Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Once again, I ran through a messy grab bag of media this week, featuring some classic horror selections, as well as a few movies I mostly just saw over my shoulder as I played more Slay the Spire. The big prize this week was Mythic Quest, the new comedy spearheaded by a good portion of the Always Sunny crew, which was so consistently excellent that we finished it in maybe three days flat. Let’s start with that then, as we run down the highs and lows of another week in the media jungle!
So, as I mentioned, Mythic Quest. The show stars Rob McElhenney (Always Sunny’s Mac) as Ian Grimm, the creative director of a popular online MMO. Along with McElhenney, the show was created by Charlie Day (Always Sunny’s Charlie) and Megan Ganz, an Always Sunny writer/producer who also worked on Community – and additionally, there are individual episodes written by Day, McElhenney, Ganz, and David Hornsby (Always Sunny’s Cricket). In terms of its writing and production staff, Mythic Quest is pretty obviously the Always Sunny crew gathering up their most trusted collaborators, and putting together a show that rivals Always Sunny’s humor, but matches it with far more dramatic and emotional ambition.
Over the course of its first season, Mythic Quest portrays a game studio in absolute disarray, with McElhenney’s self-important creative choices causing havoc for his lead engineer (Charlotte Nicdao, the show’s heart), executive producer (played to perfection by Hornsby himself), head of monetization (Danny Pudi, who turns an eminently hate-worthy character into a lovable one by pure force of comedic talent), and anyone else who crosses his path. The scripts are sharp, the humor is plentiful, and the insanely talented cast possess remarkable, immediate chemistry. I frankly can’t think of another comedy that burst out the gate with such confidence, and such obvious structural assets – Always Sunny is one of the best TV comedies of all time, and Mythic Quest is taking most of that show’s best resources at the peak of their game, while also adding in some of the best other comedians working in television.
Of course, a show that’s purely comedy probably wouldn’t grab my heart; I mean, I rarely mention Always Sunny here, though I have nothing but respect for its staff and achievements. But as I said, Mythic Quest has some genuine dramatic and character ambitions, and is frequently willing to explore both the ugliness of the gaming industry, as well as the wild, hapless passion for self-expression and glory that makes us love gaming.
The show’s main cast are plenty sympathetic in their own right, but Mythic Quest’s crown jewel is an episode that barely features any of them. Instead, it dives back into the history of a couple who bonded over their creation of a niche gaming hit, but who were ultimately consumed by the perpetual compromises of increasing scale and capitalism. As someone who struggles with staying just close enough to anime professionally in order to keep loving it personally, their reflections on how to succeed in their jobs while maintaining the things that made those jobs worthwhile felt very personal. And the face of the enemy is always clear – I can still hear the venom in Jake Johnson’s voice as he told his brand manager there would be “no muppet” in the Dark Quiet Death multiverse, right before that fucking muppet became the face of the franchise.
I’ve spent my own career arguing without much success against the encroaching corporate-sponsored muppets of media, and Mythic Quest’s anger felt as warm and soothing to me as its character moments, or consistently sturdy jokes. My one major complaint about the show is that the QA tester characters seem like a weird appendage that never quite gel with the rest of the cast, but most comedies are still finding their feet in their first seasons, so the fact that that’s all that feels clumsy about Mythic Quest is a pretty good sign. If you like Always Sunny, you should obviously check out Mythic Quest – but if you just appreciate comedy in general, this is probably the best one we’re getting in some time (or at least until it’s cancelled and Danny Pudi has to go somewhere else).
Along with Mythic Quest, I performed some more forays into classic horror this week, starting off with John Carpenter’s The Fog. Centered on a sleepy coastal town with an ominous fog coming in off the ocean, the film features some of the best cinematography I’ve seen in Carpenter’s work. The framing of the ocean throughout this film is remarkable, and there are all sorts of inspired layouts and visual tricks that embrace the film’s focus on ambiguity.
The majority of its kills are obscured in either fog or darkness – maintaining the mystery of the threat is crucial, and Carpenter achieves this in all sorts of neat visual ways, culminating in a thrilling sequence where a lighthouse keeper must direct survivors through town, broadcasting the route of the ominous fog via radio. The film’s structure is a little clumsy (apparently it necessitated some serious re-cutting), and its monsters are inevitably not as scary as the threat of the fog, but all in all it’s a very rewarding horror film, and a standout example of the power of ambiguity.
Going back even further in horror history, we also checked out the original Black Christmas, a ‘74 proto-slasher that would influence Carpenter’s own Halloween. Black Christmas is one of those electric horror films that maintains every jot of its power, in spite of the many years since its release. The film uses ominous phone calls to masterful effect; in fact, I think it’d be fair to say this is the quintessential “ominous phone call movie,” with a villain whose rambling speeches are ugly, ferocious, and genuinely discomforting, and a cast who feel angular and difficult in painfully human ways. Watching this cast come under siege feels both thrilling and suffocating, and the flashes of violence shimmer with a giallo film’s surrealist flourish. Though Black Christmas is clearly important as a progenitor to later movements in the genre, it’s also just a great, gripping film in its own right.
Finally, there were the films I “watched” because my housemate was watching them, and I was in the same room playing Slay the Spire. These included Baby Mama, which was clearly just an excuse for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to pal around and riff off each other, with Fey essentially reprising her Liz Lemon role, and Poehler absolutely relishing her chance to be the contrasting, chaotic dirtbag. Not a great film, but a warm and easy one, with Poehler regularly chewing the scenery in delightful fashion.
We also quasi-watched Poseidon, a disaster film about a ship that flips upside down, which is not a thing a ship is supposed to do. Poseidon doesn’t really possess any characterization or much inspired cinematography to speak of, but what it does possess is a delightful series of murderous obstacles, as well as Kurt Russell as Tough Action Dad. Poseidon will never demand your full attention, but it is the perfect film for demanding twenty to thirty percent of your attention, and perhaps more when cool shit is happening.
