the mist (TV series): withdrawal

i don't know if i can go on.  i'll go on.  our family are split.  mom and teen daughter [i'll learn their names soon enough.  and yes, i can easily check on imdb.com, but i'm a lazy git and i really haven't invested much in these characters to care if they have names.  too harsh?  bear with me.]  are trapped in a shopping mall.  dad and teen daughter's best friend are trapped in the police station.  dad and bf are about to make a break from the police station to reunite with mom and td.  bryan the soldier and junkie woman are in tow.

meanwhile, other survivors are sheltering in the local church.  the deacon of the church is a frightened, confused, and i would guess, weak man.  perhaps he's the more realistic character of the show.  because the family members have found within their selves a well of courage, leadership, and a sort of badassery that i find false.  for example, the mist descends on the town.  weird shit is happening.  the mist has hallucinogenic properties so when a person is in the mist you see either apparitions from your imagination and/or real people from your long gone past.  at any rate, when the camera is in the mist the frame becomes woozy as if we are viewing the scene thru a kaleidoscope.  yet, our heroes have the presence of mind to get the fuck out of the mist even when they don't know what it is or what might be in it.  i don't know about you but i'd be curious as hell about the mist and i'm sure i'd think of it as some heavy fog-like substance and investigate it by stepping outside.  i'm sure i would be the first to get chomped but, hey, what i'm saying is that there would be hundreds, thousands, of idiots like me.  and this show doesn't have any of those idiots.  instead we have groups of people hunkering down, sheltering in place.   

well, if you haven't guessed, bryan, jw, dad and bf crash their car in the mist.  they were carjacked.  were the carjackers' real?  doesn't matter.  oh, yes, before i forget, this is the critical piece of the mist.  it causes collective hallucinations.  a group of people can see the same things.  which beg the question.  what the hell is the mist?  i'm sure that question will be teased out thru the life of the show.  it might not be answered.  it wasn't answered in the source novella or 2007 movie.  anyway, our group work their way to the church and shelter in place.  to complicate matters, the sheriff, father of the boy accused of raping td, is also sheltering in place at the church.  oh man!  this is getting tense.

meanwhile, mom and td are stuck in the mall with scores of people.  the group draws names from a hat.  the chosen name is given the chore of going to the management wing of the mall where a window was kept open and the mist got in.  in a room of the management wing is a government issued radio.  the mall group want to get to that radio to communicate to the outside world.  guess what, mom is a badass.  she gets to the room accompanied by a young man who volunteered to go with her.  the young man is from a group of three who are strangers in town.  something is afoot.

the young man knows how to operate the radio.  he checks a few channels then tunes in to a channel and inquires about the arrowhead project.  remember, bryan also has an arrowhead patch on his fatigues?  except this young man in the mall is in plainclothes.  he has a pistol.  mom inquires after the pistol.  the young man tries to kill mom.  mom prevails and returns to the group claiming the young man got lost in the mist and died.  the radio didn't work.

then the mall group beds down for the night.  the young man who is accused of raping td wanders in to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  he discovers the companions of the young man radio operator hanging in a stall, a suicide.  recall that the soldiers from the arrowhead project also hanged themselves in the novella and 2007 movie.  the shit is getting real.

still, the characters are barely fleshed out even if the first show was all about their dysfunctions.  the danger of the ever-present mist creates a barely buzzed tension in the viewer.  we still haven't seen the creatures that live in the mist.  both groups of found dead bodies.  mom and td saw a woman dragged by something back in to the mist.  all of the deceased were ripped open bloody pieces of meat.  the 2007 movie had the decency to show us a mass of large tentacles when the shit hit the fan.  this TV show is going for a slower style of storytelling.  the mist is and is not.  it is all that is the case, and then some.

before i declare this show all hat let me say it is interesting.  i am curious about the nature, origin, and the properties of the mist.  what happens to the characters is another matter.  i am on this side of giving a shit.