The Stand miniseries wrapped up last week with the series’ best episode, in my opinion. The episode was an extended epilogue written by Stephen King for the show. It ties to the book’s epilogue, but it’s really a story about Fran Goldsmith and how she finally had to make a stand. I only wish the whole miniseries was as good as its last episode. Because, for the most part, The Stand was an unfortunate mess.
Before proceeding, let me admit my bias. Stephen King’s The Stand is one of my all-time favorite novels. I recently re-read it during the pandemic and found it to be even better the second time around. When I learned that CBS All-access was going to release a 9-episode miniseries, I wrote on Facebook that “if it stays true to the book, the series should be amazing!” Unfortunately, the writers chose to chop up the story, reshuffle it like a deck of cards, and largely ignore one of the most fascinating aspects of the novel—the spread of the pandemic.
From here on, *SPOILERS* abound, so if you haven’t seen the miniseries or read the book, you may want to do that first.
Flashbacks Were A killer
In his memoir, On Writing, Stephen King states that he doesn’t like beginning a story in the medias rea—in the midst of things—because the story necessitates flashbacks. Instead, King preferred to start at the beginning, and he did so in The Stand. The story begins with a soldier who is the only person to escape a military laboratory after exposure to the super-flu, called Captain Trips. He ends up crashing his car at an East Texas gas station where he infects Stu Redman and his friends. And with that, The Stand is off and running—in chronological order. From there, King introduces each main character and their problems before Captain Trips. Then he proceeds to show the disease spreading as it slowly wipes out more than 99% of the population, while society collapses in real-time.
That would have worked beautifully with a 9-episode miniseries, but instead, the show’s writers and producers chose to tell the first half of The Stand like the TV series LOST through a series of ill-advised flashbacks. Flashbacks worked perfectly in LOST because you knew they were flashbacks. They took place in the real world, instead of the mysterious island, and each one revealed secrets from one of the character’s backstories that were important to unraveling the mysteries on the show. Flashbacks also worked in movies like Memento, which had a puzzle-like plot. There is no mystery, however, to be solved in The Stand. Instead, the flashbacks simply created confusion for anyone not well-versed in the story. It also spoiled some shocking reveals from the novel. The series’ first episode, for example, is a masterclass in how to screw things up and earn a paltry 24% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The first episode of The Stand begins in the middle of the book in the Boulder Free Zone, with the body crew cleaning out a church full of long-dead victims of Captain Trips. It then flashes back to before the plague, presenting Fran’s story almost from the beginning. However, it leaves out her unexpected pregnancy, the conflict with her mother, and her relationship with her father, which makes it all the more heart wrenching when she’s forced to bury him in the novel. But the episode was really about Harold Lauder, who is presented as a creep from the very first flashback.
What’s worse, the writers tried to show Harold’s entire character arc in the first episode. The book’s Harold begins as a bit of a loser. Still, his ingenuity allows him to overcome numerous obstacles on the trek from Maine. And the messages he leaves along the way make him a hero to the people who came behind him, like Larry Underwood. For part of the book, it looks like Harold might even become a hero, even though King keeps foreshadowing his insecurity and jealously over Fran’s relationship with Stu. In the book, Harold’s diary entries about wanting to kill Stu come as a huge shock—near the middle of the novel—and after the reader has grown to care about Fran and Stu. But in the miniseries, the first episode ends with Harold wanting to kill Stu before the viewer has barely had a chance to get to know any of these characters. It felt rushed and wholly unnecessary.
While jumping back and forth between the present and the past, the show ignored the novel’s eeriest part, which concerns the spread of Captain Trips. The virus’ spread consumes at least the first quarter of the novel, but it gets less than 60 minutes in the 9-episode miniseries. Also gone are the character stories before Captain Trips, which are pivotal to each character’s arc. We don’t see Larry Underwood in his hard-partying rockstar days while blowing all his money. We don’t see Nick Andros serving as the de facto sheriff of a small town while everyone around him succumbs to the disease. And don’t even get me started about Trashcan Man. His backstory, motivations, and most of his scenes are cut from the miniseries. What’s left is a whacky cameo by Ezra Miller. If you thought one of the best chapters in the book was Trashcan Man’s cross-country trek with The Kid, you’d be sorely disappointed in the miniseries.
The non-linear storytelling also ruined Larry’s relationship with Nadine, which they attempt to gloss over in a brief flashback. Miniseries Nadine is never conflicted. She’s always Flagg’s girl, and the importance of her relationship with the boy Joe is never explored.
Flagg’s story is also a mess. In the book, Flagg begins losing control near the end. People start leaving Vegas. His ability to predict the future begins to fail him when he can’t see Tom Cullen. And he completely misjudges Trashcan Man, whom he puts in charge of airplane maintenance, only to have Trashy rig all the planes to explode during their first flight. One of the best scenes in the book is where Glen Bateman is taunting Flagg from his cell, pointing out how Flagg’s powers are failing. This enrages Flagg, who demands that Lloyd shoot Glen. In the miniseries, this goes down in the courtroom scene, but Flagg is not even there. Instead, he’s scowling and levitating in his penthouse. It was a badly missed opportunity.
But It Wasn’t All Bad
By Episode 5, the story starts unfolding linearly, and the miniseries greatly improved from that point on. With the significant exception of Glen and Flagg’s confrontation, the story plays out roughly like it’s supposed to until the very end. And even that only deviated in minor ways from the book (though the book was better).
The best part was the new epilogue in Episode 9, written by King for the series. Since the real story ended at the end of Episode 8, the only way to make a ninth episode interesting was to inject conflict into what otherwise would have been pure denouement. Having Franie, whose pregnancy sidelines her during the big stand with Flagg, have to make her own stand was a nice touch.
I have never watched the shorter 1994 miniseries of The Stand, but I’m eager to do so. It’s supposedly told in chronological order, and I’d love to see how that improves the story. In short, I wish the showrunners would have heeded the advice of the book’s famous author and began at the beginning. Had they done so, this could have been amazing.