New Stand Mini Series Episode 1 Review

 

For years, and I think as far back as ten years, I have been waiting for the remake of The Stand. Not that I didn’t love the one from 1994, but I just loved The Stand. It was a book I read over and over, albeit I skipped a lot of Trash Can man scenes, and the mini series was at least a yearly viewing pleasure. I loved it so much the complete box set was a Valentine's Day gift from my second Husband.

So when it was announced it would be on CBS access, I knew I would finally see that remake. I wanted to not give spoilers, but that’s impossible so SPOILER ALERT.

Spoilers, you say, how can there be spoilers, it’s The Stand. Well …. There is. Things are different.

For starters it doesn’t start at the beginning, like the book or the OG miniseries. It starts about halfway through the book in Boulder. The first episode delivers the plague in flashbacks, at first I was iffy about this, but then I liked it. I finished watching the maiden episode hopeful that we would see more from the book as i goes on than we did in the original mini series.

This episode gives us a hint of Mother Abigail, but not enough to judge Whoopie’s performance and a splash of the Dark Man, hot Alexander Skargard. But it centers on Harold, Stu and Franny and their background stories. Those are rich with information. Although I did think some of the Stu dialogue was contrived. Like forced narrative down our throats. “Yes, I was at the gas station with Hap when that sick military guy Campion drove through after escaping his base and talked about a code red."

Something like that.

It goes into more depth of Harold and Franny more than anything, even more than Stu. But not as deep as the Franny in the book nor is she the same.. The actress is wonderful but … what the hell have they done to Franny? She is so unlikeable, so bitchy, that I didn’t care how depressed she was. I didn’t care about her at all and when they showed her in present day Boulder, they spent so much showing how trivial she was, her present day character is not believable. 

And … SPOILER …. When Harold utters his last line, I nodded and said, “Yeah, please.”

Unless you have seen the episode you won’t know what that means.

And, well, unless you have read the book or seen the original mini series, I’m not convinced the new viewer won’t be confused.

All and all I am still excited for the weekly dive into the apocalypse Stephen King style. And of course, eventually, Greg Kinnear will be on. I am anxious for Larry and Nick

While I think others will be on the fence, I give it a thumbs up and think this Mini Series is gonna be fantastic and meet my expectations.

What did you think?

If the Covid World was actually ,...

 

I write apocalypse fiction and have done so for twenty years. In fact, I wrote apocalypse fiction before it was cool.

I am not a doctor or scientist. I can say I have put thousands of hours of research in. If I only do five hours a week for twenty years that’s 5200 hours of research on various survival, end of the world topics, half of which are viruses. Does that make me an expert? No, but it gives me lots of info that would make me a cool Jeopardy contestant. That being said, I decided to give an Apocalypse Writer’s take on Covid-19.

The reason I write this is because a lot of people don’t think it’s real or think people are overreacting, I just want to offer a ‘what if’.

Keep in mind this is me, an apocalypse writer offering an alternative fiction-like theory.

What if I wrote the novel, Covid-19? What if everything we were experiencing was a novel I was penning. The most hardcore apocalypse reader would probably stop a third of the way through and ask, “What gives? When do things pick up?”

Like in a novel, what if everything happening is all part of a bigger picture?

As so many have done, many people wonder if there is something they aren’t telling us. The reaction and precaution doesn’t match the threat. After all, how many times have you heard people toss out ‘flu’ stats.

What if …

There really is something they aren’t telling us? What if the immediate shut downs, the reaction isn’t just caution, but rather true concern and fear.

What it …

COVID-19 was manmade and/or a retrovirus, an RNA virus that inserts itself into our DNA. The scientific community are unsure of the long term effects and where the mutation inside of us could go, what it could do. What if they see signs of this and therefor delaying things, shutting things down gives them a chance to see what happens to the survivors, without tossing yet another worry object on our plate.

Oh wait … Covid IS an RNA virus. So, heck, that’s already possible.

Yeah, wouldn’t that explain the serious long term effects many people are suffering from now.

We all know it is carried in droplets and airborne, but what if … it’s a vector?

Carried in any insect you could imagine. What if they didn’t let that little fact out. Because that would be impossible to control. Wouldn’t that explain why some people (Like with Zika) don’t get symptoms, or why only some get respiratory and others don’t? The warmer weather, brought more insects, more infections? November is the heaviest lice season. If you consider bugs as major carriers, as they have been in past diseases, wouldn’t it make sense why they shut things down? Limit households mixing? Separate and social distance, especially at schools.

I wrote this theory blog because the writer in me thinks there is more and these answers above are what I say to people who question the virus and the actions to contain it.

I take it to my apocalyptic level and say ‘what if?’

 

*Image courtesy of Texas State University