I forgot about broken fingernails. To be specific, I forgot about the singularly revolting experience of finding the torn-off remains of a fingernail and wondering how long it has been there and to whom it once belonged. One thing is for sure, Outcast is determined to trigger every possible aversion and outcast that I might have.
Which begs the question: why watch it? I’ve tried to explain my fascination with horror to friends and family but the best I can come up with is that it is exhilarating. More than that, Outcast is massively entertaining and I’m enjoying it more each week.
This week Outcast took somewhat of a procedural turn with the rather strange case of Blake Morrow (Lee Tergesen, Oz). Blake is your average, run-of-the-mill crappy bowling partner until something very untoward happens and he tears his best friend’s wife to pieces before folding her into a neat pile of bones. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Blake has been possessed and Kyle and Reverend Anderson visit him in prison to investigate.
He is indeed possessed and Lee Tergesen gives an absolutely chilling performance as the unhinged and repugnant Demon Blake. That’s not the most interesting thing happening here though. Once again, Kyle’s blood seems to poison the demon but the exorcism itself fails. Perhaps most significant of all is that the demon turns around and addresses Kyle as ‘Outcast’.
So Kyle is the Outcast but what could that mean? At this point I’m dying to read the comics but I find myself in a rather charmed position. When you fall in love with a world, be it in print or on screen, there is only one moment where you do it for the first time. Sure, you can watch reruns or reread a book until it falls apart, but there is only one first time. I think this Outcast obsession is going to be big and so I’m going to hold off on filling in all the blanks just yet.
For now I’m going to speculate. I’m starting to think that if Kyle’s mother’s demon went anywhere, then it is within Kyle, and he is some sort of vessel for demons. He definitely possesses something that they respect and he must have some sort of power to tame them or destroy them. I’m wondering if other people on the show aren’t possessed, for example the evil white-haired guy Sidney (Brent Spiner). There is definitely something up with Rome’s police chief Giles (Reg E. Cathey, House of Cards) but at the moment I’m thinking he is more into covering up the demonic incursion than participating in it.
“I won’t give up until we save that man” - Reverend Anderson
“He can’t be saved. Whatever is in him is there to stay” – Kyle Barnes
Back to the episode, I really liked that they couldn’t ‘fix’ Blake Morrow and thought it significant when Kyle remarked that the demon was there to stay. It seems that there are many types of demons in the Outcast universe and while Demon Blake knew what Kyle is, I’m not sure he knew who he was.
I liked JR Bourne in his role as Luke Master, widower and best friend to Blake. I loved Master in Teen Wolf despite the fact that he was more evil than all the blood-thirsty werewolves put together.
Elsewhere in the episode, Megan is being stalked by someone from her past and it seems that some pretty hectic stuff happened to her in her previous life. I’ll be interested to see how that storyline plays out.
