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Posted in: Audio Dramas, Review, TV | Tagged: Audible, BBC Radio 4, comedy, fantasy, felicia day, neil gaiman, third eye
Third Eye: Felicia Day Audio Comedy's Magic Sauce is Snarky Comedy
Third Eye is Felicia Day's new and most ambitious project: an audio comedy fantasy series about what happens when the Chosen One fails.
In the new fantasy comedy podcast Third Eye, former teen Chosen One Laurel Pettigrew (Felicia Day) was supposed to defeat the all-powerful demon Tybus (Christopher Judge) and save the world. She failed. Now in her twenties and with her magical abilities gone, she works in a San Francisco occult bookstore called Third Eye and lives with Frank (Sean Astin), a paunchy, toothless vampire who can't feed on the living anymore, and Sybil (London Hughes) a horny fairy who's the type of best friend who makes everything worse. The supernatural world is under Tybus' rule; supernatural beings can't use their magical powers anymore because Laurel failed in her fated battle, and they all blame her. In short, Laurel's life is utter misery. Until a seemingly normie teenage runaway, Kate, shows up totally fangirling over her, who has a secret that might change everything and offer Laurel a chance at redemption.
Third Eye is Felicia Day writing and starring in what she does best: a snarky comedy that deconstructs the common tropes of the fantasy genre while using it as a prism to explore autobiographical issues like Imposter Syndrome, depression, low self-esteem and finding the way forward to live. Laurel was just a kid unfairly put in the position of Chosen One, destined to fulfill a destiny, then gets blamed for screwing it up. This was supposed to be a TV series that followed Day's popular self-produced comedy series The Guild but took five years before it became an audio series where she could make it the way she wanted. Mainstream studios just don't want anything considered too geeky, and this series is by and for an audience that has consumed copious amounts of Neil Gaiman (who narrates it), Douglas Adams, Buffy, Fantasy series, and Young Adult fiction.
The dynamic of Third Eye that recalls BBC Radio 4 comedies is the show's ability to cast not just the right actors but also actors whose voices are immediately infused with their characters' recognizable comic personalities from the moment you hear them. Thus, Day's Laurel is jittery, self-deprecating, and neurotic as she keeps all-out despair at bay, London Hughes steals the show with her gleeful horny sass, Lily Pichu's voice perfectly embodies the overeager Manic Pixie Teen Girl, Wil Wheaton just oozes smarm as the smug demon Robigus, Neil Gaiman uses his nice English voice to slip in irony and snark like a scalpel, and so on.
The cast is full of familiar voices from the world of comedy, genre TV, animation, gaming, and Weird Al Yankovic, but the real magic is Day's penchant for snarky humour, since she can't ignore the inherent absurdity of the fantasy genre tropes no matter how much she – and its fans – love them. Laurel is a character Day likes to create and play: a put-upon, unfairly burdened underdog whose comedy is found in trying to get through life while tormented by comical jerks, even those supposed to be her friends. What kind of world is it where functioning adults depended on a kid to defeat a demon lord, then treated her like crap for failing?! The dynamic, as Day openly admits, is closer to British comedy, and Third Eye is up there with the best of Radio 4 comedies. It's pitch-perfect and hilarious, with a snarky joke every other line.
Third Eye is now available from Audible.
Third Eye
10/10
A snark-filled comedy fantasy about what happens after the Chosen One loses the Great Battle against a demon lord, Felicia Day's audio comedy series Third Eye is as good as any BBC Radio 4 comedy as she deconstructs common Fantasy tropes and examines semiautobiographical issues like imposter syndrome, failure, low self-esteem, self-loathing and trying to get through life after losing everything. The actors are so perfectly cast that they're funny just by opening their mouths.
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