Each week Joe and Terry discuss the most recent episode of CBS All Access’s The Stand, alternating between our respective sites.

Spoilers follow for Episode 5 “Fear and Loathing in New Vegas”

TERRY

We are literally at the halfway point of this limited series and The Stand continues to improve while still confounding with some of its choices. On the negative side, Joe, Boone’s adaptation continues its weirdly-paced time jumps with another odd choice. But on the positive side, we finally get to see how the Other Half live...and given how deadly Captain Trips is, I think I can safely say “other half” and mean it.

Back to that time jump before we get to the good stuff. Either Dayna (Natalie Martinez) and Tom Cullen (Brad William Henke) are the quickest duo to ever cross The Rockies, get in with an evil organization and get assigned jobs they’re known for...or Nadine (Amber Heard) and Harold (Owen Teague) are extremely lazy conspirators. Because in between the two storylines...something isn’t adding up.

Basically, I’m really confused on the time sitch here.

While Nadine and Harold continue to conspire to blow up the town council, Dayna has infiltrated Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård)’s organization and has been asking around about his Walking Dude-ness. This allows us to get reacquainted with Lloyd Henreid (Nat Wolff), now dressed up as a pimp, and his new girlfriend-of-convenience Julie Lawry (Katherin McNamara). For the first time in The Stand history, we’re given an actual lay of the land as the camera zooms from the Hoover Dam to Las Vegas with a nice aerial establishing shot. It made me realize that, even though we’ve spent over four episodes there, I still don’t quite understand how the Boulder Free Zone is situated.

As we follow Dayna, Lloyd and Julie to Lloyd’s penthouse-adjacent hotel room, we see all of the debauchery of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll that Flagg encourages his followers to indulge in in New Vegas. We have strippers in the glass elevators, sexual trysts as far as the eye can see and, in a stroke of production design geniusness...a makeshift gladiator pit in an empty swimming pool. It’s a particularly wild moment as we see someone taking a chainsaw to a body in the deep end.

This is also where we’re re-introduced to Tom: after being quickly dismissed at registration because of his mental handicap, he’s been put on body cleanup. Our gentle giant of a man now spends his time cleaning up after gladiator matches; it’s actually heart-breaking to watch.

If it’s not obvious, I really liked this part of The Stand and I wish Boone & Co would have spent as much time developing this area and the characters because...well, let’s be honest, evil is always more fun to watch.

Julie’s return cements that because her brand of slightly off-kilter madness was a breath of fresh air. The way she plays with Lloyd to get what she wants by invoking Flagg’s name, knowing it’d make him lose his sexual interest, makes her instantly more interesting than any of the characters we’ve met to date. McNamara is obviously having a blast with this character and her energy is infectious. It actually made me realize how dour and lifeless the majority of the characters have been up until now.

Given that the episode is entitled “Fear and Loathing in New Vegas,” I was really hoping we’d spend the entire episode there...but, alas, we do go back to the wet noodles of the Boulder Free Zone where even an awkward dinner doesn’t liven things up.

But over to you, Joe. Did you like the brief sojourn to New Vegas? What did you think of Dayna and her plan to get to Flagg? Did Frannie (Odessa Young)’s immediate distrust of Harold work for you? What did you think about the awkward dinner party from hell? And did you notice/like the brief use of a split diopter?

JOE

Full confession: I missed the split diopter! It’s likely that I had my head down, taking notes, because I wanted to remember everything about this episode. Terry: this is the first time that The Stand has truly worked for me because the minute the episode ended, I immediately wanted to hit play on the next.

“Fear and Loathing in New Vegas” is enough of an about face to make me want to eat my words about not enjoying this show. It’s telling, like you said, that so much of the New Vegas parts of this episode work; apparently what The Stand was sorely missing wasn’t just conflict and a streamlined narrative, but VILLAINS!

Honestly, I loved this episode...or at least the New Vegas stuff. Sure, Frannie’s ploy to have Larry (Jovan Adepo) sneak into Harold’s house during that awkward dinner proves that she’s one of the few New Boulder citizens with a head on her shoulder, but there was still a surprising lack of urgency as she tried to keep Harold distracted. To say that I rolled my eyes when Larry disrupted Harold’s bedside chess board is an understatement, although I did appreciate that almost immediately afterwards, it is revealed that Harold had the whole place wired for video so they wouldn’t have gotten away with it regardless.

Sadly the Boulder Free Zone stuff remains a tired bore, which is why it’s no surprise that the den of vice that is New Vegas is such a refreshing change of pace. You’re absolutely right that seeing Julie totally in her element, bossing around and controlling Lloyd - to the point of dressing him in complementary leather outfits! - was a hilarious note.

What I appreciated the most, though, is that these parts of the episode felt dangerous. It didn’t hurt that our focal point was Dayna: I find Natalie Martinez incredibly compelling as an actress. She does great work here ensuring that we see Dayna’s mounting horror, even as she keeps a fake smile plastered across her face.

The moment when Flagg, appearing on jumbotron to address his followers, turns and looks directly at her actually sent a shiver up my spine. While Nadine and Harold are playing kid spy games back in Boulder, Dayna (and to a lesser extent Tom) are legit surrounded by people who would gladly slit their throats. The stakes have never been higher and this episode makes you feel it.

Sadly it’s over almost before it’s begun. In the span of a single episode Dayna and Judge Harris have already been exposed. This is just another aggravating narrative decision by the writing team. I’m fine if we don’t see the three spies trekking from Boulder to New Vegas, but considering how much meaty material there is to examine within the city, plowing through it so quickly feels like a mistake. This is just the latest in a long line of narrative casualties due to the expedited plotting demanded by the decision to make this a limited nine episode run rather than an ongoing series.

Part of the reason I’m singling out Martinez is because of what she does within the strict confines of her limited screen time. She does so much to make us care about Dayna, up to and including the awful impending nature of her death, and she does it all in only two episodes! As you suggested, I could have easily watched another episode, or at least an entire episode devoted solely to New Vegas.

But before I kick it back to you, Terry, I do want to touch on the continued puritanical leanings of the series and how antiquated it feels. We both clearly loved spending time in New Vegas, but it’s hard to argue that its presentation as the literal embodiment of sin and vice is encapsulated by...people enjoying sex?

Ok, yes, chainsaw pool gladiator fighting is not a great reflection of humanity, but aside from the murder, everything The Stand cues us to find disgusting, vulgar and unattractive about this unsavoury place is tied to nudity, pleasure and queerness (oh hi gays fucking in the background - we see you!).

If nothing else, this depiction made me laugh because even though I have a great deal more in common with Stu and Larry, according to the world of The Stand, I’d be hanging out in leather chaps in New Vegas by sheer virtue of my sexual orientation. And that’s laughable. And antiquated. And repressive.

Back to you with that fun observation. Did you catch Flagg’s brief mention when Dayna tries to kill him that he’s slept with a male acting coach? Do you find it ironic that if Larry had simply fucked Nadine as she requested, the impending disaster in Boulder Free Zone likely could have been averted? And, finally, what did you think of Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) laying the smackdown on Nick and disappearing after a meeting with Flagg wolf?

TERRY

I mean, I’d be hanging out right there with you...well, sans leather chaps because I’m allergic...but you bring up an excellent point, Joe.

I think it goes back to the issue plaguing this series: it needed to be two seasons so we could really dig into some of the delicious settings, characters and really explore the nuance between the two locations. We’re supposed to see New Vegas as the modern day equivalent of Sodom/Gomorrah...to the point that, in the novel (SPOILERS) The Hand of God reaches down and obliterates them with a nuclear bomb. I mean, the symbolism is on-the-nose.

But because Boone and co. dedicated maybe 60% of a single episode (so far) to explore New Vegas, all nuance is out of the window.

It’s been a bit since I’ve read The Stand but I’ve always associated Flagg with unrestrained Id. He tempts people by giving them excess and everything they could want...and then forces them into an authoritarian and totalitarian rule. The use of the screen that allows Flagg to talk to his subjects harkens back to the all-seeing eye; in the novel, he uses this tool to ferret out disloyalty and doubt among his followers. It also ties directly into the idea that The Stand is a post-apocalyptic redux of The Lord of the Rings (Flagg = Sauron).

Sadly, all we see here is full-on sexual liberation...with the occasional bit of drug use and a chainsaw battle. So I was there with you, laughing at the regressive way the adaptation uses sexuality as a beacon for debauchery.

It’s sad that the only mention of queerness so far has been the two joyfully fucking gays in the background and Flagg’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention of having sex with Konstantin Stanislavski, the man who invented the theatre acting concept that would eventually be popularized as method acting (FYI: Stanislavski is kind of the reason we have Jared Leto). These two brief moments are the only time queerness has been discussed so far and that’s...troubling because thus far, it’s only represented as the “bad side.”

But speaking of sex, yes, we both rolled our eyes at Larry’s action (or lack thereof). For you, it was Larry knocking over the chess pieces. For me, it was that ridiculous moment where Larry felt he was...I don’t know...being chivalrous by not giving into his “baser instincts” and enjoying sex with Nadine?

The way this whole conversation was framed felt equally regressive. Nadine is literally asking for sex and Larry’s grounds for refusing is “you don’t talk like that” and that he wants her “...just not this way.” Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it strikes me as a form of slut-shaming. He wants her when she seems chaste - when she’s embodying the role of motherly and teacher. But the moment she actually broaches the subject of sexual liberty, he tells her “this isn’t like you.”

Perhaps the point The Stand is trying to make is to not slut shame because, by doing so, you’ve just brought ruin to your town?

Shifting to the episode’s end: Abagail’s disappearance is intriguing. In the novel, she leaves a note and then vanishes into the wilderness to fast and pray because she feels that God has abandoned her. Here, we get the Flagg Wolf snarling at her. I kind of hope that the narrative departs from the heavy morality of the novel to present a more complex depiction of her reliance on religion.

Overall, I’m with you that this is easily the best episode of the series so far. I think it’s obvious that there’s more meat to dig into based on our discussions here. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve felt as if I have more things to say because the interesting part isn’t so slavishly focused on the plot.

So I’ll throw it back to you to take us home this week, Joe. Am I looking too hard into the Larry/Nadine bit? Going back to poor Tom Cullen, did you also feel your heart sink when Dayna gives him a note he obviously can’t read? And finally, what do you expect to see next episode?

JOE

Either we’re too alike in mentality and progressiveness, or the show seriously fumbled Larry’s conversation with Nadine, because my notes are *identical* to yours. It’s 100% slut-shaming and I seriously hope that we get a scene where Larry has to reconcile the fact that he doomed his boring ass little town because he dared to assume authority over a woman’s own sexuality.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been enjoying Adepo’s portrayal of Larry thus far, but I very audibly sighed and muttered “fuck this guy” at that scene.

Pivoting back to more interesting storylines in New Vegas: yes, it was sad to see Dayna try so valiantly to sneak that note into Tom’s hand. What I loved was how she never got frustrated with him - more insistent, sure - but never angry. By this point Dayna likely already knew that there was a strong likelihood that her plan to assassinate Flagg might not work and, as the only other known spy, she had to try and warn Tom. Both of them are simply too good, Terry!

Sidebar: I realized in our discussion of Tom and Julie last week, we neglected to touch on her pervasive use of the R word to describe his mental acuity. Obviously I don’t doubt that The Stand is aware of the taboo nature of the word; Julie’s repeated use of it very quickly signifies to the audience that she’s a “bad” person. I just wanted to flag that it was deeply uncomfortable to hear it uttered once, never mind a half dozen times in a few minutes. I would have preferred that the writers found another way to cue us to Julie’s awfulness.

Looking forward to next week...I have to assume that we’ll see the fall-out of Dayna’s note. Tom is (presumably) the sole survivor of the three spies, so he should begin making his way back to Boulder Free Zone. Meanwhile Harold and Nadine have been holding onto those explosives for too long, so I think something’s gonna blow!

We’ll find out when we jump back to QueerHorrorMovies for episode six, “The Vigil.”