The Outsider Review: Que Viene El Coco (Season 1 Episode 4)

Holly connects the dots and finds the face of evil on The Outsider Season 1 Episode 4, “Que Viene El Coco.”

An immediate presence on the episode is this heaviness, this impending doom that can’t be shaken off. It occupies every scene, nearly every frame even, this uneasy feeling as though we’re peering into darkness. This builds as the hour goes on, and culminates in the strange, almost dream-like discovery of “El Coco,” the bogeyman that Holly is warned about.

If The Outsider is a being that feeds on the pain of others, it’s found some harsh pain to inflict on the Maitland family. While the daughter is tortured by images of her father at night, the scene of Glory at the restaurant is equally as tortured. There’s malice to the way she’s simply enjoying her meal and is threatened, and it comes so suddenly.

Is this The Outsider’s doing, or as it seems, a member of the community who wanted to threaten her children’s lives? That’s a power that The Outsider, as a show, has: both are as equally terrifying a thought.

But the episode is largely concerned about Holly, and to a lesser extent Jack. Both are on paths of discovery, in Holly’s case one of truth while Jack is on a path of servitude.

Jack is still somewhat cognizant and present in his every day life, but it’s as though he is drawn to follow through on The Outsider’s whims. The question of whether or not Jack is the next suspect, or if he’s just a pawn in The Outsider’s game, remains to be seen. He’s offering home supplies and deer as offerings, though, as if The Outsider has finally found a place where misery is plentiful and is settling in.

It’s a dark ideal, that this presence goes from place to place to cause pain but has finally found a place teeming with it to occupy long-term.

Something the show could easily create fear out of is that anyone could potentially become a doppelganger. When we see Terry Maitland’s doppelganger on the security footage and in quick asides, he is a blank slate lacking of emotion. The date that opens the episode shows Maria acting fairly normal even though it’s the doppelganger, placing a seed of doubt on who characters can be at any time.

Holly’s new semi-love interest Andy (played by Derek Cecil) is certainly a good person so far, but there’s the notion that he can be The Outsider or be affected in some way to be a roadblock ahead. It could happen to any character, which is both an exciting thought for story potential, but at the same time a creepy revelation that puts concern over every scene, where things can go wrong at a moment’s notice.

Holly’s side of the episode is more methodical, much like herself. A lot of information comes from screens she’s reading, presented in a closed-off, insular manner as if we’re witnessing as she absorbs all of the facts she remembers forever. Her interest in Andy is difficult to read as she’s navigating this new friendship with an eye for help when Andy appears more interested in her.

But two integral conversations come in the form of visiting Maria in prison, and the woman who overhears them in the visiting room. Maria maintains her innocence, fitting in line with everyone else, but for some reason she is, at least so far, not in The Outsider’s line of sight as a threat. It’s curious that others are eliminated before they can speak out, but Maria is skipped over so far.

While their conversation may not prove incredibly useful for Ralph and the Maitland family, it does open up the second conversation, which takes the show into the supernatural more than before.

Starting to place an otherworldly being over the murders will never hold up in court, but it does start to place a different reality onto these events, where emotional closure will be far more important than clearing anyone’s name. But how does one take on a bogeyman and win? That will be an interesting direction for the show to take.

Something that still needs clarity is how The Outsider collects its victims. The “infection” appears to occur from the drawing of blood, but it’s still not clear what comes next after that part of the ritual. Maybe Jack will be our window into the process. Holly’s discussion about the bogeyman and how folklore and tales of different cultures pull from similar sources helps solidify the so far malleable villain.

An aspect of the show that gets under the skin is the way every shot, even the simple act of pouring coffee into a cup or cutting a slice of pie, has a menacing connotation, as though violence can occur at any point. That’s the nature of The Outsider, really, to leave behind waves of pain and fear in its wake.

The end of The Outsider Season 1 Episode 4, “Que Viene El Coco,” is especially disorienting, with its sharpened focus keeping information just out of eyesight, and with Holly slowly sinking underwater in the bathtub, this sense that anything could happen to her even when taking a bath. It’s this dream-like quality where there is danger in the smallest of things, and the show, like its villain, is playing with that.

If the show can keep that level of tenseness going while continuing to deliver a fascinating crime investigation that digs deep into both its victims, its suspects, and its investigators, The Outsider can close out as a triumph. But as of now, still early into the telling of the tale, the show is using its atmosphere as a weapon, and is swinging it with precision.

 

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The Outsider airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.

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