January Meme: Doc Holliday in Wynona Earp
Jan. 26th, 2018 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhen zahrawithaz first asked me about this topic, I hadn’t watched the second season yet, so I didn’t think I could do it, but thankfully, Netflix has put it up by now. So: John Henry „Doc“ Holliday, Wynona Earp edition, and why I like him.
Well, for starters, I blame my Dad, whose favourite Western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was (and is, at least he never disavowed it in my presence). Not until I got older did I realise it is, err, not exactly historically accurate. To put it mildly. But it did imprint me to some degree, and certainly was the first time I enountered the „lawman/honest detective and dangerous gunslinger/assassin who are friends against the odds“ trope, which I later saw numerous reiterations of. (Spenser and Hawke, Easy Rawlins and Mouse, among others.) Subsequent versions of Doc Holliday I encountered in movies and books that wildly varied in their take on everything else, especially the Earps, nonetheless shared three core traits: a) he always knows he’s dying of tuberculosis, which is a basic condition for the recklessness in fights, b) he’s always very loyal to Wyatt Earp (also to Morgan if the story includes more Earps), and c) he’s always sarcastic/sharp tongued. (One of the more famous quotes about him, from historical Wyatt Earp, seems to have inspired most scriptwriters, to wit:
„I found him a loyal friend and good company. He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean blonde fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the same time the most skillful gambler and nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.“
Now, Wynona Earp‘s version of Doc Holliday, by the manner in which they brought the character to the present day, removed one of those three traits. Their Doc is the only Doc Holliday I’ve ever encountered who isn’t dying anymore. (Well, until… but I’ll get to that.) This is because he’s made the proverbial devil’s deal resulting in conditional immortality. Which also resulted in an argument with Wyatt, thereby shaking the seccond of the three core traits, though subsequent fleshings out of the backstory reveal it’s even more tragic because Doc was sorry, but was trapped in a well for more than a century, and Wyatt was sorry, but couldn’t find him again because, see above, trapped in a well. One of the things I was most curious about after the first few episodes of the show was whether the show’s Doc would still be a recognizable version, due to this removal, or whether he might as well be Random Immortal 19th Century Gunslinger. The other thing I was wildly curious about was how the show would use him, and what kind of relationships he would have both with Wynona and the rest of the ensemble.
Wynona Earp the series first makes a big deal of Doc’s uncertain loyalties, or rather, plays the „whose side is he really on?“ card as long as it can. To tell you the truth, despite Doc hanging out with Bobo & Co. at the start and committing at least two crappy actions (pulling that unfortunate revenant into torment to stop Bobo from questioning his, Doc’s loyalties, and disregarding the Iron Smith’s direct wish/request which she died for) I didn’t have too many doubts as to which side he’d come down on, simply because Doylist experience told me you don’t tell a story about an Earp, include Doc Holliday as a key supporting character and then let him be an unredeemable villain and/or set against the Earp in question.
Interestingly, though, while the show stops playing the „whose side is he really on?“ game mid s1, it doesn’t give up the idea of their Doc Holliday as a morally ambiguous character per se. (Which is as it should be. I’ve only seen one Doc Holliday who was a misunderstood woobie, in the revisionist Western Doc, and he was the least interesting of the lot.) In s2, at a point where Doc’s loyalty to Wynona (and Waverly) is no longer questionable and he’s even gone above and beyond for Dolls (sidenote: in s1, I could not see where Doc/Dolls and Doc/Wynona/Dolls people were coming from because I thought by the end of the first season, Doc and Dolls had gotten to warily respect each other at best, but in s2 there’s definitely no question that we’ve reached bromance territory with these two), we also get a 19th century flashback emphasizing his selfishness, and a canon AU episode showing us how without his present day relationships to Wynona, Waverly and Dolls he’d have degenerated into an evil overlord. He’s also quite good at using blackmail, and not just blackmail of evil characters. By the end of s2, one key circumstance has changed for Doc which may or may not bode for future drama: he’s no longer immortal, and, courtesy of the canon AU interlude, has spent some time dead and in hell before the time line reset, which gives him a very powerful incentive to stay alive.
All this would make for an interesting-to-me character anyway, but the „to care or not to care“ question always is also relationship reliant. Doc’s with Wynona is my kind of messed up and intense, while his with Waverly is delightfully big brother-little sister like. It says something about the type of show Wynona Earp is that s2 offers us a scene that’s unabashedly mythic and corny at the same time, to wit, how Wynona and Doc take out the seasonal villains, the Widows, despite having only one bullet that can kill demons of the Widows‘ calibre at their disposal. It depends on them able to read and trust each other utterly despite the constant ups and downs of their relationship, and of course it’s a shootout on a street in Purgatory, a seemingly unsolvable Mexican standoff with the Widows. Wynona and Doc tricking the Widows by seemingly creating a situation in which Doc shoots Wynona – where in reality his shot splits the bullet Wynona fires simultanously into two, the parts then taking out the Widows simultanously – is, like I said, both high camp and utterly mythic and, in terms of characterisation, something that would only work between these two characters.
(On the other end of the emotional scale, that last quiet scene of the season between them after Wynona has sent the baby away to safety and they just sit next each other and she tells him the name(s) is heartbreaking in the best way to me.)
Lastly: like all the other Docs, this one is good with the sarcasm and the one liners. Though with the exception of his behavior towards Waverly when she identifies him as Doc Holliday early in s1, he never punches downwards, so to speak, and when in s2 new nerdish regular Jeremy very obviously has a crush on him, Doc never ridicules him, or reacts in any way homophobic. The other day, I was reminded of something I thought back in the last season of Angel: one detail that sells me on souled Spike being different from soulless Spike in a way that has nothing to do with Buffy is that when Andrew shows up in Los Angeles, sees Spike alive and hugs him in front of everyone, Spike (who, see origin story about William, is quite invested in his „cool“ image) doesn’t ridicule or humiliate him (and later answers Andrew’s geeky questions as to what blood actually tastes like etc. matter of factly). Similarly, Doc being kind to Jeremy – something he doesn’t benefit from in any way – says something as important about what kind of man he is. And why I like him.
Future developments (provided there’s a third season, which of course I hope there will be): like I said, there’s the obvious set up of Doc being mortal now once more, and with the awareness that if he dies, he’ll be stuck in hell with the revenants. (Leaving aside theological implications here; it’s fantasy hell.) While on the other hand Wynona is now more determined than ever to break the curse so that their daughter won’t have to deal with it. Obviously, Doylist-wise, „breaking the curse“ spells „end of the show“, so I don’t think they’ll do it unless they know they’re writing their last season. But the inherent conflict is there: it’s all very well to risk everything if you either know you’re dying anyway (and don’t know what comes after) or when you’re reasonably certain you won’t die at all, but if you know your death will result in something that’s considerably worse than more than a century in a well, and you’ve already once made a deal with the devil, err, the witch to avoid this, well – temptation is most definitely there.
Basically I think Doc will have to make a choice again, and while he’ll eventually go for the prospect of hell if it means a broken curse, before that he’ll probably try out a lot of other solutions and deals, because that’s the kind of character he is.
On a less serious level, given all the bonding he and Dolls did in s2 and both of them backing off a sexual relationship with Wynona at different points (Doc after he’s seen Wynona kiss Dolls, Dolls after finding out Wynona is pregnant by Doc) in a way that could be interpreted as in „in favour of the other“, I definitely see narrative justification for an OT3. Though Wynona will have to initialize it and tell them both at the same time.
The Other Days
zahrawithaz first asked me about this topic, I hadn’t watched the second season yet, so I didn’t think I could do it, but thankfully, Netflix has put it up by now. So: John Henry „Doc“ Holliday, Wynona Earp edition, and why I like him. Well, for starters, I blame my Dad, whose favourite Western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was (and is, at least he never disavowed it in my presence). Not until I got older did I realise it is, err, not exactly historically accurate. To put it mildly. But it did imprint me to some degree, and certainly was the first time I enountered the „lawman/honest detective and dangerous gunslinger/assassin who are friends against the odds“ trope, which I later saw numerous reiterations of. (Spenser and Hawke, Easy Rawlins and Mouse, among others.) Subsequent versions of Doc Holliday I encountered in movies and books that wildly varied in their take on everything else, especially the Earps, nonetheless shared three core traits: a) he always knows he’s dying of tuberculosis, which is a basic condition for the recklessness in fights, b) he’s always very loyal to Wyatt Earp (also to Morgan if the story includes more Earps), and c) he’s always sarcastic/sharp tongued. (One of the more famous quotes about him, from historical Wyatt Earp, seems to have inspired most scriptwriters, to wit:
„I found him a loyal friend and good company. He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean blonde fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the same time the most skillful gambler and nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.“
Now, Wynona Earp‘s version of Doc Holliday, by the manner in which they brought the character to the present day, removed one of those three traits. Their Doc is the only Doc Holliday I’ve ever encountered who isn’t dying anymore. (Well, until… but I’ll get to that.) This is because he’s made the proverbial devil’s deal resulting in conditional immortality. Which also resulted in an argument with Wyatt, thereby shaking the seccond of the three core traits, though subsequent fleshings out of the backstory reveal it’s even more tragic because Doc was sorry, but was trapped in a well for more than a century, and Wyatt was sorry, but couldn’t find him again because, see above, trapped in a well. One of the things I was most curious about after the first few episodes of the show was whether the show’s Doc would still be a recognizable version, due to this removal, or whether he might as well be Random Immortal 19th Century Gunslinger. The other thing I was wildly curious about was how the show would use him, and what kind of relationships he would have both with Wynona and the rest of the ensemble.
Wynona Earp the series first makes a big deal of Doc’s uncertain loyalties, or rather, plays the „whose side is he really on?“ card as long as it can. To tell you the truth, despite Doc hanging out with Bobo & Co. at the start and committing at least two crappy actions (pulling that unfortunate revenant into torment to stop Bobo from questioning his, Doc’s loyalties, and disregarding the Iron Smith’s direct wish/request which she died for) I didn’t have too many doubts as to which side he’d come down on, simply because Doylist experience told me you don’t tell a story about an Earp, include Doc Holliday as a key supporting character and then let him be an unredeemable villain and/or set against the Earp in question.
Interestingly, though, while the show stops playing the „whose side is he really on?“ game mid s1, it doesn’t give up the idea of their Doc Holliday as a morally ambiguous character per se. (Which is as it should be. I’ve only seen one Doc Holliday who was a misunderstood woobie, in the revisionist Western Doc, and he was the least interesting of the lot.) In s2, at a point where Doc’s loyalty to Wynona (and Waverly) is no longer questionable and he’s even gone above and beyond for Dolls (sidenote: in s1, I could not see where Doc/Dolls and Doc/Wynona/Dolls people were coming from because I thought by the end of the first season, Doc and Dolls had gotten to warily respect each other at best, but in s2 there’s definitely no question that we’ve reached bromance territory with these two), we also get a 19th century flashback emphasizing his selfishness, and a canon AU episode showing us how without his present day relationships to Wynona, Waverly and Dolls he’d have degenerated into an evil overlord. He’s also quite good at using blackmail, and not just blackmail of evil characters. By the end of s2, one key circumstance has changed for Doc which may or may not bode for future drama: he’s no longer immortal, and, courtesy of the canon AU interlude, has spent some time dead and in hell before the time line reset, which gives him a very powerful incentive to stay alive.
All this would make for an interesting-to-me character anyway, but the „to care or not to care“ question always is also relationship reliant. Doc’s with Wynona is my kind of messed up and intense, while his with Waverly is delightfully big brother-little sister like. It says something about the type of show Wynona Earp is that s2 offers us a scene that’s unabashedly mythic and corny at the same time, to wit, how Wynona and Doc take out the seasonal villains, the Widows, despite having only one bullet that can kill demons of the Widows‘ calibre at their disposal. It depends on them able to read and trust each other utterly despite the constant ups and downs of their relationship, and of course it’s a shootout on a street in Purgatory, a seemingly unsolvable Mexican standoff with the Widows. Wynona and Doc tricking the Widows by seemingly creating a situation in which Doc shoots Wynona – where in reality his shot splits the bullet Wynona fires simultanously into two, the parts then taking out the Widows simultanously – is, like I said, both high camp and utterly mythic and, in terms of characterisation, something that would only work between these two characters.
(On the other end of the emotional scale, that last quiet scene of the season between them after Wynona has sent the baby away to safety and they just sit next each other and she tells him the name(s) is heartbreaking in the best way to me.)
Lastly: like all the other Docs, this one is good with the sarcasm and the one liners. Though with the exception of his behavior towards Waverly when she identifies him as Doc Holliday early in s1, he never punches downwards, so to speak, and when in s2 new nerdish regular Jeremy very obviously has a crush on him, Doc never ridicules him, or reacts in any way homophobic. The other day, I was reminded of something I thought back in the last season of Angel: one detail that sells me on souled Spike being different from soulless Spike in a way that has nothing to do with Buffy is that when Andrew shows up in Los Angeles, sees Spike alive and hugs him in front of everyone, Spike (who, see origin story about William, is quite invested in his „cool“ image) doesn’t ridicule or humiliate him (and later answers Andrew’s geeky questions as to what blood actually tastes like etc. matter of factly). Similarly, Doc being kind to Jeremy – something he doesn’t benefit from in any way – says something as important about what kind of man he is. And why I like him.
Future developments (provided there’s a third season, which of course I hope there will be): like I said, there’s the obvious set up of Doc being mortal now once more, and with the awareness that if he dies, he’ll be stuck in hell with the revenants. (Leaving aside theological implications here; it’s fantasy hell.) While on the other hand Wynona is now more determined than ever to break the curse so that their daughter won’t have to deal with it. Obviously, Doylist-wise, „breaking the curse“ spells „end of the show“, so I don’t think they’ll do it unless they know they’re writing their last season. But the inherent conflict is there: it’s all very well to risk everything if you either know you’re dying anyway (and don’t know what comes after) or when you’re reasonably certain you won’t die at all, but if you know your death will result in something that’s considerably worse than more than a century in a well, and you’ve already once made a deal with the devil, err, the witch to avoid this, well – temptation is most definitely there.
Basically I think Doc will have to make a choice again, and while he’ll eventually go for the prospect of hell if it means a broken curse, before that he’ll probably try out a lot of other solutions and deals, because that’s the kind of character he is.
On a less serious level, given all the bonding he and Dolls did in s2 and both of them backing off a sexual relationship with Wynona at different points (Doc after he’s seen Wynona kiss Dolls, Dolls after finding out Wynona is pregnant by Doc) in a way that could be interpreted as in „in favour of the other“, I definitely see narrative justification for an OT3. Though Wynona will have to initialize it and tell them both at the same time.
The Other Days
no subject
Date: 2018-01-27 04:07 pm (UTC)Speaking of Doc: https://www.space.ca/wynonna-earp-season-3-photos/
No big spoilers, but one picture from what looks like it's going to be a fun first two episodes.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-28 05:42 pm (UTC)