Funny / The Magicians

The Magicians

• Dean Fogg casually revealing that magic is real and that Quentin is being granted a place at a Wizarding School - and then promptly offering him breakfast, even discussing the local farm they got the bacon from.
• Quentin, upon being offered a smoke by Eliot, summons up "all the wisdom he'd accumulated during his entire life in Brooklyn" just to say "Merits are for pussies." And Eliot agrees!
• The entry into the Physical Kids cottage, after all the effort to burn through the door with a Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass, ends up giving way the moment Quentin tries to force it open, leaving him sprawled flat on his ass.
• Towards the end of a very harrowing description of how Emily Greenstreet mangled her face and her boyfriend ended up turning into a Niffin during his attempts to repair the damage, Josh succeeds in casting an ancient Viking strength spell.
  Josh: I am a Viking warrior! Cower before my might! Cower! The strength of Thor and all his mighty hosts flows through me! And I fucked your mother! I... fucked... your... motherrrrrrr!
• The introduction of Alice's father, while a little sad considering he's an illustration of just how empty life can be for magicians without a focus for their skills, ends up becoming hilarious for the sheer level of awkwardness inherent in it - particularly the moment when he loses patience with his "Roman patrician" act and admits he has skid marks on his toga. He then leaves apropos of nothing, leaving an extremely bemused Alice to give him a sitcom farewell of "that's my dad!"
• During the post-gradation hedonistic period, Eliot gets into a drunken argument with another magician who firmly believes that their magical powers are "the tools of God". Nobody in the room takes it very seriously, proceeding to nitpick it to hell and back, and the dispute finally ends with the completely shitfaced Eliot making this little speech:
  "I am the mighty Maker, and I now bequeath to you My Holy Power Tools, because I am too fucking drunk to use them anymore, and good luck to you, because when I get up tomorrow, they had better be exactly where I left them, exactly, even My... no, especially My belt sander, because I am going to be so fucking hung-over tomorrow, anyone who fucks with My belt sander is going to get a taste of My belt. And it won't taste good. At all."
• Josh jokingly suggesting a porn magazine for sapient trees. It's called Enthouse.

Alice's Story

• Alice's entrance exam, which - as with Quentin's - goes a little Off the Rails...
  • In question 25, the paper asks how Alice were to stop the exam if it tried to escape from her. A stumped Alice barely has enough time to say "I'm not even sure I even understand the question," before her paper goes flying off the desk. Next panel, a very grumpy-looking Alice is forcing the paper back against the desk.
  • ...this:
    Exam Paper: 32. Draw a picture of a cat.
    Alice: Okay, fine.
    Exam Paper: 33. If cats could speak, what would your cat's name be in cat language and why?
    Alice: The fuck?
    Exam Paper: 34. List the phonemes of your cat's language and produce a transliteration using the Latin alphabet of your choice.
    [Alice looks absolutely bewildered]
    Exam Paper: 35. Compose a Juvenalian satire about your cat in cat language, using at least one idiom whose meaning cannot be properly conveyed in English.
    Alice: [throwing up her hands in exasperation] You have gotta be fucking kidding me.
  • And at the end of it all, Alice marches over to Dean Fogg and wearily admits defeat... only to be told she achieved a near-perfect score.
• After the exam, Alice needs a quick bathroom break - commenting that nobody at Hogwarts has to contend with stress diarrhea... and without warning, Julia emerges from one of the stalls with a yell of "what the fuuuuuuuuuuuuck?" having just been teleported out of a coffee shop for her exam.
• The new variant on Quentin trying to break down the door to the Physical Kid's cottage: this time, he tries to ram it with his shoulder, resulting in the door collapsing under him, leaving him sprawled in the doorway with his legs in the air - all while Janet looks on, casually sipping a glass of wine.
• Alice surprising Mayakovsky by throwing the bag of ingredients back in his face, a decision she attributes to having a little arctic fox still in her.
• Eliot referring to Penny as "an emo peacock."
• Penny revealing that he created a special projecting notebook to spice up his reveal of the buttons that can take them to Fillory. Janet's response? "Oh my god, you made a Power Point?"
• The first test of battle magic. While Penny and Josh are high-fiving each other over the Dungeons and Dragons references, Quentin, Eliot and Janet can only look utterly flabbergasted.

The Magician King

• As depressing as Julia's descent into obsession with magic is, it does provide a few laughs. Among other things, Julia acknowledges the fact that, over the course of her efforts to wait for the Brakebills acceptance letter, she eventually got tired of watching The Craft after about three times. Eventually, her concerned parents pack her off to a psych ward, resulting in a stretch of complaints about her roommate's habit of talking about Transformers in her sleep.
  Who's crazy now? Those movies were even worse than The Craft.
• While in Venice with Quentin and Josh, she overlooks the entire breakfast in favour of eating marmite straight from the jar, which Quentin takes as "further proof of her declining humanity."
• The perfect encapsulation of Josh as a Ditzy Genius: during preparations for the journey to Cornwall, he promises that he'll be able to get them there through portal magic, no problem. Concerned, Quentin asks Josh where he thinks Cornwall actually is, offering him a choice between England, Ireland or Scotland with $100 on the line... only for Josh to smell a trick question and incorrectly guess that Cornwall is in Canada. When it's finally revealed to him that Cornwall's in southwest England, Josh doubles down on how easy the job will be, stating that it's practically next-door - "in Europe" - only to suddenly reveal an incredible set of calculations that will transport them from Venice to Cornwall. Bemused, Quentin reflects that he should probably stop underestimating Josh.

The Magician's Land

• After the death of Quentin's father, Quentin is briefly convinced that the departed must be a magician based on the simple fact that nobody could be that boring and have that many weird quirks - most prominently, his weird obsession with Jeff Goldblum. As it turns out, this even ties into the man's computer password - thelostworld!
  • As sad as the realization is, it's a little amusing when Quentin realizes that the strange coded tables he's been obsessing over in the belief that they're the final clue to his dad's magical secrets are just his fantasy golf league stats, revealing that Quentin's dad wasn't a magician - just a very boring man.
• Plum and Quentin are discussing a means of getting to Antarctica when they realize that they don't have to be geese this time around. Plum asks for suggestions on what they can transform into; Quentin's reply: "A human being. Like on an airplane."
  Plum: What's the fastest migratory bird on Earth?
  Quentin: An airplane.
  Plum: Whatever, you are like the bullshittest magician ever.
• In order to transform into whales, Quentin and Plum Walk on Water out into the open ocean. On the way, Plum remarks that the whole thing feels vaguely blasphemous.
  • On the way, the two of them discuss their time at Brakebills South, and how they both learned how to transform into animals there. However, Plum remarks that she was restricted to polar bears and seals; apparently, fox transformations are now forbidden due to undisclosed reasons...
• Being ushered into Mayakovsky's lab, Quentin speculates that the professor is actually an Anti-Santa and he's about to show them where the elves make lumps of coal for all the bad children... and then, perhaps remembering his experiences as a fox on his last visit, Quentin finds himself praying that whatever they find in the lab isn't going to involve sex.
• Julia the dryad's sudden arrival is heralded by Janet remarking "look, it's the Lorax."
• Proving that she hasn't lost her sense of humour despite having transcended all humanity, Julia reintroduces herself with this line right in the middle of the apocalypse.
  Insert joke here about how I leave you alone for five minutes and all of Fillory goes to shit.