There’s no point in a long-winded intro here. Let’s just see where this takes us. One can make assumptions based on the book and the 1994 mini-series. Let’s try this out. I present “The End”
Start The Stand Ep. 1 “The End”
The fuck is this shit? I pay money for Paramount +. Why am I stuck watching an ad? Okay, not a great start.
Mother Abigail (Abby or MA for short) is talking about the dark man in the west and going to make your stand. Why would you start with that? Shouldn’t that be later on? And we’re already in Boulder, CO and there’s the cleanup crew. The fuck?
Why are we already cleaning up Boulder? Yes, I double-checked, this is Episode 1. We get a guy puking from seeing all the dead bodies, although that shouldn’t be terribly surprising given the number of dead bodies they must have already seen, given how far into Captain Tripps (that’s the name of the plague) they already are.
The man puking is Harold Lauder. Seven billion people are already dead. Harold’s partner that he works with, I think that is Teddy, which is very confusing for those of us who knew Stephen King to play the role of Teddy. Anyway, Teddy likes to collect movies. Okay, I like Teddy almost instantly.
Norris is the head of the cleanup crew and pats himself and his crew on the back for cleaning up 1,000 units today. Norris wants to know if everybody is good with returning the next day to do this job. Everybody raises their hand.
5 Months Earlier in Ogunquit, Maine
Yup, they’re going to tell this story via flashbacks. This fucking story should be told in chronological order. God damnit! Okay, must give this a fair opportunity. Harold is peeping in on Frannie and her father, Mr. Goldsmith. Daddy is already very sick. I immediately feel that Odessa Young is a HUGE upgrade of Molly Ringwold in the role of Frannie. She looks as I imagined the character and doesn’t grind my gears as much upon initial impression. Harold is a creeper. Keep in mind, Harold is supposed to be like 15, per the story, but they can’t show that on TV because we live in a backward society.
Harold gets attacked by 2 guys from school and they think he’s a psycho. The chase is on and a T-1000 reference. Harold is scared by a bird, maybe a crow, and he flips off of his bicycle. These guys are dicks, and are going to post pictures on Instagram. Wow, kid, you are super hardcore. You’re gonna embarrass a fellow student on Instagram. You should kill yourself, kid. Also, Harold’s bike is broken into 2 pieces. Harold got a rejection letter from Cemetary Dance Publications for his submission titled “Soulmate”.
Harold’s mom is sick in bed and his father is on his way home and not feeling well either. Harold’s sister Amy, who is getting married is a total bitch, and is friends with Frannie. That makes sense. Harold has a pile of rejection letters on his wall and an Eraserhead poster. On the radio, he hears that Arnette, TX is under quarantine. Yeah, because that’s the part of the story we should be getting to now, but fuck chronology! Harold has a sweet picture of Frannie in a bikini and he jerks off to it.
U.S. Army Research Facility – Killeen, Texas
God damnit, there’s James Marsden, who I never seem to like in most films. You replace the great Gary Sinise with fucking Cyclops. And you wonder why I’m angry. He’s got the guinea pigs, and I hope that one is still named Geraldo. Dr. Jim Ellis comes in to visit Stu Redman. I like how they are portraying this doctor. Also, Stu is refusing to cooperate. He wants answers as to why he’s there. Stu appears to not be contagious. Ellis mentions how Campion had a superflu. Stu asks if Campion was the guy in the car.
Arnette, Texas – at Hap’s gas station 3 days ago
The local guys are playing cards and shooting the shit until a car approaches recklessly and Stu tells Hap to turn off his pumps. Hap doesn’t and the car just crashes into the pump barricades.
Back at the Facility, Stu asks if Campion was military, but that is classified. Stu asks about the people or Arnette that he is quarantined with, and he’s getting no answers. Stu had a wife who died in a car accident. Stu doesn’t have much of an accent, which is unfortunate. Can I blame Marsden for this? No, probably the director’s decision. Also, everybody has what Campion had and is dead. A 4-year-old named Eva is still alive.
Flashback to Campion, who is now a black dude. No offense to Curtiss Cook Jr, the gentleman playing the role of Campion, but replacing the great Ray McKinnon is a tall task. Campion asks about his wife and daughter. Campion says that he drove fast enough. Stu is scoffing at the idea that the military is going to find every single person that Campion may have been in contact with from the moment he fled his post at the base in California all the way to Texas. Wait, so is Eva Hodges dead or alive, Jim? Stu is kinda being selfish in a way. But Stu gives the go-ahead to do as many tests as needed. The nurse comes in and sneezes and blames allergies. Come on, she wouldn’t be that dumb.
Back in Ogunquit, Harold is looking for any survivors. He goes to Frannie’s and sees her outside digging a grave in the yard. Harold announces his presence to Frannie and she has this expression of “Out of anybody that survived this, it really had to be this guy? Fuck!” She begrudgingly tells Harold that she’s there. He asks to come in to see her. Harold mentions Frannie’s brother’s death. She asks about his family, and they’re all dead.
Harold tells her that nobody is going to help. It was the government who made the virus and it was all over the internet. Owen Teague plays the role of Harold, and he is really good. Frannie freaks out on Harold. So Harold leaves angrily. Fran puts dog tags on and decorates her dad with his medals. We see an old family picture, with her dead brother.
Harold finds a crashed police car. He grabs the officer’s gun. Here’s my question. If you were sick, why were you driving fast enough to crash like that? Fran has removed a lot of clothing to drag her dad down the stairs. We hear from the president and he claims that the government had nothing to do with manufacturing this shit. And in the middle of his speech, the power goes out.
Frannie is now walking through the cornfield. Stephen King loves his cornfields. This is a dream and a little kid is running around. She approaches a small section that is cleared out. There’s a black baby doll on the ground, and then Mother Abigail introduces herself. Whoopie Goldberg plays the role of Mother Abigail and was a good choice from a casting perspective. Will she be as good as Ruby Dee? That remains to be seen. Abby tells her to come to visit her at Hemingford Home in Colorado.
Harold is typing rapidly on the typewriter that he found and there is a scorpion roaming his bedroom. I think he has a map of Atlanta. That’s where the CDC is.
Jim wakes up Stu. They are moving Stu to Stovington, Vermont. That’s close to Maine. The nurse’s kid now has gotten sick so that is why they’re moving Stu. Stu asks why they aren’t going to Atlanta, and Jim says to just be thankful. Dr. Cobb is joining the team. Cobb is super cereal. Stu has to wear a blackout hood so the location doesn’t get compromised. Cobb is sick of Stu asking a bunch of questions. Cobb is also a total hardass.
I’m not sure if that radio host was meant to be Rae Flowers or not. In the original, they had the great Kathy Bates in that role. She is arguably most famous for her role in Misery and also did a fine job in Dolores Claiborne. I can’t even find a credit for who the radio host was. But I did discover that the president was Bryan Cranston. That’s a really cool cameo.
Harold is rehearsing his conversation with Frannie to convince her to go with him. I like the shirt that he chose. A pink floral design.
Jim and Stu are chatting, and General Starkey is in charge here. Jim warns Stu not to fuck with Cobb. Jim is stuck there as well. Jim has to chat with the WHO (World Health Organization) and give them terrifying statistics. And Jim coughed.
Harold visits Fran’s house. He finds Fran in a bathtub with a bunch of pills on the floor. He forces her to puke and she mentions the cornfield. They listen to “Changes” by Black Sabbath. Such an improvement over the song in the original. Fran isn’t happy that Harold rescued her. Fran is the one that put the nail in his room to hang up all the rejection letters when she was babysitting Harold years ago. He tells her that they are the future. Harold proposes going to the CDC in Atlanta. They have this awkwardness. She leans on him and he smiles. He’s misreading the situation.
Stu wakes up and hears a baby and sees a cornfield outside his room. He finds a wolf with red eyes and no baby in the clearing. Jim visits and he is sick now. Cobb is also sick, everyone there is sick aside from Stu. Jim is planning on killing himself. Starkey has shut down everything in the building. Jim gives Stu a scalpel. A door opens, it is Cobb and he looks like hell. Cobb shoots Jim and Stu slits Cobb’s throat. The elevator door opens and Starkey invites him in.
General Starkey was originally played by the great Ed Harris, another man who made an impact in the Stephen King film world in Needful Things. In this version of The Stand, J.K. Simmons has the role. I don’t know what role he is most famous for, I’m guessing J. Jonah Jameson in the Toby Maguire Spider-Man films. For me, I prefer him in Thank You For Not Smoking.
Stu and Starkey finally meet face to face and Starkey is looking at videos of all the chaos outside. Starkey claims that Cobb wasn’t under his directive. Starkey hasn’t heard from Comms in over 2 days and Cobb was just following his orders. Stu asks if he is free to go. Starkey shows Stu a poetry book by Yates that his daughter gave him years ago. He had never opened it prior. Starkey said the soldiers did much better than the predictive models. Stu is fucking naive. He was shocked that the government had plans for this scenario. Yeah, of course, they do. Those plans don’t always play out as expected, as we are currently learning, or maybe they’re going exactly as predicted. How am I to know? Starkey tells Stu to take a key card and take the emergency exit and get to the ground level. Starkey reads Stu a poem. Starkey shoots himself in the chest. Stu is trying to find his way out and finally escapes.
Harold keeps spray painting messages in case somebody else wants to follow them. Fran and Harold take off on their bikes.
Back to Boulder. Harold likes Pride and Hate. Teddy almost falls and Harold saves his ass. Harold has a nickname, Hawk. Teddy found an amphitheater and he sets up chairs, and this is where he wants to show the movies. Harold’s letter that he typed is troubling. In his dream, he sees the wolf and neon lights of sexy girls. And then a spotlight shines on Harold. Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” plays and there he finally is. We get to finally see Randall Flagg, who hands Harold a black stone that has a glow to it. Harold has practiced being fake and friendly.
The next day Harold finds a very pregnant Fran and Stu together getting some food. The fuck? And Harold hates Stu and Frannie. They deserve it. Why did they just show that? They just gave away so much information without building it up. What could possess them to show this stuff that early?
We then get to see Campion getting the call and we see the shit go bad. Lockdown has been initiated in 2 minutes and 37 seconds. The door was supposed to close, but there was a mysterious foot keeping it open until Campion could exit. Gee, I wonder whose foot that was. He wakes up his family and evacuates. Oh, there is Randall walking alongside the road as a hitchhiker. Campion doesn’t pick him up, but Randall appears in the backseat with Campion’s daughter.
The music is good, at the very least.
End Episode 1 “The End”
Where I do even begin? I hated how they are telling the story so far out of order. I hated it initially, but to reveal Frannie is pregnant and with Stu….it was so fucking unnecessary and gives away too much to a viewer that doesn’t know the story. Just imagine that you don’t know the story, right? Wouldn’t you prefer to see how Stu steps in on Harold’s action and Harold’s slow turn to evil as opposed to just finding this out randomly, way too early? I’m sorry, that is basic fucking storytelling. How do you fuck that up?
Also, why leave Campion’s story prior to his death until the end of the first episode? Hypothetically, say you still wanted to do this disjointed fuckery of storytelling. At the very fucking least, wouldn’t you still want to show Campion’s scene up to him approaching Hap’s station? Then you could skip ahead in time with body removal. That sets the stage, at the very least. But no, they don’t give a fuck about what you want.
God damnit, this was supposed to be one of the 3 best episodes. Think back to 1994’s The Stand. The first of four parts was the best, by far. The beginning of a plague or apocalypse story is always the best aspect. They just told us all to go fuck ourselves.
To make a positive note, a lot of the acting was good. The casting of Harol, Fran, Starkey, Campion, Jim, and Mother Abigail were all good so far. I feel bad that Campion didn’t get more time to shine. James Marsden isn’t bad, but I don’t understand the lack of a thick Texas accent. I feel like he’s from Ohio and not Texas. Alexander Skarsgard as Randall doesn’t look right to me, but he hasn’t done anything to really grade him on yet.
After one episode, I noticed something funny. The biggest worry that I had heading into watching this was the casting. So far, that has been the least of my concerns. It’s the pacing and the way that they’re telling the story that is breaking my balls. They also didn’t really show the military come in and take over Arnette, TX. That was such a good scene and all they did was talk about it without showing the horror of the situation. A fleet of military arriving in a small town and just kidnapping you is fucking terrifying. Why wouldn’t you take the time to show that? Also, is it me or does it seem like this gave Harold far more shine than expected? I’m not complaining because I like how they portrayed Harold here. They gave him more depth.
Final Rating – 0.5 – This should have been an easy 1.0. Just follow the story in the book. It’s a really simple premise.
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