Another Stephen King adaptation has taken shape. This time in the mien of a police procedural show, where a gruesome murder sends a sylvan town into a state of panic and anger. In HBO’s The Outsider, a little boy named Frankie Peterson (Duncan E. Clark) is found dead in the woods, discovered by a man with a dog. Most shows wouldn’t dare show such grisly imagery of a child, but The Outsider disturbingly, if only fleetingly, captures the kid’s decapitated head and severed body. Right away, The Outsider bruises you.
In the fictitious community of Flint City, Oklahoma. everybody knows everybody — a habitual set-up for many King stories. Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn of Bloodline & Ready Player One) investigates, though it doesn’t seem to be a tough case to crack as stacks of forensic and eyewitness evidence point to beloved local teacher and baseball coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman, who also executive produced the series and directed its first two episodes). But television footage of Terry at a Literary Conference 60 miles aways performs against the DA’s evidence, thus putting Maitland in two places at once, an incredibly incoherent predicament that can only go one way.
“Fish In A Barrel”: One Murderer, Two Places At Once?
The series opens up to a succession of drone shots that capture the idyllic town of Flint City, Oklahoma. The town’s peaceful and quaint, unruffled by violence and chaos. After Frankie’s body is found, Detective Ralph Anderson is called on the scene to investigate. He’s then able to get a couple of eyewitness statements. One woman recounts seeing Terry in the parking lot of the grocery store, picking up Frankie in his van. A child also remembers seeing Terry coming out of the woods, covered in blood, and blaming it on a bloody nose.
A sleazy strip club manager named Claude Bolton (a convincingly barmy Paddy Considine) recalls seeing Terry coming into the club and changing his blood-stained clothes in the bathroom, despite not having any new threads on him (is the restroom a wardrobe? Did he hide clothes in the restroom?). Actual surveillance footage clearly shows Terry in these situations, as if Terry wanted to be caught. So yes, it’s all very peculiar and intriguing, especially when Terry declares his innocence against a heap of evidence.
As viewers, we’re also caught between clashing perspectives. If Terry didn’t do it, a look-alike must have done it, right? Early on, it’s made clear that we’re not supposed to fully anathematize Terry for Frankie’s murder; otherwise, a down-to-earth teacher and little league coach is one hell of a veneer, Terry is one of the worst criminals on the planet, and this series will conclude sooner than expected. Jason Bateman’s subdued performance as the suspected child murderer Terry is somewhat memorable.
Through fervid face acting that exudes genuine confusion and fear, Bateman is wonderfully muted and restrained. Without the collection of evidence, you have no reason to suspect Terry. With a loving wife, Glory (an emotionally on-edge Julianne Nicholson), and two daughters, it’s difficult to believe a suburban father and baseball coach would be capable of such turpitude. Then again, no one knows anything about anyone. That may be, but The Outsider also has to last 10 episodes, so there are more schemes at play, and more characters to be wary of.
For Detective Ralph Anderson, Frankie’s demise is intensely disheartening and personal. We quickly realize that Anderson lost his own son a while back, who was also a part of Terry’s little league baseball team. Fueled by unbounded rancor and rage, after getting a warrant to arrest Terry, he makes the ill-advised decision to arrest Terry at a baseball game, where a large part of the community sits watching a good old-fashioned American game of baseball.
A completely confounded Terry peacefully succumbs to the arresting officers, who take him in a cop car with a disgruntled Ralph, who angrily asks, “Did you ever touch my kid?” Ben Mendelsohn’s performance is one of the highlights of the premiere, as he brings a tactile sense of dejection and anger to the Anderson character, that’s told through eyes that have seen so much, and a corroding heart that’s steering most of what Anderson does. Mendelsohn is compellingly equipped with a moody demeanor.
Anderson and the District Attorney (Michael Esper) have all the evidence they need in the eyewitnesses and the blood uncovered in the van that was used to kidnap Frankie. Weirdly, Terry never saw the van, and he sticks with the story that he was out-of-town at a conference for English teachers. Howie Gold (an infectiously forceful Bill Camp), Terry’s unflagging lawyer, looks for evidence showing Terry at the conference. While Terry is held in prison, threatened by other inmates, Howie goes digging.
Thankfully, for Terry, Howie finds a local public access TV station that was taping the conference, and unearths incontrovertible evidence: live video showing Terry asking a question during a panel, meaning he couldn’t have been in town kidnapping, and ultimately murdering, Frankie. The two places at once machination is keenly fascinating and baffling for audiences and characters alike, Anderson included.
The premiere is infused with a lugubrious atmosphere and a sober mood. Directed by Jason Bateman, the episode is compiled by telling close-up shots and static shots that stay back from the action — a spellbinding concoction that works to understand the characters, emotionally, while also leaving room for them to breathe and react. Joy Peterson (an emotionally tense Claire Bronson), Frankie’s dispirited mother, perpetually unleashes her wrath until it leads to her own demise.
Woefully, Frankie’s mother dies, leaving Fred Peterson (Frank Deal) and the remaining son, Ollie Peterson (Joshua Whichard), left to deal with two family deaths. Richard Price’s script (inspired by King’s novel) may be propelling the action a bit quicker than necessary in the series premiere, but The Outsider deftly plants the seed of intrigue, and you become instantly spellbound.
“Roanoke”: When Tragedy Befalls, Anderson Must Pick Up The Pieces
The long opening sequence of episode two follows Ralph Anderson as he’s being led through the prison late at night. Anderson is meeting Terry, off-the-record. Anderson has now acknowledged how frustrating this case is turning out to be; there’s a part of him that believes Terry, and another part of him that doesn’t. Bluntly, Anderson came to discuss how the van with the New York plates and with Terry’s fingerprints ends up here, but Terry is as clueless as Anderson.
This opening scene brings two men, two adversaries, together to seek any truth in a case that’s shrouded in grueling mystery that is literally garbled. In a risky monologue, Terry goes on to answer if he ever touched Anderson’s child. Terry talks about how he taught his son to bunt, and how he nurtured him into a talented baseball player who never let his height or teammates discourage him. Powerfully told by a truly sympathetic Terry, this soul-stirring monologue complicates how Anderson feels about Terry.
The second episode, which premiered immediately after the first, takes an alarming turn. As Terry is on his way to court, with the conference video now circulating around and whose innocence is still largely split between the community, a gunman intervenes, hitting two cops and Terry before Anderson takes him down. Anderson unmasks the killer and sees the face of Ollie Peterson, Frankie’s older brother. The Peterson family is the ultimate tragedy that’ll forever define this town. Frankie, Joy and Ollie are now gone, leaving Fred to contemplate suicide now that everyone he ever loved is dead. In Fred’s suicide attempt, Bateman, who once again directs this episode, chooses to place a ticking clock in the background, as if he’s counting down Fred’s final moments, and the final moments of the Peterson clan before their legacy in this town becomes a doleful tale for citizens to look back on with cheap remorse.
After the ill-fated court incident that left Terry and Ollie dead, and Glory and Fred utterly alone, Anderson is forced to take some time off after having to shoot Ollie. He’s compelled to undergo therapy and refrain from work, but we know better than to believe him. In this episode, Anderson discovers that the infamous van was stolen by a young teenager in Dayton, Ohio, around the same time Terry and his family flew to Dayton to visit Terry’s father (albeit Terry is the only one allowed to see his father because of his dementia and violent ebullitions). A grieving Glory is struggling to adapt to a life without her husband. Her daughters have no friends, and one of them is convinced that she sees a man outside her window. An unyielding and guilt-ridden Anderson seeks the help of Glory, but instead, he gets some information from her daughter, who tells him about a little cut Terry “accidentally” got from a male nurse while in Dayton.
Episode two is more leisurely paced than the season premiere. Even so, the atmosphere, tone, and direction are still palpably somber, even trailing the edge of being genuinely terrifying. Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans‘ piano-centric score is achingly plangent, helping to enliven the immensely bleak climate of The Outsider’s grisly mystery. So far, the soundtrack consists of classic Mozart and Pardison Fontaine.
There are still so many mysteries and unanswered questions to exhume: the bloody cut, the cryptic hooded figure that always lurks in the background, Terry’s clothes he wore in the surveillance footage that randomly appears on a stack of hay inside a barn, and of course, the inexplicable footage of Terry at the conference and around his hometown. Somebody must be setting him up, but who? And more importantly, how?
As Of Now, The Outsider Is Deliciously Dark, Addictive & Shocking
The Outsider is not your ordinary Stephen King horror story. No monsters are summoned, but the actions of these faulty humans are meant to be probed. Death saturates this mystery-horror hybrid, even taking Terry and the Petersons’ lives in the process. Who knows what lies beyond these two episodes, speaking as there are 8 more episodes left, and many more riddles to solve. Don’t be left out of HBO’s latest obsession.
Have you seen the two-episode premiere of The Outsider? If so, what are your thoughts on it? Let us know in the comments!
The Outsider premiered on HBO on January 12, 2020, and will continue its run every Sunday on HBO.
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