I’m not usually the type of person who watches a series when it’s brand new. I usually wait a few seasons so that I can get a bunch of seasons and binge watch. Nowadays, a show will release an entire season all at once and then make you wait an entire year for a new season, which makes it even more difficult if you’re like me and hate cliffhangers. I guess I can tell my kids that television shows used to run from September to May with a new episode released each week, and you only had to wait 4 months to get the outcome of the cliffhanger.
Being the beach bum that I am, the name of the series, Outer Banks, caught my attention and I knew I had to watch it. With so many shows only lasting a season or two, I figured it was safe to watch the series that was one season in. I was wrong. I guess I’m just happy that I waited a year to watch it and now have less time to wait for the second season to drop.
The series follows a group of friends who live in the poorer part of the Outer Banks, which is a string of barrier islands off the coasts of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. The show never specifies exactly where in the Outer Banks that they live, but it is obviously a small coastal town. The main protagonists on the show are local residents from a poorer, working class part of time, who have a rivalry with the wealthier seasonal residents. This rivalry sets the tone for a lot of the stories earlier in the season.
John B is the ringleader of the Pogues, the kids from the poorer part of town and the series follows him as he seeks to find answers to questions he has about his father’s disappearance. An urban legend on the island about a large amount of gold bars hidden somewhere on the island has the locals going crazy with everyone trying to find the gold bars. John B’s father was one of those people. He was out sailing the islands in search of the gold bars and was lost at sea and presumed dead. John B never liked that outcome and he and his friends set out to find out what really happened.
*spoiler alert*
The group ends up finding the gold bars and makes a plan to retrieve them later on. During this time John B starts dating one of the Kooks, one of the wealthier kids in town. The girl’s dad overhears them talking about finding the gold bars and where they are located. He steals the gold bars and has them shipped off to Mexico on a private plane. John B and his girlfriend Sarah, attempt to stop the plane from taking off, during which they discover that Sarah’s father is the one who killed John B’s father. The struggle on the airstrip ends up with a cop being murdered and Sarah’s father Ward, frames John B, who now becomes a fugitive hiding out in various places all over the island.
With federal agencies now involved in the search for John B, the Pogues come up with a plan for John B to leave on a boat and take it to Mexico, to hide out, and to find the gold bars. With a tropical storm heading their way, it seemed like a potentially deadly trip to take. I won’t give away too much, in case there are still people who want to watch the series.
The show is definitely well written, despite character development being slow in the beginning, it does pick up pretty quickly by episodes three and four. The series feels like teen dramas of the 90’s like Dawson’s Creek and Party of Five, with elements of action-adventure shows of the 80’s and 90’s like Acapulco Heat, Baywatch, and Miami Vice, with a touch of mystery similar to Desperate Housewives and House. I highly recommend checking out season one before the release of season two this summer.
The Chaos Theory 