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Mythic Quest Season 1 Review

Mythic Quest is a comedy streaming series created by and starring Rob McElhenney for Apple TV+. The first season consisting of 9 episodes premiered in 2020.

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“You give the public a shovel, they dig dicks.

You give them a pen, they draw dicks.

You give them some clay…

Definitely gonna sculpt dicks“

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The show follows a fictional video game studio that produces a popular MMORPG called Mythic Quest. It is, thus, a standard workplace comedy, but with the gaming studio adding a fresh new perspective to this genre of comedy. The series explores the gaming industry very well. It may not be as in-depth as gamers would have liked, but still it is rich in themes, ranging from crunching to bug checking to adding new features to game streamers to doxing etc.

The show obviously uses gaming footage from already established franchises, such as ‘Assassin’s Creed’, but that wasn’t a hindrance to the series as that footage is usually very cool and quite funny. The series was developed by the ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ team, and although it’s far from the quality of that show, it’s still a perfectly good comedy in its own right. The pacing is all over the place and, as is usually the case with comedies, this first season only reached greatness at the very end of its cycle, but there is hope that the second season will be phenomenal.

The acting is fantastic across the board with the standouts being Rob himself, Charlotte Nicdao and the great F. Murray Abraham of course. Rob plays Ian. He is this very childish, insecure, but wildly successful, confident and actually talented creative director, thus making him different than Sunny’s Mac. He is hilarious as he always is and some of the best humor comes from his narcissistic behavior.

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David Hornsby pretty much plays Cricket from Sunny, though again in a much more professional and successful environment. He is always hilarious as this cuck beta man whom nobody takes seriously. You’d never think that he is an executive producer of the game how others treat him and that is what made it so funny. Abraham plays this head writer who was once a Nebula-winning SF author. He constantly spews Shakespearean lines of dialogue and his drive to create a narrative masterpiece led to many very amusing speeches.

Ashly Burch, famous for giving among others Aloy from ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ a voice, plays a lesbian game tester along with her friend Dana. The two share a sweet relationship, though they are far from funny. Brad played by Danny Pudi is this Dennis from Sunny-type character – a creepy dude who is money-hungry and always saying ridiculous, disturbing stuff. He needed more screen time in the first season, but he was consistently very funny.

Jo is fantastic and by far the funniest female character on the show. She gravitates toward power and dominance, making her constant shifts of allegiance hilariously chaotic. An agent of chaos she most surely is. As for Poppy Lee, she is a straight man for the show obviously, but she worked as basically the protagonist of the series. Her frustration with Ian and others produced a lot of entertaining moments and the eventual budding friendship that formed between the two was both wonderful and quite memorable. These two are the heart of a show that’s not afraid to go into dramatic and emotional territory when needed.

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Pilot is not great, though the whole shovel storyline was fun and solid. Pootie Shoe is introduced here and the show is very truthful to acknowledge the growing popularity of child streamers. The Casino is at its best when dealing with Brad’s money-hungry schemes and CW’s ‘Star Wars’ cluelessness. These two characters are both so good that the decision to feature them so sparsely throughout the season was an unfortunate one. Dinner Party is the best of the early episodes. The issue is hilarious and it was dealt with in a very reasonable manner.

The Convention is forgettable and more could have been done with the convention setting overall. As for The Dark Quiet Death, I don’t know how I feel about this one. This fifth episode features an entirely different story that was supposed to chronicle the video game life cycle from creation to the end of it. It worked in that area and the romance was actually quite moving, but the episode set in the nineties while not being connected in any way to the present time made it seem like a detour. Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti were great, though.

Non-Player Character starts a lot of the storylines that will resolve in the next couple of episodes, so it is important in that regard, though far from great in and of itself. But the final three episodes are all terrific and this is where the season reached its peak. Permadeath is hilarious in that in-game confrontation. The geeky nature of the episode made it a big winner.

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Brendan features a great twist about the identity of the child streamer. This is the deepest and most important episode for Ian and Poppy. Blood Ocean changes the dynamic between Poppy and Ian from boss and subordinate to creative co-directors. The episode is also important for tackling the unionizing issue and it did all of this while consistently being funny and hugely entertaining.