#dean henry fogg | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asofterhibou · 9 months

Text

I make no promises of how many of these I will do, but in honor of the Great Magicians Rewatch, here's a part one of a recap of The Magicians season one, episode one, "Unauthorized Magic", for anyone who didn't have time to rewatch but wants a refresher. Notes about spoilers and warnings below the cut.

Spoilers: for season one obviously and also probably future seasons, as I'm not going to hold back commenting on future episodes.

Warnings: The Magicians has so many warnings, friends. So many. I would ask you to please google the warnings for this show if it's at all an issue, but general series warnings: graphic violence, graphic sexual assault, child abuse, heavy themes of depression and suicide, suicide committed on screen at one point, themes of drug and alcohol abuse, graphic animal death.

We begin in New York City in 2015, on a busy city street. A door opens in one of the graffitied buildings and reveals, impossibly, a sunny green lawn on the other side. A man walks through; he's Henry Fogg, Dean of Brakebills University, and he sits on a bench and has a cryptic conversation with a woman named Eliza.

She's late, he says, which in context is very funny. She drops a dead moth on his newspaper and tells him, "It's happening."

"They're not even at Brakebills yet," Fogg says, and she tells him to get 'them' there, and hope they get a little something under their belts before 'he' finds them.

They argue about how much control is possible over the situation, and whose responsibility it is, Eliza saying that Fogg has to train them, because they know nothing, especially 'him'.

"I will do what I can," Fogg says, and Eliza gives him a pocket-watch, tucking it into his jacket pocket.

"You still have an eye on our boy, don't you?" Eliza asks, and Fogg says yes, before admitting the answer is "not exactly."

"Why not? Where is he?"

Cut to: the Statue of Liberty, and a sign saying 'Midtown Mental Health Clinic', and then to a spinning coin on a table, and a finger reaches out to stop it in place - finally, our boy, Quentin Coldwater, hoodie-clad and rolling the quarter across his knuckles before using sleight of hand to make it disappear, as the opening notes of MGMT's 'Pretend' start up, and yeah, it's an excellent fucking intro.

"Wow, nice trick," the psychiatrist sitting across the table from him says, and Quentin looks at her and makes the quarter appear again in his hands.

"I'm sure you're a hit at parties," she says, and Quentin grimace-smiles in a way that says about a million words.

Cut to the party in Julia's loft that night, full of people dancing - and Quentin sitting in a beanbag chair with a red plastic cup in his hands and staring pathetically at the ass of the girl dancing in front of him. She catches him staring and leaves, Quentin hiding his face behind the cup, and we get a back and forth between Quentin being godawful at parties and the conversation earlier that day with the psychiatrist where he tries to convince her that he is totally good to sign himself out of the clinic and leave, despite having signed himself in saying that he couldn't eat or get out of bed, felt like he didn't belong anywhere and was the most useless person who ever lived. (shout-out to Quentin telling someone at the party that the Danish version of a film is better because "the Danish people have a dark soul," iconic, unforgettable) Quentin tells the psychiatrist that when you're a kid you have notions about what life is and what it could be - but eventually you have to let all that go, and that's what he's doing. "It's part of growing up. Selling the comic book collection and getting serious."

At the party, Julia tries to gesture Quentin over to where she and James are sitting, but he retreats.

The psychiatrist asks him what he's doing after graduation, and Quentin tells her he has a grad school interview for Yale on Tuesday. When she says she would recommend further treatment, Quentin says quickly that he's never threatened to hurt himself or anyone else, so she can't make him stay, his confidence slipping slightly at the end with a "Can you?"

Back at the party, Quentin’s hiding in his room reading a book, his meds on the nightstand, his room filled with books and memorabilia of Fillory and Further, a fantasy series. The book he’s reading is Fillory and Further Book One, The World in the Walls, it’s got a old-fashioned cover with a picture of a grandfather clock with rams’ heads carved into the top. We get Quentin’s voiceover giving a summary of the book: the Chatwin siblings Martin, Rupert and Jane had been sent to the countryside, and the three of them enter into the doorway of the grandfather clock and emerge into a forest filled with trees with clocks inside them, a fountain and a castle in the background: the magical land of Fillory.

Julia comes to find Quentin in his room, and tries to talk to him about the girl whose ass he was ogling earlier, because she was wearing a unicorn t-shirt and so clearly is into fantasy, which speaks to a certain level of desperation of Julia’s part here I think. She comes to sit next to him on the bed, Quentin defends his party-reading by saying he’s getting a last look at the first edition before selling it on eBay. Julia scootches down next to him, shoulder to shoulder, says she was calling him all weekend, her voice getting quiet. “Where were you?” Quentin lies and says he was at his dad’s. Julia leans over to kiss his cheek just as her boyfriend James comes in, who fakes shock and then leaps onto the bed yelling “Threesome!” (I love how hard they go at foreshadowing the actual threesome, it’s so important to like, the themes, guys.)

It’s the day of Quentin’s grad interview and Julia’s walking him there, both of them in their wool-coat dark academia best, talking about how Quentin shouldn’t stress at all, “It’s only the alumni interview. It’s only Yale.” “Right, lesser Ivy.” Quentin says Julia doesn't have to come in with him, she smooths his hair and tells him to tighten his shit, their whole relationship in a nutshell.

They go into the house for the alumni interview, there’s no one answering their calls but there is an extremely familiar grandfather clock. And then Julia screams, because there’s also a dead body sprawled in the chair in the corner.

The paramedics are wheeling the body away, and one of the paramedics is Eliza. She hands Quentin a manila envelope before Quentin and Julia leave, saying that she thinks the dead alumni guy had left it for Quentin.

Out in the street, Quentin opens the envelope and finds a handwritten manuscript titled Fillory and Further Book Six, dated 1952. Quentin starts losing his shit in excitement - there are only five Fillory books but there have been rumors of a sixth, Julia is much less enthused. (I get that this has to lead up to the fight they’re about to have, but getting randomly handed a Fillory manuscript from the dead alumni guy’s house actually is pretty weird, so it’s a little strange Julia’s so blase about it) Julia finally tells him he has to stop: “You can’t run away hard enough, can you? What happened to giving up on the Fillory crap?” And then they have an ‘old-friends-with-years-of-built-up-issues’ fight; Quentin’s side - Julia uses to like Fillory, Julia in fact got him into Fillory, it was their thing, Julia’s side, I liked it (I loved it, she says), and it was silly nerdy bullshit that got us through high school, but -; Quentin: “it never seemed to bother you until right around the second you met James.”

Julia stops, then brings out the big guns too - she knows he was at the mental hospital this weekend, not at his dad’s, and that he feels the same as he did the last time. “Life is starting, for real,” Julia says. “You’re good at so much stuff, pick something. Please. Start living your life,” and like, she’s not completely wrong, but it’s not helpful, and Quentin’s not having it. And she has to leave to go meet James, of course. “I love you. Call me, okay?” and Quentin says nothing as she walks away. (also the first time you hear what I think of as ‘the sad magicians theme’ which rips at my heart every damn time. someone please tell me the real name of this music)

Quentin walks alone down the street with his manuscript, a page blows away from it and he chases it down an alleyway.

Julia goes into a building and gets in an elevator.

Quentin chases his lost paper into a gated wintry garden, and Julia’s elevator is going down to the parking garage instead of up.

Quentin pushes his way through the tall bushes at the back of the garden - and emerges into sunlight, onto a large green field with imposing college campus like buildings all around him.

Julia’s elevator opens into a bright hallway with a sign saying ‘To Exam’. Julia walks down the hallway and we see Quentin outside her building walking in parallel with her: wherever they are, it’s the same place.

Quentin walks across the field to Eliot, who’s stretched out smoking a cigarette on the large stone sign that says “BRAKEBILLS”. Eliot pulls a card out of his pocket, checks the name, and asks, “Quentin Coldwater?” like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. He then gives Quentin a once-over, tells him he’s late, and to follow him. Quentin’s freaking out, Eliot tells him he’s at Brakebills University in upstate New York and has been offered a preliminary exam for entrance to the grad program; and also points out that it doesn't do much good to ask your suspected hallucinations if they're hallucinations.

Quentin and Eliot get to the exam room, and we get a good first look at Penny who’s also at the exam, and Penny’s amazing biceps, thank you for that. Quentin and Julia start to work on the exam, a paper booklet whose questions move and change. Julia tries to ask a question and is refused.

As they go up to the front to pass in the finished exam, Quentin and Julia see each other and hug. Quentin’s relieved that Julia’s here and seeing what he’s seeing, since he just started new meds and was worried none of this was real.

In the next room for the final exam, Julia is alone except the examiner sitting across from her, who says first that they suspected she has nascent magical abilities - Julia smiles and starts to say, “I used to think that -” (a moment for me to cry over baby Julia who thought she had magic and then clearly put that aside with the rest of her childish things) and then the examiner tells her actually she failed the written exam and he’s there to send her home. Julia immediately starts to protest, says the test was crazy, “don’t you want students who make actual inquiry instead of just accepting like sheep?” The examiner gives her a look, and she reins in it, puts on the charm instead, says she can’t go to Yale if she knows this place exists. The examiner says essentially no worries, because she’s not going to remember this place exists. He gets up to sanitize his hands, and Julia takes off one of her rings and scratches it hard up the inside of her right arm, drawing a long line of blood.

In Quentin’s final exam room, there’s a panel of judges with Fogg sitting in the middle. “Quentin,” Fogg says, “let’s see some magic.” He places a pack of cards on the table.

Quentin starts to do card tricks, Fogg asks for real magic. Quentin drops cards on the floor, picks them up as Fogg gets up from his seat and starts to circle him. Fogg asks if Quentin wants to go back to his old life (“that pointless, miasmic march to death”), back to feeling alone and wrong. “No.” “Then quit dicking around.” “Stop it.” “And do some goddamn magic!”

“I said stop it,” Quentin yells, and does some goddamn magic, the cards in his hands flying into the air and then hanging in place, before spinning into shapes that turn into a castle made of cards on the judges’ table. “Holy shit, I’m doing this,” Quentin says. (Notable: the card castle is Whitespire, the castle in Fillory with the spinning towers; and the shadow of the cards flying through the air looks creepily similar to the shadow of the cloud of moths that we’ll see later) Quentin passes out in a dead faint on the floor and the castle collapses.

Quentin’s walking in a dark forest, looking at a clock tree: Fillory. When he goes to touch the clock, the young girl sitting in the tree warns him that time magic is difficult, “you’ll just make it worse.” It’s Jane Chatwin from the Fillory books, and she appears next to Quentin on the ground to tell him that it won’t stop the Beast from coming. “You’re in the school, he’s going to find you. You’re the one he wants.” She tells him to look down - he’s standing on a stone path. If you stay on the garden path, the Beast will kill you, she says, kill everyone. Step off the path, or -

There’s a growling sound, a blast of wind and a glowing blue moth flying directly at Quentin’s face - and he sits up in bed, waking up from his dream.

End of part one.

#the magicians #the magicians recaps #the magicians recaps season one #unauthorized magicians rewatch

23 notes · View notes