"Disenchantment," Year Five

Minor spoilers ahead.

I lost track of most of the storylines and many of the characters in "Disenchantment" by the time the final season rolled around, even though I've watched every episode.  Compared to the other Matt Groening shows, I've found it difficult to connect to "Disenchantment" for many different reasons.  I don't think the writers ever figured out how to crack the serialized storytelling, and the binge model of release didn't help matters.  I've never rewatched "Disenchantment" the way I've rewatched "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," and I've never gotten remotely as attached to the characters.  Still, having stuck with the show through multiple seasons, I decided I still wanted to see how everything was going to play out. 

After all, multiple cancellations of "Futurama" have proven that Groening and crew know how to deliver a good ending.  I was perfectly satisfied with the "Disenchantment" finale, where every character reaches a happy ending.  There are loose ends everywhere you look, and all kinds of lore left unexplained and unexplored, but this feels like the right place to stop.  Most of this season is spent reuniting everybody and mopping up the fallout from past storylines.  A couple of minor characters become much more important, mostly because they get romantically entangled with our leads - Ursula (Jeny Batten) is Zog's true love, Mop Girl (Lauren Tom) gives Elfo a distraction from Bean, and the Devil (Rich Fulcher) almost immediately becomes a henpecked husband when he gets too close to Dagmar.  There are a couple of interesting reveals that happen, but don't have much impact because the show's storytelling has been so chaotic.  Sure, it's a fun idea that a minor background character ends up being so important to the endgame of the series, but it also ends up feeling a little hollow, because we don't have much time to get to know the Macguffin in question.

  

I don't think that all the storylines were planned out from the beginning, or at least there have been some serious changes along the way.  For one thing, our central trio of Bean, Elfo, and Luci barely interact in the end, despite their friendship being such a big part of the show.  Luci has to hang out in heaven with God (Phil LaMarr) for a good chunk of the season, while Bean is obsessed with taking down Dagmar, and Elfo spends most of his time with Mop Girl.  The old dynamic's just not there anymore, and if this is the point of the story, it's not made very clear.  Instead, love seems to conquer all, rendering every other concern moot, resulting in abrupt endings for several different characters.  The deep bench of minor players enjoyed by "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" feels like it's still a work in progress on "Disenchantment."  Bean and Zog have accumulated a lot of friends and enemies on their travels, but the majority are very one-note and get little development.  Background details for side characters like Vip and Vap are often dropped on the audience out of the blue, while characters  who I thought were pretty major, like Oona and Derek, have been relegated to bit parts since around year three.  

The storyline that wound up working best was Bean's grudge with Dagmar.  Oona is still my favorite "Disenchantment" character, but Dagmar is the year's MVP for being a villain worth rooting against.  She turned out to be an incredibly funny caricature of the oversexed evil sorceress trope, and I loved all her digs at Bean and the Devil.  Bean and Dagmar's troubled relationship has been a major throughline for the show since the first season, and it was very satisfying to see Dagmar finally get her comeuppance.  Zog and Elfo, by contrast, felt a little underserved.  Both of them have earned their happy endings, but at the same time their stories  felt manipulated to have the best outcomes possible.  Luci didn't get to do a lot, but at least his role didn't feel extraneous for once.  

In the end I didn't love "Disenchantment," but I respect it a ton for trying to do something different.  So much effort was put into pulling off ambitious ideas and concepts.  I was constantly hitting the pause button to read the punny signs, and marveling over the interesting bits of worldbuilding.  One example is Bean having to spend so much time carrying Mora the mermaid around on land.  There's no joke or plot reason involved - just a reality of this world that Bean has to deal with, and we have to tough it out with her.  This level of mundanity is odd to see included in an animated show, and I can't say it adds much entertainment value, but at the same time I truly admire the level of commitment.

 

---