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Julia<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m going to start with Julia because her story again ran parallel to everything and didn’t really impact what was going on at Brakebills; while I’m interested in her journey, I’m not as invested in her overall story arc yet and how it ties back into Quentin and the others.\u00a0 Julia is currently at a rehab center, and is ready to give up magic altogether.\u00a0 She meets, however, a more spiritual Magician, Richard, who serves as the center’s Chaplain.\u00a0 Obviously he doesn’t make it known to everyone he’s a Magician, but he see’s Julia’s tattoos and tries to get her to open herself up to the idea that magic doesn’t have to be bad.\u00a0 In his perception, magic is simply a set of tools left over after creation, and the Creator has left them for humanity to use.\u00a0 He pointed out that she treats magic like a drug because that’s the only way anyone has ever showed it to her and offers to show her the more spiritual side of magic.<\/p>\n Here’s my card..you should totally trust me…because magic hasn’t burned you in the past at all<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mike and Eliot<\/strong><\/p>\n Mike is still filling in for Margo while she’s away at Spring Break, and Eliot treats him like his goddess – fixing him exquisitely mixed cocktails, exotic meals, and worrying about wearing the same thing twice in front of him.\u00a0 But Mike is a beer and hamburger kind of guy, and Eliot realizes he needs to make a confession about himself to keep Mike interested.\u00a0 We find out that Eliot’s parents are farmers…in Indiana. As Eliot described it, “becoming me was the greatest creative project I’ve ever done.” And now only Mike and Margo knew his secret.\u00a0 I was a little surprised that he opened up so quickly when Quentin didn’t even know this about Eliot, but he must have been really falling for Mike.<\/p>\n Love them!!!<\/em>\u00a0\u2665\u00a0\u2665\u00a0\u2665\u00a0\u2665 I was Team Queliot, but you could persuade me to be Team Meliot with this<\/em><\/p>\n Unfortunately, things were not going to stay so snuggly for long.\u00a0 Because that blue moth that is the mark of The Beast keeps hanging around their bed at night, and making things weird for Mike.\u00a0 Like weird in that at one point, his eyes turn the neon blue of the moth, he goes out in the hallway outside of Eliot’s room to find a small white bunny hopping down the hall towards him, and then…(seriously, stop reading now if you are slightly squeamish, I’ll wait).<\/p>\n Waiting…<\/p>\n Waiting…<\/p>\n …and then…HE CRUSHES ITS TINY HEAD AND RIPS IT OPEN TO PULL OUT SOME SORT OF MAGICAL KNIFE FROM ITS BODY.<\/p>\n Mike decides he’s into Eliot’s exotic delicacies after all<\/em><\/p>\n Like, WTF, The Magicians<\/em>??? As the story went on, I understood why it came in the form of a bunny, since the knife was from Fillory (I guess cute animals are their mail delivery system), but still – he could have waited for the adorable bunny to poop it out or something.\u00a0 That would have been equally uncomfortable for the bunny and would have fulfilled The Beast’s sadistic need for torture.\u00a0 Of course, the show runners probably would have made the sound effects of a rabbit shitting out a knife as horrible as the tiny squeal it made and the enhanced neck bone crushing, so maybe the original murder was best – it was over more quickly.<\/p>\n In any case, a Beast possessed Mike now has an enchanted knife from a dead bunny and is out for blood on the Brakebills campus.\u00a0 The Beast is still after Quentin, but we don’t know why anymore than we did in Episode One.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Quentin, Alice, and Penny<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Quentin, Alice and Penny have returned from their Brakebills South adventure.\u00a0 Penny sullenly skulks off rather quickly, leaving Quentin and Alice to catch up with Eliot and Mike.\u00a0 Eliot quickly deduces that they broke that friend barrier, much to his delight.\u00a0 Embarrassed, the two scamper off – Quentin thinks to have sex, Alice to get him to back off.\u00a0 She can still smell fox on him, and just thinks they are getting together from animal instinct, rather than because they truly care for one another.<\/p>\n They take a break from their relationship, which is good, because in the second semester, their course load has increased dramatically, and study groups are mandatory.\u00a0 Penny, Quentin and Alice end up together, with Penny and Quentin snarking at one another constantly in their love\/hate way, since Penny is still broken hearted over Kady (although he doesn’t want to admit it, and was upset enough to make a Mrs. Robinson style pass at Professor Sunderland to boost his own ego) and Quentin is still frustrated with Alice because he doesn’t know what to say to convince her that he cares about her.<\/p>\n The two guys are on the verge of actually talking to one another, rather than just passive aggressively insulting one another, when Mike approaches, looking more than a little deranged.\u00a0 A knife fight ensues, and Quentin, being the skilled master fighter and magician that he is (ha), manages to do nothing but get in the way when Penny tries to step in to defend him, thus getting Penny stabbed pretty severely in the stomach.<\/p>\n Why does this feel like a scene from Twilight 4?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Aftermath<\/strong><\/p>\n There is then a weird series of events in which Penny is saved by the Brakebills doctors, Mike is interrogated by Dean Fogg in a “clean room,” in which no magic can be performed, and in which he denies everything, and in which Penny’s wound gets stranger, with vines beginning to grow out of it.\u00a0 It is then that Quentin recognizes that Penny has been stabbed with the Virgo Blade, a cursed knife that Jane Chatwin was stabbed with by The Beast in Fillory.\u00a0 It would cause rose vines to grow from the wound until they wrapped around and strangled her heart, unless she sacrificed something meaningful to appease the curse.<\/p>\n Quentin and Alice have the weirdest romantic moments<\/em><\/p>\n Which was not going to be easy with Penny-no family, no close friends, just Kady – and she was gone.\u00a0 While Quentin and Alice search his room for anything that might be an acceptable sacrifice, Dean Fogg consults with paramedic\/specialist Eliza (the red haired woman who would appear occasionally in previous episodes with random things to share about Fillory with Quentin).<\/p>\n Quentin and Alice find the wrapper from the candy bar that Kady gave to Penny at Brakebills South, and figure this is the closest thing they are going to get to something meaningful to him.\u00a0 Burning it at his bedside as a sacrifice, the vines retreat and the curse is appeased.\u00a0 Hooray! End of story! All is well! No strangled heart!<\/p>\n Again, weird romantic moment<\/em><\/p>\n But while that was going on, Eliza went to speak to Mike, and we find out (shocker) she is the adult Jane Chatwin! I say “shocker” because even being a viewer who has not read the books, it was kind of obvious that she was Jane from the way she kept trying to give Quentin not so subtle hints about magic, her intense knowledge of Fillory, and her need to defeat The Beast.\u00a0 Sooo…yeah…she goes to confront The Beast in Mike’s body, alone, which the minute you see her doing it, you know that it’s not going to end well.\u00a0 When she asks him why he hasn’t done more damage up to this point, because she knows he can, he tells her he was waiting for her.<\/p>\n And then all hell breaks loose, and Jane gets the bunny treatment (thankfully off screen, although not without sound effects and a great deal of blood splattering all over Mike’s face), and Mike\/The Beast is now free to go kill anyone else he wants.\u00a0 He starts to leave the clean room and when Dean Fogg, who is still regaining the use of his hands from the first attack by The Beast tries to stop him by casting a spell, Mike\/The Beast easily knocks him in a wall with a hand flick and makes his escape.<\/p>\n Sigh…really Eliza\/Jane, we thought you were smarter than this<\/em><\/p>\n And here is where my heart and my family’s heart got strangled watching.\u00a0 Hale Appleman should be commended for this because he did a tremendous job with displaying exactly what was going through Eliot’s mind with just his facial expressions and the hand motion to cast the spell.\u00a0 Eliot steps in front of Mike as he storms down the hall to escape and with a slashing motion with his hand, proceeds to break his lover’s neck with a spell, thus killing the host for The Beast.\u00a0 Then, as Eliot fully realizes what he’s done, he breaks down sobbing in the most private, but open way.\u00a0 I realize that sounds strange -it was as if we, the viewers, were witnessing a grief so personal it felt voyeuristic to be watching it. I am really hoping that by next week’s episode Eliot isn’t fine and has pushed all this behind him.\u00a0 Actually, I would suspect that is exactly what the character will try to do, but I hope they let Appleman have all of that emotion brewing just below the surface, because a vulnerable Eliot is an even richer character than before.<\/p>\n![\"Here's](\"http:\/\/docpalindrome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Richard-and-Julia.jpg\")
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