Monsters of Television

We are all, in our own ways, slaves and masters.

Through a sense of responsibility, because of debts owed, on account of fear or love or hate, we are both slave and master – to ourselves and others. We are slaves to another’s whims, slave to our own passions. We are master of others because of their loyalty, master of ourselves only some of the time.

While there are many slave-master relationships at play in this episode, the main dynamic centers around – of course – one Mr. Windom Earle.

Read more »

This show just loves the double. Whether it’s opposites attract or good vs. evil or identical personalities, Twin Peaks doesn’t pass up the chance to compare, contrast, and combine.

Double has always been the name of the game in TV. The standard structure of an episode is A plot and B plot. You have your good guy(s) and your bad guy(s). There’s even the ubiquitous two-parter, usually used to bridge the mid-season hiatus and season-to-season breaks.

Twin Peaks itself is like one never-ending two-parter, with stories spilling over from episode to episode, or pausing to only to reappear a few episodes down the line. And then there’s the way the stories are matched up.

Read more »

“Inertia.”

I’ve been covering Breaking Bad for most the season, but for the finale, Nick and I decided a conversation would be worthwhile since we had intended for us to alternate coverage. Below, we talk about devious characters, montages, and what could possibly happen next. -NK

Read more »

Ah, Twin Peaks.

Every time I try to do a straight analysis of this show, it turns into a gleeful or questioning recap. This oddball little show with its mishmash of genres and unrelated storylines and characters that disappear for episodes at a time only to pop up later as big plot points. Somehow it manages to be endearing, intriguing, and unsettling all at the same time. The only true defining through line is how off the wall it is.

I think my favorite thing about Twin Peaks is how everyone just rolls with whatever flavor of crazy is on the day’s menu.

Read more »

“Well this is new!”

Mummy and Daddy are fighting.

There’s an interesting discussion to be had with regard to Doctor Who‘s seventh season opener about the relevance of external stories to the main narrative of a show. So many shows today are utilizing the Internet as a tool to draw in new viewers and keep old viewers interested. From behind-the-scenes videos to website-exclusive mini-stories, shows use the Internet to create an extension of the worlds their audience loves, extensions that promise to fill in the gaps that 45-minute-long stories always leave behind.

Yesterday, I happened across BBC America’s Doctor Who marathon and was able to refresh my memory of season six in preparation for the seventh season opener. I also watched “Pond Life”, a five-part series of short webisodes focused on the life of the Ponds while away from the Doctor.

Read more »

“Hell hath no fury like the second-rate.”

I really hope “let’s do the news” is a euphemism.

It’s not unpopular to dislike The Newsroom. I struggle to find people that truly, honestly, uninronically enjoy it. I’m not alone in wishing Mac has a revelation that maybe while her newsroom is experiencing important current events that it’s not the time to pester Will into admitting he still has feelings for her. I’m certainly not alone in suffering the pageant of pedagogy pushed onto the audience once a week that wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t make me want to roll my eyes so far into the back of my head that they might actually get stuck. And I certainly am not alone in wishing Seal Team Six had taken out Maggie instead.

But, honestly, what is it about this show that raises the ire of so many people and why do they continue to watch it? I would understand if the people lifting pitchforks were those of a right-wing persuasion, particularly those that voted for the political figures that Sorkin often uses as emotional bait throughout the series. But they would just stop watching. Why aren’t we so smart? Why do we continue to endure the misogyny, the melodrama, the one-liners that would make a girl from Rosewood groan? What is it about The Newsroom that keeps getting us to come back for more?

Read more »

“This whole thing could’ve been avoided.”

I was a little underwhelmed by “Say My Name.”  It’s unlikely that Breaking Bad can be legitimately bad — it’s too well-oiled at this stage — so it just settles with tiny missteps, whether it be the train heist (for some, not for me) or the end of this particular episode. For me, there was just something lacking, even while internally, I can justify the actual act the episode ends with.

It’s one of the problems of writing about television, or even thinking fairly critically about it. You burrow into the series, understand its ins and outs, and while it may still has the ability to surprise you, as Breaking Bad does for me, you also may see a crack or something askew, but decide that, hey, it’s supposed to be that way. This could just be, in large part, because you want the series that you’ve invested time and effort and labor (and unpaid blogging is labor, in a sense) to still make sense, otherwise what’s the point?

So, yes, I could say that I don’t feel the episode completely earns its ending, even though intellectually I can argue for it, make it feel consistent within momentum of the series. But it sits there, in my gut, wanting to be validated, like Hank’s obsession with the Fring case.

Read more »

“Bobby, you know what you have to have in this world? Balance. Distance. Symmetry.”

Remember when we had this review thing going?

It’s been four months, give or take, since my last Twin Peaks post and I’d like to apologize for the delay. A new job, moving states, the death of my computer (R.I.P.), and various other issues conspired to keep me away, but the reviews are back!

Previously on Twin Peaks: Daddy Briggs was missing, Dennis/Denise showed up as part of the investigation into Cooper’s suspected drug trafficking, James was taken in by Trophy Wife, and there was a wedding.

Read more »

“You’re here to rock the boat.”

Nick and I had a conversation about Bunheads when it premiered. Now we’re having a conversation following its first season finale. (We like symmetry.) We talk about the finale, character psyches, messiness, dance-and-talks, and, of course, Constantinople.  -Noel

That one girl in the pink isn’t going to get up for anyone.

Nick:  That was like a half-season compressed into a single episode.

Noel: Which kind of makes sense given how AS-P doled out the narrative.

Nick:  Yeah. They didn’t even spread out the mention of Chekhov’s Pretty Mace and it going off into different acts.

Noel:  Hahaha. As soon as she said the word mace, I shouted at the TV, “Chekhov’s Mace!”

Read more »

“It’s like you’re eating a scab.”

“Buyout” is not an exciting episode, but you don’t always need excitement. I’ve long maintained, across many posts here, that pacing is important, and episodes don’t always need to be white-knuckled, everything and the kitchen sink of whatever a series’s particular genre is. Breaking Bad often plays that, setting up intricate chess games between Walter and antagonistic forces, but it also knows when to take a step back and breathe, and “Buyout” is all about breathing a bit. Once you use an electrical cord to burn through your restraints, I mean.

And when Breaking Bad breathes, you tend to get episodes like this, as characters try to deal with the fallout of a particularly harrowing experience. I like that the show does this on a regular basis, and after Todd kills a kid in an effort to make sure there are no witnesses and to try and break out of his hum-drum life of robbery and killing insects, it’s kind of needed. But “Buyout” also makes gestures to answer some lingering motivational questions as Walter’s desire to keep the operation going comes under a sort of scrutiny.

Read more »