Watching Better off Ted free on Amazon Prime. Basically the same story line as Pushing Daisys, man meets the girl of his dreams, but due to extraneous circumstances cannot conceptualize the romance. An odd bit of funny/ annoyance pursue due to sexual frustration and silly antics. What else you gonna expect it's free! At least it's not some doctor show where they all end up in bed with each other. wait that's kinda in there too....
I liked better off ted. Of course, i typically watched it at work for free. Getting paid to watch netflix always throws off a shows rating value.
Twin Peaks Does this show have a magical "get better" button or something? How does this have a 9.1 on IMDB, and what exactly was David Lynch's involvement? It's like watching the cheesiest soap opera or after school special ever. The acting is just laughably bad Troll 2 caliber stuff. The music is ridiculously melodramatic. Kyle Mclaughlin as the FBI agent is about the only thing keeping it from being totally unwatchable. I was expecting a psychological thriller like David Lynch's other stuff, and instead I got a bad soap opera. And I hate soap operas. I only watched the pilot. Does it get better or is this pretty much the show? Maybe different strokes for different folks? Or is the pilot just bad? Game of Thrones has a bad pilot for instance, but the show is amazing.
The story develops significant supernatural elements later in the show. This was always intended and is integral to the storyline, but it's not revealed right away. The style is intentional and the quirkiness and peculiar characters are present throughout. Twin Peaks is one of the last shows I would say could be fully understood from watching a single episode. If you miss a single episode, you can get lost quickly. However, I'm not sure if you'd like the rest of it as the story evolves, either. It's a pretty unique show. As Fusion noted about his reaction to the show, Twin Peaks mimics the style of soap operas and TV dramas in many respects, but it takes it in a very different direction. Lynch also did this with the idyllic Mayberry style of Lumberton in Blue Velvet. Much of the acting in Blue Velvet was intentionally hackneyed and corny, especially prior to the introduction of Dennis Hopper, the embodiment of that hidden dark side of reality that Jeffrey discovers. I can think of many aspects of Twin Peaks I'd consider to be benchmarks in television history. Special Agent Dale Cooper and a certain unnamed villainous character would easily be among my all-time favorites. There are also some specific moments that stand out as the most memorable, including a scene in the second season that was so psychologically disturbing (always much more frightening and impactful than gore in my view) that it was the talk of TV at the time.
I try not to be too judgmental of shows based on their pilots or even the first few episodes. I've seen great shows like Game of Thrones with bad pilots. Star Trek The Next Generation is one of the best sci-fi shows that ever aired, but the first two seasons are pretty bad, bordering on unwatchable. The show doesn't really find its stride until the Borg show up and the writers figure out that Data is the most interesting character and focus more on him. It went from being on the verge of cancellation to winning 18 Emmys and developing a huge fanbase. I'll give Twin Peaks a few more episodes and see if it gets better.
Twin Peaks was literally the boilerplate for the subsequent rise of cable TV series with edgy/dark subject matter, complex continuing story lines, and quirky ensemble casts. Shows like the Sopranos owed a HUGE debt to Twin Peaks in terms of their approach.
Yeah but why did the first episode seem like such a godawful soap opera? It was 90210 or Melrose Place caliber stuff. Does it get better, because I don't think i can sit through something like that. And a lot of the stuff I read about it refers to it not as an homage or parody of soap operas, but just literally says it's a soap opera. The only thing I despise more than soaps is reality shows. My wife and I were laughing at how incredibly bad it was with all of the fake crying and hammy acting set to casio piano music, which I don't think was intentional. It didn't remind me at all of Breaking Bad or The Sopranos. It reminded me of that soap opera Passions which occasionally had cornball supernatural subplots with witches and UFOs. Don't get me wrong, Passions could be fun for a laugh from time to time, but it was a very, very bad show. The only reason I know of Passion's existence is because a few chicks I know said something along the lines of "this is so ridiculously bad, you have to watch this with us to make fun of it." I'm thinking this might be another bad show like HBO's The Wire that hipsters just love to have a circle jerk over for some reason.
Pretty much. And come to think of it, the soaps my grandma used to watch usually had a lot of weird supernatural stuff. The impression I get of Twin Peaks is that it's a soap opera where they hired David Lynch to try to out-weird the other weird soap operas.
The pilot is simply a quick overview of the setting, characters, and central storyline. I think you'll figure out what Lynch is really doing with the show after you get further into it. The acting styles are done with intent, not because they can't act. It can change from syrupy soap to freaky nightmare in a heartbeat. It's all about the contrasts and real vs. surreal. Some of it is meant as a farce or a comedic break, and some of it is deadly serious. As AKS mentioned previously, Twin Peaks has some very dark scenes that were truly groundbreaking at the time for TV. And by that I mean material that is on par with The Shining in terms of the creepy factor.
You can see some of the characters in Twin Peaks watching a fictional soap opera within the show. It's called "Invitation to Love," which is an intentionally gawdawful parody of soap operas. You see characters watching clips of it periodically. You can't possibly think this was an accident or coincidence.
Code: Yeah Masterchef sucked me in a while back. I normally watch it on iplayer before bed. Bad idea, hungry sleep is the worst. Also Hustle. Eighth series ended a while back and every episode was a pot of gold
It changes slowly in some ways, but from what I can tell that soap opera style remains throughout - I'm up to ep7. You probably won't be able to make it through the first series judging from your reaction to the pilot. It doesn't progress all that fast and yes, most of the acting is very soap-opera-ish throughout, but for me that's just part of the contrast with what is great about it. Around 3 times an episode I laugh at the a particular line and or the way it is delivered, but I just take that as comedic value. I can't say whether it is definitely intentional or not, but as AKS mentioned, the fictional soap opera that exists within the Twin Peaks universe "Invitation To Love" has me thinking that perhaps it is intentional.
Twin Peaks was intended to be humorous. And frightening. And bizarre. I think the mistake that cmdrmonkey is making is that he's trying to take everything at face value, which is not a hallmark of Lynch material.
Sopranos? Soap opera. Breaking Bad? Soap opera. Star Trek: Next Generation? Soap opera. TV dramas with continuing continuing characters and story lines all boil down to the soap opera genre, one way or another. Twin Peaks just isn't trying to hide the influences. Lynch is glorifying and subverting the genre at the same time.
All this Twin Peaks talk inspired me to do some searching to find out about some of the key cast members. There's a terrific couple of interviews I found from 2010 of Sherilyn Fenn and Sheryl Lee. Both of them have really charming personalities. Fenn quite obviously did not care for Lara Flynn Boyle, however. I don't think either Fenn or Lee got along with Boyle, but Fenn really seemed to dislike her. Sheryl Lee looked as if she had aged 2 years in the past 20 years. Maybe they kept her in cryogenic sleep or something. Or wrapped in plastic in freezing cold water.