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Post by Dame Bouncy Castle on Dec 19, 2019 22:11:53 GMT
The Outsider will receive its UK premiere on Sky Atlantic on Monday January 13th at 9pm with a double-bill.
Based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King, The Outsider follows police detective Ralph Anderson, as he sets out to investigate the mutilated body of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson found in the Georgia woods.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding this horrifying crime leads Ralph, still grieving the recent death of his own son, to bring in unorthodox private investigator Holly Gibney, whose uncanny abilities he hopes will help explain the unexplainable.
The drama series stars Ben Mendelsohn, Cynthia Erivo, Bill Camp, Mare Winningham, Paddy Considine, Julianne Nicholson, Yul Vázquez, Jeremy Bobb, Marc Menchaca and Jason Bateman.
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Post by yankee on Jan 21, 2020 20:38:20 GMT
I've watched the first three episodes. Its very gripping, very well acted. Great cast. Lots of complex, multi-dimensional characters. Ambiguity of who are the good guys, bad guys. But like some Stephen King stuff its a bit all over the road. Takes major twists and turns and then rambles off down another path. Making it hard to follow at times. It also has some "convenient" dialog. {SPOILER:Click to Show}
The type where a cop or private investigator or lawyer asks a witness or minor character (like a bartender, front desk staff at a senior care home, clerk at a gift shop) the simplest of questions and that person just comes back with a long and very detailed response that goes above and beyond what they asked and provides a lot of key information that drives the story forward without having to film any additional scenes. I will follow it through to the end hoping it all ties together. Enjoying it so far even though a bit confused. |
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Post by geometryman on Jan 21, 2020 22:46:33 GMT
I've watched the first 3 now, too. It is very well done, but I'm also a bit confused - especially when it suddenly takes off in a new direction that on the face of it doesn't seem connected with what we've seen so far. No doubt it will all be explained eventually.
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Post by diziet sma on Jan 26, 2020 0:18:51 GMT
I got halfway through the book, and then abandoned it cos I realised it was going in a supernatural direction, which I am not into, (and ruined the Mr Mercedes series IMHO).
Now that I know what genre it is, I am enjoying the series (I thought Jason Bateman was especially terrific).
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Post by yankee on Jan 26, 2020 22:08:14 GMT
I figured with it being based on a Stephen King story there would be some supernatural elements.
But it started off like a fairly straightforward police procedural. Just with a lot of major turns of directions.
When the drunkard cop was in the barn to collect evidence that's when it first took the Stephen King turn.
But I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out.
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Post by yankee on Jan 27, 2020 14:32:28 GMT
Well episode 4 was the most confusing yet. {SPOILER:Click to Show}The original plot seems to have been abandoned and we are following the quirky private detective (is she autistic or just super intelligent like Sheldon from BBT?) as she follows off on other cases - which yes, I can see how they are very similar to the original murder.
Also, if the main cop feels he made a mistake and Jason Bateman was innocent to the point he has hired an outside private investigator and is working with the widow's lawyer to prove him innocent, what is he waiting for to not go public and clear Jason's name and say they are reopening the case? The widow is already suing them for what happened.
Again there was more "convenient dialog". The quirky PI visits the nurse from the senior care home who (after pepper-spraying her) invites her into her flat and tells her every last detail of the co-worker who was falsely arrested for murder. It was also quite convenient that she hung on to that post card that propelled the case into yet another new direction - another new state to visit.
She goes to visit a woman in prison - who she never met before - and the woman tells her basically her entire life's story. Another woman overhears their conversation, slips her a note and invites her to her home for coffee, cake and loads of helpful information. Also last week the PI was not allowed entry to the senior care home, this week she just wandered in and talked to Jason Bateman's dad - who again just offered up a bunch of helpful dialog to a complete stranger, though he does seem in the grip of dementia.
The scene at the bar was confusing. The cop goes to talk to the bartender, says he saw on the security footage that Jason Bateman scratched him when they were shaking hands. The bartender says he doesn't remember that and the cop say "Ok" and leaves. It was a very odd scene. Jason Bateman says he was scratched by the senior home care worker when he slipped on the wet floor. Is that perhaps how the supernatural element is being passed on?
The drunkard cop is going off the deep end. The shopping trip to the store...buying loads of camping gear...but then also several lamps and extension cords but then he chucks it all out in the woods. |
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Post by geometryman on Jan 28, 2020 23:47:00 GMT
Watched ep. 4 now - I'm certainly confused about the drunkard cop (Jack, is it?). {SPOILER:Click to Show}As well as buying a trolleyful of unconnected stuff and then dumping it, at the same spot he'd earlier dumped the deer he shot, which now seems to have been partially eaten - by wild animals, or something more sinister? I guess we're meant to think he's been somehow possessed since the strange barn incident when he got his neck injuries.
I reckon private investigator Holly is autistic - she seems socially unaware and awkward.
They've been going on about the scratching and for a couple of episodes I've thought that's the mechanism for it getting passed on - by collecting a sample of the "scratchee's" DNA from which somehow a murdering clone arises? In the opening scene this week the girl is the clone of the one Holly visited in jail and the guy is the innocent one who cut his own throat in jail last week - later in the episode when they were having sex you could see his back had been scratched and was bleeding.
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Post by yankee on Jan 29, 2020 17:22:47 GMT
Hi Geometryman. Glad we are seeing this all pretty much the same.  Its bonkers, its confusing, but its also gripping and entertaining.  |
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Post by yankee on Feb 3, 2020 15:13:01 GMT
My goodness we had an eventful episode this week. {SPOILER:Click to Show}Jack was up to more housekeeping in the woods, arranging furniture and dragging around deer carcasses. He appears at his wits end and screams to the invisible force control him to either tell him what is going on or just kill him and end it. The result is he is face planted to the ground and minds his manners again. However, it seems the "force" now wants him to try and insert himself into the murder investigation, presumably so that he can report back what is going on and perhaps to derail it. Jack has also quit drinking.
Jack attended the Christening party for the Asian policewoman's baby and she spent most of the time trying to corner Jack and find out what is up with him. Her interest seems more than that of a colleague. I wonder if perhaps there was an affair? This suspicion was doubled when she became particularly angry that he refused to hold the baby (a possible question of paternity?) Jack seemed to fear for the baby's safety if he touched it.
The "hoodie man" was quite busy this week, dropping in and visiting several characters. Giving them all the same message to pass along to Ralph to end the investigation or there will be trouble.
Ralphs wife is one of those visited and this leads to dreams/flashbacks regarding the death of their son. There seems to be more to that story that I am sure we will find out.
Our autistic PI Holly was uncovering more of the other murders and encountered a strange young man in the cemetery visiting the grave of the wrongly accused senior home worker. This young man later commits suicide by police and as he is lying there we see the same marks on the back of his neck we saw from our Jack.
Speaking of Holly, how is it she drinks so much hard liquor but never even seems a bit tipsy? Is that an autistic thing too?
Our friendly strip club owner makes a brief appearance looking suspiciously at his hand and rubbing and scratching at it, the same hand Jason Bateman scratched. In a bit of a continuity flaw he is always shown sitting at the bar chain smoking. I am pretty sure smoking is banned in all public places in the US. Even Georgia.
This weeks bit of "convenient" dialog occurred when Holly visited a bar (no surprise there) and not only was the woman bartender particularly chatty, she immediately accepted Holly's offer to pay her $200 to spend the following day driving her around to various places she wanted to visit as part of the investigation. Bar tender/banterer/Uber driver/tour guide. Sure why not.
In another bit of "convenient" dialog, Holly called Ralph to tell him she had some VERY important news for him but had to tell him in person. Not over the phone. Ralph told Holly to hop on a plane and get down to Georgia ASAP.
Holly said "No more planes, I'll drive." Given that Holly's car is pretty old and has seen better days, and given that its about 725 miles, an 11 hour drive from Chicago to Georgia (she appeared to have returned to her home base after visiting New York), its no surprise that her car broke down and stranded her on the freeway. I guess the important news will have to wait.
Speaking of Holly, who exactly is paying her? I don't think its Ralph and if the lawyer is paying her that is a lawyer and two PIs being billed to the widow Glory. I don't think Jason Bateman's school teacher salary paid that kind of money.
Holly also seems very interested in taking photos of the graveyards where the various innocent and now dead people are buried. Seems some clues can be found in buildings nearby each grave.
Next week should be even more interesting. |
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Post by diziet sma on Feb 4, 2020 15:17:13 GMT
I think they said the county / town was paying for Holly in order to avoid a law suit.
Holly first appeared in Stephen King's Bill Hodges Trilogy (Mr Mercedes etc). She was suffering from a lack of self esteem, anxiety and hypochondriac tendencies, as a result of her domineering, controlling family. When they leave the scene she starts to help Bill and comes out of her shell, revealing herself to be a smart, funny capable young woman.There's no suggestion that she has autism, or savant abilities.
They have clearly decided to change the character somewhat for the Outsider TV show.
If you haven't seen Mr Mercedes series it is worth watching.( I gave up after 2 episodes because I had only just read the books.) Holly is played by the rather beautiful Justine Lupe.
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Post by yankee on Feb 10, 2020 19:54:40 GMT
Some BIG revelations this week, but also some head scratchers... {SPOILER:Click to Show}At her debriefing Holly put forth her theory that all three of the accused murderers whose cases she had researched were in fact innocent.
They were all being controlled by an evil "entity" who needed to kill once a month (I think it was every 27 days.)
But being an entity, they were just energy and needed to possess a human host to carry out their evil deeds.
Once that particular murder was done, the entity chose a new host for the next month's murder.
This was done by the current host scratching the new host and drawing blood, presumably both to pass along the entity and to acquire the DNA needed for the doppleganger.
Two things about that confused me. Did Holly mean that the entity possessed the human host or the entity possessed the doppleganger it created?
Also why did the entity always choose hosts who were going to be out of town, many miles away when the murders took place? Does the entity purposely want to choose hosts that will baffle the police with contradictory evidence?
Lastly, if the entity needs a human host to carry out any sort of physical attacks on a person, how is it that the entity can create ghosts like Jack's dead mother who gave him one hell of a brutal beat down?
Holly did surmise that when Jason Bateman was caught on camera scratching the hand of the strip club owner it meant that he was the next host and they had only a couple of weeks to destroy the entity before another murder happened.
Another somewhat confusing thing was Holly's revelation that Hoody Man was in fact Jason Bateman and that his young daughter saw three distinct versions of him over time because he was deteriorating. First he looked normal, then started to decay, then finally appeared as the ghoul like creature that Ralph's wife, the Asian woman cop and the kid who stole the van all encountered.
Why would Jason Bateman encourage all these people to try and have the police stop the investigation?
Or maybe Hoody Man is actually the doppleganger? And decaying because its main task is now complete and its no longer needed? |
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Post by geometryman on Feb 11, 2020 8:19:02 GMT
Yes, quite a bit to get my head round. {SPOILER:Click to Show}
I think it possesses the doppelganger, because Holly referred to the entity shedding the host "like a snake's skin" when no longer required. Which then leaves behind the slime with the set of clothes in the barn early on, and more slime I think with the clothes of the guy-who-cut-his-own-throat-in-jail's doppelganger, plus non-human traces detected on furniture following Mare Winningham's visitation.
Yes, that's what I think. Hoody man is its "normal appearance" - when in a new host it looks like that host until the task is complete, then decays (recuperates or recovers, in Holly's words, I think) - which takes 20-something days, before it's ready for another doppelganger host.
That is odd. We saw her at first, presumably through Jack's eyes, but then she was invisible to us as he was hit several times with enough force to throw him several feet. Also something not visible was hitting him earlier in the barn & the place where he had dumped purchases/deer - and similarly hitting the other guy with a neck rash, who committed suicide-by-cop.
I didn't get the point of the story about the yiddish vampire. Any explanation would be gratefully received! |
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Post by yankee on Feb 11, 2020 12:47:37 GMT
Thank you Geometry Man! It seems we are both at about the same speed on this and two heads are definitely better than one in fine tuning the details!
I think the joke about the Jewish/Yiddish vampire was a metaphor about how it can be difficult to fight an evil entity based on only your own personal belief system.
Established mythology and pop culture suggests that a person can fend off a vampire with a crucifix.
But if the vampire were Jewish what would he care about a crucifix?
Holly mentioned that most cultures have their own version of the boogeyman and each likely has it's own way to defeat it.
The Federal agent on the investigation team is Latino and he crossed himself for protection as soon as Holly mentioned the Latin boogeyman and the lawyer's personal private investigator, who is white, also looked very troubled at Holly's theory and clearly took it very seriously. Grown, macho men who carry guns and fight crime for a living are still very scared about the boogeyman showing the power it can carry based on your own personal upbringing and culture.
So far we have had victim/hosts that were a black man, Latina woman and white man. Three different hosts. Three different cultures. The entity could be choosing diverse hosts purposely to make it more difficult for them to figure out how to defeat it.
I guess their next step is to figure out the culture/belief system that the strip club owner was raised.
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Post by geometryman on Feb 11, 2020 17:50:41 GMT
Ah! Thanks for that, yankee. I took in Holly's speech about different cultures each having their own version, but missed the relevance of the yiddish vampire.
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Post by yankee on Feb 11, 2020 18:09:57 GMT
I could almost see that joke being in a Woody Allen movie, back when he still made funny films. Woody would be a vampire and go into some woman's bedroom to bite her ala Christopher Lee and she pulls out a crucifix and Woody makes some sort of comment that he is Jewish.  |
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Anymore to come?
