S02.E07: A Kind of Magic

[secnarf]

Quote

Ben leaps back to 1692 -- the farthest he's ever been -- where he finds himself on trial for practicing witchcraft. With limited records online, the team must race to save him before he's put to death.

Original air date: Dec 6 2023

[DoctorAtomic]

I was hoping the plot would have something to do with Highlander. 

[AnimeMania]

Alice Kremelberg as Rachel
Ruby Jay as Faith
Jett Wilder as Hope

Shelby Lee as Charity
Amanda Ruth Jaros as Morgan McKenna

Madalyn Horcher as Bridget "Goody" Smith
Brian Van Holt as Magistrate Bloodborne
Michael Provost as William Bloodborne
John Hans Tester as Reverend Crane
Chuck Filipov as Samuel "Sam" Welshire
Tim Gilbert as Merchant

[AnimeMania]

I missed when they showed the image of the person Ben leapt into, can someone tell me roughly where in the episode that happened.

[possibilities]

I don[t think they did show the image of realElizabeth. if they did, I also missed it! I think he knew who he waws because the other women were calling him Elizabeth, and then Ian showed up to tell him what year it was, etc. 

I was annoyed by the "sitting in a tree" BS in the first scene during the Leap. I don't know anyone over the age of 10 who ever sang that stupid thing, and these women seemed to be intended to be adults. Why make them seem immature and dopey?

 

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I guess the thinking was that mirrors were scarce in early colonial Massachusetts (probably true) and the town was suffering a drought, so there wasn't even a puddle in which he could see his reflection. 

I know why they went with witch-burning - for the big dramatic moment at the end with the rain extinguishing the burning pyre - and they at least acknowledged that the people executed in Salem were hanged. But it still grates, since so many people inaccurately believe there were burnings. (Not that unjustly hanging innocent people is any better than unjustly burning innocent people).

I didn't love this episode, I have to admit. It felt like more of an outline of an episode than an actual script with plot and characterization. And while I can't consider myself an expert on early colonial Massachusetts, there were a lot of anachronisms I was having a hard time getting past. (Also, that just didn't look like New England).

[bamlou]

4 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

And while I can't consider myself an expert on early colonial Massachusetts, there were a lot of anachronisms I was having a hard time getting past.

Ditto. This episode felt especially sloppy to me. The "sitting in a tree" song mentioned above seemed out of place, the way of speaking, and the makeup/hairstyles all felt too modern and took me out of it. It also seemed contradictory that Ian was able to give information about the townspeople's deaths when Jenn hadn't returned yet with the library records. But I did like that in the absence of Ziggy, Ian gained info by eavesdroping on the townspeople.

And I know they've been pretty loose all along with Ben talking to himself in front of others, but it seemed especially egregious/not the smartest when he's doing it during the trial where he's being accused of witchcraft (or at least have the townspeople notice and call it out!).

I'm trying really hard still to like this reboot, and have accepted/been worn down now that they're going for a more action-adventure angle than the more human drama of the original, and I try not to compare. But the writing should still put the effort in to make me care about the people in the leap so that the stakes matter, and this was pretty bare bones. We kinda learn about the girls on trial but it's mostly in service to moving the plot along. And I would have liked to have gotten at least some nuance from the magestrate to humanize him more or have more of an attempt by Ben to reason with him. But both him and the townspeople just came off as cartoon villains to root against and nothing more.

As with many of the episodes, it all seemed so hasty. I wish they took at least one or two beats to let the plot/scenes breathe a little. For me, it would help even if they removed the music constantly underscoring every. single. scene.

[Trini]

It was driving me crazy how Ben wasn't even trying to fit in with the time, culture, and person he was in! I'm not expecting him to be perfect, but he should be better at it by now. That and almost never getting called out about it. There one mention of 'Elizabeth' talking different, but that didn't go anywhere. A one point Ben said he read about [whatever]; but it's most likely the servant girl was illiterate.

Anyway, wow, three different people were the hologram this week.

Was surprised to see Rachel again. Maybe she will have a bigger role to play this season?

[iMonrey]

I'm actually shocked how badly written this was. The well water is tainted, people are getting sick, Josiah actually died, William keels over in church, and then Ben does CPR on him and then . . . he's cured? WTF. Unless I'm mistaken, doing CPR on someone won't cure them of what made them sick in the first place. 

There's a drought that's been going on for a long time apparently yet there's this apple cart chock full of juicy red apples. And who the hell did William get to drive the escapees out of town? And what did Ben think he could do to save Morgan? How was going back to Middletown going to do anything but get Goody killed too?

Ben's cap falls off in the middle of the streets and he walks right into church bare headed and nobody says a word. 

If you're going to burn someone, you wait until after they are tied up before you light the pyre. I realize the show wanted a dramatic moment of rain putting out the fire but how the hell did they expect to tie anyone to a raging inferno?

And I don't know what the budget for this show is, but if it can't afford to CGI out the obvious California mountains in the background when they're not supposed to be in California, then they need to frame the shots so you can't see them. This has come up before and it's just so damn sloppy and lazy.

[Driad]

I do not expect the writers to be experts on the history.  I do expect them to look it up, and get it right in the script.  Some viewers know the history and notice mistakes.

[iMonrey]

18 minutes ago, Driad said:

I do not expect the writers to be experts on the history.  I do expect them to look it up, and get it right in the script.  Some viewers know the history and notice mistakes.

Maybe Addison et. al. aren't overly familiar with history either, but they look like total idiots when stuck with the kind of dialogue this episode gave them. They're standing there at HQ watching the trial going "That's not fair! They're damned if they do and damned if they don't!" As if they're shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that the Salem witch trials weren't on the up and up.

[Trini]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Ben's cap falls off in the middle of the streets and he walks right into church bare headed and nobody says a word. 

This annoyed me as well. They were just cowards to not have Ben wear the cap the whole time. He's already in the dress, come on!

[DoctorAtomic]

I like the squabble over being the hologram. 

I'm sure you all said 'uh oh, witch' when Ben did the cpr. Back from the commercial, they're already in the stocks! I was also thinking Ben might have said he was possessed by the holy spirit since they were all in church. 

I was thinking the water probably had something to do with it because I was thinking of the London cholera case. 

I thought maybe we'd be bandying around some theories about 1692 at HQ. 

 

[Starchild]

6 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Ben's cap falls off in the middle of the streets and he walks right into church bare headed and nobody says a word. 

Right? I kept expecting it to be a plot point but it never was.

OK I know as humans we all contain multitudes, but am I the only one who feels that Ian the analyst being all about astrology was a little out of character?

[Cthulhudrew]

Add me to the list who felt that the scripting on this episode seemed especially , trite, relying on cliche-ridden tropes of colonial witch trials and shallow characterizations.

[Oscirus]

I believe they were expecting the audience to be all, OMFG, witch trials, so we'd ignore all the aforementioned nonsense or the fact that Ben's CPR was horrendously bad. 

On another note, that was such a weak conclusion to the Ben- Addison hologram drama nonsense. No build-up, just Ben accepting things and moving on. If you couldn't write a better reunion storyline, don't break them up in the first place.

 

That being said, I hope more of their future episodes are leap-based and less about the shenanigans of the crew back at the base.

[Starchild]

7 hours ago, Oscirus said:

That being said, I hope more of their future episodes are leap-based and less about the shenanigans of the crew back at the base.

Well, we still have to resolve the mysterious chip designer (c'mon we all know it's Hannah.)

And I can't imagine we've made Magic a recovering alcoholic without that coming into play somewhere. At some point he won't be there when he's needed.

[Dowel Jones]

19 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Unless I'm mistaken, doing CPR on someone won't cure them of what made them sick in the first place. 

The patient usually needs an immediate injection of handwavium to save him.

[iMonrey]

3 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

The patient usually needs an immediate injection of handwavium to save him.

Yeah, apparently. I mean, people are getting so sick they are actually dying. When Ben examined William he said he had no pulse. Just because he was able to resuscitate him doesn't mean he wouldn't still be sick enough to die. And yet William spent the rest of the episode just walking around like he was fine.

This isn't about the intricacies of anachronisms or whether so-and-so would have happened in the 1600s. This wouldn't have happened, ever. It's just basic logic. Who the hell is in charge of approving this crap? Nobody said anything? I just don't get how something like this makes it to air. I've said all along the leap stories just feel obligatory and flimsy but this is absurd.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I get what metaphorically they were going for. The Salem Witch Trials are always a good go-to for writers and producers when it seems like contemporary society is going to extremes. 

But it felt like they were trying to do too much with the metaphor. They were trying to stretch it to mean about people talking to each other and about breaking free from forced conformity AND about not judging people. Like, pick one metaphor, not three.

I still really like this reboot. This episode was a miss for me but overall, I feel like most episodes have been strong.

Edited December 8, 2023 by eleanorofaquitaine

[KaveDweller]

On 12/7/2023 at 6:14 PM, iMonrey said:

Maybe Addison et. al. aren't overly familiar with history either, but they look like total idiots when stuck with the kind of dialogue this episode gave them. They're standing there at HQ watching the trial going "That's not fair! They're damned if they do and damned if they don't!" As if they're shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that the Salem witch trials weren't on the up and up.

Or that they didn't all think of the witch trials as soon as they heard Ben was in Massachusetts. They were just like, "Oh I never heard of that town." 

I mean, the state isn't that big and not much was going on back then. Being there in the 1690s should automatically bring to mind the Salem witch trials.

[QuantumMechanic]

Wow.  That episode was a big step backwards on so many axes.

Re-establishing Addison as the hologram, Ian's ridiculous out of nowhere anti-science garbage (especially the "it's ok to believe in nonsense because who knows, amiright?" crap), the obviously not New England landscape (and I swear that in the post-rain scene at the end the buildings looked more like a mid-1800s Old West set), all the stuff people mentioned with William, the apples, Ben not even trying to fit in (not to mentioning whispering/talking to (from other peoples' POV) the air -- that wouldn't be suspicious at all, no sir!) and on and on.

One thing I was curious about -- would there even be an Irish person in 1692 Massachusetts?

[Oscirus]

Also if you're trying to prove that you're not a witch , wouldnt making it rain on command be one of the worst things that one could possibly do? 

[Chyromaniac]

3 hours ago, QuantumMechanic said:

the obviously not New England landscape (and I swear that in the post-rain scene at the end the buildings looked more like a mid-1800s Old West set)

Well, one of those environments exists at the Universal Studios backlot, and one does not.  Iirc, the only specifically New England location on the tram tour has a giant shark in it…

I’m somewhat torn on some of the anachronistic aspects of this episode.  To a certain extent, I think it can be beneficial to a story to show that we are fundamentally the same as people back then- we just have different attitudes and understandings.  So I don’t necessarily mind that we didn’t get a bunch of “prithee this” in the dialogue, or that the town girls were acting like the Plastics from Mean Girls at times.  But I do think they push the envelope too far with Ben- as others have said, he just doesn’t seem to make any attempt to blend in, or hide that he’s talking to invisible people.  I remember Sam getting called out occasionally for knowing stuff he shouldn’t- but he at least generally tried to be the person he had lept into.  Ben is talking about olfactory hallucinations to a couple of puritans.

Overall, there just wasn’t enough focus on any given element of the story.  They seemed to land on talk to people instead of about people - which, okay.  But at times it felt like it could’ve been about sisterhood and friendship, or faith vs reason, or even just mythbusting evidence of witchcraft.  I do hope that this episode puts the Ben-Addison feud to rest (for a while at least).  I actually don’t mind her as a character- I just don’t need their side drama drawing focus from the leaps any more than it has been.

[Commando Cody]

When Ben asked Addison to be his hologram again, I imagined myself throwing my remote control at the TV set. 

This was such a poorly written episode - most of which has been spelled out in earlier posts. 

Does anyone know why Morgan had a witch's hat in her shop? Does that mean something apart from being part of a witch's wardrobe?

This show seems to be directionless. They finally got rid of Addison - which wasn't working. She is easily the weakest link in the series. Then they put her back. Which now goes back to my theory on how this show will end. 

[nx74defiant]

At times I struggle with watching Historical Fiction because I know too much about history. No they didn't burn the witches.

I've just had to accept that the hatred of caps. Karolina Zebrowska did a skit that I would love to find again, about  a Historical Dress expert called in to consult on a historical production. When she mentions caps they react immediatley with Disgusting!, do you want to make the audiance sick!

It is so dumb that Ben makes no effort to blend in and hide when he is talking to someone only he can see.

[lavenderblue]

Of all the many, many, many anachronisms in this episode, which you all have amply called out already, I feel like everything involving Morgan and her stupid Victorian blouse and 1980s hair and jumper bothered me most of all. I kept hoping for a reveal that she was yet another time traveler who cared even less about adapting than Ben.

[iMonrey]

11 hours ago, lavenderblue said:

Of all the many, many, many anachronisms in this episode, which you all have amply called out already, I feel like everything involving Morgan and her stupid Victorian blouse and 1980s hair and jumper bothered me most of all. I kept hoping for a reveal that she was yet another time traveler who cared even less about adapting than Ben.

Yeah. She looked kind of like Claire from Outlander.

[DoctorAtomic]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Yeah. She looked kind of like Claire from Outlander.

Mouthing off at everyone and being dragged to the stake for being a witch? A little on the nose there. 

[nilyank]

On 12/8/2023 at 11:23 PM, QuantumMechanic said:

One thing I was curious about -- would there even be an Irish person in 1692 Massachusetts?

Yeah, I thought that was weird. Even weirder were a couple of Pilgrims who were African Americans.

[meet trouble]

You are my PEOPLE!

As much as I actually do like this show, there was far too much that annoyed about this episode, and you have each pointed out all of them (Ben losing and not replacing the cap; anachronisms galore; the "Plastics" which, has now become my favorite way to think of the other girls; the ever-popular Red Delicious apples, and especially looking so good in time of drought), however, the one that nobody has mentioned yet is the constant use of "Goody."

It wasn't her name, writers! "Goody," as everyone here knows, was short for "Good wife," or "Mrs." If they wanted to use it, Ben and the townspeople should have been referring to "Goody Sarah," or whomever.