Some Thoughts On…Disenchantment

I should probably get this out of the way now because I would feel weird if I didn’t mention it at any point in this post. I was not happy with Matt Groening’s response to the Apu controversy, since it outright dismissed a lot of the points that people like Hari Kondabolu have been trying to make about the character and Indian representation as a whole (you can read my thoughts on that whole thing here), and it was disappointing to hear those words come out of someone who I always admired, and considered not only a genius, but someone who actively shaped my sense of humor. It did temper my expectations for his debut animated show on Netflix, Disenchantment, but not to the degree that it might affect my thoughts on the show, though I don’t blame any folks out there who are affected.

So, now that I got that out of the way…

Disenchantment is basically Groening’s skewering on the fantasy genre, in the same way that Simpsons tackles modern America, and Futurama tackles sci-fi. It centers on Bean (Abbi Jacobson), the drunken, violent, and promiscuous princess of Dreamland, Luci (Eric Andre), a demon – often mistaken for a cat – that has attached himself to Bean for reasons yet unknown, and Elfo (Nat Faxon), an elf that left his secret elf world to explore the world, and later befriends Bean and Luci. They live in the kingdom of Dreamland, and the show follows their various misadventures.

For most of the ten episodes (each roughly half an hour), the show was simply fine. Despite the freedoms that come with Netflix, Groening and his staff writers don’t feel the need to stretch their humor in terms of explicitness or vulgarity. It’s fine, even if it does seem like a strange missed opportunity. And that’s not to say the show isn’t funny, it has a number of killer lines sprinkled throughout and with amazingly talented actors (and Groening regulars) like John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, and Billy West taking up a large chunk of the supporting and background characters, they can effortlessly elevate even a mediocre line into something memorable.

It did take a couple episodes, but after a while, I found myself warming up to the main trio of Bean, Luci, and Elfo, except I did enjoy Luci from the get-go. Bean is a very compelling character, whose actions can’t necessarily be predicted. Abbi Jacobson is wonderful in the role, and the same can be said of her co-stars. I will say that, however, your enjoyment of the show might hinge on how much you can tolerate Elfo because he can be a bit much sometimes. He took the longest for me to get behind because there’s an inconsistency with how innocent versus how creepy he gets. He has a very “nice guy” quality to him, but the show deals with him better as it goes along.

Speaking of that, the season is structured rather oddly. The first seven episodes feel rather standard in their formula. Bean and her friends get into a wacky situation, but by the time it ends, everything goes back to the status quo. It feels too much like business as usual, and it lacked that immediate inspiration that you felt when The Simpsons or Futurama came on. It also kept its scope rather small, and it might end up testing your patience after a while.

Thankfully, the last three episodes really save it in a big way. It actually builds on a lot of the small details that have been sprinkled throughout the season, and it begins setting up a few threads for longform storytelling, and the finally began exploring different aspects of the world and the characters. The final episode even ends on a cliffhanger that puts several characters in very different places than they were before, and I’m genuinely excited to see where it goes from here. It is unlike anything Groening has done before, commiting to a more serialized story format, and while it did take a bit long to get there, it leaves you in a place where you are curious to see how it pans out for the characters.

If you were expecting Disenchantment to basically be a retread of Bender’s Game, the 2004 DTV Futurama film that parodied aspects of Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings, it’s not quite that. The skewering of fantasy tropes doesn’t feel as pointed, encyclopedic, or specific as anything you would see in Futurama. However, like Futurama starting off like a parody of sci-fi that in the later seasons became actually good sci-fi, I can see Disenchantment starting off like a simple parody of fantasy that works its way to being a really good piece of fantasy storytelling. At least, that’s how I’m hoping it goes considering the way the season ends. If the writers room have something ambitious planned, then we might be in for a treat. I hope they don’t drop the ball when the second season comes around.