Okay, I know I'm really late to this particular party, but several people have suggested I try this show, so I decided to, uh, try this show. I watched the first episode last night, and . . . I don't know.
The Magicians is about a socially awkward grad student named Quentin who basically gets admitted to the American university equivalent of Hogwarts, I guess? Brakebills. ::shrug:: There is the requisite nerdy girl who, for all her primness, apparently can't find dresses that go past mid-thigh, and she has something against leggings to cover the rest of her. She's also unnecessarily unkind, though I'm sure we'll learn all kinds of things to make her more sympathetic. In this episode we discover her brother Charlie died and no one will tell her what happened to him, so she tries to contact him but it ends badly. Namely, it ends with some guy partially made of giant moths stepping through a mirror. We know he's bad because, well, moths, but also he messes up clocks, freezes everyone (though they're cognizant of being frozen, so it's not really like stopping time), and pulls the dean's eyes out.
Meanwhile, Quentin's overachiever friend from the normal world Julia was rejected from Brakebills and it's messed her up. She's not used to being rejected because she's good at everything and therefore always accepted. It turns out Julia does have a modicum of magical talent, and so a rival group swoops in and admits her into its ranks. It doesn't take much foresight to guess Julia and Quentin are being set up as rivals and/or potential enemies.
I don't know. There's something very pedantic about the whole thing. My understanding is that The Magicians is based on a book (or books), but that it's fairly different from the source material, too? I might need to look into that. As it stands, I don't find Quentin an endearing or compelling central character. And his hair annoys me. It's hard to watch a show with a lead character I don't want to look at, one that is so whiny and irritating.
That said, as you know, I try to give everything at least three episodes. I don't know *when* I'll circle back to this one, but Netflix will at least remind me I watched it. Once upon a time.
1 comment:
It gets better as it goes, and I found that I like other characters much more than Julia and Quentin. I still haven't read the books, but eventually I'll get to them.
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