Harold is not being portrayed as handsome. He’s a creepy, underweight, gawky, awkward incel. There is nothing attractive about him.
The actor is attractive and he shouldn’t be, that’s his point.
I don’t think the actor is attractive at all. I think he looks very awkward. I really don’t think he would be thought of as “handsome.”
I checked out his pictures online and he doesn’t appear to be handsome in his press photos, just a normal looking young guy really. Not overly geeky like Harold but not a heartthrob either.
I keep beating the same drum but now, in episode 6 we get the Trashcan Man and his entire story is reduced to a voice over while they show a mentally slow man blow up something. How in the world would a new viewer have any clue what is happening?
Also we have Nick dying which in the book and original mini series was a great and tragic loss but here where he had all of five minutes of screen time is just a shrug. This is really not good and at this point I am in this only to see the promised new epilogue King supposedly wrote.
The shame of it is the cast is pretty good. The writing just made mistake after mistake.
The original mini series gave them the blue print. The four parts were the Plague, the Dreams, The Betrayal and The Stand. Those are the story beats. Use that as the skeleton to hang story on.
I disagree that it’s awful. I am enjoying it. But I do agree with some of the criticisms. The non-linear storyline takes away from the important reveals and makes it confusing. The transformation of Harold to Hawk is not shown. He smiles more but is still creepy. As WalterBishop mentions above you are supposed to be rooting for him at one point. He seems to be finding a place in the world that he never had until he gives in to Flagg and the dark side. Harold is also fat in the book and goes through a physical transformation in the book to go along with his transformation into Hawk.
They gave one throw away line about the baby. They should all be worried if the baby is going to die. In the book everyone is wondering if everything they are doing is futile. If the babies don’t have immunity and die at the same rate humanity is done. They don’t seem to be worried in the slightest.
I do like the casting. I liked most of the cast of the old mini series. Gary Sinese will always be Stu but Marsden does a fine job. Nadine is 1000% better in this one. I was not expecting to like this version of Tom Cullen but I do. I like Greg Kinnear’s take on the character, This is a better version of Flagg than Jamie Sheridan’s affable take. This version of Nick is much more believable than Rob Lowe’s well coifed Nick although some aspects of his deafness do not seem realistic.
To me the biggest failure of the original mini-series was the character of Nadine Cross. For one they combined her with Rita which muddled Larry’s story arc. Physical attributes are not always important and can be changed in adaptations without issue. For instance it doesn’t matter if Larry is white like in the book or other series. Not in this case. Nadine’s beauty is an important aspect the character. Nadine is beautiful but aloof (and a virgin). Laura San Giacomo is not ugly but she is not beautiful. Her acting did not make up for it either. Amber Heard so far is playing the character exactly right.
Nick’s communication with the others seems to be a problem. Maybe someone with more experience can set me straight. I have a little experience with deaf people in my life but not much. When they are all talking it looks like they are not giving much effort to facing him and letting him read their lips. He tends to turn away a lot and not for effect. Frannie makes some half hearted waves at signing but in each scene I keep thinking there is no way he isn’t even getting half of the conversation
What the hell was that acting choice for Trashcan Man? A reject from Mad Max? S&M/apocalyptic leather gear and a loincloth.
Who cares that Nick died, his character was a blank non-entity. There is no emotional connection at all for the viewer, unlike in the 1994 miniseries. When he died in the miniseries I was shocked and saddened. This is just a big meh.
This series just keeps on getting worse with every episode.
Quite the opposite for me, I would say the original Nadine was much prettier than Amber Heard, who I’m aware of as a an actress and a name, she’s just another generic blonde to me.
That was just Ezra Miller being Ezra Miler. I think he just came in in his street clothes.
Well, watched the latest one, the aftermath of the bombing, and increasingly it’s becoming a testament to how much I enjoyed the original. I keep thinking, well this is just telling the same story over again, with nothing added and quite a bit taken away.
I suppose Harolds final word’s were new, but Nadine seemed to be perfectly happy with Flagg, almost on honeymoon, compared to one of the finest moments of the old mini series : “We are dead AND THIS IS HELL”.
I don’t suppose this bit is my favourite parts of the original mini series either, the kind of spacefiller at end of Chapter 3 and heading for Chapter 4.
How can they have 50% more time to utilize in this adaptation and only present 25% of the source material?
End of Episode 8: the “Hand of God” sequence was well done, SFX-wise, but too little, too late.
I haven’t seen this mentioned, but if they make this into a weekly series (à la The Mist or Under the Dome) you can all come visit me in the bug house because I’ll lose my freakin’ mind.
…wtf was that ending???
I know it was very close to the ending of the revised edition. But you couldn’t get a more tonally inconsistent moment from the the rest of the episode than that. Flagg may as well have jumped naked in front of the screen and yelled “SURPISE MUTHAFUKAS!!!” and started shooting everyone with a machine gun. It was just so what the fuck?
Terrible end to a terrible adaptation. I sat through the whole thing hoping that the King written finale would at least give the whole thing a bit of redemption. Nope 
At least I never have to watch it again.
Trivia question for fans: Who is Big Steve? 
There’s something in the book about a dog running around Mother Abigail’s house that may be called Big Steve or thinking about a Big Steve. It also crouches under the porch when some part of Flagg passes by. I think it also dreams with twitching paws about running in fields of clover (actually, I think Flagg pases by in that dream too).
This all from a book I haven’t read in 20+ years. Evocative writing, whether I have it right or not.
^ Big Steve is Kojak’s original name before Glen Bateman found him. Still, you score 92 out of 100 for your answer; that is some good memory.
I will backtrack somewhat and say the scene in this last episode when young (Mother) Abigail Freemantle fixes Fran after the well rescue was well done; the young lady was quite good – she (IMHO) was acting circles around the entire rest of the cast. Sadly, over too soon.
I guess I know where I’ll be for six hours tomorrow – visiting an old friend on DVD.
Kojak! Yes, of course, I’d forgotten all that.
It might be time to go back and reread it, I guess the only question is do I read the original, or the expanded. The expanded version did have some interesting stuff if I recall correctly, but it also had some bloat.
I’d recommend the expanded version. The original version is like a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book compared to the expanded one.
I preferred the expanded version, with more depth in characters’ individual stories and a better look at how such an apocalypse as the superflu might play out.
I prefer the original. It’s a good story that moves along well, and might as well be the definition of a page-turner that you can’t put down. I sure couldn’t, when I read it, years ago.
I’ve read the expanded version too, and it reminds me of an Arthur Hailey novel: it spends far too much time on insignificant details that make no difference in the long run. For example, in Hailey’s Airport, he spends three pages on the backstory of the girl who sold D.O. Guerrero an insurance policy. In Hotel, Hailey spends another three pages on the backstory of the garbage-picker, who keeps hotel silverware from being thrown out. Both characters are key to the plot, but in neither case do the backstories make any sense in terms of the greater plot; they’re just filler.
That’s how I found the expanded version of The Stand: most of it was insignificant filler. Yes, it gave us a deeper look into the secondary and tertiary characters and their backstories, but it didn’t really add to the plot, any more than the insurance salesgirl’s story, or the garbage-picker’s story, did, in Airport and Hotel, respectively.
^ Re-including the sequence with The Kid didn’t really improve things.
Bumpty-bumpty-bump. Cibola!