It’s been a while since we’ve seen or heard from Twin Peaks’ show within the show. Invitation to Love, the cheesy soap opera many of the townsfolk followed during Season 1, has been completely absent from Season 2, and with it one of the filmmakers’ chief methods of having a little fun at their own expense. They’re fully aware that the only thing that really separates the melodramatic potboiling of the fake show from the real one is execution, so they hung a lampshade on it. It’s all in good fun.

In audio form, anyway, the show makes its triumphant return this episode. We hear it playing in Shelley Johnson’s still half-finished house as Bobby Briggs jilts her in favor of his big opportunity with Ben Horne. (And, presumably, his equally hot prospects with Ben’s daughter Audrey.) The soap has always been an escape for Shelley; now it plays as her prospects narrow and the walls close in.

Sure enough, the inevitable finally occurs, and the monstrous Leo Johnson emerges from his coma. He’s got a party hat on his head, cake smeared all over his face, and  if his sinister smile is any indication – murder on his mind. Shelley can only scream like a girl in a horror movie, which is more or less what she is.

Shelley’s survival notwithstanding, Invitation to Love feels like an appropriate accompaniment to this episode, one of the horniest and most violent in the show’s brief history. Couple after couple, including some surprising ones, get it on, while heroes and villains alike employ brute force either to save the day or darken it.

I reviewed episode 13 of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist. (Gift link!)

Euphoria is lurid, overheated, violent, fetishistic, hyper-stylized, cynical, sentimental, melodramatic, druggy dirtbag action trash, so of course I love it. But it’s not hard to see why this has come to be the position of an increasingly beleaguered minority. Even putting aside the show’s lengthy-for-a-million-reasons absence from screens and writer-director-creator Sam Levinson’s “where there’s smoke, there’s…well, there’s smoke” air of disreputability, one need look no further than Stranger Things to see how critical fortunes can shift when the stars of a high-school drama age up. That show still at least pretended to be set during high school. What is Euphoria now?

I reviewed the season premiere of Euphoria for Decider.

“Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name, because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star.” 

Reading these words changed my life. I was a sophomore in college and very much arrayed against any kind of mainstream music when I happened to pick up the loose liner notes for a Barry White best-of compilation one of my roommates had lying around. All my life disco had represented everything cheesy and plastic about popular music — until I read what Barry said.

Suddenly it all clicked for me. What used to come across as phony about disco now felt to me like the utmost sincerity. Love really is that powerful. Dancing really is that wonderful. The night really is that magical. Disco is designed to make you feel good things in as big a way as possible. It makes you beautiful.

This revelation opened up a mind that had been closed to vast swathes of artistic expression. It also made me just about lose my mind when DTF St. Louis writer/director/creator Steven Conrad selected my favorite Barry White song, “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” to soundtrack the climactic underwear-only dance party between Clark Forrest and Floyd Smernitch. I’m serious, I threw my hands up in the air so fast I spilled a beverage. I love this music. As it turns out, I think I love these men, too.

I reviewed the finale of DTF St. Louis, an extraordinary show and one of the year’s best, for Decider.

But I keep coming back to Dr. Robby’s statement “I don’t know if I want to be here anymore.” Depression is a dark journey, and passive suicidal ideation is one of the hardest stretches of road you’ll find on it. Yet it is strangely validating to hear sadness this profound come out of the mouth of such a mensch. This is a disease to which no one, not even the Superman of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, is immune.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Pitt Season 2 for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

This season of Daredevil: Born Again feels like it plays out in the mind of The Pitt’s ferocious charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherin LaNasa) after watching Jesse get dragged away in zip-ties. The Pitt depicts the frustrating reality; Daredevil: Born Again is the dreamworld version, and as such it’s where dreams of justice can come true. No one here — certainly not me, and I don’t think anyone making either show — is under the impression that television is enough. Nor does the fact that Daredevil can kick the secret police in the teeth while Dr. Robby can’t make Born Again a more radical or more important work. But Daredevil demonstrates that with sufficient talent and courage behind the camera, even corporate superheroes can use their larger-than-life spectacle to express emotions we otherwise can’t. It’s amazing what you can get away with when you wear a mask.

I wrote about how The Pitt and Daredevil: Born Again each handle the ICE Age for Decider.

DTF St. Louis takes three real goofballs, gives them complicated and unhappy lives, and sits back as they throw themselves at each other in various combinations, hoping that one of them sets off the chain reaction that will free them from their unhappiness. It feels increasingly tragic, knowing that they failed.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of DTF St. Louis for Decider.

It took a few episodes, but it’s safe to say it now: As of the twelfth episode of Twin Peaks Season 2, Twin Peaks Season 2 has officially begun. 

Depending on how new to the show you are, you may or may not know that its second season has a historically poor reputation. By now the whole Twin Peaks saga — the original run, the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Season 3, aka Twin Peaks: The Return — is so beloved, as is its co-creator and primary director David Lynch, that you may hear Season 2 badmouthed less often than it used to be.

Speaking personally, I think people lump together the entire Laura Palmer saga in their heads as “Season 1,” then lump everything after that (plus the “Mr. Tojamura” thing, perhaps) together as “Season 2.” Even then, a lot of the things people love about Twin Peaks happen after Laura’s murder is resolved. You’re never going to hear anyone complain about post-Laura Season 2 because it introduced Denise Bryson or the concept of the Black Lodge, that’s for sure. 

Other than that, though? When people use “Season 2” pejoratively, this episode is rooted almost entirely in the storylines they’re talking about. James’s film-noir road trip. Nadine’s high school wrestling career. Andy, Lucy, Dick Tremayne, and the devilish Little Nicky (Joshua Harris). The widow Milford and her siren-like power over every man who lives in a town already inhabited by, well, the female cast of Twin Peaks. Ben Horne becoming a Confederate sympathizer during a psychotic break. 

Well, everyone knows these Twin Peaks Season 2 storylines suck. What this review presupposes is…maybe they don’t. Written and directed by one of the series’ A-teams — Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, and Caleb Deschanel — it makes a strong opening case for some of the show’s most maligned material.

I reviewed episode 12 of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist. (Gift link!)

“I need more Godzilla and King Kong in the Godzilla and King Kong show.” I’ve heard variations of this comment since Monarch debuted, even from people who generally enjoy the series. The romantic sturm und drang, the bureaucratic/technocratic squabbling, the fun flashbacks, the stunt casting of the Russells, a star turn for Anna Sawai, all the other monsters — that stuff’s well and good. Sometimes, however, you just wanna see the big guns.

To paraphrase Valerie Cherish, well, you got it.

I reviewed today’s episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider.

We have come to it at last. In episode after episode, Dr. Michael Robinavitch has dropped hints, given warning signs and generally worried his friends and colleagues with his increasingly frazzled demeanor. Now, in this episode’s cliffhanger moment, he says what everyone has been thinking: His impending sabbatical might be permanent.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Pitt for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

You can’t say you didn’t see it coming. All throughout its second season, Paradise has been building to a science-fictional scenario that’s frankly preposterous even by Paradise standards. This episode confirms it. Yes, Dan Fogelman is really going there: He’s created a competent billionaire who wants to save the planet. And oh, right, there’s time travel or something.

I reviewed the season finale of Paradise for Decider.

It’s surprisingly emotional to get attacked by a godzilla. That’s more or less the premise of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a show that has a ton of fun with its creatures but wants to make it clear the experience of coming into contact with kaiju is dangerous and deadly. The trail of physical destruction the monsters leave behind is easy to see. The trail of emotional destruction? Making that debris and detritus as visible as the monsters is Monarch’s main task.

I wrote about last week’s Monarch for Decider.

What Floyd Smernitch, Clark Forrest, and Carol Love-Smernitch had together is a hard thing to categorize, and each new revelation makes it even harder. This episode of DTF St. Louis sees our intrepid investigators Donahue Homer (amazing name) and Jodie Plumb dig deeper into the nature of this unusual arrangement, while flashbacks show us things even the detectives don’t yet know. The result is a portrait of people who grow more interesting to look at by the week.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of DTF St. Louis for Decider.

“The Pitt” does not work the way most dramas do. It’s a medical procedural, but it treats that venerable TV genre like the intense opening reel of “Saving Private Ryan.” The action is visceral, intense, virtually constant and realistically random; there’s rarely a cohesive theme or narrative progression to be constructed from each episode’s pile of unconnected cases.

The show’s near-real-time gimmick, moreover, dictates the pace at which the staffers of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center grow and change while we watch. We follow these people during a busy shift on a single day, not over the course of weeks or months. Amid that concentrated tumult, character development is squeezed into rare quiet moments between cases, or shouted over the cacophony of crowded hallways and beeping hospital equipment.

But in the dozen episodes we’ve seen this season so far, I can hear a steady, ominous drumbeat beneath the din. Looking over my notes, rereading these reviews, I see myself asking one question, over and over: Are Robby and Dana, the heart and soul of the E.R., ever going to return after this shift from hell is over?

I reviewed tonight’s episode of The Pitt for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Wherever you go, there you are. Buckaroo Banzai’s maxim feels broadly applicable to the people of Twin Peaks. Transplants bring their pasts with them, and expats remain trapped in a perpetual Twin Peaks of the mind.

I reviewed the 11th episode of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist (gift link). It’s the one that introduces Agent Denise Bryson of “fix your hearts or die” fame.

This episode — like every episode of this show — takes big, bold swings at the risk of seeming silly. It assumes, correctly, that the reward is worth the risk. Satisfyingly ludicrous sci-fi twists walk arm in arm with Cameron Britton and Julianne Nicholson’s marvelous acting. Cal Bradford’s comic relief is offset by Xavier and Teri hugging in the sunlight, and Sinatra extending her hand into that same sunlight, for the first time in years, a continent away. Moments of real power and poetry — and politics, with Link laying into billionaires like Sinatra for destroying the planet they now purport to save, or Cal laying out the exact way America’s empire is currently collapsing from its own false sense of permanence — illuminating an entire moon of cheese. Every show should go this hard or go home.

I reviewed this week’s Paradise for Decider.

At the end of the day, Carol is sitting exhausted in the backyard when Floyd comes over to tell her the umpire outfit is a turnoff. Then the landscapers that Floyd promised to cancel because they can no longer afford them show up, leaf blowers roaring. The tears that were already flowing from Carol’s eyes devolve into full-blown sobbing. She can’t count on this man for anything. Do nice guys finish last? Who can say — but the women who marry them sure do, from where Carol is sitting. The overall effect of the scene is like watching someone get punched, hard, while they’re already down for the count.

All this happens before the opening titles. It’s a knockout cold open, one which takes the drama’s least sympathetic character and reframes the story from her perspective. Now we see why the officious, mendacious, successful, put-together Clark seemed like not just a breath of fresh air but an actual lifeline for Carol, and why lovable loser Floyd was only sporadically lovable where Carol is concerned. 

And this is just one of several truly masterful sequences in this episode, which moves from strength to strength. 

I reviewed this week’s DTF St. Louis for Decider.

Monarch is hardly the first franchise effort to use its genre elements to explore family, but the absence of any kind of superheroic or chosen-one mantle to be passed from one generation to the next allows the show to focus more on what matters. Few of us are going to view what our families bequeath to us as a cape and cowl or a mighty ancestral sword, even if we are generally happy with them. It’s more likely that it’s like the Randas — setting an fine example in some ways and a poor one in others, passing on their genius and their dedication to others, but also their fixations and obsessions and hubris. 

In your case or mine, we might inherit heart disease, or a likelihood of cancer, or a treatment-resistant mental illness, or outright abuse. In the Randas’ case, they inherit the ability to set loose the beasts of the apocalypse. But when you’re there in the heat of the moment, dealing with your own family fallout, it really can feel like the world is ending.

I reviewed this week’s Monarch for Decider.

I’ve never felt the mood in Dr. Robby’s department shift the way it did when a new patient, Pranita (Ramona DuBarry), was brought in by I.C.E. agents. She is suffering from injuries incurred when they raided the restaurant where she worked, in pursuit of President Trump’s draconian mass-deportation policy.

She is not allowed to contact her daughter to tell her where she is. She is not allowed to tell the hospital staff so they may do so on her behalf. In the end, she is not even allowed to wear the sling she is prescribed to help her damaged arm.

The agents’ rough handling of Pranita proves to be too much for Nurse Jesse, who tries to intervene. Suddenly, the sounds of struggle and shouting can be heard throughout the department. Within seconds, Pranita and Jesse are being led away in zip ties by the agents. They refuse to say what Jesse did that merits his detention, or where he and Pranita will be detained.

The whole incident seems to stem from when Robby dresses down one of the agents, who is still wearing his gaiter, for the chaos their presence has caused in the hospital. Dozens of patients and staff have fled, fearing their immigration status will lead the agents to target them, too. Sick people are not getting the treatment they need, Robby says, and they will go home to get even sicker, forced to return when it may be too late. At the same time, much-needed professionals are no longer around to do their jobs. Raising his voice and dropping an expletive, Robby asks them to take their prisoner and get going as soon as they can before they make things worse.

“No problem, doc,” the agent responds, a little too softly. He has Jesse on the ground in his next scene.

I reviewed last night’s episode of The Pitt for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Jane herself is a case in point. I’m not convinced a person like her has ever existed in the real world; the character is often an awkward fit in a show so focused on intensely expressed but relatable human emotion. That said, here’s a woman who’s working out her mommy issues by giving one surrogate mother a man’s severed penis as a present and serving as Sinatra’s hired gun — while also holding up her hair to pay herself compliments in Sinatra’s voice, in a long and smartly framed mirror shot that had me saying “Welp, they got me again, goddammit.”

In fact, Jane takes the gun part of hired gun very seriously. “I’m a killer. It’s what I’ve always been: a weapon,” she says. “People I respect aim me, and I execute for them. To serve my purpose, I need someone like you.” A living weapon that other people aim? Talk about self-objectification. This is what she meant when she told Sinatra “you’re no good to me dead” after she shooting her in the chest (to keep Xavier from shooting her in the head). At least that’s Jane’s convincing, and vaguely kinky, explanation. You could say she wants Sinatra’s finger to remain on her trigger. Ahem. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of Paradise for Decider.

Rumors of Twin Peaks’ demise have been greatly exaggerated. 

We’re up to the tenth episode of the show’s second season, which tends to be described in monolithic terms as wholly unsatisfactory, a betrayal of Season 1’s potential. But everything from that cliffhanger season finale through Leland Palmer’s capture and death has been every bit as good as Season 1, and in several cases significantly better; the episode in which Leland is revealed as Laura’s killer is the most powerful episode of the show to date.

In a way, Season 2 hasn’t even really started until now. Given the truncated length of Season 1, it makes more sense from the perspective of today’s viewer to view everything from the pilot until Leland’s death at the hands of his demonic inhabitant Bob as the first chapter of the story. The remaining 13 episodes of Season 2, starting here, are effectively Chapter Two.

And what a start Chapter Two gets off to. The first episode of the show to be both written and directed by women, Tricia Brock and Tina Rathborne respectively, it’s a thoughtful farewell to the side of Leland that prevailed in the end, a heartwarming series of bon voyages between a departing Agent Cooper and the good people of Twin Peaks, and an introduction to several new storylines that, for now at least, feel both urgent and intriguing.

I reviewed episode 10 of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist. (Gift link!)