Our Schmigadoon! heroes find success in Schmicago [Apple TV+ recap] ★★★½ – do phone

Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! finds love in all of the unsuitable locations this week. Melissa goes from no person to any person, and Josh finds his calling as a religious chief, which is the very last thing they want proper now.

Of their quest to make issues proper in Schmicago, they tangle issues up worse than ever — and so they clearly don’t have a clear exit technique. The episode, entitled “Famous as Hell,” is a rousing chapter of the Schmigadoon! saga.

Schmigadoon! recap: ‘Well-known as Hell’

Season 2, episode 3: Ever since Josh (performed by Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) had the sensible thought to arrange vindictive butcher Dooley Flint (Alan Cumming) and foul-tempered orphanage keeper Mrs. Coldwell (Kristin Chenoweth), the odd couple has grown much more disturbed.

Their sensible thought is to kill Mrs. Coldwell’s orphans and promote their meat at Flint’s butcher store. The massive hitch is that the orphans received’t eat all of the meals she buys for them to fatten them up.

In the meantime, by by chance organising hippie Topher (Aaron Tveit) with quick refrain lady Jenny Banks (Dove Cameron), they’ve created a niche in the Kratt Membership lineup. Membership proprietor and native tyrant Otavius Kratt (Patrick Web page) has taken a shine to Melissa, nonetheless. And since Jenny isn’t round to do her solo quantity, Kratt insists that Melissa do it. She’s nervous, however she agrees, and naturally, she does a powerful job. (That’s true narratively, however Cecily Sturdy additionally does a very terrific job with the track.)

Kratt’s applause is a bit more than barely ominous.

So many wayward hippies …

As Melissa repairs to her dressing room, Josh goes for a stroll and Topher’s hippies begin following him. Ever since Topher began hooking up with Jenny, he doesn’t have time to gad about along with his outdated band of associates.

Josh notices one among them has a wound on her foot, and fixes it. (He’s a physician, bear in mind?) The hippies deal with it like a miracle and demand that Josh develop into their new chief. He doesn’t wish to do it, however offers in after a lot cajoling. As he falls deeper in with the hippies, and Melissa grows extra well-liked on the membership, it’s solely changing into tougher to depart Schmicago.

Topher and Jenny lastly confront Josh and Melissa for stealing their cult following and their job/viewers respectively. They kick them out of Jenny’s condominium, so they have to stick with Mrs. Coldwell.

Let’s get to the meat of the matter

After they arrive, they discover one thing is off together with her and Dooley instantly. Mrs. Coldwell appears to be nicer to the orphans than earlier than, however her angle nonetheless suggests hatred. And what’s with Dooley’s big new meat grinder?

It takes them no time in any respect to divine Coldwell and Dooley’s mad plan to kill and butcher the orphans. Josh and Melissa attempt to motive with the pair. Josh figures out that Dooley badly needs to kill Kratt however can’t do it, so he’s taking out his blood lust on the orphans. What in the event that they lastly bought Dooley the possibility to get his revenge on Kratt for having framed him for homicide and ruined his relationship along with his daughter, Jenny?

That evening on the membership, Melissa tries to seduce Kratt and get him to comply with her to a secluded spot so Dooley can kill him. Smelling a repair, he absconds together with her whereas Kratt’s nephew, Sgt. Rivera (Jaime Camil), arrests Josh. If Melissa needs to see Josh alive once more, she’ll need to consent to marry Kratt.

Give it up for the narrator!

First, a phrase of reward for Titus Burgess’ flip because the Schmigadoon! narrator. He delivered a constantly nice efficiency all season, however he sings this week’s first act break track so magnificently it’s price stating what an indispensable a part of the ensemble he’s.

I used to be type of hoping we’d get extra Ariana DeBose this season (she actually solely had one quantity, then vanished), however Burgess’ continued pleasant presence is greater than a good comfort prize.

Cecily Sturdy delivers a showstopper

Cecily Sturdy additionally had an important displaying this week, nailing her huge torch track but additionally doing nice work in her greater comedic moments. I favored her not having the ability to take their snooping round in the butcher store critically.

“I really feel like I needs to be on the duvet of a Nancy Drew guide,” she says.

Her pretending to behave like Jenny to seduce Kratt was additionally nice, from the shortcoming to take a seat in a slinky, attractive method to her throwing in random bouts of laughter to undertaking what a pleasant time she was having. Sturdy is at all times charming on this present however I like once they let her step exterior of her normal comedic territory.

Schmigadoon! isn’t a full-on comedy for all of its runtime (there’s gotta be songs with coronary heart and that means, which may’t be humorous), so Sturdy isn’t at all times allowed to play to her strengths as a comic (though she shines in these different departments as properly). Her star flip this week made this episode a really good shock.

★★★☆☆

Watch Schmigadoon! on Apple TV+

New episodes of Schmigadoon! season two arrive each Wednesday on Apple TV+.

Rated: TV-14

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the lengthy-working video essay collection The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Overview of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the creator of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the twenty first Century, the director of 30 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which could be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.