Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

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

They showed the final episode on Finnish TV yesterday, and I think it's been 15 years since I last saw the episode, so I remembered little of it. I was kinda disappointed how the whole thing ended; from what I've gathered, the makers of the series knew that it'd be cancelled when the final episode was filmed, so maybe they should've tried a bit more to create some sort of a closure.

The whole story about the White Lodge and the Black Lodge was getting kinda corny, sounding like some cheap horror or fantasy story, so I'm glad Lynch dealt with the scene in the Black Lodge in his patented surreal way rather than making it some grandiose battle between forces of good and evil. However, the actual scene is way too long; it recycles previously seen characters and themes without bringing in much new, and a lot of it doesn't really seem to serve any purpose except weirdness for weirdness's sake. I think it's pretty obvious that Lynch was just making up most of it as it went along; from what I've read he discarded a lot of the original script written by Frost, Peyton & Engels. I sorta like the idea about a struggle between "good" and "evil" Cooper, but I found the final resolution to be lacking, mainly because how the character of Cooper is handled.

The whole second season seems to be dealing with the idea of good vs. and the struggle of this forces inside people. The Black vs. White Lodge was the most obvious reference here, but I thought it was more interesting how, during the second season, characters originally coded as "evil" show a gentler side, and vice versa. Ben Horne really seems to want become a better man, Leo tries to fight against Windom Earle and wanted to save Shelly, Bobby is showing genuine love towards Shelly, etc. On the other hand, Sheriff Truman is blinded by his love for Jocelyn, Pete seems to let Catherine use him, James cheats on Donna, Doc Hayward goes mad and kills/wounds Ben, etc.

But little character growth happens with Cooper. From the very beginning until before the last few scenes he was this sort of a superhero, an epitome of goodness (which, to be honest, makes him a rather boring character). So him succumbing to evil in the Black Lodge comes mostly out of the blue. Okay, his supposed flaw is that he once fell in love with Windom Earle's wife, which eventually caused her death, and judging from the scene in the Black Lodge, this was what Bob uses against him. But since this episode is long in the past, and Cooper seems to have become a better man after that, it has carries little emotional resonance for the viewer, so him losing the test put upon him in the Black Lodge doesn't feel right. It seems more like the ending was just made up for the shock value of seeing Cooper possessed by Bob.

An alternative reading of the ending is that Cooper doesn't succumb to evil, that he actually sells his soul to Windom Earle - and, therefore, to Bob - in exchange of saving Annie from the Lodge, which allows Bob to occupy his body. I guess this interpretation is more in line with Cooper's character, but it still seems like a pretty cliched and flat way of ending such an interesting series.

Here's some other questions that came to my mind while watching the last few episodes:

* In the final episode, why are Norma and Shelly and everyone else acting as if nothing has happened, even though Annie was kidnapped the night before in front of their own eyes?

* Similarly, when Audrey comes to the bank, why isn't she at all disturbed from the fact that her father was wounded/killed the night before?

* What the hell happened to Josie? Did Bob kill her, and if so, why? Is she now haunting Great Northern?

* What was the Log Lady's and her husband's role in all of this? Apparently they knew about the Black Lodge, since she provides Cooper with the jar of oil.

* What's with the twitching of hands exhibited by Coop and Pete in the third to last episode?

Also:

* Whatever happened to Mike, the one-armed man? He seemed bent on catching Bob, yet after Leland was captured he was never seen again. He knew what Bob was, so surely he also knew Bob wasn't confined to Leland's body?

* What's the deal with the Arthurian imagery in the final episode: Glastonbury Grove, the twelve trouts... And for some reason Windom Earle seemed to have needed a "queen" (Miss Twin Peaks) to enter the black lodge, even though Cooper didn't.

One of Lynch's hallmark concerns is the construction and destruction of familiarity.

Okay, his supposed flaw is that he once fell in love with Windom Earle's wife,

no its that he fell in love with Annie/didn't learn from his previous mistake.

What was wrong in felling love with Annie? It's not like she was anyone's wife or anything. Anyway, my point is that because throughout the show Cooper is shown as this thoroughly good and decent superman, his supposed fall from grace doesn't feel convincing. Cooper and Sheriff Truman are the least interesting among the main characters, because they're given less humanity than the other, morally less sound Twin Peaks residents.

From what I've gathered Lynch had pretty much abandoned Twin Peaks by the end of the second series, and only came back to direct the final episode. Also, I read a comment from one of the writers that during the second season they were often just making things up as they went along, which would explain the incoherence and loose ends in many of the later episodes. What made the first season and the beginning of the second one intriguing was the idea that there was a big, mysterious backstory to everything that was happening, and we only caught glimpses of it through dreams and visions. But when, during the second season, they started explaining it with all that Black and White Lodge mumbo jumbo, that's when I thought it got kinda stale. So maybe they should've just left supernatural stuff on the level of mystery and occasional vision, and focused more on the quirky soap opera, which I thought was the most enjoyable part of the second season.

What was wrong in felling love with Annie?

it distracted him/made him let his guard down, its a sign of "weakness", exposing vulnerabilities

is the music from season 2 available anywhere? i don't think it ever got an official release, aside from "sycamore trees" on the FIRE WALK WITH ME sndtrk.

I don't think so - I have the season 1 sdtk on CD. Unfortunately it does not include James' classic rendition of "You and I" complete with living room slapback-reverb.

So maybe they should've just left supernatural stuff on the level of mystery and occasional vision

if this were the case, then what purpose would it serve? i mean, you seem to be complaining about the supernatural stuff being too resistant to interpretation (or at least the moral universe interpretation you'd like to apply), yet your solution seems to be simply to make it more mysterious and irrelevant.

one of the many things i love about the finale is the totally black, hopeless, things-fall-apart nature of it. it's also gotta be the weirdest hour ever on american network tv.

angelo badalamenti 20 CD box set pls

tuomas just hates anything with a spiritual context

twin peaks season 2 soundtrack on the way sez angelo:
http://myspace.com/angelobadalamenti

S2 would have been dramatically improved with just a little more planning and foresight; i heart <i>Twin Peaks</i>, but it's alarming how flimsy that second season looks by today's narrative TV standards.

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.