The Stand: Blank Page
January 1, 2021 8:58 AM - Season 1, Episode 3 - Subscribe

Mother Abagail selects a surprising voice to be her conduit to her chosen Committee in Boulder: the young deaf man Nick Andros. The arrival of a disturbing visitor to the Boulder Free Zone, shakes the Committee and Boulder residents to their core. Elsewhere in the Free Zone, Nadine Cross is haunted by a childhood memory. Air Date: Dec 30, 2020
posted by guiseroom (4 comments total)
 
It is the year of our lord 2020, I thought. Surely we will get a deaf actor to play Nick Andros.

But nope.

Tom Cullen's introduction was less awful than the other versions, but I am not hopeful it will remain that way.
posted by rhiannonstone at 12:38 AM on January 2, 2021


It is the year of our lord 2020, I thought. Surely we will get a deaf actor to play Nick Andros.
But nope.


It's also the same actor that was the whitewashed Bobby da Costa in Boone's New Mutants movie.
posted by haileris23 at 10:23 AM on January 2, 2021


I do like Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail, though. Ruby Dee was fine, but she seemed an especial victim of the Stephen King Trying To Be Profound tone that I disliked about the 1994 miniseries overall. But Whoopi's playing Mother Abigail with some sass and I like that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:19 PM on January 4, 2021


Goldberg (Freemantle) is a badass, and while she only seems to show up in certain roles that are all only in her wheelhouse I have no problems with her choosing to only do parts that she enjoys and feels comfortable in. Have I missed any of her performances where she branched out or extended herself?

Digging James Marsden's (Stu) evolution as an actor. Odessa Young (Fran) has been building herself a pretty solid career, and she's very strong here so far. Owen Teague does that toxic archetype well, hopefully he doesn't get Jack Gleeson-ed.

Henry Zaga (Nick Andros/ Bobby da Costa) is Brazilian. Is the complaint that he has a lot of European lineage? But yeah, it would've been nice to see an actor familiar with, or experiences/d, similar challenges as the character. I don't blame the actor - it's casting, producers, and directors - but he's an actor.

But in that regard, a poor one in this case - unless the ability and manner of speech in his interactions with Mother Freemantle is purely supernatural.

Brad William Henke as Tom Cullen - consistent with a percentage of people who I've met with diagnosed ASD, but ASD presents very very heterogeneously. That's the reason for S = Spectrum. The character feels sub-borderline functional but socialized very very well. Any change in social situations might set them into extreme non-social reactions, though. How (and why and by whom) they might have been helped into functioning within that society is potentially interesting.

Personally, this is someone who would be a high potential explosively unstable and very significant threat, both physically and situationally, and a high priority liability. Good job by Henke.

So Flagg (Skarsgård) is literally Lucifer/ Satan/ The Devil? Freemantle (Goldberg) is an unfallen/ repentant-fallen angel?

I've been enjoying this. Almost a palliative(? that's not he right word is it) against most of the zombie-themed/ post-apoc media of the last decade.
posted by porpoise at 7:46 PM on January 17, 2021


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