Twin Peaks Return: Assessment

In the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, there are two very different assessments of Showtime's Twin Peaks: The Return. In the major story in the TV section, there is a rave review of the series and everything about it, from Lynch's various visions to the brilliant imagery to the ultimate description that this revival "reinvents the reboot". And in the TV preview for the week to come, the preview of the finale says :"It's another hour long, so you can spend that time not figuring out what the hell is going on."

In a way, this sums up not only the revival, but almost every vision Lynch has given us for every medium, and having seen almost the entire series, I understand both points of view.  Perhaps Showtime should've known what they were getting into. Given how brilliant the three David's of the TV revolution were (Chase, Simon, Milch), perhaps the thing I was looking forward to the most was seeing how this David would manage working in the same limit free environment that created The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood. And you have to admit, he did something extraordinary. He gathered most of the cast of the groundbreaking cult series together after a quarter of a century, along with more than 200 (!) other actors. (Samples include Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jim Belushi, Ashley Judd, Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, Michael Cera and Laura Dern in the role of Diane). Then he spent a year and a half working in collaboration with Mark Frost, creating an environment where there were  no revelations of what we were going to get, not even episode titles. Even the previews of upcoming episodes are so bizarre that Showtime itself has been satirizing them the last month.

And holy crap - he's creating something almost, but not entirely, unlike Twin Peaks. Given the eclectic nature of the series when it was on the air, that's impressive. We've barely spent half the entire run in the town of Twin Peaks, and more often then not, most of the characters we've gotten to know have been almost cameos then anything else. Kyle MacLachlan is still there, but we've seen almost nothing of Agent Dale Cooper. Rather, he has spent the entire series, playing two very different personalities: Doug Jones, a married insurance agent with a Chance Gardener approach to almost everything he sees, and Mr. C, evil incarnate, closer to Cooper bent on a path on destruction. You could make the assumption that Mr. C is the BOB-infested Cooper who appeared in the original series final episode (a necessity with Frank Silva passing) but Lynch and Frost refuse to come at it directly. Even those who have come for the other pleasure that the series brought might well be disappointed - there isn't even so much of the iconic musical score that was so much a part of the original. Perhaps there's a reason why this series - which Showtime promoted with so much fanfare earlier in the year - is getting lower viewership than Fire Walk with Me.

But the fact remains, this is remarkable stuff. And if nothing else, its incredibly brave. Lynch and Frost, who have written and directed every single episode of the series, have done something truly incredible. They've created as pure a Lynchian world than we could ever have imagined. It would've so easy for them to do what every other TV revival has done - bring back the original characters and setting and put them through the traditional motions.  But this has never been Lynch's style, and it maybe as he reaches into his seventies, that the world of Peak TV has finally caught up with the kind of vision that he has had.  This is a far more daring series than the original was, and its hard to imagine even HBO at its creative peak, allowing something like this to come alive.

And whatever you may think of it, it has elicited sterling work from the actors. MacLachlan has given two sides of the same performance so brilliant, its hard to see how he can be left out of the discussion for next year's Emmys. But all of the cast members have delivered remarkable work, including Lynch himself as FBI director Gordon Cole, and the late Miguel Ferrer as Albert Rosenfeld and  Catherine Coulson as the Log Lady, now dying herself.

Will any of this make sense to even those have faithfully watched the original series over the last twenty-five years?  I'm still not sure. But critics, for the most part, have embraced this incarnation in a way that they didn't embrace the second season of the original. And given that Fire Walk achieved cult status within a few years after being savaged by critics and fans alike, I fully expect that, regardless of the conclusion, within the end of the year, Twin Peaks: The Return shall be embraced as a crowning achievement. Maybe it wasn't the smash that Showtime hoped it would be. But if nothing else, it has lived up to the idea trumpeted by Dale Cooper all those many years ago - this is something truly wondrous and strange. I sincerely doubt that any of the future revivals of old series that are either coming or in the works will have even a fraction of the imagination that this one has. This series proves they have something to learn from the old master.

The Anti-Heroine on TV: Conclusion

A more intriguing question that comes into play as we consider the future of television. Can there be a successful series centered around an anti-heroine? I have no doubt the fans of Game of Thrones would argue stridently for that position, but as I have never watched that series and never intend to, I'll take a fifth in this case. There are certainly a growth of anti-heroines in TV, but strangely enough, more seem to be found on comedy. One could make a strong argument that Eleanor (Kirsten Bell) on The Good Place,  Maya DeMeo (Minnie Driver) on Speechless, Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom) in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and especially politician Selina Meyer (Julia-Louis Dreyfus) are anti-heroines, though I imagine the audience would be more inclined to see them as women behaving badly. However, the difficulty of writing any kind of series around a anti-heroine is clearer when we consider two relatively recent series.

In TNT's Animal Kingdom, I have repeatedly expressed admiration for the work of Ellen Barkin as Smurf, the matriarch of the Cody clan. An argument could certainly be made that she is the most powerful force in this criminal family. But through the second season, as even the possibility of losing control mounting, she dug in and became excessively stubborn. She tried to act as a mentor to grandson J, but one couldn't look at what she did with each successive episode as an effort to hold onto her power through the next generation. It also became increasingly clear that even when past problems came back to bite her, she refused to take responsibility for any of it. Never was this more clear when her eldest son Pope, who spent all of Season 2 torment by murdering Catherine, a woman he had once loved, under Smurf's orders finally confronted her on a lie that she had used to convince him. She didn't feel the slightest need to defend herself. One could under when surrogate son Baz turned on her halfway through the season, framing her for a murder that she orchestrated. In the final episode, she tried to turn Pope on Baz, who in the biggest shock of the episode, was forgiven for his crime, but there is still a very good possibility that she nevertheless ordered a hit on him that was carried out, and leaves him clinging to life. One is reminded of something of one of her victims said : "She'll climb over her family to survive."

Another series where it's not yet clear the role the lead female plays is at the center of yet another Showtime dramedy I'm Dying Up Here. Melissa Leo plays Goldie, the head of the biggest standup club in 1970s Hollywood. I believe the creators meant to have her serve as this surrogate mother figure to all of the struggling comics who come into her auspice. But all the time I watched this series, I couldn't help but see another side. Goldie forever promised that she was trying to help make all of these comics by giving them eventually slots on Carson. But the fact is, she seemed to constantly use that as a carrot to prevent herself from actually having to pay anybody who worked for her. When another nightclub came up and offered them a hand up, she turned on her comics saying that "Money is your enemy." Which seemed to be a big excuse the longer the season lasted. She also refused to negotiate with some of the bigger player when CBS offered some of her comics a shot. Again, we were no doubt supposed to see a women trying to standout in a male dominated industry; all I saw was someone who wouldn't bend even though she had nothing to negotiate with.  The season finale seemed to give her a moment of power when she got one of her comics on Carson. But it also ended with the strong possibility that she arranged to have a rival nightclub burnt down.

Now, I'm not certain whether this is intentional, or merely a case of Showtime adding darkness into everything. But it does make you wonder if they were trying to play her as the hero, why portray her as the entertainment equivalent of a sweatshop owner?

The bottom line as we head ever forward into the new golden age: can the anti-heroine find support on TV? One can hardly argue about the lack of good roles for women on television for the last twenty years, and one can only assume that more will slowly emerge. Even having roles for women at the level of Skyler White and Jackie Peyton can hardly be considered steps backwards. And perhaps given the increased number of female showrunner, particularly on Netflix and Amazon, more subtle and measured female roles will probably emerge. (One need only look at Jenji Kohan's GLOW, a series devoted to a TV female wrestling league, to know that the roles are out there.) The anti-heroine may be a new concept, but if we are to have full equality on TV, we need more women to start breaking bad as well.

Don't Miss The Final Episodes

If some people were irked by the immense waiting game one has to play for the final seasons of Game of Thrones, one can picture the irritation I've had to go through waiting more than two fricking years for the fifth and final season of Showtime's brilliant meta-comedy Episodes. Hell, Matt LeBlanc has had time to do two completely different series in the interval. But, as one always finds out with this series, it's worth the wait.

This 'Matt LeBlanc' has managed to move on to his next new project, a practically unfathomable game show The Box whose massive success seems to have shocked even him. Not satisfied with being typecast as a game show host, he is now trying to get a new series. Even worse, he finds himself working in concert with his arch nemesis Merc (Jon Pankow) who seems equally determined to ruin him. In last night's episode, he was caught doing something truly sexually disgusting with one of the contestants. Merc filmed it, and had it posted on the Internet. Once Matt was caught 'masturbating in front of America' as the head of programming put it, things proceeded in typical Episodes fashion. Rather than try to apologize and admit wrong, Matt talked to the head of the network. He admitted doing something far worse when he was a young man, Matt apologized, and then got fired because what Matt did 'wasn't family friendly'. They broadcast his final episode.. and it got their highest ratings 'since 9-11'. Matt was rehired, and was able to renegotiate for a new comedy series. The sad part is, none of this sounds the least bit implausible.

Sean  (Stephen Magnan) and Beverly (Tasmin Gregg), in the meantime, are now seeing their second classic British TV comedy being destroyed from the inside out. Tom, a truly inept and talentless drudge, who got hired to head in an act revenge last season, now seems determined to take all the comedy out of the series, edit the pilot word-for-word, and is willing to cast a man in a wheelchair for one of the more active roles. It doesn't take much imagination to see why Beverly dreamed of suffocating her husband, just so she could never work with this bastard again. And things are, if anything, worse for former programming head Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins) who ever since she has been fired seems to spend her days getting stoned before breakfast and 'looking like she would if she never left Michigan'. But because this is Hollywood, she's determined to hold on to her niceties like her maid, even though she hasn't paid her in a month.

I realize that so often, after a series has been on the air for several season and almost none of the leads have bothered to change, I traditionally complain about the laziness of the writers. But for Episodes, I continue to make an exception because it involves Hollywood and broadcast television in particular, which does its damnedest to avoid making any changes at all. So sure, 'Matt LeBlanc' is still the same slovenly douche he's been since Season 1, but you don't expect him to change, cause , why should he? The series remains dirty and filthy (the jokes I've listed are about the cleanest I can print), but it also is one of the funniest comedies cable has ever done. It's hard to imagine what will happen in the final act of this series. I just hope that Sean and Beverly aren't tricked into writing Man With A Plan.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: The Wedding

     All throughout the fourth season Homicide has been on several occasions sensationalizing the aspects of the police work they do—onscreen murders, nude scenes, etc . This has been tolerable because the character aspects of the show have been basically left intact. Unfortunately, the penultimate episode of the season takes that sensationalizing aspect to the characters themselves. Thus ‘The Wedding’ inflates for an effect almost perversely comical. The only reason that the  episode works at all is because writer Henry Bromell manages to twist the situation into something bizarre.

     For starters Lewis is getting married. To someone we’ve never met. The only reason the audience isn’t pissed by this out-of-left-field development is because the squad is as astonished by this turn of events as we are. Mainly because we know less about Lewis off the job than any of the other detectives. We’ve learned about his insane brother and his childhood growing up in the Lafayette Courts but this is the first time that we have heard of Meldrick being interested in anyone romantically since Emma Zoole over a year and a half ago.

Now, on the spur of the moment, he rents the ballroom in a hotel, asks his associates at the squad to help get the flowers and food together and gets Kellerman to be his best man.

 Almost to a man, they  believe that this is some gargantuan put-on, particularly Kellerman who is irked that he’s been partnered with someone all year and this is the first he’s hearing about it.  Indeed it’s not until Meldrick shows up at the hotel with his bride-to-be in hand that the detectives are sure its for real. (Even then the ultra-paranoid Munch still thinks that its some kind of joke. )Eventually it will come out that Meldrick hid the details of this because he didn’t want to jinx its success. Unfortunately, this marriage is doomed almost from day one as we will learn in the very next episode.

We also get some insight into a couple of other detectives on the squad, particularly Howard. Her sister Carrie, visiting from Florence (where she’s been living since Season 1) drops in on the squad.  She then proves herself a very aggressive flirt, pitting Bayliss against Kellerman  in machismo that verges on being cavemanlike. Kay tries to warn both detectives off, saying that Carrie believes in a fun-loving attitude that is nearly the complete antithesis of her sister. This is an unusual performance, particularly when one learns that the actress playing Carrie is none other than Melissa Leo herself! The disjointed editing and the chameleon-like abilities of Leo keep the viewer from realizing this. I’ve seen the episode a half-dozen times, and its still hard to believe that Leo is both women. Its rather astonishing.

In the midst of all this murder keeps coming. With the entire squad burdened by arranging Meldrick’s wedding Gee finds himself going out on a call. It turns out to be a stone-cold whodunit involving a controversial Baltimore shock-jock. In the course of the episode Gee and Howard only get one lead but when they track down the suspect Giardello ends up shooting and killing him. The shooting is clean, but we learn immediately afterwards that the suspect could not have been the killer and that the only reason he was fingered for the murder in the first place was because of a practical joke by one of his friends. This is an old cliché and the only reason that it manages to come off is because of the brilliant work by Yaphet Kotto. His portrayal of  a man who has come face to face with his own fallibility is one of the most memorable work he would do. Again we get real insight into how truly lonely the commander really is. The doubts raised by this shooting will stay with him for quite some time, and not until the middle of the next season (when he goes out on another case) will he be able to get past this.

In all the fuss and fury, Mary Pembleton, eight months pregnant goes into labor during the reception. This is the final straw for this episode, redeemed only when Frank yells out for a doctor--- and ME Scheiner offers to help. The look of alarm on Frank’s face is priceless.

    Otherwise, this nearly turns this bloated episode into a near soap opera.

          There are some good parts to ‘The Wedding’ but for much of it the characters look foolish and out of place. There is some good work being done by Leo and Kotto, of course, but otherwise this seems  more like the season finale of a show like Melrose Place than Homicide. Perhaps the reason it seems so weird is that it has one of the rare occasions where the entire squadroom actually seems united and cheerful - about anything. Only one thing saves the episode from mediocrity--- this isn’t the season finale. Now that we’ve got all of the showy stuff out of the way, Bromell and Fontana have cleared the decks for the real season ender--- and it will be so remarkable that one can almost forgive everything that has come before.

My score: 3 stars.

X-Files Revival Guide: My Struggle

Written & Directed by Chris Carter

Well, you've got to hand it to Chris Carter. After years of struggling, he managed to get the X-Files back. And in the new episode of the reboot, he gives the fans just about everything that they came to expect of the series. What's more, he has a budget that even at the original series' peak he probably could never use - not even in either of the big budget movies. We finally get to see alien technology.  After a decade of using Roswell as a go-to device for every conspiracy episode, we finally see what actually happened that fateful night nearly seventy years earlier. There are shots of alien experimentation that actually give an idea of how horrible that not event the scenes torturing Mulder in Season 8 managed to capture.

There are a lot of sights and sounds in the return - but it doesn't change the fact that My Struggle offers precious little that is really new, and what it does offer is so much of what made even the most diehard fans grow sick of. There are sequences of voiceovers with stilted dialogue. There are long speeches of supposed exposition that very quickly grow into more involved double speak. There is the idea that everything we saw on the X-Files was essentially a lie, that there really were no aliens. There's something that's rumored to be the key to the X-Files that is something we've seen before. All the evidence is erased before the end credits roll. And oh yes, a long believed dead character is still alive.

This was hard enough to take when the X-Files was on the air. What makes it even harder to bear is the fact that by this point in TV, almost every other series was a serialized drama. Many new series were trying to be mythology based, and as if they hadn't learned the lessons X-Files had taught them, it was a lot more dissatisfying. In the interim between the show's end and its revival, Lost had come and gone, and while it had done many things better than X-Files, it ultimately left nearly as many people unsatisfied when it ended.  The series that weren't sci-fi based also told long-running story, but most of them knew would be on cable where the risk of failure was smaller. 

Carter was right that the mood of the country had changed so dramatically over the last fourteen years, the belief in conspiracy theories had practically become mainstream. In that sense, one of the wiser things about the new series is the character of Tad O'Malley. (This is probably another bite at the hands that fed Fox broadcasting at the time, but unfortunately, its not that far removed from the truth. Considering the last of trust that Mulder and Scully have received from the government when they were at the Bureau, its fitting that the Internet is what comes to their rescue right now, though it is a little odd that any pundit would dare risk things by even suggesting he believed in UFOs. And indeed, the theory that the government has been using alien technology to try and control the populace is a theory that has a certain amount of merit. It would be more effective, though, if the show hadn't flirted with the idea in Season 3 and again in Season 5 only to discard it. And the fact that an alien ship shows up before the episode ends seems to indicate that even in this limited series, Carter is hedging his bets.

Carter does much better when it comes to characters. It would have been easy to have Mulder and Scully come back, and finally be together where we basically left them at the end of I Want To Believe.  To have them essentially broken up because of Mulder's obsession is a daring thing - it finally takes the will they or won't they thing dance out of play. And Duchovny and Anderson (who, let's be honest, look really good in their fifties) manage to play notes that we're not used to seeing in them. Mulder is now finally so cynical that he initially has no strength to believe now that belief itself has become a punch line. And Scully has gotten to the point where she genuinely wants to try and move past everything that has happened. It's telling that the most powerful moment of the episode comes not when we see proof of alien technology, but rather when Scully is told by Sveta about the emotional and physical toll that being part of the X-Files has been. Credit should also be given to Joel McHale for tweaking his smarmy comic persona just enough to make himself sound like a real believer. (Then again, he did spend all those years on E! so he probably didn't have to strain that hard.) And Anhet Mennedru, an actress who was so good on The Americans  gets to play an alien abductees with such vulnerability that I wasn't quite sure she was capable of.

But the sad fact is My Struggle seems so much of an old X-Files episode that you wonder why they revived the series if this what we're going to get. And it doesn't help matters to have the Smoking Man to turn up again. At this point, he no longer seems like a villain but something like a joke. The really mystery is how he managed to get blowed up and come back to life essentially whole, albeit still smoking from that hole in his neck. I love William B. Davis, I truly do, but I just think they should've tried to leave him out of the return.

I have no doubt that Carter wrote My Struggle bearing in mind that this is what the fans wanted to see. But what we get is more or less an updated mythology fill in the blanks that it hardly seemed worth the effort. If the revival was to be worth taking seriously, the writers would have to show that it wasn't more of the same.

My score: 2.25 stars.

Search for the Anti-Heroine, Part 2: Shondaland

I've ranted and raved against Shonda Rhimes so many times over the past decade that at this juncture, its hard to think if there's anything more to say about her. There are signs that maybe her moment has passed - her last ABC series was a huge disappointment, and ratings for her series have dropped so dramatically this past year, in a way, its very telling that she's signed a deal with Netflix. But I think at this point, its worth doing one more key reassessment of her characters before they fade into obscurity.

Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) on Scandal has always seemed so much of a heroine to a certain group of viewers that its hard to understand why. She basically goes around D.C., making it possible for the powerful in Washington to keep getting away with the truly horrible things they do. Basically, she's Ray Donavan with a better fashion sense. But over the past couple of years (and I have basically avoiding watching the series over this time, so all of my information is second hand), she seems to have reached a level of monstrosity that I think even Raymond Reddington would find offensive.

 In one memorable episode last year, she met with the former Vice President who was recovering from a stroke (that she had helped induce, by the way). Now, the previous year, he had let a plot to have Olivia kidnapped and held hostage so he could effectively control the President. It's understandable there'd be some bad blood, but I don't think anyone expected her to beat him to death with a chair. In real time. Now, when Tony Soprano did this in the 'College' episode, it was shocking because it clearly established him as a villain. Other murders by lead characters have done the same. But what it did was effectively make Olivia no different than any of the other killers she spent the last four seasons covering up for. Yet, somehow, there was no outcry. If anything, people thought she deserved it.

Now, I purposely avoided all of Scandal last year - I was going through a kind of political withdrawal. But I know enough so that what I heard made this sound meek by comparison. Olivia had spent the last three seasons trying to bring down B613, the Consortium of Scandal. She'd succeeding at doing it at the end of every season, yet it was revived often the next episode. Never mind that. In the final episode, her father arranged for an executive order have the agency shut down. In that same episode, after arranging to have the vice president murdered (again), she tricked the President into reactivating, and making her the head. So basically, all those seasons where she tried to justify herself as the 'white hat' were just a lie.

Maybe some fans of the series will justify it by saying that this is what took to succeed in this D.C. But it just seems like the slapdash, confused writing, going for a payoff at the end of everything episode, seems to have hit a new kind of crazy. It's as if Rhimes couldn't make up her mind whether she was the hero or not, and decided that now she needed to be an antihero.

There's a similar problem with How To Get Away With Murder, which, as I've mentioned in earlier articles, really is just a Damages ripoff. But, in a lot of ways, with each successive season, it becomes more and more clear that Annalyse Keating should not be mentioned in the same sentence as Patty Hewes. Viola Davis is a great actress, I don't deny it, but no more than Kerry Washington, can she do anything with the hand she's been dealt.

At this stage, the only positive thing you can say about Annalyse is that she hasn't killed anybody yet. (But it's only the fourth season,; there's still time.) But with each successive season, she becomes more and more ruthless, and even more unfathomable. She may be a criminal lawyer, but even the dirtiest attorneys on David E. Kelley's series do not try to implicate their clients or in some cases innocent people in murders that they know other people have committed. Annalyse keeps saying that she's trying to protect the people she works with, but that justification only carries her so far. Especially considering in one case where one of her own clients was murder by her colleague. Indeed, this may be the most remarkable accomplishment of Murder, you're actually rooting for the forces of justice to lock Annalyse up.

And it gets worse!  Annalyse's main justification for all her actions over the last three years has been that she has been trying to protect her students. In the first season, they were all joined in killing her husband, who they believed was a killer, but had actually been innocent of the crime they thought he was. And with each successive season they become colder and more ruthless, knowing that Annalyse is never being truthful with them, corrupting more people who get involved, and adding to a high body count. Annalyse said at one point last season that she wanted her students to become her. That's not something to aim for.

These are horrible people, without even the redeeming value that most of the antiheroes (and for that matter, some of the better anti-heroines) have for getting involved with the nightmares they inflict. Yet Rhimes seem to imply that we should root for them - well, the implication seems to be, because they're black women, and the scales are against from them the start.  I've seen strong African-American woman characters - hell, there's more strength in a single episode of The Wire or Orange in the New Black about the real problems these women face than in an entire season of any Shonda Rhimes' work. (Indeed, there's real shame that  a great actress like Khandi Alexander, who worked wonders in The Corner and Treme has to turn to a series like Scandal to get the recognition she deserved decades ago.) There are ways to script African-American women. And there are series that demonstrate you can show their darker impulses and give them dimension. (American Crime, anyone?) But if Rhimes really thinks that this is the only way to level the playing field, maybe its a good thing she's leaving ABC for Netflix.

The Search for the Anti-Heroine, Part 1

Ever since Tony Soprano began his reign on HBO nearly twenty years ago, one of the overriding trends in the new Golden Age of TV has been the rise of the antihero. Traditionally a middle-aged, usually white man, these figures had been dazzling television in almost every respect ever since The Sopranos became a smash. From Al Swearengen to Don Draper, from Jack Bauer to Dexter Morgan these 'difficult men' as one writer on the era referred to it have been the prominent figures in the medium and have done more to make this a truly great era.

But having watched  TV, the argument that comes to mind: where are the similar kinds of women that have these kinds of roles? One can hardly argue that TV has been lacking for strong, female roles - particularly for actresses who have turned a certain age - over the last decade in particular. But strong women motivated by the same dark forces that have commanded the screen have not been nearly as prominent, or at least not as much for them to have changed the conversation. And the ones that do exist often are not referred to in the same laudatory terms as the men who dominate the screen.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this are the wives who have been the significant others of so many of the great characters of the past fifteen years. Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco), Betty Draper (January Jones), Skyler White on Breaking Bad (Anna Gunn) and to an extent Corinne Mackey from The Shield, (Catlin Ryan), have been among the most fascinating characters of their respective series. (And in the case of Falco and Gunn, they received more than their fair share of recognition from the Emmys). But a rather depressing trend that one found when one searched the Internet while their series were on the air was that they were often referred to as obscene and shrill characters, mainly because they were responsible for stopping their husband's desires. Now, while its true that none of them were exactly innocent in the excesses of their husbands (Corinne comes the closest, ultimately turning against her husband in the final seasons), it doesn't say a lot for the fact that so many people were hostile to them for getting involved in situations that they didn't want to be a part of.

A more troubling fact is how few series over the years have centered around strong female characters who have had very dark sides. Most of them have come over the past decade - Carrie Matheson on Homeland, Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) on Bates Motel, Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) on House of Cards  and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) on The Americans. Indeed, credit should be given to the writers of the latter two series in particular. Claire Underwood is, if anything, more ruthless then her husband, a man who was willing to walk over dead bodies to become President of the United States.  And in The Americans, the writers have gone to a great deal of trouble to make Elizabeth the far more ideological double agent in comparison to Philip, who seems to become less devoted to the cause with each successive season.

But by far the most intriguing anti-heroine over the past decade or so have been on series that, while successful, were never quite given the same popularity as some on their own network.  One was Patty Hewes, the ruthless corporate litigator, played by Glenn Close on Damages, the other was Oklahoma detective Grace Hanadarko, played by Holly Hunter, on Saving Grace.

Patty Hewes was a corporate shark who went after some of the most disreputable forces - corrupt industrialists, magnates manipulating the energy market, private military contractors. But it became very clear that Patty was willing to do far more diabolical things in order to win at any cost, even if the cost was her own family and in several cases, people she cared about. Damages mirrored this by introducing a younger version of Patty, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), an attorney initially hired to help win a case, but who very quickly became someone who was a lot closer to Patty in temperament. After the fifth and final season aired, some said Patty was the villain and Ellen the hero. I thought that the argument was far grayer than most people were willing to acknowledge, that Ellen saw how close she was becoming to Patty, and at the last minute, turned away from it.

In Saving Grace, which was a far more confused series in tone and message, the title character was an promiscuous, hard-drinking, and hard-living homicide detective who after getting involved in a hit-and-run became involved with an angel. Its hard to know what kind of reforms they wanted Grace to make, as she pretty much stuck to her old habits for the bulk of the series. Perhaps they were trying to infer a religious message into the series, but it started hazily, and was never quite clear. What stood out was the sterling work of Hunter, playing a character that even now has never quite been matched on any TV series - she was as screwed up and dark as any male lead on TV, but she seemed to have a real purpose that so many of the antiheroes  on TV were lacking.

Attention should also be paid to the female leads of  the 'dramedy' , a genre that was Showtime's great strength during its era of peak TV. Starting with Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a widowed mother selling marijuana to help raise her kids on Weeds (a series that looks more and more like a dress rehearsal for Breaking Bad), Showtime would run a host of energetic series powered by women battling demons, whether it was multiple personality disorder (United States of Tara's Toni Collette), drug addiction (Nurse Jackie's Edie Falco) or cancer (The Big C's Laura Linney). All of them were dark, mesmerizing series that could also be very funny (the leads to the latter three shows all would win Emmys) and demonstrate that you didn't have to be a true heavy to have appeal.

Now, those of you who have been fans of TV series know that while I have discussed many strong and powerful women, there are a few I've avoided mentioning. The ones connected to Shondaland. I have words them that you're not going to like, but since I've expended so much energy so far, I think I'll save myself from going into more detail until tomorrow.

Homicide Episode Guide: Scene of the Crime

Written by Anya Epstein and David Simon; story by Henry Bromell and  Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson

Directed by Kathy Bates

    Technically speaking, according to the show and the board this episode was the next to  last episode in the fourth season. However, given the events in episode 420 (which we will explore in time) it is very difficult to believe that Lewis  would be on the job. Problems with numbers aside ‘Scene of the Crime’ is one of the most troubling episodes the series would do dealing with two controversial questions—are the police really effective when it comes to dealing with drugs, and can the black community trust the police?

     Question one comes into play when Lewis and Kellerman investigate the murder of a drug-dealer in Highland Terrace—and run into a wall of hostility, part of which comes from the residents but also comes from a group of Muslims who we see have managed to maintain peace and order where the cops have not.

     There has been a great deal of hostility towards the Black Muslims in the past few years and they are very hostile towards the police--- specifically Kellerman, who is the wrong race. (The Muslims  would prove fascinating for Fontana, a year later he would explore their religion still further in the HBO drama Oz) But it is very clear that they have been doing good work (even if, as Giardello suggests, the violence and drugs are only being moved a few blocks away) and Lewis, in particular, seems somewhat impressed by what they have managed to accomplish where normal policing has failed. This brings up--- for the first time between Mike and Meldrick—the issue of race. It is clear that the case gets under each other’s skin. However, in the end, asked to choose black or blue,  Lewis chooses the latter. When the murderer gets away because of the Muslims intervention, he is enraged and upset.

     The second question deals with an even more troubling problem. Officer Stu Gharty is dispatched to a shooting in a housing project a couple of blocks away. When he arrives however, he hears the shots being fired and goes back into his squad car. Some time later Munch and Russert arrive and learn from Gharty that two drug dealers ran into the basement and killed the other.    Munch has no problem writing this up as a double murder. Russert, however, presses forward and learns that the mothers of the victims called the cops when they heard the shooting and it took half an hour for them to arrive. Things get even murkier when Russert presses Gharty and he refuses to state, one way or the other, whether he called for backup. Technically this is dereliction of duty but consider--- Gharty is over fifty and is armed with just his service piece. He could have easily been killed or opened up a can of worms if he ended up killing one of the shooters.

     Reluctantly Russert brings the case before a board of inquiry. Gharty is eventually cleared of all responsibility. However, he is unsettled enough that he admits to Russert that he was too scared to go into the firefight. Peter Gerety gives a superb performance showing both the good and bad about this troubled cop. As it turns out Gharty’s work in the Baltimore PD has just begun, though we won’t learn this until the end of the next season.

     There are no easy answers for any of the questions raised in this episode. Yes, the Muslims are wrong to manipulate race for political advantage but is it far removed from the political manipulations that the brass use to get them out of the Terrace? Yes, technically Gharty should have gone in to the project, but should we really expect a fiftyish cop go into a building where two young heavily armed teenagers are shooting up the place? Police are public servants but they’re not superheroes.

     In addition to all this excellence, we also finally see the real differences between Giardello and Russert’s leadership. Russert, even though she is reluctant to do so, goes after a fellow police officer rather than support him. Gee, on the other hand, fully stands behind his detectives, supporting Russert’s decision to move forward. He also does one of his most masterful manipulations of the bosses. After Barnfather tells Gee to stop the investigation of  the murder in Highland Terrace, Gee agrees—and promptly leaks this to the press the minute the Colonel’s out of his office. The next day, Barnfather puts them back on the case.

     Even the lighter moments in this episode have a ring of pain behind them. Munch yearns for the return of Bolander, who he has not heard from even though he has called twenty-six times without getting a response. He finally thinks Stan is going to show up at the Waterfront--- only to be let down when Bolander not only cancels, but does so without even talking to Munch. Poor John. As it turns out, his partnership problems are only going to get worse.

     Essentially though, ‘Scene of the Crime’ is a very serious episode. Like many episodes, the issues are not black and white but rather gray--- and this time the gray involves the police. As Russert  puts it, “if the people don’t trust the police and we don’t trust each other, who can we trust?”  This question has come up before on Homicide and will come up again but there’s still no easy answer.

My Score: 4.75 stars.

Better Late Than Never - Feud: Bette & Joan

When the latest collaboration between FX and showrunner Ryan Murphy debuted this March, I more than understand how big a deal it was going to be. Murphy was taking a look at Hollywood during the days of the studio system to use as a mirror for the roles of women in the world. Even if I was iffy about the principle, the cast listing alone, with four Academy Award winners (believe me, we'll get to them) would've been enough for me to want to see it. Add to that, the fact that it deals with an era that I have studied even longer than I have been studying television, and it was clear I had to see it. But it was scheduled against American Crime, which I have spent three years advocating for, and which frankly needed more viewers than this series would. So I watched that show, ABC canceled it anyway, and for reasons which boggle the imagination, Crime was nominated for only three Emmys. So finally, I found myself turning towards Feud: Bette & Joan, a series which got nearly as many Emmy nods as Murphy's The People V. O.J. Simpson did last year.  And while the series doesn't quite reach the level of brilliance or the Zeitgeist that this series did, one can hardly deny that it's incredible television nevertheless.

For those of you who didn't bother to watch, the series deals with two of Hollywood's greatest actresses: Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) Feud begins in the 1960s, where both actresses, considered past their prime by the studios are looking for anything resembling a great role. Crawford finds it in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She convinces down on his luck director Robert Aldrich (Alfred Molina) to direct it, and then lands her arch rival Bette Davis to play the co-lead, even though it's pretty clear the two of them have casually disliked each other for more than twenty years.

Aldrich jumps through hoops to get funding, finally ending up at Warner Brothers. Stanley Tucci does a magnificent job as Jack Warner, a man who doesn't even try to hide his disdain for talent in general and these actresses in particular. As the movie begins filming, Crawford and Davis seem to be getting along well, but Warner pushes a reluctant Aldrich into setting the two against each other, supposedly to get good publicity and to make the picture work better,  but the subtext is, he wants to make it clear he controls the picture. To that end, he has no trouble using one of the most acid-tongued writers in history, Hedda Hopper (a superb Judy Davis) who measures equal part bully and friend depending on who and when she's talking to someone. In just two episodes, Davis and Crawford are at each other throats. It's also clear that it wouldn't have taken that much to push them there.

There are clearly messages that Murphy is trying to say about Hollywood through the story of these two women. Considering all the obstacles that both Crawford and Davis faced just getting to the top of the profession, the problems that still exist to this day of women over fifty trying to get roles of any value, and the manipulations of executives treating actors like cattle, its clear that the two women should've been trying to support each other, especially at this point.  Instead, they spent their whole lives hating each other. He tries to tell this story through a documentary interviewing some of the other people of the day (Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Olivia De Haviland and Murphy stalwart Kathy Bates plays Joan Blondell.) And its very clear, from the scenes we see of them with their families that they basically gave their lives to a system that ate them up and had no use for them. (Special mention should be paid to Kieran Shpika, who plays Davis' daughter, and in one spine-tingling monologue, reminds you that she can steal the show from any actor.) In that sense, Feud works particularly well. What's not clear yet is if manages to hold a mirror to the country and women's issues the same way that O.J. Simpson held one to racial issues.

But even if you care nothing for that particular idea, one can't deny that this a triumph on almost every other level. Sarandon and Lange are exceptional playing two screen legends, which will no doubt make the already difficult job of choosing Best Actress in a Limited Series even harder for voters. But they are more than ably supporting by just about everybody in the entire cast, from Tucci and Davis, down to Jackie Hoffman as Mamacita, Crawford's loyal aide de camp.  I'm still not sure whether this series is at the level of Fargo or Big Little Lies, but it is very clear that Murphy is moving farther away from the campy excesses of so many of his FX projects to becoming one of the most extraordinary talents in TV today.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: The Damage Done

Written by Jorge Zamacona; story by Henry Bromell and Tom Fontana

Directed by Jace Alexander

              Homicide  did not generally believe in villains. There were bad people, such as Gordon Pratt and Pamela Wilgis, who never acknowledged (or paid) for their crimes but for the most part criminals are ordinary people. There is no such thing as a Keyser Soze or Professor Moriarity, no supervillains out there. But sometimes, even in real life, there are people who come close. In David Simon’s second series for TV The Wire the structure of the show was built around a drug lord who was pretty close to untouchable.  The model for these characters is present in ‘The Damage Done’ where we meet someone who will eventually turn out be the bane of the Homicide Unit—and nearly bring it down completely.

     None of this, of course, is obvious at first. At first, it seems like a normal case with Kellerman and Lewis investigating a series of drug related murders that were all committed with the same gun.  In many ways this is Homicide getting back to its roots--- with all the serial killers running around its been quite some time since we investigated murders that are clearly drug-related. The inner-city turmoil and the devastating and violent effects of drugs was at the core of Simon’s book and for the first time in a long while, we get a cold, unflinching look at  the heroin trade in Baltimore.

     This case would end up being the defining investigation of Mike Kellerman’s career in homicide. At first, he merely feels the burden of being the primary on six related murders. This pressure takes an unusual form because Giardello rather then being aggressive instead poetic and almost whimsical, which apparently with Gee is a clear sign of fury. It is added by the insinuations of Bayliss and Pembleton who (blessed with near perfect clearance rates) mock Kellerman's problem.

     The burden becomes clearer when we learn who the opposing sides of the drug war. At one end is Alonso Fortunado, aka. Drac. Like many kingpins Drac doesn’t even have so much as a parking ticket. But he is different because he is clearly not as bloodthirsty as some of the other crimelords in the city (This leads to the one unbelievable scene in the episode where Drac gets the drop on Kellerman--- and allows him to live. I know they wouldn’t kill Kellerman off, but still…)

     At the other end is Luther Mahoney, an arch drug lord who uses his drug profits to become a good humanitarian. When Kellerman and Lewis meet him, he positively oozes smarminess but he stands completely unfazed and is even amused by the detectives insinuations. (One wonders if the writers named him for DC comics archvillain Lex Luthor, an evil man with a similar humanitarian false front. You can also see some of the lines that Simon would later use when creating Stringer Bell for The Wire.) Erik Todd Dellums is marvelous as the unctuous and slimy criminal and its small wonder why he was so popular.

     The killer is eventually caught, but refuses to implicate Mahoney. Kellerman and Lewis knows that they will never be able to prove it and this upset them. But something that may have bothered him more occurs in the last scene. An anti-drug vigil is held in front of the squad and Drac shows up with his wife and child. Suddenly a shot rings out and Drac is killed—while Mahoney stands just a few feet away. It is possible that Kellerman’s hatred of Mahoney originates from this murder.

     Reed Diamond gives one of his best performances. We see him at his most hardened, and also as his most compassionate and true-blue. Part of that compassion comes when he meets Amy Jennings, a woman related to one of the murder victims and has a flutter in his heart that dies before it can bloom. But his honesty comes through when he tells his partner he has never been tempted to take money found in a drug-related case--- and would shoot his partner if he tried. This is particularly poignant considering next season when he would be ensnared in a bribery scandal.

     ‘The Damage Done’ was a critical episode in many ways for the series. It would introduce a villain whose presence would enable the writers to delve deeper into aspects of the drug culture. It showed that even doing a standard ‘good guy versus bad guy’ kind of story could be handled with class. And it began the cycle of events that would eventually lead to the destruction of Mike Kellerman as a cop. Seen on its own merits, this is a  good episode. Seen in relation to Homicide it is a vital part of the series history.

My Score: 4 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: The Truth

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Better Late Than Never: Master of None Season 2

One of the more entertaining shows in 2015 was Netflix's Master of None. Aziz Ansari, less than a year removed from the remarkable Parks & Recreation, all but single-handedly brought the series together. He wrote or co-wrote, directed and starred in every episode, creating the character of Dev,  a thirty-ish Indian actor living in New York, trying to build a career and a romantic life in Manhattan. The series dealt with his career, his relationship with his family, and his attempt to find a relationship. Ansari was nominated for three Emmys and won for writing in 2016. Given how much work is involved in the project, its perhaps not that surprising that it took until this May for Season 2 to arrive. And just having seen the first three episodes, I can say that it more than deserved the nine nominations it got, including Best Comedy series.

For the first episode alone, it deserves a prize. Dev has relocated to Italy where he was studying to become a pasta chef. In an episode, shot in black & white, and two-thirds in Italian, Ansari brilliant satirized the 1940's realist Italian classic The Bicycle Thief.  In this episode, Dev finds himself wandering through Italy on his birthday, encountering a beautiful woman, and setting up a date - only to have his cell phone stolen. Even if you knew nothing about the film, there was something truly magnificent about the scope and daring of it.

The other two episodes were nearly as well done. Dev's best friend Arnold came to Italy to visit him and attend a wedding, only to reveal that the woman getting married had been, for him, the one that got away. A whirlwind of food and love, it was both humorous heartbreaking. And in the episode titled, 'Religion', Ansari revisited much of the same territory he did in the marvelous episode 'Family, only this time finally dealing with Dev's (and by extension, his own) Indian Muslim heritage. Dealing with how Dev managed to get his far more devout cousin to indulge in pork for the first time, the episode eventually came around to Dev's own very light religious leanings. The episode eventually ended on a sweet note including probably the most benign reading of the Koran you'll see in any TV series this year.

Will Dev manage to reunite with the girl who broke his heart and flew to Tokyo last year? Will he be able to move on? (Given that one of the episode's is basically a recounting of a bunch of failed first dates, I'm not betting on it.) Will he manage to have a more successful career than he managed last season?  Will they finally manage to utilize the rest of the cast outside of Dev a bit better? It's hard to say at this stage. What I am relatively sure of is that Master of None is one of the best auteur driven comedies on any network. It's definitely a lot easier for me to relate to than Atlanta, and when it's firing on all cylinders, which as you can tell, is often, its one of the funniest and most endearing shows on TV. I hope I don't have to wait another year and a half for Season 3.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: Requiem for Adena

Written by Julie Martin

Directed by Lee Bonner

     Having managed to improve Homicide’s ratings over the season, the heads of NBC gave Tom Fontana and the shows writers room to experiment with the format or in this case revisit an old story. Or to be truthful, the old story.

     The murder of Adena Watson was at the center of Homicide first season and was central in shaping Tim Bayliss. Time has gone by (the show says four years, the calendar says three) but, as we saw in ‘Stakeout’ Tim hasn’t forgotten it. So when Janelle Parsons, a twelve year old is found stabbed and sexually assaulted in an alley Bayliss, perhaps seeing things that he wants to see, thinks that there may be a connection to Adena’s murder. However, there is one critical difference to this case: Pembleton is the primary. And he knows how badly the Watson case was botched by the bosses and the media and, yes, his partner and he doesn’t want those mistakes to be repeated . So he insists to Gee  that the case NOT be designated a red ball and that he be allowed to work this case solo.

     This may seem very unlikely for an investigation of this nature to be handled. In fact, the Parsons case is modeled after a similar child killing that occurred the same year in Simon’s book. Pushing the parallel further Harry Edgerton  (on whom Pembleton is modeled) worked the case in exactly the same way Frank does here and it was solved without any links to Latonya Wallace’s murder earlier in the year.

     However, as in the case in this episode, the passage of time has done little to heal the emotional scars that Bayliss received during the course of his first investigation. Old wounds are reopened for the detective and the show, much like real life, does  not offer the benefit of any answers. It also reopens some of the old problems that Tim and Frank have always had during their partnership, especially when Frank goes ballistic when Tim leaks word of the investigation to the press. (On a side note, Giardello cautions Pembleton not to get so pissed that he burst a blood vessel. Did Gee have any idea what was coming?) But, in point of fact, Frank is absolutely right about what Tim is doing. He knows that Bayliss’ attitude has nothing to do with Adena Watson any more than it has to do with Janelle Parsons. It is all about Tim trying to correct the mistakes of the past--- and despite Bayliss’ best efforts he can’t.

      Andre Braugher gives a great performance, as he almost always does. His instincts are as sharp as they have been and he is as smooth a detective as he usually. In this episode he proves that a ‘one-man red ball’ can sometimes do far more than a troop of police. But at the center of this episode is Kyle Secor who continues to demonstrate why he is the guts of Homicide . He wears his heart on his sleeve in this show (much like the carnation on  his lapel) and he demonstrates that he is still in nine kinds of pains over Adena Watson’s death—so much so that he tells Gee  that he isn’t sleeping well and if he knows how to let a case go.  Gee offers some comfort but there isn’t a lot that he can give. Tim manages to put Adena’s ghost to rest after a fashion, discarding the picture of the murdered child that has adorned his desk for three years. But ghosts don’t go away  because of symbolic gestures and it will soon become clear that this case will never go away. (We won’t learn the reason why for another year)

     The episode is dark and painful but there are some amusing aspects to it. For one thing, there is Janelle Parsons’ killer Carver Dooley portrayed memorably by comedian Chris Rock.  Dooley is an incredibly dim bulb, so much so that even when Frank interrogates him he becomes half- convinced that Dooley didn’t kill him. The mixture of genuine stupidity plus the horror of the crime makes a very disturbing portrayal. Then there is the other subplot involving Brodie’s crush on Kay Howard—who he calls hot, an adjective that seriously disturbs Munch when he hears it. Howard eventually hears about the crush but comes to believe that it is a put-on by her male colleagues, leaving poor Brodie crushed. (This, however, is true to Howard’s overall character.)

     But, even with the comic elements, ‘Requiem For Adena’ remains a wrenching, conflicted and unnerving episode of Homicide. To revisit old wounds as painful as these is something that few television shows would have the guts to do but Homicide did regularly.  I would have been willing to sit through ‘Thrill of the Kill’ and ‘Map of the Heart’  in order to get an episode like this and, as is almost always the case, the show delivers when it does.

My score: 5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Sunshine Days

Written & Directed by Vince Gilligan

With the exception of Darin Morgan (whose level of genius and talented was only limited by the number of scripts he wrote for Ten-Thirteen), by far the most extraordinary talent to come out of the X-Files was Vince Gilligan. He has been a master of creating villains who are remarkable mainly by their ordinariness, and being able to satirize the series with an insight that was extraordinary at the time, and still seems remarkable now. (One could also make the argument that by working with Chris Carter, he carefully harvested so many of the actors, writers and directors that would make Breaking Bad the remarkable force it was. And considering how much of that series, as well as Better Call Saul, was based on a singular overriding story, and the mythology leading up to it, and argument could made that what he learned from Carter was what not to do.)

Two years ago, in Je Souhaite, Gilligan wrote what many people thought would stand as the penultimate episode of the series, a story that simultaneously provided proof of the paranormal, and demonstrated that it was never about the huge world changing events, but rather the human element that were the most important thing. It was a note of pure comic bliss that the series has never really been able to equal ever again.Now, in Sunshine Days, the actual penultimate episode, he tries to do something similar, and if its not nearly as immaculate or entertaining story, it still sings a great deal, and provides us with a marvelous way to leave.

If anything, this episode gives Gilligan his chance to satirize a lot of elements of the series that has been so good to him the past eight years. The story involves a man who has been living in a house that everyone considers 'the Brady Bunch house', and has even named himself after a character who joined the series after it 'jumped the shark'.  And this case is being investigated by Doggett and Reyes. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see what Gilligan is gently trying to satirize. As the episode goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Oliver  is the proof of the paranormal that Scully in particular has been seeking for the past nine years. She ends up recruiting one of the professionals, Dr. John Reitz (very well played by John Aylward) and they end up finding out that Oliver is indeed what they are looking for, and everybody in the X-Files unit - including Scully! - sees it. Skinner is left to observe, and in another delightful sequence, literally turns cartwheels in mid-air when he sees. "With this, the X-Files can go on forever!" he says ecstatically.  And then, Oliver collapses. And Doggett of all people, makes the connection to realize that his life can only be saved if he never uses his power again. And the fact that Reyes now says Doggett is getting the hang of this job, and Scully finally admitting that she's had proof of the paranormal all along, emphasizes the bittersweet of the end that is nearly upon us.

One could also make the argument that Gilligan is, Morgan-like, taking potshots at some of the failed aspects of Season 9. Oliver is supposed to be the one who will change everything, who will serve as a beacon to the entire world. Sound familiar? But Gilligan is gentle enough never to mention William by name, and points out that what it really took to change the savior of humanity was something that has almost never been whispered on this series: real love. Genuine care is what saves Oliver in the end, not some ridiculous shot of some kind of metal.

Admittedly, Sunshine Days isn't one of Gilligan's greatest scripts, but that's mainly because (and you have to have noticed if you've read by guide for this long) the standard he put forth was so high. Perhaps the biggest flaw is the fact of Oliver himself. What draws Doggett and Reyes to the crime in the first place is the fact that Oliver ends up killing somebody, and before the first act is over, he kills someone else. Once its decided that Oliver is the proof of the paranormal, the fact that he's killed two people gets kind of pushed back into the background. You could make the argument that's not exactly an inconsistency with the X-Files writing, even with Gilligan himself (Eddie Van Blundht, rapist, anyone?) but it is kind of strange to see him give it short shrift. Michael Emerson is one of the most gifted actors in TV today (his performance as Ben Linus was one of the great strengths of the next big cult phenomena Lost), but he doesn't quite have the ambiguity to play it this time.

But the fact remains it is one of the most wondrous scripts in Gilligan's entire time on the series. The imagery that he uses, from the Brady bunch kids paralleling The Shining to the incredible moment when the X-Files unit is transported to a Pacific Coast, are remarkable for any episode in the show, much less the next-to-last one. You know that its all probably the work of a green screen, but Gilligan has done enough with the series that you just don't care.

Sunshine Days may be a final statement on the X-Files itself, better than any mythology episode ever could be. At its peak, like The Brady Bunch, it was a show that has became part of the lexicon, that was one of the last real series to draw the masses together before TV turned a lot narrower in its focus. I don't if we'll ever see another Gilligan story for the series again (its not outside the realm of extreme possibilities) but for his final statement on the show, its still rather fitting.

My score: 4 stars.