If The Stand was an employee in my company, this would be the point where a good come-to-Jesus meeting would likely be called for. Overall, there has been more that I have enjoyed and I refuse as much as is possible to be the crusty old fan, crying in my Nozz-A-La over how my favorite book was ruined.
Still, the longer this series goes on, the more cracks in the foundation are starting to show themselves. The fundamental building blocks of the story are here but more and more they don’t feel like there’s any substance to them.
It would be like if you had a beautifully decorated cake. But when you cut through the frosting you find that there’s nothing under there except a cardboard box. I’m not in this for the frosting, I want the cake. The cake, after all, is what Stephen King rightfully earned his reputation for.
What truly baffles me about this show is how I have watched five hours of content but I feel like it’s been closer to one. The Stand is a story propped up by amazing characters and while much of the cast is doing a great job, the creative decisions being made aren’t doing the show any favors. Everything is charging past us at warp speed, with plot points chucked out the window like items on a checklist. The moments in the show that are supposed to be dramatic haven’t earned what they need from the narrative and as a result, a lot of the story just feels like going through the motions.
I don’t know where there is to go from here at this point but I’ll be waiting, come Friday morning to see if some miracle is able to be performed and to see if this boat can ever be righted again.
Okay, enough of a preamble of jumbled thoughts. On with the actual episode.
I’ve been wondering for weeks out loud when the Trashcan Man was going to show up. I think part of me was hoping that he wasn’t going to show up at all. If it were me, considering the scope of the story and the physical space they have to tell it, I think my approach would be to take the really crucial aspects of what Trash brings to the story and give them to Lloyd, instead. Because without revealing what Trash does at the end of the book, Lloyd’s narrative arc is one where it could be made logical for him to go to that point as well. And for as much as purists of the book would scream about there being no Trashcan Man, the upside would be that Lloyd as a character would be far more interesting and dynamic.
Well, we got the Trashcan Man. And behold how it went.
Before I dive into this I’d like to express my sympathies and condolences to anyone who is coming to The Stand for the first time. I hope that there is enough here in this series to make you interested in the novel because it really is a fantastic read, even now, decades after the fact.
Here’s the thing. You can’t introduce a character this important so late in the game. We are now two thirds of the way to the end, an ending in which Trash is going to play a pretty important part. And what did we get?
My hope was that he was going to get most of this episode. That we would backtrack and get the chance to be acquainted with the character and see what specific spin the creators of the show had put on him. Because with a character like that, you need to give him space to breathe and develop properly, to give the audience a chance to connect with him. Otherwise you end up having to make the character so exaggerated in order to get him or her across that you risk making them cartoonish.
And that is exactly what happened here.
Trash is about as subtle as a dump truck driving through a brick wall. We get a brief scene of him blowing something up, followed by a bizarre montage of more fire, people screaming and a blur of the Trash’s favorite lines from the book. Then he has a vision in which he asks Flagg where he can find him. And how does Flagg respond?
To the west. Beyond the mountains.
Okay, Sauron. You couldn’t be more specific?
Flash forward to Vegas. No journey, he’s just there now. We get a few minutes of him talking to Flagg and then like he was never even there, Trash vanishes from the episode.
Really? That’s all you’re going to do with him? That’s what we consider “setting up” a character?
And as for the performance, it’s so far over the top and over cooked that you can’t even begin to take him seriously. It was like someone broke out their trademark “crazy person starter kit” and just started running down the tropes.
Make him look manic and like he just heard the best joke ever. Check.
Make him run around and shrieking at nothing in particular. Check.
Have him in his underwear, no pants. Check.
In this show, the Trashcan Man feels to me like a greatest hits album of eccentric characters from other movies. I feel like I’ve seen him a million times and I find him even less interesting than I do in the book. This character needed to be brought into the fold weeks ago. Then he might be something I give a crap about. For a character that plays such an important role at the end, it baffles me why the producers are barely dragging him across the surface of the narrative.
And that brings me to judge Ferris. In last week’s episode we already disposed of in pretty rapid fashion two of the three spies sent out from the Free Zone. And that was done so abruptly that it makes one wonder what the point was at all. Judge Ferris was the one still hanging in the breeze. Well, after a brief scene of her looking out a window and picking up a gun, we did away with her as well.
Whatever you do, don’t blink. You might miss a plot point.
Relating to this, I was disappointed to see one of my favorite scenes from the book gutted in the show. In the book, Bobby Terry is the man who accidentally defies Flagg by killing Ferris in a way that makes identification of the body impossible. The scene where Flagg shows up to dispense punishment is fantastic. In this episode, save for a line of dialogue, Bobby Terry is basically used to create some gore. No atmosphere. None of the creepy suspense of Flagg basically appearing on an abandoned highway to kill his soldier. Just some blood and guts.
Thanks for coming. Here’s your consolation prize.
Ironically, the sight of Bobby Terry’s insides on the outside may have been the most heart put on display by the episode.
On the more positive side, while in last week’s episode I felt like Mother Abigail was floundering to find her role in the narrative, this week she and Flagg have a scene together that I thought was actually pretty good. We finally get to see these two figureheads facing off against each other and I thought it did a good job establishing more of a framework and structure to the two sides of this conflict.
Relating to this though, I still feel like they are missing the boat in how Vegas is being portrayed. The point in the book was never to put the super righteous and good people of Boulder against the depraved assholes of Las Vegas. For as much as the heroes of the story are in fear of Flagg, what we find are that his people are just as apprehensive about the world around them. Their only fault was in letting their fear lead them to the wrong person. It seems to me like the show just wanted an excuse to erect a bunch of standard fare apocalyptic set pieces. It isn’t horrible, necessarily, just stripped of so much humanity and subtlety.
To close this cascade of disappointments, I have to sing a lament for Nick Andros, the character who proved to have pretty much no point whatsoever to the story. Other than glowering in the corner from time to time, I can’t really bring to mind anything he ended up bringing to the table. The role was cast well, there was just no substance for him to work with. They couldn’t even get through to his relationship and bond with Tom Cullen, which frankly, is one of the more straight forward aspects of the book.
He’s just there. And ultimately I feel like he stands better as a metaphor for what’s been going wrong with this entire series. The whole thing just feels like it’s going through the motions and I’m starting to do the same as a viewer.
And the feeling of bland superficiality is enhanced by what I have to credit my friend, author Duncan Ralston for pointing out. How so many of the actors in this look so much alike. Even the kid, Joe, looks like his dad could be any number of the characters in this show. It’s hard to feel anything special about these characters when they look like they were all churned out of the same sausage factory.
At this point I would say that the main thing keeping me going is stubbornness as well as my possibly morbid curiosity over the fact that King evidently wrote a new epilogue for the book which will be seen here. What that means exactly is anyone’s guess, considering that language like that is a pretty standard bait technique designed to get your interest. At this point, I can really only make a few statements about the show. There’s good guys who are really good and bad guys that are just as bad. Lots of people got sick. A small amount of them survived.
Do I wish we could have dived deeper into all of that? Without a doubt.
Still, I persist, with what we’ve been given.
