Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials

Basically, what it says in the title. I haven't watched a lot of Marvel projects recently but WandaVision was most definitely great and after seeing a lot of positive reviews on TikTok I decided to give Agatha All Along a try.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy good comedy and I really like some of the cast. But everything feels both a little exaggerated (like the acting, for example. I understand that it's part of Agatha's character but it just doesn't feel natural to me) and underdeveloped at the same time.

I know that they tried to make most of the setup real and I enjoyed the house set. But I just can't help but get the ick when escape room-like situations happen. Like the riddle about wine, them running around the house looking for items and the oven just clicking open and being a door to the next adventure. Maybe I've just been to too many escape rooms, but it just feels very unnatural and strange.

Also I can't not say anything about the jokes. There's just too many. And some of them do feel forced. We watch the cast remember their trauma and the next thing we hear is a not-so-great joke.

Overall, entertaining, but this far, and I am really hoping it will change, I don't love it.

Hope to see more of Aubrey Plaza in the next episode, I feel like her chemistry with Agatha is the most developed and feels more real than her hate-dependency with the other members of the cast.

For the first two episodes, the show was suffering from a lack of a clear direction. While it was told that they would be travelling down the Witches' Road for something, it was never really clear why or what was going to make that travel interesting. However, they decided to waste no time in actually bringing people onboard with the story and introducing them to these tasks that our heroes will be facing, and in this episode, it was done with a pretty amazing set. This is definitely the show's best episode yet, as it interestingly pulls back the curtains for what's actually going on.

The coven is definitely an integral part of the show, and while they saw the foundation in the previous episode, this really highlighted how they're going to get through this together. They are not a perfectly matched band, and that's totally great, because it adds to the dynamic between them all, and the episode forces them to work together amidst screams and arguments, and puts pieces in motion for some great character development. And this episode actually had some amazing development for Agatha, who is clearly hiding some dark secrets and has a lot of regrets that she will be facing on the road. And that's where the development of the plot comes in as well, because while Agatha's motives were pretty clear at the first, there are other things that could come into play there. And obviously, it had a certain shoutout that's going to make fans happy, but also continue a horde of expectations that have been haunting the Marvel show since the inception of their Disney+ era. The ending was very unexpected, but also shows that this is not afraid to take some big swings and take a piece of the puzzle away if it feels like it's necessary. However, there are certain aspects of the show's pacing that still needs a bit of work, and the mystery surrounding Joe Locke's "Teen" is still not interesting enough for me to actually care, despite the show's really desperate attempts to make me. Maybe it'll work sooner or later, but for now, not really.

"Through Many Miles / Of Tricks and Trials" seems to be laying some interesting groundwork for the future and puts real stakes into this magical journey. The episode is still fun and full of fantastical elements, but it's not afraid to go dark and does a good job of developing the characters and the overall storyline.

I was a little bit worried that they wouldn't do enough with the premise they set up in the first two episodes. I was luckily mistaken. I love what they're setting up here. The costumes, set design, and story are so incredible, and the camaraderie that the characters have with each other is very enjoyable. I love when shows have a large number of main characters, but still manage to handle each one of them with respect towards their backstories and relationships with other characters. These trials are going to be so interesting to watch, especially since every episode has its own theme. I've been loving this show so far, and I can't wait to keep loving it.

The first trial is set in a rich Hampton home inspired by famous television shows of the same nature (eg. Keeping up with the Kardashians, big little lies, real housewives franchise, etc).

It plays out as as an unimaginative escape room with very low stakes. Although a slow burn of an episode, each character is given their own storyline that will tie into the hopefully climatic finale.

As much as this episode a little boring at times, the narrative for Agatha is well written and we can see the contrast from Wandavision. In Wandavision, Agatha is a selfish, manipulative and conniving witch but in this season she's more posed having lost her powers. It feels like two completely different written characters but it works in showing how her powers change her.

I really enjoyed the first two episodes and was excited to see what would come next.

Unfortunately, this episode didn't live up to the anticipation. It felt disjointed, with random elements thrown in seemingly just to spook the characters, only for elements to conveniently disappear without resolution later on.

Overall, it reminded me of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, where things quickly spiraled into chaos purely for dramatic purposes, only to be resolved just as conveniently by the episode's end.

As others have noted, there were too many forced jokes in every scene, which started to turn the characters into caricatures. Marvel used to do funny puns effortlessly, with impeccable timing. Here, the humor felt forced and unnatural and at times rather mean.

I hope the remaining episodes will get better, but it seems the tone and pacing have already been set, which is a bit concerning.