Before we begin, a disclaimer which I hope is always implied on any review I write, but which I feel the need to say explicitly every so often: this is just, like, my opinion, man. You may have a different one, and if you do, that's great. I'd never want anyone to feel as if anything I write, here or anywhere else, is designed to browbeat people into agreeing with me. I'm not saying that I'd be incapable of writing a thing with that sort of intent, but if I did, I'd preface if by saying something along the lines of, "If you don't agree with me about this, you are a terrible person who is wrong and who needs to learn to be right." It's not inconceivable that I might write such a thing at some point, but when and if I do, it'd be unlikely to happen in connection with a television review, or a book review, movie review, music, etc.
But I do worry sometimes that the tone I take makes people think that that's the stance I'm assuming when I write reviews. I especially feel that way when I write a negative review, and though I sometimes enjoy going into snark-filled mode for these things, mostly I do not; and even when I do, I worry that it's offputting.
You might by now have ascertained the fact that this review is going to be especially negative. If so, you have arrived at the correct conclusion. And if you enjoyed this episode more than I did, I just want to be clear up front: I think that's great! I love Jason X, so let's face it, my taste is not necessarily a thing of which to be proud. So know that I am not judging you if you dug this episode, or if you dig this miniseries overall. I'd love to have your perspective in the comments, sincerely. We only tolerate nice comments around here anyways; this has never been, and will never be, a combative blog in the comments. So please do chime in and tell me that you loved this one, and if you feel like expounding, tell me why.
Now, strap in why I attempt to explain why I goddamn fucking HATED this piece-a-shit 48 minutes of television.
"The Stand"
(The Stand episode 8)
airdate: February 4, 2021
written by: Benjamin Cavell & Taylor Elmore
directed by: Vincenzo Natali
This was the episode where I realized that I was not only off the train, but that I'd already rolled down the embankment and had landed in the weeds and was hearing the clackety-clack of the train as it rolled along. This episode was actually the train exploding while the bombs that the bad guys planted on it finally detonated. Whew! I barely made it, y'all!
In retrospect, the train was doomed from the beginning. And by "train" I mean CBS All Access's miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand, which was, I now realize, doomed from the outset. Granted, there's one episode left to go, and it was written by Stephen King himself, so maaaayyyyybe he's got some kind of rabbit in some kind of hat and is going to blow our minds next week. It would, I think, have to be a rabbit of the sort that M. Night Shyamalan pulled out for The Sixth Sense; I'm talking about a once-in-a-generation, era-defining rabbit. And bless his heart, King is the screenwriter who brought us Rose Red and the season-two opener of Under the Dome and Sleepwalkers and Maximum Overdrive, so I'm guessing it's just not going to happen.
More than that, I'm assuming it. I'd love to be wrong, but guys, c'mon: you know I'm not. And after this week's episode, I know I'm not. In retrospect, I've known it all along. Much though I enjoyed certain aspects of the first four episodes, I've known from the first scene of the first episode that this sucker was a failure. As soon as we went to New Vegas in episode five, I was like, urgh, hmm, something don't quite feel right in my tummy no more, but even then the episodes continued to have enough virtues sprinkled in amongst the failings that I was still enjoying myself to some degree.
That ceased with episode eight, and now, I'm finding it almost impossible to summon up any genuine appreciation for the miniseries whatsoever. (One exception: Owen Teague's performance as Harold was impeccable from beginning to end. He does not appear in this episode, and the miniseries feels his absence keenly.) Nope, this was the episode where the miniseries collapsed under the cumulative weight of the numerous poor decisions made by the producers and writers (and I blame them in that order) in the early episodes. They did a masterful job, if the job they were given was to remove from King's story its scope, grandeur, and resonance. Sure, if that the goal, they did a fucking bang-up job.
Let's recap.
Mistake #1: the minuscule number of episodes. The decision to try to cram this story into a one-season miniseries was a disaster. This should have been, at minimum, a three-season series of thirty episodes. How about some comparisons? AT&T commissioned a ten-episode season based on the novel Mr. Mercedes, which is scarcely a quarter of the length of The Stand. HBO commissioned a ten-episode season based on The Outsider, which is about half its length. Even more damning, there's an upcoming miniseries on Epix called Chapelwaite, which is an adaptation of the short story "Jerusalem's Lot." (I'm looking forward to that; it might suck, but I love the story, and it stars Adrien Brody and Emily Hampshire, which is promising.) Guess how many episodes it is going to be? You guessed it: ten. The Stand is, if I've done the math correctly, something like 31 times as long as "Jerusalem's Lot." That's the kind of number that leaves no doubt: somebody fucked up when they decided The Stand was going to be a mere nine episodes.
Let's be charitable: the 1994 miniseries on ABC was only the equivalent of six hour-long episodes, so in theory nine is an improvement. But 1994 was such a different era in television that we may as well be talking about two different mediums, artistically. It is not an apples-and-apples comparison; it's not even an apples-and-oranges comparison. Even so, the 1994 version did so much more with so much less that everyone affiliated with the 2020 version should be ashamed of themselves for the results they got. Well, except for Owen Teague, and maybe a handful of the other cast members. Everyone else, you're suspect. At best.
Especially you yahoos who thought it would be a good idea to begin the story in media res. What were you thinking? I mean that sincerely: what did you think the upside to this was? I've so far only been able to glean from interviews that you guys felt it was incumbent upon you to do things differently than the 1994 version did, and I simply do not understand how you'd arrive at that decision as being sensible. Did you not understand what it is that bonds people to King's novel? You can't have; if you did, you purposefully shied away from it, and that's just crazy. You should not be allowed to make multi-million-dollar decisions if that's your decision-making acumen. No shame in that; lots of folks shouldn't be allowed to gamble with that much money, it don't make ya a bad person or nothin'. A bad television producer? Yes. It definitely makes you that.
What people love about King's novel is the journey it takes them on. It's an epic that they live with for an extended period of time, and if it gets into them the way it got into me, then it's in them permanently. That novel was not my first of King's, but it's the one than made me a King fan, and it gave me such a high that I've maintained it for over thirty years since. It's not even one of my favorites, necessarily; but I love it unreservedly, and don't let the fact that I've occasionally expressed actual reservations about aspects of it (i.e., the hand of God, more on which in a bit) fool you -- I adore this novel. The bond King created between me and his large cast of characters is one rarely equaled, at least for me as a reader. And it's as effective as it is because he takes readers on a journey with these folks, and in many cases provides a character arc that would be capable of sustaining an entire novel in its own right. This one novel carries the emotional weight of something like seven or eight normal-sized novels. It's not just a star, it's a supernova.
What works about the 1994 miniseries is that screenwriter Stephen King -- who, yes, occasionally does very good work in that medium as well as, uh, less good work -- knew that the correct approach was to distill the novel's events down to their essence, and fit as many of them into a four-night commercial-television structure as he could without losing the essence of the characters. So even though the runtime is so short that it literally cannot even approach doing the novel justice, it somehow manages to present the illusion of doing it justice, because it replicates the journey, and it captures enough of the character bonds to provide an equivalent of the journey's impact. It's a pretty damn masterful example of adaptation, to be honest; I'm not sure I've ever appreciated it properly on these grounds, and maybe that's something I can thank this new adaptation for. It's about the only thing, sadly.
Okay, so we've established (again) that this miniseries shit the bed by being too short and by implementing an ill-advised non-chronological structure. Bad enough on either count, and they got both. AND THEN, they also made some terrible decisions in terms of how to adapt specific aspects of the story. I'm not sure what I think the worst is, but I'm leaning toward thinking it's the decision to almost entirely neuter the Christian underpinnings of the story. As a result, Mother Abagail became an almost complete non-entity; and yet, much of the eighth episode involves Randall Flagg railing publicly against her, as if his ravings made sense. They do not, because these writers did not allow it to.
And the problem is actually worse than that, because they failed Randall Flagg just as completely as they failed Abagail Freemantle. Who is this "person"? What does he want? Where did he come from? If you don't know the novel, you likely have no clue. You may not even know enough to ask some of those questions. He is simply a non-entity, and he spends several minutes in this episode railing against another non-entity in limp fashion. It's like if you turned on your television expecting to see the college football national championship game, and instead found that the UAB vs. UNLV game was being aired. What they're doing is technically football, yes, but this is not what you tuned in for.
Sigh.
This has been a long preamble, and if I allowed it to be, the actual review of the episode would be even longer. I'm bumming myself out, though, so let's see if we can speed things up a bit.
Alright, so if the Christian subtext -- which I'd argue is actually text -- has been mostly removed, that means the hand of God is out, right? Yep, sure does. So what did these masters of their craft come up with to replace it?
Well, what happens is this: Flagg loses control of the crowd he's addressing (more on which momentarily), and then suddenly a dark cloud surrounds the hotel from the outside.