Review: Duncanville “Witch Day 2”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

It’s time for the annual Witch Day tradition, and Kimberly and her coven of witchy friends are eager to sell potions at their festival booth. Jing wants to lend a hand, but her older sister forbids her from helping out… until Jing meets a mysterious tree witch and gains magical powers.

Meanwhile, Duncan is on a quest to make a move on Mia. Jack recommends he take her to a scary attraction, but the haunted house is closed this year. The gang helps him out by suggesting a closed Circuit City store instead, but it turns out the one who gets scared is Duncan himself.

Our Take:

Season two of Duncanville comes to an impressive end with this week’s episode. Witch Day 2 is a Halloween episode through and through, which makes it an interesting choice for a season finale airing in August. Regardless of the odd timing, how does the episode itself hold up? While it certainly won’t go down as one of this season’s best, it’s still a solid half hour to go out on.

Duncan’s seemingly eternal quest to win Mia’s affection is still going strong, and this is one of the most explicit episodes about his crush in a while. Duncan trying to implement a “Jack hack for lip smack” was pretty funny, but in the end Mia tells him he didn’t need to try anything fancy, because she wants to put her arm around him, too. Duncanville is the kind of show where nothing really changes and the status quo is king, but I’m curious to know how far the writers will push Mia and Duncan together. I don’t think the show will change up the usual formula that much, but I could envision some really fun storylines where Duncan tries to make their newfound relationship work.

The other half of the episode is devoted to a Jing/Kimberly/tree witch plot. Following on last week’s episode, this one keeps up the strange magical occurrences. Jing turning into a witch with magical powers after being shunned by her sister is a cute development, and the show has a good time displaying all the ways a kid would use magic (winning fair prizes, producing new money, and generally making peoples’ wildest dreams come true). It’s nice to get a little drama between Jing and Kimberly, as they’re some of the most diametrically opposed characters in my mind, with Kimberly being in her rebellious tween phase while Jing is still in her adorable cute kid era.

But their sisterly beef is pretty quickly pushed to the side when they accidentally free the tree witches. The witches have been imprisoned for decades and aren’t happy about sharing the town with humans. Things get pretty crazy as they fly around causing havoc, but in the end it’s Duncan’s crew who has the idea to let the witches haunt the old Circuit City shop instead of living with people in town. It’s a resolution that feels a bit too convenient, and I wish that Jing and Kimberly had to work together to end the mess they caused.

Witch Day 2 has a lot of fun stuff going on, like Jing’s magical abilities and Duncan’s failures at flirting, but it doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch that I expect from a good season finale. It’s a fine episode on its own, but doesn’t really offer up anything more lasting than a half hour of mild laughter.