TV Review: Ash vs Evil Dead: Season 1 – Episode 7

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Season 1, Episode 7: Fire in the Hole

SUMMARY:  Ash (Bruce Campbell), with Pablo (Ray Santiago), Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), and Amanda (Jill Marie Jones) in tow, visits a survivalist camp for supplies, but finds they’ve already become overrun by Deadites. 

REVIEW: Last week’s episode – for me – set a high water mark for the series. It was everything you could hope for from a show like this. It was gruesome, funny and smart and the perfect little twenty-five minute adventure for Ash and the gang. By contrast, episode seven, while perfectly good in its own right, seems like an afterthought.

This is one of the few times that Ash Vs Evil Dead has felt stretched a little thin as the gang’s adventure at a survivalist camp – while entertaining – doesn’t feel like a necessary development. The point seems to have been to draw Ash and Amanda together in a more romantic way, but their already strong chemistry – evident by just a few quick moments last episode – makes this redundant. Also – the chaos at the survivalist camp doesn’t really offer us anything we haven’t seen before. It just feels like biding time for the big finale at the original Evil Dead cabin.

Even still, the episode is fine. There are a lot of fun moments, such as Kelly learning how to use a machine gun – refreshingly honest in that she doesn’t suddenly become Rambo when she picks it up but actually has a hard time controlling it and almost kills Pablo before working in a bit of (surprisingly smart) political satire when she uses a survivalist’s gun against him, saying “Prop H this!” It’s not heavy-handed, but rather just a cute, kinda smart aside reminding us that Ash vs Evil Dead is supposed to take place in a real world setting.

Naturally, the best parts all feature Ash, with him and Amanda trapped underneath the survivalist compound and hunted by a particularly nasty Deadite. Jill Marie Jones has proven herself to be an ideal partner for Campbell, with some sly flirtation and an ass-kicking streak that makes her feel like an organic, believable (as far as these things go) heroine. As usual, Ash has some great lines, like “safety last” and “save the handcuffs for later baby.”

My favorite part of the episode – and the bit that ultimately made this instalment worth doing – is that Ash ditches his crew at the end of the episode in an effort to protect them for what lies at the cabin. Obviously they’re going to track him down without much trouble, but it’s a nice touch that gives Ash a bit of heart. We also see Lucy Lawless’ Ruby come back from what nobody was convinced was her demise to make her way to the cabin as well, promising an epic showdown that should go for a few episodes at least. While I ultimately feel like the show-runners were stretching the plot out a bit with this episode, I still had fun watching it and the fact that the poorest episode of the season scores so highly in my book proves just how tight it actually is.