I had no plans to see Emerald City. Cynics may believe that NBC is trying to exploit the (waning) success of Once Upon A Time, but NBC has always taken a stab and ultimately failed at launching a self-sustaining adventure, fantasy world and stuck to miniseries such as The 10th Kingdom, Merlin, The Odyssey, Gulliver’s Travels. I watched some of them, and the special effects were quite limited, but the cast usually had well known or up and coming actors, who would later find success in other projects. NBC succeeded with Grimm because it was more rooted in reality and was set in our world. When I heard that Emerald City was cancelled, I was not surprised.
Why after all of that did I decide to ultimately put the obsolete series in my queue? I heard that Vincent D’Onofrio played the Wizard. I love him. So when Hulu notified me that the series would expire on September 18, 2017, I jumped into action and watched all ten episodes as quickly as possible. Emerald City is a modern retelling of Dorothy Gale’s story. Now she is an orphan nurse with intimacy issues ready to finally meet her birth mother when a tornado takes her to Oz and throws her into a confusing world where magic is outlawed, and everyone, including the Wizard, is dreading the return of The Beast Forever, which I suppose is their version of the herald of the apocalypse.
Even though Emerald City is a bit transparent and heavy-handed, I did appreciate the exploration of gender and power. The Wizard is actually a little man with a big ego who has a problem taking a backseat to women even though they outmatch his actual accomplishments and talent. He touts science, but actually knows little, and his expertise is outdated (loved the waterproof, yellow Walkman). As Aaron Rand Freeman would say, he resents any power that they have over him and is probably angry at his vulnerability even when he gets an erection. The women are magicians and scientists, but are divided by his conniving instead of uniting against a common enemy. There is an interesting transgender storyline, which I surprisingly predicted the minute that I saw the actor even though I am not familiar with that person (side note: I have not read all the books). There are clever twists on why someone is the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion. My favorite character was actually Langwidere. I loved that all the black women knew what was really going on behind the scenes although they got very little screen time. West probably was the most interesting character in terms of a story arch.
Emerald City was sadly very flawed. Just because you’re aware and comment on the nun whore dichotomy does not mean that you had to have one. (Was it in the book?) Before Michelle Williams’ comments, I did not realize how problematic the Munchkins are, and completely forgot all about it until now. The portrait of the Munja’kin tribe made me feel uneasy. I’m going to need to see a whole bunch of groups signing off on this depiction before I could resume breathing. I did not like Tip as a human being. Tip will get you killed and be annoyed with you for doing something nice that Tip asked you to do. Tip is still young, and everything can be rationalized, but I don’t think Tip is someone that you want to trust with any level of responsibility. Also I know that in a retelling of a story, you want to add texture to characters, but some of the characters seemed hard to get a handle on. For instance, Glinda doesn’t have to be perfect, but she was all over the map. Also I initially thought that the Wizard was just full of BS, but he seemed to genuinely buy his crap about the Beast Forever, which made him seem stupid, not pathological. I prefer to think that it was a continued naked power play as opposed to genuine belief. I was disappointed that we never saw Mother South.
NBC needs to stop making love interests that can turn homicidal in an instant, but I’m supposed to still find hot and sympathetic. This theme happened in The 10th Kingdom too, which I found weird, but was able to push through, but now, no, that crap is too realistic. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that showed most murders of American women involve domestic violence. I did not need a study. I read the news. The number of pregnant women being shot or immolated by the father of their children this week alone has been astonishing. The perpetrator of many mass shootings usually has a history of domestic violence. Guess what a warning sign is: strangling! When did strangling become a warning! I thought that was the follow-up.
I liked Emerald City, but I would not urge you to rush and see it before the 18th in case it never appears in another format. If you have more important things to do, it is not that serious. It is definitely the most visually stunning of all of NBC’s fantasy adventure projects so if you were a faithful adherent to NBC’s earlier projects, definitely make the time.