“The Stand” has hardly been in a sprint during its narrative journey thus far, but that’s only because the mini-series has been juggling about a dozen chainsaws en route. In its fourth episode, “The House of the Dead,” the method to that madness is, at last, taking shape, for the terminus is a place with a gaggle of trees and nothing nearby to fell them. Indeed, a portion of the story that might have dragged on for hours now passes like a two-stroke, 55.5-cc motor-axe chewing through virgin pine, and while “The House of the Dead” contains a few more glimpses backward, the story’s loop is at last closed.
The theme of this fourth episode seems to be related to the idea of community, and what it means to be part of a society at a time when humanity is largely scattered and alone. The last three episodes have introduced all the notable Boulder characters and positioned them in this emerging Colorado collective centered around Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg), and the early portion of this fourth installment shows her five hand-picked leaders hard at work. The group is discussing an upcoming town meeting where they hope to receive a leadership mandate to organize things like a safety watch group, yet bigger problems they are only partially aware of lurk in the shadows.
Like, literally. After the town meeting, Nadine (Amber Heard) emerges from a darkened corner on Harold’s (Owen Teague) porch to loop him in on the plan to kill Mother Abigail and her inner circle. The last episode established that Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård) is wired into their dreams and plans to weaponize Nadine to control Harold. Harold is no idiot, though, and while seems to grasp the fact that he’s being used somehow, he’s also horny AF, and is looking for dynamite and blasting caps after just one wink and a dry hump.
Yet Flagg isn’t the only one with spies, as the episode also shows the Boulder council agreeing to send three residents to Las Vegas so they can report back on what’s going on out there. Enough work on the present-day timeline has been done up till now to allow for these conversations to hit the ground running, and it’s a credit to the previous three hours that all of this comes off organically.
Still, the show isn’t done with the time jumps quite yet. Mixed into all of this present-day business are a couple of flashbacks that show Stu (James Marsden) and Glen (Greg Kinnear) linking up with Harold and Frannie (Odessa Young) on the road to Boulder after the latter pair are snared in a horrific trap set by a sadistic trucker (Angus Sampson). One of the most terrifying scenes of the mini-series due in no small part to the chilling work by Sampson, it also introduces a new character, Dayna (Natalie Martinez), who serves as one of Boulder’s three spies.
Once again, showrunner Benjamin Cavell and his writing team are packing as much into this hour as humanly possible, yet the larger picture of what’s going on within the wider conflict is emerging at last. If the previous episode was all about establishing the threat of Flagg, the “how” and “why” of that emerging conflict is coming into focus, here. This is a story of good versus evil as personified by Mother Abigail and Flagg, sure, but this series has always been more concerned with the larger question of humanity’s internal struggle against itself.
In Boulder, Stu, Frannie, Glen, and the rest are trying to organize a new society with good intentions and an eye towards fairness and equality. Even without the active threat of Flagg, there’s still Harold’s dangerous, plastic-smiled narcissism, or safety watch members lobbying for sidearms. Flagg’s menace is little more than a spark: a splash of gasoline on a fire already burning (or a boot holding the door to the apocalypse open). “The House of the Dead” asks the audience to contend not just with a dynamite-charged threat from the boogeyman, but from the paranoia and cruelty that might keep a community like Boulder from getting the power back on, or the dead bodies buried.
The episode also allows its characters to settle into their skins now that the audience is familiar with all of them and where they fit into the 5-months-later timeline. Jovan Adepo is a standout amongst the cast in this regard, leaving crumbs with his performance to allow the audience to track Larry’s transformation from a self-loathing cretin to an integral part of Boulder’s new community. Teague’s work as the personification of bottled-up rage whose chewed up and spit out humanity vanishes in the span of a single gunshot’s report is also worth talking about. Harold manages to elicit sympathy and hatred in equal measure, and that all comes down to Teague’s performance, which blossoms in “The House of the Dead.”
Brad William Henke also continues to shine as Tom Cullen, who gets a flashback with Nick (Henry Zaga) on the road to Boulder, where the villainous Julie Lawry (Katherine McNamara) makes her first appearance (along with a blink-and-miss-it Stephen King cameo). No one is doing more with their screen time than Henke, as proven by his emotional departure from Boulder at the end of this episode: probably the most emotionally affecting moment of the series to date. The audience has spent maybe 20 minutes with Tom over the course of 4 hours by the time he begins his spying mission, yet the paralyzing concern for him at this moment proves how well he has been set up and portrayed.
This is to say that things finally seem to be coming together and organizing into something viewers new to this tale can wrap their heads around. If this episode’s theme is one of organization, of community and concentration, then “The House of the Dead” checks this box both literally and figuratively. With all the leads now introduced, and the narrative’s second act well underway, the stage is set for a showdown between the opposing camps of survivors.
Yet visual cues throughout this episode hint at trouble ahead for the story’s heroes, who have more than just Flagg to worry about. Frannie’s opening narration for the episode comes at dawn, and between Nadine’s shadow-hopping, the nighttime murder of physical media enthusiast Teddy (Eion Bailey), and Tom’s dusk departure, a dark pall seems to have fallen over Boulder. It’s a small flourish, yet like all of the plot and character work thus far, speaks to the care and deliberation that has positioned this series to finally break through. [B+]
“The Stand” airs weekly on CBS All Access.
