In a vignette that’s disconnected from the show’s predominant arc, we meet Salim (Omid Abtahi), a salesman from Oman who’s trying to make a living within American capitalism, selling gaudy trinkets that no one wants to distributors who might allow him to net a big payday for his brother-in-law. This notion of transcendence, of gods ironically inspiring humans to abandon the very prejudice that’s usually encouraged by religion, runs through “Head Full of Snow” as a thematic thread.
Fadil’s cat helps her take the plunge, abandoning the trivialities that characterize earthbound squabbling. Fadil is stuck on the cultural significance of Anubis’s presence, as she’s afraid that an Egyptian deity won’t lead her to the afterlife of her family. Fadil out onto her fire escape, and they walk the turquoise metal stairs all the way up into the sky, settling into a desert with a scale measuring goodness. Fadil that she’s never forgotten the Egyptian stories told to her in childhood, and for that homage he’s here, paving the way for a wonderfully uncanny image: Anubis escorts Mrs. Fadil straightens the dress on her corpse, and wonders aloud why an Egyptian god should be here to greet a Muslim upon death. Fadil’s fate is elegant and poignant, as she’s cooking over the stove and answers a knock on the door to let in Anubis, who gradually allows her to see her own body collapsed on the kitchen floor. Fadil (Jacqueline Antaramian) to her death. In “Head Full of Snow,” an Egyptian god of the afterlife, Anubis (Chris Obi), guides Mrs. As we know by now, each episode of American Gods begins with a primer scene in which a god associated with a specific culture is shown to flex its powers, usually to destructive ends. The prologue signals this episode’s softer and guardedly optimistic tenor. And this episode also once again recalls certain portions of Fuller’s Hannibal, notably the first half of the third season, in which the characters wandered the Italy of our opera- and horror-film-fed imaginations. At times, “Head Full of Snow” suggests that creators and screenwriters Bryan Fuller and Michael Green and director David Slade are getting high on the existentialist fumes of Mad Men. The episode is appealingly scruffy around the edges, as television isn’t usually allowed to roam this freely. After the enraged and despairing racial-religious politics of “The Secret of Spoon,” “Head Full of Snow” serves as a tonal palette cleanser for American Gods, reveling in the solace of belief during times of loneliness and despair.