As entertaining as the first couple chapters of Agatha All Along were, it looks like it’s time to get this show on The Road. With “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials,” Agatha All Along officially sets its characters off on a more linear journey to self-actualization, glory, redemption, and/or death. Just in case we weren’t listening last week, Agatha goes ahead and re-explains what The Road and her coven cohorts are all about. Once again, the breakdown goes as follows: Lilia (Patti Lupone) wants to regain her divination skills, Alice (Ali Ahn) wants to find out what happened to her mother, and Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata) wants to reclaim her magic, which has been bound for some as of yet untold reason.
Teen, meanwhile, ostensibly just wants to learn from Agatha and gain powers along the way. But the second he tries to share his name with the witches, they also see the mouth squiggle instead of hearing the answer. It’s obvious to everyone that there’s Something Else Afoot with this kid, and boy, does this episode lay some heavy clues as to what that might be.
We’ll get back to that. For now, it’s time to join our witches (plus Mrs. Sharon Davis Hart) on The Road in a jarring new locale: a pristine beach house with a built-in sauna and a kitchen to die for (poor Mrs. Sharon Davis Hart). “Was that there before?” Alice wonders. “You should stop asking that question,” Agatha replies before I can. You’re all witches! Why do you keep getting surprised by magic??
For a minute, I thought this mansion might be ushering in a Practical Magic homage, but nah. That Victorian home of family secrets and midnight margaritas is so extremely and specifically of New England, all nooks and crannies and vintage clutter. This one looks like Grace and Frankie hired Chip and Joanna Gaines to fixer-upper their Malibu getaway. The second they all walk in, their entire appearances and outfits change to match the vibe, complete with all the luxe linens and beige sweaters of Nancy Meyers’s dreams. (I’m sure costume designer Daniel Selon’s having fun with the series’ many genre switches, but this one made me miss Agatha’s gorgeous aubergine coat something fierce.) As Teen says in one of this episode’s several lines of meta commentary, “it’s giving very, ‘middle-aged second chance at love.’” He’s here for it, but Jen is decidedly not.
As she stares at her unfamiliar reflection in one of many gleaming mirrors, Jen realizes with horror that she’s now sporting a tasteful bob that makes her look like “one of my clients.” This particular mansion, well-stocked with her own snake oil Kale Kare line, seems to be her own house of horrors. According to Agatha, The Road — which stripped the coven of its powers in transit — will test each of the witches on their individual skill sets. It’s a crash course in witchcraft, “emphasis on the ‘craft.’” So when a bottle of pro-offered wine poisons the coven, it is potions master Jen’s turn to whip up the antidote.
As everyone searches the house for various ingredients, the episode takes on a bit of a horror video game vibe. Between its clear-cut mission (Ingredient + Ingredient = Antidote/Escape) and POV shots creeping around every corner, it’s all too easy to imagine getting to this level and clicking around the empty rooms to locate each potion component. Neither the coven nor the episode have much time to dawdle, but I can’t help but think that this trial might’ve been more compelling in a Practical Magic house stuffed to the brim with possibilities rather than a Big Little Lies mansion largely empty of mess or ephemera, aside from exactly the ingredients they need.
Then again, I guess, the specifics of this trial aren’t really the point. As the third of nine chapters, “Through Many Tricks and Trials” — written by WandaVision alum Cameron Squires — is more about establishing who these characters are and have been beyond their supernatural abilities. The hallucinations the wine triggers for everyone (except underage Teen) prove especially revealing. Jen sees a sadistic doctor who degrades and attempts to drown her; Lilia gets an invite from a ghostly Italian aristocrat to see some crumbling skulls in robes; Alice thinks she’s found her mother, only to watch the apparition sob that “it’s my turn, it’s going to kill me.” Big yikes all around! Each vision is brief, shattering with a scream, but effectively unsettling in leaving new breadcrumbs of foreshadowing.
Before the bad trips start, though, there’s time for some small(ish) talk. Alice and Teen bond over their trauma circa age 13 — Teen’s remains vague, but noted — and her tattoo, a protective symbol her mother insisted upon during a tour pit stop at Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks venue. Then, mere minutes before the poison makes their faces balloon like bad fillers, Jen tries to warn Teen that Agatha isn’t to be trusted. He isn’t interested in denigrating Agatha, but still can’t ignore what Jen says next.
“Did you know she traded her own child for the book of the Damned?” Jen asks. No, no Teen did not. To be fair, she also doesn’t know it for sure; Nicholas Scratch has become a bit of an urban legend over the centuries. So in the present, Jen settles for dropping the biggest hint and/or red herring towards Teen’s true identity yet: “I doubt she’d even recognize her own son even if he turned up on her own doorstep.” The only thing more obvious than this line is the pointed “Oh really?” look on Teen’s face as she walks away.
Between that, Agatha’s hallucination of a crying baby becoming The Darkhold, and her uncharacteristically protective instinct to stop Teen from drinking any wine, it seems like the writers are just fine with us coming to the conclusion that Teen might be Nicholas. This is because either (a) he is Nicholas, (b) he’s not and they’re enjoying toying with us, or (c) they’re planning a different twist down the line. Given how early we are in the season, my gut tells me it’s (c), but only time and The Road will tell.
By the end of the episode, Jen successfully gets it together — with assists from a farmhouse sink “cauldron” and sous vide cooker — to brew the correct antidote. And even though Agatha resists the idea of teamwork so hard she almost bashes in the floor-to-ceiling windows to fling herself out, the idea of dying in such a useless manner forces her to play ball. She proves especially handy as she halts Jen’s blooming panic attack with a rare (if backhanded) compliment. “I have always hated you,” Agatha admits, “but I left you alone because what you were doing was important.” It’d be great to know a bit more about what that means at the moment; I’m rarely one to ask TV shows to run longer, but this one’s been moving at such a brisk pace that it feels a little like these 35-minute episodes were supposed to run 45.
Onward, then! Everyone takes a shot of the antidote before the clock runs out and the house floods (which is now underwater, by the way — things happen fast on The Road). They only barely remember Mrs. Sharon Hart Davis in time to force a drop down her throat before time’s up and the oven door flies open as an escape hatch, ostensibly signaling that they’ve beaten the level and can move on … but no.
Sadly for her and all of us fans of Debra Jo Rupp’s pitch-perfect comedic vulnerability, it sure looks like it’s Game Over for Sharon. She comes out the other side of the oven slide without a pulse, tinged blue like a fish corpse washed ashore. Even Agatha, who spent most of the episode forgetting she existed and/or writing her off as an inevitable liability, seems shaken. However wacky The Road’s trials might be, they’re definitely not fucking around.
The Snarkhold-overs
• Hahn line read of the week: responding to the coven’s insistence that she can’t “cheat” on The Road with an instant whine of, “why NOT, who SAYS!”
• … is it bad that I’m kinda with Agatha on the whole “why did we all have to drink the poison wine” thing? Maybe The Road would’ve rebelled, but they still would need unpoisoned blood for the antidote and there’s no guarantee that they’d have brought a random(ish) Teen sidekick for it. All for one and one for all, etc, but how about a little logic??
• Like WandaVision, Agatha All Along is a self-reflective series that’s extremely aware of the pop culture surrounding it. Still, I could use fewer obviously meta lines like, “helpful interjection, random woman with no obvious magical qualities” and more specifically funny observations à la, “this is definitely a ‘sip your tea with two hands’ kind of place.”
• I am not sure what’s up with Lilia’s random outbursts (e.g., “Try to save Agatha!”) just yet, but hopefully, she/Lupone will get a real spotlight episode soon to clue us in.
• And now, a brief elegy for Mrs. Sharon Hart Davis, who may or may not be dead (this is Marvel magic, after all), but who definitely didn’t deserve any of this shit. From Wanda mentally imprisoning her to the betrayal of a badly needed glass of wine shutting down all her internal organs, Sharon’s had a rough go of it, and I wish her nothing but peace and untouched Talbots handbags on the other side.