It's no surprise that you're going to see a lot of reviews of Yellowstone and Outer Range. A lot of the same ingredients as Kevin Costner hit were used in the new series by Amazon. The Outer Range has a serious inclination toward the supernatural. We won't be giving away any plot points for Outer Range in this review. On the surface, at least, the similarities between Outer Range and Yellowstone are obvious. Both focus on rough-hewn ranchers who are fiercely loyal to their families, and the unexpected violence and drama they encounter while roaming around on horseback, tending cattle, chugging beers at the local honky-tonk, and dealing with the annoyance of outsiders and local politics. Costner and crew never had to deal with the sudden appearance of a giant hole in one of their vast fields, a perfectly symmetrical, seemingly bottomless pit descending into the unknown. When Royal Abbott makes a discovery that is so unnerving, he has to stand at the edge and yell. The hole changes everything for the Abbott family, not just Royal's wife Cecelia, Tom Pelphrey, and Lewis Pullman. Thanks to Outer Range's fondness for ominous voice-overs and monologues, as well as carefully chosen production design elements that feel like symbolism and omens, we have an inkling about this. The world has been waiting for something like this, and Royal informs us of it in the first episode. It is the right kind of tease for a show that might be mistaken for a Western. Outer Range runs eight episodes and will have a staggered release, with two installments rolling out weekly, bad news for bingers since episodes tend to end in cliffhangers, though the plot mostly takes a slow-burn approach. At! Along the way.
Many characters have hidden layers of their own. The big hole that isn't the hole is the disappearance of Rebecca Abbott's mother nine months prior. It isn't long enough for the family to give up hope, but it's long enough for the FBI to stop their search. Royal's past is a gaping maw. He was taken in by Cecelia's family when he showed up at the ranch one day, with no recollection of his childhood. Amy asks for it as a story for her children to read. It feels like an event.
As the story gets started, other dominoes fall on the Abbott family. Royal's lawyer calls it a good old-fashioned topographical fuckup, the fact that a certain amount of Abbott land apparently belongs to a neighboring ranch. Wayne Tillerson, the frail yet fierce matriarch of the Tillerson family, is eager to take back the land. You get the sense that it's due to something beyond greed and his rivalry with Royal, and that it definitely ties into Wayne's comments early in the first episode.
There is no love lost between Royal and Wayne's sons, a conflict that explodes in episode one and soon involves Sheriff Joy Hawk. A character that could have been written as a one-note is filled with unexpected layers.
Autumn Rivers is a harmless hippie-ish drifter looking for something in the vast prairies of rural Wyoming. She shakes his hand and says, "I'm glad to finally meet you." Her manner is friendly, but also overly familiar to the point of being domineering, and we eventually learn she has a chemical imbalance that accounts for some of her quirks. You get a strong sense that she is connected to the strange things around Royal.
One of the show's trailers made excellent, it leans heavily into darkness, a blend of both conventional Western tropes and twists so far-out you have to witness them if you want to make sense of them.
Outer Range is a more fanciful component because of the natural gravitas of the commanding presence of the man. There are also moments of warmth, as well as bizarre humor. It's not Twin Peaks, it's not Lost, it's not quite The Outer Limits, but it does venture into those directions.
The biggest mystery is whether or not Outer Range will stick the landing as it puzzles through Royal. You won't be able to stop yourself from tuning in once you start watching.
The first two episodes of Outer Range will be available on Amazon Prime on April 15.
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