Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Wherein the Road is an Escape Room and feels just as fake

Spoiler Warning for Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials

To be blunt, I am not a fan of this episode although I continue to remain hopeful for the series.  The problem boils down to the episode’s inability to immerse me in the story, allowing me to suspend disbelief and feel the tension.  There were three main reasons: Kathryn Hahn’s performance as Agatha, the fake settings, and the by-the-numbers storytelling.

The storytelling in the previous episode was also formulaic in structure, but the direction, production and performances elevated it as a whole.  Here with elements of that previous elevation variable, the storytelling feels pedestrian.  The frame of the story sets out what will happen to the coven as they traverse the Road; that they will meet with trials and here is the first one – the potions trial.

It’s a reasonable set-up – the coven gets locked into a house where they drink poisoned wine and have to create and take the antidote before the timer runs out while suffering hallucinations.  The execution is very ‘meh’ and comes across as nothing more exciting than watching a group of people trying to get out of an escape room. 

There are elements done well.  I very much liked the production quality of a wealthy abode filled with lovely furniture and products.  It’s a dream house therefore there is a symbolic dichotomy of it turning into a nightmare.  I also liked the costume changes for the travellers with each taking on a suburban lady look. 

I could also appreciate the purpose in showing us the witches’ hallucinations as they allow the audience in a semi-organic way to either learn more about the coven or to reinforce what we did know – Jen’s losing her powers, Lilia’s past in Spain, and Alice’s lost mother.  There were definitely creepy moments in each hallucination and the performances here were solid.

Joe Locke also did a great job throughout the episode.  His performance does elevate the moments where the story is clearly signposting ‘INFORMATION AND HINTS ABOUT TEEN!!” (and yes, in all-caps), from the sigil reveal to the other witches which confirms someone is hiding him to Jen’s moment of warning about Agatha to Alice’s bonding over eyeliner.  The story continues the mystery and the hook of who Teen is – will he be Wanda’s son, or is he Agatha’s?  Teen’s information drop is done differently to the others as Teen is underage and does not drink the wine so therefore does not hallucinate.

I did like Agatha’s hallucination and the information that she’d traded her son for the Darkhold.  The moment with the crib was one of the few where I felt captivated by the story and by Hahn’s performance.  Hahn’s performance in the rest of the episode was a little too caricature of an evil witch lurking at the sidelines and dramatically doing hand movements to convey their witchy-ness (the latter of which only led me to notice that she had a fabulous manicure).  She wasn’t helped by the story which keeps her on the sidelines of the room for the most part to convey Agatha’s attempt to cheat her way through, to lie, to manipulate.  But I felt her performance was overdone here for the most part.

The other part of her performance I did enjoy was the conversation with Jen.  Agatha knows which buttons to push in her ‘pep’ talk to get Jen past her fear and accessing the knowledge she needs to complete the antidote.  That little segment was well-done.

Yet the antidote itself was not well done at all.  It felt too ‘made-up.’  Ignoring the nice twist of ordinary ingredients being called weird witchy variants, the whole ‘sink cauldron’ and just toss everything in mentality underscored that this was not a real potion, and so underscored the fakeness of the scene and show. 

Suspension of disbelief is a difficult thing when watching a film or TV show, doubly so for a fantasy show which does have fantastical elements.  There needs to be enough that grounds the viewer, enabling them to look past the sets, costumes and CGI, and accept on some level that these are the characters fighting for their lives in a trial.  Unfortunately, the potion-making is not grounded at all.  It feels like a group of adults pretending to make a potion, took me completely out of the story and made me all too aware that I was watching a TV show.

The fakery of the Road itself is also a little jarring.  The iridescent leaves stretching out in a winding way is very Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road.  Again, it just completely removes the idea that these characters are anywhere but on a set.  This is not helped by the direction and editing where the characters appear to be in one position in one shot (for example, Sharon close to Jen), only for the wide shot to show them in different places (Sharon suddenly far away from Jen).  The house is so obviously unreal, more like a matte painting rendition, that it is jarring.  Perhaps if the show had played the Road’s fakeness up more a la a riff on the past sitcom/TV show settings…maybe that might have helped?  As it is I do not believe that Debra Jo Rupp’s Sharon sits on a grassy muddy bank or is being pulled into a swamp mud sinkhole.

The last part of the episode which I do think is done well is the surprise of Sharon dying at the end.  The bewilderment and irritation of the character through the episode is believably played by Rupp who also turns in a good performance throughout.  But is she actually dead?  Another hook perhaps, and maybe a needed one as the episode signals very heavily what the future holds for the series.

In conclusion

Reading my review, I definitely enjoyed more of the episode than the feeling of overall discontent that brewed within me at the end of it would suggest.

The Road ahead for this series seems obvious after this episode.  There are likely yet four more trials (Divination, Protection, Earth and the power aspect Agatha is embodying).  It’s either going to tempt audiences to keep watching to see what those trials are, or perhaps the hooks of the wider mysteries its set out will keep the audience, despite this formulaic format. 

It’s definitely the mysteries which will keep me watching, and I really hope that the next trial is better done than this one.

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