Probably the last thing to be expected from two of the creative forces behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on a brand new streaming service looking to make its mark is a basic, old-school workplace sitcom, but that's exactly what Sunny's Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day (along with co-creator Megan Ganz) have come up with in Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet. Ungainly title aside, Mythic Quest is a standard network-style sitcom about the wacky goings-on at a nontraditional office, in this case a company that produces a hugely popular video game.
Take out the occasional swear word and add in a laugh track, and most episodes of Mythic Quest could pass for a CBS sitcom. McElhenney plays Ian Grimm, the creative director of the studio that produces World of Warcraft-style MMORPG Mythic Quest, which in the first episode is about to launch its first major update in years, Raven's Banquet. The vain, egotistical Ian is a typical sitcom boss, undervaluing and overworking his employees, including the game's perpetually flustered lead designer, Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao). The office is full of goofy character types, from ineffectual executive producer David (Sunny's David Hornsby) to soulless head of monetization Brad (Community's Danny Pudi).
The video game industry is ripe for satire, but Mythic Quest is largely toothless, like a tamer, more mainstream version of HBO's Silicon Valley. Even an episode about the game being overrun by Nazi players avoids any kind of sharp social commentary, instead settling for silly misunderstandings and an easy, neat wrap-up in less than 30 minutes. It's no surprise that the show is co-produced by video game company Ubisoft, since every plot point feels carefully calculated to avoid anything beyond superficial ribbing of the industry.
What's left, then, is the kind of mildly amusing sitcom that could have taken place in almost any semi-creative work environment, from a TV station to a publishing company to a fashion house. The characters have jobs that are specific to gaming, but the basic types are familiar to anyone who's watched network TV in the past 30 years. Even if you don't know what loot crates are, it's easy to understand Brad, who's only interested in making the most money possible for the company, and doesn't care about the artistic value of the game.
Poppy is presented as the sane voice of reason, but she's just as neurotic and self-absorbed as everyone else around her. A pair of game testers played by Ashly Burch and Imani Hakim are a bit more grounded, although that often just makes them dull, and their romantic-tension subplot barely registers. Jessie Ennis plays a deadpan, socipopathic assistant whose motivations seem to change from episode to episode, depending on the needs of the plot.
The funniest character is washed-up sci-fi author C.W. Longbottom (F. Murray Abraham), a onetime Nebula Award winner now writing back stories for video game characters even though he's never played a video game in his life. Oscar-winner Abraham gives C.W. a pompous yet tragic quality that adds a layer of humor to his often baffled interactions with the younger people in the company. Even so, a lot of the jokes about C.W. lean on obvious bits about his drunkenness and his past inappropriate relationships with women.
Most of the jokes are pretty obvious, including some hacky sitcom cliches that would have been creaky decades ago ("Do you think they bought it?" a pair of characters ask once they're alone after bluffing their way through an important meeting). Although there's some light serialization, the bulk of the stories get resolved within a single episode (even the massive launch of the new update is finished by the end of the first episode). It's refreshing for a streaming comedy to be episodic and joke-focused rather than serialized and emotionally draining, but the problem here is that the jokes are largely weak, nothing like the edgy (perhaps sometimes too edgy) humor on Sunny, or even the surreal take on sitcom conventions of Community (where co-creator Ganz got her start).
In the midst of all this underwhelming sitcom mediocrity, the show takes a strange swerve in its fifth episode, telling a completely self-contained story about two entirely new characters, who've never previously been mentioned and never show up again. It's a bittersweet but not exactly funny romance between two video game designers played by Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti, with only a tiny sliver of connection to the overall show. It feels like something that McElhenney (who directed the episode, from a script by his sister Katie) could have made as an independent film, and while it's refreshing to watch, it's entirely out of place in the overall season.
As jarring as that episode may be, it points to ways that Mythic Quest could be a more daring kind of show. The serious inspirational moments in the other episodes all feel disingenuous, since the regular characters are goofy sitcom creations, but the writers clearly have the ability to come up with something more nuanced and affecting. If they aren't going to aim for Sunny-style craziness, and they aren't going to properly satirize the video-game industry, then they could at least create characters with complex emotional lives that are worth caring about. Instead, most of Mythic Quest is the kind of show that would have come and gone in half a season on network TV in 2004.
Starring Rob McElhenney, Charlotte Nicdao, David Hornsby, Danny Pudi, Ashly Burch, Imani Hakim, Jessie Ennis and F. Murray Abraham, the nine-episode first season of Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet debuts Friday on Apple TV+.