rolling tv thread

[Mr. Tea]

i finally saw twin peaks the return. it started off promisingly, then became interminable (as drawn out as any recent prequel-sequel really), then found some threads of coherence in the last 5-6 episodes. i dont think it needed to be 18 hours, though when it finally ended, i did start to see the rest in a different, slightly more positive light, but im still pretty sure, that despite some good scenes and moments, it was massively padded out, like most modern american dramas. then again, maybe its designed just to upend the modern tv audience's ideas of watching modern 'prestige' tv, which it did, but on the WTF scale of david lynchs older stuff, the WTF factor was kind of middling. its like faded WTF-ery. they should have given him some money to make a film without a connection to a tv series he probably doesnt really care much about anymore.

I've picked it up again after a break of some months. I'm still enjoying it, but it undeniably lacks the punch and gripping what-happens-next?-ness of the original (or at least, the first series and first part of the second series). I've just watched ep8, which I think put a lot of people off, with at least half of it having (so far) nothing to do with the main narrative and being really an exercise is surrealism as much as anything.

You're right about it harking back to Lynch's older stuff - even in the first episode, I was amazed at how much it reminded me of Eraserhead. Or even, you know, his Playstation ads from years back, lol.

I'm hoping some of the many disparate plot threads will be wrapped up by the end of the series but I think I know Lynch well enough now to expect many of them to be left dangling.

 

[william kent]

I've been watching and enjoying Lodge 49 recently. It's about a crippled surfer who finds a ring on a beach and ends up joining a free mason-type fraternal lodge whilst a bunch of other stuff goes on in the background relating to debt, alchemy, property development and various other things. It's an odd show, it just sort of gently unfurls and spreads out whilst the characters take centre stage, the creator's namechecked Pynchon as an influence (hence the '49' in the title) which gives some idea of the general atmosphere.

 

[Leo]

my wife has grown to like "lodge 49" but I gave up, watched the first episode and found it a bit "quirky" a la Wes Anderson.

deep into season 4 of "better call saul", jimmy getting closer to fully turning the corner into the dark side. still holds up.

just finished binging all four seasons of "line of duty", decent summer fare. two and three were particularly good.

"trapped" from iceland is worth checking out.

 

[william kent]

my wife has grown to like "lodge 49" but I gave up, watched the first episode and found it a bit "quirky" a la Wes Anderson.

It is a bit like that, yeah. It doesn't really bother me though, it's not the relentlessly twee 'quirky' that you find in later Anderson (I'm thinking Moonrise Kingdom in particular) and which does annoy me, it's just kind of goofy.

 

[luka]

do you reckon the x files would be good if you watched it from the start now at this point of the timeline 2018? or would it be terrible? i really dont know. i liked it a lot when it came out but i guess i was about 14.

 

[Corpsey]

That one about the man sized tapeworm fucked me up as a kid

 

[luka]

i dont have your crystalline memory. all i can remember are mulder and scully and the conspiracy nut in the trailer. i did love it though.

 

[Corpsey]

There was a tapeworm right

But it was man sized

 

[luka]

sounds wicked lets watch that one again.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I reckon X-Files is well due for a rewatch. Both for laughing at the shonky '90s CGI effects and for genuine unironic entertainment.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

That one about the man sized tapeworm fucked me up as a kid

that's a good one

they didn't have the monster costume ready when they shot Duchnovy so he just did his best Keanusian non-reaction + it came across like a genius bit of underacting

the show holds up pretty well. there's plenty of uneven episodes and retrospectively the whole conspiracy angle is kinda ponderous, but its vibe seems more prescient with every passing year. if anything 90s conspiracies - black helicopters, militias, pre-millenial dread - seems so quaint in the age of Pizzagate, Qanon, etc. plenty of really good monster of the week episodes tho. also being one of the first big shows to embrace meta and mess around with the comedy/drama boundary, i.e. Jose Chung's From Outer Space. didn't watch the reboot just like you don't wanna watch a favorite band do an embarrassing cash-in reunion tour 20 years later.

if you want to watch some there's a definite sweet spot from seasons 2-6 or so, after it found its legs but before Mulder left

 

[Corpsey]

I remember reading about the X files before I saw it

I was too young I suppose

And at that time I genuinely believed that "Greys" must exist

The twilight of my childish capacity to believe

I WANT TO BELIEVE

 

[Mr. Tea]

Do reckon they should make a new series?

And I'm definitely not just saying that because Gillian Anderson is somehow even hotter now than she was at 24.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Although it is *part* of the reason, obviously.

 

[luka]

i wonder if you can watch the early ones on youtube. i remember watching the very first broadcast of the first episode on telly here and being hooked straight away. what i cant remember is when i drifted off. it was still very 'monster of the week' while i was watching. not much grand narrative sweep

 

[baboon2004]

x-files was fantastic - definitive 90s TV show bar none, surely - and the general feel is no more dated than anything from the decade, but as padraig said, the big conspiracy raises a bit of a nostalgic shrug in 2018. Why was that sense of dread in the X-Files so popular in the 90s - because it was absent from culture in general and people always need it?

Tea - the reboot was terrible, no more is needed. Gillian Anderson is available to view in lots of other things.

@Padraig - here, Pizzagate means when Cesc Fabregas threw pizza at Alex Ferguson - not sure if he was part of a wider conspiracy tbh

 

[Mr. Tea]

Tea - the reboot was terrible, no more is needed. Gillian Anderson is available to view in lots of other things.

Shit, that passed me by! Shows how much TV I've watched in the last decade or so. Do you mean there was a new series or another feature-length fillum?

And I know G.A. has done stuff other than X-Files, but let's face it, she will always be first and foremost Dana Scully.

 

[baboon2004]

I thought it was one new series, but apparently it was two (in 2016 and 2018, maybe). I only heard about it by chance, so not surprising if you didn't; I only watched a couple of episodes. Maybe not outright terrible, but just out of time and suddenly irrelevant, like that reboot of This Life, which was actually the worst thing i have ever seen. On that note, is it any coincidence that the original X-Files finished shortly after Sept 2001, when reality changed overnight? So tethered to a particular -7 year - moment culturally.

 

[Mr. Tea]

On that note, is it any coincidence that the original X-Files finished shortly after Sept 2001, when reality changed overnight? So tethered to a particular -7 year - moment culturally.

That's a very good point - and to answer your question in the spirit of Fox Mulder (and Alex Jones), there are no coincidences....

As padraig has already pointed out, though, real life has overtaken the basic premise of the show. The semi-comedic minor characters of the little group of ultra-paranoid conspiracy theorists that Mulder was mates with would seem bizarre today, because that way of thinking is now a part of mainstream Western, and indeed global, culture.

It's a bit like how we watched House of Cards thinking "But surely no real POTUS would ever do *that*...", and then Trump won first the Republican nomination and then the election itself, and we were all like, "Oh".

 

[baboon2004]

Very true.

Talking about 90s-ness and how otherworldly it can appear at times, there's a film called Super Dark Times from 2017 that captures this uncannily well (before turning into a very different type of film after 30 minutes....which is more in keeping with 80s films like Society, but anyways), It's kind of mesmeric.

Now my brain is stuck trying to identify films that change partway through...Society, From Dusk til Dawn, Psycho, The Birds, Audition, Martyrs, Coherence sort of, The Rapture (which is fucking brilliant, could have done with changing the title tho in the service of suspense)....