‘Outer Range’ Season 2 Review - Falling In and Out of the Hole

The first season of Outer Range was a chore to watch. Its inconsistent tone swung between being portentous and weird, which left you frustrated. Season 1 failed to be an effective sci-fi mystery, comedy, or drama. Every episode went on and on like a blabbering drunk stranger to whom you just want to say, "Shut up!" The exhausting first season ended with a bison stampede and a fatally injured Billy (Noah Reid) and Autumn (Imogen Poots). Season 2 picks up right after the events of the first season, and the first thing it tells us is that both Billy and Autumn are not dead. What the new season also gradually reveals to us is that it has come with a tone that is much, much better than the previous season's. Outer Range still breaks away from realism and ventures into the realm of the absurd (a man floats in the air while his father lovingly looks at him), but the shift this time doesn't feel jarring at all.

Yet, Season 2 grapples with a significant issue that plagued Season 1: Nothing here feels consequential. By eschewing the typical visual effects-driven spectacle, creator Brian Watkins may have aimed to ground the show in "realism." The massive hole, serving as a time travel portal, thrusts characters into the past/present/future, leading to familial encounters like the one between Perry (Tom Pelphrey) and a young Royal (Christian James). It's evident that Outer Range aspires to be something akin to Netflix's Dark. Dark, though, utilized its somber tone to accentuate its intelligence. It was intriguing as hell, which is a compliment you cannot extend to Outer Range. Here, the events appear bland. The first season fills you with tedium, while the second one simply leaves you unmoved, prompting a dismissive reaction.

Deputy Sheriff Joy (Tamara Podemski) finds herself in 1882, where she meets a 9-year-old Royal (Teaguen Arbogast). Joy apparently is stuck there for almost four years, which naturally leaves her longing for her wife and daughter. But we never get to feel Joy's longing. Her pain of being away from her loved ones is reduced to a footnote; in one of the episodes, she just returns to her home. Her four-year journey (a large portion of it) occurs off-screen, and we get one episode dedicated to telling us how she manages to return to her year. Outer Range fails to mine ache from Joy's situation, so it fails to serve as a drama. The Abbott family is asked to arrange $500,000 bail money within a short duration of time, yet there is no sense of urgency in this thread. In fact, you forget all about the bail money after a while. Hence, you cannot put Outer Range under the category of a race-against-the-time thriller.

At least one of the issues could have been solved if Outer Range had given more screen time to Patricia (Deirdre O'Connell), not Wayne (Will Patton). Wayne, like his sons Billy and Luke (Shaun Sipos), only manages to dream big. His goals remain unfulfilled, which is why everything about him screams redundant. In the first season, Billy, like a dog, roamed around Autumn. Luke repeats the same behavior in this season. These boys look weak in front of Patricia, who, just with her brief appearance, fills the screen with vigor. She gets the best scene in the whole series when Wayne utters, "If I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on justice, I will render vengeance on my adversaries. Deuteronomy, chapter 32...verse 41" and a confounded Patricia replies, "How about Wabang Sheriff, 9-1-1?" O'Connell turns out to be funnier, and more interesting than all the other actors. Even Josh Brolin doesn't pull you in as energetically as O'Connell does in her brief appearance.

Watch Season 2 right after Season 1, and you will at least have fun making connections between the two seasons. For instance, Autumn initially denies that she is Amy, but when you see Amy on a swing while her mother listens to a cult leader, you remember that, in the first season, Autumn told Royal that she was in a cult. Moreover, when you notice a bison with arrows on its body, you recall that scene from the previous season where a character took out an arrow from the body of a bison (did the bison, too, fall into the hole?). It's all good as a timepass because it doesn't really make the series any better. I also want to ask why the older Royal (Brolin) doesn't remember the face of his son when he met him in the past, but a series like this purposefully leaves things vague or unresolved so that it can surprise us in the future. A point that looks like a plot hole now turns out to be significant later. This means all you can do is put your faith in the writers. Trust that they know what they are doing and will surely satisfy your queries in the upcoming season(s). I only wish someone had focussed on making the journey better instead of teasing us with the rewards of the destination.

Final Score- [5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times