The Magicians - 'Hotel Spa Potions'

I feel bad harping on Professor Sunderland being the hot professor, but she is
just so blatantly the hot professor.

Leaving Eliot to be sensational, the rest of our merry band – who lack a satisfying collective moniker, since Penny is neither a Physical nor a monarch of Fillory, but let's go with 'Team Fillory' where necessary – return to Brakebills, where they approach Dean Fogg to teach them battle magic. Unfortunately Professor Bigby, the last battle magic instructor at the school was escorted from the premises after a number of fairly destructive incidents, and hid the text books in the library before she left. The Dean ropes in Professor(1) Sunderland (Penny's hot traveling instructor/supplementary love interest, also pretty up on the library,) and reads her into the whole Fillory thing.

Sometime earlier, Martin's magical alternate dimension had thrown him out,
requesting that he never return.

Julia, meanwhile, is trapped in a whole Odd Couple sort of thing with the Beast, who has taken to singing show tunes while he waits for her to create a new summoning totem to call up Renard; one not too like the original to tip her hand. He again advises her to give up a little of her Shade, especially when her conscience balks at almost literally roping Marina into helping with the plan(2). Marina is somewhat put off by the abduction thing, although she allows that a rogue god ripping the hearts from hedge witches is, on some level, legitimately her problem. Once released, she goes to Dean Fogg to seek his help, but the Dean is a dick to her because of her problems at Brakebills and so she signs on with Team Julia.

In Fillory, Eliot struggles with the whole King thing. He tries to circumvent his marital problems by organising a group thing, but realises that the other people are only involved because the King said so, which gives him a hella icky feeling. Meanwhile, the Kingdom faces starvation due to failing crops, and now Eliot's shameful past as the black sheep, ascetic gay son of a large family of robust and wholesomely homophobic farm folk(3) comes into play. He realises that, thanks to Fillory's magical nature, no-one in the kingdom waters or fertilises their crops, so he organises great shipments of dung.

Sunderland does some kinky mojo to fix Penny's hands and rebuffs his advances until he graduates, which based on how much schoolwork he does will presumably be a week on never. The cure involves him wearing some beaded bracelets, so presumably it would be bad if he lost those at an inopportune moment.

Etch-a-Sketch of the gods.

Following a kind of scavenger trail left by Professor Bigby, Team Fillory locate the book they need, but find a page missing and a note pointing to an address. Alice, Quentin and the Dean go to the address and meet Bigby, a perky and ageless pixie who makes out with the Dean and comments on Alice and Quentin's sexual energy(4) and Alice's raw power, before handing over the spell. Essentially the mystical equivalent of high explosives, it will take out the Beast and anyone else within several hundred feet. Thus Quentin meets up with Julia to warn her not to be close to the Beast when the balloon goes up, and to once more belittle her trauma. Good job, Q. She does pass on that the thrones of Fillory are cursed by the Beast.

Alice works on the spell, noting that the divine power she received is fading fast. The Dean has each member of the team tattooed and a demon bound into the marks to serve to slow the Beast down when they attack. Then they head for Fillory – which seems to have synched its timeline to Earth's – to warn Eliot about the curse.

I've got those,
Ten tap-tap-tappy toes,
And a dozen fingers for extra magical oomph.

So, first of all, I don't know what's up with the timelines synching; maybe it’s a royalty thing. Also unexplained is the fact that the Neitherlands reavers have stopped trying to kill them all, and the Beast's sudden shift into comedy housemate mode. He's like a disgracefully whitewashed version of Titus Andromedon from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, only with less floaty outfits and more potential to tear the world apart from the foundations up. Speaking of tearing worlds apart, I wish people would stop treating Julia as if she were having a strop because Renard dumped her or something. Sure, the Beast is bad news and has the potential to kill magic (and a lot of people besides,) and Julia proved last season that egoism is a core failing, but rape isn't just a thing that happens and you move on. Julia plays this close, but it feels just awful that Quentin – who is not just her best friend, but was there in the raw and immediate moment when the memories were unlocked – is apparently so tremendously up himself(5) that he hasn't realised.

Also, even without the personal angle, the fact is that Renard has, within the confines of the series at least, already killed way more people than the Beast. He's not a non-issue, indeed he is arguably more powerful and dangerous than Martin, he just isn't targeting posh(6) wizards yet. Also, we still haven't found out what happened to Kady.

In 'Hotel Spa Potions'(7), Season 2 is doing a lot of set-up, from the curse to Alice's waning god-power to the battle magic to Julia's gathering dream team. The scavenger hunt was a bit odd, but explained by Bigby's pixie nature, while Penny's subplot seemed somewhat tacked on. Hopefully his powers and his evil hand syndrome will be more relevant in the future. Still, he did get to sass the fuck out of Josh for ducking out on the big confrontation with the Beast in Season 1. Eliot, conversely, got some excellent character work, but was desperately hurting for sass, unable to pour withering scorn on his subjects because their inability to answer back derives from servility and not tongue-tied inadequacy. It's interesting to see a character who gained much of his status from wit and bitterness struggling to cope with an independent status which turns his defensive sarcasm into pure bullying.

(1) Does no-one teaching at magic schools not have full tenure?

(2) By which I mean that Martin/the Beast kidnaps her and ties her to a chair. With ropes.

(3) Very much a thing in the book, but not mentioned before now in the series.

(4) So awkward.

(5) Not that Quentin being completely up himself is a shocker; it's kind of his whole deal.

(6) Classically trained; even a lot of the hedge witches are pretty Ivy League.

(7) The anagrammatic title of the skincare magic book which concealed the battle magic text Last Hope Options.