The Outsider

Personally I don't mind it b/c it lends credibility to the realism of the show. Any real detective would never entertain a supernatural explanation until it he saw it with his own eyes. Even other shows that i enjoyed like n0s4a2 played its hand a little early imo and almost took me out of it.

Just binge watched episodes 1 through 6. Good show, not great. As usual with Stephen King, you get the typical stock characters: alcoholic cop, odd genius that no one believes and is misunderstood, the cynic, the skeptic. It's almost as if Stephen King has never heard of the word trope. That being said, the story is still intriguing, but I'm just waiting for the usual King unsatisfactory conclusion. I hope I'm wrong and they're able to give an "oh shit!" moment for a worthy payoff.

etchazz said:

Just binge watched episodes 1 through 6. Good show, not great. As usual with Stephen King, you get the typical stock characters: alcoholic cop, odd genius that no one believes and is misunderstood, the cynic, the skeptic. It's almost as if Stephen King has never heard of the word trope. That being said, the story is still intriguing, but I'm just waiting for the usual King unsatisfactory conclusion. I hope I'm wrong and they're able to give an "oh shit!" moment for a worthy payoff.

Click to expand...

Not sure what they can do for there to be an "oh shit" moment. We know that the thing killing these kids is supernatural. So now it's all about how are they going to kill it.

ShakyJake said:

Not sure what they can do for there to be an "oh shit" moment. We know that the thing killing these kids is supernatural. So now it's all about how are they going to kill it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess never reading the book I'm intrigued as to how you fight something that is supernatural, and can attack you and put that shit on your neck without even being able to see it. Maybe even a surprise ending, like it gets away or something. I don't know. I'm never confident when it comes to Stephen King's writing. I think "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" was more of an exception, and obviously not the norm.

So did Holly have the keys or not? Ending scene was confusing.

jooka said:

The end was a nightmare she woke up from. I'm guessing she freaked out thinking she is gonna be taken over by El Coco now.

Click to expand...

That's what I figured, but the way it all played out was a bit strange -- they were all out looking for Holly and then poof, she's back at the hotel (or wherever) talking to the gang. I need to re-watch the events at the gas station, but did she do a key switch-a-roo before exiting the vehicle?

It was a rental car, so I think she had two sets of keys. I agree though, the editing of the whole sequence was really botched.

The whole episode was sloppy.

Mendelsohn's wife guilt trips him because Holly leaves the house in the morning. This is not a normal reaction for his wife to have. Then, through 5 minutes of plot contrivances Mendelsohn concludes that she was kidnapped? Holly could have left Mendelsohn a note that she was going out with Jack (rogue cop) to follow-up on a lead, but also asked him to please call her once he is up and going for the day.

The cop that Mendelsohn answers to, the guy that wears the GBI vest, all of a sudden is once again interested in the Strip Club manager? Why? What possible reason would GBI vest guy have to be circling back around on this guy at this point? Mendelsohn hasn't even learned that the guy has quit yet. And even if he has quit his shitty strip club manager job, who the fuck cares? Unless, we need to bring this non-essential character back into the story for a "gotcha" moment later on. Thus the freak-out by Mendelsohn's wife about how he was scratched by Terry Maitland and now everyone needs to find this guy ASAP. So contrived...

It was a good moment in Ep 6 when Holly confirms Jack is compromised when she gets him to lean forward and sees the boils on his neck. Then, this episode, Jack just comes right out and shows her? He goes from being uncomfortably mute to spilling his guts on how a demon possessed him? Then, when Holly gets away, he pulls out his gun and starts popping off? He just went from plausible deniability about the whole situation, to attempted murder in a very low % chance of taking her out. Not something a cop would do.

From later dialogue, we know that they are 2 hours in a random direction outside of town. Not near the farm house or anything. We see Holly peeling out of the gas station in a completely random and frantic direction, and then Mendelsohn & private investigator dude at the same gas station and indeterminate amount of time later. They inspect her destroyed phone. They go from being scattered all the fuck around in random directions at different times at a minimum of 2 hours out town, to being back together in Mendelsohn's dining room. No communication, no coordination, just back home. Even the lawyer, who wants to sue all their asses is there like a big happy family reunion.

So many elements in this episode fail the logic test. HBO is supposed to be better than this.

Ossoi said:

The first episode was the best, it's all downhill from there. By HBO standards this program is pretty bad

Click to expand...

It is bad. I was hoping for something more like "True Detective" but it's about as far from that as you can get. The writing is bad, the acting is bad, the plot is messy. I'm out. At this point, I don't really care what happens, it's just not very interesting.

The first episode was giving me TD vibes and looked like it might be good. Downhill all the way since.