We’ll miss it, but we’re OK with saying goodbye to Schmicago after Schmigadoon! 2×06. Appropriately titled “Over and Done,” the season two finale of the Apple TV+ musical comedy series moves quickly to wrap things up.
For once, the episode doesn’t start with Tituss Burgess’s narrator singing to bring us up to speed. It starts off even better! Seeing Ariana DeBose’s emcee again was a treat as the Oscar winner had limited availability to appear in Schmigadoon! season two. Though the introductory song, “Over and Done,” maintains the very literal lyrics of the show’s songs, DeBose singing to begin the episode is simply a nice change, a breath of fresh air.
Also keeping in tune with the rest of the season, things are happening and the fantastic characters are interacting, but the pace is simultaneously slow and fast. We see Melissa (Cecily Strong) in a wedding dress with Bobbie (Jane Krakowski) acting as Kratt’s (Patrick Page) lawyer. Miss Codwell (Kristin Chenoweth) stuffs her orphans with food before getting it on with Dooley Blight (Alan Cumming). Topher (Aaron Tveit) and Jenny’s (Dove Cameron) post-sex conversation is interrupted by the tribe asking them to help Josh (Keegan-Michael Key).
While those three scenes all have great writing and some golden one-liners — including “Why did you call him daddy?” and “Well at least you’re still getting naked.” — we’re still left wondering how this culminates to anything. We go from one scene to another to another, and the season is almost over, yet we don’t feel that much closer to a conclusion.
One strength of Schmigadoon! season two that carries on through the finale is the depth Cinco Paul has given the characters. Even in the final moments of “Over and Done,” we get to see that everyone is more complex than they seem, helping us connect with them, giving us a reason to root for them. As Sergeant Rivera (Jaime Camil) watches over a tied-up Josh, we learn all Kratt’s lackey of a nephew wants is to be on stage and have his own act at the Kratt Klubb. It’s why the police officer has been at his uncle’s right hand, helping him with dirty work for 36 years.
Similarly, the narrator didn’t choose a life of watching, standing idly by or even helping Kratt kidnap Melissa. He works for the leprechaun at the bridge, who turns out to be the Jiminy Cricket to Josh and Melissa’s Ebenezer Scrooge. All the narrator wants is his own story and love, and we totally get that. It’s understandable to have waited till the end to discover the narrator’s desires and depths, but learning Rivera’s sooner would have made him a stronger character.
Once things wrap up, they wrap up pretty quickly. For the most part, it feels pretty anticlimactic. Jenny and her father, Dooley Blight, reunite. Madame Frau (Ann Harada) and Rivera turn on Kratt. Blight barges into Melissa and Kratt’s wedding and chucks his butcher’s knife at Kratt, only to miss. However, the knife does nip the end of his jacket, helping cause an epic villain death that references the now-closed Broadway spectacle Phantom of the Opera with a chandelier falling on the Schmicago tycoon. It’s similar to the pacing of the other scenes of the episode, minus Josh’s rescue scene. This happens, then this happens. Oh, and then this happens. And then the bad guy is dead, so now what?
Josh and Melissa were told they couldn’t leave Schmicago until they found happiness, but it turns out that was like a trick question. The citizens of Schmicago sing, “Happy endings don’t exist/But here’s a pearl you may have missed/Every day can be a happy beginning.” They all try to get Josh and Melissa to stay in the musical city or at least reconsider leaving, giving us the true lesson of the season. Life requires balance. It requires both happy and sad, highs and lows, the bright, cheeriness of Schmigadoon and dreary darkness of Schmicago.
