The Outsider - Stephen King on HBO

[ImLawBoy]

Anyone watching this? First two episodes aired on Sunday night. It's an adaptation of Stephen King's recent novel The Outsider, which I rather enjoyed. It's a crime thriller that turns supernatural, and the first two episodes (both starring and directed by Jason Bateman) were really good. There's no action yet, but a lot of very intense scene setting with a large creepiness factor. Early reviews were quite positive, although one I read noted that HBO only screened the first six episodes, and expressed concerns about a King story ending satisfactorily. I did like the ending of the book, but I do wonder if it will translate well to the screen.

[EvilHomer3k]

I was going to show it to my wife and then watch with her as she's a King fan. We both enjoyed the book and like Jason Bateman so it should be a good fit. Previews looked good.

[Jaddison]

It was an excellent listen- Will Patton was the reader and he is always a treat to listen to.

[EvilHomer3k]

Watched the first two episodes. Moving a bit slow so far but enjoyable. From what I remember it's fairly true to the book.

Spoiler:

Both my wife and I were perplexed by the choice of actress for Holly Gibney. Cynthia looks more like Serena Williams than Holly Gibney. I don't care that she's african american but get someone who at least fits the description. Maybe she will be great but visually she's entirely too muscular and toned. I think a better choice would have been Erin Kellyman or even the girl who played Domino in deadpool

[Jeff V]

Watched the first episode last night, seems to stick pretty close to the book.

[Exodor]

I enjoyed the first two episodes but I haven't read the book so I have no idea where it's going. It's pretty clear there's a supernatural element (the kid seeing "the man" and the creepy hooded dude (not to mention Jason Bateman seemingly being in two places at once)) but so far it seems very vague.

How many episodes does the series run? For some reason I thought it was only 6 episodes.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I also haven't read the book but enjoyed the first two episodes, despite the seemingly constant slow zooms on people's faces accompanied by eerie music. As with any Stephen King story, however, I'm worried about whether the story will be able to stick the landing; he's always better at set-ups than conclusions. And while I'm sure they have their reasons, I would have preferred it so far if they didn't constantly show that dude in the hoodie anytime something bad happens. I think the mystery of the story so far stands on it's own without having to have some presumably external menace that we're told nothing about.

[ImLawBoy]

The series is slated for 10 episodes, I believe. it's also not going to be multi-season - the whole book will be covered. There are apparently six episodes out for review, so that might be where that number came up.

I liked the ending to the book. Unlike some late period King works, I thought the conclusion worked well and didn't feel cheap. That said, I'm not sure how well it will translate to the screen. I am concerned that there will be a fair amount of bloat to the season, as they zoomed through a lot of book events pretty quickly in the first two episodes.

[hepcat]

I really wanna see this because of Jason Bateman. I love his comedic work, but after seeing him in the underrated The Gift from 2015, I came to realize he can do sinister VERY well.

[JSHAW]

Watched both episodes monday morning. Never read the KING book.

Found it to be very creepy and very entertaining.

I'm trying to figure out the same thing as the detective "that's on paid leave", so far it hasn't turned into the area I think it's gonna go, which looks
like where episode 3 is headed.

I'm hooked. In till the end.

[hepcat]

Why wasn’t I told the great Paddy Considine is in this? Having that great English character actor in a scene with the equally great Australian character actor Ben Mendelsohn in which they’re both supposed to be small town American denizens proved they’re both...well...great.

[ImLawBoy]

Watched the first two episodes. Moving a bit slow so far but enjoyable. From what I remember it's fairly true to the book.

Spoiler:

Both my wife and I were perplexed by the choice of actress for Holly Gibney. Cynthia looks more like Serena Williams than Holly Gibney. I don't care that she's african american but get someone who at least fits the description. Maybe she will be great but visually she's entirely too muscular and toned. I think a better choice would have been Erin Kellyman or even the girl who played Domino in deadpool

Now that the episode with her reveal has aired, I think it's safe to discuss this outside of spoilers.

It's pretty clear that Holly in the show is quite different from the Holly in the book(s). I'm not sure what her build would have had to do with anything anyway (I don't remember her build being an even minor plot point in the book, but it's been a couple of years since I read it) and so far she's dressed in a way that wouldn't really let you contemplate her build. Regardless, I thought Erivo was good, and I think it was a smart decision to detach her character from the Holly in the Bill Hodges Trilogy.

[hepcat]

I tore through the first two episodes last night. Really enjoying this one. Jason Bateman is fantastic (as always). I love the oppressive tone. The music, the lighting, the camera angles...it's just a master class in how to "Hitchcock" up a show.

[rittchard]

I really like this show but I keep falling asleep and having to rewatch scenes. I think shows with dense plotting and moody atmospheres really confuse me when I'm in a relaxed mode and tend to knock me out. I got super confused by the show. I think part of it is I got two of the main characters confused, I thought they were the same guy. They are both kind of generic old white dudes with grey hair (no offense intended), for a moment I thought it was the Democratic presidential candidates. Sorry JK. I'm finally more able to tell them apart by Ep 3 but I'm still confused as to whose kid was killed and what's motivating who. As far as I can tell they are both cops? Why are they both involved? Then there was some other old guy in it too and I had no idea who he was related to. Anyway, I still really like the show in spite of my own lameness.

[ImLawBoy]

I really like this show but I keep falling asleep and having to rewatch scenes. I think shows with dense plotting and moody atmospheres really confuse me when I'm in a relaxed mode and tend to knock me out. I got super confused by the show. I think part of it is I got two of the main characters confused, I thought they were the same guy. They are both kind of generic old white dudes with grey hair (no offense intended), for a moment I thought it was the Democratic presidential candidates. Sorry JK. I'm finally more able to tell them apart by Ep 3 but I'm still confused as to whose kid was killed and what's motivating who. As far as I can tell they are both cops? Why are they both involved? Then there was some other old guy in it too and I had no idea who he was related to. Anyway, I still really like the show in spite of my own lameness.

The kid who was killed was the youngest son of the family of four. Mom died of a heart attack after his funeral. The older (red headed) son shot Terry and was killed by Ralph Anderson (the main detective). The dad then tried to hang himself and is currently in a vegetative state in the hospital.

Not sure who else you're talking about. There's another local detective, who is the guy called in from his hunting vacation and who likes to get into drunken fights at the strip club. He's the guy that eventually went out to the barn after everyone had already left and something weird happened to him. There's the guy with the GBI jacket. I'm guessing that's Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and he's the state level cop. There's also a DA and Terry's attorney.

[edit]I've been doing OK during The Outsider, but I often do the falling asleep thing during a show and having to go back to figure that out. I did that recently with season 2 of American Gods, and I'm currently waking up to find myself having auto-loaded the next episode of Good Omens.[/edit]

[EvilHomer3k]

Watched the first two episodes. Moving a bit slow so far but enjoyable. From what I remember it's fairly true to the book.

Spoiler:

Both my wife and I were perplexed by the choice of actress for Holly Gibney. Cynthia looks more like Serena Williams than Holly Gibney. I don't care that she's african american but get someone who at least fits the description. Maybe she will be great but visually she's entirely too muscular and toned. I think a better choice would have been Erin Kellyman or even the girl who played Domino in deadpool

Now that the episode with her reveal has aired, I think it's safe to discuss this outside of spoilers.

It's pretty clear that Holly in the show is quite different from the Holly in the book(s). I'm not sure what her build would have had to do with anything anyway (I don't remember her build being an even minor plot point in the book, but it's been a couple of years since I read it) and so far she's dressed in a way that wouldn't really let you contemplate her build. Regardless, I thought Erivo was good, and I think it was a smart decision to detach her character from the Holly in the Bill Hodges Trilogy.

Yes, the Holly in the show is quite different from the Holly in the books but yet they're trying to make here essentially the same type of person. In Mr Mercedes, Holly is introduced with this line:

Spoiler:

Holley Gibney never speaks above a mutter and has trouble making eye contact.

By the time we see her in The Outsider she has changed and she is different but there's still the original idea there.

Overall, I didn't care for the way they portrayed her at all. Neither the actress nor the writers seem to get how to portray someone with ASD. They bring it up and force you to see it. Then go back to regular dialogue and mannerisms. They wrote a few lines of dialog for her to say. But it's all like taking a sledghammer to a thumb tack and then weilding the sledgehammer like a drill press. They introduce the character like she's Sherlock Holmes. Then they have her reading off car names and dates they're produced. There's no softness in her voice. The inflection is the same as it would be for any other character. She answers the phone like anyone else. Strong, confident. The conversation continues the same. She's got a strong voice and is very direct. Then they throw in the bar scene. You're in my seat. They're trying to show she has OCD/ASD with a few lines of dialog that scream I'M ON THE SPECTRUM AND HAVE OCD. She's not visibly upset. There's no hand wringing. No pacing. Nothing to indicate that she's bothered except for the lines of dialog. There's no nuance here. The only indications that she's on the spectrum is the heavy handed dialogue delivered as if it's a commercial for Bud light.

Then there's the scene where they are in the booth in the bar. Several times she looks directly at one, then another. That's not the way Holly (or most people on the spectrum) would talk with people. When they talk about the doppleganger that's actually pretty good. She's looking down quite often and the dialogue isn't too heavy handed...until she goes on the I can remember everything rant. And then there's the psychiatrist thing. Ugh. It's just all very poorly done with no subtlety at all. You basically get no indication that Holly is on the spectrum until they pull out a shotgun and shoot you with it.

Even The Big Bang handles it better. They should have dropped all of the OCD/ASD stuff completely because it was done so poorly that it was a distraction.

[ImLawBoy]

I'm certainly no expert on OCD/ASD, but my assumption is that mannerisms and behaviors can manifest differently in different people. If that's not right and they tend to hew to a more rigid manifestation, I'll pay more attention to that going forward. If it's that you're just comparing show Holly to book Holly and you don't like show Holly as she is presented compared to book Holly, then that's a personal preference thing. I don't need characters and events to be exactly the same as in the source material, but I know some folks prefer that.

[EvilHomer3k]

It's their portrayal of someone like Holly rather than it's not THE Holly from the books. It's also how the character is different from one scene to another. There are the scenes where they are telling you this person is on the spectrum by bludgeoning you over the head with it and then scenes where they are not doing that and show 0 signs that they're on the spectrum. They are basically treating it as a scene rather than part of the character. An example of both a behavior and the shows portrayal of that behavior is lack of eye contact. People with ASD often have difficulty making eye contact. In the show they portray that well when Holly talks about a doppelganger. She's looking down, not making eye contact. Just prior to that they don't portray it at all. She looks directly and speaks directly to two separate people without every looking away. It's not something that turns off and on like that.

[hepcat]

Just finished episode 3 and I’m still hooked. It feels like True Detective in a way. Well...season 1, at least. I know there’s a supernatural answer to everything, and I was initially hoping that wouldn’t happen. But they’re handling it so well, I’ve changed my mind.

[Kurth]

Just finished episode 3 and I’m still hooked. It feels like True Detective in a way. Well...season 1, at least. I know there’s a supernatural answer to everything, and I was initially hoping that wouldn’t happen. But they’re handling it so well, I’ve changed my mind.

I just binge watched the first three episodes. I am hooked, and I had the same thought in terms of favorable comparisons to True Detective season 1.

[rittchard]

Nothing after that finale? Come on Outsiders!!!!

I have to say I really liked this show, and it grew on me more and more each week. The first half of the finale stunned me, and the second half was incredibly gripping, down to the after-credits scene which I think warrants some discussion. I immediately turned to the internet for theories but I haven't found any particularly satisfying ones yet.

Oddly enough as I mentioned earlier, I still had problems falling asleep many times during the series. The good thing about this is it forced me to go back and re-watch a lot of the episodes, so I did catch quite a bit on second/third viewings. I found that if I didn't pay 100% attention I would start to get confused, which doesn't usually happen to me. But this show had a lot of nuance and detailed dialog so it was easy to miss things. It's probably worth re-watching the whole thing.

I would love to see a second season, but I'm also fine with the way they left it.

[EvilHomer3k]

My wife enjoyed it and was excited to watch it each week. I didn't hate it but I didn't really care for most of the characters and felt it drug out too long. Its not that they weren't well acted I just didn't really like most of them (nor really hate them). Marc Menchaca was a great Jack Hoskins and I enjoyed the scenes he was in more than any others. I'm still not a fan of Holly Gibney in this show but that's mostly due to the book and the clumsy, heavy handed way they introduced her. I didn't care for Ralph and felt his portrayal was one of the weakest in the story. The shootout in the last episode was good. I'm not sure I'd watch a second season. There is only one book and I think it would end up like GoT where once the book material is gone, they have trouble coming up with a good way to continue without that framework.

[Jeff V]

There is only one book and I think it would end up like GoT where once the book material is gone, they have trouble coming up with a good way to continue without that framework.

Spoiler:

The book would seem to definitively end the story, it's the last of 4 novels. Now, I suppose you could have Holly wonder if this was the only one, and discover similar, on-going incidents elsewhere, but that would radically change the tone from a single, complex story to something like a "Holly Gibney - Vampire Hunter" where stories are more contained within single episodes.

I too lost interest, mainly due to the pacing. The kids make it hard to settle into anything for the long haul though; I don't think I was able to watch a season of anything since GoT ended. Having read the book last year further depleted interest since I always knew what would happen next.

Regarding the Holly character, from the books I imagined someone older, more awkward both physically and socially. The image in my mind rather resembled Jane Hathaway from Beverly Hillbillies. That they made her a younger, more energetic character would seem to provide openings for the show to deviate from the books at some point and continue beyond this story line.

[EvilHomer3k]

The kids make it hard to settle into anything for the long haul though; I don't think I was able to watch a season of anything since GoT ended.

I have similar issues. This series is harder than some due to the importance of the dialogue. When we watch TWD it doesn't matter quite so much. I had similar issues with knowing what happens. I saw Holly in pretty much the same way you did. I do think that if you didn't have any reference for her that the portrayal of Holly was pretty good overall. Not what she was from the books but I liked it after the first few episodes where they tried to establish her quirky nature (and failed at it IMO).

[ImLawBoy]

I finished watching last night. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It did drag a bit in the middle (probably should have done a 6 episode run instead of 10), but it rallied and ended strong. While there were certainly changes from the source material, I felt that the show remained pretty true to the book. I was really impressed that they were able to keep the ending more or less the same but still have it work - as I said in my original post I was concerned with how the book's ending would translate to the screen.

The first half of the finale stunned me, and the second half was incredibly gripping, down to the after-credits scene which I think warrants some discussion. I immediately turned to the internet for theories but I haven't found any particularly satisfying ones yet.

I think there are two obvious ways to interpret way. The first (and the one I favor) is that this whole thing left a scar on Holly - not physical, but psychic. The show used ghosts/visions of the dead in other contexts, so it's reasonable to assume what she saw in the mirror was just in her head. The second is the old horror trope about the supposedly dead villain opening his eyes just before the credits roll. That would seem cheap to me and I'm hoping that wasn't the intent. I didn't see any of the scars/blisters on her neck when she checked, but if they were there and I just missed them, that would change my mind, of course.

I would love to see a second season, but I'm also fine with the way they left it.

I don't think there was ever any plans for a multi-season run on this, and they pretty much told the book's story from soup to nuts. I think that's going to be it for the show. It's kind of interesting that HBO is going this route for a number of shows (this one, Watchmen, Plot Against America) instead of trying to turn everything into a franchise.

I'm still not a fan of Holly Gibney in this show but that's mostly due to the book and the clumsy, heavy handed way they introduced her.

Going back to our earlier discussion of Holly a bit, it's almost like they started off with her having much the same psyche as the book, but then they deviated pretty quickly and dropped much of the autism/OCD nature of her character. It does make her introduction with the car identification seem out of place.

Regarding the Holly character, from the books I imagined someone older, more awkward both physically and socially. The image in my mind rather resembled Jane Hathaway from Beverly Hillbillies. That they made her a younger, more energetic character would seem to provide openings for the show to deviate from the books at some point and continue beyond this story line.

FWIW, she was supposedly 45 in the trilogy. I just looked that up, because I actually thought she was younger due to some of her child-like behavior in the books.

[Jeff V]

I considered her behavior more OCD than child-like, but the awesome thing about books is we can read the same thing and get different impressions.

[rittchard]

The thing that people focused on in the articles I read was the scratch on her arm. I noticed it but I really wasn't sure what their intention was. Did they imply you could get infected or whatever by a scratch? I also read people saying she was behaving "abnormally" because she was listening to music, which I also didn't get. The one thing that stuck with me for some odd reason was the way she was twirling and playing with her hair. I don't remember her doing that at all but it seemed like it was intended to invoke something, I just have no idea what lol.

[ImLawBoy]

The thing that people focused on in the articles I read was the scratch on her arm. I noticed it but I really wasn't sure what their intention was. Did they imply you could get infected or whatever by a scratch? I also read people saying she was behaving "abnormally" because she was listening to music, which I also didn't get. The one thing that stuck with me for some odd reason was the way she was twirling and playing with her hair. I don't remember her doing that at all but it seemed like it was intended to invoke something, I just have no idea what lol.

I didn't see the scratch, but that's typically how El Cuco gets a new host body. Recall Terry Maitland got scratched by the El Cuco version of the orderly when in Dayton, and then the El Cuco version of Terry scratched Claude Bolton to start his next transformation. It's how it gets the DNA or whatever to start its transformation. Of course, it doesn't actually inhabit a new body - it just transforms its existing body. If Holly was scratched but El Cuco's actual body was killed, I think that'd be it for El Cuco and Holly dodged a bullet.

[Kurth]

The thing that people focused on in the articles I read was the scratch on her arm. I noticed it but I really wasn't sure what their intention was. Did they imply you could get infected or whatever by a scratch? I also read people saying she was behaving "abnormally" because she was listening to music, which I also didn't get. The one thing that stuck with me for some odd reason was the way she was twirling and playing with her hair. I don't remember her doing that at all but it seemed like it was intended to invoke something, I just have no idea what lol.

I didn't see the scratch, but that's typically how El Cuco gets a new host body. Recall Terry Maitland got scratched by the El Cuco version of the orderly when in Dayton, and then the El Cuco version of Terry scratched Claude Bolton to start his next transformation. It's how it gets the DNA or whatever to start its transformation. Of course, it doesn't actually inhabit a new body - it just transforms its existing body. If Holly was scratched but El Cuco's actual body was killed, I think that'd be it for El Cuco and Holly dodged a bullet.

Finished this up last night. Really enjoyed it!

And the camera definitely lingered on the large scratch on Holly’s arm, suggesting she may now be infected. The show runner also alluded to that possibility in the post-finale wrap.