Outer Range

Starring: Josh Brolin (15 episodes), Tamara Podemski (15 episodes), Imogen Poots (14 episodes), Lili Taylor (14 episodes), Tom Pelphrey (14 episodes), Lewis Pullman (14 episodes), Shaun Sipos (14 episodes), Noah Reid (13 episodes), Isabel Arraiza (13 episodes), Olive Abercrombie (13 episodes), Will Patton (13 episodes), Morningstar Angeline (11 episodes), Teaguen Arbogast (8 episodes), Matthew Maher (6 episodes), Sam Strike (5 episodes), Deirdre O'Connell (5 episodes), Christian James (5 episodes), Megan West (5 episodes), Johnny Sneed (5 episodes), Yrsa Daley-Ward (5 episodes), Monette Moio (5 episodes), William Sterchi (5 episodes), Kristen Connolly (3 episodes), Michael O'Neill (2 episodes)
Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger (2 episodes), Alonso Ruizpalacios (2 episodes), Amy Seimetz (2 episodes), Lawrence Trilling (2 episodes), Gwyneth Horder-Payton (2 episodes), Deborah Kampmeier (2 episodes), Josh Brolin (1 episode)
Rating: TV-MA
Genre: Science Fiction, Western, Drama
2022-2024

Seasons Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: The Abbott family fights to save their ranch, while the patriarch (Josh Brolin) works to keep secret a mysterious, unexplained hole on their property.

Review:
Tim: I hated Outer Range. There's no way to get around that. I started watching Amazon Prime's series because it seemed so intriguing- Josh Brolin starring in a science fiction Western about a mysterious hole in the middle of a pasture? What's not to like about that? It turns out, nearly everything. The series is big on mystery and little on everything else. I liked the first couple of episodes, but it soon proved to be an absolute slog to get through each episode. I didn't care about any of the characters. Those bland, boring characters talk so much and say so little. We get answers to questions, but none of them are especially satisfactory. When the first season ended, I prayed it would get cancelled. Unfortunately, Prime renewed the show, so I suffered through the bad second season, too. Thank the stars, the series was put out to pasture and I was put out of my misery. I read a bunch of things online and I was always stunned by the people that felt captivated by this dumb show. There's no accounting for taste.

Outer Range feels to me like a show that's all style and so little substance. What actually mattered in this series? It's so scattershot- the cast is way too big, so most of it remains underdeveloped. So many supporting characters felt pointless and like a waste of our time, but we spend so much time with them. The big mysteries might be kind of cool, but they all conclude in dead ends. What was the point of this series? What was the point of the whole narrative? It ultimately builds to nothing. It's unnecessarily obtuse in the first season, and then with a different showrunner, the second season tries to provide more answers, but it's equally as bland and boring.

I wasn't a fan of many of the characters, even when I liked the actors behind them. Josh Brolin is definitely the standout, bringing real gravitas to the character of Royal Abbott. Royal isn't a likeable character, but he's an interesting one. The series is at its best when Royal is front-and-center. So of course, it spends a lot of its time on other characters. I wasn't a fan of Imogen Poots here, which is a shame, because she gets a lot of screen time. I don't think her character was well handled and she feels very different between season one and two. Poots is overrated as an actress, and while she puts in effort here, it doesn't amount to very much. I liked Will Patton a lot, but all the series with the Tillermans were low points for me. His character feels so odd and uninteresting. I liked him better in the first season, but the more time we spend with his character, the worse it gets. His two sons, Billy and Luke never felt well-developed to me. There's the source of a lot of drama and so little of it feels worth our time. Some of the singing scenes just drove me crazy. I hated the Tillermans and nearly all the time we spend with them.

Lili Taylor bored me, too. Taylor is a solid actress, but Cecilia felt like such a bland character. Taylor gives a good performance, but she's routinely limited in what she can contribute. Tamara Podemski was a highlight, though. Joy was a fascinating, interesting, compelling character. Outside of Royal, she was probably the most complex, well-written character. She needed more screen time, because she was intriguing, a character well worth our time. Podemski is a supporting actress that elevates the character beyond the written word. I also really liked seeing Tom Pelphery here. I still had a very bad taste in my mouth from Pelphery's atrocious performance in Iron Fist, so, I have to give him credit for delivering a more consistently strong performance here. He did redeem himself in my eyes, although to be fair, he's now been in two very bad television series. Lewis Pullman was solid, but Rhett feels like he does a lot of things in this series that amounts to very little. He had strong moments throughout the seasons, but his character never makes the impact that he should. He's never quite as interesting as the series believes him to be. I'm not going to talk about anyone else- this cast was way too big and it's just diminishing returns from here.

Where the series really goes wrong is the writing. It took an interesting idea and then bumbles the execution. Over fifteen episodes, there's so much dialogue and so much it is annoying, bland, pointless. This exposition-heavy show needed to shut the heck up and show us more. The scenes of the hole, the exploration of what it was, the time travel sequences- that's when the series comes to life. Some of the action scenes that take place in the past were among the best sequences of the entire series. The sad thing is, these are limited far too much. We jump back to the Abbotts arguing, or the Tillermans having their internal squabbles and it all feels like a massive waste of our time. Each episode felt like torture. It took me a while to get through the first season because I disliked it so much. I pushed through the second season in about a week, because I was so desperate to get it over.

Outer Range sucked as a series. I still like Brolin, but he didn't do himself too many favors here. If there's a silver lining, this series reminded me that I have to be more discerning before I commit to a series. This one looked cool, but I should have waited and read a little more. As is, I felt like I wasted fifteen hours of my life. I never cared about the characters, or the boring narrative. This is a series I could have skipped and I wouldn't have missed anything special.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Series, We Recommend: The X-Files, Dispatches From Elsewhere, Iron Fist, Fringe