The Stand (2021 CBS)

[Ensign9]

Spoilers to follow sans spoiler tag.


A lot of good things ultimately undone by poor execution. The time-jumping was a huge mistake that robbed the early parts of the series of the slow, creeping descent into hell as Captain Trips takes hold. There was no building tension or dread.

Skarsgard was a poor choice for Flagg; he just doesn’t have the right presence and intimidation factor. Never scary until that brief dream sequence with Trash.

Owen Teague was great as Harold.

WTF was Ezra Miller doing? Why is Trash in the show for a grand total of five minutes?

The Hand of God sequence was solid. Impressive effects work throughout, including the nuke.

Why does this 9-hour show feel more heavily condensed than the 6-hour 1994 miniseries? This is one of the few situations in the Peak TV era—where ten episodes is a sweet spot—that could’ve benefitted from many more episodes. (Aside from the much needed expansion of the main storylines, you could have devoted episodes to secondary narrative asides like the “No Great Loss” chapter of the novel.)

The new coda didn’t do much for me. It’s a neat addition but ultimately unnecessary.

The show ends up being another wasted opportunity which is unfortunately the norm when it comes to King adaptations, with a few notable exceptions. Maybe the third time will be the charm when they try this again in 2037.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[VinylGuy]

I only read half the book and thats like 25 years ago, and havent seen the Mick Garris miniseries (by the way he makes a cameo at the end and has a great podcast with Boone talking about the production) and i really liked this one.

I thought it was cool to have Trips only featured in the firsts ep, and then dive into Boulder and Vegas. Also, i fucking loved the cast, Skarsgard was having so much fun and he was super scary in a lot of moments ( the elevator scene!)

It seems most folks dont like this series because of the timeline stuff and other choices that are different than the book.

Overall, it was a blast for me, and ill pick the book again soon for sure.