The Magicians: The Cock Barrens Show Only

March 2, 2017 9:25 PM - Season 2, Episode 6

Quentin sees a ghost. Margo is thrust into a dicey situation. Julia seeks an answer, but does not like it when she gets it. Penny looks for magic moss, among other things.
posted by purpleclover (11 comments total)

Meta question that I also asked in the other thread: Do you think we should continue to have both Books Included and Show Only threads for this show? It's both lightly commented on, and (no spoilers, show-only folks), we've really veered pretty far away from the books. Let me know what you think.
posted by purpleclover at 9:26 PM on March 2, 2017

Part of the fun for me is seeing the parallels and divvying up of book events and characters. So I'd prefer to be able to talk about that. But I'm not sure that really constitutes spoilers anymore, because the show has demonstrated that they're just going to drop bits in. Don't expect those bits to lead to the same conclusions. I'm looking forward to the bank heist next week, which may be taken from book 3, or may be something completely different. TBH, I don't remember book 3 well because I only read it once.
posted by rikschell at 4:39 AM on March 3, 2017

I appreciate having a show-only thread, even if I don't comment in it. I'll try to make more of an effort to participate in the thread.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:49 AM on March 3, 2017

Sounds very reasaonable! I wanted to make sure I wasn't cluttering up Fanfare with duplicate posts.
posted by purpleclover at 7:53 AM on March 3, 2017

I haven't read the books, but I don't think it's terribly necessary to separate the show only/with books threads. I'm interested to know about what the people who've read the books think. I mean, I can read both threads, but as you say, they're lightly commented.

I'm really digging Julia and Kady right now. As much shit as they've gotten into and caused, they're just a really good, strong team.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:15 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm in the "spoilers? no worry" camp so merging threads is fine. I do think it smart that the show is going it's own direction, the books to my fuzzy memory get increasingly unfilmable. I do wish there was reason to go back to the fountain world, really like the librarian.
posted by sammyo at 3:51 PM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've never read the books, but I generally go directly to the book threads because they have more insight and commentary. I'm happy if they get merged.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:46 PM on March 5, 2017

In terms of the episode, Margo as high queen can't stop a prisoner from being executed because Elliot is high king, but she CAN declare war without his approval? That doesn't seem like it should work.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:48 PM on March 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

I could do with one thread because the deviations from the sacred texts are pretty extensive.

One thing about the books and the show is the great way that Eliot and Margo/Janet seem to do a lot better in Fillory than back on Earth. They were pretty much just aimless party kids before. Now they're royalty, with attitude.
posted by Ber at 10:58 AM on March 6, 2017

While I initially stayed out of the books-included threads to avoid spoilers for the show, now I'm staying out of them because I may decide to read the books someday after the tv-series ends so I'm avoiding spoilers for the books.
posted by oh yeah! at 11:31 AM on March 6, 2017

I actually like separate threads because as more and more tv shows are now based off of books, they usually end up separate in almost everything. I find it distracting to analyze what something means in term of the books when these shows were made with the intention of not having to adhere to the books. Characters don't have the same developments, sometimes they're combined or just a whole new one altogether. Plots don't follow the same patterns or even stay in the same books.

I feel like unless you specially set out to follow a source material to the T, which is difficult, showrunners should only use them as a rough outline for a general direction of the show. Any details after that is irrelevant and trying to glean motivations and reasoning serves only to distract from the discussion at hand. It makes me not want to read all the comments because I just don't care what the books say; I'd rather discuss how the show succeeds or fails at proper character development or plotting on its own.

That said, I was also annoyed that while in line with his instincts, Quentin was hiding niffin Alice from the group, it's one of those things that you hope characters grow out of, but I suppose that's for season 3.
posted by numaner at 12:56 PM on December 25, 2017