Miracle Workers: Dark Ages Review: Music Festival (Season 2 Episode 6)
Doing right by the peasants sends Prince Chauncley down a road of kindness, a road his father is likely disapproving of. But on Miracle Workers: Dark Ages Season 2 Episode 6, “Music Festival,” kindness finds itself as only a temporary fix when outrage produces far better results.
The piece that resonates most on the episode is the friendship between Al and Maggie. Friends drifting apart or no longer having time to hang out is such a universal concept that everyone goes through at some point during their lives, and Al’s reaction is likely one a lot of people have experienced.
ph: Stanislav Honzík/TBS.
Maggie’s life at the convent is delightfully strange, and so revealing a little more of that does the episode well. The constant bashing, thrashing, and beatings, self-prescribed, makes for a rather low ceiling of opportunity, but Maggie is thriving and enjoying herself there now, starting to find meaning through her suffering.
While Al may be slow to accept her friend’s new life, she does get there by the end. Al is developing into someone far more accepting and understanding than when we initially see her at the start of the season.
Peter Serafinowicz lights up every scene he’s on as King Cragnoor, this high level of rage and contempt he feels for every single thing in the known universe this strangely compelling creation. His need to smash skulls and diminish happiness may only exist for a single scene, but it sits as one of the major highlights of the episode.
The skull smashing joke lives on through Prince Chauncley, and while the joke could easily be that he can’t smash a skull at all, the fact that he makes minor damage is actually a funnier outcome.
ph: Stanislav Honzík/TBS.
Chauncley standing up to Fred Armisen’s demanding artist and taking back his dignity is part of the season’s long game of Chauncley becoming his own person, and it works great here. He’s always viewed as too agreeable for the sake of avoiding conflict or others avoiding execution, and so for him to finally stand up for not only himself but the people, is a major step in the right direction.
It could be a fun direction to take both Chauncley and his father, where Chauncley stands up for the people when his father finally turns on them. There’s been this severe disconnect between them, despite Chauncley wishing to please Cragnoor. Kindness and cruelty are big themes on the show, and so leading up to a confrontation over those themes could be a rewarding place to take them.
All of the music festival gags are perfectly spot on, taking the casual modern-humor-set-in-medieval-times to a new level with the various pop-up merch tents and the dealer looking to sell to passersby. They’re all fairly tame gags, but the way it’s done in such quick succession and with great timing goes a long way.
ph: Stanislav Honzík/TBS.
Miracle Workers: Dark Ages Season 2 Episode 6, “Music Festival,” feels like a perfect version that the show has been striving for. It has a solid message at its middle about the loss of friendship and the need to be patient, while also showing that kindness goes only so far before action must be taken so that you’re not walked all over.
The gags come flying at such a rapid speed that even when some may not work, there are so many that it makes up for the misses. Hopefully the show can keep to this speed for the rest of the season, as it’s really starting to click more and more as it goes on.
What did you think of this episode of Miracle Workers: Dark Ages? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Miracle Workers: Dark Ages airs Tuesdays at 10:30/9:30c on TBS.
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Kevin Lever
Kevin Lever has been following television closely for most of his life, but in starting to cover it, he has grown a further appreciation. He strives to give the blockbusters their due, and give the lesser known shows a spotlight to find more fans.