I Watch TV: Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail

Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail

Miracle Workers returns with most of its regular cast and for this season of the anthology series we’re in the American West. The crops fail in a town and the residents decide to go to Oregon. Reverend Ezekiel Brown (Daniel Radcliffe) prays for a guide and they get notorious outlaw Benny The Teen (Steve Buscemi). The returning cast make up a bounty hunter after Benny, and the richest couple in the wagon train, Prudence and Todd.

Each episode takes a look at an idea of the Old West and makes some jokes, often by juxtaposing them with modern concepts. So the week they have to cross a river and are too overweight so have to leave someone behind, Todd and Prudence take the ferry where they meet a 19^th century influencer couple. Benny gets separated and falls in with some Native Americans and tries to become a white saviour, eventually realising that he’s not the central figure in the struggle. Benny also encounters his daughter, who wants to become a more notorious outlaw than him, their struggle driving the plot of the second half of the season, and causing Benny’s redemption arc to continually and hilariously get sidetracked.

If its more interested in making jokes based on the characters rather than learning anything about actual history, then that's probably a strength. You won't get much of a look at the real Old West, whatever that was, or much more than a surface level satire of our ideas of the fictional version, but they dig in on putting a bunch of weirdos in outrageous situations.

Watch This: Western comedy from a charismatic cast
Don’t Watch This: To learn anything about the actual Old West
This Is The Last TV Series I Completed Watching in 2021: And so ends my TV reviewing of 2021