Emerald City Review: There’s No Place Like Home (Season 1 Episode 10)

As far as finales go, Emerald City Season 1 Episode 10, “There’s No Place Like Home,” might just be one of the least satisfying of all time.

It’s understandable that the show needs to leave us with some reason to want a second season, but absolutely nothing is resolved in what just may be the series finale, and that leaves me deeply unsatisfied.

That being said, one thing we can all be very happy about is the fact that someone finally shot the Wizard of Oz. This moment has been a long time coming, and it is deeply satisfying to have finally gotten rid of that man once and for all.

And, with him gone, Tip is free to ascend to the throne without any real contest — except, perhaps, a bit of reluctance from Glinda, but it seems like West will be taking care of that.

Tip and West’s arch this season has been one of the shows most pleasant surprises. West started off as a mess, a wreck, and, truthfully, someone I found extremely annoying, but then she grew on me and grew in to this beautiful, wonderfully wounded, maternal figure. It was a character development journey, and an extremely well executed one that is rare to see, and I applaud Emerald City for that success.

The development of the supportive, mutual respect based relationship between her and Tip is such a fantastic journey and became, without a doubt, the greatest, most well developed relationship of the season.

One of the biggest unanswered questions, however, is that of Tip’s identity. He gave up who he really is to rule as Ozma and one has to wonder just how long he will be able to stand living a lie. He makes an incredible sacrifice by giving up his true self for the sake of ruling, and it’s bound to eat away at him the longer he is made to do it.

Then, in a close second for Most Interesting Character Arch is that of Jack — another character that we never expected to love who took us by surprise. He, too, is left in a position where his fate is deeply uncertain — torn apart and mutilated and left for dead.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about this finale is that we never see Langwidere again. We do not know if Jane repaired her. She never comes to Jack’s rescue. Perhaps her death was truly the end of her run on the show.

Whether Jack or Langwidere lives or dies is something we may never know, unless the show is picked up for a second season.

Finally, we have Dorothy’s story. Dorothy never really rose to the occasion in any major sense.

She never found a purpose and, throughout the finale, she, more or less, just seems to aimlessly swap sides whenever it suits her and it makes her a massively directionless character. It’s hard to stand behind someone when we have no idea what, exactly, she’s fighting for.

In the end, it just seems like Dorothy was a way to tie all these far more interesting storylines together, because of the fact that she was always able to hop from one story to the next.

Time will tell if we’ll get to see Dorothy hop back in to the fray and return to Emerald City. Maybe then we’ll learn the fates of our favorite characters.

For now, however, we have just been left with a lot of loose ends.

What did you think of this episode of Emerald City? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Emerald City airs Fridays at 9/8c on NBC.

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