I guess Fox has optioned his books into a 1-hour television series.
I think a series for the book would be better than a movie. I’m just hoping it doesn’t get the Firefly treatment.
Having just finished season 4 on Netflix I must say that this series is amazing and is great in. Why the books weren’t. Almost every thing is an improvement.
Let’s see —
Jason Ralphs makes Quentin into an engaging, smart, funny character, while maintaining the character’s flaws.
In fact, almost very character is fleshed out and brought to life much more vividly than in the books, especially Margo (Janet) and Penny.
The show is wonderfully diverse in casting, depicting different sexualities, nonmonogamy, disabilities, etc.
The power of the female characters is brilliant. The show is like a flame of feminism in comparison to the books’ run-of-the-mill misogyny.
You are assuming Lev Grossman characters are supposed to be engaging, funny, non-misogynistic, at all likable, etc., or ultimately have any power. Makes one wonder if he had much to do with the television adaptation.
I always figured the Magicians (the original one, and the trilogy as a whole) had basically a happy ending compared to Codex.
I’m not assuming anything. For the most part, Grossman wrote flat, indistinguishable characters with few entertaining traits. The show makes the characters much more engaging and interesting and entertaining and meaningful to me. If Grossman intended to write half-baked, uninteresting stories with in engaging characters that’s I guess a situation.
I’m not assuming the characters were meant to be nonmisogynistic. The problem was when the story itself was misogynistic.
I haven’t seen the series, though I want to check it out someday.
But I loved the trilogy. Even though I didn’t particularly like the characters. I loved the books for Grossman’s writing, and for the magic, which felt real and dangerous and resonant.
I agree 100%.
The books were ok but the show is just so much better. I’m not ashamed to admit that season 4 had some of the most personally satisfying moments I have ever seen on TV:
- Drunk Dean Fogg putting some of his affairs’ in order (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktcXxM2F8N0)
- Margo’s Hard, Glossy Armor scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmLinKZud6g)
- Quentin and Penny’s conversation at the end of season 4 - WARNING, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20vzPVFfsog)
And as far the women of the show are concerned, all I can say is, All Hail High King Margo! Julia and Alice are ok but Margo kicks so much ass it’s just not funny anymore.
I’m impressed - an OP that got no responses for over 8 years then turns active.
They really did cut loose on the dean’s characterization. He’s not Headmaster Dumbledore at all, is he?
That was quite a moment. Her speech about her father was so heartbreaking and true. I was a little annoyed by the trope of success through being unable to do the one thing that you have been told will keep you safe. As if Margo has no capacity for self control—okay, maybe you could say that the circumstances were extreme in this case—but it seems like this kind of thing happens too much in popular fiction. Maybe being high as balls is sufficient cover in this case, though.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character like Margo on television before. And I love how she has turned around the language to make “cock” a substitute for “pussy” in terms of an epithet for failure or weakness.
Margo is one of my favorite fictional characters. She is a top 10 TV character for me.
I’m about 4 episodes into season 5 right now as I catch up in time for the finale. It is cancelled, but they did know enough ahead to film a proper final episode.
I’m stoked about Season 5. No spoilers, please! I can’t wait until it comes on Netflix.
The thing I enjoy most about Margo is that (I think) she sees no need for the type of self control that is stereotypically applied to most women in fiction. She isn’t afraid to be herself in any and all situations and fuck you if you don’t love her. I think that one scene from Hard, Glossy Armor perfectly captured what it feels like to be a marginalized person who has to navigate the expectations of others vs the expectations one puts on themselves and I love the fact that she has chosen to be herself and just let the chips fall where they may.
When she broke that shit out in Season 4 I was on the floor laughing my ass off. “You are not going to cock out on me. I’d say pussy, but let’s be honest. Which one is tougher?”
[Removed verbal exchange from Season 5…not really a spoiler but it is funny as hell and best experienced with no advanced warning]
I love that this thread is turning into a Margo love fest!
Maybe his theme is how hard it is, and what it takes, for a person to be other than half-baked and uninteresting, and how harsh reality (naturally including misogyny and violence) may crush you anyway. The default is, their dreams will remain unfulfilled (even as a successful investment banker; even in hedonism; even at the fantastic college for sorcery; even in (someone else’s) land of magic and imagination), and that made me sympathetic towards the characters.
That theme is preserved in the show. But the show does everything better in pretty much every way and adds more good themes.
I read the books and loved them but when I watched the show, I got to the part where
the fox god trapped and killed the hedge witch woman and her cat and it kinda freaked me out. Was that a high point in horror for the show and I would be fine picking it back up or if that was a bit much for me should I leave it be?
I don’t recall the show getting any worse than that. There is occasionally a lot of killing, but that was probably the most frightening scene I recall.
I do think the show did a fantastic job at adaptation for like… oh, 3 seasons. The 4th was a bit of a mess in the beginning and in the end because they moved away from the foundation of the books… and the 5th is… well… meh. I guess it’s not really any wonder that SyFy has said this is the last season.
I really enjoyed the books. I kind of wish the show stayed on the same general path of them while filling things in and moving things around.
Right. The books are basically that magic can’t solve what makes you an asshole - you have to work on that yourself.
He said that she in particular says things that he would want to say, and is disinhibited and free with her aggression in a way that maybe he wishes he could be, and would really enjoy being, but doesn’t think he could actually do.
Who is the “he” here?