WARNING: The following contains spoilers forMythic Quest Season 2, Episode 5 "Please Sign Here," streaming now on Apple TV+.
As Mythic QuestSeason 2 reaches its halfway point, a staff exercise in mandatory sensitivity trainingcauses deep fissures between the game developers, with a mix of hilarious and heartbreaking results. Using animal archetypes to define personality traits, pent-up frustrations and interpersonal conflicts rise to the surface, leaving creative directors Ian Grimm and Poppy Li at an impasse while the office descends into chaos once again.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, series writer Katie McElhenney discussed how "Please Sign Here" arrived at a crucial moment for the characters, her favorite joke from the episode and what she and the writers want to focus on for the remainder of Season 2.
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I love bottle episodes, with the main cast all together in a show's main setting. How is it having these characters bounce off each other in a confined place?
Katie McElhenney: It's really fun! I also love bottle episodes, because they're their own unique challenge. There's something fun about getting to spend more time with characters than we usually do and seeing them interact with each other in some groupings we don't normally see. The challenge of them, of course, is that you're in one space, so how do you keep it active? How do you keep the conversation flowing in a way that feels natural with exposition and interpersonal conflicts and having it serve the story as a whole? It's just this unique challenge that was really, really fun to break and having [series creator and episode director] Meg Ganz, who has written some really great bottle episodes. It was a challenge we were really happy to work on together.
It was just really fun and a great way to get out some of the drama and some of the comedy, with pairings we don't normally see and people who wouldn't normally have conversations in private, and now it's on blast in front of everybody. It's a lot of fun and a lot to track; as you're breaking the [writing] whiteboard, it gets colorful and full pretty fast because that's typically the way Megan likes to break a story: Track what scenes people are in and assigning people a color [on the white board] that way you can visually see everyone's story but when it's a bottle and everyone is in the room together, it lends itself to some creative and fun challenges to make sure everybody is served and every story flows into the next one and everyone has their moments.
One of the great things about Mythic Quest is so many people in the cast are also writers on the show: Rob McElhenney, David Hornsby, Ashly Burch and director Megan Ganz. How is it sitting down with everyone to script an episode?
McElhenney: We are really lucky to have -- maybe it's part luck, part by design -- really generous writers and actors in the writers room because there isn't the ego that would happen sometimes that could have potentially conflicting interests. Everybody is there to serve the story. If it makes the sense for one character to be featured more, then they will be. If it doesn't, then they take a backseat. It also allows you to get their perspective on what things they feel would work and what they can bring to it and a different kind of passion for a particular storyline and advocating for it. It's nice to have that perspective but, at the same time, everybody is just fantastic professionals and their job is to do what's best for the season and I feel like that really reflects in it.
It just feels more authentic. And we were also really lucky in the season to have Jessie Ennis and Imani Hakimpop in and spend time in the writers' room as well. It was really open to anybody because Rob, Megan and David really feel that the more voices you have in a room, the better it's going to be. There's no sense in someone sitting back because they don't feel comfortable expressing their ideas because then you miss out on a potentially great idea. For them, we get their perspective and opinions and see how that works out into the fabric of the show and, two seasons in, I think it's showing that model really works.
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This episode comes at the halfway point of Season 2, building off revelations about Brad from the preceding episode and ending on the most emotionally raw conversation between Ian and Poppy yet. How is it setting up what will inform the rest of Season 2 with this single episode?
McElhenney: Yeah, it was really intentional for them to have that conversation for a lot of reasons at the midway point, seeing how they were kind of working inauthentically together, forcing it and driving each other away and working separately. And then came this time where they're both really struggling and assumed new places in the company, with expectations from Montreal, and now they're forced with and struggling but, because of egos, they can't admit it to the only other person who would understand. I think that's just human nature that the ones we see the most are the ones we're the most afraid to be vulnerable with because, while you're 99% sure they'll be supportive, there's that 1% that thinks they might not be. If you lose this mentor and steam and, in their current state, it would just be too hard for them to admit.
For the context of this episode, with the animals and animal behaviors, Ian does show his neck and comes out and is vulnerable and Poppy rejects that. Now he's a wounded animal and there's nothing more dangerous than a cornered, wounded animal because they will come out and fight even harder and that's kind of what we were going for with that. That's not to say that... Poppy reacted the way she needed to react. Just because he gets vulnerable one time doesn't mean he's deserving of her vulnerabilities. But again, it's just these two wounded animals who just can't decide to work together. Theyhave to keep protecting themselves and lashing out at the only other person who could probably be helpful to them. It was important to have that, especially in light of some of the comedy that went on with relationships shifting, but this is the one that's at the core of our show, so we had to hit it pretty hard that there are some fractures happening.
You wrote the interlude episode from Season 1 which functions just as well asa standalone story while thematically informing the rest of that season. How liberating is itwriting a story separate fromMythic Quest's main narrative?
McElhenney: It was great because it was the last one that we shot. I was able to do updates to it that continued to reflect the season because you break the scripts and then they do morph and change as it's being filmed because actors are bringing something fresh to it or you start to notice a scene that wasn't there on paper. That was great, that it was able to inform, it was just something that happened organicallythat was more parallel. And the opposite is true of having things in the "A Dark Quiet Death" script that were then represented in the season, having Roscoe everywhere having characters wear A Dark Quiet Death shirts and hitting those notes.
It was really great that we were able to do that. I was glad that I was in the room while the other scripts were being written. We were able to really get to the core of this interpersonal and professional relationship and the intersection of creativity and commerce and the symbiotic and sometimes parasitic relationship between those two things. To be a part of that conversation and getting to know our characters and to be able to reflect that in these proxy characters -- it was just really fun to be part of transforming the space and work with Jake [Johnson] and Cristin [Milioti], it was just a really fantastic experience.
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What is your personal favorite joke that you've been able to write that still makes you laugh or crack a smile?
McElhenney: From this episode, for sure, anything with David Hornsby. His whole wolf situation was unreal. [Laughs.] It's really true that we had to do multiple takes of things because everybody couldn't help but laugh and he would do something else that was just as wild with his whole demeanor. Anything that involved him becoming a wolf, I think about it and it makes me so happy because it's so ridiculous. [L aughs.] He's so willing to just do it and it's fantastic.
I love watching his wholewolf persona crumble in a matter of seconds and he's stuck in an elevator by the end of the episode.
McElhenney: "I was howling for help!" [L aughs.] And it's just such a compliment when you write something and somebody who's as funny as David doesn't change your words and delivers them just as you've written them. It makes you feel very worthy. And I'll say that for the whole cast as well. When you've written something as a writer, to hear your words, especially when they're unchanged because these amazing actors and really funny people thought it was funny enough just to say it as it was is just extremely validating and terrifying as well, like "It must've been a fluke! They're going to find out I'm a fraud!"
Going into Season 2 and knowing the cast and characters better, what did you want to change up or build upon?
McElhenney: We definitely wanted to explore Brad more. I think we saw that in his episodes with his brother where not only his ability to emote but his physical comedy is amazing. Just him peering between blinds and slinking out backward through doorways is just so funny. And now that we're able to look at the season as a whole and what we really wanted to explore with these characters, Brad's story is something we definitely wanted to focus on because you don't get a phenomenal actor like Danny [Pudi] and not use him the way we do in Season 2.
It's an interesting position in the video game world, the monetization expert. We had somebody from a gaming company who does monetization come in and she was saying you could feel the air get sucked out of a room when [a monetization staffer] walks in it because everyone [feels] like they're going to make them do something they don't want to do. But it's the person that turns on the light switch because they're how the money gets made. She would relish that role because she knows she's doing something to ultimately help the game even though people have to speak to her a lot about it.
Looking at this character who is all about the money and the game of it, not so much the people, what kind of person wants to do that? Who is he and how can we get into a little bit of his own backstory about how he ended up where he is? No one wants to see a one-dimensional bad guy, that's not fun. You want to see all the flaws and be able to peer behind the current a little bit.
Mythic Quest stars Rob McElhenney, Charlotte Nicdao, David Hornsby, Danny Pudi, Ashly Burch, Imani Hakim, Jessie Ennis and F. Murray Abraham, with Naomi Ekperigin, Caitlin McGee, Humphrey Ker, Chris Naoki Lee and Jonathan Wiggs. New episodes air Fridays on Apple TV+.
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