Tin Man: In Search of a Rainbow

I find myself torn about how well the story they attempted to tell with Tin Man really worked or not. As I noted earlier my biggest problem with the first installment was the lack of an engaging emotional element to the story. The second installment of the miniseries solved many of the problems I had been having, by giving depth to the character of Askadellia and suggesting that she hadn’t always simply been an evil sorceress out to destroy the sweet and innocent little DG. Instead the two had been close, their magical powers amplified by one another and it was in fact DG who had lead her sister into a dangerous cave and then abandoned her there at the mercy of the true Wicked Witch.

The result is to create an added level of emotion between the two sisters, by showing the closeness they had once shared to give the audience some sense not only of what was lost, but also the hope that there was a way for DG to reach her sister once again. If anything, that answer was perhaps telegraphed too much, nothing surprising or enthralling when DG came to her lost sister at the last moment, wanting to take her by the hand and renew the connection she had been responsible for severing so long ago.

And though I wish we had more of a denouement, with a chance to get a sense of Askadellia after she had been saved, to better appreciate what the struggle had been about rather than just cutting right to the tearful family reunion to wrap things up. Since the bond which would save the day was between the two sisters, a chance to see them reconnect on an emotional level instead of a CGI laden climax would have really helped add to the emotions driving the entire story.

Perhaps the greatest squandered opportunity however, was in the direct connection the story tried to draw to Dorothy, herself. As with the eventual climax of the story, by the end of the second installment of Tin Man, I had begun to guess at the actual familial connection to the original Dorothy. But instead of the truth that she was simply the progenitor of the line leading down to DG and her sister, I had guessed that she would perhaps turn out to be their mother, or more fittingly, their grandmother.

By having the connection between Dorothy and DG so far removed by time and emotions, it undercut the emotional impact that connection could produce. Instead of giving us as viewers the pleasure of seeing really come to life before us once again, letting the affection we feel for her be transformed into a greater connection with someone she so obviously loved, instead we got a brief throwback scene with an emotionless Dorothy handing off the reigns to DG without so much as a hug or anything else which would have made us feel we were seeing Dorothy, our Dorothy, again for at least a few moments before she vanished into her black and white world, waiting for the next time we watched The Wizard of Oz to come back to life before our eyes again. I’m not saying she needed to bust into a chorus of Over the Rainbow, but some kind of talk or anything at all which would have forged a deeper connection between Dorothy and her namesake would have added a priceless element to the story.

And while it was great to see DG constantly put in the Dorothy-like situations of peril and finding ways to use her wits and her burgeoning power to save herself rather than waiting for her band of misfit friends to come and get her, that fact also made me wonder why the series itself was called Tin Man in the first place. In a way, this was symptomatic of the problems I had with the story as a whole, because it was so focused on highlighting the cleverness of the reinvented characters and scenarios, hearkening back to the original story with hastily developed themes rather than necessarily concentrating on the story they were telling themselves, the emotions and journey of the characters. It was great to see the ‘Tin Man’ find his son, grown heartless as leader of the resistance and try to help him reconnect with his emotions. And yet, for all the wit used in reinventing the story in such a way, it was somehow still not as charming as a man made out of tin, dancing around and singing about his longing for a heart, or a young farm girl desperately trying to save her dog and longing for a mystical land from her dreams with all the starry-eyed wonder of childhood shining off her face.

Tin Man was the most frustrating to me because all the elements of a much better story were there, waiting to be tapped in to - waiting to spring it on us that everything we had hoped and wished for had been there the entire time. But it seemed to always find a way to miss the mark, or not hit it well enough to really resonate. The O.Z. really isn’t Oz as we know it. You don’t get there by drifting over the rainbow, or get to find a mystical Emerald City (whether or not you need a good pair of colored glasses to see it as green). As with the entire conceit of naming the main character DG, giving her a tenuous connection to her name sake without ever truly having an identity all her own, the miniseries was more interested in drawing a connection to the original movie than it was in connecting with audience in its own right.

I do believe I’ll be more likely to catch the next airing of The Wizard of Oz when it hopefully airs over the holiday season. Tin Man, not so much.