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Welcome back, everybody! Pretty light on plot this week, but we did get to see Jafar's backstory. Back in Agrabah, he was the Sultan's bastard son, sent to work for a cruel blacksmith in the marketplace as a child. Hellbent on revenge, young Jafar begs a powerful evil sorceress named Amara to teach him the ways of dark magic. And she does! She teaches him magic, and then she teaches him how to be a dick when she makes him choose between letting a friend die and learning a new spell (he chooses the spell). She also tells him all about the spell he's currently after, the one that can change the Laws of Magic. Apparently you need three genies to perform this spell, and we see that Jafar is keeping two additional genies on a shelf in his storage closet, literally just sitting open on a shelf, not even a bike lock or a zip tie securing those things. Don't come crying to me when those things end up missing and on Craigslist, Jafar.
Amara gets hers, though. Eventually Jafar grows tired of being part of a team, sucks up all her power, and turns her into his serpent staff. Bonus serpent staff backstory!
As for the Knave, Jafar demands that the Red Queen have him publicly executed so everyone in Wonderland will know the price of helping Alice. He also seems to know she has some affection for the Knave and is at least partly messing with her here. But after they capture him and the time comes to behead him (with all of Wonderland just positively psyched to watch an execution), Alice and her new girlfriend Lizard come to the rescue and literally catapult the Knave out of the Red Queen's castle.
But their victory is short-lived. Jafar and the Red Queen quickly catch up with them all in the hedge maze's life-sized chess board (metaphors!), and Jafar uses the Knave to get Alice to waste one of her wishes. She wishes that if the Knave dies, so will she. That seems like it would violate the "can't kill anybody" clause, doesn't it? Apparently it's a loophole. Annoyed, Jafar turns the Knave into stone and flies off, leaving the Red Queen to be all creepy with a statue of her boyfriend, Ariel-style.
No White Rabbit budget this week, but Jafar does have a new set of spies in the Red Queen's Aladdin Sane guards. They are nervous and fabulous.
Oh, and Cyrus has a chicken bone shank now. Watch out.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Agrabah… many years ago." We're back in the same marketplace where Jafar choked out that poor scarf vendor a couple weeks ago. This time, we meet a very hairy blacksmith (his back looks like Burt Reynolds' chest!) with a hot temper and a boy assistant he treats like crap. So, this is Jafar's backstory. The blacksmith beats the boy and starves him and tells him he should have left him in the gutter where he found him. If only Jafar had had a good childhood, we all could have been spared this entire show.
As baby Jafar cowers in fear of his blacksmith overlord, the people outside begin cowering in fear of a woman entering the marketplace. She is played by Zuleikha Robinson, one of the terrorists from Homeland Season 2 (speaking of shows I'd rather we were all spared from) and one of the new characters that didn't end up mattering very much from the final season of Lost. She works a lot, is what I'm saying.
Anyway, she saunters through the market as people flee in terror. Everyone turns away from her, but Jafar decides to make intense eye contact because he kind of has nothing to lose. The blacksmith warns him that she'll "burn us where we stand" if he keeps staring at her, but the woman decides she's not in a firestarting mood and moves on.
At nightfall, baby Jafar knocks on the woman's door just on the outside of town. She's very annoyed, but more in a "Why are you interrupting my stories?" kind of way than "I AM EVIL YOU WILL DIE"! Jafar wants her to teach him the arts of dark magic so he can get revenge on his deadbeat dad the Sultan. Jafar hates the Sultan "with the fire of a thousand suns." Big 10 Things I Hate About You fan, that Jafar. And so is she, apparently. With that, she decides to take him under her wing of evil.
Back in Wonderland, the Red Queen is enjoying some new jewels with her Aladdin Sane guards when Jafar shows up. They trade some passive aggressive barbs and when Jafar accuses her of keeping secrets from him, she plays dumb. Jafar makes some demands, blah, blah, blah. These Red Queen and Jafar scenes sure are tedious, aren't they? Bottom line is that Jafar wants the Knave dead because he's Jafar and he likes to make people dead. The Red Queen keeps her past with him a secret and silently frets over how to get out of this. Also, she pronounces "purpose" like "porpoise," which is fun for all of us, I think.
Back in the forest, the Knave is trying to talk Alice out of going after the Red Queen. She reasons that if she has Cyrus's bottle, she likely has Cyrus as well. Makes sense, but how is she going to single-handedly fight the entire Red Army? Alice doesn't really have a plan to address that as of yet, but before they can work one out, they realize they're being followed by some steampunk ninjas called "The Collectors." Spin-off, please! They are bounty hunters working for the Caterpillar, who is no doubt pissed about losing the Forget-Me-Knot last week. Alice and the Knave try running from them for a while, but that soon proves untenable. In a pretty impressive display of selflessness, the Knave decides to get their attention and run off on his own, thereby removing the threat from Alice. Shippers, clutch your pearls.
Speaking of Alice, she has now taken to talking to her Cyrus necklace when she's alone. I can almost see why so many people deemed her insane.
Cyrus's sex cage. His portly guard is gorging on booze and rotisserie chicken while Cyrus and his Count of Monte Cristo buddy look on, famished. Cyrus begs the guard for table scraps, and the guard (who is just slaying his role as drunken oaf, I must say) throws him some sweet, sweet chicken carcass and bounces. Apparently he doesn't have to watch them all the time -- budget cuts in Wonderland government and all that. Cyrus's imprisoned friend harshes his meat buzz by pointing out that begging for garbage is kind of a bad look, but Cyrus was actually tricking the guard; he just wanted the wishbone from the chicken. He has great plans for this wishbone. His friend laughs at him and passes out, which is what happens to me several times per episode so I'm feeling great kinship with that guy.
Knave on the run in the forest, the Collectors hot on his heels. He takes shelter behind a tree stump when suddenly he hears someone kicking the collective asses of the Collectors. He peers at the scene and sees them all lying in a lump, out cold. He assumes Alice did the ass-kicking, a decent guess considering the way she handled her asylum guards in the pilot. But no, it was the Red Queen, here to dig up old emotional wounds and drag him back to her dungeon.
Agrabah flashback, Jafar is now grown-up and Naveen Andrews-aged. He's enjoying a laugh with a friend on the wizard woman's patio about how stupid Jafar's goat is. Jafar gives his friend a fanny pack filled with wine and he is nearly moved to tears. Inside, the woman is teasing Jafar with a spell book she won't let him play with yet. She also hasn't aged in all this time because she's mega magic. She tells Jafar that she is willing to teach him a "masking spell," which he's been begging her to teach him forever. All he has to do is let his friend die from the poisoned wine she tricked both of them with so they can use his liver as a spell ingredient. See, this is why you don't drink wine out of fanny packs. Jafar is conflicted about this for a split second, but c'mon… he's Jafar. He lets that fucker die and gets his spell on! But first, he and lady wizard have we-just-killed-a-guy sex. Oh my.
In the present, Jafar is reviewing some spells in his storage cave when one of the Aladdin Sane guards pops up on a magic mirror with a message: The Red Queen has acquired the Knave, and also please don't kill me -- oh god, I am so nervous. So, those guys are working for Jafar now. The poor Red Queen. If you can't even trust your gay Aladdin Sane pedicurists who can you trust?
The Red Queen has thrown the Knave into a dungeon overlooking what appears to be a mini-Death Star. Synergy! She fishes for crazy ex-girlfriend intel by calling Alice his girlfriend, an error he quickly corrects, much to her satisfaction. But then he angrily calls her Anastasia and she storms off, threatening to keep him in the dungeon forever.
Alice draws her sword and prepares to entire Underland when a plucky lady with an Ellen Page vibe stops her, saying the Knave isn't in there. She is a Collector, and if he were in Underland, she'd be in there collecting her reward. So much collecting! Alice lowers her sword and the girl tells her the Red Queen got him. Her name is Elizabeth ("Lizard"), and she's going with Alice to the Red Queen's castle -- the Knave owes her, and dead men can't pay debts. Hey, new friend!
In her chess piece castle, the Red Queen is playing chess inside of a chess-themed room. They really need you to get this chess metaphor through your thick, stupid heads, audience. God! Why do you need to be beaten repeatedly with this in order for it to stick? It's your own fault, really. Jafar shows up and congratulates her on catching the Knave, though he's very displeased that she hasn't killed him yet. Jafar wants a public execution so everyone can see the price of helping Alice. He seems to know she has a past with him and is testing her the way sexy wizard tested him. Oh no, Jafar. Break the cycle!
Agrabah again, Jafar and lady wizard enjoying a romantic candlelit scheming session. She's teaching him all about how genies can be yielded to change the Laws of Magic, the tip he's on today. Snag is you need three genies to perform the spell, and two wizards, so I guess that explains why Jafar continues to find the Red Queen useful in the absence of this lady. In the present, we see that Jafar has two genie lamps in his storage cave and another red velvet pedestal all set up and waiting for a third, even though they already have Cyrus's bottle. No offense, but this show thinks you're kinda stupid.
Cyrus's sex cage. He's admiring half of his broken wishbone, when another, more UFC-esque guard notices and demands to see his hands. Cyrus quickly tucks the wishbone between two fingers and comes up with clean hands. The guard acts satisfied, but then he marches over to the crank holding Cyrus's cage up and drops it several feet, knocking the now quite sharpened shank onto the guard's platform. The guard promptly chucks it into the abyss, but since Cyrus somehow knows everything that's going to happen before it ever does, he has planned this entire thing.
Alice and Lizard are back on Myst lane, on their way to the Red Queen's palace. This show just has no shame about that thing. Along the way, Lizard exposits that she and the Knave used to run together as thieves, but don't get the wrong idea -- no funny business. They were just co-thieves. Also, he was too destroyed by Anastasia to be dating material anyway. Oh, was the Knave hurt by a woman named Anastasia? I HADN'T HEARD!
The Red Queen returns to the Knave's cage for a goodwill visit. She's enlisted the White Rabbit to come and take the Knave far away from Wonderland. She makes it pretty clear that if he refuses her help he'll be killed, and she seems quite passionate about keeping him alive. He refuses, saying he doesn't want her help and besides, she'd never have the guts to kill him anyway. Well, which is it, Knave? Then he dares her to kill him. Honestly, I can't imagine being in a productive relationship with either of them.
Alice and Lizard pass a very excited townie, who is all abuzz about a public hangin' going down. And the Red Queen's office has already made and distributed promotional posters for it and everything! Wonderland really has its act together when it wants to.
The crowd's assembled in front of a raised stage in the Red Queen's courtyard, watching an amazing execution demo. The executioner is hacking up watermelons, which then roll down a chute attached to a catapult that flings the watermelon bits over the wall of the castle. So when the Knave is beheaded, his severed head will soar across the sky! It's kind of a fantastic way to die, honestly.
Alice and Lizard watch all of this from the crowd and come up with a plan just as the Red Queen and Jafar appear to officiate the beheading. Jafar teases the Queen a little, all "anything wrong?" just to see if some pushing will make her expose herself as a Knave sympathizer. Just then, an Aladdin Sane guard runs up to (very nervously) notify them that he spotted Alice in the crowd. Instead of having her seized and imprisoned like a smart person would, Jafar just wants to let her go and see what she'll come up with.
Flashback to Jafar hassling a bartender in a whorehouse. The bartender has a genie and one more wish to make. Jafar decides to force him to make his wish by stabbing his hands a lot. This works pretty well. The guy just wishes Jafar can't do him any harm, and his genie is immediately lost. Lady wizard then comes in to swirl him up in a mysterious black cloud. Smoke Monster and Sayid reunion!
Execution time. The Knave is brought out and positioned on the chopping block while the crowd is all awful old timey execution audience about it. He still seems pretty confident that Anastasia will save him, which is unfortunate, because she lets the executioner swing his axe without objection. Good news is the executioner is Alice, and she uses the axe to cut him loose before beating the hell out of the remaining guards. Feeling stupid yet, Jafar? She and the Knave hop into the catapult and launch themselves to freedom within seconds, exactly like that scene in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which I guess was a deliberate reference? Do people remember that movie as well as I do, though? It came out when I was seven and had no taste yet, so I watched it two to three times per day for several years. That probably isn't normal.
Alice, the Knave and Lizard run through the hedge maze we've seen so many times, the Red Army in hot pursuit. They run into a chess piece motif section (CHESS!!!) but are stopped by Jafar flying in on his magic carpet. Question: Is the CGI getting worse on this show? I actually think they're just using Myst screenshots as background images now. It's not even a joke anymore!
The Red Queen and her guards block their exit at the other end of the chess board, and they are surrounded. Lizard draws her sword to fight, but Jafar uses his magic to take it out of her hand and fling her across the board. Have a nice nap, Lizard. Jafar introduces himself to Alice, but she's like ohhhh, I know all about your crazy ass, Jafar. Jafar's like, great, so we can just skip ahead to me choking the Knave so you'll use up your wishes, 'kay? Mid-choke, the Knave looks over to the Red Queen and pleads "Anastasia!" at her, so Alice knows that secret now too. Her idea of helping is barking at Alice to use her bloody wishes already.
Alice decides to wish that if the Knave dies, she dies too. That's a funny call to make -- and Cyrus isn't very happy about it, based on the cut to his reaction in his cage -- but it does work for the time being. Jafar releases his grip on the Knave and gets to work on that second wish by raising Alice into the air and slowly drawing and quartering her, hoping she'll use a wish to save her limbs. Alice hangs tough and Jafar gives up, which seems unlike him. At least rip a foot off to see what would happen, right? Before he leaves, however, Jafar does his own black smoke trick around the Knave, turning him into stone. So that's what that does. It sure seems terrible. The Red Queen stands idly by during all this because she's an asshole and when Jafar leaves, Alice punches her in the face! That was great, Alice! More of that, less of you talking to your jewelry, please.
As the Red Queen starts to leave in a huff, Alice asks her if she's sure she doesn't want to put her in prison and torture her because Alice is the kid in class who reminds the teacher they forgot to assign homework. The Red Queen just kind of snorts at her all, uhh, you are in prison? What do you think Wonderland is?
Jafar pays Cyrus a visit to gloat about his victory over Alice and Cyrus's sad future as Jafar's wish slave. What a dick.
Flashback to Jafar and lady wizard enjoying some wine in bed. He's heard a rumor there's a third genie in Agrabah! Which is great, because they've traveled so far to get the other two and are tired of paying foreign transaction fees every time they leave the country. Lady wizard starts to feel a little strange because, oh yes, Jafar has given her poison fanny pack wine! This time, it's poisoned with a potion to steal her magical essence. She feels very betrayed, because she thought they had love. Also, he can't even perform the spell on his own, so why bother? He says he can if he absorbs her power, so shut up and die already. He waves his hands at her and turns her into a snake, which he then turns into his serpent staff. So we got two origin stories this week!
Back in Cyrus's cage he is telling a very long story about how the story of wishbones granting wishes is a myth, which, duh. What wishbones "really want," according to Cyrus, is to be with their other half. He presses his half to the floor of his cage, and the half lost in the abyss flies up to the bottom of his cage, forming a kind of power saw with the other half. He is making a hole in his cage, which seems like kind of a bad idea considering it's floating hundreds of feet in the air. You need a floor in this situation!
week: Cyrus escapes! Alice talks to her necklace some more! Then she teams up with the Red Queen to find Cyrus! Then Alice falls off a cliff! Action-packed!
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