While the real start of the new TV season has been delayed until next week, a new show did premiere on Wednesday.
WOLF LAKE features Lou Diamond Phillips as a cop whose fiancee disappears after a violent incident, and the trail leads him to a small town where Things Are Not What They Seem (Except To The Audience, For Whom Its Not Very Subtle.)
There was something about this that didn’t feel quite like a TV show, nor quite like a movie. Then it hit me: it felt like a computer adventure game, from the early days of graphic adventures. Constant mood music plays. “You enter the restaurant. You cannot find a waitress. The place is deserted except for a single customer, a friendly gent, seemingly an American Indian. ‘Is that a .39 or a 9 milimeter you have?’ he asks. How do you respond?”
SAY WHAT?
“‘Strapped to your ankle,’ says the grinning man, letting you know that he has picked up on you and recognized you as a cop.”
ITS A 38
I do not understand the command ITS
SAY ITS A 38
“‘Oh, an old-fashioned type of guy!’”
ASK FOR WAITRESS
“The grinning man plays with what appears to be a hard-boiled egg. ‘This late, the place is on the honor system. Go to the refrigerator and take what you want.’”
HEAD TO KITCHEN
“As you head to the kitchen door, the grinning man says ‘Be careful of Rusty!’”
OPEN DOOR
“The door bonks against the head of a man asleep on the floor. This must be Rusty.”
TURN BACK
“The grinning man has mysteriously disappeared, but the egg is still on the table, spinning on end.”
Filled with mysteriousness but lacking mystery, echoing touches of Twin Peaks without catching the bizarrity of it, unable to evoke a convincing small town, Wolf Lake is on worth skipping… particularly since it seems unlikely to last long enough to reach whatever mysterious core they’re aiming to explore.
