Ben Watches Television : The Outsider - "Tear-Drinker"
* This review contains spoilers for the first five episodes *
This week’s episode of The Outsider is a continuation of the investigation on the other child murder cases uncovered by Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo). Ralph (Ben Mendelsohn) is once again warned off by a creepy hooded stranger who materializes into people’s homes without breaking in. The visit prompts him out of his grief stricken stupor, leading him to confirm the mysterious link between places of grief and the murders established by Holly. He is also visited by the ghost of his son. Because this show’s about ghosts and shit. Literal and metaphorical ghosts.
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Tear-Drinker wasn’t exactly riveting, can’t-miss television, but it was the best episode of The Outsider by far. It is starting to look like a horror show, thanks to the first official visit by our boogeyman. I don’t remember if it was Ralph’s wife Jeanie (Mare Winningham) he visited in the book), but it had the desired effect. I don’t know about you, but finding a hooded silhouette with a distorted voice standing in my living room and making threats in the middle of the night is something I’ve been inexplicably afraid since childhood and the show exploited that quite well.
That brings back the notions of threat and tension we’ve discussed last week. The Outsider finally established that the supernatural entity that killed Frankie Peterson (and all the other children) is out there monitoring the investigation and can cause damage if need be. It’s an important step. The remaining problem is that it has been warning Ralph off by saying something terrible will happen if he keeps investigating. I don’t know. Telling that to a man who lost his only child to cancer is a little bit like making threats without bullets in your gun, isn’t it?
Spoiler: Derek Anderson is alive and well in the novel. It helps keeping the threat credible if the protagonist has something to lose.
The only leverage the boogeyman has is Tamika (Hettienne Park)’s baby, which the show painstakingly emphasizes. It’s the only purpose her character serves. Holding get-togethers meant to celebrate life in a show about death, grief and the boogeyman. I’m not spoiling you anything from the novel here because it differs from it. But it’s what’s going to happen anyway. If it wasn’t already clear to you, Richard Price thought of including a scene where the boogeyman visits Tamika’s house at night, although she’s not really involved with the case.
Once again, I caught myself thinking of the nuts-and-bolt of writing, when I should’ve been caught in the moment. It seems like this show’s been conceptualized for binging rather than for a week-to-week distribution. Que Viene El Coco and Tear-Drinker make WAY more sense if watched one after the other. It’s like a two hour horror film without clear resolution, which is something only Ari Aster has the balls to do in 2020. So far, The Outsider (the show, not the novel) is borderline weird fiction in the classic sense, as defined by H.P Lovecraft himself:
“[The weird tale] has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains.”
It has “a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread” or “malign and particular suspension or defeat of [the] fixed laws of Nature.”
I’m starting to connect the dots The Outsider is mapping out. It is starting to claim its own identity and break free from the novel, which is the way it should be. I can’t say that I’m straightforwardly enjoying it so far, but it won’t reveal the complete picture until the last episode. The stakes of its success lie on how they’re going to reveal their boogeyman and what they’ll decide to do with it. But I’m slightly more confident that it’ll ultimately deliver than I was last week. The week-to-week distribution model just doesn’t do justice to its murky, corrupted atmosphere.
