Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

You guys have seen these Lynch-directed spots, right? (Apologies if already posted somewhere upthread):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4sBbO3o9zs

it's all about the buildup to the moment when rosenfield gives his speech about pacificism

"Now you listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman.:

this is the best scene ever on tv

i don't think lynch had anything to do w/ those georgia coffee spots.

http://www.lynchnet.com/ads/

ronan otm re: best scene in tv history

haha i also like that ronan and i are the only 2 ppl i know that are fans of albert on facebook

meh, i think i said this on the character poll thread but rosenfeld is kinda jacked by the writers, he's a miserable grump in one episode, the next one he's a treehugging newager in the next, and back and forth depending on the way the wind is blowing. would've liked him treated with a little consistency.

he contains multitudes

meh, i think i said this on the character poll thread but rosenfeld is kinda jacked by the writers, he's a miserable grump in one episode, the next one he's a treehugging newager in the next, and back and forth depending on the way the wind is blowing. would've liked him treated with a little consistency.

― _▂▅▇█▓▒░◕‿‿◕░▒▓█▇▅▂_ (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, April 28, 2010 2:23 PM

Sound like he was modelled on David Lynch...

i mean, he is a character with a lot of potential that got short shrift with facetime compared to Harold Smith, Dennis/Denice, and all that garbage.

poor harold.

i liked the harold smith storyline a lot, & i think they used albert p well his weirdness was of a piece 2 me

harold will fuck u up w/ a garden weasel iirc

only the orchids understand his pain

Why was Harold/Laura C-on-T scene cut from FWWM?

I agree with Shasta, Albert was funny as a miserable curmudgeon, but the treehugger revelation made no sense in any way, as cool as his little monologue was. It felt like the whole thing was just played for cheap laughs instead of trying to keep the character consistent.

No way, it took his character to the next level. "Just because you have an unpleasant disposition and dislike people, it is no obstacle to Work."

^ real talk

Only really a problem if you think there is a basic inconsistency between bad personal skills and pacifism. As a pacifist who is also an asshole, I can assure you the two are not irreconcilable.

Yeah I didn't find it all out of character, especially in the context of a series by David Lynch of a town filled with a bunch of weird quirky characters. That's one of my favorite moments in the series and I usually forget about it. The other is when Major Briggs describes his dream to his son.

my favorite, at the beginning of the 2nd season: "i warmed it up for you!"

that milk'll cool down on you, but it's getting warmer now!

i think there was a conscious effort to change the personalities around in season 2. most obviously with ben and nadine but also significantly with the major and albert. the major's speech was incredible but i thought albert's speech was just inserted for laughs.

I think the whole scene shows that even as albert says that stuff he is angry. He even sort of loosens his rough grip on truman's shoulder as he speaks and dusts him down. It's like he has to remind himself of his values or something! I didn't find it out of character at all, coop acts like he had faith in albert all along afterwards too.

That's funny btw roxy, I think albert is close to my favourite!

http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/40849/twin-peaks_M_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpg

Nice feature (& screen-grab!) on ep. 3 in the AV Club today: http://www.avclub.com/articles/twin-peaks-zen-or-the-skill-to-catch-a-killer,40849/

Twin Beaks lol

"dark mood woods" theme that runs throughout the final episode is the best in entire series

this new shitty show happy town is trying very very hard to be twin peaks and failing, awfully

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3IZS2QddAY

five stars

words fail

nice one

I wonder if that could convince my fiancé to watch Twin Peaks. Let's watch & see!

Nice little interview with Lynch, McLachlan and Mark Frost.

"We're planning a prequel spin-off series with Dr Jacobi, and it's set in Hawaii," says Frost. Added Lynch, "It's going to be very different than Twin Peaks but we've been doing research on proper Luau cooking. It's important these things right."

"Sorry, I meant to say 'it's important to get these things right'" said Lynch. "You need to lay off the coffee David," joked MacLachlan.

I remember liking FWWM because it gave the viewer more room to interpret "Bob" as a persona imagined by Laura to shield her from the psychological damage of her daddy abusing her, instead of the evil spirit explanation which I always found kinda silly and unnecessarily Manichean. (See my point upthread about externalizing evil.)

― Tuomas, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:11 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
But I haven't seen it ever since I was teen, should probably rewatch it.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:12 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
I don't have a problem with the externalized evil thing - its still something that is given power by the consent of the inhabiting individual (see Leland's death speech). Plus the abstract/pagan "evil in the woods" is a very classically American trope (cf. Hawthorne)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:21 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it gave the viewer more room to interpret "Bob" as a persona imagined by Laura to shield her from the psychological damage of her daddy abusing her, instead of the evil spirit

yeah, but the series kind of blows that deal from the get go, I guess as soon as Sarah sees Bob, and then Coop's dream. I don't know how spoilery this thread is already but you know who Bob is possessing at the end of the series, right? I guess I don't see how the series would work without the whole Black Lodge thing.

― marmotwolof, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:37 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
I like how Tuomas cannot abide anything supernatural/spiritual in any form, even if its in a fuckin artsy TV show.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:54 PM Bookmark

I just got through the episode where Leland dies. I actually think the show is very open to the reading of Bob as a persona Laura invents to deal with being molested by her father -- not in the most literal sense where every supernatural thing in the show directly matches up to a non-supernatural explanation, but in a very strong, metaphorical sort of way to the point that I don't think the show can resist that interpretation.

There's the fact that the relationship with 'Bob' has been going on since her childhood. The mother is the classic willfully ignorant enabler - she asks over and over again "what is going on in this house?" and in the Maddy murder scene she is lying passed out on the floor right there in the living room. And by the way, that also explains why the wife can "see" Bob.

In his confession scene Leland describes how he let Bob go "inside" him - a pretty clear double entendre that can be read to mean Leland was himself molested as a child, as is the pattern with child molesters

I think someone upthread criticized the 'conservative' attitude of the show that promiscuity is caused by molestation. But in fact children who are molested frequently seek out excessive sexual attention - this doesn't imply that all or most promiscuity is a sign of molestation, just that molested children often act out in that way - especially the stuff about looking for controlling, domineering men.

At the funeral for Laura, Bobby yells at the funeralgoers about what hypocrites they were and how they all did nothing to help Laura, and this seems to be another theme of the show - the close-knit community that looks the other way while abuse is going on.

The dreams and the supernatural elements can all be read partly as ways of dealing with the horror - Agent Cooper practically spells this out when, iirc, the sheriff says he finds all the supernatural stuff too hard to get his mind around and Cooper says something like "Is it any easier to believe that a man would rape and murder his own daughter?"

that's a very smart and persuasive interpretation. although i think there is more evidence that the show leaned harder on the "bob as malevolent inhabiting spirit" side of things -- the fact that one-armed man, etc. can "see" him, and of course all of the stuff in the black lodge in the last few episodes. that doesn't vitiate the metaphorical power of this narrative thread, but it does mean that the filmmakers also wanted to indulge the supernatural take as well in ways that aren't always congruent with the metaphor.

The dreams and the supernatural elements can all be read partly as ways of dealing with the horror - Agent Cooper practically spells this out when, iirc, the sheriff says he finds all the supernatural stuff too hard to get his mind around and Cooper says something like "Is it any easier to believe that a man would rape and murder his own daughter?"

this moment always struck me as positioned very delicately between too on-the-nose and, well, a perfect encapsulation of what the show is up to.

yeah felt the same way about that moment

I just got through the episode where Leland dies. I actually think the show is very open to the reading of Bob as a persona Laura invents to deal with being molested by her father -- not in the most literal sense where every supernatural thing in the show directly matches up to a non-supernatural explanation, but in a very strong, metaphorical sort of way to the point that I don't think the show can resist that interpretation.

There's the fact that the relationship with 'Bob' has been going on since her childhood. The mother is the classic willfully ignorant enabler - she asks over and over again "what is going on in this house?" and in the Maddy murder scene she is lying passed out on the floor right there in the living room. And by the way, that also explains why the wife can "see" Bob.

This ie exactly why I was criticizing the second half of Season 2 upthread. If you just watch TP up until the episode in which Leland dies, and watch FWM after that, it's pretty easy to interpret Bob as a persona Laura and/or Leland created to justify the horrible things he did. Sure there are some inconsistenties with that theory (mostly, Mike knowing Bob and Agent Cooper seeing him in his dreams), but on a thematical level it works. But after Leland's death the theme of evil spirits and forces of good vs. forces of evil becomes much more prominent, and it's much harder to reconcile that with the psychological explanation.

In his confession scene Leland describes how he let Bob go "inside" him - a pretty clear double entendre that can be read to mean Leland was himself molested as a child, as is the pattern with child molesters.

It's been a while since I saw the episode, but IIRC Leland's confession before death was pretty ambiguous. If Bob is indeed an evil spirit who possessed him, he shouldn't be held accountable for what he did to Laura. But he seemed to think he was both responsible for happened and that things beyond his control were also involved. This would fit quite well with Leland being a victim of molestation himself; it's not his fault he became such a fucked-up person, but he's still accountable for the fucked-up things he did.

Also, Leland being a victim would provide an alternative interpretation to the scene where he sees the police drawing of Bob, and recognizes him as someone he knew in his childhood. Maybe Bob was the actual person who molested Leland as a kid? Then, when Leland became a molester himself, it would make sense that he developed "Bob" as the persona who does all the bad things, as he feels it's the original Bob's fault that he turned out to be so crazy. Bob being a real person might also explain why Mike the one-armed man knows about him... Maybe Mike knew what Bob did to Leland (maybe he was another one of Bob's victims? he appears to be about the same age as Leland), and he suspects Bob "inserted" his evil into Leland (i.e. fucked him up psychologically), a suspicion that is confirmed by Laura's death.

Yeah, having watched the next episode this evening I see what you mean and it is a bit disappointing. Maybe it's almost as though the show is saying "No, you, audience, can't handle the idea that a father would do this to his own daughter without supernatural cause"

one of the most unique shows i've ever watched, next to buffy (and i would've said lost if that wasn't the worlds greatest cop-out, the ending and the revelations of...........nothing). admittedly it gets a little tedious during the 2nd season, and i have come to hate the ending despite initially liking it.

mark frost's books suck, sadly

"...folded in half, he began to read it."

now that its fall, rewatching peaks again

First day of unemployment, think rewatching this is mandatory.

For Britishers with SKY the Horror Channel is showing both seasons from 9pm every Monday starting tonight

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/8812/fwwmmontage.jpg

http://dugpa.com/2010/11/09/exclusive-photos-from-the-psych-twin-peaks-tribute-episode-dual-spires-airing-december-1st-on-usa-network/

^^ OK, seeing Bobby Briggs all Ted Danson-ed out w/ a full head of gray hair just made me feel really old.

Now Audrey Horne on the other hand..