At its best, the show delights in a vital feeling that has, of late, been denied us. Still, it’s not a bad place to visit for a bit, all bright and airy and deliciously open. Outer Banks is too wobbly, too noncommittal about what kind of show it wants to be: generic teen melodrama or thriller with a keen sense of place? Deliberately hokey or deeply sincere? Burke and the brothers Pate struggle to answer those questions, leaving the show to languish in limbo-beached on a sandbar of its own making, stuck out in the very shallows where it should be cavorting. So many dumb mistakes are made in each episode, usually leading to some moment of violence that should be harrowing, scarring, transformative for John B and crew, but are instead merely brushed off or laughed away a scene later. But more often than not, Outer Banks is bogged down by weak, shout-y performances and writing that invites more genuine frustration than affable, “get a load of these idiots” chuckles. It gets there, at times, when its silliness mingles well with the propulsive sweep of its world-building. If only the show was as fun as that premise suggests. There are glimmers, here and there, suggesting that Outer Banks has a broader politics on its mind in this depiction of vassal and liege, but the show is more concerned with having a good time frothing around in the soap than it is in Saying Something. That monied caste is called the Kooks, for some reason, and are largely identifiable by their traditionally preppy clothing-bright polos, crisp shorts-as opposed to the Pogues’ artful scraggle. There’s a class struggle framing this whole narrative, as John B and JJ and Pope (but not Kiara, technically) are “Pogues,” meaning they’re children of the poor local families who service all the wealthy seasonal residents. Outer Banks is determined to not have its mellow harshed too much. Once the suspense part of the story kicks into gear, you’d think the kids would have less time to lounge around looking perfectly mussed. Life is all mild hustle and easy flow for these relatively carefree kids-they screw around on their boat, they drink beers on the beach, they seemingly never wash their hair-until a hurricane comes and dredges up past secrets. ) some nine months prior to the pilot episode, but he’s got good company in his pals: dopey-dangerous JJ ( Rudy Pankow), nerdy-quirky Pope ( Jonathan Daviss), and the resident girl, a politically minded toughie named Kiara ( Madison Bailey). John B has basically lived alone since his dad was lost at sea (hmm. Outer Banks is a show that is, in theory, as much as about its moody setting as it is about its characters, like Netflix’s Bloodline before it, a humid thriller that made menacing poetry of the mangrove tangles of the Florida Keys. Television teens have returned to those troubled shores for the usual canoodling and angst-but also, this time, in pursuit of a mystery’s answer, dodging bullets fired by menacing thugs invading a tucked-away Eden to extract its hidden riches. Which brings me to the new Netflix series Outer Banks (dropping April 15), which takes place on the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina, but was filmed in South Carolina. This landscape was home to emotional swell and gauzy romance beautiful, but lacking a danger that might make these places seem truly mythic. As that happened, the coastal south was partly taken over by the Nicholas Sparks cinematic universe, in which a legion of lovers, mostly young, had their dramas unfold in those picturesque expanses, all warm and golden and dripping with sticky-sweet honey. While North Carolina boomed for a while, over time, TV and film productions followed tax breaks to the shorelines of South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. (The cliffside road scenes were shot in California, but still.) The teen tone of North Carolina was quite different in 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer (which shared the same writer as Dawson’s), but it had the same pleasing allure: recognizably of our country, but still somehow exotic. Though the show took place on Cape Cod, it was filmed in and around Wilmington, North Carolina, capturing a kind of glowing Americana-not too north, but not too south, and lush with marsh and water. A staggering 22 years ago, the teen drama series Dawson’s Creek introduced many young Americans to the sun-dappled shores of the Carolinas.
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