REVIEW: Agatha All Along – Season 1, Episode 1, “Seekest Thou the Road”

Television Reviews

It’s hard to think of a preamble to a show I don’t think anyone is really anticipating, but Agatha All Along has debuted on Disney+, and the world is probably minding its own business. A spin-off of the streaming service’s first Marvel series, WandaVision, Agatha All Along sees that show’s villain – the one who isn’t Wanda – take center stage for what was billed as a creepy witch series that’ll take the MCU to some dark corners. Whether it delivers on that proposition remains to be seen, but it’s off to a mediocre start. “Seekest Thou the Road,” the premiere episode, is very much an opening, putting some of the pieces on the game board and letting us dip our toes into what Agatha All Along will be… eventually.

Agnes O’Connor (Kathryn Hahn), a detective in the small town of Westview, New Jersey, is called out of suspension to lead a murder investigation. But as she zeroes in on the identity of the dead body in the woods, she has visions and hallucinations and finds reality warping around her. Why does her new partner (Aubrey Plaza)have a history with her that Agnes doesn’t remember? Who’s the kid (Joe Locke) who broke into her house? Is she really Agnes O’Connor, or was she… Agatha all along? (Everyone on Earth is welcome for that.)

“Seekest Thou the Road” opens to a world similar to that of WandaVision, at least if you’ve seen the previous series, which is a prerequisite for watching Agatha All Along. Once again, we’re in a TV show; this time, instead of classic sitcoms, Agatha (I don’t have to pretend she’s actually Agnes, right?) is the lead in a modern detective series, replete with a woodland crime scene, a dour tone, and plenty of blue windbreakers. “Agnes” fits right in with the heroes of these shows as well; she’s flippant, morbid, damaged, takes no guff, and will go to any lengths to say something clever in response to a question or comment. It also handles its opening credits the same way WandaVision did, with visuals and a song reminiscent of the dreary cop shows of today; it reminded me a lot of Justified, albeit without Agnes walking through Westview like Raylan Givens used to do in Harlan. This is a good setup for the show, and I like how it just drops you in, again like WandaVision, trusting the viewer to know what’s going on because we’ve been to this rodeo before.

***SPOILERS***

What’s wrong with the faux True Detective setting of “Seekest Thou the Road” is the tonal shifts, something Marvel has increasingly used as a crutch of late. (Some would say they’ve always struggled with this, but I think their early movies were more adept at executing it.) These scenes should have been played 100% straight and kept dark and dreary. Instead, there are moments of broad humor to highlight how silly some of the crime show tropes are. Agatha All Along would’ve been better served just letting them speak for themselves. For example, Agnes always has something to say in reply to whoever she’s talking to, but she struggles to make them all witty. This is a funny idea, and you can tell in these series when the writers just couldn’t come up with a good line, so they threw in whatever lame comeback they could think of in the moment. But it’s played too broadly on Agatha All Along, and Agnes makes goofy noises and mugs for the camera to belabor a point that everyone would’ve understood. The worst of it comes when she’s interrogating Teen, whose placeholder name is never mentioned; to demonstrate that she doesn’t accept his alibi, she makes a big show of writing on her notepad – while holding it in the air, just in case we didn’t realize she was being facetious – and drawing out each word she says. It’s really bad, and that’s a shame because Kathryn Hahn is good in the scenes that feel more natural.

There are good moments, though. The way the characters hold themselves is perfect, which is probably down to the actresses. Hahn has a sort of weary, tired gait similar to that of Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown, while Aubrey Plaza, who plays an FBI agent named Rio Vidal, is constantly leaning on walls with her hands in her pockets, wearing a grin that lets the whole room know she thinks she’s two steps ahead of them all. The subtle things like this are great, and “Seekest Thou the Road” needed more of them and less mugging for the camera. (Agnes has a very funny line about three goddesses depicted in a piece of jewelry found on the murder victim where she asks why there isn’t a working professional goddess; I could be wrong, but I took this as a jab at the aggressive modern-day feminism these female detective characters tend to exhibit.) Of course, we know what’s going on here; Agatha is caught in a TV world, which must be where Wanda left her at the end of WandaVision when she took Agatha’s powers away as punishment for a much lesser crime than the one Wanda committed. And the show doesn’t beat around the bush too much; the knowing smirk on Aubrey Plaza’s face is not just mocking detective tropes but a signal that Rio Vidal knows what’s happening with Agatha. And slowly but surely, she leads Agatha to discovery and escape in a fun scene where Agatha claws her way through each of the nosy neighbor sitcom characters she played on WandaVision until, finally, Agatha Harkness is unleashed on the world.

Well, sort of. Agatha may be out of her TV mind prison and back in the real Westview, but she’s without her powers. Aside from a quick glimpse of what Westview is like in the wake of the psychological torture Wanda visited on its residents (they’re pretty much back to normal, although nobody mentions Wanda’s name), this part sets up the rest of the series. Rio Vidal wasn’t helping Agatha out of the goodness of her heart; she’s the “Green Witch,” and a nemesis of Agatha’s who’d like to hill her, but after a poorly-filmed and sloppily-choreographed fight in Agatha’s kitchen – it’s not quite She-Hulk bad, but it’s not good – Agatha convinces Rio to wait until she has her powers back to take her on. As she leaves, Rio warns Agatha that a group called the Salem Seven will be visiting her at sundown and that plenty of other witches want Agatha dead. And the teenage burglar is tied up in Agatha’s closet. It’s mostly just breadcrumbs, and it’s not much of a satisfying conclusion, but “Seekest Thou the Road” isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I assume the Salem Seven will be the villains, and Agatha will be trying to restore her powers. Marvel’s Disney+ series often start out with promise only to let me down as they go along, so I’m still not getting my hopes up for Agatha All Along, but this is an okay beginning.

Let us know what you think of “Seekest Thou the Road” in the comments!

***

Get your Geeks + Gamers merch here!