Disenchantment – Season 2 Review

I’m calling it Season 2, I don’t care. Disenchantment’s not going to be the one to usher in the era of “parts.” If that sounds like a bitter way to start a review, it’s because I am bitter. Season 1 didn’t exactly leave me with high hopes, and Season 2 is even rockier. At this point, the team might as well scrap it and start over with a new Groening idea. Disenchantment just doesn’t do character work or humor or narrative payoff very well. The major cliffhanger in Season 1 is quickly resolved in Season 2, leading into a series of status quo episodes, only for the season to end on a major cliffhanger again. Is Disenchantment trying to be more story-driven, or is it a cartoonish sitcom? A year later, it still feels like they don’t know what they want to do with this show.

What further suggests this may be the case is the penultimate episode going full steampunk. That episode left a really bad taste in my mouth, because the technology came out of nowhere. You can’t spend 18 episodes laying the groundwork for a medieval fantasy and then suddenly introduce airplanes and guns. If the joke is that Dreamland is “behind the times,” that could work given a slower introduction to the bigger steampunk world. The way it’s presented, though, feels more like the team’s rushing to get to a point where they can start making more Futurama-like jokes. It’s kind of sad when a show realizes it can’t live up to its predecessors. Disenchantment may have failed to take advantage of its fantasy motif, but shifting to sci-fi isn’t the right direction.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.