{"id":6891,"date":"2018-07-03T13:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T20:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6891"},"modified":"2018-06-26T13:14:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T20:14:40","slug":"mark-watches-galavant-s01e05-completely-mad-alena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2018\/07\/mark-watches-galavant-s01e05-completely-mad-alena\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Galavant&#8217;: S01E05 &#8211; Completely Mad&#8230;Alena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the fifth episode of the first season of <i>Galavant<\/i>, I DID NOT EXPECT THIS\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 even though I said I knew something horrible was going to happen??? JUST NOT LIKE THIS. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch <i>Galavant<\/i>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>HOLY SHIT, <i>what<\/i>???<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Before I talk about what Madalena has done (EVERYTHING, SHE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S DONE EVERYTHING), I wanted to address how the <i>other<\/i> plot leads perfectly to that twist. I wrote in the last review how this felt inevitable. I suppose I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not wrong, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also not <i>right<\/i>, per se. Galavant was barreling to his disastrous future, but here, Isabella pumps the breaks and <i>tries<\/i> to stop the inevitable from happening. To her credit, she <i>did<\/i> confess the truth in its entirety to Galavant at the end of the previous episode, but he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t paying attention because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what he does. So, the direct route didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work. How about a passive-aggressive, guilt-fueled attempt to get Galavant to believe what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about to do is a bad idea?<\/p>\n<p>Because <i>lord<\/i>, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of guilt on display here. And who can blame Isabella for feeling this way? Up until this point, reaching Valencia was just an idea, but now they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made it! The reality of Isabella\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s choice is real, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening, so she funnels Galavant to a monastery, both to distract him AND to consult one of the monks about what she should do. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t freak out about one of the monks being WEIRD AL YANKOVIC, which was a beautiful cameo. I also love that the show wrote his song so that it <i>sounded<\/i> like something he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d do. (It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible he wrote his own piece; I would totally believe that!) The monks are ridiculous and mostly exist for the show to stage a musical number that is both harmonious and deliberately annoying, which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is kind of Weird Al\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whole thing? Again, brilliant. Brilliant!<\/p>\n<p>But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Isabella\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guilt that is center stage here. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that she has feelings for Galavant, that she is intensely regretting what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done, and that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aware that he is an unstoppable force. She was <i>too <\/i>good at manipulating him, <i>too<\/i> skilled at getting him to believe in himself, and <i>too<\/i> talented as she trained him back into who he used to be. How can she take that away from him? How can she ask him to <i>stop<\/i> being himself?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Look, she tries. She fails, but she <i>tries<\/i> to stop this whole thing! Once it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s set in motion, though, another variable makes it impossible to stop. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I fully did not expect <i>Madalena<\/i> to be the one to take control of the situation. I suppose I should have, given how impatient she had become with King Richard. That opening song of hers, aside from being a hell of a lot of fun, was the foreshadowing I needed. She was ready to take charge, to stop waiting for all the incompetent people around her to help her out. Why wait when you can do shit yourself? So she sets out to discover why her husband is throwing a secretive celebration, and y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, it snowballs. Badly. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still reeling by how Madalena manipulated the Chef AND her handmaiden AND how the episode itself manipulated me??? SHE TRICKED THE CHEF INTO MAKING HER AN EXQUISITE MEAL SO THAT SHE COULD MAKE IT SEEM LIKE SHE HAD IT PREPARED FOR GALAVANT.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Even worse, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m now plainly aware of how vulnerable he is. She knows that, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she? He JUST found out Isabella betrayed him, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desperate for confirmation that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s food in the world. Gods, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gonna play him again, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she??? Except I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who she wrote to. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what sort of chaos she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about to bring to Valencia. This twist is the first real moment in the series that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made me invested in the arc of the season, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve enjoyed the show so far, but this has me aching for the next episode. What has Madalena done? HOW WILL RICHARD REACT NOW THAT HE KNOWS HE HAS BEEN PLAYED AS WELL??? Oh god, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hooked, HERE WE GO.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Completely Mad\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Alena\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded <a href=\"https:\/\/markdoesstuff.com\/products\/mark-watches-galavant\">here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the fifth episode of the first season of Galavant, I DID NOT EXPECT THIS\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 even though I said I knew something horrible was going to happen??? JUST NOT LIKE THIS. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Galavant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[686],"tags":[687],"class_list":["post-6891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-galavant","tag-mark-watches-galavant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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