Agatha All Along: First Impressions
This show started life as a gag. Truthfully it wasn’t a bad gag. WandaVision was a show that was half good and half godawful. Wanda Maximoff having lost her mind and created a TV show world she could hide in was not itself a terrible concept. But it was the first of the M-She-U entertainment products. Regardless, the Agatha All Along demi-Munsters theme song was genuinely funny and became something of a novelty hit on YouTube.
A novelty hit is no reason to greenlight a project, (granted, this was hardly the first of those).
This show is not going to be half good, that is way too ambitious of a goal for this show.
However, I was deeply concerned about the possibility of actually liking this thing for a few minutes. Marvel has made good stuff before but that was either fifteen years ago or Marvel wasn’t allowed to touch it.
The show kicks off with a woman (without makeup) driving in the country while depressing lesbian music plays. This is looking like an episode of a Chris Chibnal true crime police procedural which beats the hell out of a Chris Chibnal Doctor Who episode.
Agatha gets out of the car wearing a badge. Called it.
She runs into the Black Neighbor from WanadaVision. He’s now her detective partner. They exchange clunky exposition dialog meant to establish their stereotypes. This show is starting off as another WandaVision.
There’s been a woman who was crushed to death. The corpse wearing is Wanda Maximoff’s hoodie and jeans and has red hair. However, this show does not appear to have had the kind of budget needed to get Elizabeth Olsen to do any kind of cameo.
Speaking of cameos, Agatha finds her Hecate broach.
Opening true crime credits, we see the title of the show is Agnes of West View.
REMEMBER WEST VIEW!!!
Credit where it’s due, the reason I thought this show was actually going to be good for a few minutes was that it nailed the very distinct tone of a true crime procedural. A kid breaks into Agatha’s home to try and steal something. Agatha captures him and takes him to her interrogation room. Audrey Plaza is there as the Frenmy FBI Agent Trope.
Two things are immediately obvious. One, the show is going way out of its way to avoid saying what the teenager’s name is. Which means we would recognize it immediately. Which means it’s Wanda’s son Billy Maximoff (AKA Wiccan). The other thing is that he has painted fingernails and a bi-brow.* He has the ghey!
The consistent tone I was praising was shattered like an egg hit by a railgun when Agatha broke the spell Wanda had placed on her. Now it’s comedy! Now it’s horror! Now it’s a musical! But now it’s mostly a Marvel project.
I honestly felt relief wash over me when Billy delivered his horrible line about how “a Witches Coven is the truest form of sisterhood.” It had stopped being this strange and worrying thing, a good Marvel show, and was now simply a Marvel show.
Disney dumped two episodes of this show at once, the second episode is a fetch quest or rather the first of what I am certain will be a series of fetch quests. This first one is Agatha putting together her highly diverse coven. She needs this team to open up the Witches Road, at the end of which (sorry) she will recover her power. The rest of her team has various Yellow Brick Road reasons to go along with Agatha.
This show has everything! Tone breaking jokes! A musical witches number to rival the Acolyte’s! Everyone in the show has the gay! A fuckton of Wicca bullshit!
If you’re a cat lady, a wine box mom, a fan of the Acolyte, or just a Creative Genders major, Agatha All Along is for you!
If you’re normal, then this show’s got nothing.
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*Women who identify as Bi-sexual on dating apps tend to reach out to both men and women. Whereas men who identify as Bi-sexual on dating apps reach out exclusively to men.
