Emerald City is basically a loose retelling of The Wizard of Oz. But super Game of Thrones-y. In fact, I read one review that called it The Wizard of Westeroz. Heh. Sometimes I love people. Not always, but sometimes. I enjoyed it all the way through but it did become a bit muddied of story and vague of character, so they need to up their game a bit if they are coming back.
the cast
Dorothy - via tornado - gets stranded in a bleak, washed out landscape. Not the merry old land of Oz that Judy Garland ended up in. She is transported in a police car (with a K9 officer in back) and hits the East Witch with the car. She ends up in some kind of fucked up Munchkin Land which is more like a Mad Max Land (costume and attitude). No one is nice, there is no charmingly scruffy Lollipop Guild welcoming Dorothy. No Glinda coming to help. Instead, she gets tortured by these Mad Max-y looking folks and run out of town. WTF? They do manage to name the dog - Toto - which means Dog in their language. Clearly they aren't an animal loving bunch. Nor are they creative.
She doesn't kill the East Witch immediately but eventually shoots her and gains a pair of beautiful ruby and gold gloves which meld with her skin and come out when she needs some big-guns-magic. I was kind of hoping she would just have had to clap her hands three times to get home, but again - not the movie we know. It's MUCH more involved. In fact, this Dorothy decidedly does NOT have the power to get home all along. FU Glinda.
On the yellow brick road, which is only yellow because this land has a huge problem with poppy pollen, she sees a dude crucified on a pole. Well. Hello Scarecrow! They are attracted to each other, which is truly the adult version of the original. We all know that, if she was old enough and had a choice, Dorothy would have hooked up with the Scarecrow. And this one is definitely shag-worthy.
They travel together and peripherally meet a kid who later becomes the TinMan in an interesting, steampunk way. He ends up in the Kingdom of Ev with more steampunky, robotic folk. The Princess of Ev (who in the books is a niece of the king) constantly wears a mask for reasons that come out later and they are some truly beautiful pieces of costume art.
amirite?
He also initially hangs out with a young boy...who is actually a girl but had some powerful magic put on her when she was young. She is Ozma, who is in later books. This is actually a really interesting element of the show. Ozma identifies as a boy because that is how she grew up. So, discovering that she is actually a girl when she's a teenager is a huge mind fuck for her. I'm enjoying how the show is having her deal with this incongruity. Additionally, in episode 9 of 10 we finally see who the Lion is. I had guessed who he would be and I'm not sure I like that he doesn't show up until late. An interesting element to him is why he identifies as cowardly. He is a soldier for the Wizard who has made some suspect decisions in the past, which influences how he now sees the world.
The remaining witches, Glinda and West, have some absolutely gorgeous costumes. They are also not what you remember from the old movie. Glinda is actually a calculating, hard woman (always dressed in white, to keep the illusion of goodness). She is in a sort of cold war with the Wizard, who banned magic from the land when he arrived. West is a drug addicted madam of a brothel (always dressed in black) who is all sorts of crazy. They talk a lot about their mother, South. She has birthed all the witches, apparently, so I keep thinking of her as the mother in Alien plopping down a ton of eggs. Dorothy is trying to get one of the young witches out of Glinda's grasp and I want a reenactment of the Aliens scene: "Get away from her, you bitch!"
L - R: East, Glinda of the North, West
Glinda is played by Joely Richardson and she is truly lovely. She's 52 years old and I appreciate that the show is not trying to make her look super young. She's gorgeous anyway and they aren't using soft focus or any other device to mask her age. Yay them. Vincent D'Onofrio plays the Wizard. I usually love his absolute quirkiness and he's got it in spades in this show. Instead of hiding behind a curtain, he wears a big, ugly wig and lots of facial hair. He isn't fancy because nothing is as opulent as the movie version of the Emerald City, so he wears kind of drab robes and lives in a monotone castle. He is a tyrannical leader and is constantly on the verge of a war with the witches. D'Onofrio has affected this weird, flat accent, which sort of comes and goes. I haven't figured out if he means to do that or if he's just being lazy. Either way, this isn't my favorite of his roles (really, nothing surpasses Goren from Law and Order: Criminal Intent for me).
So I liked this series, but I fell that executive producer/writer Shaun Cassidy (yes, THE Sean Cassidy of Hardy Boy fame) and team bit off more than they could chew in 10 episodes. I have only read the first Oz book so I'm certainly no expert, but they introduced characters (like Ozma) and kingdoms (like Ev) that definitely need more fleshing out for folks like me who only know the one book. The acting is generally good but nothing note-worthy. For me, it's really about the production design. It's really, really cool. I read that they opted for very little cgi in the world (saving it for the magic) so they scouted some really amazing locations all around the world, including parks in Croatia and castles in Hungary.
Finally, the politics in this show are likely equal to that of the books. The books were never just a simple fairy tale; they were suffused with political undercurrents (I don't know why I didn't know this but L. Frank Baum's mother was a suffragette). And like Wicked, this show puts the politics of the land right up front. The unfit ruler (hmmm...who does that sound like?), witches (women) being oppressed, a world on the verge of war. Art imitates life, eh?
(Because I binged a series, I think this is less about drink pairing (because I don't want you all to think I'm a complete lush) and more about binge-y food. I discovered some delicious dark chocolate coconut "bites" at my local store that paired nicely with this series. Oh, and they are complimented by a glass of red wine, if you're so inclined.)
My takeaways (only one):
#1 - When I was in China many years ago at a work event, I met a group of Australian guys that I hung out with. By the end of my trip, I realized that we were exactly the cast of The Wizard of Oz. Obviously I was Dorothy. My favorite guy, who I connected with the most, was the Scarecrow and one goofy guy who had a huge issue with shark fin soup (for good reason, but still...when in Rome.) was the Cowardly Lion. I even had a TinMan who was just a nice, reliable guy. I even had a Wizard replacement in a lovely older gentleman who ran an animation company. I am a total dork.
xoxo...hashtagSueslife
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