General Television Thread

[Benji]

Nashville S5 E9 **MAJOR SPOILERS, DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE EPISODE**

Spoiler

Well fuck. TV has conditioned me to think the main characters in shows like this are invincible, especially mid-season, and I spent all my time rolling my eyes waiting for the miracle and then... poof. It's over. I read online that it's real and I'm kind of undecided on continuing the show. It's been going downhill for a while.

Gunner and Scarlet's relationship is the absolute worst at this point. Juliet hasn't been interesting in two seasons. I'm not sure I can deal with yet another Deacon story about his anger/alcohol. Maddy is the most unberable character on TV right now, and her little sister never gets any decent stories beyond her sister being mad at her despite being infinitely more likeable. Avery is likeable but held down by being anchored to Juliet. Will has great moments but I really wish his entire story history wasn't based around him being gay. Luke was great but he's gone. Teddy was interesting but he's gone. Jeff was phenomenal but he's gone for good. Layla was good but she's gone. The new cast members suck.

Whilst Rayna was never particularly interesting, she was the anchor of the show, and I liked Connie's performances as a sort of centre for everyone else. It kind of feels like I should call time on the show, but despite almost all the crap going on, I still find it watchable and even enjoyable at times, but they need a proper sort out of the characters. I'll see out this season, but I'm probably not going to move forward beyond that. Very few drama shows are good in their sixth season.

 

[Monkey D. Lars]

Anyone seen the first episode of the Mist?

[Josh]

Finished GLOW. Super dug it. Super super dug it.

[Alex.]

Twin Peaks Tonight:

Spoiler

What the fuck was that

 

[Ruki]

Watching the Silicon Valley season finale. Oh man....half way in.

 

EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG

RICHARD YOU'VE FUCKED EVERYTHING

[MalaCloudy Black]

Speaking of Silicon Valley,

Spoiler

I'm kind of tired of the "Everything's fucked, whoops, some other mistake actually made things work out for the main characters in the end!" trope they've employed like.. idk, since the series started? It's been a lot more prevalent this season. For all the talk of Big Head falling ass backwards into something good, the same shit happens to Richard et al. and it's kind of boring to me, at this point. There's no real stakes. It's just "oh hey look how they fucked this up" but it never matters because someone else's fuck up "fixes" theirs.

But hey, Erlich's being written out by hanging out for five years (!) in an opium den. So that's.. new.

 

[Benjamin]

Re: Silicon Valley

Spoiler

I was actually surprised that basically, at the end of the season, basically nothing changed barring Erlich being written out, and I guess Big Head is at Stanford now. Besides that, has anything really progressed? Jared left and came back in the same episode? Fuck that, his blow up last week should totally have started him moving out from Richard's absolute shit leadership, because Jared deserves fucking better. 

 

[MalaCloudy Black]

That's exactly what I mean.

Spoiler

 

Everything changes, then within an episode or two - sometimes even the same episode - it's back to the status quo. It's still a funny show and I still like it, but when you do that shit it kinds of robs the show of any narrative heft, you know? 

It seems like the only big thing moving forward is that Richard's gone from being a timid pushover with a moral compass to a ruthless, opportunistic dick ala Gavin Belson. That end scene was pretty much perfect; it shows you that Richard's changed and he's no longer the man he was when we met him back in season 1, but then you get that "Gavy-baby" and the quick correction to "Gavin" after one withering stare, and you realize, yeah, this is and isn't the same guy.

 

Was there a new Veep last night? For some reason my DVR didn't record it if there was.

[Monkey D. Lars]

I'm happy Preacher is back! The first episode is great! Especially the first 10 minutes.

[tristy]

39 minutes ago, Broken Cloyd said:

Was there a new Veep last night? For some reason my DVR didn't record it if there was.

Yep, it was the season finale too. 

[Benjamin]

2 hours ago, tristy said:

Yep, it was the season finale too. 

And it was absolutely incredible. One of the few episodes of the season where everybody was on fire.

[livid]

3 hours ago, Broken Cloyd said:

That's exactly what I mean.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Everything changes, then within an episode or two - sometimes even the same episode - it's back to the status quo. It's still a funny show and I still like it, but when you do that shit it kinds of robs the show of any narrative heft, you know? 

It seems like the only big thing moving forward is that Richard's gone from being a timid pushover with a moral compass to a ruthless, opportunistic dick ala Gavin Belson. That end scene was pretty much perfect; it shows you that Richard's changed and he's no longer the man he was when we met him back in season 1, but then you get that "Gavy-baby" and the quick correction to "Gavin" after one withering stare, and you realize, yeah, this is and isn't the same guy.

 

Was there a new Veep last night? For some reason my DVR didn't record it if there was.

Continuing the Silicon Valley discussion...

Spoiler

I do hope that the amount of criticism about this aspect of the show is addressed next season and they actually develop some forward momentum. Hopefully the end scene between Richard and Gavin is a hint that that will be the case.

On a side note, Gilfoyle's cat eyes got me every time. 

 

[Hobo]

This week's Twin Peaks was pure unfiltered David Lynch.

I'm confused and scared.

[GoGo Yubari]

Most of the Silicon Valley talk here is basically how I've felt about the show since the end of last season, just amplified. Incredibly funny show but it's basically a well-made perpetual motion machine.

[Skummy]

4 hours ago, Hobo said:

This week's Twin Peaks was pure unfiltered David Lynch.

I'm confused and scared.

It was the closest thing to his artwork I've seen him do since Eraserhead. I think elements of it tied Mulholland Drive into the Twin Peaks mythos (as I've long suspected it was anyway), and possibly even incorporated Eraserhead, or at least shared a lot of similarities with that film. Definitely the most "Lynchian" he has ever been. It was extraordinary, and looked incredible, but it could also have just been a complete self-indulgent mess. It's amazing as a piece of film-making, but hard to justify as an episode of a TV drama. 

No idea where it fits in the grand scheme of things, unless this series is going to explore the interior of the Black Lodge (I assume that's what we were looking at) a little more. Definitely seems to imply that the Black Lodge, or whatever plane it exists on, has a more malleable relationship with time than we realised, which plays into a lot of other things going on this series.

[Alex.]

I read up on a lot of theories and such about last nights episode I think I have began to put the pieces together about it. I suggest you guys take a read on the Twin Peaks reddit if you are interested. Its a lot.

[Hobo]

IIRC, Mullholand Drive was , at one point, to be about Audrey Horne.

I kinda love the clearly self-indulgent bits of of the show. Especially the musical performances (the placing of this weeks was wonderful!). I also really enjoy whenever a title card pops up on screen because there's always something seemingly extraneous added in.

I'd hope this is as close to a Lodge spirit origin story as we get. If you can even call it that.

[Skummy]

9 hours ago, Hobo said:

IIRC, Mullholand Drive was , at one point, to be about Audrey Horne.

I've only ever heard that from Sherilyn Fenn, and long after the movie was made, so I'd take it with a pinch of salt. Mulholland Drive started out life as a TV pilot, not the film spin-off that it would have had to have been for Fenn's story to add up. I've always assumed it was inspired, much like Twin Peaks was, by Lynch's obsession with Marilyn Monroe; pretty blonde girl in trouble in Hollywood.
 

Last episode discussion;

Spoiler

 

I always felt that Mulholland Drive followed the same internal logic as Twin Peaks, even if it wasn't intended to be the same universe, but only recently discovered that Laura Palmer and Ronette are in the audience at Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive, and parts of the last episode of Twin Peaks were filmed in Lynch's real Club Silencio.

The evil hobo/spirit things, which have appeared in the series already, immediately put me in mind of the Man Behind The Diner in Mulholland Drive, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

In what I'm now assuming is the White Lodge, not only does part of it resemble Mulholland Drive, but the part where they're pulling levers and contraptions to send Laura's spirit (?) to Earth makes me think of the Man Inside The Planet in Eraserhead, and the whole mood and setting of that film. A lot of this episode reminded me of Eraserhead, and of the Lady In The Radiator in particular. I'm beginning to think that this series is intended as a grand unifying thread across all of Lynch's work - there have even been references in previous episodes to films he planned but never made - and it would make perfect sense, as much as Lynch ever does, for Eraserhead to follow a similar logic as the Lodges of Twin Peaks. This might be the closest we'll get to seeing Lynch's mythology writ large, and I can't wait to see where this goes.

Something I saw pointed out elsewhere: Cooper was shot in episode 8 of series 1, evil Cooper was shot in episode 8 of series 2.

 

The nuclear explosion. The Black Lodge is opened by extreme acts of violence, well, how much more extreme do you get? No wonder something like that brought Bob into the world. But is that all there is to it? What of Gordon Cole's framed picture of a nuclear explosion in his office?

The Lodges seem to have a pretty open-ended relationship with time ("is it future, or is it past?"), admittedly, but did we really just see Bob launched into the world in the '40s or '50s? So how long has Bob been around, and what was he getting up to prior to Fire Walk With Me? And did the Giant send Laura Palmer, or the idea of Laura Palmer, into the world specifically knowing what would happen? Was it an attempt to lure Bob back, or something worse?

 

 

[Hobo]

6 hours ago, Skummy said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I always felt that Mulholland Drive followed the same internal logic as Twin Peaks, even if it wasn't intended to be the same universe, but only recently discovered that Laura Palmer and Ronette are in the audience at Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive, and parts of the last episode of Twin Peaks were filmed in Lynch's real Club Silencio.

The evil hobo/spirit things, which have appeared in the series already, immediately put me in mind of the Man Behind The Diner in Mulholland Drive, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

In what I'm now assuming is the White Lodge, not only does part of it resemble Mulholland Drive, but the part where they're pulling levers and contraptions to send Laura's spirit (?) to Earth makes me think of the Man Inside The Planet in Eraserhead, and the whole mood and setting of that film. A lot of this episode reminded me of Eraserhead, and of the Lady In The Radiator in particular. I'm beginning to think that this series is intended as a grand unifying thread across all of Lynch's work - there have even been references in previous episodes to films he planned but never made - and it would make perfect sense, as much as Lynch ever does, for Eraserhead to follow a similar logic as the Lodges of Twin Peaks. This might be the closest we'll get to seeing Lynch's mythology writ large, and I can't wait to see where this goes.

Something I saw pointed out elsewhere: Cooper was shot in episode 8 of series 1, evil Cooper was shot in episode 8 of series 2.

 

The nuclear explosion. The Black Lodge is opened by extreme acts of violence, well, how much more extreme do you get? No wonder something like that brought Bob into the world. But is that all there is to it? What of Gordon Cole's framed picture of a nuclear explosion in his office?

The Lodges seem to have a pretty open-ended relationship with time ("is it future, or is it past?"), admittedly, but did we really just see Bob launched into the world in the '40s or '50s? So how long has Bob been around, and what was he getting up to prior to Fire Walk With Me? And did the Giant send Laura Palmer, or the idea of Laura Palmer, into the world specifically knowing what would happen? Was it an attempt to lure Bob back, or something worse?

 

 

I'd heard about the Man Behind The Diner connection before. I've been listening to The Fire Talk With Me Podcast and that got brought up when they first appeared a few episodes back. They also look like The Woodsmen from Fire Walk With Me even though those weren't all black.

In the first series MIKE says BOB has been around for 40 years or so, which would imply the late 1940s. So I would take what we saw to be BOB's creation.

The more I think about the end of that episode the more I'm not sure what the hell to make of it. Initially I thought that we see the birth of BOB and then the frog-fly-thingy is something to do with Laura. My hunch being the girl is a young Sarah Palmer (and maybe the boy a young Leland).

But now I don't think that makes sense. The thing that hatches seems too tied to the Black Lodge because it seems to be reacting to radiobroadcast. Now I'm thinking it might be MIKE and whatever was sent by The Giant doesn't arrive until later.

What the thing they sent is, I can only guess it's marking Laura as important to them.

[Skummy]

Spoiler

The spectre (?) that invaded the radio station was credited as the Woodsman, so that's explicitly tying him to the Woodsmen of Fire Walk With Me. Last time we saw him was wandering the morgue, a la MIKE in series one. There's theories that the Woodsmen relate to the Log Lady, and/or to her dead husband, somehow as well.

There's not really anything concrete that I'd base the connection to The Man Behind The Diner on there, just a hunch, and a visual similarity that could easily be explained as a director returning to similar motifs. The first time one of the Woodsmen appeared (and then disappeared) in episode 2 or 3, though, my thoughts went to Mulholland Drive before Fire Walk With Me.

I'm pretty sure it was the creation of BOB too - it fits time-wise, but yeah, the stuff with Laura is a little more off. The relationship of the Lodges and time as we know it is complex - hence Cooper being able to speak to Laura in dreams before Cooper had come to Twin Peaks in "our" time - so these stories may not be occurring concurrently. We've seen Laura dragged out of the Red Room, or the Lodge, or wherever she was, maybe she was dragged out of there to be sent to Earth by the Giant? When? "Is this future or is this past?". Was it even really Laura? "She is my cousin, but doesn't she look exactly like Laura Palmer"? The "Laura" we saw in the first episode said "sometimes my arms bend back" - my first goosebumps moment of this series - and those are the words of the Man From Another Place's "cousin", not the real Laura Palmer.

Maybe it's all circular? Maybe Laura Palmer had to die because she resembled the Black Lodge doppelganger - let's call her LAURA - and, like the good and bad Cooper, only one can exist for any period of time. Maybe LAURA spoke to Cooper, knowing that the death of Laura Palmer would bring him to Twin Peaks, with The Giant knowing that he was their best chance to bring BOB back to the Lodge? This series, in Richard Horne, we've seen a new troubled young man capable of extreme violence - ripe for manipulation by BOB, but we've also seen a troubled young blonde girl, tied in with shady characters and a drug-addled boyfriend. Maybe she's one of the girls whoring for the Roadhouse that Renault took the phonecall about? What else to bring BOB back to Twin Peaks but a troubled young blonde girl with secrets? And what else to lure Dale Cooper back to Twin Peaks but a copycat Laura Palmer murder? I think these patterns repeat themselves.

 

Ignoring that off the top of my head rambling, and assuming things are rather more linear than that...what's with the cockroach thing crawling into the girl's mouth? Most people seem to be assuming that the girl is a young Sarah Palmer, as you have. But was it not hatched from an egg created by the same entity that created BOB? So it seems to be connected to something evil, not to the White Lodge. If the same thing that birthed BOB somehow "seeded" Sarah Palmer to lure BOB in, that's the only way it makes sense to me - bearing in mind Leland talks of first seeing BOB in his childhood, it may make sense. BOB may have been after Laura Palmer decades before she was even born. In which case we have to ask again, what's so special about Laura Palmer? Having some kind of connection to the Lodges would explain Sarah's psychic abilities, though.

Apropos of nothing, I don't think the kids in this episode were Leland and Sarah, I think maybe the boy was a young Gordon Cole, if he's significant at all. I suspect we probably haven't grasped this one at all.