"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Sunday, February 16, 2020

The Outsider 1.7: The Guy with the Neck



Most of The Outsider 1.7 tonight was devoted to the guy with the neck, aka Jack.

Here's what I think I get and don't get about him.  He's in pain.  That draws the evil spirit to him, for whom, as Holly has said, pain is its "wine".  I'm not clear on whether the evil spirit is making his body deteriorate more quickly, or whether the spirit is just inhabiting and going for a ride on that deterioration.

Also, I'm not clear on when and where the doppelganger appears and fits in.  Will that happen when Jack is completely taken over?  Terry had a doppelganger, but his neck with ok.  What was up - or down - with that?

Now to Holly: if she's so savvy about the evil spirit, how come it took her so long to realize that it was at least in part afflicting Jack?  Why didn't she sense something before she got in the car with him.? I guess she thought that it took 20-whatever number of days for the evil spirit to totally take over, so she had a little time?  And her escape in the car with her extra set of keys was well done.

As is Ralph's struggle to make some rational sense of what's happening.  He doesn't know he's in a Stephen King story, so his resistance to what Holly and Sablo are telling him, or trying to telling him, makes sense, i.e., is rational.  Sablo also has one of the best lines of the episode, when he tells Ralph that the difference between Ralph and him is that Ralph wants to understand what's going on, but Sablo just wants it over.

Indeed, what's gradually happening is Ralph is standing increasingly alone.  Well, at least on his side of the screen.  Because I'm with him - I'd like a rational explanation for this, too. Even though I know that's just beating my head against Stephen King's fiction.

See also The Outsider 1.1-2:  Two Places at the Same Time ... The Outsider 1.7: The Tear-Drinker




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