It’s possible Schmigadoon! is settling into being a show that shifts up and down along a sort of x/y axis of good versus fun. Sometimes it shifts too far along one axis without making up the space on the other, although your mileage may vary depending on how much you appreciate the “all fun homages” version of the show. “Over and Done” does what it can to make up for some of the iffy plotting of the season, but it can’t quite overcome that the show didn’t really set up this season’s plot to wrap up in a way that didn’t feel rushed.

The opening scene is the most notable example of traveling up the fun but not good axis. Not in the sense of the performance—Ariana DeBose gives a knockout performance singing the very Dreamgirls-esque “It’s Over and Done.” But the song is almost completely disconnected from the narrative of the show. DeBose hasn’t been a character all season, and the direction of this opening sequence makes only the most minimal effort to suggest the song is connected to Josh and Melissa, cutting to them only once throughout the whole song. It’s an odd way to open the episode, dwelling as it does in the mystery zone this season has sometimes had, where it’s hard to tell if we’re meant to think Josh and Melissa are witnessing what’s happening. And given that the song is performed by someone without any real tie to the action, it’s that much harder to tie it in emotionally to the season overall. It feels strange to complain about an entertaining Ariana DeBose song, but there’s been a lot of that kind of thing this season, where it’s easy to passively enjoy a vocal performance that makes fun references to another musical as long as you ignore that it doesn’t do much for the plot. 

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If there’s one thing you could say about this season of Schmigadoon!, it might be that it never met a plot point it didn’t like. As the season nears its conclusion, the show spends an episode zigzagging all over the place, as Melissa and Josh try to figure out what a happy ending in Schmicago is supposed to look like. 

The first half of the episode is a bit of a frenetic mess, jumping from Melissa’s love of performance to Josh’s takeover of the tribe to Topher and Jenny yelling at them for it in one long stretch. The second half slows down a bit, as the duo’s eviction from Jenny’s apartment means they finally notice that Dooley and Miss Codwell are planning to murder children. But it’s a bit of a slog getting there in the first place, as the show once again shows a lack of interest in the story it’s telling. Not to keep banging the drum about the aborted murder trial for Josh, but it’s seeming more and more like what this season desperately needed was one ongoing plotline to work from.

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If “Bells and Whistles” suffered from whiplash as it sped between plots and musical pastiches, “Something Real” comes up with a pretty funny way around the problem: Just combine them! 

Faced with the vague feedback from the narrator that they’re not being helpful when they try and fail to leave Schmicago, Josh and Melissa decide their way out of of town is to figure out happy endings for all the people they’ve encountered—no small order when everyone is kind of miserable. Of course, Melissa’s plan to solve the plot of Sweeney Todd simply by asking his daughter to hang out with him goes nowhere, so they try Josh’s idea with more success, and drag her out into the country. Jenny may not want to see her dad anymore, but she’s perfectly happy to hang out with some hippies. It’s downright bizarre to see someone dressed as a nightclub performer out amongst the hippies of Topher’s camp, but as it turns out, Jenny’s devil-may-care attitude and general joie de vivre fit right in with the love-f…

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There’s always a delicate balance in parody between hitting all the touchpoints of the thing being spoofed and still telling a compelling narrative. The story only works because it’s putting a spin on a genre, and the satire only hits insofar as it’s used to tell a new story that comments on the original. “Bells and Whistles” shows what happens when that balance tilts too far in one direction, with a barrage of references and some questionable storytelling.

The biggest tell is the way Schmigadoon absolutely churns through plot in this episode. Josh’s decision to break out of prison is foreshadowed as a big mistake in the prior episode and in earlier parts of this one, but he’s with Topher’s hippies too briefly for there to be any consequences or real forward momentum on that plot. And he returns to court with zero repercussions for his absence, and is then immediately cleared on his murder charges. For a court case that the show had spent some time building up to be a major plotline this season, it wraps up blindingly quickly, with so little fanfare that the prosecutor is never even introduced. On the plus side, Bobbie was really worth every penny Melissa paid her. But the whole Topher interlude feels more like an excuse to let Aaron Tveit lean into a Hair parody than a development that’s fully braided into the central plot. 

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Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of the second season of Schmigadoon!, which debuts its first two episodes today on Apple TV+. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers. You can find out more on our About Page.

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The first season of Schmigadoon! had such an ironclad premise combined with such a seasoned cast of performers that it was always going to be at least reasonably entertaining. But those performers covered up some of the weaker spots in the show, which could occasionally feel like a dynamite concept in search of a sharper application. The musical theater kid energy practically seeped off the screen, but the story following modern-day troubled couple Josh and Melissa as they stumbled through a generic brand version of the classic musical Brigadoon on their way to a happy ending lagged in places. Jokes didn’t quite land. Talented performers were occasionally stranded in draggy roles that didn’t give them room to shine (cough cough Kristin Chenoweth). It was hard not to wish the material was just a little bit more honed, although the general can-do spirit emanating from the whole thing more or less made it worth your while. What other show could boast Keegan-Michael Key, Cecily Strong, Alan Cumming, Jaime Camil1…the list goes on.

Thankfully, season two bursts out of the gate with such a clear sense of purpose and so much zest that it feels like the show has worked out exactly what it wants to be, and exactly how its goofy premise works best. We get through some table setting about why the gang is back together—sure, Josh (Key) and Melissa (Strong) have recommitted to each other and decided their love story is worth saving, but they still have to return to the humdrum world outside of Schmigadoon. They’re blissfully happy, and then less and less so, in a montage that documents their slow descent into depression caused in part by fertility struggles that plays like a less brightly colored Up. Desperate to recapture some joy, they try to find their way back to Schmigadoon, only to discover that their current struggles are more suited to a different era of musicals: the sexy, violent worlds of Sweeney Todd, Chicago, and Cabaret. 

The show establishes this in an opening number that absolutely nails what works best in this show. It’s catchy, it’s clever, and it allows Josh and Melissa to comment on the proceedings with a modern eye. The meta commentary works exceedingly well, as in the moment when Josh, acting as an audience surrogate, tries to greet Alan Cumming, last season’s mayor, when he’s self-evidently in costume as Sweeney Todd. No, Melissa points out with an eyeroll. That’s obviously not the mayor anymore, and he’s playing a new role.

Apple TV+ launched the new season with two episodes, and it’s hard not to notice that the proceedings sag a tiny bit once they have to get into the particulars of what’s going to happen to Josh and Melissa in this universe. The premiere is such a nonstop barrage of jokes and references that at one point I paused the episode twice in about five seconds to make a note of two separate jokes from Tituss Burgess that both made me laugh out loud (telling the audience to look up the definition of the slightly clunky Schmicago rhyme “farrago” and then the moment the lyric “endings that are tragic” aligns with him holding up Melissa’s split ends). This is partly thanks to the always-wise choice to cast Burgess as one of the Season 2 newcomers, but it’s also because the show is so sharp about setting the scene here. Sure, the jokes are rapid-fire, but it even takes time to pause for an entirely pointless bit in a nightclub where the phone at Josh and Melissa’s table rings and she answers to discover two big weirdos trying to do a “we like your vibe” at her from across the room. Oh, you thought they weren’t serious about how extremely SEXUAL this world is? Well, that’s how sexual!

The on-the-nose efforts to prove how shocking things are in Schmicago turns into one of the better running gags of the season. If season one was full of cracks about how innocent everything was, season two finds a lot of comedic pay dirt in very dated attempts to shock Josh and Melissa with such generally mainstream behavior as bisexuality, tattoos, the female orgasm, and in an unfortunate real-world analog, drag. Plus that one old lady who appears at random to say “I’ll drink to that!”

As the story leaves the realm of exposition, though, the plot suffers from a certain sense of checking boxes. This time through, Josh is accused of killing one of the club’s dancers, Elsie, and Melissa becomes a dancer at the club to figure out who really killed her. Aaron Tveit will appear, because he’s one of the series regulars. It’s all a bit dutiful—the show doesn’t even try to make Elsie into a character before immediately offing her. And locking Josh up in prison negates one of the more fun aspects of the early going, which is watching the two of them engage with the world of Schmicago as a duo instead of in completely separate plotlines.2 But separating them does mean Josh, the less musically-inclined of the duo, is stuck making judgment calls on his own, since he depends on Melissa to explain the rules and etiquette of musical theater to him. And there’s already interesting material to mine in the joy Melissa gets from performing at the nightclub as a relief from the heartbreak of another failed IVF cycle.

And that’s without even diving into the wealth of performances that make the whole thing spark to life. Dove Cameron gets the standout number, in her role as Sally Bowles stand-in Jenny Banks, with a hilarious, physics-defying song-and-dance piece about various lovers disappointing her, but Ariana DeBose pops up for a few minutes to ham it up, fake mustache and accent in tow, as an emcee for the club. Jane Krakowksi returns as a Billy Flynn-style lawyer, Bobby Flanagan, who plans to play the press like a fiddle to help Josh beat the charges—if the line, “Mr. Flanagan is my father, after he lost his medical license,” didn’t give you a warm wash of nostalgia for the perfect Jenna Maroney delivery, then, well, you probably just didn’t watch 30 Rock.

It’s all very promising stuff for the new season. The notion of a show taking a season to find its footing feels positively quaint these days, but it’s exciting to see Schmigadoon return with such confidence. 

Stray observations

• I know I’m not the most committed musical theater fan in this particular show’s audience, but other references I caught were Hair (obviously), A Chorus Line for the audition number, and just the briefest of nods at Bye Bye Birdie in the jail callout to Conrad. I’ll try to catch these as I can, but definitely speak up in the comments if you catch some of the deeper cuts.

• The line “Would you wave to Sutton Foster in The Music Man because you remember her from Thoroughly Modern Millie” is such a succinct way to establish what’s going on this season, while also serving as a tip of the cap to the show’s musical-loving audience. One of multiple lines that made me laugh with delight.

• The nod to Sondheim’s overlapping dialogue being a little hard to follow if you’re actually in-world was cute, as well.

• For you, I looked up farrago, since I wanted to make sure I was spelling it correctly in my review. It’s a “confused mixture,” per Merriam Webster.

• Caught myself making the exact same facial expression as Cecily Strong in reaction to the line in “Kaput” about “Soon I tired of his…cockamamie talk.”

• Everyone noticed that the dude in the hallway on the way to the bathroom was reading Mein Kampf, right?

• Just a hint of it so far, but I am very excited for Jaime Camil’s character to embrace his secret love of song and dance.