Outer Range: When the western cowboy genre combines with the supernatural

(All Photos from Pinterest!)

If the title of this blog post managed to have you hooked, then believe me when I say you fell into the same rabbit hole- or well, void- that I did. Since this post would be published near(ish) to my birthday and parts of it are written on my birthday, I decided to do a more self-indulgent review and deep dive into the first season of this show as well as its themes as a whole. Normally, I'd be making short stories on this blog but today, I'll be focusing on something that had caught my interest for these past few months.

Now, let's get into the basics. What is Outer Range?

Outer Range is a show on Amazon Prime about... well, that's where the rabbit hole first starts. Simply put, the show centers around the Abbott family with its main focus being Royal Abbott (played by Josh Brolin; yes, the same guy who played Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Within the first episode, we already get a taste of what we're getting ourselves into with the hole. This hole is in the middle of the Abbott ranch and Royal doesn't seem to know what to do with it. Things are only made worse for him when this strange woman named Autumn (played by Imogen Poots) finds her way on their land and acts very suspicious in the eyes of the family. Not only that but their daughter-in-law, Rebecca is missing and to make matters even worse, their rival family, The Tillersons, want to take over their land.

Would you be surprised if I said that isn't the only thing that's going on in the Abbott family? Like I had previously mentioned, this show centers around them. The sons of this family end up getting into trouble when Perry (the eldest son played by Tom Pelphery) and Rhett (the youngest son played by Lewis Pullman) catch themselves in a murder of one of the Tillerson sons, Trevor. Royal helps them cover it up, using the hole because he thought it was a smart idea, and the rest of the season is spent dealing with the aftermath of what happened to Trevor. Royal tries to find out about the darn hole. Perry is trying to deal with not getting caught, the fact that his wife is gone and that he's raising his daughter, Amy, all on his own. Meanwhile, Rhett has a whole storyline about whether he wants to be selfish and choose a life with his childhood crush (turned girlfriend later down the road) or to be loyal to his family. Well, that and a bunch of bull riding scenes. Strangely enough, Rhett, at least in my opinion, is one of the best parts of the show despite his story being so disconnected from the main plot and uninteresting as well.

There are more characters in the show that have their little storylines. The sheriff, Joy, is trying to make sense of what happened to Trevor and run for mayor of the town. The remaining Tillerson brothers, Luke and Billy, want to get to the bottom of their brother's murder and think the Abbotts (more specifically Rhett, Perry and later, Royal) have something to do with it. Well, mostly that's what Luke does. Billy just sings.... a lot... and yes, I'm serious. He does sing, act weird and that's pretty much all he does in the first season. Cecelia Abbott, on the other hand, wants to get to the bottom of her husband's lies and has a bit of a crisis in regards to her faith in God and religion.

If anything I said made any sense at all, then congrats! You understood the plot better than I did when I first watched the show. If anything I said didn't make sense, then yeah, we're in the same boat. While I have a grasp of what the plot is about (and my explanation is extremely simplified in order to avoid spoiling too much), it still does have its moments where I just stare at my tablet with shock, confusion and disbelief.

If you've gotten this far, then I'm sure you are reaching the conclusion that I had when I finished the first season.

Is Outer Range good or is it worth it at least?

If you completely didn't understand my summary, then the show probably won't be for you. That was the most simplified version of the show I could pull out and I barely even touched on the hole and its place in the show's world building. I didn't even talk about what Autumn's deal is because it's all over the place. If you thought the murder mystery aspect in the good ol' wild west was compelling to you and you didn't care for the supernatural hole, then I'm sorry but the murder mystery kinda takes a backseat to the supernatural aspects. If you thought my explanation of the show was too messy, the actual show is way worse in regards to pacing and writing.

If that's the case, then why do I seem to like the show so much. It's honestly because it falls under the umbrella of what the heck is happening... I need to keep watching to find out. It is so bizarre that you could rarely get bored of it! Sure, some are a snooze to get through (Rhett's whole romantic subplot come to mind despite him being a cool character) but overall, something always happens to catch your interest. I guess it could be considered a type of media where it's so bad it's entertaining but I feel like it's not just that. The characters are interesting even if they're weird and the cinematography is great.

Though, I would have to warn you that the show is left in a tough spot since it ends at season 2 due to it getting cancelled. And Season 2 hasn't been praised for being... good... even Outer Range's hardcore fans can attest to that. So if you actually want resolution, I'm afraid this show can't give it to you. However, like I mentioned before, part of the intrigue of this show is more about how crazy the journey is. Everything's so crazy it's like you can't look away which is what makes season 1 a delight in my eyes.

Objectively, is it good or peak cinema? No. All my problems with it that I have listed in this post still exist and are made even worse in the second season (haven't watched it yet; might make a follow up post if I do). Many characters are kind of random and don't serve too much, letting them get thrown aside (ex. Rhett...) as well as the messy pacing for each of the plots that lets the audience get extremely confused by the direction in which it's going.

But is it a fun time regardless? Yeah, I'd say so.