After waiting all year in excitement to see one of my favorite books come to life, I found this series pilot to be a frustratingly mixed bag. Fortunately, it did get much better towards the end, so I'm still holding out hope. To start, the opening was incredibly lame, and it was followed by several more weak scenes and some really spotty directing. The acting from one of the dudes bullying Harold was unbelievably bad. However, Teague quickly won me over as Harold. He's definitely got some acting chops, which is great since his arc is my favorite from the book. It's too early to say with Fran, but at the very least Young seems much better cast than Ringwald.
Marsden does a commendable job as well, and I liked his take on Stu much more than I expected to based off the trailers. His storyline was actually very well handled for the most part, albeit too rushed. In fact, that was my biggest issue with the whole episode. The structure and pacing were horrendous! It was constantly jumping all over the place, to the point where it frequently made it unclear when each scene was happening. Whoever decided to scramble the chronology should be smacked! Also, why not slow it down and let some of the moments breathe a little? The breakneck pace prevented the story from establishing tension and stakes. The best part of King's book was the opening chapters with the steady spread of the disease and seeing the characters react to it without knowing who would live and what would happen to them. That suspense is now completely absent, and for no apparent reason.
It's so frustrating, cause there are individual scenes of brilliance throughout. I really hope the show finds it's footing and corrects the pacing issues, as it's definitely got potential. For now I'd give it a 7/10. Looking forward to next week.