Review: Nomad of Nowhere “End of the Line”

I’m losing my train of thought here.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Hoping to flee his pursuers and to stop causing so much trouble, The Nomad plans to smuggle himself on a train at a nearby station. What he doesn’t count on is running into Skout, who seems to have skipped getting reassigned and just decided to go AWOL. The two soon find each other, which gives Skout a chance to vent all of the stress of her crush dumping her and having to head home to her family in shame. But she gets an idea: instead of the Nomad continuing to wander around just to get captured by someone and eventually taken to El Rey, the Nomad should let himself be captured by SKOUT…and then taken to El Rey. Win-Win, right?

Well, that capturing is superseded by the train being itself captured by a robbery group called the Near-Sighted Bandits, who hold the passengers up for money. Skout first tries ordering the Nomad to stop them, then tries appealing to his conscience like Toth did. He diverts one of the bandits with his powers, but the other two recognize him and try their hand at Nomad capturing. Nearby, Toth and the Dandy Lions continue their search, but Toth is noticeably distracted by Skout’s absence. On their way, they cross paths with Governor Toro’s Champion (unsure if his name IS Champion or not), who finds the train, derails it with his bare hands and crashes it, likely injuring and/or killing many of the passengers. Skout tries to get the Nomad away but is spotted by the Champion.

OUR TAKE

This was the shortest episode yet at ten minutes and ten seconds, but it sure didn’t feel that way. While the ongoing story continues at a steady pace, it doesn’t do much to help the staleness of these characters, the dialogue, or the world at large. Aside from the main three focal points of the Nomad, Toth, and Skout, there isn’t a ton of personality or flavor to dig into in the land of Nowhere. The supporting cast like Red Manuel or the Dandy Lions are still one note and don’t add anything to scenes they’re in other than their same quickly tired schtick, while whatever new bit characters we get like the Near-Sighted Bandits are anemic punchlines at best and blatant plot devices at worst, and supposedly oncoming major threats like Toro’s champion are about as hollow as a dry gourd. And even worse is that, in committing to this grander storyline about El Rey and the Governers, it might’ve bitten off more than it can chew.

This story started in a rather economical way, with almost every character given a built-in motive and goal revolving around the Nomad. Whether it was capturing or protecting or simply reacting, he was the center of it all. However, the Nomad himself has been shown to be rather passive and reactionary, meaning that he has no real goal of his own other than to wander, which has now been amended somewhat into wandering away from places that he’s likely to cause trouble. That nature is fitting for the descriptor of a nomad, and it’s not necessarily a bad route for a protagonist if you know what you’re doing, but having a main character without a clear goal in mind makes it more likely for viewers to lose touch with what that character is thinking and eventually lose interest, just as a portion of Nomad of Nowhere viewers seem to have done (which was not helped by the four-month break). So, as the stakes continue to be raised and higher ranking enemies come in to deal with our silent friend, if he doesn’t evolve with the situation, it’ll just continue to undersell whether or not things are actually worth being invested in.

It’s no surprise then, considering they can actually speak and are going through clear character arcs, that Skout and Toth are the far more developed of the three leads. This week was Skout’s turn to get more one on one time with the Nomad since Toth got hers last week. By comparison, they go through some of the same beats, like trying to negotiate terms of surrender and making use of his apparent want of helping people to make him see this is the best solution, but Skout’s lack of physical strength means she has to use her head more. It’s what makes her a good foil for Toth to work off of, and it’s used…adequately here. Given her first appearance of being considerably book smart and later being shown as mechanically knowledgeable enough to inspect and repair an oil pump, I was hoping for her to do something with the train’s engine and either stop it herself or use it against the bandits somehow. Best we got of her smarts was using stolen glasses as a magnifying glass, which is a very Skout-like move, but just less than what I expected. Still, I had been hoping for her and the Nomad to properly reunite and team up since they got along so well in the first episode, so it was at least nice on that level.

This seems to be the beginning of at least another two-parter like with Bliss Hill, or the start of the arc that will lead us into the season finale in four weeks, but the locomotion of this story is so slow that it might feel like another four months before we get there.