Good point! I hadn't thought of that. This is the only possible way that what they're doing regarding swearing makes sense.

I bet the Dean and faculty are mostly absent for the same reason the campus is always deserted — they're just trimming budget by having fewer people on screen. It definitely bothers me because it makes everything feel too thin, like a prop town outside and like a few rooms on sets inside (e.g. exactly what they are).…

If there is one, it has to be Quentin, doesn't it?

| rather than being somewhat clumsily told in exposition at the very end of the story.

| Is there some chance still that Eliza isn't Jane, or is somehow a copy or clone or projection of Jane?

Also, isn't Elliot's whole thing that he goes to great effort to appear as if he's disinterested and uninvolved, but he desperately wants to be interested and involved in something that matters? It seems the reviewer bought into the character's public persona, without factoring in his deeper motivations.

| Did they actually say that Eliza was Jane in the episode? Maybe she's a different Chatwin?

I think you're right. Which makes me think about what someone suggested earlier, about how we could see Jane again, as different iterations of herself from other timelines.

The A.V. Club
You seem more upset about the bunny than the human characters.

"I know no one likes them but I've been saying from the beginning this show has needed world-building episodes."

Hmm…
Penny getting dressed.
Penny about to go for a swim.
Penny had spaghetti for dinner.
Penny discovers clothes-disintegrating magic.
Penny teleports to a dimension where shirts don't exist.

"my only odd issue was that she wore her hair so markedly differently in each appearance, it always took me a moment to recognize her."

Also, for what it's worth, I think the rabbit scene happened off-campus. There was an establishing shot of a cityscape at the start of the scene. That doesn't clarify why Mike needed a rabbit needed to bring him the knife, but just saying that it didn't materialize within the Brakebills perimeter.

Oh yeah. That would be great!

Wasn't that the entire series run of Friends?

I agree — the show's not doing enough to demonstrate how much time is passing. And, I think that's to its detriment. The stakes for the characters matter less when we can't tell how much time they're investing, in things like learning the nail spell or building the gin machine.

Alternately:

Without redundancies, how would I while away my life on message boards?

Also, in the show's version, maybe Mayakovsky knows the same stuff as in the first scene of E1 — Dean Fogg's conversation with 'the specialist' — with it's implication that Quentin is some sort of chosen one.

Yes! This was long overdue. I still can't see why they didn't put more of that in the Brakebills story line in the first few episodes.