Sure there are some good movies from time to time but how good
is TV these days? Once upon a time there were shows that ran
half-an-hour and were full of characters you knew well
and something would happen and 22 minutes plus ads later
the issue would be resolved and Maxwell Smart has
triumphed over KAOS once more.
And then something odd happened. David Lynch made a TV series called Twin Peaks which had—along with crazy stuff like little people with backmasked voices in dream sequences (woooh! Isn't it wacky! And a woman with a pet log! The man is a genius!)—a story arc that ran across the entire run of the show. This kind of thing had previously been unpopular with the networks as it meant that episodes couldn't be shown out of order. A few years later The X-Files sort of dabbled with this idea with their Smoking Man subplot but they concentrated on more of the “Well obviously, Mulder, he killed her because of the inheritance” “But, Scully, what if it was actually a hyper-intelligent, super-evolved form of waterlily” kind of episodes.
And now the Twin Peaks school has grown into cool shit like 24 and Deadwood where there is almost no division between episodes. It's as though you're watching a movie that lasts for the entire winter, it rocks. You can watch an actual movie and it'll last for an hour and a half (although these days it's often closer to three hours. While I am being all archeological, I date this trend back to Dances With Wolves. That flick has a lot to answer for) but hire, say, a series of West Wing on DVD and you're entertained for weeks. TV is great.
What other cool things are there to see? Anything with Ricky Gervais in it. Anything Joss Whedon does. What else?
¶ 4:50 pm
To big Lynchie's credit, while I agree some of it came across as whacky for wacky's sake, the plot devices were clever and layered...and crucially!!!! not everything is explained, some things are left hanging, some are red herrings AND, heaven forfend, sometimes you are left to work it out yourself.
These dullard shows you feel are derived from Twin Peaks are end to end lazy. There is no investment required by the viewer other than simply turning on the TV on time...everything else is spoonfed into there flabby brains along with the requisite ammount of titilation to get their willy hard enough so they'll tune in next week.
Twin Peaks was not amazing but at least it could provoke some active thought rather than just passive.
Not that, in my case, he's far wrong about that of course but he'll voice his accusations in a public forum and then have a sneery crack at the Da Vinci Code. Now who should back the fuck up, eh?
I watched Twin Peaks with pleasure at the time and was happily titillated by Lara Flynn Boyle. The only active thought I remember having about the dream sequences and the log lady was pretty much "that man is trying too hard."
The show was clearly something brand new. It introduced many concepts to serial television, only one of which was the idea of the story arc and it was this particular concept that has been picked up by later shows and makes them more enjoyable for me to watch.
I won't argue with you about the spoonfeeding thing. That point is hard to counter.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5321270.stm
/* when paired with its twin */ was the delimiter for comments in C and therefore in C++ and, as such, became the fashion for delimiting comments in many later languages, including CSS. Where do you see it? I know I am unhip but I can't spot it on this site.
And, thank you Rebecca. Firefly is the one reason for the invention of television. I'm afraid I've never heard of Max X
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