WiC Binges: Disenchantment (Netflix)

Episode 5: “Faster, Princess! Kill! Kill!”

After finding out his daughter threw a party when he was at the spa in episode 4, King Zøg sends Bean to a boarding school. When she gets kicked out of there, the king decides she needs a stronger punishment and banishes her from the castle. There were a lot of funny moments this episode, so let’s get into it.

Having nowhere to go, Bean roams the city until her maid Bunty takes her in. Bunty lives with her husband and several children in their tiny home. But all the kids have a job, because as Bunty’s husband puts it, “If you’re old enough to cry, you’re old enough to work.” Bean decides she needs a job, now that she’s homeless, and goes on the hunt. “What’s minimum wage around here?” she asks. “Two lashings an hour,” Bunty’s husband replies.

First, she tries her hand at being a shepherd, but she runs all the sheep off a cliff. Then she attempts to be a lighthouse keeper, but doesn’t pay attention and all the ships sink. Next, she thinks she’s learning to be a butcher (which she’s actually good at), but just carves up a bunch of pets in a pet shop. Man, it’s hard out there for a princess.

Finally, Bean is hired as an apprentice executioner, which actually seems to be a perfect fit for her since she seems to kill multiple people in every episode. She goes to work at the dungeons to learn from Bunty’s husband (the executioner). There are some great moments in the dungeons, like Luci noticing a man on the torture rack with a book of golf jokes sitting on a stand in front of him. The demon begins to read all the jokes, causing the man on the rack to suffer.

Eventually, Bean ends up deciding she isn’t cut out to be an executioner, so she runs away from the city to find Elfo, who ran into the forest to get away from being treated like an infant by Bunty. In the forest, Bean and Luci find a house made of candy where adult versions of Hansel and Gretel live, only to realize the siblings were insane German cannibals who were cooking Elfo for dinner.

Bean saves her friends and kills Hansel and Gretel with an ax to the head, learning she did have what it takes to kill someone intentionally. Ah, I do love it when fairy tales have a happy ending.