Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! finds love in all the wrong places this week. Melissa goes from nobody to somebody, and Josh finds his calling as a spiritual leader, which is the last thing they need right now.
In their quest to make things right in Schmicago, they tangle things up worse than ever — and they clearly don’t have a clean exit strategy. The episode, entitled “Famous as Hell,” is a rousing chapter of the Schmigadoon! saga.
Schmigadoon! recap: ‘Famous as Hell’
Season 2, episode 3: Ever since Josh (played by Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) had the brilliant idea to set up vindictive butcher Dooley Flint (Alan Cumming) and foul-tempered orphanage keeper Mrs. Coldwell (Kristin Chenoweth), the odd couple has grown even more disturbed.
Their brilliant idea is to kill Mrs. Coldwell’s orphans and sell their meat at Flint’s butcher shop. The big hitch is that the orphans won’t eat all the food she buys for them to fatten them up.
Meanwhile, by accidentally setting up hippie Topher (Aaron Tveit) with fast chorus girl Jenny Banks (Dove Cameron), they’ve created a gap in the Kratt Club lineup. Club owner and local tyrant Otavius Kratt (Patrick Page) has taken a shine to Melissa, however. And because Jenny isn’t around to do her solo number, Kratt insists that Melissa do it. She’s nervous, but she agrees, and of course, she does a magnificent job. (That’s true narratively, but Cecily Strong also does a really terrific job with the song.)
Kratt’s applause is a little more than slightly ominous.
So many wayward hippies …
As Melissa repairs to her dressing room, Josh goes for a walk and Topher’s hippies start following him. Ever since Topher started hooking up with Jenny, he doesn’t have time to gad about with his old band of friends.
Josh notices one of them has a wound on her foot, and fixes it. (He’s a doctor, remember?) The hippies treat it like a miracle and demand that Josh become their new leader. He doesn’t want to do it, but gives in after much cajoling. As he falls deeper in with the hippies, and Melissa grows more popular at the club, it’s only becoming harder to leave Schmicago.
Topher and Jenny finally confront Josh and Melissa for stealing their cult following and their job/audience respectively. They kick them out of Jenny’s apartment, so they must stay with Mrs. Coldwell.
Let’s get to the meat of the matter
When they arrive, they notice something is off with her and Dooley right away. Mrs. Coldwell seems to be nicer to the orphans than before, but her attitude still suggests hatred. And what’s with Dooley’s huge new meat grinder?
It takes them no time at all to divine Coldwell and Dooley’s mad plan to kill and butcher the orphans. Josh and Melissa try to reason with the pair. Josh figures out that Dooley badly wants to kill Kratt but can’t do it, so he’s taking out his blood lust on the orphans. What if they finally got Dooley the chance to get his revenge on Kratt for having framed him for murder and ruined his relationship with his daughter, Jenny?
That night at the club, Melissa tries to seduce Kratt and get him to follow her to a secluded spot so Dooley can kill him. Smelling a fix, he absconds with her while Kratt’s nephew, Sgt. Rivera (Jaime Camil), arrests Josh. If Melissa wants to see Josh alive again, she’ll have to consent to marry Kratt.
Give it up for the narrator!
Photo: Apple TV+
First, a word of praise for Titus Burgess’ turn as the Schmigadoon! narrator. He delivered a consistently great performance all season, but he sings this week’s first act break song so magnificently it’s worth pointing out what an indispensable part of the ensemble he is.
I was kind of hoping we’d get more Ariana DeBose this season (she really only had one number, then vanished), but Burgess’ continued delightful presence is more than a fair consolation prize.
Cecily Strong delivers a showstopper
Cecily Strong also had a great showing this week, nailing her big torch song but also doing great work in her bigger comedic moments. I liked her not being able to take their snooping around in the butcher shop seriously.
“I feel like I should be on the cover of a Nancy Drew book,” she says.
Her pretending to act like Jenny to seduce Kratt was also great, from the inability to sit in a slinky, sexy manner to her throwing in random bouts of laughter to project what a nice time she was having. Strong is always charming on this show but I like when they let her step outside of her usual comedic territory.
Schmigadoon! isn’t a full-on comedy for all of its runtime (there’s gotta be songs with heart and meaning, which can’t be funny), so Strong isn’t always allowed to play to her strengths as a comedian (although she shines in those other departments as well). Her star turn this week made this episode a very nice surprise.
★★★☆☆
Watch Schmigadoon! on Apple TV+
New episodes of Schmigadoon! season two arrive every Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-14
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 and But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, the director of 30 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
