LeftHandedGuitarist

[6.0/10] “The Counterclock” has all the elements of a good Star Trek episode: a clear obstacle, a funky sci-fi twist, and a personal element to anchor it. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts, mostly for some boneheaded choices in terms of how the central concept of the episode works.

The idea of a backwards universe is simple enough, and the sort of thing Star Trek has done before, whether it’s with the evil versions of our heroes in The Mirror Universe, or the anti-matter zone in “The Immunity Syndrome.” But while it works well enough to have people talking in reverse or the crew having to learn to operate the ship backwards, and neat to have to time a dying star in one universe with one being born in another, the episode gets pretty ridiculous with it.

For one thing, the notion that people are born as old folks and die as infants makes very little sense (though I want to say Voyager did this idea too). By the same token, the episode’s very inconsistent about how quickly people age and de-age for the sake of narrative convenience. It also makes no sense that the mere fact that Kirk and company are getting younger means that they lose their knowledge of how to run the ship, talk, etc. It’s the kind of lazy, “taking the concept too far” stuff that turns a neat premise into nonsense.

There is something cool about having Captain April and Dr. April, the first captain and medical officer of The Enterprise, aboard for The Animated Series’s last outing. The de-aging thing does provide a good excuse for Capt. April to take command, and again, having to line up the supernovas to get back to our universe is a solid setup.

But “The Counterclock Incident” messes up the ending pretty bad. For one thing, we have another “we can make them the right ages by using the stored transporter signal” situation, which I hate because that could solve nearly every physical problem our heroes have ever had. (It’s a shame no one thought of it when Kirk and Spock were turned into mermen.) For another, Mr. and Mrs. April decline to stay young because they’ve “already had good lives.” It’s dumb because they could still have great lives! They’d just be longer lives! It’s not like continuing to live and be young means your old life is erased! What an odd form of Ludditeism.

Anyway, if you can forget about the goofy backwards stuff and cop out ending, there’s a solid episode underneath, with some of the usual second act exposition, but an interesting setup and a straightforward, if appropriately science fiction-y problem for the good guys to solve. There’s cool ship designs, the fun of seeing the main characters as toddlers, and some of the usual space emergency action. It’s not the best note for The Animated Series to go out on, but the episode certainly has its moments.

As a whole, The Animated Series doesn’t deserve its shabby reputation. It has its high points and low points, but it has roughly the same batting average that The Original Series did, and typically feels very much of a piece with its forbear. There are some issues with the stiffness of the animation, but there were also issues with the stiffness of Shatner’s acting in the live action show, so you win some you lose some. Still, the show offered as much creativity, invention, and fun as its predecessor, and deserves its place in Star Trek canon.

(On a personal note -- so ends my journey through the episodic incarnation of the original cast’s adventures. I still have six movies to go, and plan to rewatch the episodes from later Trek series where the original castmembers show up, but this is still something of a point of demarkation. It’s been very interesting to me seeing the early incarnation of a franchise I love -- the conventions of the time and the tropes that would be solidified for the series. The watch-through has had its ups and downs, but there’s been plenty of brilliance in it, and I’m glad to be more fully versed in the iconic beginnings of this hallowed series of shows, movies, and more.)

[4.5/10] Oh Twin Peaks. If you can’t make me care, the least you can do is make me laugh, and “Miss Twin Peaks” at least gave me that. Almost nothing about the Windom Earle storyline has worked, but god help me if seeing him not only dress up like the Log Lady, but bonk Bobby Briggs on the head with his log, cracked me the hell up. (Why couldn’t you have done that sooner, Wind-y?) I’m not made of stone. Putting your uber-evil, scenery-chewing villain in the getup of your town’s oddest oddball (which is saying something) and having him cavort around and give the ol’ el kabong to nudniks tickles my fancy.

So did Donna’s story here, where by god Donna is uncovering secrets and she has feelings about that! Her overdramatic confrontation with her parents in her bow-heavy prom dress lookalike is the kind of overwrought nonsense this show delivers on a regular basis. She also confronts Ben Horne about it, and her mouth-covering gasp is the kind of reaction you look for on a telenovela. I guess they needed something to do with Donna now that the Laura stuff is finished and Bobby’s been either off the show or embroiled in his own terrible storyline, but it’s cheesy to begin with and Lara Flynn Boyle isn’t up to it.

The same goes for poor Heather Graham who, it’s increasingly clear, must have been to five acting boot camps between now and when her movie career kicked into gear, because she displays all the acting talent of teleprompter come to life in this series. That would be fine if she were one of Twin Peaks’s many picked-up-and-forgotten side characters with little to do, but she has to make a heartfelt expression of love to Cooper and an impassioned plea for the environment at the pageant, and neither land. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that (a.) the love part is supposed to seal the tragedy and threat vis-a-vis Cooper and (b.) the speech is supposed to be what wins her the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, so when two major events happen as a consequence of these things, the reaction is a great big “huh?”

That’s right! True to the title’s promise, we’ve made it to the Miss Twin Peaks competition, and Annie’s game-winning oratory seems even sillier when Audrey gives a much more convincing and compelling speech about two minutes earlier. Lana, the probable succubus, fails in her attempt to rig the contest by sleeping with Dick Tremayne in a closet (something The Mayor is oddly okay with), and by doing a contrived bit of “jazz exotica.” And we round out the talent show portion by revealing that, what do you know, Lucy is a pretty great dancer! (She also picks Andy as her baby-daddy, hopefully ending that terrible plotline forever.) Nobody else involved has much to do, which is kind of a shame since Shelly, of all people, seemed to be the most hopeful about this gig.

But mostly, it’s all a contrived setup for Annie to win and for Windom Earle to attack. I’ll admit, there’s something cool, albeit cheesy, about the strobe light effect, and Earle mugging his way through the crowd while Cooper looks on in shock, but it’s a predictable, all too neat end for everything involving Earle, this contest, and the old love triangle involving Cooper and his former partner. (The episode also has Earle clumsily deliver the information that he did, in fact, kill his wife Caroline.)

Which leads to what is probably my biggest beef with this episode -- the literalizing of Twin Peaks’s mythology. I’ll admit, it’s a very tough line for any supernatural-themed show to walk, because you want the magical elements of your story to feel like they make sense, but you also want to ensure there’s a certain degree of mystery or unknowableness to them as well, or it feels like every problem is solved by just following the recipe and baking your mundane-but-technically-magical cake.

Spelling out so many details about Bob and The Black Lodge and the cave pictogram make the whole “evil in these woods” -- one of the few elements that I liked about this show early in its run -- into run of the mill B-movie supernatural thriller material. The Black Lodge is now a literal place, and Bob comes from there, and you can only get there from a certain place and certain time. We may as well have Link assemble the seven magical amulets to open the gate. The unexplained origins and abilities of Bob and his evil and the possession that came with gave the whole thing a certain power. Making it so rote and ordinary takes a lot of that away.

It doesn’t help that the key to opening this portal (which, I imagine, will work out about as well for Windom Earle as it did for the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark), is the combination of love and fear. What do you know! Annie has both! Love for Cooper! Fear of Earle! It’s all too simplistic and convenient and contrived, and turns one of the few cool things about Twin Peaks -- its mythos -- into a bargain basement fetch quest. (One deciphered, appropriately enough, by a dolt like Deputy Andy.)

As usual, there’s other minor, mostly pointless developments along the way too. Nadine suddenly seems jealous at the news that Ed and Norma plan to get married (and crushes Mike’s arm for his troubles). Andrew Packard plus Pete and Catherine Martell continue to play The Da Vinci Code with Eckert’s box to my continuing disinterest. Leo frees Major Briggs from Earle’s cabin, apparently wanting to save Shelly despite the fact that he himself was trying to kill her pretty recently. For the effort, Leo gets put in a ridiculous contraption that threatens to drop spiders on his head and Major Briggs is too brain-scrambled to be much help to anyone.

And so, Twin Peaks approaches its endgame determined to try to ruin one of the few half-decent things about the show. With any luck, there’ll still be a predictable but welcome “more than you bargained for” twist to unlocking The Black Lodge, but regardless, it reduces one of the distinctive factors of the show to a magical flowchart. At least the end is nigh.

[6.6/10] It’s appropriate that this episode opens with the face of Ted Raimi, because much of the best parts of “The Path to the Black Lodge” evokes the cinematography of him and his brother Sam in the Evil Dead movies. In several moments, the camera pulls back, or someone feels as though they’re being watched or pursued, in the same way that the demons or spirits that attacked Ash once did. There’s even a POV shot swooping through the woods for good measure.

In the episode, Twin Peaks gets literal with its demon. Several people in the episode -- a random lady, Pete Martell, and Cooper himself, start to feel their hand quiver as though it’s acting without their control. Only later, after the aforementioned swooping, do we see that it’s the product of Killer Bob, presumably trying to force his way back into the land of the living. His writhing limb is appropriately creepy (as most Bob stuff is). And while the notion that there is an actual entry point for The Black Lodge makes the show’s mythos feel a little too literal for my tastes, the whole in the ground where the infamous red-curtained room from Cooper’s dream is reflected gives the whole thing a bit of a charge.

I have to admit, as skeptical as I’ve been about Twin Peaks more supernatural side at times, it’s become one of the most interesting things about the show. The series seems to have dumbed it down a bit here -- Bob trying to break back into possessing people, the lodge having a welcome mat, and The Giant being much more clear than usual -- but it’s still a neat wrinkle to otherwise run-of-the-mill drama the show has to offer.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the show is setting up something terrible to happen for the winner of the Miss Twin Peaks contest, but The Giant specifically warning Cooper off from letting Annie enter adds to the doomed quality of the event.

We check in with a number of potential contestants this week (presumably just to ensure there’s a wide array of possible victims). Lucy is going to enter, I guess because the baby could use the money. The probable succubus is still plotting with The Mayor to rig the contest in her favor. Ben Horne wants Audrey to enter so that she can become the spokeswoman for his cause. Shelly is practicing her speech about the environment with Bobby (the two have a gooey, disappointing reconciliation). I forget why, but Donna previously expressed a willingness to enter. And as just mentioned, former nun Annie is trading theologian quotes with Cooper offering a thin excuse for why she would enter. Who knows why exactly it will all go wrong, but surely it will, and Twin Peaks contrives ways to include every conceivable young woman in the contest.

The romance angles with these young women continue apace, only this time with a more sexual twist. Cooper and Annie are still a pretty disappointing couple. Again, I’m a fan of Heather Graham’s work, but she definitely seems stilted and overmatched here, with her line delivery seeming as though it’s being read off of cue cards without any convincing emotion to speak of. Annie and Cooper exchanging quotes feels like the show trying hard to show there’s a connection between them that the chemistry just doesn’t support. And Annie telling Cooper she wants to sleep with him feels out of nowhere and out of step with the character we’ve come to know thus far.

The same goes for Audrey and John Wheeler. The pair have a variety of missed connections in the episode, but at the last minute, Audrey manages to flag her beau down before he has to leave back to wherever it is he came from. I’ve generally enjoyed the two of them as a couple, but “The Path to the Black Lodge” really doubles down on the overwrought romantic drama, and it’s not for the better. The revelation that Audrey is a virgin kind of works -- the idea that her bark is bigger than her bite -- but it too comes out of nowhere and worse yet, feels like a thrown-in way to try to heighten the importance of her relationship with John rather than something that develops organically from the character.

In terms of other major storylines, Windom Earle continues to be an utter bore as he chews scenery in the most rote manner imaginable. The character is going for something like The Joker but comes off like an overactive toddler who hasn’t taken his medication. The cackling and faux-crazy routine still doesn’t work, and having him babble about The Black Lodge or torture Major Briggs for information does little to counteract that fact.

We do get some reasonably important plot details. Apparently the pictogram from the cave is a map to The Black Lodge. Leo is quietly (and mostly incompetently) planning a rebellion against Earle. And Cooper’s figured out that Earle has been toying with Audrey, Donna, and Shelly, and warns them to be on the lookout. It’s not much, but it’s nice to see the show at least moving the ball and bringing us closer to the endgame.

Otherwise the episode checks in with the other parts of the narrative that are rolling merrily along. Catherine Martell and Andrew Packard break through another layer of Eckert’s box and find...another box. Donna seems poised to discover that her dad is not her dad, which the show keeps dragging out. Lucy is going to “decide” who the father is soon. Some random guy who looks like Truman’s illegitimate son is working at the sheriff’s office without explanation. And Ben is seemingly committed to his “trying to be good” routine.

Again, there’s some force that comes from the fact that Twin Peaks is digging into its supernatural side once more. That latent creepiness carries the episode through some of its weaker points. But the predictability of the Miss Twin Peaks shtick, Windom Earle’s sideshow and the miscalibrated romantic stuff drags much of the rest of it down. This is still more watchable than the average episode, maybe because it seems slightly more focused than usual, but without the Bob material, it wouldn’t be much to write home about.

As if this show wasn't far fetched enough, now you expect me to believe that Christian fundamentalists changed the whole power grid to solar?!?

It´s amazing how many of the storys reflect events in the present no matter when you watch them.

these roots are going to take three hours to soften

get out the plates and utensils

Please. You didn't even give her time to prep the root you handed her a minute before.

I love this episode because it's such a touching character study.

[8.4/10] Another quality episode in this short season, which is always welcome. I liked the apparent theme of people seeing one another in an unvarnished fashion, recognizing them for who they are, for good and for ill. Lady Tyrell recognizes that Dany is a dragon, not a sheep (or a shark, for my fellow Futurama fans. Nymeria recognizes Arya as something familiar, but also very different than what she was the last time they were together. Sam sees Jorah as more than just a plague sufferer, but as the son of a man who saved his life. Missandei sees Grey Worm for the good man she loves, regardless of the abuses, physical and mental that he's suffered. And Theon is not so lucky, when Euron and the carnage around him reminds him that part of him is still Reek, and that part cannot be so easily escaped.

I also liked the political business in the episode. It's nice that the show had Dany confront Lord Varys about his hand in her assisination attempt and his shifting loyalties, but his response -- that he truest loyalty lies with the common people, because that's where he came from, and her retort -- that she values his advice but would rather he tell her if he thinks she's stepping out of line than plot behind her back -- works really well too. By the same token, the dichotomy of "listen to your advisors and strategize to gain loyalty" or "go your own way, come in dragons blazing, and just take over" presented to Dany is an interesting one. Last but not least, Cersei appealing to her countrymen's xenophobic impulses to gin up support is an interesting tack.

Overall, it was a well-done episode of the show, that ended with some good fireworks (both figurative and nigh-literal) and had a good sense of character exploration amid the plotting and storytelling that is setting all our heroes and villains on a collision course.

Anyone care to explain to me why Bashir couldn't simply replicate another dress uniform when he realized he'd misplaced his? It's not like they're forced to ration replicator usage like the crew of a certain ship lost in the Delta Quadrant…

Ugh. Bashir's acting in this is atrocious. Even more so that usual.

"Dammit, if you were still a man…"
This line struck me as somewhat uncharacteristic of Trek. They usually try to avoid portraying any human behavior that would suggest inequality between men and women. To insinuate that a woman is less capable of taking a punch than a man goes against that.

But what is very characteristic of Trek? The rest of the legal adventure into whether Dax is or is not responsible for the actions of every past host. This was a lot like putting Data on trial to determine whether he qualifies as a life form with all the rights guaranteed thereto. Trek is at its best when attacking philosophical questions like these!

[5.8/10] I’ll say this for David Lynch. I may not think much of what he’s done behind the camera on Twin Peaks, but damn if Gordon Cole hasn’t become one of my favorite parts of the show. There’s just something about his hard-of-hearing, chipper demeanor that makes him a nice compliment to Cooper (love their little joint thumbs up) and a funny addition to the show.

I wouldn’t have predicted it, but he actually has pretty great comic chemistry with Shelly. There’s something kind of neat about the fact that he can hear her, and Shelly’s bemused response to his ordering massive amounts of cherry pie and claiming to want to compose an epic poem about her is superb. And the whole exchange with Shelly playing telephone between Cole and the Log Lady is a fun exercise in farce.

The only catch is that it’s interspersed with scenes between Cooper and Annie. I have to admit, I found nothing offensive about Annie in her first appearance, but I get why she’s reputed to be hated by the fans. In this episode, the show lays the romance with Cooper on really thick and really fast, and the pair don’t have the chemistry to support that.

There’s something interesting in the premise of the character -- someone who’s had a suicide attempt, been shut off from a lot of the modern world, and is just taking her first steps back into it. (Her line about reintegrating it being like a foreign language -- knowing just enough to know she doesn’t understand -- is one of the few great bits of dialogue on this show). By the same token, the idea that she is her own brand of strange and that attracts Cooper is a solid idea. But the two of them making goo goo eyes at one another doesn’t really work, and there’s a lot of that here.

Thankfully, Annie provides some plot momentum as well, as she pieces together that the tatoos for Major Briggs and the Log Lady look like a symbol in “The Owl Cave.” Remember, they’re not what they seem! The show has started to get more literal with its mythos, losing the sort of mysterious nature and devolving into Da Vinci Code-esque symbol hunting, but it’s at least advancing the plot on the whole White Lodge/Black Lodge business, which is something.

Unfortunately, we also get Windom Earle entering the same cave, doing some Indiana Jones-style twist of the knob that emerges in the cave from Andy’s pickaxe-ing, and a seeing cave-in to end the episode. It’s another would-be cliffhanger that will no doubt be wiped away within the first five minutes of the next episode.

Speaking of which, this episode opens with an attempt on Sheriff Truman’s life from Eckert’s mistress. Cooper chalks the whole thing up to sexual jealousy from Eckhert, but it’s an odd thing, and the woman’s method of trying to strangle him is pretty odd. I guess she’s trying to make it look like S&M gone wrong or something? Feels like more weird for the sake of weird, but what the hell do I know?

We also get some minor progression, or really lack thereof, with Audrey and John Wheeler. They’re all flirty and have a big date planned, but Ben inadvertently messes it up by recognizing Audrey’s potential and sending her off to Seattle to do some business. I enjoy the back and forth between Audrey and John, but it needs to be going somewhere, and right now it feels pretty rudderless.

Speaking of which, Windom Earle also gets a face-to-face with Audrey, where he creeps her out doing his master of disguise routine in the library. I suppose it’s a fine scene, but why we need him interacting with all his “queens” ahead of time is beyond me. I suppose it’s supposed to be creepy, but instead it feels like an overacting version of dress-up. We also get another painful game-related metaphor, as Earle’s taken the time to affix the women’s faces (plus Cooper’s) to playing cards. The law of conservation of major characters suggests Annie will be his fourth “queen” so yipee.

Twin Peaks is also pulling a Veronica Mars here (which, in many ways, is a better done take on this same sort of mystery show set in a quirky town with a dark underbelly), as Donna discovers that her mom and Ben Horne had a thing back in the day, and the episode hints that Ben might be her real father. It’s a pretty dumb, soapy twist to pull out, and the show seems like it just needs something for Donna to do. God only knows where the show is going with Ben’s “I’m a changed man” routine, but it’s not promising.

Otherwise, we get a weird button to the story where, you know, Nadine statutorily rapes Mike and no one seems to be bothered by this in the slightest. We get a San Francisco postcard from James Hurley, which provides the nice reminder that we don’t have to see him on a weekly basis anymore. And there’s some an amusing running gag where the G-men trying to help Truman’s hangover by describing sickening dishes to make him puke.

Overall, it’s a better episode than usual, if only because there’s some legitimate plot progression and the worst storylines are kept to a minimum, and the addition of Gordon Cole is a shot in the arm for the episode’s comedy quotient. Only four episodes to go!

[3.4/10] Here’s the weird thing about Twin Peaks for me. I feel like, after twenty-five episodes, I pretty fully understand why it’s bad. (What is still a mystery, granted, is why people not only thought it was good, but so good.) It’s easy to point to the terrible dialogue, the convoluted plotting, the awful performances, and oh man that ridiculous music that sucks the ability to take the show even slightly seriously.

But then, the show will do something different, show a performer in a different light, and I start to question my diagnosis of the pathology. Sometimes, that’s good. Take Shelly for instance. Shelly has basically been a human prop on the show. She’s there for Leo to abuse, Bobby to fawn over then ignore, and occasionally do something sexy. The show’s never really developed the character beyond that, and so she pretty squarely falls into the unfortunate “sexy lamp” category.

But for literally 15-20 seconds, Mädchen Amick shows that she has at least a modicum of talent and personality. Her little routine pretending to do a Q&A session for a beauty pageant has her doing amusing character voices, creative facial impressions, and overall just seeming like she’s a person and not a prop. It’s a tiny thing, but it’s more than Shelly usually gets to do and it makes me wonder if someone I’d written off as a mediocre actress on the show just wasn’t getting material commensurate with or at least well-suited to what she can do.

The flipside of that is Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Truman. For the most part, I’ve found Truman to serviceable at worst. He spits out his fair share of the show’s bad lines, but he’s one of the more normal seeming people in Twin Peaks (not much of an achievement) and he’s one of the few performers on the show who generally delivers a believable, not overly exaggerated performance. It’s not exactly naturalism, and sometimes it tends toward the bland, but Truman seems like a regular enough guy which is what you’d expect for the sheriff of a small northwestern town.

But then you hit an episode like “Wounds and Scars” where, rather than playing the strait-laced lawman, Ontkean has to yell and weep and be an emotional wreck and god help him, he’s just not up to it. Again, the script doesn’t do him any favors, making him a generic mourner spouting the usual clichés. But when he’s supposed to be angry or suicidal or just despondent, the emotions feel insincere.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I was never invested in Josey as a character, so maybe it would mean more if the loss of her was something I really cared about, but still. It’s a sign that every performer has their strengths and weaknesses, and maybe there’s a version of Twin Peaks that asks different things of its actors: allows Shelly to have more personality, lets Truman remain the even-keeled normal dude, doesn’t try to hang so much on the emotional turmoil of James “I’ve never felt an actual feeling” Hurley.

One of the show’s strongest performers has always been Audrey, and Billy Zane isn’t bad either, which is why what should be another bog standard banality of a story -- young rich guy swoops in to save a local business and falls in love with the daughter of the business owner -- feels more vibrant than most of what “Wounds and Scars” churns out. Audrey and Zane’s character have chemistry, and it plays on Audrey’s sense of feeling lost and not understood in a nice way. There’s still as much cheese in their plot as anyone’s (and there’s an Attack of the Clones vibe to their picnic, of all things), but the talents of the performers make it work better than it has any right to.

What doesn’t work is the entire rigamarol around the charity fashion show. My lord, that scene just stretches on and on into eternity, jumping from dull story to dull story. Ben Horn and Catherine Martell taunting and being lusty with one another hasn’t been interesting for a long time, and it’s just interminable here. By the same token, I was naive enough to think the show had actually minimized Andy, Lucy, and Dick. But here they are doing a sub-Full House level comedy routine about a lumberjack fashion show and Dick getting bit on the nose with a weasel. It’s the broadest of broad shlock and just a bear of a scene to get through.

Windom Earle is also back to playing master of disguise. He’s such a bond villain type that I can’t really be invested in his story. I’ll admit, there was some juice to him pretending to be one of Donna’s dad’s old friends from medical school, and a bit from him seeming to sense Cooper’s presence, but for the most part it’s just cornball monologues and groaners.

Speaking of Cooper’s presence, we see him lock eyes with Heather Graham! She had to be super young here, right? Mrs. Bloom tells me that people hate her character, but thus far she’s unobjectionable, if a bit wooden in her delivery. Though again, like I’ve been saying, that’s not unusual for this show, and the lines the script feeds are no great shakes.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual on Twin Peaks. We get some hint at the supernatural stuff with Major Briggs and the Log Lady revealing that they have similar scars from similar white light encounters. Ed gets Dr. Jacoby to try to get him help explain divorce to Nadine but she’s still deluded. (Her “I think I’ve gone blind in my left eye” line is a big laugh, I’ll admit.) And Pete is freaking out trying to figure out the right stalemate moves for a game of chess in the world’s most belabored ongoing metaphor.

None of it’s terribly compelling, and none of it is especially well done, but as scenes like Shelly’s and Truman’s show us, there’s an alternate world where this show could have been much better, or, god help us, much much worse.

[7.3/10] I have to say, it’s nice to see Uhura get to be the driver of an episode for once. TOS was pretty exclusively the Kirk, Spock, and Bones show, with Scotty occasionally getting to be the main character for an episode, so it’s pleasant to get to see one where Uhura takes command of the ship, uses her wits, and saves the day.

The premise of the episode is somewhat silly, but nicely sci-fi. The Enterprise is in the intergalactic Bermuda Triangle (after coordinating with the Klingons!) just in time for the mysterious event that happens every twenty-seven years to happen. It turns out to be a planet of sirens, who lure men to their planet and suck their life force away after tempting them and plying them with this or that.

I’d almost call it a sexist metaphor if it weren’t for the fact that this is probably the most capable and sharp the franchise has ever made Uhura seem. Kirk, Bones, and even Spock get suckered in by their enchantments. (And Scotty sings an old Scottish air, seemingly just to pass the time). The episode drags a bit in places as this whole thing is obviously a trap and none of the men can seem to resist it, but that’s pretty much the point.

(I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s some more great design work for the palace and grounds of the women on the planet. For all the stiltedness of the animation, the show does know how to make the most of the cartoon setting to create some nicely elaborate and beautiful “sets.”)

The only thing that really keeps this episode from being higher is that there’s a lot of extraneous, silly stuff in it. The women’s technology being operated by tones made me laugh out loud. The entire end bit with the men of the Enterprise being de-aged using the transporter was unnecessary (just have the women reverse the process or something) and opens up a big can of worms. And the whole belaboring the resettlement of the women on the planet felt like more than we needed.

Still, seeing Uhura and Nurse Chapel not only avoid befalling the latest alien wizards’ spells, but then taking control and winning the day, is a real treat. (And for a Spock-Nurse Chapel shipper like me, it was nice to hear a dying Spock call her Christine and implore her for help.) Another fun outing from the show.

The more I watch The Americans, the more afraid I become of Keri Russell.

[8.6/10] Game of Thrones, as a series, is always going to exist in the shadow of The Red Wedding. More than Ned’s beheading, more than Joffrey’s demise, more than the battles of Blackwater Bay or The Wall or Hardhome or The Bastards, it is the event that defined this show in the popular consciousness. For a long time, it felt like everything up to that point was building to that moment, and everything that came after was a consequence of it. The third season of this show was a focal point, with that mortal bit of matrimony at its center.

Season 6 of the series has felt more like a sequel to that one than the extension of the work that the show did in Seasons 4 and 5. It is the season of resurrection, one where we’ve witnessed the returns (and often demises) of those we knew long ago: The Brothers Without Banners, The Blackfish, Osha and Rickon, Benjen, Walder Frey, and more. Whether it’s the freedom of no longer being constrained by George R.R. Martin’s novels, or the knowledge that the end is nigh, Game of Thrones spent much of its sixth year tying off loose ends, often in typically lethal fashion.

That culminates in “The Winds of Winter” a season finale of beginnings and endings. It is the close of one epoch of the show, one that spun out from that Red Wedding and scattered our heroes across oceans, as more and more characters were introduced. All the monarchs of the War of the Five Kings are dead. Winter is here, but now the future is coming.

Before it can though, the last of the old guard must be washed away. The wildfire of the Sept of Balon does not match The Red Wedding for shock value, but it is still one of the show’s most superlative sequences. There is something slow and measured about it. It unspools over twenty minutes, and never feels rushed, lingering on the impending horror.

It’s one of the series’ most beautifully shot and edited sequences as well. It’s a series of contrasts: the light, meticulous braiding of Margaery’s hair and dress, the soot black finery of Cersei as she prepares for darkness, the sleeve of the High Sparrow and that of the King, spliced together at opposite angle. Adherents file into the Sept in symmetry, Grand Maester Pycelle is led into darkness below, Lancel Lannister follows a little bird into the catacombs below where lucid green liquid pools and portends beneath those who stand opposed.

It is not The Red Wedding. It is the end of The Godfather, the final attempt by the individual attempting to maintain her family’s power and position in the face of those who would take it in one fell swoop. The burst of neon flame takes with it the daughter-in-law who threatened to replace her, the zealot who humiliated her, the relations that turned on her. This is her moment, her last move to triumph, the willingness to leave the enemies bathed in fire like The Mad King once did.

It is to be a cleansing fire, one that clears away the brush that has stood in Cersei’s way and clears a path to the end of all these machinations and threats. She taunts the erstwhile nun who tortured her and sees that the favor is returned. This is her moment of glory, her revenge, her ultimate victory.
But everything in Westeros comes at a price. For all that may be said about Tommen, his suggestibility, his weak will, his propensity to be manipulated, he is a young man who felt the weight of that crown, who never seemed comfortable carrying it. When he sees that smoking crater, smells the stench of the lives lost under his watch, the sensitive young man can take it no more. His end is swift, balletic as he plummets from his vantage point. Cersei has what she wanted. The throne is hers. But as the witch prophesied, it has cost her the things in her life she loved most.

But it is the end of the last external threat, the last separate obstacle the show threw in its characters’ paths until the main figures of this story were set to collide. The Sparrow is no more. The young Tyrells are gone for. The Baratheons have fallen. Ramsey is dogfood. Slaver’s Bay is settled. The Freys are derided and neutered. The Three-Eyed raven has died and lives again. All that is left is to settle the great game once and for all.

In one corner is Cersei. When Jamie returns from the Freys, he sees his lover sitting on the throne, wearing clothes of mourning and of battle. Gone is the woman who smiled in victory in the flaming perdition she unleashed upon her tormentors; gone is the woman who crumbled almost imperceptibly to see her last child with each ounce of life stricken from him. In their place is a dark-visaged queen with a ten-thousand yard stare, one with nothing more that can be taken from her. All she has now is the throne, and a heart that’s been bled dry drop by drop.

On another shore is Daenerys Stormborn. She sets sail with painted ships and her dragons overhead. But she doesn’t not travel with Daario, knowing the opportunity cost of bringing a lover to the Seven Kingdoms when political marriages are expedient. Instead, she travels with Grey Worm and Missandei, she travels with Theon and Yara, she travels with Spider (who apparently knows how to book it from Dorne). And she travels with Tyrion Lannister.

The moment she and Tyrion share is one of those that points the series toward its endgame. After traveling the Dothraki Sea, after being stranded in Qarth, after what seems like an interminable amount of time learning to rule Dragons (née Slavers) Bay, she is finally setting on the path to retake Westeros. It is scary, and she confides her anxiousness to Tyrion. Tyrion affirms her, the way she cuts through his cynicism, and validates her unease at the grave and great task that lay before her. In return, she makes him the hand of the queen. It’s a meaningful gesture, after Tyrion gave his all to defend King’s Landing and was branded an outcast and traitor for it. For once, the things he can do, the gifts he can offer, are valued and have placed him at the side of a champion.

But in the way of that champion sits the man we learn is, thanks to the Three-Eyed Raven, Daenerys’s nephew. Jon Snow is not the child of Ned Stark and an unknown mother, but of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. The cut between the face of the child in Bran’s visit to the past and Jon Standing before the great houses of Winterfell confirms the connection between those who may rule.

But Jon is not alone. He and Sansa have retaken The North and the lords and the Free Folk have pledged fealty to the White Wolf, the new King in the North (thanks to the irrepressible fireplug known as Lady Mormont). The Starks have been prepared for this moment from the beginning. The two of them have fought and suffered for this moment. Jon is uneasy in his father’s chair. Sansa has been through enough not to fall for Littlefinger’s pleasantries and manipulations. This is as much denouement from The Battle of the Bastards as it is a moment in its own right, but it is hard not to see these two young people who have seen so much, bracing for what’s to come, in front of raised swords and cheers that the North remembers, and not think them ready for whatever lurks in a murky future.

Amid all of this, Melisandre is banished for her hand Shireen’s demise. Lady Tyrell and the Sand Snakes form an alliance brokered by the Spider. Sam stands agape at the font of knowledge where he, like Tyrion, starts to believe that maybe the talents that seemed wasted in a hard world have a place somewhere. And there still lurks The Night King beyond the wall, the real battle that threatens to overtake any contest for the Iron Throne.

For once, Game of Thrones seems to narrow. While there will no doubt be more detours along the way, more unexpected turns and daggers in the back and marauders at the gates, the days of expanding this world are over. The Red Wedding is past. Its victims and perpetrators now a part of the same scorched earth. Too many have fallen since then. Those who survive now face the series’ end. The witch’s prediction comes to fruition; the Khaleesi sets sail for Westeros, and a pair of Starks preside over Winterfell once more.

After years of promises, seasons of teases, episodes and episodes of a telescoping world, winter has come; the board is set, and the last chapter of this story, the climax of it all, is about to begin.

[9.1/10] I sang the praises of D.C. Fontana in my writeups for The Original Series, so I won’t spend much time rehashing them here, but I’ll say this much -- she is such a boon to Star Treks of all shapes and sizes. I don’t think there’s a writer, particularly from the TOS-era of the show, who better understood that for all the science fiction wizardry at play, you have to nail the characters and their experience of all that futuristic brick-a-brack to turn out the best Star Trek episodes.

That’s what’s great about “Yesteryear.” It has a fantastic sci-fi premise that involves our heroes returning to The Guardian from “City on the Edge of Forever” and having more back-in-time adventures. I find it amusing that despite the kind of ominous threat and danger The Guardian posed in its first appearance, now Starfleet is using it to casually explore the past and employing it as a historical DVR. Naturally, this goes wrong, and when Kirk and Spock return from visiting the dawn of the society on Orion, nobody remembers who Spock is.

The explanation is a little headache-inducing, but also elegant. In this timeline, Spock died when he was seven-years-old. Kirk and Spock, who are sure that they didn’t interfere with the past in any way in their trip to ancient Orion (“I swear I didn’t touch that slave girl!”), try to piece together what happened. In a neat bit of clockwork time travel plots, Spock recalls that an older cousin, Selek, helped the young Spock when he was going through the Vulcan trials in the desert at the time of his death in this timeline. Though the memory is vague, the adult Spock realizes that he was Selek, and he has to go back through The Guardian now to complete the stable time loop.

Some of the chronological tricks used to get there feel a little contrived. Apparently the fact that Kirk and Spock were using The Guardian to travel back in time to Orion at the same time some other Starfleet dignitaries (including some wild pterodactyl man!) were reviewing the history of Vulcan at that time meant that Spock “couldn’t be a two places at once” and messed up the time loop. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around, but makes enough surface-level sense to pass the smell test.

But what’s great about “Yesteryear,” and Fontana’s scripts generally is that the episode doesn’t just coast on the “hey, isn’t it cool to go back in time!” novelty of The Guardian. It uses Spock returning to his childhood home and visiting with the moppet version of himself as a means to elucidate the struggle Spock had growing up between honoring his Vulcan side and his Human side. It spotlights Spock’s difficult relationship with his father. It lets Leonard Nimoy shine as a voice actor as the elder Spock speaks knowingly with his younger self.

The best feature of the episode is how it presents the audience with the elder Spock we know and love -- stoic, measured, and disciplined -- and a young Spock we’ve never seen before -- headstrong, uncertain, and emotional -- and naturally makes the viewer wonder how he got from A-to-B. “Yesteryear” doesn’t give every detail (it doesn’t have the time afterall), but it presents a seminal moment in young Spock’s life that set him on the course to being the noble Vulcan man he is today.
That moment hinges on I-Chaya, Spock’s childhood pet sehlat. (Think of a cross between a dog and a saber toothed tiger.) It’s clear that the I-Chaya is very important to young Spock. His mother mentioned it in “Journey to Babel,” and this episode takes care to mention that it first belonged to Sarek so it’s a family pet and part of his legacy. At the same time, it’s clear from young Spock being derided by his peers as an “Earther,” warned by his father about the difficulties of their way of life, and speaking with a mother who wants to honor the Vulcan ways she’s adopted, that I-Chaya is Spock’s dearest friend and closest confidante.

That’s why it’s meaningful when I-Chaya saves young Spock from a wild le-matya (think of a cross between a dragon and a wolf), young Spock has to try to repay his friend. “Selek” helps young Spock figure that he needs to run to town to fetch a healer if he has any hope, disclaiming his prior practical jokes in the process. When the healer explains that I-Chaya is fatally wounded, young Spock has to choose between extending his furry friend’s life, which would be painful for it, or “releasing” him. It’s a choice between emotion -- wanting to preserve someone young Spock loves, and between maturity -- understanding that all things end and that the right thing to do is grant I-Chaya that one last kindness.

There is something poetic about elder Spock, in his guise as a distant cousin, teaching his younger self about Vulcan philosophy. It’s one of the most beautiful accounts of the Vulcan perspective Star Trek has ever presented. Spock speaks of Vulcans still experiencing emotions, but not letting themselves be controlled by them, of feeling grief, but only when a life is wasted, of accepting that everything ends but appreciating the time shared before that inevitability. The young Spock is clearly in conflict, struggling with whether he can be what his father wants him to be, whether he can find the center of himself. The act of the elder Spock giving him gentle guidance serve as a tremendous character-building moment for Spocks old and new.

There is something wistful about the elder Spock here, where recognizes the difficulties of those times but clearly appreciates his chance to revisit them from a different vantage point. His words to his father about trying to understand his son are about as sentimental as the Vulcan gets, and his half-joking admonition to Bones that, had things been different, the doctor might have had to calibrate his devices for an Andorian, show that there’s still a part of that playful little boy within the older Spock. (And as an aside, it’s a nice beat where the Andorian first officer gives Spock his blessing and goodbye.)

Time travel stories are often fun because they often take the shape of what-ifs. It’s exciting to imagine what might have been if some detail were changed, or gawk at the precursors and causes to the present day effects. But Fontana uses that to explore the distance between a child and an adult, those life-changing moments where we choose who we are, and the reflections on what we became and what we lost in the process. There is great poetry in that, a sort of it hardly possible outside of the science fiction context, and “Yesteryear” embraces it to the fullest.

[7.1/10] Hey! Most of this was pretty good! At least by Twin Peaks standards. This seems like a good time to mention that my ratings (not just for this show, but everywhere) are sort of series-perspective. That is to say, a 7/10 for The Sopranos might be a 10/10 for Agents of Shield and vice versa. I try to judge all shows against themselves, with some measures for absolute quality.

And yeah, if this were any other show, it’d probably be a 5/10 at best, but most of this was coherent, decently acted, and even went somewhere with most of its storyline, which puts it in rarified air among Twin Peaks episodes.

Let’s start with a sort of odd but pretty effective storyline. The show has seemingly paid off the Nadine/Ed/Norma/Hank love quadrangle, and in a pretty decent fashion too. I have to admit, as frequently as I lose patience with her storyline, I have something of a soft spot for Nadine. There’s something about the way she tries to be straight with Ed and “let him down” that has an air of wistfulness to it, the sense that maybe Ed should have just been direct with Nadine when she was sane, and that she’s far more concerned with his feelings than he’s necessarily been with hers. I’m probably reading too much into a cheesy storyline, but there was something melancholy about her breaking up with him, even amid the weird superpower and reverting to high school insanity of it all.

The payoffs with just Norma and Ed were not quite as potent, but still good. Maybe it’s just because the show has spun its wheels on Norma and Ed for so long, but the episode got something out of me when Ed bursts being the counter of the diner, declares that it’s their turn for happiness, proposes to Norma, and kisses her. By the same token, Norma’s encounter with Hank is too over the top for my tastes (“I’d rather be his whore than your wife” is such a hokey line), but I like the idea that Hank tries his usual tricks and puts on an air of contrition, and even goes to the point of threats, but Norma stays steely throughout. Maybe we’ll finally be rid of the albatross that is Hank on this show.

We also get Billy Zane debuting as some mogul whom Ben Horne helped give his start, returned to help a rejuvenated Ben get out of trouble by standing in the way of Catherine’s development of Ghostwood via environmental crusading. They’re clearly setting up some romantic tension between him and Audrey, and while it’s a little belabored (what isn’t on this show?), I can get behind it. Zane has a reserved quality about him which, despite the generic pretty boy love interest material the show feeds him, immediately makes him stand out on the show.

Hell, there’s even some amusing stuff here. Something about Pete and Andrew Martell laughing about smiley-faced breakfast while Catherine glours made me chuckle. I like the Martells better when they’re a little gleeful and chuckly about their evilness than when they’re dour plotters.

Speaking of which, the major fireworks around the episode center on the Martells setting Josie and Thomas Eckert against one another, convincing both sides that the other has betrayed and is ready to kill them. It’s more convoluted machinations, but again, there’s some joie de vivre in it that livens it.

That said, the real meat of the episode, as usual, hinges on Cooper. Him and Alfred trying to keep the info that Josey shot him (which makes no sense...I think) and lots of other from Harry has some weight to it. It shows the depth of their friendship that Cooper wants to be absolutely sure before he’ll move on Josey, and even then he tries to get her to confess first to spare Harry. Harry, of course, finds out in his own way and has his big dramatic moments, which he’s not quite up to. His shouting is pretty ridiculous and he doesn’t do emotional anguish well. Oh yeah, and Joan Chen cannot convincingly faint or die from poisoning or whatever (hopefully) killed her character to save her life.

Still, it’s a payoff to some long-running storylines, including the Josey-Harry relationship, Josey’s tete-a-tete with Catherine, and the newly ginned up feud between the Martells and the Eckerts. But we get a return appearance from Bob and the Man from Another Place, for reasons that are beyond me. Is the implication that he was possessing Josey too? Is he just appearing to taunt Cooper? And what the hell is the deal with the janky 90s special effects with Josey and the knob on the drawer? Maybe there’s some kind of explanation, but it felt like weird for the sake of weird.

Speaking of things that are hopefully gone forever, Donna seems to send James on his way, tying a bow on the whole Mrs Marsh storyline. But we couldn’t lose James without one more painfully overwrought rumination on love and what they’ve both been through. Feh and good riddance.

The last major storyline to get any juice in the episode is Cooper’s continuing dance with Wyndam Earle. The three young ladies in the town getting mysterious invites and all actually attending this cryptically-described get-together seems beyond reason, but whatever. Earle is back to monologuing with Leo (who is thankfully mostly mute once more), and sending Cooper tapes full of double-speak. It continues to be a weaker part of the show, but I suspect it’s going to carry us through to the finale.

Still, this one was, by Twin Peaks standards at least, a keeper. James and Josey still deliver terrible performances, but maybe they’re gone! Everybody else seems on their game in the acting department; the show closes the book on a number of persistent story threads in a satisfying enough fashion, and the truly awful plotlines and scenes are kept to a minimum. Maybe there’s hope yet! (Not holding my breath though.)

So, who liked that Liv? RAWR!!
Also, two "Veronica Mars" regulars making a special appearance in the same episode, what a nostalgic treat!
Also also, Oasis, Muse and Pearl Jam? Even the soundtrack for this particular episode was a treat!

Great start of this series, Although i watched it when it originaly aired, i started rewatching it recently, The Pilot begins for at the time as a great visual opener, when the borg attack ensues at wolf 359, now seen throug the eyes of "Cmdr Benjamin Lafayette Sisko", which sets the backstage for the main protagonist of this series, The Series then jumps forward a couple of years, to starfleet taking administrative command of DS9 a former cardassian space station, which is left behind after the Cardassians withdrew from the Bajoran systems, after 40 years of occupation, The Pilot introduces the Characters and sets up the bord, Besides fleshing out the character Benjamin Sisko, and his dealing with loss, and acceptation. the story also plays on the bajorans spiritual believes, which will be further fleshed out throughout the series.. Although a longtime trek fan, I greatly love this show, i wouldnt call it completly Unique, as its rival Show Babylon 5 also proved a fierce contender for this show. Some fans regard this show as the best "Trek Ever". I can only say it didnt dissapoint

[7.6/10] I’m always fascinated by accidental or hastily put together finales. Whether it’s shows like Deadwood or Firefly with final episodes that aren’t meant to be endings and yet still represent a culmination of the themes of the show, or series like Angel or Arrested Development that rush to pay off everything in just a couple of episodes, there’s something compelling about a television show’s big exit, especially when that exit isn’t exactly planned.

“Turnabout Intruder” is and isn’t that for The Original Series. There’s an animated show, a set of four (soon to be five) successor series each indebted to TOS in their own way, and a sextet of films that continue these adventures. But it is still the last outing for this particular incarnation of Trek, and while it’s not the show’s finest hour, it’s a fitting finale for this seminal series.

Just as “Operation -- Annihilate” works surprisingly well as a season finale despite, on the surface, being just another standalone episode, “Turnabout Intruder” works as an ending to The Original Series because it represents two ideas that have been central to the show.

The first is that in the found family that makes up the crew of the Enterprise, these men and woman who’ve lived through nearly eighty episodes know who James Tiberius Kirk is, how he acts and what his character is, and no one can replace, impersonate, or imitate that. I’ve tweaked Star Trek repeatedly for its continuing notion that Kirk is a Great Man™, but the show uses it to good ends here, to show that beyond saving the day or bossing other civilizations around, there is something that is recognizably and inimitably Kirk about the captain of the Enterprise, and even when they can’t prove it, the folks who’ve served with him all these years know it.

So when an old flame from Starfleet Academy pulls the good ol’ Freaky Friday on Kirk and changes places with him, Spock and Bones and eventually Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov know that there’s something amiss. It’s not like they all suspect a body switch at first, but they’ve known Captain Kirk long enough to know that he doesn’t fly off the handle like this, that he doesn’t make those sort of reckless, self-serving decisions (or at least, not in that way), and he is not the smug snake who angrily dresses down subordinates and laughs at the prospect of people dying.

Despite the multiple facets of Star Trek, one of its chief projects has been to let the audience get to know James T. Kirk, what he believes in, stands for, and acts like. It’s allowed the show to signal that something is wrong to the audience in twists like the one in “The Enterprise Incident” And here, it works as a signal to the crew that the man sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge is not their leader.

It also speaks to the show’s other grand theme -- a recognition of the infinite possibilities of the universe. As Spock himself says, the crew of the Enterprise have witnessed their share of strange occurrences that nevertheless turned out to be real. As bizarre as a mind switch seems (though “Return to Yesterday” and “Whom Gods Destroy” ought to theoretically have prepared them for it), Spock’s words on the stand evince the ethos of the show -- an openness to new experiences and developments that may seem strange to us, but that we should still accept if the evidence points us that way. Star Trek has always been a show devoted to the unusual and unexpected and asked its audience and its characters to accept that. It’s a notion that permeates “Turnabout Intruder” and, in an odd way, brings the episode in line with The Next Generation’s series finale.

But “Turnabout Intruder” is also fitting because it fits the less-than-great parts of Star Trek as well. Its subsidiary theme is one that feels particularly backward -- the notion that women (or at least a woman) a conniving, blinded by love, and too unstable to lead. The depiction of Janice Lester here is regrettable, to say the least, and there’s an unfortunate subtext to her increasing insanity of the old “crazy woman” tropes that contributed to skepticism about their being full and equal members of society for centuries.

On a less pernicious note, “Turnabout Intruder” also offers one last great outing for another recurring feature of Star Trek -- William Shatner’s overacting. I will say this for the episode -- as much as I am apt to resist the “crazy woman” trope and the way it’s deployed here, it does give Shatner the opportunity to go full ham. He shouts and laughs maniacally and contorts his limbs with that trademark Shatner over-exuberance in a way that is fitting as a representation of the extremes of the actors’ performances that often found purchase in the show from week to week.

There’s even a few nice bits of continuity to help cement this finale as remembering (more or less) where the series started and where it’s been. When Lester-as-Kirk orders an execution, Sulu and Chekov get the number of the general order wrong, but note that there’s only one rule in Starfleet that carries the death penalty, a reference to “The Menagerie” which repurposed the show’s original pilot. When Kirk-as-Lester is pressed to prove that he is who he says it is, he brings up Spock’s actions in “The Tholian Web.” Hell, it’s subtle enough to potentially be a coincidence, but Lester-as-Kirk even uses McCoy’s little leg-press machine in sick bay just like he did in “The Corbomite Maneuver.”

But more than anything, apart from the themes, apart from the problematic elements and continuity nods and recognitions of Kirk, “Turnabout Intruder” just tells a compelling story, one with significant stakes and intriguing obstacles. One of the best parts of the episode is that all of the characters, not just Spock, act logically. They don’t instantly know that Kirk isn’t really Kirk, they just suspect something is up when he’s not acting like himself and try to figure out why. When trying to prove his identity, Kirk resorts to shared experiences (as he did in “Whom Gods Destroy”) and when that fails, remembers Spock’s psychic abilities to establish that his mind is his own.

And even when Kirk has the support of his crew, everyone on board from the second-in-command to the folks at the helm realize that their beliefs will do them no good without some objective proof to Starfleet Command. It’s a thorny problem, one where the issue is clear but the solution is elusive, and the characters work diligently to find it while facing personal challenges in how to do so, the sort of setup that creates the best episodes of The Original Series.

“Turnabout Intruder” isn’t one of the best episodes of the show. The retrograde theme and instances of Shatner shatnering drag it down, the resolution with the psychic transference simply breaking down when the time is right (albeit motivated by stress induced from the prospective mutiny) is a little too convenient. But it’s still an interesting premise, bolstered by understandable actions from the main characters on the show who are in a difficult position with their friend and their duty, and it even goes out the way Star Trek should, with Kirk delivering some wistful, mostly vapid rumination on what just happened.

It’s an episode that represents the best and worst of The Original Series and that makes it feel right as an ending to the show proper, before animated spinoffs and further cinematic adventures took shape. There is something holy about these first 79 episodes, the ones that set the stage for the five-decade (and counting) franchise that followed. TOS will never be my Star Trek. I didn’t grow up with it; much of it feels dated or hokey, and even at its best it has problems.

But as “Turnabout Intruder” demonstrates, it’s still a worthwhile, enjoyable, and occasionally transcendent series, one that forged connections between its main characters even in a show without serialization, one devoted to exploring the unusual and unanticipated and embracing the weird and wooly possibilities that promised, and most of all, one that had its missteps and blindspots and bits of ridiculousness, but often found the truth in the fantastical, in a way that made this uneven series always worth watching, just to see where it, the Enterprise, and the noble men and women who populated it, would end up next.

Loved the last scene where Scotty and Worf growled at each other :)

[3.2/10] This one was pretty rough. A boatload of idiotic plot developments, worse dialogue, and every other character giving some wistful monologue about something that happened long ago. Let’s dive-in shall we?

First, the good stuff. It wasn’t nearly as effective as the end of the last episode, but I appreciated the low-grade Michael Meyers business with Leo and Shelly. Sure, it doesn’t make much sense -- for instance why were all the doors locked from both the inside and the outside? And it’s pretty cheesy that everybody escaped that encounter essentially unscathed, but there was at least some shlocky, horror-esque fun to be had.

Speaking of shlocky fun, that seems to be what the show is going for with the Windam Earl storyline as well. Again, it feels like a proto-Hannibal Lecter and/or Dexter Morgan kind of shtick. There’s at least some intrigue in the fact that he taught Cooper everything he knows, and he’s good enough not to leave fingerprints or fibers, making him a real challenge for Coop & Co. The catch is that 1. The whole chess symbolism thing is still super corny and 2. The fact that Cooper was romantically involved with Earl’s wife and that Earl maybe killed her feels like a bridge too far.

A lot of stuff in this episode feels like a bridge too far, twists for the sake of twists. We already knew that Mrs. Marsh was likely setting James up somehow, but why the show has devoted so much time to this tedious storyline, god only knows. Mrs. Marsh seems to have some remorse, having had her husband die in a car accident (which would conveniently point the finger at James) at her “brother’s” behest, but apparently falling for stone-faced James anyway. Of course, Donna has to be shoehorned in (with the return of their little ballad), and now we’ll get a dull Bonnie and Clyde deal with the cops after the two of them, swell.

At least in terms of bonkers, so-bad-it’s-good territory, Ben Horne and Dr. Jacoby waving confederate flags and singing songs about Dixie is...striking. Truth be told, I kind of like the idea behind this -- that Ben has been defeated in the real world and so the only way for him to get his mojo and his sanity back is for him to win a war for the historical losing side. Of course, this being Twin Peaks, it’s done in a terribly cartoonish fashion, but there’s something comic about the looniness of it all.

The same can’t be said for the Andy/Dick/Lucy storyline. It’s all so broad, with Lucy in particular feeling like a bad sitcom stereotype throughout all this while the two guys play standard male dumdums. Dr. Hayward setting them straight about Little Nicky’s life of misfortunes should, at least hopefully, put a merciful end to that portion of their storyline, but I doubt it.

I doubt it if for no other reason than Lana, the Mayor’s brother’s widow, appears to be a literal succubus and I have to imagine she’s related to Nicky somehow. (In fact, I bet the child she and the Mayor want to adopt turns out to be Nicky.) The fact that the Mayor holds her at gunpoint and the crew of the sheriff’s office just leaves him alone with her is straight up nutbar. I’m not really interested in seeing where this is going, but I’m sure it’ll be some supernatural mumbo jumbo, and not in a good way.

That’s also my feeling about the dip we take into Major Briggs’s storyline here. Again, I like that he’s shaken from his experience in the White/Black Lodge and questioning his loyalty to the airforce, but this is another “when are they going to get to the fireworks factory” plotline. The show should either just keep Briggs off screen until something meaningful happens in the story, or actually advance the plot in his appearances.

Catherine revealing the fact that her brother is alive to Pete is yet another tedious scene, where Andrew delivers loads and loads of exposition that I could just as well do without. (And all this crap with the Eckerts feels just sort of tossed off conveniently to boot.) There’s lots of that in this episode for whatever reason, whether it’s that or Coop talking about what happened with Earl or Dr. Hayward giving Nicky’s backstory. None of it is natural and much of it is full of plot holes.

Otherwise, Bobby and Audrey’s story continues to be a slow moving waste, Norma and Ed’s getting together is the same, and Leo running into Windam Earl in the forest is unbelievably serendipitous and convenient, though maybe you can chalk it up to the evil woods putting a thumb on the scale or something.

Overall, this is a real dog of an episode. I have to admit, my patience with the show is starting to wear thin, but there’s only eight more episodes so I’m going to strive to see it through.

HOLY SHIT. they actually cut ofglen's clitoris or am I wrong?

[3.2/10] Well, this was a real stinker. The one saving grace of the episode happens in the last five minutes where Major Briggs returns from his mysterious journey to embrace his wife and calm his son, in his own peculiar way. Bobby is still one of the worst actors/characters on the show, but for a split second there, when he’s comforting his worried mother and telling her that things will be okay, it felt real, like capturing the truth in this art, rather than just being a garish, cartoony bit of slop. It’s an odd place to find such a thing, in the midst of the family patriarch returning from being beamed to the white lodge or some such thing, but there’s real feeling there in a way most of this show can’t manage.

But boy, is there a lot of downright junk throughout the rest of the proceedings. Let’s start with the worst offender which is, as usual, James Hurley. Him stumbling into this weird Dallas-like world of wealth and spousal abuse and femme fatales has the benefit of keeping him away from the rest of the show, but it’s real overwrought crap. The monologuing brother of Mrs. Marsh, waxing rhapsodic about he vowed to stand up to the overbearing husband and didn’t, is painful in his awfulness, and Bobby still can’t emote to save his life.

That’s not a problem Nadine has, though again, her story still feels like something from an entirely different show. I again ask, where the hell is this storyline going? What is the point of it? Is it just supposed to be comic relief? Is it some commentary on how Ed infantilized her? Is it just to give the character something to do? I have no idea, but while the image of Nadine military-pressing Mike over her head is kind of kookily fun, it definitely feels like the show is spinning its wheels with Nadine.

But it’s barreling toward some strange, supernatural stuff with, of all people, Lucy, Dick, and Andy. While the dismal slapstick comedy of Andy and Dick mentoring Little Nicky was a big misfire for me, I’m even less enamored with the idea that Nicky might be literally cursed. Now maybe this is all extrapolation and Nicky’s caseworker (Molly Shannon!) saying that Nicky’s face a lot of misfortune isn’t meant to be some kind of repeat of The Omen. But this is a show that isn’t afraid to go that direction with things, and I have to admit it strikes me as a pretty dumb thing to wrap the comic relief portion of the show in. (Though I have to admit, I cracked up when the guys imagined Nicky in a little devil costume laughing maniacally. It’s ridiculous and dumb, but funny.)

I wouldn’t think much of it beyond giving the Lucy/Andy/Dick triumvirate something to do, but then you have the titular black widow, whose elderly husband dies seemingly in the throes of passion, but perhaps something more sinister is afoot. The scene closes with her having enraptured all the young men in the sheriff’s department, in a way that feels preternatural and not just a bunch of guys fawning over a pretty young woman. The fact that she too claims to be literally cursed, in the same episode we hear that about Nicky, suggests that there’s something mystical/magical happening here, with possible malevolent purposes if the dead hubby is any indication. I can’t say I’m enamored with all of this, but maybe it’ll give the now-listless show some direction.

Speaking of which, there’s some development in what I guess has become the main storyline of the show now, namely exonerating Cooper after the setup from Hank, Jean Renault, etc. His coin-flip decision to visit the “Dead Dog Ranch” with his realtor leads him to find the place where the show’s bad guys executed their plan to set him up. It’s another instance of some supernatural force guiding him to the answer. I’d call it convenient, and it is, but I guess we’re supposed to take something from his being preternaturally guided to these places.

I’d be lying if I said I was particularly engrossed by the storyline, but it does give us more Denise, who is, surprisingly, quickly becoming one of the best characters on the show. She’s kind of no-nonsense despite having an unusual lifestyle for 1991, and it makes for an interesting balance for the character. And it gives Audrey something more to do, stealing Bobby’s pictures of the deal going down to pass on to Coop, who can then exonerate himself. Audrey seeing Denise and realizing that there can be female agents (“more or less” according to Denise) seems to open up an entire new world for Audrey, and all of a sudden, her dreams of getting out of this town seem less married (figuratively or nigh-literally) to Dale Cooper.

Of course she’s also toying with Bobby in another storyline that does nothing for me, as the now suited-up dweeb is still the annoying little chump he always was. But now he’s paired up with a gone-off-the-deep end Ben Horne whose taken feng shui to ludicrous extremes and is tracking Hank so that he doesn’t lose One-Eyed Jacks. Screw-loose Ben Horne is, perhaps, slightly more interesting that generic 80s businessman Ben Horne, but neither of them is particularly compelling.

That’s the problem with a lot of Twin Peaks post-Palmer era. While I’ve never been much of a fan of this show, the very least it had going for it was a strong central mystery that the rest of the events of the series could be built around. While often it was pretty contrived, everyone in that town had a connection to Laura, and so it made sense to trace Twin Peaks’ reaction to the death of one of the town’s stars.

But without that throughline, we’re left with a mere collection of events that are only tied together for happening in and around the same place. That means they rise and fall on the quality of the individual stories and characters, and that has just never been Twin Peaks’s strong suit. When its few distinctive and complex figures -- Cooper, Audrey, maybe even Denise -- come out to play, the show can still be compelling. And on those rare occasions when its main personalities feel like real people experiencing real emotions and not overbroad soap opera nonsense, like in the quiet moment between Bobby and his mom, there’s something worthwhile there.

But for the most part, without that mystery to tie everything together, Twin Peaks is just a big mishmash of undifferentiated cheese, and that doesn’t do anyone, in the show’s universe or for those watching at home, any good.

[4.8/10] I’ll admit, despite my tepid review, there were parts of this one I enjoyed, particularly the opening act of the episode. While I found it kind of trying at first, David Lynch himself as Cooper’s hard-of-hearing boss, offering well-intentioned encouragement turns out to be a pretty funny bit in small doses. And Cooper facing down the investigation from internal affairs seems to have some legs. In a particularly amusing moment, Cooper offers one of this metaphysical-minded aphorisms about the town and his life, and the investigator offers a laugh-worthy “what the hell was that?” in response. We’re often wondering the same thing, fella.

The investigation ends up proving to be the strongest part of the episode. That dovetails, surprisingly, with the debut of Denise (David Duchovny!) as a DEA agent assigned to the investigation. Look, it’s 1991, so the attempts at tolerance are more than a little patronizing, and the show can’t resist having Harry having a laugh at her expense, but there’s a surprising amount of empathy for Denise as a trans woman for a show that aired twenty-five years ago. The best exemplar of this is Cooper, who is initially thrown upon seeing the woman he previously knew as Dennis, but then immediately adjusts and treats Denise with the same respect and kindness he treats everyone else. It gives the “this looks like a frame job to me, but you have to prove it” direction the episode goes something more than just another major plot to occupy the show post-Laura Palmer.

The other side of the coin is that the show seems to be introducing a lot of new crap to try to fill that vacuum, and most of it is godawful. The peak of this is the reveal that Catherine’s brother Andrew (a.k.a. Josie’s husband) is still alive and this is all a part of some plot the Martells have been cooking up. Let’s nevermind the fact that this would necessarily be so baroque a plan as to lose all credibility, but even so, it’s such a soap opera move (yeah yeah, I know Twin Peaks is riffing on soap operas) that I legitimately laughed out loud when he emerged from the other room.

The show bringing Josie back into the fold wasn’t my favorite thing in the first place, just because the actress isn’t terribly good and her romance with Harry is one of the least interesting things about a pretty strait-laced character. But this is a silly direction to take her, giving her a painfully cliché backstory and making her Catherine’s maid. (Though I neglected to mention in prior write-ups that as borderline offensive as it was at times, and as goofy as it is, I kind of liked the reveal that the Japanese investor was Catherine. It’s the kind of bonkers surprise that delights in its ridiculousness rather than makes you laugh at its stupidity. It’s a fine line, I’ll admit.

The runner-up award for worst new storyline goes to, who else, James Hurley, who conveniently finds some femme fatale with a derelict husband who wants James to fix her car and stay at her house while the hubby is away. (Presumably with sexy results.) Both James and his new likely paramour are bad actors (though it’s hard to tell given how painfully bad their dialogue is) to where the most one can hope for is that they’re quarantined to this bad part of the show so that it doesn’t infect everything else.

We also continue apace with Nadine’s adventures in high school, something that is, I am ashamed to admit, is kind of winning me over in its “so bad it’s good” qualities. To be frank, this feels like something from a different show, maybe a direct-to-video live action Disney Channel movie. But it’s unbelievably silly and totally unclear as to where it’s going that I can’t help but laugh at how insane the whole thing is.

I’m much less enamored with what’s supposed to be the comic relief here, namely the interactions between Deputy Andy, Dick Trelane, and the moppet who’s Dick’s “helping hands” buddy. The hijinx that they get into at the Double R Diner are sub-Little Rascals quality, and while there’s something kind of endearing about Andy trying to “kill ‘em with kindness” the charm wears off quickly.

We also get some of what appears to be foreshadowing for Cooper. Some of it comes from Hawk, who offers a hokey and again, borderline offensive dose of indigenous people’s wisdom about the “Black Lodge” and “White Lodge.” And we also get a cheesy Hannibal Lecter routine on audio tape from Cooper’s former partner who’s playing a literal chess match via the mail and underlining that fact with ponderous, overdone metaphors about how the game mirrors their real life tete-a-tete.

There’s a bit more legitimate entertainment at the wedding between the mayor’s brother and some young (probably) golddigger. Sometimes this show does best when it’s light on its feet and just gives you quick scenes of silly stuff around the town and its cast of oddballs without having to linger on any one of them long enough to deliver a monologue. But surprise kudos to Ben Horne, whose viewing of an old movie and reciting Shakespeare was actually mildly affecting. I didn’t think the guy had it in him.

Overall, more of the usual mixed fruit tray of mostly crud with a few ripe bites here and there. Let the “bad period” of Twin Peaks continue!

totally love this episode! great to see that there is still in individual inside the borg

I was prepared to be irritated after watching yet another episode about Riker finding a playmate, but this was a very good, very intense episode.

This took an interesting turn into parallels concerning homosexuality, transgenderism and conversion therapy. While I found the topic of the episode very interesting, the majority of the episode's pace was too slow for me and I didn't find Riker engaging. I think I would've preferred another character to have had this arc, although I understand why Riker was chosen. However, I found the last 15 min. very compelling starting from Riker trying to take the blame and Soren's subsequent speech.
It's been nice to see the friendship between Worf and Riker these last two episodes. I'm happy that they're able to be there for each other, even when they don't always see eye to eye. I feel really bad for how things turned out for Riker at the end. I can imagine how heartbroken he must feel at how things ended between Soren and him.

Just like in Orphan Black an episode where a character says s/he's gonna leave.

In like 9 out of 10 cases it raises either a death flag or is a red herring to fill an episode.
Either way, the character isn't going to leave. In this particular case I instantly thought Natalie taking Major to Italy raised a death flag for her. It'd be weird letting Major leave the show right now and she's the reason for him to potentially leave, so she needs to go to resolve it.
And then that totally unexpected end. Damn you, iZombie.
Finally Major is reunited with Natalie and then that. Although, I am not a fan that the character Major is degraded to a guy who sleeps with every woman who's not running away because he's the chaos killer kidnapper.
But I liked the irony of Liv claiming she's wearing a wig and a ton of paint while in fact it's usally the other way around.
Then again, I don't like Liv as a human as much as I like her as a zombie.
Overall a good episode, though, even if a bit tame in terms of brain-of-the-week than I expected upon reading the synopsis.

[7.3/10] I think I owe Ray Wise an apology. Leland Palmer grief-stricken jigs were one of my least favorite parts of the first season, and certainly one of the most laughable, and I had pretty well written the character, and by extension the actor who played him, off. Coffin-surfing and show tunes and more overwrought falling to pieces just struck me as too much, verging into, at best, “so bad it’s good” territory.

But now that he can fully play up Bob’s predatory instincts, his malevolent glee, his unhinged villainy, Wise is a revelation. In his first interaction with Donna in ages, he is so unbearably creepy. “Arbitrary Law” does well to tease and taunt the audience, putting Donna in the place Maddy was two episodes ago, in the same corner, while this shark of a man starts to pen her in. From his skin-crawling touching of Donna’s hair, to his awkward dancing that quickly turns into creepy dancing, to the same lewd gestures he performed before killing Maddy, Wise’s take on Leland goes all out in seeming to come this close to striking again.

He, of course, doesn’t, and a last minute reprieve for Donna thanks to Sheriff Truman leads him back to the Roadhouse for Cooper’s last seance, or whatever you’d like to call it. That sequence, like most of the show, is a bit hokey, with lightning crashing and showy camera angles. But at the same time, the episode does a nice job of not only attempting to tie all the psychic elements together, but setting a mood to make those reveals meaningful.

So we have all, or almost all the major players in one room -- Ben, Leland, Leo, the cops, and even, by serendipity or providence, Major Briggs escorting the senile bellhop. It’s then that Twin Peaks plays its hand. Leland’s dancing connects with The Man From Another Place’s little boogie. The “gold circle” that Gerard warns Cooper about in a severe and unnerving fashion comes back in the form of The Giant returning Cooper’s ring to him. The senile bellhop offers a stick of gum to Leland, serving as the cosmic force of the universe essentially fingering him as the killer in light of the “your gum is coming back in style” comment. In the shadow of all of this, Cooper thinks back on his dream, and for once he can hear Laura’s whispered words -- “my father killed me.”

What’s noteworthy about the scene is how much we already know. We know Ben’s a red herring. We know that Leland is Bob. We know who killed Laura Palmer and to a lesser extent why. And yet, this still feels like a reveal, a momentous occasion -- Cooper not only realizing who the culprit is but deciphering all of the cryptic images and clues he’s seen up until this point. I’m sure half of it is a retcon as I doubt how much of this Lynch & Frost had planned out in the beginning, but it works well enough to feel like a satisfying, if not fully clockwork, resolution of all the mystical symbolism Cooper has been chasing throughout the series.

There’s also some cleverness from Cooper here, realizing the dangerous animal he’s about to try to nab and making Ben the temporary patsy to lure Leland to the station as his lawyer. Again, the episode leans into the shorthand and trust that Cooper and Truman have developed, and the scene where they push Leland into the cell and he begins running around like a crazed beast is both a triumph and a fright.
It’s there that Ray Wise really shines, letting the beast out of his cage and creating a truly ominous and horrific presence. The way he hoots and hollers and toys with his captors as they interrogate him about what happened to Laura and the others gives him the character of an unchained spirit, unconcerned about his current circumstances and revelling in his taunts and his terror. It’s the scariest Bob has ever seemed, and that’s saying something.

But Wise isn’t finished. As usual, things get a bit melodramatic, but he also sells Leland’s remorse, his regret, his revulsion to all that he’s been a party to after Bob pulls the “ripcord” and Leland is forced to remember all of the deeds that Bob committed in his body. The sprinklers going off from Dick’s cigarette is too convenient, but it creates worthwhile imagery of Leland leaving this mortal coil and Cooper easing him into the next world, trying to help him let go of his unimaginable pain.

The only big problem is that Twin Peaks feels the need to sum up too much, both at the conclusion of Leland’s incident and in the aftermath. The scenes speak for themselves, so having Truman wax rhapsodic about what he can or can’t believe, and having the group give their “I sure learned a lot” speeches is an unsatisfying finish to some great work. It also doesn’t help that they’re wondering what’ll happen to Bob results in a cheesy sequence of an owl flying and a freeze frame that looks like the rejected cover of a prog rock album.

There’s also a good chunk of other pretty useless junk in the episode before we get to the meat of it with Leland. The Norma’s mom storyline continues to be entirely uncompelling. The same goes for the James-Donna romance, which never ceases to include the worst dialogue in the entire show on a regular basis as they torture one another (emotionally -- something I have to specify on this show) over Maddy’s death. And Lucy’s paternity situation wears on without end. There’s an awful lot of crap to wade through before the episode really kicks into gear with Leland, and by extension Bob, being exposed.

But once that happens, the show and the episode finds its way and delivers a satisfying wrap-up of the Laura Palmer saga, with enough imaginative verve and dot-connecting to make it feel like this jumble of nonsense was part of a plan after all. And you have my apologies Ray Wise -- you knocked it out of the park here, and for once, the outsized, supernatural world of Twin Peaks felt right at home for someone other than Agent Cooper. Godspeed, Leland. So long, Bob.