Lisey’s Story brings us one step closer to a satisfying end
"No Spark, No Light" takes the viewer closer to the end of Lisey's Story while also revisiting the inciting incident that kicked the series off
TV Reviews Lisey
“I don’t want an autograph,” a fan says to Scott Landon early on in the latest episode of Lisey’s Story. “I just want you to know you changed my life.”
It’s a simple line, one presented with a splash of horror as the fan holds a magic wand (looking eerily like a weapon) that he built as an exact replica of something from Scott’s books. But, taking this line out of context is where it holds the most power. As much as the series has been about Lisey and her experiences with Scott, it is ultimately a story about the way the pair have changed each other’s lives. Though much of it can be, and has been, lazily read as a story about how Lisey’s entire persona is based around Scott, King has gone through great lengths to emphasize that Lisey is as much her own woman and a life-changing force in Scott’s life.
The first half of “No Light, No Spark” takes place entirely in the past, at the end of Scott’s life with the focus almost entirely on him. The road to his death is a gorgeous one, the way Pablo Larraín shoots both the Colony Theater and the hospital he’s admitted to as haunting as it is aesthetically appealing. There’s such a heightened sense of magic and horror from the get-go of the episode, from the red herring of the obsessed fan to the way Scott’s relentless cough is the primary sound present.
Scott’s old wounds are reopening, both figuratively and literally, coating him in blood while he’s trying to fix himself up in the bathroom and falling apart on stage at his author event. The way Larraín lets the stage performance play out, pushing hard on Scott’s exhaustion and the toll that life (and this other world) has taken on him, is engrossing. For all the mention of Scott’s death and glimpsing into the aftermath of it that we’ve seen in the past, it’s a nice touch to actually get into his death itself. This is especially rewarding in how it reframes the Boo’ya Moon and its healing waters as something with its share of lasting side-effects rather than as easy salvation.
Once Scott is wheeled off to the hospital, we pivot back to Lisey. It’s always Lisey who has to pick up the pieces, Lisey who has to navigate what she believes and what she doesn’t. Lisey, without Scott, is still Lisey with Scott’s baggage, and the series has always made that explicit. When Lisey begs Scott to try to go back to the Boo’ya Moon (which he notes is impossible because the Longboy is blocking the way to the water), it’s extra context for why she has so actively rejected it as real in the past. She wasn’t always denying it, but once it became theoretically useless in saving Scott from death, it became something to pretend wasn’t real.
Owen and Moore give everything to Scott’s final moments of life, the two playing off each other beautifully; one in a desperate attempt to get someone to hold on to life while the other tries to soothe their partner before death. It’s unfortunate that, once again, the emotional impact of a scene is undercut by the music, with Clark’s music drowning out the whispers of the show’s protagonists. But Moore gets to continue shining as Lisey wanders Scott’s funeral and wake, wanting to be out of this house of people, of memories, her mourning and exhaustion consuming her.
“No Light, No Spark” takes the viewer back to the present and back to the same energy that closed out “Now You Must Be Still,” a trio of sisters not only getting to be themselves for the first time in ages but preparing for a fight for their lives. In readying themselves for the fight against Dooley, Amanda arms herself with a hockey stick signed by Patrice Bergeron & Darla handles the gun she claimed to throw away. Everything about the relationship between these three women continues to lean into humor while also acknowledging that their joking serves to combat the very real danger they’re in. Larraín is adept at navigating humor and tension, with Dooley’s home invasion and Lisey’s half-assed plan to lure him into the Boo’ya Moon being just as amusing as it is thrilling.
It’s delightful to watch how Larraín stages the low-lighting fight, complete with night vision goggles and a rotating lighthouse that blinds the villain and the audience alike. The humor fades out once they step into the Booya Moon though, with one of the best mounted bits of suspense happening as Lisey and Dooley trail through their own paths. One is entirely unfamiliar with this space and the other just barely, but it’s clear Lisey has the upper hand and it shows in the way they exchange provocations back-and-forth. Once Lisey hears the Longboy and says, “There you are,” the episode ends on the ideal cliffhanger; we may all have an idea of how it’s going to end, but there’s pleasure in watching the execution, and I simply cannot wait.
Stray observations
- The scene where Lisey begins to throw everything away, from typewriters to models, whispering “I don’t know how to be this way, I don’t know how to think it” to herself, feels the closest to what King’s genesis for Lisey’s Story was. It’s the closest thing to his wife redesigning his studio and King seeing his books and belongings in boxes, imagining life after death, and I think it’s well depicted here.
- Maybe stupid but when I read the words “No Light, No Spark,” I immediately thought of Joni Mitchell’s “Court & Spark” and I can’t explain why that feels right, but it does.
- Alright, now it’s time to list my favorite quotes from Amanda, Darla, and Lisey in this episode, starting with Darla screaming “DIE! DIE! DIE!” while hitting Dooley in the dark.
- When Lisey notes that her Plan B is just them all beating him to death: “Plan B sucks!”
- “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
- “Good, I hope the asshole gets soaked.”
- “I think hockey players must be illiterate.”
- “You invited a maniac, a fucking lunatic, into your house.”
- And, my personal favorite exchange: “A safe word. Oh yeah, like S&M.” “What? Were you and Charlie into S&M?” “God no, his idea of bedroom excitement was leaving his socks on.”
18 Comments
I only now realized the Long Boy is made of people! Is that King paying homage to “In the Hills, the Cities” by his longtime frenemy Clive Barker?
Yes! I actually mentioned it a while back in Stray Observations and how I low key wanted them to go even harder on making it extra Popolac-y!
Cool! But did King actually confirm it was his intention?
Not as far as I can tell via extensive Googling. Maybe I’ll just shamelessly tweet at him about it and try to find out, haha.
It’s also possible it’s not King’s idea, and it came from Larraín or even a visual designer from the SFX department. Unless it’s also in the book, but from other comments, I’m gathering the Long Boy is described differently in the book.
I can only imagine Stephen King piling cornier and cornier euphemisms for death onto the page and thinking “yes, that’s it, that’s how you build emotion”.His scripts are easily the weakest aspect of this series.
No one has ever referred to the recently deceased as having “popped off”. Though there may be very rare and exotic examples of them “pegging out”.
also RIP to Sung Kang, you had like five lines over seven hours and your death didn’t merit a mention in this review.
I think he was sleeping when Dooley came, looked at him, and thought, “Might as well shoot him. He’s a POC, and we don’t want any of those around for the finale.”
One of the elements that most terrorize me in Lisey’s Story, particularly this episode, is being faced with the sheer fact that Stephen King considers his books highbrow, salvific literature.And you can’t argue that Landon is supposed to be a completely different kind of writer. His novels include magic wands and he has a nickname for his fans that is ritualistically recited during conventions.
when reading the book, i always imagined the long boy to be really huge, like the ginormous monster in the end of the film “the mist,” so tall that you can’t see its head.i don’t remember dead scott being in booya moon in the book at all. i don’t understand how that works – it just opens up a whole can of worms.“Though much of it can be, and has been, lazily read as a story about how Lisey’s entire persona is based around Scott, King has gone through great lengths to emphasize that Lisey is as much her own woman and a life-changing force in Scott’s life.” i have to disagree. she may be a life-changing force for scott, but what does she do for herself??? when he was alive, what did she do all day when he was writing? did she have hobbies? did she volunteer in town? she has literally no life outside of supporting scott.
i don’t remember dead scott being in booya moon in the book at all. i don’t understand how that works – it just opens up a whole can of worms.I haven’t read the book, but the Stephen King Wiki (yup, that’s a thing!) defines it as “the dream world and one of many realities that make up the multiverse.” Which doesn’t help us much. Did Scott’s “double” remained trapped there when he was trying to heal himself and his physical body died?Also, what were the odds that Scott, one of the ultra-rare people who can access Boo’ya Moon in spiritual form, would marry Lisey, one of the super-duper-extra-rare people who can access Boo’ya Moon in physical form? (And whose older sister also has some predisposition to travel there). she has literally no life outside of supporting scott.Even now that he’s dead! Everything Lisey does is still about Scott!I bet King’s own wife had some mixed reaction to that.
By most accounts she really does not like the novel.
i can understand why. you can’t help but think lisey=tabitha. i’m sure king meant it as a compliment to his wife but she’s really the weakest character. now if he had made scott something other than a novelist (& a horror novelist at that), you would draw such an obvious parallel to his life & marriage.
i don’t recall the idea of “doubles” in the book at all but the last time i read it was several years ago.
Have to agree about Lisey and Scott, even just from a structural perspective – there’s really no good functional reason for us to know most of what we do know about Scott’s childhood. It’s a good creepy part of the tale but you could cut most of it and it wouldn’t do any harm to Lisey’s side of the story, which is what it’s all (ostensibly) about.The actors – even Clive Owen, who I don’t think most of the vocal viewers of the show seem to like – do their damnedest to carry the scripts, but the plot is pure King, and only Peter Straub (try reading the plot summary to Koko sometime) could beat Stephen King for sheer lumpiness of plot. And that’s not to say that the Scott flashbacks aren’t effective horror! They are. But they make everything to do with Lisey that much more dependent on Scott. She doesn’t have friends, her closest sister is especially simpatico with Scott. When she has to dig deep and find her power, it’s in the context of taking care of Scott and the trust he put in her. It’s all about Scott.Word’s been that Tabitha King has always intensely disliked Lisey’s Story, a book that is pretty clearly about King’s reverence for and protectiveness toward his wife, to the extent that any fiction can be supposed to be “about” real life. I can’t say I blame her; points for trying, I guess, but King mostly fails to sketch out Lisey outside of the context of her marriage. It’s a defense of the centrality of the marriage, which is not too far from the centrality of Scott / Stephen.
I really feel like they designed the heck out of that monster when they didn’t need to. The “piebald side” of Long Boy as described in the book wasn’t a writhing mass of limbs, at least not in my head. It was vast and unknowable. It didn’t have a face, just a menacing presence. I guess that would be difficult to film, but I really don’t like where they went with it. A somewhat ho hum giant made of people. I always imagined more of a wall of flesh slithering through the forest, like a snake or a worm that’s bigger than any building. Maybe that was too Dune-sandworm like to pass muster, what with Dune coming out so soon?
Well I suppose it is nice to have a reviewer who is more into the show than I am for a change instead of constantly trying to get all the commenters to hate it.This one really hasn’t risen up much. Dooley is a tic factory (his friend tried to kill Scott for stealing his story? I thought that meant the guy who shot him DIDN’T like him?), Lisey has very little of a story (and her whole life is about Scott even though he’s dead), and Booya Moon is pretty thinly conceived. Plus…it’s so slow…I don’t think ponderous = profound.Glad there’s only one episode left. It was cool that the Longboy is made up of people who are screaming like they’re on a rollercoaster.