Drama
Andor
The critically acclaimed Star Wars series ‘Andor’ is back. For fans, it is a return to form. For families, the show is still potentially a ride through an asteroid belt.
Hub Halloran never had an easy job. As a bounty hunter, he tracked Georgia’s worst lowlifes and hauled ‘em back to jail. It’s always been hard, sometimes dangerous work. And he hardly ever got a thank-you note from anybody.
But ever since he died, the work’s gotten harder. Fiendishly harder, you might say.
Oh, Hub’s still a bounty hunter. Only now he works for the Devil. That’s right—he’s the hatchet man for (as the show describes him) hell’s warden.
It’s not the greatest gig, Hub knows. “Dying and coming back—fine,” he tells his mom, Kitty. “But it’s the whole ‘bounty hunter for the devil’ bit that I don’t like.”
But it beats the alternative.
Midge, a liaison of sorts between Hub and hell, tells Hub that when he was unceremoniously murdered, he came to the land of eternal torment before being given this curious second chance. Kitty wants to know why he was sent down there in the first place, but Hub assures her it’s got to be a mistake.
And certainly, hell doesn’t seem to be particularly well run: Demons sometimes break out of the infernal jail to run amok in our world. And while that usually involves possession, they prefer to possess an already vacated vessel. “Helps them work around any kind of exorcism wrinkles,” Midge says.
These sorts of jailbreaks aren’t new. The devil has hired plenty of bounty hunters to take care of the problem in the past. The last guy, Midge mentions, wasn’t even Christian. (“We don’t discriminate,” she says.) And as long as Hub catches and kills these infernal escapees, the brimstone bounty hunter will stay out of Satan’s sulfurous clutches.
Oh, and he just might have a chance to bond a little more with his own son, Cade, and woo his ex-wife, Maryanne, away from her current beau. And Kitty thinks the woman could use a good woo.
“Your wife ran off with a man from Boston!” Kitty reminds her boy. “If that ain’t a sign that you’ve lost your way, well, I don’t know what is.”
If anyone’s trying to suss out how to experience eternal salvation from The Bondsman … well, just don’t. The creators of The Bondsman know as much about Christian demonology and eschatology as I know about hydro-electric dams: I know that such dams are a thing—but if you asked me how they operate, my answer would be comical guesswork.
The Bondsman isn’t interested in theological fidelity, of course. It takes a very loose Christian framework—think of it as a drying rack on which you’d hang sweaters—and drapes this zany, blood-red horror comedy atop it. And man, is this ugly sweater of a show a mess. Literally.
The Bondsman exists to stretch the talents of its special effects artists. It goes something like this: An escaped demon kills someone in a ludicrously grotesque way. The possessed corpse then kills a few people in grotesquely ludicrous ways. Hub shows up and he dispatches the demon/corpse in—well, you get the idea.
In between these blood-drenched scenes, The Bondsman does take the time to flesh out (if you will) its characters a bit and even hint at Hub’s staggering shamble toward personal (if not eternal) salvation. He’s a fractured bit of goods that wants to do better. And Kitty, a committed (albeit confused) Christian who wants to see her son succeed both in this plane and the next, serves as both the show’s comparatively innocent comic foil and its moral anchor.
But whatever overarching morality tale The Bondsman seeks to tell, it’s hard to justify our engagement with it, given all the torn-off faces and tossed-out curse words and incredibly confused theology here. Hub may be seeking to send fallen angels back to where they came from. But where does one sentence fallen shows?
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
While trying to ambush a notorious criminal, bounty hunter Hub Halloran is ambushed instead—and has his throat cut. The good news for Hub is that he apparently survives and rapidly heals. The bad news: He learns that Lucky Callahan, his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, likely contracted to have Hub killed. More bad news: Hub keeps getting phone messages from the “Pot O’ Gold corporate family,” inviting him to take part in new employee orientation.
Hub’s brush with death is bloody indeed. A large knife carves through the guy’s neck as the camera watches, blood spewing onto the dirt below. When Hub revives, he discovers that he not only has a bloody gash on his neck, but a gaping hole in his windpipe: When he smokes a cigarette, the smoke curls out both his mouth and the hole.
Hub’s wound heals rapidly. The bodily injustices others receive? Not so much. One man is supernaturally thrown up against a wall and has several bones grotesquely broken before his entire body is wrung out like a lemon slice. Another man is levitated and sent flying—head first—into the door. (The man’s skull punches a hole through the door in a spray of blood.)
Hub shoots someone’s hand, leaving a couple of fingers hanging by the merest bits of meat. Someone is lassoed around the neck. A character gets stuffed into the back of a car and left there for several hours. (He apologizes for urinating in his pants.) Hub patches up his gory neck wound with duct tape. Elsewhere, he pushes a hornet’s nest into a motel vent to torment the occupant inside.
A Methodist pastor visits Kitty, Hub’s mother, negotiating her return to church. The pastor says he’d be happy to welcome her back if Hub would “just stop detaining skips during Sunday services.” Hub makes no promises, and the pastor takes his leave, saying, “I’ll be praying for both of you.” Later, the same pastor appears to be under the influence of a demon. A character recites the Lord’s Prayer in a panic. We hear references to hell and demons.
Maryanne sings at a bar in a getup that reveals a bit of cleavage. Later, we see her remove some breast-enhancing pads from her outfit. Hub smokes. He and a number of other characters drink (mostly beer). We hear references to gambling. Nearly 30 uses of the f-word are uttered, along with about 16 uses of the s-word. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “d–k” and “p-ssed.” God’s named is misused five times, four of those with “d–n.”
Hub and his mother, Kitty, learn a little bit about Hub’s new gig from Midge, a representative from the Pot O’ Gold corporation (aka, hell). Midge tells Hub that as long as he’s sending demons back to whence they came, he’ll stay out of the devil’s clutches. Fail once, or run out of demons, and he’s gone. The first demon on the docket? One that has apparently taken over the body of the town’s Methodist minister. Kitty, a veteran bounty hunter herself, is determined to help.
“I will not fail [the pastor] like I failed you,” Kitty tells Hub. “And if I get to help save your immortal soul by ridding this town of whatever he is, well, I can think of worse ways to meet my Maker.”
Kitty (who wears a cross around her neck) is a committed Christian who is very concerned that her son was originally sentenced to eternal damnation. (“Was I a bad mother?” she asks Hub. “Because I was supposed to keep you on the path. That was my job—and I failed.” She then bursts into tears.) Kitty also tells Hub that his new status proves that her faith has been vindicated. “You know this means it’s all true, right?” Kitty says, emphasizing that that truth includes the reality of God. “Does add a point to your argument, I’ll give you that,” Hub says.
Kitty also adds that they shouldn’t kill the pastor if they can help it. “Rob’s still a man of God,” she says.
But that’s not true anymore. In the episode’s opening moments, we see the rather smarmy pastor’s demise. He’s in his empty church, listening to some lewd dance music and smoothing his hair with a dab of holy water—with posters of himself adorning various corners of the sanctuary. The demon appears and is unfazed when the Pastor brandishes a cross and begins loudly praying. The pastor eventually dies via some form of electrocution—the basin of holy water serving as a convenient conduit. The man’s body lands on the floor with a thud, and his face kind of melts off and sticks to the floor as the corpse stands up.
As mentioned, Midge pay Hub and Kitty a visit, and she unpacks Hub’s new job duties. She tells Hub to think of hell as a sort of prison, adding that “sometimes inmates bust out.”
We hear a sermon on a radio. Another cross, accompanied by the words, “By the power of our Lord in Jesus Christ!” fails to deter a demon-possessed corpse. Someone says, “Praise the Lord, I’m a changed man now,” but he realizes he’s not that changed when he screws a silencer on a weapon.
Someone discovers a supernatural murder scene: He finds three dead-and-dismembered bodies, with the camera taking special care to document the gore-soaked limbs lying about. In another scene, a dead body is supernaturally suspended from a ceiling, the bloody corpse forming an upside-down cross. A character gets blasted by a shotgun, then finally dispatched when a filing cabinet crushes his skull like a melon.
When Hub tells his mother that her pastor’s a demon now, Kitty speculates that maybe he’s under the influence of something else. “I did hear rumors about a drinking problem,” she says. “He wasn’t drunk, Ma,” Hub says. “Made a guy levitate right in front of me.” We hear other references to alcohol. Characters say the f-word five times and the s-word four. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and one abuse of Jesus’ name.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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