The Stand Reviews

This is one of my very favorite books by Uncle Steve. Yeah it can drag on in places, but it is still a great story. What they did with it in this limited series is criminal. I don't understand why they started the series showing Harold helping clean up bodies in Colorado. It's like they were trying to set him up to be the sympathetic protagonist, which he's not. And why the fuck did they have to tell the story of the first few episodes of the series out of order? You don't have to Tarantino everything to make something cool. That's his thing and he's the master of it. It just really kills character development I think. People who haven't read the book or seen the original tv miniseries are probably confused by this. They introduced the Colorado storyline way too early. I don't know why they cut out the whole Nebraska arc. It seems really stupid to have the whole cornfield motif when I'm quite sure cornfields aren't aplenty in Boulder. I also hate that they just smashed together the characters of Rita and Nadine, making the casting of Heather Graham as Rita completely useless. What a waste! She would've been a great Nadine. And the part where Amber Heard's Nadine says she's saving herself for Flagg, but she lets Harold have her, they screwed that up too. She's supposed to tell they can do everything except vaginal penetration. Are we still so prude that we can't have a reference to anal in a series rated Mature. God this is a mess, but I will finish hate-watching it.

The first half of this TV show is a disaster with its incessant and irritating time back and forth, the characters are very poorly introduced and I don't like the cast (except the excellent Owen Teague as Harold Lauder).
Things are a little better in the second half, more linear and fairly consistent with the novel, despite embarrassing script shortcuts.
And it really becomes anything with a completely absurd last episode which tries to invent a useless epilogue (and outside the novel) to perhaps announce a sequel ... that I will not watch!
Clearly, don't waste your time and read or reread Stephen King's masterpiece. And if you're not allergic to the 90s, check out the much better TV version from 1994!