I really hated the 8th episode when I saw it (and other ponderings on this season in general)

I'm still undecided about how I feel about this season in general. I'm even rewatching for the third time (or trying to, its so fucking boring I keep getting tempted to multitask or look at my phone, which is what I ended up doing for my entire second attempt).

First of all, the Nine Inch Nails performance. Nine Inch Nails have sucked since like their second or third album and its embarrassing to see Trent Reznor try so hard to hide his age with that stupid haircut and sunglasses.

Other than that I've grown to like the episode somewhat as long as I ignore that its attached to a series and pretend its some short film. Visually, its pretty stunning but to be honest it is very self indulgent and pretentious to a degree considering there's no context as to whats going on. You see Bob Ball for the first time but thats it. The show offers nothing in terms of clues as to whats happening so how are you even supposed to figure out this "mystery".

There's not a lot happening half the time. You're mostly just looking at special effects, watching the camera slowly zoom in on something, two kids walking home, and a zombie guy repeating the same phrase over and over and over as a bug climbs into the little girl's mouth. The general consensus seems to be that the girl is Sarah Palmer as a child, but honestly I don't even see anything in the episode that backs that claim up. It seems more like a wild guess than an actual theory based on clues from the show. But of course, there aren't any anyway, so whats the point other than to stare at pretty effects for 10 minutes.

One thing I dislike about this season is that way too much time is wasted just watching characters stare at one another or perform tasks at a snails pace. Thats all the Giant scene is. Two characters staring at things for far too long. This isn't even something thats present in David Lynch's other movies aside from Eraserhead and Inland Empire (but both of those are about single individual characters so it makes sense that there's not a lot of dialogue). His characters are constantly talking, and they talk like human beings, not robots.

Speaking of robots, Kyle Machlachlan is a great, very underrated actor but my god is he wasted here. Half the time, he's Dougie, the guy who doesn't move or speak anything other than the last few words he just heard. The other half is spent as "Mr. C", who is the definition of robotic. Seriously, watch the scene where Gordon visits him in prison. The way he speaks is so stiff and zombified. Its also very stupid the way he repeats himself over and over as if he has no more mental efficiancy than Dougie. He doesn't do this with any of the other characters, why did he do it to Gordon? I think they were going for an Anton Chigurh kinda character but since he never really develops throughout the entire show, we don't get invested in him like Anton. He's literally the same character at the end of the show as he is at the beginning and we learn absolutely nothing about him. But anyway, bottom line is that if this show was all I had known from Kyle's portfolio, I would think he's a terrible actor.

Anyway, all that aside, the first time I saw episode 8 I was so irritated at it that I almost decided to stop watching the show entirely. Now that I've seen the full product that is the entire season, and knowing what a mess the rest of it is, I guess its not one of the worst episodes out of the bunch.

Also sorry for the wall of text, there's just a lot I need to get off my chest about this season, so I'll probably be making alot more topics.