty – but it doesn’t matter, at some point, you woulda thought about it,” he says when he’s telling her he’s sorry he has to leave her so soon. She slams him on the counter and threatens him.

Over at the Blue Lake Diner, Amanda is staring into a cup of coffee. She sees something, and a woman – Ruby – turns around and asks her if she’s all right. She says she thought she saw something but can’t trust her eyes. Ruby tells her she saw what she saw, and walks out.

Ash is in the warehouse at his work, and all the lights go out. There’s a child’s laughter. It’s one of the dolls in the store room come to life as a deadite, and she attacks. They start to fight. She bites him, and grabs a box cutter, coming at him again – and Pablo splats her with a shovel. “What the hell was that?” he asks Ash.

Outside the ValueStop, storm clouds are gathering. Ash asks Pablo if he believes in the forces of evil, and Pablo said his uncle is a Shaman. “After seeing this? I think he was right.” Ash tells him about the night at the cabin, and finding the book. As he tells this story, we see scenes from that fateful night. What a nice memory lane trip. “Now, because I screwed up and read from that book one lousy time, the evil has found me.” Pablo says “only one man would rise to stand against it, they called him El Jefe, and I think that’s you, Ash!”

The bar has fallen into a sinkhole, and Ash is freaking out. Pablo says he has to finish what he started. Ash intends to try to run, and leaves the house.

Kelly is on a facetime with her dad – her mother, his wife, died six months ago. He’s scared and says, “She’s here. She’s at the door. My God, she’s coming inside. Oh God, she’s here!” Annnnd her mom walks in the door, and his phone cuts out.

Pablo says he’ll take Kelly to her dad’s house. The manager stops him from leaving. The evil is almost here. Nice Michigan State Spartans helmet, Kelly! They ride off on Pablo’s motorcycle, and the manager is killed off screen with a yell.

Amanda goes back to the house where she encountered the deadites. She finds her partner’s shirt and is now sure it happened.

Pablo and Kelly pull up to Ash’s trailer, and Pablo says “he’s the only one who can help us, I hope he will.” It’s dark and a camera shows something approaching the trailer. A low growl and something starts beating on the roof. An arm busts through a window and grabs Kelly, choking her. Pablo begs Ash to do something. Kelly says “Help me, help me, please,” and he grabs an axe off the wall, throwing it and perfectly severing the hand. The evil starts attacking the trailer in force now, shaking it and sending things flying. Kelly screams for it to “live us alone” and it stops for a minute. Ash pulls Kelly up and grabs her belt, he starts putting something on. He grabs his boom stick and starts kicking deadite ass after one comes in. He straps the shotgun to his back. Kelly asks, “Who are you? You seem so different.” “I told you it would cross your mind,” he deadpans. Kelly wants them to go to her dad and save him from her mom. He tells her they have to get to the bottom of the book.

He opens a curtain, and we see the silhouette of his chainsaw. He opens another, and the woman from the trailer park is there and she’s a deadite. She throws him around a bit, and says “We await you! It’s time to test the meddle of man.” She goes after Pablo and stabs him in the shoulder. She then goes after Kelly, who fights back admirably but is clearly outmatched.

Ash wakes up, and his shotgun is missing. He takes off his hand, Pablo kicks the chainsaw over, and he catches it, right on his hand. He revs that shit up and tells the deadite, “It’s time to dance!” YES.

She attacks, and he swings, taking her head clean off. “You were right, no more running,” he says. “It’s good to see you, Jefe,” Pablo says. “It’s good to be back.” “How’s it feel?”

“Groovy.”