If there’s one thing you can say for the kids of Netflix’s hit Outer Banks it’s that boy, they sure haven’t learned anything over five seasons. And frankly, while on most shows that would be a detriment, OBX (as it’s called by fans) is going out how it came in: young, dumb, and full of fun.
If you’re not familiar with the series, the short pitch is The O.C. meets The Goonies, with a dash of a million other teen shows thrown in (and a side of Riverdale’s bonkers plotting minus the Archie Comics of it all). The first season introduced a town split between the Pogues – aka the poor kids – and the Kooks – aka the rich kids – and then sent some of those Pogues on a hunt for buried treasure that could flip the power dynamic forever. Through four seasons, our main Pogues have lived, loved, ran for their lives multiple times, died, come back, and as mentioned above never forgotten that they are dumb teens way in over their heads. Credit a great cast full of beautiful, funny actors, who conveyed an instant rapport and kept it going for the past six years for making it all work.
And entering this fifth and final season, there’s a lot on the line… Trapped in Morocco, one of their number, JJ (Rudy Pankow), murdered by his own villainous father Groff (J. Anthony Crane), and a potentially mystically powered, wish-granting crown (at some point this show segued from Goonies to Indiana Jones) in the wind, it takes a bit for Outer Banks to find its footing. In particular, the first two episodes (all 10 were provided to critics for review) are a bit of an aberration for the series… While the show has experimented with international trips before, turning these regular kids into deadly serious Jason Bourne types taking on a militia hell-bent on finding the crown, led by the hard-nosed Finch (Jason Alan Carvell), loses the charm of the series. Sure they’re good at hatching plans, but seeing Kie (Madison Bailey) suddenly become an undercover mastermind while mourning her true love’s death (that would be JJ) twists the series away from their base motivation: mainly they want to get wasted, fish on their boats, and have a nice time.
Thankfully, things do get back to basics once the action heads back to North Carolina, and while there’s a slew of narrative hoops the show needs to jump through (almost literally, as Chase Stokes’ John B lays out at length how everyone got home and what happened next for nearly an entire episode), you can feel things kicking into gear once they do. Should these characters know better than to try to sell some weed they found floating in the water? Sure. Should they probably be trying to find jobs instead of squatting in mansions? Yeah, maybe. But that wouldn’t nearly be as fun as making these dumb decisions… These are the same characters who, in an earlier season, stopped to crash a party and dance romantically while in the middle of a life or death chase. Watching Outer Banks as an adult is partially the same experience as watching a horror movie (instead of “don’t go up those stairs” it’s “call your parents for god sake”); but that’s what actually makes Outer Banks, in an odd way, one of the most realistic depictions of being a teen on TV.
Does that sound like hyperbole? Well, sure. But despite (or perhaps because of) the outrageous circumstances these kids constantly find themselves in, the cast presents some of the most lived in performances currently on streaming. Stokes is a perfectly earnest, slightly dumb leader for the gang, and this final season doesn’t stretch him much farther than that (the show long ago pivoted the emotional weight to other characters). Madelyn Cline gets lots to do this season, including a ludicrous stunt in the finale that finds her hanging upside down from a fence that’s about to be electrocuted, but her Sarah Cameron also settled most of her emotional arcs in earlier seasons as well. While John B and Sarah Cameron started as the romantic arc of the show, they end as the most stable couple, and steadiest almost, not quite adults. Outer Banks is less about growing up than, perhaps, growing sideways… The adults on the show are all damaged or overly strict sketches of characters. That’s not what John B and Sarah Cameron want to become (despite Sarah being pregnant)… They want to have a nice time and be happy, rather than constantly search for the next treasure or lament the lost chances of their youth.
Jonathan Daviss initially gets some new flavors to play as Pope after a stint in jail changes him – temporarily – and of the actors has shown the most growth from the first season. And the newer members of the Pogues still feel oddly fresh despite being around for multiple seasons… Cleo (Carlacia Grant) started strong, but ends up mostly as a supporting romantic interest for Pope this time around (though she does get a “cool girls don’t look at explosions” bit in one episode). And the show has worked overtime to redeem arch villain Rafe (Drew Starkey), but seeing the characters rely on the guy who tried to kill them multiple times is odd. It’s a staple of this sort of thing – the villain turns uneasily to the side of good – but Starkey is so effective at conveying how Rafe is a rich a-hole that you’re actually rooting for the town’s resident sad-sack sheriff Shoupe (Cullen Moss) to toss him in jail and throw away the key.
Speaking of keys, or Kei, the whole season hinges on her mourning the loss of JJ, and coming around to the idea of whether perhaps that magical crown can bring him back to life. Bailey effectively takes everything in the show on her back, from the emotional weight to enormous action scenes, and handles them with aplomb. She’s always been a stand-out on the series, but particularly in a gorgeously shot scene in the penultimate episode, her heart sits on her sleeve. It’s a remarkable performance that on the downside isolates her from most of the rest of the cast this season. But on the upside whenever Outer Banks Season 5 pivots to essentially being North Carolina Kies it’s pretty damn good.
And rounding out the cast, while the final season takes great pains to give characters big and small the ending they deserve (somehow, Wheezie Cameron, played by Julia Antonelli, has returned), it really does help that Crane is such a reprehensible, unrepentant villain. His pencil thin mustache, floppy hair and wicked smile make it feel like he walked right out of an old movie serial, and is about to tie everyone to the train tracks any second – and he would. The show has had a lot of bad guys it has sought to redeem or understand over the years, including, in this season, Finch and Polyanna McIntosh’s underused Dalia. But Groff is exactly the sort of cackling evil the banana stakes present here deserve.
I noted “gorgeously shot” above and other than the show’s jail-worthy over-use of shooting night for day, this is a pretty gorgeously filmed series, and that continues in the final season. Filming in actual locations and not, say, a quarry somewhere in Vancouver from five different angles elevates the international adventure feel of the show exponentially, and helps make it all the more jarring that these regular kids who like to surf and hang out have somehow been chasing down their friend’s killer in Portugal. And the final episode which mostly takes place in a hurricane is a jaw-dropper. Yes, there’s digital trickery going on here, but overall the insane amount of rain pelted on these poor cast members is as epic as you might want in an hour-plus finale episode.
Look, the fact of the matter is that Outer Banks has been spinning its wheels since it finished its main story at the end of Season 3. It’s been fun to get these extra 20 episodes over the past two seasons, but even the show’s rogue element JJ felt like he had run his own course by the time he was killed in Season 4; his missing presence does leave a huge gap the show struggles to fill, but as noted there wasn’t much more to say about him, or any of these folks. Thankfully it ends on as conclusive a note as possible, letting all these characters – and actors – have one more big party before they go to the great algorithm in the sky. We didn’t need more Outer Banks; but like the show has proved over and over, it’s nice to hang out with your friends. They’re messed up. They make mistakes. But damn if it isn’t a blast while it lasts.
Outer Banks Season 5 is on Netflix now.
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