Outer Range: The West
May 10, 2022 9:53 AM - Season 1, Episode 8 - Subscribe
The Abbott family face a reckoning over the course of a single day as the showdown between Royal and Autumn culminates, unearthing a shattering revelation. (Season finale.)
Streaming in the US on Amazon Prime.
Streaming in the US on Amazon Prime.
The singing, and the KISSING!
We're left with more questions than answers, and queued up for a potential season 2. I think I liked the series? Mostly for the weirdness than anything else. I'm satisfied enough even if we don't get a second season.
posted by jazon at 10:09 AM on May 10, 2022
We're left with more questions than answers, and queued up for a potential season 2. I think I liked the series? Mostly for the weirdness than anything else. I'm satisfied enough even if we don't get a second season.
posted by jazon at 10:09 AM on May 10, 2022
Autumn, Royal, and Cecilia are three of the most unexpectedly volatile, least predictable characters on TV right now and I am here for it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
I feel like Cecilia knows much more than she's letting on.
posted by CheeseLouise at 2:04 PM on May 10, 2022
posted by CheeseLouise at 2:04 PM on May 10, 2022
I wanna hear theories about that device beep at the very end but I also don't because I think that the ending along with everything else kinda sealed the deal for me - this show suffers from LOST syndrome.
posted by destructive cactus at 3:19 PM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by destructive cactus at 3:19 PM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
This show makes me think of the essential difference between something like Twin Peaks and something like Lost. Lots of stuff was never explained in Twin Peaks, but it was all kind of glorious weirdness that was fascinating and enjoyable for its own sake. I feel like this is kind of in-between. I think they have built up some mysteries that they have to explain, but but stuff like the singin’ and kissin’ and makin’ a dead bear bite your hand and drinkin’ clamato all pay off enough as they happen and don’t really require a resolution or explanation.
posted by snofoam at 5:11 PM on May 10, 2022
posted by snofoam at 5:11 PM on May 10, 2022
Interesting comparison to 'Twin Peaks' vs. 'Lost.'
I never saw 'Lost,' but I loved 'Twin Peaks' when it first came out and on a rewatch in college and it was very much a character driven story before being a WTH driven story. I didn't quite like the revival of TP because it was nostalgia driven (and goofy Kyle MacLachlan - he was fun in 'Joe vs Carole,' too)
'Severance' works along those lines (character driven), and to a lesser extent 'From' (vs. the adaptation of 'Annihilation' which I hated because the characters were boring and unlikable vs. the books which kept me going based on wanting an answer despite the characters being boring).
This was fine but not enough character and not enough WTH.
I'm perfectly fine with it as it stands, no need to a second season (which I'm oddly grateful). Throw in (Judeo-Christian, Americanized) "God" and that was it for me.
(I understand, "God" is something that the character attributes, rather than an absolute "God.")
posted by porpoise at 9:39 PM on May 10, 2022
I never saw 'Lost,' but I loved 'Twin Peaks' when it first came out and on a rewatch in college and it was very much a character driven story before being a WTH driven story. I didn't quite like the revival of TP because it was nostalgia driven (and goofy Kyle MacLachlan - he was fun in 'Joe vs Carole,' too)
'Severance' works along those lines (character driven), and to a lesser extent 'From' (vs. the adaptation of 'Annihilation' which I hated because the characters were boring and unlikable vs. the books which kept me going based on wanting an answer despite the characters being boring).
This was fine but not enough character and not enough WTH.
I'm perfectly fine with it as it stands, no need to a second season (which I'm oddly grateful). Throw in (Judeo-Christian, Americanized) "God" and that was it for me.
(I understand, "God" is something that the character attributes, rather than an absolute "God.")
posted by porpoise at 9:39 PM on May 10, 2022
destructive cactus - i think the device going off was the slow cooker timer, finishing the family dinner that was never to be had.
posted by jazon at 6:50 AM on May 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jazon at 6:50 AM on May 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh my gosh - thank you, jazon. For some reason, I attributed it to some weird detail that they were using to string us along, haha. Very glad to have egg on my face here.
posted by destructive cactus at 12:48 PM on May 11, 2022
posted by destructive cactus at 12:48 PM on May 11, 2022
but but stuff like the singin’ and kissin’ and makin’ a dead bear bite your hand and drinkin’ clamato all pay off enough as they happen and don’t really require a resolution or explanation.
My one major complaint about this show was that the throughlines for the weirdness all seemed a bit *too* explicable, but not in a way that really satisfied. The hole being revealed as an erratic time portal with physical residue happened waaaay too early for my taste, and seemed to deflate a lot of the mystique.
Singin Billy - shorthand for a character that is driven much more strongly by emotive reasoning than trying to logic his way through the mysteries. He just feeeeeels it maaaaan
Kissin Billy / Autumn - two characters driven by unhinged passions and resonating off each other into increasing extremes. The lampshading reaction shot of Maria staring at the two of them in the bank cracked me up.
Dead bear bites - Cici wanted to be mauled by bears as an expression of biblical level guilt over everything she feels has gone wrong, just like in the bible story she heard shortly beforehand. Grief over a lost child, her feeling responsible for another person's loss of a child, the bear itself being a dead child... etc etc
Clamato time - pretty sure all the shots of Tillerson drinking that clam brew are after his health decline of the last 9 months or so, as i recall of the flashbacks? Sort of a shorthand for 'borderline placebo affectation of healthiness in the face of his clearly unhealthy choices in life'.
All in all, what I wanted out of this show was an exploration of the Handsome Family song 'The Bottomless Hole' and it never quite got there. And then I started watching Night Sky immediately afterward, which is kind of a total emotional inversion of a very similar core premise...
posted by FatherDagon at 12:42 PM on May 24, 2022
My one major complaint about this show was that the throughlines for the weirdness all seemed a bit *too* explicable, but not in a way that really satisfied. The hole being revealed as an erratic time portal with physical residue happened waaaay too early for my taste, and seemed to deflate a lot of the mystique.
Singin Billy - shorthand for a character that is driven much more strongly by emotive reasoning than trying to logic his way through the mysteries. He just feeeeeels it maaaaan
Kissin Billy / Autumn - two characters driven by unhinged passions and resonating off each other into increasing extremes. The lampshading reaction shot of Maria staring at the two of them in the bank cracked me up.
Dead bear bites - Cici wanted to be mauled by bears as an expression of biblical level guilt over everything she feels has gone wrong, just like in the bible story she heard shortly beforehand. Grief over a lost child, her feeling responsible for another person's loss of a child, the bear itself being a dead child... etc etc
Clamato time - pretty sure all the shots of Tillerson drinking that clam brew are after his health decline of the last 9 months or so, as i recall of the flashbacks? Sort of a shorthand for 'borderline placebo affectation of healthiness in the face of his clearly unhealthy choices in life'.
All in all, what I wanted out of this show was an exploration of the Handsome Family song 'The Bottomless Hole' and it never quite got there. And then I started watching Night Sky immediately afterward, which is kind of a total emotional inversion of a very similar core premise...
posted by FatherDagon at 12:42 PM on May 24, 2022
This first season of this thing delivered for me. I hope we get a second season that shows a little more of the what’s-going-on behind it all, like there are a few setpieces and absurdly grandiose character monologues that will make me smile to see, but if I don’t get those, and I still get these human emotional buffalo all winding up to collide with each other again and again, I think it will still be enough.
If they spin it out across even more than two seasons, until the cast all just lose patience with Outer Limits melodrama in Wyoming, well, I am also here for that.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:56 PM on May 29, 2022
If they spin it out across even more than two seasons, until the cast all just lose patience with Outer Limits melodrama in Wyoming, well, I am also here for that.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:56 PM on May 29, 2022
The shootout/chase seemed like it was more for our sakes than for Autumn's sake, and that rankled a bit, but I guess in retrospect you could say the whole thing may have gone according to plan, if Autumn's plan was to end up in her childhood bed. And her recklessness/enthusiasm could have been an expression of the freedom of being able to do anything with full abandon if the end result is known ahead of time, vs. the bloodthirstiness it appeared to be in the moment.
Scenes with lots of guns going off are narratively...annoying, because they seem to just roll the dice on life and death stakes (which is to say, roll the dice on what future narrative threads are even possible after that point).
But maybe a story specifically about fate gets away with it, in retrospect, even though I couldn't quite appreciate that while it was going on.
Oh, and good on Catblack for catching onto Autumn's identity as early as episode three. (I think the tipping point for me otherwise would have been when Amy asks, much later, if she could leave with her mom if her mom returns while her dad's in jail.)
posted by nobody at 7:23 AM on July 31, 2022
Scenes with lots of guns going off are narratively...annoying, because they seem to just roll the dice on life and death stakes (which is to say, roll the dice on what future narrative threads are even possible after that point).
But maybe a story specifically about fate gets away with it, in retrospect, even though I couldn't quite appreciate that while it was going on.
Oh, and good on Catblack for catching onto Autumn's identity as early as episode three. (I think the tipping point for me otherwise would have been when Amy asks, much later, if she could leave with her mom if her mom returns while her dad's in jail.)
posted by nobody at 7:23 AM on July 31, 2022
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posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:54 AM on May 10, 2022 [5 favorites]