Main cast: Kathryn Hahn (Agatha Harkness), Joe Locke (Teen), Sasheer Zamata (Jennifer Kale), Ali Ahn (Alice Wu-Gulliver), Debra Jo Rupp (Mrs Hart), Patti LuPone (Lilia Calderu), and Aubrey Plaza (Rio Vidal)
Director: Rachel Goldberg

One of the most annoying developments that plague the movie and music industries recently is this trend of dangling keychains in front of an ADHD audience, hoping to lure them from their cell phones into consuming these products. As we can see from how badly movies and shows are bombing recently, the so-called “modern audience” just will not be moved from their echo chambers in their favorite social media, so the most prominent result from this mess is shows and music that are designed to “go viral” in the form of 1-minute clips on social media. 

Hence, Agatha All Along is more about “wacky” scenes than a proper story. If I Can’t Reach You / Let My Song Teach You is the fourth episode of the season and so far, there are only two major developments: these idiots found and now are traveling the Road to have their magical wishes granted and Mrs Hart is dead. Yes, she’s dead, because the budget can only stretch so far among Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, and Kathryn Hahn. 

So, what happens in this episode? If you like the previous episode like Mr Mustard did, you’ll like this one, because it’s the same thing all over again:

• Idiot witches caterwaul, shriek, and generally exist just to be warm bodies that fill up the screen. Right now, there are way too many of them and too many of them don’t have anything useful to do aside from cranking out stale and stilted one-liners that are pure cringe.
• These idiots act like morons, unable to do anything without bickering like children. With Mrs Hart dead, they bumble around to conduct a ritual in order to summon a replacement for her… and that turns out to be Agatha’s favorite frenemy, Rio.
• There is another singing scene designed for going viral on social media… or so the people behind this show wish. Least-viewed Disney+ show to date, LOL. 

The biggest sin of this episode is that it wants to be wacky and campy but ends up flopping like a fish out of water. It is full of the brand of unfunny jokes that plague shows defecated out by DEI clowns these days.

Say what you will about Joss Whedon, but that fellow was actually very good at balancing humor and pathos when he was at his peak during the small screen days. The unfortunate fallout of the popularity of his brand of humor is that we have copycats that even to this day believe that all it takes to make that kind of humor is to just crank out jokes non-stop. Sadly, not everyone can be a standup comedian, and for every one that gets it, there are 99 that are just terrible at it, and this show is made by a number of those people that fall into the 99 camp.

As a result, “comedy” here is just grown women screaming and shrieking when Kathryn Hahn is not lurching around like a zombie or flicking her hair around like she is rushing from a Return of the Living Dead set to do a shampoo commercial, and throughout it all, poor Joe Locke’s character seems to be the only sane one of the cast of characters. Considering that he’s supposed to be a teenager, I can only give the so-called adult witch characters my side eye.

Again, I have to ask: who is the target audience of this show? It has a grown-up cast, but it is brimming with prepubescent humor that crosses into slapstick. This kind of humor can work had the cast gone all out with the camp, but they just stand there and make shrieking monkey noises at the top of their voice instead, sigh. This whole thing has the fingerprints of the grubby paws of people that can’t do comedy but are hired to do comedy anyway because they have the right body parts and colors and sleep with the right people.

Anyway, Agatha can run along now.