Four episodes in, Galavant is starting to show its true colors. The songs and plot are still on point and clever, but after four episodes, the one thing that I find myself rolling my eyes at are the guest stars. I understand that this show is about tired tropes and stereotypes, but I was hoping to only find that in the medieval hero. In the third episode, Two Balls, we travel to Sidney’s hometown, “Sidneyland,” to visit his family but little does Galavant know that Sidney pumped up his resume a bit by telling his family that he was a knight, instead of a squire. So when they meet his family, Isabella pretends to be his betrothed and Galavant reluctantly agrees to become his squire. This plot had a lot of potential to be entertaining. Would Sidney have to joust against an actual knight and have Galavant save him, thus having to tell his family that he was lying? Nope! Instead, all we got was extremely tired Jewish stereotypes. His parents had thick New Jersey accents and said “bubby” more than anything else and citizens would couldn’t decide whether they wanted to conform to the Jewish stereotype or just be normal medieval peasants. When Galavant sees how abused the squires are by their masters, through song and dance, he decides to let Sidney keep up his lie and off they go with absolutely no conflict at all.
Things were a little more entertaining in Valencia, though. King Richard controls all of these people but doesn’t know how to get them to respect him. When burning all of their crops and an executioner dance party doesn’t work, he decides to let them insult him in any way possible. Through the stacks of insults, the one that gets to him is when a eunuch says that he was blind to his wife cheating on him with the jester. Along with having the eunuch executed, he decides to confront the jester on his own.
That ending leads to the transition of the next episode, Comedy Gold, which had way more plot and character development. Not only did it have more humor but it actually moved the plot forward. Galavant and the gang are on their way to the castle when they are captured by a group of pirates and have Valencia’s precious jewel taken from them. It was interesting to see Hugh Bonneville take on a pirate captain compared to his Downton Abbey role, but other than that the pirates didn’t do a lot for me. I did chuckle when they started singing about never having actually travelled the ocean, though, but once again, the comedy was all at the castle.
In Valencia, King Richard approaches the jester about him sleeping with Madalena but instead of killing him, he asks him for tips on how to make his wife laugh and love him again. The song was great and it was hilarious to watch this ruthless king not understand how to make people laugh; the one thing that made Madalena laugh was him throwing a pie into Gareth’s face. For now, that seemed to work, but let’s see how long it will be until Madalena compares him to Galavant. Regardless of what his wife thinks of him, King Richard is my new favorite character. Timothy Omundson is hilarious as this awkward ruler and he is what I look forward to in this show. His and Gareth’s relationship is better than any romantic relationship because of how much Richard looks to this cold, distant man for support. For now, I will keep watching, but is it too much to ask the writers just to focus on King Richard and Gareth?
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