'The Mist' series premiere recap: 'Pilot' 

If you look around the television landscape, you’ll find that more than a few series based on Stephen King books (or novellas) have made their way to the small screen. In the 2000s alone, we’ve seen 

(among others). That list grows by two this summer, with Audience’s upcoming 

, a J.J. Abrams collaboration announced earlier this year. No premiere date has been set.) And on the big screen, 

In short, it’s a good year to be a Stephen King fan.

But what is it about King’s writing that makes it not only popular among readers but also ripe for adaptation? Well, the answer lies somewhere in the pilot of

itself, which is one part human drama, one part environmental horror — and it doesn’t take too long for the show to introduce both elements. It does, though, take a while for the central weather phenomenon to descend on the small town of Bridgeville, Maine. (Originally Bridgton in the books.)

We open on an unconscious soldier (Okezie Morro) waking up in the woods beside a dog — only he doesn’t remember anything about who he is or how he got there. He doesn’t even know if the dog, Rufus, is his. Faint

pilot vibes aside, we discover that his name is Bryan Hunt… and that there’s something hiding in the Mist. (Henceforth capitalized because, like that one episode of Netflix’s

it is the main villain of this piece. Well, alongside the regular human ones.) Oh. And this something is quite willing

. (You know a show is serious when it’s willing to off a canine.) At the sight of the late Rufus hanging from a tree, Bryan screams and takes off running. Good call.

He eventually ends up in Bridgeville, the main setting of the show. But of course, no one quite believes his warnings that the looming clouds on the horizon are dangerous. (Maybe they’d believe him if he were a weatherman.) In a bid to protect himself, Bryan tries to arm himself with one of the policemen’s guns, but that just lands him locked up behind bars for the night, where he still continues to issue his warnings.

The next morning, the officers at the station ask him about his home and his social security number, but when he can’t remember either, they get mad and slam him against the bars. They inform him that they’ll be calling Arrowhead, the name on the patch on his arm, to check up on him. (We’ll be avoiding book-related spoilers, but this reference likely caught the eye of fans who’ve read the novel.)

Over in another part of town, Eve Copeland (Alyssa Sutherland) is also having a couple of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. She’s suspended from her job as a high school teacher for daring to give her students proper sex education. Her husband Kevin (Morgan Spector) offers to get a job in advertising, but she refuses because she doesn’t want him to hate her. It would be sweet if they didn’t run into some family drama a few hours later, when Eve tells their teenage daughter, Alex (Gus Birney), she can’t go to a high school party after the local football game, and Kevin disagrees. (This whole story line would feel like

Lite if it weren’t for how unusually supportive Kevin is of Alex’s teenage life.)

Secretly, Kevin goes against his wife’s wishes and tells Alex she can accept an invitation from her football-player crush, Jay (Luke Cosgrove), and attend the party for a couple of hours. She just has to take her best friend Adrian (Russell Posner) with her. So she does just that. Here, we learn that Adrian wears makeup, does not like football, and does not get along with his father. Also, he’s pansexual; he’s not attracted to gender, but rather to the person. Adrian doesn’t fit in with his peers, except for Alex, seeing as how no one joins in their dance party and he gets called a slur. He’s even abandoned by Alex, who waives her no-drinking policy for Jay when he asks her to join him.

Sadly, it doesn’t end well. The next morning, Kevin and Eve discover that Alex never slept in her bed. Instead, she’s on the swing in the yard, where she tearfully tells them that she not only got drunk at the party and blacked out, but also that Jay raped her. She’s not sure about that detail, but Adrian told her it was him. Of all the terrible things I expected to befall the characters on this show, 

was certainly not something I expected, especially so early on. Poor kid.

So the Copelands file a complaint with an officer who’s

Jay’s police-chief father. Alex’s doctor also recommends they have her see a therapist. It appears that Eve and Kevin also need one, because they both blame him for letting Alex go to the party. Eve states that she’s tired of being the bad cop while Kevin gets to be the cool parent. They’re interrupted by jocks throwing something through their window (a response to Jay getting called in for questioning at school). The delightful fellows have also spray-painted the word “Whore” on the street in front of the house.

While all this is happening, Adrian and Alex are upstairs, where he tells her that the town will no doubt side with Jay. The camera lingers on him as he says this, which, coupled with the look he gave the departing Alex and Jay at the party, makes me suspect that there’s more to Alex’s night that he’s not sharing. (

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