Galavant, ABC’s farcical take on the medieval fairy tale, was supposed to be a guaranteed train wreck. A midseason show about drunken, horny knights, peasants and princesses who burst into song at least twice per episode? It’s the stuff of wine-fueled, snarky live-tweeter’s dreams. And yet, Galavant is not a disaster. It’s actually pretty fun. I watched six episodes in one sitting; sometimes I laughed, sometimes I cringed, but by the end I’d had a great time and was left wanting more.
If you’re snickering to yourself and thinking that’s what she said, you’re already on Galavant’s level. The show is 100 percent aware of how ridiculous it is. Written by Crazy, Stupid Love’s Dan Fogelman, with extravagant musical numbers by lyricist Glenn Slater and composer Alan Menken (of Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast fame), Galavant revels in rolling its eyes at itself—all while, crucially, never going too far off the deep end. As a few have pointed out, it’s Spamalot meets The Princess Bride, with a raunchy Disney score.
The plot starts with the most cliché of fairy tale beginnings: A knight on a quest to save his damsel-in-distress from an evil king. We’re introduced, via a blindingly colorful title card and theme song, to Sir Galavant—“square jaw and perfect hair / cajones up to there”—played by Joshua Sasse, and Madalena (Mallory Jansen), his “true love” (or at least the woman who likes having sex with him). Evil King Richard (Psych’s Timothy Omundson) shows up and steals Madalena away, whisking her to his castle to become his unwilling bride.
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Madalena, however, is no helpless Buttercup. Upon finding herself suddenly draped in finery with teams of servants at her command, she decides this whole kidnapping thing is actually pretty OK. Who can blame her? As the new queen puts it a little later in the series, “Why would I give all this up to get fat and pregnant and grow my own food?”
Cue heartbroken Galavant engorging himself on booze and mutton back home. His squire, Sid (Luke Youngblood), desperate to give his master reason to shower again, introduces to him a princess (Karen David), the “small and cute and ethnically hard to pin down” (her words) Isabella Maria Lucia Elisabetta of Valencia—“Izzie” for short. Her kingdom has been ravaged by King Richard, who’s holding both her parents hostage unless she lures Galavant back to the castle and into a trap. So she lies to the knight, telling him Madalena is sorry and wants him back. King Richard, meanwhile, just wants Galavant dead so that Madalena will stop constantly comparing them; also so that she’ll maybe finally sleep with him because so far she’s only interested in banging the court jester.
Thus the quest begins, with our main trio—Isabella, Sid, and Galavant—journeying across the kingdom, battling evildoers (Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville as a filthy, eyeliner-wearing pirate and John Stamos as an easily seduced knight are both highlights) and getting on each other’s nerves. Odd couples begin to blossom, with Isabella and Galavant, and Richard and Madalena, admitting to each other in song that hey, “Maybe You’re Not the Worst Thing Ever.” And backstories are revealed, adding a limited level of depth that keeps characters (and their non-stop wisecracking) from becoming too tiresome.
Of course, not every joke lands. I’m still puzzling out what’s supposed to be funny about kingsguard Gareth’s fat jokes about Isabella. (“Spunky? More like chunky!” Ha-ha? She’s like a size four.) Or how kicking a reaction-less eunuch in the crotch over and over again is comedy. But the jokes flow at such a torrential pace that duds are soon forgotten; the best are even Spamalot-worthy. (My favorite is Galavant licking his gloved finger, holding it up to the wind, and deducing, “It’s going to be dark soon.”)
But the show’s biggest problem comes with its villain’s overwhelming charm. As played by Omundson, King Richard is effeminate, sincere, and ten times funnier than everyone else. The more we learn about his backstory, the more his efforts to win Madalena’s heart come off as misguidedly sweet, rather than pathetic. It gets to a point where it’s hard to root for the show’s heroic trio because we’d rather just fast-forward to see whatever Richard’s up to next.
Then again, Galavant is supposed to be boring. He certainly stays bland throughout the show—though his budding “relationship” with Isabella (there is zero chemistry there, but whatever) indicates we should want him to find happiness in the end. Either way, there’s such a madhouse of supporting characters hamming it up around the knight—there’s a magician named Xanax, a singing monk played by Weird Al and another familiar Downton Abbey face to look forward to in coming weeks—that it barely matters. A wonderfully weird show somehow made it onto primetime. These are dark times for network TV, but experiments like Galavant are the silver lining. That’s gotta count for something.
