Hulu's 11/22/63 - Early Thoughts

This is a series that I have been looking forward to for quite some time. As many of us constant Stephen King readers by now know, movie or television adaptations of his work tend to be hit or miss. Sometimes you get a Misery or a Shawshank Redemption, and other times you get Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return. When this project was first announced, I was beyond thrilled. In addition to being a personal favorite of mine, 11/22/63 is really one of King's overall best novels, and by far the best one he's written in recent years.

Left to right: James Franco, Stephen King, and J.J. Abrams

As more news came about this project, the more optimistic I became. Hulu brought an all-star cast and crew to the table, with J.J. Abrams directing, and the inspired choice of James Franco for the story's lead, Jake Epping. I also believe that a miniseries works much better for adapting a long novel like this than a movie, and a story like 11/22/63 doesn't need some eight figure Hollywood Budget budget to pull off. And of course Netflix and Amazon have certainly set the bar high for original programs produced by digital streaming services.

Last night, after a long wait and many high expectations, the first episode has finally aired. Amazon and Netflix typically drop a full season of one of their shows all at once, embracing the habit that their viewers typically have of binge-watching shows over a single week. Hulu does things differently, releasing a single episode per week, more like traditional networks, so rather than offering up a review of the whole series, as I had hoped, I'll be dropping my early thoughts and impressions here, and updating them as the series progresses.

As to that, after viewing the first episode, The Rabbit Hole, my feelings are . . . mixed.

The talent assembled for this project is nothing short of staggering, and the directing, acting, and cinematography are everything I would expect from an all-star cast such as this. In particular the shifts in tone, from the sunny optimism in "the land of Ago," to the slow and menacing presence of Little Eddie the bookie, provided an immersive atmosphere worthy of King's original novel.

Unfortunately for all the points that The Rabbit Hole gains for acting and atmosphere, it loses for pacing and storytelling. The first episode felt extremely rushed, and it seemed like a lot of King's original material was being pushed aside to make room for hokey or nonsensical subplots born in the writer's room.

Now bear in mind, there are always going to be some changes when adapting a story across different mediums. There are some storytelling techniques that are used in books that aren't available in movies or television, and vice versa. With TV shows in particular, which boast significantly smaller budgets than movies, there are sometimes plot elements that have to be changed for monetary reasons. The best adaptations are almost always those which stay truest to the books (Blade Runner notwithstanding), but a writer or directer that treats the source material as unimpeachable or sacred will quickly see their project fall apart over practicality issues alone.

The problem comes, however, with the fact that television writers often have less intellectual respect for their audiences compared to novelists. We're living in what many are calling the Golden Age of television, and with the explosive popularity of HBO's Game of Thrones, we are also seeing a lot of novels (and comic books) being adopted for TV. Unfortunately, there seems to be a trend lately of dumbing down material, either because writers think that the average television viewer won't be able to understand a complex story, or to convey a sense of false drama because we're just too dim to be invested in the story based on its own merit. The latter, I think, is the crux of The Rabbit Hole's pacing issues.

There's very little action during the first fourth or so of King's novel. Much of the plot is dedicated to Jake's planning with Al, trial and error with the time portal, and his exploration of and acclimation to the land of Ago. King's vision of 1958, seen through Jake Epping's contemporary eyes, is rivaled only by his descriptions of rural New England in stories like 'Salem's Lot and One for the Road. Without idolatry or adulation, King gives us an endearing yet honest vision of a simpler time, warts and all. We get the clean air and root beer right along with segregation and the Cold War. Jake's conflicting feelings about this time is really what puts us behind the proverbial wheel, and King accomplishes this very well.

The show, by contrast, skips over most of this is in a brief montage and some expositional narration on Al's behalf. Had the plot been pressed for time, this might be understandable (though I find this hard to accept in an eight-episode miniseries), but it seems that most of the time made up skipping over the source material is dedicated to subplots that are artificially inserted into the narrative in a lazy attempt to get people's hearts racing.

Did anybody really buy, for example, that Jake would bring a knife back in time with him that had the name and dates of the Vietnam war on it? Or, can you think of a more cliche way of escaping a violent bookie than by distracting him with a video on a smartphone (which somehow was able to stream in 1960)? I won't even get into the Benny Hill chase scene where a schoolteacher from Maine almost escapes the Secret Service, or what Jake hoped to accomplish by calling his father up on the phone, and even going so far as to call him "Dad."

I can't help but think that these scenes were inserted only because the studio felt that audiences would tune out if they were bombarded by too much political backstory, or travel scenes, or nuances of the less sexy parts of Jake's quest. If there's one lesson that we can take, however, from a show like AMC's Breaking Bad, it's that audiences are willing to A) use their brains while watching television, and B) wait for the pig payoff.

Overall I have to say I was somewhat underwhelmed by the first episode of 11/22/63. Part of this, I suspect, is due to the high expectations I had going in. As far as your typical Stephen King adaptation goes it's okay. Not the worst, but certainly not up to par with the best either. It was better than Under the Dome, that's for damn sure, but it also had a much better story to draw upon, and (with the exception of Dean Norris) a better cast and crew to bring the material to life. Whether or not 11/22/63 lives up to its own promise remains to be seen. I'm still optimistic, but my enthusiasm has dulled somewhat after the first episode.

Review of The Bastard Executioner (Contains Spoilers)

For a pilot that is clearly trying very hard to shock its audience, I found the plot of Kurt Sutter's latest project, The Bastard Executioner, to be disappointingly predictable, riddled with cliches, and lacking all sense of subtlety. Taking place in Wales in the 14th Century, The Bastard Executioner tells the story of Wilkin Brattle, a Byronic hero, cursed with an unfortunate destiny and forged in the crucible of tragedy.

Brattle's cardboard life has an unauthentic feel from the start.

Unfortunately, Brattle's angst-ridden story is the very same rehashed tale that we've already seen played out again and again . . . and again in stories like Spartacus, Braveheart, Gladiator, and Hell on Wheels. It's the typical narrative wherein a reluctant hero rides off to battle, only for everything he loves to be destroyed while he's away, often as a retaliatory measure for his own moral righteousness in the field against a corrupt authority. His family and village have the feel of backdrop pieces to be swept aside from the onset, deadening any emotional shock when they're taken.

And sadly, the cliches don't stop there. From the obligatory Wilhelm-scream during battle scenes, to characters playing the pronoun game to add a false air of mystery to the narrative, the show seems to hit every landmark you'd expect from a story completely unable to convey an authentic sense of drama. And while we're on the subject of Sutter's particularly egregious exploitation of the pronoun game, I found to Katey Sagal's ham-handed imitation of Bella Lugosi to be much more disturbing than the so-called "reveal" that her character was the killer.

The Sacred and the Profane

While The Bastard Executioner has the potential for some very powerful imagery, it dampens the evocative nature of its visual elements through the same lack of subtlety that was a weakness in the latter seasons of Sutter's biker drama, Sons of Anarchy. Like the sacramental imagery forced into the lukewarm SOA finale, Pappa's Goods, the scenes of holy iconography so often intermingled with implements of torture shows a lack of intellectual faith in the audience. A crucifix jutting out from a mountain of corpses is a powerful image, but the effect is dampened due to the overuse of the sacred-profane dichotomy. When the pilot alone overuses imagery to the point of exploitation, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the season.

All in all The Bastard Executioner has a premise with great potential, but is brought down by a number of small issues that compound to undermine the project as a whole, such as the fades to gray which come off as jarring, rather than artistic. After Sons of Anarchy coasted by in its final years on the popularity of the infinitely superior Breaking Bad, The Bastard Executioner feels too much like a cheap attempt at riding the coattails of HBO's Game of Thrones. While Sons of Anarchy started strong and went down hill after a number of positive seasons, The Bastard Executioner comes off as mediocre from the get go. In the end, I blame Kurt Sutter's lack of patience and attention to detail that made Shawn Ryan the true writing talent on FX's The Shield.

I give the bastard executioner two out of five blood-dripping crucifixes.

My thoughts exactly.