Matt Groening's new series for Netflix: Disenchantment

Could be good:

Announced this morning by the streaming service, Disenchantment takes viewers to the Kingdom of Dreamland, which is slowly falling apart into rampant disarray as its hard-drinking young princess Bean (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) goes on a series of misadventures with an elf named Elfo (Nat Faxon) and her own personal demon, Luci (Eric Andre). It’s “about life and death, love and sex, and how to keep laughing in a world full of suffering and idiots, despite what the elders and wizards and other jerks tell you,” as Groening himself is quoted in a provided press release.

Even the extended voice cast reads like a list of Futurama greats, with John DiMaggio, Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, and Tress MacNeille all having roles

Ugh, Tress MacNeille is just the worst. Unpopular opinion, I guess, but she's such a one-note, overbearing voice actor and an absolute comedy killer. I also can't disassociate her from The Simpsons' creative decline.

The comedy killer who voices Mom

always happy to see (hear) Eric Andre get a gig

Tress MacNeille would be classic even if the only thing she had ever done was Agnes Skinner.

all she does is yell

When you yell that hilariously, all you need to do is yell.

I dunno, that logic is how you get Crazy Cat Lady in every third episode

i still can't believe they have episodes centered on those one-off/jokey characters

Could take or leave Jacobsen but am on board with Andre

I also can't disassociate her from The Simpsons' creative decline.

― Evan R, Tuesday, July 25, 2017 4:46 PM (three hours ago)

i'd put the blame more on those lousy writers

definitely interested in this but fucking yawn at hard drinking main character

xp yeah I don't blame her for the decline, though the writers indiscriminately giving her shitty characters free reign certainly didn't help anything. But her increased role on the show is one of those secondary things, like the absence of Phil Hartman, that separates the classic era from the aftermath.

How can the woman who voiced "jam a bastard in it, you crap!" and "I'm off to some charity BS for knocked-up teenage sluts" be a "comedy killer" ffs!?

Also Matt Berry is in this = I'm on board.

So, I've watched 8 eps of this so far and it is thus far mostly a bit of a flat disappointment. There's too few main characters for starters, and the sound production is really strange: off/missing foley work, a really obvious lack of much musical cues. And jokes being explained, urgh!

That aside: Matt Berry and Noel Fielding do great in this, though their parts are quite small. I wasnt very on board with Futurama when it started either so I'm prepared to give it time, though if its only going to be 2 seasons long, that's a worry as it didnt start getting good til ep 8!

So: has promise, but could really bring more to the table.

only saw a trailer for this a fortnight ago

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

give it the fuck up

Groening, not you Trayce

It could do with some heavy editing. There’s some good gags but it suffers from being allowed to sprawl out to some ridiculous episode lengths. Tight 20 minute episodes like the simpsons or Futurama could do a lot for this.

Sound production is a good pickup. Matt Berry sounds like he was not just in a different studio but mixed for a different show.

Yes! He was louder than other voices, I hadnt thought about that. Agreed on the editing too - the pacing was weirdly sluggish and muted. There was no punchy tight jokes or music cues!

he's been doing fan service since at least the first cancellation of Futurama and this looks like the laziest service of fan service

Well he was being himself, granted. But I like that.

My gripe is done :)

I made it about 10 minutes

OK Ive just finished the lot and have to say, it will be worth it to stick with it - the last 3 episodes actually get going and get quite good. Its a bloody shame it took so long to get going.

Basically the whole thing has a payoff - its a long story.

the first episode totally lost me, but i picked it up again because i was bored, and it really does improve. it’s definitely slow, but it’s got loads of imagination, the art direction is gorgeous, and it’s properly funny once it finds its groove. they can fix the problems quite easily (tighten things up a bit, have more fun with the fantasy stuff), so i hope it gets time to improve.

…i said “improve” like six times

is it worth just watching the final 3 episodes

i mean i started enjoying it around episode 5

Yeah same it definitely got funnier and a bit more interesting than it suggested from the start. I wonder if Sharon Horgan is bothered yet that even in this show she can't do a voice with her own accent (genuinely thought it was Jo Lumley at first).

I enjoyed it, not sure where i would say it started picking up but maybe by about episode 3.
& wanted more after the series ending.

Maybe i need to go back and see if there's any Futurama I haven't seen yet. Not that it's exactly like that.

I asked abt the last 3 bcz of Trayce’s post. And because the elliptical at the YMCA now has Netflix, so I figured that’s one mountain-climb’s worth

sic: they won’t make sense without watching the rest is the thing. well they’d have less plot payoff at least.

Hard nope then, thanks for the feedback!

I must have low standards for this sort of thing because I thought it was perfectly fine. Seemed at least as funny as Futurama (which I never thought was that funny anyway?).

Is Elfo meant to be a sympathetic character? Because he isn’t. The series does improve as it goes along.

Yeah really the key point of diff is this whole "series is a long overarching story" thing, which I never realised groening just doesnt do, well aside from Fry and his nasty in the pasty delta brainwave thing. xp

xps to sic: consensus seems to be that 8–10 are the best, but as trayce said you wouldn’t get the context just jumping in.

also, elfo is easily my least favourite groening lead character, probably due to the voice actor

also my favourite disenchantment character is probably the laughing horse

it’s got loads of imagination, the art direction is gorgeous

3 eps in, these are the qualities that are motivating me to keep watching. I haven't actually laughed much.

Next set of 10 eps has an episode written by Adam Briggs - Groening himself was on TV last week gleefully stating his ep is "the most violent of the lot" which could be interesting.

Maybe I'm just basic but I won't lie, I enjoyed the 'talking cat'/'weird cat' joke every time.

Next set of 10 eps has an episode written by Adam Briggs - Groening himself was on TV last week gleefully stating his ep is "the most violent of the lot" which could be interesting.

i love that the producers looked outside the usa

also, i wonder how many people were expecting another futurama and gave up when they didn’t get one. which is unfair because it doesn’t have to be 11/10 to be worth watching. this is a thing that keeps happening and it makes me ia every time.

I loved the jokes with the old witch.

"Ah, there's my real laugh."

MASSIVE SPOILER but it was cool that her perceived madness turned out to be something fixable which she came out of pretty normally, like when ANOTHER SPOILER the giant coughed up the horse

They did keep misgendering the griffin, that was weird.

God I've already forgotten all that haha thats what I get for bingewatching all 10 episodes in 2 days I guess.

S3 pretty dark at times (esp. with Zog).

Was enjoying it until the finale which once again didn't really pay much of anything off re character motives and felt like they started with the cliffhanger and then wrote around that only for it to still feel like it was tacked on at the last.

I can't see why everything I've tried to d/ld has series 3 labeled as series 2. Reference to a Zog arc as being dark in series 3 should mean I have just watched that one.
Hadn't realised there were more than 1 series before Media Eval covered it a few weeks ago.

There have only been two seasons commissioned, each of 20 episodes apiece, released ten at a time. nashwan was referring to the third block of ten, evidently. It seems likely that the second half of S2 will plop in January 2022.

back for a new series , just seen the first 3 over the last few days. Think it's still quite good quite good and seems to have soem of teh attention to detail that early Simpsons had.

It feels thin, but it could be because I barely recall what happened in s3.

Elfo's origin story was cool though.

This new season is DREADFUL.

Every second joke has been rehashed from an old Furutama or Simpsons gag. The story is menadering worse than a drunk out for a stroll. There was one scene where Bean and Zog are chasing something and for no reason randomly suddenly there's Oona and the dumb kid in their ship, noticing whats going on from offshore but for no reason, when they havent shown up in the show for like a whole season. WTF.
What is this plot with the possessed wooden dolls about? Why do they keep changing who wants to rule the kingdom every second episode? Gah!

isn't it more egalitarian to write things by committee. & isn't the idea of quality a little bit bourgie, like.
So what if a useful character just happens to be passing by or easily conjured by touching a window or something.
It's useful, it helps the story keep going.
THe more a story meanders the more ground it can cover. I mean surely that's for the best.

Actually still been quite enjoying but maybe it is getting weaker.

& isn't recycling more green

went back to rewatch season three as i can't recall a single plot point how we got to where we now are in s4e1

i still like the characters and the overall look: inc the elements that remind me of two completely separate computer games = bill the demon and monument valley

when oonagh and bean are on drugs and run round the fountain very fast and screaming

haha yes that bit was good.

I like this show, I do, but this latest season is weird. It feels like its in search of a plot - I'm not sure long-arc storylines are groenings strong suit.

(i'm still ketchuping s3)

stience

thoughts on season 4:

i: the scene-to-scene writing quality has just plummeted :(
ii: sense of timing also shot (unfunny scenes way too long, gags don't land bcz they're too swift or even half-offscreen)*
iii: the arc structure absolutely doesn't help**
iv: without the castle and non-crazy zog as the stable revert-to-mean centre the mechanics of a lot of the anticipation is very much dissipated (and this impacts on the ablity to set up jokes)

*the asylum ep and the stand-up comedy roast scene were both just unending without pay-off (also chaz is like the most unwatchably unfunny character in the series)
**in principle i like the way the earlier forays into rival kingdoms became the serial forays of the rival kingdoms into dreamland (and also into one another) but in practice it's reduced further comedy worldbuilding just to isolated gestures (yes it's potentially funny that the trogs shed their skin) and also puts way too much weight on ppl caring about e.g. the "awful backstory" that got us here (endless hints at the ancient elf war, but if we do the work we get nothing for it)

also lucy is deadweight really except as a device (gets us in and out of hell, which remains one of the funnier rival kingdoms)

stience

― mark s, Friday, 18 February 2022 22:16 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

i assumed they'd given up on this and so had i but turns out i had semi-distracted time to spare between morses :|

has the writing tightened a bit or have my standards collapsed even further?

Only Queer Steamland is good.

i kind of like that it's (timidly) got a little hornier

but it is still very robustly sticking with its more tiresome and useless characters (= luci)

It’s strange that this has stronger underground comix aesthetic than stuff you’d see elsewhere despite being created by a multi-millionaire member of Jeffrey Epstein’s black book.

underrated visual mini-joke: in maru bean puts the queen of the crones' chopped-off hands back onto the wrong arms

funny mainly bcz absolutely no reference is made to the error by any of the characters and the QotC herself just gets on with it

it went back to totally sucking btw

Didn't realise a new season had dropped.

I have never had a show so thoroughly drop out of my mind than this one has. I re-read the summaries of last season and I dont recall most of it. Either I'm going senile or it wasnt very memorable.

I complete missed that Futurama was back on too until I began seeing new episodes in the pirate channels