Vee

We're still waiting for some potential new news tonight from the same source who broke the details of the Showtime deal in October, but for now there's this new interview with legendary composer Angelo Badalamenti, who's composed all the great music of TP along with many of David Lynch's other films, working closely with Lynch (and singer Julee Cruise) on many of the classic themes. Tomorrow night in L.A. there will a musical tribute concert to Lynch, featuring much of Lynch and Badalamenti's works re-interpreted by everyone from Moby to Karen O., Donovan and Duran Duran - I wish I could be there, but I hope it leaks online. (And yes, Julee Cruise will apparently be there too.) Anyway, here's some of the pertinent material from this piece with Badalamenti: Also:

Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James on the finale. Gale Anne Hurd on S6 and more.

Maisie Williams is doing Doctor Who this year.

Arthur Darvill has joined another one of those CW DC Comics shows I don't watch, playing time traveler Rip Hunter. GOT's Maisie Williams will be appearing on DW this year. Pic at the link.

That was pretty great. I felt they walked the line between Rick's (and Carol's) take and that of the Alexandrians' - the most extreme takes, on either end of the spectrum, pretty effectively. And what I have always appreciated about the show, especially since Gimple took over, is that they seem to go more for emotional catharsis at the end of a season vs. "WHO WILL DIE???" Yeah, we were on the edge of our seats about poor Sasha, about Glenn, etc. But what they were really doing - even for Gabriel - was illustrating what those characters needed to move forward psychologically and spiritually. And I love that. That's what I think powers the show and why it works better than people give it credit for. It's about that family and their struggles. And I think Rick was getting it, thanks to Michonne, Carl, Glenn, etc. But he also knew what they needed to go forward. Even the stuff with Abraham (who has come a long way) and fuckin' Eugene worked. They've made all of them, even Rosita, work as characters. That's wonderful. I've already liveblogged a lot of this, but I especially loved the end with Michonne, Abraham, etc. saying their peace, and then the final tag with Michonne taking down her sword. I'm not going to stress about Jessie because it's still obvious that thing with Rick is not a major going concern, IMO. If they want to do Morgan and Michonne I'm fine with it - Rick and Michonne being romantic or not are not enough for me to worry about when the rest of the show is largely solid and their relationship is still intact. I also think the show frankly prefers to avoid satisfying most major fan ships for fear of letting them think they have any control, which is probably wise. Anyway, very good season ender and a pretty good season. I understand why they do the split seasons - why most successful cable shows do now - but I think sometimes it causes audiences to lose sight of the throughlines running through all of it, back to Terminus, to Bob, etc. I'm glad they brought all that back in. And whatever happens, my true OTP - Carol/Sam - remains intact.

D'Angelo Bob was right! That was a lovely scene with Rick and Michonne. I would've hit the note harder with Rick given his behavior, but she said what he needed to hear (in addition to Bob's convenient voice-overs) and I think he was coming around a lot more quickly than Carol. Carol is too, IMO, she just doesn't realize it yet. She's connected more to Sam than she realizes.

I hate Father Pee Pants on TWD more than I ever thought possible after adoring Seth Gilliam as Carver on The Wire.

I'm hoping this isn't curtains for ol' Glenn, but I had a bad feeling after that scene on the porch. That scene with Aaron and Daryl in the car - having to do it together, and committing to each other - really represents what they're getting at with the group and Alexandria, IMO, in a microcosm. Reedus and Ross Marquand played it beautifully.

These "wolves" are whatever their official name is are a lot more effective here than Negan or whoever was in the comics. That booby trap, as well as the opening scene with Morgan, were really effective and creepy. I hope if they bring the Negan character or a variant on him on that he's a lot less bombastic than the comic version - I felt they did a pretty good job with making the Governor more grounded and less ridiculous on the show than in the comics, though I know that is a polarizing thing. And they seem to do a better job overall with bringing on ludicrous Kirkman characters that he likely insists upon, and making them more human - Michonne, Abraham, and others have all come off much better in the long haul than the typical adolescent badasses he creates. That note in the car was also really creepy. These wolves people are a fairly sophisticated guerilla operation, and Rick seems to be slowly, grudgingly coming along to realizing he can't be like them or Terminus. Melissa McBride is so good at being so terrifying. But Pete deserves all of it.

I am a good hour or so behind the actual airing, but woo! Rick has lost it and Michonne and Glenn are still being painted as the voices of sanity and reason, next to him and Carol. Even Abraham isn't down with this. They have a point about the problems with Alexandria, but there is a medium between the Terminus way of doing things (which Glenn rightly told Rick just now) and being too soft. And that's what the show is clearly trying to put across. Deanna's husband (whose name I can't remember) is a wonderful guy, and thus clearly doomed. Poor Sasha needs a long rest.

Amazon UK has a listing for Mark Frost's companion book The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks. It indicates its release as October 8th.

Two more!

A promo for spinoff Fear the Walking Dead will run during the finale.

I actually think the show's writing is completely with Yvette Brown, though I don't watch the talk show. I don't think anything currently happening has been presented as a foundation for a relationship between Rick or Jessie - if that happens, for however long, it will have to be later. But I think we'll see how the future bears it out.

I think they put Daryl and Beth together but they thought they were opposites and wanted to see what happened with them isolated, for writing value. I didn't want them together romantically, but I didn't mind that duo in story. I also don't think they killed Beth for Daryl; I just think they thought Beth had run her course, which is a fair POV though I didn't agree with it, I thought she'd finally come into her own. I like the whole ensemble, including Norman Reedus; I think he's a charismatic actor they enjoy writing for, but I don't think they do things just to try and service his fanbase. TWD is far bigger than any actor now. It is character-proof and death-proof. And I think it's unfair to say stuff happens because a different actor or character is too popular. There certainly are shows that run like that, TWD is not one of them. They could kill any of the leads on Sunday (and probably will kill at least one regular) and still run for another four or five years if they want to. And the thing is, Michonne was only slightly separated from Rick for two or three episodes while they both began to find their bearings in Alexandria (and they weren't the only ones). They still shared scenes together but their struggles were very different, for a specific reason which has now been illuminated. And as for Jessie, she's had very little airtime, and the show itself has never positioned her as "the new Mrs. Rick Grimes." You're conflating social media reaction and annoying guests on the talk show with what the show is actually doing. On the show, in the scripts, Jessie is just a woman in trouble whose situation Rick has become unhealthily fixated on while having a PTSD breakdown. And as for the rest, if you're saying the show is saying Michonne has forgotten her place or is jealous - the show is saying nothing like that. People on the Internet are saying that. That's not the show, and that's not what they are writing. They can't help it if dumb people say that [!@#$%^&*], and they can't write everything in the hopes of preventing that because that is impossible - people are always going to be stupid. You have to write in spite of that, which IMO is what they do. If I judged everything everything in terms of how we think the craziest segment of the audience is going to react to it, I think that would become a very different viewing experience for me, and certainly a different writing experience for them. But it's not what I'm seeing and I don't think it's what they're writing.

But any question of Daryl being in love with a woman, or having to choose, never actually materialized onscreen. He clearly had deep feelings for Carol and for Beth and for many people in the group, but they have never broken the seal on doing a romance. I think there's a big difference between developing character relationships because they're rich and they're worth exploring, and simply doing it to bait the audience. I never felt TWD did the latter with them or with anyone else, really. I think the Rick and Michonne relationship especially developed organically, and probably took them by surprise with the actors' chemistry (I doubt Daryl and Carol's connection with McBride and Reedus was something they'd always planned, either). Of course they'd want to write for these things. They didn't do it because Facebook told them to. And in the end, Daryl saved no women, the women usually saved themselves. So again, what I'm saying is, these things you keep saying social media wants and is trying to drive the show to do - none of them have ever happened. Certainly not on their terms or in their timeframe. I would love for the show to do Rick/Michonne romantically, but I neither expect it nor view the show around it. I don't think you do either, but I feel like you're saying that that open question, and the audience response to it, is a much bigger part of the way this season is being written than IMO it actually is or ever was. The whole Jessie plot point, to me, is clearly just a reflection of Rick's PTSD meltdown at this point. And Michonne's whole drive for the back half of this season since the hiatus ended has been for the group to find a new way of living, find some shelter and some new place they can call home, because she's seen what being out on the road forever can do to them and to her. She has been the one telling them they need to change from the start, and Rick has been the one fighting it from the start. Michonne and Rick were both in separate directions trying to find their way in this place, and now she's back to set him straight. Same thing with Carl since coming to Alexandria - he's spending time with actual kids, I can't begrudge him that. I don't think any of this is about breaking those ties, but I do think they deliberately separated some of the group from each other in this strange new world so they can explore themselves (like Michonne coming to grips with her own skills and insecurities in a more peaceful world, or Rick's breakdown instead) and then come back together. I mean, it's only been what, three, four episodes since they arrived? So we're seeing this season's narrative in two different ways. But I hope you can consider the possibility that maybe they don't care about what these people think, and they're just trying to tell their own story in their own way, even if it drives some people nuts or pits fans against each other. In the end, to most creative personnel, all that crap is just background noise. You worry so much about what they will do or could do because of people in the audience that I don't think you're necessarily being fair to what they are doing.

I don't think it was difficult to establish Michonne, because Michonne was incredibly popular with fans from the comics. She was always pre-sold. They just happened to get a great actress and expanded the role into much more than it was in the source material. I also don't think she is limited; I think her bond with Rick and Carl has become one of the cornerstones of the TV version of the character. I also think they were separated (for maybe two or three episodes at best) when they were in order to both let their characters breathe on their own and let RIck's breakdown be illustrated without her balancing influence. If anything Michonne has come back to prove Rick is wrong. She is the moral compass here, along with Glenn and Daryl in different ways. Also, we have no metric for the general audience and how they think or what they do. I think you're thinking about them a lot more than the writers were when they broke down this season, or any season. I also don't see any evidence of what they did purely based on audience response. Nobody was begging for more Carol in Season 2 or 3 but they beefed up her role and made her indispensable. People wanted Lori and Andrea dead for years before they went. People loved Shane. You're telling me the social media audience is incredibly important and is making the show do what it wants or will someday, but everything you say they keep talking about - a love triangle where Michonne is vilifed, a love triangle with Daryl and two women, a show where Daryl is the only character who matters - none of that has ever appeared onscreen. I understand these kind of social media things worry you on a TV show and I'm not trying to belittle your concern. What I am saying is, just because they concern you this much does not mean the show itself gives a [!@#$%^&*] about what these stupid people think. And I don't think their writing reflects it in any way. They've been hanging much of the moral conscience of the show on Michonne for the better part of two years. I don't think it's fair to keep processing the show through how other people might watch it, and blame them for what you think other people might think about it, even if what they're doing has nothing to do with that.

But I think what we're saying is that that doesn't make up the bulk of the audience, and it's definitely not what the show is writing for or doing onscreen. I also think you seriously underestimate just how much of a massive fan favorite Michonne was even before she was introduced on the TV show and how much she still is. You seem to think that because a few dumb people on Facebook turn on her that it will become some sort of fan war where Michonne will ultimately be vilified by the writing and the program. That is never going to happen. And frankly, she is far too popular for it ever to happen with the mass audience, most of which does not care about shipping wars on a zombie show. You're saying that if they do anything with a story it has to be clear-cut from the beginning exactly who is right and who is wrong, otherwise dumb people in the audience who watch TWD primarily for the romance will get the wrong idea - but stuff like that is going to happen with dumb people no matter what. They have no impact on the storytelling and the show can't let them dictate how they write or what they write. Nor could they ever have that kind of impact on a character as popular as Michonne, even if TWD cared about their opinion, which they don't. I get that this kind of stuff happens on other TV shows sometimes. It doesn't happen on TWD. But even if it was that kind of TV show, I can't get behind saying you can't write Story X because Idiot Y might misunderstand it. In the end, that is only Idiot Y's problem unless the show makes it theirs (which they won't).

What many people, though? I don't think most of the general audience sees or cares about Jessie in that way. I see no evidence of that.

He is not my favorite person, but it is relevant: Jamey Giddens proposes a Netflix 12-episode revival of GL. It's rather long, very overstuffed and far, far too involved for 12 hour-long episodes IMO, and also inexplicably involves a presumed romance between the two Matthew Buchanans of OLTL. But I don't hate all of it, though it's definitely not what I would do.

I don't think they wrote Lori out over fan complaints; I think they just decided it was time. She was pregnant and Lori died near the same point in the comics, albeit in different circumstances. It also threw people for a loop, IMO, coming when it did. I also don't think Michonne has ever been defined as Rick's protector or by his story. They've always taken great pains to show a far more complete and whole person on the show than the caricature of the comics, which is the only way I warmed up to her despite not being a fan of the comic version at all. On the show she's not just a badass with a sword, she's a whole, three-dimensional woman, who IMO doesn't have anything like these relationships in the source material. Her whole thing last week - dealing with her own trauma and demons and supporting Sasha - also had nothing to do with Rick. A lot of her stuff has nothing to do with Rick. And I don't know how you can say they're pitting Jessie against Michonne when the two have shared no scenes, have never had a conversation and neither has discussed the other with Rick, nor has the show ever set up a dynamic between them. I think you're looking at a couple fans on social media blaming Michonne for punching Rick out, maybe wanting a relationship between Rick and Jessie, and then you're saying the show must be doing something to make them think or feel this way. I don't think that's true or fair, because how many people do you see, here and everywhere, including in the show itself and in the scripts or with the showrunners, saying Rick was out of control, Michonne had to stop him? Then the question becomes which POV is real, which one wins out? Because I think it's abundantly clear that anyone saying Michonne was in the wrong, that's not coming from the show - that's just a couple fans being idiots. A show can be critic-proof or character-proof, but no TV show is idiot fan-proof. You're asking TWD to do something it can't do, which is change human nature and completely control social media feedback. I don't think you can't blame the show for a few people making it about Jessie vs. Michonne - or maybe doing that in the future, if it hasn't happened yet - when there is nothing in the show itself that is doing that. (It also never created a romantic triangle between Beth, Daryl and Carol, but that's a whole other thing.) Michonne is a massive fan favorite that pre-dates even the show. She is never going to be in danger of being supplanted by the chick who showed up a couple weeks ago.

I don't think that would scare them - there are a lot of popular characters now, not just Daryl, and the show is now basically critic-proof. It's always been character-proof. It's going to run and run for years to come. Sooner or later several more favorites will leave, and that may or may not include Reedus. They're not scared to kill anyone.

I don't think that's true about that group at all. I do think there is a central core (which I would say currently consists of Rick, Carl, Michonne, Daryl, Carol, Glenn and Maggie) but i think the showrunners view the whole ensemble as a larger and constantly growing and shifting unit, and some will become more central or have their turn in the spotlight, and some central figures will go and others will take their place. It happened to Shane, Lori and Andrea (and even Hershel) and it will happen to others as well. Michonne and Carol took some people's places. The only people I think are likely here for the longest possible haul are Rick, Carl and Michonne at this point. Sooner or later I think the others will fall away, including Daryl, if only because Norman Reedus' career is branching out considerably. Here's the thing that goes back to my original point, though - even if you and I disagree, I don't think the show has to resolutely go out of its way to prove either one of us wrong. It just has to keep doing what it's doing, which to me is doing a pretty decent job of balancing a very large ensemble. It's not just pandering to the core group.

See, I don't think that crazy segment of the audience has half the sway you think it does. If that were true, the show would be nothing but fan favorites dominating airtime and shipping wars, and IMO none of that really has any place in the actual program. It doesn't matter what the network polls for to drum up social media, and it doesn't matter what the talk show does - the show has never care about that. Daryl has never been paired romantically with anyone; Beth was executed; Lori and Andrea were neither vilified nor quickly or summarily disposed of to please that segment of the audience which bayed for their blood. And as for Jessie, the character had a purpose in the comics which has already been subverted here, by introducing her and her dilemma as a symptom of Rick's psychological tailspin. The character and this subplot existed in the comics and were, in fact, far more benign than what's been presented here, IIRC - this was not invented out of whole cloth and introduced simply in order to pander to fans who don't like the black woman. There was a good chance this subplot was always going to turn up when Alexandria did. There are always going to be fans who only like X or Y or only want this or that, on any TV show. The trick is for the TV show to not fall into the trap of writing for those elements and pleasing no one, and I think TWD has never done that. I want Rick and Michonne to happen myself, but I don't think anything about this current storyline has anything to do with that or with closing that possibility off. It just doesn't register in that way to me. He is clearly shown to be unstable and out of control - I see nothing saying in the writing or direction, 'oh, but he wuvs her so much and they're a great couple.' If you do that's fine, but I don't think that's the story they're telling at all and I see no evidence of it. Maybe they might go there if he gets his head on straight and she lasts beyond the season, who knows. I also don't think it's fair to say that the show can't have any kind of ambiguous storytelling or characterization because it might embolden the wrong element of the audience. That's not fair to storytelling. They can't shout through a bullhorn, and to me that would be writing for them, letting them have sway - by making everything about them and how they should process the show. I think the only way to write fiction is to find your character's stories and tell them, and if stupid people get it twisted, correct them as best you can later. And if they still don't get it, !@#$%^&*] 'em - it's not an adult education course. That's certainly been TWD's approach in the past and I'm good with it.

I just think we can like both; just because something is popular doesn't make it inherently devalued. People worship Michonne and for good reason. For me, I just can't let a specific subset of dumb fans dictate what I enjoy, or how I process the show and its own merits by worrying about those people on the outside of it. Trying to anticipate the movements and reactions of a slice of the audience doesn't make for a fun viewing experience, and it's not fair, IMO, to the characters or actors or the story that's being told. There's always going to be idiots who worship Daryl or whoever, but that doesn't mean I can't like Daryl (or whoever or whatever else) too while also having what I hope is a bit more of a nuanced take on the entire ensemble. I adore Carol and Rick but it doesn't mean I love Michonne or Sasha or Maggie any less. I think if we worry so much about factionalism, then we end up joining them ourselves. It's just a TV show - I watch it in my own way, I enjoy it in my own way, I leave the idiot fringe completely behind. Otherwise it becomes about filtering the show through other people first. What will they do, what will they say, how should I feel about this scene because of what other people will think about it - who cares?