The Magicians (Syfy) (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

As I heard about the developments regarding this series, I didn't have any interest, dismissing it as Harry Potter for the underwear model set. But tonight I found myself unable to sleep, and the first episode was available for free on Vudu ahead of its premiere the next day (Monday), so I decided to give it a shot.

I ended up being really blown away. Based on the series of books by Lev Grossman, the story centers around Quentin Coldwater and Julia Wicker, childhood friends that were obsessed with fantasy growing up, particularly a five-book Narnia-esque series called "Fillory and Further". Now, recent college graduates, they are preparing for grad school.


Julia has already been admitted to Yale, and her life is fully on track. She has left their childhood imaginings behind her.


Quentin, an amateur slight-of-hand artist, can't bring himself to leave their childhood imaginings behind him, and it's destroying his life. We meet him at his exit interview from the psychiatric facility he had checked himself into. His explanation for his depression is one of the more potent metaphors I've encountered for the often rough transition from childhood into adulthood.


Things take a turn when they show up for his graduate admissions interview to find the interviewer dead and the home in which the interview was to be conducted eerily mirrors the illustrations from his Fillory and Further first edition. Shortly thereafter, Quentin and Julia separately find themselves plucked out of their ordinary lives and given a shot at the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy's graduate program. Brakebills is located vaguely in upstate New York and can best be described as reality-adjacent.


From there the plot takes a number of twists and turns that I did not see coming.


The showrunners are John McNamara ("Lois & Clark", the short-lived cult favorite "Profit", "Jericho", NBC's "Aquarius") and Sera Gamble ("Supernatural"). The writing is much better than Syfy's average. I haven't followed every series the channel has done, but it's definitely the best written I've watched on the channel since the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica".


The producing director is Mike Cahill, best known for his big screen collaborations with Brit Marling, Another Earth and I Origins. The look and feel of his pilot is very distinctive; there are three worlds presented in this episode, and each has its own distinctive look and feel. The production design is fairly simple but also distinctive and effective. The pilot was filmed in New Orleans, but production shifted to Vancouver when it was picked up to series. I hope it doesn't loose that interesting character with the transition.


Most of the cast members really do look like they stepped out of a catalog photo, but the main performances are all solid.

 

[NeilO]

Completely forgot to set the DVR. It looks like there are more airings this week and it should also be on demand.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

As I feared, the second episode wasn't quite as visually distinctive as the first episode. But the other strengths from the pilot were still there, and Kacey Rohl's presence in a prominent role pretty much guarantees that I'm in for the long haul.

 

[NeilO]

The first two episodes definitely looked like they were meant to be shown at once as one whole story with the scenes at the beginning and end with the principal and the Specialist talking about the threat.

Is it now going to be SyFy's signature mark to have floating sex in the first episode of shows? First in The Expanse and now this. It seemed a bit weird to see it in another show so soon.

 

[Johnny Angell]

My wife and I watched the first episode and stopped. It was boring and I didn't care about any of the characters.

 

[DaveF]

I read the book when it was hot stuff, and found it infuriating. I was a little curious about the show -- and catching a few minutes of it, it looked well done. But I figured what annoyed me about the book wouldn't be changed on tv.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Syfy's Magicians Renewed for Season 2

I'm glad. I've been enjoying this one so far.

I read the book when it was hot stuff, and found it infuriating. I was a little curious about the show -- and catching a few minutes of it, it looked well done. But I figured what annoyed me about the book wouldn't be changed on tv.

Just out of curiosity, what infuriated you about the book? My understanding is that Julia's story mostly happened offscreen, so to speak, in the book. I can see how it would be frustrating to have the story told solely through Quentin's perspective, since he's not a very likable protagonist.

 

[DaveF]

Just out of curiosity, what infuriated you about the book? My understanding is that Julia's story mostly happened offscreen, so to speak, in the book. I can see how it would be frustrating to have the story told solely through Quentin's perspective, since he's not a very likable protagonist.

I'll just copy my review at Amazon that I wrote after reading it. It's interesting to read this now, about six years later, and wonder how I'd feel about it today. My specific tastes and allowances for anti-heroes, unsympathetic characters, and wandering plot lines ebbs and flows.



This book does almost everything wrong. If you must read it, start past the half-way point. The first half is especially bad. It commits my five great literary sins (the fourth is new to me with this book)

1) Telling me, not showing me: Especially the first third, we are repeatably told of the brilliance of the characters. They are said to have friendships, emotional bonds with others. But these are stated by the third-person narrator. The real evidence of this is but dimly demonstrated through the characters actions and dialog. Rather than showing me that someone is loyal through appropriate actions, they are described as loyal with minimal, if any, supporting evidence.

2) Not making me believe: In a world of magic and magicians, I never really believed these characters could do magic.

3) Not making me care: There was no hero. No anti-hero. No sympathetic characters. The protagonist was tedious from the start, and only gained some emotional resonance in the last quarter of the overlong story.

4) Mocking the greats: It's as if Lev Grossman decided that Narnia and Harry Potter would be much better if those worlds were filled with vulgar, cynical, angsty, young adults. So it creates its own version of Narnia, Filory, that the characters all read as children: young British kids escape through their uncle's furniture into a magical land, have adventures, and return home. He then reworks the Potter world where high-school kids with hidden magical talent are sent off to a special school, where they are hidden away for 5 years learning magic, completely unknown the outside, non-magical world. But being "real", they smoke and curse and have sex and do nothing of value with their lives. And for the first many chapters, it creates a constant comparison with far greater books, and looks all the worse for it.

5) Goes nowhere, Does nothing: The story is a string of essentially random events, culminating in nothing.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Thanks for clarifying, Dave.

I don't think the show is guilty of sins 1 and 2, and I can't speak to 5 yet.

There's a strong argument to be made for 3, though; of the main characters, Julia's the only one remotely sympathetic, and she's not especially free of faults, either. Mainly, I'm rooting for her because of how badly she got screwed over, and I like stories about characters attempting to overcome adversity. Quentin and Alice both do pretty deplorable things; I'm invested in them, but I don't especially like them.

And there's definitely a strong argument to be made for 4; the show is pretty unequivocally a nihilistic exploration of the usual fantasy tropes, with Harry Potter and Narnia both more or less explicitly referenced in the show's DNA. The institutions are flawed; the authority figures are flawed and nearly as ignorant as their pupils. I think part of what I find compelling about it is that it captures the feeling of my early twenties, when I had graduated college and been thrust out into the real world. Upon until that point, everything had been one logical step after the next, culminating in a predetermined point of completion. Suddenly there was no predefined next step, no designated point to strive toward. For some people, that freedom is empowering. I found it demoralizing. And it makes sense to me that magic wouldn't solve that identity crisis; there's a reason the Harry Potter books end with Harry defeating Voldemort. What follows, when there is no prophecy to guide his destiny, would seem to be simultaneously much scarier and much less compelling.

 

[DaveF]

My view of the book is marginal; it was well reviewed. And I have at least one friend who liked it a good deal (and went on to read the trilogy).

I don't think the author, Les Grossman, had ill will towards Potter and Narnia. I think the intent was to create an ironic derivative consideration of those ideas. To consider them in this real world of ours with broken churches, flawed people, and the understanding that a secret world would most likely be just as ambivalent as ours.

I believe that was his intent. But for me, when I read it, he failed utterly. That's the danger of tackling beloved classics, new or old.


And still, there was something compelling about the ideas in the book. I wanted it to work. I wanted to be drawn in. I considered reading the sequel to see what happened. I was especially curious about Denny, though I don't know if or how his character progresses after the first book. So, if wasn't overloaded by SyFy's re-discovery of life beyond wrassling and sharktopus, I'd probably watch the show in hopes it would work for me.

Eventually this current golden (or platinum) age of TV will come to its conclusion, there will be nothing but reruns of Gilligan's Island on HBO, and I'll catch up on all the interesting shows I skipped

 

[Malcolm R]

My wife and I watched the first episode and stopped. It was boring and I didn't care about any of the characters.

I managed to make it through all of the episodes with some judicious use of the fast-forward button on my DVR, and largely agree with this. There was not a single character that I cared about enough to root for. By the end, I was actually hoping the Beast would kill them all and we could start fresh with a new class for Season 2. But since that didn't happen, I likely won't be watching.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

There was not a single character that I cared about enough to root for. By the end, I was actually hoping the Beast would kill them all and we could start fresh with a new class for Season 2.

Usually I don't like television shows and movies centered around unlikable characters. And every main character on "The Magicians" is unlikable. But somewhere near the halfway point, I found myself invested in all of their journeys. Partly that's a credit to the great casting, and partly that's a credit to the writing. I understood where the characters were coming from and why, so I guess I didn't need to like them to care what happened to them.

Julia, in particular, had a great storyline.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The Blu-Ray will be uncensored, with the audio dropouts for the harsher profanity eliminated.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

For anyone who wants to catch up ahead of Season 2:

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

One of my very favorite shows is ending