[Margo is talking to Tick about replanting farms with the fairies’ mushrooms. The people of Fillory are hesitant to plant inedible mushrooms instead of food] CLARA: I really love that clip, it’s so funny. [Laughter] DANI: It is. It’s one of my favorites. Rizwan, who plays Tick, is just hilarious. CLARA: He’s great. DANI: His comedic timing is always perfect. CLARA: We definitely have to find a way to get him on at some point. [Pause] Right, so speaking of on, what are we on? Hi everyone! Welcome back to Physical Kids Weekly! I’m Clara DANI: And I’m Dani. CLARA: And this week’s episode, episode 303, is called “The Losses of Magic.” So before we dive in, I’m gonna do a quick recap like we’ve been doing this season. In this episode, Alice returns to her childhood home to hide out after her encounter with the Lamprey, but it follows her, having possessed Quentin’s body. In Fillory, Eliot, Fen, and Frey narrowly escape as the pirates board the Muntjac. Finally, Kady enlists Julia’s help to summon a demon and save Penny, who is on his deathbed. Unfortunately, they call the demon too late… or do they? So DANI, what did you think of this episode?! DANI: Well first of all, you forgot Alice’s dad dies. CLARA: I was gonna get to that! This is like a recap summary. DANI: Okay, Okay. [Laugher] DANI: Anyways, I really liked this episode. I don’t like it’s quite as good as the second episode of the season, but it’s still very good. CLARA: It is a little more, like, it’s one of those ones that is moving things along a little more slowly. I also agree though, I really liked it. I really thought the performances in this episode were really spectacular by everyone. When we get to the MVP I’ll talk about how hard of a time I had picking. But yeah, what stood out to you? DANI: Well I always like whenever they happen to show relationships with people other than the main cast so I liked revisiting Alice’s family because they’re SO monumentally shitty– CLARA: They really are. DANI: That it’s entertaining. LIke her dad is just as shitty as her mom, but maybe just a – CLARA: Yeah, maybe a different style of shitty. DANI: He definitely cares about Alice more. CLARA: I don’t even know if that’s true. It’s just that her mom is aggressively bad and her dad is like, passively bad. Like he’s the parent who is way too lenient and he doesn’t parent her because he wants to be her friend. And her mom doesn’t parent her because… she’s a child herself, I guess. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: But yeah, I agree with you and one of the things I’ve been noticing for a little while and I was talking to Lanier, my husband, is how great the guest stars are on this show. Like we’re so used to the regular cast and having them be so spectacular, but I really noticed when we went back to Alice’s family, how great and how nuanced the portrayals are by Judith Hoag, who plays Stephanie Quinn, and the guy who plays her dad whose name I’m blanking on right now. [Transcriber’s note: His name is Tom Amandes] DANI: His name’s Daniel, but I don’t know who the actor is. CLARA: Yeah. I think in smaller parts we tend not to notice as much, but they are lowkey great. DANI: Yeah, like, even the one-off guest stars are so hilarious. Like the demon that they summon. [Laughter] CLARA: Yeah, he’s really great too and I think what I really appreciated about that is that he goes more ‘Twilight Zone’ than full-on horror flick, which feels really appropriate for this episode. So we should probably get into it, start our deep dive. And I think we’ll start with the Lamprey stuff. So the Lamprey tracks Alice to her childhood home. There’s more cat shenanigans but fortunately no more explosions, because that was super sad. DANI: Yeah, this cat looked like my cat, Dobby– CLARA: Yeah, I know. DANI: So I was like, so please don’t explode. [Laughter] CLARA: Dani and I have been talking about whether we should post the texts we’ve been sending each other as we watch the screeners at some point after the episodes air, and this one I remember texting you, ‘At least it wasn’t the Dobby-looking cat who died.’ DANI: Yeah, it got away. CLARA: Yeah, and apparently there wasn’t the Lamprey around at the time. It just didn’t like Alice’s family, which, fair. DANI: Oh my God, that line. I was DYING where her mom was like, “Well Carol’s, you know.” CLARA: “She’s just a bit of a mess!”or something like that. DANI [more dramatically]: “She’s just a bit of a mess!” [The cat] could sense it. CLARA: Cats do though. I think dogs and cats are both really good at sensing if you’re in emotional distress. They have very different responses. Dogs are like, let me cuddle you and make you feel better, and cats are like, let me scratch your eyes out. [Laughter] DANI: Yeah. Dobs will kind of come up to me and reassure me, but then he’ll like, dip. CLARA: Alright so, back to the episode. You were saying that its always so interesting to see Alice’s relationship with her parents and yeah, I really felt that too. I really love that they are awful, but they feel very real. Like her mom who is so over-the-top, doesn’t feel like a caricature to me. DANI: No, she doesn’t. She’s just like one of those really dramatic people, which I know plenty of. And I actually also love the way they treat Quentin like a son almost. Like they treat him almost a little bit better than they treat Alice. CLARA: That’s such a thing to, like, if you have a parent like that, who is maybe more of a child so much of the time, I feel like they end up playing [the] kids against each other, or if you only have one child, they end up playing you against a friend. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: And then I think the whole thing with Alice’s dad– and of course we should talk about the fact that he died, like you said, because I think that’s a really big and kinda weird moment for Alice. Because I think she knows she has to kill the Lamprey, and I don’t really think she has a choice there, even though the Lamprey is really trying to make it out to be a choice. But it’s still her fault, the way the Lamprey came after her in the first place is her fault. So it’s the first time she’s having to contend with the consequences of what she did as a Niffin. DANI: Yeah. So I’m curious. So a lot of people think that the Lamprey is that little girl that she killed last season, but that’s not the case, right? CLARA: I think it is. I think it is. Well, that’s the Lamprey’s family. So she killed the whole family of this particular Lamprey so I think [the little girl] is a different one, but I do think that little girl was one of the Lamprey’s family. DANI: Okay, it’s just kind of slightly confusing cuz everyone’s just like, who’s the Lamprey? Did we see this happen? [Laughter] CLARA: Yeah, because I don’t think we got a name for it until later, until the finale episode. But yeah, one of the other things I found interesting was that in the first episode with the Great Cock, when he’s naming what they all are, he refers to Alice as ‘The Torture Artist’. And this is the first episode where we really see what that means. I remember being really confused about that in the previews. DANI: I wasn’t all that confused because they just assume that he meant stuff she did as a Niffin, but yeah, Eliot’s very confused by it. He’s like, ummm you lost me. CLARA: But yeah, like in this episode, it’s actually pretty dark. Like all the ways she’s talked about what she did to the Lamprey’s family before has always been kind of cagey and now she just kinda comes out with it like, yeah I just killed them for fun, to watch the pretty lights. And there’s that– did you see in the episode, when she does kill the Lamprey and that lights come up, her mouth twitches. DANI: Mhm. CLARA: Still come Niffin in there, for sure. DANI: Yeah, she definitely still is a little bit. And I think that’s definitely a thing in the books. Like she’s not quite human. CLARA: Yeah. Doesn’t he say her eyes or bluer or something like that? A different shade of blue? DANI: Yeah, something like that. CLARA: They talk about it too, Quentin and Alice, in this episode. DANI: Yeah, they do. CLARA: Yeah so they talk about their relationship and how being a Niffin changed Alice in this episode. And I thought it was really interesting because Alice especially had been avoiding that conversation since the finale, which I guess is only two or three episodes, but it still feels like a lot. DANI: I feel like in almost every episode she keeps reminding Quentin that it’s just not the same anymore. CLARA: Yeah, and some of that you see in flashbacks, but this is the first time I think they really face it head on. And the second time I watched this, when I was watching it, I really noticed how she’s talking about how he looks at her like she’s the same person, but she’s not, and that’s what’s really hard for her.And I really appreciated that because that’s kind of a thing you might expect somebody whose like a survivor of a really traumatic incident, someone with PTSD, to feel. It’s hard to be around the people who were a big part of your life before because either they just pity you or they treat you like nothing has changed. DANI: Yeah, it is. It’s hard to be around the same people after trauma. CLARA: Yeah, for sure. So somebody was talking on Twitter, maybe in the chat, about how Alice’s makeup and clothes are a little sharper. Like there’s sharper edges to her in her fashion choices and in her makeup this season, and I didn’t notice. I don’t know if I’d call it sharper in this episode, but I did notice her lipstick is different. She has more blue tones in her lipstick, where she used to wear more brighter reds. DANI: I don’t think I noticed that because she rarely wears lipstick. CLARA: Yeah, but she does in this episode and I’m sure you’ll go back and watch it again, because you’re you, but when you do, pay attention to that. It’s more like a Margo color than a standard Alice color. DANI: Interesting. CLARA: But that was like a really interesting touch. What else do I have about this? Oh yeah, we should talk about Alice’s dad dying. DANI: Yeah, it was slightly surprising just because there’s so much going on in the episode, and then I was like, oh wow. I wonder if she had actually not done anything to the Lamprey, if it would have left the body like it said. CLARA: I don’t think it would have. I think it would have laid eggs in him. DANI: Yeah? CLARA: And then– Yeah. DANI: Then she could have cleaned them out, like she did to Quentin. CLARA: Ugh, gross. [Laughter] I guess that’s true, but I don’t know. It depends on how far the Lamprey got with Daniel’s body. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: But yeah, I really feel like this is gonna be– like Alice is a hard person to read, right? She keeps her feelings very close to the vest until they explode out of her. Which is probably why she went Niffin, but--getting very distracted by Dobby’s butt which just entered the frame of our Skype call–. But yeah, I think this is a big emotional moment and one that she had no real preparation to handle. And it’s interesting to me, in part, in the background we keep hearing things about Quentin’s dad who has been dying of cancer. On the one hand, you think that would be something that would bring them closer together, but I don’t think it’s going too. DANI: Probably not. But I did think the entire time [if] they were gonna cure Penny’s cancer, like Quentin’s gonna be pissed that they found a way to cure cancer. [Laughter] CLARA: I know right?! I feel like we need to go back to that episode at some point and have a heart to heart over the plot holes [Whispers] She says quietly... [Laughter] DANI: It was a book that was in the restricted library that Marlee Matlin’s character had to go out of her way to get, so. CLARA: That’s true, but didn’t [Quentin] like, talk to a magic doctor, or something and they were like, yeah there’s no way. DANI: He talked to his advisor who I think had something to do with medicine and she said there were ways, but they were restricted and dangerous and that he wasn’t a good enough magician to do anything. CLARA: Ahh, you’re remembering it better than I am. DANI: But it was also more like, ‘it’s something you could possibly do, but you probably wouldn’t want to because your dad wouldn’t be the same.’ CLARA: Yeah. That makes me wonder what would have happened– well okay. God, I have this saved for last… Okay. We’re gonna hold off on the ‘Penny dies’ discussion for later. But let’s move on to the second major plot point, which is the stuff that’s going on in Fillory. Pirates board the Muntjac and they’re holding Eliot and Fen and Fray hostage, except for that they escape and Benedict covers for them. DANI: Which is hilarious. CLARA: Oh yeah! I was gonna ask, what do you think of Benedict pretending to be High King? DANI: I fucking love Benedict and I love that actor that plays him so it’s hilarious. He’s so not Benedict from the books, but it’s okay. [Transcribers note: The actor who plays Benedict is Harvey Guillen] CLARA: Yeah! It was so funny to me like it seems that it’s so transparent. How do the pirates not know that he’s not actually the High King? DANI: Yeah. CLARA: But they do a good job with it. Benedict, you’re great, but you do not have a High King’s bearing. DANI: No. I love– I actually think I really love the Fillory parts the best of this episode. Just because, well, Summer– CLARA: She’s fucking amazing in this episode. DANI: She IS fucking amazing. Yeah, I love when she is introduced to the pirates and they call her, Ms Destroyer. CLARA: Oh yeah. It was so perfect and you can see the look on her face, like, yes this is what you should call me, good job. DANI: She also keeps coming up with these hilarious like, curse words basically. Like she said, son of a twat, and I was like laughing forever. Or when she calls them dickholes, and they’re just like… dickholes? Did you just call us dickholes? CLARA: I wonder if like, in The Magicians writers’ room, they just have– they probably do– have a board full of post-it notes of creative curses. DANI: They just have one of those probability dice. [Laugher] CLARA: Yeah, they have a like a D20 and h1 through 20 are different synonyms for ‘fuck’ or ‘asshole’. What was… oh man… DANI: Asstrench? CLARA [agreeing]: Asstrench. So beautiful. [Laughter] That was in the last episode right? DANI: Yeah CLARA: So good. Assditch--I don’t know if that was better or worse. Better in the fish out of water... Have you ever seen Demolition Man? DANI: No. CLARA: Okay so first of all, you have to see this movie, brief side note: Demolition Man is a movie from the early 90s with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. DANI: Okay. CLARA: So brief plot: It begins in 1996, there’s like all this crazy violence in LA and the character played by Wesley Snipes, who’s name is Phoenix, something Phoenix, he’s like a psychopath who basically wants to watch the world burn. He recruits a gang of psychopaths to blow shit up and kill people and Sylvester Stallone’s character is this guy called Spartan is known for taking out and catching hard to catch criminals basically because he doesn’t give a fuck and will destoy anything in his path to do that. He catches Phoenix, but destroys so much stuff in the process that they’re like, you’re going to jail, and jail is being cryogenically frozen for years and years and years. So when he comes out, he’s in the future and it’s a future where--this is a large tangent sorry guys. It’s a future where the only restaurant is Taco Bell, like even fancy restaurants are Taco Bell because of monopolies and it’s kinda the same thing. Sandra Bullock plays this cop in that weird future that’s like super obsessed with the past, but not good at it, and it’s exactly like the Tick stuff. Like she keeps misstating idioms and curse words and things like that, and it’s hilarious. DANI: I love Sandra Bullock so. CLARA: Yeah, you should definitely watch this. You would love it. DANI: It sounds like an interesting movie. I’m not too big on Sylvester Stallone. My first thought when you were like action-man, was like, it has to be Sylvester Stallone who was in the Expendables. So it is the right guy. [Laughter] CLARA: I promise you'll like this movie. You don’t have to like Sylvester Stallone to like this movie. It’s hilarious. Yeah. Everyone watch Demolition Man is what I’m saying, sorry. We’re both a little tired today. So! Pirates board the Muntjac and hold Eliot hostage. Margo, Ms. Destroyer, covers for them. And… oh! There’s this whole thing with Tick revealing he’s a pickpocket and steals Margo’s eye from the Fairy Queen, who of course finds out, because she’s the fucking Fairy Queen. And then Margo decides to squish her own eyeball rather than return it. DANI: Yeah, I really didn’t like those scenes where she’s, oh you’re a queen. They’re starting to get on a little bit and then it’s like, nah. CLARA: Yeah, it’s like they respect each other, but that respect doesn’t mean that they’re going to give an inch. I feel like having the Fairy Queen’s respect just means that the Fairy Queen is going to use you in more awful ways, because she can just take advantage of all that awful power. DANI: Mhm. CLARA: What did you think of Candis Cayne this season? DANI: She is really– I still think the fairies are scary. They’re also just–its a completely original plotline obviously. There are no fairies in the books. CLARA: No. [Laughs] None whatsoever. DANI: It’s really cool. It’s kinda one of those things I go back and forth with. Like at first, I really hated the fairies, but I think I’m starting to like them. CLARA: Expanding on my theory from last time, slightly, I was thinking about it more. And one of the things I was thinking about was how Fray plays into it. Like in the books, the daughter, the character who roughly corresponds with the tale, also has a daughter, like there’s some weird shit with the way she parents her daughter for sure, but that daughter plays an important role in facilitating travel between realms. Only in the books, they go to the Underworld so I was thinking they’re probably not going to do that because they’ve already been to the Underworld, BUT, BUT Fray– DANI: They could go to the Fairy Realm? CLARA: Exactly! I could see Fray being their passport, or creating their passport to the Fairy Realm. DANI: That would be interesting. CLARA: Yeah. See? I’m right, I’m totally sure of it. And then I’m gonna be totally wrong [DANI laughs] But that’s okay. [Laughter] DANI: It’s okay. You can get someone to write you a fanfic of what could have been. CLARA: So I’ve gotten– I post the podcast on Reddit and I had a whole bunch of people on there (okay three people on there), be like, tell me more about your theory! And I was like, I can’t! Spoilers! [Laughter] CLARA: I’m into it! Oh, which by the way, we– I don’t know if this will be out by the time that we’re trying to record the other one, but we’re going to try to record a fan theory episode, so tweet us your fan theories and we’ll talk about them and try to include them. It should be fun. DANI: Yeah CLARA: So what did you think about the fact that Margo squishes her eyeball? DANI: It was pretty gross. [Laughter] CLARA: I mean, that’s true. It was pretty gross. DANI: It was a boss move though. Of course she’s like, ‘you know what? I’ll never be able to see out of this eye again, but at least this bitch doesn’t get to spy on me anymore.’But they’ll find a way, I’m sure. CLARA: I feel like that’s also a thing that Janet in the books would do. I feel like that’s a place where they really aligned. DANI: Yeah, I feel like the longer she’s in Fillory, the more Janet she becomes. CLARA: Yeah, the more Fillory Clinton she becomes, hehe. DANI: Yeah. I do love the moment though between her and the Pirate King, who’s a woman. CLARA: Who’s a very beautiful woman. DANI: A very beautiful woman. CLARA: Who’s definitely into Margo. DANI: Yes. I was kinda slightly disappointed that that went nowhere. CLARA: Yeah, it’s too bad. It’s too bad she couldn’t take on the Pirate King to become her personal High King… I don’t know where that metaphor was going. Anyway [Laughter] CLARA: Yeah I was a little sad it went nowhere. OH! The other thing I wanted to talk about was so beautiful and just fascinating. We get the first real glimpse of the sort of personhood and humanity of the Muntjac in this episode, because the pirates’ boat is also a Deer class ship and the pirates basically ask Margo for permission to have their boat rape the Muntjac. And there’s this really touching conversation between Margo and the Muntjac, like the heart of the Muntjac, where she asks, ‘are you okay with this?’ And says, ‘I could just command you, but I can’t basically because of sisterhood.’ I thought that was so interesting and so beautiful. I don’t know, did you like it? DANI: I liked it. It was very interesting. There’s always things fucking in this [show]. First we had books and now we have boats. Magic. [Laughter] CLARA: Yeah, I think we’re gonna see more of the boat as a person as the season goes on. DANI: Probably. CLARA: I feel like it has to happen. DANI: I don’t know if its because of the key, but the keyhole randomly appeared, and I wonder if that has to do with the boat or if that’s just key magic. CLARA: Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on with the key magic. I’ve been super curious about the first key. DANI: What is the first key’s magic? CLARA: That’s what I mean, like, this is the only key we have, this first key, and it’s the ram’s head. And we don’t really know what it does yet. We just know it’s a key… Well I guess we know that maybe--well I guess we don’t know if its the Muntjac or its the key, but it does seem like its the key that creates the keyhole and lets them out. DANI: Probably. I’m curious to what the key is though. Let’s see… what does it do when they hold it? CLARA: I don’t think it does anything except for giving them that sort of ‘rush’ feeling. DANI: It has to do something, because that guy who had it before, that friar– CLARA: Friar? DANI: The father. The priest guy from the previous episode. CLARA: Father Poe. Oh you’re right! He used it for the Illusion work. Yeah, we’ll find out.,sure [Laughter] DANI: I’m sure there will be an answer to all of the keys and what they represent. CLARA: Do YOU have a fan theory? DANI: I have a couple, but I feel like I can’t discuss them [CLARA: Oh.] because they involve episodes that we’ve seen. [Laughter] CLARA: Okay, then we’ll come back to that then. Okay so, anything else from the Pirates and the Muntjac? Or the Fairies? DANI: The Johnny Depp line was funny. CLARA: Oh what was that line? Did you copy that down? DANI: I didn’t copy it word for word, but it was basically just like she was saying, and this was– CLARA: Margo? DANI: Margo, saying that it was slightly cute and adorable in a Johnny Depp sort of way, but also fucked up in a Johnny Depp sort of way. CLARA: Yeah. Yeah! I liked that. Was that when she was talking to the Muntjac? DANI: I think so. CLARA: Yeah, because I think she was talking about how her image of pirates was not exactly what she [expected], what reality was. DANI: And they just always have such fresh commentary and I feel like that’s exactly how a lot of people feel about Johnny Depp currently. CLARA: Yeah, definitely. Oh, I was watching The Good Place today– DANI: That’s so good. CLARA: Yeah, have you seen the most recent episode? DANI: Where they go to Hell? No, unfortunately. CLARA: Okay, well I won’t spoil much, but the very first scene they’re in a subway station, something like that, and on the wall is a poster for Pirates of the Carribean 6. [Laughter] DANI: That’s funny. CLARA: I thought so! DANI: I’m sure Kristen Bell had a hand in that one. CLARA: Yeah. Oh also, I won’t spoil by saying the role but Dax Shepard is in that one too. DANI: Ugh, I love Dax Sherpard. CLARA: Okay, so let's move on. Penny dies… or does he? So, yeah, were you expecting this? DANI: Hmmm… kinda? Sorta not? Like, it was one of those I was shocked, but I’m really not at the same time. CLARA: Yeah, like maybe how it was done was surprising. DANI: Yeah, I was kinda like, this fool’s gonna die. He does not have long on this Earth. [Laughter] CLARA: Yeah, but I thought it was pretty bold for Kady to ask Julia to help her summon a demon. DANI: I don’t think so. Because Julia owes her and she knows it. CLARA: So, okay! I wanna ask about that. Like, do you really think Julia owes Kady as much as Kady seems to think that she does? DANI: Ummm… yes. Kind of. I think it’s kind of fucked up to ask Julia to summon a demon because the last time they tried to summon something it didn’t go very well. CLARA: Yeah. DANI: But, I don’t know. I feel like they’re always in this contant fit of owing each other something and I just feel that’s just Kady’s character. She’s always going back and forth between owing Penny something as well so– CLARA: Yeah, she’s very transactional in her relationships. DANI: Mhm. But Julia, Julia cares and wants to repair that relationship with Kady somehow. CLARA: I guess that’s the thing. I actually don’t feel like she owes her anything. Like, she owes her in the way that friends always owe each other, like be a good friend, and I think that Julia would do it out of being a good friend, and wanting to help Penny who is such a good person anyway. I feel like Kady really took personally the fact that Julia didn’t kill Reynard and I mean, on the one hand, I understand that because he also tried to kill her and also did kill all their other friends. But it really does feel to me like it should be Julia’s decision. DANI: I mean, she made it her decision. She was kinda like either ‘you help me or fuck off’. And Julia just probably isn’t going to say no to that. But Kady kinda kills Senator Gaines and feels very fucked up by that and I think that’s where her anger comes from. Because its like, ‘why did this have to happen if we didn’t kill Reynard?’ CLARA: Yeah, and it is very understandable, but I think that Gaines would have– I think he would have done that anyway because he didn’t want Reynard to have power and he definitely didn’t want to become Reynard. I think he saw that that was his only real option. Like, if he stayed alive and he kept being who he was, and Reynard kept trying to recruit him, I think he felt like maybe he would eventually give into that. DANI: Yeah. Very sad existence for him. CLARA: Yeah. DANI: I just… I miss that character. I feel like there’s so much more we could have found out about him or gotten to know. CLARA: Well, who knows? Characters do seem to have a way of coming back. [Laughter] DANI: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s possible, but– CLARA: So while we’re on that point, should we talk about the fact that Penny dies, but he like, watches his own death, so like… what’s that about? DANI: That was funny at first because he astral projects and he’s like, ‘no shame bro’ to the demon. CLARA: Oh yeah, which let’s be real, if I could astral project– well, I guess that’s what dissociation is– but if I could get out of that kind of severe pain, I’m pretty sure I would. DANI: Mhm. I would too. CLARA: So like, all we really know about Penny’s state is that his body is dead and some astrally projected version of him says shit. And that’s like, all we see. How do you feel about that? I mean, do you feel like if they bring him back, how would you feel about that? Especially since they kinda did that with Alice last season. DANI: It’s like on one hand you want it because you don’t wanna not see Arjun, but on the other hand, it’s like, do deaths ever stick? CLARA: Only for cats. DANI: Yeah. That cat can’t come back. CLARA: And Marina’s cat too. DANI: Ugh. That’s why I was like, do you guys hate cats? [Laughter] CLARA: There’s somebody who put a really aggressive thread on Reddit about that. [Laughter] DANI: Yeah, I’ve seen a couple. They’re just like, I don’t know why [the show] picks on cats. They’re probably dog people. CLARA: Honestly, I think its probably because they had a cat in the writers’ room for large portions of writing last season. DANI: Did they really? CLARA: Rupert Catwin? Trogdor, whatever. You remember those pictures? Like the cat that wandered in and they kinda adopted it. DANI: Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot about that. CLARA: I think that’s probably it. They were like, hmmm we need something to be an early warning system for the Lamprey, oh hey look, a cat! [Laughter] CLARA: I just assume that everyone, no matter how professional they are, are just as distractible as I am. DANI: Potentially. CLARA: I also hope that we get to keep seeing Penny in this season because I love Arjun and I think that Penny’s character has had really interesting things happen to him. Like he’s developed in interesting ways and especially because he is not a character who is in this part of the books. You know I’ve been super interested in seeing where he goes this season so I’m excited that we got an episode where we got to see that had a lot to do with him and I do hope we have more. What’s my last thing on here… oh! This isn’t really part of Penny’s arc, but Julia gets a creepy message from a stranger in this episode. Do you remember that? DANI: Yeah, like, the hobo lady. CLARA: What’d you think is going on there? DANI: I’m assuming that its a message from a god. Probably Our Lady Underground. CLARA: Yeah, that was my assumption too and it’s probably related to the fact that she still seems to have magic. DANI: Does she have any moments like that before the demi-goddess reveal in the books? CLARA: Ummm… no. It’s done differently. In the books it’s more about how she changes, and that’s more about her having lost her shade. And in the show, she gets her shade back, and that actually seems to be the catalyst for whatever’s happening to her now. So yeah, I think it’s different from how it is in the books. DANI: It’s definitely different. CLARA: The one thing I always remember is the story of how Eliot and Janet met her. This is told in the second book? Or third book? I don’t remember. DANI: Wait, which part? CLARA: When they meet her in that weird resort, that fancy resort, and they’re hanging out. DANI: That’s in the second one and they’re like, oh yeah that’s how we met Julia. CLARA: Right, right! So in the books, after they kill the Beast in Fillory, everyone goes their separate ways for a little while and takes a moment to chill away from magic and Janet and Eliot go to a fancy resort in like, Montana or something like that, and happen to run into Julia who is like… I think they describe her as like, super goth and emo and full of drama, which is why Eliot is instantly like, ‘I need to be friends with her.’ [Laughter] CLARA: Cuz she’s so full of drama. But the scene I’m thinking of is [when Eliot] walks past her room, I think the window’s open, and he sees her, and she’s trying to burn some stuff in the fire. Did he say she like, crawls into the fire? DANI: She just like, gives up and lays on top of the fire, and he’s like, what the fuck? CLARA: Yeah, so it’s like that kinda stuff is more how we see things unfold for Julia in the books than this. But I think it’s really interesting. DANI: Well she says many times that she’s pretty sure she’s not quite human anymore. CLARA: In the books. DANI: Yeah, in the books. CLARA: Yeah, so I’m hoping that that’s an indication that all is not yet lost on the book front, on Julia’s arc on the book front. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: Okay, so those are the big things I have. Do you have anything else for the episode? DANI: I know I made a note about how Quentin just does SO MUCH for Alice. Like he still cares about her so much. CLARA: He really does. DANI: It just makes me sad for him. CLARA: Though also, like, it’s funny because she knows this. Because when he shows up at her house and she’s like, what the fuck why are you here?, and he says, your cat exploded. She gets at him for following her, but also it seems like she kinda expected that. Like it’s not really a surprise that he would come follow her and make sure she’s okay. And of course, that’s not what he’s doing, because he is, in fact, invested with the Lamprey. DANI: Which Jason is always incredible at being possessed. CLARA: Oh yeah. The weird, creepy neck stuff freaks me out. I have weird shit about my throat already, I don’t need to see that. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: I like that line the Lamprey says when he’s in DANIel’s body about how its weird the things you can sense when you’re inside someone. And he talks about knowing that Quentin is still in love with Alice and then he also talks about knowing that Daniel has a heart condition. But I kinda wondered… Alice clearly knows that, but that seemed to give her more– it seemed to make her more empathic to Quentin. So I think in that moment, she stopped seeing it as just a problem that she had to deal with and started to see it from his perspective a little. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: Okay! Fashion. DANI: Let’s do it! CLARA: So there wasn’t a ton I really noted on the Earth side other than the saran wrap, which I guess is a fashion choice. DANI: I mean, they looked like aliens, like that alien look. CLARA: I thought they looked like conspiracy theorists. DANI: Yeah something like that. Aliens! CLARA: It was so funny but also that can’t be effective. Like if it can get through skin, you can’t leave your face and your hands open and be like, oh everything’s fine. DANI: Yeah, that’s why I was like ummmm... [Laughter] CLARA: I thought that was great though and just so funny and a great way to just inject some comedy into a scene where the characters are total straight-men. Cuz nobody except for Stephanie, really questions it. They’re like, yeah this is just how it is. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: The other Earth thing I noticed was Alice’s blazer, like the quilted blue blazer she’s wearing. See, she’s also wearing more blue. I gotta file this away. I think I’m seeing a pattern. Magali, I got my eye on you [Laughter] CLARA: But in Fillory there's a lot of really great fashion stuff. So Margo’s jumpsuit with the lace skirt overlay, I just thought that was gorgeous. DANI: Well that color of blue just looks so amazing on her. She wears it a lot. CLARA: Yeah, and often with a really really bright, like fire engine red color lipstick. There’s also Fen’s dress with the weird hair collar. Did you notice that? The collar was made with, like, strips of hair. DANI: I didn’t. That’s kinda gross. CLARA: Yeah, you should go back and look at it because it’s fucking creepy. I didn’t notice it was hair the first time– well maybe it’s not hair, maybe it’s something else, but it definitely looks like hair, it’s definitely individual strands of something woven together and forming a collar. So that was notable. Fray’s outfit I thought was gorgeous! That teal and brown, like reddish brown jumpsuit-thingy. I don’t know if it was beaded or leather, but it was just really beautiful. And I just love the continued ‘fancy warrior’ look that we’re getting from her. DANI: Yeah, it’s interesting. It kinda reminds me of something that Jasmine would wear in like Aladdin or something. CLARA: Yeah yeah! I think we talked about that a little bit last episode but it’s really developing in an interesting way and I don’t know! I wanna know what it’s going to tell us about her character. I got both excited and cranky of course when Brittany told us she couldn’t tell us because it would be a spoiler. [Laughter] DANI: Yeah. CLARA: And then the Pirate King! The Pirate King is gorgeous and is wearing like all this highly constructed black. I thought you would like that because you always like the goth girls. [Laughs] DANI: Yeah. She looked good. CLARA: So those were the big things I had and I have a note here cuz for the last episodes this season I’ve been like, anything else and you’ve been like, Julia’s clothes are great! So what did I miss about Julia? DANI: I feel like she’s wearing the same stuff she wore in the last episode. CLARA: Okay. So nothing new. DANI: Nothing new. CLARA: I did notice– I don’t know that it’s especially notable otherwise, but Jade was wearing a military jacket in that scene where Penny dies, and I’m pretty sure I have that same exact jacket. Alright so that’s all I have for fashion. Did you have anything else? I feel like that was a lot. DANI: I don’t think so. CLARA: What did you think of Eliot’s weird polka dot blouse? DANI: [Pause and laughter] I feel like I’m so used to his weird fashion that I don’t even question it anymore. [Laughter] CLARA: Fair enough! Let’s move to MVP. Dani, who's your MVP this episode? DANI: This is hard because they keep being more and more ensemble based episodes, that it becomes harder and harder to choose one. I either have to go with Summer or Judith, who plays Stephanie Quinn. She’s amazing. [Laughter] CLARA: You and I had the same stuff down. I wrote all this stuff about how I love everybody. Like Olivia is great and Candis is great and like everybody in this episode is great, but Summer is fucking amazing. Like the things she does with her face and her voice in this episode? I didn’t think that we would end up… I felt like we’d seen so much range and growth from Margo last season that I didn’t think we could possibly see more, but there’s new levels of freaked the fuck out in this episode, and she’s still a boss and she’s great. DANI: I love how she does this thing when she talks to her royal court. Like she makes her voice really shrill, like [high pitched] ahhhh. [Laughter] CLARA: I was thinking that too cuz in that scene that we played in the very beginning, her voice goes up and up and it gets more and more squeaky, but not like a mice squeak, it’s more like a ‘I’m gonna punch somebody in the face’ squeak. DANI: Yeah and then she does this thing were she makes her voice really like [Voice shift] a valley girl for like a second. [Laughter] CLARA: What was that again? One more time? DANI [voice pitched]: Like a valley girl! CLARA [voice pitched]: Oh my god! [Laughter] CLARA: And then the other scene you mentioned with Judith Hoag, who plays Stephanie Quinn, and I already talked about that a little, but it’s so hard to take a character who is as unsympathetic as that character is and make her seem like a real person instead of a caricature and she definitely does. I do think though I’m going to give it to Summer because she’s fucking fantastic in this episode. DANI: She is. CLARA: And it’s just hard to take your eyes off her in the scenes that she’s in. DANI: Yeah, I mean she’s quickly growing into so many people's favorite character. A lot of the people I know who watch this show, they are obsessed with Summer. CLARA: Well you know how I feel about Fillory Clinton. [Laughter] CLARA: Okay so, ratings? Episode ratings? DANI: Ummm… CLARA: Do you want me to go first? DANI: Sure. CLARA: Okay. So I gave it an 8/10, which is what I think we gave the last episode too. I think it’s really great, I don’t tend to like the ensemble episodes as I like the single theme ones, but honestly, more of this is I feel like I really need to leave room for things to go up in this season because it’s an amazing season and I’m excited by it. So 8/10. DANI: Since it’s not quite as good as the last episode, I think I have to give it a 7/10. CLARA: Alright, that’s fair enough. So, still a solid episode, but still not an absolute favorite yet. Man, that’s all we have. Do you have anything else? DANI: I don’t think so. I think I got through everything I wrote down. CLARA: Yeah. I think this is a really fun episode and a really great one to watch and I think we’ve talked it out. So listeners, thank you for joining us again this week. We love hearing from you, so tweet your questions, comments, and whackadoodle fan theories to us @physicalkidspod, or you can find us on Facebook, it’s the same handle. And don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes! I know I’m saying this a lot this season and I’m gonna keep saying it, but the more positive ratings we get, the higher we show up in search results, and that makes it easier for other fans to find us. Okay, my spiel. That’s everything. See you next week! Bye! DANI: Bye!