re-listening to the magnus archives for the nth time and man the quality drop-off after the episode where gerard kaey just Explains the Lore to jon is astonishing. I’d thought the decline was mostly confined to latter season 4 and 5, but nope! it’s there halfway through the series!
I think a number of things about the show’s premise are fundamentally unworkable, but one that really stands out to me now is the extent to which it wants to be a drama when it has done very little to establish, specifically, what its characters are like around each other. I have a pretty good idea of who Jon is, and a reasonably solid sense of who the rest of the cast is, but I don’t really understand how any of them fit together. even Jon and Martin, ostensibly the central relationship of the show…I don’t really understand what that is! what’s the shape of their dynamic? what do they see in each other? what do they like and dislike? why are they together (even in a platonic sense)!
(sidenote: honestly I feel like the most well-developed relationship in the whole thing is Jon and Elias, because there is a very clear rationale for what’s going on there: Elias is grooming Jon and has some emotional investment besides that because he thinks of Jon as his property; Jon at first isn’t aware of this and then struggles with wanting to leave but also wanting to stick around because he’s curious, and because on some level he wants Elias’s approval. yep, check the box, that’s A Relationship)
now this lack of character stuff isn’t so much a problem in the early series when it’s primarily about the shortform statements— a frame narrative, and a handful of constant characters to populate it, are handy for all kinds of reasons! there’s a much better version of this series that casts Jon as a kind of occult Hercule Poirot, and afaict that was originally what the series was supposed to be. but once the show makes its ill-fated pivot towards drama, it has to be about the characters because that’s all a drama is ever about, and the gaps become blindingly obvious especially because of the decision to make the first part of season 4 about Things Falling Apart
and like, listen, if you have a group of characters who are friends, and you’re a drama, you kind of always want to do this, right? the Platonic ideal of this kind of thing is the lead up to the Buffy season 4 finale, where Spike tries to get everyone at loggerheads, and then all of season 6. but the reason that works on Buffy is that the viewer has a very clear idea of what all of these relationships are, and why they exist. take Xander and Buffy: Buffy loves Xander because he’s a goof and he’s sweet and he does the right thing when it counts, even though he’s not special or strong; she needs someone like that, who knows and sees everything she is and yet still loves her from the ground, and it was never going to be Willow because Willow is also, in her way, part of the supernatural world. where’s the wedge? Xander feels inadequate and like he has nothing to offer Buffy! boom, done, conflict generated.
but like…what is the conflict between Martin and Jon in early season 4? Martin used to be super involved and now he’s not and there’s kind of nothing to be done about it? Basira just randomly despises Jon because…she lost her partner, but never expresses it in a way that reads as anything other than petty sniping, which isn’t really in line with the rough sketch of her character we’ve gotten so far? it really feels like the writers’ room (well, one guy in this case) decided that there would be A Conflict at the beginning of season 4 between the characters, but never stopped to realize that with the board state as it was, there wasn’t really a way to do that that made any sense, because we have no idea who these people are when they’re together.
it’s such a shame because the early season horror shorts really are so strong. I know the author cites MR James as his inspiration, and that shines through in a way that I’d confidently call an improvement on James’ work! really well-crafted, minimalist horror with a laser focus on the story’s core idea, the Thing that makes this tale scary— there’s a wonderful intention to it that makes them a joy to listen to. I just wish it’d kept going like that…
this hits my own issues head on tbh
like there’s an amount of background information we’re supposed to just assume or believe from context clues that just doesn’t work? and once the mystery of what connects everything we’re hearing is explained it just… loses all intrigue.
and then it becomes clear this isn’t going to turn into a story about healing from trauma and is instead a bunch of misery piled on misery with very little of it making any logical sense outside of that.