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The Outsider HBO


Michael Knight

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I'd have enjoyed a prolonged back-and-forth with Cuco in the cave.

It wasn't gonna be "try to kill the unkillable monster," so turn the scene into an existential/metaphysical exploration, an exercise in confronting or struggling with the absolute mystery of where we come from, how/why we're here, etc.  A decent writer could've made that scene fantastic.

You had the perfect participants for that type of discussion.  The staunch empiricist, agonizing over the loss of his son, somewhat cynical but kind and decent.  The freakishly gifted Holly, outcast due to her abilities and resulting insecurities.  

Instead of making the creature ignorant or just plain forgetful of his own origin, turn him into a wealth of knowledge and wisdom like the sphere in ST Discovery. Could've made him even somewhat sympathetic.  It's not his fault nature created him to feed on death/grief/fear.  

That could have been really compelling.

Instead, they just shot and crushed the skull of an ordinarily mortal monster with alzheimers.  No insight or exploration whatsoever.  I can't believe King wrote the character like that.  Or maybe I can.

 

Edited by Augustus
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6 hours ago, Augustus said:

I'd have enjoyed a prolonged back-and-forth with Cuco in the cave.

It wasn't gonna be "try to kill the unkillable monster," so turn the scene into an existential/metaphysical exploration, an exercise in confronting or struggling with the absolute mystery of where we come from, how/why we're here, etc.  A decent writer could've made that scene fantastic.

You had the perfect participants for that type of discussion.  The staunch empiricist, agonizing over the loss of his son, somewhat cynical but kind and decent.  The freakishly gifted Holly, outcast due to her abilities and resulting insecurities.  

Instead of making the creature ignorant or just plain forgetful of his own origin, turn him into a wealth of knowledge and wisdom like the sphere in ST Discovery. Could've made him even somewhat sympathetic.  It's not his fault nature created him to feed on death/grief/fear.  

That could have been really compelling.

Instead, they just shot and crushed the skull of an ordinarily mortal monster with alzheimers.  No insight or exploration whatsoever.  I can't believe King wrote the character like that.  Or maybe I can.

 

Good call.  Having read almost all of Stephen King's books, I had warned my wife about what might happen at the end.  That is, cast of good guys fight the ultimate evil at the end, some of them die, then the bad guy dies.  The end.

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We binged this over the last 2 weeks and finished last night. I really liked it for 4 episodes, then I kinda liked it for 4 more episodes, then I wanted it to be over for 2 episodes.

In the end I kind of regret watching it. Maybe I was desperate for a new show and I thought HBO plus Stephen King would be a winning combination.

I sort of blame myself. I don't typically enjoy supernatural monster type stuff, but I guess I hoped this would be a solid character driven story and that would make it worth the watch. I was wrong.

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Just goes to show that it's not just King that doesn't end his stories satisfactorily.

First few eps followed pretty close to the book and are yet another glimpse at how well King creates and develops characters and makes them sympathetic.  And conjures some hellacious scenarios in which to stick them.

When it wandered away from the source material, it went astray.

I have read the book, but have forgotten the deets on the disposition of El Cuco.  I seem to recall that it was less 'straightforward."

Also, the exoneration of Terry Maitland was a less explicit theme of the book, so there was little or no dwelling on that purpose, which the series tried to tie up.  
 

One wonders how well the source material would have "filmed" toward the end.  I suspect kind of like Desperation; weird as fuck.  Tak.

Dennis Lehane apparently wrote the last couple of eps.  He's a decent writer.  Regardless, there were some big creative brains in on that, and that's what you got.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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