The Magicians has a 97% rating on Netflix, and it's already in Season 5, so here goes Season 1, Episode 1:
Scene 1: Elegant man and woman are arguing on a park bench. The woman: "You have to get them to Brakebills before HE finds them. They're infants! They know nothing!" The man promises to try. But...he's lost the boy.
Scene 2: Statue of Liberty pas out to the Midtown Mental Health Clinic. Urm...the Statue of Liberty is nowhere near Midtown Manhattan. A psychiatrist or social worker gets all sarcastic at a patient, a surly long-haired guy (Jason Ralph). He admits that he's feeling better, no longer out-of-place, "the most useless person on the planet."
He's about to graduate from college (wow, he looks really old for 22!), and he has some interviews set up for grad school at Harvard, Yale, Princeton -- the standard Ivy Leagues.
Switch to a close-up of a gyrating girl butt. Gross! It's a gyrating party. Surly Long-haired guy is sitting by himself. Back to the girl butt. She turns around to show us her boobs. Gross again!. Surly tries not to look.
We intersplice the interview and the party scene. Surly impresses girls with a magic trick, discusses Danish cinema, and ignores Gyrating Butt's attempts to engage with him. He goes to his room, which is full of books on stage magic, plus the Fillory and Feathers series of children's books. He begins to read one.
Scene 3: The story: The Chatwin Twins (Jane and Martin) and their older brother Rupert(who was wounded in the War) are staying in the country house of an elderly professor, where they discover that an old grandfather clock is a portal to Fillory (Narnia without the copyright issues).
Back in New York, Julia comes into Surly's room and asks why he didn't try to pick up Gyrating Butt. "Not my type." "But she was wearing a unicorn t-shirt. She was clearly into all of that fantasy stuff you read. But you wouldn't know because you never interact with anyone. You're too busy with that Fillory crap."
She climbs onto the bed next to him. James (Michael Cassidy) comes in and pretends to be upset: "My girlfriend and my friend together! Have you no decency?" He piles on, yelling "Three way!"
Scene 4: Julia is escorting Surly (we finally get his name -- Quentin) to his Yale interview. Piece of cake -- Yale is so desperate for philosopy majors that they'll take anyone.
The interview is being held in an elegant house in midtown Manhattan. No one answers the door, so they go in. In the drawing room, they see the Fillory and Feathers grandfather clock! The admissions counselor must be a super fan. Ahh -- he's lying on a chair, dead!
Scene 5: The Admissions Counselor left a package for Quentin: the manuscript of Book 6 of the Fillory series. But there were only five books. This one was unpublished! It will turn the fantasy world upside down!
"Nonsense!" Julia snipes. "You said you were a super-fan on your application, so he thought he'd share his fan fiction."
"You used to be a fan."
"Yes, but then I grew up. You should, too. Start living life in the real world."
Scene 6: Quentin walking down the street at night, reading the unbound pages (not worried that they will blow away?) Whoops, a page does blow away. He chases it through a mysterious gate and into the woods. Suddenly it's daytime, and he's on the lawn of an elegant old manor house. Uh-oh, Quent is having a psychotic breakdown!
Meanwhile, Julia gets on an elevator, but instead of going up, it goes down -- way, way down, past P1, P2, and P3. To a floor that is above the ground. A corridor. A sign reading "To exam."
Quent heads for the building -- Brakebridge Hall. An Edwardian dandy with a nice basket eyes him. "I'm Elliot. You're late. Follow me."
Hey, his name is Elliot Waugh, a homage to Evelyn Waugh who wrote the queer classic Brideshead Revisited.
I'm not going to watch anymore. This sounds like the setup for yet another complex mythology featuring the Chosen One, and I don't have time for it. But some research reveals that practically everyone on the show engages in same-sex activity at one point or another, although the main romances are heterosexual.
1. Elliot is more into guys than girls.
2. Quentin is more into girls, but ends up with Elliot in Season 4.
3. Penny (Arjun Gupta, left) is more into girls.
4. Rupert Chatwin (from the Fillory stories, which are real) is more into guys.
5. Josh Hoberman (Trevor Einhorn) is more into girls.
