Each week Joe (@bstolemyremote) and Terry (@gaylydreadful) discuss the most recent episode of HBO’s The Outsider, alternating between our respective sites -- queerhorrormovies.com and gaylydreadful.com.

Episode 1.09 “Tigers and Bears” — After obscuring their true purpose in town from local police, Ralph and Yunis interview witnesses from the cave festival, while Holly and Andy visit the scene; later, the group considers its next move as Claude deals with his role.

TERRY

We’re almost to the end, Joe, but in order to do so we need...more (kind of clever?) exposition about our finale’s location, as well as tying up some loose ends back in Cherokee City...sort of.

Let’s start with the clever part. Or at least the part that I found clever, because I completely didn’t get what it was doing. We get an idyllic setting with two brothers, John and George, playing a game of flashlight tag before chasing each other into the forest. Their father soon sets off after them. Throughout the episode, we go back to this plot thread, as the kids enter a cave, find claw marks of an ancient bear and end up getting lost while their father searches from a different path, through a ”tours for $0.25” souvenir shop. I must be the dumbest person, Joe, because I sat there thinking, “why the fuck are tours so cheap? It even comes with a flashlight…” not realizing that this narrative thread was set in the past and exists to set up this hidden cave.

Back in our time, Sablo (Yul Vazquez) and Ralph (Ben Mendelsohn) end up convincing the cops not to arrest Claude (Paddy Considine) because they were there with him all night. They lie about the reasons they’re keeping Claude and say that the perp that tried to make off with Sam in last week’s episode might be tied to the Frankie Peterson case. We get more of a “Rally your Troops” bit, as well as a jaunty trip to get the best fried chicken in the world from a place called Hi-Way to Heaven, which involves a two hour drive for Howie (Bill Camp) and Claude. It’s mostly just a means to get Claude away from the group because Holly (Cynthia Erivo) believes that El Coco knows what Claude knows.

And everyone else chats.

They wonder whether they can kill this creature. Hunky Seale (Max Beesley) wonders if they know of a way to stop the thing. Meanwhile, Jeannie (Mare Winningham) reverts to even more of a damsel, begging her husband to come home.

We do get a semi-intriguing interview between Sablo and Ralph and Sam and his grandpa, where they ask the kid if it touched him (no) and then ask Grandpa whether it scratched him in the brawl. To which, he responds, “if he did, I didn’t feel it.” Which means he probably did, right? But he does tell them that when he first saw The Outsider, he thought his eyes looked too far back in their sockets. He attributed it to the mask but when the mask was off, he still thought he was looking at him from under a mask. Creepy.

While Ralph and Sablo go chat with Sam and his grandpa about the attack, Holly and Andy (Derek Cecil) search a local cemetery and then hit up Cavestock to figure out where The Outsider could have gone. The interesting thing of note here is that Holly talks about the Spanish Flu epidemic and how it hit the town hard. This, coupled with our soon-to-be-known bit about the cave-in means that, for a creature nicknamed the Tear-Drinker, this place is Grief Heaven.

So much exposition, Joe. But I have to ask: what was all that jazz involving the return of DA Hayes (Michael Esper)? There’s a moment when his assistant comes in, closes the door and tells him about a hiker who just came across a body of a young boy, nude and torn up; “face about gone.”

What is that all about? It’s a little nugget of a scene that’s pretty much brought up and dropped for the rest of the episode. Are we to assume that there’s another one? Or what are we to make of that? Do you have any thoughts? What did you think of this episode as a whole? Are we still grinding our wheels into mud here? You called it, by the way, about the Red Shirt Calvary showing up, but were you surprised with the way the episode ended? And please tell me I’m not alone in missing that the kids’ storyline was in the past?

JOE

Sadly I can’t support you with the kids storyline, though I won’t say I ID’d it much earlier than you. Initially The Outsider seems to be setting up a situation in which the two kids stumble onto a starving creature and are consumed, allowing it to transition into full Claude form. But the nature of the clothing on both the boys and their father felt off to me, and then the minute I saw the sign at the rest stop, I knew it was some time in the past. By this point in the limited series’ run, I’m rarely surprised by the bait and switch format (it’s kind of the show’s modus operandi), though I quite liked this attempt to flesh out the caves (har har) beyond what we glimpsed last week when Jack was cowering while The Outsider fed.

As for the episode on the whole. It’s...ok? The random scenes with DA Hayes felt slightly tacked on (truth be told: I’d forgotten who he even was). I’m anticipating that the discovery of another child’s body could go in a few different directions: it may offer evidence to Glory that Terry was innocent or - and I say this with dread because I think it would undermine the entirety of this season - it could reveal that there is another Outsider or that it can possess multiple people at once (thereby continuing the series past a one season run). I could be completely missing the mark, but I almost would have preferred these brief scenes be held off because they don’t contribute much to this week’s A plot.

So yeah, I’m somewhere in the middle with that and some of the other extraneous stuff (ie: everything Jeannie and Glory, sadly). Even some of the quiet moments with the doomed group in Cecil could have been trimmed or elided entirely. And yet, so much of this content is clearly The Outsider giving each character their due in advance of a showdown in which at least a few of them will perish.

Let’s be honest: “Tigers and Bears” is an episode that exists explicitly for its ending. This is probably the closest that I’ve felt a contemporary piece of entertainment has come to exemplifying Hitchcock’s infamous “bomb under the table” analogy about the difference between surprise and suspense in quite some time.

The fact that Seale would completely fuck things up for the group and/or that Claude would discover the truth? Inevitable.

The fact that this knowledge would inevitably set in motion the cliffhanger wherein the lives of nearly every character hangs in the balance? Masterful.

The fact that we knew this conflict would go to shit the minute that they went to the caves and we got to see Jack (Marc Menchaca) set up the trap in advance of their arrival? Suspenseful.

There’s something so tragic about the idea of a doomed group that ventures (in two cars “in case something goes wrong”) into an ambush of their own creation after spending fifty minutes debating life, death and the inevitability of the two. It hardly matters that the ambush is forecast from the episode’s beginning; the fact that it still works just proves how effective it is! There was never a doubt that several (many?) of these characters would be killed. The only question was “when” and “how many”?

Like all good storytellers, Dennis Lehane’s script knows just when to cut to black. We get confirmation of Pelley (Jeremy Bobb)’s demise in a strawberry red splatter glimpsed through Jack’s rifle gaze, but the subsequent shots that follow? We’ll just have to wait another week to see who survives to venture into the caves below and face the true embodiment of evil.

Terry, who do you think survived and, like my favourite horror movie tagline ever, what will be left of them? Do you have a different read on the DA scenes? And which quiet moment was your favourite?

TERRY

I don’t really have a read on the DA scenes, outside of the thing you and I talked about briefly offline. It honestly felt like a season two setup, Joe. There’s a lot left to tackle in this last episode: we have a showdown with Jack, an inevitable fight with The Outsider and wrap up the rest of the season’s plotlines like Glory’s lawsuit and Terry’s possible exoneration—which has been the defining motive in this back half.

And now the addition of another body…

I personally feel like this is a way for the creative team to establish the foundation for a potential second season of this “limited” series. I’m not sure that’s justified, but why else are they introducing this new body that seemingly has nothing to do with the plot? The only possibility that doesn’t lead to a sequel series in my head is that it’s, as you mentioned, the physical evidence that Terry Maitland didn’t do it. Like if Terry’s DNA (or a mix of Terry and Claude’s DNA) were present that obviously couldn’t be there because, well, episode two happened. I don’t know.

None of the quiet moments completely worked with me, to be honest, if only because they all felt incredibly manufactured. The last few episodes have spent so much time pairing off characters to do last minute character development that it slowed the pacing to a crawl. That said, I did enjoy Andy and Holly’s little moment at the graveyard. Andy notices that two people died within days of each other and he romanticizes their death as two people who couldn’t live without each other. It further defines Andy as a hopeless romantic. Contrast this with Holly’s immediate response that the flu got them and the whole exchange brought a kind of smile to my face. I loved the little smile Holly barely tries to hide from Andy. She clearly finds his romantic hypothesis endearing, even if she knows it’s bogus.

It’s a shame he’s going to die.

I enjoy your “bomb under the table” metaphor because it does create tension throughout the episode. But there’s another ticking bomb that is slithering just outside of Jack’s periphery. I’m sure the rattlesnake provides a fun little visual motif and metaphor for Jack’s snakiness, but that’s quite a deadly little bugger inches away from Jack’s ankle. A Chekov’s Snake, if you will.

As for who survived…I’m not going to hazard much of a guess because Alec’s demise was in the book so I don’t want to potentially spoil anything with my ESP-like knowledge. BUT I will say, as I mentioned above, that the kiss shared between Andy and Holly sealed his fate and would provide an additional urge to destroy The Outsider; a being that Holly, up until this moment, has wanted to “contain”, not destroy. I have a feeling that, analytical mind or not, Andy’s death would change her thought process.

But what about you, Joe? Who’s not going to make it out next episode? Do you think this really will end the “Limited Series” or will this go the way of another HBO “Limited Series” called Big Little Lies?

JOE

I really hope that this next episode is the last. There’s been a fair amount of online rumbling about the pacing in the back half of the season (something you forecast very early on. Lo and behold!), and I’m not convinced that there’s enough story here to justify what I fear would just be more of the same. Although, when I saw the old-timey mine stuff in this episode, I did briefly contemplate what a prequel version of this story could look like (replace modern day technology with superstition and paranoia a la The Witch).

With all that said, I wouldn’t put it past HBO to attempt to capitalize on the prestige nature of this project and try to milk a golden goose for a little extra (did I mix my metaphors properly enough there?) Consider that this project has united A-level directors like Kusama and Dillard with A-level writers like Lehane and King. Who wouldn’t want a second go at potential Emmy glory? Especially if they don’t announce a second season until this first has already competed in the Limited Series category like BLL did in year one. Oh, I’m such a cynical bitch!

Bringing it back specifically to the show, however, I’m going all in on the deaths. Obviously if folks watch the trailer for the “finale”, you’ll see there’s a fair amount more carnage to come, though I won’t reference that footage in case anyone wants to remain unspoiled. So I’ll merely hypothesize the following: Andy is 100% a goner, as we’ve called since his introduction. I fear that Yun will also be shot, though possibly not die? As for the others, it all depends on when the Claude, Seale and Howard arrive and whether Checkov’s snake has done its work on Jack.

Guess we’ll just have to wait until the finale next week when we return to QueerHorrorMovies for “Must/Can’t”.