“The Magicians” has an interesting premise, but the show frequently undermines itself by trying to be darker and edgier, forgetting that the “mature” versions of things are generally anything but mature.
The show basically answers the question “What if you went to Hogwarts but you were like, an adult, and it was all, like, drugs and booze all the time?”
If you know about fanfiction, you can probably get this question answered a hundred different ways in a thousand different stories, and many of them would probably be more interesting than “The Magicians.” Many of them would be a lot worse, too. Fanfiction is like that.
There’s also a healthy dose of “What if Narnia were real?” here, involving a pretend magical kingdom named “Fillory” that turns out to be real as well, and becomes a key plot point during the first season.
Now keep in mind I only watched the first season, as that’s what’s on Netflix right now, and that I haven’t read the books, which as always with adaptations, are quite different.
The problem is, all the drugs and booze and sex the show throws at us in an effort to be “grown-up” don’t work. It just makes you roll your eyes because they’re trying so, so hard. Much too hard, really.
Compounding the issue are the unsympathetic characters, especially the main one, Quentin Coldwater, a grad student age guy with a mental illness. The mental illness part is fine, and adds a lot to the character. The problem is, it’s probably the only interesting aspect of the character.
I understand this is likely a deconstruction of the “savior” trope, in which an ordinary white guy becomes the Chosen One and saves a magical kingdom even though he’s a stranger to it and an ordinary white guy, but that doesn’t change the fact that the character actually is still an ordinary white guy. He’s not as good at magic as some of his fellow students, a fact which is heavily lampshaded at the end of the first season–but that’s long after they make us watch a whole season of this guy. It’s not the actor’s fault, it’s that the character is a drip. He’s not a good student, not a good friend, not a good person and not very interesting, either.
It’s hard to put even a good concept around a character like that and make it work, and if we’re being honest here it didn’t always work even in Harry Potter–in book 5, Harry is unspeakably irritating and verges on being unbearable. And if we’re talking Narnia, the Pevensies weren’t all that interesting either, but in both those cases, it didn’t matter terribly much because the books were lightly written children’s books. The characters were often archetypes rather than full characters.
This show isn’t supposed to be for children, so why are so many of the characters puddle-deep?
I sound incredibly critical, but the show managed to hold my attention (albeit with much eyerolling) throughout the first season, but toward the end they pushed “darker and edgier” a little too far and portrayed (spoiler alert!!) a bloody rape scene, and that was enough for me.
A better story with better characters would have made the show enchanting, but “darker and edgier” just doesn’t do much for me. If you think the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter would have been improved by including various kinds of sexual assault (including rape and child molestation), plus a lot of drinking, drugs and sex, maybe you’d like “The Magicians.”
I’m going to pass on season 2, though.