Starring: Chase Stokes, Madelyn Cline, Madison Bailey, Jonathan Daviss, Rudy Pankow, Austin North, Drew Starkey, Charles Esten
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 78% Critics, 78% Audience
Rotten Tomatoes Description: “A teenager enlists his three best friends to hunt for a legendary treasure linked to his father’s disappearance.”
Short Version:
This is a show that embraces the feeling of youth, that careless notion that you can do anything. It is the treasure hunt that drives the show, and keeps its over-the-top drama from feeling too out of control, because wouldn’t you do anything for half a billion dollars? It loses some points for bending the truth beyond believability. It is a fun watch, but past the whiles of youth, the characters aren’t as endearing as they might have been now that I am no longer a teen.
Long Version:
Outer Banks starts with a storm, and continues with a different kind of storm that follows our characters for the rest of the two seasons that have been released so far. The catalyst for the show is the sunken boat our crew stumbles upon the next day while trawling. From that moment, it is turn after turn in the plot, and friends some of these plot twists could rival Riverdale in their obscurity. But the one thing this show has in spades? Hooks. Each character’s storyline. Each cliffhanger. It is hard to walk away from, because that I ate sense of adventure and the desire to know how it all ends drags you back. It’s the kind of show that ten years ago would have a sibling screaming from the couch that a commercial was ending so you could rush back from the bathroom to not miss a moment.
So, lets break is down a little. The fist thing that makes show so compelling is the characters. Though he is the captain of our band of misfits, John B. is not our only solid character. Each of our pogues is a fleshed out character, and gets a rich personal history and inner life over the course of the show. The depth of character in each person on this show, especially in Kie, the girl caught on the line in the kook/pogue feud and Ward as the man who came from nothing and will do anything to keep what he has. The character composition throughout both seasons is a crucial part of the show, because who would want to watch a treasure hunt if we didn’t care about the people who ended up with the treasure? Or even worse, if there wasn’t a timeline imposed by a villain who sough the same gold. We care about these kids, about the danger they face, and the progress they make. The structure of the show is composed to make an audience care.
Conversely, however, the same characters that have such rich lives are often incapable of making significant progress in their own character. They make the same mistakes. They do not learn from them, they do not consider the people around them beyond “pogues for life”. The only character that shows significant change is Sarah, but if you go back to her first scene, where she is trying to save mice on the beach, her character focus has always been on justice and peacekeeping. She might be the smartest of the characters, but she does not fundamentally change over the course of the show. These characters are fascinating, but they are not extremely dynamic, it is the treasure hunt that carries them, and that is why they come off as juvenile to me. Their inability to grow over time, their insistence on remaining youthfully ignorant. As a teen, I might have loved that stasis, being allowed to live in the adventure forever. The same fights, the same gun pulling, the same dumb decisions.
It also becomes a small issue with plotting on how believable some of the plotlines are. They travel out of the realm of legitimacy a bit to often for the show to carry. Suspension of disbelief can carry me through so much, but the amount of dodging bullets and really shaky police work and plot armor in this show takes it a bit too far. However, the found family grouping and treasure hunt storylines keep me coming back for more, and I can’t wait to see where the next season takes us.
Favorite moments:
- The pogues first jump down to the sunken boat.
- Johnny hiding under the water while the Pogues and the cops talk, his air meter running out.
- Sarah and Johnny meeting on the boat
- John B Coming home to a cop eating his cereal
- Sarah and Kie making up on the boat. “I’m sorry for calling the cops.”
- John B finding the tape of his father, telling him that he found the royal merchant.
- Pope driving high, “Good thing I’m not driving anymore.”
- The first trip down the well and Sarah’s old hide and seek game.
- “Well you overpaid for the medical, so have a nice trip.”
- “I went up and over, been through worse.” After being hit by a car.
- Pope and Kie’s constant ill-fated flirtation.
- Cleo being on the boat.
- Pope trying to drop the cross into the ocean
All images belong to Netflix, the show, and the production companies. Thanks for stopping in!
Megan’s Musings 