One of the things I like most about The Magicians is how realistic it is. I mean, yes, they are going to Narnia to fight Satan, but putting that aside, this is all extremely familiar to anyone who went to a co-ed college in recent times. Let’s do dangerous things to our bodies and have hugely emotional overreactions and do stupid stuff that we later regret, involving lots of drugs and sex! It’s not as concretely complete as Buffy‘s highschool-is-hell but it’s up there.
I cannot remember if I have ever heard any of these characters use “TV Speke” – the lines that only people on TV shows say or hear seriously. Probably they have, because the writers are only human (or are they?), but even if they have it’s very rare. Which makes the show very rare.
Episode-specific-wise, the bottled emotion scenes are of course hilarious. As is that Penny – the one who has the most invested in denying that he has anything as stupid as emotions – is the one who immediately vows to never do that again when they drink them back. Differently from Alice, who I think sees it as cheating. Alice is a ball of deep, though, it’s hard to tell.
Nice to see Julia have a positive development for a change. It will all go hideously wrong soon, of course, but for now, nice.