yea.. I kind of want to punch his character in the face. He even admits how much of a insufferable little twit he is in that previous episode when he said something like 'i've wanted magic to be real forever, but now that it is, i'm still miserable. ' no shit, stfu, see a therapist or take some zoloft then. I'd be the Hermione-est of all Hermiones if magic was real. I just can't understand these guys acting like they are so put out by having to learn FUCKING MAGIC.
That said, I also kind of enjoy it with this show because I realize the author was kind of making fun of the fact that this happens in most stories like this. So, when I view it like that, it doesn't bother me as much as it does in other similar fantasy stories. In the real world, it'd be the Alice/Hermione character that would actually be tasked with taking down the bad guy. But, someone actually being good at something because their smart doesn't play well to most people. Instead, it has to be about 'guts' and 'bravery' and somehow you suddenly become the best at something. So, they make the main hero a wimpy moron until he redeems himself. Despite the show's overall arc being pretty predictable, i.e. Quentin is going to become the big hero and defeat the Beast (and/or Jessica if she keeps going down the rabbit hole) with the help of his 3 friends, likely in fillory itself, blah blah, the details are great. It's written as a deconstruction of fantasy, but also with more details filled in that other books tend to skip over, so it just works.