Hell yeah, bro! It took eleven episodes to get here, but Outer range has finally knocked it out of the park. Set entirely in 1886 until its final moments, the cheekily titled “Ode to Joy” is exactly that: a showcase for time-displaced Sheriff Joy Hawk and actress Tamara Podemski. Both character and performer take that attention and turn it into a star, transforming Joy into one of the show’s best characters and cementing Podemski as, perhaps, the equal and opposite reaction to Josh Brolin’s Royal Abbott.
But more than that, this episode proves that the action in the season premiere, in which Joy found herself in the middle of a breathless battle between horseback warriors, was no fluke. With a fantastic script by Aïda Mashaka Croal and Randy Redroad, director Blackhorse Lowe delivers a clinic in action and suspense. The quest of Joy and her young friend Flowers (Lily Joy Winder) to defeat and escape their white captors and pursuers deals with real-world sociopolitical horrors sensitively without being afraid to use them as fuel for powerful genre storytelling.
The plot of the episode is simple. In the late 19th century, Joy has been living among her Shoshone ancestors for four years, with her Led Zeppelin-loving friend Falling Star by her side. But Falling Star, a trained nurse, knows she’s dying of cancer and wants Joy to take on the role of liaison to the “settlers,” whose government-appointed representative, Carson Krum (Mark Sivertsen), seems like a pretty decent guy. .
However, as is often the case with this shoe, the bison are the harbinger of doom. When young hunters Flowers and Mountain Lion (River Novin) shoot a bison (it’s the same bison with two arrows sticking out that trotted around mysteriously throughout the first season, of course), they chase it into the settlers’ territory. There, they are approached by Shelton Cape (John Ales), a gray-bearded kicker, and his men. Mountain Lion escapes, but Flowers is captured, and with all of his warriors out hunting, it’s up to former LEO Joy to come to the rescue.
And now, a personal aside. I literally cannot conceive myself as a person without Led Zeppelin. His complete ten-disc box set of studio recordings was the soundtrack of my entire adolescence. So I’m right there with Falling Star and Joy when they quote “Stairway to Heaven” at the beginning of Joy’s perilous journey. that song is absolutely consistent with such moment; quoting it is a way to show Falling Star, Joy, and Led Zeppelin with all due respect. I choked, but can you blame me? “Stairway to Heaven” was the first song I sang to my son, when he was in a small plastic box in a neonatal intensive care unit. That song means as much to me as it does to them.
Anyway, Joy heads to the rescue armed with the power of an automatic pistol (or whatever, I’m no gun expert, go home and play with your kids), a weapon that has a level of accuracy and power. of braking for which the white men of 1886 are completely unprepared. But Gage wounds her in the leg and escapes from her, practically guaranteeing a racial bloodbath once the news gets out. Joy convinces Flowers to leave her behind so she can better reach the village, giving them advance notice. This means that Joy has been left behind to die.
But he didn’t count on his closest pursuer being young Royal Sumner (Teauguen Arbogast) and his abusive father Levi (Brandon Stacy). Surprisingly, Joy, who comes from a “place” where men like Levi are considered the scum of the earth and imprisoned for such behavior, convinces Royal to kill her father instead of her.
This is the “hunt” Royal was on when he “accidentally” shot his father. This is what made him run away from her family and jump into a hole in the world. This is what also made Joy do the same, chasing the young Royal headlong despite her injured leg and falling through the bottomless void just shy of Royal’s own descent. Now you’ve seen where they both end up. Meanwhile, the white men find themselves outwitted and surrounded by returning Shoshone warriors. All’s well that ends well, at least for now.
The best thing about the highly serialized New Golden Age/Prestige TV/Peak TV storytelling is that when a standalone episode like this comes out, it really stands out. (This is why the critical craze for such episodes is meaningless: if they were common, they wouldn’t hit half as hard.) Outer range I used this to, in wrestling parlance, get Joy back on her feet: turn her into someone the crowd would cheer for, loudly. I am enormously impressed by this effort. I’m excited to see where things go from here.
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.
