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‘Wynonna Earp’ S2. E4: Bad Decisions Aplenty

Previously on “Wynonna Earp,” Wynonna fought a burlap sack genie as part of the Wynonna Earp Demon Detective Agency, apparently we no longer really care about Revanants, and oh yeah, Waverly was holding Dolls hostage in the barn.

This week starts with idyllic scenes of American life in…uh, whatever state Purgatory is. Montana? The camera pans to Demon Waverly wandering around by the barn. Demon Waverly finds Dolls’ dogtags and seems confused. What are these strange hieroglyphics on a chain? She’s also wielding a cross between a steak knife and a bowie knife, and definitely it’s not Thanksgiving turkey time. Something else is going to get carved up.

Demon Waverly’s dastardly plans for Dolls are foiled, however, when Wynonna runs out to find Waverly and the demon part of Waverly recedes. Waverly is left wondering why she’s been sleepwalking out in the cold in only a nightgown. As the two sisters go back in the house, the camera pans to the barn a few yards away, where Dolls is gasping on the ground and calling softly to Wynonna, his eyes burning fire. No, not metaphorically; literally.

In a nameless diner in the Triangle, two bad guys (uh, a bad guy and a bad woman? Bad people?) cut off a Black Badge field marshal’s hand to get the briefcase he’s carrying, proving for the millionth time that handcuffing someone to anything important is just an invitation to get their hand cut off. Does no one watch movies in the Triangle?

At BBHQ, Jeremy and Waverly are Giles and Willowing over the seal. Is it written in Aramaic? Syriac? Assyrian? (Fun fact of the day: Syriac is actually a dialect of Aramaic. Neo-Assyrian is also a modern Aramaic language. All of these languages are still spoken in small parts of the Middle East.) Luchado bursts in to tell them about the theft of the briefcase. She thinks if she can find the thieves, she’ll be reassigned away from Purgatory, the armpit of the world. Give Purgatory a chance, says Waverly brightly, we’re this close to getting a vegetarian restaurant. #Priorities.

Luchado wants Wynonna to come on the Briefcase Rescue Mission, but Wynonna gives it a hard pass, citing the need to continue watching the broken seal like a hawk in case anything comes out and she needs to Falcon Punch it in the face. Waverly volunteers in Wynonna’s place, citing her bendiness, fluency in four languages, and that one time she got hit by a tranqualizer dart and still went to band practice. No really, she said those things. And I mean come on, how can you not view those as extremely useful skills? Surprisingly, Luchado agrees.

Back at the sheriff’s office, Nicole is microwaving a sad, sad gluten free pizza that screams, “When I go home at night I spend a lot of time talking to my cat.” Wynonna admits that Nicole was right that Waverly has been acting weird, telling Nicole about the morning incident. Nicole alludes to Waverly “trying to find herself” (read: trying to see who her real parents are), but she and Wynonna are on different wavelengths again. Wynonna notices that all the cutlery in the sheriff’s office has gone missing. One guess where it is. By coincidence, Wynonna reaches into the pocket of her coat-the coat Waverly wore that morning-and finds the knife Demon Waverly had been carrying…and Dolls’ dogtags.

She runs home, certain that Dolls is there, and finds him in the barn. It’s not quite Dolls who greets her, however. Whatever fire demon is inside him is in control, and he circles her like a rabid dog before pinning her down on a hay bale. Wynonna draws Peacemaker, using its orange glow to make Dolls recognize her. Dolls surfaces for a minute, warning her to leave because he can’t control the monster inside. Wynonna ignores him and solves the problem by beaning him with Peacemaker and then wheeling him out in a wheelbarrow. Let no one ever say Wynonna Earp isn’t resourceful. And also committed to the reinvigoration of her love triangle.

Determined to shed her status as a cute but ultimately helpless sidekick, Waverly sneaks into the lounge where Luchado thinks that the briefcase is being held. She is immediately confronted in the hallway by the demon woman who helped take the briefcase in the first place. The woman conveniently thinks that Waverly is the new entertainer they hired, sparing Waverly the need to immediately abort the mission.

Meanwhile, Wynonna brings Dolls to Shorty’s for help. Rosie says they need to know how to adjust the acids to alkalines ratio of the serum based on whatever Dolls is, and Doc identifies Jeremy as the only person who can get that information safely. Ugh whyyyyy can’t Jeremy just get eaten by like, a big dog demon? Dolls tries to warn Wynonna about Waverly’s eyes, but without any helpful details, such as what it means.

Back at casa Gardiner, Mercedes lives! Or more likely, she’s been possessed by the black fog ghost thing, because apparently she hadn’t previously discovered the magic that is bacon and NO American right now hasn’t discovered the transformative, transcendent experience of eating way too much bacon.

Her brother Tucker comes to grumble some more about Ginger Butch the Cop, but Probably Not Mercedes isn’t interested. Because bacon. Tucker leaves and then screaming starts elsewhere in the house. Mercedes listens with amusement, munching on her bacon. Guess Beth Gardiner met a black fog ghost, too.

At BBHQ, Wynonna bursts in looking for Waverly. Jeremy snatches her coat off just before it catches fire, because polyester and Doc’s “Demon be Gone” serum don’t mix. Jeremy is happy to help Dolls (well that was way easier than Wynonna anticipated), and directs Wynonna to the lounge where Waverly is. Luckily, Waverly is-surprise!-a good singer and pretending to be the lounge act gives her a great vantage point to watch the bad guys engage in a transaction to sell the briefcase.

She follows them deeper into the bar when they move, but the baddies kill the buyer on the assumption that the briefcase holds some sort of weapon they can use to protect themselves when the Big Bad that came through the Hellmouth arrives.

Waverly calls for backup, but Luchado was lying when she said there would be a Black Badge team to back her up. In fact, Luchado has been blackballed by the Black Badge bigwigs, and she saw this rogue operation as her way to get back into their good graces. It’s just the two of them, and Luchado isn’t really the brave fighting type. Luckily, Wynonna arrives just in time to help Waverly. Unluckily, she walks right into a trap, as the baddies capture both of them.

The baddies want to know what’s in the case, operating under the assumption that anyone who handcuffs himself to a case hasn’t just got old VHS tapes of Knight Rider in there. At Doc’s downstairs magical meth lab for demon serum, Doc and Rosie (“Buxom Biochemist”) are about the inject Dolls with whatever amount of serum seems about right when Jeremy runs in to stop them. Apparently they would have guessed wrong about the amount of ammonium in the serum. Timing is everything.

Wynonna and Waverly talk a bit while tied up waiting for the bad guy to come back and torture them. Waverly bemoans that all she wanted to do was be more Wynonna-y, a valid point except that she’s been doing much better lately. Remember when she took a metal pipe to the demon spider eggs? Then she admits something is wrong with her. Wynonna tries to pass it off as the side effects of Willa’s death, but Waverly points out Wynonna thought Waverly killed a guy, a very un-Waverly like thing to do, and that she’s having memory lapses. Wynonna promises they can sort it out once they’re free. She tries to flip her phone up, but it lands at Waverly’s feet instead, who expertly uses her heel to activate Siri. What follows is one of the funniest scenes in season two of “Wynonna Earp” so far:

Waverly: Siri, call ‘Doc Holliday.’

Siri: Calling ‘Holiday Inn.’ Because that is exactly what would happen in the event of a life or death situation requiring Siri’s help. Speaking of the rapscallion, Doc and Dolls are sharing their own intimate moment in Doc’s lab. Apparently Wynonna’s love triangle is NBD to them, because rather than being aggressively competitive, they’re friendly competitive about it. Lol bro, good luck to you in winning Wynonna’s heart. *Bro hug.*

Doc asks how Dolls ended up back at the Earp homestead and Dolls tells him that some dude brought him back and said he wasn’t done there yet. Doc knows it was Juan Carlo, the angel in disguise from last season who also intervened with him to get him to go back to Purgatory and help Wynonna. Because remember how Purgatory is the battleground between good and evil and Juan Carlo is the angel on the side of good poking his nose in when it seems like evil is getting the upper hand?

At the sheriff’s office, Tucker Gardiner has turned up to report to Nicole that his sisters are acting weird. Oh, and also Waverly, who almost choked him to death. Tucker, who is wearing a shirt with a cartoonish cat on it, announces he’s not a bad person and “if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll stop treating him like one.” Which is like saying, “I’m not a bully and I’ll hit you if you say I am.” Nicole has no idea what to make of any of it other than telling him to leave and looking concerned.

The baddies are back and now they realize that probably they should have checked the Earps for phones, because they can see that Wynonna’s phone made some calls. And also she probably has some reservations with the Holiday Inn. Worst. Bad guys. Ever. Seriously. The head baddie can’t get the briefcase open because it’s made of some unknown metal (what, adamantium?), so he threatens to torture Waverly to get Wynonna-who he assumes is a Black Badge marshal-to talk. Waverly suddenly realizes that the initials on the briefcase, E.E., may stand for Erwin Earp, or as Wynonna calls him, “The One Year Wonder.” Then things get real dark, real fast. Wynonna has slipped her bonds and lunges to help Waverly, but the baddie’s overly muscled henchman pins her against the chain link wall while the bad guy cuts off Waverly’s hand with the bladed bones that came up through his hand when he took his glove off. Cuts. Off. Waverly’s. Hand. It falls to the ground and everything while Waverly screams.

Doc shows up at the lounge with his six-shooter and starts taking bad guys out (revolver vs. semiautomatic doesn’t matter when you’re the fastest gunslinger in the West). He also stops to pick up a new cowboy hat, which is conveniently available on the head of a recently deceased bad guy. Because #Priorities.

Blade Hand bad guy grabs the case and runs, thinking the Black Badge cavalry has arrived. Wynonna and Waverly totter off as well (without Waverly’s hand. Guys, you have to pick up the hand so doctors can reattach it!). Blade Hand circles back, however, still after the combination to the briefcase. Waverly kicks him in the groin and the Earp sisters leave. Or rather, they don’t get far because duh kicking someone in the ground isn’t going to stop them for more than like, ten seconds. Blade Hand comes back and is only stopped by a knife in the back from Doc. They leave him for dead and run.

At Doc’s lab, Dolls grabs the serum and injects it all into himself, which makes him immediately super lizard demon-y. Bad plan.

Still at the lounge, Wynonna is going back to get Waverly’s hand when the demon in Waverly briefly takes over and Waverly’s hand regenerates. Everyone is like, “Okay, def weird, but let’s process this later when we’re not in imminent danger of death.” Wynonna and Doc arrive back at Shorty’s in time to find Rosie barricading the door to the lab with a slot machine to keep Demon Dolls in. And JK, Blade Hand still isn’t dead even though the knife is still in his back! He shows up with Jeremy as his hostage to coerce Wynonna into handing over the briefcase.

Wynonna complies, but then Demon Dolls comes out from the lab and breathes really, really horrible CGI fire on him. “Way cool habanero,” Wynonna murmurs, not at all worried about it the possibility of that fire being directed at them, too. Dolls, who evidently is part dragon, immediately reverts to human, and everyone congratulates him on his return to the Scooby fold. Blade Hand, still not dead, tells Wynonna that something is coming and she’s not ready. Yup, the Big Bad from the Hellmouth; Wynonna has already figured that out. Blade Hand finally dies, his super obvious message delivered. Question: what do they do with the body? Why don’t they give it to Black Badge so Luchado can leave? At the Gardiner house, Tucker has figured out that his sisters are no longer actually his sisters. The black fog ghosts tell him that they chose to possess his sisters because he has a latent darkness they want to bring forth (remember, he’s still in his cat shirt). They tell him that in exchange for helping them, they’ll give him anything he wants. He says he wants a girl. Probably he’s referring to Waverly, but when he says it that way it’s not hard to imagine that he just wants a girl he can take to the school dance and with whom he can get a good picture with a hover hand.

Back at the homestead, Waverly guesses that the combination to the briefcase is 6/18/(19)40, Edwin Earp’s birthday. Inside the briefcase is a commemorative plate from the Purgatory Fair 1952, which Wynonna and Waverly instantly dismiss as less important than the matter of Waverly’s magically regenerated hand. Figuring there’s no time like the present, the demon in Waverly finally reveals itself…to complain that Waverly is annoyingly persistent in resisting being controlled, because honestly demons are soooo whiney. Wynonna pulls Peacemaker, but of course she can’t kill the demon without killing Waverly. Instead, the demon makes Waverly kiss Wynonna (ewwww, OMG no), and uses the physical contact to jump from Waverly to Wynonna. Wynonna, now possessed by a demon, drops Peacemaker, which sizzles in the demon’s hand.

Honestly, this was not my favorite episode. I’m starting to miss the ambiance of season 1, which was about the Wyatt Earp legacy and mythology and the Revenants that Wynonna has to kill to protect Waverly and herself and try to end the curse. It was much more Western in style, and refreshingly different from other shows on TV. Although season 2 is perhaps truer to the comic books (in which Wynonna fights zombies, mummies, vampires, gremlins, etc, as a U.S. marshal), it feels like a rehashing of many of the same themes as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

I hope that in the future, the show can find a way to create more balance between striking its own path in creating its own Western-inspired mythology and following the comic book’s monster-of-the-week format. I’m also kind of sad that Waverly didn’t end up being genetically part demon. Wouldn’t it have been cool if she could activate a demon side to give her superhuman strength when necessary?

What do you think, Earpers? Are we going in the right direction?

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