Schmigadoon searches for a happy escape [Apple TV+ recap] ★★★½ – do phone

This week on Apple TV+ musical comedy fantasia Schmigadoon!, Melissa and Paul attempt to depart Schmicago however study that nothing is ever straightforward in a musical. The 2 misplaced lovers should determine a method to sew a little concord of their new digs. Nevertheless, these individuals aren’t simply backyard-selection unhappy — they’re deranged and depressing.

That is going to be tougher than they suppose. It’s additionally fairly entertaining, due to a handful of nice musical numbers within the episode, entitled “Something Real.”

Schmigadoon! recap: ‘One thing Actual’

Season 2, episode 4: Josh (performed by Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) need to depart Schmicago, however they hold operating into issues. First they discover their automobile destroyed and vandalized, due to Josh turning into a city pariah as a result of he was accused of homicide. Then the narrator (Tituss Burgess) stops them with a query: “Aren’t they having enjoyable?”

Melissa admits a few of it was enjoyable, however that’s not a ok purpose to remain. They’re leaving and that’s that. Nicely … it might be besides that they cross the bridge out of city and wind up proper again the place they began.

The narrator laughs at them and leaves, they usually strive to determine get out of city. The rule of those magic, musical cities is that you must discover a really happy ending earlier than you possibly can depart. Possibly the purpose is that they not solely have to determine their very own happy ending, however a happy ending for everybody in Schmicago.

It’s laborious to be happy

Sadly, they’re not notably happy campers themselves. Melissa causes that a good place to start out can be fixing the connection between Jenny (Dove Cameron) and her estranged father, Dooley Flint the butcher (Alan Cumming). That’s powerful, as a result of Jenny has grown to hate her dad over time. Otavius Kratt (Patrick Page), the native magnate, framed Flint for the homicide of his spouse, which Jenny believes.

Josh decides possibly the way in which to chill her tensions can be to introduce her to Topher the hippie (Aaron Tveit) and his band of continuously nude, free-spirited buddies. They do love a good parable, so Melissa and Josh ask him to inform a story about a daughter and her estranged father. They nitpick him to demise getting him there, although, so he abandons the concept and Josh should make one thing up on the spot.

He fumbles at first, however then music comes from nowhere and he begins singing, which makes all the things simpler. Their music, about reconnecting together with your dad, fails to stir a lot in Jenny however sympathy for Topher, who sat dejectedly by means of the entire music. She goes to consolation him they usually fall for one another.

OK, so if they will’t make that work, possibly they may give Dooley one thing else. Why not set him up with the crusty proprietor of the orphanage, Mrs. Coldwell (Kristin Chenoweth)? They take them to dinner (on a dinner date reminiscent of the one in The Fisher King), they usually get on fairly properly certainly. Mrs. Coldwell even invitations Dooley again to her condo, the place her gaggle of orphans make them cocktails. Then they stumble on a good concept: Kill the orphans and promote their meat.

Naturally, they focus on this in a musical quantity parodying “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd. This isn’t the happy ending Josh and Melissa had been hoping for, however they don’t know that but.

Discuss to Daddy

The Bob Fosse-fashion choreography in “Discuss to Daddy” is fairly impressively baroque and athletic. The dancing on Schmigadoon! is often appropriate, in fact, and final season it was fairly previous-original on function, so I’m having fun with the extra presentational fashion this season. I’m glad to have had the large robust begin to the episode’s musical numbers, as a result of the soppy love music Dove Cameron and Aaron Tveit sing subsequent is approach too uninteresting to be so long as it’s. (Plus, it doesn’t remind me sufficient of any actual musical quantity from the ’70s.)

Nonetheless, issues get well in the course of the date and subsequent Sweeney Todd quantity. The youngsters showing out of nowhere so Kristen Chenoweth can embrace their names within the music is fairly humorous. And Alan Cumming is at all times a pleasure to look at. He’s hampered considerably by taking part in somebody so outwardly depressing as Flint, nonetheless. Not as a result of he can’t do it, but it surely simply feels so flawed to not see Cumming smile extra.

Watching him popping out of his shell on this episode is simply fantastic stuff, humorous and compelling and odd due to his hair and apparel. The musical quantity continues after its preliminary Sweeney crib — switching to up-tempo jazz and together with faucet dancing and sight gags — which makes factor much more joyous. Two out of three ain’t dangerous.

I’m bummed these seasons os Schmigadoon! aren’t longer. I like spending time on this world, issues and all.

★★★☆☆

Watch Schmigadoon! on Apple TV+

New episodes of Schmigadoon! 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-operating video essay collection The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Assessment of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the writer of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 30 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which will be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.