THE MAGICIANS — “The World in the Walls” Episode 104 — Pictured: Jason Ralph as Quentin — (Photo by: Carole Segal/Syfy)
Literally, this week’s episode of The Magicians (Syfy, Mondays, 9/8C) finds Quentin back in a very familiar – yet strangely different – environment: the hospital we saw in the premiere.
Only, of course, it’s not quite the same… is it?
The World in the Walls opens with Quentin waking up in the hospital – only this time, he has a hulking roommate. Dr. London (Tembi Locke) is there and she has bad news. When Quentin says he’s not a danger to himself or others, she brings in his father – whom he is supposed to have tried to kill!
Penny (Arjun Gupta) is there, too. He’s a nurse – who calls Quentin on his palming of his meds. Julie (Stella Maeve) turns up to visit – she and James are getting married! And Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) seems to be under the delusion that she’s an alien who has been sent to Earth to mate with him.
Worse, when Jane Chatwin (Rose Liston) turns up to tell him he’s right about his supposition that this is a spell, she also insists he knows the way out of it.
THE MAGICIANS — “The World in the Walls” Episode 104 — Pictured: Rose Liston as Jane — (Photo by: Carole Segal/Syfy)
While everyone involved gives it their best shot, the sequences of Quentin in the hospital get old pretty quickly. What’s far more interesting is what’s going on in the real world – which involves such a nice twist at the end that I won’t say anything more about it.
The problem is that the hospital sequences take up the bulk of the episode – leaving Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy), and the real world Alice, Julie and Penny little time to do their part to wake Quentin up.
John McNamara’s script uses the hospital sequences to toss in some genre references (Lost in space, Star Trek, etc.…) but even those nifty bits can’t overcome the feeling that the ep is a placeholder – a feeling that only dissipates during the last few minutes, by which time it’s just not enough to really jolt us awake again.
It probably doesn’t help that the direction – by James L. Conway – is a bit ponderous and never really helps generate the excitement of discoveries being made in the real world.
After three pretty great episodes, The World in the Wall is a big stumble – even though we learn some crucial information. I’m sure it reads better in the book, but on TV it comes across as little better than boring.
Final Grade: C-