The Princess Blog

At this point, Disenchantment feels like a failed experiment. It sounded like a great idea at first. Using Matt Groening's irreverent humor to deconstruct modern princess stereotypes  could have gone in the way of a cleverly nuanced series like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend . Instead, it tried to recreate outdated techniques from shows like The Simpsons  that were made for syndication. By releasing entire seasons all at once with a year between each one on Netflix, Disenchantment needed to break the mold to match its new format, and it could not do that. Each season or "part" of the series had a bunch of irrelevant or mediocre episodes in between finales that would barely advance the plot and end on cliffhangers , requiring viewers to wait a full year to find out what would happen next. Even though this final installment cleverly included a background character who would pointed out these inconsistencies, it wasn't enough to save the show. Part 5 of Disenchantment begins wit...

The fourth season of Disenchantment  is one of several princess surprises  that were released on Netflix over the past couple of months. The new season even contained a reference to another recent princess release on Netflix called The Royal Treatment . I'm not sure if this reference was intentional, but it sure seemed that way since both projects are produced by the same popular streaming service. I had low expectations for Disenchantment after a disappointing third season last year , but I was pleasantly surprised this time. It seemed like the writers either learned from their mistakes or read a lot of reviews that were similar to mine. Either way, this season had much stronger continuity and character development, and felt less disjointed than the previous releases. It's probably the best season of Disenchantment so far. The season begins with Bean, who is now Queen of Dreamland, being forced by her wicked mother to marry the devil. The troubled royal teen takes the show ba...

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Disenchantment . I love the concept  of a fantasy princess show from  Matt Groening , creator of The Simpsons and Futurama , which both have deeply flawed protagonists that people would not associate with the heroes or heroines from fairy tales. Bean is a new kind of princess who is more likely to hang out at the local tavern instead of attending a royal ball. Her two sidekicks, Elfo, a lovesick runaway elf and Luci, a demon who was kicked out of Hell, give the show plenty of humor and charm. The biggest flaw derives from its format. The Simpsons and Futurama were long-running episodic series that pumped out a lot of episodes that could be watched in any order with the intention of being syndicated on network television. Netflix series are designed to be binged, which means they release small chunks of episodes that give enough of a cohesive story to satisfy viewers for another year while they wait for the next season. So far, Disench...

It's been a rough year. Not only did three animated princess shows end , but it's been over a year since we got new episodes of Disenchantment . We need Matt Groening's dark humor now more than ever, so I am pleased to announce that it will only be a matter of weeks before Princess Tiabeanie makes her return to Netflix. A new trailer  was just released, and oh my goodness! There is an incredible amount of footage packed into this two-minute treat of a teaser! Mermaids, world-building, and familiar faces abound as Bean must decide if she wants to form an alliance between the kingdoms of Dreamland and Steamland. Part 3 of Disenchantment will hit Netflix on January 15th, 2021. You can check out the trailer below. The second season of Disenchantment  ended with a surprise re-appearance of Bean's mother, Queen Dagmar , a fascinating villain who was notably absent for most of the season. It looks like the next part will place more focus on her half-hearted attempts to recon...

Betrayal has been a common theme among princess shows as of late , and I think that may be something worth exploring a little further. I incorporated an act of betrayal into my own story, The Stolen Jewel , even before it appeared in three of my favorite princess shows. The betrayal of a princess by someone she cares about is a big trend among Disney properties within the past five years or so. It began with the popularity of Frozen  which had a novel twist for a Disney movie in which Anna's true love turned out to be using her for power and tried to kill both her and her sister. Once  Frozen  became the cultural phenomenon that it did, Disney decided to duplicate the formula with varying results . In my opinion, the most effective of these was Cassandra's betrayal of Rapunzel. The Tangled series gave us over two years to feel as close to Rapunzel's  lady-in-waiting  as she did, which made it sting that much more when she stabbed her in the back during the p...

I had high hopes for the second season, or "part," of Disenchantment, even though I was mildly disappointed with the first set of episodes . Having a show about a princess who wants to be a good person but constantly makes bad decisions is pretty ground-breaking for a genre of characters who always do the right thing as second nature. Princess Bean follows in the footsteps of Fry and Homer Simpson from Matt Groening 's other shows, but she stands out as his first female protagonist. After these new episodes of Disenchantment, I'm beginning to think he does a better job making his side characters interesting than his protagonists. All of his leads tend to be simple-minded drunkards whose sole purpose is to give the average viewer someone to relate to. I might be biased, but I think the most interesting character in The Simpsons is Lisa Simpson, not Homer, and the most interesting character in Futurama is Leela , not Fry. In the case of Disenchantment, I would give th...

It's been a while since we've heard from Rapunzel or Bean , and their creators seemed to be perfectly happy leaving us hanging. The previous seasons of both Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure and Disenchantment  ended on cliffhangers. Luckily, the story gods have finally heard our desperate pleas as both these shows are coming back from the dead with new episodes less than a month from now! The third and final season of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure  will premiere on October 7th, and Disenchantment will be back with what they are referring to as  "Part 2"  on September 20th. We've been theorizing and worrying for a long time about the fate of these two princesses, so it's a huge relief to know that it won't be much longer before we learn how they overcome their shocking betrayals. When we last saw Rapunzel, she was feeling hurt and anguished by Cassandra's untimely betrayal. Just when Rapunzel was about to grab the Moonstone Opal and potentiall...

Today is the day! The first season of Disenchantment is now on Netflix , and I'm here to tell you all about it. The trailer for the show contained lots of clips from the ten-episode season, which can be good or bad. It gave a pretty accurate portrayal of the tone, but it also revealed a lot of the jokes in advance. For that reason among others, the last two episodes of the season were the best because they were the only ones that had just barely been hinted at earlier on, including a most likely unintentional Mysticons reference . The rest of the episodes had their ups and downs. There were a few fractured fairy tale references, but most of the stories were original. The pacing was pretty good overall. Any violence was there purely for the sake of comedy, and it never got gratuitous. That said, I think I still prefer Futurama overall thanks to its colorful cast of characters and clever story ideas. Still, it was refreshing to see a Matt Groening show with a female lead, even if s...

This has been a pretty good weekend for princess fans. Maleficent II   officially began production , and I started a new playlist on my YouTube channel about princess TV shows. The biggest news, however, is that Matt Groening's upcoming Netflix series just dropped its first full-length trailer. I am so excited about Disenchantment , and the trailer did not disappoint. It looks like everything I was hoping it would be. Bean is incredibly easy to relate to. Even though she does turn many of the princess tropes on their head, she still inherently wants to be a good person, which is very important for princess parodies , which can easily lose their focus if they try to be too malicious. I'll let you check out the trailer below before delving into it further. The first thing we see is Bean's wedding, but just like the opening wedding in ABC's 2015 comedy Galavant , things do not go as expected for our adventuresome heroine. When Bean is given the opportunity to say ...

Over the weekend, there was a big announcement that the first season of  Matt Groening 's first new show in 20 years will be released on August 17th. Unless you've been living under a rock, you're familiar with Matt's other shows, Futurama , and  The Simpsons , which has been running approximately since the dawn of mankind. The new series, which will release ten episodes for its first season on Netflix, is called Disenchantment (not to be confused with Disenchanted , the upcoming sequel to Disney's 2007 Enchanted ). In a surprise move for Matt Groening, Disenchantment will be starring a princess! Bean, our new heroine,  is described as a "hard-drinking princess who decided ruling a kingdom is boring and sets out on a series of misadventures with an elf named, err, Elfo and her very own demon, Luci." This is groundbreaking territory for princess culture in many ways. Even though very little has been revealed about the show thus far aside from four ...