Roush Review: Workplace Mirth in ‘Mythic Quest’ Season 2

Two heads are maybe not better than one in the enjoyable second season of Mythic Quest, the tart workplace comedy set in a video-game production studio. (Think Silicon Valley with a swords-and-sorcery overlay.)

Once again, expanding the fictional “Mythic Quest” is the dysfunctional team’s No. 1 priority, but when neurotic engineer Poppy (a shrill Charlotte Nicdao) is promoted to co-creative director alongside the preeningly arrogant Ian (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Rob McElhenney), their insecurities and clashing egos keep everyone on edge, especially nebbishy boss-in-name-only David (David Hornsby).

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Loving all the conflict: misanthropic and mercenary coworker Brad (Community‘s Danny Pudi), who’s all about monetization. (Here he is pitching a new fad to the reluctant team: “It’s a big fat whale carcass just sitting on a beach, and we should be gorging ourselves on it like all the other seagulls.”) Brad eagerly embraces any opportunity to manipulate the creatives—Ian, who seeks friction, and Poppy, who longs for affirmation—all the while urging his new assistant Jo (the hilarious Jessie Ennis) to embrace her dark side. Which she does with terrifying abandon.

On the outskirts of the action, because of Covid, is the fantasy game’s skeevy head writer C.W. Longbottom (a hammy F. Murray Abraham). His character takes center stage in the season’s best episode, an origin story set in the 1970s, when a young C.W. (Silicon Valley‘s Josh Brener) leaves Iowa for Los Angeles as a fledgling and deeply unsuccessful writer of sci-fi/fantasy. An encounter with the legendary Isaac Asimov and an epiphany involving the earliest home-video entertainment sets him on a new path, and we can all see how that turned out.

I’ve never been a fan of video games, but I’m sold on the sardonic silliness of Mythic Quest.

Mythic Quest, Season 2 Premiere, Friday, May 7, Apple TV+