Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

goddamn html my bad sry.

thank you!

I didn't mean that the supernatural aspect is supposed to be irrelevant, it's just that when they started explaining it with stuff like "in the Black Lodge you have to go through a test of courage" or "the White Lodge can be entered with love", I though it got to the level of some teenage fantasy book. In the beginning of the series, and in Lynch's subsequent work (such as Lost Highway) the surreal/supernatural stuff is more subtle, which makes it more intriguing. Even Bob stopped being scary when he was exposed too much.

LOST HIGHWAY is subtle?

"scary" is obv subjective but i thought the techniques used to alienate BOB in season 2 were more successful. in S1 he's just a dude in a jean jacket kneeling behind a couch going "GRRR" right? i find the scene where he crawls over the back of the couch towards maddy quite terrifying, despite the silliness.

i always found the friendship between cooper and truman very touching. those two are also the only characters i'm aware of who were based on specific northwestern archetypes: D.B. Cooper, the outsider who disappeared into the washington woods; Harry Truman,, the resilent local who refused to give ground. this combined with their specific investigative authority has always made me view them in a different way than the rest of the cast: more archetypal, more fated, already lost and therefore more prone to fall prey to the town's dark moods. like at some point you have to stop thinking of cooper as an ethically unique individual like the others and conflate him with the town or at least his (and our own) curiosity about the town and that this might be a way to view his fate. it's why the show does lose some of its focus when cooper goes native and starts dressing in flannel (which apparently pissed lynch off to no end). but i think the finale reclaims his character in a properly tragic way. i mean, how could this have ever ended well?

LOST HIGHWAY is subtle?

Subtle in the sense that all the weird shit that goes on is never really explained the same way it is in Twin Peaks.

i find the scene where he crawls over the back of the couch towards maddy quite terrifying, despite the silliness.

Yeah, I found that scene scary too, but after it was revealed he's an evil spirit possessing people, that's when it turned into a regular horror story. To be honest, I thought the suspense/horror aspect of the series lost it's momentum after the murder was solved and Leland was dead. I really think they should've continued the story as soap opera, maybe occasionally bring Bob back, but instead they tried to recreate the original charm by bringing in a new villain (Windom Earle) and introducing all that Black Lodge stuff, and it never worked as well as before.

this combined with their specific investigative authority has always made me view them in a different way than the rest of the cast: more archetypal, more fated, already lost and therefore more prone to fall prey to the town's dark moods.

If I remember correctly, Fire Walk With Me implies that it was no coincidence Cooper came to Twin Peaks, that maybe he was drawn there by the Black Lodge, though I'm not sure if the series ever gave that impression. But yeah, I guess you can see it all as classical tragedy, where's the hero's doom is already predestined. However, as a human tragedy it doesn't really work, because Cooper (unlike Leland) is never portrayed as the sort of a flawed human being who'd succumb to the Black Lodge. I mean, if his flaw was loving Annie, it doesn't really seem like a flaw at all (besides, I thought love was what got you the White Lodge?).

not that this makes me right or anything, but just as an aside i grew up in a small logging community in washington, and as a dorky 15 year old desperate to escape this show was MANNA FROM HEAVEN. it's the "mythology" (however scattershot) that means more to me than any other, probably my favorite cultural product ever. whenever i go back i see things in a twin peaksy way, like branches blowing randomly in a strong breeze. or perhaps more importantly, i HEAR them: lynch's episodes capture so perfectly the pervasive buzzing hum of blank, lonesome, otherworldly nature towering over you in an empty town. so classic, not dud.

it's explicit in both series and movie that cooper has a psychic connection with laura that extends backwards and forwards in time and past the limits of death and that manifests primarily in the black/white/red zone of the lodges, though obv (thankfully) this is never fully spelled out.

what's satisfying to me about cooper's doom is that it only seems predestined in retrospect: to lose yourself in a mystery is to suffer the worst fate it has to offer, though this only apparent when you can no longer escape. why doesn't cooper leave when he's suspended from the fbi? cause again i think he's no longer making totally "human" choices, and is complicit in something much larger! (and also outside the scope of "classical tragedy")

actually tuomas i'd sincerely like to hear your interpretation of the twitching hands bit!

it's explicit in both series and movie that cooper has a psychic connection with laura that extends backwards and forwards in time

Actually, I think only in the movie it is stated that Cooper has had visions of Laura before he came to Twin Peaks. The series itself doesn't make this connection.

why doesn't cooper leave when he's suspended from the fbi? cause again i think he's no longer making totally "human" choices, and is complicit in something much larger! (and also outside the scope of "classical tragedy")

Haha, I saw in that completely different light, I thought that was one of the more human moments Cooper had. I mean, I think it was made pretty clear that he stayed in Twin Peaks because he liked it there, he liked the people and the coffee and the trees and everything.

Re: the twitching hands - when Cooper's hand twitched, obviously I thought it had something to do with Bob trying to attack him, but then it happened to Pete too, after which I had no explanation. I think it was just one of those clues that never really lead anywhere, like Josie inside the wooden knob, Ben being scared of something we never see, the mystery man in the woods with Leo, Little Nicky, Windom Earle's poem to Donna, Audrey and Shelly, etc. Like I said, it seems that at some point the writers were just making stuff up as they went along, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

I watched epsiode one last night. It only really gets good when Agent Cooper appears.

The picture quality is a little murky.

It struck me the latest time I watched is that Cooper actually does enter through the White Lodge - his motivation is his love for Annie, not fear or hate - and transits between Lodges once on the other side after talking to The Man From Another Place and Laura having been given the warning "the next time you see us we will not be the same".

Does anyone have any idea what the hand signals Laura does in the final episode mean? Just something random Lynch came up with?

cooper's attraction to twin peaks is obv on a mystic/psychic level as well as a good cherry pie level, even if this isn't explicitly acknowledged. it would go against the inherent conservatism of his character to claim to want to be part of that darkness (this goes back to sexyDancer's post upthread about constructing and deconstructing familiarity).

"the wood contains many spirits, doesn't it margaret?"--josie disappears into the wood just as the log lady's husband did. people fade into their surroundings when the tragedies those surroundings have witnessed choose to claim them. the ugliness in the martell house finally rang josie's number. i've always thought of this as a classic ghost story thing.

obv they were making random shit up, mark frost said as much in a recent interview. just cause there's no nabokovian grand master whose moves you're trying to follow doesn't mean you can't see possibilities in the loose ends, and spin stoner theories till the coffee gets cold. i like to think the mystery man in the woods with leo was windam earle but who knows?

i love arguing about this show but it's too late and i'm still too drunk and i have a very important haircut first thing in the morning. actually i'm happy to blame the whole bloody mess on heather graham and billy zane and just leave it at that.

it would go against the inherent conservatism of his character to claim to want to be part of that darkness

But this would be true only if "darkness" was the defining element of Twin Peaks, and it never seemed like Cooper (or anyone else) thought that way.

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/5984/twinpeaksdefinitivegoldoj5.jpg

October 30th in the US. With deleted scenes and pilot!

(see http://dugpa.com/ for more info)

or this for the full press release:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=7769

What, *everything* ?

:):):)

No, not everything - the Fire Walk With Me movie is still a separate release.

still, rad.

Oh FFS. I'll wait for this to massively drop in price, or a Deep Discount sale or something, and see if I can sell my other boxes.

me too, if this ever gets a R2 edition :-(

Or a fucking r4.

):):):

God dangit, I just bought the season 2 set.

They should do a "return both your season 1 and 2 boxes and get x dollar off the box" - but then so should all those labels who do exactly the same thing with CDs that we buy nevertheless.

i want this! my birthday's in december... ;)

After having seen Inland Empire it feels like the Black Lodge scene in the final episode preshadows it, since both of them show how boring Lynch can get when his imagination is given a totally free reign. I think he does need outside balancing forces (producers, co-writers, or even a goddamn script!) not to fall victim to his worst instincts.

You say boring, I say potato.

:D

It's released on my birthday!

Very glad I held off on picking up any previous sets/discs (aside from the movie). Xmas ahoy...

guess I gotta sell those Season 1 and 2 sets arrrghhh

Yeah, I held off on the boxed sets too and just borrowed them from a friend of mine who is now completely pissed off that he's going to have to shell out for this new boxed set. Oh well, I'm a leech. I'm super pumped about the deleted scenes. Perhaps the pilot will be the actual pilot and not the bizarre standalone pilot that was available forever on VHS with the nonsensical tacked-on ending.

it has both versions of the pilot

"standalone pilot with the bizarre ending" = European version

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it -- I don't think I have on here -- but the woman who played Dr. Jacoby's wife Eolani in the one scene where he's visited in the hospital by Cooper and Truman was a classmate of mine at UCLA, Jennifer Aquino; she was on the same dorm floor I was in our freshman year there, which was a couple of years before the show. Very cool and friendly person! As you can see from the link, that appearance was her first 'major' part as such (there's a piece in the Daily Bruin from that year where she was interviewed and admitted that while she loved doing it, she was a bit frustrated with the role being essentially a stereotypical eye-candy part with no lines -- can't find it online, their archives only go back to 1994) and she's been plugging away ever since.

I think gygax! RIP said it best:

You guys are misjudging that Twin Peaks was all Lynch's ideas... Mark Frost (Hill Street Blues, $6 Million Man) had a huge hand in overseeing the writing and production of the series.
-- gygax! (gygax!), Friday, October 8, 2004 10:16 AM (2 years ago)

Such good news.

About fucking time.

happy hannukah, me!

roxy otm.

between this, blade runner and the kubrick dvds i am going to be one busy nerd

not to mention a broke one, ha

so, how much?

USD 65 @ Amazon.com, out next week!

http://www.amazon.com/Twin-Peaks-Definitive-Gold-Complete/dp/B000UX6THK

(no sign of a region 2 yet, not on amazon.co.uk, at least)

Can someone tell me when the fuck the UK version of season 2 is going to be released?

I have the Dutch edition. No Dutch subtitles is kinda English too, according to the commenters on the second hand/import reviewers here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Twin-Peaks-Complete-Season-Boxset/dp/B000S2I8X6

Are you ordering it, Stan? I mean, what with the weak dollah and all... :-)

very excited.

I don't think I've seen the American version of the pilot since it was broadcast.

xpost: No, I've only bought that second season a couple of months ago and I don't think my player does R1 discs. At the very least, I'll wait a while to see if this gold edition isn't going to be released over here as well.

Did you google for info on how to unlock your DVD player? Most of'em do, you only need to find the required info on the net or... something.

Yes, and it doesn't have one. I could send it to some shoddy guy in England who will put a modchip in it and charge me half the price of a new one, so I don't think I'll bother. I can watch R1 discs on my PC (I did before I bought the TV), but I'm holding off on the gold thing mainly because I only just got that Season 2 box.