Oh man, I canceled Netflix.
:(
Can’t wait.
Oh, good deal!
Season 2 just dropped. It’s much better. The octopus one was pretty funny. King Scruffy is a very funny character, fleshed out now. Abbi J. has that consistent self aware self destructive millenial down pat. I liked her reaction when she first saw Hell.
Lucy has even grown on me.
Edit:. It’s Luci, and it’s Eric Andre! Didn’t recognize him, but then again I’ve only seen him in meme form.
“Ok, let me go get my opera glasses.”
Agreed - I liked season 1, but it wasn’t great. I think 2 hit its stride.
Matt Berry Is such a treasure. Well, the whole voice cast, really, beginning with Abbi Jacobson.
I’m slowly making my way through season 2, and I’m really enjoying it. Better tone to the jokes, but it’s the more fleshed out world and depth to the characters which is finally paying off.
Show would be much improved with no Elfo.
Powered through Season 2. Not sure it was worth it - it’s better than S1, for sure, but is it good?
I tend to agree, though I think it’s more than just that. I feel it’s more that they’re trying to take the ensemble concept also used in Futurama: the fool (Fry/Elfo), the cynic (Bender/Luci) and the Straight woman (Leela/Bean) and hoping to catch that same dynamic (they even steal the subplot of the fool in love, the fool and the cynic as roommates, and the straight woman having difficulty finding friends) - but because they change a bunch of things, it no longer works.
A big problem is, none of these characters have the bite or likability of the originals. Elfo is just a creepy moron - Fry was stupid, but he was a likeable doofus who was also a brave and loyal friend, and the show allowed him moments of growth and maturity. Elfo immediately forgets why he left his homeland and just acts as moronical as the show needs him to at any given time. And the romance sub-plot here is just skin-tinglingly creepy (Fry-Leela wasn’t super-good all the time either, but it didn’t have Fry creeping into her bedchambers at night, etc, ugh). I really cannot comprehend why this remains a thing in the show.
Luci is just a weak demon, with very little edge. I suspect one can find multiple episodes where Bender commits more crime and devilry than Luci does in an entire season.
Bean is the only one with more depth/complexity than her predecessors, but almost none of that potential is utilized for anything but cheap gags. And unlike Leela/Lisa, she has no ideals. She doesn’t really believe or care about anything - despite the show providing plenty of opportunities to open her eyes (and multiple characters who provide hints to her, e.g., her nanny and the broom girl) - and that nihilism makes her fairly poor as a primary protagonist. That may be an intentional commentary about millenials, but if so, I think it’s a really bad one.
Somewhat to my surprise, I’m finding King Zog to be the most interesting character - at least when they don’t just play him for cheap laughs. I think the show is at it’s best when it focuses on the core dynamics of the Grunkwitz family, and I really, really don’t understand why they don’t lean into that plot more.
Disenchantment irritates me, because I want to like it and I think there is enough ideas in there for a very good show, but not enough for the show they’re doing. Generally speaking, I wish they’d drop the filler (80% of the show) and just get on with telling the story. The latter is interesting - the filler generally isn’t, especially not when they have to dredge up that old Family Guy trick of dragging out jokes for unfunny lengths of time in order to pad out run-time.
I like the nihilism. I find it endearing coming from Bean. (Although she drinks a little too much.)
Haven’t watched Season 2, but you pretty much identified exactly the problems I had with Season 1.
I think I wouldn’t mind it quite so much, if the other two “protagonists” had more substance, because then we’d at least have those other character arcs advancing while Bean’s messes around learning nothing at all. But they don’t (other than the tiny reveal about Elfo mid-season), and that leaves the nihilism - to me - feeling like just something they turn on/off as required to serve their need to produce X episodes of Y minutes.
As is, I feel pretty much as if I could watch the first two and the last one and a half episode of Season 2, and I’d have missed very little of value (and Season 1 followed exactly the same pattern).
I get the distinct impression many people look far more deeply into their comedies than I do (not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
Even beyond that the pacing and timing of a lot of jokes feels off, maybe a result of the extra runtime per episode compared to network TV and the creators not knowing how to fill it properly. Also a lot of jokes are just kind of lazy. Look at Hell in this v. Robot Hell and the Robot Devil from Futurama.
I’m in the same boat as a lot of people. I really want to like this show, but it mostly gets a “meh” from me. I still have slight hope for future seasons since a good fix would be to get the cast out of the kingdom and go on adventures to different, less generic places—most of the better episodes do this already—and I think that might actually happen. I do view season 2 (or part two or however they style it) as being a slight improvement on the first, but it’s still not quite good.
Here’s my main annoyance with the show: it has Eric Andre and no idea how to use him. The Eric Andre Show is a straight-up, 10/10 masterpiece and easily one of the best shows of my lifetime. However, I’ve never seen Andre reach anywhere near those highs on any other project he’s been on. Part of that is that it’s probably hard to fit his brand of comedy into most worlds. I get that. Disenchantment is an animated show where he plays a demon, a supposedly evil agent of chaos sowing bedlam and destruction across the land. That’s. . . Eric Andre’s entire MO! It should be perfect for him. Yet, Luci rarely does anything of the sort. It’s such a waste of talent and potential to have him basically be Bean’s smartass pet.* It occasionally hints at something more for him to do, but nothing ever comes of it. Nothing much worthwhile anyway, besides the brief flash of what could be here and there. It’s maddening.
*Bean’s probably the strongest character overall, but there too I’m constantly reminded that Abbi Jacobson was also much better deployed on her own show. So, even with Bean, there’s an obvious waste of potential.
The only thing I really don’t like is the voice/accent of the king/dad. Are they trying to hide that it’s the same guy as Bender and Jake?
I don’t think so. I have heard Dimaggio use variations of that voice before, I think there is a plumber or truck driver type guy in Futurama that sounds very similar.
Scruffy? That’s not DiMaggio.
No, not Scruffy, that’s the janitor. Remember the voice of the guy on the Simpsons who usually plays a sarcastic clerk or store worker? It’s kind of like that, randomly thrown in.
I may be confusing shows but I have definitely heard that inflection before. I wanna say it’s a guy who says “yous” a lot, like a space truck driver maybe.