User Reviews

Read The Stand when it was first published. Read the King-edited long version when it was later published. Have re-read it several times over the years. Among my favorite books.

Like many fans, when the original TV mini-series aired, I was thrilled to watch, and disappointed with the end result. I've hoped for a remake many times over the years, and imagined the casting. It was a discussion we had many times at the dinner table in our house. We mostly dwelled on casting because Molly Ringwald was so ruinous in the original miniseries...it left a lasting impression.

We never considered the plot timeline could be so badly mangled. As other reviewers have stated, the non-linear storytelling was not only pointless, but harmful to the telling. It adds nothing, and detracts greatly.

The last episode starts by tragically omitting the difficult journey home by Stu, Tom and Kojak. It's a great part of the book, and well done in the original miniseries.

Instead, the end of the series is extended with a Frannie-centered tale of the ongoing battle of good-and-evil. Flagg reborn, still tempting souls with low hanging fruit. Frannie fighting the good fight, with Mother A's help, to "be true and stand." Odessa Young turned in a fine performance over the entire series. No discredit to her. There was simply no need for this plot extension (except maybe for Stephen King's need to finish the story differently, because that was on his mind).

I never thought I'd say this, but if forced to watch one of these miniseries again, I'd watch Molly Ringwald's awful performance, just because of the linear storytelling of the first series.

For those of you who like to dwell on casting, here's my take:

Odessa Young > Molly Ringwald (not even close) Miguel Ferrer > Nat Wolf (Miguel's part was better written) Gary Sinise > James Marsden Laura San Giacomo > Amber Heard Matt Frewer > Ezra Miller (writing and plot treatment for Miller was a disaster) Ruby Dee > Whoopi Goldberg

... because there are none in this dojo. The episode is mostly an ego piece, as King himself steps in to write an end for Frannie that wasn't in the original novel. It's not much of an ending, but it does give Frannie some closure she didn't have in the novel. Because the novel was written in 1978, and the mini-series is in 2021. So whether King is feeling the pressure to give a female character a decent sendoff, or whether he feels it is required of him in this day and age, or he really feels it, who knows?

Not since George Lucas have we had a creator who feels the need to rewrite what they created years earlier. Most of us don't get to redo our "mistakes" from 30+ years earlier, but hey, if you're King and Lucas, I guess you're not "most of us".

As to the episode itself, it pretty much ends as the unabridged novel did, with the exception of the Frannie coda. And we get more of Mother Abigail: one imagines the production crew trying to kick Whoopi Goldberg out the door, and Goldberg clutching onto the sill by her fingernails begging for one more scene and yelling "But I'm on 'The View'!". And King standing in the background, smiling and nodding.

So Frannie and Stu head to Ogunquit, and along the way have an adventure. Fran falls down a well (why does she go out on a rickety well cover and abandon her newborn) when she's already asked Stu to get her some water), and has a dream (or... does she?) of Flagg tempting her. I'm not sure what Flagg gets by being able to occasionally see out of Frannie's eyes, but it must be evil because it's Flagg making the offer. That, and he does offer to heal Frannie and spare Stu from having a camper fall on him. Although we find out the latter is a hollow threat, anyway.

And Mother Abigail, or a young (reincarnated?) version of her, heals Frannie anyway of the broken bones she got when she fell into the well. So Frannie gets to have her cake and eat it, too: she rejects Flagg's offer and gets healed of her injuries anyway. Isn't that special?

And why does Flagg need to tempt Frannie to let him use her eyes? Can't he find one of his would-be followers that didn't make it to New Vegas, and would easily agree? Or anyone in Boulder? Why is it so important that he tempt and corrupt Frannie? Is it a corruption/temptation thing?

At the end we do get the unabridged ending, where Flagg arrives at a village of untouched-by-civilization natives, blows the brains out of the leader (f he has that kind of power, why didn't he use it before when it would have been useful?), and demands the other natives worship him. In a language they don't speak, but they get the picture.

And I don't recall Flagg being that big on people worshipping him. Yes, it was sort of implied. But he probably would have got a lot more direct worship if he had demonstrated his superpower to blow people's brains out by pointing a finger, in New Vegas. Like I said, why didn't he use his power when it would have been useful?

But It's In the novel (the native tribe part, anyway), so heck, let's go with it. We don't get any real answers, we don't find out how anything ends (like the Boulder community), and all we really get is the Frannie-in-the-spotlight coda and some talk about the wheel turning. And Flagg going on to corrupt some natives, so if he's part of "the wheel", where has he been throughout history. Even Pennywise had a history, for pete's sake. But other than Flagg's off-screen King-described Hearst kidnapping,involvement, nothing, really.

Oh, and some rear nudity of Alexander Skarsgard if you're into that kind of thing.

Overall, the new mini-series didn't really add anything to what we've already had with the novel and the first mini-series. It seemed shorter, so there's that. But a lot of it got condensed, and we lost the travels to Boulder. Trashcan Man was reduced to a cartoon, and most of the God/Devil battle got exercised out in a 2020 stab at American TV.

There were good parts: Skarsgard's performance, and Teague, Kinnear, and Zaga to a lesser degree. I wouldn't say there were any great performances, and this series didn't have the original mini-series' limitation of being on network TV. The mini-series just seemed to be... limited. Like someone had the idea "Hey, there's a pandemic! King is hot these days after 'It', and he wrote about a pandemic. Let's go with that!"

There weren't any _bad_ actors, but some of them (hi, Amber Heard!) weren't that good. And none of them were an improvement on the actors in the original mini-series? Marsden over Sinise? I don't think so. Okay, Zaga was better than Lowe, but that's mostly because Zaga doesn't have the baggage that Lowe does. And the Nick character still doesn't go anywhere. King's novel development of Nick is cut, and he does even less once he gets to Boulder.

But the momentum of pandemic commentary ran out after 2-3 episodes, and the production staff fell back on adapting the novel verbatim to the silver screen. And asking King, "Hey, was there anything you wanted to do-over?" for Frannie's coda.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

So whilst this awful reboot / remake missed a lot of key detail and sped past key characters we are forced to endure over 5 minutes of needless blathering from Frannie Goldsmith. Stu appears out of the blue. Then unrequired love scene. The pair and their child decide to move to nowhere themselves??? An not only that surrounded by the King deadly cornfield Seriously! Then a young mother Abigail appears to save the day. haha stop already with this cliche nonsense.

Now the worst part is Flagg then appears before a tribe and to become their leader, its abundantly clear CBS attempting to prolong this awful TV show.... I for one wont be watching.

You can actually skip most of this episode and not miss a thing its 5 minutes worth of content 10 at max with added needless filler.

So Stu gets a flat tire and pulls off to the side of the road. Why? He's expecting rush hour traffic? Just one example of how horribly written this version is.

They could've wrapped up the story in 8 episodes, add an extra 20 minutes to episode 8. How many stories is this nut gonna write about falling in a well? As a whole, the acting in the show wasn't great, Whoopi as Abigale was not a good choice. They should've tried to cast Angela Bassett or Pam Grier. The actor who played Lloyd was pretty awful.

This is what you get with his remakes, Pet Semetary, Firestarter, all 30 Salem's Lot reboots and The Shining, all really terrible.

I will say that I enjoyed that they followed the book more, but with all the money they put into this, it feels like they could've put more into it.