Series / Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail

Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail is the third season of TBS's Miracle Workers anthology series, released in 2021.

Reverend Ezekiel Brown (Daniel Radcliffe) leads his townspeople on the Oregon Trail, recruiting notorious outlaw Benny the Teen (Steve Buscemi) to aid them. Meanwhile, repressed prairie wife Prudence Aberdeen (Geraldine Viswanathan), wife to Todd (Jon Bass) enjoys the freedom the Trail gives her.

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Tropes in this season:

• Actor Allusion: Not the first time Daniel Radcliffe played an orphan with an abusive childhood.
• Action Girl: Sheila, a female Blackfoot warrior, who's the fiercest among her band.
• Always Second Best: After already trying repeatedly to get Benny out of her life, Trig ends up chasing him all the way to the Blue Mountains to kill him because journalists keep calling her his successor rather than his superior.
• American Eagle: While on the trail, Zeke notices a bald eagle in the sky and excitedly points it out, only for Benny to shoot it out of the sky. After an off-screen "thud", Zeke indignantly says "You shot America!" Benny is unmoved and later eats the bird for supper.
• Anachronism Stew: A lot of terms and concepts which weren't yet around in the 1840s come up, all Played for Laughs given that it's parodying Western TV shows.
• Answer Cut: Rev. Brown's desperate prayer in episode 1—"Please, Lord, send us a miracle"—is answered by Benny the Teen walking through the front door of the church and saying "Howdy!".
• Apathetic Citizens: The citizens of Oregon turn out to be this when Prudence informs them of Todd and Trig's evil scheme to politically take over the town but they still get the majority vote.
• Awful Wedded Life: From the moment they're introduced, it's clear that Prudence and Todd do not have a good relationship, with Todd mainly using her to serve his own needs and making a fool of himself when he tries to act romantic.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Phaedra trying to seduce Gorgeous Pete as a distraction in the season finale. Surprisingly, it works.
  Phaedra: I would like to fornicate with you… for non-reproductive reasons!
• Badass Longcoat: "The Gunslinger" (Karan Soni) is dressed all in black with one heck of a cool long coat to complete the ensemble.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: In The Tag of "Meet the Noonans", Todd tries and fails to convince the Noonans (who had been serving his every whim) to not part ways with the caravan by claiming he needs their moral guidance, as he's a sick-minded man that coveted his own mother and repeatedly made out with a dog.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: "White Savior" lampshades and mocks how Hollywood typically treats Native issues as window dressing to a story about a White man coming to save an oppressed tribe and having a romance with The Chief's Daughter while he's at it. Instead, Benny is regarded as The Load, makes things worse for the Blackfeet, and gets punched when he tries to kiss Sheila.
• Bitter Wedding Speech: Prudence ruins her friend/crush Ezekiel's wedding by deliberately listing all his traits his fiancee would hate.
• Bring My Brown Pants: When the bear shows up in "Hunting Party", Todd remarks to Rev. Brown that it was a bad day for him to wear velvet underwear. Because he just shat his velvet underwear.
• The Caligula: Once Todd becomes Governor of Oregon, he starts dressing up as the Roman Emperor and have orgies in his house, while the town plunges into chaos and ruin.
• Casting Gag:
  • Tim Meadows plays Jedidiah, a character who claims God is speaking directly to him. That’s exactly what happened to his character, Dave Shelby, in the first season (though Dave was mostly confused about the situation and didn’t claim to be a prophet like Jedidiah).
  • In season one, Steve Buscemi played God. Here his character Benny pretends to be God in "Stranded" to stop everyone else from eating each other.
  • Phaedra, Zeke's new wife, is played by Erin Darke, Daniel Radcliffe's girlfriend.
• Comically Missing the Point: Ezekiel and Prudence eventually hook up and have incredibly loud sex, but neither of their spouses clue in; Todd thinks that Prudence's cries of "Oh God" are part of her Bible study, while Ezekiel's wife catching them without clothes after they out-ambush Trig was to make them more stealthy.
• Corrupt Politician: Todd, upon reaching Oregon with Trig's crew, schemes to become governor of the state and lets Trig steal, pollute, and commit whatever other crimes she wants in order to stay in power while doing as little actual work as necessary.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Tag for "Hunting Party" has Rev. Brown give a eulogy for Lionel, the black member of the hunting party that died trying to divert the bear and an unexpected second bear, and his wife wants to know how he spent his final moments. He was not only eaten by the two bears like a hotdog, the bears played with his corpse like a volleyball, and then placed his head in what Rev. Brown can only call a "bear cannon". The grieving widow, while openly weeping, wants more details.
  • Todd also gets one in the season finale, having his dick shot off by a cannon and leaving a hole in its place.
• Darkest Hour: "Over the Mountain" ends with Ezekiel hated by the entire camp after confessing to adultery, all of the caravan's supplies trashed, and Todd & Trig kidnapping Prudence.
• A Day in the Limelight: "White Savior" focuses entirely on Benny, with the rest of the regular cast only appearing in the pre-credits sequence and stinger.
• Deceptive Disciple: In "Hunting Party", Benny admits to Prudence that he used to have an adopted daughter named Trig that ended up being a better bandit than him and betrayed him.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The first half of the season sets up The Gunslinger as the main threat to Benny and the caravan, but after Trig shows up and tries to kill him with a Sand Necktie, she becomes the greater threat while The Gunslinger survives and befriends the main cast.
• Don't Come A-Knockin': In "Over the Mountain", we see the wagon shaking while Prudence and Ezekiel are having sex inside.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: The Gunslinger does this in episode 4 when drawing against Benny in the tavern...only to have his gun taken by the perky hostess, because "This is a no-shooting establishment after 6 pm."
• Drunk on Milk: Ezekiel gets so trashed on snake oil that he dresses up as a woman and sings "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" in front of the whole bar, then grabs Prudence's breasts...only to be told by the Snake Oil Salesman that snake oil is "completely fake".
• Easy Evangelism: Benny goes from comically racist toward the Blackfeet (plus all Indigenous people) to coming around by a single talk with Sheila into championing their cause (but ends up taking a "white savior" role as a result, greatly annoying them). It's Played for Laughs, likely parodying Dances with Wolves, among other depictions.
• Erotic Dream: A very silly one in episode 4, when Ezekiel has an erotic dream about seeing Prudence's...ankle.
• Face–Heel Turn: Todd has this after he finds out about Prudence's affair with Ezekiel. To get revenge on Ezekiel, he teams up with Trig to strand everyone on the mountain and kidnaps Prudence.
• Feet-First Introduction: The Gunslinger is introduced with his boots and spurs hitting the ground as he jumps off a horse.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Prudence comically disbelieves that anything miraculous is going on when clear divine wrath starts raining down over her and Zeke having an affair (i.e. a lightning bolt from the clear blue sky, a kid possessed by Satan etc.).
• Foreshadowing: Todd is the only one to stick up for Trig's rep as a bandit in "Over the Mountain". Suffice it to say, he then teams up with her to screw over everyone else once the affair between Ezekiel and Prudence is revealed.
• Fully-Clothed Nudity: Zeke has a dream where he gets to see Prudence's bare ankle and reacts as if he saw her undressed.
• God Is Displeased: Almost immediately after Ezekiel starts to think that his adultery with Prudence is actually a good thing, the caravan is beset with spontaneous combustion, demonic possession, lightning strikes, earthquakes, and other plagues. It all stops as suddenly as it starts when Ezekiel publicly confesses his sins, unfortunately referring to Prudence as a temptress and a harlot in the process.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: When Benny the Teen and the Gunslinger cross paths in Branchwater they sit together in the town's saloon and mope about how gentrification ruined what had once been a debauched hellhole. The Gunslinger later cheerfully hangs out with Benny on the Fourth of July, as the federal holiday is a mandated day off according to union rules. And when it's time to cross the Blue Mountains, Benny and Ezekiel actually rescue the Gunslinger (who's now more focused on Trig) from dehydration and let him join the caravan.
• Gilded Cage: A literal example. Once they get to Oregon, Todd keeps Prudence in an actual golden cage.
• Guns Akimbo: Prudence and Benny both wield guns akimbo in episode 3, "Hunting Party", when he's teaching her how to be an outlaw, and they rob some fur trappers. Then the Gunslinger comes out of the trappers' cabin wearing a fur coat, and he wields guns akimbo as well.
• Gun Twirling: In the final episode, Benny shows off his skills by twirling his gun around his finger before tossing it in the air and catching it as it spins back down.
• Hairstyle Inertia: Trig wears her hair plaited in two braids as a girl in Benny's flashbacks and in the present day.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Rev. Brown's childhood involved growing up in a British orphanage where the headmistress beat him with a shovel and fed him shoe leather, and he had to dance naked for pennies. "And pennies can really hurt."
• Hollywood Mirage: "Over the Mountain" starts with Ezekiel mistaking sand for an oasis, soon after followed by the caravan finding the Gunslinger, who thinks he's at a pool party.
• Hollywood Natives: The Blackfeet in "White Savior" dress in the usual Braids, Beads and Buckskins, but most of the tropes related to this are parodied, along with nearly every Native American cliché imaginable.
• Ignored Epiphany: At the Blue Mountains, after Ezekiel confesses to adultery, Todd wonders if he should've been a better husband...but Trig, who's currently the caravan's captive after a failed ambush, instead convinces him to get revenge by setting her free, joining her bandits, kidnapping his own wife, and causing all the caravan's wagons to careen off a cliff. Additionally, before Todd and Trig abandon the others, Benny makes one final plea to Trig that he never meant to hurt her and she's clearly superior to him, but Trig only hesitates a moment before leaving them to die.
• I'm a Humanitarian: When the gang gets stuck in the snowy mountains in "Stranded", they eat a member of their party who's just died. They really enjoy it.
• Immigrant Patriotism: A plot point in "Independence Rock". Ezekiel the British orphan loves America for the new opportunity it gave him. This creates friction with his new wife Phaedra, the religious fanatic who disapproves of patriotic fervor as being un-Godly.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Benny and Trig engage in a shooting contest (in the middle of gunfight, no less) to see who can pull off the most complex kill. Benny banks a shot off of multiple objects before hitting his target. Trig, meanwhile, shoots up in the air and performs a quick dance timed to end just as her bullet arcs down and hits her target.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Ezekiel and Prudence both get very loud while having sex.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: After both of their spouses are shown Comically Missing the Point, Ezekiel remarks that maybe his and Prudence's relationship isn't as sinful as he thought. Immediately, an ox is struck by lightning, and plagues beset the camp.
• Instant Soprano: Subtly implied by the One-Woman Wail when Prudence shoots Todd's junk off.
• Karma Houdini: Trig, after trying repeatedly to kill Benny and the others, gets to make up with Benny and ride off into the sunset to commit more crimes in the end.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In "Hunting Party", Todd mocks Rev. Brown for showing remorse upon dealing a killing blow to a docile buffalo, calling him a buffalo-lover and humping the beast's corpse. They're then immediately attacked by a hostile bear.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the first scene of Season 3's first episode, Rev. Brown is burying a victim of cholera. He says to the crowd "Everyone stay six feet apart," then says "Oh good, nobody's doing it." Season 3 was produced during the COVID-19 Pandemic, in which similar advice was given (and ignored by a vocal minority).
• Like Father, Unlike Son: When Benny's daughter Trig shows up in "Meet the Noonans" and Benny decides to reconnect with her, it quickly turns out that her betrayal was less about cutting him out of the profits and more that the ways they wanted to run the gang clashed horribly, with Benny preferring a flair for drama that was more harmful than beneficial (but made the gang more enthusiastic).
• Littlest Cancer Patient: Levi suffers from cholera, alcoholism, demonic possession, and being a cute little scamp.
• Manipulative Bastard: Trig is known to deceive people to get what she wants. She uses Benny to learn everything she needs from him before backstabbing him and becoming an outlaw herself. Trig would eventually manipulate Todd into freeing her, while manipulating the people into voting for Todd when he runs for Governor.
• The Magic Poker Equation: Lampooned in episode 4 when Todd, playing poker and clearly way out of his depth with some dangerous characters, lays down four aces...and loses to a guy with five aces. And a guy with twelve aces.
• Mighty Whitey: The episode appropriately titled "White Savior" has Benny attempt to become a hero to a Native American tribe.
• Modesty Bedsheet: After Prudence and Ezekiel are done having sex in "Over the Mountain", when they collapse back on the bed the bedsheet is around his waist but tucked securely under her armpits.
• Mythology Gag: When the gang is dining on human flesh in "Stranded", Ezekiel says God has abandoned him. Benny says "I'm sure he's just busy with work. You know, probably building a new kind of planet, or designing a new kind of giraffe." In the first season Steve Buscemi played God and one of the Running Gags was about his lack of skill in designing a planet.
• No Name Given: The Gunslinger, the bounty hunter chasing after Benny the Teen doesn't give out his name, with Benny only addressing him as "Dingus". In episode 4 an old acquaintance actually calls him "Bounty hunter with no name".
• Noodle Incident: The Gunslinger simply reappears on Benny's trail in "Independence Rock", with no explanation of how he escaped from his Sand Necktie in the previous episode, "Meet the Noonans".
• No Party Like a Donner Party: With "Over the Mountain" ending with the caravan's supplies trashed, "Stranded" has them trapped during a blizzard and arguing over who to eat, with Benny attempting to cook himself to repay them for their kindness.
• Parody Religion: In "Meet the Noonans" the wagon party...meets the Noonans, a religious group also on the trail west. The Noonans are an obvious Bland-Name Product version of the LDS Church aka Mormons, what with their leader Jedediah's claims to talk directly to God, the identical dress of male and female members (and particularly the women with their neck-to-ankle dresses and upswept hair), and specifically that they're headed west in the 1840s (the real Mormons migrated to Utah in 1846).
• Politically Correct History: No one bats an eye at interracial marriage, adoption and White people happily follow a Black man who claims he's a prophet, while in the real US of the 1840s these things would be highly controversial at best (along with very rare). Of course, the series isn't really claiming to be accurate, more parodying Western films and TV shows.
• Post-Coital Collapse : In "Over the Mountain", Prudence and Ezekiel collapse into bed together when we cut back to them just as they finish having sex, with a Modesty Bedsheet tucked securely around both.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Prudence gets one in the Season Finale.
  Prudence: Hey, Todd? I want a divorce. (shoots him at close-range with a cannon)
• Sand Necktie: At Benny's insistence his old gang, now run by Trig, does this to execute the Gunslinger in "Meet the Noonans".
• Settling the Frontier: The plot of the season, as Rev. Brown and his people leave their dusty prairie village and head off to Oregon.
• Shout-Out: There are occasional references to The Oregon Trail, such as the party needing to choose between paying for a ferry or caulking their wagons and floating them to ford a river.
• Snake Oil Salesman: In episode 4 Ezekiel comes across a man who actually identifies himself as a Snake Oil Salesman and sells him some. Intoxication Ensues. (Later Ezekiel finds out he was Drunk on Milk.)
• Stylistic Suck: This season recreates the slightly fuzzy look of shows broadcast on CRT televisions on top of replicating the grainy look of older shows shot on film.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Most of the season plays fast and loose with racial and gender issues that would have existed during the setting, but Trig eventually has to acknowledge that her quest for power is stymied by the fact that she's Black and female.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: Zeke and Prudence kiss at the end of “Independence Rock” despite both being married to other people. Both are sympathetic characters who have been friends for years, and their spouses are emotionally neglectful or abusive. However, once they have sex God at least does not approve.
• Take That!: Prudence and Todd meet a vapid proto-Hipster couple who travel the country in search of superficial experiences while the wife spouts off meaningless terms like "Hashtag", "Yass Queen", and "Wagon Life" because she'd been kicked in the head by a horse.
  • The whole election plot in Oregon is a not-so-subtle jab at how the 2016 presidential election went down.
• Tempting Fate: In "Meet the Noonans", Prudence grouses about Rev. Brown's new love interest Phaedra but says "Whatever, it's not like they're getting married." This is immediately followed by the Noonan leader (Tim Meadows) ringing a bell and announcing that Ezekiel and Phaedra will be getting married that afternoon.
• Testosterone Poisoning: "Hunting Party" has Rev. Brown, dismissed for his lack of "manliness", join the other men for a buffalo hunt everyone but him treats like an action-packed war campaign despite the docility of the beasts.
• "This Is the Part Where... we start drinking our pee," says Benny in the opening of "Over the Mountain" when they're stuck in a Thirsty Desert. Whether or not they drink pee remains unrevealed, as when the next scene starts they're out of the desert.
• Toilet Humor: Todd's attempt to have sex with Prudence in episode 1 comes to naught when he's hit by an attack of explosive diarrhea.
  Todd: Oh God, it's like the mighty Mississippi coming out of my ass!
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: "Meet the Noonans" has Ezekiel, advised by Prudence to find a relationship when she doesn't reciprocate his feelings, quickly form an attachment with a member of the titular Parody Religion. Prudence immediately detests the buzzkill and breaks them up by revealing Ezekiel's impurities, such as his love of chocolate, though she brings them back together after seeing Ezekiel heartbroken.
• Upper-Class Twit: Todd is a wealthy gentleman who declines to exert himself in any way and expects Prudence to wait on him hand and foot at all hours.
• Video Credits: Season 3 has video credits of the principals at the beginning of episodes, in a manner suggestive of an old-timey TV western like Bonanza.
• Vocal Dissonance: The Gunslinger is a bounty hunter with a frightful appearance, but he speaks in a high-pitched, cheerful tone similar to that of a kindergarten teacher.
• What You Are in the Dark: In "Hunting Party", Todd and Rev. Brown are trapped in a cave together by a bear, and Rev. Brown briefly considers taking a shot when Todd admits to having marital problems...but ultimately decides to instead help Todd put his emotions into words to make him and Prudence both happy.
• Wild West: The setting of the season, focusing on a caravan following the (eponymous) Oregon Trail.
• Would Hurt a Child: Trapped and with food supplies running low, the party decide they'll kill and eat the young Levi, reasoning he'd be the tenderest of the bunch.

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