Season 5, Episode 7
Acting Dean
Penny gets made acting dean of Brakebills in the middle of a crisis, while Eliot, Margo and Fen continue to investigate the Dark King.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Alice and Bax clearly have it when they bicker.
- Boxed Crook: After stopping Fogg 17, Penny decides to keep him neutralized in the Clean Room so he'll have a version of Fogg to talk to.
- Brutal Honesty: Once again Margo tries diplomacy before getting frustrated and resorting to this. In this case, she tells the fairy representative how stupid not teaming up against the Dark King is.
- The Bus Came Back: Rafe's back, but not Lady Abigail. Poor guy. Especially since he's not getting on with the marsupial currently in her old position.
- Chekhov's Gun: Last season, Dean Fogg pressed Todd into writing down his memoirs. When Julia and Penny realize they're dealing with a different timeline Fogg, Todd's knowledge of Fogg's multiple pasts allows him to quickly identify which one this is based on a few distinct characteristics.
- Dramatic Irony: Todd mentions having always wanted to meet a person from another timeline. Penny doesn't bother explaining that he's from one.
- Evil Counterpart: Dean Fogg and Todd (Eliot) of Timeline 17 make their way to whatever Timeline we're on now when Penny tries to call the current Fogg back from the Etheric Realm. This version of Fogg blew up his Brakebills in an attempt to stop the Beast, and now plans to steal the current one to replace it so he'll have somewhere to teach his daughter.
- Evil Twin: Todd-40 thinks Todd-17 is one of these at first.
- Fake Defector: Penny-23 pretends to have no stake in Timeline 40 and that he wants to collaborate with Fogg-17 in order to get his psychic GPS back, in order to trick him into taking the fake cinnabar.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Bik Pickwick hates non-humans, such as talking animals and fairies, and has no qualms about framing the latter for his crimes.
- Rafe says marsupials can't be trusted, but then again the one marsupial we see sold out all the Talking Animals for a deal from Bik.
- For their part the Talking Animals apparently stereotype humans as having an insanity all their own.
- Foreshadowing: The first sign Fogg-17 isn't who he claims to be is when he goes for a drink; Fogg was on the wagon when he left.
- For Want Of A Nail: Margo and Eliot not being there to enforce the fairies' freedom and equality after their Realm was destroyed led to three hundred years of oppression and Fantastic Racism instead.
- Frame-Up: Bik frames the fairies for the theft of Fillory's gold so the Dark King will wipe them out, secretly creating the supply himself through the use of gold-crapping beetles.
- Friendship Denial: Alice is quick to correct Penny about being friends with Bax, and expresses her annoyance ("Fucking great!") through gritted teeth when she learns he's going to be hired on as Brakebills staff.
- Genius Loci: Magic is screwed up on Earth because the Moon is pissed about being moved, so she's actively defying attempts to compensate for the change in Circumstances.
- Godzilla Threshold: Dean Fogg 17 blew up his Brakebills in an attempt to stop the Beast, but only succeeded in killing most of his students.
- Good Parents: Eliot is able to accurately guess that Charlton had parents who loved him unconditionally because unlike himself, Charlton believes that he deserves to better than to be with someone who's "fucked-up".
- Got Volunteered: Penny gets made acting dean of Brakebills after Lipson is put into a coma by the haywire security system, because all the other teachers didn't want the job and decided to choose Penny because he missed the meeting.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: In-universe, three hundred years of Gossip Evolution and resentment about their circumstances has changed Margo from the woman who gave the fairies a new home to the destroyer of their original home and the woman responsible for making them hunted now. With some help from Fen and Eliot, she manages to get back in their good graces.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After a morning of listening to students' problems, especially with the changed Circumstances, Acting Dean Penny says it's a shame Fogg was sober when he left while looking in every nook and cranny of his office.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Bax thinks he'd found the weak point to one of the wards and caused it to collapse, but as soon as he walks through it a piece of the ward suddenly becomes active again, slicing his arm open.
- It Runs in the Family: Bik definitely inherited the Pickwick tendency toward shadiness.
- Lockdown: When Dean Fogg triggers the security system in Brakebills, magical wards spring up over every building and magical traps cover the grounds.
- The Lost Lenore: Rafe is pretty broken up over the fact that Lady Abigail was left behind 300 years ago.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Todd 17 steps on a magical land mine and is reduced to meaty chunks in an instant.
- Muggles Do It Better: When magic's going crazy, Alice and Bax have to hit the greenhouse for medicinal plants when the latter is injured.
- The Multiverse: Fogg 17 confirms that all the previous timelines where the heroes lost the fight against the Beast kept going after the time loop resets by Jane Chatwin, continuing as alternate universes. This may mean there are timelines spun out of the moon disaster where the Earth is still destroyed, assuming that that time magic worked the same way.
- Not So Extinct: The Pickwick family has kept the continued existence of gold-pooping beetles a secret from the rest of Fillory for long enough that everyone believes them extinct.
- Not the Intended Use: The former Exobotany professor invented the Circumstances Control Panel in order to grow plants alien to our world in a hospitable environment. Alice hijacks it so she can use magic safely in its area of effect.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: One of the professors tells Penny that Lipson was fried by a ward and in a coma because some asshole moved the moon, and they can't heal her magically because...some asshole moved the moon.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Julia realizes something is wrong with Fogg and Todd when the former calls the latter "Eliot". While that is in fact his real name, Todd is such a Butt-Monkey that Eliot forced him to go by his middle name and everyone went along with it. Furthermore, Todd shows no knowledge of the pig man or the quest on Fillory.
- Painful Rhyme: Sir Effingham's song rhymes "everyone" and "smeveryone".
- Papa Wolf: Upon learning that he has a daughter in his timeline, Fogg-17 travels to Brakebills-40 in order to try to fix Timeline 17.
- Race Traitor: Gertrude, the Dark King's Talking Animal advisor (holding the position Abigail had 300 years earlier), acquiesced to a law that had Talking Animals placed permanently outside The Wall in exchange for a handsome deal from Bik.
- Red Right Hand: Fogg-17 burned his hands badly while in the process of destroying his Brakebills, and still bears the scars.
- The Reveal:
- The former Exobotany professor created a control panel which can alter the Circumstances within an area and override the moon's interference.
- The Dark King is responsible for the Takers, spawning them from the ground through the use of gold and magic.
- Timelines and the people in them keep on going after new loops are created.
- Time-Compression Montage: Acting Dean Adiyodi gets to spend his morning dealing with crazy student problems.
- Vagueness Is Coming: The pig man's song, as Todd relates it, speaks of coming death from a far-off land and the need to seal gates of some sort. It's not terribly helpful.
- Wet Blanket Wife: Penny is a male example to Julia, saying he wants to settle down and be done with world-saving.
- Wham Shot: The Dark King dumps a bagful of gold on the ground, does a ritual, and...up from the ground come a-bubblin' Takers. Kidnappers, that is. Underworld "G"...uardians.
