Not A Review Of “The Magicians”

So recently, having just finished the post-apocalyptic science fiction series Silo—which, believe it or not, my wife actually watched:

We found ourselves in need of another “heavy” show, “heavy” in this case referring kinda to subject matter, but also kinda to length. Since I’d had success with Silo, which was, of course, based on Wool, I thought, why not try another series based on a book I ‘ve read? Abracadabra! It’s The Magicians:

Incidentally, if you have neither read nor seen The Magicians, you are going to encounter some

if you keep reading. Granted these are not major spoilers as they appear in the first episode of the show and fairly early in the book as well. But still. Have all you spoiler-phobes averted your eyes yet? You have? Good, let’s continue.

Wife: “What’s this?”
Me: “This is The Magicians. It’s about a secret college for magic.”
Wife: “Oh, so it’s Harry Potter?”
Me: “Not really … It’s a school for wizards, but—”
Wife: “Harry Potter.”
Me: “Well, okay, but it’s Harry Potter for grownups.”
Wife: “Grownups read Harry Potter.”
Me, Being A Grownup Who Read Harry Potter (beat): “Fair enough.”

So we put on The Magicians and watched a bit of it, with the main characters acting like, you know, recent undergrads getting ready for grad school, until (some of them) got magically transported to Brakebills, the aforementioned secret college for magic, to take their entrance exams, at which point my wife was beginning to have doubts:

Wife: “Is this a young adult show?”
Me: “I wouldn’t characterize the book as young adult. I mean, yes, they’re young, and yes, they’re adults, but, um …”

Only one of the characters actually gets into Brakebills, of course, because where would we get our conflicts if we didn’t split everyone up? This leads to an informational montage in which, among other things, the voice-over narrator (the dean of the college) informs the new students as well as us, the viewers, that everyone will be tested for their aptitudes and inclinations and sorted into the appropriate house for their particular talents.

Wife: “Sorted into houses? Are you sure this isn’t Harry Potter?”
Me: “Trust me, this is going to get much darker much faster than Harry Potter.”*

Towards the middle or end of the first episode, a couple of the characters—at least one of whom is telekinetic—have a scene of noisy levitating sex in the dorm room.

Me: “There, you won’t see that in Harry Potter.”

I am not the only one who noticed this.

Anyway, my wife mostly sorta kinda paid attention to The Magicians, including the part where Our Hero Quentin and his new friends make the catastrophic mistake of attempting to contact somebody’s deceased brother via a summoning incantation, which appears to fail and have no effect. APPEARS TO. What it actually does is allow a creature known as The Beast** to infiltrate Brakebills via a mirror and wreak some havoc, up to and including ripping somebody’s eyeballs out and using them to make a 3D smiley face on a desk.

Me: “You won’t see that in Harry Potter either.”
Wife: “Because it’s gross.”

Hmm, another show for my wife to mostly watch and occasionally avert her eyes from.

Incidentally, in the book The Magicians, the characters at one point decamp to Buffalo, New York, to obtain supplies and, later that evening—still in Buffalo, as far as I can tell—they go out in the yard, and this is what they see:

The sun was setting behind the Adirondacks in the distance, cold and red and desolate through the haze.

Lev Grossman, The Magicians

So apparently in the world of The Magicians, not only is there magic, but the Earth itself is really, really, really small and rotates backwards, because otherwise there is simply no way you are going to see the sun setting behind the Adirondacks if you’re in freaking Buffalo.

Me (after mentioning the above to my wife while we were watching the show): “This is another example of people having no idea how big New York State is.”

Well, or maybe it’s an example of this artist’s rendition of how people from New York City see things:

Unfortunately, after getting five or six episodes into The Magicians, my wife decided she had had enough of the let’s call it “bitchiness” going on between most all of the female characters:

Wife: “This is like Harry Potter meets Mean Girls except Mean Girls was funny. There’s nobody I like except the gay guy and I don’t think he’s going to be enough to keep me going.”
Me: “Rotten Tomatoes says it gets a lot better in the second season***, so things may improve.”
Wife: “How far away is the second season, exactly?”
Me (checks episode count): “Umm, seven episodes.”
Wife: “That’s too many.”

In case you were wondering, my wife is not the only one who felt that way. And so, sadly, it seemed as if the quest for the next Breaking Bad/Mad Men/The Wire/Treme/Halt and Catch Fire may have to continue … But then, after some discussion, it was decided that because the show allegedly becomes much improved in Season Two and beyond:

we would just skip ahead to Season 2 and see how that goes. Abracadabra! We just made Season 1 disappear.****

* Yes I am aware that Harry Potter gets pretty dark eventually, but it does take a while.
** I of course know who The Beast is, but I’m not telling.
*** It said the same thing about Halt and Catch Fire and Halt and Catch Fire turned out to be amazing, but of course, the first season of Halt and Catch Fire was also not all about the mean girls.
**** I am still going to watch the balance of Season 1 on the side so that I can supply any missing information regarding shenanigans the show pulls that aren’t in the book. Wish me luck.