Great Performances: Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive

From time to time, I want to highlight a performance that I find truly remarkable.  This may be from film or TV and could be a leading role, a supporting role, or even a guest appearance.

The story is well known: David Lynch's Mulholland Drive was originally a 2-hour pilot filmed for ABC that the network not too surprisingly passed on.  The irked director turned around and found French backers to give him the money to extend the existing footage into a 2-and-a-half hour-long theatrical mindfuck.  I have no idea if Lynch planned on eventually having the series take the bizarre turn that the film takes around the 2-hour mark, but Mulholland Drive ended up as one awesomely strange and beautiful movie.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #9

9. Northern Exposure - Season 4 - Northern Exposure premiered in July of 1990, just 3 months after Twin Peaks turned TV upside-down.  And like that groundbreaking show it found an audience almost immediately to the surprise and delight of the nervous executives who rolled it out with a trial season of just eight episodes.  The pilot of Northern Exposure was fresh, smart, and funny as it introduced our hero Joel Fleischman and the lovable residents of fictional Cicely, Alaska.  The cast and crew were all on the same page from the start and Northern Exposure was one of the best shows on television for five and a half seasons - until Rob Morrow left and the series became merely ordinary.  But up until that point, the show was amazingly consistent.  There were no changes to the principal cast and there were no stretches of bad episodes.  Thus, any of the early seasons of the show could have been named on this list of the best seasons in TV history, but I give the nod to season 4 on the strength of its best episodes.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #10

10. Twin Peaks - Season 1 - The rise and fall of Twin Peaks has been dissected ad nauseum and I agree with the general consensus that the show began brilliantly only to run out of steam halfway through season 2 after Laura Palmer's killer is revealed.  Everything that made Twin Peaks so original and entertaining is encapsulated in the 8 amazing episodes that comprise the show's first season.  These episodes are all build-up, inviting us into creator David Lynch's mindscape.  They pay attention to music and atmosphere while keeping the pace humming along, introducing us to the myriad strange characters and mysteries of the quixotic small town.

Hey, it's...David Patrick Kelly!

I noticed the voice first.  This was the first scene of the fourth episode of Louie on FX.  Louie CK was talking to his psychiatrist about his sexual problems.


"Listen," the shrink explains.  "Sex seems very complicated...and confusing, but it's very simple.  The man takes his penis, puts it into the woman's vagina, he ejaculates, and she dies."

"She dies?" Louie asks.


"Oh, no.  I was thinking about something else."