LeftHandedGuitarist

7.5/10, rounded up… Any rating rounded off practically compels one to write a comment, @justin. (I added the mention in my previous shout in an edit, so it might not have generated a notification. I promise I'll stop asking for percentage ratings now!)

Is that a bowl of starfruit on Neelix's counter? Hooray for exotic Earth plants being pushed as alien foodstuffs.

Carey is absolutely Voyager's Miles O'Brien. The similarities are striking in this episode, from how he talks to his hair.

Did anyone else notice that Seska says "We have to do something!" right after Torres says "Aye, Captain" over the comm and the bridge doesn't hear her? But later Torres hits her commbadge to close the channel before they start talking about the matrix again? Sometimes these things just…slip through.

OK, enough nitpicking.

More philosophy! And this time, it has substance! No more wishy-washy flip-flopping on the subject of whether there might be an afterlife. Nay, this week it's character-building and Starfleet people getting a little taste of their own medicine regarding sharing technology.

Like so many of the one-shot alien races, the Sikarians have essentially no depth. They still manage to be a little creepy, as @LeftHandedGuitarist remarked. (They're not that creepy, though. Frankly, I think the Sikarians represent what would happen if you took "Minnesota Nice" and turned it up to 11.) That said, the most interesting thing about them is Gath's accent—which is probably because a Belgian actor played him.

[8.1/10] Ambiguity can be both frustrating and brilliant. There is a natural impulse in most people to want to know the answers, to resolve the unknown, but the unknown is also a part of life, and if a television show can harness that, use it to make meaning, it can hit outstanding notes. David Chase knew that with The Sopranos , his protégé Matt Weiner knew it with Mad Men, and Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland seem to know it with Rick and Morty.

Because the last thing you’re likely to think about when you flip off “The ABCs of Beth” (if you’re not reflecting on the amusingly self-aware answering machine gag) is whether or not Beth replaced herself with a clone and left to go mount the universe. Rick and Morty is a show that usually delivers answers, even if it’s content to delay them for months or, in the case of Evil Morty, even years. But maybe some questions shouldn’t be answered.

I think that’s the point of “The ABCs of Beth.” Rick gives his daughter two options: either she can create a painless substitute that will carry her current life forward while she prowls the galaxy in search of meaning or adventure, or she can live her life as is, knowing it’s what she actually chose with clear eyes and real alternatives on the table. The Beth we meet at the end of the episode could be either -- the content clone or the real, happy Beth who’s satisfied at having picked this rather than having it forced upon her.

That’s the cinch of the episode. For many of us sitting home, we have similar choices, even if they’re not quite so fantastical. We can radically change our lives, pursuing abstract principles and goals at the expense of all that we know, or we can go forward with how things are, finding comfort and joy in the day-to-day. There are multiple paths to happiness, Rick and Morty seems to posit, or at least multiple paths to wholeness, and which path you take there isn’t necessarily evident or comprehensible to an outsider observer. But it starts with accepting who you are and what you want.

That’s the noteworthy parallel “ABCs” draws between its outstanding A-story and its less-inspired B-story. Both Beth and Jerry spend much of the episode attempting to deny who they are, blaming unfortunate events on family members, rather than owning them, accepting that the consequences are a product of their own actions.

For Jerry, that means accepting that him dating an alien huntress is a pathetic attempt to make Beth jealous. It’s an interesting way to mirror the two stories, but Jerry’s half of the episode just isn’t as strong. Maybe it’s the hard-to-watch way his kids just bust on him constantly (not that he doesn’t deserve it). Maybe it’s the divorced dad humor that’s pretty tepid, even if it’s spiced up in Rick and Morty’s intergalactic fashion. Maybe it’s that the ultimate twist -- that the huntress ends up going after the Smiths, only run into her ex -- is amusing but predictable.

Jerry’s part of the episode isn’t bad or anything. The bubble gun is enjoyable. Jerry’s barely-sublimated space racism and smugness is used for amusing effect. And there’s some more frank exposing of Jerry’s true colors. But it mainly feels like Rick and Morty needed something for the rest of the cast to do while Rick and Beth hit the high notes, and little that happens in Jerry’s dating life, however explosive, can match it.

But really, who could match the horrible realization that not only was your childhood fantasy land real, but that your childhood friend is still stuck there in it. There’s so many endlessly interesting things that spin out from the unveiling of “Froopyland.” I’d be lying if I said that the reveal that Beth’s friend survived by “humping” the fantastical creatures and then eating his own children didn’t gross me out, but Rick and Morty manages to wring the humor from even that with its bizarre little forest creature play about it.

Stronger still is the emotional and character material. For one thing, we learn that Rick created this fantasy land for his daughter. He claims it’s a practical measure, something to keep her occupied and to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious. But as the Citadel episode hinted with its Rick wafers, there’s a part of Rick that really does care about his daughter, even if it means he shows it in weird ways like creating deranged toys, or letting her help him clone her childhood friend, or giving her a way out of her family.

For another, we learn that Beth, despite her seemingly greater morals and guilt and issues with her dad, is just like him. That’s been a subtle thread throughout Season 3, with particularly resonance in “Pickle Rick.” Beth admits it herself, realizing how she denies the utility of apologies, and elides her own mistakes and past by casting those things as simply how others interpret her greatness. Her unwillingness to face that she pushed her childhood pal in the honey pit, and her then getting into a bloody confrontation with him, is an odd form of self-acceptance, but also a cathartic one.

It leads Beth back to the choice that represents the crux of the episode. If you are the daughter of Rick Sanchez, the miserable, amoral, genius, do you go out and try to ride the universe until it gets tired of bucking you, or do you try a different way, a way that finds happiness in being a part of your family, in doing the everyday. It’s the clearest suggestion yet as to what choice Rick himself made when he left Beth and her mother all those years ago.

But as much as they have in common, Beth is not her father. She feels enough guilt to want to save her friend’s dad from death row, to look at those pictures of her family on the fridge and feel the wistfulness of the thought of leaving him. We just don’t know if that’s enough to change her mind.

Maybe we shouldn’t know. I bet dollars to donuts that one day we will, that the “real” Beth will come floating down in Season 5 and cause some story sparks just like Evil Morty and the Cronenberg Universe Smiths did. But regardless, the force of the ambiguity is clear. There are different ways to live, different ways to try to make your peace with who you are and what you want out of this universe. What we choose, and why we choose it, can be opaque, even to ourselves, and the art that reflects that vagueness, that uncertainty, can be all the stronger for it.

[6.1/10] I have to admit, the show is starting to feel formulaic even as it’s moving the ball forward, and I’m getting a bit tired of the repetition. The show is overly didactic when it comes to the theme of Eleanor not being a joiner or willing to be a part of a group vs. here when she realizes that Chidi & co. like her and want to be on her team. It’s a sweet enough idea, but the show is just too blunt about it to land.

The B-story, with Tahani trying to teach Michael to grow a backbone and stand-up to the reps from The Bad Place similarly ends on a strong note, but fills the coffers with some pretty feeble comedy and tepid storytelling when getting there. The badness of the bad guys is a little too over the top to be funny.

That is, of course, except for Adam Scott, who is just perfect at playing this sleazeball. It’s a complete 180 from his character on Parks and Rec or Party Down. Plus, new Eleanor is Sabine from Star Wars Rebels, which I appreciate, and her instant nerd chemistry with Chidi is certainly cute.

Overall, this one just didn’t click with me. I’m beginning to catch on to the show’s rhythms, and the humor wasn’t strong enough to cover for that in this one.

[7.5/10] Risk is our business. That notable speech from Captain Kirk lays out the essential ethos of Star Trek as a franchise -- that the wild and wooly galaxy our heroes explore is full of dangers and pitfalls, but also full of unfathomable possibility, there to be discovered. The first two episodes of the aptly titled Star Trek Discovery bring this notion to the fore.

On one side is our protagonist, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who relishes exploration, enjoys taking chances, and is ready to shoot first. On the other is Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), who hails from a species of alien prey, ever reluctant to mix things up. And in the middle is Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has to find the middle ground between the two chief advisors whispering in her ear.

It’s the type of dynamic The Original Series relied upon heavily: Spock the cold logician, Bones the hot-blooded humanist, and Kirk the leader who had to somehow split the difference. But Discovery’s three-man band differs from its predecessors in more ways than just its welcome lack of monochrome. While the 1960s series often focused on how much logic versus emotion should go into decision-making, its successor, fifty-years later, seems focused on how much risk we should take, when our lives, and the lives of the people we care about, are on the line.

The fulcrum for that point of contention, as it so often is in Star Trek, is some unknown object in space giving the ship funny readings. Naturally, Burnham wants to go check it out; Saru wants to leave it alone, and Georgiou comes up with a measured response that allows for some investigation from her headstrong first-in-command, but with set limits meant to minimize the dangers as much as possible. While walking along the surface of the ancient object that defies scanning, Burnham encounters a Klingon “torchbearer,” bat’leth in tow, whom she kills in a moment of confrontation as she makes a desperate attempt at self-defense and escape.

The Klingon is part of T’Kuvma’s crew, a collection of Klingon zealots devoted to the “Light of Kahless.” T’Kuvma speaks of Klingon unity, intending to light a beacon to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in opposition to the perceived threat of the Federation. It’s his ship, which is covered with coffins of his fallen countrymen, that emerges in the aftermath of Burnham’s skirmish, and poses the next major threat for Captain Georgiou.

Burnham consults with Ambassador Sarek, her adoptive father, and concludes that they should fire first -- claiming it’s the only language the Klingons understand. Saru advises retreat and caution, noting that the members of his species who survived did so because they could sense deadly situations, and he senses one now.

In the end, Burnham defies the chain of command, going so far as to give her captain the Vulcan nerve pinch and try to assume to command so as to fire on the enemy vessel. Georgiou recovers in time to halt her second-in-command, with the business end of a phaser, but by that point it doesn’t matter. T’Kuvma lights the beacon, and a swarm of Klingon ships emerge, heavily outgunning the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou before their backup has arrived.

It’s a hell of an opening statement from Discovery one that seems to run in the face Star Trek’s exploratory, diplomatic, peaceful ethos. (And it’s also a somewhat cheesy enticement to convince people to purchase CBS’s new subscription streaming service to catch the end of the cliffhanger.) But it’s also one poised to explore new wrinkles in Starfleet’s mission to patrol the galaxy and seek out new life and new civilizations. Humanity’s journey through the stars is not a painless one, but one fraught with beings who may attack on sight, who may not prove receptive to your message, who may disdain your very existence. There is a cost to roaming the frontier, a peril in the unknown, and Discovery’s first hour, brings that peril to the forefront.

But it also foregrounds the clash of civilizations idea that seems a likely throughline for the season. The series doesn’t open with a recitation of those hallowed words about five-year missions or boldly going where no one has gone before. It opens with a unifying demagogue rallying his people around the emptiness of the Starfleet mantra “we come in peace.” To T’Kuvma, the Federation is not the coming of paradise; it’s a threat to Klingon purity, to Klingon sanctity, that must be fended off before it engulfs all they believe in.

It calls to a sense of multiculturalism and a pushback among enclaves that fear their personal cultures will be overwritten in a fashion that’s all too relevant, as Star Trek should be, in light of current events. T’Kuvma isn’t afraid of Starfleet as a military threat; he’s afraid of it as a cultural one. A confederation that would blend humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians is anathema to the Klingon hardliner who worries the same sort of melting pot will extinguish the unique Klingon identity.

That is what he’s fighting for. That’s why he tries to unify the warring houses. That’s his angry response to a broadening world that’s encroaching on his space.

These are weighty themes, and Discovery’s two part premiere -- “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” feels true to its roots by wrapping its explorations, space-battles, and hand-to-hand fights in those broader ideas. Despite that, it often falters in capturing the “feel” of Star Trek, for lack of a better term. The series says and does all the right things, introduces a compelling conflict, and throws in a few classic sound effects to soothe the diehards, but doesn’t yet feel of a piece with its forebears.

Part of that comes down to the series’ visuals. Make no mistake, this is the finest Star Trek has ever looked on the small screen. CBS and Paramount clearly spared no expense in terms of the production design, the special effects, and the kinetic action sequences that filter throughout the series’ opening salvo.

But that is, in a peculiar way, part of the issue. Despite officially existing as part of the “prime” Star Trek timeline, Discovery takes most of its visual cues from the J.J. Abrams reboot films. The Shenzou is a dark-tinted version of Chris Pine’s Enterprise, with a floor to ceiling viewscreen and holographic conversations with superior officers. Its frames are filled with dutch angles and even those notorious lens flares. The Klingons are more directly alien, looking more like spiky-headed demons than hairy brutes. Sarek is snootier, more condescending, less detached. The series’ opening credits are a page out of the Marvel Netflix playground rather than a visual journey through space.

This is a slicker, darker, fancier version of Star Trek. On the one hand, that’s an exciting, arguably necessary direction in which to evolve the franchise, but on the other, it just doesn’t feel like home yet.

It doesn’t help (though maybe it should) that the dialogue and performances are uneven across Discovery’s two-part premiere. As all opening episodes must do to some extent, there’s infodumps, “as you know”-style statements, and relationship-establishing scenes that stick out as the heavy machinery of T.V. storytelling being a little too visible behind the curtain. Comments like “The only word to describe it is ‘wow’” would make the writers of Contact blush. On-the-nose statements about choosing hope sting the ears. And while the hard-edged lyricism of Klingons and subtitles can cover for some of it, there’s plenty of the faux-profundity and stilted character declarations that have infected much of “serious” sci-fi of late.

That’s why I’m inclined to give Sonequa Martin-Green, the show’s lead, a bit of a pass for her weaker moments in the premiere. In The Walking Dead, Martin-Green was often grouped with characters who spoke with a certain fanciful verbiage and cadence. That lent itself to a theatrical, mannered tone in Martin-Green’s delivery which frequently carries over now that she’s made the leap from zombies to Xindi. But when not spitting out the premiere’s rougher dialogue, Martin-Green excels at selling confidence, desperation, and even Vulcan detachment creaking toward emotion to help carry the hour.

That’s helpful since her character’s personal journey makes up other main arc of the premiere, and presumably the series. Raised by Vulcans, living with humans, resentful of the Klingons, Michael Burnham exists at the inflection point between the species “A Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” center on. While the “they killed my parents” backstory is generic, and the connection to an established Star Trek family is strained, the notion of how Burnham balances her human heart with her Vulcan teachings and channels them toward a species whose terrorists made her an orphan is fruitful territory for the new series to explore.

It also connects with the attention Discovery pays to race, and the challenges of existing in multiple worlds but not finding full acceptance or understanding in either of them. Burham’s presence on the Shenzou is paralleled with Voq, an albino Klingon on T’Kuvma’s ship. He too is an orphan, one whose captain sees a unique value and potential in him, who faces challenges because of who he is and how he differs from those around him. Both Burnham and Voq lose a great deal in the battle that ensues, one spurred, in part, by how the two cultures view one another.

So much of Star Trek is about managing the risks of such encounters. The premiere of Discovery is good not great, with questionable visuals, performances, and writing. But the strength of the nascent show comes from its premise, from its themes, and from its willingness to confront the good and bad of that, animating, exploratory philosophy at the heart of the series.

There's a cost to roaming the frontier and trying to make first contact (or at least new contact) with alien species. More than a few folks in prior Star Trek incarnation paid the price for it, but outside of the occasional Tasha Yar, they were typically guest stars or redshirts whose demise carried less impact. Discovery features Starfleet commanders following the underlying principles of the Federation and suffering losses for it, while a relative outsider bristles against these tactics which, oddly enough, leave her sharing the philosophy of the Klingons she says should be attacked. Risk is still Star Trek’s business, but it can be a harsh business, where you are, what you stand for, and how you see the faces on the other side of the viewscreen can dictate whether you seek out new life, or end it.

[7.5/10] Risk is our business. That notable speech from Captain Kirk lays out the essential ethos of Star Trek as a franchise -- that the wild and wooly galaxy our heroes explore is full of dangers and pitfalls, but also full of unfathomable possibility, there to be discovered. The first two episodes of the aptly titled Star Trek Discovery bring this notion to the fore.

On one side is our protagonist, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who relishes exploration, enjoys taking chances, and is ready to shoot first. On the other is Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), who hails from a species of alien prey, ever reluctant to mix things up. And in the middle is Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has to find the middle ground between the two chief advisors whispering in her ear.

It’s the type of dynamic The Original Series relied upon heavily: Spock the cold logician, Bones the hot-blooded humanist, and Kirk the leader who had to somehow split the difference. But Discovery’s three-man band differs from its predecessors in more ways than just its welcome lack of monochrome. While the 1960s series often focused on how much logic versus emotion should go into decision-making, its successor, fifty-years later, seems focused on how much risk we should take, when our lives, and the lives of the people we care about, are on the line.

The fulcrum for that point of contention, as it so often is in Star Trek, is some unknown object in space giving the ship funny readings. Naturally, Burnham wants to go check it out; Saru wants to leave it alone, and Georgiou comes up with a measured response that allows for some investigation from her headstrong first-in-command, but with set limits meant to minimize the dangers as much as possible. While walking along the surface of the ancient object that defies scanning, Burnham encounters a Klingon “torchbearer,” bat’leth in tow, whom she kills in a moment of confrontation as she makes a desperate attempt at self-defense and escape.

The Klingon is part of T’Kuvma’s crew, a collection of Klingon zealots devoted to the “Light of Kahless.” T’Kuvma speaks of Klingon unity, intending to light a beacon to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in opposition to the perceived threat of the Federation. It’s his ship, which is covered with coffins of his fallen countrymen, that emerges in the aftermath of Burnham’s skirmish, and poses the next major threat for Captain Georgiou.

Burnham consults with Ambassador Sarek, her adoptive father, and concludes that they should fire first -- claiming it’s the only language the Klingons understand. Saru advises retreat and caution, noting that the members of his species who survived did so because they could sense deadly situations, and he senses one now.

In the end, Burnham defies the chain of command, going so far as to give her captain the Vulcan nerve pinch and try to assume to command so as to fire on the enemy vessel. Georgiou recovers in time to halt her second-in-command, with the business end of a phaser, but by that point it doesn’t matter. T’Kuvma lights the beacon, and a swarm of Klingon ships emerge, heavily outgunning the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou before their backup has arrived.

It’s a hell of an opening statement from Discovery one that seems to run in the face Star Trek’s exploratory, diplomatic, peaceful ethos. (And it’s also a somewhat cheesy enticement to convince people to purchase CBS’s new subscription streaming service to catch the end of the cliffhanger.) But it’s also one poised to explore new wrinkles in Starfleet’s mission to patrol the galaxy and seek out new life and new civilizations. Humanity’s journey through the stars is not a painless one, but one fraught with beings who may attack on sight, who may not prove receptive to your message, who may disdain your very existence. There is a cost to roaming the frontier, a peril in the unknown, and Discovery’s first hour, brings that peril to the forefront.

But it also foregrounds the clash of civilizations idea that seems a likely throughline for the season. The series doesn’t open with a recitation of those hallowed words about five-year missions or boldly going where no one has gone before. It opens with a unifying demagogue rallying his people around the emptiness of the Starfleet mantra “we come in peace.” To T’Kuvma, the Federation is not the coming of paradise; it’s a threat to Klingon purity, to Klingon sanctity, that must be fended off before it engulfs all they believe in.

It calls to a sense of multiculturalism and a pushback among enclaves that fear their personal cultures will be overwritten in a fashion that’s all too relevant, as Star Trek should be, in light of current events. T’Kuvma isn’t afraid of Starfleet as a military threat; he’s afraid of it as a cultural one. A confederation that would blend humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians is anathema to the Klingon hardliner who worries the same sort of melting pot will extinguish the unique Klingon identity.

That is what he’s fighting for. That’s why he tries to unify the warring houses. That’s his angry response to a broadening world that’s encroaching on his space.

These are weighty themes, and Discovery’s two part premiere -- “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” feels true to its roots by wrapping its explorations, space-battles, and hand-to-hand fights in those broader ideas. Despite that, it often falters in capturing the “feel” of Star Trek, for lack of a better term. The series says and does all the right things, introduces a compelling conflict, and throws in a few classic sound effects to soothe the diehards, but doesn’t yet feel of a piece with its forebears.

Part of that comes down to the series’ visuals. Make no mistake, this is the finest Star Trek has ever looked on the small screen. CBS and Paramount clearly spared no expense in terms of the production design, the special effects, and the kinetic action sequences that filter throughout the series’ opening salvo.

But that is, in a peculiar way, part of the issue. Despite officially existing as part of the “prime” Star Trek timeline, Discovery takes most of its visual cues from the J.J. Abrams reboot films. The Shenzou is a dark-tinted version of Chris Pine’s Enterprise, with a floor to ceiling viewscreen and holographic conversations with superior officers. Its frames are filled with dutch angles and even those notorious lens flares. The Klingons are more directly alien, looking more like spiky-headed demons than hairy brutes. Sarek is snootier, more condescending, less detached. The series’ opening credits are a page out of the Marvel Netflix playground rather than a visual journey through space.

This is a slicker, darker, fancier version of Star Trek. On the one hand, that’s an exciting, arguably necessary direction in which to evolve the franchise, but on the other, it just doesn’t feel like home yet.

It doesn’t help (though maybe it should) that the dialogue and performances are uneven across Discovery’s two-part premiere. As all opening episodes must do to some extent, there’s infodumps, “as you know”-style statements, and relationship-establishing scenes that stick out as the heavy machinery of T.V. storytelling being a little too visible behind the curtain. Comments like “The only word to describe it is ‘wow’” would make the writers of Contact blush. On-the-nose statements about choosing hope sting the ears. And while the hard-edged lyricism of Klingons and subtitles can cover for some of it, there’s plenty of the faux-profundity and stilted character declarations that have infected much of “serious” sci-fi of late.

That’s why I’m inclined to give Sonequa Martin-Green, the show’s lead, a bit of a pass for her weaker moments in the premiere. In The Walking Dead, Martin-Green was often grouped with characters who spoke with a certain fanciful verbiage and cadence. That lent itself to a theatrical, mannered tone in Martin-Green’s delivery which frequently carries over now that she’s made the leap from zombies to Xindi. But when not spitting out the premiere’s rougher dialogue, Martin-Green excels at selling confidence, desperation, and even Vulcan detachment creaking toward emotion to help carry the hour.

That’s helpful since her character’s personal journey makes up other main arc of the premiere, and presumably the series. Raised by Vulcans, living with humans, resentful of the Klingons, Michael Burnham exists at the inflection point between the species “A Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” center on. While the “they killed my parents” backstory is generic, and the connection to an established Star Trek family is strained, the notion of how Burnham balances her human heart with her Vulcan teachings and channels them toward a species whose terrorists made her an orphan is fruitful territory for the new series to explore.

It also connects with the attention Discovery pays to race, and the challenges of existing in multiple worlds but not finding full acceptance or understanding in either of them. Burham’s presence on the Shenzou is paralleled with Voq, an albino Klingon on T’Kuvma’s ship. He too is an orphan, one whose captain sees a unique value and potential in him, who faces challenges because of who he is and how he differs from those around him. Both Burnham and Voq lose a great deal in the battle that ensues, one spurred, in part, by how the two cultures view one another.

So much of Star Trek is about managing the risks of such encounters. The premiere of Discovery is good not great, with questionable visuals, performances, and writing. But the strength of the nascent show comes from its premise, from its themes, and from its willingness to confront the good and bad of that, animating, exploratory philosophy at the heart of the series.

There's a cost to roaming the frontier and trying to make first contact (or at least new contact) with alien species. More than a few folks in prior Star Trek incarnation paid the price for it, but outside of the occasional Tasha Yar, they were typically guest stars or redshirts whose demise carried less impact. Discovery features Starfleet commanders following the underlying principles of the Federation and suffering losses for it, while a relative outsider bristles against these tactics which, oddly enough, leave her sharing the philosophy of the Klingons she says should be attacked. Risk is still Star Trek’s business, but it can be a harsh business, where you are, what you stand for, and how you see the faces on the other side of the viewscreen can dictate whether you seek out new life, or end it.

This episode is one of the best of the season, the writing and tension superb. There is not a single extraneous or wasted scene or moment, and the focus on the story unfolding remaining very sharp.

The salvage mission on the the Anubis by now feels familiar, but I'm glad it's the crew of the Rocinante doing the blowing up rather than running. What they uncover of course are more questions, and almost few answers.

The moment the crew of the Rocinante and Miller meet up in the Blue Falcon, in search of Lionel Polanski, is one of the high points of this season, and one that still thrills me although I think I've seen this episode three times at this writing.

Somehow, and there's a little voice that is telling me this, they will be together for a minute.

One has to feel some type of way for Miller. His heartbreak at finding his answers is heart wrenching. This is some major turning point for Miller. I'm not certain what is coming for him, but Julie Mao will be for him, what the Cant is for the crew of the Rocinante, and maybe for the whole solar system. Either way, this looks like kismet. Never mind the whole, "touch me again and there'll be another body on the floor," bit. It looks like kismet.

One of the things to appreciate with the season winding down, is how it has used detail and visual textures to build a convincing world and story. The little clues we've been getting are beginning to add up.

Listen, I am really digging Amos. He's the last of the Rocinante crew that I've gotten attached to, but I am really digging him.

After a lifetime of love for the Star Trek universe, it's hard to be impressed by some of the iterations between the end of Voyager, and the start of the recent movie reboots. As much as I love Scott Bakula, I panned "Enterprise" sometime after the first season, unable to find a way into the story or caring about that crew.

However, as if the showrunners of Discovery knew what, my intersectional heart was longing for. A powerful new female lead of colour (wearing her natural hair), in a very different take on the Federation and enemies of old. When I realised which enemy of old it was being reimagined—indeed, the extent to which the Federation has been a little reimagined—I became deeply impressed, moment by moment.

I'm uncertain if I like the makeup and costume design for the new 'Others' in the story, and the very 'colourfulness' of their ship interiors, but you know, I might just let it grow on me and see how it goes.

A word here on Sonequa Martin-Green's performance: Yes muh girl! Yes! I like you... A nuanced and compelling performance.

That said, this was an impressive opener. Oh CBS.. you play too much. They banned reviews to pique interest, and I am in for it. Here for it. I'm glad I took the chance and watched, and I'm glad to be so pleasantly surprised. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[7.6/10] Well, I guess I was wrong about last week’s episode replacing the improv-based interdimensional cable eps we’ve gotten previously. But I enjoy this entree full of bite-sized adventures for our heroes. It’s a throwback to Harmon’s “clip show but with new clips” bit from Community and fun to see the mini-stories thrown out rapid fire.

I particularly liked the opening pair of stories. Morty mistaking his new guidance counselor for a scary moon man is the sort of Bailey School Kids schtick with a Rick and Morty twist that really tickled my fancy. By the same token, turning the usual “humans trapped in an alien zoo” routine into a Contact-based hoodwinking is entertaining.

But I also really enjoyed the fact that Rick didn’t just zap away the memories of things that were too heavy for Morty to take; he zapped away his own minor mistakes, like the phrase “taken for granite,” not to mention things that implicate his family members, like Beth choosing Summer over Morty in her alien Sophie’s Choice scenario.

While most of the stories were amusing in that black comic way the show’s mastered, it feels like they’re all another brick in the wall of Morty getting tired of Rick’s bullshit, and the rest of the family’s bullshit too. The twist that both Rick and Morty lose their memories and have to use the vials to figure out who they are revitalizes the premise a bit, but also leads to the bleak realization that after seeing all that stuff, the pair want to have a suicide pact.

It’s played mainly for laughs, with Summer barging in on them and refueling their memories in a desultory fashion like she’s had to do this dozens of times, but like most episodes of the show, it finds the humor in something that, at its core, is pretty damn dark. (And then “no wonder you guys fight all the time and are always behind schedule” sounds like a not so veiled bit of self-commentary about Harmon and Roiland, which is a little discouraging.)

Overall, it’s a fun, rapid-fire premise for an episode that allows the show to deliver its humor and demented scenarios in quick hit format, but which still uses the form to offer a commentary on its two core characters, what they’ve seen, and the frustrations and vanity and ego that drives them to want to end it all. The fact that the show can wring comedy from that is just another pelt on the wall of its achievements.

[7.0/10] This season ends as it began. That’s not just to say that Lynch and Frost go back to the beginning, with repeated scenes from “The Return”’s opening foray back in the Red Lodge, or that we return once more to the Palmer house where, depending on how you interpret “Part Eight” the instigating events of Twin Peaks started. It’s also to say that I have to rate this thing at a flat seven because, once more, I just have no idea what to make of the possible final bow for this show.

But I can tell you what I both admire and frustrate about it. This was not a traditional season/quasi-series finale. This wasn’t the culmination of everything that had come before (which “Part Seventeen” came closer to.) It wasn’t some triumphant or tidy bit of narrative housekeeping that gave everything meaning and summed up what had come before, even to the extent that the at times mystifying Season 2 finale did.

Instead, it was something entirely different than the Twin Peaks that we’ve come to know over forty seven episodes. It is weird and unknowable in the way that the best of Twin Peaks can be, but not in a way that really harkens back to the other red room or otherwise supernatural shenanigans we’ve seen so far.

Rather, it captures a feeling, one that seems to draw a connection to however and wherever Audrey is trapped. Here is Dale Cooper, restored once more, but finding himself waking up in a familiar yet foreign place. He’s drawn to certain places and names -- Judy’s diner, the face of Laura Palmer -- but the world doesn’t recognize him. Names are different. Everything is so close, to present, but also so just out of reach.

I’ve said before that I think Lynch is oftentimes a pretty crappy storyteller. His characters are hit and miss and his plots sputter and stall to the extent they’re worthwhile in the first place. But he is an almost incomparable crafter of moods, of these motifs and atmospheres that provoke something in you even if you’re not sure where, if anywhere, all of this is going.

“Part Eighteen” captures that sense of alienation, the sense of (again, as Audrey putting it) dreamlike arena where you know what you’re supposed to do and where you’re supposed to be, but something feels wrong, everything you know and want and think is important is lingering at the edge of the frame.

So much of Lynch’s oeuvre has involved capturing the surrealism of dreams, the way that one thought leaps into the next without transition or comprehension. But here, he captures a very different sort of dreamlike state -- the one where you live a different life, inhabit a different body, and everything seems normal enough, but the settings are miscalibrated, the world isn’t as it should be, and you can just barely wrap your hands around the sense that there’s somewhere else, something else you’re supposed to be, but that fought can find no purchase where you are.

It’s a finale with very little closure. We get no confirmation on what’s happening with Audrey. We’re left to wonder about what the implication and, moreover, the point, of Steven and Becky’s story is. We don’t know what happens in Twin Peaks after The Good Dale and cockney Iron Fist save the day. (Or do we?) While “Part Seventeen” closed off a surprising number of loose ends, there’s still so much that’s so up in the air or unclear after the show’s final hour which is, I suspect, how Lynch and Frost like it.

You do have Mike making a new Dougie and depositing him with the Joneses, in one of the few scenes that not only evinces a sense of finality, but also one of heartening sentiment. The other comes with the equivalent of Cooper’s last meal with Dianne. There’s the sense that the two of them know that what Cooper did, his saving Laura from her grisly end, changed something, and that whatever it means to cross over, to go past that spot -- the same place The Bad Dale (who’s consumed in black flame here) seemed to be driving -- exactly 430 miles away, will change it. Dale and Diane get to have one last moment of happiness, one respite from the time and distance in which they’ve been separated, to enjoy that bliss, scored to the dulcet tones of The Platters no less.

Despite that musical high point, “Part Eighteen” is a surprisingly quiet, languid episode. My mind drew back to Shadow of the Colossus, a large, often empty video game filled with far away destinations and long sojourns that force the player to reflect on their task and their role in these events during the journey. The Season 3 finale embraces the same idea, not populating its world with the chatter of conversation or the gooey riffs of Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack or even much of the electric hum that’s zapped through so much of the show.

Instead, it offers those hollowing silences, where the road rumbles beneath and the dim lights of the highway peeking through an enveloping darkness. “Part Eighteen” is devoted to the scariness of that silence, the places where unnerving thoughts creep in and disturb or peace. More than painting his own portraits, Lynch in some ways offers an empty canvas, one where we’re left to fill in the disturbed blanks rolling around in the minds of Agent Cooper and Carrie Page.

And then comes the punctuation, the return to Twin Peaks but one that doesn’t feel like the warm place with a dark underbelly that we know and feel comfortable with. Whether it’s shot differently or just put in a different context, the place feels alien. As the camera seems to float up the steps of what we know as the Palmer house, there’s a sense of foreboding, of pulling at the wrong threads, or not being able to pull at them hard enough.

There’s clues. The woman who answers is the door gives her last name as Tremond, and says she bought her house from a woman named Mrs. Chalfont, both names used by the elderly woman who guided Laura in Fire Walk with Me and was served meals on wheels by Donna in Season 2. But they only serve to further disorient. Dale stumbles, almost like Dougie, realizing he’s not sure what year it is, or what realm the forces of Twin Peaks may have deposited him in.
Carrie looks up at that house one last time. Certain names, certain faces, sparked something in her, something that prompts her to ask what’s happening. And in the shadow of the house where so much abuse was visited upon Laura Palmer, the horrible truth seems to wash over her brain, and she lets out one last ear-piercing, blood-curdling screech, as the place seems to pop out and shut down in an instant, one last chilling images to make your heart skip a beat in this alternatively stultifying and unnerving show.

After forty eight episodes, I still don’t know if I like Twin Peaks, if the balance of those stupefying moments and those horrifying moments and those interminable moments and those transcendent moments comes out in the show’s favor or not. It is a show with deep flaws, either ignored or praised, but also a singularness that few series have grazed, let alone matched. It can indulgent, hokey, and downright dumb, but also weird, terrifying, and irrepressible when its stars align.

Its finale represents that, the head-scratch, unpredictability of the show, the long pauses that may leave you checking your watch, but also the strange mood that the show at its best could evoke. Twin Peaks is never going to be a show that makes sense, or even really wants to, but one deeply concerned with how it makes you feel. And that means it’s hard to know whether it’s good or bad, or even whether you like it or not, but it is there, and it lingers with you, like reality lurking on the edge of a dream, present and transfixing whether you seek it or shun it or just sit and wonder what it all means.

[7.0/10] Well, I’m back to giving flat sevens to “The Return” as a shrug, because I have no idea how to rate this thing, which is, I think, a good thing. But when lost in a sea of images and scenes you’re not sure you understand, it makes sense to return to the very basics, so let’s go with what I liked and didn’t like.

I liked the reveal that the eyeless woman was, in fact, the real Dianne. A good reveal should recontextualize what the audience has already seen in an interesting and natural way, and the Dianne reveal does that. It makes sense how she would try to communicate with Coop in the nether realm and endeavor to get back to the real world. It makes sense that The Bad Dale would try to hide her away as part of his plan in order to have someone close to the real Cooper on his side in her place. (And the change in hair color to signify the difference was a sort of easy choice that nevertheless worked really well.)

And somehow, despite the fact that we’ve never actually seen the two of them together before, there was something really heartwarming and cathartic about Cooper and Dianne kissing. Dianne was always an unseen but clearly felt presence in the original run of Twin Peaks, and so I can accept the two of them as an OTP. There’s enough hints of something there in the past, and a sense that they’ve been separated for so long that it works.

I did not really like Freddy with the green glove Iron Fisting the Bob orb into shards. It’s fine as a nuts and bolts “we have to move the plot forward” sort of thing, but there’s just no emotion there. I do appreciate how they worked around the death of Frank Silva, and the zooming and biting put the Bob Orb in line with the shapeless form that killed those two young people in the premiere. But I don’t really care about Freddy, and if anything, despite the weirdness, it felt like more of a superhero film solution to this problem than a more off-kilter Twin Peaks resolution to it. (Though I would have been perfectly satisfied if he merely punched the jail cell to knock out Chad and get the rest of the gang in place -- that was a nice moment.)

I did like that Lucy gets a chance to save the day in a scene that seems to call back to Andy pulling a similar trick with Jacques Renault. The quick draw where The Bad Dale shoots Frank Truman’s hat but Lucy takes him out is a little cheesy, but it worked to hold the tension in the moment. Hell, as much her and Andy’s antics have annoyed me in the past, I even got a kick out of her line about understanding how cellular phones work now (all it took was an explanation from The Good Dale)! I’ve given my fair of crap to Lynch and Frost for seemingly pointless nonsense (and granted, there’s still plenty of it) but I’m impressed at how many of their digressions have actually had relevant payoffs.

I did not particularly care for The Bad Dale’s journey into the White Lodge. There’s lots of ways to interpret it (and it’s striking seeing the floating head of Major Briggs there), but The Giant putting his face in a cage and sending him to the sheriff’s office via the same device he once used to send the Laura orb to Earth just didn’t click with me for some reason.

Still, I did like the prophecy/clockwork element to the climax here. Presumably, The Giant acted to get everyone in the right place at the right time, hence keeping Mr. C out of the White Lodge and sending him back to Twin Peaks. Sure enough, at 2:53, the forces align to get everyone where they need to be at the sheriff’s office. Twin Peaks has always had an interesting sense of time dilation, but I like that enough folks picked up on Major Briggs’ hints to get the players in place to banish The Bad Dale, revive Dianne, and set the next step in motion.

And yet, there was something kind of unsatisfying about it that I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s that I think I wanted a scene with The Good Dale confronting The Bad Dale, just to see Kyle MacLachlan act against himself. Maybe it’s that the key to defeating Bob (however temporarily) turns out to be a green gloved rando rather than anything one of the better known characters did.

But in some ways, Twin Peaks thrives on anticlimax and subversion, and I can admire that even if it leaves me cold. I can easily see Lynch & Frost delighting in the notion that they set up this seemingly inevitable, epic showdown, and it comes down to a gunshot from Lucy and some punches from a kid in a gardening glove we only met three episodes ago. It might be a stretch, but I think it’s speaks to a point about the inscrutability of the will of the gods and the randomness of life, that even seemingly unremarkable folk like the Brennans and Freddy can have a vital role to play in the face of cosmic events.

I did not, however, like the sense of a sort of drive by reunion we got once the major threat had been eliminated. Maybe we’ll get more in the final episode, but after waiting so long to get the real Cooper back, and to reunite him with an (admittedly kind of contrived) collection of nearly every major character from the town in the same room, we get some stilted, oddly written remembrances (i.e. statements along the lines of “your dad saw to all of this, Bobby”) without ever really having a chance for the real Coop to actually reunite with anyone other than Dianne. That’s pretty unsatisfying, and maybe that’s intentional, but it’s also a bit frustrating.

That semi-wooden dialogue is part and parcel with some odd expositional moments in this. I don’t know how I feel about the explanation that “Judy” is “Juh-Deh” some ancient dark force (presumably the same one that we saw birthing the Bob orb, destroying those kids in the premiere, and maybe lurking inside Sarah Palmer?). It feels a little too neat for Twin Peaks, and having Cole just give an info dump about it seems odd too. (Plus I could swear I read somewhere that Judy was supposed to be Josey’s sister, not that Lynch & Frost aren’t allowed to change directions from an original plan that never made it to the screen.)

It’s also a bit odd that Gordon Cole and Diane could follow Coop into the furnace-y area that James stumbled onto earlier, but no one else could. I guess to just give them an extra moment to say goodbye? I do like that the Great Northern hotel room key served a purpose (another bit of payoff) in granting Cooper access to the Room Above a Convenience Store, though the sequence itself wasn’t nearly as striking as when The Bad Dale visited there a few episodes ago.

Really, that whole sequence is kind of a mixed bag. There’s plenty to like, with nice moodiness and the melancholy of saying goodbye, but also lots of stuff that doesn’t quite work, like Mike repeating the same old “Fire Walk with Me” poem and more time spent with the enchanted tea pot version of Philip Jeffries making smoke signals in the air.

That said, I loved the tack the episode takes after that. Having spent time in the Lodge, having understood more of the geometry and possibility of this place, Cooper sets out to erase the horrible event that started this all -- the death of Laura Palmer. There’s great symbolic resonance in that -- in the eternal battle between good and evil that has been waged over the course of Twin Peaks, Cooper tries to shortcircuit it at the beginning, to prevent any of these events from happening in the first place.

There’s something affectingly elliptical about that, the notion of Cooper giving up all the life-changing things, good and bad, that happened to him because of Laura’s death, and wipe them away to prevent the instigating evil of the series from taking root. (Granted, he probably should have gone back sooner to stop Leland/Bob, but I’m willing to give the show some leeway in making this more of a symbolic beat than a purely consequential “would you kill baby Hitler?” type deal.) There is a great sense of catharsis in that, in Cooper saving Laura from her fate, while simultaneously erasing all the events the audience has seen over the past twenty-five years. It’s a gusty move from Lynch and Frost, and I admire it.

I also admire how well they integrated Cooper into the decades-old Fire Walk with Me footage and managed to connect it to present footage. Maybe I just need a better TV, but I was impressed at how well they stitched together old scenes and new scenes to make something that feels genuine to what we saw in the film, but also advances the history-changing narrative of the episode in a striking visual way, replete with the body wrapped in plastic disappearing.

I don’t know to feel about the ending, or what to make of it. That ear-splitting shriek can still scare the life out of you, and Cooper and Laura’s trip to (presumably) gastonberry grove in the past is a nicely moody one, filled with the sense of Laura’s distress and possible release an Cooper filled with the righteous, spiritual sense of trying to right past wrongs. But why Laura disappears, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe you can’t change fate, or even saving Laura from being killed still sends her to a difficult place regardless? Someone brighter than me will have to figure that out.

But I can tell you one thing -- I’m still not on board with Julee Cruise reprising her spacy warbling for the show again. Frankly, that goes for all the music in the episode, which understandably reverts to using much of the score from the original series that always put me off sonically. That, however, can be chalked up to taste, and even if it takes me out of some scenes (Cooper’s reunion with Dianne was nearly ruined by that so-cheesy-it-hurts backing track), I can accept it as a part of the show’s DNA.

Overall, this is unquestionably a momentous episode, filled with playoffs and climaxes and challenging new directions to take the narrative. What it amounts to, what it means, and whether it’s any good is something that I just can’t answer. But it got me talking (not necessarily a challenge) and also thinking (maybe more of a challenge) so it’s certainly worth something. Maybe the final episode will help crystalize it all and make things clearer, though knowing Lynch, I’m not holding my breath.

[9.0/10] Best Twin Peaks episode ever? Because I think this might be the best Twin Peaks episode ever.

What makes it so great, you ask? Or so much better than other Twin Peaks episodes.

Well, first off, it was almost all Cooper. The episode starts off with The Bad Dale luring his (officially confirmed) son to a set of coordinates he’s been given twice, and turns Richard Horne into his guinea pig. It’s just the latest abuse of a parent against a child in Twin Peaks, and the callousness with which Mr. C lures his offspring to the top of that rock, only to respond dispassionately when he’s zapped to bits (a trap laid by Phillip Jeffries?) speaks to the depth of the uncaring evil that lurks within Dark Dale.

And wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, there was a bloody point to the whole Jerry Horne getting lost in the woods bit of (seeming) nonsense! Or at least a payoff to it! He’s there to witness his own grand-nephew’s demise at the hands of a man who at least looks an awful like Agent Cooper. While he chastises the binoculars for what he saw with them in a sort of strange, not particularly funny manner, the fact that there was a point to his presence in this narrative at all is kind of amazing.

That’s another facet of what made this episode great -- payoff. After so many teases, so much stumbling around and going down detours, Twin Peaks actually gets down to brass tax and advances the major parts of the story. After fifteen long episodes of waiting, the real Dale Cooper is back in business, and it’s an absolute thrill. I could do without the old Twin Peaks score being piped in for his dramatic return (call me a heretic, I’ve never cared for Angelo Badalamenti’s work on the show) seeing The Good Dale back in action again is great.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the escapades of Dougie, but seeing the good-hearted and competent man take charge of the situation, see the hearts of gold in bosses, kids, and gangasters alike, and confidently race his way to a Casino rendezvous to get to Twin Peaks is a hell of a catharsis after all the trekking it took to get him there. MacLachlan hasn’t lost a step, instantly summoning the old special agent (I nearly fistpumped when he said “I am the FBI”) and bringing him to life once more.

But another element that makes this episode great is not just that Cooper returns, it’s that he returns with the combination of joy and sadness that would naturally follow from this bizarre situation. Twin Peaks has rarely been heartwarming for me -- with its attempts at that vein of sentiment tending to fall flat. But Cooper telling Janey and Sonny Jim that his heart is full from the time he spent with them, and his deal with Mike to make another copy to give the two of them their Dougie back, are the acts of the kind-hearted, decent man that Coop always was.

Still, there’s pathos in that moment, because unwittingly or not, The Good Dale has turned the lives of the Joneses around. He’s solved their problems, financial or otherwise. Fulfilled Janey’s needs as a husband and Sonny Jim’s as a father. Intuitively or not, the Joneses realize they’re losing him, that they’re going back to the overweight, gambling, prostitute-visiting man they lived with before. (Though who knows, maybe Mike can make a better man this time.) The last hug among them, the last kiss between “Dougie” and Janey has meaning because what we as the audience have gained with Cooper’s return is someone else’s loss.

That said, the other reaction-based facet of “Part Sixteen” that sets this installment apart (and, if I’m being a bit snarky, sets it apart from much of Twin Peaks) is that it’s really damn funny. I just loved the scene featuring the standoff between Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the machine gun-wielding neighbor annoyed that they’re blocking his driveway. There’s such an incredible rhythm and absurdity to the scene, with the FBI staking out the Jones’s house, the Mitchums coming to deliver food, and the neighbor casually interfering in this confluence of gangsters and law enforcement.

And, once more, through no action of his own, a threat to Dougie Jones’s life goes away. There’s is something so delightfully insane about that, the way that problems keep solving themselves, suggesting some form of providence or at least a universe filled with gods with a wry sense of humor. It’s appropriate that that unmarked van reunited two stars of The Hateful Eight because there’s a Tarantino-esque mix of bulletfire, coincidence, and dry remarks that made this a stand out scene among stand out scenes. Hell, even the dialogue was great, with one of the Mitchum’s remarking “people are very stressed these days” and some great reactions from Jim Belushi of all people, both to that line and the explanation for where Cooper comes from.

It’s not all smiles and catharsis though. We get a tense, well-done scene from Dianne, revealing what happened between her and The Bad Dale that fateful night. Only an actor the caliber of Laura Dern could pull off having to command and convey the meaning of a monologue like that and not have it seem overwrought or maudlin. The reveal that not only did Mr. C sexually assault Dianne, but that she too is “manufacture” like Dougie was is a startling one, and Dern owns it the whole way through, wrestling with the realization of what she is and what was done to her. The fact that she give Mike a defiant “fuck you” on her way out is the icing on the cake.

And last but not least, we even get a payoff (or at least the hint of one) for why the goings on with Audrey have been so bizarre over the last few episodes. Whether she’s in a coma or another realm or something else entirely, it seems like she’s not in a real place, instead trapped somewhere that makes her realizes why she’s been feeling unlike herself, why nothing feels right. It gives the show a chance to have Audrey reprise her famous dance, and the strangeness of what seems like the usual episode-ending musical number turning into swinging, swaying tribute to her sultry sashay of old works wonderfully.

That musical fake out even works well, as Eddie Vedder (using an odd stage name) warbles out a topical tune about having lost who you were and being unable to get it back. Cooper has lost twenty-five years of his life, Audrey may have lost the same, and the Joneses are losing something too. But maybe, just maybe, something good is around the corner, whether at the local sheriff’s station or elsewhere. If Twin Peaks can deliver something this great, anything’s possible.

[7.0/10] I had a heuristic for original recipe Twin Peaks. The more an episode focused on Agent Cooper, the better it was going to be, and the more it focused on the townies, the harder it would be to sit through. That hasn’t proven entirely true for “The Return.” The Cooper material is still great, but even episodes that haven’t focused on him have managed to find interesting places to go. But it’s definitely true for “Part Thirteen” which is fairly hard to rate since the half featuring the continued cruel machinations of Mr. C and the continuing misadventures of Dougie Jones is great, and the half featuring the motley pack of misfits the revival has mostly kept on the sidelines up to this point was crap stacked on crap.

Let’s start with the good. I expected my roll my eyes when The Bad Dale wanders into what can only be described as a den of thieves plucked right from an eighties action thriller starring Stallone or Van Damme. But damnit if Kyle MacLachlan doesn’t make it work. He deserves awards recognition for his amazing work this season, and the way he just exudes power and control and singular focus as Mr. C absolutely anchors the scene.

In contrast to long scenes that can feel interminable, Lynch lets The Bad Dale’s encounter with the gang that’s safeguarding his former associate Ray build and breathe. The show of power during the arm-wrestling match, the interrogation of Ray, and the cold steady walk out of the place all make The Bad Dale a formidable opponent for anyone, let alone a brain-addled doppelganger.

It also makes him a formidable opponent for Phillip Jeffries, whom we learn for certain is the man behind the attempt on Mr. C’s life. The appearance of the owl signet ring ties ocne more into the mythology of the show, and Richard Horne’s fixed gaze on The Bad Dale’s stroll out of the hideout hints at where his unrepentant evil might have come from. It’s a hell of a scene of tension and fearsomeness from The Revival’s main antagonist.

(As an aside, I just love that the gang of ruffians in the lair of the big bald brute includes a meek man with a wardrobe Mr. Rogers would approve of. It’s those sorts of odd details that get the biggest laughs out of me.)

That only makes Dougie’s role as this season’s protagonist seem all the more like an uphill climb. We learn a bit more about the shit his co-worker Anthony is into, who, with the Mitchum brothers plan having failed, now finds the task of killing Dougie has fallen to him, and despite threats from Todd and help from a pair of crooked cops, he doesn’t have the stomach for it.

It’s another story of how happenstance and chance help let’s Dougie live another day. I’ve gone on and on about the inherent commentary of how The Catatonic Cooper and the comedy of errors that allows him to survive this tangle of criminals and conspiracies is brilliant. But this is just another outing where, like those before him, Anthony’s own hangups and projections on to Dougie save him, rather than anything Dougie does himself.

But my god, the humor of it all! Just the image of the Mitchum brothers, their showgirls, and Dougie conga-lining into Battlin’ Bud’s office tickled me pink. Details like Dougie walking straight into a glass door, or pawing feebly at cherry pie behind glass that he’ll later obviously eat as Anthony pours out his soul, or even his inadvertent massage of Anthony while poking at the powder on his jacket all cracked me up. Hell, the funniest moment of the entire show may be when a weeping, guilt-ridden Anthony pours the poisoned coffee in the toilet, throws away the mug, causing a nearby urinator to remark, “that bad huh?” The comic stylings of the show’s original run fell on deaf ears in my household, but the adventures of Dougie and friends have been a laugh riot from start to finish.

Unfortunately, that ends when we get back to Twin Peaks and delve back into the uninteresting lives of most of the people who live there.

So help me god, why are we doing another Norma-Ed love triangle twenty-five years later? Presumably, whatever they had, they’d have worked out or not by now, and the fact that their relationship has been in stasis for more than two decades just reeks of a writer going “I want to get the catharsis of them coming together so I’ll just pretend they’ve been in a holding pattern this whole time.” I was never that invested in Norma and Big Ed, but this just feels like a cheesy way to get to deliver their coming together in the revival.

Nevermind the fact that Walter, Norma’s current beau, is the worst kind of stock type -- the heartless businessman. I appreciate the extra care and “love” that goes into local and small batch products as much as the next guy, but my god, I could go another twenty-five years without another character who supercilious denies the value of whatever the “old ways” are because “it’s bad for business.” It’s such a cliché, and the fact that he’s not only the guy trying to get Norma to change the way she operates the diner, but also the romantic impediment to her and Ed getting together just makes him a cornball bad guy. Sure, Ed’s sad lonely dinner over the credits has a certain resonance, but the obstacles in his way are so contrived that the whole thing falls flat.

(My prediction -- and I’ve been constantly wrong with this show so take it with a grain of salt -- is that the point of all the “Nadine admires Dr. Amp” business is that she leaves Ed for Jacoby, clearing the way for Ed and Norma to be together. That seems to be what “Part Thirteen” is setting up with Nadine and Jacoby’s face-to-face here.)

We also get even more painful, soap opera-esque drama between Audrey and her nebbish of a husband. There’s something interesting in the idea the scene teases out -- the strange feeling that you’re not yourself or not where you ought to be -- but her overwrought protestations matched with her soft-spoken husband’s meh reassurances just go on and on and leave the whole thing as a mystifying, uninteresting interlude.

So we get Shelly having a conversation with her daughter, Sarah Palmer watching boxing on a loop, and an endless scene of James Hurley playing the fabled “Just You” while some random woman gushes over him in the audience. Is there a point to any of it, beyond checking in a few characters and bringing back an aural touchstone? God only knows, but it’s just part and parcel with the townie-focused bits that bring the back half of the episode to a screeching halt.

This show has proven that it doesn’t need Agent Cooper -- in either of his forms -- to be the center of attention to make a good episode. The antics of the G-Men, the origin story episode, and even surprisingly good outings for the likes of Bobby, Sarah, and Ben have proven the contrary. But this is one of those episodes where, if Kyle MacLachlan isn’t on the screen, you’re probably better off looking away.

[9.5/10] At some point, I am going to stop being surprised by Rick and Morty’s brilliance and just expect it, but the show is still at that point where I suspect it’ll be good every week, but it still manages to blow me away each new turn it takes.

I take “The Ricklantis Mixup” to be Season 3’s answer to the improv episodes from the prior two seasons -- a change of pace that allows Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland to play around in their amazing sandbox of a universe for a bit without feeling the need to develop or advance their main character. In that, they give us an episode that doesn’t have Rick or Morty or any of the other main characters, and yet has all the Ricks and Morties, in glorious, The Wire-esque splendor.

And The Wire really has to be the touchstone for an episode like this. Where else are you going to find something that addresses the challenges of cops and criminals, the rise of an charismatic and unexpected leader, the frustrations of blue collar working who feels like the system is holding him down, and the difficulties of four schoolchildren to make their way in that world. Hell, throw in a Hamsterdam, and you have all five seasons of that superlative show, filtered through Harman and Roiland’s dueling deranged perspectives and deposited into one twenty-two minute chunk. That’s an amazing achievement, the sort of praise I feel like I’m throwing out all too often for this show, but it keeps earning it.

The episode can roughly be broken up into those four stories, but what makes the episode more than just the sum of its parts (and what earns its Wire comparisons) is how interconnected those stories are, both literally, since they’re connected by the Citadel are all affected by the ecosystem that’s developed after our Rick destroyed the place, but also thematically, in the way each protagonist of each story looks at a bad situation and wants change, and gets it, but gets something unsatisfying or unpleasant or worse than they bargained for out of the process, with plenty of dead bodies floating among the garbage and blasted out the airlock.

That’s clearest for Candidate Morty, trying to win the presidency of The Citadel on behalf of The Morty Party. There’s something aspirational, almost West Wing-esque about Candidate Morty, as he gives soaring, Obama-esque speeches about dissolving the lines of division between Ricks and Morties and make The Citadel something better for all. That makes it seem particularly terrible when his former campaign manager, another Morty, tries to assassinate him. The move turns out to be all for naught since Candidate Morty survives and becomes President, in something that seems like a chance to turn around this mixed up place.

Instead, it’s revealed that Candidate Morty is the evil, eye patch-wearing Morty we met back in Season 1. It’s the perfect, knife-turning twist for the episode -- a reveal that the Carcetti-esque beacon of hope for a city in turmoil is a guy running on unifying rhetoric to pursue his own Carcetti-esque ambitions (well, maybe a touch more intergalactically evil than Carcetti’s). All of that hope, all of the communal joining together and believing that things can change just puts a tyrant into power, and holy hell is that one of the darkest things an already dark show has put forward.
Then there’s Factory Worker Rick, who seems older and more haried even by Rick standards, gazing out of subway cars, seeing wealthier and cooler Ricks succeed ahead of him, and sighing. He works at a factory that makes wafers out of the satisfaction an old fashioned “Simple Rick” enjoys when reliving the experience of spending time with his daughter (a subtly revealing bit in and of itself).

Things hit the fan when he goes postal, killing his boss and co-workers, and getting into a hostage standoff with the police. There too, the show capture a certain backbreaking ennui to this place, that even (and maybe especially) a locale populated by geniuses leads to this sort of dissatisfaction, disaffection, and anomie. And this story has just as cynical an ending, with Factory Worker Rick believing he’s won, only for the Wonka-esque Rick who runs the factory to capture him and use that feeling of freedom and satisfaction to fuel his new deluxe wafers. I mean, my god, if that is not the peak of devastating, existential irony on this show, I don’t know what is.

There’s also Rookie Cop Rick, who’s paired with Grizzled Cop Morty. More than the other stories, this one feels like it’s riffing on a sea of tropes ripped right out of the Training Day playbook. There’s plenty of political and social commentary baked in through how even Grizzled Cop Morty looks down on his fellow Morties as “animals” or how Rookie Cop Rick tries to give himself up to his brethren for the difficult choices he’s made and gets let off the hook. But it has less impact since it feels like more of those tropes played straight (or at least, as straight as can be possible given the insane circumstances) than something truly new and subversive.

Still, this is the part of the episode where the show gains strength from the crazy details of the world it’s constructed at The Citadel. The entire concept of a wild Morty club where Morty’s dress up in costumes, dance for one another, and use bad math, or of a series of news anchors from the same hierarchy of subuniverses, each of whom has it worst than the next, or just the concept of Morties who’ve been turned into lizards and Ricks adopting rural affections is bizarre and hilarious and head-scratching in the best ways.

That comes through in the episode’s final story, which sees a quartet of young Morties, soon to be assigned to a new quartet of Ricks, go out in search of a fabled “wish portal” that could change their lives. The sorriest among them is Cool Morty, who has an experimental drama chip that allows him to make things “sad and a little boring,” and who’s been through Rick after Rick. Here too, there is that sense of existential dread, of things never changing, the permeates the proceedings. Cool Morty’s suicide is unexpected and lives up to the sadness his experimental chip portends, but it’s made worse that the supposed change his dive into this sci-fi wishing well effected is the hollow one President Morty offered.

That’s the rub of this one. Even in this fantastical world of brilliant scientists and their boy sidekicks, there is a kaleidoscope of pain and false promises that stretch through everything. All the geniuses, all the good-natured moppets in the world can’t change that when thrown together into their own dysfunctional society. That Rick and Morty has the chutzpah to explore that society for an episode, and to deliver that message, just speaks to the boldness and off-kilter storytelling we’ve come to expect, and to make it all as funny as it is quietly devastating, is a near-miracle. Rick and Morty keeps delivering them on a regular basis.

[7.1/10] I do want the real Dale Cooper to come back. I’m still hoping to see him say “damn fine coffee” and reunite with all his old pals once more. But man, I am absolutely loving The Dougie Show. There is something so so funny about the way that the rest of the world revolves around him, that people project their affections and resentments and concerns on him while he dodders blithely through it all.

MacLachlan’s proven himself the sort of physical comedian who can make it all work. His simpleton consumption of chocolate cake while his wife tries to get his attention, his flapping arms while they’re in the throes of passion, the stupidly gleeful look on his face at the moment of truth, all just drive home the comedy of this dope being stuck in this web of deceit and murder and domestic squabbles so well.

That web, once again, looks a little clearer this week. We find more connections between Dougie, the men who own the casino where he won big (The Mitchum brothers), his insurance company, and The Bad Dale’s associate in Vegas.

The short version is that the Mitchum brothers had a hotel burn down, and their claim is in the hands of Dougie’s lying coworker, Anthony. Anthony is in cahoots with Duncan Todd, Mr. C’s man in Vegas, and is told to turn the Mitchums on Dougie lest Anthony be required to take Dougie out himself. Anthony’s malfeasance in handling this claim seems to be what Dougie’s boss uncovered, and the Mitchums have a preexisting grudge against Ike the Spike, Todd’s assassin who attacked Dougie. Once more, the disparate threads are being tied together, to where more is starting to make sense.

It’s compelling, both for the weirdness of the interludes between the Mitchum brothers and their spacey showgirl, Candy, and for again, the Kafkaesque sense that all these threats -- the Mitchum brothers, Anthony, Todd, Mr. C, etc. -- are springing up around a man who wants to do little more than enjoy a nice piece of chocolate cake.

We also see Richard Horne go on a pretty unpleasant rampage, where he seems to be carrying on the proud Twin Peaks tradition of someone not needing to be inhabited by Bob to do awful things. His killing of Miriam is tastefully shot and revealed, but still pretty unpleasant. We learn that he too is in cahoots with someone -- Chad, the prick officer at the Sheriff’s Office, who intercepts Miriam’s letter for Richard. And then we get our first real look at Sylvia Horne and her still developmentally challenged son Johnny (sans headdress, but still wearing distinctive headgear).

I’ll say this for Lynch, he always knows how to mix something horrible with something absurd. The scene where Richard assaults his grandmothers is utterly disquieting and filmed with unflinching brutality, but the disquieting nature is only heightened by the repetition of the “Hello Johnny” from the grotesque-looking teddy bear on the Hornes’ table, and Johnny’s flails and cries for help, not understanding the situation as his mother is powerless to stop it. I’ll say this for Richard Horne -- Lynch & Frost haven’t made him an especially deep character, but they’ve quickly established him as as much of a despicable antagonist as you could ever want or even stomach.

That just leaves a scattered handful of other scenes and vignettes. Carl Rodd plays a soothing song on acoustic guitar while hearing the equally terrifying domestic abuse between Becky and her boyfriend. It works well both in showing Carl’s disgust with the horrors of the world and giving us a glimpse at the dark side of Becky’s existence we only had hints of in her first appearance.

We also get some random, if semi-interesting stuff. Albert is having dinner with Constance, in what seems like a perfect match, and Gordon and Tammy silently gushing over it is a nice touch. Nadine is still watching Dr. Jacoby’s rants, enraptured, and we see (via a sign) that she’s still invested in silent drape-runners. It seems pointless so far, but it’s amusing enough. The same can’t be said for Jerry Horne still being lost in the forest while high, but we get some movement in his brother’s storyline, as the trouble with his (presumably ex) wife and his grandson prompts Ben Horne to ask his assistant Beverly to dinner. I’ll admit, I don’t know what the point of this is, beyond showing that Ben is trying to be a good man and fails when the going gets rough, but we’ll see.

That just leaves the strange stuff. When Albert knocks on Gordon’s door, he sees a vision of Laura Palmer, lifted (I think?) from Fire Walk with Me, and hears the news that Diane has been texting in code with Mr. C, and sees a picture of him in the box from New York. Presumably this too is tying all the disparate Cooper threads together, but who can be sure?

Last and least, the Log Lady offers some of her typical doublespeak to Hawk, noting that the Sheriffs Truman are “true men” and that Laura Palmer is “the one.” I’ll admit, this seems like cryptic prose for cryptic prose sake, even if it ends up tying into the resolution of the season. I’m kind of tired of it, to be honest.

Still, a solid episode, with some more element coalescing and pointing us to the different parts of the story bearing on one another.

[9.0/10] Not since The Sopranos has there been a show on television so devoted to examining the psyches of its characters. I feel like I need to rewatch this episode five times to truly unpack everything there is to glean from such a dense, psychologically complex episode. If there’s been a consistent theme to Season 3, it’s been digging deep into what makes the show’s main characters tick, what makes them who they are, and “Rest and Ricklaxation” both literalizes that (by separating its title characters into their constituent parts) and plays it out in fascinating, emotionally-wrenching detail.

The impetus for that is Rick and Morty going into a psychological toxin-clearing chamber at an intergalactic spa. The catch is that the chamber doesn’t just free you from harmful it elements, it removes those elements, personified as “booger” versions of you, and keeps them trapped in a chamber. So while the real Rick and Morty are feeling happier and more relaxed in the real world, the concentrated toxic parts of them are caught in the chamber working frantically to get out.

The initial results seem predictable, if a little twisted. Toxic Rick is even more hateful and self-aggrandizing than Real Rick. He’s constantly touting his own genius, constantly belittling Morty, and constantly lashing out at the world. Toxic Morty is entirely self-hating and debased, little more than a subservient wart of a person accepting any and all abuse.

What’s interesting is that it seems to flip the good/evil dynamic in Healthy Rick and Healthy Morty. While Healthy Rick feels compelled to rescue their toxic counterparts once he knows of their existence, Healthy Morty likes his own happiness and is constantly resisting any attempt to set things back the way they were under a the guise of not questioning it.

Now splitting protagonists into their good and evil sides is nothing new. (Lord knows the Star Trek franchise returned to that well time and time again.) But the twist, and the thing that makes the episode really stand out from the pack, is that the divergence point for “healthy” Rick and Morty isn’t some arbitrary definition of toxicity, it’s what they themselves view as the toxic parts of their being.

Which leads to all kinds of interesting complications, not the least of which is that Toxic Rick isn’t just some personification of bad, and Healthy Morty isn’t some noble personification of good. It’s a brilliant, fascinating choice to depict Healthy Morty as this honest but heartless, manipulative douchebag. The things that Morty sees as toxic in himself -- his self-doubt and self-loathing -- weigh down an overconfidence and disregard for others’ that, left unchecked, turn him into an uberpopular, successful stock broker, but one who doesn’t really care about anything else or anyone.

It’s a deranged echo of Inside Out’s thesis that negative emotions are vital and valid and help make us stronger individuals. There is something so frighteningly recognizable about Healthy Morty, between his offhand quips about his food being organic to maxims about saying important things face-to-face that reveal a deeper soulless beneath despite all the crowd-pleasing pablum. Toxic Morty isn’t a pretty sight or an encouraging reflection of the real Morty -- he’s deeply unhappy, horribly self-defeating, and outright declares that he wants to die. But the idea that these are the things keeping Morty from becoming a wide-eyed, smiling little monster is one of the boldest and darkest takes this show has offered on one of its main characters.

But that’s only half the impact of the twist. The other, and arguably more foundational reveal in the episode is that Rick really does care about the people in his life, at least Morty, but he views that as toxic, as “irrational attachments” he’d rather overcome. It’s striking in that it answers one of the basic questions the show has been teasing out forever now -- whether despite his protestations to the contrary, Rick loves his family. “Rest Ricklaxation” suggests that he does, but it’s something he hates in himself, which explains how and why he’s always trying to disclaim any such affections.

Rick may acknowledge the other parts of his personality as “toxic.” He admits narcissism, of disregard for the rest of the universe in favor of his own brilliance. But without that, without the parts of him he views as holding him back psychologically, he only has a general care for the world, about the impartial welfare of all, without any personal attachments to his grandson or anything else. The episode digs into who Rick and Morty are, what they hate about themselves, and the people they become without that, which tells you so very much about the show’s title characters.

Meanwhile, amidst all this deep psychological examination is an episode that just works on a nuts and bolts level. The conflict of reconciling toxic and healthy versions of Rick and Morty propels the episode nicely. Seeing a Rick-on-Rick battle throughout the Smiths’ house is thrilling with plenty of creative turns. Healthy Morty’s quiet psychopathy builds and builds keeping a comedic hum the whole time. And there’s even some amusing social commentary as Rick’s toxicity ray covers the globe and Morty’s restaurant acquaintance yells out “sea cucumber!” The main event of “Rest and Ricklaxation” is the show boring into the mental processes and damage of its protagonists, but it keeps the tension and the excitement up for what could otherwise be an overly cerebral exercise.

Like nearly all sitcoms must, it then returns things to the status quo. But while for most shows that’s a return to normalcy and sanity, for Rick and Morty it means returning those two characters to the fraught place where they began the episode. One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire series is the two of them sitting in Rick’s craft in the intro. Morty cries; Rick screams in anguish and admits he wasn’t in control, and the episode doesn’t turn away from the unnerving distress and damage these two individuals have accumulated over the course of their adventures.

This is what the combination of good and bad in Rick and Morty gets them. There’s the sense that both need that balance, to keep them tethered and, in different ways, to keep them caring about people, but the results of that cocktail -- of self-glorification and self-loathing, of brash confidence and debasement, of personal fulfillment and global concern -- doesn’t create a pretty picture for our heroes either.

[8.0/10] My cat has spent a great deal of time in the glow of the T.V. over the years. He likes to be wherever my wife and I are, which means that if we’re watching a show, he tends to come over and nestle in between us. But most of the time, he’s pretty oblivious to what we’re watching. That’s not the point for him. He just wants to be close to his two humans and if that means curling up on the couch while the television is on, so be it. It’s rare for him to even gaze in that direction.

But something funny happened while I watched “Part Eight.” He seemed to actually be watching the show. Not for all of it, and not necessarily attentively, but his attention seemed drawn to the images on the screen much more so than usual.

Like most things in and around Twin Peaks, I have no idea if this actually means anything. Maybe it’s just that all that light and color is sufficiently attention-grabbing for a feline. Maybe it’s that the presence of an insect-like creature, which has lured him to a screen before, was enough to attract his notice. But I’d like to think it’s a sign that Lynch, Frost & Co. are getting at something primal, something atavistic here. “Part Eight” is Twin Peaks at its most symbolic and opaque, and there seems something poetic and appropriate about that tack leaving me scratching my head but leaving my feline friend enraptured.

Mere summary doesn’t do the episode justice. It starts simply enough, with The Bad Dale and his treacherous associate Ray making their escape, until a mutual doublecross leads to Mr. C getting shot in the abdomen. Suddenly, a group of transparent cavemen-like creatures emerge and perform some sort of ritual, leading to the image of an orb with Bob’s face on it emerging from the wound, which rightfully freaks the hell out of Ray. He seems to confirm that it’s Phillip Jeffries who wanted Mr. C dead, and despite his injuries, Mr. C arises and seems to enter a trance-like state.

And then we flash back to a nuclear test in 1945 and all hell breaks loose.

I mean that more literally than it sounds. On the one hand, it is the point where the episode stops being a somewhat cryptic but mostly followable story about an inevitable Cooper vs. Cooper spiritual tango in the present day, and turns into a tone poem full of visual metaphor and arresting images and Lynch at his art film zenith. There’s shades of Stanley Kubrick (2001 is an easy touchstone but one that fits), of Don Hertzfeldt (one of Lynch’s greatest inheritors), of Terrence Mallick (Tree of Life loomed large in my mind during many sequences), and even Tim Burton (the black and white art deco look with The Giant’s space) here, all stitched together with Lynch’s trademark surreal flair.

But on the other hand, I think this is meant to be Bob’s origin story, a story about the birth of evil, or at least a particular kind of evil, in the modern world. If there are two consistent themes to Twin Peaks, they’ve been The Evil That Men Do and The Importance and Corruption Of Innocence. That provides our best key to understanding what Lynch is trying to say here, and suggests that to the extent there is one meaning or point to be gleaned from this outré outing, it’s one of the emergence of a particular sort of evil, but also of the preservation of a pure innocent good, and the cycle that’s raged between them for decades if not eons.

If I were to get overly literal about it (something I imagine Lynch would blanche at), I’d suggest the “plot” of this episode is this. A nuclear explosion, and the awful destructive power that comes with it, created Bob, or at least rendered him unto this mortal coil. With that came these minions, the dark cavemen-like creatures who stand for dark forces and, it should be noted, congregate around a convenience store, not unlike the one Mike and Bob supposedly lived above.

In response, The Giant, possibly residing in The White Lodge, gave up a part of himself, some divine spark or essence of purity, and sent it to Earth, to create a counterweight to such evil. That found its place within the young and pure and good, like the young woman listening to her radio, like the little boy struck by Richard Horne’s truck, like Laura Palmer. It is the elemental battle between good and evil, the one that Lynch and Frost have been fascinated by since the beginning, and we’re meant to see where it starts, at least for the purposes of Twin Peaks.

And yet there’s so much more to the episode than just piecing the puzzle together. There is so much symbolism at play here beyond simply figuring out how this fits into the story. For one thing, apart from any particular intention or specific interpretation, Lynch and his team just create an engrossing series of images. The slow swell of the mushroom cloud, the unnerving stop motion fade-in-and-fade-out of the minions, the swirl of colors and sounds as the camera dives into the tumult, the black and white splendor and forced perspective of The Giant’s realm, all create visuals that captive man and beast alike, that provoke feelings and emotional responses, something that carries even if the firm definition of what we’ve witnessed is unclear.

But there’s more direct points to be taken too, I think. It’s hard not to drift back to Braid, a video game by Jonathan Blow, who explicitly cited Lynch as an influence. He used the theme and imagery of nuclear bombs as a metonym for self-destruction, for something unyielding and alienating and the fruit of myopic obsession. I imagine Lynch is working in a similar vein, showing us Bob emerging from the use of a weapon of unimaginable desolation, a turning point in the transition to modernity, which suddenly gave humanity the power of self-annihilation.

It is from this that the great evil of Twin Peaks emerges, and it evinces the sense that Lynch & Frost see the advent of the nuclear bomb as something that took the world out of balance, that set evil upon the world with a new strength, a new ability to wound and wither and weaken.

And yet, it’s not the only sight of evil we see here. It’s telling that when we see the cavemen creatures begin their reign of terror, they hit a small town that feels like a 1950s version of Twin Peaks. There is a man, not unlike Big Ed, working in his gas station/fixit shop. There is a diner, run by a 1950s equivalent of Norma, one of the anchor spots of Twin Peaks. And there are young people courting, leaving one relationship and starting another, one of the core leitmotifs of the show’s original run.

The opacity of the images leads my mind to wander to other works, and I think of Battlestar Galactica refrain of “This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.” Or perhaps it’s better to go with The Giant’s “It’s happening again.” Lynch seems to suggest a cycle, that Twin Peaks isn’t the first town to be corrupted by Bob’s brand of evil, that the grim particulars of Laura Palmer’s death in a quiet little burg are a symptom, not a cause, of a greater affliction that started here and has come back and again and again.

It’s striking, too, that the caveman creature, beyond simply crushing skulls with the trademark riveting and unnerving combination of imagery and sound design that Lynch is known for, sends his message and exerts his will via the radio, using the same sort of electrical wires than stand-in for mystical happenings in Lynch & Frost’s universe. He speaks of a white horse (an image we already know) dark within, suggesting a blackness beneath the pleasing surface, and uses this mechanism to communicate the idea.

There’s been a vague sense of an examination of the effect of mass media in “The Return.” Its opening chapter featured a young couple staring at an empty box, waiting for something to happen, and meeting a brutal end. Here too, the people in the 1950s town passively fill their lives with the sounds coming from those old radios, ones that perhaps has a connection to the similar-looking devices that populate The Giant’s home, and end up worse for wear.

Taking my interpretive guise at its most grandiose, I’d suggest Lynch is suggesting mass media as a means of corruption. He and Frost and their collaborators are intimating that the innocence of those times (notably, the times that make up the childhoods of Lynch, born in 1946, and Frost, born in 1953), were combatted by the ability to reach millions of people, and the majesty that comes with that, succumbing or at least being available to, those who would use it to denigrate and corrode the good.

I’m not suggesting Lynch and Frost are about to go start picketing with the Parents Television Council or anything, but there’s a real sense that something idyllic is lost, or at least has to struggle against, the advent of our awesome, horrible destructive power, and a new medium that could be used to reach people, but also bring them down.

There is, however, a small hope. Again, call it the spark of the divine, the essence of good, or just another golden pebble to match the one Mike pockets early on, but in this, it emerges into something that calls to mind our ancestors crawling out of the sea. Some essential humanity still exists, still finds it home in the pure and good, and raises the attentions of feline Twin Peaks watchers.

Maybe this is all nonsense. Maybe I’m grasping at straws and twisting and bending intentionally impressionistic and surreal images into some contrived, literal meaning. I don’t know for sure what Lynch and Frost intended with this sequence, and given that their prone to keep mum about the intended meaning of their work, I’m not sure we’ll ever hear a definitive answer.

But it speaks to the level that Lynch operates on that it still provokes a reaction, that it still makes you wonder and furrow your brow and respond to the thing. After spending nearly forty hours visiting Twin Peaks via the current mass medium du jour, I’ve found Lynch more a crafter of moods than a teller of stories, more an artist whose medium is sentiment and theme than someone who can craft a compelling narrative. “Part Eight” is the peak of this tack, of the only semi-scrutable collection of scenes that evoke a feeling more than they guide you along a particular path. But it gets your attention, man or animal, and that makes it valuable, fascinating, and above all, unique.

[7.3/10] If the first six installments of the show were about reintroducing this world, lingering in the details, and setting everything up, then the seventh was about actually moving the plot forward, delivering a few real answers, and keeping things moving. I imagine this will be the episode that most old school Twin Peaks fans enjoy the most of the show’s opening third or so, since it feels the most like what the show used to be.

That means we spend the first third or so of the episode in Twin Peaks itself, following where Hawk’s discovery leads Sheriff Frank, and checking in on a number of old faces. It didn’t do much for me, but the back and forth between Ben and Jerry Horne over Jerry being lost feels like the sort of quirk and comedy Lynch & Frost used to spin back in the 90s. We also get Deputy Andy on the trail of Richard Horne, which means Richard is probably off scot free.

On the other side of the coin, there’s something undeniably warm and sweet about Sheriff Frank’s skype session with Doc Hayward. Sure, it too advances the plot, letting us know that Doc saw Mr. C sneaking out of the hospital back in the day (where Audrey was in a coma!). But more than that, it works in parallel with Dianne’s pronouncement in this episode, that Doc saw that it wasn’t the Dale Cooper he’d known, and just feels authentically like a nice conversation between old friends. There’s a homespun charm to the conversation between the old sheriff and the old doctor.

(Warren Frost joins Catherine E. Coulson and Miguel Ferrer who seemed to live just long enough to reprise their roles in this revival, and if I were a more superstitious man, I’d say there’s some providence there.)

It all seems to be setting up Sheriff Frank coming to believe that the Cooper out and about in the world is not The Good Dale. To that end, Hawk’s discovery turns out to be not only the missing pages from Laura Palmer’s diary, but the ones where she wrote down Annie’s warning from Fire Walk with Me. It’s enough for him to call his brother Harry (who sounds worse for wear). Again, I’m impressed at how much continuity Lynch & Frost are playing with here, making meaningful follow-ups to things they set up decades ago.

The episode also closes in Twin Peaks, in one of those “this is more for local color than for plot advancement, and you either like it or you don’t.” Ben Horne and Ashley Judd have romantic tension around his office, while they try to locate an electric hum, the sort that tends to signify spiritual happenings in Lynchland. After a moment of letting it hang in the air, Judd goes home to her sick husband whom she fights with. Seems like the show’s going for a “exhausted by caring for a loved one at home and so finds solace in relationships at work” type of storyline, which didn’t do much for me here. But again, these sorts of local diversions are par for the course for Twin Peaks.

But apart from Twin Peaks, the story is advancing as well. As mentioned before, Diane meets with The Bad Dale face-to-face and concludes it’s not really him, confirming Gordon and Albert’s suspicions that there’s something missing “in here.” Laura Dern’s performance is a little overblown for my preferences, but I like the idea that she is pissed off at the FBI and anyone associated with it, drinking and smoking for comfort, and above all not in a great place. My pet theory is that The Bad Dale did something to her that started her down a bad path of disillusionment, and while the execution leaves something to be desired, the idea of her as this “tough cookie” lashing out at all these folks associated with her old life is an interesting one.

We also get The Bad Dale’s great escape. I like the vagueness of his references to Mr. Strawberry and “dog legs.” It adds a cryptic menace to these unspoken events, and the Warden’s reaction to Mr. C’s calm-voiced threats and demands tells us all we need to know. The Bad Dale is back on the road, and the smart money says he’s on a collision course with The Good Dale.

The Good Dale, however, is looking like less of a pushover by the episode. While a visit from the local cops (including David Koechner!) offers another opportunity for Janey-E to stand up for her husband even when she’s exasperated with him, Catatonic Coop gets his own moment in the sun.

When the small man who took out Lorraine last episode comes at him with a gun, Cooper moves his wife aside and disarms the little person before he can do any damage, receiving an assist from The Arm who tells him to squeeze the little man’s hand off the weapon. It evokes two notions: one, that once again, there is still part of the full-fledged Dale Cooper buried somewhere in Dougie, and two, that the denizens of The Lodge are still looking out for The Good Dale, trying to keep him out of trouble.

But there’s a third player to be concerned with as we seem headed for a Dale-on-Dale rumble. As the young military woman goes to investigate the mysterious murder scene that kicked off the revival, she uncovers a startling revelation (well, two to be more precise). The body that the local forensics team found belongs to none other than Major Briggs, and it’s the body of a man in his forties, suggesting that the good Major was stuck in the Lodge or regenerated there or some mumbo jumbo happened before he was pulled out and beheaded like this.

And there’s a mysterious figure, kept in the background and producing that same electric hum stalking the floor of the morgue that the young military woman is investigating. Who could it be? My money’s on Phillip Jeffries, but who knows.

Overall, it’s one of the most answer-filled and plot-moving episodes of the revival, and hell, the whole show, which ought to please some folks who felt like Lynch & Frost were spinning their wheels. There wasn’t much as transcendent or moving or jaw-dropping like there has been in prior episodes (though the Frank/Doc Hayward conversation comes close) but it certainly advances the ball.

(Oh yeah, what's with Jacques Renalt seemingly having survived his incident with Leland and going back to the Road House to ply his usual trade? Identical twin cousin? Wouldn't be the first time Twin Peaks has tried to pull that.)

[6.7/10] One of the major criticisms about J.K. Rowling’s writing in the Harry Potter series was that she felt the need to describe every instance of her characters walking down a hallway or going up some stairs rather than just letting the audience pick up that Harry & Co. were moving from place to place. Sometimes, that’s what Twin Peaks feels like, where we spend five minutes watching Cooper scribble on an insurance form, or what feels like an endless amount of time with some random drug dealer flipping a coin around, or needing to see Carl (Harry Dean Stanton) drive from one place to another. It feels like wheel-spinning, like indulgence, like an effort to elevate the quotidian that forgets to be interesting.

And then it all comes together. Carl sits on a bench, seemingly resigned to the end of his life and wondering why he’s still around. He watches a young woman playing something like tag with her son. And then the poor boy is run over by the man who took the drugs from the random dealer (credited as Richard Horne, who looks like a cross between Matthew McConaughey and the “Dude You’re Getting a Dell” guy) in a freak confluence of events, and it’s absolutely heartrending.

Now maybe that’s a cheat from Lynch & Co. Maybe entirely divorced from all the setup, all those interminable scenes that feel like the Twin Peaks creative team screwing with the audience, the mere fact that a young child, in the midst of a joyful scene with his loving mother, meets a senseless end would tug at our heartstrings no matter what preceded it. But it gives a sense that whether we knew it or not, all of that boring setup was leading to this horrible, transcendent moment.

And that’s really all that I can hope for from Twin Peaks, in its new or its old formulation. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think much of even its lauded original run is dreck. But every once in a while, a confluence of scenes, of moments, culminates into something transcendent, something that makes you take notice and realize that amid the opacity and convoluted qualities of the show, there’s still something incredible in the offing when the conditions are right.

Which is to say that I have little idea where the show is going with Albert meeting Dianne (Laura Dern with a platinum bob). I have little idea what the junkie mom screaming “one one nine” is building toward. I have only the vaguest knowledge why we spend so much time on Heidi, the giggling waitress at the Double R Diner, or what the deal with the random drug dealer and his seemingly magic coin is, or why we get another scene of Frank Truman’s wife with explanation that their son committed suicide. But all I can do is hope that it falls into the half of the show with a plan and a purpose that will become clear once everything is laid out, and result in something magical.

Because the scene with Carl is pretty magical. It’s interesting that Carl is one of the characters Lynch brings back and gives a pretty meaningful role in this episode. It’s striking how much The Return feels like as much if not more of a continuation of things set up in Fire Walk with Me as it does of the events in the original Twin Peaks series. (See also, the shot of that electric pole.) I’m sketchy on how far Deer Meadow is supposed to be from Twin Peaks, or where exactly Carl is when he witnesses these grisly events, but the connection gives it some extra force.

Carl’s words to the agents played by Chris Isaak and Keifer Sutherland in Fire Walk with Me stand out -- this is a man who’s “been places.” The fact that despite his apparent fatalism, he wanders into the street to comfort the grieving mother, and then sees what appears to be the boy’s soul or essence floating up into the ether, leaves an impression. This deadened man can still feel something, can still be moved, is still in touch, for better or for worse, with the parts of the world than tend toward the metaphysical more than the physical, and it causes him to be more in touch with his fellow man. I don’t know if it’s worth all that somnambulant build to that point, but by god, it’s a hell of a sequence.

It’s not all following up on Fire Walk with Me though. The iconic transition shot of a traffic light returns, and with it, we seem to get the payoff from the Log Lady’s portent that something was missing having to do with Hawk’s heritage. He finds a toilet stall built by a company with a Native American name, and one of the bolts holding it together is missing. Some deft crowbarring (and rebuffing of the cartoonishly jerkish Chad) allows Hawk to find what I imagine are the missing pages from Laura Palmer’s diary she mentioned to Harold. It’s a reasonably satisfying conclusion to that part of the mystery.

We also get more movement on the Dougie storyline. Again, I love the absurd comedy of existentialist commentary of his story, which feels like something Vonnegut or Heller would come up with. The fact that this catatonic man is caught up in this intersecting web of attempts on his life and trouble at work and family struggles with no one really seeming to notice that he’s not right in the head (his wife seems to suggest this isn’t unusual?) is out there. I’ll admit to wishing the show would get on with it already, but I still like the premise.

The actual developments are pretty simple. MIKE offers another warning to Good Coop, telling him to wake up and implying that if he dies, The Bad Dale wins and gets to stay outside the Red Room. Some supernatural force (Mike? Or just the power of light?) guides The Good Dale to make scribbles on his case files from work and expose some horrifying thing to his boss that assures his place at the company. Again, there’s a commentary there that people will overlook any eccentricity or clear plea for help if you’re useful to them.

On the more dangerous side of things, Dougie’s wife Janey proves herself a tough cookie, standing up to the bookies trying to strongarm Dougie for his gambling debts. (It probably goes without saying, but Naomi Watts is absolutely owning a kind of strange role and delivering a performance with real conviction here). The police are investigating Dougie’s blown up car, with a license plate likely sending them Coop’s way soon. And somebody (presumably The Bad Dale) signaled Jimmy Barrett to cue a little person with an ice pick to take out Dougie a woman whom, if I’m not mistaken, was trying to kill Dougie herself. It’s a little confusing, but presumably fits somehow into the intersection between mob operators attempting to rough up Dougie for his gambling debts and The Bad Dale trying to take him out so he can stay in the physical realm.
There’s a lot of strangeness and confusing elements here. (A shock for Twin Peaks, I know.) Some of it feels like a waste of time. Some of it feels like oddness for the sake of oddness. Some of it feels like David Lynch twiddling his thumbs on the screen. But some moments, where Twin Peaks delves back into its vaunted themes of the metaphysical interacting with the everyday, and innocence corrupted and destroyed by the evil in this world, it can still hit something transcendent, striking, and good.

[7.2/10] Definitely some good stuff here. An interesting theme of family being important. One the one hand, the fakeout among the Starks (at least Arya and Sansa) is that they're at odds, but it turns out that it's only a ruse and despite their differences they're still sticking together and care for one another. On the other, there's the Lannisters, where Cersei feigns having a change of heart thanks to Tyrion, and leaves Jaime in the dark when it comes to her ruse, showing that despite pretending to the contrary, they're not on the same page and it tears them apart. To boot, you have Theon finding the road to recovery from receiving absolution from his brother Jon, and resolving to rescue his sister Yara, making sense of his shared Stark and Greyjoy heritage. And Jon is revealed (in a stolid infodump) to have shared heritage as well, being half-Stark and half-Targaryan, whcih is underwhelming considering we pretty well already knew that, and makes the love scene between Jon and Aunt Dany pretty awkward. (Though again, it's pretty mild by this show's standard for incest).

While getting pretty much all the major players in one place has a certain thrill, watching Littlefinger get his comeuppance after causing so much trouble should be satisfying, and watching an undead dragon take down the wall works well enough as spectacle, somehow this episode was still underwhelming as a season finale. It's hard to put a finger on why, but something just felt a little off or perfunctory about it all. Still, some great one-on-one moments and interesting thematic material to make it solid if not quite spectacular as a capstone to the show's penultimate season.

[9.0/10] I don’t know how Rick and Morty keeps doing it, but somehow the show continually finds new ways to combine insane sci-fi weirdness with deep and meaningful character introspection, and I can’t get enough of it.

At the same time the show crafts and adventure where Rick and Jerry turn a visit to a resort and theme park into a snowballing bout of murder attempts and changing alliances, the show also explores both the strain Rick placed on Beth and Jerry’s marriage, and Jerry’s own unassumingly weasely ethos.

The former comes in the form of an inventive resort setting with an “immortality field.” Maybe I’m just not deep enough into sci-fi, but I love the concept as a setting that not only makes for a natural place Rick would take Jerry (at Morty’s behest, naturally) but creates an interesting conundrum for the plotters trying to take out Rick. (Plus it creates one dark as hell joke from two little kids playing together.) The show certainly has its fun with the concepts, and setting a murder attempt there on a roller coaster that dips just outside the field is superb.

The great escape part is fun too. Everything from another alien forest full of crazy creatures, to a cruise line that makes dangerous people dumber rather than preventing them from boarding is inventive as all get out. Plus, the “time-preserver” sequence is the sort of Lynchian madness we haven’t seen much of from the show, but which featured some insanely creative sequences as well.

And in the midst of all this, there’s a great exploration both of who Jerry is, how Rick sees him, and what Rick’s done to his life. The high point of that is Rick’s speech to Jerry that his son-in-law plays it off like he’s prey but that he’s really a predator, attaching himself to people and bringing him down. It makes sense that Rick would see him that way, and it’s revealing of Rick that as much as he pretends his reasons for busting on Jerry are because he gets in the way, there’s a part of him that does it to defend his daughter, whose life he thinks Jerry ruined. Rick caring about things always manifests in weird ways, but that what makes him interesting as a character.

Hell, I like Jerry, and there’s something about a guy whose only crime is being “unremarkable” being treated so shabbily by pretty much everyone that feels wrong. But he’s also not a great guy himself -- a small, petty man as Principal Skinner might say. Still, his indecision about whether to let Rick die, coupled with his feelings about Rick squeezing him out and hurting his marriage, make for very rich, complex material in a pairing we don’t get all that often.

The B-story is not nearly as deep, but pretty darn great too. It has its own spate of weirdness, with Summer trying to make her breasts larger with one of Rick’s transforming rays and ending up gigantic and, thanks to Beth’s assistance, also inside out. That, coupled with the “tech support” guys being three little dudes who live in the machine and trick her into letting them out, makes the science fiction-y and comedy sides of the story spectacular. (The same goes for Beth’s bizarre “hoof collage”)

But there’s also some good character stuff there too. I’m kind of loving the direction the show’s taking Morty this season. He’s showing his own dark side (see how he treats Ethan), and he’s become the character on the show with the most perspective, being able to identify how his mom is acting like her father in her refusal to ask for help and arrogance in her belief that she can just solve the problem without engaging emotionally. Beth turning herself gigantic and inside out to comfort Summer about her body issues is a bizarre but hilarious way to resolve the story to boot.

Overall, another stellar outing from Rick and Morty that makes me lament we only get five more weeks (maybe?) of this awesome show.

[6.8/10] When I made my list of favorite Twin Peaks characters for Twitter (because it’s 2017 and apparently that’s something we do now), I realized that, save for Audrey, they were all G-Men. I don’t know why, but the agents from afar were characters I was better able to connect with than the local color. Maybe it’s just the performers, maybe it’s the fact that they tended to be more adjacent to the soap opera nonsense that dominated much of the original show than a part of it, or maybe it’s that these figures had a sense of humor apart from the “hey isn’t that kind of goofy and weird” that tended to dominate the show.

Whatever the reason, they always stood out, and so an episode like this one, essentially dominated by Cooper (in various forms), Gordon Cole, Albert, and Denise(!) was, for the most part, right up my alley. I’ve read some grousing from various fans that the revived Twin Peaks hasn’t spent enough time in Twin Peaks, but from my perspective, this is the balance the show should always have had (if not even more slanted toward the agents).

Full disclosure: I cheered out loud when Denise made her entrance, though I have mixed feelings about the scene itself. There’s something a little too self-congratulatory about it, particularly with Lynch himself playing a character in the scene. Denise is a little too grateful to Cole and a bit caricatured, and Cole a bit too self-justifying. But “fix your hearts or die” is a great turn of phrase, Duchovny is still a superb performer, and Lynch’s heart is clearly in the right place, so it gets a pass from me.

What doesn’t get a pass, however, are the scenes we do get back in Twin Peaks, which seem interminable. Lucy and Andy’s shtick was pretty tired 25 years ago, and now it just feels like a trying clownshow. That said, I love the fact that their son is Michael Cera. I laughed out loud, because his awkwardness makes perfect sense for the offspring of those two characters. I didn’t care for his performance though. He seemed to have the wrong energy for the show, and his little monologue about “paying his respects” went on forever.

(Here’s where we go on an “Andrew’s Reaching With This One” detour. My pet theory is that Wally is Lynch and Frost parodying James Hurley. Wally has the leather jacket, the motorcycle, the criss-crossing the country, and the faux-poetic but mostly painful dialogue delivered in a faux-soulful but mostly painful way. Maybe I’m giving too much credit to what would otherwise be a pretty rough performance from Cera, but maybe it’s so bad because it’s replicating/poking fun at something that was so bad in the first place.)

Really, all the scenes with the original players at the Sheriff’s office went on forever. We get to see Bobby again, and learn that rather than going into business with Ben Horne, he himself became a cop. Oh yeah, and he’s still a terrible actor. I mean, holy cow, I thought that maybe in the previous quarter-century, Dana Ashbrook would have had some life experience to draw on to make his tearing up at the picture of Laura Palmer even the slightest bit convincing, but nope. Same ol’ Bobby. Same ol’ overwrought, unconvincing shtick.

But hey, at least there’s the great Robert Forster, of Jackie Brown fame, to play Harry Truman’s brother and substitute sheriff Frank Truman. He brings a certain world-weary gravitas to the role. As much as the return visits to the sheriff’s office to see the same reheated comic stylings I disdained in original recipe Twin Peaks doesn’t do much for me, but I like the sense, mostly delivered by Forster, that there is, to be too cute about it, a new sheriff in town, who seems to be suffering these fools gladly out of a sense of obligation while the other members of the department do the real work. I’m at least curious as to what the deal with Harry is, so that’s something. Otherwise, the portions of the episode actually set in Twin Peaks are a bust.

Even the parts with Gordon, Albert, and Tammy going to meet The Bad Dale are not all that great. For one thing, I sort of revile the Tammy character. Her performance isn’t very good, the cinematography male gazes the hell out of her, and she seems to only exist to ooze sexiness, which seems churlish at best. The scene where the G-Men talk to Bad Coop is strange, but more in a stilted way than in a cool Red Room sort of way. Maybe that’s intentional, to help convey that something is off and it’s palpable to Gordon and Albert, but the scene goes on a long time without much happening.

At least we get some interesting plot hints out of the deal. The notion that Albert gave Philip Jeffries some information to pass on to Bad Coop since he thought Coop was in trouble, that it led to the death of one of their agents, and that Bad Coop is trying to get out of this jam by pretending he’s been working undercover is an interesting one. Like most things involving Twin Peaks, I don’t know where they’re going with it, but it has promise.

I’ve said before that I wish there was an easier way to distinguish between a middling grade that means “mediocre throughout” from one that means “half brilliant” and “half terrible.” That’s this episode to a tee, because while much of the material here is questionable, everything focusing on The Good Dale as “Dougie” is just amazing.

Watching the stupefied Good Dale wander around the casino, his neighborhood, his home, and have no one recognize or acknowledge that he’s in real trouble is just an amazing choice. There is something genuinely Kafkaesque about it, and the idea that you have someone who has the mind of a child at the moment, who has clearly suffered something traumatic, and yet because everyone is just worried about the effect his actions will have on them, nobody helps them.

It’s an incredibly effective commentary on human nature. The casino owner, the limo driver, the old acquaintance (Ethan Suplee) and Dougie’s wife (Naomi Watts!) don’t make any effort to get him the help he clearly needs! Everyone’s just playing their role, making threats and demands and assurances to this guileless naif of an individual who is so clearly not all there.

It’s a brilliantly constructed set of scenes, ones where The Good Dale’s ability to repeat things drives just enough of the action to get him home and move the story forward. I’m going to run out of ways to compliment MacLachlan’s performance here, but the way he crafts this persona that is so vacant and lost, but with little peaks of the old Coop rising up here and there, is just incredible. And I love the callbacks and visual echoes that help bring those about, from Cooper’s awkward thumbs up with his son (a la Senor Droolcup), his look in the mirror (a la the final moments of the original series), and of course, his damn fine cup of coffee.

But what’s really striking, and what makes the inherent critique of how everyone treats Dougie so damning, is that the only person who seems to actually see Dougie, to realize that he needs help and respond to him in a non-self serving way is a child. Unlike everyone else in Dougie’s orbit, Sonny Jim has no agenda, which means he doesn’t project worries or imagined threats or his own crap on this man who is practically a blank slate. Instead, Sonny Jim just guides his dad, puts syrup on his plate, and actually responds to the man.

It’s half a comedy sketch from something like Animaniacs, and half an existentialist short story, and I love every minute of it. Unlike in the rest of the episode, the awkwardness of this diminished individual stumbling around, nigh-mindlessly repeating whatever’s said to him, and having the world plot and proceed like he isn’t behaving like some kind of stroke victim, only heightens the tragedy and absurdity of the situation. Separate and apart from Twin Peaks, it’s just this brilliant little vignette that could absolutely work on its own and which puts Dale Cooper in the company of Gregor Samsa.

But that tends to be what Twin Peaks is for me, even at its best. Some brilliant thing at the center, surrounded by tons of corny or dull crud that blunts its impact. It’s a thrill to see the G-Men back in action again, and the Cooper-focused portions of the story are, as usual, tops, but the further the show pulls away from that, the more it devolves into the same shlocky meh-ness that put me off the show originally.

[7.2/10] Yeah, so, I’m going to stick with my tack from the prior episode and say that I have zero idea how to rate this episode. Which, I think, is good? Again, it provokes a reaction, and while I don’t know what to make of it, that’s still a good thing, especially compared to original recipe Twin Peaks which typically just left me rolling my eyes or putting my face in my hands.

The story of the episode, to the extent there is one, seems to be about The Good Dale returning to the real world, and The Bad Dale trying to stay put. Much of that is depicted in as surreal and outré a fashion as Lynch normally musters, that only really becomes enjoyable 10-15 minutes into the episode.

The opening portion of the episode, the one centered on Good Dale being stuck in some metal apartment floating in space, didn’t do much for me. Normally the symbolic and more high concept parts of the show are the ones that work for me, but this felt too inscrutable for even my tastes. There’s a certain amount of nicely disorienting style to the transparent quality of Cooper looking out from the balcony, or the stop and start movements, or the Pan’s Labyrinth-esque scare of the faceless woman gesturing to him (who’s maybe the creature that attacked the kids in the first episode?), but something about it just felt off and too opaque even for Twin Peaks.

I don’t know where Cooper was (some weigh station between the lodge and reality? Or some place cooked up by Bad Dale?). I don’t know how he got back. I don’t know who that woman that kind of looked like Audrey or Josie from the back was. And I don’t know what that giant face (Maj. Briggs?) saying “blue rose” (a la Fire Walk with Me) is all about. Maybe it’ll be explained later, but in the here and now, it was a big heap of confusing nothingness.

Thankfully, once Good Coop started to come back, the episode more or less found its rhythm. I appreciated the intensity of Bad Coop driving in his sportscar through the desert, trying to ensure the black lodge can’t get a hold of him. It’s great acting from Kyle MacLachlan, showing Evil Coop’s delirium. I believe he threw up creamed corn, which, as usual, has special meaning in Twin Peaks, and I wonder if the smell that the highway patrol can’t stand is burning motor oil a la Bob. Whatever the literal interpretation of the scene, I like the way it conveys the sense of visceral revulsion and being overpowered.

By the same token, I like the advent of “Dougie.” My interpretation is that Dougie was some kind of clone or duplicate or something that Evil Cooper created so that the black lodge would take it instead of him, presumably using the ring. It’s an interesting, if confusing idea that, true to the show, raises more questions than it answers. But there too, Dougie suffering at the onset of the change (replete with arm going numb, hello again Fire Walk with Me) is a nicely intense scene.

And the coup de grace (no pun intended) is Good Coop coming back. I really like that either because of Evil Coop’s shenanigans with the Fake Coop, or because of the interference from the box and room in New York City, or some other thing we don’t know yet, the Good Cooper is in a stupor, childlike, and imitative.

Again, it’s superb acting from Kyle MacLachlan. In particular, it’s an incredible physical performance. His halting walk, his blank gaze, his childlike repetition of what he sees and hears are all just perfect. It’s a convincing portrayal of a man who’s been completely wiped and is rebuilding himself one tenuous thought at the time. I sometimes tire of Lynch’s overly long scenes, but just letting MacLachlan command the screen with his strange but sympathetic portrayal of a full grown man with the expressive abilities of a toddler really works.

I’m definitely repeating myself, but I also don’t know what to make of his incredible luck at the casino via seeing the glimpses of the lodge above certain slot machines. Maybe it’s somebody in the lodge guiding him to help? Maybe he just has an aura about him? Whatever it is, the scene works for the strangeness of it, the supernatural clicking into place as he channels this strange energy back into the real world.

And it gives us an opportunity to see Gordon Cole and Albert again! A new (to us) agent named Tammy slinks around quite a bit and also reports what happened in New York City in the last episode to them. Presumably it’s a Blue Rose case or something, but there’s no time because they get a call that Coop’s been found and they’re off to go see him! It’s definitely a tease at the end of the episode, but it’s an inviting one. It’s nice to see the pair again (though Albert, on of my favorites from the original, sounds pretty damn different), and the prospect of them reuniting with Cooper is an exciting one.

Otherwise, we get a bizarrely long scene of Dr. Jacoby spray painting shovels gold. I don’t need to know why right now necessarily, but the episode spends an awfully long time on seeing every detail of it for no apparent reason.

We also get another scene of Hawk, Lucy, and Andy trying to figure out, per the Log Lady, “what’s missing.” The pacing of the scene is very awkward and stilted, but there’s a few funny moments. In particular, Hawk seeming to consider for a brief moment whether the chocolate bunny has anything to do with his heritage got a laugh out of me. But for the most part, it was an odd, not particularly entertaining interlude. (I forgot to mention that Good Coop being whisked along in the revolving door was some of the funniest physical comedy I’ve seen in a while).

Overall, I don’t really know how to feel about this one. I find myself excited by the plot of it, which is unusual for me and Twin Peaks. The idea of Good Coop coming back and Evil Coop resisting is a compelling one, and Gordon and Albert reuniting with Coop is very promising. I also love Kyle MacLachlan here, doing something amazing and weird with the character. But there’s a lot of strange, go-nowhere or opaque portions of the episode that just didn’t click with me. Once again, I don’t know what to make of most of this stuff, or even if I liked it or not, but there’s something kind of cool about the show existing in that zone of twilight, to where I don’t even know what I think about it.

(As a personal aside, Mrs. Bloom didn’t feel the same way, and gave up on the revival about 3/4 of the way through this one, with an amusing and memorable irateness at its very existence.)

[7.8/10] It’s occasionally hard to know how to unpack an episode of Rick and Morty. The show has so many layers to it, of irony, of parody, of character, of story, of theme, that’s hard to separate each into discrete groups and consider what exactly the episode is trying to say. I consider it a feature, not a bug, but it does sometimes make the show hard to write about.

That said, there’s a few things (I think) we can take away from the episode. The first is that, as evidenced by this episode and the series finale of Community, Dan Harmon does not particularly care for The Avengers and its related films, now the baby of his old friends The Russo Brothers. “Vindicators 3” does a nice job of parodying these films with the Vindicators themselves, poking fun at oddly specific or impractical problems with convenient or unnecessary solutions, and through Rick more directly commenting on them.

The show has fun playing around with colorful superheroes and mixing them into R&M’s sad sack world where people more readily die and friends and families are more apt to turn on one another than be united by the latest adventure. Bringing in Gillian Jacobs certainly helps the proceedings, and the escalation as the heroes keep getting picked off in Drunk Rick’s amusing Saw-like series of death rooms fits the weird creativity of the show.

Now I’m a fan of the MCU movies, so I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the criticisms of the episode, but I also think that’s kind of the point. The mouthpiece of the show (and to some degree, it’s creators) is Rick, and while Rick rails away at the formulaicness and lack of complication to the Vindicators (and by extension, The Avengers), the show also acknowledges that everybody loves them and hates him, and that it’s not unfounded.

One thing I appreciate about this season of Rick and Morty is how the show’s been committed to exploring its protagonist as a bad guy, and filter it through the lens of the people around him coming to realize that. Morty is his companion through all this excitement (and his sandwich shop punch card to pick an adventure is a nice touch) and seeing Rick not only rain on his parade and excitement about working with The Vindicators, but realize that his grandfather is the one keeping him from more of these sorts of adventures, that he’s being treated as guilty by association, is a very interesting tack.

Hell, I love the fake out of this one, where the group supposes that Morty is the only thing Rick thinks is worthwhile about The Vindicators, and the episode plays up a tearful drunken confession, only to reveal that it’s Noob Noob, the Mr. Poopybutthole-esque underling at The Vindicators’ base, whom Rick was blubbering about. More and more, we’re getting indications that Morty’s questioning how much his grandfather cares about him, how much he wants this insane man to be in his life anymore, and I’m more more and intrigued by it.

Of course, the whole thing naturally (and amusingly) ends with a big party and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style rap about the heroes, but the scars are still there. As much as Rick derides The Vindicators (and by extension the du jour superhero movies) as insignificant relative to him and what he can do, they’re something that other people appreciate, something that makes him seem less uniquely brilliant and superlative, and maybe that’s what really bothers him. Rick is the type who always has to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, and Morty’s starting to realize he’s tired of it.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW DISCUSSES EVENTS FROM BOTH PT. 1 & PT. 2. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU’VE WATCHED BOTH EPISODES.

[7.0/10] So full disclosure, I have no idea how to rate or review this. The first two hours of the revived Twin Peaks are, for better and for worse, much like the old Twin Peaks. There are parts of it that are unbelievably scary, parts of it that are mind-numbingly boring, parts of it that are transcendent and surreal, parts of it that are stilted and dull, and parts of it that just leave you scratching your head. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it something else altogether? I don’t really know. A lot of that depends on where Lynch & Frost end up taking this over the course of the ensuing sixteen episode, much of which the first two installments of this revival season seem to be setting up.

So let’s start with the best part, and what was the best part of the original Twin Peaks -- the Red Room sequences.

There’s a very fanservice-y part of me that is just excited to see Cooper in that room again, sitting across from The Giant, being directed by MIKE, hearing the backwards talk and elegant sound design of the footsteps. It is all familiar, but less in a “hey remember this” sort of way, and more in a way that makes it cohesive (but still different) than what came before. As much as is mystifying about these first couple of episodes of Twin Peaks, I really respect Lynch and Frost for how much they commit to the continuity of their series here.

To that end, the pair sprinkle in little reminders. The episode opens with the “I’ll see you in 25 years” exchange and includes a flashback to Dale chasing his doppelganger around the Red Room. And the revival, admirably, sticks with the idea that the real dale, the “Good Dale” as Fire Walk with Me put it, has been stuck in the Black Lodge for the past 25 years, with the Evil Dale out and about and causing trouble in that time.

And in truth, as awful as it is, there’s something captivating about seeing McLachlan return to the role of Dale Cooper, but play him as a villainous badass rather than a clean cut do-gooder. The Evil Dale has shades of a Tarantino-esque character, wandering into faraway places, disabling rifle-wielding protectors with the flick of his wrist, strong-arming information out of his criminal compatriots, and all-in-all playing the disciplined but effective black hat that we never really saw with The Good Dale. Watch out for the bad fans on this one. (Is Twin Peaks the kind of show that’ll have those sorts of fans?)

But he’s contrasted with The Good Dale still stuck in the lodge. Again, it’s a thrill to see all those familiar faces, plying their usual mysterious trade, but with enough twists not to feel like a repeat. There is a gravity that comes from seeing Laura Palmer reenact Cooper’s famous dream a quarter-century later, telling Coop that it’s time for him to go. There’s a tragedy in seeing Leland Palmer again, still appearing stricken and guilt-ridden about his actions, trapped there just as long. I don’t know what to make of the fact that The Man From Another Place has “evolved” into a tree with a bulbous orb on top of it, or the return of the white horse, but it has meaning when we see Mike once more, invoking the “past or future” aphorism froms Fire Walk with Me to suggest that Good Dale may have a way back to the real world.

The mythology of it is intentionally and effectively fuzzy. Evil Coop is or was in contact with Philip Jeffries and now someone else who knows about the lodge and offers cryptic hints about Evil Cooper’s plan to avoid being sucked back there. There’s a disruption (from the box?) that brings Good Cooper down and out. Hawk goes back to Glastonberry Grove (on a tip from The Log Lady) and sees those famed curtains, flickering like fire. Much of it is opaque, but that part of the narrative has extra weight from picking up the threads that the television series and subsequent film left off.

Unfortunately, the rest of the glimpses we get of the world beyond Twin Peaks (and even within it) are rather hit and miss at best. There’s an extended sequence where Matthew Lillard plays a local principal named Bill who seems to be implicated in a gruesome murder. This seems to be the way the show is setting up a new murder mystery in the vein of the original Twin Peaks, with Bill claiming that it was all in a dream, suggesting that some Black Lodge possession is at play a la Leland Palmer. At the same time, there’s a series of locals cheating on each other, dealing with the out of town investigator, and trying to make sense of such a dark thing happening in their otherwise calm community, making the whole thing feel like Twin Peaks attempting to replay its past with variations on a theme in North Dakota.

That’s also where we get the biggest snootfuls of Lynch and Frost’s sense of humor, between a nosy neighbor who can’t work out the process to get the key to the dead woman’s apartment and Bill’s wife who complains about her husband being arrested because they have guests coming over for dinner. It doesn’t really work for me -- coming off more like “yeah, I can see how that would be funny” than anything that actually makes me laugh, but it’s true to Lynch’s M.O. so I expect partisans will be pleased.

There’s also a big glass box, being watched by cameras and local students at all times, that has some connection to the supernatural. This is probably a reach on my part, but it feels like Lynch’s commentary on television -- people staring blankly at a large box, categorizing the nothing, seemingly captivated by it. It puts me off a bit, but I’d interpret how long Lynch’s camera lingers on Sam, the watcher, dutifully performing his duties is meant as a layered, almost meta reflection of the audience doing the exact same thing at home. The fact that Cooper gets semi-trapped in there or something works as an added dimension, that Cooper was supposed to be in the lodge forever, or at least for a long time, but that the people watching, the people who kept waiting for something new to happen, brought him back and messed with the process.

But even just taking it as text, the scenes with the box provide the most suplerative non-Red Room scenes in the first two episodes. I’ll say this for Lynch, he may not always be my cup of tea in terms of crafting characters or telling stories, but he sure knows how to do horror right. There’s something that feels almost out of a slasher flick about the young kids about to have sex on the couch, when some creature from a different plane attacks and slaughters them. There’s something terrifying about the only vaguely formed, gray phase creature coming at them again and again as blood spurts everywhere. The sound and look of the scene conveys the terror expertly, and it almost makes up for all the doldrums the audience had to suffer to get there.

Along the way there’s other cryptic glimpses as different corners of the world. Jimmy Barrett (of Mad Men fame) is under somebody’s thumb in Las Vegas. Niles Crane’s former fiancee Mel is investigating the murder in South Dakota. And somebody, somewhere, wants Evil Cooper killed. There’s enough wisps and suggestions to keep the mystery-solver contingent of the Twin Peaks fanbase happy.

That just leaves Twin Peaks itself, which appears to have been left in some state of stasis. Dr. Jacoby is doing some work with shovels that requires deliveries out to his hut that are hard to make out. (There’s a recurring visual motif in the episode of figures being shot from far away which I can make neither head nor tails of). Ben and Jerry Horne are still running things at the Great Northern, though both are practically unrecognizable, with Ben enlisting Ashley Judd as an assistant and Jerry (legally) selling pot and pot accessories. James Hurley and Shelly Johnson still hang out at the Roadhouse and weird bands still play there. And The Log Lady is still calling the sheriff’s office with strange messages from her log.

The sherrif’s office seems to have changed the least. Lucy (who’s barely aged a day) is still answering the phone in her usual manner, though she’s now married to Andy, who seems to have the same disposition he always did. They confirm both that Lucy had her baby, named Wally, who’s now 24 years old, and that they haven’t seen Cooper since before he was born. Truman is still the sheriff, but there’s two Sheriff Trumans, though neither is in. And Hawk is still the strong, silent type, not saying much but acting decisively. It’s like we never left, for better and for worse.

That’s pretty much what I have to say about the two-hour premiere for the Twin Peaks revival. The things that bugged me about the original show -- the stilted acting, the rough dialogue, the long go-nowhere scenes -- are still there (though they thankfully seem to have toned down the music a bit). The things that I liked about the original show -- the Red Room weirdness, its capacity for creating great horror, the striking performance from Kyle MacLachlan -- are there too.

You more or less get what you were promised here: a few answers, a lot more questions, and the style that Lynch and Frost delivered twenty-five years ago slickened up for the modern day. That means it’s still amazing at times, still an utter slog at times, but that with a quarter-century worth of mythmaking outside the show to contend with, Twin Peaks adds some intrigue and meaning to the events it depicts. I’m not ready to call it good yet (or at least not uniformly so) but it’s piqued my interest and provoked a response, which is more than enough for a show returning to the airwaves for the first time since 1991.

[9.5/10] So much to like about this one. The show is really moving at an impressive pace at this point, with events and aftershocks and reunions that would have taken entire seasons in prior years happening one right after another. But despite that, what I like about "Eastwatch" is that it features a lot of people reflecting and taking stock and worrying about what the future holds. For as much happens personally and in terms of setting the table for later events, this episode is kind of an inbetweener, one that moves our heroes and villains around before the next big event, but gets so much mileage out of the interactions and face-to-face meetings from the show's deep bench of characters.

In the big picture, that means that Dany and Cersei are likely to have an audience together, but for that to mean something, Jon and a motley crew of uneasy allies has to set out north of The Wall to retrieve a wight for proof of the oncoming invasion. That means that Dany and Cersei are willing to set aside hostilities, however temporarily or connivingly, and that Tyrion and Jaime get a tense but impactful reunion as well. It also means that we get a much tenderer reunion between Jorah and Dany, some tension between Arya and Sansa, and most notably, a tenuous union among Jon, Jorah, Tormund, The Hound, The Brotherhood Without Banners, and Gendry.

That's right! Gendry is back! And his repartee with Ser Davos, his instant rapport with Jon Snow, and his quick-thinking warhammer use with the Gold Cloaks makes for a fistpump-worthy return for King Robert's bastard. He's one of the last few major characters whom we haven't seen in ages, and it's a thrill of a return engagement from him.

But the thing I liked most about this episode is Tyrion's concerns about what kind of ruler he's backing. The moral and political questions involved in Dany turning the Tarlys to ash are many and thorny, but it's a very timely worry that a leader who's ready to easily threaten fiery death may very well be one who raises serious concerns. Varys's remembrance of his time serving the Mad King, and the way he left himself off the hook ethically for his complicity in the deaths of Aegon's "traitors" makes for an interesting counterpoint to the view of the bold leader we've come to appreciate over the course of the series.

On the whole, it's a stellar episode, filled with humor, character history, moral ambiguities, and the kind of high-minded reflection grounded in long-standing characterization that I really like. Best of the season so far.

[9.4/10] Really enjoyed this one. On the one hand, you have a just balls-to-the-walls Rick adventure. Him turning himself into a pickle, and having to climb to the top of the food chain by brain-licking his way to cockroach-based mobility, assembling a rat-based super-torso, and then make it out of the sewer is the kind of sci-fi weirdness I love from this show.

But then, Roiland & Harmon turn it up a notch, with Rick then finding his way inside some combination of Die Hard and Rambo, having to escape a secret and illegal compound run by a generic evil boss aided by a generic badass named “The Jaguar.” It’s the well-observed trope mashup and creativity that this show does well, mixed the inherent silliness that our hero is an ambulatory pickle. To top it off, it had the right details, like the enemy goons having superstitions about a pickle monster, and the Rube Goldberg traps Rick sets to defend itself.

The best part, though, is it’s not just empty violence or insanity for insanity stake. It’s a testament to how far Rick will go to avoid doing something he doesn’t want to do, particularly something he thinks is beneath him, and especially something he thinks might force him to confront the ways in which he’s created problems for his family.

Getting Susan Sarandon to play the counselor is a complete coup, and the writing is perfect, as Dr. Wong quickly teases out exactly what’s wrong with The Smiths’ family dynamic, Beth deflecting the real issue, and the kids being cautious but wanting to identify the problem. It’s the show coming clean about its psychological perspective on its characters, which could be a little too direct, but feels right with the tone of the episode.

After all, Beth idolizes her father and so justifies everything he does despite the fact that, as Dr. Wong points out, he doesn’t reward emotion or vulnerability and emotion and in fact punishes it, making Beth worried to call him to the carpet for anything lest he run away again. And Dr. Wong’s also right about Rick, the way he’s caught between his brilliant mind as a blessing and a curse and incapable of doing the work to be good or get better because it’s just that -- work, which bores him.

But what’s great and also terrible is how that accurate diagnosis doesn’t change anything. Morty and Summer both meekly suggest that the school-mandated session was helpful and they want to do it again, and Rick and Beth completely ignore them, the same way they ignore all their problems and opportunities to make things better, when their status quo is unpleasant but comfortable and more importantly familiar. It’s another episode that shows how well this show knows its characters and their hangups, while inserting fecophilia gags to lighten the tone, and a gonzo set of action sequences that actually manages to dovetail with the deeper, darker message of the episode.

It’s all part of the amazing balancing act that Rick and Morty pulls off on a weekly (or at least biannual) basis, and this installment stands out for its frankness about the problems facing two of its main characters, its creativity in dramatizing them, and the sadness of the rut they allow themselves to be stuck in, dragging poor Morty and Summer down with them. But hey, the Jaguar saves the day in the tag from the Con-Chair-To, so there’s hope yet!

[7.8/10] A lot of the first portion of the episode is a bit clunky, but I like the various reunions we get. Arya and Sansa are happy to see one another, and have common ground with long difficult journeys to get back home, but they're still very different people, and I appreciate the combination of warmth and distance between them. The same goes for Bran, who's full-blown Dr. Manhattan at his point, unable to emote or even really care about much from the present. And lord knows, Jon's reunion with Theon is, uh, tense. His business with Dany feels a little more convenient, with the cave drawings persuading her rather quickly (though there's still that whole "bending the knee thing" to contend with) and him being there just in time to give a tidy monologue about what Dany being a leader means.

Still, here it means her splitting the difference between trying a more humane method of conquest and just flying into King's Landing, dragons a'blazing, and melting the place down. She turns her ire onto Jaime's forces at Highgarden, blowing up his grain (and most of his men) to smithereens. It's one of the show's most thrilling action sequences, but also one of its most horrible. It's dramatic and exciting when dragon-backed Dothraki meet Lannister soldiers, but it's also something to recoil from when you see men burned to a crisp or screaming as they're consumed by flame. War is a terrible business, and as much drama and thrills as the show extracts from it, it also gives us people we care about on both sides and horrible ends for so many, that makes us, like Dickon Tarly, question how "glorious" it truly is.

That reuninion of the Starks after so long, after so many seasons was so rewarding. And yet they all clearly showed the distance that has grown in between them during that time. Such great acting.

And wow that duel between Arya and Brienne was so amazing! I loved seeing the two different styles and the mutual respect that appeared after. That delightful smirk of Sansa and her answer of "no one" was perfect.

The cave scene was great for two reason. 1) I also loved the chemistry between Daenerys's and Jon Snow was great in the cave. Besides deepening the backdrop of the almost forgotten children of the forest lore (for me anyways), it 2) strengthened Jon's case that the White Walkers are REAL. The blue eyes in the cave drawing and that music was great at reminding me of the battle at Long Lake- in that eerie and terrifying finale where all the dead rose again as Jon rowed away from the beach.

I honestly thought that Jon was gonna tell Daenerys to attack King's Landing. The response he made started so neutral in the beginning I didn't think he was gonna say to not go. Besides that I loved the tension between Theon and Jon was great as well. There's so much tension going back and forth in this series now that there's a longer history of betrayals and cruelties this season is turning out to be really exciting.

This battle at the end totally exceeded my expectations. Small battle- another loss like the short conclusive clips of the Casterly Rock battle and in the seas with the Greyjoys.

That moment when u hear the thunder I knew the Dothraki where coming~ what I didn't expect was to see a dragon......HOLY SHIT LOL those precious seconds before the dragon spew fire was glorious. Was really anxious during the whole battle to see if any of my favorite characters would be killed. Danerys was there, Jamie was there, Tyrion was there, . Knowing that GoT has no qualms about killing main characters made this battle extremely tense. xD

Having Tyrion there and Jamie on the same battlefield also brought huge tension. Add into addition the new ballista as well as that shot into the dragon made me think Daenerys was done for. Then I thought Jamie was done for from that fire breath. Honestly this battle had me on the edge of my seat the whole battle. Jeezus.

[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.)

[8.0/10] When I think of David Lynch, I think “weird,” and that may be what was missing all too often in Twin Peaks for me. Most of the show functions as a parody/pastiche/homage to soap operas, and while Lynch and Frost seem to want to riff on the tropes on that genre, more often than not the line between playing with the form of a bad soap opera and just presenting a bad soap opera was too blurred for my tastes. I don’t mean to relitigate all my criticisms of the show here, but suffice it to say, vanilla Twin Peaks, the parts of the show that were just supposed to be about people interacting and having emotional reactions and learning things about one another almost uniformly fell flat to me.

But every once in a while, the show would get truly weird, truly outré, truly thought-provokingly bizarre, and those instances were the few times that I felt like I “got” Twin Peaks, like I understood what all the fuss was about. Sure, some bits -- like Lynch Jr.’s creamed corn or Josey getting trapped in a doorknob -- only amounted to what Futurama memorably described as standard-issue “hey look at that weird mirror” nonsense. But in some scenes, like Cooper’s dream, the sequence in the bar at the end of Season 1, and his epiphany and confrontation of Leland this season, the show lived up to its jarring, out there reputation, and for a few brief moments, it actually felt like nothing else on television in a good way.

It’s fitting, then, that Twin Peaks delivers the best episode of its original run by devoting most of its erstwhile series finale to an extended-length return to the realm of Cooper’s dream, and with it, the sort of symbolic strangeness that served as one of the few things the series could consistently do well.

But before we can get into that, we have to tie up a few loose ends (and unravel a few more) in the real world. Lucy and Andy say the L-word, and it’s as much of a waste as you’d imagine. Bobby and Shelly make goo-goo eyes at one another and talk about getting married while the episode cuts to Leo still trapped under his spider box. Worst of all, Ben Horne and Donna’s mom try to talk to her about her paternity, only for their significant others to jump in and turn the whole scene into the usual overwrought, overdramatic nonsense that consistently turned me off of the show. It’s a bad storyline and it’s featured more of the painfully exaggerated emotions of the show that make it seem like Days of Our Lives redux not something avante garde.

Still, we do get two scenes in the real world that bear some merit despite falling into a few of the usual traps. One is a brief scene where Nadine recovers her sanity. There’s a bit more overacting, and it’s patently ridiculous that Nadine’s mental issue is cured via the old “just hit her on the head again” routine from Saturday morning cartoons. But there’s some legitimate pathos in Nadine basically waking up from the weeks (months?) worth of reverie to realize she’s being comforted by a stranger while her husband canoodles with another woman. I’ve gone back and forth on Nadine over the course of the show, but there is something inherently tragic about her, and I’m glad that Twin Peaks leans into that tragedy and compassion for her in her last appearance.

We also get Audrey staging a sit-in at the Twin Peaks Savings & Loan to protest its involvement in the Ghostwood Estates deal, which just so happens to be the same location where Andrew Packard and Pete Martell go to open a safety deposit box with the key they found in Eckert’s magic box. The results of it all -- the Bugs Bunny-esque dynamite and note, the cheesy cliffhanger of who survived the blast, the flying glasses -- are all pretty silly.

That said, there’s a strange rhythm to the scene, where the doddering old man who’s in charge of the place brings an amusingly workaday energy as he putters around trying to deal with Audrey and the rest. It has sort of the same vibe as the scene with the bellhop in the premiere, and I can appreciate the intentional stiltedness of it, with Lynch (who directed the finale) choosing to keep in all the awkward little moments that slick T.V. editing usually elides.

But the main event of the episode is Cooper’s return to the Black Lodge. Lynch & Co. provide a nice enough prelude with some of the show’s trademarks. Earle strong-arming Annie through those big red curtains has the sort of chill that Leland was able to bring and which Earle had previously been unable to muster. Andy incessantly asking Harry questions about coffee and pie is true to the best flavor of the show’s humor -- awkward intrusions of the mundane into the dramatic or fantastical.

What happens next, however, is something I cannot really describe or encapsulate. It is Lynch’s unrestrained id, let out to play on a black and white floorboard girded with red curtains. Suddenly, it all comes rushing back. The owls. The giant. The man from another place. Bob. Laura. Maddy. Sarah. Annie. Caroline. Windom. The backwards talking. The barking. The damn good coffee that’s suddenly not so damn good. Everything Cooper’s seen and done comes blasting back at him in surreal sequence after surreal sequence that I cannot capture with my humble words.

But I can tell that you that it’s unique, bizarre, disquieting, affecting, and gripping in a way that so little of Twin Peaks has been. Laura Palmer screams and the strobe light flashes and the contrast of her smiling face and gaping maw makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. She promises to see him in twenty-five years (and the timing of the revival is just about right for it) in a way that seems ominous rather than reassuring.

It’s a series of images full of what the text of the episode acknowledges as doppelgangers, “one and the same.” It blends the presence of Laura and Maddy. It jumps back and forth between Annie and Caroline. A dark-haired Leland proclaims his innocence and then laughs like Bob. Cooper himself runs from his own double.

One of the show’s major themes has been duality, the notion that there’s parts of who we are we only show to certain people. But while Twin Peaks could belabor that point, here it is visceral, scene in the flashes and phantasmagoria of strange figures flitting about this weigh station beyond life and death.

It’s unnerving, the way that Cooper and Bob look directly into the camera, the way the lights come on and off, the pretzel logic and impossible geography of this far away place. With its last gasp, Twin Peaks reveals its magnum opus of weirdness, of expressing itself in iconography and poignant or disturbing images rather than clumsy dialogue or overwrought attempts at emotion. The past and present fade together, with the texture of Lynch’s warped brain to hold it all in place.

Naturally, it ends with a cheesy cliffhanger, one that reveals that Bob has now wormed his way inside Cooper, perhaps signifying that there’s a darkness in all of us, even the most decent and upstanding, or perhaps just signifying that the show wanted somewhere to go in the event it was renewed. While Cooper’s headbang into the mirror and maniacal laugh carries its own force, and haunts just enough as a closing image, even it cannot match the virtuoso, nightmarish dreamscape that Lynch and company craft as the culmination of everything Twin Peaks has been and promised.

This is what Twin Peaks should have been, what I was promised by the partisans and diehards who speak of a show that is so, to put it charitably, uneven in such hushed tones. Beneath the convoluted conspiracies, beneath the painful love stories, beneath the dreadful dialogue, there is a capacity from this show to convey these liminal, atavistic, subconscious versions of the themes and ideas it has such trouble expressing directly. I don’t know if it’s worth thirty episodes of mostly dreck to extract those bold and unmatched gems, but at least Twin Peaks saves it best for last, going out with an extraordinary, unnerving dose of the weird, the sort of genuine strangeness the show promised all too often, but delivered all too rarely.