Tag: episode 3

“Hunters” starts with some backstory on Regan as a child. It also highlights the issue of sounds on the creature’s hearing. The younger Regan attacks another girl who will not stop jumping rope outside her house. The slapping noise of the cord hitting the sidewalk hurts her ears.

“Maid of Orleans” takes the Hunter back to her childhood and we learn that her father is also a Hunter as well as her mother, who we never meet in the flashback sequences. This episode feels very much like a cross between “Predator” and “The Terminator”franchise.

In the present Regan, Briggs and Flynn all head to the jungle and with the bickering between the local guns for hire and the clicking noises it feels like Arnold Schwarzenegger may come bounding out of the underbrush at any moment.

The atmosphere works and puts the viewer on edge. The fact that Briggs is trigger happy adds to the tension. Keeping with the Predator theme, a young woman they rescue tells Flynn that a monster came out of the jungle and took her mother.

Instead of the 1987 film monster, these kidnappers are the “leather-faced fodder-muckers” that McCarthy (Julian McMahon) did business with last week and something much more frightening.   Regan knows the leather faced  creatures  very well as it seems that they killed her family.

It is also revealed that the younger Regan (Britne Oldford) killed a rabbit and ate it raw while on the run.  Flynn and his team reach the camp and find it empty of life and surrounded by dead bodies. The dead are mangled and torn apart. 

As they move through the camp something is watching Regan.  Later she finds a footprint. The camp was a heroin factory but one of the bodies found has the same holes in it as the heroin addict’s corpse found at  McCarthy’s place.

More memories of Regan before the ETU emerge, sex, smoking crack and attacking the police brings her in contact with the organization.  In the jungle, Flynn bonds with the alien agent who reveals that Briggs has a love/hate relationship with her.

Regan also tells Flynn that she did not know she was alien till her parents told her. The FBI agent is also starting to believe that his wife Abby was a Hunter after all.  A “monster” kills all the local gun’s for hire sand the leader, Mato.  Alarmed and angry, he  goes to call for backup. Regan shoots him  in the back of the head, per ETU protocol.

Mato (Deniz Akdeniz), who Regan killed with a bullet in the back of his head, wounded  the creature before being executed and the remaining team start to  track the creature down despite Jackson ordering them to abort. 

Briggs finds a punji stick trap and it slows the team down while Flynn treats the other ETU agent’s injury. Briggs explains why he dislikes Hunters and Regan.

The Hunter ETU agent tracks the creature on her own.  She finds the “monster” and the description is an apt one.  This Hunter looks anything but human and it is indeed wounded. Rather than kill it, Regan reaches out and touches the creature.

Thus far, it seems that there are several varieties of the same Hunter species. Not all Hunters are created equal with some being less human than others. There are also, apparently, warring Hunter factions on Earth.

Briggs tells Flynn (Nathan Phillips) that regardless of what the aliens look like that underneath it all they are monsters. Regan shows, via her flashbacks, a certain vulnerability that, despite her alien nature, makes her rather endearing. 

“Hunters” airs Mondays on SyFy. Tune in and watch this serious  and intriguing thriller.

“Wynonna Earp: Leavin’ on Your Mind” has shoved the series right into that hallowed spot of favorite by making this reviewer “well up,” aka grab for the tissues and then break out in gooseflesh.  The humor is still there as is the clever writing with so many layers given to each of the characters.  How can one not love a show that has “Sometimes we get donuts” and then makes tears flow later  on only to be followed up by goosebumps at the episode end?

In this weekly installment  there are three revenants who follow a spell left by the “Stone Witch” that will allow them to leave the Ghost River Triangle without suffering “Hell on Earth.”

“Leavin’ on Your Mind” begins with Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) taking US Deputy Marshall Dolls (Shamier Anderson) and Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) through her revenant research.  Dolls proves, yet again, that he is not “Mr. Affable” and the elder Earp talks about  shooting the revenants in the face and making them tremble with fear before her. Wynonna’s boss retorts:

“You have powdered sugar on your nose.”

Haught comes into the black badge office to tell about an incident in the big city and spares a smile at Waverly. The officer clearly still has a crush on the younger Earp. Dolls notes this interesting exchange with his usual lack of emotion.

The revenants are collecting items for their escape spell, all cryptically named.  The voice of a mute, turns out to be collection of poetry written by a deaf-mute author (and local celebrity) and a loveless heart is the necklace of a cheating wife. The third item  in the spell’s recipe a man’s dismembered hand,  is the only one still a mystery.

Doc Holliday proves that sex with a demon is not above him and Waverly now knows who “Henry” really is and attempts to either prove it or make him acknowledge the fact.  Wynonna has a run-in with a speedy revenant and reports the fact to Dolls.

The two work out that the revenants, who killed a city official and cut off a man’s hand in the big city, are headed to the old Purgatory bank which is now a surplus store.  The two law officials show up at the store and the revenants take hostages. Two of the people being held are Shorty and Waverly’s fella Hardy Champ (Dylan Koroll)

Marty (Murray Farnell),  the revenant who moves “like he is krumping” is barely keeping it together and Wynonna goes into the store to replace the hostages.  Dolls takes the Buntline Special and caresses Wynonna behind her ear in an uncharacteristic show of tenderness before she goes in.

Inside the store all the hostages are released except for Shorty,  Champ and Wynonna.  Marty kills revenant Gary, and Wynonna opens the old Purgatory bank safe for the revenants. This results in the final ingredient becoming available for the stone witch’s spell.

The witch’s name is wanted by Holliday and Bobo tells the former friend of Wyatt Earp that he will give him name if he gets close to Wynonna.  Waverly gets too near the two during their negotiations  and after shooting at her, Holliday angrily confronts Waverly  and insults her. Little sister gets angry and Doc may have made a mistake.

After getting all the ingredients Sam (Roger LeBlanc) performs the spell, but only after shooting the increasingly annoying Marty. Wynonna helps Champ to escape and Sam possess the dying Shorty (Peter Skagen).  A weeping Wynonna gets back the Buntline and uses it to send Marty and Sam back to hell. 

Unfortunately she has to shoot Shorty in the head to send back Sam this is an emotional moment. Afterward, Holliday comes to the homestead and introduces himself offering help to the Earp sisters in their quest to send back all the revenants.

Cue goosebumps.

Ruminations:

This episode reveals a bit more about the enigma that is Dolls.  For one thing, it appears that he covets the Buntline Special and even tries to fire it at the revenants. The pistol does not work and he ends up giving it back to Wynonna. One does have to wonder if, the gun had fired, whether the Deputy US Marshall would keep the Earp heir on the team.

Dolls is also “sneaky” that caress behind the ear was him placing a tracker on Wynonna.

Holliday (Tim Rozon) proves he has a temper and when under the influence of his ire, he makes stupid mistakes. Attempting to bully Waverly was clearly something that he should not have done.  The youngest Earp sister does have a steely interior as proved in the pilot when she takes a shotgun to someone she believes to be a woman moving in on Champ. 

Wynonna may not have killed the revenants with her bare hands as promised, but she does not hesitate to get physical when she needs to.  The bit where she has to shoot Shorty is one of those tissue grabbing scenes that burns the eyes and chokes up the viewer.

Comic Moments:

These mostly have to do with eating and drinking or references to food in the scene with Dolls and Waverly:

Donuts; powdered sugar and as a special treat, intermixed with the “Mr. Shut-up and Do as You’re Told.”

Coffee; Wynonna burning her lip after being told to hurry up.

Reference:

Waverly: “You know, sounds a little cuckoo bananas.”

Narc-mobile.

Dolls’ reactions to Officer Haught to Waverly.

Final Thoughts:

By the end of the episode the storyline has reached an impressive depth of themes. The revelation that Willa was not killed instantly and that “she screamed for days” is shocking. The violence, thus far, has been mostly aimed against the fictional revenants. Sam’s  referral to the pilot’s backstory reveal, where young Wynonna kills her father and Willa is murdered,  marks the only “non-revenant” deaths apart from the unfortunate girl on the bus. (Also in the pilot.) Shorty’s death moves the “real” death count forward. .

The death of Shorty, a peripheral character with ties to the Earp family, is upsetting. The revenants killing the city official and cutting off the man’s hand are violent acts against people and not demons.  These and the reference to the  horrid death of Willa shifts things into a darker fantasy world than the previous episodes have suggested.

The final death toll against humans is now four.

“Wynonna Earp” still has humor in spades and the writing suggests that things are now going to pick up in the Doc Holliday/Earp dynamic.  The motives of Wyatt’s old, and apparently back-stabbing, bestie remains to be seen. Revenge is most definitely on Doc’s mind but against who.

The Earp heirs or the Stone Witch?

“Wynonna Earp” airs Fridays on SyFy.