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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
23
Mixed:
13
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Jan 23, 2019
Season 4 Review:
The writers blast all kinds of arcs in your face, and the fractals come at you with full force. But no matter how many layers of latex pile onto an actor's body so they can become an amphibious beast or a hircine god, the feelings are always real and the stakes are always high. The Magicians demands that its characters sacrifice love for magic, but I would never demand that The Magicians sacrifice energy for coherence.
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ColliderJan 23, 2019
Season 4 Review:
The Magicians Season 4 reboots its characters in exciting ways without losing any of the charm and anarchy that makes the show so delightful. Impossibly, it’s a serialized, character-driven sci-fi series that shows no signs of slowing down, and is opening up compelling and refreshing new avenues of storytelling that are grounded in emotional truth and a willingness to get funky.
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Jan 23, 2019
Season 4 Review:
It knows itself. It tells episode-level stories well. Its biggest arcs make sense, and its smallest arcs are impressively effective. If the middle bits are a little foggy--how anything connects to anything else, the realm of the possible versus the impossible, what stage of a quest they’re on at any particular moment--it never seems to matter much. The Magicians charges ahead with gusto and style anyhow, staying both dark and effervescent.
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Jan 9, 2018
Season 3 Review:
A premiere packed with sexual innuendo, pop culture references, and Margo snark. [12 Jan 2018, p.55]
Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Monday’s busy pilot (crammed with setting reveals and visual effects) leads to a sluggish second hour trading the thrill of discovery for downbeat foreboding. Yet the purpose-seeking characters emerge so starkly--Jason Ralph’s disturbed new student, Hale Appleman as his sardonic guide, Arjun Gupta as his itchy roommate, Stella Maeve as his left-behind soul mate. They feel worth following.
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Dec 16, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The pilot is an effective introductory chapter to a story that speaks to a moment cluttered with both escapist fantasy and neo-gothic gloominess. It’s Harry Potter, distressed with a Heavy Metal acid bath.... The world and perspective of The Magicians is more immediately interesting than the characters.
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TV Guide MagazineJan 28, 2016
Season 1 Review:
It promises to be a wild ride. [1-14 Feb 2016, p.19]
Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The students of Brakebills have never fit in and aren’t part of a hierarchy, and, like a lot of young people, can be their own worst enemy. So far The Magicians played off those reverse expectations fairly well, and has a more hip Gothic atmosphere to it. It will be interesting to see if it can keep all the balls flying in the air.
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Jan 13, 2020
Season 5 Review:
It’s not the show it once was, but to the show’s own point, it’s not like it’s been “Harry Potter for adults” in a long time. If it can find a way to tie together these various mourning, screwed-up heroes, and have them keep battling their way toward the best versions of themselves, there’s probably always going to be a good reason to watch The Magicians.
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Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
It’ll take more than an episode or two to see what The Magicians becomes when it stops trying so hard to be the dark, sexy, thoughtful, sexy, and also sexy series it so clearly wants to be. There’s a lot to like here, and plenty of potential to make the show as engrossing and sometimes devastating as the books on which it’s based.
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Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The show is at its worst when straining to be provocative and, in so doing, incorporating various Hollywood clichés (Hogwarts meets Gossip Girl, one review blared). But in terms of establishing a world and getting the plot going, the show’s first episodes are actually pretty promising.
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Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Perhaps once the exposition is disposed of, it’ll pick up speed (the second episode, which also airs Monday, is a little better than the first). But to succeed, the show needs to more fully explore the complex and often terrifying world it introduces, tropes and all.
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Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Just like a school like Brakebills wouldn't send its students to an advanced class before teaching them the basics, The Magicians loses something for not fully setting up foundational elements like how magic works in this world, what it's like to be a student (or teacher) at Brakebills, or the many ways it is very different from Hogwarts.
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Dec 17, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The Magicians tries to create three different worlds simultaneously--Quentin’s New York City, Fillory, and Brakebills, complete with different casts of characters and different sets of rules. It’s not as sloppy as it could be, but it’s hard to not feel rushed through the pilot.
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Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Some of the special effects are magical; others are genuinely terrifying. But with so many characters, and such an abundance of twists and turns and truths and lies, keeping up is exhausting even in the first two hours. And none of the characters, especially the mopey Quentin, is engaging enough to make it worth the effort.
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Dec 17, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The best that can be said about The Magician thus far is that it has so many balls in the air that you’re tempted to stick with it just to see where it’s going. Even then, though, the show puts more stock in atmosphere and attitude than in distinguishing its characters or sci-fi fantasy terrain from those of comparable projects.
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Jan 20, 2016
Season 1 Review:
There’s little time for texture or complexity in the first two episodes of The Magicians, which cherry-pick a series of important incidents from the novel and often fail to import the psychological or philosophical depth that accompanied each plot point. Even the production design seems more cheap than spare, and tends to make the mythical Brakebills look like a bland store selling Ikea knockoffs.
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Jan 25, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Most of the characters, however, are written and behave as if they are 14, and not 20-something graduate students. That said, the first episode ends on a terrific cliffhanger, when a creature from another realm--a man with a swarm of moths flitting around his head--attacks. A good three minutes does not excuse the hour that came before it. And the resolution is presented so poorly in the next episode that it sabotages any good will the first episode earned.
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Dec 16, 2015
Season 1 Review:
There's little that's magical about the cold, poorly paced Magicians pilot. It takes 16 minutes until Quentin arrives at Brakebills and feels longer. The pilot is rife with drab colors and while the story has potential, it made me want to go find the book rather than watch more of the TV series.
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