What a day for teen twenty-somethings. And children, sure.
I have been impatiently waiting for this show since Rick and Becky Riordan announced they were working on something in 2020. I even fought my fellow staff members for the right to cover the show. But realistically, I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was twelve, which is why I’m outing myself so early on in this review for having an insane bias for not only wanting this show to succeed but also for the way I am determined to point out where it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
Spoilers for Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
In a not-so-surprising turn of events, Disney decided to have a two-episode premiere for the show (a day early, might I add), a now common occurrence for Disney+ original shows. There’s something fishy to be said about the fact that I’ve noticed a peculiar trend with this format, one that I am unhappy to report is the case with Percy Jackson and the Olympians as well – the pilot episode is bad.
Now, my oversimplification of “bad” is laughable, mostly because I enjoyed many things about the pilot. Walker Scobel dazzles as Percy Jackson, Aryan Simhadri brings such a soft nuance to Grover that makes my heart melt, the fact that Riptide is book accurate made me scream, the little glimpses of Mythomagic that we got, Sally Jackson (Virginia Kull) is truly an icon.
But that is the problem – I am being forced to nitpick and find details that I love to distract from the overarching issue that, as fun as it is in the book and as much as I know fans have asked for, there is an overreliance on narration simply because there’s no time.
The Percy Jackson books are filled with lore, with connective moments fed from each other and evolve into a fast-paced, emotion-filled, funny as hell, and action-forward story. And while the show clearly does its best to try and replicate it, I can’t help but feel as though we’re forced to rush through everything to match the measly eight-episode first season order they got.
I get it. Adapting a book series into a show is arguably a challenging task. You have many different types of audiences in mind, and unfortunately, as much as you want to please everyone watching the show, you simply can’t. And as much as I can speculate all I want, because there’s not enough time, in my opinion, a minimum of twelve episodes or eight-hour-long ones, the show is set up on almost a disappointing fast forward from the very start.
A clear example of this is Mrs. Dodds (Megan Mullally). Her existence in the story serves a straightforward purpose: to show the audience something strange happened. Percy almost died in the process, and now the people around him are trying to gaslight him into forgetting that it did to protect him so that they can make sure he gets to camp before he’s killed. She is supposed to fight Percy, she is meant to be the first domino that falls in the barrier keeping Percy away from the world of Greek gods, she is the push that forces the timeline to move up.
Even as someone who has read the books, I felt the whiplash. It’s a three-beat scene. The problem is that it is over in literally three consecutive beats. Sure, the VFX is masterful as we watch Mrs. Dodds transform into a gorgeously terrifying fury. Still, the weight of what Percy just did (re: his powers) and that being the catalyst for the fury to catch him finally unfold, so we’re not given the time to digest everything properly before we move on to the next thing.
It’s a recurring theme in the second episode as well, but there’s this impatient energy surrounding the setup of the show that I don’t particularly enjoy. Yes, I understand that the “important” part of the story is the quest upon which Percy, Annabeth, and Grover embark. Still, the fact that we’re rushing through what’s supposed to be such a world-turned-upside-down moment for Percy feels disingenuous and almost rude to his feelings and his development as a character.
That being said, the show knows what it is from the start. This is not a show about the glamorization of magical systems and a “chosen one” trope because that is not what the books are about either. This is a show about an average kid losing his “normal” life at the expense of the forces at play larger than him. It is a show about how systems are inherently flawed and the gods should not expect a child to react in their favor after losing his mother. This is a show about defiance and pushing back against what we, the audience, deem desirable.
Percy does not want a magical life, does not want to fit neatly into a system that was thrust upon him and does not want to bend to the will of those who only appeared in his life when convenient for them. This is why I also completely understand the narrative need for them to push through these magical moments to focus on the human ones.
Most of the pilot is focused on building the relationship between Percy and his mother, the only person who stood by him and claimed him from the second he was born.
A lot of kids, myself included, would’ve jumped at the opportunity of being taken out of their everyday lives and told that they’re a part of something much more significant, a puzzle piece in a fantastical world, a chance at finally being special. But that’s not Percy; it has never been and will never be. And I am willing to overlook how the pilot doesn’t fit perfectly together for this particular fact. One that is not clear until the second episode.
Episode two is…a lot. There is so much that happens, so much to discuss, that I can wholeheartedly say that it took the lovely people over at the Seaweed Brain podcast and me two hours to get through everything we wanted to discuss. This is truly when the fan service picks up, all the things we’ve been itching to see happen, and the show sets the tone going forward. We’ve left whatever sense of normalcy was cultivated in the pilot and find ourselves free-falling alongside Percy into this new world. And let me just say I will gladly leap.
Camp Half-Blood comes alive in a way that I’ve only dreamed of. Everything feels lived in, intentional, like a real place where demigods live. From Annabeth (Leah Jeffries) and Percy’s iconic first meeting to Mr. D being Jason Mantzoukas‘s best performance by far to the incomparable Dior Goodjohn as Clarisse and Charlie Bushnell as Luke – the second episode is jam-packed with action.
The world we’ve stepped into is fleshed out by, you guessed it, more exposition from every character we encounter because there is literally no other way for Percy to figure out these things unless someone tells them to him (obvious sarcasm). Once again, I understand the practical use. There’s so much to go over that needs to be explained to Percy and the audience simultaneously…but I can’t help but feel like they took the easy road out of fear (and explicit time constraints).
I know that I, the adult who has read every single one of these books and knows what will happen, is definitely not the primary target audience for the show. But I also know the kids they made this for are not stupid. They have the intellect necessary to put two and two together. They can decipher things in ways that are engaging and without having to be led through each step with excruciating detail. While I believe that time is the biggest proponent of why the team decided to tell rather than show, I also believe there’s an evident lack of trust in their audience.
There is a pattern of oversharing at times that makes me question how much I actually remember about the books and has me asking myself how much we were told in them instead of learning it along the way. For example, Luke tells Percy his and Annabeth’s story of how they made it to camp pretty early on and in great detail, down to Thalia’s tragic demise. Now, I know from a writing perspective why this decision was made, but I feel like it takes away from the weight that we’re given this insanely massive piece of information in such a way that makes it come across like a passing thought.
And that is part of the more significant issue – moments of great importance being condensed into throwaway pieces of dialogue that aren’t able to get across the layered emotional value because we don’t quite yet know about or care for these characters enough for it actually to sink in.
I do have to give a special shout-out to Annabeth. I think that because we’re not going to be seeing Luke again until the end of the season, what once was her tour of camp got passed on to Luke so that the audience could bond with him before he, spoilers, betrayed the Hell out of everyone. Because of that, what should’ve been the most scream-inducing Percabeth moment before the two embarked on their first quest together turned into scattered moments that indeed showed just how phenomenal of a character Annabeth is and how Leah Jeffries was perfectly cast.
I will rave about her, Dior Goodjohn, and Charlie Bushnell for as long as I can because they indeed did the most with their little screen time, and I cannot wait to see them shine to their full potential in season two. The entire capture-the-flag sequence was literal perfection, and once again, I was left greedily wishing we could’ve spent more time at camp. But alas, Percy must go on this quest and save the world, so we must leave the best characters behind.
Overall, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians premiere left much to be desired, but it also established itself as a fascinating take on the book series. While it might not be perfect, I know that the show will only get better the longer it runs. With more people watching, more fans will hopefully come with more opportunities to take risks, for the actors to settle into their roles and become more comfortable in their choices, and for the writing team to be given more of a budget to explore everything the books have to offer fully.
I look forward to the next six weeks to see how the team’s vision comes together. Most importantly, I look forward to embracing community to its fullest and having fun watching a show, fully knowing that it is not for me but for that twelve-year-old girl whose life was changed by Rick Riordan over a decade ago.
Rating: 7/10
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