Mysteries spun within the world of genre programming can be time consuming. That’s why spinning such an intricate web within a Science Fiction and Fantasy property like Amazon Prime’s Outer Range is risky business, indeed.
To be frank, I’ve really only experienced one time-jumping series that pretty much got it right from start-to-finish, and that was Netflix’s pretty stellar Dark. While I’m on record as having issues with the program’s third season – a series of episodes that loosely sought to reshape timelines in such a way that perhaps the storytellers bit off far more than needed to be chewed – the show very effectively wrapped its various plotlines tightly around a core group of characters, so much so that you couldn’t quite separate one from the other if you tried. Syfy’s adaptation of 12 Monkeys also made good use of the basic ‘chronology-hopping’ constructs, and still I found its first and last season’s a bit clunky for widely different reasons. Of course, there have been other franchises that have used time travel, parallel realities, and related concepts similarly (Fox TV’s stellar Fringe comes to mind), but I can only stand by what I’ve seen and found compelling, leaving everything else aside because far too many enterprises pick and choose what rules to follow, making them decidedly inferior if not downright confusing.
What makes Outer Range different is that – by all intents and appearances – it’s a SciFi journey composed entirely of ‘salt of the Earth’ types. There isn’t a brainiac among this rural bunch; and yet they’re all kinda/sorta ‘in’ on the loose mechanics of what’s transpiring … or they’ve decided remaining blissfully ignorant works just fine. Taking such an approach encourages that the core mystery of temporal manipulation never quite gets mired down in the potential technobabble that might otherwise distract a casual audience, and it also leaves plenty of breathing room for viewers to get to know these people as individuals a bit more than like-minded fare usually allows. There isn’t an intellectual wall between them (the fictional men and women) and us, so relatability stays possible despite their extraordinary circumstances.
Now … this doesn’t mean that everything that takes place on screen is all that easy to follow, a sentiment that kinda/sorta wraps up how I felt about the show’s second season premiere. “One Night In Wabang” essentially picks up damn near where Season 1 ended, and it’s a shame that no one at Amazon or in the show’s production really thought about giving their audiences a better recap. Before I get into the thick of it – and keeping in mind that it’s been nearly two years since that first group of episodes aired on the streaming service – let me just encourage those of you reading this might be best served to go back and rewatch that finale. Small bits and pieces get a bit more exposure in this premiere; and I’m not ashamed to admit to a bit of confusion. (The wifey and I, in fact, rewatched all of Season 1; and only now do I feel caught up enough to have something worthwhile to say about this episode.)
As I postulated across my reviews of the Season 1 episodes, it seemed pretty clear to me that the identity of Autumn Rivers (played by Imogen Poots) and just how it was so closely tied in to the Abbott family was the crux around which most of the show’s foundational mystery revolved; and I think that’s pretty much cleared up right off the bat in Season 2. Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) suspected as much – though he did show up later to the party than I did – and this validation really only swung the door open for others to now step up and come to grips with the fact that the understanding of their shared reality is crumbling around them. Given the fact that when we last saw Royal and Autumn they were trying to kill one another, Wabang is a bit hard to swallow in a few spots, but rest assured the Season 2 is really only beginning.
To be frank, I’ve really only experienced one time-jumping series that pretty much got it right from start-to-finish, and that was Netflix’s pretty stellar Dark. While I’m on record as having issues with the program’s third season – a series of episodes that loosely sought to reshape timelines in such a way that perhaps the storytellers bit off far more than needed to be chewed – the show very effectively wrapped its various plotlines tightly around a core group of characters, so much so that you couldn’t quite separate one from the other if you tried. Syfy’s adaptation of 12 Monkeys also made good use of the basic ‘chronology-hopping’ constructs, and still I found its first and last season’s a bit clunky for widely different reasons. Of course, there have been other franchises that have used time travel, parallel realities, and related concepts similarly (Fox TV’s stellar Fringe comes to mind), but I can only stand by what I’ve seen and found compelling, leaving everything else aside because far too many enterprises pick and choose what rules to follow, making them decidedly inferior if not downright confusing.
What makes Outer Range different is that – by all intents and appearances – it’s a SciFi journey composed entirely of ‘salt of the Earth’ types. There isn’t a brainiac among this rural bunch; and yet they’re all kinda/sorta ‘in’ on the loose mechanics of what’s transpiring … or they’ve decided remaining blissfully ignorant works just fine. Taking such an approach encourages that the core mystery of temporal manipulation never quite gets mired down in the potential technobabble that might otherwise distract a casual audience, and it also leaves plenty of breathing room for viewers to get to know these people as individuals a bit more than like-minded fare usually allows. There isn’t an intellectual wall between them (the fictional men and women) and us, so relatability stays possible despite their extraordinary circumstances.
Now … this doesn’t mean that everything that takes place on screen is all that easy to follow, a sentiment that kinda/sorta wraps up how I felt about the show’s second season premiere. “One Night In Wabang” essentially picks up damn near where Season 1 ended, and it’s a shame that no one at Amazon or in the show’s production really thought about giving their audiences a better recap. Before I get into the thick of it – and keeping in mind that it’s been nearly two years since that first group of episodes aired on the streaming service – let me just encourage those of you reading this might be best served to go back and rewatch that finale. Small bits and pieces get a bit more exposure in this premiere; and I’m not ashamed to admit to a bit of confusion. (The wifey and I, in fact, rewatched all of Season 1; and only now do I feel caught up enough to have something worthwhile to say about this episode.)
As I postulated across my reviews of the Season 1 episodes, it seemed pretty clear to me that the identity of Autumn Rivers (played by Imogen Poots) and just how it was so closely tied in to the Abbott family was the crux around which most of the show’s foundational mystery revolved; and I think that’s pretty much cleared up right off the bat in Season 2. Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) suspected as much – though he did show up later to the party than I did – and this validation really only swung the door open for others to now step up and come to grips with the fact that the understanding of their shared reality is crumbling around them. Given the fact that when we last saw Royal and Autumn they were trying to kill one another, Wabang is a bit hard to swallow in a few spots, but rest assured the Season 2 is really only beginning.
The good thing about having answers, however, is that the show is now free to chart a slightly modified course.
The bad thing about charting a slightly modified course is that – well – creator Brian Watkins shows up to Season 2 with really only some new character quirks to keep viewers tuned in.
Think what you will, but the Mother Of All Quirky Character Dramas remains David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminal Twin Peaks; and I don’t think that program is in any jeopardy of losing the mantle to Outer Range, though – by appearances alone – it occasionally seems like that’s what Watkins and crew are reaching for with this season opener. Rhett (Lewis Pullman) and Maria (Isabel Arraiza) do a U-turn on bailing out on their lives in Wabang, winding up in a dirty roadside motel run by a slightly unkempt man with a cat fixation. Wayne Tillerson (Wil Patton) has awakened from his weird comatose state and now appears like a man in the (somewhat) prime of his adult life; for reasons unexplained, he’s begun delivering spoken word renditions of rock songs … and here we, the audience, thought all of the singing was left up to Billy Tillerson (Noah Reid). Cecilia Abbott (Lily Taylor) continues her on-again-off-again soliloquies on faith and family; and we learn that she, too, has been hiding secrets from everyone that tie to Rebecca’s disappearance some time ago.
What I’m trying to suggest above is that “One Night In Wabang” feels a bit too much like a narrative download at times and less like an organic development of the chaos so winningly delivered in the first season finale. Not a lot of answers were forthcoming, and a few more mysteries were loosely introduced. Dialing up the character zaniness might seem, at first, like an understandable result of an endless herd of bison storming out of nowhere across the fruited plains; and, yet, at some point I’m hoping goofy for goofy’s sake doesn’t become the norm. The mere fact alone that Royal believes Autumn has far more answers than she shares and yet he spends no time trying to get them out of her in these moments makes his struggle feel a bit amiss here. It certainly feels like he’s not all that concerned that his prized granddaughter Amy (Olive Abercrombie) has gone missing; sure, Autumn may be one and the same, but knowing what he knows about time travel is he not the least bit concerned about how he’s been robbed of the child’s formative years?
For my money, the single greatest development in all of this first chapter was the fact that Perry (Tom Pelphrey) found himself in the past wherein a younger Royal (Christian James) and Cecilia (Megan West) appear poised to serve as benefactors for a man lost in time. If we see more of them – all three, that is – then we might achieve a vastly greater understanding of just how timelines work in this curious realm. What was it Doc Brown warned a young Marty McFly to avoid doing? Disrupting the flow of time? Should this trio discover the truth behind their respective identities, what changes – if any – might this have in present day? And how will these alterations take place? What might be done and/or undone? That’s the reason, ultimately, why fans of time travel shows tune in; and I wonder just what developments we might have in store for us in the hours ahead.
Again, dear readers, I realize that many of you have criticized yours truly for occasionally overthinking a premise; and, yes, that could be the case here. “It’s only a first episode” has become the mantra for those who ‘watch the watchers,’ and I’m definitely willing to see where the program heads in this second crop of serialized adventures. All I’m saying is that layering on another round of mysteries and dialing the quirk up to eleven will only distract audiences for so long. Eventually, you have to come clean with definitive answers. I’m hoping that Watkins has that on the docket as well, or this Fantastic oater might find itself painted into a corner with no conceivable way out … except leaping down a great big hole in the ground.
Recommended.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that I’m beholden to no one for this review of “One Night In Wabang” – Outer Range Season 02 Episode 01 – as I streamed it via my membership of Amazon Prime.
-- EZ
The bad thing about charting a slightly modified course is that – well – creator Brian Watkins shows up to Season 2 with really only some new character quirks to keep viewers tuned in.
Think what you will, but the Mother Of All Quirky Character Dramas remains David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminal Twin Peaks; and I don’t think that program is in any jeopardy of losing the mantle to Outer Range, though – by appearances alone – it occasionally seems like that’s what Watkins and crew are reaching for with this season opener. Rhett (Lewis Pullman) and Maria (Isabel Arraiza) do a U-turn on bailing out on their lives in Wabang, winding up in a dirty roadside motel run by a slightly unkempt man with a cat fixation. Wayne Tillerson (Wil Patton) has awakened from his weird comatose state and now appears like a man in the (somewhat) prime of his adult life; for reasons unexplained, he’s begun delivering spoken word renditions of rock songs … and here we, the audience, thought all of the singing was left up to Billy Tillerson (Noah Reid). Cecilia Abbott (Lily Taylor) continues her on-again-off-again soliloquies on faith and family; and we learn that she, too, has been hiding secrets from everyone that tie to Rebecca’s disappearance some time ago.
What I’m trying to suggest above is that “One Night In Wabang” feels a bit too much like a narrative download at times and less like an organic development of the chaos so winningly delivered in the first season finale. Not a lot of answers were forthcoming, and a few more mysteries were loosely introduced. Dialing up the character zaniness might seem, at first, like an understandable result of an endless herd of bison storming out of nowhere across the fruited plains; and, yet, at some point I’m hoping goofy for goofy’s sake doesn’t become the norm. The mere fact alone that Royal believes Autumn has far more answers than she shares and yet he spends no time trying to get them out of her in these moments makes his struggle feel a bit amiss here. It certainly feels like he’s not all that concerned that his prized granddaughter Amy (Olive Abercrombie) has gone missing; sure, Autumn may be one and the same, but knowing what he knows about time travel is he not the least bit concerned about how he’s been robbed of the child’s formative years?
For my money, the single greatest development in all of this first chapter was the fact that Perry (Tom Pelphrey) found himself in the past wherein a younger Royal (Christian James) and Cecilia (Megan West) appear poised to serve as benefactors for a man lost in time. If we see more of them – all three, that is – then we might achieve a vastly greater understanding of just how timelines work in this curious realm. What was it Doc Brown warned a young Marty McFly to avoid doing? Disrupting the flow of time? Should this trio discover the truth behind their respective identities, what changes – if any – might this have in present day? And how will these alterations take place? What might be done and/or undone? That’s the reason, ultimately, why fans of time travel shows tune in; and I wonder just what developments we might have in store for us in the hours ahead.
Again, dear readers, I realize that many of you have criticized yours truly for occasionally overthinking a premise; and, yes, that could be the case here. “It’s only a first episode” has become the mantra for those who ‘watch the watchers,’ and I’m definitely willing to see where the program heads in this second crop of serialized adventures. All I’m saying is that layering on another round of mysteries and dialing the quirk up to eleven will only distract audiences for so long. Eventually, you have to come clean with definitive answers. I’m hoping that Watkins has that on the docket as well, or this Fantastic oater might find itself painted into a corner with no conceivable way out … except leaping down a great big hole in the ground.
Recommended.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that I’m beholden to no one for this review of “One Night In Wabang” – Outer Range Season 02 Episode 01 – as I streamed it via my membership of Amazon Prime.
-- EZ
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