Two Amazon original shows that I recently watched within a few weeks of one another.
Outer Range is condensed Yellowstone but science fiction. Can’t really tell you what kind of science fiction without spoiling it. You have your rural rugged Wyoming cattle rancher fighting for his land. His family getting into trouble. Rodeos. The staples from a show like Yellowstone. But there’s a sci-fi twist that moves between the background and foreground as the show progresses. The first season sets up a mystery that we may never get answers to because Amazon hasn’t renewed it yet. It’s kinda boring at times because it’s just going through the motions of being a streaming prestige drama. It ranges from very whelming to sort of okay.
Spoilers if you don’t care:
spoiler
Josh Brolin is a stoic cattle rancher who discovers a large bottomless pit on his ranch. His neighbor and rival is a wacky, crazy, wealthier rancher who wants to take the land that the hole is on away from Brolin. This is because there’s a secret. Josh Brolin is actually from 1899. He accidentally killed a man while hunting and ran away from home as a kid. The hole formed in his time and he fell/jumped in. When he got out the other side it was 1968. This is where his rival, also a kid, discovered him. That drove Brolin’s rival crazy. He was taken in by the family of the woman who would eventually be his wife.
A shady camper played by Imogen Poots shows up looking for creative inspiration. She stays on the ranch and creeps Josh Brolin out.
Brolin’s sons get into a bar fight and kill a son of their rival. Brolin hides the body by dropping it in the hole. The camper sees and pushes Brolin in. He comes out two years into the future. The camper is there with a cult. The ranch has been turned into a military zone and is being mined, presumably, by the government. Another son of the rival shoots Brolin as he escapes back into the hole.
Brolin comes back to the present. He’s very weirded out. One thing the show does well is show how real people would react to this. In other shows with supernatural stuff, characters rarely get too weirded out by it. Like they might be scared at first, but then they treat it as normal. Brolin really has to come to terms with what’s happening and it takes a tole on his mental health. Same with the rest of his family. They all sort of go mad trying to cope with weird shit.
So anyways, stuff happens and you find out the camper girl is Brolin’s grand daughter who was abducted by a cult for some reason not yet revealed. It has something to do with the hole.
The hole contains a black mineral/goo. The goo seems to open up points between two times. Though it’s never explained exactly how the goo works or what it is or where it came from. I think the implication is aliens but IDK. Maybe there will be a season 2.
The next show, which follows a lot of the same beats, is Night Sky. JK Simmons and Cissy Spacek are a long married aging couple. They hold a secret though, there is a portal to another planet in their basement. That’s not a spoiler, it’s the premise of the show set up in the first 15 mins.
There is a mysterious room in their basement with weird architecture that transports them via teleportation to another planet. There is a small building on this planet where they have made a second home. They go there to get away and relax. They have spent decades of their lives trying to figure out what it’s for and where it came from but never solved it. It seems the nearly 1000 trips they made over the years are taking its toll on their health. They must figure out if it’s time to stop going or not.
Like Outer Range, not sure if this will get a second season.
Spoilers if you don’t care:
spoiler
At the end of the first episode a mysterious stranger appears in the other planet’s room. He’s covered in blood. They take him in and nurse him back to health. It turns out there are these portals all over Earth (and other planets). They’re sort of like star gates. They each have an address. There is a secret society that is dedicated to controlling/protecting/using these gates for their own ends, though we never know what that is. Think of the assassins from John Wick but cheaper and more homely.
The doors are not man-made and have been known for 300 years. The mysterious stranger is a young person being trained for the secret society. There is a place they where they keep those people in their youth. It’s very strict and oppressive. He tried to escape and had to kill a man to get free.
By the end of the season JK Simmons ventures out onto the other planet with a homemade space suit. It turns out he doesn’t need it and the air is breathable. He and his wife discover a small settlement on the other planet. The implication being from context that it’s where the stranger is from.
There’s more to it. Lots of drama between JK Simmons and his wife as their world gets turned upside down and they reckon with their age. There is also some world building with the secret society stuff.
These two shows seem like the kind of thing someone wrote a while ago and they just sat in a filing cabinet of show ideas until Amazon decided to throw them at the wall. They’re not bad, they’re extremely adequate. I wouldn’t mind more of both just to solve the mysteries set up in each one. It’s weird that they’re similar attempts at a sci-fi drama but then again, its’ not really weird at all. You can tell Amazon is trying to see what sticks with.
