‘Mythic Quest’ Just Aired One of the Year’s Best Holiday Episodes
Christmas episodes and sitcoms go together like the Hallmark channel and festive romance. Or at least they can, if released at the appropriate time of year.
It would take up too much space to list how many beloved network comedies have decked the halls with cheer and heartfelt moments to get viewers in the holiday spirit over the years. Long gone are the days of most shows airing 24 episodes between September and May, even if current broadcast titles like Abbott Elementary and Ghosts keep this holiday theme dream alive.
For streaming, this road has occasionally invoked a Scrooge-like bitterness, as the Ted Lasso backlash last summer proved. Ah yes, releasing a Yuletide adventure in August. That was something that no one expected—myself included. Other factors were at play, and it wasn’t simply because audiences rejected out-of-season cheer. But now that it’s seasonally appropriate, you should go back and rewatch it to experience the “instant classic” that The Daily Beast’s Obsessed’s Kevin Fallon described in his review last year. (Seriously, Brett Goldstein and Juno Temple’s bad breath reactions are gold, and I think we’re all now waiting for Hannah Waddingham to release a Christmas album.)
Thankfully, Mythic Quest, Ted Lasso’s Apple TV+ stablemate, is not making the same mistake.
“12 Hours of Christmas” lands this week on the streamer, slap bang in the middle of an already fantastic season. Offering a dose of seasonal joy in December is a wise scheduling move from the comedy, which also follows a weekly release schedule.
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Set in a video game development studio, the series, from the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia masterminds, debuted a few months before Ted Lasso, and has always deserved to be in the same awards conversation—even though it’s been rudely ignored. (Two years after the show’s lockdown Zoom episode was released, I still watch the Rube Goldberg machine sequence if I want to feel something.) Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz have crafted a workplace comedy that balances humor and heart.
Many viewers can identify with having to work in the lead-up to Christmas Day. Some well-meaning bosses think decorations, snacks, and themed attire are enough to compensate for missing out on time at home with family (or at drinks with friends). Mythic Quest one-ups this scenario as the video game employees must work around the clock on Christmas Eve to deal with the added pressure the servers will experience as each global time zone wakes up on Christmas morning to MQ-themed gifts.
In previous years, former co-creative directors Ian (McElhenney) and Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) turned this annual bummer into an office party to distract everyone from what they are no doubt missing. However, MQ executive director David (David Hornsby, who also directed this episode) has a different plan. He wants to make it special and bans what he deems is Ian’s “Scrooge energy.” David is basically giving off “divorced dad getting the kids for the first time on Christmas” vibes.
Chemistry and comic timing between Nicdao and McElhenney continue to be a source of much hilarity. At the same time, the dialogue never shies away from how lonely they would be if the other were suddenly gone. Depending on their mood, they are either a dream team or a nightmare waiting to implode. However, they are on the same page when it comes to tormenting David. Ian and Poppy have oversized egos, so despite David’s giddy mood about getting to do Christmas his way this year, his former colleagues can’t help but interfere.
Like any good holiday episode, something crummy has to happen before you get to the warm and fuzzy resolution.
Despite no longer working at MQ, Poppy and Ian bribed their way into the round-the-clock work assignment they have historically turned into a Christmas party. It speaks volumes that the two people who don’t have to be at the office can’t keep away. They both laugh off the fact they don’t have a family to be with (Poppy claims hers is a scheduling mishap), before realizing beneath the snark that they did something nice for each other.
Of course, David has done away with debauchery, hoping the team will eagerly participate in wholesome activities like karaoke with a caroling twist—all while ensuring the servers can handle the holiday surge.
About midway through, David and his assistant step out of his office, ready to cosplay A Christmas Carol. What they find are zero takers for a festive sing-along. Of course, Poppy and Ian took matters into their own hands, and everyone is now partying hard in the GrimPop office (which has the ideal spacious set-up for a makeshift club). “It’s a place of business,” David tries to remind the unnamed co-workers going at it. He announces, “Christmas is canceled,” before he “bah humbugs” his employees and tells them to get back upstairs.
“We were gonna connect everyone together. It was going to be special,” is David’s sad refrain before he retreats to his office to clutch a snowglobe and bottle of scotch. David can reframe the most pathetic of stories (such as his childhood Christmas) to convince himself he had a good time, but Poppy and Ian take things too far—as they often do.
Rupture and repair are sitcom storytelling 101, but a grand gesture is required to restore goodwill if this breakdown occurs during the Yuletide window. Whoever has their feelings hurt in the first half of the episode (usually the character that loves the holidays) needs a boost by the end of the 20-plus minutes—or the entire run of the canceled-too-soon Dash & Lily.
One recurring theme of comedy holiday episodes is to sprinkle some miraculous moments of good cheer that might come across as cheesy at any other time. Emotional stakes are raised, and no doubt there will be tears. (I also cried at the end of the forthcoming Ghosts Christmas double-bill and cry-laughed through Matt Rogers’s Showtime special, Have You Heard of Christmas?)
Self-absorbed characters will also take a beat to consider their fellow man, but only after they have made a mess. “You say you’re doing it for other people, but you guys are doing it for yourselves. Like you always do,” David says to Poppy and Ian. He later tells them to “stick your dick in a blender” as they have sucked all joy out of this day. Thankfully, no appendages make contact with kitchen appliances, and no one has to be visited by ghosts or experience a world in which they don’t exist for Mythic Quest’s heartwarming payoff to happen. David is awoken on Christmas morning in the office to discover the white Christmas of his dreams is a reality.
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Ian and Poppy have turned MQ into David’s snowglobe fantasy; everyone gets a bonus, and there’s a delightful singalong. Because it is the holidays, we aren’t going to poke holes in how they managed to pull off such an impressive decoration job in mere hours. The choice of the song makes the final scene even more heartwarming and funny. The back catalog of pop tracks and hymns with a festive theme is vast, and the smile that broke out on my face when I heard the opening bars of “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” was massive.
Poppy has spent most of the episode referring to everyone in sight as “freakazoids,” but the connection David was striving for with former and current employees is real. When snow falls from the ceiling in the office, it looks like David might burst with joy; thankfully, the sentiment is immediately undercut as the faux snowflakes cause coughing and health concerns. There’s nothing like an Old Hollywood asbestos reference to ensure the Apple TV+ comedy doesn’t tip into overtly schmaltzy territory.
Mythic Quest has leveled up and unlocked a festive streaming victory.
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