The singular vision of David Lynch. I don't wanna sound dramatic or anything, but after seeing one of this dude's movies, it changed my life. He never underestimates your intelligence and never stoops to the limitations of television. In fact, he could probably pack more into one episode of Mulholland Drive than an entire week of regular programming. This is mostly because he has no shame in throwing completely absurd characters into his work -- like Mr. Roque, a mysterious tycoon, who is oddly described as "paralyzed everywhere except his right hand and head, and his head small in relation to the size of his body", or The Cowboy, a polite Texan (played by Billy Ray Cyrus!) who serves as goon for the Italian Mafia.

Where Forbidden Island was probably stronger on page than on screen, the opposite holds true for this pilot. Mulholland Drive isn't strong because of its script, but for its sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing images. These images trigger emotional responses rather than making much narrative sense. With these images, he creates a world that reflects our contemporary reality, but it's a charged and heightened reflection of it. That's what makes a scene like THIS work, which is equal parts bizarre and banal.

Lynch may have that quiet genius action going, but upstairs? Freak city. To the ABC network, his work can be too fragmented and schizophrenic for your everyday TV slob. The one thing about the pilot is that there are too many great characters, which could lead into problems. If the show had been picked up as a continuing serial, these characters would inevitably have to splinter off into a number of other unresolved, complex, and often irrelevant subplots. This discourages casual viewing - miss an episode and you're screwed, so you stop watching the show. A similar problem pared down the audience of Twin Peaks.

Since the Columbine high school shootings in Colorado last April, any violence shown on television has been slagged on for being a harmful influence on today's youth. Pressured by the media, the TV networks asserted that they would take an iron fist to the shows containing excessive scenes of it. Meaning? BAD timing for Mulholland Drive to come out, which contains five murders (3 of them in one long extended scene), one brutish beating, and the trashing of two American vehicles.

With ABC's rejection of Mulholland Drive, Lynch claims to have become a realist like Frost, although he's taking it harder than his former partner did. "This will be the end of [my involvement in TV], for sure." he recently told Movieline. "I've got to get realistic. I love feature films, and that's what I should be doing." In Lynch's mind, this project is over, but for others, it's not quite dead yet. Mulholland Drive is a feature-length, two-hour long pilot. Although ABC has rejected it, there's still time to be shopping it around to a more amenable market. Rumours say maybe Fox or HBO are looking at it (yeah, right). More likely, it would go to a willing distributor in Europe, where everyone seems to dig on Lynch's work. At least this way, Mulholland Drive could conceivably end up on video some day as a self-contained, made-for-TV movie.