Tag Archives: TV Review

Twin Peaks (2017) A (First Half Of The Season) Review

Had to do some flying (*gasp*) to take care of some family business so I haven’t been around as much as I wanted. Luckily, I’ve already had my two Pfizer shots and, while the entire two weeks’ time since the second injection hadn’t quite elapsed (they did the day after I returned home), I felt far more comfortable doing this trip than I have the previous one I was also forced to do earlier on.

Whew.

Anyway: Get vaccinated, people! If I could do it, you can as well and most states nowadays seem to be offering vaccines to almost everyone.

Ahem.

Anyway, Twin Peaks 2017.

I recall the show being released -to Showtime- and it was for a little while the talk of critics, but it didn’t seem to be the world-stopping event that some other writer/director David Lynch works, up to and including the original season of Twin Peaks released waaaaaay back in 1989. The show lasted two seasons before being cancelled, with many saying that once Lynch left the show in the second season it went downhill.

A year or so after the TV series was done, David Lynch would release Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which was originally met with considerable critical hatred though, over the years, people re-assessed it far more positively.

Anyway, that movie came out in 1992 and a whopping twenty nine years later and via Showtime what is effectively the third season of Twin Peaks was released and, thanks to the free time both on my flight and afterwards, I was able to blow through eight of the 18 episodes made.

As I said above, this new “season” of Twin Peaks didn’t seem to have the lasting power some of Lynch’s works have. It’s been four years since its release and I have to admit it surprised me to remember I picked it up -digitally- a while back and had yet to see it.

I wondered why it was that it didn’t seem to peak like some other Lynch works and, further, if maybe this series might wind up being something of a disappointment.

Based on the 8 episodes I’ve seen, culminating in an episode which I recall some critics were particularly blown away (pun intended, I guess!) over, the show is a fascinating, though perhaps over stuffed, work that falls neatly in line with your typical Lynchian work.

But its also a lot of material being thrown at you and at times its bewildering, amusing, creepy, and drawn out… and I’m not sure if it might have benefitted from being a little more streamlined.

For example, what many consider David Lynch’s best work, the 2001 film Mulholland Dr., was originally intended to be a TV series not unlike Twin Peaks but ultimately wound up being compressed into a fantastic two and a half hour movie. There was weirdness, there was comedy, there was rot under the gleaming surface, but there was also a story that was told in toto without any real bloat.

I worry that with this Twin Peaks work, as fantastic as it is at times, we’re given more extraneous stuff than is necessary.

Worries aside, the eight episodes I’ve seen so far have been enjoyable. There are bits that are absolutely hilarious mixed with bits that are creepy and suspenseful as hell. Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost (who worked with him on the original Twin Peaks show) have given us a veritable avalanche of characters moving about doing their thing, natural or supernatural, and in the middle of it all are two Dale Coopers (Longtime Lynch collaborator/actor Kyle MacLachlan), one who is possessed by evil and the other -dazed for the episodes I’ve seen- is the “good” Agent Dale Cooper, recently released from the mystical Black Lodge where he’s been imprisoned for over twenty five years while his evil version runs rampant on the roads of the U.S.

It’s difficult to give a full on review of the series, not having seen it all yet, but at least for these eight episodes I’ve been entertained, certainly, and have to give considerable credit to Mr. Lynch and company for creating something as visually sumptuous and meaty as this series and not lose track and go off the rails into complete bizarreness.

Anyway, a thumbs up for me -at least for now!- and let’s see how the rest plays out…

Helix (2014) a (mildly) belated TV pilot review

Whenever I look over movies, TV shows, books, or music, I try to give the people who created the work the benefit of the doubt.

This is a relatively new thing for me as I used to have very stringent standards for what I perceived as “good” works vs. those that were “bad”.  Perhaps its a sign of mellowing with age.  Perhaps its the realization that all works were created by people like me who certainly had no intention of making something “bad”.

In the books I write, the only deadline I have is my own.  I will not release any of my works until I’m satisfied they are about as good as I can get them.  And even then I know the works aren’t perfect.  A typo or two might have escaped me.  A passage might have worked better had I written it this way versus that way.

While I have the luxury of time and budget (as a novel writer, there is no budget!), others aren’t so lucky.  A project can be greenlighted and the people before and behind the scenes may have a very limited time and an equally limited budget to create their work as best as they can.  Long, loooong hours may be invested to make sure the project gets to the screen at a given time and sometimes compromises are made.  A work that looks like it “can’t miss” therefore comes out looking sloppy and not at all well thought out.

Which brings us to the SyFi network’s Helix.

Just before the show aired its pilot and first episode back to back last Friday, there were posts on the blogs that I frequent talking about how good the show was and how it would be a “must watch” in the future.  The show involved a group of Center for Disease Control (CDC) officers sent to a remote arctic base where a mysterious virus has been released.  The CDC officers are trying to find and contain the virus while dealing with the fact that the people behind the base are keeping secrets…and one of their own members may be in cahoots with the base’s brass.

Now, this description sounded OK to me.  Not great, I would admit right off the bat, but not all that bad.

But then I watched the two episodes.

Ouch.

While the show features decent actors and a decent “look”, the story presented veered from the dull to the absolutely preposterous.  The head of the CDC, Dr. Alan Farragut (Billy Campbell) is sent into this situation along with his estranged wife (Kyra Zagorsky) and have to deal with a survivor of this mysterious virus, his brother (Neil Napier) who happened to have slept with his wife!

Are these the people you want to send into a potentially Earth threatening hot zone?  Do we need this potential drama between professionals who should be focused on their jobs?!

But it gets worse.  There is a military officer liason and another CDC Doctor who break from the others and explore the facility essentially on their own.  They do not report back to their superior for what appeared to be two days or so despite quickly finding evidence that the head of the research facility was withholding information/lying to them about the research center.  I mean, come on, shouldn’t you tell the others that the head of the base might in fact be a bad guy?  Are you going to let your teammates stumble around a couple of days not knowing the man they’re dealing with may be about to make them victims?  Then again, the head of the research center was only missing a thin twirly mustache and the name “Dr. Evil” to fully cement his persona.  If the others didn’t realize he was holding back, perhaps it was their own damn fault.

No, I did not like the show at all.

One wonders how some of the talent involved in The X-Files, Lost, and the excellent Battlestar: Galactica reworking could also have had a hand in this show.

The answer is we’ll never really know…unless we were there.  Perhaps the writers were rushed.  Perhaps the directors and actors and crew didn’t have the time necessary to fully flesh out the characters and scripts before filming began.  It’s far better to think that than to think these two first episodes are exactly what their makers were hoping to create.

Needless to say, a pass.