We’re back at Hogwarts U Brakebills for some moe shenanigans with the Queliot gang, let’s roll into episode 6 of The Magicians! We’re still behind, hurry!
Oh my bad, last week when Penny was meeting with Stanley the Manly Astral Traveler, I didn’t really understand the tattoo he advised Penny to get. Now that I have closed captions (SQUEE!!!) I see that the tattoo will bind his body to earth (that still makes no sense, but I guess: magic) and he’ll still be able to astral project. Got it.
Last week we left off at a gathering of Kady (shaaaady lady), Penny, Alice and Quentin, having deciphered enough of Penny’s visions of the screaming missing lady from the third class to figure out that he had traveled into Fillory and THAT’S A LOT OF WORDS FOR ONE SENTENCE INNIT??
Penny is his usual sneery self, “kill me” as Quentin nerds out about the Fillorian castle built by dwarves (I believe he means Little People), he just doesn’t see the use of someone like Q waxing poetic about the Chatwins and their merry chases with the Watcher Witch who plants clocks in trees and I bet that comes up! It’s worth noting that the Beast doesn’t appear in the books, but we know at least Jane Chatwin is aware of his existence. Not mentioning the Beast might have been a judgement call given the average age of the usual reader *cough excluding Quentin cough* and the whole eye-ripping thing.
Oh yay. We’re back to Julia, who is trying to bully the yerks she embarrassed from last week (I’m not here to teach) with her little cloud spell. Pete and Marina have ditched her and put out the word, he calls the cops and she breaks stuff and all is as it ever was with Julia and her toxicity.
A woman watches and the bullied barman chases her out, though, it was Marina that shut that safe house down for her. He gives her the address of another safe house, about an hour away and good.
Kady is tattooing Penny with his inkspell and all of a sudden, he wants to know about her life, what’s her “flavour of boring?” (Imma use the Queen’s English AND slang in the same sentence because I CAN!) Aww, Penny is focused on something other than perfecting his growl, that’s so sweet. Her mom died early and her dad is an embarrassing hippie drug dealer (I absolutely pictured Feck from the River’s Edge just then) and how is she beholden to Marina again? Let’s get to THAT part! We don’t, but Penny says that while he hears Miss Fourth Year all the time, he doesn’t hear the Beast anymore, so…progress?
Presumably an hour away an fresh off a train, Julia wanders a dark alley to find a safe house with an eviction notice on the door. A woman has followed her from the other bar, though, Julia whirls around with a gun and WHUT? A magician with a loaded weapon? WHUT? That’s why you have FINGERS, Julia! She is so budget.
The other woman says she’s just like her, though and shows off her star tattoos. Ooooh rival gang!
Quentin is reading in the library when he’s disturbed by weird noises “hello? Is someone being creepy on purpose” and HAHAHAHA. He sees a shadow roll by and …throws a book into the void.
Um. He’s set upon by a masked gang, and they hood him and it’s a party!
A ritual pretend sacrifice party! Eliot will be administering The Trials and hey, mebbe all this training to react in the moment as a magician will stop them reaching for automatic weapons when scared in a dark alley! Still hazing though, boooooo!! Eliot: “oh nut up, this isn’t Harvard” and you really have to watch it for him.
The students have to sign in again and there’s a fun part when Margo pretends she doesn’t know Alice, but all of that is just so we know that the Dean created these Trials and they will pass or fail them.
Hey Quentin! Welcome to Horny Chupacabras! Penny is excited because there’s someone even MOAR sarcastic than him, yay! Eliot tells them that they will be decoding and casting spells from the 18th century, they have until 9 am and it’s impossible. Pencils up!
Julia and the mystery woman are bonding over coffee in a diner; she’s got the same story, she was part of a group of Hedge Witches and she felt like she belonged for the first time. She butters up Julia with a bunch of “you’re different! You’re the real deal! Let’s trade spells! I miss the feeling!” and I hope Julia remembers that EVERYONE has an angle.
The woman gives her a bunch of spells and they have fun breaking shite and trading compliments, oh, no, wait, that only flows one way with Miss Julia. Guess who she wants to get more spells from? NO, GUESS??? Marina! Sure!
Quentin and the rest of the Horny Chupacabras are having a hard time with the spells; Quentin wants to cheat and that’s is the very first time Penny has ever agreed with him! Mazel! Other sarcastic dude is oot, but Q has a plan! Supply closet in five!
Also without an exact plan are Julia and My Kingdom For A Name Spoken Out Loud Or At The Camera ah! I found her on the IMDB, she’s Hannah (Amy Pietz) and she knows someone that could maybe help them!
Quentin and Penny are strategizing in the most massive supply closet EVER; no Penny can’t cheat off Alice, but he can do one better, which is…astral traveling to directly behind her and copying everything. They pass, yay! For cheating, and Sarcastic gets sent home: thinning the herd. Always listen to the Q!
Julia and Hannah (yay name!) are sitting in another diner waiting for Hannah’s help, there’s a bit of history there, btw, oh and that history is that she’s Kady’s mom. That totally is not dead as advertised. Estranged, though, lots of sullen teenage baggage later and they share the plan with her. She shits all over it and explains why she has to steal for Marina: her mom can’t handle herself under pressure so she made a mistake in the middle of a big heist (like they’re planning!) and two people died. Julia looks spooked, but I say hey! No way that will happen twice, Julia, LET’S DO THIS!!
See. I have three male kiddos and I was very sad about that before I had them, mostly because I didn’t use to know anything age-appropriate about boy-children. I was going to change the world with all my girl-children because I was going to teach them all this stuff about THE PATRIARCHY. I have since learned a metric tonne about boy-children and you know, once they were born I couldn’t imagine them any other way than exactly who they are. We’re working on THE PATRIARCHY from the inside and in the meantime, while I sometimes get the sadz for nobody to pass on super-gendered material objects, I am so ecstatic I will not have to raise a girl teenager. Because we’re AWFUL to our moms.
I’m a little confused as to why Kady has to take their plan, but it makes sense to Hannah, who still thinks it has a chance for working. Julia is trying to disengage, but Hannah is clinging like a spider-monkey.
Kady brings her stolen booty back to Marina, it’s not enough. She wants Kady to do the REAL booty exchange with Professor March and I’m trying to remember who dat?
Quentin is spending yet ANOTHER celebration in his room pouting with a Fillory book; Margo tries to cheer him up and she must have drawn short straw. He talks about Fillory not being what he expected and blah blah Margo asks if he’s planning a trip there? Because otherwise he’s torturing himself over a fairytale and I bet that’s his favourite way to self-torture, ifyouknowwhatImean and Ithinkyoudo. She says “it’s a party, find someone to bang, drink UP!” and that’s it, she roofied him.
He wakes up near a creek, Eliot tells him he can’t make magic here. He has a bow and one arrow to capture one fish for Eliot. One eating, shitting, breeding fish and I am reminded of Danzig on Billions and his shooting up all the deer on his lawn with a machine gun. I bet Quentin wishes he had a machine gun. What he needs is focus and what’s he’s doing is whining.
Kady isn’t whining, she’s running through the forest with a butterfly net past Alice who is roping a ..tree? A beautiful white horse rides by Margo, she tells Penny to fetch it for her. When he asks why, she says she wants to get her Catherine the Great on, and I had that mixed up with Lady Godiva, so I snorted and then EWWWW!!! Followed by OUCH!!
He refuses, but she can see his future and it is filled with swinging ballsacs:”gay porn??” yay! Don’t get the horse, Penny, do THAT!!
Julia is working away and being interrupted by spider-monkey Hannah while Kady and Penny fight in the woods about the relative importance of Brakebills and she kinda breaks his nose, maybe just a little. That is gonna bring his pay down for the porn work…
They all get together and realise that they each have the tools to do SOMEONE else’s task; Penny can fish with Kady’s net, Quentin and his Junior Cowboy Camp can get that horse, Olivia can get Kady’s pheasant with the bow & arrow and Kady can chop down the tree for Olivia. Go team!
Everything goes as planned; they won! After they chop the tree into firewood to grill the pheasant and take turns blowing the horse. Quentin is all whaaaa?
And they’re back at Brakebills
So they’ve passed the second trial, but there are still some randoms kicking around in the back of the classroom so we know there will be another. Eliot and Margo tell the class that they will have to bare themselves to their utmost truth in the presence of a magical adept and that doesn’t even sound like the fun kind of baring. Sad panda is sad.
Julia and Hannah are within the circle of energy chanting and casting in synchronicity,
and over in Marina’s pawn shop, the lights are swinging, baby! And there go the file cabinets while Marina grunts
Penny and Kady are down for nekkid Truth or Dare, but Alice tells them this is a real thing, not just floating sex. They have to focus and…smear mud on each other?
Back at Julia’s, ohhh well, it appears Marina DID have time to protect herself; she’s sent three filing cabinets full of papers with “nice try” written on them and blood starts pouring out of Hannah’s mouth and eyes. “Run” she tells Julia and come ON!! I just figured out her name! It is super gruesome and ICK, it’s a bloodbath!
Quentin and Alice are drinking in preparation of their nekkid communing and why does it not surprise me that she lost her virginity with all her clothes on? A short striptease and mud smearing later, they make meaningful eye contact and start spilling while together.
Kady and Penny are next-level bonding but she can’t take it. She can’t tell the truth, really, but he’s falling in lurve and they both get branded with something that makes them fall over. Whut?
The bell tolls in the morning and Q and Alice are still at it. Talking, that is. She hates being the best at everything, she already feels so isolated from everyone else. Quentin has that too, he understands, so much self-hatred and running and then all of a sudden they’re covered with brands and it’s painful and Alice disappears and we oot. Whut? That must have been a good thing; they reach their moment of truth and POOF: swooped off with the cawing birds above. See you next week, NekkidCharmers!
