I officially completely love The Magicians now. Penny is a dick but he’s not stupid or a plot-device stereotype and that combination is amazingly rare. Quentin and Alice are such complete nerds, and very believable to me; I’ve known that type, simultaneously super attractive and yet so personally damaged that they end up awkward as hell. Julia breaks my heart every episode somehow. Even Eliot and Margo, who teetered on the border of annoyingly “whimsical”, have unexpected depths.
The plot keeps veering off in ways I wouldn’t expect (an unbooker so far), and the not-strictly-plottish parts are just as interesting as anything else. Like, good grief Alice’s parents. The whole adult-child dynamic seems to have escaped them. Beyond creepy. And the library! And that librarian! The Sand People ish kids! The Margolem!
The cast should be grateful that we don’t know any real magic because I think we’d keep them making us an episode every week forever.