RIP, David Lynch

Plus, 'Severance' returns, old people conquer TV, 'Skeleton Crew' and 'Lower Decks' finales, a 'Better Call Saul' book minor mix-up, and more

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I’m a night gardener…

You remind me today of a small Mexican Chihuahua!

David Lynch’s family announced yesterday that the iconic writer/director died. We decided to tackle his massive legacy two ways: our film critic David Fear wrote a beautiful tribute to Lynch’s overall career, and I drilled down on the improbable greatest mainstream success of it in Twin Peaks, a show whose original run on ABC I adored even when I couldn’t explain or even defend much of what was happening. The prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and the Showtime miniseries Twin Peaks: The Return slotted more into my overall Lynch agnosticism when I first watched each. If you were reading me at Uproxx in the summer of 2017, you might recall how impatient I frequently sounded in my exchanges with Keith Phipps:

But the more I’ve thought back on both over the years, the more passionately I feel about them. Or, at least, as the years have passed, the less I recall or care about the parts I found exasperating in the moment, and the more deeply enmeshed in my soul the great moments feel.

So in that column, I tried to dig into what made all versions of Twin Peaks special, what made the brief commercial success of the ABC show so amusing in hindsight, the awe-inspiring defiance Lynch and Mark Frost brought to The Return, and more. I even made one more stab at trying to reckon with how the story came to an end.

Back on the chain gang

You already know that I think Severance Season Two is pretty fantastic. Now it’s time to get down to details. Earlier this week, Rolling Stone published my refresher course on Season One, for people who may have forgotten a few details — or a lot of them — in the three years that have elapsed in the real world. And early this morning, we published my first recap of the new season, where I broke down all the notable events of the premiere, “Hello, Ms. Cobel.” No spoilers here, so click on the link for my take.

That recap includes an aside where I acknowledge that I’ve already watched the whole season, but that my goal is to make sure any speculation is something I was thinking as I was watching each episode, and not influenced by what I know comes later. With shows like this, my notes are so heavily detailed that they include my theorizing and other in-the-moment reactions along with my recounting of the plot, transcription of notable quotes, etc. So I feel confident I can do this without spoiling, and write as if I was doing it without having seen later episodes. But it’s something I’m conscious of whenever I do things like this.

For the time being, we can try to have the conversation about the show in the comments to the newsletter, since episodes drop on Thursday nights and the newsletter comes out Friday mornings. If, however, there’s a significant groundswell to separate that discussion from everything else, I can start doing a weekly chat or something else along those lines.

Early edition

You know how I’ve been relentlessly promoting the idea of pre-ordering my new Better Call Saul book — aka Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill: The Complete Critical Companion to Better Call Saul — so you could have it in your hands by its February 4 publication date? Well, funny story there: due to a shipping mix-up, a number of people who ordered it directly from Abrams Books received their books over the last couple of weeks, not only well ahead of that pub date, but — because of a different shipping mix-up — before I had my own physical copy of the thing! Fortunately, that situation has been rectified, and I even made my own attempt at an unboxing video for my Instagram:

sepinwall

A post shared by @sepinwall

No one is entirely sure what caused this particular glitch, though my theory is that Jimmy McGill snuck into the Abrams mailroom and transposed some numbers with an Exacto knife and paste. Regardless, I’m glad some of you already have a copy in your hands. If you enjoy what you’ve read so far and were of a mind to share that with your friends — whether on social media or in the great big scary place we call the real world — it would be much appreciated. If you preordered from anywhere else won’t get it until February 4 like a normal person, I hope it will be worth the extra wait. And if you’re thinking of not preordering, then Mike and Gus have one simple word for you:

Also, as a reminder if you’re in the NY/NJ area: I’ll be at The Strand in Manhattan on February 5 with James Poniewozik, and at Words in Maplewood on February 6 with Kathryn VanArendonk. Come by, say hi, get a book personally signed!

Golden years

This week’s other column was about a silver-haired lining to the streaming era of TV: the rise of shows about old people. The wonderful A Man on the Inside was the impetus for the story, but the trend has been building gradually for about a decade, going back to the beginning of Grace and Frankie’s long and successful run on Netflix. In the column, I look at various reasons why a business that was desperately chasing younger demographics — and convinced that the only way to get them was with stories about hot people in their 20s — would now be more willing to put septuagenarians front and center, and celebrate the late-in-life work of people like Ted Danson, Kathy Bates, Harrison Ford, and more.

When you’re a writer with editors, there is always a risk of you making an offhand comment that somehow turns into a writing assignment you hate. This one, which began with a similar “You should turn that stray thought into an article for us” origin story, wound up being a lot of fun to write.

Odds and/or ends

• My take on this week’s Skeleton Crew finale was more or less in line with my initial review of the latest Star Wars TV show: not particularly ambitious or complex, but well-crafted, satisfying all-ages entertainment. On the whole, the season got better as it went along, thanks to some increasingly impressive set pieces, and a much more prominent role for Jude Law than he had in the first few installments. Plus, the deeper we got into the season, the more time the show spent on Neel and KB, who both turned out to be much more appealing than Fern and Wim. I appreciate that Skeleton Crew gave us a bunch of kid protagonists who make lots of stupid, naive kid decisions. But Wim and Fern being so consistently wrong about things prior to the finale was a reminder that sometimes, there’s dramatic value to letting kids act above their age. Still, this was one of the more consistently satisfying seasons of Star Wars TV. Definitely below the first seasons of Andor and The Mandalorian, but ahead of a bunch of other things that were more highly-anticipated. Doesn’t feel like we need another season of it, but it accomplished exactly what it set out to do.

• Meanwhile, I belatedly finished the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks earlier this week. Lower Decks was a show that grew on me over time, and it ended its run as one of the two clear gems of the streaming era of Star Trek, along with Strange New Worlds. The final season did a nice job revisiting characters who had been established throughout the series, making everything feel connected, despite the show rightly using the Mission of the Week format that best suits this franchise. And honestly? If the final season had just given us alt-universe versions of Elim Garak and Julian Bashir as a bickering married couple? Dayenu.

• I’ve watched the first handful of episodes of the fifth season of Harley Quinn, which debuted this week on Max. Funny show remains funny, and the big change-of-pace of the season is that Harley and Ivy — and many supporting characters like Bane — have now moved to Metropolis, which in turn makes Lois Lane, Superman, Perry White, et al, into prominent figures. I am amazed this wonderful, dirty show has managed to avoid getting Zaslav’ed. (On the other hand, I fear its spinoff, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, is a one-and-done, given how many months it’s been since that season ended, without any word on renewal.

• I wanted to make quick note of two things from this week’s third episode of The Pitt. First, after so many TCA panels for 24 where reporters failed to get a satisfactory answer about when Jack Bauer goes to the bathroom, I was delighted to see Robby’s difficulty finding an opportunity to pee being a running gag in this episode. Second, while the show’s retro vibe doesn’t go so far as to do its own version of an Eighties or Nineties ensemble drama opening credits sequence, it’s fun to look for moments that could be part of such a hypothetical sequence. For example, Mel trying and failing to high-five someone would have to be Taylor Dearden’s big credits moment, right?

• Finally, even last week’s deleted scenes collection from my Jeopardy! set visit feature didn’t have room for everything that didn’t make the final cut at Rolling Stone. As I watched episodes over the last week, I was reminded that I talked about my general agnosticism towards the contestant interview segment with Ken Jennings, and with superchamps Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider, all of whom were contestants on the show for so long that their interviews felt especially superfluous after a few days. Ken admitted that, growing up, he would often leave the room during the interviews, “Because why is the game stopping at this point to hear about somebody's cat or whatever?” But as host, he’s begun to appreciate their value, because, “That's the only time you kind of get a sense of who these people are. If you're going to have a rooting interest, it probably comes from that 30 seconds.” He knows that not every anecdote will be great, and/or well told, but he wants to try to give everyone their moment. But he, Amy, and Matt all know what a strain it is to keep coming up with stories for that segment when you keep winning. As Amy put it to me, “Within 60 seconds after I realized I had lost and my streak was over, one of my thoughts was, Oh, my God, I don't have to come up with any more anecdotes!”

That’s it for this week! What did everybody else think?