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The Magicians: Poached Eggs

“When things happen, they leave a mark. Figuring out how to deal with it takes time.”

So our characters contemplate how to bear the weight of their trauma and, well, existence. And there’s a fun jailbreak. Typical Magicians episode.

Let’s start with the jailbreak. So they still need to get the last key from the underground. They figure out a way to do this, which involves Penny turning himself into a book to break into the underground library, then passing the key to the Neitherlands library, where another traveler will be to bring it back home. The problem is their second traveler (Victoria from the Beast’s dungeon) is rolling with Harriet (fake buzzfeed, anti-library girl). They need to get Harriet on their side, so they need Kady, who’s been locked in a mental hospital since her conversation with Astral Penny.

The jailbreak itself is lots of fun. Quentin and Poppy use their concerning level of knowledge about mental hospitals to get her out. Kady gets to punch someone. It’s all great. Except for Kady’s conversation with Penny, which is heart-breaking. Kady isn’t happy to hear about Penny’s part of the plan, that he’s once again putting his life on the line for everyone. And her exhaustion and frustration is kinda understandable. Because she’s right; Penny’s sacrificed for the group time and time again, and his last sacrifice got him pseudo-dead. At the end of the day, it's Penny’s choice. But Kady still might not want to (and shouldn’t have to) watch him do it again.

In Fillory, Margo and Eliot go up against The Fairies. They almost have them with their kidnapping scheme, but then the Fairy Queen threatens Frey. Frey realizes, if family does mean loyalty like Fen says, then the fairies don’t treat Frey like family. So she betrays them and admits to Eliot and Fen that she isn’t her daughter. Turns out, their kid died at childbirth. Fen’s disappointed in herself, that she didn’t know, that she tried so hard to force Frey to be her family. Because she didn’t want to see the truth and she saw as a way of avoiding her pain. But that would have never worked, of course, which is what Julia realizes regarding her own trauma.

After Julia and Alice did their switcheroo (as Dean Fogg puts it), it doesn’t work as well as either hoped. Julia’s still haunted by Reynard. Alice can’t hold Julia’s magic; it’s killing her. Alice isn’t willing to accept her end of it. It seems that she sees magic as a way of finding herself again. So Julia has to stop her, before the magic kills her. Ultimately (after Alice accidentally almost kills Julia) Alice gives Julia’s magic back and they have a nice conversation about trauma and healing. Julia realizes there’s nothing magic about her pain, so there’s nothing magic she can do to fix it. She just needs time. Alice likely needs the same to figure out who she is and how to be.

It’s a small conversation, but I found it to be the most important part of the entire episode. Because that’s really the answer to a lot of the character’s problems. Quentin can’t magic his way out his depression, he just needs time to accept it and learn how to cope with it. Fen can’t use a surrogate child to fix her loss. And Kady needs time to deal with kind of losing Penny. It’s that cliché saying: “time heals all wounds.” It’s not fun or entertaining, but it’s likely got some truth to it.

Bits and Pieces

-- Time alone isn’t going to save Margo and Eliot from the pissed off Fillorian residents, though. They could really use some magic about now.

-- For a moment there, Frey was starting to hate Eliot less. Which was a nice family moment. Until, you know, it turned out they weren’t really a family.

-- Irene McAllistair’s magic reserve turns out to be creature excretions you take like cocaine. Nothing fishy going on there.

Dean Fogg, regarding Julia’s reason for rejecting her magic: “I'll file it under ‘entitled Millennial bullshit.’” This was a funny line, but I’m still annoyed by everyone’s inability/refusal to try to understand Julia’s reluctance.

Fen: “We had the most wonderful adventure. We went to the Square of Time, where no one sleeps. And it's always light.”
Frey: “A man urinated next to me.”
Fen: “Then we saw bards performing on your famous Broad Way."
Frey: “You call it Cats, but it's just humans in cat greasepaint.”
Fen: “And we tried a delicacy called pizza at an eatery that was ‘Family Style.’”

Margo, threatening: “So have fun on the little egg hunt, 'cause if you don't make this deal, we're about to boil and dye 'em like it's motherfucking Easter around here.”
Fairy Queen: “I don't know what that means.”

Vampire, when Julia comes to save Alice: “Get out.”
Alice: “No, I gave you my money.”
Vampire: “Not enough to deal with hedgewitch Buffy.”

Margo: “There wasn't a blood test to tell me to be High Queen. I chose it. And I have had to fight for every shred of authority. And no offense, but you can't understand, because it was handed to you. And now I'm supposed to abandon my kingdom? Those fairy bitches wanna come for my crown, well I'll shove it up their fucking egg-holes.”

Three and a half out of four Easter-egged fairy fetuses.

1 comment:

  1. The emotional pain nearly all of them are experiencing is one of the things that makes this series work for me. If they were just casting spells and having adventures and hooking up, I'm certain I wouldn't be watching it.

    I didn't see the Frey thing coming, and kept wondering -- do the fairies still have Fen and Eliot's baby? Are they lying?

    Loved the description of Times Square. Too funny.

    ReplyDelete

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