Before my actual viewing, here’s what I’m kind of hoping to see. I’ve got this odd feeling that in episode five we are going to get a departure not unlike in Lost, when we get to find out what happened to the other survivors. In this case, though, we are seeing what life is like for the other end of the moral spectrum. The people who are allowing themselves to be led by the one who has occupied their dreams as the embodiment of everything that they have ever wanted.
One of my favorite ironies from the book is the fact that despite the amount of fear that Randall Flagg rightly causes, his actual followers are not nearly as remarkable. They’re just ... people. Maybe they were just a little misled, maybe had just the wrong kind of dreams and ended up where they are now. And thanks to being misled by Flagg, they are just as apprehensive of the people in Boulder as the other way around. My hope is that the series will be able to accomplish this as well. The standard urge with the nature of TV anymore would likely be to make all of Flagg’s people drooling at the mouth, dark sociopaths. It’s an easy route to take but I hope they don’t do it.
We’ve got to see some more of Flagg as well. Maybe some more with him and Nadine. Their scene together was one of the high points of episode three for me. Some more of Harold as we inch closer to what he has in store for his friends and neighbors.
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My point is, as we have left things, the pot is full and steaming. All that’s left is to stir it up.
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Getting on to a more specific issue, I’m very curious to see how the show is going to deal with the Trashcan Man who, arguably is maybe the most important character of the story, based on what he ends up doing in the climax of the book.
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My intrigue stems from the fact that, as I hinted at in a previous review, Trashie is my least favorite part of the book. I just don’t understand him. Okay, he likes to set fires. He seems to possess a great deal of technical know-how. Beyond that, he just seems eccentric for the sake of being eccentric. He has constantly repeated strings of dialogue that I don’t really get and often find kind of annoying.
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And in escalating fashion, Trashie functions as a gateway to The Kid, a character that grates on my nerves even more. I don’t know how many more times I could handle lines like “I’d piss Coors if I could” or “Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you.” Just stop it.
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Honestly, it feels like the only point of having The Kid in the story is to demonstrate both Randall Flagg’s far-reaching power as well as his connection with Trashie. Neither point seems particularly important or necessary to reinforce.
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And in the end, when Trashie makes his fateful decision, I just don’t understand why. For as much as we occupy his head, I just don’t understand him. He babbles on about Cibola and my life for yours and bumpty bumpty but it’s just white noise for me. So many of the characters are beautifully painted, Trashie has always felt like a rough sketch to me.
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A lot of this can potentially be addressed if the actor is really on top of their game and brings some humanity to the superficially irritating nature of the text on its own. The right performance here could really elevate the character, so I am eagerly waiting to see if this proves to be the case.
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Anyway, this is where my head is at the day before seeing episode five. I will continue this after I have seen the goods.
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As before, there will be some minor spoilers in here, though I would like to think that if you’re here reading a review that is now five episodes deep, this disclaimer shouldn’t be needed.
We continue to get more of the picture although it still somehow manages to feel rushed as hell while at the same time like it’s dragging its feet. We have gotten our first good look at life in “New Vegas” and for the first time we see Randall Flagg present as a fully participatory character, as opposed to just a lurking presence.
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We also get to see the further unraveling of Harold and Nadine’s sanity in the community in Boulder. And despite how much of the previous episode was building up to the decision to send the spies into the west, this plot point seems to have been already mostly resolved. And I will be fair and concede this was dealt with rather quickly in the book as well. Still, the show gets there so quickly it makes one wonder what the real point was to do it.
One thing that continues to be strong in the series is the portrayal of Harold Lauder. Every scene he’s in oozes with discomfort at how he behaves and interacts with people. And the dramatic irony is employed to perfection as we know perfectly well why he’s acting like this. But everyone else seems determined to be blindsided - despite clearly having some reservations about him. Harold comes off as such a condescending, obnoxious bastard so much of the time that from this episode I would even go so far that the character here is done better than in the book.
Still, there’s a lot of aspects to this latest episode that screams of shoving the dough into the oven without giving it the proper time to rise.
One such example that really seems to suffer is the relationship between Stu and Fran. We see very little of them before coming to Boulder and are basically told that they are a couple without really seeing how that develops. And it isn’t like the romance is super essential but part of what feeds into Harold’s splintering away from the new society is how early on he sees Fran being pulled from him and towards Stu. Not that he has title and deed over her but he’s basically a teenager, with raging hormones and insecurities, who is attracted to her and he gets to watch in slow motion as she becomes attracted to someone other than him. Seeing your hopes for a connection being destroyed is great fodder for drama and the book plays that well. And while, pragmatically I can see aspects of this in the performances, I wish that side of the story could have gotten more time in the spotlight.
Fran’s pregnancy is a pretty important part of the story and a source of great tension for our characters as this child represents the hope for our future. Will the child live? Or will it just succumb to the virus as mankind dwindles away into a newly unsustainable resident on a hostile planet? Even on a more basic, local scale, how will Fran deliver and care for her child in a world absent of any kind of organized health care providers?
None of this seems to be as much of an issue here. She’s just pregnant.
I also wonder how many viewers picked up on the fact that Stu isn’t the father. There is one scene in which Fran says the father’s name while she’s being given an ultrasound- because yeah we still have ultrasounds in the apocalypse. But it’s such a quick throwaway line that I wonder how many just missed it.
All of this leads me to the confusing question that - if Fran’s pregnancy was to become such a casual issue, why not just make Stu the father? Or go further, why make her pregnant at all? You could have eliminated it and not made one difference to this show. In fact, that could have freed up some time to deal with other areas that are kind of lacking.
Like Larry and Nadine, for example.
One of the most pivotal scenes in the book happens when Nadine decides to finally give in to her urges and give herself to Larry. She knows that she has already promised herself to Flagg but she also realizes that if she lets Larry have her, she can break Flagg’s claim over her. Larry rejects her and literally the fate of pretty much everyone swings on that narrative fulcrum point.
In the show, however, Nadine just shows up at Larry’s door and throws herself at him. There is little, if any context or explanation given and to me the scene just feels awkward and out of place. In the book, Larry has suffered from Nadine holding him at arms length and as things often go, her sudden acceptance of him comes at a time when he has actually moved on and found someone else, namely Lucy Swann, a character that isn’t even present here. And in general, Nadine seems to be all over the map. She wants Flagg, she’s scared of him, she’s pushing Harold to do what Flagg wants, she’s also trying to get out of this situation. I don’t understand where she thinks she’s going or what she wants. So in this scene where she shows up at Larry’s, we have all the nuts and bolts of the scene, but stripped of any of the irony, context, clarity or drama.
The scene just happens. She tells him she wants him to fuck her. Kind of like how the whole moment is written and just shoved in my face. And my ability to give the scene weight is only possible because I’ve read the book.
And then we come around to the issue of New Vegas itself, the yin to the yang of the free society in Boulder. And for this, my reactions are mixed. Some positive but with a twinge of distraction as well.
If I take them in a vacuum, absent the context of the story, the scenes are done pretty well. They have constructed a microcosm of a society, essentially within a lavish Vegas casino that is disturbing and reminiscent of some great grindhouse B-style films, putting the worst aspects of humanity on center stage. It truly is a giant monument to as many deadly sins that can be packed into one room at the same time.
So what’s my problem? It’s just that you need to remember that this is all taking place only months past the initial plague event. It just seems too fast for something like this to have unfolded. Maybe if we were talking five years down the line I could accept it a little easier. As it is, it’s like the evil aspects of society hit the ground running a little too quickly. And it all just feels kind of caricaturized. The imagery and behaviors and what we see inside the casino, while technically it’s executed well, the substance of it feels like scenes I’ve seen in a hundred different movies already. I think it would have been way more effective to zoom in on some more specific characters instead of just turning it into an apocalyptic society standard starter’s kit.
I would have loved to have seen an entire episode detailing the experiences of the three spies. Separate from Boulder completely and just show their journey to Vegas and what happens to them there. That would dovetail perfectly into showing off what is happening in Vegas and allow that part of the plot to breathe a little better. As it is, the whole thing feels like we are sprinting through it. We see one scene with Tom Cullen and all of a sudden it’s time for him to run.
What?
Did he actually do anything? It just seems like they missed out on an opportunity for great storytelling.
I did want to spend a few words discussing Mother Abigail because I feel like her character is getting less and less rooted in the story. I don’t take issue with Whoopie Goldberg’s performance as much as I find myself perplexed by the creative direction being taken.
She has a particularly close relationship with Nick, a stronger connection than with the rest and I kind of wish the show had spent more time diving into that. In this episode we see her more agitated and upset than we have up to this point as she criticizes Nick for the committee’s decision to send spies to Vegas. In the book she often has an air of confidence about her and even if she isn’t sure what direction they are going in, she can at least assure herself that the way before them was put there by some higher design. Honestly, the scene between her and Nick was my least favorite part of the episode. Because it just kind of happens and then we’re gone and it’s over. It feels clumsy and there’s a whiff of suggestion that no one knows really what to do with her. Mine through the book, folks, it’s all in there.
It just made me think that we don’t really get much sense of her vision or her connection with the community. She’s there and we are told that she’s important. I just have a hard time really feeling why she’s important to the people there. Or why Flagg is so bent on destroying her.
Again, and I’m sorry for circling around this point so many times but again, I think we just need to have more time with her and there needs to be more development.
The original miniseries that was adapted from this book is not perfect by any means and I have already discussed my dislike for how Flagg is portrayed. But you had much more of a sense of these characters in that. Somehow this series manages to have twice as much time and feels like it covers half as much. I have enjoyed the atmosphere of the show and much of the performances are great. It just baffles me that a story with so many characters can feel like it has so little scope to it.
There are still four episodes left to go. I’m in this until the end, I just find from week to week that my optimism fades just a little more.