Hello friends, and happy Tuesday! It’s been a while, but I’m bringing back TV Tuesday to talk about the Netflix adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, The Mist.

Today I’m talking about the only season, this adaptation got, as it was cancelled after season one… and I think that might have been for the best. This was interesting to say the least. They tried to give it its own spin, but they didn’t do a good job with with, plus the acting was not there for me.

At first I didn’t know if this was the adaption to Stephen King’s short story by the same name, the only thing that was relevant was an army man who’s dog was killed by a rolling fog that was coming. But it does get into it more.

He’s trying to warn the rest of the town, but the cops just think he’s crazy and lock him up.

We’re basically dropped into the middle of this town with all its small town history and nuisances, that it’s a little much to take in, especially for the first episode.

We first meet Eve, who’s being fired for wanting to teach teens about sex. It’s interesting because she seems so open about teaching kids and educating them about the safe way to go about it… but she won’t let her own daughter out of the house. All Alex wants is to go to a party, Eve says no, but her father, Kevin says she can go, if she brings her friend Adrian with her. Adrian is an interesting character; I can see they’re trying not to go the gay best friend route by going the pan best friend route? It’s supposed to feel inclusive and I guess forward thinking, but it feels more cringy. 

Anyways, the two go to this party and one thing leads to another and we’re told that she was sexually assaulted at the party. That’s really heavy for episode one, but okay, here we are. It’s supposedly one of the boys on the football team, and his dad is a cop – they couldn’t make it more generic if they tried here. 

So Eve and Kevin fight and decide it’s best if Alex gets out of town for a bit. It’s there at the mall that the power goes out and the mist comes rolling through. There are random people in it who are crazed… is this mist supposed to make people go crazy? 

There was also a lot of focus on bugs… is that going to play a big part?

I love seeing Frances Conroy on my screen… I just wish her character had been better. She’s playing this old lady, Natalie who gets bitten by a bug and she’s noticing that nature is going crazy… so she goes to the library to look it up. It’s there the mist makes its appearance. One of the crazy people in the mist takes her husband right before her eyes.

We’re also introduced to this woman who is trying to get something from a shed that used to belong to someone she knew, but now belongs to this really angry man. So she gets arrested for trespassing and is with the army man. Both of them are in jail when the mist shows up. One of the cops gets eaten by whatever is out there. 

It’s been a wild first episode, but curious to see where this goes. 

Okay, things are starting to get interesting. It’s looking like there will be two main locations for people to hideout in. The first being the mall where Alex and her mom Eve are; and the church where her father Kevin and best friend Adrian are… as well as the army man, Brian the erratic woman, Mia and Natalie. 

I’m finding the story at the mall way more exciting than the one at the church. The mist has found its way into a hallway of the mall. It’s in the admin area, where the radios are. Eve is chosen to go into it with a strange man named Clint? To retrieve the radios. But once they get there, Clint is radioing someone and it sounds like some sort of inside job. Eve beings to ask him who he is, but he gets cagey. When she tries to escape, he goes after her, but she uses the mist to her advantage and unfortunately kills him. I’m so curious who he was radioing and I hope they bring that back in some way because does he know who’s causing the mist?!?! 

Then back at the church, everyone is kinda just around trying to stay safe. We do see that Brian, Mia, Adrian and Kevin get to the church by stealing a cop car and flipping it. Mia sees a woman from her past, a woman who has died, while in the mist. So either she’s hallucinating because she’s coming down from drugs, or the mist is making her see it… which has peaked my interest I won’t lie. When Brian says he saw her too, I got even more curious. I need to know more!

Ehhh I’m not so sure I’m totally into this. I’m only 3 episodes in so I’ll see where it goes but it’s gotten so boring. The character development is whatever to me. It’s not really doing anything for me and it’s not even that scary, like nothing is keeping me engaged.

The plot with Alex and being raped is getting to be a bit much. And her mom has some sort of past too, but nothing is really explained; it’s just used as a bate to keep us watching. I don’t like that. 

Then there’s a plot where the priest is trying to baptize the gay out of Adrian. I’m not really sure what this show is trying to tell its viewers. 

It’s been very slow moving. Nothing has really moved; everyone is still trapped and tempers are running high. Petty squabbling has started and they’ve alluded to the military knowing more than they’re letting on. 

Okay, so this got a little ruthless, but I liked that because it made the stakes higher – nothing is safe. When one of the boys at the mall causes the mist to enter a part of the mall and kill a little girl, they toss him out into the mist to survive. I wonder if he will, I doubt it but I guess I’ll see. 

Alex was with that little girl, and she survived. She even asks her mom why didn’t it want me? Which is a great question. (I mean, obviously as a main character I get she wouldn’t be killed in the beginning, but it’s still interesting that it just looked at her).

Back at the church, Natalie has gone a little crazy believing the bugs have a deep meaning to the mist and she refuses to kill any of them. The priest thinks that they’re at the end of days and god is coming with the rapture. 

Kevin, Adrian and, Brian and Mia escape the church and try to steal a car, only to realize that the cars stopped working. They do find a guy in a minimart who has a car that was built without technology so it still works. They have to convince the guy who owns it to use it – it comes to gun violence, but in the end they win and now I guess they’re on their way to the mall… nope the hospital.

Brian has been shot and needs medical attention. So they make it to the hospital and people are there. Brian gets the care he needs… but something is telling me Brian isn’t who he says he is. When Mia goes to see him, his room has moved so she goes to where a nurse tells him he is… only it’s not Brian. Hmm, interesting. 

Also while at the hospital, Kevin finds his brother Mike, suffering. We get a lot of flashbacks to when Kevin and Eve first moved to what I’m assuming is this town, I guess Kevin is feeling sentimental. Kevin tries to do everything for his brother, even though he doesn’t quite see eye to eye with him. 

He even risks his own life by going into the OR that has the mist to perform a surgery. In the end it’s no use because they’re attacked by leaches, ew, and he can’t save him. It’s devastating, but it’s all about survival at this point. 

So people are starting to go missing at the hospital. It’s Kevin who finds out it’s a doctor he’s been talking to, who’s basically killing people… and Kevin may be next. I thought maybe he was doing it because he knew more about the mist… but I think he’s just scared. It’s Adrian that saves him. 

Mia has fled the hospital and she’s gone back to the house she started in. It’s there that she sees her dead mother… and her mother tries to get her to kill herself, telling her she has no one to live for. But she somehow pulls through it.

Back at the church, this really religious kid wants the priest to do something about Natalie because she’s leading people astray and she needs to repent and be dealt with. The priest has no want to do any such thing, so the kid takes things into his own hands. He leads Natalie to the attic, and she knows something is up. I like how smart and resourceful her character is here; I was like ‘yes, you go girl’. She finds a window and punches it so the mist comes through and then locks him in the attic. She feels bad, but she knew she had to do that to stay alive. 

This is what happens when people take religion too seriously, in the sense that they take it very literally. Anyone who doesn’t follow it to a T should be killed. I hate that kind of mentality… about any thought or viewpoint. 

Then at the mall, someone tries to kill Alex by locking her in a room and setting it on fire. Of course the guy who was said to assault her is there to save her. I’m not sure where they’re going with this plot. Alex is about ready to forgive him, but her mother is nowhere close. It’s like she has a personal vendetta against the kid. I’m wondering if her past has anything to do with his father… it would make some sort of sense.

It’s not long before flyers are being delivered saying “They’re coming”? Is that supposed to be the military? So everyone starts to leave their ‘safe zones’. Should be interesting. 

We’re definitely entering the crazy part of the show… quite literally as they take shelter in the psychiatric ward. Mia gets them in and we meet this doctor… but we find out the hard way when he kidnaps Adrian that he’s actually one of the patients. Geeeez!

Mia finds out that Brian’s real name is Jonah. And because she’s on some sort of drug free path, she’s in a lot of pain. Her screams remind Jonah of what happened to him… or part of it. He was strapped to a gurney and tortured… that’s where he lost his memory that’s for sure.

Then back at the church, we find out that the priest actually wanted that kid to do what he did to Natalie. Geeeeez. So he tells Natalie that he’s leading them all astray, so the only way to settle the score is for both of them to go out into the mist to see who survives.

I didn’t like where this went. Natalie goes naked believing nature would save her and the priest goes in believing god will save him. I was kinda hoping they both would die to prove that the mist doesn’t discriminate… well that didn’t happen. They go out and these knights (that look like fools) show up on horses and basically condemn the priest to death. 

Really?! This one girl, Shelley is so mad that she thinks that the mist was brought on because she thinks Alex lied about being raped… what a weird concept. I hate this plot. 

Everything is getting so insane. 

What the hell?! Okay, so talk about insane, Adrian… is what delusional? Psychotic? Messed in the head?

I mean, I get it, his upbringing wasn’t great and his father was a piece of work, so when he kills his father I’m not surprised… what surprised me were all the revelations that came with it.

So he, Kevin, Jonah and Mia leave the hospital and they end up on Adrain’s street. He tells the group he wants to say goodbye to his family. So they let him do that. 

He finds out that his mother is dead and his father goes on and on about how he never loved him. This, I don’t know, sets Adrian off and all these things start coming out. He tells his father that his mother loved him and that Alex loves him. But his father tells him that she’ll never be with him and Adrian says something that I didn’t quite catch, but it implied he picked who raped her. 

Then after he kills his father, Kevin comes back for him and Adrian freaks out, pretending his father tried to kill him and asking that he’ll always be apart of his family. Kevin says yes, but the fact that he kept saying it, had Kevin questioning it and wondering what he did. Either he raped Alex himself, or he made someone do it and I don’t think it’s the kid, Jay. In the end, Adrian kills Kevin and claims his father did it when he returns to the car.

So now they’re off to the mall.

Back at the church, Natalie’s god tells them they must go to the mall because the cop admitted that he’s pretty sure his son, Jay raped Alex and so they must go and repent his sins. 

Natalie believes that the catalyst for it all was Alex getting assaulted. Mother Nature has gotten so mad that it’s getting rid of all the bad people in the world. 

So anyone who doesn’t follow Natalie are being burned in the church as they leave. Well that’s rather dramatic. 

Then at the mall. Alex is hanging out with Jay and Eve is PISSED. Like overtly mad. 

Shelley the woman whose daughter died is pissed that Alex lived and her daughter didn’t so she keeps blaming everything on Alex. But when she goes to tell the guy in charge, Gus, she finds a stash of food in his office. The Gus is mad at Shelley, but when she tells him what she found… he kills her and blames Alex for it. My gosh this is getting suuuper crazy!

So now they’re on a witch hunt for Alex. 

Dear lord, so Kevin isn’t dead?!?! Oh man this will get good if he ever finds his family again. So the kid that got ejected from the mall survived and he finds Kevin. So they become a tag team. But before they can get to their destination, the mall, they must go through a whole bunch of shit. It’s there where Kevin asks where Adrian is and he tells the kid that it was Adrian who raped Alex. We finally got the confirmation that had been sorta alluded to before. 

Adrian, Jonah and Mia make it to the mall. Adrian reconnects with Alex and Eve… but now that we know who he is, it’s not a happy reunion from the viewers perspective. He tells them that her father is dead, or so he thinks. Again, shall be interesting. 

Jonah and Mia basically hide out. Jonah goes to look for food and runs into a guy named Wes. When Jonah tells him his name, Wes looks taken aback… I think he’s one of the guys who made him forget who he was… because next thing we know, Wes is attacking Jonah. 

So I know that this show got canceled so I’m expecting an unfinished ending but we’ll see.

So the cop makes it to the mall. Everyone is demanding he knows what is going on, when all he wants to know is if his son is there.

He finds Jay, brings him back to Natalie… then throws him out into the mist. They believe he’s the sacrifice for raping Alex. But because we know it’s not him… I’m like nothing this going to happen is it? And nope, nothing happens, the mist is still there.

Kevin also makes it back to the mall and he finds Mia who is happy to see him… but you know who isn’t happy, Adrian. Kevin doesn’t kill him, but beats him up good. I’m mad that no one got to find out he was the real one behind it all because he ‘loved’ her. 

The mob at the mall are deadset on kicking Eve and Alex out into the mist. That’s when Eve drops this bomb shell that she was pregnant before she met Kevin and that Alex’s real father is the cop and that’s why she said Alex couldn’t be with Jay. See I had a feeling it had to do with his father, I just didn’t see that coming. Was this added to keep viewers interested? Like an incest plotline… like there were SO many better ways this could have been handled. Eve acted like Jay was going to damage Alex, like he was a disease… not her half brother. This plot made zero sense.

Kevin finds Eve and Alex and Gus tells Kevin the news basically and all hell breaks loose. That’s when they leave the mall on their own. They get in the car and flee. But before they get to the car, Alex gets caught in the mist and it’s Jay who saves her, and it takes his life. 

Once they get to the car, Kevin decides to back the car into the mall, breaking all the glass so the mist can infiltrate the mall – I mean, I don’t blame him, after everything they’ve all been through. People start dying left and right. 

Natalie sees her dead husband, then she has a baby, is that supposed to be a dead baby from her past? But it’s not long before she’s sucked dry of life and she becomes a skeleton. So much for knowing everything. 

Alex tells the cop to go with them… seeing as I guess that’s her real father. They drive until they find a train. It’s there where they find what is feeding the mist. But we’ll never know more because that’s how it ends.

Womp womp. I read the season 2 was supposed to dive into the military and how that plays a roll in the mist. Because Jonah makes it out too with Wes. And I think they were going to play a part in that. But like I said, we’ll never know. 

I don’t like that loose ends weren’t tied up and we never got to see the mist go away. For the most part, it was ok; it was never really scary, creepy at times and definitely played at emotions and life and death and what you’d do for survival. But there were scenes and sometimes whole episodes where I was like this wasn’t needed. It would be super slow paced and then super fast, that it felt uneven while watching it. I can see why there was low viewership because after episode 3 or 4 I was like do I want to continue, and to be fair I don’t even know if it was worth continuing because you don’t get a resolution. 

In the end, they tried, but this was just ok.