"Welcome to Independence."
Hello everyone!
Ahem lol.
So a little bit back I had the randomest post mentioning this show while it was on its break, and since then it's not only returned BUT it concluded it's first season, to roaring success as far as I'm concerned.
Not only did they somehow manage to get the perfect cast for the job at hand, but the writing was also on point from the first to the last episode.
The fact is, it seems to be the only show centered around the old West on television right now, so despite the restructuring over at The CW - and all the rather sad news coming from that with the cancellations and whatnot - viewers are generally hoping this one gets renewed.
I mean, from what I've been able to gather, nobody wants MORE unscripted programming and golf.
But enough with that nonsense. It's cowboy hat time in Walker: Independence.
Walker: Independence was launched as a prequel to the Walker reboot, focusing on a certain feud that the modern-day show also has to deal with in spades, but we get to see how it all began and why.
Abby (Kat McNamara) is heading west with her husband Liam when he's shot one night, and the shooter guns for her, too, but only wounds her (though he leaves her for dead). She's rescued from the grass in the middle of nowhere by the Apache tribe and meets their tracker Calian (Justin Cortez), who has his own story to tell searching for his missing sister.
Calian takes her to Independence, the town just over the hill, where Abby's plan is to talk to the sheriff and report the murder, only by the time she meets Deputy Augustus (Philemon Chambers), the Sheriff Tom Davidson (Greg Hovanessian) is revealed to be the guy who shot her husband.
Well, revealed is a strong word. Abby recognizes him, is the better explanation, so naturally she isn't about to say anything.
Instead, she finds shelter at the hotel with Kate (Katie Findlay) and forms an unlikely but strong friendship with Hoyt Rawlins (Matt Barr), an outlaw-occasional good guy, or is it the other way around? Either way, he's a misfit, he tries robbing the bank the same day Abby's there so she makes him "kidnap" her, and he eventually stops her from shooting the Sheriff right in the middle of his welcoming celebrations.
He also promises to help her figure out what's the deal with this Davidson, so they rope in Calian, who initially only comes to town to check on Abby, but agrees to help because he's a good guy like that.
Through ups and downs they eventually also include Kate and Kai in their group, though Kai seems to be more on the fringes and supplying them with food so they don't drop from hunger, at least in the beginning.
But the interesting part of this show is that everyone has their own story to tell about how they ended up in Independence - and what it means to them.
See, Hoyt's mom was a hustler and taught him everything she knew, but his dad was one of the founding fathers of Independence, so the guy eventually decides the town is literally in his blood and he'll do anything to protect it (though he also often gets tangled in random disasters like his on again, off again relationship with rancher daughter Lucía or pretending to be someone he's not, getting recognized by someone else, and getting into a fist fight).
Kate initially came west because she worked for the Pinkertons, and she agrees with Abby that something's off about the Sheriff, particularly when the former proprietor of the hotel she dances at is poisoned and convinced to sell, so she agrees to help out and snoop around.
Turns out, the Pinkertons wanted her dead, but supposedly Tom Davidson saved her life by NOT killing her, because the detective agency has cut a deal with the Davidson family. Think Kate's grateful? Think again!
Kai's an interesting one, because his subplot involves a long-lost lover even though we were all reasonably convinced he's head-over-heels for Kate, but the lover brings the Tong into town with her, expanding west along the railroad that's ALSO coming west. Kai eventually hammers out a deal with them, but it does mean further trouble on the horizon if you ask me, because even I, the most basic white girl you can find, know the Tong is ... well, big problem is a very simple explanation for it.
Speaking of the Tong and the railroad though, said railroad is doing what railroads do best, which is relocating or just kicking people off the land so they can build. Abby gets wind that this is going to happen to Calian's tribe, so she and Gus take matters into their own hands and stage a bit of a performance to get some faked documents to the railroad where they'll be diverted south rather than north, in show that the group puts on together.
This is a sort of reunion, in a way, because just prior to that, things got extra complicated.
See, they'd been trying to pin stuff on the Sheriff since Abby's arrival to Independence, finally also with the help of his own deputy, because Gus doesn't trust him as far as he can throw him, and he and Abby share a similar sense of justice overall.
Then another Davidson brother walks into town, and Abby starts questioning just what she saw that night, making her co-conspirators huff and puff and disband in the one plotting decision I still don't get, and the show doesn't address why they're so mad at her.
I was under the impression they were solving the murder of Liam Collins, but nope; that scene convinced me that ABBY was the one solving it. Everyone else made the case into HOW TO PUT AWAY TOM DAVIDSON, and abandoned her when that wasn't going to happen anymore.
So anyway, the only one still standing by Abby at that point is Calian (whose sister, by the way, is eventually located, happily married and with children), whom she advocated for in front of an angry mob that thought he'd murdered one of their founders in one of the, frankly, funniest episodes to me in terms of what the Sheriff was doing in the meantime while the people were trying to hang Calian (THAT part isn't funny, and I'm impressed they put the most Caucasian person in defense of the Native American).
Spoiler alert: he was plugging up a hole in his abdomen and literally bleeding all over the place through the entire episode before collapsing into Abby's arms at the end of it, having had someone shank him right at the start.
Anyway, back to the gang: after all of the shenanigans explained above, and after Abby actually shares Tom's bed for a night, things go belly-up: Gus gets caught in the spat the Davidson brothers are having (that entire family is bonkers if you ask me) and ends up shot, while Abby finds her husband's diary in Tom's possession, so after saving Gus, she tells Hoyt to barricade the town up, keep the people inside, and takes a rifle off the shelf.
Kate's the one who starts the shootout that literally looks like OK Corral by the time they're done, when she goes after Tom with her own gun, and everyone else joins in throughout; Tom finds himself surrounded by enemies, getting shot at even by the woman he literally JUST banged, and the one who might have helped him - Kai, because the Sheriff helped him with the Tong - ignores him and walks back inside to close the door and stay safely out of it.
Gus ends the shootout with a bullet of his own, and Abby extracts the confession out of the arrested Sheriff, who reveals himself to be even more coocoo for cocoa puffs than we initially thought.
See, he's known who she is the entire time (so did his brother, at that, I think), but he fell in love with her along the way after following her from Boston out West, and everything he's done since has been to protect her, ostensibly, and that's also why he signs that confession - he even says it. 'If it protects you, then I will'.
Man is OBSESSED, and I've never had that many chills watching a performance as I did then. Hovanessian deserves some kind of award for this.
They pack the Sheriff up, but their telegrapher seems to be on the Davidson payroll or something, because a message about a money reward for freeing Tom pops up, so the team guesses it might have been sent to other towns as well - but they're too late, and Tom's gone by the time they catch up to the wagon transporting him to Austin for trial. Turns out he meets up with his dad again - and through the course of the show, we've learned daddy-o isn't the best person, or the best influence.
It might also be that the newest kid on the block (a literal teen) who popped up in Independence just before the shoot-out is Tom's progeny, not that we have any confirmation of that. But even with Tom on the loose, our gang of misfits now holds Independence.
For how long though, and will the Tong help them if they have something better to offer than the Davidsons? Or, more importantly, will Tom come back for Abby in his obsessive mania, or will he turn on her now that she's turned on him? And is she pregnant, considering she was throwing up by the end of it all?
We don't know, and the network hasn't announced anything yet, unfortunately.
Everyone's keeping their fingers and toes crossed; this is one of the best scripted shows to come out of this television season, and the cast is STELLAR. They all bring a unique humanity to their characters (yes, even to Tom) and give layer upon layer of nuance. While I disagree with how that whole group split was handled, that doesn't mean I didn't absolutely love this show from start to finish for the most part.
It's an old western story that takes characters who are just like you or I and puts them in impossible situations. It also brings an intriguing perspective of the clash between East and West and the justice systems that still need to find an even keel.
Most importantly, it's a story about family, born and found, and about all you can achieve if you surround yourself with the right people.
So here's to hoping this gets renewed. Come on, Powers That Be!
xx
*images and video not mine
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