1x10 Dreamland Falls

[7.4/10] This was another episode that was more heavy on drama and on mythos and on teases than it was on comedy, but I still generally liked it. It’s not the Futurama-style “make you laugh for twenty minutes and then punch you in the guy in the last two” style drama, but as much as this series seems to be indebted to its space-bound forebear, it’s good to distinguish itself like this.

Oddly enough, my two favorite moments in the episode center on King Zog of all people. I like the fact that the show deals with the awkwardness of him having to figure out how to resolve the fact that he’s still married to his new, politically-convenient wife whom he has a child with (and his heir, no less), and yet has been reunited with his beloved old wife who’s been frozen in stone for fifteen years. Sure, the episode devolves into some hacky “queen fight” material that isn’t ideal, but it doesn’t just glide over the awkwardness of the conflict for everyone. Instead, it deals with the effect the return of the old queen has on both Bean and Zog.

But I also like the moment where Zog realizes that his wife was the one who tried to poison him, not some mysterious outsider assassin. The king has been such a comedy character so far with his mutterings and “whyIoughtta” mentality about everything. But you can feel the betrayal and sadness when he slowly goes to confront his wife about what she’s done.

My one complaint is that Disenchantment is so interested in saving certain revelations for later that it plays hide the ball a lot here. We don’t get to see the full confrontation between Zog and his wife. We don’t get to see the full extent of what Luci shows him. We don’t see what happens to Luci (though the sound effect suggests it’s the return of Big Joe). And we only get teased with revelations between Bean and her mom.

To some extent, I get it. You want to keep people interested and excited for the next season, so Disenchantment adopts a Twin Peaks approach of just throwing a bunch of (nigh-literal) cliffhangers at the audience. Still, as much as some of the emotional stuff lands, and however exciting some of the dramatic reveals are, you can see the plot machinery being moved into place and the future revelations being set up, rather than the show trying to tell anything approaching a complete story here, which leaves little room for, you know, jokes.

Some of the reveals are pretty cool though. I like the build to the reveal that Bean’s mom is (probably) a member of the same civilization that turned the quasi-Egyptian civilization to stone. The episode does a nice job of headfaking the audience, suggesting that Oona or the royal advisor, or somebody else might be behind all this. But the fact that the woman who both Bean and Zog have been waiting for for so long turns out to be the bad guy is a cool place to take things.

We also get a strong suggestion that Bean is a witch or part magical creature or some other fantasy-era revelation given her mom trying to give her a very different version of “the talk” and the coterie of mystical creatures they end up with on the ship in Dreamland’s harbor. (Don’t be shocked in Elfo washes up on the same ship/destination and gets revived using the same far off magic.)

Otherwise, there’s something heartening about seeing Bean and her mom bond, at the two of them having the sort of connection that Bean has dreamed of for a long time. It makes things all that more complicated whenever Bean realizes that her mom is the bad guy (or at least the seeming antagonist), and that Bean chose her over Elfo. As with Zog, “Dreamland Falls” satisfyingly pays off how long Bean has waited for this, how shocked everyone is when the queen reappears, and how happy it makes Bean to have her mom back.

The only catch is that there’s a lot of clunky plot material and mystery boxing going on that doesn’t leave much of a place for the show’s humor. I’m not averse to these sorts of shows giving into the dramatic stuff (see also: Adventure Time, which feels like another touchstone for this series), but I do wish there were a little more lighthearted flair to it all.

Overall, this is more of a grand, dramatic mid-season finale than something that puts a period, on the show’s first batch of episodes, but it promises some interesting things to come. On the whole, Disenchantment’s first season was solid, but not quite a homerun.

There’s some good laughs, a good dynamic between the main characters, and a neat sandbox for the show to play in. But it takes some shortcuts with the character relationships, and in the back half of the season in particular, leans into the drama and adventure over the comedy, without necessarily being to punch in that weight class for twenty-two minutes. Still, it’s a promising enough first season that hopefully sets a tone and sets the table for more good work to come.