Wynonna Earp 1.1 - In which Wynonna winds up back in Purgatory

Wynonna Earp airs Friday nights on Syfy.

I literally had never heard of this show before last week, but then I saw that it was Syfy, and that Hank was recommending it, and since a) Syfy has really been making an effort to make shows that plug perfectly into my personal psyche, b) Hank usually recommends shows I wind up loving*, and c) I already missed Sleepy Hollow** and Second Chance***, I thought I'd give it a go.

Man, I'm glad I did.

Wynonna is a mess, but she's not irredeemable, and she's mean, but not because she's a mean person--because she was damaged by a sucky childhood where she thought she'd be the sister of the hero and wound up having to be the hero herself after the monsters killed the first born. And then she accidentally killed her dad while trying to save him. Like you do.

But this starts years later. She's trying to come home just long enough for her uncle's funeral and winds up getting involved in a murder case for a girl who was on the bus with her. In fact, she spends most of the episode trying to leave, but you can't keep running from your fate, and she has come into her Slayer powers and needs to deal with that.

Deputy Marshall Dolls wants her to work with him. Aunt Gus wants her to leave. Waverly, her sister, has been doing all the research and knowledge-gathering that she's been avoiding, and so has a whole Wall of Crazy**** and is way more enthusiastic about everything than Wynonna is. And all 77 people their ancestor Wyatt Earp killed with his enchanted gun are all coming back to the world--the curse the Earps have to deal with.

The first half of the episode is tense set up after a horror-movie intro where Wynonna knows how to take on a baddie and THEN comes into her power without really even noticing it yet. Then there's really good character stuff as she tries to find out what happened to her uncle (the monsters got him) and she runs into all the people she never wanted to see again, who have various reactions to her. And the second half is full adventure--She gets the gun, she has run ins with Marshall Dolls, the Revenants want Earp's gun, the Peacemaker, and to get it they kidnap her sister and attack her aunt. She is a lousy shot, which is hilarious, but she learns how to use the wild ricochets for good. The aunt lives AND she saves her sister from hanging! Hurrah!

That last part was great. If there was a male lead, Gus would probably be dead, and Waverly might have died dramatically in her arms; since she's not a dude and the creator and at least some of the writers are women, too, Gus lives and Wynonna manages to save Waverly with much snark and crazy risk taking! Better yet, Waverly seems to have not once questioned that her sister would save her, even when the stool is kicked out from under her and she's literally being hung while her sister handles a fistfight nearby. It's wonderful!

This first episode moves at a good clip, but doesn't feel slow when people are talking, probably because of how Wynonna is sometimes literally fighting her way away from all this stuff that's being introduced, and always does it with admirable snark and attitude. It's a snarky show--but the snark covers scared, damaged people who don't want to be hurt anymore, and that comes through really well. Wynonna and Dolls have good chemistry, but more importantly, Wynonna and Waverly could very well be the lady-Hunters show that Sleepy Hollow looked in the first season like it could have been and never was! It's got sort of an early-seasons Supernatural feel, but with one location and girls, with a little Buffy and the barest hint that they took what worked for Sleepy Hollow and folded that into the genre influences. And it's a little little like Jessica Jones in the leather-jacket, tank-top, hard-drinker who doesn't take shit from anyone.

It's so much fun.

And the "this season on" looks really good, too, with more and better, so if it can manage not to change the tone too much in the transition from pilot to season, it'll be so great. Even better, there's a dark heart lurking somewhere next to that heart of gold, and there's the potential for it to get really creepy--and also the potential to stay light-heavy like this episode: serious, but not oppressive. It'll depend how they take it. And both ways would work so well with this pilot! I can't wait to see how they'll take it.

Did you guys watch? What did you think! Tell us here in the comments, or go over to Twitter and let's talk there!

*Last year he got me to watch Killjoys and Dark Matter and I never looked back.
**I'm mad at Sleepy Hollow for dropping so many of the good story-balls they've thrown anyway, and this does sisters better.
***I really like that show and it makes me sad that ANOTHER Fox show I like is probably not going to exist long enough for people to kiss.
****A Wall of Crazy is a sure sign of quality weird plots to come!

Geeky TV commentary - Catch-up edition - Continuum 4.1, 4.2

Continuum returned tonight! Syfy Friday at 11pm. (Yay, it's back! I can't believe it took me so long to get caught up!)

Episode 1!
Season 4 picks up almost exactly where Season 3 finished up, with the lights going out and the Kellog-future soldiers coming through. Kiera runs while Brad tries to stall them, which gets him scooped up and her shot by concussive weapons like four times this episode. Then the soldiers leave her and the cops find her, she's unconscious and in a psych-hallucination brought on by her CMR because of brain trauma that they don't really talk about too much but that sounds worrying. She sees Sam and wants to stay, but Carlos and Alec wake her up with their combined force of caring about her.

So Brad is trying to get info from the soldiers, and they're letting him be there, but they're shutting him out because they're on a need to know mission and he "can't see what we see". That, combined with how the leader says things got worse after Brad left (and how long after?), makes it sound like there's way more afoot than everyone thought, and now Brad's semi-trapped and definitely out of the loop. Kiera keeps hoping he'll call in, but he can't, so she goes to spy on the team, which gets her shot again and thrown off a building. Good thing that suit can do literally anything they need*, and Garza was creeping around and knows to look out for a kerfuffle.

Meanwhile, Kellog has taken over Piron and Alec wants it back--half because it's his, and half because Kiera has asked him to send her home, despite the fact that they know for sure the future has changed and she might not be able to get there even if he does send her forward. He and Lucas hack Kellog's servers and lock him out of them while simultaneously stealing all the data so they can work on it whichever way this goes. Lucas has reservations about everything that's going on, and Garza doesn't like it either. Kellog also doesn't like it, but he's on the other side of the argument, with Curtis the rouge time agent telling him that he can use Brad's crew to his own means, and whatever he does about it, Kellog has a destiny that will lead him back to Curtis and the Traveler.

It's neat that it's Kellog that's got all this destiny-weight on him this time, since he was such an annoyingly free agent all along, and that leaves the free agent slot open for Alec, who has accomplished his goals and is now able to do what he wants so long as it doesn't result in him being Old Alec sitting on a totalitarian regime.

Alec is also now working with Julian and his revolutionaries, at least on this.

And someone has kidnapped Emily, despite her kickass skills.

And then Kellog gets a call from his old self.

What a way to kick off a season! There's only six episodes this year, and then the whole thing is over forever**, so they have no space to mess around, and it's good that they're not even pretending to--they have a lot of story lines to wrap up, and they're just going for it, action and excitement and revelations right off the bat, and there's still space for quiet scenes where she hangs out with Carlos*** and they try to figure out what's happening.

There's so much going on that it's a little hard to talk about just yet, but it makes sense when the show is running, and that's an accomplishment this show always had down. It's good to see that they're bringing their A-game for this season they almost didn't get! It's always a little nervous-making going into a new season. It's always, like, "is this the season where it all falls apart?" and a show like this where the plots happen in multiple realities and time frames has more to balance than a regular procedural, but so far, it's just as amazing as it was when we last saw it.

Episode 2!
It was Kellog who took Emily! This surprises no one, really, nor does how he's trying to use her to strong-arm Alec into giving him back his data--in hard-copy on a drive that Kiera has to hand to him and stay until he's sure it hasn't been contaminated in any way, and then he'll release them both. And apparently, he really wanted to see Kiera in a sweater-dress because he makes her change out of her super suit and into that, of all dresses, and acts like she's wearing the newest Fashion Week premier. Maybe sweater dresses are the newest thing.

Anyway, while they're doing that, and she's trying to get him to confess and he's trying to get her to tell him everything, a whole lot of stuff happens at once:

• Kiera realizes that Kellog doesn't actually know what his future self wants him to do or what his soldiers are up to.
• Garza and Travis show up all creeper-like, waiting for their plant in the restaurant Kiera and Kellog are meeting at to poison them to death.
• Carlos is spying on them and notices Team Liberate, so he does what any lunatic would do, and crashes his car into theirs to stop them, and gets into a fight with Travis.
• And Alec impersonates himself to get at Emily after he's pinpointed the building where they have to be keeping her, and walks in on her beating her guard to death and gets into a fight with the one who took him in.

So while Kiera is trying to save herself and Kellog--which involves busting out of the plate glass window and then drowning him to get the poison out of his lungs, and then bringing him back--Alec and Emily are fighting for their lives and Carlos is shooting Travis a lot and not making much headway until Dylan brings in Kellog's security people and puts and end to it all. Carlos is all beat up and took several point-blank shots to the vest, but alive, and he's back on good terms with Dylan. Kiera insists that she is now owed one by Kellog, though he says that the CPR counts as a kiss**** and that they're even.

Back at Team Alec headquarters, Emily asks Jason if she's his mom, and when he says she's not, she makes up her mind to leave, because she won't be taken and used against him again, and it's the only way she can think of to protect them both. And that was right in the middle of a really nice and super domestic dinner with Lucas, Kiera, Garza who followed Kiera home like a lost cat again, Jason, Alec, and Julien. 

And then Kellog gets another visit from Curtis. He's figured out that since Curtis couldn't manipulate him directly, he manipulated Liberate to move against him and force his hand--and it works. He asks Curtis what he needs to do, and Curtis says that soon he'll get the change to send Kiera home...and then totally doesn't say whether he needs to do that or stop it, because people from the future are all jackasses, apparently, and don't ever just say things.

Because of that huge three-location fight in the middle, there was less story this episode, but what we got was fast-paced and exciting and moved the plot along by breaking up all the waiting and watching and making people actually do things. 

We're one third of the way through the season, and everything is in motion. Brad is working his people, Kiera is working hers, they say they trust each other but Kiera always has a little pause before she says it that looks like a red flag. Liberate is mostly gone but still fighting. Kellog is trapped between several rocks and hard places, and despite his note from the future, for the first time doesn't know what's going on but is still trying to do whatever he can in his own best interests with it.

Carlos doesn't want to be boss anymore, but looks more and more like he's stuck there, and doesn't want to see Kiera go, but won't stop her if she gets the chance. Though he does look really bummed when she said without a hesitation--with the opposite of a hesitation since she says it before he's done asking--that she'd go back in a second. But at least it looks like he can count on Dylan to back him up when it's needed.

And Team Alec is all trying to do what's best for everyone and basically keeps breaking all their own hearts.

I wonder why Future Alec never just sent Sam back in time to where Kiera is, to sever that last thing holding her to that future that probably no longer exists? Maybe Alec now will remember that when he's Alec then, and that's how the show will end--with her staying in the present, retiring from saving the world, with her kid and her man and a bright new future. We can hope, right?

But this week has also brought us some new questions!

• If Emily is not Jason's mom, who is? And does Alec love her, or is it just to get the heir he needs?
• Why can't Kellog give a straight answer even to himself?
• What is Curtis really up to?
• What are the future soldiers really up to, and why do they need that one specific building that they want Kellog to procure for them?
• Does Kiera not actually trust Brad, or is her insistence that she does stalled by her surprise that it's real?
• Is Kiera's brain trauma actually gone, or will it come back at an inconvenient time? And what about Carlos's ribs now?
• Will Emily leaving willingly break Alec's heart in a different way than him losing her before?
• If Garza's all that's left, will she play nice?

If the six episodes make a consistent three-act story, that's act one, and it's been a doozy! I can't want to see what happens in act two!

What did you guys think about these episodes? Share in the comments below, or come talk to me on Twitter! I don't have enough Continuum fans to talk with!

NOTES:
*Best widget ever, since the Sonic Screwdriver.
**Insert inconsolable tears.
***I still think he loves her, but in a non-grabby way because he knows he can't keep her and that she doesn't return those specific feelings, and that's great.
****Why do dudes on TV always do that? Like, CPR is a totally different thing that just happens to involve the same part of the face. Ugh.