r/TheStand

Okay! So like the title says, I totally did this out of order. I watched the 2020 miniseries a couple years ago. I've actually seen it a couple times because my fiancé adores it. I haven't seen it recently, but I remember it well enough. As it stands (haha get it?) right now, I think I'll maintain that I liked it. I've seen a few of the complaints, and I get some of them. Reading the book, I've realized that the story is very much not really about Boulder. I'm over halfway through and haven't even seen the place yet. But I liked Alexander Skarsgard as Flagg, even if Vegas is nothing like it is in the book. And I personally don't think the timeline jumping is a huge problem. The book jumps around all the time. I just read a chapter that jumps back and forth between Trash Can Man in Vegas and his trip there like 5 times. Something similar happened in a recent Frannie chapter. That's not to say the show didn't have problems. It skips basically the entirety of the government response to the plague, and the way it handles Trash Can Man is horrendous to name a couple things.

Meanwhile, I've only seen the 1994 miniseries once. A few months, maybe a year ago. I really liked the first episode, then found that it declined with every episode following for me. Now at the time, I hadn't read the book. I didn't realize that, yeah, the book really is paced like that. If anything, they ALSO put more focus on Boulder than the book did from what I can tell. That's proportionally, not true amount of time of course. This book is very long. By far my biggest complaint at the time was that they flattened Nadine. Say what you will of the actress, but Nadine in 2020 was interesting. 1994 gave her nothing. She took all the drug habits and cowardice of Rita and lost her care for children and Joe in particular. She was just evil. She wasn't conflicted, she just kinda sucked as a person. Given how much people who have read the book love 1994, I was very worried going in that Nadine would be that flat, awful bore in the book as well, so I was very happy to see that that's not the case.

As for the book, I love it. Every character has been more interesting and more full of life than they are in either show. Particularly, Frannie went from someone I didn't really care one way or another for to a deeply interesting person for me! I'm also loving every moment I get with Nadine, though it's been precious few so far. Rita was really great for the small bit of the story she's in, and being able to be in Nick's head has launched him up to an S tier character for me. But by far my favorite part of the book, and something neither show did or I think really could do, are all the tiny tragedies and miracles. Chapter 38, which covers the "second epidemic" is maybe my favorite chapter in the book, though there's certainly other instances of it. The big three that have stuck with me are George McDougal, who gave himself a heart attack trying to run from his thoughts after losing his family, Gina McCone, who Nick's group rescued on their way to Mother Abigail's after she had broken her leg playing in her uncle's barn, and the unnamed girl who was killed by her captors in "the zoo" for refusing to do something which Susan Stern won't even name as she recounted it. Those three have stuck with me a lot.

I'll make another post after I finish the book. My fiancé and I are doing it together (they read the book in high school in the 2010s, so I'm the only one who did this so horrifically out of order). I may wait to watch both shows again before I post, or I may do one after the book and another after each show or both shows. Not totally sure yet.

I think after the book, I'll also want to read the short story anthology. Considering what my favorite parts of the book have been, I get the feeling I'll like it very much.