What did we learn during this short second season of Outer range? This is not a rhetorical question; It’s hard for me to remember it.
Young Royal killed his abusive father to save Joy, rather than shooting him in a “hunting accident,” that was new news. Perry creates a pergent timeline by stopping his former self from killing Trevor Tillerson and then takes his own place when Trevor accidentally kills Perry’s former self, also new. Rhett becomes a traitor from the blue sky and sells himself to Dr. Bintu – that’s number three.
Anything else?
Actually no. Did anything about the seven hours of television we just watched mean anything in the end? An ending that, in one of the most egregious uses of cliché instead of depth you’ll see on TV all year, the show assures us is “just the beginning”?
From a plot perspective, I don’t think so. We are no closer to knowing anything about the nature of the hole, its relationship to the mineral, or how any of them function as portals or inducers of psychic power. We haven’t returned or moved forward significantly toward the dystopian future that Royal glimpsed in the show’s early episodes. Autumn’s cult of personality is still just a bunch of extras in yellow jumpsuits in gauzy visions and flash-forwards; We know exactly nothing about how they formed or what they believe. That mountain that disappeared long ago? How did that happen? Because that happens? Yes, your guess is as good as mine.
The western pastures of the Abbott ranch are still there, and the same parties (the Abbotts, the Tillersons, and the interests represented by Dr. Bintu) are still interested in controlling it. Rhett and Maria are still trapped in Wabang. Perry and Rebecca are still estranged. Amy is still missing, even if she is now because she was thrown into the portal by the machinations of her older self, Autumn. Grief-deranged people are still jumping through portals to create cliffhanger endings, although this time it’s a grief-deranged Wayne Tillerson instead of a grief-deranged Perry Abbott.
Minimal movement is the best we can hope for here, and even then there is no guarantee that the movement will go in the right direction. Stealing from her job is something new for Maria, but it’s such a small beer compared to murder and time portals that I can’t imagine anyone would care. Autumn is shot, apparently to death, but awakens when Amy, displaced by the portal, does so (in a desert, found by hikers). The emergence of a new timeline and time frame through Perry, whose story will now take place during the early days of the story in general, is… well, frankly, I think it’s going to confuse the issue, not to mention which will leave the prodigiously talented Tom Pelphrey still feeling removed from the main flow of the drama. Royal and Joy, the two most emotionally engaging characters on the show, teaming up to stop Autumn, is the only truly exciting development.
It’s curious how much Outer range it reminds me of Western world, the sci-fi western that is almost certainly the reason this show was greenlit in the first place before crashing and burning. He is equally lost in his desire to be mysterious and to answer every question with a new question; you need a stronger foundation than this for a genre story to work. Coincidentally, the best episodes of both shows were self-contained, emotionally engaging action-adventure stories also set among 19th-century Native American communities.
Unfortunately, the expected sophomore surprise that would have made Outer range What there is to see never materialized. The revitalization of Joy and Luke as characters, that magnificent episode from the 1880s, were the exceptions to Outer rangeIt’s a second season afloat, rather than the rule. Watching this show is like jumping into a hole in time, only to return to where you started.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television forRolling Stone,Vulture,The New York TimesandAnywhere that has it, In fact. He and his family live on Long Island.
