Wynonna Earp S1
If Twilight Met The Wild, Wild West
I’m in a weird place where I don’t dislike this show, but I also don’t not like it. Y’know? And I don’t know why hmmm.
If you like supernatural westerns, then this is a solid, Grade-A catch for you! I, for one, am only slightly partial to stylized westerns and, though a fan of the supernatural, it is not my go-to cup of genre tea.
The characters are memorable, the storyline seeming like a monster-of-the-week style special but in actuality building up to something greater that has a great cliff hanger at the end of the first season.
Honestly loads of fun and easy enough to get through.
There are a lot of characters. And the lore is nicely explained so it doesn’t get dumped on you like a load of exposition you’re drowning in. Most of the time. And if you love the first season, they have 4 seasons out, a fifth one promised but not yet released (and probably not going to be since SyFy announced its termination to the chagrin of fans), and it’s hella female-driven which is always nice to see.
For a quick rundown:
The Earps are cursed with putting down all of the outlaws their great-great grandaddy Wyatt Earp killed back when the West was Wild, Wild, Wildin’. The catch is that they come back every few decades without fail to what seems like the Phineas and Ferb equivalent of the Tri-State Area in the town of Purgatory.
The outlaws are also demons. That’s kind of like. A big thing. Supernatural powers. Really creepy eyes. Smoldering, but not in a good Flynn Rider kind of smolder.
And for some reason, they can’t help but be bad. They live in trailer camps and drink booze and set things on fire and generally create havoc in Purgatory since they magically cannot leave under any circumstances. The reincarnated outlaws are deviants, for the most part.
[Sidenote If I kept getting reincarnated I’d open a goddamn store and sell knick-knacks from the 1800s and wine I bottled myself myself before I died the third time over.]
There’s a taskforce created to deal with the outlaws known as Revenants that Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) helps deal with and it’s a lot of nonsense and I lowkey love it. All these supernatural things happening, and the taskforce has to pretend to the townsfolk like Ole Mrs. O’Leary got into a little too much moonshine what have you, and not that the devil walks among them.
I love that this is a comic book adaptation by Beau Smith and adapted to TV by Emily Andras. The former medium lends so much to the storytelling abilities of film in general and having actual visuals melding with audio and music makes for an amazing story to be had.
What I Like
If I’m being completely honest, I started watching this for the LGBT subplot that was waved at us in the first episode and I was desperate to know if it had a happy ending or any sort of airtime.
I was not disappointed.
Beyond that, I enjoyed the powerful female leads they had populating the screen and being just as badass as their male counterparts. In Westerns, the idea of a woman being any sorts of powerful beyond a Saloon owner or some deviant gunslinger, is nonexistent. While Wynonna is a deviant gunslinger, her heart is in the right place and she’s working with the law so she has that trope and eats it.
She has so much power and isn’t afraid to use it, or her witty one-liners, to put the bad guys in their place.
And also the mythos. The world they build and populate with villains and cronies and despicable townspeople is so realistic. The legend of the Earps and the history of Purgatory feels alive and immersive.
The story has a powerful engine built on a single, family curse that has tendrils in every which direction— which is really cool from a narrative standpoint and means anything can happen (within the framework of laws and regulations they’ve put on themselves).
Sometimes I loved Wynonna and sometimes I would shake my head, nibble on some popcorn and go “Really bitch? That’s the move?” and it made me reevaluate if I had some internalized misogyny I need to take care of.
What I Dislike
Sometimes the story got stale. It felt repetitive in the style of enemy bashing and shootouts and the never-ending fact that we never really know anything. It’s a great carrot to dangle throughout the season, of not really knowing why or what they were doing, only vague reasons to motivate them per episode, but there was no payoff!
It extends itself well to future seasons, but the complete lack of any sort of actual information made me angry but definitely want more so obviously they’re doing something right. It just hurts me inside.
The stakes also felt weak. We see problems but we never see lasting consequences, especially in a world where everything matters and should have devastating effects in a ripple effect.
Maybe these are for later on, but I’ll have to watch the remaining seasons and come to new conclusions once I do.
I also couldn’t get into the special effects they used for a lot of the first season. It was really…weird. Given this was first aired 2016 and the effects weren’t as good as jolly old 2022, it has that defense but it’s so cringe that it has developed a cult-like following.
Expenses had to be divvied elsewhere with contracts and licensing and different streaming channels so I don’t blame them for cutting corners somewhere, I actually think the effects are quite funny.
But for me, it turns into a meme, in the nicest way possible. The effects, which are meant to make a scene terrifying or scary, makes me giggle and I know that’s not what I’m supposed to be doing. The bad effects take me away from the story and the intensity of scenes when I really want to hold my breath and feel the fear.
Why None of That Matters
But like most things in life that we stamp our opinions on and demand to tell the world, don’t listen to me.
I’m like the last person you should ever listen to when it comes to matters of taste and sensibility.
Watch it yourself. Form your own opinion. Love it, hate it, take it to conventions, but own your opinion on whatever it is you want to enjoy.
Just… Have fun with it. :)
