Minor spoilers for ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ to follow
Let me speak West Coast for a moment. Ahem. “So, is like, this show even going to attempt to elevate the source material?” Okay, I got that out of my system. But really, this show needs to step it up. I love character development. I really, really do. However, I do not feel anyone has been in danger since the first episode, and that was due to the virus itself. We are now firmly placed in a time where the virus has done its damage and are tasked to navigate the evils of real people. Instead, we just navigate, well, the lives of people.
The Stand Episode 5, ‘Fear and Loating in Las Vegas’ takes us to the location I’ve been dying to see, shiny and bright Las Vegas, where Randall Flagg has set up camp. Last week we saw a few members of the Boulder community set on a journey to spy on Flagg’s camp. This should have been an opportunity to get to know Dayna Jergens, a bad ass seen killing the manic trucker last week, as well as fear for Tom Cullen’s while under the knowing eye of Flagg. This show should be showering us in tension and uncertainty, but instead, we just go through the motions. It feels as though we’re just watching scenes happen. None of this is bad, I don’t want that to be the message here. It’s just not the horror-thriller epic, and that falls on the writing of character, plot and setting.
Flagg is cool. There’s no other word for it. I fear (and it’s the only real fear I have at the moment) that he is falling into the cool villain trope, one you want to be like instead of run away from. The man is evil incarnate, but we don’t see that very much. Instead, he’s a handsome smooth-talker that gets his way with every wink of the eye and twitch of the beard. Not to say it’s bad, it’s just not Flagg, you know? The only true sense of evilness we get from him is when he discovers the Boulder-infiltration. He knows Dayna’s plight. He’s aware there is someone else waiting on the outside and he knows there is someone else in the city, though he luckily hasn’t figured out it’s sweet Tom (who is barely seen, by the way).
Remember Lloyd? He was the violent killer Flagg freed from prison way back in the second episode. Where is his malice, his badassery we saw earlier? The dude walks around Vegas like a bumbling idiot who doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s paired with Julie Lawry (the gun-toting sexpot), and they have some fun, but nothing really of substance aside from their interactions with the aforementioned Dayna.
Naturally, we need to shoot back to Harold and Nadine, after their murder from last week. In the novel, Nadine successfully entices Harold to join Flagg, but here, Harold comes off like the Big Bad, way more interesting and scary than the right hand of Satan. His relationship with Nadine is troubled, as expected, but it’s when he becomes under suspicion from Frannie that things really heat up. Harold has cameras in Stu’s home to watch him makeout with Frannie while the couple have asked Larry to break into his house to see if there is any evidence of the death of Teddy.
THIS SHOULD NOT BE WHERE THE HORROR COMES FROM! There should be tension here (and there is), but we should be invested in the battle of good and evil and instead we fall into the territory of latter day The Walking Dead. Look, Harold is a great villain. And I’m actually digging his arc in this series more than the book. But no one else is that intriguing and that’s a problem.
I must reiterate. This show is not bad. It just struggles to show the horrors of this post-apocalyptic world. It fails to build a massive amount of tension and it leaves people in the dust. One bright spot is, and I know I’ve said this before but, the next four episodes are 100% going to be off the chain. There is so much to pack into the next four hours that I cannot see anything stopping the onslaught. And I’m ready.
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