Series Review: Disenchantment, Season 1

Disenchantment, Season 1

I had originally wanted to do this episode-by-episode, but I'm trying out reviewing an entire season at once.

Anyway, Disenchantment is the brainchild of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, two intense juggernauts in the cartoon department. So after doing a parody of the present day and one of futuristic sci-fi tropes, it doesn't take a genius to guess that any future series is predictably going to go the obvious route and be set in the past. A medieval fantasy setting, in this case.

Interestingly, though, Disenchantment's first season only runs for ten episodes, and is streamed wholesale on Netflix, which is an... interesting way to do it. The show still runs on a mostly episodic format, though. Continuity's there, and there are some episodes that are closely-knit together (the last three episodes worked like a three-parter, and the first two episodes worked like a two-parter), but ultimately it feels definitely like a more light-hearted, non-serialized show. It's definitely odd to pick Netflix as the way to showcase this particular project.

And the concept is... well, it's okay, I guess. Part of what makes Groening's works so fantastic tends to be a combination of jokes, voice acting and the pretty unique style of artwork. No complaints about the artwork for sure, with a whole ton of fun visual gags in the background, and the voice-acting is... mostly well-done, with a fair bit of alums from Futurama and Simpsons. But the storytelling is a bit... well, I'm not sure if I'm judging too harshly, but it's definitely nowhere as well-done as I would've liked. Granted, neither the first seasons of Futurama or Simpsons are perfect seasons, but still, it's not until the last three episodes (or one and a half, if we're being less charitable) that the show actually tries to tell any sort of huge over-reaching story. Yes, the rapid-fire machinegun of sudden plot twists given in the final episodes definitely are built up from details from the previous episodes, but I dunno... it's a bit of a weird balance between attempting to seed clues to a potentially long-running storyline, while keeping most of the episodes relatively standalone for hijinks.

Throw in the fact that some of the earlier episodes actually are weak and hang on rather flimsy "filler"-esque storylines, and it's not that good. Of course, on the other hand, the show's snappy enough that you can just breeze through the weaker episodes, and as a whole, I did enjoy Disenchantment. 

A vast majority of this, of course, is thanks to the pretty amazing voice cast. The setup isn't the most novel -- our main trio, Princess Tiabeanie (Abbi Jacobson), Bean to her friends, is the sort of typical rebel princess that doesn't want to marry for political convenience and just wants to go around getting drunk and party. She quickly hangs out with the shadow demon Luci (Eric Andre), who's sent to "corrupt" the princess by a pair of mysterious colluders, but in practice Luci acts more like that frat friend that tries to be a bad influence on you while secretly a big softy.

The final member of that trio is Elfo (Nat Faxon), an elf exiled from the saccharine Smurf-like elf village for trying to develop independent thoughts, and acts as the 'good' counterpart to Luci. Also, just like Futurama, Elfo has this unrequited nice-guy-crush on Bean. Elfo is perhaps one of the more problematic characters in the show. The initial pitch of the character is interesting -- someone who comes from a saccharine world that doesn't know what 'war' or 'evil' is, finding himself trapped as the court of King Zog and his mad scientist-wizard Sorcerio attempt to drain his blood to create an elixir of life, but after the first three episodes or so, Elfo ends up being defined by his  desire to be noticed by Bean, which is just kind of jarring.

Rounding out the main cast is Bean's crazy warrior tyrant-king dad, Zog (John DiMaggio), as well as the rest of the royal  family and the various retainers of the king. It does not quite reach Game of Thrones-level of complexity, but the world-building aspect is certainly pretty well done, so much that when the big spoiler-y conspiracy is revealed in the final episode, you do rack your brain as to who the likely culprits are.

Ultimately, though, while nothing special, Disenchantment is blessed with a pretty neat art team and a great set of voice actors. It's not impressive, but it's definitely good enough that I did enjoy my breeze through the first ten episodes of the season despite its flaws, and the characters definitely grew on me. I will definitely be back for whenever this gets continued for a second one.