Episode Report Card Mindy Monez: C | 24 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Daddy Issues
By Mindy Monez | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 12.05.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Jafar brings Alice's father back to Wonderland and attempts to impersonate him, which works on Alice for a little while. But when he doesn't say grace over a charred dragon dinner (long story), Alice knows her "father" is an imposter and ditches him. This leaves Jafar with the choice he should have gone with in the first place -- trotting her real father out in front of Alice, threatening him with death and forcing Alice to make one of her wishes. Her father, facing certain death, breaks down and apologizes for how awful he's been to her all her life and tells her he doesn't even deserve her forgiveness anyway, so please don't waste a wish on him. Obviously, this makes her want to waste on wish on him more than ever and so she does. Two down.
In flashbacks, we see even more daddy issues from Jafar. After watching his mother die as a child, he goes to his father the Sultan for refuge, but is turned down. The Sultan tells him he can't be his son because he already has one (one child policy in Agrabah, apparently), but hey, there's a servant job open! Young Jafar takes the gig, but after he speaks out of turn while serving a fancy meeting, Jafar's tiny son hilariously slaps him with his tiny 'lil baby hands a bunch of times and it's all very humiliating for Jafar. Then, less hilariously, the Sultan drowns young Jafar and has his body thrown in the garbage. Magic keeps Jafar alive and he later returns as a grown man with a serpent staff to bring doom to the palace. When he faces the Sultan we see that he is -- as we all suspected -- the man in Cyrus's neighboring cage. Jafar threatens his life and demands that he acknowledge him as his son, but the Sultan refuses and promises that he will never get that from him. It's unclear whether his refusal at that point is still a snooty classist thing or a Jafar-is-a-dick thing, but anyway, that's all out in the open now. This show thinks that was a HUGE reveal, by the way. They have no idea what they're doing.
Cyrus spends the episode passed out on a beach, but he wakes up at the end. Nice nap, Cyrus? You wanna maybe get off your ass and do something on this show before it's cancelled?
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Agrabah… many years ago" again. Young Jafar is at his mother's death bed, and things look grim. She has been a healer all her life, but sorry, Jafar, it is just her time now. Really? Because she looks about 36. Young Jafar wonders what he's supposed to do now that he's about to be an orphan, and she tells him he's actually in spectacular luck! His absent father is the Sultan, and she has an industrial-looking ring of his to prove it. She gives the ring to Jafar and dies, her spirit leaking out of her as a magical golden mist, which is a pretty dazzling way to die. Jafar cries. RIP Jafar's mom, Episode 107, Minute 1 to Episode 107, Minute 2.
In fictional Victorian England, Jafar is still wearing the Sultan's ring as he plays his con with Alice's father. Posing as a doctor from Bethlem, he tells the tales of Alice's arrival at the asylum, and how he could just tell by looking at her that she came from a loving home. First red flag right there, Alice's dad. He asks Jafar if he knows where Alice has gone, and Jafar decides to do a little show and tell with the White Rabbit, which means someone has pulled him out of a sack yet again, so: Drink! Alice's father is decidedly freaked out, but when Jafar tells him to come with him through a magical purple portal conjured by a cartoon rabbit, he's totally down. The White Rabbit does his thing, and they all jump through to Wonderland. So handy how those portals just KNOW exactly where and when you'd like to go, isn't it? Such intuitive design!
The trio land in Wonderland on Myst lane, where Jafar promptly dismisses the White Rabbit because money for a full episode of a CGI rabbit doesn't grow on cartoon trees. Alice's father looks around and thinks he must be hallucinating, which, yeah, buddy. Welcome to the experience of watching this show. Jafar assures him that it's all real, and very dangerous for a young girl to boot, so they must be off to find Alice. Alice's dad is like yeah, about that? I've always been a pretty shitty father, actually. I'm not sure she'll be psyched to see me. Owning it! As he talks, Jafar takes note of a few of his mannerisms for some caper antics down the line. Oh, and by the way, you can see floating islands in the distance over each of their shoulders, because this show is very into those things all of a sudden.
Alice and the Knave are on the Cyrus hunt. Alice is very confident about the ease of this journey to the floating island, until they walk about five steps further and come to a clearing where she can see how high up it is from the ground. "Oh my," she says. I really wish these characters could swear sometimes.