Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

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).

Another continuity error that sticks in my craw was how in the last episode, Norma and Ed repair to her home to look after Nadine (thwacked by a sandbag during the Miss Twin Peaks contest), but make no mention of Norma's sister Annie who has been kidnapped by Wyndam Earle. My guess is that David Lynch (who wrote/directed the final episode) was not too fond of the plot contrivance that was Annie and just acted as though she were marginal to the story.

I haven't even watched this series for years, but such was my devotion to it that I remember such minutae even now. Embarrassing, isn't it?

Twin Peaks: mostly Classic. Faltered a lot in the middle, and then got canned just as things were really picking up at the end. Lynch had pretty much left the other writers to do as they please, if I remember right, only to come in and ditch their plans for the last episode, leaving us with ... well, that.

I spent a month in college doing nothing but watching David Lynch stuff, for a paper. I can never watch Eraserhead again.

It's hard to believe this was ever a network television show, I can't imagine any of the networks airing something like this now (I think the failure of Mulholland Drive as a series confirms this).

I always felt like Lynch just ran out of ideas or something.

We own the DVDs for the first episodes - they're great and the "extras" aren't bad, either. Purchased the vidoes from Amazon - quality so horrid that toward the end we could not hear the dialogue. But the creepy music came through.

I liked that I kept being thrown for a loop with the plot lines. I hate it when things are predicatable. (And, well, I thought that the sheriff was a hottie - but I found Audrey more enticing. Never understood how Cooper restrained from kidnapping her and showing her the error of her ways, or something equally as entertaining.)

my other theory is that lynch, with TP, had an almost perverse understanding of what makes teenage girls with a certain disposition tick. as a dude, i can be a fan of course, but all the sinister, hidden shit going on with mom, dad, boyfriends, sisters, etc., ... everything is not okay! anyway, these theories are, like, quarter-baked, obviously.

i like the show. it's weird!

She also enjoyed a long life (with some interesting biographical details that I learned from an obit). Many of the others died younger, which was especially sad.

Personally have close to zero quibbles with s3 but I do feel they could have included at least one scene of Ben Horne looking wistfully at a framed photograph of her feet

Whatever became of Little Elvis?

He became bruno mars

ah loved Piper. Watched Carrie recently, and yeah didn't know she was the mother. But then realised that the Frasier episode with her as the over controlling mother figure made a lot more sense!

no one wants to know the number of times a day I've walked around the house saying "animal life" since rewatching FWWM

Very sad to hear of Piper Laurie's passing, though I'll be listening for reports of any elderly Japanese men appearing at her funeral...

Haha

There seemed to be such a horrible spate of Twin Peaks actors dying in the aftermath of s3. Piper Laurie's passing reminds me that it has thankfully slowed, but maybe that's just cause so many are gone.

It was pretty sad how many who actually appeared in The Return died before those episodes were even broadcast. And even new cast members like Robert Forster passed away after the series finished airing.

FWIW, my favorite Piper Laurie performance is still Sara in The Hustler, one of my favorite films, period.

Agree! One of my favourites for close to 50 years. (And she's amazing.)

well into the return now, episode 5. Struck this time by the sensitivity and pathos of Coop-as-Dougie. The breakfast scene was actually rather hard for me to watch as it reminded me so much of trying to feed my mother in the last week of her life, her mind just completely gone. I can't believe he didn't get an Emmy for this.

The purple room/eyeless woman/not-ronette scenes were terrifying when I watched them this time, I don't remember being so viscerally horrified the first time through. This stuff really recalled Eraserhead.

My only complaint is that some things actually make too much sense; the Mike/Dougie scene in the red room, for example. It's so expository ('someone manufactured you") I have to think Mark Frost wrote that.

I think that line is a useful grounding point for the viewer... it also shows that Mike (apparently) wasn't the one who "manufactured" Dougie, although I suppose even that is open for debate.

Outside the opening scene of Part 17, I can't think of many lines that I thought were too expository; one or two plot aspects are sort of presented as initially unclear and then are revealed to be what you thought they would be (but this is more the exception than the norm, ha ha).

xp yes I’ve always felt this series was primarily about ageing and the changes it wreaks.

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/431572089_820552056777083_990553146318547682_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=7dlM8CBYBwoAX9MShtu&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfCTyHULMHPyEeBU4xaTN4C319jzR9th8GM4QcSw90V2zg&oe=660D1A24

aw. lynch looking very guru-like in his robe

Very david lynch voice “I SHOULD. HAVE. DIRECTED. JEDI. “

my biggest problem with the revive was that hawk wasn't sheriff. my other quibble was the "cherry pie" issue: i wouldn't have minded if it just stayed local and picked up where the og series left off and stayed in twin peaks altogether but in the future but the expanded universe way of exploring core concepts vis-a-vis judy and whatnot was ok too but they took too long to return cooper to his true self imo. other than that, all michael horse all the time.

my recent rewatch of the Return (the first time I'd rewatched the entire thing), I was much happier with the pace and the amount of time spent with Cooper as Dougie. But it was frustrating when these were coming out week by week.

New Frost interview: https://variety.com/2024/tv/features/twin-peaks-mark-frost-david-lynch-laura-palmer-mulholland-drive-1235955147/

April 8, 1990: "She's dead...wrapped in plastic."

https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/112/238/312/179/988/757/original/31fb1cc1cddf0e1e.jpeg

It first aired in Australia a little later in Feb 1991 - I was 14 and Twin Peaks + Northern Exposure was my ~entire~ personality in high school

I basically dressed and wore my hair like Bobby Briggs for a year or two

My friend's band played their first show on 4/8/1990* and THEIR 2ND GUITARIST stayed home to watch Twin Peaks instead lol.

*openers: The Melvins & TFUL282!

for my 15th birthday that year my friends gave me THE SECRET DIARY OF LAURA PALMER

xp The second guitarist, in his final moments:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/twinpeaks/images/8/8e/Rusty_Tomasky.jpg/revision/latest/thumbnail/width/360/height/360?cb=20161029002620

my mom watched the pilot and immediately roped me in for the first real episode. i was obsessed with Bobby and fancied myself more of an Audrey Horne type which, in retrospect, is kind of disturbing. But not surprising.

To this day I am spooked by men who look even remotely like BOB and I think it's because I was 14 when I saw him for the first time creepin out from behind the furniture

Imagine being the copywriter who had to figure out how to try to explain what Twin Peaks was in a newspaper ad.

I was 11 when I first watched the show and I literally threw the remote control out of my hand at BOB's first appearance.

The owner of the Palmer house is now doing paid tours of it, and has set up a BOB mannequin looming inside a cracked-open closet door.

She seems cool, I've seen her social media postings and whatnot

My wife and I stopped outside that house several years ago. Her license plate is TREMOND.

Did you see creamed corn on that plate?