SPOILERS: Your thoughts on Dr. Mordrid?

[Mordrid pulls a quarter out from behind one of the apocalypse warrior’s ears]

Mordrid: “Check. Mate.”

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I would watch a TV show about a cheap stage magician who tries and fails to convince everyone he has real powers who helps a cop solve crimes.

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That does sound like a good show. I can think of a few that have tangentially similar premises, even though none quite fits the bill:

1.Psych - a guy pretends to be a psychic police consultant, but is actually just uncannily observant and quick-thinking. So the whole thing is a con, but it works. He does convince most people that he’s psychic, and he does help the cops solve crimes.

  1. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Two books by Douglas Adams which inspired two very different but both excellent short-lived TV shows. Dirk loudly proclaimed that he has no idea where these rumors about him being psychic came from, until people started actually spreading and believing such rumors. But it turns out that everything in the universe really is interconnected and there really is no such thing as coincidence, and his highly unorthodox and seemingly illogical methods actually do work.

  2. Defenders of the Earth, an 80s cartoon featuring a team-up of golden age comic strip superheroes: The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and Mandrake the Magician, along with Mandrake’s assistant Lothar and the heros’ teenage kids. Mandrake is a stage magician (based on a real life stage magician who went by Mandrake and then legally changed his name to Mandrake when the comic strip character became more popular than his stage act). He uses a form of rapid mass hypnosis (which also apparently works on robots and aliens) to cast illusions. Sometimes, he seems to have other, more magical abilities, but it’s very inconsistent. Comic strip Mandrake made a living as a stage magician, but would also go out and fight crime. In the cartoon, the heroes have to fight off Flash Gordon’s nemesis Ming the Merciless, who is attempting to spearhead an alien invasion of Earth.

  3. There’s also Zatanna, a member of DC Comics Justice League. She’s appeared in Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, and Young Justice. Possibly a few others? (One of these days, I want to see a live action version portrayed by Misty Lee, first female inductee into the Magic Castle club for successful stage magicians. She’s married to comic book and Batman: TAS series writer Paul Dini, and has served as a model for drawing Zatanna.) Like her father, Zatarra, Zatanna is a stage magician who knows real magic. However, she never uses real magic in her act. She wants to give the audience authentic stage magic.

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Yeah, I’m thinking Psych except no one buys it.

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And he has to be a really mediocre magician. Like he tries to convince people he has mystical powers by pulling a line of silk scarves out of his sleeve.

But he’s really good at solving murders.

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And his stage name is Mediocre the Magnificent!

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And then you have The Mentalist, which gave Psych great glee to tear it apart for being sorta kinda somewhat derivative of its formula.

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I’ve always liked iZombie, where she’s convinced the cops she’s a psychic but she’s actually a zombie and seeing memories from all the brains she eats in the morgue.

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When he asks Sam to get his amulet he refers to his mortal form and says he can be killed in “this state.” Whether that means “without my amulet” or “in this body I inhabit while on Earth” I’m not sure. The latter would make more sense to me but he didn’t seem worried until he lost the amulet. Maybe it’s a combo? He’s normally immortal but had to take a mortal form on Earth BUT that form is effectively immortal with the proper fashion accessory?

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“Magician great at crime solving” reminds me of the BBC TV series Jonathan Creek. (A designer of illusions for a stage magician uses this talent to solve “impossible” or “seemingly supernatural” crimes and murders.) Stars Alan Davies.

As for Mordrid’s mortality, I took it to mean he was vulnerable without the amulet. My guess is that the amulet connects him to the magic which both protects him and allows him to travel inter-dimensionally or whatever.

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Yeah, it’s probably that. It’s just the “in this state” immediately following “my mortal form” makes me want to attribute more to the statement. But it’s probably just a bit of clunky writing that sounded cooler than it did sensible.

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Maybe New York has some weird wizard hunting laws.

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Watching the episode now (I know, I’m super-late, but I’ve been busy). Hey, a Plan 9 reference!

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The Gilbert and Sulli-phone is the worthy successor to the Public Domain Karaoke Machine.

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And much more portable for your convenience!

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I just realized on re-watch how much Irene (Julie Michaels) looks like Linda Ronstadt. (Or is it just me?) Hearing Ronstadt lyrics blaring out when she’s on screen would have been cool, particularly with the already-established Gilbert and Sullivan connection.

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Or the Andrew Lloyd Weber Grill.

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They also seem to skip a whole scene where the Excessively Italian New York Police Detective meets up with Mordrid at his place, and then decides to arrest him on suspicion of bein’ a kooky nutso (Tom’s later riff, “Boy, I just love trumped-up charges!” is [chefkiss]) – Sam just runs into them at the station and the detective describes what happened. Maybe it’s just me, but it really feels like either the filmmakers ran out of budget/time and had to “tell, don’t show” or the MST3K crew decided to cut it out for time.

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That bit reminded me of the “Intervention!” episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the Gang (predictably) gets drunk and never really understood what an intervention was in the first place, but decides it’s something you shout to interrupt people and belittle them in hopes of changing their behavior:

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I think this one was my favorite of the new batch so far, we get off to a great start with Crow remarking over a shot of the statue of Christ the Redeemer ,“For God so loved the world, thiiiis much!” And then Tom scores with “Is this Mordrid’s Zillow video?” over the extremely long pans over the wizardly set design. Emily did a great job with the runner about Sam’s broken garbage disposal and her general ersatz Andie MacDowell vibe. Kelsey and Yvonne clowning around with the “shimmy hypnotize!” sketch was also great fun – puppets getting angry at each other will never not bring a smile to my face.

And I haven’t clocked a “miss” yet with these new episodes, but so far this is the first one that I’ve been compelled to watch again with captions on, so I can catch all the jokes I missed during the live premiere. I’ll get to the others eventually, I’m sure, but this one grabbed me right away. Great job all!

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