The Nightmare is Over

The mini-series Nightmares and Dreamscapes, based on the short story collection of the same name by Stephen King, concluded tonight on TNT. The eight one-hour installments each portrayed a different story from the book (all of them total?). If you're a Stephen King fan that somehow missed it, don't fret -- the DVD set has already been announced for release this Halloween.

If you're not a Stephen King fan, however, I don't believe you missed a thing. I'm glad it finally ended tonight, because I don't think I could have taken another week. Looking back now, I don't quite understand what pulled me through all eight episodes. Maybe it was knowing that, good or bad, it would all be over in four weeks. Maybe it was the assumption that they'd get better. They'd have to get better, wouldn't they? Otherwise, why would TNT have shelled out the money to make them? Well, I've seen them all now, and I cannot answer that question. I can, however, give you my quickie, one paragraph review of each episode:

Battleground. Perhaps I stayed with the miniseries for the whole run because it started on an interesting note. This tale of a hired hitman tormented by animate toy soldiers wielding functional weaponry wasn't great, but it was interesting in its execution. It ran one hour with no commercial breaks and not one word of spoken dialogue. William Hurt gave a good enough performance, given no other live actors to play off of. Still, the story didn't really demand he convey a wide range of emotion without dialogue.

Crouch End. Airing the same night as Battleground, I should have known to jump ship right there. Friends of mine who have read the original story tell me it's full of creepy, Lovecraft-ian imagery and is damn unsettling. Whether that's true or not, on screen it was an endless stream of the worst aspects of Stephen King's writing: cardboard characters were shepherded through a flimsy plot like cattle. Married couple is on vacation. Man is excited to explore a creepy place that seems to be in another plane of existence. Woman constantly tells him it's a bad idea, but they go anyway. After a procession of minor set pieces, man goes bat-shit crazy. Ambiguous ending leaves you uncertain what the point of the whole damn thing was.

Umney's Last Stand. Despite a great performance by William H. Macy, this story of a pulp detective novel writer who wants to switch places with his fictional detective suffered from really bad pacing. The first 15-20 minutes are chewed up by a bunch of larger-than-life "bad crime novel" cliches featuring the fictional detective. Anyone who hasn't figured out within half that time that none of what is being shown is real needs to be exposed to more storytelling. The writer character finally appears to make things interesting, but by then so much time has been wasted on the introduction that the episode appears to get hacked off. I'm sure the conclusion of the tale was meant to be open-ended, but instead it simply comes across as unfinished. Curiously, this episode was directed by the same man who made the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Big Goodbye." He did all the dime-store detective gags there already, with a smaller budget, and to greater effect.

The End of the Whole Mess. Ron Livingston continues the trend of good acting elevating weak material in this tale of a documentary filmmaker with a genius brother who wants to cure the human race of aggression. I certainly hope the ending of this one wasn't meant to be a surprise, because it's telegraphed like a neon sign from practically the opening frame. Waiting for that foregone conclusion of an ending to arrive was a long wait indeed.

The Road Virus Heads North. It seems to me that Stephen King sure likes to write stories in which the lead characters are writers. Maybe it's supposed to be self-depracating. Maybe he's simply sticking to the old adage "write what you know," and he's writing what scares him. I don't typically find these set-ups he keeps using very accessible. This story of being threatened by a creepy-looking, animate painting failed for me on two levels. One, it doesn't seem to have a consistent internal logic. By that I mean, supernatural tales can violate the laws of the real world, but ought to have interal laws that make sense. Two, well -- speaking of "supernatural," let me bring up the WB (soon CW) show of that title. A surprisingly good little show that I wasn't expecting to last or to even like when it started last fall. Instead, it was one of my favorite new shows of the year. In their first season, they did a "creepy-looking, animate painting" episode that was on every level more scary and effective than this episode of the mini-series.

The Fifth Quarter. Not too much to commend or condemn about this tale of an ex-con (played by Jeremy Sisto) on a killing rampage/treasure hunt to find the loot from a bank heist. It wasn't particularly boring or exciting. It wasn't exactly surprising, but neither was it predictable. This episode was quite watchable, really, but surrounded by other weak content, probably seemed worse to me than it actually was.

Autopsy Room Four. Probably the best episode of the bunch, and yet still not without a big flaw. In this case, a one-note gimmick -- a still-living man lying paralyzed on an autopsy table -- is strecthed past its limits to fill the one-hour time slot. As an episode of a half hour anthology series, a Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories, this would probably have been a winner. As it was, the "are they about to do something horrible to him, or is something going to stop them?" card a few too many times, and we're subjected to one or two too many irrelevant flashbacks.

You Know They Got a Hell of a Band. This could easily have been titled "Crouch End, Redux." The only difference between the two stories was that dead rock idols were substituted for wacky Lovecraft-ian imagery. Otherwise, here's the plot: Married couple is on vacation. Man is excited to explore a creepy place that seems to be in another plane of existence. Woman constantly tells him it's a bad idea, but they go anyway. After a procession of minor set pieces, man goes bat-shit crazy. Oh, I guess you can scratch the "ambiguous ending" part this time. There's really no doubt here as to what happened, or what will happen, after the last fade to black. That is, unless you count my own doubt as to why the makers of this mini-series would do two versions of basically the same damn story -- the worst story in the bunch, to boot!

I've given Stephen King a chance on many occasions. It's always ended up average, with me not exactly hating him, but neither understanding what so many see in his writing. Fans of his have faulted my choices in his books I've read over the years: Misery, It, and The Dead Zone. All three pulled me through to the last page, but didn't leave me rushing to grab another Stephen King book. So I guess that it's just putting things back into balance that after reading The Dark Tower series and actually really liking it overall (despite finding books 1, 3, and 5 pretty awful), I'd have my opinion of Stephen King re-adjusted by this sad collection of stories on TNT.