"The Other Woman" - - Wynonna Earp S03E10 Review

And so with "The Other Woman" we play catch-up. Again. It seems like half the season is people recovering from what happened in the previous episode. This week, we have Wynonna recovering from giving up Peacemaker to Bulshar last week. She mopes around a bit, until a mysterious "watcher" named Kevin (Anna Silk) shows up and tells her she's with a mysterious group (whom she calls the Menfolk: at least, the closed captioning capitalizes it), and they typically don't normally interfere but the world is in bad enough shape she felt she had to.

At least once in the episode Team Earp wonders what Bulshar is up to. And I have to echo the characters' (and the creative team's?) confusion. I don't know what the stakes are, either. We know Bulshar getting into the garden is bad. And we find out this week apparently he was the original Snake in the Garden. He's apparently trying to get out (so he's been imprisoned in the Triangle for millennia?) and now that he has Peacemaker, he needs a Blood Eclipse which just happens to be coming the next night, i.e., in the two-hour finale next week.

So Bulshar gets out of the Triangle and then... what? Destroys the world? What did destroying all the first family descendants in Purgatory have to do with that? Did he turn them into Beekeepers? Why did Bulshar need Robin.

So the new Watcheresque Kevin tells Wynonna and Waverly there's still a weapon to use against Bulshar. Bulshar's severed arm, which is in a uranium mine outside of Purgatory. They go there, and it turns out a one-armed Revenant named Clint has taken Bulshar's arm and attached it to himself, becoming Two Armed Clint. He's radioactive, so Waverly and Wynonna can't touch him.

They go to the Gardner house, where Mercedes is still singing Waverly's praises for apparently healing her last episode. Waverly discovers she can use the Ring to control Clint's Bulshar-arm and forces him to choke himself to death. Kevin then shows up and says Waverly is the Champion and can control Bulshar, but it will turn her into stone. Cue the tears and sister-talk at the end of the episode.

Meanwhile, Bobo is imprisoned at the BBD office. He's still insane from everything that's happened to him, and eventually says they have to track down Maeve. Maeve was not only the person who wrote down Juan Carlo's prophetic warnings back in 1887, but is one of the Perley witches along with Mattie (the Blacksmith) and Gretta (the Iron Witch). Why she was doing dictation for Juan Carlos in 1887, I have no idea.

Now Maeve is dead and Doc and Nicole go to the Perley homestead. Maeve was the Fire Witch, so she not only occupies the fire in the fireplace, but can jump from body to body. She jumps into Nicole, and Katherine Barrell acts her heart out as a teenage girl in Nicole's body. When Jeremy shows up, Maeve jumps into him and feels up her new body a bit, but quickly realizes a female body suits her better and jumps back into Nicole. Then she sets the Perley homestead on fire.

Charlie (Sebastian Pigott) visited Wynonna earlier and wants more of a relationship than she does. He and the other firefighters show up at the burning Perley homestead, and Charlie pulls Doc out. Doc apparently gives into his vampiric urges and rips Charlie's neck out. Nicole finds out and can't kill Doc, but tells him she will if she ever sees him again and orders him away. However, as "Doc" walks away, we realize that Maeve has jumped into his body. Ruh-roh!

In the best scene of the episode, we also get Robin and Bobo bonding over their love of jazz music. Robin echoes mine (and the creative team's?) confusion when he wonders if Bobo is a good guy or a bad guy. Credit to Michael Eklund, who has never faltered on the show whether he's playing good guy, bad guy, psychopath, or sexy cad. Eklund is a class act in everything he's appeared in, and he's appeared in a lot over the years.

We also find out Juan Carlo is an angel and along with Julian was tasked with guarding the Garden and keeping Bulshar in the Triangle. I don't think we knew he was an angel, and it's one of several revelations that are tossed out throughout the episode.

At the end, Mercedes is waiting for a date, hears someone knocking on her door, and a guy grabs her when she answers the door. Whether it's Doc, Maeve/Doc, Julian, Bulshar, Juan Carlos back from the dead, or someone else, who knows?

"The Other Woman" hit on the little moments, as Wynonna Earp almost always does. The creative team always manages to get the best out of Scrofano, Rozon, Provost-Chalkley, and Barrell. As well as the guest stars like Eklund, Saranga, Kind, and this week Justin Kelly.

The creative team seems to be rushing the whole Apocalypse of the Season thing a bit, but that's pretty typical for the show. I'm not sure if it's deliberate, a matter of circumstance (this year, like last year but unlike season 1, is only 12 episodes), or if they get so tied up with the little stuff they don't realize until too late that yeah, SyFy wants a big apocalyptic ending for the season. Until next year, until we get an even bigger apocalyptic ending.

It's not even Syfy: pretty much all of the networks want big earth-shattering season enders. Until the next season, when they go for a bigger earth-shattering season ender. It's not only hard to top each previous season, but it makes things monotonous after a while. It's particularly noticeable on the CW superhero shows, where Arrow and Supergirl and Flash and DC's Legends of Tomorrow try to top the previous year, wrap up the current year, and set the ground for the next year with an even bigger threat than the previous year's biggest threat yet.

So yes, Bulshar is an evil threatening Big Bad for the season. There's no denying that Jean Marchand as Bulshar has talent, even if he hasn't done a lot of TV. But it's not a part that gives him much to do. He's evil and... that's it. Maybe Bulshar will get some deeper characterization in the two-hour finale airing next week. Wrapping up season 3 just in time for the "real" network shows to start up. Strange how that "coincidentally" works out.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?