Few things have stayed with me like Twin Peaks: The Return. Not an original feeling, but true, nonetheless. The series is dream-like and abstract, built with scenes and moments that are unlike anything else on TV, before or since. But that’s not the reason The Return has stayed with me. It’s the deep unease that accumulates over the eighteen-hour run time, a spiral born from the original sin of Twin Peaks: not the murder of Laura Palmer, but the complicity of Laura Palmer’s friends, family, and acquaintances in the trauma and abuse Laura Palmer endured throughout her life.

In Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Mark Frost position sexual violence as the ultimate evil—so absolute, its traumatic aftershocks ripple throughout decades, warping time, identity, and reality itself. An even more disturbing implication of The Return, however, is that the forces aligned against that evil are willing to exploit the trauma sexual violence creates as a necessary instrument of containment.

I’m not the first to read Twin Peaks through this lens, nor do I claim this interpretation as definitive. But it is the understanding that has kept the series alive in my subconscious, even when I’ve gone years between revisiting it. Episode by episode, The Return feels like it’s circling a single wound—Laura Palmer’s—and treating it as a cosmic event. Not in the sense of destiny or chosen-one mythology, but in the way certain tragedies create psychic aftershocks that never stop propagating. The show’s central horror isn’t simply that Laura was murdered. It’s that she was violated, repeatedly, by a force that hides inside the familiar. Murder ends a life; sexual violence colonizes it. And in Lynch’s universe, that colonization is metaphysical.

The image Lynch can’t stop re-staging

Despite being famously reluctant to explain his work, Lynch has often described a defining childhood memory: seeing a naked woman walking down the street, crying, in a dazed, terrified state—an image that haunted him and never left.

If you want a single “seed image” for Lynch’s work, it might be that: a woman exposed, unprotected, moving through a normal neighborhood as if the world has failed to keep its most basic promises. That figure reappears, transformed, across his filmography—not always literally naked, not always literally running, but consistently in trouble: endangered, disoriented, pursued, fragmented, or trapped inside someone else’s desire.

When asked what Inland Empire is about, Lynch simply offered: it’s “about a woman in trouble,” and it’s a mystery. “A woman in trouble” isn’t just a tagline; it’s a lens.

Seen through that lens, Twin Peaks: The Return reads like the culmination of a lifelong theme—and perhaps the most uncompromising version of it. The original series flirts with the idea that a town can be haunted by the secret exploitation of women. Fire Walk With Me makes that exploitation explicit. The Return goes further: it implies that the exploitation is not only necessary to sustain evil, but it’s also the fuel that “good” quietly runs on.

Laura as counterforce—and as sacrifice

Part 8 of The Return reframes the entire mythology: we witness the atomic test give birth to a new kind of evil in the world with the creation (or release) of BOB—the evil entity that possesses Leland Palmer for the purpose of repeatedly assaulting his daughter, Laura.

The rise of BOB inspires a counter-response from forces of good represented by the Fireman. Existing in another plane of existence or metaphysical space, the Fireman produces a glowing orb containing Laura Palmer’s face—an act presented with the solemnity of creation, not metaphor. This sequence is the foundation for the common reading that Laura is a kind of cosmic countermeasure: a light introduced into the world as an antidote to a newly intensified darkness.

But even if we accept the countermeasure reading, the ethical question doesn’t go away—it intensifies. Because the Fireman does not create Laura and then protect her. He does not place her outside harm. He sends her directly into it.

Part 8 reframes our understanding of Laura Palmer. She wasn’t a victim of BOB’s evil by chance. Instead, she is set on this path as a cosmic antibody to absorb and bind the toxins unleashed by the atomic test. The Fireman never intends for her to annihilate BOB but contain it. In human terms, that means Laura is designed to receive what the world cannot otherwise metabolize.

If sexual violence is the ultimate evil in this universe, then Laura is created to face it head-on—not as a chosen one or warrior, but as a vessel. And that’s the first major jolt of The Return: the “forces of good” are more than willing to let a girl be destroyed if her destruction keeps darker forces at bay.

Cooper’s arc: from protector to instrument

This is where Dale Cooper becomes the most tragic and unsettling figure in the series—not because he fails, but because success in this world resembles complicity.

After traveling back in time to prevent Laura’s death, Cooper has to complete the second leg of the mission given to him by the Fireman. Here, he crosses a threshold in another dimension and is no longer the warm, curious agent who arrives in Twin Peaks with wonder and decency. He is a man moving through coordinates, instructions, doorways—operational language that sounds less like investigation and more like ritual. The Fireman’s directives (“430,” “Richard and Linda”) feel like mission parameters rather than guidance, as if Cooper is a piece being moved across a board.

As part of this mission, Cooper must have sex with Diane, who was revealed to have been raped by Cooper’s doppelganger, Mr. C, in the 25 years between the original series and the revival. The sex scene plays like a ritual: cold, relentless, strangely grief-stricken, as if intimacy has been stripped of connection and repurposed as a mechanism. To enact the next stage of the Fireman’s plan, Cooper must willingly traumatize Diane as the Fireman was willing to traumatize Laura.

This adds to the unnerving sense that for all its quirkiness, The Return is about the exploitation of women’s pain as a tool against evil. And that Cooper is either a misguided white knight or a complicit operator inside the metaphysical machinery that drives the battle of good versus evil between the Fireman and Judy (the evil entity that spawned BOB).

The finale as retraumatization

In Part 18, the finale, the Fireman’s directives have Cooper retrieve an alternate Laura (Carrie Page) and bring her back to the Palmer house. Once there, the voice of Sarah Palmer (Laura’s mother, who’s been established as a vessel for Judy) calling her name echoes across dimensions, reactivating Laura’s trauma until it erupts as a scream that short-circuits the electricity—the show’s recurring symbol for Lodge influence and malignant presence.

Cooper doesn’t guide Carrie gently toward self-knowledge. He takes her to the scene of the crime for the purpose of, whether he’s aware of it or not, retraumatizing her.

The result is a complete electrical blackout in this alternate dimension Cooper’s created; trauma discharged so violently it extinguishes the electrical channel evil travels through—neutralizing Judy. A loss for the forces of evil, a win for the forces of good.

But at what cost?

In its final moments, Twin Peaks: The Return makes one thing clear. Cooper’s mission was never about saving Laura from the trauma she experienced. His mission was about saving her from death so she could fulfil the Fireman’s original mission: using her trauma to overload the evil forces that feed on “garmonbozia”—also known as “pain and suffering.”

Audrey: a wound metastasizing

Audrey Horne’s fate is one of The Return’s most revealing cruelties. Her storyline, introduced midway through the run, plays as a series of vignettes disconnected from the rest of the season. In these vignettes, we watch her argue in circles, pursue an absence (“Billy”), swing between moods, then arrive at the Roadhouse for a moment that feels like pure nostalgia—Audrey dancing to Angela Badalamenti’s score, an echo of a memorable scene from the original series.

The nostalgia is disrupted when a fight breaks out in the Roadhouse. Audrey wants to go home. But she can’t. The scene fractures, and Audrey wakes in a sterile white room. An electrical crackle can be heard as she looks in a mirror, as if discovering she has been living inside someone else’s idea of her.

The show frames Audrey as someone whose identity has been shattered by forces she cannot name. Mark Frost’s The Final Dossier clarifies the grimmest implication of The Return: Audrey was raped by Mr. C, and Richard Horne is the product of that assault—evil reproducing through sexual violence.

Like Laura and Diane, Audrey becomes another woman whose life is not simply damaged, but reorganized around assault, with reality itself bending in response. Audrey’s final state isn’t just sadness; it’s derealization, the sense that she’s no longer the plucky teenager she once was. Trauma, here, doesn’t live in memory; it shapes the environment.

If Laura is the original wound that haunts Twin Peaks, Audrey is the proof that the wound metastasizes.

Psychic aftershocks

In The Return, Twin Peaks the town no longer feels like a quirky community with a darkness beneath it. It feels like a place living after tragedy. People aren’t merely changed by time; they’re flattened by it. Their conversations have the drained quality of lives lived adjacent to something unspeakable for too long.

The Return presents the town as if it is still reverberating with Laura’s psychic trauma. The violence is not back. It never left. The community simply learned to live inside the echo.

This is illustrated in one of the most controversial scenes in The Return: the extended floor sweeping scene at the Roadhouse.

Lynch holds on a person sweeping the floor for what feels like forever. What initially presents as one of the most frustrating and indulgent scenes in The Return is key to my understanding of the show. The sequence is punctuated by the Roadhouse’s owner taking a phone call that confirms the world of prostitution and trafficking that exploited Laura Palmer is still alive and well in the town of Twin Peaks.

Sweeping the Roadhouse is as mundane and business as usual in Twin Peaks as pimping and trafficking. The broom becomes a metronome. The moral horror isn’t that these things happen—it’s that the town has done nothing to address the rot that contributed to Laura’s tragedy in the intervening 25 years.

This is Twin Peaks in miniature: the dance floor, the music, the community vibe—and, underneath, the continuation of the pipeline that led Laura to her fate in the first place.

The Roadhouse: where dreams bleed into reality

Which brings me to the Roadhouse—the show’s most deceptively simple recurring device, and the clearest barometer of the season’s spiritual weather.

Almost every episode ends with a Roadhouse performance, a coda that’s part concert, part Greek chorus, part dream diary. The musical arc of Twin Peaks tracks the season’s journey from nostalgia as bait, to a kind of communal trance, to outright foreboding that the crowd absorbs without protest.

At the end of Part 2, Chromatics’s “Shadow” plays like a seductive opening gambit: the show handing you mood, melody, familiarity—an invitation to sink back into the familiar nostalgia of Twin Peaks.

As the season darkens, the Roadhouse becomes less a comforting venue and more a threshold. Nine Inch Nails’s “She’s Gone Away” appears in Part 8, the episode that stages the atomic bomb as a metaphysical rupture. The performance doesn’t feel like “a band playing a song.” It feels like an invasion of industrial dread into the town’s bloodstream—an announcement that the old dream has been contaminated.

Later, in Part 15, The Veils perform “Axolotl,” and the show overlays the performance with a violent removal of a woman (Ruby) from her booth—her screams cutting across the music, evoking the various times Laura has screamed through the series. This is Lynch using music as enchantment, violence as interruption, the crowd continuing to exist inside the vibe as if the vibe matters more than the horror.

That indifference—people swaying to ominous music while evil proliferates—becomes the point. The Roadhouse crowds often look ambivalent, half-hypnotized, present in body but oblivious to the stories unfolding around them. In that sense the Roadhouse is not just a setting. It’s a litmus test for what the town can absorb without changing course.

Critics and commentators have described the Roadhouse as liminal—an in-between space where the show’s reality drifts closer to dream logic. The Roadhouse is where The Return tells the truth in emotional code. The plot is often cryptic; the music is not. Each performance is a mood prophecy.

Nostalgia first. Then unease. Then dread. Then numbness. Then rupture.

The Return as a culmination

If Blue Velvet is the discovery that violence and sexual exploitation live beneath manicured suburbia, then Lost Highway is the realization that identity can fracture under that pressure. If Mulholland Drive is the dream of Hollywood collapsing under the weight of betrayal and humiliation, then Inland Empire is the nightmare of a woman disappearing into roles, rooms, and violations—“a woman in trouble” multiplied into a labyrinth.

Twin Peaks: The Return feels like Lynch pulling on all these threads at once—using the Twin Peaks mythos as the apotheosis of the stories inspired by the childhood memory of a terrified woman, exposed to a world that won’t protect her.

And the decisive thing The Return does—what makes it feel like a period at the end of a lifelong sentence—is that it refuses any comforting separation between evil and resistance. It suggests that in a universe where sexual violence is the ultimate evil, there may be no clean way to fight it. There may only be bargains, sacrifices, and containment strategies that reproduce the very harm they claim to oppose.

That’s why the ending doesn’t feel like closure. It feels like an indictment.

Cooper stands there, confused, as if he’s completed the mission and only now realizes what the mission was. Carrie/Laura screams, and the house goes dark, and the series ends in a silence that doesn’t feel like peace.

In Twin Peaks, the scream is the thesis.

It isn’t just fear. It’s recognition. It’s memory flooding back. It’s the psychic echo of sexual trauma returning with enough force to disrupt the circuitry of evil, while also proving that trauma can’t be solved with a quick fix, it can only be displaced.

And that displacement—women’s pain redirected, repurposed, turned into a tool—is exactly the thing The Return can’t stop showing us.

Not to shock. Not to moralize. But to force a question that lingers long after the screen goes black: If the world requires women to suffer in order to keep evil contained, what kind of world is that—and what, exactly, is the difference between good and evil?

Buy on Amazon

FRIDAY NIGHT

BROOKE. I want to vom when Aaron or Dom or Pablo or whatever the fuck the Uber driver’s called rolls to a stop at a red light on Santa Monica alongside a wall plastered in posters of Joel Manning and Alissa Carmichael—AKA Joelissa, Teen Vogue’s Cutest Couple of 2016—sucking face and holding hands at the Santa Monica Pier, the Observatory, a Mulholland overlook. The posters are for A Los Angeles Love Story, Joelissa’s first movie as co-stars. Before the puke reaches my mouth, a hobo staggers up to the wall, unzips his fly, and urinates all over Joelissa’s faces. I down the last mouthful of Casamigos from a Voss bottle, and Ashley 1 looks up from her phone long enough to see what I’m seeing and say, “Gross.”

“I know, right?” I agree. “Alissa’s skin is dry as fuck and Joel’s so scrawny.”

The light turns green, the Uber rolls forward, and the driver asks us what our plans are for the night.

I’m already checking my Insta notifications when I tell him, “It’s rude to ask too many questions.”

He apologizes and turns the radio up. A newscaster is talking about a missing girl. Apparently, she’s the forty-ninth hospitality worker to be reported missing in Los Angeles County since April. Her friends and loved ones are worried. He says she worked at Mastro’s Ocean Club in Malibu.

“OMG, I love Mastro’s!” I say, spinning around to face Ashley 1. “That’s where that Silicon Beach douchebag took me on Valentine’s Day. God. Remember him?”

“The one who’d just sold the app?”

“Yeah, the ‘Tinder for groceries’ guy.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t even know, girl. I forgot to ask. All I know is I ordered the lobster shiitake salad with spicy lemon dressing, and it was to die for.” That’s not a lie. It was. But it’s not why I ordered it. I wanted to see if he’d flinch if I had the most expensive thing on the menu and even though he totally did, I still let him fuck me in the back seat of his Camaro.

“I didn’t know Mastro’s do a lobster shiitake salad.”

I think about what Ashley 1 just said and an uneasy silence falls over us. It’s filled by the newscaster on the radio, his voice a flatline. “Earlier this morning, Dallas Everett’s parents made an impassioned plea for anyone with information on their daughter’s whereabouts to step forward.”

“You know, girl, you’re right,” I realize while using my phone camera to touch up my lip gloss. “We went to Nobu. I don’t know why I always get those two confused. They’re, like, totally different.”

“So different,” Ashley 1 agrees.

“I should go back to Nobu. The monkfish with caviar is supposed to be bomb.”

Another guy on the radio speaks. Probably missing girl’s dad. “Please, if you know anything at all, if you think you’ve seen our little girl—”

“This is super depressing,” I groan, throwing my head back before turning to Ashley 1. “Ash, isn’t this super depressing? I’m, like, so depressed right now, you have no idea. I don’t think anyone in the history of the universe has ever been as depressed as I am right now.”

She shakes her head, “It’s a total bummer, B.”

“Such a bummer!” I slouch my shoulders and sigh. “Xanax?”

Ashley 1 checks her Chanel clutch. “I’m all out.”

“Cry!”

She pulls out a pill bottle. “Ativan?”

“Me me me me me!” I throw my hands out, palms open. She gives me a pill and without any Casamigos to hand, I swallow it the hard way. Missing girl’s dad is still mid-monologue—it sounds like he’s crying—and I lean forward, resting against the back of the driver’s seat. “Can you, like, play some music or something? This is so depressing.”

“Yes, miss,” he says, already scanning the radio, landing on the opening chords of “Get Lucky.”

“This is my favorite song ever. It’s, like, so totally retro and I don’t even care. Turn it—”

He’s already scanned past it, finding some country music bullshit.

“Go back! Go back!”

He does as he’s told and Ashley 1 and I jump up and down in the back seat, filming ourselves screaming the lyrics for Snapchat reasons. “Get Lucky” is followed by “I Can’t Feel My Face” and when that ends, the driver’s struggling to find a place to pull up outside Doheny Room.

“I could drop you over there?” he suggests, pointing to a street corner on Santa Monica.

Ashley 1 pouts. “But how will we get from there to Doheny Room?”

“You just have to cross the street.”

“Have you seen these heels?” she asks.

“That’s not a viable option,” I add.

“So not viable.”

In the time it takes the driver to do a U-turn on Santa Monica and find a spot outside Doheny Room, we’ve made a snap of ourselves rocking out to “Trap Queen.” Exiting the Uber, I rate the driver three stars and we walk straight by the fuckboys and basic bitches who’ve almost definitely been lining up for an hour or longer and straight up to the door guy who bites his knuckles, says, “Lookingfinetonight,” and lifts the velvet rope. With Ashley 1 by my side, I walk into da club like I own the place.

CHASE. “Get Lucky” plays through the Sonos sound system around my apartment as I step out of the shower, towel off, unplug my Philips Norelco stubble trimmer from the charger, spread my ass cheeks, and trim the hair around my hole. This has been my Friday night ritual ever since I returned from shooting All That Glitters in Vancouver and a server from Cecconi’s surprised me with a finger in the ass. The next day, I tried Nair, and the week after that I tried waxing, but ingrown hair’s a bitch, so I ended up buying a second stubble trimmer and haven’t looked back. Granted, no one’s stuck anything—much less a finger—up there since, but of all the risks I’m willing to take, reading about my ass hair on TMZ isn’t one of them.

When I finish, I unscrew the attachment, screw in the nose hair trimmer, and get to work in my nostrils, using the mirror over the sink to make sure all’s good in the hood. I then trim my stubble, splash some Clive Christian No. 1 for Men on my neck, tweeze a few hairs from between my eyebrows, and get dressed—a fitted Hugo Boss shirt, slim-fit jeans from Guess, and Kurt Geiger high tops. Inspecting myself in the mirror confirms I’m battle-ready. Now I just need to make sure everything else is. I tidy the apartment, pull the bedsheets tight, open a few windows, and grab a handful of Magnums and a switchblade from the bedside drawer. I put the Magnums in my wallet and tap the business end of the blade with my finger. It’s blunt so I sharpen it, and when I’m done, I fold the blade away and slip it into my right shoe in time to hear a knock on the door.

Jay, wearing a pleather jacket over a scoop neck tee, stands on the other side of the door with a shit-eating grin. “Ready to kill it, killa?”

“Fo’ sho’, bro,” I reply, pulling him in for a bro hug.

BROOKE. It takes less than ten minutes for us to find Ashley 1’s boyfriend, Jared, sitting at a table. He’s with two guys—each in denim jackets, ripped jeans, and Yeezys—and five blondes in low-cut dresses. He kisses Ashley 1 for what feels like forever before greeting me with a hug and a kiss on each cheek. “Brooke, it’s so good to see you,” he says.

“Oh my God, you, too!” I tell him. “How was New York?”

“Fuck that scene. I just got back from London.”

“Same diff.”

“What about you?”

“I was in Cannes last month.”

“Cool. Did you hit up VIP Room?”

“Shit! I, like, totally forgot. I never even left the InterContinental.”

“I love that place.”

“It’s amaze!” Ashley 1 is now kissing Jared’s neck and I look beyond them to the other guys at the table. “Who are your friends, Jared?”

“This is Jensen and Jonny.” I smile and shake their hands. He turns to the five blondes, “And this is Ashley, Ashley, Ashley, Ashley, and Ashley.”

While Jared and Ashley 1 catch up, Jensen and Jonny resume their conversation with the other Ashleys. Unable to tell if I’m thirsty, bored, or having withdrawals, I interrupt, a flirtatious twinkle in my eye, “So, Jensen and Jonny, what are we drinking?”

Either Jensen or Jonny pours the table vodka into a glass, mixes it with cranberry juice, and hands it to me. I pass it straight to Ashley 1 and shake my head. “What are we actually drinking?”

Jared turns to Jensen and Jonny. “B’s all about that absinthe.”

“My kinda girl,” says the one who didn’t try to give me vodka cranberry. “I’ll hook you up.”

“Ooh, I like this one,” I tell Ashley 1 and Jared as I follow him to the bar, my arm around his. I do shot after shot of absinthe while he downs a few tequilas and, with a hand strategically placed on my waist, tells me about the movie he’s producing and the actors already attached, casually name-dropping Taylor Lautner and Andrew Garfield. “Oh my God, this must be the role Taylor was telling me about. That’s so cool,” I say, my face less than an inch from his so he can hear me over the pulse of a Kevin Gates track.

“Yeah, yeah, must be,” he replies.

We go back to the table where Ashley 1 is laughing and smiling and whispering God knows what in Jared’s ear, and I let Jensen or Jonny rest his hand on my thigh while he tells me about his Ivy League education, the countries he’s visited, and the cars he owns. I encourage each revelation with a hand on his forearm and an “Oh, wow, that’s amaze,” and every time he enters the next phase of his spiel I down a shot of whatever alcohol’s within reach: absinthe, tequila, even—God forbid—table vodka. When he’s drunk enough, we kinda make out a little and then we’re dancing. A Drake versus Kanye remix fills the club and Jensen or Jonny half-heartedly shifts from foot to foot, biting his lower lip as I grind against him. My back to him, I fold my body into his, grab the back of his head until he’s close enough to breathe me in, and guide his hands below my waist until he’s stroking my thighs and lifting my dress. Ashley 1 and Jared are dancing, too—stilllaughing, still smiling—while Jensen or Jonny’s penis, hard, presses against my ass and I wonder how many people have viewed my Insta Story. Eventually we’re kissing, his tongue swirling around my mouth and with a hand under his shirt, I claw at his back as he grabs my ass and holds me tight against his body. It’s clumsy, uncoordinated. He doesn’t seem to notice. If he does, he doesn’t care. I don’t think he can handle his tequila.

CHASE. The door guy, Bryan, doesn’t make eye contact as he raises the velvet rope for Jay and me to enter. A few Fridays ago, Bryan went for a fist bump as he raised the rope. I’d been pregaming so I don’t know if it was his fault or mine but, like ships passing in the night, our fists missed each other, and neither of us have been able to look the other in the eye since.

Doheny Room is hopping, and a bottle girl shows us to our table and pours us each a vodka cranberry. “If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask,” she says.

“Much appreciated,” I reply. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Jay echoes, his voice terse, his eyeline never once rising above breast level. He’s sitting back, glass in hand, overtly scanning the club, his attention belonging to whichever pair of legs are walking by at the time.

I turn to him and ask, “How’s your week been?”

“It a’ight,” he replies without once looking away from the girls passing by. “Same old. Yours?”

“Got a callback for the Apatow flick next week. It’s only a scene and it would mean flying to Atlanta but whatever.”

“Oh, yeah?” he says, hypnotized by a couple on the dance floor—a blonde in a tight dress grinding against a preppy try-hard in a denim jacket and Yeezys, his hands creeping up the back of her dress. “Atlanta’s pretty hot.”

“Yeah,” I reply and three minutes later I stand up and tell him, “I'ma do a circuit.”

“Make me proud, killa.”

I walk through the club with purpose, occasionally meeting the gaze of the girls I pass, offering them a boyish smirk and a tip of the head, until I arrive at the bar where a brunette in a low-cut white top and miniskirt is waiting to give a drink order. She’s petite, as attractive as any girl here. But she looks a little out of place, walking the line between bored and lost, like there’s a million places she wants to be, and this isn’t one of them. She also looks very familiar.

I sidle up to her, hitting my mark, my posture relaxed but assertive, strong yet approachable. I’m walking a line of my own—pretending I’m waiting to give a drink order, but not so convincingly that a bartender will serve me before I have a chance to introduce myself to the girl. Pretending to look around, I catch her attention for a fleeting second and dazzle her with my smile. She blushes a little and I ask, “How’s it going?”

Suddenly she looks less bored, less lost, exaggerating a pout as she says, “My friends abandoned me!” her voice barely audible over a remix of Rihanna’s “Work.”

“Sounds like you need better friends.”

She twirls a strand of her hair around a finger. “Are you auditioning?”

I laugh and offer her my hand, accepting the challenge. “Chase.”

“Melissa,” she replies.

“What brings you out tonight, Melissa?”

“It’s my first Friday off in forever.”

“It’s your what?” I ask, pretending not to hear her.

“It’s my first—” I mime that I’m deaf, an excuse to get closer, and place a hand on the small of her back. Melissa’s breath is warm against my ear when she repeats, “It’s my first Friday off in a month.”

“I feel that,” I say, hoping this means what I think it means. “Where do you work?”

“Gjelina.”

I knew I recognized her! My heart palpitates, my palms sweat. I’ve never fucked a girl who works on Abbot Kinney before. This is a big moment for me. Attempts to curb my elation fail and I feel my face light up. “Hostess?”

“Server!”

Bullseye!

“That’s a cool spot.”

“What about you? What do you do?”

“I pretend to be people I’m not, professionally.”

“You know there’s a word for that, right?”

“I do. I just try not to use it.”

“Why?”

“I feel myself turning into a douchebag every time I do.”

“Say it!”

“I’d rather not.”

“I won’t judge.”

“Uh…”

“Please,” Melissa says, batting her eyelids. She’s cute.

“I’m an ac—” I stop myself. “I’m an ac—” I bow my head in failure. “I can’t do it.”

“This makes me worry for your career,” she jokes and then takes a moment to really look at me, searching my eyes, holding my gaze. “Wait! I know you!”

“You do?” I ask, feigning surprise while scared shitless she recognizes me from Gjelina.

“I do! You were in that show with Joel Manning. All That Glitters, right?”

Relieved, I match her enthusiasm. “I was!”

“Oh my God! You’re Troy! I love Troy!”

“And I love Gjelina! What are the odds and what are you drinking?”

“Vodka cranberry.”

“Keeping it simple.”

“Always.”

“It just so happens I have a table here. And that table just so happens to have vodka and cranberry…”

I gesture her to follow me, and she does. For two steps. “Wait,” she says.

“What’s up?”

“If you have drinks at your table, why were you waiting at the bar?”

A lesser man would be caught off guard by the question. But I’ve done my homework, I’ve learned my lines. “I was shamelessly looking for an excuse to say hi to you.”

Small talk carries us from the bar to my table. Soon we’re dancing and the bass of a Weeknd track rumbles through our bodies and I feel the heat trapped between us and the beat of her heart against my chest. I’m drowning in the emerald pools of her eyes, losing myself in the moment. I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone as much as I want to kiss Melissa right now and the next thing I’m aware of is our lips touching. Between kisses, she looks up at me, enamored but vulnerable, and says, “You’re trouble.”

BROOKE. BROOKE. A stranger wearing my face stares back at me. I squint, she squints. She leans forward, I lean forward. I fix my hair; she fixes her hair. Her bright blue eyes are vibrant, makeup perfect, blond hair luscious, skin flawless, breasts perky. She’s young, her whole life ahead of her. She could be anything she wants to be: A Teen Vogue cover girl, the love interest in a Bieber video, an Instamodel. Her eyes sparkle and the room lights up. She looks like she’s having the time of her life in the prime of her life, happily oblivious, pleasantly vacant. Everything she is, everything she has, is all I want.

The restroom door flies open, and Ashley 1 tumbles in. “Fuck me,” I mutter so quietly she won’t hear over the Bryson Tiller remix that’s playing. I raise my voice a few octaves and say, “Hey, Ash! What up, girl?” as she joins me in refreshing her lip gloss at the mirrors above the sinks.

“Oh my God! Did you see Ashley with that guy?” she asks through the reflection in the mirror.

“Which Ashley?”

“The blond one.”

“In the blue dress?”

“No. The one in the purple dress.”

“Oh, that Ashley.” I search my Jimmy Choo clutch for lip gloss. “I did.”

“That was nasty.”

“So nasty.” I start touching my lips up and a silence follows. It unnerves me. “Her shoes are so ratchet.”

“I overheard her telling one of the other Ashleys that she got them from a new boutique on Melrose.”

I don’t know what to do with this information, so I screw my face up and say, “Ew.”

“I heard they’re paying her to endorse them on Insta.”

“Double ew.” I lower the lip gloss and turn to Ashley 1. “What store is this?”

“I don’t know. Milano’s or something.”

I turn back to the mirror. “Never heard of it. Bet it’s east of Fairfax.”

“Try east of La Brea.”

“That’s so tragic.”

I feel Ashley 1 looking at me through the mirror. “Your lips look amaze.”

“Really? Thanks, girl!” I put the lip gloss away and pull out a snuff bullet.

“The guy you’re dancing with is hella hot.”

“Oh my God, are you, like, reading my mind or something? I was just about to say the same thing.” I take a hit from the bullet. “Is he Jensen or Jonny?”

“Girl, you’re so bad!” she says, not answering my question. “He seems pretty chill.”

“Like Netflix-and-chill-chill?”

I hand her the snuff bullet and she takes a hit. “Totally.” She gives the bullet back and puts her gloss away, fluffs her hair, and brushes a strand from her forehead.

“What do you see when you look at me?” I ask her.

She turns to me for a split second, barely looking, and without much thought says, “A total smoke show.” I look back to the mirror, considering her answer, and she asks, “Ready to get back out there, girl?”

I hook my arm around Ashley 1’s and reply, “You know it, girl.”

CHASE. I tell Alexa to play X Ambassadors’ “Gorgeous” and the song fills my apartment as I ask Melissa if she likes wine. I’m already pouring two glasses of chilled Pinot grigio when she replies, “I love wine.” Hovering by the wall on the opposite side of the kitchen, she clasps her left arm with her right hand, watching with uncertainty as I circle the kitchen island and hand her a glass. “Thank you,” Melissa says.

She’s sobering up, having second thoughts, more self-conscious than she was in Doheny Room. The Uber from there to here was only ten minutes. Three minutes quicker than the app predicted but long enough to dampen the momentum. I offer her the same charming smile I flashed when I first approached her, and she blushes a little as I raise my glass in a toast. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” she says, clinking glasses.

Our eyes don’t part as we take a sip and when we lower our glasses, I walk toward her, rest my free hand against the side of her face, and lean in to kiss her. Her doubts melt away as she opens herself up to my kiss, sets her glass down, and lets me lift her atop the counter. She wraps her legs around my body, keeping me close, and the kissing intensifies, our hearts racing, curious hands exploring bodies. She pulls away with a lingering look that leaves me craving her touch. It’s a look girls only have when they’re smitten, consumed by the moment. It’s a look that tells me she wants me as much as I want her.

BROOKE. I think I’m in Santa Monica or Brentwood. Possibly Westwood. I don’t know and I don’t stop kissing Jensen or Jonny long enough for him to see what he’s doing as he fumbles to unlock the front door to his apartment. He finally manages to turn the key and I take everything I can get from him as the door flies open and we tumble inside. He tries to turn the light on, but I don’t let him, telling him between pants, “I really wanna fuck.”

He doesn’t have to be told twice, leading me through his darkened apartment into a bedroom. I throw him down on the bed and straddle him, captivating him with kisses, my fingers already unbuttoning his shirt. He’s as annoyed as I am that the struggle to free his arms from his sleeves is keeping his hands away from me, so I use the time to loosen my dress and let it fall to my waist. When he’s free of his shirt, the first thing he sees through the darkness is my breasts staring back at him. He responds by burrowing his head between them, kissing them all over until his mouth finds a nipple and he sucks on it while running his tongue over the tip.

Moaning, I draw deeper breaths, letting him feel the rise and fall of my chest against his face. I feel his cock beneath me, straining against his pants, so I take the cue and undo his belt, freeing his dick. “Relax,” I purr, pushing him down hard on the mattress, my body slithering down his, stroking his cock with my hand as my hair tickles his chest, and I do what is wanted of me, what is expected of me: I take him in my mouth. I don’t even react when he grabs the back of my head and drives himself deeper down my throat.

CHASE. My tongue brings Melissa to the brink of ecstasy, and she tenses, claws at the sheets, her back arching as she comes and just as quickly relaxes. She’s soft to the touch as I crawl up her naked body and when our faces are level, she kisses me and I enter her, slowly thrusting in and out, my movements responding to hers, our eyes locked, two lost souls feeling a little less lost.

BROOKE. Jensen or Jonny thrusts into me, the sound of his waist slamming into my ass cheeks drowning out his grunting and groaning. My moans make him even more enthused, and I help him spin me around so he can climb on top of me, missionary. He buries his head between my neck and the pillow and thrusts harder and faster. Rolling my eyes, I scream, “Oh, yeah!” Climaxing, he collapses, crushing me under the weight of his body. He stays there longer than I’d like and when he eventually rolls over, he tells me I’m amazing and I tell him I know.

CHASE. Climaxing as one, we punctuate the experience with a long, loving kiss before I roll off Melissa and she rests her head on my chest. Her hair smells good, like passion fruit. I let myself enjoy it until she angles her head up to look at me, her voice as soft and supple as her skin as she says, “You’re different.”

“Than what?”

She shrugs her shoulders a little. “The usual douchebag fuckboys who hit on me.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Jerk,” she says, playfully hitting my shoulder. “I mean it, though. You seem like a cool guy. Especially for, y’know, an actor…”

“Now who’s the jerk?”

She laughs a little before breaking eye contact, shy. “I just—”

“What? What’s up?”

“My dad…” Melissa takes a moment, choosing her words carefully. “He passed away two months ago. Tonight is the first time I’ve gone more than ten seconds without thinking about him.”

Her eyes, now watery, blink and a tear falls down her cheek. I wipe it away with a thumb and hold her tighter. I don’t want her to feel like she has to be someone else around me. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “It was literally every moment of every day. It was getting exhausting.” With a sweet smile, she adds, “I needed this. Thank you.”

I kiss her forehead. “Melissa…”

“Yeah?”

“I really like you.”

“I really like you, too.”

“Is this gonna be one of those things where we wake up in the morning, say our goodbyes, and never see each other again?”

“I hope not.”

“Can I tell you something?” I ask, butterflies fluttering around my stomach.

“Sure,” she says. “Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Yeah. Anything.”

“I think we might have something, and I don’t want to start whatever it is with a lie…”

“Oh God, you have an STD, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t have an STD.”

“Then what is it?”

I smile, steeling myself. “You know the missing hospitality workers around town?”

“Yeah…” she says.

“They’re not missing.”

“They’re not?”

“No,” I sigh.

“Where are they?”

“They’re dead.”

This seems to worry her. “How do you—”

“I killed them.”

Melissa processes this, laughs, playfully nudges my shoulder. “You’re funny.”

I may be funny but I’m not laughing. “I’m serious.”

She nudges me again, a little less jovial this time. “Stop it, you.”

“Melissa, I’m telling you the truth. Amy McIntyre, the server from Ysabel? She was in my yoga class. The server from Cecconi’s, Sara Ortega… We matched on Raya. I met Dallas Everett by the bar in The Nice Guy. It was a bit like how we met… She was ordering a drink and I—” And then I see it: the glaze in the eyes, the shallowing of her breath, the lack of expression. “I didn’t want to kill any of them. You have to understand I never wanted to—”

Melissa pushes me away, scrambles to leave, my worst fear coming to pass. “I have to go,” she tells me.

“Where?” I ask, sitting up.

“Thank you for tonight, I—”

“Don’t go,” I plead, snatching her wrist and pulling her back into bed, fighting to control the tears already welling in my eyes. “Please don’t go.”

She tries to free her hand, but I don’t let her. I yank her back down to the mattress and scramble to climb on top of her, pinning her down with my weight as she thrashes and struggles while I reach for my switchblade.

“Please, not again. Not again,” I ramble, the words tumbling out of my mouth. I’m too distraught to really hear them, let alone vet them, crying, “Why does this always happen to me?”

Her eyes widen in fear when I release the blade. I gag her with my free hand before she can scream and drive the blade into her stomach with the other.

Tears stream down my face and I bawl, “Why does this always happen to me? What’s the point in opening up to people when no one understands?” I plunge the blade into her again, yelling, “Why does no one get me?” When she doesn’t answer, I stab her again. Blood spurts everywhere, spraying my face, my body, my two-thousand-dollar silk sheets, but I can’t stop stabbing her, my emotions erupting like a volcano that refuses to be contained. “Oh, Melissa, I’m so sorry. I thought you were different. I thought you’d understand. I thought we were having a moment! ‘Just be yourself,’ they tell me. ‘But what if one likes the real me?’ I ask. ‘Then it’s not meant to be,’ they say. Well, what if it’s never meant to fucking be, Melissa? Then what?” I stab her for the last time, her blood warm and wet as it runs down my naked body, soaking the bed, forming a pool in the middle of the mattress cover. I think she’s too dead to answer my questions, so I roll off her with a splash and stare at the ceiling, holding her body tight against mine, as I ask—this time not expecting an answer, “Why doesn’t anyone like me for me?”

SATURDAY

BROOKE. “You’re cute when you sleep,” is the first thing I hear when I wake up to the sight of Jensen or Jonny staring at me. Before I can reply, he reaches to cup my face and I recoil, pulling myself out of bed. “You’re welcome to stay for breakfast,” he adds as I search the room for my clothes.

“That’s okay,” I say, finding my panties.

“Or there’s a cool breakfast spot a block over,” he suggests, desperation seeping into his voice.

I turn a light on, walking around his room in nothing but a thong until I find my dress hanging over his computer. “I need to let the housekeeper in at nine…”

“Well, I’d love to see you again sometime.”

“Yeah, that’d be awesome,” I lie, stepping into my dress.

“I tell you what,” he says, reaching for his iPhone on the bedside, “I'ma follow you on the ’gram.”

“Sure, yeah, sounds good.”

I take a hit from my snuff bullet, make sure everything’s in my clutch, and am already standing in the doorway, my back to him, when he asks, “What’s your username?”

I exhale deeply before turning to glare at him. “It’s rude to ask too many questions.” I’ve already forgotten the sight of his heart breaking in the time it takes to turn around, walk out of his apartment, and out of his life.

What does the morning after the night before look like for Brooke and Chase? A Los Angeles Love Story is available in print and digital.

Buy on Amazon

I’ve resisted opinion writing for a long time. Tried it once; didn’t care for it. Over the last year or so, I feel like pop culture commentary has become increasingly lazy. Binary takes, groupthink en masse, and any content that falls short of near-universal praise is dismissed as “mid” without a second thought.

I had three options: read Twitter and seethe, hide Twitter on my phone, or become part of the problem.

So, here I am, becoming everything I hate: an opinion writer.

And the thing that’s dragged me kicking and screaming back to opinion writing? The most critically maligned TV show of the summer. HBO’s The Idol.

Hot take: The Idol is a good show.

Outside of two episodes of Euphoria, which were not for me, I’m not familiar with Sam Levinson’s work. And I’m not here to litigate the Rolling Stone piece on the production of The Idol or whether The Weeknd’s a good actor (even though he reminds me of many a sketchy club promoter I’ve known, and his presence has been no more distracting than any other music artist who’s tried their hand at acting).

I’m here to provide a different perspective on The Idol, a show I feel has been unfairly overlooked and misrepresented in lieu of tired criticisms about sex scenes and unfair readings on the intention of the creators.

I can think of many shows over the years with more explicit sex scenes, more nudity, and less self-aware depictions of toxic relationships, but I can’t think of the last time a show has been so widely misunderstood, and so obsessively picked apart.

(Of course, if we’re including movies, there’s always Don’t Worry Darling…)

Created by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and Sam Levinson of Euphoria fame, The Idol follows Jocelyn, a pop star trying to mount a comeback after her mother’s death, a toxic relationship, and a psychotic break. It’s a narrative reminiscent of Britney Spears’s struggles told with a specificity, courtesy of Tesfaye’s first-hand experience in the industry, that adds a layer of authenticity.

The first two episodes of The Idol follow a dual narrative: Jocelyn’s frustrations with her team and her escape from those frustrations, which she finds in Tedros Tedros [sic], a Hollywood triple threat—cult leader, talent manager, and Hollywood night club owner.

Jocelyn’s team, all of whom rely on her as a source of income, talk about her as if she’s more of a commodity than a person. They’re manipulative and definitely controlling. All of this leads her into the arms of Tedros (played by Tesfaye)—the lightning rod of the show’s criticism.

The scenes between Jocelyn and Tedros have, without exception, featured graphic sex and awkward dirty talk (“Make that mouth wet for me”). Critics of the show have blasted everything from the inclusion of the sex to the dialogue and Tesfaye’s acting ability. GQ labeled the sex scene at the end of the second episode as “the worst sex scene ever.”

Could these scenes be written differently? Yes. Would the show work without them? Almost definitely. Would that make it a better show? I don’t think so. It also wouldn’t make it a worse show. It would just make it a different show.

The Idol blends satire, neo-noir, and horror. To appreciate this cocktail of genres, it might help to dive deeper into The Idol’s inspirations. The Weeknd’s videography homages many movies up to and including American Psycho, Lost in Translation, The Neon Demon, Eyes Wide Shut, and Eraserhead. Beyond film, one of his songs, “Less Than Zero,” is presumably named after the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name. These inspirations have also carried over into The Idol.

Let’s focus on the novels of Bret Easton Ellis and The Neon Demon, both of which have two things in common with The Idol: their unique combination of satire with scenes and moments that are so extreme they become (intentionally) farcical.

Glamorama by Ellis has a threesome that lasts ten-plus pages. It starts funny, becomes uncomfortable, then cringeworthy, before becoming so gratuitous, explicit, and over-the-top that it circles back to funny.

Likewise, The Neon Demon builds tension in its final act through a series of increasingly dark developments until such a point that the last ten minutes of over-the-top gratuity and darkness double as a pressure release of gallows humor.

Ellis’s novels and Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon can’t be fully understood from dialogue and plot points alone. Their meaning comes from the style in which they’re told—the choice of words, tonal incongruencies, lighting, music, colors, camera angles, narrative non-sequiturs, etcetera.

If the sex scenes make you uncomfortable, that’s the point.

If the sex scenes make you cringe, that’s also the point.

If the sex scenes take such a weird turn you burst out laughing… Also the point!

Refn and Ellis aren’t alone in leaning on style, mood, and atmosphere to convey theme. Many shows over the last several years have dabbled in a similar approach. Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime), The Girlfriend Experience (Starz), Atlanta(FX), Too Old To Die Young (Prime), and The Leftovers (HBO) are as much about the experience of watching them and the feelings they inspire than the plot, character arcs, and dialogue.

And so is The Idol.

In the first episode, Tedros, wearing a trench coat, stands backlit in Jocelyn’s drive like Dracula. It’s weird. It’s ominous. It’s also fucking ridiculous. And that’s the point. The show wants you to feel all these things. And in feeling them, you know everything you need to know about Tedros.

The sexual content of the show isn’t there to turn you on. And Tedros isn’t supposed to be attractive. The sexual content is exploitative and Tedros is a sleaze, and they both function to give you insight into Jocelyn and further the themes of the show.

How toxic are Jocelyn’s label and management that Tedros’s scummy alternative seems like a safe haven by comparison? The show is intentionally drawing a comparison between the music industry apparatus and a sinister sex cult, and it’s not a flattering one.

These scenes are shot like a music video. Not because the show is style over substance, but because the style is the substance. By portraying these disturbing scenes in the style of a Britney Spears video, The Idol’s asking you to look beyond skimpy outfits and highly choreographed dance sequences to the performer underneath—one part human being, one part commodity.

Sexually provocative songs have topped the Billboard charts for as long as they’ve been a thing. The Idol is the story behind the lyrics. It’s asking us to engage with the songs we’re familiar with and interrogate the stories that inspire them. Some of which are raw, ugly, and—even—cringe-worthy. Just like the sex scenes in The Idol.

Everything about The Idol—from the situations, the way they’re shot, and the music—is geared to reflect where Jocelyn is emotionally. Everyone sympathized with Britney Spears when she was trying to escape her conservatorship. Maybe if more people had The Idol’s perspective on how the music industry commodifies talent, they would have sympathized sooner.

Is it realistic that a pop star like Jocelyn could fall for a guy as weird as Tedros? Go to an LA nightclub any night of the week and you’ll see a dozen girls who look just like Jocelyn making out with sketchy promoters with hair that would make Tedros’s rattail blush.

Does the show sympathize with Jocelyn? Yes.

Does the show empower Jocelyn? Not completely. Not yet. But we’re only two episodes in.

In the first episode, Jocelyn and her assistant watch Basic Instinct.

“A detective falls for the wrong woman,” says Sharon Stone, smoking a cigarette (a la Jocelyn).

“What happens?” asks Michael Douglas.

“She kills him.”

A Los Angeles Love Story

A Novel by Pasha Adam

A tale of two Angelenos snorting and fucking and killing their way through life in the pursuit of love.

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Apple Books

Praise for A Los Angeles Love Story

“The latest novel from Adam (Keep Santa Monica Clean, 2016, etc.) is a twisty and transgressive tale of two jaded and troubled strangers discovering an unlikely connection… Adam’s sharp and economical prose is punctuated by moments of acerbic humor.” – Kirkus Reviews

A tale of two Angelenos snorting and fucking and killing their way through life in the pursuit of love.

Read an excerpt

Buy A Los Angeles Love Story

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Apple Books

Praise for A Los Angeles Love Story

“The latest novel from Adam (Keep Santa Monica Clean, 2016, etc.) is a twisty and transgressive tale of two jaded and troubled strangers discovering an unlikely connection… Adam’s sharp and economical prose is punctuated by moments of acerbic humor.” – Kirkus Reviews

Daughter. Lover. Actress. Dancer. Muse. Redhead. Girl. Victim. Survivor.

Ariel Ames is many things to many people.

With stars in her eyes, Ariel moves to Los Angeles at a time when a prolific serial killer is targeting young women who match her description and displaying their bodies in violently beautiful tableaus high above Hollywood. When fear and paranoia collide with ambition and determination, Ariel is forced to navigate the roles assigned her by the men in her life as she strives to pursue her dreams.

Pasha Adam continues his genre-spanning exploration of Los Angeles and its inhabitants in City of Angels, a psychological thriller about a young woman trying to make it in a big city, told from the POV of the men she meets along the way.

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Apple Music

FADE IN:

EXT. CABANA, SANTA MONICA, CA – SUNSET

New to LA and fresh off his first spec sale, a screenwriter spies a girl through a cloud of cigarette smoke. He approaches her; their eyes meet and they connect instantly.

If the screenwriter’s story were to end on this moment, it would have a happy ending. Instead, we

CUT TO:

EXT. CABANA, SANTA MONICA, CA – NIGHT – FOUR YEARS LATER

A shit-storm is brewing over Hollywood. Cyber-attacks are decimating the studio system, exposing the secrets of everyone within it.

The screenwriter — now a disaffected entertainment news blogger — sits at the bar, unwinding with a whiskey after a day spent investigating the hacks.

That is, until Grace Chase — the girl from four years prior, now the star of television’s Vampire Queen — requests his help when she’s blackmailed with incriminating photos.

The entertainment news blogger is reluctant to oblige, knowing to do so will propel him on an odyssey across Los Angeles that will have him questioning everything about the girl he once knew and the industry that’s defined his life.

But Grace needs him and he’s powerless to deny her. Off this, we

SMASH CUT TO:

KEEP SANTA MONICA CLEAN

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Apple Books

Praise for Keep Santa Monica Clean

“Dante is a perfect combination of charming and difficult for this sort of tale, and Grace is pitch-perfect as his opposite number. But the glue that holds it all together is the twisting novel’s style and sense of humor. Sharp narration and situation comedy blend with the genuine threat of the hackers and Hollywood itself to keep the pages turning.” – Kirkus Reviews

Named one of the Best Books of 2016 by Kirkus Reviews

Working to live or living to work? How about neither?

As an office worker with a mediocre middle class existence, I’m giving you the opportunity to give me the opportunity of a better one.

If you’re asking how this is possible and wondering how you can help, ask and wonder no longer. I come bearing answers. My goal is to crowdfund a million dollars. And all I ask of you is a donation of two dollars or more.

Donate to me today so I can live the life you wish you were living tomorrow.

My name is River Conway and I approve this message.

– River Conway, “Save an A$$hole”

River Conway grew up believing a lie, the lie that you can be anything you want to be as long as you put your mind to it. After losing his twenties to an office cubicle in the middle of nowhere, River reaches breaking point and launches a self-aware crowdfunding campaign asking for one million dollars, embarking on a journey that has him ricocheting between the sublime and the ridiculous.

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Apple Books

Praise for American Asshole

“Adam has written a wickedly funny, timely satire, full of piercing jabs at Hollywood and crystal-clear characterizations of brain-dead, disingenuous LA denizens. The fact that River is Tisch-trained but still becomes the chief flake of the moment is amusing, and it shows the push-and-pull relationship that members of River’s generation have with industries that simultaneously seduce and repulse them. The scenarios are wild, but the novel does well to wonder if people obsessed with popular culture can survive in LA without descending into tragicomedy. The ending is a bit neat, but Adam’s tight prose and perfect timing make the story as a whole both playful and gratifying.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)