Galavant Series Premiere Review: Seek Ye the Silly Grail?

Galavant S01E01 & S01E02: "Pilot" & "Joust Friends"

Galavant is a welcome extension of the holidays, an unapologetic hour of joyful escapism that cries "F-ck the headlines and f-ck your credit card bills, let's have a good laugh and be silly!" From Dan Fogelman, the guy responsible for Tangled and The Neighbors, Galavant's plot trods the well-worn path of a Classic Hero's Journey à la Joseph Campbell, but its dialogue is blunt, modern, and surprisingly self-aware, like a medieval version of the American Office... set to music! Yes, there's a sort of broad, old-school bawdiness to the humor—think Once Upon a Mattress meets Robin Hood: Men in Tights—but whomever did the final pass at the script threw in enough genuinely surprising, unexpected quips to give Galavant an air of unique freshness.

We began with Galavant as the greatest hero in the land, but then his true love Madalena was stolen by Evil King Richard. When Galavant showed up to rescue her before she could be forced to wed the guy, she told him no worries; she'd decided to just go ahead and marry the baddie so she could be a rich, royal mean lady.

Heartbroken, Galavant embarked on an epic bender, until Princess Isabella arrived with a jewel and a quest: Evil King Richard had conquered her Kingdom of Valencia. Her parents' lives were in the king's hands, and she needed Galavant to help her overthrow him. What Galavant didn't know was that Evil King Richard had been unable to secure Madalena's love and consequently longed to battle and slay Galavant right before her eyes—so he'd sent Isabella to retrieve Galavant specifically for that purpose.

The series' second half-hour was the first step in the journey of Isabella, Galavant, and Galavant's squire Sid on the way to Valencia: a detour at a joust to pick up some quick cash. Isabella trained an out-of-shape Galavant in a boisterous montage that ended with him showing up at the tournament too sore to actually move. The workout seen in the montage had been too much, too fast, for Galavant's muscles, but luckily he was competing with a knight who'd been drugged into a stupor: one Sir Jean Hamm, played by a pitch-perfect John Stamos. Their joust climaxed with a thrilling competition to see who could stand up first after they both slid off their horses. (The mounts then wandered away.)

This real-world consequence of a common storytelling device is actually a perfect example of the sensibility guiding Galavant: The story exists in the amplified world of an animated Disney movie until it gets the chance to pull the rug out from under the audience's expectations, in a way that reveals just how charmingly human and relatable the characters are. I actually laughed several times—like, out loud and everything—and I have to offer a big tip of the "You did it!" hat to the fact that Galavant's castles and fairy-tale sets seem 100 percent practical. No green screens up in this bitch, thank goodness.

If you put a gun to my head and demanded one reason to watch Galavant (which, really, what is your problem, chill out) I'd have to answer Timothy Omundson, who plays Evil King Richard. The way the silliness of his character is heightened by the manliness of his physical presence brings to mind Jon Cleese in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

One of the more abstract questions I had going into Galavant was, "What exactly are we spoofing here?" The success of fairy-tale spoofs is sort of contingent on taking the air out of self-serious epic period movies. But while we can't claim the 1990s' resurgence of humorless costume epics like Kevin Costner's Robin Hood that made Robin Hood: Men in Tights so necessary, the success of Game of Thrones has certainly brought tunics and Spandex back into the zeitgeist; Galavant even alluded to Game of Thrones with a signpost marking the way to Winterfell. So far there's no hint of the grittiness, bloodiness, or brutality to suggest a full-on Game of Thrones spoof , but I've got my fingers crossed for more direct references.

Bottom line: If you are one of those fans who can recite the entire "The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle" bit from Danny Kaye's The Court Jester, or if you break up laughing every time Prince Herbert doesn't get to burst into song during Monty Python and the Holy Grail, this show is a love letter to your sensibilities. Get multiple generations of your family together, warn your grandma it's gonna get a little spicy, and enjoy.

QUESTIONS:

... Did you watch Galavant? Did you like it/love it/ "not your thing" it?

... TV comedy musicals: bold choice or bad choice?

... What exactly are we spoofing when we spoof fairy tales? The period/fantasy films of the moment, or the medieval simulacra we absorb as children?

... Where is the pellet with the poison? How about the brew that is true?