Wild Palms

I loved Twin Peaks and have watched the whole thing a few times, but it seems to lose something each time. I will always argue that TP was important and revelatory when it first aired, but memory amplifies its merits. I find the first three or four episodes are the best, followed by a rapid decline in quality.

Wild Palms has stuck in my head from the era also. It's a strange mini series adapted from an equally strange comic that featured a weird take on Scientology. It was originally published on the last page of Details (U.S.) magazine back before it became a tiresome hetero-meathead lifestyle rag. The "TV broadcast as mind control agent" is a thoroughly exhausted plot device, but I don't think the merits of this are in the plot; rather the characters passing off song lyrics as dialog, and startling scenes like one involving Angie Dickinson, a seven-year old and a tanning reflector.

This is not the usual grade-Z Jim Belushi project He's pretty good in this. Dana Delaney alone seems to strike the wrong chord. It also was somehow spared Oliver Stone's characteristic heavy-handedness and clumsy direction.