Mythic Quest kicks off season 3 by dutifully getting the band back together

Since the start, Mythic Quest has defined itself as a workplace comedy that emphasizes the work. Rob McElhenney, no stranger to the deconstructed sitcom, understands the irony of passionate people using dispassionate machines to create something that can generate passion in users. And video games certainly generate passion. This juxtaposition is a fundamental philosophy of the company that produces McElhenney’s show, Apple. As the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs put it, “Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”

The show indeed sang in its fine-tuned second season, namely with C.W. Longbottom, played by a game F. Murray Abraham and, for one flashback episode, Silicon Valley’s Joshua Max Brener. Exemplifying Jobs’ point, the show focused on how this failed writer became the perfect vessel for video game plotting. C.W. needed to find the right vehicle for his ever-expanding ideas, and since video games require expansion (in a way books rarely do), his vision provided the missing piece to the game’s code. Not everyone learned the lesson, though. In Mythic Quest’s season-three premiere, “Across The Universe,” everyone’s supposedly reformed and “better off without” each other. Purposely or not, the connection Jobs described is sorely lacking here, making for an airless episode that feels more like a prologue than a season premiere.

GRADE FOR SEASON 3, EPISODE 2, “PARTNERS”: B

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At the line-less GrimPop office, and on the heels of a $25 million pitch meeting, Ian (McElhenney) navigates and possibly builds a subsection of the metaverse as Poppy (Charlotte Nicado) stress chugs green soda. Poppy puts her foot down when the email comes in, insisting they take no less than their asking price, and Ian agrees. Unfortunately, they’re offered $50 million. Gut checks have a strong presence in the episode, and Ian has a multi-million dollar one, suggesting they decline the offer. Poppy reminds Ian that she’s in charge of GrimPop. It’s her game, so he leaves the final decision in her diarrhetic gut.

Poppy can trust herself to make a great game but lacks confidence on the business end. She just can’t sell the thing without Ian. Meanwhile, her partner follows his instincts, assuming he’ll be able to handle any hurdle that comes his way because getting it right 51% of the time is a good gut. Before Poppy can trust Ian’s gut, she must trust her own.

Do you know who doesn’t need a gut check? David (the underrated David Hornsby). The lanky former GM of “MQ” is TCB 24/7. So when the head of diversity and inclusion, Carol (Naomi Ekperigin), comes to him with a professional existential crisis, David teaches her the “Hokey Pokey”: the endless jostling of meetings, power pacing around the office, and the general “don’t hassle me” demeanor that says “I’m busy.” David’s lack of ambition stifles his underlings, forcing Jo (Jessie Ennis) to waste her time organizing C.W.’s welcome home party and Carol into a career spiral. But, like Poppy, Carol aspires to something greataer, so she makes a gut decision: She rehires David’s nemesis, Brad (Danny Pudi), as the company janitor.

This season finds the cast more distant than ever, deflating some of the season premiere excitement. COVID production restrictions and the abrupt departure of F. Murray Abraham give the episode a rushed quality—as it had been reworked to accommodate Abraham’s exit. It works thematically, especially in GrimPop’s Jony Ive-inspired hellscape. Poppy and Ian are on another planet compared to last year’s livelier atmosphere of the “MQ” office. However, regarding C.W.’s welcome home party, Brad, David, Poppy, and Ian look like holograms. Television produced during this period will undoubtedly have a specific look.

True to his dramatic style, C.W.’s a no-show at the party, sending a letter that reveals the character’s demise. He succumbed to illness but died at peace, and his remains now fly above “MQ” Studios in a satellite. C.W.’s message puts a bow on the episode’s themes: “Hold on to each other.” Gut checks and mistakes led C.W. to “Mythic Quest,” where he could connect with people; those connections are his legacy, not the thing they were making together. Poppy trusts her gut and passes on the money, much to Ian’s dismay (he had another gut feeling). Gut checks are good because some mistakes lead to an “MQ” family, while others are a $50 million loss.

True to its title, “Across The Universe” kept characters apart, and continuing on this on-the-nose titling convention, episode two, “Partners,” puts our re-established pairings to work. Now that they’ve decided to collaborate, Ian and Poppy will have to prove it, but the cold open put them at opposite ends of the spectrum. Ian’s using the metaverse to fulfill his aspirations, giving sales presentations no one would ever ask for. Thinking far beyond the scope of “Hera,” Ian dreams of adding the game to the blockchain. It’s a bad idea, but he has a point. Ian’s job is expansion; however, this web3 whim is the sort of thing that the infrastructure at “MQ” was excellent (well, okay) at managing. Poppy, with her sugar crashes and coding crunches, can’t puff up Ian’s ego all day. He is an ideas man, examining all aspects of the game, from the smallest shovel to the most non-fungible of tokens. Poppy’s job is to execute the plan in place, and maybe if Ian didn’t keep trying to improve upon the idea, she could finish it.

At “MQ,” David’s things are going suspiciously well with Brad as a janitor. Brad has been an exceptional, if not sus, team member, providing the bathrooms with $68 vanilla bean defusers and folding toilet paper into little points like at a fancy hotel. David’s skepticism means nothing to Carol, who sees Brad, a formerly incarcerated person of color, as a success for the diversity and inclusion initiatives. It’s a cynical win for Carol, but “that’s what it’s all about,” apparently.

When we catch up with Poppy, she sees the Matrix code and chomping down candy in her “Hera” crunch. She’s in the zone here, with McElhenney’s direction showing the luminescent creative world Poppy finds in her work, mirroring Ian’s phony web3 tour guide from the cold open. If only she could do something about the people. Dana (Imani Hakim) arrives for her first day at “Hera,” interrupts her flow, and asks Poppy to fulfill her promise and train the aspiring coder. Poppy’s too busy and gives Dana the day off. She gets back to work long enough for Ian to interrupt her with a plan to shift her nutritional paradigm. But, of course, Ian will always blow these menial tasks, like lunch buying, into something bigger because he’s a big thinker, like Thomas Edison or Jim Jones. As Ian points out, big thinkers need practical thinkers to make something to sell and vice versa.

With the day off, Dana and Rachel (Ashly Burch) kill time by visiting their old hangout in the “MQ” testing closet. Unbeknownst to them, they’ve been replaced by a new generation of testers that Dana and Rachel waste no time offending. Dana, Rachel, and, later, Jo’s interactions with the new testers result in an HR meeting, not unlike the one from the series premiere but with a different dynamic. David’s in charge but doesn’t trust Brad, who’s now at the lowest wrung of the “MQ” ladder, where he’s manipulating people into indulging their worst instincts. Poppy and Ian aren’t even supposed to be in the office, let alone trying to peel off a sliver of the workforce for some metaverse nonsense. But here they are resorting to the exact solutions as before.

“Partners” is about collaboration and how, most of the time, a partnership isn’t between two people doing the same job. It’s filling in the cracks of the other, sharing the responsibility of creation. Ultimately, it’s a new collaboration between Dana and Ian that leaves the episode on a strangely optimistic note that makes our hearts sing—we hope.

Stray observations

• Welcome to Mythic Quest recaps! This show ended last year as one of the best, if not the most underrated, comedies on TV. I have high expectations for the season, which may have led to a bit of disappointment at an understandable but no less dull housekeeping episode.
• The “Mythic Quest” staff’s inability to wait 20 seconds for an answer is the exact energy missing from most of the episode. They have the attitude of a Springfield mob, which is all any mob can hope for.
• “Look at your body. You’re all angles.”
• “What are you passionate about? Don’t say dog.” “Cat?”
• Is Apple saving money on sets by allowing Mythic Quest and Severance to film in the famously line-less Apple Park office?