The Outsider Weaponizes Jason Bateman's 'Nice Guy' Persona
The Outsider casts Bateman as Terry Maitland, a universally-loved small town english teacher, father, husband, and little league coach. Sound like a typical Bateman role, right? Well, there's one more thingTerry might have brutally murdered and partially eaten a young boy named Frankie Peterson. Yeah.
The central question of The Outsider asks audiences a question of physics: how can one person be in the same place at two times? Terry has a razor-tight alibi that puts him at a teacher conference at the time of the crime, but eyewitnesses, video footage, and DNA at the crime scene don't lie either. Throughout the show, we're shown two distinct versions of the same Terrya positively-Bateman-esque nice guy, and a cold, distant, empty-seeming shell. One scene depicts the latter emerging from the woods with blood covering the majority of his face, mostly around his mouth.
Outside of one notable exception (a major hiccup in a 2018 New York Times interview that led to a public apology ), Bateman has made that 'nice guy' persona a part of every role he plays. Even Ozark, the hit Netflix series that plays something like a midwestern version of Breaking Bad with Bateman in the lead role, plays on the idea that he's a nice guy on the surface, but doesn't realize what a monster he can really be to those around him. The Outsider takes that a step furtherTerry Maitland might literally be a monster. This is Stephen King , after all.
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It's not the first time Bateman has played against type. 2015's The Gift does a great job of utilizing the relatable lead persona that Bateman has established, and, without spoiling the movie, plays quite a bit with our expectations of who and what a Jason Bateman character is. What the movie begins to presentparticularly with regard to Bateman's characteris drastically changed by the time that movie's credits roll.
The fact that audiences so trust the characters that Bateman plays has to be a deliberate reason why he was cast as Terry. This guy couldn't possibly have committed these crimes he's accused of; because we've watched his characters before, we feel like we know him. Especially Arrested Development, where his character, Michael, tends to be the straight man of the familyeveryone else is crazy. More than any other character, we're laughing with him. The show puts us on his side.
All of that builds into The Outsider, and it gives audiences the feeling like they know that character. King's book writes from Terry's perspective, and gives him a voice as someone who sounds innocent. But on TV that option isn't necessarily there. The next best option? Give audiences someone they can feel like they trust. Should we trust Terry? Probably not. Do we? Let's just wait and see.
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