A Eulogy for “Mythic Quest”

Charlotte Nicdao and Rob McElhenney in Mythic Quest. Apple TV+

There was a very brief window during which Mythic Quest, the Apple TV+ series about a fictional video game studio, might have been the best sitcom on television. I haven’t seen every sitcom, of course, but I have seen Bob’s Burgers, The Good Place, Ted Lasso, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia—probably at least a few others you also love—and at its best, Mythic Quest punched in their class. At times, it even improved upon them.

That shouldn’t be terribly surprising on paper. Just follow the careers of Mythic Quest’s cast and crew: Co-creator Megan Ganz and co-star Dani Pudi are both Community alums. Of course, co-creator and star Rob McElhenny is the creator of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Jessie Ennis did Better Call Saul. Ashly Burch has been involved with the majority of nerd media of the last decade.

What’s a little more surprising is that the show never really caught on, as evidenced by its abrupt cancellation, announced on April 11. It didn’t get the attention of Ted Lasso or Severance or other shows that have catapulted Apple’s streaming service onto a great many people’s entertainment budgets for a few months. I was on Twitter when Community was dropping Pulitzer-quality concept episodes on Thursday-evening NBC. I saw the hyperbole. I wrote some of it. But when Mythic Quest took those same tools and found novel and increasingly engaging ways to draw audiences into a conversation, to craft moments that lingered after the credits rolled, it barely registered.

To be fair, the show couldn’t keep that energy up—it peaked pretty dramatically in its second season. Seasons 3 and 4 had very strong moments, but they rarely approached the self-referential brilliance of “Everlight” or the meticulous genre storytelling of “Dark Quiet Death” and “Backstory!” There was some appropriate critical acclaim, but it never translated to the feverous audience enthusiasm that kept those other shows alive well past their financial expiration dates. Every week I watched Mythic Quest, hoping I might see something brilliant, but also knowing there was a chance I’d see something just okay. I’d rather have inconsistent brilliance than consistent goodness, but I’m aware my tastes aren’t always universal.

Chase Yi, Ashly Burch, Imani Hakim, David Hornsby, and Danny Pudi. Apple TV+

Still, the show had a solid four-season run, and at least one and a half of those seasons are among the best reimaginings of a workplace sitcom that I’ve seen. I suspect five, even 50 years from now, people will stumble upon “Dark Quiet Death,” “Peter,” “Quarantine,” “Please Sign Here,” “Sarian,” or “The Villain’s Feast” and wind up shouting, “Oh my god! How have I not heard of this show?” Many of those episodes find uses for the sitcom form that I’d never encountered. They do surprising, sometimes exhilarating things within a very limited format, one that’s built primarily for telling jokes, certainly not exploring big ideas like the relationship between power, ego, and creativity, the struggle of neurodivergent adults to find compatible social arrangements, and the unique shape of video game storytelling.

I’m sure there are dozens of names responsible for that ingenuity, but I want to single out Megan Ganz. Her Community episodes—“Collaborative Calligraphy,” “Documentary Filmmaking Redux,” and “Basic Lupine Urology”—are all among the best half hours that show produced. They’re also concept episodes that play with genre and form, searching for novel ways to harness the audience’s pop culture affection and storytelling savvy to connect on a deeper level. TV shows have been using concept episodes this way since at least the ’90s, but I can’t think of one that found more unique uses than Ganz’s work on Community, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Mythic Quest. In particular, I felt her Mythic Quest episode “Please Sign Here” was seriously underrated and probably the funniest 30 minutes of the series.

So what went wrong? Probably just a random accident of fate, the same one that kept all but a thousand people from buying The Velvet Underground and Nico, that claimed the lives of fun and promising projects as diverse as Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23, and Firefly. I’ve been avoiding certain relevant names in this conversation on purpose, but I bring up Firefly primarily to point out that sometimes shows die years before they reach their peak audience awareness. I think there’s so much good material in Mythic Quest that it’s destined to become someone’s new favorite show one viewing at a time for as long as it remains somewhere on the internet. Maybe those people will add up eventually.

Apple TV+

Maybe this was the show’s fatal flaw: Though the dramatic chops were consistent, the punchline hit ratio varied from episode to episode. Season 3 in particular felt like a huge comedic misstep, even while it delivered one of the series’ most emotionally moving episodes, “Sarian.” Of course, most shows are only good for a very short time. And I never felt like Mythic Quest stopped trying—the final season, which completed its run before the show was canceled, did a lot of interesting things. The writers tied their stories and jokes to the real state of the video game industry rather than settling for established narratives and easy moralizing lessons. They parodied writers who doubled down on old storytelling tropes rather than speaking to the world directly, and they lived by their own ethos. The show itself strove for a frank conversation about the games industry and the sorts of personalities that populate it.

But if we’re being honest, their refusal to settle for a formula may have ultimately cost them. They never established that reliable patter that gave series like 30 Rock and Parks and Rec their bottomless punchline reservoirs. I can’t even imagine how hard it is to do anything within the limited sitcom format, which relies heavily on patterns and familiarity. I cried during episodes of Mythic Quest. I cheered. I laughed quite a bit. Brad (Dani Pudi) and Jo (Jessie Ennis) circling each other while villainously monologuing in “Please Sign Here”; that tortuous peer review in “Backstory!”; Sue (Caitlin McGee), whose job involves talking to toxic fans online, shouting a horrified “No!” at a Girls Can Code group when one of the girls implies she wants to be like Sue someday.

But I won’t remember Mythic Quest as a very funny show, despite that being its primary purpose. And maybe that alone is damning. I’ll remember it as a show with surprising dramatic highs and really charismatic leads, especially Charlotte Nicdao as Poppy Li and Jessie Ennis as Jo. I’ll remember the soundtrack’s underrated needle-drop game—the end-credit tracks especially are so perfectly timed. I’ll remember the scripts that raised relevant questions and found unexpected answers. The show dug with curiosity and wit into the egocentrism, hypocrisy, and prejudice of both the game industry and narrative storytelling.

David Hornsby, Danny Pudi, Jessie Ennis, Imani Hakim, and Ashly Burch. Apple TV+

I’ll also remember the opening minutes of “Dark Quiet Death,” with Cristin Milotti and Jake Johnson. One article called it “Mythic Quest’s great standalone episode,” which I think is an unfair categorization. “Dark Quiet Death” (and its sequels, “Backstory!,” “Sarian,” and “Rebrand”) not only exists within the world of Mythic Quest but makes that world more interesting. Mythic Quest before this point feels simple, maybe even performatively reductive: Poppy is an underappreciated nonwhite female coder and Ian is her incompetent, egocentric white male superior, Michael Scott by another name. “Dark Quiet Death” puts that ego struggle in a different context, romanticizing the work, giving the viewer a lens into the characters’ world, how they see themselves, what they think matters, how that colors their ethics and choices. That kind of insight would never be achievable if we just kept cycling through three-act office hijinks every week. These episodes draw the viewer closer to the questions that really fuel the show, that make it more than a diverting half hour. Before I begin new creative projects, I have a ritual of watching all of the show’s concept episodes, because I think it gets me in a really strong, conscious, humble headspace. I can’t think of another show I’d do that with.

So goodbye for now, Mythic Quest. I refuse to count you out entirely, because there’s just too much good to escape notice forever. I hope you feel proud of the work you did. I hope to see the whole cast and creators on other projects. Now is the waiting game.

If you’re curious and still have your Apple TV + subscription active from Severance, I strongly advise you watch “Dark Quiet Death,” “Backstory!” and “Peter.” I think you’ll find something there worth your time. Maybe if enough people do that, this won’t have to be the final eulogy.