Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

Unless I'm remembering wrong the penultimate S2 episode was pretty good as well...

The third-to-last episode is much better than the penultimate episode, really feels like it nails the atmosphere for the first time in ages.

Also Simon’s podcast helps make the awful episodes a bit more bearable!

The final few eps of s2 are great, I'd rather skip season 3 in its entirety tbh

finally got around to watching the original Twin Peaks series a few months ago. Saw 'Fire Walk With Me' at a drive-in last week. Kinda all over the place but still entertaining. Looking forward to Season 3, and annoying my girlfriend with other David Lynch movies.

yes, last few episodes of twin peaks are when it finally gets good again, and it's so incredibly good at the end

of S2 i mean

Counterpoint: the 2nd last ep is just about the worst of the whole run. The one before that is good (and finale is great obv) tho

wow good to know, didn’t know it actually got good at the end. Thanks all!

I m/l enjoy all of S2 except James' wild ride, and I reckon cutting out that and any Ted Raimi-adjacent material would be enough to make it bearable for nearly everyone who otherwise loses faith

if you're really burnt out but keen for FWWM / The Return though, you can jump to the final ep whenever the burnout sets in

nah I’m just gonna watch the rest

you've got some good Gordon Cole scenes coming up then :)

i watched everything over the summer and some of those late season 2 eps are stupid sure but it still flew by

I m/l enjoy all of S2 except James' wild ride

lol, I got this far into your post and was like 'but what about Raimi?' Thank u for addressing my primary concern, sic.

I’m a confirmed s2 enjoyer except for anything raimi-adjacent (which I understand to mean all of windom earle) but the beauty contest ep is the nadir for me, way worse than the wacky/aimless/boring stretch that includes Evelyn

there's a certain amount of fun / creepy material with Windom Earle. pegging the Raimi parts as the nexus / apex of it going off the rails lets the imaginary editor fillet as far out from there as they prefer :)

beauty pageant plotline is absolutely terrible but iirc it not only allows for more Heather Graham onscreen, but also brings the giant back to warn Coop to stop faffing about and go and join the plot again? great meta moment

oh I spoiler tagged for brimstead but I guess it doesn't work on Flagging?

oh I spoiler tagged for brimstead but I guess it doesn't work on Flagging?

Yeah, just skip to the last 3-4 episodes.

I am still saving the last 2 episodes of S3 for a rainy day! And now I've waited so long, I should probably just start S3 from scratch again.

Yeah, probably. Not sure I'd want to watch the last two episodes of s3 in isolation.

wow good to know, didn’t know it actually got good at the end.

it's an oft-told twin peaks / lynch anecdote, but he left during most of S2 to do Wild At Heart, but came back once it was clear that cancellation was imminent to take the reigns on the last few episodes, which is why they're suddenly much better (imo). there's also the counterpoint about frost's heavy involvement all the way through, and there are definitely many series highlights that are from the period where lynch was off less involved. but still, when he comes back for the last few episodes it's like night and day

That oft-told anecdote is entirely untrue fwiw

haha, i knew this would happen - i almost advised brimstead to just look upthread for this discussion

What year is this

But seriously, lynch was not away during series 2 working on a film that premiered a month after series 1, though he always claims he was

He was absent for most of the making of the first series because he was making wild at heart

it's all coming back to me...and yes, that timeline you present does go against the commonly-told version (which is Lynch's version? i don't even know).

it still seems so odd, because the 1st season is pretty consistently good all the way through, and....well you know how my reaction to this goes. :) I'm seriously going to scroll up and see what i say next

hmm, can't seem to find it, it was probably on one of the many other lynch threads. still, it seems striking to me that even lynch's biographers seem to support his version of events (one of many examples: Worst ongoing plotline in the second season of Twin Peaks (SPOILERS))

that doesn't mean anything, of course - biographers can get it wrong and lynch is certainly not past exaggerating or straight up lying

He definitely withdrew from the production during s2 (even when he was technically “around”) but I think it’s more to do with losing interest/feeling like the project got away from him post-Laura Palmer than any commitment to other projects. The wild at heart story that he tells and everyone repeats is so clearly, verifiably untrue it reminds me of lost highway “I like to remember things my own way”. He’s IN the show for a lot of these eps he pretends he was absent for!

He’s IN the show for a lot of these eps he pretends he was absent for!

many are saying this is where the idea of tulpas came into the mix

i'm curious about that, though. i guess he would say that he was in those episodes but wasn't directing them or writing them? but it's really, REALLY hard to imagine lynch on set, no taking control of everything.

He was actually busy filming Industrial Symphony No. 1 during season 2. A beleaguered 15-month shoot iirc (Anderson had a hell of a time learning to saw that log to Lynch's liking).

_ He’s IN the show for a lot of these eps he pretends he was absent for!_

many are saying this is where the idea of tulpas came into the mix

It's funny, it's clear how much Lynch liked the idea of making a TV show with ongoing plots. He even tried to do it again with what became Mulholland Drive. But at the same time, staying focused on one thing for such an extended period was probably kind of at odds with his instincts. Especially when it involved dealing with network brass etc. He cleared the landscape ahead of time for S3 by making sure he could do pretty much whatever he wanted, and he obviously approached it more as an 18-hour movie than a show with no definitive cut-off.

Lynch got disillusioned about ~creating~ on Peaks after the network forced them to reveal a killer: this is supported by the accounts of himself and every other writer, plus the fact he stops writing or directing immediately afterward.

Which, to be fair, is not an unreasonable or unexpected request of a TV network.

Less noted is that Frost was also checked out during the doldrums of season 2 prepping his own film. A couple of staff writers were basically running things for a while.

That could read unnecessarily dismissive - they weren't just "a couple of staff writers," they were the entirety of the writing staff, other than Frost, up until the point they had to become showrunners, and had never worked in TV before! It's no wonder they wobbled a bit under the pressure of a) the job, b) the demands of the network, c) the impact of scheduling changes and soft cancellations / uncancellations, and d) Lynch's grumpy feedback.

(Peyton's first full script was episode 4, and Engels' was #5. Peyton is the only non-Frost/Lynch writer on whose script Lynch went into production as a director (S02e02). Lynch has a total of 3 teleplay credits on old Peaks - the first 3 eps, including the pilot - Peyton has 12 (not counting the finale, where Lynch's revisions muddy the waters beyond the usual murky credits of US TV), Engels has nine and was recruited by Lynch to write both Fire Walk With Me and On The Air with him.)

Yes, I'm sympathetic. They were in a difficult position that was foisted upon them.

The other thing is that the main direction they had planned to go post-reveal (developing the coop-Audrey relationship) was kiboshed by maclachlan at pretty much the last minute and they had to scrabble to come up with replacement storylines. They were definitely dropped in the shit and kind of abandoned by the l/f team to differing degrees and did alright considering

"ok ok we can't do the audrey/coop storyline, what else do we got"

"how about... audrey sleeps with billy zane in his private plane"

nailed it

They really had no idea what to do with Audrey after that and it’s so apparent - watching her scenes in the third season I really felt that they had a grasp of her character again for the first time since the very beginning of s2

how about... audrey sleeps with billy zane in his private plane

who wouldn't

'Mmm, you're almost there, but it feels like something is still missing from the tableau...'
'What if Pete just hangs around outside while they fuck?'
'Kid, you've got the goods.'

who wouldn't!

I just wonder - how much can you really put on Cooper/Audrey not happening? Apart from the perfectly legitimate concern that an upstanding FBI agent shouldn't be romancing a high school girl (even if she only goes to school every fortnight or so), would that have eliminated all the bad storylines? Would we have been spared the Widow Milford? Would Windom Earle have become menacing for more than two scenes out of 25? Could Josie's plotline ever have become comprehensible or meaningful in any way? Would "Asian Man Killed!!" have been a real gut-punch of a reveal?

Storyline Killed!

^ ha

With the murder's exposure of the darkness and secrets permeating the town being removed completely as a motivating engine, they were left flailing to try and come up with a version of the show that contained existing elements / characters but was also acceptable to the network. Who, probably, were now looking for it to be competitive to Northern Exposure in 18-49 demographic viewers who buy branded tea towels.

(even if she only goes to school every fortnight or so)

reminder for fun here that the entirety of OG Twin Peaks takes place in a month!

I just wonder - how much can you really put on Cooper/Audrey not happening? Apart from the perfectly legitimate concern that an upstanding FBI agent shouldn't be romancing a high school girl (even if she only goes to school every fortnight or so), would that have eliminated all the bad storylines? Would we have been spared the Widow Milford? Would Windom Earle have become menacing for more than two scenes out of 25? Could Josie's plotline ever have become comprehensible or meaningful in any way? Would "Asian Man Killed!!" have been a real gut-punch of a reveal?

― JoeStork, Friday, 9 October 2020 22:51 (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Now you're asking! My own answer is "a bit" - the cancellation of one major storyline is one extra thing that was piled on to the new de facto showrunners, along with all the other stuff cited upthread

But I have a different view to most wrt what went wrong in s2. Lynch has never got over the fact that the network forced him to reveal the killer and everyone takes his side because blah blah artistic vision but the bad and hated network execs made the correct call - the episode where the killer is revealed is the best episode of the series, without it you don't have fwwm which is the centre of the tp universe for me. In the parallel universe where his hand was never forced the show still gets cancelled (ratings were tanking from the start) but the show is a bit more consistent for a few more episodes and they never face these issues of patriarchal violence head-on.

With the murder's exposure of the darkness and secrets permeating the town being removed completely as a motivating engine

why on earth is this a given? If lynch/frost had the nerve to follow through on their big reveal, the devastating effect of Leland's crime on the community could easily have been the driver of the rest of the series - but they got bored/fed up and bailed. Much as I can enjoy the latter half of s2 the fact that they abruptly bury the palmer murder(s) is what's jarring. It makes zero sense.

& for me the same thing holds with the audrey/cooper thing, kyle m's objections are obv sound but I don't think it immediately follows that they completely abandon the relationship they've been building for a season and a bit (which is what ends up happening) - it doesn't have to be "cooper and audrey bang and this is a good thing", they could instead have worked with the chemistry they'd built up to explore that dynamic in a show obsessed with older dudes preying on young women, at the same time they were consciously introducing fatal flaws in their perfect hero.

20/20 hindsight obv but the accepted narratives are all a bit self-serving - I think lynch had a sulk and fucked off, and the writers tore up the main stories unnecessarily and that's why those eps are the way they are. Windom earle is the most unlynchian creation but he's ok when lynch directs him in that last ep, he might not have been 100% shit in previous eps if lynch was more engaged.

yeah Earle is finally genuinely unsettling in the s2 finale