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“Will & Harper’s” ability to walk a fine line between being edifying and didactic, entertaining and superficial, is woven into its very structure, with its stars’ connection deepening by degrees until they reach the Mojave Desert town of Trona, where Steele, in a shattering moment, reveals the depths of her past self-hatred.

The battle has spawned a good bit of anxiety in Trona, a withering town of 1,500 residents in a wind-swept bowl hugged by three rugged mountain ranges that relies on groundwater supplied by Searles Valley Minerals.

“With no Searles, there’s no Trona,” said Regina Troglin, 35, a resident and freelance architectural designer.

“Just because Ridgecrest wants to grow doesn’t mean it has the right to kill off Trona,” she said.

That kind of talk has prompted Searles Valley Minerals, in the community of Trona, and Mojave Pistachios, a tree nut company on the west side of Ridgecrest, to rise up in a fury, declaring the proposed pipeline is part of a groundwater sustainability plan that forces them to bear an allegedly unfair and illegal economic burden that threatens their continued existence.