David Lynch said what?! 'Twin Peaks' mystery is just one of a critic's L.A. stories

LOS ANGELES – If life imitated art, I'd be spending my time in La La Land dancing outside the Griffith Observatory with Emma Stone. Instead, I'm bouncing among network parties and film sets, getting a clearer picture of the ever changing TV landscape. A few excerpts from the notebook:

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The press event for the highly anticipated sequel to "Twin Peaks" had the makings of a major waste of time. No questions about the story line would be answered, we were told. No one-on-one interviews with a cast that includes Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern. Not a snippet of footage. No appearance by the show's creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost.

Then, to the surprise of the critics, Lynch emerged from backstage to entertain questions. But this wasn't Lynch the innovative director. It was Lynch the performance artist, delivering a series of elliptical answers, cutesy dodges and bemused grins.

I was mainly interested in learning about how he collaborates with Frost, who was raised in Minnesota.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about how you and Mark worked together, how you divided duties, what he is as a partner for you?

A: Well, in the beginning, many years ago, we were, Mark and I, as if lost in the wilderness, as it always is in the beginning, and then we seemed to find some mountain, and we begin to climb, and when we rounded the mountain, we entered a deep forest, and going through the forest for a time, the trees began to thin. And when we came out of the woods, we discovered this small town called Twin Peaks. And we got to know many of the people in Twin Peaks, and the people who visited Twin Peaks, and we discovered a mystery, and within this mystery were many other mysteries. And we discovered a world, and within this world, there were other worlds, and that's how it started, and that's what brought us here today. This story continues.

The series premieres May 21 on Showtime.

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Louie Anderson may have had the sweetest success story of any Twin Cities comic in 2016, but Cedric Yarbrough came in a comfortable second. After years of stealing scenes in sitcoms (such as "Reno 911!") and films, the Dudley Riggs veteran finally got his big break as a big-hearted caretaker to a physically challenged teenager in ABC's freshman hit "Speechless."

"I used to be bro famous," he told me during a network party. "Now I'm family famous."

For the third time, Yarbrough went overseas during the holiday season to entertain the troops. "In Honduras, there was a snake in my room," he said. "And it wasn't a Minnesota snake."

Peter Krause's Minnesota upbringing has served him well in playing solid but often repressed leads in such shows as "Six Feet Under" and "Parenthood." The veteran is getting a chance to stretch as the universe's smoothest con artist in "The Catch," which returns March 9 to ABC.

Krause had at least a little life experience to prep for the role.

"I know somebody in New York that I bartended with in the 1980s who thought he had bought a new answering machine," he said. "When he took the shrink-wrap off and opened it up, it was a bunch of newspapers surrounding a part of a brick. There are con artists everywhere."

Neal Justin • 612-673-7431 •