by Kim Filchak, Reporter

To begin with this is a recap, not a review. So, here be spoilers, you have been warned.

The inaugural episode of ABC’s all singing, all dancing, Game of Thrones /Glee hybrid, Galavant premiered the other night, along with a second helping of the insanity just because, and my brain is still trying to process what I watched. While the pilot was a tad uneven and on occasion it meandered into the ground I would expect to be already ably covered by the overly earnest drama kids in a Montessori middle schools production of Spamalot, it was pretty darn hilarious.

The tale opens in song, as one would expect in such things, though I have to say the lyrics lean more toward the works of Parker and Stone rather than Rogers and Hammerstein, and by leans towards I mean dives face first in the vat of snark and genitalia and never looks back. Which I am completely down with.

Our hero Galavant (Joshua Sasse), the manliest man to ever man outta man town, is a heroic hero who heroes and his life revolves around his one true love, the lovely maiden Madalena (Mallory Jansen), whom he bones with great abandon. Seriously, it’s in the opening number, they have lots of sex. That is they bang relentlessly until the evil King Richard, Played by Psych’s Timothy Omundson, spots her lithe and shiny haired form one day when he’s taking the royal carriage out for a spin. Before you can say Princess Bride, King Richard and his posse take advantage of Galavant’s temporary distraction with pig purchasing to maiden-nap her and carry her off to his castle.

The morning of the wedding the former maiden fair, now royal fiancé, waits in her tower room when her kidnapper/fiancé/King shows up just to confirm that they will in fact “do it” that night, not just open wedding gifts in bed, though there will totally be some of that action too. Meanwhile our heroic hero heroes his way to her, in song of course, until finally we have our happy ending moment. Where by the maiden fair walks away from wealth and the sort of absolute power only being at the tippy top of the feudal system dog pile can give you and swans off in to the sun set with her one true love.

Except not.

Nope, our maiden dose a sensible cost gain analysis and promptly dumps his firmly toned ass and leaves his abs of glory for Lassiter from Psyche in a full on hipster beard, a prop crown, and tights. And honestly, I can’t say as I blame her. King Lassy makes that shit look gooooood.

 

Suffice it to say when we rejoin Gal after the commercial break he has totally let the break up break him. Drunk, pungent, and eh… say a good twenty pounds over his ideal fighting weight, he is in what me and my girlfriends like to call “the bad place.” Sadly as he is still roughly a thousand years away from the invention of Häagen-Dazs and the Lifetime Network there seems to be no cure in sight for his malaise. Luckily for him a new raison d’etre appears on the horizon. A princess, desperately fleeing the evil empire, has come seeking his help, and this one did not even subcontract out that job to a couple of droids.

Anyways, our Princess, Isabella Maria Lucia Elizabetta of Valencia (Karen David) and savor that full name because from now on she is Princess Sassy Skirts, has come to offer a priceless jewel to our current resident of the downward spiral in exchange for saving her kingdom and avenging her parents deaths.

He pretty much ignores her pleas until confronted with the truly dire news, his bar tab.

Seeing a way to keep drinking and eating away his pain, Gal butters up Princess Sassy Skirts but heroic hero-ing to hero the lady and her kingdom outta a jam really is not Gal’s thing these days. However, when she mentions the evil king she wants to take down is King Lassy, who torments his poor wife all the time while she sobs for her lost love? That get’s Gal’s attention. It seems almost to good to be true. Turns out, it is.

While yes it is true the evil king who invaded her land is King Lassy, the only reason he did it was because Madalena went full Imelda Marcos and demanded he do so just to get her hands on that jewel. And probably all the fancy shoes in the kingdom, but I am just guessing on the second part. Which actually worked, not that Gal knows his girl has embraced her inner Kardashian and gone full darkside.

I have to say I have to hand it to Madalena, she may be married to an evil despot but she is working the poor sap and his tummy flowers at a freaking master class level. Not only is Madalena getting King Lassy to invade random kingdom’s named after citrus fruits and torture the inhabitants for bling, she had him locked into a celibacy agreement and is banging the hot jester on the side. Girls got game.

So what is really going on with this nonsensical plot twist? Glad you asked. Once he had the ring pop of magnificence in hand King Lassy had a rare moment of awesome and instead of handing over the jewel and going to back to the cuckholding as usual, he keeps it and sends Princess Sassy Skirts off to recruit Galavant to save her kingdom. Knowing that wealth and decency would not be enough to tempt Gal from his misery spider hole, King Lassy sweetens the pot. He has her name drop him and gives her a fish story about Madalena’s misery, regret, and despair over her choice. Which given her enthusiasm for knock knock jokes and the hot dudes who tell them is going to make things very awkward when Gal shows up to save her and she is ruling over a court of madness from her throne of sculls.

King Lassy’s entire plan is to lure Gal there with this story so he can stab him, because killing her ex in front of Darth Madalena will somehow make her less of a B. And given King Lassy’s utter fail at the manly arts? Is an over optimistic estimation of how that fight is going to go down. So not the best plan ever, but his head hench dude is working on that bit.

Episode two involves even more inappropriate jokes, a jousting match where the priceless jewel of great worth is put for collateral next to a chicken so our heroic trio, Gal, Princess Sassy Skirts and Gal’s plucking young squire, Sid, can earn some green in order to finance the road to vengeance. Two things stand in their way to solvency. One, Gal is in truly horrible shape and two? John Fucking Stamos is there as Jean Hamm a rival Knight who is the one to beat in this clash of err… cash poor nobility wielding sticks on horse back. Lucky Princess Sassy Skirts has this shit wired. One training montage and one glass of absinthe in the wrong hands later and we are witness to the most pathetic joust in the history of… umm… wherever this show is set. (England? Guilder? Westeros after someone spiked the world’s entire water supply with Prozac?) After Drunk (the radiant Stamos) and Over Trained to Exhaustion (Gal) both fall off of their horses Gal wins by default and the good-ish guys have the money to wage their campaign.

Meanwhile in their lair of evil, King Lassy’s Lead Hench dude tries to manly his boy up wit some mildly encouraging results which lead to his wife/harridan actually not looking at him in utter disgust for, like, a entire nanosecond.

But neither of these plots matter at all save as lead up to this song. Possibly the greatest love song ever written by a human person.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goCccJNTQAM]

So fun times ahead! I am going to stick with Gal, Princess sassy Pants, and his overly enthusiastic squire Sid to see where this all ends up. I am guess badly for everyone involved, but hilarious for those watching.