'The Magicians' Gets "Lost, Found, F***ed" In A Very Eventful Episode
The title of this season's second episode, "Lost, Found, F***ed," is as descriptive as it is indelicately alliterative. At the beginning of the hour, our favorite memory-less magicians are indeed lost; by the end of the episode though, Julia—like an overachieving Jesus—has died and resurrected herself hundreds of times in order to break the magic battery keeping the persona-creating glamour alive. Julia's death-inducing efforts work—everyone finds themselves again as their memories crash back into their minds. Most of the crew, however, barely have a chance to nurse their glamour hangovers before they find themselves f***ed again, this time by the monster-controlled Eliot, who shows up to kill Penny, Kady and Josh because he's jealous Quentin likes them more than him.There's a lot packed into this hour, and at times it's a challenge to keep track of everything as the show flits between its five storylines. The frenetic switching and fast-paced plot points, however, also prevent the episode from getting too bogged down in its own complexity, albeit at the cost of not spending much time with our usual characters.But the show does pause for a moment with Henry Fogg. The scenes with the Dean, who we've known so far as a high-functioning (and sometimes not-so-functioning) alcoholic curmudgeon, are the heart of this episode. Rick Worthy does an amazing job showing the cracks in the Dean's well-cultivated and well-armored exterior as we follow Fogg through what he thinks is the last day of his life (hedge witch Marina has dosed him with his own glamour potion, and he refuses to develop an antidote for it). Fogg's refusal to develop a cure is his sacrifice, his self-implemented penance for his past sins and the one thing he thinks he can do to keep his former students safe. Henry Fogg, it turns out, is a gruff, grumbling man who secretly has a heart of gold. And while that could easily have come across as trite, Worthy's acting and the show's writing make it sincere.Fogg's sacrifice is short-lived—his new persona (as Marina's homeless dad?!) is banished by the end of this episode along with everyone else's. Lifting the glamour spell so early in the season, however, is a good move (this is assuming those personas are gone forever, which could be proved wrong—if/when magic comes back un-rationed, would that repower Fogg's spell?). With the exception of Penny/DJ Hansel, the characters' personalities were pretty much the same as their true magician ones, so there wasn't much to play with after a couple of episodes anyway.Besides, there are so many other things to mine this season. Hale Appleman, for example, is killing it (pun intended) as an evil monster with poor impulse control. His scene disemboweling Enyalius was divine, and don't even get me started with his nose-to-snout moment with the cute little pig that he forces Brian/Quentin to disembowel.And Summer Bishil still brings the house down with her High King Margo. Her lines alone would keep me watching (my favorite line this episode were her choice words to the amphibious Fillorian Lord Fresh: "You and my birth box ain't happening, so back the f*** up, Shape of Water.") And while her storyline so far this season entails different fickle gods transporting her to different worlds (in this episode, Bacchus has sent her somewhere to be determined), I'm looking forward to see where her quest to gain access to her birth box takes her.Alice is the last hanging storyline here, and while not much happens to her in "Lost, Found, F***ed" besides her smuggled cockroach getting smushed by Zelda during a reconnaissance mission, I have a feeling her story will come to the forefront once the gang's quest turns toward usurping the Library's hold on magic. There's also the hint that Alice might escape her captors via chimney with her cell neighbor, Santa Claus, so that's exciting.And so we head into episode 3, and while everyone's memories are back in place, most people, to reference the title again, are completely f***ed. With some of the gang facing imminent death from monster-Eliot, High King Margo transported to who knows where, and Alice locked in the Library, only Julia seems to be kind of okay (well, except for the whole having died and resurrected herself a whole bunch of times thing). What's in store for next week? Who knows! I wouldn't place money on things becoming honky-dory for the crew, though.