The sci-fi element of this story isn’t a black hole that warps time for nothing, you know? The most generous read that one can give Outer Range is that it’s a story about the inescapability of small towns — small town people, small town living, small town thinking. Royal, Cece, Wayne, and their children are all effectively trapped in Wabang: Royal and Cece by family ties and poverty, Wayne by mania and greed. Rhett and Maria try to run away but chart a course that runs right back through town at the first obstacle. (Granted, the first obstacle was a herd of time-traveling bison, but still.) Perry has now fallen through the time portal twice and still winds up back on the Abbott family ranch each time. Even Autumn, the wildest and most widely traveled of the characters, is ultimately a refugee who comes back to the only place where she can truly find herself: home. They all get sucked in as surely as spacetime itself.

The challenge facing the show is the one you and I discussed above: A lot of things take place on Outer Range, but not enough happens. With a few exceptions, most of them Perry-related, Season 2 didn’t advance any of its major mysteries nor answer any of its big questions. This is an extremely dangerous game for a mystery-box show to play with its viewers. At a certain point, if all you find in the box is either more boxes or nothing, you’re just gonna put that box down and catch an NBA game or rewatch Shōgun instead.

I wrote an explainer of the end of Outer Range S2 for Decider. I had a lot of fun riffing at the show’s expense, but I also feel I gave it a pretty fair read here.

Unfortunately, the hoped-for Sophomore Surprise that would have made Outer Range must-watch never materialized. The revitalization of Joy and Luke as characters, that magnificent episode in the 1880s — these were the exceptions to Outer Range’s water-treading second season, rather than the rule. Watching this show feels like jumping in a hole in time, only to wind up right back where you started.

I reviewed the season finale of Outer Range‘s disappointing second season for Decider.

The problem with airing a really, really good episode of an otherwise mediocre show is that people will raise their expectations accordingly. This what The Wire would refer to as one of them good problems. Of course you want your audience to respect and enjoy the work you do and eagerly anticipate more of the same, if not better. 

It becomes one of them bad problems when you fail to deliver on that forward momentum. The all-too-aptly titled “Do-Si-Do,” which believe it or not is the penultimate episode of Outer Range’s second season, shows that last episode wasn’t a breather, but a return to the status quo, even if it makes little storytelling sense to head back there to begin with.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Outer Range Season 2 for Decider.

Hell yeah, brother! It took eleven episodes to get here, but Outer Range has finally, truly, knocked it out of the park. Set entirely in 1886 until its final moments, the cheekily titled “Ode to Joy” is exactly that — a showcase for the time-displaced Sheriff Joy Hawk, and for actor Tamara Podemski. Both the character and the performer take that spotlight and make it a star turn, transforming Joy into one of the show’s best characters and cementing Podemski as, perhaps, the equal and opposite reaction to Josh Brolin’s Royal Abbott. 

I reviewed the outstanding fourth episode of Outer Range S2 for Decider.

Sometimes I feel less like I’m watching Outer Range and more like I’m rooting for it. Somewhere within “Everybody Hurts,” the third episode of the show’s second season, director Deborah Kampmeier and writers Dagny Atencio Looper and Glenise Mullins have the makings of the fun, surprising show Outer Range can be. It’s like tracking a promising team’s progress, hoping this is their year.

I reviewed the third episode of Outer Range S2 for Decider.

When a show switches showrunners, the temptation to play armchair analyst about the results is strong. How much of what we’re watching is how the story was always intended to play out? How much is the revision or invention of the new guy in town? 

In the case of Outer Range, I can’t help but give into temptation and say that the seams of the switchover from the Brian Watkins era to Charles Murray era are showing a bit. But that’s okay, I think. Outer Range doesn’t have the benefit of the case-of-the-season structure utilized by the late, great Perry Mason reboot, which switched out showrunners from one season to the next without missing a beat. But when (for example) you make a big dramatic showing of sending Rhett and Maria out of town in the Season One finale, only to have them back in town permanently by the second episode of Season Two, it’s safe to say a beat has been missed. 

I reviewed episode two of Outer Range Season Two for Decider.

A lot of people make their home, home on the Outer Range, where the bison and the time portals play. The biggest problem facing the show, created by Brian Watkins and now helmed by Charles Murray for its second season, is that some of those people are way more interesting than others.

I reviewed the premiere of Outer Range Season 2 for Decider.

So what kind of show is Outer Range, then? A neo-Western befitting Josh Brolin? A science-fiction mystery box in the Westworld mode? A meemaw-and-papaw-friendly melodrama in cowboy boots?

In preparation for the recent second season of Outer Range, I wrote about the challenges it faces for Decider.