Apple TV+ comedy Mythic Quest rings in the holiday season with a very special Christmas episode this week. The Mythic Quest offices are full of misery as David makes everyone stay and work through Christmas Eve. His attempts to cheer them up come to naught. And when Poppy and Ian try to salvage things at their old company, they go too far.
Meanwhile, Poppy and Rachel must learn what Jo’s definition of friendship is, and Rachel has her first brush with success. All in all, “The 12 Hours of Christmas” stands tall as a stellar episode of Apple TV+’s funniest show.
Mythic Quest recap: ‘The 12 Hours of Christmas’
Season 2, episode 6: It’s Christmas at the Mythic Quest offices. And despite David (played by David Hornsby) and Jo (Jessie Ennis) trying to bring the Christmas spirit to the office, every overworked drone wants badly to be home with their families instead of keeping the servers alive at MQ headquarters.
Ian (Rob McElhenney) shows up to see if he can pawn off Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) on Mythic Quest for the season because she has no one to celebrate with. (Poppy tells Jo that she’s doing the same thing for Ian.) And when he discovers that David’s blowing it, as usual, Ian tells him not to remind the office workers that they’re not at home with their families. It’ll just make them even sadder.
David protests, but they immediately catch one of the workers watching porn on his computer. “Anthony! No porn!” snaps David, to which the unembarrassed fellow (Mort Burke) replies, “But it’s Christmas!”
Jo gets Poppy a gift, but Poppy didn’t get Jo anything, unaware that after their brunch date Jo considers them friends. “So … you did friendship wrong,” says Jo aggressively, pleased with herself for being the better friend. Poppy’s horrified expression as Jo walks away is hysterically funny. No one does car crash shame like Charlotte Nicdao.
Getting into that holiday spirit
Meanwhile, Mythic Quest’s recently promoted monetization chief Rachel (Ashly Burch), explains to her girlfriend, Dana (Imani Hakim), what her new job is all about. This is a big seasonal moment for them, as Rachel will be meeting Dana’s parents for the first time.
Brad (Danny Pudi), back in an administrative position but still in a diminished role, can’t argue with her demands to give more privileges to players. She earns the company $500,000 dollars in an hour, but her joy is short-lived. Jo comes in and gives her a gift and she has nothing to give her in return, prompting Jo once more to say that someone else is doing friendship wrong.
Poppy and Ian finally get on the same page about their Christmas gifts for each other. (Both must admit that their families don’t want to hang out with them, too.) Then they decide to cheer up the disgruntled Mythic Quest workers. David’s plan to dress up in Dickensian costume and sing carols clearly isn’t going to work.
They take everyone down to their new Grim Pop offices for a quick rave and a Porsche raffle. (Poppy never drove the car when Ian gave it to her, “Which is astonishing!” Ian chimes in). David is furious. He cancels the party and demands everyone go back to work. And they arrive just in time to hear Rachel brag to Brad about making the company money, which makes the lack of Christmas bonuses even more offensive to the workers.
Rachel, Brad, Ian and Poppy quickly throw together a festive traditional Christmas party for the office. Poppy and Rachel make Jo a video game where she kills women at brunch as an apology, and they even manage to squeeze in some caroling just before they start choking on the fake snow they’ve started pumping into the Mythic Quest offices.
Time for toys and time for cheer
Photo: Apple TV+
This is a very good episode of Mythic Quest all across the board. Jo’s apoplexy at realizing her friends don’t take friendship as seriously as she does is extremely funny. David turning into a Scrooge accidentally when his very quaint and old-fashioned ideas don’t sit well with the overworked staff is a handy metaphor for everything he’s doing wrong as the head of Mythic Quest. And Ashly Burch and Imani Hakim make great use of their screen time this week, with Burch desperate for approval (as usual) and Hakim leaning into Ian’s zen approach to corporate culture.
But perhaps the best gift of all is that the writers found funny stuff to illustrate the Poppy-and-Ian dynamic again. I was really starting to miss that this season.
The two characters coming to terms with their families hating them is great and, if it’s out of character for Ian to admit he’s bad at something, it works because this is a holiday episode.
“I think we might have messed this up,” says a rueful Poppy when David retreats to his office, his Christmas party in shambles. “No wonder our families hate us,” says Ian.
Long, awkward pause, before Poppy meekly chimes in: “Well … it was really more of a scheduling thing with my family.” “I know, Pop … I know…” Very funny.
Anytime the writers can craft solid punch lines to bridge the gap between these two characters it’s a winning moment on this show. Mythic Quest was built on the foundational differences between Nicdao and McElhenney’s characters and performances. It’s nice to see them go back to basics for this very charming Christmas episode.
★★★★☆
Watch Mythic Quest on Apple TV+
New episodes of the third season of Mythic Quest arrive on Apple TV+ every Friday.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
