Pamela Avalos

I was so excited to see a show about the Oregon Trail, and since I enjoyed Yellowstone I thought this would be a fun watch. But nope! I just couldn’t suspend disbelief enough to enjoy this show, and some scenes were just so out there and ridiculous I was laughing my ass off. Some spoilers ahead! You have a teenage girl crushing on every guy she meets and having pre-marital sex left, right, and center and not only are her parents OK with it but nobody shames her, at all?? Even though the entire camp knew? Like nobody even gives her a dirty look or pulls their children away from this bad influence. Just total acceptance by everyone around. She suffers no social repercussions. Same for when she goes full Comanche. Nobody bats an eye. It’s like the Summer of Love but in 1883. Pretty much every human interaction is shoot first, ask questions later. Sooo much gratuitous shooting. YOU get a bullet, YOU get a bullet, everybody gets a bullet! I get that this was “the Wild West” but I had a hard time with the characters’ nonchalance when it came to killing people. The immigrants don’t know any English but in a matter of days can speak it fluently, but they’re also too stupid to boil water before drinking it? Presumably they had to do a fair bit of traveling to reach Texas in the first place but they picked up no life skills in the process? They’re just too, too helpless. And in addition to all this heavy lifting the show asks of us to accept what is being portrayed, the story suffers from being told from the perspective of a very dramatic, not too bright teenager who basically relies on pretty privilege and being a daddy’s girl to waltz through life. I just don’t think the character had the depth to carry so much of the storyline. And finally, I was just annoyed that 95% of the group that set out for Oregon was dead before they even left Texas. A lot of stupid deaths when nobody was even facing any real hardship. There was an abundance of food, beautiful mellow days, loads of horses and cattle (that they could just pick up off the side of the road at any old time), guides who knew what they were doing…but no, wading through a shallow river was too much hardship, and everyone who crossed their paths was intent on murder. It was ludicrous.