WILD PALMS (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                           The five-hour mini-series WILD PALMS was adapted from a serial magazine comic from one Bruce Wagner, who also scripted the adaptation of his work for this ABC project. Oliver Stone executive-produced while four separate directors helmed the five episodes. ABC was allegedly seeking an "arty" offering that might pull in some of the high ratings that the 1990-91 TWIN PEAKS had enjoyed before it imploded, and they sprang for an all-star cast: Jim Belushi, Dana Delany, Kim Cattrall, Robert Loggia and Angie Dickinson. These five performers provide the primary ensemble, though there are at least a dozen secondary players, few of whom Wagner makes interesting or relevant to the muddled plot.                         

   In the near-future of 2007 Los Angeles, patent attorney Harry Wyckoff (Belushi) seems to be living a mostly blessed life, with beauteous wife Grace (Delany), two children, and a strong expectation that he's soon going to become a partner at his law firm. He has a weird dream about a rhinoceros at the story's opening-- one of the many hermetic symbols that's barely if at all deciphered-- but on the whole his life is fine. Then, after the fashion of many a film noir protagonist, temptation knocks on his office door, in the form of old girlfriend Paige (Cattrall). Paige has lost track of her grown son and wants Harry to play detective and find the offspring. Harry never really does play Philip Marlowe, though, because Paige is simply roping him in as the witness to a massive cultural conflict seeking dominance of the American culture. Paige is tied to an oppressive faction called "The Fathers," led by Senator Kreutzer (Loggia), who also controls a Scientology-like cult. His main goal-- allegedly not in the original comic-- is that he seeks what one character calls a "techno-shamanistic key to eternity" which will make his dominion possible. Against Kreutzer's power are ranged an equally secret cabal, The Friends. Kruetzer's sister Josie Kruetzer-Ito (Dickinson) is also involved in the Senator's vague scheme, sometimes operating as an enforcer.                                 

  Wagner never resolves most of the mysteries he introduces, and possibly, if he had any notion of translating his comics-concept into something along the lines of TWIN PEAKS, he might've thought explanations counter-intuitive. Comparisons to Philip K. Dick crop up frequently in reviews of WILD PALMS as well, and many Dick novels do place some hapless, clueless protagonist at the center of some vast conspiracy that's never fully explicated. That said, Dick usually finds at least a tenuous reason for the hero to be the focus of conspiratorial attentions. Why do both the Fathers and the Friends want to enlist Harry, a rather mediocre figure, into their grand schemes? These schemes are laid long before Harry dreams of any rhinos, starting with a sort of "changeling myth." Apparently, the son that Harry and Grace raised was never their child; instead, that boy was abducted and replaced by another one, sired by both Kreutzer and Paige. Wagner evokes this "child-stealing" trope several times, but I for one couldn't figure out what was its significance within the grand plan.                                   

   I should note that at least one of Kreutzer's motives for suborning the services of Harry is that of jealousy. Though he sires a child with the much younger Paige, Kreutzer is jealous of Paige's more passionate feelings toward Harry, so at least some of his scheme comes down to dicking with a rival. Sister Josie isn't much less weird. She has a thing for her Eli, her former husband, and father to Harry's wife Grace, although Eli is now one of the Friends, and may have organized the resistance to counter both Kreutzer and Josie. But is there something going on between the Kreutzer siblings? One of Josie's earliest scenes with Kreutzer has him half-naked on a massage-bed while she rubs him down with body-lotion. In that scene, Josie complains that she doesn't like her brother's artist-friend Tully because he has too much influence over the Senator. (Tully also becomes one of the Friends at some point.) The very next scene shows the artist (Nick Mancuso) ending a movie-date with his sister Mazie, who makes the strange remark, "Brothers and sisters share the sweetest mysteries." Josie then has Mazie kidnapped and killed. Later Josie and her goons bust into Tully's studio, and while the goons restrain the artist, Josie does an Oedipus on Tully's eyes-- easily the most memorable scene in the serial's disjointed continuity.                                                                                                

Belushi handles both the confusion and rage of his hapless protagonist well enough, though his character doesn't get much of a resolution since the final segment just kind of fizzles out. Loggia and Dickinson get the best scenes, and while Loggia played various evildoers in his career, Dickinson's intense villainess-turn is a welcome change. Wagner's script is forever asserting its own cleverness, but many of the mysterioso scenes fall flat. Episodes of TWIN PEAKS also teased the viewer with mysteries that would never be resolved, but under David Lynch's aegis, the episodes looked as good as any of Lynch's cinematic projects. In contrast, the segments of PALMS, regardless of director, all look flat and uninvolving, possibly because the directors didn't know what the story was about, any more than did most viewers. The                     science-fiction content here is generally low-level, thus falling into the domain of the uncanny.                                                                                                                                                                                   SPOILER-IFIC ADDENDUM: I thought about not revealing the "shocking ending," but decided I would do so to explain why I rated the story's mythicity as "fair." I think what Wagner was clumsily seeking to do was to portray Kreutzer and Josie as the sibling-deities of a new regime, like Zeus and Hera, even though both "gods" are more focused on having relations with "mortals" outside their power-sphere. The big reveal of PALMS' last episode is that Kreutzer is actually Harry's father, as the older man cuckolded the husband of Harry's mother. Apparently for no reason but sadism, Kreutzer later seduced his son's girlfriend and impregnated her, which led to the whole pointless changeling-scenario. Thus Harry and Grace raise the Kreutzer-Paige child "Coty" for the next eleven years, while Kruetzer's minions raise the Harry-Grace offspring "Peter." Given that Josie is both Harry's aunt and Grace's mother, this means that Peter is the product of literal first-cousin incest, while Coty is the result of purely symbolic incest. Yet, though Wagner doesn't really elaborate any themes from all this kid-switching, I have to believe it significant that "real incest kid" Peter remains substantially good, while "symbolic incest kid" Coty acts the part of a "bad seed" until the story's end. Josie abuses her child Grace even more badly than Kreutzer messes with Harry, with the final outcome being Grace's death at her mother's own hands. Josie doesn't interact much with Harry, but I thought her persecution of artist Tully, Kreutzer's "favored son," might carry another symbolic incest-vibe, if only because the actor playing Tully was roughly seventeen years younger than the one playing Josie. I suppose that the details of a botched narrative are only of academic interest, but this trope proves more interesting than any of the pretentious observations that Wagner produced consciously.