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Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: The Bad-Ass-Women of Outcast, 109, “Close to Home,” Recap & Review

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Spoilers,
Gory & Spooky-Sad

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We’ve known from the start of the season that the women in Cinemax’s horror show Outcast, based on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman and Paul Azaceta, were some pretty fierce, bad-ass women. Not just when they’re possessed by demons, either. Sure, some of the girls get a little more feisty when they’re taken over by demons. Kyle’s mother and Mildred come to mind. Given how strong and tough all the women are, even when they are not controlled by demons, I’m guessing Kyle’s mother and Mildred were already strong: the demons just made them tougher, and, okay, a bit more violent. This week’s episode, “Close to Home,” showed protagonist Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit, below) and the viewers just how close to him the demons are.

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Last week, episode 108, “What Lurks Within,” revealed that when the human host fights the demon, the demon has a more difficult time staying in control. Witness the camper in the woods: Chief Giles (Reg E Cathey, below R) has been investigating the site all season as a murder scene, only to have his friend Ogden reveal that he and his wife Kat have been helping demons get control of their often-violent hosts. Hence, all the blood and guts and eviscerated animals mounted to trees.

imagesWe haven’t witnessed Kat being violent, but she’s obviously tough: how else would she convince her husband to help her — when she’s already demon-controlled — give aid and sustenance to other demons trying to conquer their human hosts? Ogden’s wife Kat (Debra Christofferson, below) has seemed just fine to everyone else in Rome, while, in fact, she’s been facilitating the possession of fellow citizens.

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In another surprise Reveal last week, Ogden (Pete Burris, below) told that he actually prefers Demon-Kat to his own wife. He prefers Demon-Kat so much that after Sidney gave her a “job” in episode 9 — a job which will prevent her from leaving Rome, as husband Ogden wished — she persuaded Ogden to stay with her in Rome, telling him there’s no “us” if she doesn’t do what Sidney’s instructed her to do. In a warehouse basement full of creepity-creepy mannequins, as Ogden expressed reluctance to stay in Rome, Kat took the matter into her own hands, literally and figuratively, by getting down-and-dirty with hubby. The woman knows what she wants, and she knows how to get it. At least from hubby Ogden. Yes, Kat’s bad. She’s so bad that, contrary to most folks’ expectations, Ogden thinks she’s very, very fine.

There are plenty of other bad-ass women in Rome, though some of them get badder after demon possession. In previous episodes, while Mildred’s daughter Sophie complained that Mildred (Grace Zabriskie, below) had changed over the last several months, and that Sophie no longer liked the woman her mother had become, Reverend Anderson thought Mildred was just the same as she’d always been. After the exorcism, of course. As he pointed out to Kyle, Mildred has been in church at his service every week for the past two years and The Rev is pretty dang sure he would have known if Mildred were still possessed.

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Demon-Mildred is such a bad-ass, that she caught Kyle completely off-guard when she came to his home, cold-cocked him with her walking cane, straddled him on the floor, and tried to “steal” his energy or life-force or whatever it was she was trying to steal by doing some weird air-kiss. She was only prevented from finishing Kyle off by Sidney’s arrival. Sidney yanked Mildred away from Kyle. It was apparent afterward, from the way she kept trying to convince Sidney that Kyle was fine, that Sidney is a superior demon of some sort — if not the Devil himself, as The Rev suspects — and that Demon-Mildred had stepped out of line. She paid for her disobedience with her life: Kyle later found her dead in her home. The women of Rome may be tough, they may be demon-possessed, but they still have rules and orders to follow. Bad-asses can only be so bad, apparently, and then they have to pay for their mischief.

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The Rev (Philip Glenister, above L) discovered, in episode 9, that Patricia (Melinda McGraw, above R) is much tougher and more bad-ass than she seems. Because she has been chasing after him, basically, and because she wasn’t up to helping him exorcise Caleb, The Rev may have gotten the idea that Patricia was a pushover. Despite the obvious conflict and discord between her and her son Aaron (CJ Hoff, below), Patricia chose Aaron over The Rev, whom she’d asked to move in with her after he lost his job and his home.

The Rev got upset with Aaron because he’s been hanging with Sidney (Brent Spiner, below).

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The Rev foolishly thought that Aaron didn’t realize that Sidney is the Devil. Aaron knows. In fact, he’s been doing things to help Sidney, albeit without Sidney’s foreknowledge or approval. After Aaron saw Sidney carve the pentagram into The Rev’s chest, Aaron told Chief Giles that The Rev did it to himself.

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When The Rev went after Aaron in Patricia’s home, which is also, technically, still Aaron’s home for about 6 more months (he’s counting down to his 18th birthday, when he can leave and be legally on his own), Patricia got her bad-ass on and ordered The Rev to leave. Permanently. The Rev was kind of surprised. Apparently, he thought that Patricia would choose him over her delinquent son. Given a choice between a relationship with The Rev and one with the wayward Aaron, Patricia showed herself to have a spine of steel and a mother’s love to die for: she chose her son, even though he doesn’t like her very much. Patricia may have seemed whiny and clingy and weak, but when forced to choose between the new love in her life and her own son, she proved herself the bad-ass that most of the women in Rome have shown themselves to be, with or without demons.

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Kyle’s wife Allison (Kate Lyn Sheil), though she’s been a minor character all season, is another one of the tough, bad-ass women of Outcast. After she recovered her memory of the night Kyle “attacked her,” she remembered that she had been choking their daughter Amber. That means that, instead of being an abusive husband who assaulted Allison for some unknown reason, Kyle had been protecting Amber by fighting off Allison. Kyle  thinks Allison was demon-possessed. Amber agrees, insisting that someting was in Mommy. Allison thinks she’s just losing her mind. After making love with Kyle in an earlier episode, Allison left Amber with Kyle and disappeared.

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Kyle found Allison last night. In a mental hospital. He tried to persuade her to come home, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s convinced that she’s a danger to Amber — and she obviously is — but whether she’s a danger because she’s losing her mind or because she’s demon-possessed is not clear. Kyle thought he’d exorcised the demon during their battle on Assualt-Night. Allison has still not been acting like herself, however, though Kyle may not know this (it’s only been shown to viewers and to Amber). Is the demon still in Allison? We don’t know. We do know that Allison is one tough lady, and when it comes to protecting her daughter, and her ex-husband Kyle, she’ll even lock herself up in an asylum to do it.

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Without a doubt, the most bad-ass woman in Outcast is Kyle’s sister Megan (Wrenn Schmidt), who, despite a few “cracks” in her tough-woman armor, is the baddest of them all. She’s been violated by childhood rapist Donnie, who returned and tormented her, then blackmailed her after Megan’s husband Mark (David Denman, below L) assaulted Donnie. Megan’s been depressed since Donnie came back to town and taunted her, since she pawned her ring and robbed the savings account to pay off blackmailer-rapist Donnie, since Donnie filed assault charges despite receiving money, since Mark lost his job for assaulting Donnie, and, as viewers learned in episode 9, since she learned that she is pregnant.

Mark, good-guy that he is, was much more delighted and optimistic than Megan at the news of her pregnancy. She was talking about the expenses — clothes, food, diapers, doctor visits, etc — which seemed insurmountable now that Mark has lost his job, and Mark was just being the Happy-and-Totally-Supportive-Hubby.

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Mark managed to convince Megan that her being pregnant again, after all these years, was a good thing, though completely unplanned. Megan seemed fine with that. After all, she is Woman, hear her roar. This is the woman who takes care not only of their daughter Holly, but of Kyle’s daughter Amber whenever Kyle needs Megan to sit for him. This is the woman who watches out for Kyle, going to his home and forcing him to come to the grocery with her, or taking lunch to his worksite just because she loves Kyle. This is the woman who is protective toward Kyle’s ex-wife Allison, going to see how she is when Kyle is concerned about Allison’s mental health,  trying to intervene for Kyle with Allison, then telling Kyle that Allison is fragile and that he needs to leave her alone. And she does all of these nurturing, caring things on top of being a full-time teacher. Megan is a tough, strong survivor. She’s one bad-ass woman who fights for herself and for the people around her. She’s the baddest of the bad-ass women in Outcast. 

And she got even more bad-ass in “Close to Home.”

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Megan was taking a shower and suddenly started convulsing as if someone had flushed a toilet somewhere in the house, causing all the water to turn fiery hot. She jumped out of the tub, and seemed to have a difficult time walking. It was like the room was moving under her feet. As she stared at herself in the mirror, she seemed not to recognize her reflection. When Mark rushed into the bathroom, concerned for her, she grabbed him and slammed his head into the mirror.

Viewers, no doubt, collectively gasped at one of the most graphically violent scenes of the season.

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Then, as Mark lay bleeding out on the bathroom floor, Megan pulled a wicked shard of broken mirror out of his neck. Was she confused about what she’d just done? Was the demon just interested in looking at himself in the piece of mirror? Or was the demon chanting, Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who’s the baddest of them all?

It’s not clear yet why Demon-Megan was so fascinated with the mirror-shard.

It’s clear, though, that the most bad-ass woman on Outcast just got scary-bad-ass.

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Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself: Choosing the Devil in Cinemax’s Outcast, 108, “What Lurks Within,” Recap & Review

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Spoilers

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All season, Cinemax’s new horror series, Outcast, based on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman and Paul Azaceta, has concentrated as much on its characters’ inner demons as it has on possession by external, hellish ones. Protagonist Kyle Barnes has struggled to discover what inner quality he has that draws the demons to him; other townspeople have attempted to control their own demons, internal psychological ones, and external, hellish ones; and the spiritual leader of the community, Revered Anderson, was forced to recognize that he has been casting out demons more for his own glory than for God’s. Episode 8, “What Lurks Within,” took a harrowing and unexpected turn when characters — and viewers — were given a chance to “choose” a demon — perhaps even the Devil himself — who was less evil than his pedophile human host.

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The episode was a bit confusing at the start, showing Sidney (Brent Spiner) in a loud-print shirt, waiting on some boys at a shop, then at home, where he had a young boy bound and gagged in a padded torture chamber. Initially, I assumed that the Devil in Sidney was also a pedophile, and it freaked me out. I feared Outcast was about to go into graphically violent and sexually explicit territory that would trigger me, and lose me as a viewer. Instead, we gradually learned that this was a flashback of Sidney before demonic possession. Sidney the man was a pedophile, not Sidney-the-demon.

Please allow me to introduce myself…

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As Kyle (Patrick Fugit) learned when he visited Sidney in jail, the demons, who are attracted to Kyle’s “light,” don’t have a choice about what body they end up in. They simply open their eyes and discover who they’re in, along with what kind of life that body leads. Much as Mildred and Sidney discussed in an earlier episode, they can “find their passions” in the new bodies. Mildred’s demon learned to like collecting porcelain figurines. Sidney’s demon learned that the body he inhabited was a pedophile, a rapist, a torturer, and perhaps a serial murderer as well. Sidney-the-demon was not happy about that.

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As you can imagine, Kyle thought Sidney’s story was ridiculous when he first heard it. No doubt, he thought Sidney was playing him for a fool. Kyle simply didn’t believe that these demons — which can destroy a person’s life, and which have some nefarious ulterior motive for invading the residents of Rome WV  — don’t have any control over where they end up.  Sidney-the-demon was surprisingly forthcoming, however, which forced Kyle to believe that it was telling him the truth.

Though the demon never did reveal exactly what it is about Kyle that draws them to Kyle, the demon did say that they were, in fact, honing in on some sort of light or radar in Kyle that attracts them. The demonic possessions may have started with Kyle’s mother. It may have started before that.

I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith

Kyle, who was a young boy when his mother was possessed and her personality changed, may not have noticed the demons in any other Rome inhabitants. When choosing between the demon and his mother, however, Kyle chose his mother, casting the demon out as best he could, leaving his mother a catatonic shell.

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To Kyle’s horror, Demon-Sidney revealed that the longer a demon is in its human host, the less of the human host remains when the demon is cast out. That means that Kyle did, indeed, cause his mother’s catatonia, albeit unintentionally, when he exorcised the hellish demon.

But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

Then Demon-Sidney told about the host that his demon inhabits. The story eventually returned to flashbacks involving Sidney-the-Pedophile, with a vicious looking knife in hand, about to open the locked door to the padded room where the bound boy was imprisoned. In a shocking volte-face, viewers rooted for the demon, who was not a pedophile, and who actually released the imprisoned boy rather than killing him.

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Would you ever have imagined that you would prefer a demon to its host? Well, if the host is a murdering, raping pedophile, the demon is preferable. Especially when that demon releases the intended child victim rather than hurting him. When you’re introduced to the Devil, which The Rev (Philip Glenister, below) believes Sidney to be, and you find the Devil to be less evil than his human host, you’re probably going to choose to have the Devil stick around.

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As if it weren’t enough of a shock for the viewers to find themselves rooting for the Devil-as-Sidney, we learned that some of the other Rome residents also prefer the demon to the human host. When The Rev cornered Ogden’s wife and took her to Kyle’s house (below) so the two of them could drive out the demon, Kyle didn’t want to do it. He doesn’t know how long the demon has been in her, and he doesn’t want to cause yet another innocent host to become catatonic: recall that it’s already happened with Kyle’s mother and with the runaway Sherry.

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Now Kyle knows why the exorcism sometimes causes catatonia. It’s nothing that Kyle is doing or not doing correctly: instead, a successful or failed exorcism depends on how long the demon has been in its human host. Too long, and there’s nothing of the human host left. When the demon is cast out, the remaining host becomes catatonic. Kyle doesn’t want to risk another exorcism without knowing more about the possession, especially how long the host has been inhabited by the demon.

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The Rev has gone absolutely off-the-rails-crazy, though, and he and Kyle had a knock-down-drag-out-sine-missione brawl. (In fact, the battle was so physically rough that when Philip Glenister’s The Rev smashed Patrick Fugit’s Kyle and knocked him into the car, Fugit/Kyle hit the car so hard, he dented it.) When Chief Giles (Reg E Cathey, above L) pulled up with Ogden, to rescue Ogden’s wife, he also had to stop the fight between Kyle and The Rev.

Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

In a reversal of their roles over the last few weeks, Kyle has become the cautious and pacific one, while The Rev has become the hot-tempered, violent one. Now, instead of trusting The Rev, people like Giles prefer to trust Kyle. Chief Giles was inclined to change his opinion of Kyle and of The Rev before he saw them fighting. On the trip over to Kyle’s home, Ogden (Pete Burris, below) explained that he already knows his wife’s body is inhabited by a demon, that he took her to the camper in the woods because some host-bodies fight harder when they first become possessed and that’s where Ogden kept his wife during those early demon-thrashing times, and that Ogden actually prefers the new demon-wife to his former human-wife.

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Yowza!

Unlike Mildred’s daughter, Sophie, who preferred the sweeter pre-possessed version of her mother, some of Rome’s inhabitants like the demons and do not want the demons exorcised.

Talk about turning the Possession trope on its ear! As Kyle, and the viewers, came to realize that Demon-Sidney was vastly preferable to the Pedophile-Rapist-Murderer-Sidney, other characters have revealed their own preferences for the demons.

What a shockity-shock, my fellow Outcasts.

The Devil has introduced himself, and he’s more likeable, affectionate, and moral than some of Rome’s original residents.

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Even in the human bodies, however, the demons appear to have their own “demons.”

After the red-head son of the red-headed Patricia (who’s dating The Rev) showed up at Demon-Sidney’s home, Sidney cautioned the boy to leave. The boy has already lied to Chief Giles, telling him that he saw The Rev carve the pentagram into his own chest, when viewers know that Demon-Sidney did the flesh-artwork. The boy broke into Demon-Sidney’s home. The Kid appears to suspect, or actually know, that the Devil is in Sidney, and, contrary to expectations, The Kid likes the Devil. The Kid seems to prefer the Devil’s company to that of his mother or The Rev.

Unfortunately, the pedophile is still lurking beneath the surface of Demon-Sidney, and it wants the Redhead-Kid.

The Kid doesn’t want to go home.

He’d rather hang with the Devil.

And hang, he may.

 ———

(lyrics, in italics, from “Sympathy for the Devil”
© 1968-69 by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)

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Damage Control: Cinemax’s OUTCAST 107, “The Damage Done,” Recap & Review

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Every character in Cinemax’s horror series Outcast, based on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman and Paul Azaceta, has been damaged, by other people if not by demons. In episode 7, “The Damage Done,” many of the characters attempted to limit the damage previously done (whether by them or by others), to make up for past damage, or, at the very least, to prevent any future damage from occurring. They were not always successful. Sometimes, by trying to prevent any more damage, the people in Rome WV caused more damage in their personal lives and relationships. They didn’t need external demons from Hell to make their lives worse: the characters messed up their lives just fine without any demonic help.

Allison

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We already know that Kyle’s ex-wife Allison (Kate Lyn Sheil) is not behaving normally, though Kyle’s sister Megan thinks that Allison’s slightly “off” behavior might be due to some of the medications she’s taking. Megan has already told Kyle that Allison is fragile, perhaps permanently damaged due to what happened on the night that Allison cannot remember. The night she was assaulted, she was told by police and ER doctors that her husband had admitted to attacking her. What she hadn’t knows was why he assaulted her.

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In episode 7, after finding a drawing inside the closet where daughter Amber keeps hiding, Allison has a flashback of her daughter being choked. Amber cries out, “Don’t, Mommy,” in the flashback, and Allison realizes that her ex-husband Kyle has taken the blame for something that she herself did.

She then brought Amber over to Kyle’s home, made love to Kyle, then left them both: Kyle awoke to a note from Allison which read, Take care of our little light. He got his daughter back, but at the price of his wife. After recognizing Kyle’s sacrifice to keep her and their daughter safe, Allison sacrificed her relationship with her daughter to keep her safe. I’m sure it was incredibly bittersweet for Kyle, who has always made it clear that he wants his entire family back, wife and daughter.

Kyle

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Chief Giles (Reg E Cathey, above R) came to Kyle’s home and took Kyle to the burnt camper in the woods. Giles kept asking Kyle if he got a “read”on it. Kyle told him he wasn’t “psychic.” After Kyle explained that he sometimes got a reaction from a person who was possessed by a demon, but had unpredictable success casting out the demons — at times the victim is freed, but at others, the victim becomes catatonic, like Kyle’s mother — Giles and Kyle were shown at the town’s Memorial Service (Day of Remembrance) for 29 miners who died 7 years earlier. While Chief Giles’ friend Ogden, who burnt the camper, was greeting people at the celebration, Giles watched Kyle go up and shake Ogden’s hand, hoping to determine if there was a demon in Ogden (Pete Burris).

Fire Chief Ogden didn’t have the type of reaction that viewers (and Kyle) have come to expect when Kyle touches the demonically possessed. Instead, Ogden became verbally and emotionally abusive to Kyle, telling him that he was one of the miners who should have died 7 years ago, and that Kyle’s death would have been a blessing to his wife. Ogden tried to damage Kyle more his his abuse, but Kyle is already traumatized enough by what’s happened to him. Ogden’s words didn’t seem to affect Kyle. After shaking hands with Ogden, Kyle shook his head at the Chief to let him know there didn’t seem to be a demon in Ogden.

Later, when the crowd got there, Kyle accepted a candle from Ogden’s wife, and she jerked away, dropping the candle, when her hand touched Kyle’s. Demon Warning. Kyle attempted to follow Ogden’s wife, but lost her in the crowd. Kyle then had to abandon the hunt when the Reverend needed Kyle’s assistance at damage control.

That night, Kyle thought he was being reunited with his family only to wake in the morning and find himself alone with his daughter. Kyle probably thinks he’s cursed: not only does he seem to be the person that all the demons want, but he got his daughter back at the price of his wife. Furthermore, there seems to be some indication that his daughter Amber is a bit like Kyle: she admitted being able to see the demon that was in her mother 7 years ago. If she could see the demon, she may be like Kyle.

Megan

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 After Megan (Wrenn Schmidt) was blackmailed by her childhood rapist, Donnie, who was assaulted by her Police Officer husband Mark, Megan got together all the money she could and took it to Donnie in the hospital. Unfortunately, Donnie didn’t want money: he probably wanted Megan. He said he wanted “whatever she could give him,” or something equally ambiguous. Megan interpreted “what she could give him” as money. Donnie (Scott Parker, below), apparently, meant something else entirely (or he meant a lot more money than Megan could gather).

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Donnie’s lawyer filed assault charges, Mark was suspended from his job, and Megan was left to deal with the fall-out of her not telling Mark about Donnie’s blackmail. Megan and Mark had a bitter argument about secrets, each of them accusing the other of not being completely honest. At the end of the fight, Megan asked, “How are we going to fix this?” and Mark told her, quite candidly, “I don’t know if we can.” The damage from the past has been complicated by the damage in the present, and these are two people who don’t have demonic possession to blame for ruining their lives.

Reverend Anderson

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After being attacked by Sidney and mutilated with a knife, Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister) has become unhinged. The damage to his ego may be even greater than the damage to his body. Before the attack, The Rev was angry at God, blaming God for the Rev’s own failures to cast out all the demons in his congregation. Now The Rev is blaming Sidney (Brent Spiner), taunting him in the barbershop before the Remembrance Day Service.

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After giving his dedication to the Memorial, The Rev flipped out when the statue of the miner was unveiled. It had been defaced with red paint, marked with the pentagram in a circle, the same mark that Sidney carved in The Rev’s chest the previous night. The Rev went totally berserkers, pointing out Sidney to the other members of the crowd, shouting that Sidney was The Devil, saying, “We can send them [demons] back. I can send them back.”

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By the time The Rev displayed his own mutilated chest, he’d already lost the crowd. They were probably more frightened of him than they were of the black-garbed Sidney, who is a stranger in the town. The physical damage done to The Rev wasn’t as great as the reputation damage he did to himself with his neurotic, paranoid rant at the Memorial.

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Kyle had to come “save” The Rev from alienating people any further. While The Rev realized afterward that everyone probably thought he was crazy, he listened to Kyle when Kyle said they needed to “be smart” to get the demons — and perhaps the Devil himself — out of Rome.

Mildred

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I thought, when she was taken away from her home, that Mildred (Grace Zabriskie) was catatonic, like Kyle’s mother and the exorcised Sherry in Charleston. To my dismay, I learned that Mildred is dead. What a shame. I hope we’re going to see more of the demon-possessed Mildred, at least, if only in flashbacks. She’s one of the best actors in the series, and I’d hate if we only got that little bit of her wonderful performance.

Kyle has become a Saviour, of sorts, to many of the people in Rome, and not just because they’re demonically possessed and need his exorcism services. He had to save The Rev from his own crazy diatribe and rescue him from the townies before they became a mob and turned on him. Kyle already had to save his daughter once from her mother Allison: now Allison has explicitly asked him to be Amber’s Saviour again. Allison didn’t ask Kyle to save her, but he may still have to do that. I can’t believe that he’d cast out the demons of Rome’s other citizens but neglect the demon in Allison. Chief Giles asked Kyle to help him identify a demon in his friend, Ogden. Whether or not the Chief will care about the demons in townspeople who are not his friends remains to be seen. In any event, the Chief has already made the first step to becoming more involved in the exorcisms by asking Kyle for help.

The only people who haven’t yet asked Kyle to be their Saviour are his sister Megan and his brother-in-law Officer Mark. But then, these two aren’t dealing with demons from Hell. They’re not even dealing with the Devil. Instead, their fighting their own inner demons.

And losing.

I don’t know if Kyle will be able to help them in that battle.

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Demons, Demons Everywhere: Cinemax’s Outcast, Review

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No Spoilers

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You don’t have to be a fan of AMC’s The Walking Dead to be captivated by Cinemax’s new horror thriller Outcast, based on the graphic novels-comics by Robert Kirkman and Paul Azaceta. You don’t even have to be a fan of the authors themselves. It helps, however, to be a fan of the horror genre, since the shows packs in a hefty weekly dose of demons, Satanic and personal.

Based on the premise that one’s inner demons can be almost as terrifying as being possessed by Hellish ones, Outcast explores the way a person’s past can haunt him as much as any supernatural demon. The major protagonist, Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit) grew up with a mother who, supposedly possessed by demonic forces, violently abused the boy.

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Later, after she became catatonic and was committed to a Home, Kyle was taken in by a foster family who eventually adopted him. His sister Megan (Wrenn Schmidt) tries to take care of Kyle now that he is separated from his wife and daughter.

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In conjunction with Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister) — one of the most fascinating and complex characters in the series to date — Kyle confronts the demons who seem to be gathering in various inhabitants of Rome WV, all the while wondering what it is about him that causes him to constantly encounter these demons, who address Kyle as “Outcast.”

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At first, the show had some major weaknesses. The constant flashbacks to Kyle’s childhood, when he was abused by his demonically possessed mother, Sarah Barnes (Julia Crockett) were repetitions of the same few flashbacks: they were repetitious because they didn’t provide new information on Kyle’s childhood, his character, nor his mother’s nature. Also, they occurred every few minutes, which got tedious in the extreme.

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Additionally, each of the first three episodes featured an exorcism, leading me to fear that the show would degenerate into an Exorcism of the Week format.

Fortunately, both of those weaknesses disappeared by the fourth episode, “A Wrath Unseen,” as the show stretched its focus to explore the personal lives of the characters surrounding Kyle, including his sister Megan and her husband officer Mark Holter (David Denman, below L), who is conducting an investigation with Chief Giles (Reg E. Cathey, below R) into dead and mounted animals left in the woods, and a bloodied camper.

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Reverend Anderson is one of the strongest characters in the early episodes, since he is more  unpredictable in his attempts to help his congregation defeat demons. Is he doing it for God, or for his own reputation? We’ve yet to discover that.

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Apparently, Rev. Anderson has been doing this for a while, but suddenly, the demon possession of individuals in Rome has multiplied exponentially. Except for the fact that this would be immediately noticed by law enforcement and medical personnel since there’s quite a bit of physical violence inflicted on those who are possessed, both by the demons themselves and by Kyle as he aids the Revered in his attempt to exorcise the demonic spirits, the show handles the actual violence relatively well. Some of it is on-screen, but most is off.

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One of the most gruesome moments happens in the first scene of episode 1, “A Darkness Surrounds Him,” with a possessed boy, Joshua (Gabriel Bateman), and a bug. In the highlights of the show aired immediately afterward, the director and writer stated that young Bateman himself thought of many of the possessed behaviors for his character.

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While that may be true, it is clear that Bateman has seen The Exorcist quite a few times, since much of his demonic actions — levitating, talking in Voices, puking green-pea-soup — are directly from the classic film.

That’s one of the things that slowed the premiere down because viewers had a “been there, seen that” feeling. The show improved in the second episode, “(I Remember) When She Loved Me,” which concentrated on Kyle’s past, including his relationship with his mother, which wasn’t all demons and physical abuse, making the demonic possession more tragic.

By the fourth episode, the show has found its comfort zone in the horror genre, terrifying viewers with hints of demons — personal and demonic — instead of just rolling out the Exorcist special effects. Veteran character actor Grace Zabrieski as Mildred, a congregationist who was supposedly exorcised two years previously, displayed her acting talent by threatening both Kyle and the Reverend.

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The investigation into the gruesome bloodied camper finally expanded, while a visit from someone in Megan’s past released her own demons, those of her husband, and those of adopted brother Kyle. Brent Spiner’s character Sidney, introduced in episode 2, is not yet doing more than lurking about, but I suspect that will change. (If it doesn’t, it would be a dreadful waste of Spiner’s talent.) At this point, it’s unclear whether Sidney is the Devil himself or just a powerful and very well dressed demon.

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The show’s super haunting and spooky opening credits will get your attention fast. Outcast airs Fridays at 10p.m. ET on Cinemax. You can watch the premiere, “A Darkness Surrounds Him,” free on Cinemax (or on its YouTube Channel) and watch all the episodes on MaxGo.

Scary in a completely different way from Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, Cinemax’s Outcast is sure to grab horror fans by the throat and not let them go. Enjoy the trailer, my fellow Outcasts.

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