The Magicians 4x13

[schneefink]

Sooo I just watched the "Magicians" season finale and I don't even know where to fucking start.

No actually I know: There's one specific thing that made me extremely angry that I haven't seen mentioned a lot in others' very justified angry reactions. Namely when after Quentin's death he tells Penny about how he's been depressed all his life, often suicidal, he had to take meds, went to therapy… and then he found Brakebills, and all that went away.
WHAT THE FUCK.
First of all, no, that is not what happened, have you watched any episode of your show, Quentin is depressed the whole time, and it only gets worse when he gets abused e.g. by the monster, Quentin in season 4 is clearly doing badly. And I don't even buy that Quentin himself believes it, maybe in season 1 but not afterwards – that he wants to believe it, sure, but not that he does, and just a minute ago he talked about being unable to lie to himself now.
But even though it's so clearly not true, even if we're meant to know that, it's still… I hate it so much.
I've been struggling with depression for years now (though fortunately I was never suicidal) and I loved Quentin as a character. Not always, admittedly, but more recently. A guy – a queer guy, even – who's depressed, and struggling, and finding friends and having good moments and sometimes it gets better and sometimes the struggle gets worse, especially when there are shitty circumstances. That's life. Quentin is depressed, but he has a life, and adventures, and he gets to be a hero, and sometimes he fails and sometimes he fails because he's struggling but that doesn't change who he is. That was so good to see.
And then THIS BULLSHIT. Look, that magical moment, that magical solution/place/event that will happen one day and then I'm not depressed anymore, I've hoped for that for SO LONG. And eventually I had to realize that this is not how depression works, this is not how my life works, I'll struggle with depression probably always but it'll get better and I can still have a life and adventures and good things. And sometimes things will get worse, sometimes my depression will get worse, but that doesn't change who I am and what I can do and what my life is, and things will get better again.
And then for this show, this character whose struggles with depression I could empathize with so much, to suddenly tell me "no he's already found his magical fix, he's cured" is just… like a slap in the face.

More bullshit from this episode:
- Julia not getting to choose. What the fuck. All this build-up and she doesn't even get to choose? Penny-23 chooses for her and she's a normal human again. She gets angry at him but she gets angry at him for making the choice, which is stupid because he had to make a choice even though he didn't even want to, so that makes it look like her anger is unjustified. She should get angry at him for making this choice, for making the choice that makes her powerless just because he's selfish and he wants her around, instead of the choice that gives her the power she's suffered so much for.
(The scene with Julia and the playing cards was cool but doesn't make up for it.)

- Josh and Margo. My opinion of that relationship was doomed from the moment Margo stayed with a fish instead of saving Eliot, but who was this Margo? Seriously? Why? Arrrgh I hope Josh died and we don't have to see him again. (Sorry Margo.)

- I did like that Margo got to save Eliot in the end, but Eliot got to speak, what, one sentence? Bullshit. Quentin didn't even know if Eliot would make it when he died.

- And then of course there's the big one, Quentin's death. Look if you want him to make a heroic sacrifice don't make it so clear that he didn't have to die. It looked like he had plenty of time to get away, especially since Penny-23 was right there! (Was that the "do it"? Bullshit.)
Others have written better than I could about what a terrible message this episode sends to suicidal people, it's so bad.

For a moment, when Everett appeared in the mirror world, I thought that the monster would escape from the bottle and in the next season the big bads would be benevolent tyrant god Everett and the monster, who's still a monster but also now aware that this world is not so terrible maybe and still wants to be poor Quentin's friend. But noo that's not what we got, and the monster is gone and Everett's storyline was never really interesting and Quentin dies. (The season finale and s5 greywash proposed, here, would have been so much better.)

The one thing I liked about the episode was that hedge witch telling Kady to please die when fewer people need her, because yes. And I guess Eliot waking up when Margo shouted was okay, and the cooperative magic, and the mourning song around the fire was good, and Quentin and Penny-40 hugging.

Yeah, so to sum up, season 4 was a mess, that I didn't write about because I had hope that they would tie it together well but instead the season finale was an even bigger mess. On the one hand I hope fandom will write a lot of fix-it but on the other hand I also completely understand everyone who's done with the show.

Comments

[mecurtin]

I'm someone who owes my LIFE to hospitalization and 25 years of antidepressants. Better Living Through Chemistry is my motto for a *reason*. so:

he's been depressed all his life, often suicidal, he had to take meds, went to therapy… and then he found Brakebills, and all that went away.
is, like, a Brontosaurus of Bullshit.

I'm really glad I didn't let myself get sucked into this fandom. You have my sincere condolences.

[schneefink]

I could have sworn there was a bit in season one where Dean Fogg tells Quentin now that he has magic he doesn't need his meds anymore, and then Quentin gets worse. And I think later he takes them again? Idk, it's been over a year and my memory isn't clear, maybe that was just wishful thinking.

[sholio]

I'm so sorry your show did this to you. :(((

[schneefink]

At least I was already worried that it would be bad so it didn't come completely out of the blue, silver lining.

[starshipfox]

The thing about that line "All the went away" -- which I agree was total bullshit -- was that he seemed to follow it up fairly immediately with "except..." which made me think he was saying that he'd HOPED it would go away and it didn't. But idk, I don't want to defend anything in this trainwreck, and I'm happy to admit I'm wrong. Mostly up until S04 I thought they handled Quentin's depression fairly well? but the opening episode where he gave up the pills made me want to stop watching. :(

Really mad about the treatment of Julia and Alice in this episode -- and I completely agree that they utterly wasted the time they had spent on the Monster and they could have done something interesting there and just... didn't bother. Ugh.

[schneefink]

That's not how it came across to me, but I'm also not in the mood to go back and check. I mean, clearly he was worried that it had caught up with him now, but that still doesn't erase the past however-long-it-was-in-show. And now I'm wondering how much of what I thought they did fairly well was even intentional.

Yes, so much of the monster character development seems pointless now.

[sheron]

I'm really sorry. I don't watch the show, but a friend told me about the basics of what happened in the episode and I was shocked, sad, furious on behalf of the fans. They did not do right by you. In fact, this turn of events and the reasoning they seem to have behind it (what I know of it, from hear-say anyway) is absolutely terrible. :(

*sends hugs*

[schneefink]

The reasoning makes it even worse! They actually seem to be proud of it, and saying that there's nothing more they could tell about Quentin, and this is a beautiful end to his story, and all, and I don't know which show they were watching but not the same I did. And they seem to want to position him as the standard white male, but they are not all interchangeable, and Quentin was also queer and mentally ill, that is rare and means something to people.

[sheron]

Yeah, the bit with him being a queer and mentally ill character sinks it to a new low, even though it would have been terrible for the fans even without that. They failed on every level conceivable.

[schneefink]

An accomplishment, almost! And the rest of the episode had so many terrible choices as well.

[kittydesade]

Well. Um. Now I guess I know some of why my friend was so upset at the show today, so... thanks? for helping me to help her and I am so so sorry they did this.

[schneefink]

I hope your friend is okay! I'm just glad I wasn't more invested otherwise it would have hit me even harder.

[kittydesade]

She'll be all right I think, she's also had to deal with other crises and I think it was more a case of "oh great I can't even escape into my favorite show."

Yeah, I can imagine. Yikes and yikes again.

[ruinsplume]

Yes to all of this! And thank you for pointing out that super bizzare revisionist “when I got to Brakebills all my problems went away.” Like, maybe for fifteen minutes they did, and maybe you believed, during this fifteen minutes that they would stay gone, but that is not what happened on the show!!! Did the writers watch the show?!?!? Did the watch Jason Ralph acting his great big heart out to show that no, Quentin was not okay?!?!

[schneefink]

Yeah, they clearly watched a different show than I did. I think he then continued with something like "but now I wonder if that was true" - which, a, is still bullshit because I just can't buy that at all, and b, since it clearly wasn't, is that meant to lead to the conclusion that it really was suicide? What? It's just really stupid and wrong and hurt.