Control: Outer Banks S1E1…
Wherein our heroes find a boat filled with treasure…and try to plunder it. I, Dalton Lewis, watched the first episode of 2020’s teen drama Outer Banks and felt that it seemed like two episodes or a movie stuffed into fifty minutes. Overall it was a good episode that I would recommend for any fan of teen fiction — albiet with some caveats. The beginning was a bit stilted — they started the episode by having the protagonist, John B, introduce us to our characters with a monologue and montage scenes of him and his friends. This is a very old-fashioned sort of introduction to a story. In plays from centuries past the maid would answer the phone at the beginning of the play and list off all the main characters and their personalities and plots that would happen during the play…
From then we see another very standard trope: the teenager without parents. I don’t know why this is so popular. Huck Finn was so much stronger with an abusive father and an old matron that takes care of him. Hamlet is stronger with a mother and a stepfather who…well, you know. However, John B’s father is missing and needs to be found. This is an effective setup for a story because it is an interesting mystery that is set up well during the first episode.
Eventually there is a hurricane, and after the hurricane John B and his three gorgeous friends all find a sunken boat with some sort of surprise cargo. They are scared away repeatedly but find several leads. Each lead brings some investigation and some risk of danger.
One effective scene shows John B and JJ, his best friend, sneaking into a hotel room of the owner of the sunken boat and finding a gun and some cash. Then the police show up to that hotel room, and they have to hide. All in all the action scenes are low-key and realistic enough to be interesting and slightly believable. At one point someone shoots guns at them, but I felt like that was a little unbelievable: why are these people shooting at teenagers? But it’s a minor problem, and the story hums along pretty well.
Sarah Cameron is the pretty girl who is rich and a foil to John B’s poor character, and they will clearly fall in love. They don’t like each other at first, and she is dating a popular preppie frat boy character who is like every cliche of an 80’s evil jock in existence. He is a weak point, a character who is flat and uninteresting and without the depth and complexity of, well, everyone else. Sarah Cameron is a helplessly and hopelessly good person, trying to save as many animals and little kids as possible, and one can see why she and John B would fall in love.
Overall the show is good and interesting and shows pretty people with problems in a relatively new and interesting way. I remember when I was a teenager, though, and there were no sunken treasures to find or people shooting guns at me. I just remember that the popular successful kids whose parents had millions did bother me and every other middle-class kid along with me. I suppose that divide — the rich vs. everyone else — is something that is a real anxiety presented well by the show. I hope to watch some more episodes and review the rest of the first season sometime.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
