The Mist TV series review: Season 1, episode 2-4

The Mist TV pilot impressed us, but we’re less than thrilled with the following episodes. Hopefully, The Mist will get back on track quickly. Otherwise, I expect we won’t get more than the one season.

Unfortunately, she’s the only character in her little group that’s working for me. No, that’s actually not true. I’m intrigued by Okezie Morro as well. He’s portraying the soldier with memory loss and I hope he’ll get a lot more screen time.

The young boy, who was proudly bisexual in the pilot has become gay few episodes later. That’s just a stupid mistake. Still, he does have the most impressive eyeliner that stays on-point for days while others are looking more worn down.

The “dad” character is just plain boring.

Let’s focus on the positive first

Other than Danica Curcic, Frances Conroy also continues to impress and wow us.

Her character is turning out quite different than that of Marcia Gay Harden from the movie adaptation. Initially, I expected Frances Conroy would turn into an extremely religious character.

Instead, it seems her character Nathalie is very spiritual, but not exactly religious.

Basically, she’s battling the priest (and his creepy alter boy sidekick) in terms of faith. It’s working very well so far, and of course, with Dan Butler portraying Father Romanov, we have two strong and capable actors facing off.

Well, that escalated quickly… and yet not at all!

At the church, we’ve experienced the first real creature moment.

A moth-like creature flies into the ear of someone, then makes him sprout giant moth wings out of his back and hatch thousands of baby moths out of his mouth. Oh yeah, this is the kind of stuff I would expect from The Mist.

However, that’s probably the only really The Mist-like thing we’ve seen so far.

Other than that, the ordinary human beings are finding and creating drama out of every imaginable situation.

Lesson one from The Mist: People are idiots

The Mist has an important task of showing how people react in a crisis. And from The Mall people, we can only gather that people are generally idiots.

Basically, the people trapped at the Mall have set up rules that have become a sort of Marshall Law. And this all happens within the first 24 hours.

And within three days, they’ve already had a fun little lottery to decide who would go into the mist to get a radio and exiled someone for endangering the others.

Damn, they’re not messing around.

They do have food, water and are generally comfortable though, so I’m pretty annoyed by this. Also, the lines are so damn stereotypical and trope-driven, you see them coming a mile away.

And also, there are these cutesy moments where they get out board games because people are getting bored. And we all know boredom is the true enemy! Not a lack of food, water or security. No, boredom, I say!

White boy wonder redemption… no thanks!

What really irks me, however, is boy wonder’s redemption arc. The [white] football hero, who seems like a nice guy, but was accused of raping a girl in the pilot, is doing everything wrong.

Of course, they’re painting him as the agonizing helpful kid, who’s cutting down people who’ve hung themselves. Why the HELL whould a high school kid get this task?

He probably didn’t rape her (though somebody did, so there’s a little mystery for us all to ponder), but now he’s insisting on touching the girl and holding her hand; To let him prove that he won’t hurt her.

All of this takes place when they’re all alone, and the girl is clearly telling him to stay away. Anyone, male or female, who would’ve walked in on this should smack the idiot kid upside the head. Maybe he didn’t rape her, but he sure as Hell doesn’t understand the concept of consent or even the word “No!”.

And yet, there’s a budding love story in development. After all, the girl did like the boy before the whole rape thing, and since maybe he didn’t rape her (she doesn’t remember what happened), they can go ahead and have little cute-meets all over the place. WTF?

Please, get back on track with The Mist

Yeah, I’m not impressed. At all.

If we don’t get The Mist creatures and actual drama and intensity instead of all this “paint by numbers”-stuff, then the TV show will not last past its first season.

Find our review of The Mist Pilot, which we loved, here >

Read our review of the entire season 1 of the The Mist >>