Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! finds love in all of the improper locations this week. Melissa goes from no one to any individual, and Josh finds his calling as a religious chief, which is the very last thing they want proper now.
Of their quest to make issues proper in Schmicago, they tangle issues up worse than ever — they usually clearly don’t have a clear exit technique. The episode, entitled “Well-known as Hell,” is a rousing chapter of the Schmigadoon! saga.
Schmigadoon! recap: ‘Well-known as Hell’
Season 2, episode 3: Ever since Josh (performed by Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Sturdy) had the good concept to arrange vindictive butcher Dooley Flint (Alan Cumming) and foul-tempered orphanage keeper Mrs. Coldwell (Kristin Chenoweth), the odd couple has grown much more disturbed.
Their good concept is to kill Mrs. Coldwell’s orphans and promote their meat at Flint’s butcher store. The large hitch is that the orphans received’t eat all of the meals she buys for them to fatten them up.
In the meantime, by by chance establishing hippie Topher (Aaron Tveit) with quick refrain lady Jenny Banks (Dove Cameron), they’ve created a spot within the Kratt Membership lineup. Membership proprietor and native tyrant Otavius Kratt (Patrick Web page) has taken a shine to Melissa, nonetheless. And since Jenny isn’t round to do her solo quantity, Kratt insists that Melissa do it. She’s nervous, however she agrees, and naturally, she does a powerful job. (That’s true narratively, however Cecily Sturdy additionally does a very terrific job with the track.)
Kratt’s applause is a bit more than barely ominous.
So many wayward hippies …
As Melissa repairs to her dressing room, Josh goes for a stroll and Topher’s hippies begin following him. Ever since Topher began hooking up with Jenny, he doesn’t have time to gad about together with his previous band of buddies.
Josh notices one among them has a wound on her foot, and fixes it. (He’s a health care provider, keep in mind?) The hippies deal with it like a miracle and demand that Josh turn out to be their new chief. He doesn’t wish to do it, however provides in after a lot cajoling. As he falls deeper in with the hippies, and Melissa grows extra fashionable on the membership, it’s solely changing into tougher to go away Schmicago.
Topher and Jenny lastly confront Josh and Melissa for stealing their cult following and their job/viewers respectively. They kick them out of Jenny’s house, so they have to stick with Mrs. Coldwell.
Let’s get to the meat of the matter
Once they arrive, they discover one thing is off along with her and Dooley instantly. Mrs. Coldwell appears to be nicer to the orphans than earlier than, however her angle nonetheless suggests hatred. And what’s with Dooley’s enormous new meat grinder?
It takes them no time in any respect to divine Coldwell and Dooley’s mad plan to kill and butcher the orphans. Josh and Melissa attempt to cause with the pair. Josh figures out that Dooley badly needs to kill Kratt however can’t do it, so he’s taking out his blood lust on the orphans. What in the event that they lastly received Dooley the possibility to get his revenge on Kratt for having framed him for homicide and ruined his relationship together with his daughter, Jenny?
That night time on the membership, Melissa tries to seduce Kratt and get him to observe her to a secluded spot so Dooley can kill him. Smelling a repair, he absconds along with her whereas Kratt’s nephew, Sgt. Rivera (Jaime Camil), arrests Josh. If Melissa needs to see Josh alive once more, she’ll should consent to marry Kratt.
Give it up for the narrator!
Picture: Apple TV+
First, a phrase of reward for Titus Burgess’ flip because the Schmigadoon! narrator. He delivered a constantly nice efficiency all season, however he sings this week’s first act break track so magnificently it’s price mentioning what an indispensable a part of the ensemble he’s.
I used to be form of hoping we’d get extra Ariana DeBose this season (she actually solely had one quantity, then vanished), however Burgess’ continued pleasant presence is greater than a good comfort prize.
Cecily Sturdy delivers a showstopper
Cecily Sturdy additionally had an awesome exhibiting this week, nailing her huge torch track but additionally doing nice work in her larger comedic moments. I appreciated her not with the ability to take their snooping round within the butcher store significantly.
“I really feel like I needs to be on the duvet of a Nancy Drew guide,” she says.
Her pretending to behave like Jenny to seduce Kratt was additionally nice, from the lack to sit down in a slinky, horny method to her throwing in random bouts of laughter to challenge what a pleasant time she was having. Sturdy is all the time charming on this present however I like once they let her step exterior of her normal comedic territory.
Schmigadoon! isn’t a full-on comedy for all of its runtime (there’s gotta be songs with coronary heart and that means, which may’t be humorous), so Sturdy isn’t all the time allowed to play to her strengths as a comic (though she shines in these different departments as effectively). Her star flip this week made this episode a really good shock.
★★★☆☆
Watch Schmigadoon! on Apple TV+
New episodes of Schmigadoon! season two arrive each Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-14
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay sequence The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Overview of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the writer of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 30 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which may be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
