Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Lost in Oz, Chapter 14: The Deadly Desert

Yes! It's back for the second half of the first season! So naturally I'm going to watch and blog the next thirteen episodes of Lost in Oz. (I may not do them every day, however, and the viewings may get interspersed with other shows that I will talk about when they come up.) As you may remember, when we left off, Dorothy, Toto, and the Scarecrow didn't make it back to Kansas after all. Instead, the house had landed in a desert. Well, at the top of this episode, Scarecrow confirms that it's the Deadly Desert, and Dorothy is frustrated at getting lost again. Nevertheless, she tries to find a solution, and eventually spots a signal from a lighthouse. She uses the bathroom mirror to signal it, and eventually a high-tech flying carpet (which looks a lot like a metallic articulated manta ray!) comes for them. They head off towards the lighthouse, but the Wheelers come after them. They almost shake them off, but in the struggle Dorothy falls into the desert—and nothing much appears to happen to her. A sand ghost surrounds her, however, and scares off the Wheelers. So far so good, until Dorothy spots a distant lunch pail tree and heads towards it. Trouble is, Scarecrow and Toto can't. Toto follows anyway, and he and Dorothy enjoy a meal and are eventually joined by Ojo, West, and Dorothy's mother. It's the latter image that casts doubts in Dorothy's mind, and she realizes it's all a mirage, but it's very convincing and nearly stays anyway. Only Scarecrow swooping in on the carpet shakes her up enough to notice they're really sand ghosts. Fortunately, Dorothy and Scarecrow arrive at the lighthouse, which is on rock that the sand ghosts can't travel on. Our little group is safe, but they have a gauntlet of pounding fists to get through (the Lost in Oz version of the Giant with the Hammer, I'm guessing) before finally finding out where they are—as General Guph welcomes them to the Nome Kingdom, and he has plans to present Dorothy to his king.

So it's off to a slow but promising start. The sand ghosts are a creepy new addition to tho Oz mythos, and Dorothy's scream of frustration behind a closed door before coming out again to take charge of things is right on. We don't see what's happening back in the Emerald City, but it looks like we will in the next episode.

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