If you ever wanted a little supernatural mixed in with your Yellowstone, I've got the show for you! -- Outer Range

Cafe Society
1

Anybody else watching? I’ve been enjoying it. I’m a little annoyed it’s a weekly release though.

“Outer Range centers on Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin), a rancher fighting for his land and family, who discovers an unfathomable mystery at the edge of Wyoming’s wilderness. A thrilling Western family saga with hints of wry humor and supernatural mystery, Outer Range examines how we grapple with the unknown.”

2

I’m watching. Waiting for a giant bony arm holding a scythe to come up from the hole. Maybe Royal can’t remember his childhood because it happens in the future and he is his own grandfather, or some equally weird sequence of events has will been going to happen. Grammar makes no sense once time travel comes into play.

3

I knew what you were talking about when I saw the title.

I watched some a while back. Earlier today I was checking to see if the new episode had come out and discovered that six were out! And that I had only watched one instead of the two or three that I thought!

Misremembering one episode as two or three tells you how tedious I found it. But I plan on trying again.

4

Yeah, you should definitely give it at least another two episodes. The first episode was a little slow.

5

Huh. I thought only two episodes had come out… Time travel causes such problems…

6

I think it’s two episodes every other week. No idea why they’re doing it like that.

7

It turns out that they are releasing two per week. And episodes 5 and 6 came out today. So we are a little less crazy.

8

I’ve been watching, and yeah it is two episodes per week. It seems like it could be interesting, I think several of the characters are well acted. Brolin and Imogen Poots (Autumn) have had great scenes. Lili Taylor (Royal’s wife Cecilia has done well), as has Will Patton as Wayne Tillerson. The Native American interim sheriff (Tamara Podemski) has had some good scenes as well.

I like the look/feel of it and the acting.

Narratively it’s kinda weird, I feel like it’s going to be one of those things where by end of this season the grand mystery needs some sort of come home moment that makes it all interesting enough to say it was good. On the flipside there is a chance the big mystery is something trite and dumb and kinda kill sit, or that they refuse to disclose it in an attempt to drag it out for multiple seasons (ala Lost in the 2000s.)

9

Okay, I’m caught up to episode 6. The show needs about 500% more time-hole and about 80% less family drama.

10

And about 110% less evil family singing.

11

Well shoot. I did NOT see that coming. (EP.8)

12

Was Episode 8 the last one? If so, I have so many questions…

13

Yes. The word is we’ll probably get another season but nothing has been confirmed yet.

14

I’ll spoiler my questions since it’s still Friday:

  1. So, wth is the hole?? Obviously some form of time/dimensional portal. But it can move around? And spew crude oil?

  2. Were the bison some sort of parable? They seemed to be physically real, so were the native Americans hunting them also real?

  3. How did Amy and Autumn exist in the same time/place?

  4. Why did Rebecca come get Amy at that point?

15

I edited the title to include the name of the show.

16

Since we don’t know any rules for how time travel works in this story, there is no way of knowing if the old “two versions can’t exist at the same time” trope would even apply.

17

And I don’t know if this was ever a trope to begin with. I only remember that being said in one movie. And I can’t even remember the name of that movie (Time Cop maybe?)

18

Yes. (Plus extra unneeded writing because of stupid fucking Discourse.)

19

I assumed from the moment she showed up that she was somehow related to him. (I guessed sister.)

20

Lots of spoilers below. I primarily tuned into this show because I like most of Brolin’s work and I usually like both Westerns and Sci-Fi, so it seemed like it could be good. While the show had some high points in the first 6 episodes (some of the actors have done great, a few have been weak), the pacing felt pretty bad for an 8 episode show and it felt like we were getting enmeshed into some side stories that don’t relate well to the core mystery of the series which…again, in an 8 episode season 1 that could be a problem.

The last two episodes I think mostly cleaned up the pacing issues, and made me feel more favorable about S1 as a whole. I’m still left thinking the show has a lot of potential but a lot of it hasn’t been realized on screen yet, it sounded like S2 was all but certain so they have another batch of episodes to figure it out, but I wouldn’t bet on an S3 unless S2 really delivers, so hopefully they have a good game plan on where they are going.

Some take aways from S1 in no particular order:

  • The magic “time stuff” appears to exist in a form that is both similar to powdered coal, but can also exist in a liquid solution that appears like crude oil
  • It appears to readily absorb into the human body both by ingestion and skin contact
  • When absorbed it does “weird time stuff”, that’s unclear if it’s just seeing visions (which was typical) or even more
  • It appears that it has to be kept in some sort of stabilization medium for long term storage (Autumn/Amy’s amber pendant, that special crystal rock that Wayne had which had particles of it embedded inside)
  • The “hole” appears to open and close with some element of “intelligence”, it opened for Royal when he desperately felt he needed it back in the 1880s, and seems to have closed in the early 70s or late 60s right after he came through and scared Wayne. However it also closed up once Perry jumped through (but not when Royal was pushed in by Autumn/Amy or when Royal threw Trevor into it.)
  • The hole obviously allows what we can assume is genuine time travel, or maybe some weird interdimensional travel between parallel worlds with asynchronous timelines, but with no clear indicator as to how it is controlled–for example Royal jumped forward nearly 80 years initially and the hole closed behind him, but when Autumn pushed him in he went forward what appeared to be a few years (possibly as few as 2), and he was able to jump back out into the story’s main timeline
  • It is unclear what happened to Perry, as the last sign of him is him moving motionlessly and frozen through the hole
  • Billy despite coming off stupid, was incredibly insightful in many ways, particularly when he speculated that Trevor was somewhere in “uncreated space” outside of our reality
  • Luke Tillerson likely took a shot at Royal on the future side of the hole because he knew Royal had killed Billy multiple years before
  • There are a lot of unanswered questions about that glimpse a few years into the future.
    – What is the mysterious company whose logo was all over the drilling equipment? It is the same company the University of Wyoming geologist that Royal goes to meet is affiliated with, but its role / purpose is unclear.
    – What exactly are people hoping to gain by extracting the “time material”, how can it be put to practical / controlled use (so far while it allows some weird shit, it seems very chaotic and uncontrollable.)
    – Why exactly was Luke and Lili and a military unit just chilling at the drill site in the future? It would seem Royal must have interrupted some event, because it doesn’t seem likely that after being dispossessed of the land Lili would just be chilling in that area. It seems like Royal was weirdly brought to that specific time with some specific reason.
  • Lots of big questions about Autumn/Amy
    – How exactly does Amy become autumn? She said a very weird mantra in the scene where she is staring at the bathroom mirror that make me suspect she had received some weird indoctrination in her life. Obviously this didn’t occur while she was being raised on the ranch, so must have occurred after. Presumably wherever Rebecca takes her.
    – Rebecca likely has some relationship with the time travel stuff, since we have to assume Autumn/Amy gets time traveled BACK in time at some point–maybe she was even “raised” in the past. I think Amy was like 9 years old, Imogen Poots who plays Autumn is actually 33 but I got the impression they were intending Autumn to be seen as a woman in her mid 20s, so we have at least a 15-year “time gap” for Amy. Maybe Rebecca takes her back somewhere 15 years before the main timeline, and then she "ages in the past and “catches up” to the main timeline as a grown woman.
    – How does Autumn/Amy have a trust fund, Rebecca wasn’t wealthy as far as we know.