Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

It was eerie and surreal. I like the way the main character (I'm terrible with names), always slept in such a perfect manner. And the dream sequences with the midget were cool.

Show it again, powers that be!

Him in general -- hey, even Dune had its moments. But let me confess I still have never seen Eraserhead.

I liked the TP giant who appeared to say: "It's happening again!"
And the rude cop, Albert.

I lived in Seattle for a year, and that year coincided with the year of Twin Peaks' first season. We went to all the joints on the show, the hotel, the waterfall, the diner. Classic.

The second series: If I remember correctly it was a lot longer than the first, and it started off really well and the last episode or two is great as well, but there is this monstrously dull section in the middle where it turns into a tiresome soap opera. Soap operas are not cool.

The film: complete genius. what modern horror is meant to be like.

David Lynch generally: I think he's great.

Re: the second season: yes, the soap-opera bits were atrocious. But in retrospect, I think of them so fondly. That ridiculous part where James leaves town and gets involved in the weird love-triangle with the woman and her abusive husband? And then just comes back to Twin Peaks, as if nothing had ever happened?

"And Clint Beefsteak as Montana."

Whilst still a student I lived with someone who had all the episodes on video. In our third year, due to freak timetabling I finished my exams earlier than everyone else I knew. For three days I sat on my own and watched series one and two back to back, only speaking to stressed flatmates when they came down to make coffee.

By all accounts I was a little odd at the end of it.

I *knew* there would be a Twin Peaks thread on here somewh

I know what you mean, but seeing as there is no ending it's a bit unfair to pick on it for being a crap one. "Nonexistent" would be better.

Last week I watched episodes of On the Air, the surprisingly sitcommy show Lynch developed after Twin Peaks. Slapstick. Most of it played out like the Twin Peaks beauty pageant. Very torn as to its classicness versus dudness.

Classic, of course. I wish David Lynch had the energy to involve himself in each episode, however. The ones he directed are a world apart from the rest of the series.

The actor who played BOB (Frank Silva) died not long after Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me came out, so no danger of spotting him on the street. The scene where he crawls over the coach to Maddy's horror is terrifying.

I'll try and chase the second season.

Classic. Classic. Classic.

the seldom seen Hayward sisters Harriet (twee and so hilarious - 2 scenes) and her piano playing sister Gersten (awesome boogie woogie retainer speech affect - sadly one scene).

Yeah I stayed up with a flu/fever to watch - I think by the time my kids went to bed (so I could start) I was on track to finish after midnight and I just had to push through, being a bit fucked up kinda enhanced the vibe TBH

(though can also confirm it works just as well in full health)

There are definitely some patience-testing moments throughout. I was very tired last night watching S3E2-3 and conked out a couple of times during the quieter parts and had to rewind

been rewatching with my roommate. we're in the "bad" stretch of season two. leland's funeral is a miserable episode, but otherwise i've been having... fun???? it's a completely different show from what it was but it's fucking hilarious. ok yeah ben horne civil war thing pretty bad. however andy's devil child thought bubble was amazing

finished my 3 rewatch in parallel with THE LODGERS podcast (ilx extended universe)

my main note i think is how much i loved the dougie material this time round: as a member of a close-knit family gathered affectinately yet watchfully round a member who (over many years) gradually half-disappeared behind a "condition", this was extremely relateable and recogniseable. my dad was diagnosed with parkinsons in the mid-60s (when he and my mum were in their 0s and my sister and i were small children); he endured it -- with considerable serenity -- until 2010, when he died, aged 79, having lived at his own telling some 30 years longer than he was first given to expect.

parkinsons primarily manifests physically, though it can also involve dementia in its late stages: i wont list the variants and types symptoms except to say dad's was unusually slow onset. dougie (or more precisely i guess good coop trapped within dougie's body) is mostly NOT parkinsonian, no tremors, no writhing, no balance issues, but the sense of him as a person we know lost but perhaps lurking within a stilled body behind a masked face is extremely familiar, that sense of a family forever on the look-out for the return of the beloved, seizing on glimpses that outsiders would miss, projecting aspects that aren’t really there any more, fiercely protective in social contexts where the beloved might face criticism or ridicule, defensively expounding a version of the beloved that perhaps isn’t evident socially. his quick mind and sense of humour never failed — or so we always believed — but our access to them was sometimes deeply blocked

and while i say coop isn’t parkinsonian, parkinsons does have lynchians aspect to it. it manifests at and blurs the borderlands between thought and act in mysterious ways. at an early stage, in the house we moved into in the 70s, dad found that while he was still well able to go up and down stairs and navigate the landing and the corridor to the kitchen without difficulty, as soon as he arrived at the dining room (which was floored with black-and-white tiles) the region of the brain controlling his walking simply stuttered and failed: he had always to pause and re-calibrate at the arrival of the checker-board pattern.

and then in the late stages, though he escaped full-on dementia, he found it increasingly hard to distinguish the morning’s reality and the dream he had just woken from, unravelling this a chore for us his carers, tho not an unpleasant one, waiting out the bizarre urgency of whatever it was (and when we said there was a rat coming in through the window to eat his biscuits and we all wagged our head and said he’d dreamed it, he made fools of us all: it wasn't a rat but it WAS a squirrel)

so anyway yes: the coop-as-dougie scenes, i loved them because i knew them 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

in their 0s = in their 30s

That's a really wonderful post and insight. Thank you for sharing. I loved those scenes as well.

While the change from the corrupt real-Dougie to the quieted Cooper-Dougie was somewhat traumatic (at least to his wife), the latter Dougie was a better person, father, and husband than the former Dougie. In some sense the family gains something from Dougie's "condition".

beautiful post, mark

I'm planning a rewatch of S3 this coming month... currently in S2 the "murder was solved" and I'm hoping to persuade my bf that we might skip the Windom Earle/soap-opera James/"Josie becomes a dresser" awfulness, conclude with the final two or three S2 episodes and move on to the Blue Rose cut of FWWM.

Oftentimes when I'm watching a long film or series for the first time, if there is a long-standing unresolved "thing" (in the case of S3, Dougie's plot being resolved so that Cooper can return), I find myself feeling frustrated, watching the clock, like I'm waiting for a tedious day of work to end. Once I've seen this scenario play out, and know how long I have to wait, I'm better able to enjoy the process of waiting-for-it. Dougie's plot was agonising to me on first viewing of S3 and I look forward to being better-able to enjoy it on second-watch.

they windom earle so you could BOB coop

lovely postmark

def watch the last three episodes of season two at least. episode 27 is one of my faves, the shot of earl in whiteface with black teeth is the only time he’s fucking terrifying and it rules

also it was interesting on this rewatch to find cooper and annie’s thing oddly touching. iirc the discourse about that has always circled around how they don’t have the explosive sexual chemistry that coop had with a high schooler, but i like how adult it is by contrast, two hurt ppl finding some solace and possibility in each other

i think, and its gonna be arguable either way ofc, that the sexual chemistry is prob between actors and not characters

yeah but the writing matters!!! and idk i was surprised at how much i recognized in what mclachlan and graham had going on. heather graham i know you get no respect from fans of this show but i love and appreciate you

let the record show that interjection was not in anyway to question heather graham in any way shape or form we love heather graham in this house and if she does different things to sherilyn fenn well its a big world with space for all things

I have no problems with HG either. Aspects of the writing were clunky, but that’s just Twin Peaks season 2. I appreciate that they let her be relatively normal and relatable and not WACKY. Of all the things to complain about latter TP, that’s a weird thing that fandom had a problem with. The notion of Coop with a high school girl is fucked and I’m glad they abandoned the Audrey romance, even if they didn’t know what to do with her afterwards.

I’m also glad the Audrey romance didn’t happen. I’m not sure the creative team had the best ideas at that point in the show… but then I don’t even like Wyndham Earl too much.

I’ve noticed a particular segment of the fandom that is really mad the show was canceled, or that Frost/Lynch were forced to reveal the killer “early” (or even at all). Obviously everyone’s welcome to their opinion, but I feel there’s a lot of serendipity in the way things played out with Twin Peaks. Without the revelation of the killer (which gave us some powerful episodes/scenes), we may never have had the “lore” that the movie and S3 were built on… if the show had been renewed for a (mediocre?) S3, there maybe never would’ve been FWWM, or The Return years later… etc.

Maybe it sounds too pat to say everything worked out just right, and who knows what Twin Peaks would’ve been in an alternate timeline, but I’m pretty satisfied with the direction things went. (I also don’t think it would’ve been sustainable to keep holding off on revealing the killer, but who knows.)

I would definitely recommend watching the third-to-last episode, even if some of the dumb subplots are still going it just has the feeling of the early episodes. The director gives scenes room to breathe, the odd touches feel organic rather than forced wackiness, and there’s a general foreboding atmosphere that basically disappeared after the big reveal.

i don’t mind graham’s performance but i find it awfully uncomfortable that cooper immediately gets involved someone who seems way more vulnerable and naive than the high schooler. And iirc stops her from talking about her traumatic past?

xp Lynch has a strong track record of transmuting setbacks into creative stimuli - cf Mulholland Dr, Inland Empire, the last few eps of Peaks S2, Fenn’s storyline in S3, etc.

Even BOB himself (as has been pointed out) famously emerged from a serendipity… Frank Silva accidentally caught in a mirror by the camera!

"honor thy error as a hidden intention" nonstop in a 50+ year career

also "honor someone else's error"

I'm not-disenjoying S2. This is only my second watch of the second half. The first time I watched it I had the flu and nothing else to do but lie in bed and hoover through it. On VHS no less! More than twenty years ago. I hated post-solve S2 so much and spent most of my time watching it punching the couch.

But this time it's weirdly appealing, there's a charm in seeing how badly it all falls apart. Ben becoming a Gettysburger, "I don't care" romances between Catherine/Pete and James/Whatshername, the perennially terrible Andy-Lucy-Dick plotline. It's strange to see how something so captivating and tightly wound can just stutter and shudder into awfulness, like falling out of love with a man you were once head-over-heels in love with

Mostly bf and I are laughing at how many production errors there are. Boom mic in the frame, coffee cups changing positions, it all kinda adds to the experience

showing the 13 year old Twin Peaks and he handled the notorious goodbye to Maddy episode very well. he didn't want to watch the part with the letter being put under her nail, though.

i was trying to explain to him how objectively horrifying a scene like that was, airing it on network TV like that, the brutal death of a terrified character who was a fully decent individual. and how the horror just increased, and it was so frightening to see. i had seen a few things on network TV back in the day which were memorably fucked up in terms of pushing the envelope (the 1988 TV movie In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders culminates in a chillingly realistic gun battle for example, rough enough for me to find it intense 35+ years later.) But this was very different. i think it's good to be shocked by something like this, though, since it feels like so much graphic violence is prevalent everywhere on TV now that it rarely has any effect. and it's not given any weight. Breaking Bad can have a female character one of our heroes loves dispatched with a shot to the head and it's just there as a watercooler moment in the final stretch where the show is just trapping its characters in this interminably hopeless vise, it doesn't have the same depth of feeling or fear or real terror or tragedy.

The version of Maddy’s death that was originally televised is slightly different than all versions subsequently released. Some uber TP nerd that taped all of the original broadcasts confirmed it. There was a few seconds of footage added to all later versions so what was first broadcast wasn’t quite as brutal as what we’ve seen since then. But it was still shocking at the time.

Huh, that’s interesting…

I remember a “controversy” around how the BRAVO bug appeared onscreen right in the middle of that scene, when Bravo re-aired the show… ppl thought it was in poor taste because it was, supposedly, read as cheering on the action… “Bravo!”

There's another difference that I'm trying to remember...

I think when it was originally broadcast in another country (Japan?) there was an overlay of Bob's face on the carpet when Maddy freaks out while staring at the carpet. I think this is a totally different episode, not the one where she dies.

Everywhere else the carpet just... changes or shows marks of someone being drug across it or something. The theory was that Lynch originally had Bob's face on it but removed it, with the original version accidentally going out to some market.

hard agree about the horror of those maddy scenes. i cannot think of anything equivalent from tv and i only watched TP for the first time well after violence or explicit gore or etc had gone fairly mainstream

FWWM last night. I only watched this film once, previously, on VHS, age 23 or so, and I remember hating it— I didn’t find it terrifying, I found it corny, few salient revelations relating to the series, just a drawn-out enactment of what we already knew had happened. I thought in particular the Jack’s scene was completely dumb, and would mock the film by saying “I am the muffin” in other contexts.

Watched the Blue Rose cut last night, 3h15m. It’s a different movie. I kept thinking “that scene was amazing, why was it cut?” The world-building was at its all-time strongest— “bring me my axe!” and huckleberry muffins and the romances between Laura et al. I’ve commented elsewhere that Lynch appeals to me most when the extemporized quality of his process results in Gordian knots that connect, that is, I like for it to have SOME end-result structure (as does “Mulholland Drive”). Seeing how resolute Lynch was about tying up every old thread in S3, I felt like he shares that desire himself.

It’s funny, I commented to bf how odd it was that “Harold’s disappearing neighbours” was such a dead end, and here we are (the Chalfonts in FWWM). Bf proclaimed last night that FWWM was immediately one of his favourite films of all time

i adore the "bring me my axe" scene but it makes total sense to me why it was cut. idk that fwwm as released could tonally incorporate a warm and sweet palmer family scene

watched FWWM for the first time the other night. I dunno how much I can call it a "movie" as opposed to Twin Peaks' Silmarillion really. I would have almost preferred that it were largely its own story, focusing entirely on the investigative duo in the first quarter and their adventure rather than simply forgetting they exist and going back to the main TP plotline.

Leland's death is a truly devastating and tragic moment, i was surprised at how affecting it was upon a decades-later rewatch, and my 13 yr old at the end simply said "wow."

Yeah that scene is a tour de force… I don’t remember it making a particular impression when the show first aired, but rewatching it as an adult I’m like.…”!!”

have to admit i was prepared for cringing my way through the Duchovny scenes all these years later but i thought the Denise character has been handled about as well as could be expected for a show of its time. obv there were the lame reaction shots from other characters but Cooper just being completely happy for Denise and at ease with the situation is very moving. no memory of how it goes the rest of the way forward but i'm only at the episode where Major Briggs reappears at the end wearing vintage pilot gear.

It’s far more realistic that Cooper is “yay!” and Harry’s face is “sure, if Coop says so” and Hawk’s face is “hmmm” than if they were all celebrating this person they’ve never met

especially given the past range of FBI weirdos that Coop’s brought to interfere in their work previously

iirc literally every line denise says is some kind of joke about how she’s trans. i could’ve been inclined to find it offensive but it was pretty funny sometimes, and it’s not mean-spirited

Duchovny plays it with a certain amount of panache where those comments come across more as lightly teasing everyone else rather than being self-deprecating

yeah “I still put my panties on one leg at a time” is an undercutting of cliche, of masculinity, and of binary expectations around transness all at once, while also being an okay joke, and more than anything, an incredible piece of character writing: showing how Coop and Denise were close enough colleagues to swap cliched banter in the field, genuine enough bros to share prurient admiration without performative leering, and trusting enough in each other’s open-heartedness that Denise knows Coop will take it both as rebuke and intimacy. But her lines totally could have played horribly with a different performance stressing the jokes.

Also, it provides me and my wife to use variations of this exchange on a regular basis:

“(something something)… if you know what I mean?”

“Not really”

Got the Z to A set, so started my first rewatch in at least 20 years, probably longer. First thing that struck me was a reminder of how iconic all the young female actors are, and how lame all the young dudes are, but in this show the soapy stuff is as entertaining as the surreal or supernatural stuff.

I watched the Blue Rose edit after learning about it from reading this thread, and kind of had a bad time with it. I ended up watching it in chunks over a couple of days; definitely not as fulfilling an experience as my theatrical viewing of the official cut. Am I correct though that the Blue Rose cut explains Teresa Banks's whole connection to BOB in a way that was cut out of the theatrical release? Because I sort of appreciated that that unified the Chris Isaak investigation scenes with the rest of the film. Mostly otherwise I couldn't tell at all what was an addition from The Missing Pieces, which I'd seen separately a few years ago (that might be part of my problem).

xp Bobby's not a cool character (like, as a person) but I think he's iconic! (James is iconically lame, I guess...)

most of the additional stuff in the blue rose cut is in the Laura portion of the film; the only main addition to the Chris Isaak/Banks section is the fist-fight with the sherif, I think. I can't recall now if the scene where Leland goes to meet Theresa was in the theatrical cut or not. the most important restored part is the longer Philip Jeffries/Bowie section.

I suppose as characters go they are all iconic, given the show and its legacy. Kind of amazing that none of the young actors amounted to much, acting-wise. I guess their particular abilities worked here and not anywhere else.

Alicia Witt was lowkey the breakout actor...

(she was already part of the Lynch Repertory Company, tho)

Leland going to see Theresa and almost running into Laura and Ronette was in the theatrical version.

Ah, OK. Been a while since I saw the theatrical version, then.

The four importantest scenes in Blue Rose for me were the fisticuffs scene, “bring me my axe”, “cigarette! cigarette!” and “no, YOU’RE the muffin”.

What I like about it is how addictive and contrasting the bucolic setup is— it’s necessary to have the second half make any narrative sense

As I was saying, I'm watching this for the first time in decades. Miracle this got on the air. I'd forgotten much/most of it, but there's stuff in the first season I could have sworn I remembered from the second. Anyway, I knew Lynch's actual involvement was inconsistent, but I did find this breakdown from a fan, which was revelatory:

Here’s a comprehensive guide to how Twin peaks worked (as I understand it from dozens of hours of interviews and commentary tracks from the production crew and cast and also reading a bunch). Hopefully this will clear things up and dispel some common misconceptions.

Pilot

The pilot was basically a movie written by mark frost and David Lynch. It was written and produced over a year before any of the rest of the show.

Season 1 Episodes 1-7

It got picked up as a show as a mid season replacement, which meant ABC only ordered 7 episodes. The short duration allowed them to write almost the entire season before a single episode was shot. Lynch and Frost wrote the first two episodes together and then for the remainder basically wrote very detailed outlines of each episode, and they hired other writers like Harley Peyton and Robert Engels to turn those outlines into full episodes. David Lynch left to shoot Wild at Heart after writing up the outline for season 1, so Frost mostly oversaw the writers room. After Wild at Heart wrapped shooting David Lynch came back in time to direct Episode 2 and oversee the editing process for the remaining episodes.

Season 2 Episode 1-9

This time, due to the success of season 1 ABC ordered a full season, 22 episodes, which meant they now had to be writing and producing episodes while others were already airing. At times, they were only 3 or even two episodes ahead of what was airing on TV. David Lynch reportedly had some problems with the direction the show had taken while he was gone, and was starting to experience burnout.

“When I came back from Wild at Heart I didn’t know what was going on with (Twin Peaks). All I remember feeling is that it was this runaway train and you had to commit to it 24/7 to keep it on track. I think if it had just been Mark and me writing together on every episode we would’ve been okay, but we didn’t do that and other people came in. This is nothing against any of them, but they didn’t know my Twin Peaks and it just ceased to be anything that I recognized. When I came back to do an episode I’d try to change things and make it what I wanted, but then it would go off again on other stupid fucking things. It just wasn’t fun anymore.”

Like he said he directed a few episodes early on in Season 2, but he wasn’t nearly as involved in the writing process. The last episode he actually wrote with mark frost was season 2 episode 1. The writers described getting less and less detailed outlines, until eventually they weren’t getting any at all. The breaking point for Lynch seems to have been when they revealed the killer. The network heavily pressured them to do it and both Lynch and Frost have expressed regret over this decision.

Season 2 Episode 10-16

It seems that they had only really storyboarded as far as episode 9 ahead of time, as the original planned story arc which would’ve come next was rejected by Kyle Maclachlan at the last minute. Because they were writing the show as they went along, after they resolved the Laura Palmer story the writers had almost no break to decide where the show was gonna go next. Lynch had stopped contributing at all and went to Japan, and Frost was mainly focusing on writing his movie Storyville, so for episodes 10-16 writer Harley Peyton basically became the showrunner. When people say “David Lynch left the show during season 2” they are referring to these 7 episodes.

After a few weeks of neither David Lynch nor Mark Frost being very involved and the show spinning out of control, Bob Iger took them out to lunch and apologized and asked them what he could do to get them onboard and working together again. It was here where David Lynch first started to contribute new ideas again, with his first being that the Josie Packard storyline end with her being trapped in a doorknob . After this episode ABC took the show off the air due to low ratings.

Season 2 Episode 17-23

Despite his creative differences with the show, David Lynch campaigned relentlessly to get it back on the air. He held press conferences, went on talk shows, and encouraged fans to write to ABC. The fan support was enough that ABC ordered 6 more episodes, and were even optimistic about a third season depending on how well these final 6 did. These six episodes were written and shot all together. Once again Lynch and Frost were involved in the writing process, with Lynch coming up with a love interest for Cooper and casting Heather Graham whom he had worked with previously as well as plotting out the direction the final episodes would take. Mark Frost began actually writing scripts again and Lynch directed the final episode. These final six shows didn’t do any better in the ratings than those that came before them, so ABC cancelled it for good.

All in all, David Lynch’s involvement with the show is kind of all over the place, so it’s hard to say which parts of the show are “him”. Overall Season 2 episode 10-16 are the episodes where he was the least involved, but even his involvement during season 1 and the rest of season 2 varies wildly. The pilot and fire walk with me and the Return are the only parts I consider pure David.

I wasn't sure where Lynch and Graham had worked together before, but it turns out to be a Calvin Klein ad, directed by Lynch and also featuring Benicio Del Toro!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrOyRLN6hXQ

Lynch did more than just direct the final episode, he basically totally rewrote it on the fly, from what I understand