REVIEW: Agatha All Along – Season 1, Episode 3, “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials”

Television Reviews

With “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials,” Agatha All Along makes the bold move of embracing who it’s for: middle-aged wine women. Whether or not that’s a bad thing depends on your perspective. It’s not overly interesting unless this is what you want from your televised entertainment, but I respect that the show isn’t making any excuses for what it is. It doesn’t solve some of Agatha All Along’s problems, like its convoluted pace, forgetting its own magical rules in the space of a single scene, or the characters making dumb decisions, but it keeps it from being as unbearable as some of the other Marvel shows.

Now traveling on the Witches’ Road, Agatha and her coven quickly – very quickly – come across a luxurious beach house that appears out of nowhere. When they enter, they’re transported to a ladies’ hangout party that turns deadly, and the witches have thirty minutes to save themselves from their mystical confinement.

Immediately, “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials” sets up the rules of the Witches’ Road. Essentially, it’s a ripoff of the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz: stay on the path, for venturing into the woods will bring danger and death. Sharon finds this out the hard way when she attempts to flee the coven she never agreed to join and gets sucked into a mud puddle that functions like quicksand, prompting Agatha to lay out the rules. You’d think she’d have done this right away, but I guess they wanted to demonstrate the dangers of not being on the Road. At any rate, this is decent storytelling, so I can’t complain. So, of course, they immediately get off the Road and walk into a beach house that just popped into existence, which is… let’s say, not good storytelling. Not only does the show immediately violate the rule it just established, but all of these women look like idiots. They aren’t even led to this house by the path; they just run at the first oasis they see. If the writers wanted to do this, it should have been left for next week, while this week had them follow the path and experience other things. I keep bringing this up, but these Marvel shows are both too long and too short, and their pacing is all over the map.

***SPOILERS***

So, now Agatha and the others are in a lovely house, and upon entering, they’re dressed like suburban wives who dabble in realty while their husband works in an office in the nearest city and the kids are in school or practicing the viola. And it’s kind of perfect because this is what everyone has been saying about Agatha All Along: it was made for middle-aged wine moms. Leaning into that is a good move, and it gets an instant laugh. There’s also a digital clock in the living room, ominously counting down from thirty minutes. The next obvious element is wine, which is introduced via a note that gives them a rhyming riddle as to what to do next. (Not to pat myself on the back because it’s mega obvious, but when the riddle was read aloud, I immediately knew the answer was wine.) And, like idiots, they all drink the wine in the magic house off the Witches’ Road that has a countdown clock. Well, all of them drink the wine except Agatha and Teen, the latter because he’s underage and a spazz. And, as expected, things go wrong; their faces puff out like women who’ve had botox injections (think Courteney Cox nowadays), and Jennifer deduces that they’re all about to die.

The rest of “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials” is the coven searching the house for ingredients to a spell that’ll undo whatever curse the wine put on them. Conveniently, every single rote witch’s brew ingredient can be found in everyday household items, particularly ones used by women. That’s a stretch – eye of newt is in some kind of facial cream, if I remember correctly, and a dead body can be duplicated with petroleum jelly – but I get what they’re going for with this. And again, it’s smart to lean into the woman aspect, and I appreciate this more than turning them into the usual ball-busting macho broads that permeate every piece of entertainment nowadays. I don’t mind women acting like women, being unapologetically feminine instead of trying to replicate masculinity and coming off like phonies. I wish it were a little more interesting, though, and a bit more creative. For example, Black Widow fits into Marvel’s superhero universe by being an assassin, but she’s also feminine in that she’s very sensual, and she yearns to be a mother, if more figuratively than literally, which informs her arc. (This is largely established by that Age of Ultron scene most of the world seems determined to misunderstand.) You can do this subtly and make it more fun than a bunch of ladies running around a house looking for beauty products; even Desperate Housewives had chase scenes with killers and stuff.

I’ll give “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials” another compliment, too: it doesn’t suddenly make Agatha a hero. So far, the show is maintaining the idea that Agatha Harkness is not a good person, and I’m glad. She’s selfish, she’s manipulative, and she’s perfectly willing to sacrifice others for her own gain. There’s a running joke that she keeps calling Sharon “Mrs. Hart,” the fake name she had in Wanda’s hex world (and, resultingly, so do the others). This is because Sharon is meaningless to her as a person; she exists as nothing more than a tool for Agatha to get her power back. (Agatha also has a genuinely funny line when Sharon disappears from the Witches’ Road early on; most of the humor doesn’t land, but occasionally, they crack out a good one.) When the others drink the wine, Agatha abstains, but rather than warn her coven of the danger she senses, she lets them damn themselves. When the others realize Agatha hasn’t had any wine and that Agatha drinking it is the key to their survival, Agatha still doesn’t want to do it. And through Jennifer, we learn that there may be even more darkness in Agatha’s past, as she tells Teen that Agatha sacrificed her baby for the Darkhold – which is seemingly confirmed by Agatha’s vision of a bassinet with the book in it. (The mention of Mephisto strikes me as Jac Schaeffer’s response to fan theories from WandaVision; I imagine nothing will come of this.) And when they escape the house, Sharon appears to be dead, which, if this holds, means that Agatha got an innocent woman killed because it suited her goals. This is good, and I hope it remains this way throughout the show; I want evil acknowledged rather than hand-flicked away.

In the end, “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials” feels like a time-killer. The plot doesn’t advance, and the mini-adventure they’re on isn’t involving. We get hints about Agatha’s past, but those could have come in a better episode. However, I don’t hate Agatha All Along; I think there are some decent ideas, the actresses are all good, and I appreciate that the writers and producers are embracing what they want the show to be. I would like them to make this more interesting, though, and perhaps stop relying on intelligent people being stupid to push the plot along. And bring Aubrey Plaza back; this is has been the second episode without her, and I’m starting to feel hoodwinked.

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