[Editor’s note: The following containsspoilersforThe Stand, Season 1, Episode 4, “The House of the Dead."]
Stephen KingbeginsThe Stand, his three-book apocalyptic novel about good vs. evil, at just about the start of a pandemic outbreak. What exactly happened – a spilled beaker, a dropped test tube, a ripped hazmat suit – that led to the introduction of a government-made lethal flu to a human, we may never know. As for how it got out of the facility, that is quite clear. A working soldier named Campion made it through a door that was supposed to have auto-locked sooner. As he fled, he brought the deadly disease that came to be nicknamed “Captain Trips,” across the base, to his wife and daughter, and into the world.
In this CBS All Access version of King’sThe Stand, that sequence does play out, but it finds a place at the conclusion of Episode 1 – “The End” – a hint that this adaptation of the story is heavy on the post-pandemic good vs. evil battle and light on how the flu spread and billions died.
In fact, after a quick tease of Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg) telling someone or more than someone that God wants them to go West (a real axis the book pivots on), this TV version picks up deep into Book II, as one of humanity’s survivors, Harold Emery Lauder (Owen Teague) – a resident of the Free Zone in Boulder, Colorado – vomits while performing volunteer duty to help clear the remains of the months-long dead scattered across the city.
While the book jumps from point-of-view character to POV character, its format is fairly linear. The only real exceptions to that are when King explains what was happening to another POV character at the same time, but in a different place, or when someone has some sort of supernatural-related dream. Here though, the series employs flashback and flashforward sequences frequently to weave its tale.
Those who have readThe Stand, which King added to more than a decade after its initial publishing (and it is this updated-and-currently-available version we are using for comparison), are aware it is a long novel. So, to condense it into limited series form – even with a span of 9 episodes – will certainly force the leaving out of quite a bit of the trimmings.
So, let’s start with the meat the first episode gave us: Harold.
A flashback introduces the pre-pandemic Harold, a bullied high schooler with a crush on his former babysitter (Frannie Goldsmith). He has a passion for writing, an even more passionate temper (he cracks his laptop in half after receiving a writing-related rejection letter, which also moves the series forward in time given that the book takes place, mostly, in 1990), and an ability to move on from the death of his family and town quickly and without mourning. Instead, we see him almost gleefully planning – and practicing the lines for – his post-pandemic life with Fran. Quite how deep his feelings go for Fran are definitely explored, but don’t get as death-defying as him painting their names while teetering on the edge of a barn roof (he just spray paints them and the direction they are headed on a wall) or carving their initials in a post.
What we do not get, though, in this episode at least, is Frannie’s (Odessa Young) substantial backstory. She is a major POV character in the novel, who readers spend quite a bit of time inside the mind of (more than Harold, at least). Her pregnancy is hinted at in a flash-forward, but how she got pregnant is left out — so is the moving connection she had to her father.
In the series, it’s through Harold’s peep through the fence that reveals Fran had something to tell her dad, but the show leaves out whether that conversation ever took place. “The End” shows Fran dressing and burying her father after he succumbs to Capt. Trips — left numb, a silent Fran listens to a coughing President’s address where he emphatically claims the US didn’t create the flu in a lab. The series, though, paints her mourning with wide, wordless brushstrokes, and in a twist not from the book, Harold finds her passed out in a tub after swallowing a bottle of pills in what’s clearly a suicide attempt. He makes her vomit them out and gets a good guy sheen – for a little while, at least.
In the first episode, we also meet POV character Stu Redman (James Marsden), whose backstory covers his time being held as a lab rat by the military as they attempted to use his flu-immunity to find a vaccine. Marsden’s version of the character, though, isn’t as fearful as book Stu, and quite happily submits to various scans and fluid tests after a kindly doc asks him what his late wife – a nurse – would want him to do.
In his interactions with the doctors, captains, and even a general Starkey (Oscar-winnerJ.K. Simmons, making a surprise cameo), we get a Stu who is always looking for an escape route or information on how to break out of the Vermont facility he’s confined to. He certainly comes across as braver and more resourceful (read: badass) than book Stu, whose escape from the top-secret government location seems driven by primal instinct.
As the first episode pushes to conclusion, it pays short shrift to Harold’s psychological development, which the novel explores. While he is respected in the Free Zone, he’s unwilling to let go of grudges new or old – including a murderous one for Stu, who is seen paired romantically with Fran in the future. While there is no time for their story, like how Stu and Fran even met, making the cut in the premiere is a montage of Harold practicing his game face (a smile he models afterTom Cruise) which disguises his real feelings.
While the premiere shies away from introducing Nick, Lloyd, Tom, Glen, Larry, Nadine, Joe, or Rita, another important character gets a couple of brief nods – Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård). His trademark Western boots crop up (holding open the door for Campion’s escape), his shadow squares up with Harold in a dream sequence, and the full Randall turns up smiling in the back seat of Campion’s car as the virus-carrying man drives his family down the road – a much earlier full look than in the book at the “evil” figure in the story.
Episode 2: “Pocket Savior”
Larry and Lloyd took center stage inThe Stand’s second episode on CBS All Access. The story of how Lloyd Henried (Nat Wolff) ended up in jail (following an interstate robbing and murder spree with his trigger-happy late companion Poke) is sped up, but keeps close to King’s narrative. So does Lloyd’s get out of jail not-quite-free tale, which comes after Captain Trips kills everyone in his cell block, leaving him starving and feasting on a rat and his bunkmate’s calf. In another book-to-screen match,The Standfinally introduces Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård) with more than a dream scene, as he saunters down the cell block hall and offers Lloyd the key to freedom in return for a pledge of loyalty. Lloyd, obviously accepts.
Musician Larry Underwood (Jovan Adepo) is an African-American character in this adaptation (he’s Caucasian in the book) and instead of returning to NYC quietly after blowing his record company advances and then some on a beach house and coke-fueled party in LA, TV Larry hits the stage for a gig in the Big Apple as the pandemic takes root. Keyboardist and briefly appearing character Wayne, though, isn’t the decent guy who takes his bandmate on a morning beach walk to set him straight (stop the partying! You have a chance to make it!). Here, he’s a bitter artist who claims Larry stole his hook and chorus for the much mentioned in the novel, “Baby Can You Dig Your Man!” hit single. TV Wayne confronts Larry a second time, but he’s too weak from the superflu and Larry leaves him to die next to his car (but in an off-book twist, takes his duffel bag of drugs from the trunk).
As the world begins to fall apart and humans become scarce, Larry doesn’t stay alone for long. He has a picturesque meeting with Rita Blakemoor (Heather Graham) that is almost (absent a zoo) straight off the page. The musician and slightly-older wealthy New Yorker pair up, but their exit from New York gets a little tweaking. Instead of climbing over bodies in a dark Lincoln tunnel, the two begin their escape through a rat-infested sewer.
Episode 3: “Blank Page”
This week, the show finally gives a proper introduction to Nick Andros (Henry Zaga) – who is quickly set up as one of Mother Abigail’s closest. TV Nick is the son of an immigrant mother from El Salvador, something revealed by dream-sequence Randall Flagg (book Nick is from Nebraska), who offers Nick hearing and a voice if he pledges to worship him. Just like in the book, Nick takes a hard pass and becomes the voice of Mother Abigail in Boulder, Colorado. Pandemic-era Nick losing an eye after being beat up by some town hooligans happens, but the novel’s storyline, in which a sheriff takes Nick under his wing (and deputizes him) before passing away due to Capt. Trips, doesn’t make the cut. We do, however, get Nick’s introduction to Tom Cullen (Brad William Henke), the developmentally disabled 41-year-old who we expect will have a much bigger role to play later on (although their intro is condensed).
It’s also the week where Stu Redman crosses paths with Frannie Goldsmith and Harold Lauder on the road, but in the CBS All Access adaptation, it occurs before he meets quirky professor Glenn Bateman (played byGreg Kinnear). TV Harold is just as irritated seeing the handsome Stu as book Harold, and makes it pretty clear that he has no intention of letting the good-looking East Texan join their party. Unfortunately, that memorable scene from King’s book, where Stu takes Harold aside and promises him he has no romantic intentions toward Frannie (and, at the time, means it) doesn’t take place. It’ll be interesting to see if that man-to-man talk comes in later, or how its absence impacts things when Stu and Frannie get together (as was set up in the first episode’s flash-forward).
Nadine’s (Amber Heard) orphan childhood, where she learned through planchette (a spirit-contacting game) that she was meant for Randall Flagg, gets revealed in a flashback. Boulder Free Zone Nadine sees Flagg during an adult planchette sesh, and he asks her to murder the leadership that’s quickly springing up in the Boulder Free Zone (Frannie, Nick, Stu, Larry, and Glenn) with a weapon he’s chosen (Harold), in a tweak on the way that plot is planned out in the book.
Flagg gets plenty of screen time – even in another form. He appears through the body of an escapee from his Las Vegas territory (who has crucifixion scars) and threatens Mother Abigail in the presence of the Boulder leadership. It’s another twist, but gets the main point across from the book — that Las Vegas is “bad” and wants war with the “good” Boulder.
Episode 4: “The House of The Dead”
After the warning from last week’s possessed visitor from Las Vegas, the Boulder Committee – Nick, Glenn, Stu, Frannie and Larry – decide (in episode 4, “The House of the Dead”) they need to learn more about Randall Flagg’s plans. So, it’s time to recruit some spies and send them in.
Glenn suggests Tom Cullen (Nick’s idea in the book) for the job, leading to more of the Nick/Tom backstory. On their way to Mother Abigail’s, the pair came across a young woman named Julie Lawry (ArrowandShadowhuntersstarKatharine McNamara), who made a move on Nick. They kissed, but when she cruelly made fun of Tom, Nick left her behind.
An older woman is also recruited to spy (in the book, it’s a male doctor), and so is Dayna Jurgens (Natalie Martinez), the latter Frannie’s suggestion. In the TV version, we learn the two met on the road when a man attempted to kidnap Fran and add her to his “pride”/harem and tried to kill Harold (until Stu and Glenn rode up, which created a bit of a distraction and gave Dayna the opportunity she needed to bludgeon her captor to death).
After Stu and Glenn joined Fran, Dayna and Harold in the on-the-road flashback, the story finally showed how Stu and Fran began to grow close. He became the first person she told of her pregnancy – beyond her late father, a conversation that was only alluded to in the first episode (where most of her story came through the eyes of Harold).
Nadine’s storyline was also advanced. Book Harold was already writing in his journal, stewing over Stu and plotting his love rival’s death when Nadine arrived on his doorstep. She turned to Harold after being rejected by book Larry (she made a pass at him in one last attempt to skip out on her destiny to pair up with Flagg). In the TV version, Nadine doesn’t have a romantic connection to Larry or conflict over whether joining Flagg is the right thing to do. TV Nadine heads over to Harold’s and engages in somewhat of a seduction (as long as she stays a virgin, she says) to help drive his obsession with killing Stu (and the rest of the committee). She helps him find dynamite and even murders the one guy in town who liked Harold when he catches them unloading the volatile substance from a shipping crate.
New episodes ofThe Standwill premiere Thursdays on CBS All Access. For more on the show, read our own Vinnie Mancuso’sreview of the first several episodes. We will update this post regularly with each new episode.
