The Fantasy Review’s review of Agatha All Along Episode 1 – Seekest Thou the Road.
My spoiler-free review of Agatha All Along episode 1 is pretty positive. To be honest, there isn’t much to go on, but that’s not always a bad thing. I had a lot of fun being introduced to the world, some of the main characters (briefly), but mostly this was an introduction of Agatha.
Kathryn Hahn is perfect in her role as Agatha Harkness. She plays the quirkiness brilliantly, but also the sadness, guilt, grief, sarcasm… It is a joy to watch.
Next episode: Episode 2 Review – Circle Sewn With Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate
Spoiler-Filled Review of Agatha All Along Episode 1
Agatha All Along episode 1 opens on what looks like a classic Scandi detective drama. The music, atmosphere, lighting, and setting are all fantastic. Clearly, this is a joke and I am here for it.
Everything was very tropey. Iit gets to the point when we meet the police chief, and Agatha says “eat my ass, Chief” and you just know this is a fake world in her head. I have forgotten everything about WandaVision, and I wasn’t going to watch that disappointment again just for this show, but I remember this being a thing in that too. I have no doubt they will remove it before long, or the audience will get bored.
I paused the episode here to write this exact note:
Dialogue And Rhetoric Known History Of Learning & Debate = DARKHOLD.
Haha, literally thirty seconds later, Agatha does the same thing! Of course, if there are secrets in a show like this, the writers will hold everything back so you can’t work it out and have to wait for a page of exposition during the climax. It also probably means it doesn’t matter.
I love the tone, the atmosphere and the over-the-top cringey dialogue. And then we get the scene where Agatha is freed from her prison. It has an awesome soundtrack and gives me all the silliness I was looking for.
We learn that Agatha has been stuck in the town for three years, and everyone around her has tried to help as much as they can, but she’s been a bit weird. I mean, she’s been pretending to be a police detective for the past few days…
We get a final scene with Agatha having lost her powers, discovering the intruder from her visions (Teen, played by Joe Locke) is real and tied up in her cupboard, and gets attacked by Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza).
The show tells us nothing, and I am coming into Agatha All Along with absolutely no idea who the characters are and where they come from, however we do get something. We get tone. This is a silly show. That’s the point. It isn’t going to take itself seriously and we shouldn’t ask it to.
I’m looking forward to episode 2 so we can finally start having some basic character development and motivations for the cast. There is nothing worse than a plot happening to characters – we need the characters to do the pushing!
