Magicians 1x04

[sabotabby]

My latest review is up! Quentin gets his comeuppance for being a neckbeard by getting trapped in a psychiatric institution that's—gasp!—all in his head.

Comments

[eboniorchid.livejournal.com]

Oh that Gawd someone else is watching this show!!!

[sabotabby]

Yes! I was hugely obsessed with the books and the show is excellent and like 99% of what I hoped it would be.

[ironed_orchid]

I love these reviews.

[sabotabby]

Why thank you!

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

I need to get on this. Like, soon.
Hopefully it won't become one of the six or so shows I've started, liked, and am currently failing to continue watching...

[sabotabby]

Get on it! I would love to hear your opinions!

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Up to S01E03. Enjoying it. Eliot is *fabulous*.

Thus far I feel like the plot is being rushed a whole lot. Not sure how I feel about that. I understand that this is TV and accommodations must be made, but still... It lacks something of the epic story sense I got from the audiobooks.

Also, Quentin is a prat in the audio version and, presumably, in the book -- I don't see that being lost going from text to audio version. But on screen, where you have to look *at* him rather than *through* him? I have such acute contact embarrassement, I can hardly stand to watch. He is so much more blind, so much less intelligent. I mean, yes, sure, he wasn't the smartest in the group in the books either, but there was just more *to* him than an inert mass of social awkwardness and geekdom.

And I really didn't like what they did to his interactions with Penny. This may well be my "Han Shot First" moment, actually.

[sabotabby]

But on screen, where you have to look *at* him rather than *through* him? I have such acute contact embarrassement, I can hardly stand to watch. He is so much more blind, so much less intelligent. I mean, yes, sure, he wasn't the smartest in the group in the books either, but there was just more *to* him than an inert mass of social awkwardness and geekdom.

It's interesting because I had the opposite reaction. I felt horribly creeped out being in his head through most of the first book (and a lot of it was because I related to him and his horrible thoughts) whereas on screen he just seems more like a kid. Horrible, yes, but a lot of the horrible comes from mental illness rather than entitlement, although there's a healthy dose of the latter too.

But this is in retrospect over the whole season. By the episode you're at, I wanted him to DIAF.

And I really didn't like what they did to his interactions with Penny. This may well be my "Han Shot First" moment, actually.

Interesting! Expand? One of the things I liked about it is kind of meta—in the book, we only see Penny through Quentin's eyes, so of course he's terrible, but on screen he's much more sympathetic because we get his POV.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

(so apparently I got a bit wordy... Hope you don't mind!)
The one problem with audiobooks is, it's really hard to scan through them for a bit you need to reference. So I won't. I hope my memory doesn't screw me over *too* badly...

First, the question of Quentin's douchenozzlery. I found it much harder to stomach when virtually no time had passed between his getting into Breakbills and being a complete asshole to Julia. There was no build-up of unrequited love and adoration, no gradual deterioration for Julia into obsession... I believe Alice says in S01E03 something about his only being at Breakbills for three months. That's far too rapid for any number of things. If Quentin did pick up all that magical skill in the span of thee months, he's an absolute magical genius -- but then what the hell is he doing screwing up basic things and acting like generally like a bumbling idiot? His only actual magical contribution thus far has been to participate in a ritual (which he fucked up due to an inability to see the sabotage), to volunteer a good suggestion to Alice (which required no magical talent or ability whatsoever), and to try to use battle magic on Penny (which got thrown back in his face, but more on that in a bit). The books' pace was much more sane and believable in this regard. No, you can't do all that much when you begin your studies. Yes, Julia had been obsessed with vague memories -- and I emphasize *vague* here -- of Breakbills for months before seeing Quentin again. Yes, Quentin was a douche to her at that meeting, but he had much more time apart from her, much more time to get sucked into his new life, forget about his mundane friends, and not turn the whole thing into a bout of "oh yeah? Well you didn't fuck me, so you deserve to suffer!"

Quentin -- all of them, actually -- is also younger in the books. They're all applying to undergrad, not living on their own as reasonably independent university students. I think that also helped me tolerate Quentin more. I remember how much of a dumbass I was when I was graduating from high school.

Speaking of the flow of time, there's some serious fuckery going on in that regard. Magic is hard. So hard that most people can't do it, and most people *with the aptitude*, carefully selected by professionals whose raison d'etre is to find and train people with the aptitude, still fail the entrance exams. OK, the bit about it being most people is from the books and isn't clearly shown in the series, but I believe it's still implied. There definitely is the bit about most of a 3rd year class simply disappearing. Becoming a magician is *hard*.

And then we have Quentin, who had demonstrated no particular talent in that regard, who is clearly inferior in skill to Alice, in raw talent to Penny, and in badassery and panache to Eliot... simply pick up a spell after seeing it *once*. Not just any spell, either, but battle magic, which is forbidden to students. That's some incredible ability right there. It completely demolishes the sense the books had tried so hard to build -- there is no difficulty in learning magic. The only difficulty is getting your hands on the right books. Magic isn't hard; it's just protected by DRM.

It also completely fucks with the plot later in the books, where the group spends a lot of effort developing half-assed versions of attack spells because battle magic is forbidden and isn't written down anywhere. They go to battle woefully unprepared because there's no one to prepare them. But if battle magic is just floating around the Breakbills student body, well...

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Now, speaking of that battle spell Quentin flings at Penny... I don't remember the lead-up in the books, sadly, but Penny does something that makes Quentin so furious that he walks up to Penny and punches the latter in the nose. There's no magical response of any sort, no magic used at all during the encounter, in fact. Penny gets punched and then the Dean comes down on the two of them like a tonne of bricks. Not so in the series, where Quentin is not only the recipient of Penny's violent outburst, but is also a coward, attacking Penny from behind with forbidden magic. This is a Quentin who will go to any lengths to win. The Quentin in the books *is* willng to go to extremes, but first and foremost it's about knowledge for him, at least in the early stages of the story. And it has to be that for all of them -- Breakbills doesn't have an Arts general non-major degree option.

My problem with the book Penny and Quentin vs. the TV ones isn't that Penny is more sympathetic or that Quentin is less so. Rather, it's that Penny has lost his essential Penny-ness. Penny was, more than anyone else, absolutely obsessed with knowledge. He cared very little for anything else, and if memory serves was completely oblivious to how he was coming across. The pursuit of knowledge was everything to him.

On the other hand, Quentin is... almost a non-person in the books. He doesn't take responsibility for his own actions, is pretty much defined by his studies for a very long time. The TV Quentin is defined by his fuck-ups, and he seems to be far more engaged with the world, providing much more opportunity to produce the aforementioned fuck-ups. It may be an interesting, if unappealing, main character, but I don't think it's Quentin anymore.

[sabotabby]

TBH I could go on about the books/show all day.

The books' pace was much more sane and believable in this regard.

For sure. I forgive them a lot of the pacing difficulties since they didn't know at this point that the show would be renewed. If they knew that they had five seasons, I think it would have been quite different.

Quentin -- all of them, actually -- is also younger in the books. They're all applying to undergrad, not living on their own as reasonably independent university students. I think that also helped me tolerate Quentin more. I remember how much of a dumbass I was when I was graduating from high school.

Same. I'm not sure why they went with grad school, beyond that if it was a long-running show, older actors would age less dramatically. Actually that is probably why they did it. But it makes the characters less forgivable.

And I don't think it's necessary; Quentin ages 10 years over three books, so having actors go from kid to obviously adult isn't a huge problem. But I think they wanted to space the Fillory plot over the Brakebills plot (sigh) and hence keeping them looking roughly the same age would have been important.

Of course, I'd prefer the months of ennui in New York, and then the entire plot set in Fillory, but I doubt the budget would allow for this.

In terms of the differences between characters, I agree, but I'm not too hung up on it. TV's a different medium. Also, I love TV!Penny so much more than Book!Penny that I will forgive a lot. (I didn't hate him in the books, but he didn't get much in the way of character development.) And there is a pretty good in-story explanation (blink and you'll miss it, but it is great) that explains why.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

There's a storied and time-honoured tradition of casting actors in their 20s as high school students. Remember 21 Jump St.? Fame? It worked just fine. And, as you point out, the characters are *supposed* to age. What's with them not being permitted to? (you're farther along than I, and I figure you'd have mentioned if some had taken place later in the season)

As for TV!Penny, I do like him! I like him a lot! ...but he's not the same character. I guess this is where "based on a story by Lev Grossman" as opposed to "Lev Grossman's The Magicians" comes in. Still more closely related to the original story than Movie!Starship Troopers, which by sheer accident happens to share a name with a book by Heinlein.

My problem with TV!Penny is that his not being this self-obsessed, unbeliveably brilliant jerk is going to change the dynamics of the group. I eagerly await the episode where Julia meets Penny and the two immediately start a whirlwhind romance.

The more I think about it, the more I am distilling what bothers me about the pacing of the show. It's the gaps. It's the lack of any sense of continuity of events. This isn't a coherent story; it's like someone took the body of a story, ran it through a wood chipper, and then laid out the resultant gobbets of meat and connective tissue into the vague approximation of the original shape. Only they did a really poor job of collecting all the pieces and the gaps are showing.

"What do you mean Alice and Quentin hadn't tried entering the Physical cottage until Quentin's second year? What do you mean it took them over a day of trying things to break through the door? What do you mean Julia didn't just get instantly admitted -- nay, drafted! -- into a highly secretive and paranoid underground society?"

[sabotabby]

What's with them not being permitted to? (you're farther along than I, and I figure you'd have mentioned if some had taken place later in the season)

Like I said, I think it's a matter of the uncertainty of American network TV rather than a purely creative decision. They would have had no idea if they were going to get cancelled mid-season.

The group dynamics are very different as a result of Penny being basically a different character. It's a bit to Janet/Margo's detriment, as she doesn't get as much to do. But like I said, there are good narrative reasons.

The pacing gets better. I don't know that it's any worse than any other first season of an American show that's not, say Breaking Bad, but I'd say it's the biggest flaw. I can't tell if it bothers me just because of how into the books I was or whether it's objectively worse.