On the Air

I didn't get to see this show when it was on television but I have a copy of the episodes on vhs, and I can certainly understand why On The Air didn't stay on the air for very long - it's original, for one thing, David Lynch's surreal and slapstick answer to the sitcom. Seek it out if you can, you will definitely not be sorry.

There is a kind of transcendent brilliance here, enhanced all the more by the project never having been finished so it's an open thread that vanishes. It's one of several ideas Lynch pitched for TV while Twin Peaks was hot, for whatever reason this one was given the go ahead.

We have only a small portion, 5 episodes plus 2 with Lynch's involvement for a total of 7. Only a handful of these aired before it was pulled. It's such a weird thing we're lucky we even got this small bit. Unsuspecting viewers would have stumbled upon it for two weeks one summer and then it vanished into air as strangely as it had appeared, and was it a prank of some kind? A glitch in programming? Was it a bit of latenight mischief that some odd soul managed to sneak into the airwaves while no one was looking?

And this is what the actual show is about. A TV show about a TV show being made that should have been harmless entertainment but mischievous forces conspire to throw a crank in the gears. The show goes awry every night - staging gear intrude upon the scene, the diva's entrance is foiled by doors, the suave protagonist of the show made a fool of, producers are flummoxed.

In the episodes without Lynch's involvement, you can see it devolve into farce and slapstick. The result is still the same as in the episodes with Lynch on board - the machinery of narrative collapse on the stage in a pile of magical chance and human buffoonery - but it's writers taking these characters and bumping them around without agency in the collapse.

It's Lynch's portion that you have to see; preferably you'll see it all, how Lynch envisions agency in the pilot, then go through the next few to see how it's harmless fun without his input. He returns again for the last one as writer only but you'll know he's there in spirit.

The protagonist of the show-within is Lester Guy, a sly charmer past his heyday. The real protagonist in Lynch's conception is his blonde simpleton costar, Betty.

Something else is taking place in his episodes. Anxieties of this innocently goofy soul - opening day anxieties in the pilot, not being able to remember the name of her mother in the last - create the dreamlike machine that collapses, spontaneously erupting with visions of that anxiety?

I watched with marvel. Somehow in all the furiously goofy stuff, Lynch manages to evoke a fragile soul who is terribly unsure about her place on that stage where life should have been without blemish, controlled, carefree.

It even adds that we have only this small bit without the James subplots that TV demands to drag its feet through whole seasons. You can imagine that she has a home somewhere that she comes back to, dreaming is she even Betty and does she perhaps have a husband who is going behind her back?

It has rocketed among my favorite works by Lynch and in general. It's the same noir god in the machine that creates Betty's world in Mulholland Drive.

What would it be like if David Lynch made a sitcom? A comedy?

On The Air explains it. Fantastic. I've seen all seven episodes and I some of it is exactly about that unique thing we like about David Lynch. This show didn't get much of a chance, because it was aired daytime in summertime(worst time for a program to be aired) because ABC according to Lynch hated it. I feel that it was a great show having seen the whole thing, but its not flawless. The main error here is that David Lynch(and Mark Frost) wasn't involved enough in it.. They were busy with Twin Peaks at the time probably. Of course, the characters and plot for the series is pure Lynch.. the first episode is amazing. The characters are crazy, stereotyped and full of absurd depth.

The following episodes are quite good in themselves too, but for some reason there's a different writer for each episode here, so the series seems to change direction from episode to episode.. Some of the later episodes I found even a bit too silly.

But David Lynch came back on the last episode and wrote it, and EVERYTHING is right again. Lynch manages to throw some mystery into it again and its so amazing! All the episodes has its charm though.. Its a lovely show.. and if you like David Lynch and you like funny and absurd stuff, this is a safe shot. 8 out of 10 overall. The first two and number seven where Lynch is more directly involved

deserves a 9 out of 10.

I knew it wouldn't last, I loved it just too much. Television does that to me all the time. This was such a wonderful bizarre comedy. What there was of it. Miguel Ferrer performed with such serious, straight-faced intensity. Will I ever get to see all seven episodes?

I have long been a fan of David Lynch's work on film and his "Twin Peaks" television series. This very short-lived 6-episode series now qualifies as simply a curiosity - something any true David Lynch fan should probably see once, but that anyone else could probably take or leave. As I read from another reviewer, the only thing similar in tone to this is Steven Spielberg's 1979 semi-flop "1941." I do not dislike either that film or this series, but they won't appeal to a sophisticated comedy connosseur. Both are loud, sometimes obnoxious slapstick pieces with a great eye for historical detail, and plenty of gags involving slipping on banana peels, things falling down, mistaken identity, and other cartoonish props. The highlights of the episodes are the dazzling set design and, not surprisingly, Lynch's injections of bona fide weirdness, such as a mostly-absent narrator who makes the same character introductions each and every episode, and more of Lynch's fetish for red curtains (he seems to put them in virtually everything he makes; there was even a character in "Twin Peaks" whose only known characteristic was an obsession with the curtains in her trailer). But the true sign that this was a Lynch production is a set of conjoined twins that show up almost randomly each episode (like Kenny's deaths in the "South Park" series) and walk around the set saying nothing but "Hurry Up!" over and over again. Other characters even refer to them as the Hurry-Up Twins!! Man, Lynch is one twisted genius.