Tv

Twin Peaks (2017)

I don't think I have ever been offended by a tv show before. But here we are and Twin Peaks is on, and it might just be garbage.

In trying to work out the mess that is Twin Peaks season 3, it came to me that where the real Twin Peaks tv show was the 50s (and had a story), Twin Peaks season 3 is the 80s, and that's sort of why it's so shit. No story, no fashion sense, no reason to watch other than the thin hope some of the many threads left dangling at the end of Season 2 might have some tying off. If I'm being kind, I'll say Twin Peaks' season 3 is True Detective's season 2. But I think it might be worse than that. There is, it seems to me, almost nothing in the show to care about. Anything that was worth caring about in the Twin Peaks story is almost never included in Twin Peaks season 3 except tangentially, and I think it might keep going that way. And with that in mind, those musical outros are sufficiently irritating that I might on principle stop watching the show. A summary of what little did happen over the next eight weeks will probably be enough.

Yeah, and don't clutch at straws: episode 8 was cool, but it was essentially a completely different story, and the one they should have been telling all along.

"Not the 50s anymore" spoilers: what clues you in to the how Twin Peaks is no longer the 50s, I mean among all the other roaring signals, is that worthlessly "important" scene at the end of episode 9 where two girls - a Laura clone and a Donna clone - sit around stoned and stupid at the One Eyed Jack's Bang Bang bar. You can tell by the hairstyles and the pimples, it's not the fifties no more. And who, I mean who, really gives a damn?

Ozark

Chicago-based financial advisor, MIchael Bluth Marty Byrde, is disenchanted. One night he is called to a meeting with his partner, and "Del". And because Del is from the second largest Mexican drug cartel and Marty and his partner launder cartel money, well dammit, Marty has to go....

As a tv show, Ozark is pretty good. The tone is all over the place. The first ep is grimdark and frightening, while later eps are going almost for comedy. And, some of the "gritty" elements are undercooked. And maybe the black comedy is not the blacker for being played by Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. But there are truly excellent pieces in here as well. The straight drama is pretty great sometimes, and Bateman carries most of that. Overall? True Detective meets Arrested Development with a dash of Breaking Bad, except that overall Ozark is it's own show because of where it goes with relationships.

Liked

Meanwhile...

Just watched the series finale of 'The Leftovers'.

Me too, just now. 

I have opinions about season three, not wholly formed as yet, except that while working through the season I kept thinking I was watching a necessary addendum but that the story, I'll call it the Passion of the Kevin, was complete with the end of season two. Not concluded, obviously, but complete. It is concluded with the season three finale though, so there is that.

Man, I'm going to miss this show. I can't do it any time soon, but I think I'm going to have to watch the whole thing over again.


Departure (Lullaby) - Max Richter

Twin Peaks

The following is either spoilers or a just a cranky meta-review, you decide.

The third season of Twin Peaks supposedly makes more sense - aka is less like garbage - if you observe - pun intended - that the episodes in their presentation often directly reference watching. Screens, tv clips repeated, people watching stuff, lengthy sequences where you have to watch nothing happen for so long that you cannot not notice that you are doing an act of watching. Goddamn freaking five minute outros that are stage shows and you're in the audience.

And here's what I'm going to say about that. The original series used lengthy observation of the mundane to make that mundane thing alien - traffic lights, trees in the wind, etc - and in the context of the murder investigation, threatening. And that what happens in this hopefully last series is that alienation is turned on the viewer. The lengthy observation isn't of a thing, a story, it's of the observer, it's of you. You get to become the alien. Or more exactly, the alienated. No one and nothing in here is what you used to love. It's all fallen apart, they've all fallen apart, there can be nothing but fragments. And what are you doing watching them?

That's interesting and all, but it's part 13 now and I only just found out so screw you guys I'm not going back to watch all this shit again.

人民的名义 aka In the Name of [The] People

55 episodes of this exist.... and it's some kind of runaway hit for Hunan TV... and I don't know the broadcast schedule but I believe the finale for the first (55 episode) season aired recently.

And there're no subs!!

And there are subs! (For the first 18 or so episodes)

https://subscene.com/subtitles/in-the-name-of-the-people


I'm not sure I did this show justice. I watched the first two episodes, then the ninth, then I jumped straight to 55. I jumped from 2 to 9 to get some idea if all the episodes were going to be as dynamic as the first two - that is whether or not the major story telling device was going to be lengthy scenes where two people sit in a room or a car and describe everything that has happened. And it seems a bit like yeah, that's how the show works: two overactors elaborating this or that plot point without moving much. To my tv eyes, a lot of telling rather than showing, but I don't know all the ins and outs of Chinese drama. I'm not saying it's bad. In fact, so long as you have a playbook and can identify each character's role (because you so rarely see them doing anything other than talking to one another), the elaborations of everyone's byzantine thinking is fairly interesting. But I jumped to 55 anyway to see who ends up in jail. The last episode has a new story telling device: stoic tears, regular crying, and chest-beating crying. No subs for 55 tho, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Valkyrien (2017)

If Batman (in Norway) were a doomsday prepper (and Norwegian) and Frankenstein (in Norway) were a physician-turned-biochemist (and also Norwegian) and they set up shop together in a disused (Norwegian) subway station (in Norway) and the subway station were called Valkyrie, then wouldn't we have a tv show? They could call it Valkyrien. I know I would.


 

Welp, Twin Peaks is over.

Unfortunately, it rewards repeat viewing. There are, for instance, a few things in the first episode that you literally can't see until you've seen most of the other episodes. I suppose I'd like to discuss some of that, but I don't know I can face watching all that shit again. There's something afoot in Twin Peaks: The Return and I doubt it can be represented in overarching concepts but fragmentation is important, as is repetition. There are lots of repeatings and doublings, and a great many of them are not obvious. And as for fragmentation, pretty much everything in the show is incomplete, is indeed but a fragment. The people, their actions, what you see of their lives, how their stories play out - all in tiny pieces. If there is a whole, it is something other than everything they think and you see.

Nah, truth is, I don't know.

I have a tiny possibility hanging over my viewings saying what's being represented is not a wheel, but The Wheel, the cycle of existence. Which doesn't exactly help me understand anything much of what I saw, but in the cycle of existence one's gotta try, right?

Twin Peaks (2017)

Season 3.... generalised spoilers, I guess.

Watch out below.


Thus far:

Exceptionally tiresome outros. Bugs me every time. That'll probably continue for the whole season unfortunately. But the lengthy, time-wasting, not very informative wiling away of the hour on lengthy stays with boring characters seems finished by episode 4. Goodness, the first three eps included some tedious stretches, I was wondering if I hadn't been had. The intensity wasn't there. But then along comes episode 4. Worth it. By episode 3 I was wondering if I'd keep watching. With episode 4, I'm looking forward to 5.

Well I don't know what's going on. I've rewatched episodes 1 and 2, and now 3, and... I was okay with the outro.

Twin Peaks: the Return is very much more acceptable the second time around. The "lengthy, time-wasting, not very informative" stays with boring characters have meaning now, mostly because there's a lot more context available to make sense of them. Meta-context is helping too. By that I mean it helps if I notice that there is narrative meaning in the amount of fragmentation and repetition that goes on, and that - I think, or it helps me to think - that meaning is related to the cycle of existence.

Also, [spoiler]Judy[/spoiler]


but I'm not gonna watch all the damn episodes again. I'm jumping to 8.

"If You Are The One" Is a show I'm watching on SBS VICELAND (Ch32) in Oz. It is about Chinese males choosing a female as a partner to either go out with or to get more involved. It is in Chinese with English sub titles. I am leaning quite a bit about how both sexes think. Has anyone else seen this? I expect it is being shown in China.

OMG saw it on holiday in OZ last month! It was jaw droppingly awful I thought.

Piglet, do you think that the show gave a true indication of the way young people think? I am trying to understand the Chinese folk that are here in Oz.

Granny Mae we were completely astounded by the sheer numbers. In Melbourne we stayed in an air bnb in a tower block in which we were the only non Asians I think. In Sydney we had dinner with an ex student of ours from China. He took us to a restaurant in which we were the only non Chinese. Menu in Chinese, waitress took order in Chinese it was amazing!THen as we went north there were fewer Chinese but still many more than we were prepared for.