This week’s episode, The Cock Barrens, was a little lighter than last week – still with the show’s characteristic darkness, but also with a bit more playfulness than in recent weeks. Plus it has the word “cock” in the title, so how could it be anything but fun?

This week’s recap and review may be a little shorter than normal, so I apologize (ha, I know many of you are thinking that’s not really something I should apologize for, and that really, this isn’t much shorter than it usually is, but whatever).

As always, spoilers follow:

 

Remembering Alice

Quentin has managed to make his way back to Fillory this episode – apparently he was not quite cut out for accounting. Margo and Eliot catch him trying to call forth Alice’s spirit/niffin form in the place where she died, in order to use the spell on her that she was trying to do for Charlie in Season 1. The “niffin bait” he has to use is doing something that brought them both happiness – so he’s trying to perform Cirque de Soleil (as you do).  Eliot and Margo try to stop him from enacting this shit show (because wow, it was far worse than his Taylor Swift musical number in Season 1), since it’s not really working, and because there is enough of a shit show going on in Fillory for which they could use his help.  Quentin tells them that he needs to go back for Alice’s memorial the next day and tell her parents in person what happened, so Margo gives him the button to return to New York after Quentin promises to come back afterwards and fulfill his kingly duties.

Par for the course, at the memorial, Alice’s parents are assholes (so nothing really has changed), with her father, Daniel, setting up an elaborate sacrifice in Alice’s honor in the backyard, while her mother Stephanie loudly proclaims how she was such a good mother and didn’t deserve for both of her children to be dead.

Quentin can’t quite deal with their nonsense, and goes down a back hallway for some alone time.  However, he hears someone crying – turns out Alice is trying to get his attention.

He follows her to her father’s locked private study, and she disappears before Quentin can ask her about the code to get in. He starts to think he really is losing him mind, only to see numbers scratched into the door jamb across from him.

Once inside the study, he hears a knocking inside of a cabinet, and a knocked over book with Egyptian hieroglyphs catches his attention.  Before he can look at it, however, Daniel catches him in the study, and Quentin tries to explain how he’s been having hallucinations of Alice, and that she led him to the book.  Daniel believes him, given the fact that a few months prior to her death, Alice had contacted him for assistance in putting the souls of the kids trapped at the Plover house to rest, and this is similar to what she is trying to do now for her own soul.  Daniel says that they need to follow the direction of the ancient Egyptians, and build Alice a pyramid to put her soul to rest.

Quentin and Daniel erect a fiberglass pyramid structure in the backyard (as you do), and urges Quentin to make sure that Stephanie doesn’t see what they are doing (even though she’s napping on their back patio), since he doesn’t think his wife can handle what’s going on.  When Q tries to talk to Daniel further about Alice’s death, the older man is definitely in de-Nile (sorry, I could resist), and moves on with the ritual, stating that a blood relative must create a true image in a mirror with his or her words in order to call forth the restless spirit.

Daniel approaches the ladder with the mirror, only to hesitate and insist that Quentin climb up and hang the mirror that he’s enchanted.  Oh, and also, he wants Q to memorize a spell in Egyptian Arabic that needs to be recited in order to make everything work.  Quentin, not being fluent in Egyptian Arabic (nice job preparing your students for the real world, Brakebills), protests that it shouldn’t be him doing the ritual, but Daniel angrily insists that it has to be him.

Under the premise of having to memorize the spell, Quentin goes inside to instead wash his face and try to relax a little, only to find Alice standing behind him pointing to a picture next to the sink.

Quentin takes the picture out to show Daniel – it is of Alice and Daniel, with Alice hugging a large furry gray cat she owned as child named Alanis Morissette.  Quentin is rightfully confused as to why spirit Alice is pointing out pictures of pets named after Canadian alt-rock musicians, and Daniel explains to him that Alanis Morrissette got stuck on their roof once, and his crippling fear of heights caused him to not be able to save the cat for Alice.

But now – now Daniel will take the mirror to the top of the pyramid to show his daughter’s spirit that he’s brave! He climbs to the top, hanging the mirror and performing the incantation, only to immediately fall off the ladder and hurt his leg, because really, how could the writers resist throwing in situational irony after they just introduced a cat named Alanis Morissette?

Quentin gets Daniel settled in on a couch with some painkillers for his broken leg, and tries to tell him how his daughter died a hero. Daniel can’t stand to hear about it, since it just reminds him again of his daughter’s death.  He asks Q to get him some liquor to mix with the pain pills, while Stephanie is in the background watching the entire exchange.

Quentin once again goes to wash his face to try to pull himself together, and is again startled by a Quinn woman standing next to him, only this time it’s Stephanie. She accuses Daniel of being a drama queen, saying that he plays the “I’m too crazy to go on” card, and then asks Quentin if they are going to finish the ritual when Q simply stares at her in disbelief, unable to comprehend her selfishness.

Once outside in the pyramid, Quentin gives Stephanie the mirror and reminds her that she needs to tell the truth about her relationship with her daughter for the spell to work.  As she holds up the mirror, he notices Alice’s face peering out from the bushes

Stephanie starts by telling her reflection that Alice needed a strong female role model, and Stephanie was that for her.  The mirror cracks, of course, since Stephanie can’t admit that deep down, she’s a horrible person, and Q reminds her that she needs to go with the actual truth, not the truth of what she wanted her life to be. She continues on, saying that Alice was complicated, didn’t know how to be a woman, and this was just Alice up to her old tricks, trying to torture Stephanie, and being hard on her. Quentin finally blurts out what all of us have been waiting since “Homecoming” to hear someone say:

Stephanie finally cracks, saying that she never really understood Alice, and that she never really tried.  She weeps about never realizing how hard it is to have a daughter (uh…news flash, Stephanie – it’s not if you aren’t terrible), and that she resented Alice sometimes.  Overwhelmed by her own shittiness, Stephanie runs off crying before finishing the ritual.  Quentin, frustrated, turns to see Alice standing before him, slight streaks of blue across her body, indicating that Niffin Alice was there, rather than Spirit Alice.

When Quentin protests that she didn’t come when he summoned her back in Fillory, she points out that she did, in fact, come, and now that she was here, there was lots of fun to be had fucking with people, similar to how they had just done to her parents. Q is confused as to how this happening, since the cacodemon killed her.  Well, it turns out that’s not quite what happened.  When the cacodemon discovered that it would lose the battle with Alice, rather than killing her, it stuffed her into Quentin’s back tattoo, which is probably why he was itchy earlier while out with Daniel.

 

The Attempted Abortion Aftermath (Yes, I Realize This Title Goes Against All of that Playfulness I Talked About Earlier)

Kady and Julia are back at the apartment, with Kady trying to get in touch with one of her mother’s old friends for a potential solution to Julia’s problem, and Julia’s doing more research.

Julia found news of a huge weather event that ravaged the East Coast on August 19, 1976 and destroyed several cities; however, a building in Hoboken weirdly remained unscathed.  The two women find the building and the hidden symbols under the flooring, with the human blood used for the banishing still hot after 40 years.  Conducting the oddest DNA test ever, they are on the cusp of discovering who banished Reynard when Kady gets a call from her mother’s friend Goldie.  They agree to meet later at home, and Kady will potentially have some solutions to the baby problem.

Julia is taking a nap back at the apartment when the atlas in the DNA ritual wakes her up by flipping to a page marked with the location of the woman who banished Reynard.  The woman confronts Julia about following her from the grocery store, but not before Julia manages to send Kady a message as to where she is.

Julia figures out pretty quickly that the other woman was hurt equally as badly by the Trickster god, and after begging for her help, the woman, Dana, invites Julia into her home.  Dana shares with her that she was 21 when she tried to summon Our Lady Underground, and instead summoned Reynard, getting raped and impregnated that night.  To Julia’s horror, Dana tells her how she couldn’t get rid of the baby, and ended up having it.  Julia insists that she would rather die first, but Dana tells her she can’t, since she’s the only one who can send Reynard back.

She takes Julia down to her basement under the guise of showing her something that can help banish Reynard. Julia is rightfully suspicious, and leaves a secret symbol for Kady outside the door jamb in case something goes wrong.  Which, of course, it does – Dana smacks her over the head with a baseball bat. Julia wakes up a bit later, tied up and sitting across from what we find out later is a Haxen Paxen, a creature that masks their odor so completely with his magical vibes that even Reynard can’t sniff them out. Dana stresses to her that even though she doesn’t want to give birth, the only way to harness enough energy to banish Reynard is to bring life to the tiny demigod nuclear weapon she’s carrying.  Julia naturally thinks that’s crazy pants, and refuses, which is why Dana is trying to hold her hostage in the basement.

After some time alone with the Haxen Paxen, where the chained creature offers her one of the bones from its food, she asks the returning Dana if her baby will end up like that (since she had no idea what a Haxen Paxen was at that point, and assumes that the creature is Dana’s son). This amuses Dana to no end, and she explains what the creature is.  She also shares that her son is a good man, and an influential man who knows nothing of his birth or of her.

Kady, meanwhile has gotten a possible solution from her mother’s friend Goldie, but the older woman warns her that this is probably not the best solution for Julia’s pregnancy.  She tries to call Julia but only gets her voicemail.  Realizing that something is wrong, she heads over to Dana’s house and breaks in, looking for Julia.  She spots the secret symbol Julia left for her outside the basement door, and magically breaks it down.

Kady tries to cast something at Dana but the room is pretty tightly warded, so it doesn’t work.  Dana comes at her with the baseball bat, but Kady cold cocks her, knocking her unconscious.  She unties Julia and the two escape, taking the Haxen Paxen with them for protection.

Dana wakes up a bit later, and is terrified to see that her captive and the Haxen Paxen are both gone, leaving her potentially exposed to Reynard.  She goes upstairs, and thinks she is safe, but Reynard surprises her, stepping out from the living room after she’s locked the door.  He commends her for her skill in hiding, but fortunately for him, she slipped up.  He creepily chides her, telling her she has some apologizing to do.

 

Fillorian Royal Intrigue

Fen is trying to talk to Eliot about Bayler, but they keep getting interrupted – first, it’s the delivery of a shitty drink (as usual for Fillory), then Penny comes in needing help finding the moss that Mayakovsky tasked him with. He asks to see the royal botanist, but Eliot informs him that he was eaten on the job by one of his plants.  He instead directs Penny to see the royal map maker for assistance.  Penny seeks out the royal mapmaker Benedict, who refuses to help him till next Thursday and even then, he can only draw him a map to the moss.

While Eliot is kvetching to Margo about all of their responsibilities, they receive an unexpected visit from Prince Ess of Loria, who has also been having issues with magic since Ember shit in the Wellspring.  Ess proposes a treaty between their nations in order to solve the problem, with a 50/50 split of the Wellspring, and wants to seal the deal by offering his hand in marriage to the “Virgin High Queen Margo.”

Eliot requests additional time to consider Ess’s generous offer, but Margo’s not having any of the diplomacy nonsense that potentially offers her up as a prize to the other nation.  She doesn’t share well with others, and tells Ess to and his unironic furs to leave.

Of course, this prompts “Plan B” which involves one of Ess’s servants casting a spell that transports Castle White Spire to Loria, where the Fillorian royalty and the castle inhabitants remain prisoners until Margo agrees to the proposal and the treaty.

Meanwhile, as Penny is trying to convince Benedict to draw the map sooner, we see the aftermath of Ess’s spell, as the ground around them two men rumbles and White Spire disappears.

Benedict tries to draw a map of Fillory, now without the castle to keep the current maps accurate, while Penny tries to figure out how to rescue his friends.

Inside the castle, Eliot and Margo heatedly try to find a solution, with Eliot initially offering to send his golem somewhere for help, but Quentin still having the traveling button puts the brakes on that idea.  He calls Margo out for treating Ess shitty in the first place, and getting them into the mess, and she scoffs, asking him if he really expected her to marry a stranger.

Margo, however, notes that it is slightly different, since Ess is an arrogant, entitled asshole, who doesn’t quite understand the concept of consent.  Eliot concedes a bit, but also reminds her that they are kings and queens, and don’t have the luxury of wedding for love.  Margo sees his point, and says she will talk to Ess, if only to negotiate them out of this “massive clusterfuck.”

Margo interrupts Ess’s frat boy drinking party to try to negotiate, but Ess tries to swagger his way into dominance with Margo.  She finds out that he knows all about Children of Earth, since his mother shipped him to off to Exeter, a boarding school in New England, when he was just a boy.  He tries to win her over by telling her that he’s super progressive for a Lorian, so he’ll let her speak in public when they are married, and then tries to gain some pity by pointing out what a major sacrifice it is to have to marry a virgin.

Margo finally can’t keep quiet about that, and puts him in his place in more ways than one.  While Ess tells her that he’s had the best lovers in Loria (and Lorians apparently produce the best lovers overall), and that Margo is still a virgin to him, she proceeds to give him a hand job that causes him to beg her not to stop. The two finally give into their growing sexual tension.

Meanwhile, Eliot is having it out with Fen, as she has just told him about her history with the FU Fighters (snort…still awesome to say).  While he is furious, she tells him that she had a life before he came to Fillory – hell, she wasn’t even certain that he would come (since the gang received the Leo Blade when she was just a child).  Eliot asks why she stays if she hates him so much.  Fen is a realist and believes that he can do good for Fillory – it’s certainly not because she can feel his deep attraction for her.  Eliot at least has the decency to look abashed at that comment.

When Eliot asks Fen what he should do with Bayler, she insists that he remain imprisoned, since he can’t be trusted.  Eliot asks Fen if he can trust her, to which she has no answer.

Back in Ess’s room, after sexy time, Margo is having one of those “stuck-in-my-pjs-and-unprepared-for-the-final-exam” dreams.  Just as everyone in the class is laughing at her, Penny barges in, having traveled there to try to help.  Margo realizes she’s asleep, and Penny asks her to tell him where they are, since all that’s left in Fillory is a large crater.  Margo shares that they are in Loria, in an area surrounded by purple dick-like rocks at various levels of arousal.

An amused Penny says he will go for help, and as he leaves she begs him not to tell anyone about her being vulnerable in this dream.  He assures her that he won’t as he wants her to owe him huge for keeping the secret.

After traveling back from Margo’s dream, Penny describes the area in Loria to Benedict, who notes that they are definitely in the Cock Barrens.

Margo wakes up in bed with Ess, and as she quietly gets up, he asks if she’s looking for a weapon, since she has a look in her eye.  She claims it is only resting bitch face, and the two share a silly little post-coitus, “let-me-mess-with-you-more-you-little-hellcat-vixen-and-misogynistic-but-sexy-crown-prince” sort of way.

When she returns to the throne room, Eliot is staring out at the landscape in a forlorn, longing sort of way, and he snarks at Margo for taking sooooo long with the negotiation. She asks him to consider the possibility of her marrying him, how it would help the kingdom, but Eliot, disillusioned since his perceptions of Fen have been shattered, tells her that it would be absurd for her to marry Ess, since she doesn’t even know him, and he could be dangerous.  Margo, realizing they aren’t really talking about her and Ess, suggested that Eliot have Fen killed if she’s a threat to the kingdom, but he can’t, seeing as they just conceived a baby, and because somewhere along the way, he actually started to care for her.  When Margo pushes him for more details, he brushes her off, telling her to focus on the crisis at hand.  He asks her what she chooses to do about Prince Ess, since he just wants what’s best for her.

Before they can make a plan, Penny interrupts them to tell them what he’s discovered where they actually are.  Their friend traveled back to Loria, only to find was no Castle White Spire, and despite his insistence to Benedict that there had to be an additional Dong world, apparently there is only one.  Which, after a moment, prompted Penny to understand what was happening.  The reason he was able to travel to inside the castle was because Castle White Spire never left – it was under a cloaking spell that gave the illusion that they were in Loria.

The High King and Queen call Prince Ess and his entourage to the throne room, where Margo notes that she will marry him, on the condition that he gives her a tour of his kingdom, right now.  Ess nervously insists on the wedding first, at which point Margo does a little bit of magic and dispels the illusion that they were in Loria, rather than still in Fillory.  When Margo breaks the spell on the castle, Penny returns to Benedict, and encourages him to make that map he needs now, since things are back to normal.  Turns out Benedict already made him the map – I think the mapmaker has a bit of an idol crush, which works to Penny’s advantage.

Inside the castle, Prince Ess tries to explain, but Margo goes off on a rant, with Eliot testifying in the background (albeit with a bit of confusion in regards to one of the threats she makes).

She continues on, declaring war on Loria, at first to Eliot’s cheers, then to his chagrin as what she’s just said sinks in with him and with all of us.

 

Q & A About Q & A…and Everything Else:

• I probably should start a new section with an alliterative title to recognize director of photography Elie Smolkin’s work, because here’s some more examples of his beautiful cinematography.

• The pickles were a little stereotypical for Julia’s pregnancy, but I like the fact that she started to sip from the jar, rather than grab some ice cream from the freezer.

• I need Starbucks to offer a unicorn milk latte so that when I try to order one, I can get this reaction:

• I wasn’t super pleased when the writers had Eliot ask Penny if he was having a seizure when the other man said the name of the moss he was looking for, as if Penny was speaking in tongues, but I may be uber sensitive to this sort of thing given my line of work with people with epilepsy.  Or maybe he thought it was just a different form of seizure given Penny’s recent lack of control over his hands, but that is assuming a lot about Eliot’s knowledge of types of seizures.  I’m probably way overthinking it.
• I will say though, that Eliot and Penny are adorable when they try to awkwardly comfort each other about Alice’s death. Eliot asks him if he’s ok, to which Penny replies back incredulously “are YOU ok?” Eliot, of course, has no response, since he’s not ok, but it nips further weirdness in the bud, while also providing each man with some comfort.

• I love the “royal speak” of Ess, Eliot and Margo; meanwhile, Tick Pickwick introduces the contingency from Loria with excessive fanfare, and cospiratorially whispering to Eliot that the Crown Prince is part Child of Earth, given that his mother was from “Cin-ci-naaaahhhti.”

• So this randomly occurred to me when I was writing “Lorians” and “Fillorians” – does the name Flllory mean more than it lets on? For example, does the prefix “fi” or “fil” have any bearing on the history of this world? If the prefix is “fi” (for “faithful”), perhaps at some point Fillory was subservient and “faithful to Loria,” and the extra “l” is a bastardization of the spelling.  Or if it was “fil” (“son” in French), perhaps Fillory was once seen as the “son of Loria.” It would be interesting to see if this has any bearing on the history between these two areas, and why there is such contention between the two groups.
• If Dana is hell bent of Julia having the baby, wouldn’t smacking her over the head with a baseball bat to force her into complying be a bad idea? Like, she’s pregnant – probably not the best idea to beat her into unconsciousness and let her fall hard on the floor.  Yes, she’s probably protected because of the godly seed, but still…
• Why was Dana so relieved when she got upstairs and managed to lock the door? Did she think that would keep out Reynard? It’s not like he’s a vampire and you have to invite him in, he’s a FUCKING GOD – I hardly think that second deadbolt, chain link lock was going to keep him out.
• Hmmm…so how will Penny cash in with Margo on keeping her dream secret? We did see Margo lose her clothes in the dream as another part of the “exam-gone-wrong” so now we have actually had some real Penny-Margo naked time.  Ember and Umber, please let it lead to more Pargo/Menny time, and let it not be hampered by Queen Margo’s sexy time with Prince Ess.

• So who is the “influential man” that is Dana’s son, and have we already met him, or heard mention of him, in Seasons 1 or 2? Or is it someone entirely new?
• Indulge my anger at Stephanie Quinn for a moment, because, as my husband pointed out while we were watching the episode, the fact that I yelled out “uh, yeah, bitch!” to every self-depricating question Stephanie asked of herself as a mother means that I probably have a lot of deep seated maternal issues.  I’m not sure I’ve ever despised a character as much as I do Stephanie Quinn – I have a visceral reaction of loathing and hatred when this woman is on screen.  Which means that Judith Hoag is really doing a stellar job as Stephanie, so praise for that, at least.

• Seriously, given the way Daniel and Stephanie behave, how could Quentin really be upset that Alice used her status as a niffin to finally get sweet, sweet revenge on the people who fucked up her emotions so much? If only someone had brought this book to the memorial, and left it out for Niffin Alice, maybe it all could have been avoided.

 

Magical Moments for Memorization:

“Like I need more people calling me daddy, but thanks, we’re thrilled” – Eliot in response to Penny’s congratulations about knocking up Fenn

“Oh my God, fuck your parents, dude…” – Eliot to Prince Ess after figuring out the other man’s name

“You’re right, this would really only be equivalent, if Ess was a girl, and you found pussy, you know, interesting, in a “sometimes-you-like-Thai-food-kind-of-way,” and now it’s all Thai food forever, till YOU DIE.” – Eliot to Margo, after Margo says marrying Ess on the spot was different than him marrying Fen.

“Even I studied, and I’m dead.”  – Alice to Margo in her dream about being unprepared for a mid-term

“I can’t…we just made a human together.” Eliot to Margo after the High Queen suggests that Fen be killed if she’s dangerous

“And now we’re going to put our Jimmy Choos so far up your ass you’re going to taste next season” – Margo to Ess after they discover his betrayal

 

Next Week:

Next week’s episode, entitled Plan B, was also what Ess went to when his original plan this week didn’t go the way he wanted with Margo.  The previews show what looks to be a rather campy, Scooby Doo and the Gang kind of episode, with the group robbing a bank to help save Fillory, win the war against Loria, and beat Reynard.  Ruh-roh, Magicians – tall order. But I imagine you will be rewarded with some mighty bad ass Scooby snacks if you succeed.

 

Photos 

All photos courtesy of Syfy.com unless otherwise noted below:

I’m Ok, You’re OK book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I’m_OK_%E2%80%93_You’re_OK

Bad Childhood, Good Life – https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Childhood-Good-Life-Blossom-Childhood/dp/0060577878