Left to my own devices

When the finale for Twin Peaks The Return (ostensibly the third season of the program) was over this past Sunday night, I immediately felt ripped-off, unsatisfied, and that the time spent watching the show over the summer had been a waste. Thankfully, during the intervening days, and after lots of conversations about it with the spouse and in online forums, I have come to better appreciate the way things ended. I'm still not on board with it 100%, though. Without getting into the weeds as to everything that happened during the finale, the show managed to wrap-up several plot threads during the first-half (Part 17), then turned around and launched things in a different direction during the second-half (Part 18). While tangentially related to what had come before, Part 18 could almost stand alone as its own show, with a different look and feel than the previous 17 episodes, and about a third of the cast. It was, upon first viewing, quite jarring. It was also, most definitely...

Last night's episode of Twin Peaks , the ninth in the revival series, was without a doubt my least favorite since its return. There are many reasons for this, which I'll touch upon shortly. I want to be clear, however, that I didn't hate the episode, just that it frustrated me to no end. That's a mark of how good the show has been so far. Too bad last night's entry dropped the ball.

I've been enjoying Showtime's revival of Twin Peaks this past month. We are now seven episodes in to an eighteen-episode season, and I am actually looking forward to a Sunday evening for a change. The mood created within the world of David Lynch's creation can at times be mesmerizing, and the plot is progressing, albeit slowly. It's that slowness that is perhaps one of the key reasons I'm enjoying the show so much. We live in a fast-moving age. Our Internet connections move in the blink of an eye. The service industry caters to an ever-increasing society that is on-the-go. Movies and TV shows have all but done away with opening credits, fearing that a viewership with short attention spans won't want to wait through such tedious trifle. Camera shots in film and television are so fast now, down to low-end single-digit seconds. And the hype machines are out in full force. I never remember producers being interviewed about the shows they were in charge of, ...

Hope everyone is enjoying their month of June so far! Here is our latest Pic of the Week, actor Ben Rosenfield. He has appeared in HBO's Boardwalk Empire , last year's film Indignation , and in the first two episodes of Showtime's Twin Peaks revival this year.

Episode five of the new season of Twin Peaks was overall another good entry for the revived program. We were treated to a progression (albeit a slow one) of the plot lines previously dangled before us in episodes one through four, as well as some new elements that were introduced to keep us guessing. I could have done without the sadistic violence and profanity, but am resigned to expecting such things with David Lynch, especially when he's unshackled from the constraints of network television. It is pretty well-known that David Lynch's works don't always make a lot of sense. To this day, almost two decades after its release, people are still debating what the heck his movie Mulholland Drive is about. Lynch was also reticent to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer which, you know, is kinda the reason millions of people initially watched the original series of Twin Peaks . With that, I was a bit apprehensive going into this new season, as devoting several hours of one...

Last night I watched the first four new episodes of Twin Peaks since 1991. A show whose influence still echoes in modern day television, I was curious to see how it would perform a quarter-century after it left the airwaves. Overall, it did not disappoint. The first thing to know is that I am not a devout Twin Peaks fan. It was a phenomenon difficult to escape in the early '90s, and I'd tune-in every now and then to see what the denizens of the 51,000 populace 'small town' were up to. It wasn't until years later that I gave it more attention, as my spouse is a huge fan of the original program. So, last night, with our newly-minted Showtime access via streaming in place, we watched the first four episodes of the new show. Some spoilers follow from here onward, so turn away now if you don't want to know anything about the new version.

Ashley & I have recently re-started watching Twin Peaks , that quirky, venerable TV series that enjoyed a bright, brilliant life before burning out quickly after a season-and-a-half in the early 1990s. The up and down quality of the program is noticeable, especially during the second season (where we have picked it up at). While the death of Laura Palmer made for good water cooler talk, other mysteries, such as possible alien abductions, Agent Cooper being investigated by the FBI, David Duchovny as a cross-dresser, and a hostile business take-over, are not quite as enthralling. Audiences thought so, too, which is why the series was cancelled in 1991.