Ben Watches Television : The Outsider - "In the Pines, In the Pines"

* This review contains spoilers for the first seven episodes *

In this week’s episode of The Outsider, the Maitland task force is scrambling to rescue investigator Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo) from her captor Jack Hoskins (Marc Menchaca). The urgency is making everyone accept the absurd premise Holly dropped on them last week quicker and it becomes quite clear that a supernatural entity is wrecking shit up. In the meantime, Ralph (Ben Mendelsohn) is struggling with his notions of good and evil and the limits of human knowledge, finding himself on the edge of finally fucking buying in and stop being such a drag to everyone else.

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Every television show that drags on for too long has an episode like this. In 12-episodes series, it usually is episode nine or ten. It was episode seven for The Outsider. Tension went up a notch, but no new element was introduced. The showrunner is buying time while trying to provide some sort of dramatic value for the audience. Last night wasn’t unpleasant and I’m sure it’ll make sense in the bigger picture like episode three, four and five made more sense because of episode six, but it felt… mechanical? Once again, The Outsider is content with just following the rules.

I mean, In the Pines, In the Pines (great title, zero connection with the show or Lead Belly) is most important for Ralph, who finally accepts the eventuality that a supernatural entity is killing children. The best part of the episodes is the conversation with his therapist (Steve Witting) who comes off as stiff and close-minded to our Ralphie as he once did towards the other members of the task force. It’s a nice character arc because he’ll now be able to hope to see his son again and not be such an aggressive and mopey mess anymore. That is good writing.

It’s the rest that is not so good.

First, the pursuit of Jack and Holly takes two thirds of the episodes and leads nowhere. Holly tricks Jack out of the car at a gas station, turns around and drives back into town without him. We’ll probably never know where he wanted to lead her. The one week tension buildup ends in the most anticlimactic way as possible. Jack has to be among the least capable antagonists I’ve ever seen. Not only he can’t affect the investigation, but he’s getting clobbered by his own imaginary demons. El Cuco doesn’t even seem to know what to do with his useless ass.

Then, Jack goes into the forest AGAIN to do something that isn’t exactly clear AGAIN. I mean, he puts a gun into his mouth at some point and is seemingly stopped at the least moment by El Cuco. But what the fuck is up with that forest anyway? He spent three episodes dragging a deer carcass around over there without proper explanation. We get it: the man is fucking possessed by the boogeyman. He was jumped and beat into mush by the ghost of his abusive mother last week. Can we not put him back in the woods, please? That is bad writing.

In the Pines, In the Pines was the first of two episodes written by Dennis Lehane, who I really liked at some point in my life. Part of what happened this week isn’t his fault. He just picked up where the others left off. But In the Pines, In the Pines lacked the magic he usually brings to a project and it sure lacked the magic of last week’s episode. I get the idea. It was a bridge everyone needed to cross in order to get to the final confrontation with El Cuco. But it was a very long and topsy-turvy bridge with unnecessary toll booths. The Outsider is simply too long for what it needs to be.