Lost in the Movies

The Wire - "The Target" (season 1, episode 1)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Wire. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on June 2, 2002/written by David Simon, story by David Simon & Ed Burns; directed by Clark Johnson): Baltimore Homicide Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is noticing a pattern. He has recently seen a murder rap result in an acquittal, and now he's watching it happen again - one witness (Ingrid Cornell) changes her story while another (Larry Hull) sticks to his, but also hesitates nervously when eyed by Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) sitting in the back of the court. McNulty recognizes Bell as a member of the Avon Barksdale crime organization, and the defendant who gets off, D'Angelo Barksdale (Lawrence Gilliard, Jr.), as the boss' nephew. Judge Phelan (Peter Gerety) notices McNulty in court, and asks him why he attended a case he had nothing to do with. McNulty never quite answers this question, other than implying curiosity based on what happened to his own previous case, but he does share everything he knows about Barksdale, who pushes drugs in most of West Baltimore's projects. Actually...that's pretty much all he (or anyone in law enforcement) knows about the mysterious kingpin, who has never been photographed and keeps a low enough profile that even McNulty's peers seem unfamiliar with his name. That won't last.

The conversation with the judge opens up a can of worms and McNulty finds himself on the hook (to mangle a metaphor). He's assigned to a detail run by the Narcotics Division, led by Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick) and staffed by gung-ho detectives Herc Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Ellis Carver (Seth Gilliam), the more by-the-book Det. Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn), and - also dragged along from Homicide as an unwilling victim of McNulty's loud mouth - McNulty's erstwhile partner Det. Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce). Their superiors are furious that McNulty spoke out; they want to rush through this Barksdale investigation as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, D'Angelo is facing the heat despite beating his case. Wee-Bey Brice (Hassan Johnson) rakes him over the coals for his impulsive shooting, and he is demoted from selling drugs in a high-rise to supervising a group of youngsters in a low-rise yard. There he catches a junkie (Leo Fitzpatrick) trying to use fake bills, and the other dealers beat him so badly he winds up in critical condition at the hospital. This is a helpful turn of events for the detectives, since the junkie's friend Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins (Andre Royo) is a former informant and tells Greggs he wants to inform again for revenge. Speaking of revenge, D'Angelo eventually discovers the price of his escape in the episode's final minutes. The security guard who identified him in court lies dead, and D'Angelo looks a bit stunned to see what a moment's indiscretion has wrought: not just one corpse, but two - including someone who hadn't even been in the game to begin with.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on May 13, 1994/written by Chris Carter, directed by R.W. Goodwin: At first, Scully is frustrated by Mulder's credulity and Deep Throat's obscurity. They are trying to figure out what happened to Dr. William Secare (Simon Webb), a man fleeing a police chase who bleeds green when he is shot and then disappears underwater for hours without being found. The car he's using belongs to Dr. Terrance Berube (Ken Kramer), a member of the Human Genome Project conducting mysterious experiments. Based on these clues and Deep Throat's strong hint that they're onto something big, Mulder and Scully deepen their investigation. Scully's skepticism is quickly overcome: Dr. Berube dies under very suspicious circumstances, Dr. Anne Carpenter (Anne De Salvo) informs her that a sample from the Berube lab is possibly extraterrestrial in origin, and then Dr. Carpenter dies under even more suspicious circumstances. Mulder discovers a room full of bodies floating in water and they're all gone the next day - according to Deep Throat, these were humans with terminal illness who were infused with alien genes as experimental treatement. However, they've probably been destroyed thanks to Secare's relatively high-profile disapperance (and perhaps, grimly, Mulder's piqued interest in their condition). This isn't merely a cover-up - it's a brutally violent suppression.

As Mulder tries to save Secare, the doctor is assassinated and the FBI agent is taken hostage. The "Crew Cut Man" (Lindsey Ginter) has been scouring and often instigating these crime scenes and he mocks Mulder as his cell phone rings without answer. Only Deep Throat can help him now, and so the informant meets with Scully, telling her what to do to get Mulder back. She is given passage to a top-secret government facility where she extracts the source of extraterrestrial tissue that was infused into the various patients: an alien fetus in a jar. The trick works; the deep-secret agents release Mulder. But the rescue comes at a price - these same nefarious forces shoot Deep Throat at the hand-off. And Mulder finally informs Scully that Skinner, from "the highest authority in the Executive Branch" has shut down the X-files and is planning to assign the partners to different areas. Explaining why he won't comply with this order, Mulder references one of the series' key slogans: "the truth is out there." Deep Throat articulates another arresting phrase: "Trust no one." Well, aside from one another.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on April 29, 1994/written by Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa, directed by Jerrold Freedman): A Buffalo police station becomes a crime scene when a cocky, obnoxious detective (Dwight Koss) is mysteriously thrown out the window of an interrogation room. The only other person in there with him was eight-year-old Michelle Bishop (Andrea Libman), so the death is assumed to be a suicide. The girl, however, claims that she saw another man in the room. Mulder, called to Buffalo to investigate this unusual case, has a third idea: the killer was the girl herself. Scully is not the only one skeptical of this notion, but it turns out Michelle's own story is compatible with this out-there thesis. A mixture of clever, lucky, and thorough detective work turns up the identity of the man Michelle saw in the room: Charlie Morris, a cop who passed away before Michelle was born. Meanwhile, origami figures connect Michelle to the home of Tony Fiore (Brian Markinson), another cop Charlie was once linked with.

After introducing us to Tony, the show breaks away from the FBI agents' point of view to show Tony arguing with ex-cop Leon Felder (Richard Sali) about money they stole long ago, and the pact that led to Charlie's death. Soon after, Leon is killed by a bus - his scarf is caught in the door and he's strangled...as Michelle sits nearby and watches. This plus the child's history of strange behavior convince Mulder that Michelle is Charlie, that somehow upon death his energy transmigrated to hers and she's functionally a reincarnation of the murdered cop. Now Charlie/Michelle is getting revenge on the policemen who drowned him in a fishtank and then faked the circumstances of his murder (a grisly gangland execution that Michelle imitates by mutilating dolls at therapy sessions). Sure enough, Michelle descends upon Tony's house, telekinetically assaulting him with an electrical cord and various fragile objects. She only stops when Mulder and Scully realize the circumstances of Charlie's murder (shades of "Shadows") and when Tony's wife Anita (who was once married to Charlie) begs for mercy. As in "Eve," The X-Files tells the story of a powerful, dangerous little girl but this time she doesn't know her own power and is restored to a normal life at episode's end.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on April 22, 1994/written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, directed by David Nutter): When we last saw Tooms, a mutant serial killer capable of stretching his body to fit through extremely narrow openings, he was placed inside an institution for the criminally insane, ostensibly under lock and key. However, the small opening in his cell door beckoned with the promise of escape. As it turns out Tooms himself doesn't have to do much to escape - the system will do that for him. Despite Mulder's testimony - arguing that the seemingly young man has actually been killing innocent people for decades, slaughtering five victims and devouring their livers before undergoing another thirty-year hibernation - the prisoner is released. His hunt for a new victim is continually thwarted by the omnipresent but increasingly exhausted Mulder's semi-rogue surveillance. Scully takes a more methodical approach, digging (literally) into Tooms' past with the help of Detective Frank Briggs (Henry Beckman), the retired cop from episode three who guides Scully to a skeletal corpse with incriminating toothmarks on its ribcage. Mulder and Scully are unable to prevent Tooms from murdering Dr. Aaron Monte (Paul Ben-Victor), the very psychologist who helped get him released, but they do catch up to the killer as he burrows beneath a new building (on the site of his old hibernation spot). Sucked into an escalator, he is apparently destroyed but Mulder's and Scully's troubles are only beginning.

FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and the ominous, usually silent Smoking Man (William B. Davis) spend much of episode 21 pressuring Mulder and Scully to back off their general mission. At times Skinner argues that their methods are not within bureau guidelines, at others he implies that their conclusions are at issue. In one meeting, he shakes a career-threatening stick at them, in another he flatters their talents and offers the carrot of restored credibility. His means change but his ends are clear - let's allow these X-files to fade away. Mulder of course resists, while Scully is increasingly invested not just in their personal solidarity (which is solidified when she lies to cover for him) but in the importance of the work itself, however hesitant she is to draw immediate conclusions. Although it never makes explicit reference to the quasi-cliffhanger at the end of "Darkness Falls," in which the agents were placed in lingering physical peril, somehow the precarious nature of their work in this episode flows logically from the grim mood of the previous one. With three episodes until the finale, The X-Files is building a sense of anxiety that draws the agents closer to one another - and the audience closer to them.

My Response:

Believe it or not, I didn't realize the perfect pairing of "Gotta light?" and Holy Smoke! until I put those two images together. It's one of those serendipitous accidents that we discuss in the episode itself. This is a big entry - by far my longest (two and half hours), covering the most celebrated episode of The Return alongside my final patron-recommended film in focus (Jane Campion's 1999 film starring Kate Winslet as a cult member and Harvey Keitel as her cocky deprogrammer), and featuring my first double guests, here to discuss not just a movie but a Twin Peaks episode. This will also be the third time I've publicly shared an episode or part of an episode on YouTube - in this case, I'm uploading eighteen minutes of our Part 8 discussion, focusing on the New Mexico sequences of the atomic bomb blast and the Woodsmen-led invasion of a small town eleven years later. If you enjoy this conversation, I encourage you not only to subscribe to my own Patreon but that of No Ship Network, where you can support the fantastic and prolific work of this week's guests Em and Steve (who host the Sparkwood & 21 podcast on Twin Peaks, among many other ventures).

I'm also using the occasion to change how I publish my Patreon updates on this site; from now on, I will be cross-posting new podcast episodes an hour after they go up each Monday instead of waiting until the end of the week. My original reasons for updating on Saturdays became irrelevant long ago, and I was already planning to switch to Mondays in time for the site's tenth anniversary in three weeks (which I will celebrate with a special podcast episode marking a one-week break from the Return rewatch). After that, I'll probably stick to this schedule at least through the end of the rewatch, maybe until I have a public series/backlog of pieces to go up on those days for the foreseeable future. This spring has been pretty nonstop, so I imagine it will take a while to get to the point where I have a backlog again, but meanwhile the podcasts will remain steady throughout the year.

As for this week, there's a biweekly preview coming out Wednesday but I'll save that for the next update. There's already plenty to dive into with this podcast alone: aside from the Peaks episode and Campion film (one of Em's favorites, which I was seeing for the first time based on her tip), I loaded up an "other topics" section with recent non-site-related activities: YouTube videos I watched - including, finally, the viral 2014 sensation Too Many Cooks; a couple political articles I read; rock albums I listened to; a dash of Twitter drama; and, of course, a whole lot of podcast recomendations. After some brief listener feedback on Dougie's unusual arm gesture, "Opening the Archive" explores the recent past, recapping my summer of Twin Peaks: The Return that we're now reliving with my rewatch series. These first reactions were a lot of fun to write, and hopefully still helpful to read, but my highlight ended up being a more comprehensive piece I wrote after the third season ended, in which I covered all three seasons at length. And of course, the show notes provide a bevy of links to accompany and extend these discussions.

Drink full and descend...

Episode 26: "Gotta light? HOLY SMOKE!" - guests Em & Steve of No Ship Network/Sparkwood & 21 discuss Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Part 8 & the final film in focus...for now (+ Too Many Cooks, podcast recommendations, my Return viewing diary & much more)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on April 15, 1994/written by Chris Carter, directed by Joe Napolitano): A huge crew of loggers vanishes in one of the few limited, isolated areas of Olympia State Park where they're allowed to cut down trees (as long as they're not old-growth). Mulder volunteers for the case and, as Scully quickly deduces, it's not because he believes that the suspected eco-terrorists are responsible for the disappearances. The agents trek into the woods with Park Ranger Larry Moore (Jason Beghe) and head of security for the logging company Steve Humphreys (Tom O'Rourke), eventually running into one of the anti-logging guerrillas, Doug Spinney (familiar character actor and eventual TV lead Titus Welliver). Sure enough, they come across bizarre phenomena like a cocooned cadaver attached to a tree and an illegally cut old-growth whose inner rings reveal a bizarre substance from several hundred years ago. Doug tells them that he saw one of his friends devoured alive by a strange swarm of insects, who avoid light but attack in darkness, and eventually they all realize that a volcanic explosion must have trapped these ancient parasites inside a tree...until they were released by the shady avarice of the logging company.

This realization comes too late to save the stubborn Humphreys, who hikes back to the crew's wounded vehicle and is killed. Doug notes the irony of both Humphreys' and the loggers' deaths at the hands of a force of nature released by their own disrespect for nature, but a similar irony will eventually consume Doug too. The radical environmentalist, true to his word, attempts to rescue the other three survivors in his Jeep (Mulder allows him to take the cabin's gasoline, condemning himself, Scully, and Moore to submit to a nervous night in the dimming cabin as the generator runs low). However, he drives across his own spiked traps ("talk about shooting yourself in the foot," Moore mutters) and is swarmed when he exits the car to discover the flat tire. Surprisingly, there is no real escape for Scully, Mulder, or Moore either. They only survive the episode, with Scully still comatose and Mulder looking extremely battered, because rescuers arrive before the cocoons have entirely consumed their bodily fluids. A scientist (David Hay) tending to them tells Mulder that the government will eradicate the pestilence from the woods, but Mulder has his doubts. As the official reminds him, failure isn't an option - should these swarms migrate, they could destroy the human race. If ever there was a time to truly want to believe, this is it.

My Response:

Part 7 of Twin Peaks' third season is driven by investigation and discovery: Deputy Hawk and Sheriff Truman examine Laura's secret diary, Ben and Beverly go looking for the source of the magical Great Northern hum, Mr. C mysteriously blackmails a prison warden to plan his escape, and we finally get to know Diane - and come to realize all we don't yet know about her. Part 7 was one of my favorite episodes at the time it aired, although of course it would quickly be dwarfed by the follow-up (a very different episode). Elsewhere in this entry, I linger over the early discography of the Rolling Stones, from the American version of their cover-heavy rhythm and blues debut (England's Newest Hit Makers) to the fully-realized masterpiece they recorded nearly a decade later (Exile on Main Street). In between, they dabbled in raucous rock and roll, airy pop, and experimental psychedelia, before returning to their roots with renewed vigor and songwriting maturity. As I describe the various eras they experienced, I play short clips from many songs; in the show notes on Patreon, I've listed each one by timestamp, in case you're curious. As for Opening the Archive, I'm diving into the original character series - we're now almost a year away from the present, having traversed my entire back catalog up until my Return viewing diary last summer.

Episode 25: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Part 7 (+ The Rolling Stones early albums & more)

Film in Focus update...

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on March 18, 1994/written by Chris Carter & Howard Gordon, directed by Michael Lange): The pride of his Southern town, young faith healer Samuel Hartley (Scott Bairstow) has been performing miracles since he was a child, starting with burn victim Leonard Vance (Dennis Lipscomb), whom Samuel revives from death during an opening sequence set in 1983. Samuel's talents earn a fortune for his adopted father, Rev. Calvin Hartley (George Gerdes) but lately they've taken a dark turn. Accused of murder after a cancer patient mysteriously dies within hours of Samuel's touch, the boy is convinced that his pride has turned his gift toward devilish rather than godly ends; he even surrenders himself to the town sheriff (R.D. Call), a Hartley skeptic determined to shut down the thriving revivalist. For the second episode in a row, Mulder and Scully head to Tennessee, this time for a full immersion in the local community rather than a brief interview off a rural highway. I've been wondering when The X-Files, so keen on exploring the vast geography and sociology of the U.S., would turn toward the Deep South. This particularly subject matter provides the perfect opportunity to do so.

Scully warns Mulder at the outset that "this isn't an X-file" but several factors eventually convince them otherwise. After being killed under shady circumstances, Samuel gets up and walks out of the morgue (he's spotted by several witnesses before disappearing), a Christlike resurrection to match the outstretched-arm crucifixion we witnessed in his jail cell a few scenes earlier. Perhaps even more significant, however, is the effect Samuel has on Mulder. "Miracle Man" is generally considered a "monster-of-the-week" story (it's eventually revealed that Vance, not Samuel, is the monster; bitter about being brought back to life in his beleaguered condition, he has been poisoning the victims with cyanide in order to discredit and destroy the Hartleys). That designation is fair enough, but the episode also dips into the ongoing mythology in a way that even the mythos-heavy "E.B.E." didn't touch: the faith healer is able to manifest and channel a little girl who continually haunts Mulder's peripheral vision. She appears to be his own, unaged sister, abducted from their childhood bedroom in a close encounter of the fourth kind. Is this another example of Samuel bringing back the dead, or is he contacting her across another plane altogether?

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on February 18, 1994/written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, directed by William Graham): With this dense, cross-country (occasionally even international) tale of sci-fi intrigue, The X-Files dives headfirst into its mythology again, arguably going deeper than it has before. Mulder and Scully are tracking a trucker (Peter LaCroix) who experienced a close encounter deep in Tennessee. Interrogating him in a jail cell where he's been held after firing his shotgun in the middle of the night on a dark country road, supposedly aiming at a flying saucer, the agents are frustrated to see his release ordered over their heads. With Deep Throat's help, they discover that the truck was traveling under false pretenses, with the driver using a fake name and the cargo much heavier than declared in its manifest. But if the duo is onto some secret faction of the government, that faction is also onto them - and Deep Throat is caught in the middle. Several episodes ago, we learned that this source wasn't simply feeding Mulder information but also using and manipulating him. Now it's Mulder's turn to find this out for himself, as he and Scully uncover wiretaps around their office and realize that some (but not all) of the evidence they're receiving is part of an elaborate set-up. When are they being told the truth? When are they being lied to? Why are the people responsible for this cover-up playing this game with them at all?

We get many questions in this episode, and some answers as well - although we don't know which answers are sincere, and what purpose the insincere ones serve. Or, as Mulder puts it, "I'm trying to decide which lies to believe." Riding to his help are "the Lone Gunmen" - John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), Richard Langly (Dean Haglund), and Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood) - brilliant conspiracy theorists who consider Mulder's ideas even more fringe than their own, and love him for it. U.F.O. enthusiasts, camped out near a top-secret site in Washington state, also assist Mulder and Scully in their quest to find the cargo (which they are pretty sure at this point is an "E.B.E." - "extraterrestrial biological entity," presumably captured when a spacecraft was shot down over Iraq in the opening sequence). This leads them to shake two snoops, fly separately to Las Vegas where they reunite, and follow the truck just in time to witness a spectacular light show. Did the aliens rescue one of their own from the back of the vehicle? Even this event appears to have been staged (the watches Mulder uses to track time disparities remain unaffected) and so the agents press on until finally they make it to the facility where the alien is being held...or was being held. Deep Throat reveals to Mulder that the creature has been killed. In the late forties, the leaders of all the great powers met in secret and mutually agreed to exterminate any extraterrestrial that crossed their paths (Deep Throat is still haunted by his own role in slaying one such seemingly innocent being).

Is this all bullshit or our deepest peek yet behind the U.S. government's red curtain? Is it a bit of both?

My Response:

The Wire - "The Target" (season 1, episode 1)

The X-Files - "The Erlenmeyer Flask" (season 1, episode 24)

The X-Files - "Roland" (season 1, episode 23)

The X-Files - "Born Again" (season 1, episode 22)

The X-Files - "Tooms" (season 1, episode 21)

Patreon update #26: "Gotta light? HOLY SMOKE!" - guests Em & Steve of No Ship Network/Sparkwood & 21 discuss Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Part 8 & the final film in focus...for now (+ Too Many Cooks, podcast recommendations, my Return viewing diary & much more)

The X-Files - "Darkness Falls" (season 1, episode 20)

Patreon update #25: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Part 7 (+ The Rolling Stones early albums & more)

The X-Files - "Shapes" (season 1, episode 19)

The X-Files - "Miracle Man" (season 1, episode 18)

The X-Files - "E.B.E." (season 1, episode 17)

The X-Files - "Young at Heart" (season 1, episode 16)

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