1x03 The Princess of Darkness

[7.6/10] The show’s best outing yet. I’m glad we’ve reached the point where the characters’ personalities and goals are more or less established, so they can just play around in the universe rather than have pure character-establishing bits. The storytelling is still a little lumpy, but this one had more a clear throughline, which helped.

That throughline is Bean’s rebelling and misbehaving, which leads her father and his associates to believe she’s possessed, and which inadvertently puts Luci at risk. As with the last episode, some of that rebelliousness comes off a little bit forced, but still, Abby and the gang’s snake root-fueled antics are generally enjoyable and allow the show to make use of its fantasyland setting. Three episodes in, and Disenchantment has already established a pretty nice three-man dynamic with Bean, Elfo, and Luci, to where some of the most enjoyable parts of the episode are just the three of them tooling around. (Bean’s 30-second musician biopic was a particular highlight in that regard.)

From there, we transition into the exorcism spoof, which was pretty fun. The presence of “Big Joe” fits the loony, Futurama vibe the show’s been maintaining, and Luci’s antics against him were a nice set of gags. At the same time, I like humanizing Luci a little bit, to where he’s willing to save Bean and be “the good guy” when her life is on the line. It makes the ensuing race against time to save him and his compatriots from being deposited into Mordor seem worth it and even a touch thrilling.

I also enjoyed the antics of the gender-progressive kleptocracy gang Bean and company run into. They’re a nice way to represent Bean feeling pressured to give into her bad side, and their lines were pretty fun throughout. And there was more amusing physical humor with Bean’s stepmom and her crawling and creeping around the kingdom.

Overall, it’s still early, but this was a promising episode for the show.