Leslie Warren

I have read The Stand at least 10 times over the years and saw the first mini series. I watched The Stand 2020 thinking that it would follow the book and first series exactly. I was wrong. I loved this new adaptation and I also hated it. So many of the characters were changed, and that always happens when updating a story, but some of the personalities fell flat, and we were given little to no backstory on them. Like Nick and his stay in jail and the sheriff. Mother Abigail, she wasn't in a nursing home, she lived in a little house in Hemingford Home, Nebraska. Stu was from Texas, but had no Texas accent? Harold was a fat kid with pimples that ate Snickers candy bars. Yet we got almost a whole episode on Larry and Rita, but going through the tunnel was changed to the sewer? Tom Cullen and his collection of stuffed (taxidermy) animals in his little house. These are the people that King created and wrote their about. These are the people we cared about, why did they have to be changed? There was nothing wrong with the choice of actors or their acting, just the changes in their personalities and no background. Then there were things that were left out that I feel were important to the story. The whole part of when Tom Cullen found Stu after Vegas blew up. How they had to hold up in a ski resort while Stu healed from his injuries, and how Nick came to Tom and told him what medicines to give to Stu, and how Tom thought it was odd that Nick could talk and he could hear. That was an important part of the story. And Trashcan Man, if I hadn't read the book I would have had no idea what made him be the way he was or why he heard voices and why he winced when one of the voices asked him about old lady Semples pension check. And that whole scene of Franny falling in the well, and just where did the little black girl (Mother Abigail?) come from? This is why a book like The Stand needs to be much mor than a nine episode series. Maybe make it a two or three season with eight or nine episodes each show. If it can be done with zombies in a comic book, why not a best seller novel? Just a thought.