Emerald City has only aired twice, and we’ve already seen demonic rituals and gruesome murders. This Friday, we’re introduced to a new topic: a character suffering an identity crisis, namely their gender.
The plot spills over from last week where we met Tip (Jordan Loughran) living with his guardian who constantly feeds him medicine. With help from his friend Jack (Gerran Howell), he escapes. During the night, Tip turns into a girl, seemingly as a side effect from not having his medicine.
During this week’s episode, “Mistress–New–Mistress,” while the two look for someone to recreate the medicine, they go to a bar. Jack starts looking at Tip as a girl, with an obvious physical attraction. Tip does not appreciate this and retreats to the restroom. (Of course, they have to work in the bathroom controversy.) He has trouble identifying which room to use, ultimately deciding on the women’s, presumably based on his appearance.
They eventually find a shop and ask an herbalist to recreate the medicine. They tell him it was administered because of Tip’s “bad blood.” After doing some research, the herbalist discovers he cannot recreate it because of its magical properties. He also reveals a shocking verdict: Tip was born female.
Shopkeeper: I can't make you your medicine, love. Which is to say, I won't. No one will, not anywhere, and you shouldn't ever ask again.
Tip: Why?
Shopkeeper: Because you could hang for it. It's a black elixir, it's magic. It disturbs your true nature.
Tip: My true nature?
Shopkeeper: What you are right now, what's under those clothes, that's not a side effect of the medicine wearing off. That's what happens when the medicine itself wears off.
Tip: But I'm a boy. I've always been a boy.
Shopkeeper: Yes, someone may have wanted that, and they gave you this to make it so. But it's not how you were born. This is how you were born.
Wow. Talk about shocking. While we can certainly feel some sympathy for Tip’s situation, the guardian messing with his/her body, we can’t help but notice Hollywood bringing attention to those who identify differently from their birth.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say this is all an allegory of the current transgender debate. The shopkeeper represents conservatives telling transgenders how they were born is their true nature and it's illegal and wrong to try to resist it. We are supposed to root for Tip to be able to become a boy again because that's what he feels he is despite his gender at birth, making us question our views on gender and become sympathetic to the transgender side. (Of course this message falls apart because Tip never knew the gender he was born with and lived the way he was magically raised, it was not his choice to live as a gender he wasn't born as, but liberals have never really been good at similes.) But no, Hollywood would NEVER try to use a subliminal storyline to advance the LGBTQ agenda!
The episode ends with Jack getting pushed off a balcony (seemingly killed) after he kisses Tip and she acts out of rage and disgust.
This show has gone past the point of confusing by adding this unnecessary plot twist. If this Wizard of Oz reboot was a musical, they'd probably replace the song "If I Only Had a Brain" with "If I Only Had a Penis." Again, it’s clearly Tinsel Town’s attempt to bring more attention to the growing gender identity hysteria. How much more of this social agenda must we endure before they realize it just doesn't create good television!
