The Outsider: Episode 4 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow... [poilib element="accentDivider"] With The Outsider's fourth episode, "Que Viene el Coco," we start to better understand how this tale will take up 10 full episodes. Even though a slow-burn pace has already been clearly established, this was the first chapter where it felt like viewers might creep ahead of the story a little bit. Not in a terrible way, mind you -- and, of course, I'm discounting those who've read the book and might know certain story beats ahead of time -- but as Holly dug deeper into the creature's path of destruction we started to see the full forest in a way that the main characters still can't. Granted, we already know the killer is a supernatural beast and so the show's job now is to reconcile what we've easily accepted with its "real world" characters who are going to think this is all horses***. Except for Holly, naturally, who's key role here is to be the most open-minded of the heroes, and the one who'll more likely follow the mythology with no judgment (while taking pepper spray to the face). Her arc this week had a lot of legs, as she traveled from Dayton to New York to sift through the mystery of Heath, the hospital worker who was set up for child murders the same way Terry was. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=midseason-tv-2020-34-shows-we-cant-wait-to-watch&captions=true"]

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET

Ralph's stay-at-home investigation lagged a bit, however. While Holly was out uncovering the unfathomable, Ralph was stuck. Fortunately, Ben Mendelsohn is such a joy to watch, even in sludgy situations, that he always delivers fascinating nuggets of realization. Of course, Ralph's personal story is one of grief and "being stuck," so his cycle of frustration and unproductiveness felt apropos. While Terry's widow was harassed by stealth reporters and hostile locals, Ralph watched surveillance videos over and over, and then later sat by the teen van thief while he draw a picture of a hooded man with a melted face. None of it led him to anything more than just a bigger feeling that things weren't right about the case though. The show needs to position him into a place where he might be able to believe what Holly brings back, as an explanation, and right now he's pretty far from that point. There are a lot of invisible daggers pointed at Ralph right now. Both Jack and Claude, in the end, might be the pieces of the creature's puzzle that sound the alarm. Jack's being puppeted by the beast, building a nest for it out in the woods with supplies and dead animals, but his behavior's already unsettling so it might take a while for people to notice. Claude, on the other hand, might be next in line as the creature's double, having been scratched. But it'd also be breaking its own M.O. since copying Claude wouldn't take the monster far out of town to a new community. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/12/06/hbos-the-outsider-official-trailer-ben-mendelsohn-jason-bateman"]

EL COCO

The creature wasn't given an actual labeling this week, but like Holly's brief blurb last week about different cultures' names for doppelgängers, it got lumped in with many old world tales about boogeymen -  hammering home the idea of yesteryear yarns about goblins and ghouls being based in real life and that we, in the modern era, just dismiss them because of our ancestors' limited knowledge of the world. For now, "El Coco," seems to be the most used moniker, coupled with the idea of a "grief-eater" - a being that creates a tragedy and then dines out for a while on the sadness everyone in the surrounding area feels. And as we've seen with this particular monster, it's able to get in people's heads and make them kill themselves. And then those death are covered up in the wake of the overall awfulness of the incident. El Coco is all about covertness and cover-ups. Holly's investigation, which brought back Derek Cecil's Andy (and started up a small romance between the two), gave us more. More of what we basically knew about the creature's pattern. Not only did we get Heath, and the deaths of his brother and mother, but we met Maria, who'd been framed states away. In the wake of her crucible, she lost her father and uncle to a vengeful member of her dead boy's family (which, as we know, is the other way the beast creates more death). So yes...more. What will everyone think when Holly tells them all of this? Hell, what does Andy think? Like, the patterns are clearly unmistakable. What will be the thing that helps everyone get over the hump of disbelief?

COPYCAT

All of the world and lore building regarding the "Coco" creature is interesting (which is fortunate because it made up the bulk of this episode), but the most fascinating element came with the diner scene between Heath and "Maria." It was this week's tiny mystery, opening the episode with flirty small talk about eggs and syrup. This being, this entity, is actually good at becoming a person. At emulating an individual to a degree that they'll think they're out on a date with them. It doesn't just fake basic mannerisms, like it seemed to be doing when it was Terry, but it managed to get Heath in the sack for a full sexual encounter. And with that came the funniest part of the episode where the creature still had to scratch Heath's back in order to gain access to his form when...it was in the middle of having sex with him. You'd think the sharing of intimate bodily fluids would also be a way for Coco to absorb a person's essence, but no. It still needed to get that scratch in.

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