We’re almost caught up on The Magicians, y’all! One more after this and we’ll be right up to date. Let’s get through The World in the Walls before we blow our own horns, yes?

We open with Quentin so calm, so peaceful, good sleep, Buddy? Oh wait. Grey sweats, change in Tupperware containers…what’s going on?? FluffyBunnyRoomie isn’t coming up with any answers.

He wanders around, the hallways are filled with people in scrubs and other people in sweats, surely this must be clicking in any minute. Ah finally, there’s Eliot! But he’s acting weird, he wants Q’s happy pills and then he’ll love him long time. Huh. There’s the antagonistic psychiatrist from the first episode, she calls Eliot off and I didn’t know Eliot was at the mental hospital too??

She’s talking to our Quentin again, leading him into her study, but it’s not HER study, it’s Dean Fogg’s study and we’re all confused. Is Brakebills just a psychotic break as a result of his new happy pills? Q figures he can settle all of this, he does some finger casting. Which looks like his hands are breakdancing to an unheard beat and produces: nada. More confusing talk

Dr. London calls in someone to help ‘splain things: it’s Penny! Oh great, there wasn’t ANYONE else that could help? Quentin isn’t exactly Penny’s “Style”. He’s just there to show what he found, however, it’s all of Quentin’s meds that he hasn’t been taking. Why you gotta be so “Mean,” Penny? Dang. Now you guys got “Bad Blood.”

Quentin keeps seeing moths everywhere, NOT seen by Dr. London: he goes in a seizure and it’s Code Red.

Alice shows up in his dream; didn’t she leave? She says they just have to break the illusion and they’ll escape. Unforch, she then says he’s a starship captain, and pfft: he’s not even a Redshirt (credit: John Scalzi @scalzi) but she kisses him and says they have to mate, so it’s not ALL bad. Dean Fogg as doctor pulls Amorous Alice off, woo hoo, the gang’s almost all here!

Dean sits down for a chat with Quentin, he asks if he’s up for a visitor and you KNEW that would be Julia, yaaaay. She says she’s engaged and Q cries, awww, man, no this can’t be your life. Lots of rueful heart eyes and shouting later, Julia makes to leave, but she’s slipped up. She mentioned the fireworks that Q DIDN’T so now he knows for sure something is wrong. I’ve never seen anyone yerk himself off in a dream before, it looks EXHAUSTING!

Q’s being closely supervised while taking his meds; he’s braced by Penny rocking a thick Indian accent and it’s so distracting that I lost my train of thought. I mean, Penny’s brown

But he looks English and sounds like an Angry American, so I’m thrown. He says he’s the only one that believes that Quentin’s a magician, but that turns out to be a ploy to suss out the pills Q’s hidden. HAHAHAHA best line contender; Quentin under his breath about Penny: “one thing about you, you’re always a raging dick.”

Quentin is a resident of the Ellsworth Downs hospital and that means something to him…yay, Jane Chatwin is there! I bet she shouts at him. First she says that he is the book, the whole book and he is the book and the book is him and it’s just so MATRIX. And she’s gone.

FluffyBunnyRoomie is ripping Quentin’s book apart when he wakes, and the nurse on duty (wasn’t she the nurse from Brakebills?) won’t give him any Scotch tape to fix it lest he strangle himself or someone else with it. I mean. Getcherbutt to Music Therapy, Q!

Dr. London is leading the class; she asks for suggestions and Quentin is starting to realise that everything here is him. He starts singing “Shake It Off” and Penny whips around! Group dance! Like a tone deaf Glee, woo hoo! (it’s a good thing Jason Ralph is adorable and can act, Imma just say that).

Quentin thinks he’s got it now, he has to reach the real Penny; if he can get into his head, the spell will be broken and. Drs. London and Fogg are very disappointed that Q is backsliding like this. He’s waiting in their office when in walks his dad, who calls him Curly-Q (I call bs) and looks like he’s walked into a door? Meaningful glances later, Dr. London tells Curly-Q that HE did that to his dad, who looks at a loss, and they show him a video of himself in handcuffs screaming “it wasn’t my dad!! It was The Beast!” and there’s the move: he tried to kill his dad. He isn’t getting out of this mind-prison any time soon.

Oh yay. Julia is back. TWO Pennys!! An orderly and the Brakebills one! And it is the real Penny, who sees his dream-counterpart waxing ecstatic about Chicken Curry for lunch

HAHAHAHAHAH

Quentin has drunk a little of the Koolaid, though, so he’s needing a little rough trade action to “Shake It Off,” and he knows now that he needs Penny to wake up and find him so he starts shouting. Ahhhhh, it was Julia doing the spell with Marina, oh yeah, her and Curly Q were best buds fo SHO.

Julie is riding the endorphin high from doing complicated magic, Marina is all creepy and Kady is MAD. Btw, Marina has gone Full Caricature. Never go Full Caricature.

The upshot is that unless Penny does something drastic (which Kady is supposed to dissuade him from doing), Quentin could maybe never wake up. I think it’s unrealistic that such a newb as Julia could pull that off, especially since she was still calling them BFFs five minutes ago, but whatever.

Quentin is reassembling his pages while waiting for Penny to find him in his “Blank Space,” he finally figures out where he knows the name Ellsworth Downs from: it’s in the Books. Blah blah insane magician blah chess blah Jane Chatwin blah. The good news is that Penny is looking for him in the real world, yay! The bad news is that Kady shows up and leads them right to him. She’s not on our side, see. They are gonna take him to see the Dean, I guess that’s a good thing.

Marina and Julia are lurking on the edge of the forest, Marina won’t tell Julia what the whole story is and I just think it’s hilarious that Julia keeps insisting. Bish, pleez. You’re so new you’re still sticky, why would she tell you anything?

Dean takes a look at Q and sees immediately that he’s under a powerful spell, nobody can help, but a Matarisse(?) can. And to let one of those in, the school has to let down their protective shields. Which they do, and which is why Marina and Julia are lurking at the edge of the wood. “Welcome back to Brakebills,” says Marina.

Penny is the Spirit Guide, he’s got to go get them while a animatronic gold scorpion crawls into Quentin’s mouth. WHAT.DA.FUQ???? I can’t find a gif, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. Let’s let just one of us not be able to sleep tonight.

Back at the hospital, they’re working on a lobotomy and Penny walks in! The now-brown scorpion crawls out of Q’s mouth *herk* and he’s able to change the environment.

We find out why Marina is there after all; she was a student there until 3 months before graduation. When you’ve made that many memories, it’s not just a matter of hand sanitizer and elbow grease, you have to be taken apart by a Specialist (Ros!) and the memories of allllls the magic you learned are stored. She’s after her storage locker of spells.

Dean says the spell isn’t working, Kady carefully backs out of the room making that “Totally Wasn’t Me” face and finds Julia. She tells her Q is dead unless Julia reverses it, just as Marina finds all her goodies.

Quentin is trapped in a circle of beams, oh yay, Jane is there. Also there is the mad guy from the book, wanting to play chess. Sure, that seems pretty straightforward.

Julia is crying to everyone: it was just a joke! No harm no foul! WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE ME?? and Q starts playing then stops and finds his way out! He wakes up and Julia is magicked out by Marina just as the shields come back up.

Dean Fogg is trying to explain magic to Quentin, who says “I don’t need to be taught what magic is or isn’t, I need to be taught magic, so I can decide what it is or isn’t. For me” and slow clap, yo.

Over in the magical pawn shop, Marina is enjoying the return of her full magical skills. Not enjoying so much is Julia, who is effectively banned and branded. She’s outside all alone, and I was pretty sure that side was just using her, but there it is.

Not a bad epi, but it could have used Moar Eliot. What say yous?