Disenchantmentis the third TV show created by Matt Groening.
WhereFuturamajoked about the far future,Disenchantmentlurches back toward the past.
She seeks something bigger out of life, which could make her a Disney princess.
Credit: Netflix
She has platinum-white hair, a look I choose to describe as Daenerys-esque.
(No, no, Khaleesi-ish, that’s better.)
And she drinks as a passion and a hobby.
In the first episode, Bean meets a couple new buddies.
So, like a cat.
Together, they set off on… adventures?
No, that implies excitement.
No, that implies humor.
Stuff happens to them, I guess, and sometimes they respond with a wisecrack.
Disenchantmentis a strange show.
But after the first couple of episodes, there’s no obvious narrative momentum.
The interplay between characters feels off.
It quickly becomes a joke factory for fantasy riffs.
you could’t execute an elf by hanging because they don’t weigh enough.
Tinkerbell-looking fairies are prostitutes, which is funny, because prostitutes.
There’s one full-fledged fairy-tale spoof: Hansel and Gretel, like you’ve never seen them before!
No, not witch hunters, something else!
This isn’t really aiming to be theFuturamaof fantasy.
But maybeDisenchantmentwould’ve benefited from more specificity.
scene fromMonty Python and the Holy Grail, except as a whole show.
The hit rate’s low.
Some of the castle guards have a band called the Pillage People (grooooan).
What went wrong here?
Besides the lead voice actors, Groening’s collaborators have a good track record.
DiMaggio joins fellowFuturamaalumni Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, Tress MacNeille, and David Herman on the supporting cast.
A lot of this just seems nasty, though, gross without being funny.
Dreamland seems to weather a new massacre every few weeks, and the regularity gets depressing.
Next month sees the return ofBojack Horseman, Netflix’s best ongoing series.
That might be where the show’s going, but the early episodes are all stuck in Dreamland.
Pretty soon you want to leave, too.C
