Outer Range review: A mixed bag when Twin Peaks comes to Yellowstone

The American West has vast empty spaces and skyscrapers big enough for you to hide it. It is the perfect setting for extreme strangeness. Roswell Ranch and Skinwalker Ranch are both located in the desert Southwest. But Amazon’s new series Outer RangeFor a Western sci-fi drama, the action is moved further north to Wyoming. YellowstoneAnd The Outer LimitsJust a hint of Twin Peaks. Now, the shifting tones implied by such a mixture don’t always connect. They can sometimes feel disjointed. Given that, however Outer Range is very much of the uncanny school of sci-fi, re-fashioning classic Western tropes — the mysterious drifter, the shootout on main street — to enigmatic ends, perhaps some off-putting qualities are appropriate.

Outer Range comes to Amazon with an impeccable pedigree: It’s the second series made under Oscar-winning production company Plan B’s first-look deal with Amazon — the first being Barry Jenkins’Underground Railroad. These are the more woo-woo parts of Outer RangeThey are probably influenced by Amy Seimetz who is a consultant producer and an EP, whose 2020 film She Dies TomorrowSimilar mysteries surround her. (Although they weren’t involved with the production, there are shades of a Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead concept in the show as well.) Brian Watkins (showrunner and series creator) is an internationally acclaimed playwright. WyomingThe open-range also dealt with unspoken family secrets.

Before it can plunge face-first into the unknown, Outer RangeThere is a drama about prestige ranching to attend. Josh Brolin plays Royal Abbott, the patriarch of a rodeo and ranching family. The Abbotts are the type of family where no one ever says what they really mean, but they’re bound tightly together by blood and intrigue nevertheless. Royal is informed by his neighbor Wayne Tillerson (Will Patton), that he’s trying to seize the west pasture of his home in order to capitalize on a mistake made in his map.

Photo by Richard Foreman/Amazon Prime Video

Photo by Richard Foreman/Amazon Prime Video

Photo by Richard Foreman/Amazon Prime Video

Although they’re both prominent ranching families in the same small town, the eccentric Tillersons couldn’t be more different from the plain-talking, pious Abbots. And as the series’ primary antagonists, they contribute a majority of the comic surrealism. For example, Billy Tillerson’s youngest son (Noah Reid) is a singer cowboy. In one of the Outer Range’s most Twin-Peaks-esque moments, he performs graveside karaoke at a funeral as his mother Patricia (Deirdre O’Connell), the type of woman who kisses her adult sons on the lips longer than she should, throws open the coffin so she can see who among the assembled mourners looks the guiltiest.

Wyoming ranchers are known for taking their land seriously. So the dispute quickly spirals into murder, and the entire Abbott family, save for Royal’s preteen granddaughter Amy (Olive Abercrombie), is in on it. Matriarch Cecilia Abbott (Lili Taylor) tries, and fails, to give it to God in one of the series’ least satisfying storylines. Perry, the older son (Tom Pelphrey), is obsessed with his wife’s disappearance. Rhett, his younger brother (Lewis Pullman), is preoccupied with his rodeo career as well as a budding relationship. And Deputy Sheriff Joy (Tamara Podemski) has a lot to prove, given that she’s angling to become the town’s first Indigenous sheriff — and its first queer one. Add the hippie backpacker, Autumn (Imogen Poots), who’s camping on the Abbott land, and you’ve got a lot of potential witnesses when Royal drops a body down the cosmic time portal on the embattled west pasture.

As it turns out murder is just one of many secrets Royal keeps. The portal — or, as the characters call it, simply “the hole” — appears and disappears according to its own capricious whims. When it’s present, it swirls with starlight and planetary mist. And if you jump (or are pushed) into it, you’ll tumble through space like Alice in WonderlandBe sure to check in with your doctor before you leave the Abbott Ranch. The problem is, you can’t control how long you’ll be gone. These time gaps vary from just a few hours up to over 82 years in season 1. In short, it’s a tangible manifestation of the inexplicable nature of space-time — which, as Autumn puts it, is “chaos all the way down.”

Photo by Richard Foreman/Amazon Prime Video

Outer RangeIt is supported by great performances and great interaction between them. Brolin can be as fiery as Royal. Their secrets show in their bulging neck veins as well as the spittle-drenched outbursts. Autumn’s arc, on the other hand, is one of continual escalation. Poots’ transformation from trust-fund hippie into a violent, messianic leader of cults is magnetic. She only has one follower. As the rivalry between the characters escalates, Brolin and Poots engage in a series of powerful confrontations, each of them eyeing the other like they aren’t sure if this person is a dangerous rival or the product of their own unreliable imagination. Podemski, meanwhile, takes a more measured approach to sussing out the intricacies of the show’s murder plot. But she’s just as fierce, if more subtle in her methods.

The first half is amazingly entertaining, but there’s one question. Outer Range: But what about the hole? Seimetz takes over the camera in episodes 5 and 6. This series becomes more exciting and compelling. The avalanche becomes unstoppable from that point on. It takes some time to reach there. Outer Range leans a little too hard into slow-talkin’ cowboy languorousness, with not enough high strangeness to balance it out. Some of the storylines aren’t supernatural at all, and suffer as a result: For example, whether Rhett is going to do well at the rodeo, or if he’ll get a second date with his old friend who’s back in town, simply isn’t as high stakes or as interesting as the nature of time. Who cares about squabbling families when there’s The holeTo consider:

There’s a sense that the soundtrack is trying to pull the two sides of the show together. Veteran TV composers Danny Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans compose the score. It evolves with the story, from jazzy percussion to eerie, haunting strings that sound like something out of a sci-fi film in 1950s. Elsewhere we hear evocative country and classic rock songs from artists like Dolly Parton, Robert Plant & Alison Kraus, Lee Hazlewood, and the Rolling Stones. But ultimately, many of these songs seem to have been chosen because they’re cool, not because they fit the moment lyrically or musically. This is what it reflects. Outer Range’s biggest issue, which is that its more ambitious tonal gambits don’t always come together. Each episode has a good direction, even when it takes an unexpected turn in the back. When it comes down to the overall season arc however, Outer Range isn’t sure if it wants to be arch and ironic, gritty and dramatic, or an awe-inspiring sci-fi mindfuck. Of course, a show could be both of those things at once. But, perhaps because this is Watkins’ first foray into TV, the balance between these shifting tones is off as often as it works.

However, once characters begin to snort what can only been described as time dirt however Outer Range It becomes so bizarre that almost anything is possible. Early in the series, a minor character claims that the town is filled with bizarre mysteries. This comment Deputy Sheriff Joy calls drug-crazed rambling. She’ll have a harder time writing it off should Outer RangeYou can still return for the second season. Once you’ve seen the time buffalo, there’s no going back.

These are the first two episodes Outer RangeAmazon Prime Video will drop new episodes on April 15. Every Friday thereafter, there will be two episodes new.