Outer Range is an odd bit of business to be sure. It starts off like a number of other modern Westerns, a couple of rich ranchers hate each other, their kids are kind of idiots, the countryside is beautiful but hides all kinds of secrets. But we pretty quickly discover that this isn’t Dallas or Yellowstone, it’s more like LOST or Westworld with just a touch of the Twilight Zone tossed in.
There’s an odd mixture of the mundane and the extraordinary. Most of the time we’re shown people doing normal real world stuff. Lawyers and land disputes. A rodeo rider hoping for one last shot at the big time. A mother who wants to have dinner with the family every night. This half of the show could have been a series all by itself. Family drama and trouble with the neighbors and a few small mysteries about a missing girl.
Then we get to the other side of the story. There’s a hole in a bit of land where there’s some question as to who really owns it. This hole has a cloud floating in it and seems to be bottomless. The man who currently owns the land seems unhappy about the hole, but not totally shocked by it. He has some history with the hole. When one of his idiot sons murders the son of the neighbor trying to take the land away from him, the rancher takes the body and tosses it into the hole, where it vanishes in the mist.
We learn just enough about the hole, and the area around the hole, to be left with nothing but more questions. Is it a wormhole? A magic portal? Something left by aliens? How long has it been there? And most annoying of all, why don’t we see any mastodons when they are mentioned several times?
The supernatural aspects of the story are constantly shoved aside so we can watch someone run for Sheriff, try to win a rodeo, cover up a murder, and repair a fence. Yes, they keep pretending it’s a police procedural and a family drama even if the main character is a hundred and fifty years old and time travel is real.
The modern world of TV is a blessing and a curse. A show like Outer Range would have never been made by the Big Three, but like most streaming shows, we only get 8 episodes. There’s clearly more to the story than where we stopped. Several of our heroes are left is precarious situations, with the Sheriff being the most intriguing. The potential of time travel has always been what makes it fun, but you can’t really go back and kill Hitler, can you?
It was very well done. I liked all the people I was meant to like and hated all the people I was meant to hate. The landscape was beautiful and the collection of stuffed animals was just creepy and wrong. I liked Outer Range, and I don’t know that another season would explain anything, but I would like one anyway.
