Emerald City Review

Nostalgia is a tricky thing. When remaking or rebooting or sequel-ing a beloved classic from childhood, it may bring eyeballs, but it is also likely to draw the ire of fans who treasure the original. I suspect that will be the case with Emerald City. This new adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is not like the Oz I remember from my childhood. In fact, it barely resembles it. I never read any of Frank Baum’s Oz books, but I have to imagine that at least some elements from Emerald City came from the books. I should start off by saying that I hold no nostalgia for Oz. As a kid, I was terrified of the witch, so I never made it to the end. When I finally did, I was pissed off that the witch was bested by a simple bucket of water.

NBC‘s Emerald City follows the tornado’s path into Oz, but from there it is quite different from Victor Fleming’s musical classic. Instead of Munchkins, Dorothy meets a tribe of normal-sized people who live in the tribal free lands, not unlike the Wildlings of Game of Thrones. Instead of a yellow brick road, Dorothy follows a path made of yellow poppy pollen. Instead of meeting a scarecrow, she meets a soldier with amnesia who has been crucified, and he follows her on her journey to find the Wizard. The Wizard has outlawed magic in an attempt to keep Oz safe from a “beast that comes from the sky.” This does not sit well with the two surviving sacred witches: the Witch of the West, who runs a brothel; and Glinda, who runs an orphanage. That’s a little ham-fisted, even for Oz, although Glinda is stern and definitely has ulterior motives. She pimps out her wards, too, but in a (slightly) less direct way.

Emerald City is The Wizard of Oz for the Game of Thrones set. A vaguely Middle Ages setting, with enough fantasy elements to make it feel not truly historical; lush costumes; gorgeous sets and cinematic landscapes; more sex and violence than the material necessarily needs. Despite all this, I found Emerald City to be surprisingly boring.

The characters are uninteresting. Dorothy has no spark. She is a popular nurse… who steals medication. But she is stealing to give them to Auntie Em… for her back problems. She knows she is adopted… but is too chicken to meet her birth mother. I think all of this is a misguided attempt to make Dorothy a complex and flawed anti-hero, but it doesn’t carry through to her time in Oz. Once she gets to Oz, she is on a determined path to find the Wizard and get home. Her demeanor and attitude don’t change, whether she is saving a child or tricking the Witch of the East to kill herself. She also doesn’t have that basic “freak out” that any human would have after discovering a tornado has taken them to a fantasy land.

The most interesting character I have come across is Tip, a young boy who is kept locked inside a woman’s hut, being given a medicine for a mysterious ailment. This medicine has been keeping Tip a boy. When he escapes and runs out of medicine, he becomes a she. It then becomes a heavy-handed tale of a transgendered teen. While Tip does appear in Baum’s The Marvelous Land of Oz, the attempt to make it topical feels a little preachy. Tip’s story does bring us to Jack, who stands in for the Tin Man, and he’s got a cool look.

I applaud NBC for trying something big, something a bit daring for network television. For the past few seasons, their lineup has mixed standard Law & Order procedural fare with daring, artistic goodies like Hannibal. Unfortunately, I would have rather seen a fourth season of Hannibal than Emerald City. But hey, you don’t know until you try.

Emerald City premieres on Friday, January 6 at 9/8c on NBC.

Are you a good witch, or a bad witch? #EmeraldCity pic.twitter.com/i63ign97xC

— Emerald City (@NBCEmeraldCity) November 23, 2016