Wynonna Earp Season 2, Episode 4 Review, “She Ain’t Right”
Everybody ready for another week of Melanie Scrofano’s face journeys and Dominique Provost-Chalkley being unfairly multi-talented? Because I know I am. Get ready for Waverly singing, sexual innuendo, Wynonna hiding her feelings with sarcasm, queer Jeremy, face-stealing, and a whole lot of demon possession. In other words, just another average week on Wynonna Earp.
OMG, what?
We open on Gooverly walking the homestead carrying a knife. She finds Dolls’ dog tags, then Wynonna finds her and she is Waverly once more. She stuffs the dog tags in her coat and rushes inside, confused and concerned at the possibility of sleepwalking with a knife. In the background, Dolls cries out for Wynonna unheeded. At a diner in Purgatory, a couple of baddies cut off a BBD agent’s hand to get his briefcase. Lucado brings the case to the team. Wynonna passes, but Waverly offers to take it on herself as a chance to be a solo field agent. Doc and Rosita are still cooking up serum at Shorty’s, and getting a little flirty, methinks? Rosita thinks he has one hell of a lifeline.
“Kudrow, pay the lady for her troubles, and the pastry. We’re not savages.”—Bad Guy
Wynonna apologizes to Nicole for not believing her about Waverly being…off. They realize she’s been stealing cutlery. Wynonna finds Dolls’ dog tags in her coat pocket and rushes off to the homestead. Dolls attacks her. In a flash of sanity, he explains he can’t control his inner demon lizard whatever-ness before Wynonna has to knock him out. Waverly’s undercover op gets complicated when one of the BBD agents mistakes her for a singer. Wynonna takes Dolls to Doc, where he reveals that Waverly’s eyes aren’t right.
“I’ll be here, even if you turn into a lizard or a salamander or whatever you are. We’ll buy you a terrarium, a little sun lamp, a couple of plants…” – Wynonna
At the Gardner household, Mercedes is acting super creepy while she happily munches her bacon. Tucker gets snippy, he leaves, and a bunch of screaming starts. Mercedes keeps munching and smiling. Before we can discover what that’s about, we cut to the sheriff’s office, where Jeremy chides Wynonna on the overuse of ammonia in the serum while he simultaneously realizes Dolls is alive. He wants to help because he thinks Dolls is neat, so Wynonna tasks him with helping Doc while she goes after Waverly.
“You’re using too much ammonia, classic Wynonna.” – Jeremy
Waverly seems just fine though, singing a sultry jazz tune while delaying the baddies from selling off his briefcase. Lucado is impressed. Waverly sneaks off to get more intel; only the baddies have turned on their buyer to keep the briefcase and its contents for themselves. Wynonna shows up in time to punch a backup-less Lucado for putting Waverly in danger and get caught by the baddies along with Waverly. Jeremy prevents Doc and Rosita from overdosing Dolls.
“Talk, or the last thing you’re going to hear is the crushing of your larynx.” – Rosita
Waverly blames herself for the op going south. She wanted to ‘go all Wynonna.’ Wynonna consoles her, and Waverly confesses that she believes something is wrong with her. Wynonna believed she’d killed someone, which is proof to Waves what Wynonna thinks something is wrong, too. And it started with a pool of perfectly shiny black goo calling to her the day Willa died. Wynonna agrees to help figure out what’s up with Waves. Step one is getting get them out by calling Doc. In an ingenious move, Wynonna flips her phone out of her back pocket with her hands tied. Waves uses her heel to turn the phone on; only Siri thinks she wants to call the Holliday Inn instead of Doc Holliday. Heh. Doc, meanwhile, is helping Dolls, who explains that Juan Carlo found him and told him to go back to the homestead because his job isn’t done.
“You look really small without your hat.” – Dolls
Tucker finds Nicole at the station to tell her his sister, and Waverly, are acting weird. He threatens Nicole for treating him like a bad person when he’s totally not (*side eyes Tucker*) while warning her that Waverly is dangerous because she choked him out. Nicole is visibly shaken. Turns out Bad Guy has a bone knife in his wrist. He uses it to threaten Waverly, so Wynonna will help him open the briefcase. Waverly figures out it belonged to Edwin Earp but they can’t reason out the combination. Wynonna breaks free of her ropes. Kudrow grabs her, and Bad Guy cuts off Waverly’s hand. Doc shows up, guns a blazin’, distracting the baddies for long enough that Wynonna can head butt Kudrow and grab Waverly and Peacemaker.
Wynonna: Keep that thing wrapped up honey.
Waverly: That’s what she said.
Back at Shorty’s, Rosita tries to get information out of Jeremy about BBD and the serum, but she’s a girl. She’s lovely, for a girl. Get it? He’s not into girls. (And with that, my Jeremy/Doc headcanons just went through the roof.) He leaves to get lattes, and Rosita decides to taunt(?) Dolls with the serum, only it backfires. He injects himself and tells her to run just as his head goes all fire-y demon-y. At the club, Doc stabs Bad Guy with the briefcase. He and Wynonna fret about Waverly’s hand, but don’t worry, Gooverly is part starfish and grew it back.
“Way cool with a side of habañero.” – Wynonna
They all head back to Shorty’s, where Bad Guy shows up. He threatens Jeremy, so Wynonna turns over the briefcase and Peacemaker. Dolls comes storming out of the basement and blows off some steam fire directly at Bad Guy, burning him to a crisp. He then laughs about how cool it was. Dolls is back, y’all! As Bad Guy dies, he warns them that something is coming. At the Gardner estate, Tucker learns his sisters are now creepy demons who stole his real sisters’ faces. They want to nurture his darkness, and in return, they’ll give him anything he wants. Wynonna and Waverly open the briefcase to find…a fancy plate. Gooverly shows up, exhausted from fighting Waverly and regrowing her hand. She decides she wants a new host, one knows how to have fun: Wynonna.
Favorite One Liner: “Wynonna has decided to trust me. I think we all know that’s a big deal.” – Jeremy
I Gotta Say…
Ramona Barckert definitely brought her A game with the writing this week. Spiders might gross me out, but this week wins the Creepy AF award thus far. Mercedes happily crunching on her bacon while Beth screamed in the background gave me goosebumps. Then you get to the end of the episode and realize that when Mercedes said Beth was “putting on her face”, she meant it quite literally. *shudder*. Every time I thought the story couldn’t get more wtf, it did. And I loved every minute of it. I especially enjoyed how seamlessly it managed to work in a good ol’ Western style bar shoot ’em up scene. Doc was really in his element.
I’m not usually a big fan of horror, but that tone worked so well for this week. The slow build up of suspense suffused every plot arc without being overwhelming. On any other show, so much happening in an episode would start to feel hectic. But Wynonna Earp pulls off a jam-packed, suspenseful, creepy episode with aplomb. This show hands you a glass of whiskey, breaks it all in pieces, then puts it back together again by the end of an episode, all the while leaving you with a thirst for more. Or, like a tapestry, it gives you a few threads to start with, unravels them, then weaves them back together by the end. You have a glimpse of what’s coming next, but never the full picture.
Jeremy’s adorable nerdiness and Wynonna’s wise-cracking lend humor, while the relationship ties between the characters add emotional heft. It’s a show that will mess with your head, make you laugh till it hurts, and pull on your heartstrings all at once without breaking a sweat.
As regular readers know, I latched onto Jeremy (Varun Saranga) from the beginning. Awesome nerds are my faves, so when this precious smol bean graced my screen, I knew I’d love him. He plays the straight man to Wynonna’s snark so well because he’s new at it. Waverly roles with the punches and has started snarking back, but Jeremy still in the “do I take this seriously or ignore it?” phase, and it’s delightful. I’m intrigued by that throwaway line about his mother, so I’m going to need his backstory pronto.
Speaking of ‘straight man’ though (heh), he’s not. I had a feeling he wasn’t into girls when he ignored Waverly’s flirting in the first episode. Then he flirted with Doc, and I was 100% convinced he was gay. Well, this week confirmed it, and I couldn’t be happier. Having multiple queer characters on a show, and more than just ones in a relationship with each other is a rarity. Especially for a ‘regular’ show, and by that I mean a show not specifically geared toward the queer community, like Glee or The L Word. Plus, now we have a queer male character alongside two queer female characters. I’m absolutely floored.
We now have a gay male character, a lesbian female character, and a bisexual female character. If Andras and Co. find a way to write in a trans character, I might explode from joy. Bless Emily. Bless this writing team. Just…bless them all for this beautiful representation.
Whereas last week focused a lot on Nicole and Waverly, both individually and separately, this week Wynonna took center stage. How much Wynonna cares about people, and how much she covers it with alcohol and sarcasm, has been a major undercurrent since season one. Yet this season, that façade is beginning to crumble. The more pressure she’s been under to lead the team and cope with Willa’s death at her hands, the more she’s let her love for others show.
Jeremy’s remark about Wynonna trusting him and how big a deal that is, is a symptom of what’s happening with her. She doesn’t let people in easily, nor does she trust them quickly. Yet here she is trusting Jeremy on little more than a few weeks of interaction. But rather than a sign of weakness (that she’s ‘getting soft’ in her grief and making sloppy judgments about people), it’s a sign of growth. Wynonna has been too quick to judge negatively, too quick to push people away. Her instincts about Jeremy being trustworthy, and Perry being someone worth dating were she in a healthy place, are correct. Grief over Willa created cracks in her armor where true friendship and trust can break through. It’s beautiful to see happening in real time.
We see this nowhere more clearly than with Dolls. Wynonna has had feelings for Dolls for a while. She’s clearly sexually and romantically attracted to him, which is what makes her relationship with both him and Doc so complicated. This week, we got to see a tender side to her that we haven’t seen yet. Her promise to stay with him no matter what comes out in typical Wynonna style ala a joke about getting a terrarium to cover her true feelings. But we can see what’s underneath. She believes in him and will be by his side even if he’s not himself. She’ll also do whatever it takes to bring him back to himself.
The same thing happens with Waverly in the final scene. Having lost her older sister last season, Wynonna comes face to face with both her sister and one of her romantic interests possibly turning into demons. Instead of killing them outright, or cutting ties and running away from her pain, she stares them down. She extends a hand of help and understanding and tries to talk them down. She’s learning that love is a strength, not a weakness.
We can only hope that despite all she’s lost and how much she’s struggling with her grief over Willa, she will be able to fight the Goo. Because Goononna is far scarier even than Gooverly and has the potential to be much more destructive.
I’m curious about Peacemaker now, though. Since Wynonna can’t use it, does this make Waverly the heir? Will this be how we learn once and for all if she’s a “real Earp” or not? Because if Wynonna can’t use Peacemaker and Waverly isn’t an Earp…what does that mean for the Earp curse? Do the demons win now? Are Mercedes and Beth actually dead or could they be rescued? I have so many questions!
I see you, Andras Barckert
- The number of times “Tacos are tasty” was said this episode…
- Sleepwalking was a nice touch because that’s the benignest thing one can think of when you wake up to find yourself in a nightgown in below freezing weather holding a knife
- The joke about getting a vegetarian restaurant, lol
- “Robin Hood’s going to ‘oo dallaly right to hell” omg. I love this reference.
- That Siri thing, tho. HA!
- I appreciate Dolls needing water after breathing fire. It’s a little thing, but a nice worldbuilding touch that many supernatural or sci-fi shows might overlook.
- I see that Game of Thrones reference
- Nicole was FIERCE in that scene with Tucker. That’s my girl!
- That moment when you realize that Wynonna doesn’t actually remember Waverly’s birthday, and how much this must hurt Waverly.
- I think this means my theory about Waverly being part demon is shot to hell. R.I.P. Demon/Earp Waverly. It was a good idea while it lasted.
- ‘Juan Carlos’ seems to have a lot of stake in what’s going on in Purgatory, hmmm?
Tune in next week for the team taking on Goononna! At least a glass of mouse milk is less disgusting than Gooverly eating a giant spider, amirite?