Category Archives: Television

Twin Peaks: The Entire Shebang

A year ago, Mike Muncer, podcaster behind the excellent Evolution of Horror series launched a new show The Detective & The Log Lady, a Twin Peaks rewatch podcast. I decided to rewatch the series along with episodes of the podcast and my sweetie-wife came along for the ride as well.

This past Sunday we completed the voyage watching part 18 of the Twin Peaks‘ third season, also known as Twin Peaks: The Return which aired on the Showtime premium cable channel in 2017.

ABC Television

It has been quite a ride. I have not rewatched the original series in decades, watched the prequel film Fire Walk With Me only once in the theaters and retained very little of it, and did not even know of the existence of Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, a feature film length collection of deleted scenes from the prequel film. Watching it all week in, week out for a year, keeping the characters and story elements fresh in my mind as I experience the 27-year journey was an entertainment journey unlike anything I had experienced.

Twin Peaks when it aired in 1990 on ABC became a national and cultural phenomenon but the second season, adrift after the creators stepped back because the networked forced them to reveal the solution to mysteries they preferred not to, lost that grip on the nation’s imagination and the series ended on a cliffhanger that would not be resolved until 2017.

Freed from network constraints and interference the series’ third and final season presented almost nothing that the fan base demanded, instead diving deep into the abstract dream-logic that so defines the work of director and co-writer David Lynch. The entire series defies easy explanation or interpretation. Is it about the evil and corruption that lies just under the surface of American life? Is it about trans-dimension beings waging a war for humanity with entities such as ‘Bob’ and ‘The Fireman’? It is merely a strange dream held by television characters where some of them are actually aware of their nature as fictional constructs?

Arguments can be made for any and all of these premises, often with all of them playing a part in interpreting the program.

What is undeniable is that Twin Peaks had a massive impact on television going forward from the 1990s. Not only did programming become more experimental in their plots and conceptions but Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost showed that it was possible to bring feature film cinema quality to television, paving the way for today’s prestige TV.

I may not understand it all, but I admire it all just the same.

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Movie Review: Fountain of Youth

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In 1981 Steven Spielberg and George Lucas released the box-office-busting adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark earning $354 million dollars and setting off a wave of copycat movies hoping to reproduce that lightning in a bottle financial effect.

Most of the copycat productions were of limited budgets, lacking major stars, and frankly poor-quality scripts. As with Alien before it, Raiders of the Lost Ark is singular and stands out well ahead of any imitators.

Now, 44 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, comes another imitator trying to capture that sense of adventure and fun that so marked the original film, Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth.

Siblings Luke and Charlotte Purdue (John Krasinski and Natalie Portman) the children of an

Apple TV+

adventure-loving archeologist are estranged because Luke continues their father’s adventuring ways while Charlotte has settled into a routine mundane existence as a museum curator. Luke pulls Charlotte out of her dull life and onto a globe-spanning hunt for clues hidden in historical artifacts for the location of the fabled Fountain of Youth. They are being bankrolled by billionaire Owen Carter seeking to avoid an untimely death due to liver cancer. Along the way they are pursued by both Interpol for the crimes they are committing and a shadowy secret society.

With Guy Ritchie directing and Apple producing Fountain of Youth is no cheap, hastily thrown-together production of a movie. It boasts an impressive list of talent, shooting locations around the world, well-crafted action and chase scenes, but still fails to be engaging.

The characters are reflections of archetypes seen over and over again. Attempts to give them rich inner lives that might elevate them from flat to people with depth utterly fail and no chemistry exists either on the screen or the page for the enemy to lovers subplot between Luke and the woman representing the secret society determined to stop him.

At no point was I ever really caring about the characters or events on the screen, which is not how I always feel about Guy Ritchie’s work. He has directed some very entertaining and engrossing films, but this is not one of them. It does strike me that anytime Ritchie strays from modern criminal London his odds of producing a movie I really like drops considerably.

Fountain of Youth is streaming on Apple TV+.

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I Hate Cliffhangers

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Now, I am not talking about chapters that end in cliffhangers or individual episodes that leaving you on tenterhooks until the next week. I am talking about the end of novels and the end of season crap where the story is not completed and the reader or audience has to wait for the next book or season, which sometimes never arrives, to see resolution of the character’s current crisis.

I am of the firm belief that a novel or a movie or even a season of a television show should present a complete story. The Discworld or Hornblower novels are great examples of a series that executes this flawlessly. Each book is its own tale, complete with establishment, conflict, and resolution but leaves enough in the air, enough unwoven threads that new stories can arise from them.

A Season for Slaughter the fourth book in an SF series by David Gerrold left the main character stranded in the jungle in dire danger and the fifth book, some 32 years later, still has not been released.

Severance, the Apple TV+ series, appears to be telling a complete story over multiple seasons but ended the first on a cliffhanger and I suspect that they are going to do so with the second. (I know the second has concluded but I haven’t reached it yet.) I do not expect all the answers to be presented by the end of the second season, but I want more than one or two. If the series is going to present mystery upon mystery without resolution, then I am going to drop it.

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Series Review: Mobland

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On April 1st I reviewed the first episode of the Paramount+ television series Mobland. Last night my sweetie-wife and I completed the first season, and I can now talk about it as a whole.

Paramount+

In the show two crime organizations, the Harrigans, an Irish family and the Stevensons, an East-London family are on the brink of war over control of the fentanyl trade in London. Conrad and Maeve Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren) are the elder parents that rule their family

with ruthlessness and manipulation. We see less of Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell) as the Harrigans are the focus of the series, mainly through the eyes of their primary fixer and enforcer Harry de Souza (Tom Hardy). The Stevensons and the Harrigans inevitably go to war, the principal focus of the season, with only one family slated for survival.

 

The series presents a bewildering collection of characters associated with Harry, his family, and the Harrigans, often with their own subplots and schemes that interact with the war that breaks out between the criminal gangs. In my opinion there are too many of these side characters and stories, some of which I still cannot accurately describe in plot or in importance.

That said, I enjoyed Mobland and was quite pleased that the conflict between the Harrigans and the Stevensons concluded at the end of season one. Enough plot threads lay unresolved that the series can continue while still presenting a complete tale in its first season. The acting was generally brilliant, and I am sure Brosnan thoroughly enjoyed playing a right bastard of a character.

All ten episodes of the first season are now streaming on Paramount+.

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Christmas in June: The Ice House

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During the 1970s the BBC ran a series A Ghost Story for Christmas where short horror films, often but not always focused on ghost and spirits were aired during the holidays. The series was revived decades later. Last night my sweetie-wife and I watched the final episode of the original 70s run, The Ice House.

BBC

Paul, (John Stride) emotionally vulnerable following his divorce, has checked into a health spa and retreat in the English countryside. The facility, owned and operated by Clovis (Geoffrey Burridge) and Jessica (Elizabeth Romily), brother and sister who radiate not only an unnatural relationship with each other but a deeply uncanny intimidating presence. The pair show Paul the establishment’s ice house, a structure that predates modern conveniences, and the strange flowering vine that grows on it. The vine releases a strangely intoxicating scent and blooms with red and white flowers, colors mirrored by the siblings. Repeatedly Paul is drawn to the building until he discovers the unnatural nature of Clovis and Jessica.

Given the budgetary and public broadcast standards of the time A Ghost Story for Christmascould never delve into explicit and transgressive horror but instead relied upon mood and suggestion of things unseen to convey its payload. In some cases, this produced dull and lifeless pieces that are best used to cure insomnia and at other times disturbing stories that echoed in one’s mind well after the credits had run.

While it is not generally well reviewed, I found The Ice House to be effective in delivering a short story vibe with atmosphere and dread. Burridge and Romilly perform admirably, always oozing with threat and malice while delivering dialog that is quite the opposite. The characters are as cold to the suffering and deaths of other people as the materials stored in the titular building. It is sad that Romilly’s career never found the stardom that I think this performance promised, she possesses a mere 12 IMDB credits and it is tragic that AIDS robbed us of Burridge. The Ice House is a credit to both of them and their talents.

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Screw Canon

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Canon, a rule, regulation, or dogma decreed by a church, is often used in fiction to declare which elements of backstory and non-depicted events are part of the fiction’s reality. These days, particularly with the Star Wars franchise I see the term lore used much more often but in the same manner, those events or concepts that are considered part of the franchise’s universe versus theories generated by fandom without any official standing.

Debates about events that are perceived as ‘canon’ can generate intense, personal, and often bitter arguments, particularly online. Personally, I care very little for when canon is violated if it is done in the service of a better story, if it is done because that institutional knowledge is lost from the creative team and the story simply stumbled into something that conflicts with earlier narrative for no real reason, that’s sloppy writing but it generates no anger in me.

Star Trek V forgetting that Jim Kirk had an actual brother, Sam, is such a case, but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds exploring Spock, T’pring, and Christine while shattering ‘canon’ is such interesting character work that I am perfectly happy with it. I can still watch the episode of the original series Amok Time and the seasons of Strange New Worlds with equal enjoyment.

Canon as backstory is good and nice but it should not serve as a straitjacket and when something better comes along it should not prohibit its utilization.

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Series Review: Manhunt

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Adapted from the book Manhunt: The 12-day chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson, the Apple TV series centers on Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) as he navigates the complex political and logistical battlefield is trying to apprehend John Wilkes Booth following the assassination of President Lincoln.

Apple TV

The story utilizes flashbacks to explore Stanton’s relationship with Lincoln, Lincoln’s plan for the post-war period, and some of the intolerable cruelty visited upon the enslaved of the south. Menzies is engaging as Stanton, displaying a quiet obsession as he pursues Booth while many for varied reasons seems open to the concept of simply letting the killers vanish into history.

Anthony Boyle as Booth plays the man as a person determined to live in glory as a hero while showing that under the surface the man roiled with jealousy for a level of fame denied to him.

I am about halfway through the 7-episode adaptation. The production values are quite high, something that seems standard for Apple TV productions. They are willing to spend the cash required to make each series have the look and feel of first-rate feature films, be that far future such as Foundation or Murderbot, period such as this, or contemporary like Slow Horses.

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Andor: Final Thoughts

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I have finally finished watching the Star Wars inspired television series Andor, which follows both the character of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) introduced to audiences with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the growth of the Rebel Alliance as they struggle against the Galactic Empire.

Disney Studios

Andor is quite simply my favorite Star Wars inspired media that I have encountered, unique in that it avoids tales of mysticism and chosen bloodlines for a more complex view of people in crisis. While it repeats the phrase ‘Rebellions are built on hope’, it also depicts that rebellions, vast criminal conspiracies, are often riven with conflict, competing power centers, and a willingness to do terrible things for their ultimate objective.

I refer to it as ‘Star Wars inspired’ and not directly as Star Wars because I do think the difference is immense. Star Wars is the collection of stories centered on the Skywalker clan and their associates. Those tales focus on noble bloodlines, characters born ‘better’ than the masses, and have much more in common with fairy tales than the lives of ordinary people living through difficult times facing terrible decisions. In Star Wars the fascism of the Empire is an abstract thing, shown here and there with its casual cruelty to principal characters of the story but otherwise something that we need not actually see. In Andor, the fascism is the day-to-day experience of the people, and we live it not only in the arbitrary ‘justice’ system that dispatches people to labor prisons for minor offenses but also in the bureaucratic nightmare of its security services as talented dedicated officers are hamstrung and eventually crushed for their initiative.

I applaud Andor for its multifaceted depiction of the Alliance, from politicians deluding themselves that politics and policy can still save them, through idealists writing their manifestos while running from the law to fanatics blinded to the suffering and the evil that they do by their need to win.

Andor which began with Cassian leaving a brothel where he had hoped to find his sister and killing a pair of police officers that tried to shake him down is not ‘realistic’, but it echoes our world and its corruption.

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Staycation

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I’ve been absent from the online spaces here because I took a little staycation break over the Memorial Day weekend. Having secured five days off in a row, I lounged about the house, visited the zoo, Balboa Park, and Riverside Park with my sweetie-wife while working on absolutely nothing.

That last phrase is not quite true. A writer’s mind doesn’t seem to be able to turn off completely and while shopping Monday evening I did manage to solve an issue with my 80s themed cinephile horror novel in progress, something that will end act 2 and propel things into act 3.

In addition to video games and laziness, I completed a couple of television seasons. With my sweetie-wife, we finished off Season 2 of Andor, that simply fantastic and amazing show set in the Star Wars universe but divested from space wizards, knights, and princesses with an approach that is closer to real-world revolutionaries. A complex tale of shadowy worlds where compromises are required for victory and one’s opponents are not kept incompetent to save the plot. As you can tell, I loved it.

On my own I finished watching season one of Severance. While I enjoyed the series  and the mysteries provided enough interest to draw in for a completion it did not hook me the way Andor or The Pitt did. It is interesting, and I will undoubtedly watch season two, but it is not a need but curiosity that draws my interest.

This morning, I return to my desk at the day job, with no question that a ton of emails are waiting to be quickly scanned, sorted, and most deleted and then back to processing and fixing Medicare Advantage enrollments. I will also get back to actually writing my horror novel and working my way towards that scene that will propel the next major section of the story.

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So, I Finally Started Severance

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Despite the second season having already completed its airing, (airing strikes me as grossly incorrect in the age of streaming) I only began watching the series Severance this past weekend.

Apple TV +

The series is a science-fiction program centered on the ‘severed’ workers at the mysterious Lumon corporation. ‘Severed’ is a mechanical/surgical procedure that causes memory formation and retrieval in those altered to be spatially controlled. In the case of these workers while on the ‘severed’ floor they have no memory of their lives outside of the work area and when off that designated floor they have no ability to recall anything that occurred during their working hours. Each worker lives two lives, one where work is their entire existence and one ‘normal’ outside of their shift on the ‘severed’ floor.

 

 

The show’s protagonist is Mark (Adam Scott) a man who in his regular life is dealing with crushing grief and at work who has recently been promoted to a supervisory position which now includes a new hire, Helly (Britt Lower). Things become complicated when a ‘severed’ worker, Petey, approaches Mike in his outer life with information that Lumon is hiding the truth of their work and that being ‘severed’ is actually reversable.

Severance is executive produced by Ben Stiller and his company Red Hour Productions, (Stiller is a noted Star Trek fan as his production company indicates.) and Stiller directed the first two episodes.

I have heard since the series’ release of season one that this was an interesting and challenging show with surprising twists and reveals but it has been only in the last few days, I made time to start watching. Right now, I can’t say if I am completely sold on the series.

I have watched two episodes, and the world building is interesting, the concepts are fascinating, the acting is quite good, but the show hasn’t managed to set a hook that forces me to come back for the next episode. Comparing my reaction to Severance with another show I recently started watching, The Pitt, produces a striking contrast.

The Pitt is a medical drama with no genre conventions, normally the sort of series that would provoke little interest from me and it was only doctors praising the accuracy that caused me to watch the first episode, and I was utterly hooked. From the very first show I had favorite characters and those who I disliked, and I had to watch more. I burned through the entire series in about two weeks, skipping only one night when I was still so mad because my favorite character had been physically attacked.

Severance has produced no reaction like that. It is interesting, the world building with the people who live outside of the company have valid and interesting reaction to such technology, and there are mysteries to be uncovered, puzzles to be solved, but so far nothing that is emotionally compelling. The series is prompting curiosity but not much more. That is not to say I will stop watching; I will give it a few more episodes but unless something changes it could fall into a well of disinterest where I simply watch other things and fail to return not from dislike but simply not caring.

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