Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

yeah that's pretty good. He hams it up almost to an unforgivable degree half the time, but he is really good in the disguise scenes, so good that my kid didn't even realize it was him in half of those (like when he goes to the Hayward home). I don't think he becomes legitimately 'scary' until the final episode though and that's due to Lynch's direction.

i listed my earle hits upthread:

cackling amidst a growing clutter of bespoke surveillance and analysis hardware; his disguises (scene w donna is particularly successful); the business with leo's shock collar (deep); the interrogation of major briggs; the part where he sees a postcard with an owl on it

I was a fan of Scott Frost's non-canon Cooper autobiography which had more Earle in it. I should re-read that and see if I still like it.

Loved him in the diner dressed up as an inconspicuous hunter-type.

oh also, this watch through I am very charmed by Shelly Johnson in ways I never was before. Amick is really good in this, I'm not surprised she's had a steady career ever since.

I have that wrong--he was a biker in the diner.

https://25yearslatersite.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/C-spLkmVYAEYy2I.jpg

Wasn't he a hunter at one point?

he's also in the diner dressed up in some kind of inconspicuous puffer vest/hat at one point

That must be it...I am completely smitten by Madchen Amick.

my uncle used to play music with her dad! they were hotel jazz musicians together in Reno NV. Alas neither of my cousins knew or ever met her.

amazing bit in a dvd extra where she's talking about simultaneously doing the twin peaks pilot and the baywatch pilot then after being absorbed into twin peaks for years emerging having forgotten that "in the real hollywood you're not always so..." she thinks "...free," and lynch sitting next to her yells THIS IS THE REAL HOLLYWOOD, BABY

The Cooper autobiography is surprisingly good.

Access Guide to the town is super fun.

Amick just strikes me as amazingly professional. she's in a lot of scenes in the diner that could be throwaways. there's no reason for her to be as good in those scenes as she is. That scene where Gordon discovers he can hear her is completely delightful because of her reactions while talking to him.

Gordon's infatuation with her is one of the true highlights of the series.

one of the most pointless scenes in the entire show: Ms Jones (Eckhard's assistant) played by Brenda Strong trying to strangle Truman. Why?

also, while Brenda Strong has had an admirable career in acting, I cannot see her and not think of a Sudafed nasal spray commercial.

love Windom Earle’s scenes, performances and traps; origin-storying Coop and giving him a grand nemesis sucks

imo the whole Earle storyline is terrible but it's also totally part of TP as soap so i don't blame it for happening

origin-storying Coop and giving him a grand nemesis sucks

otm especially as they set up a totally organic nemesis w jean renault, throw him away, then decide they want one after all

no earle scene is as bad as any scene where coop talks up earle to truman: his mind is like a diamond etc

jean renault was annoying though

i love jean's monologue about "the nightmare" at dead dog farm and take it as evidence he is ascending to the kind of ambitious awareness that defines+endangers coop and later has to be conferred hastily on earle via exposition

also like "in the other room, the girl dreams of fishes, and dark lakebeds, and tangled weeds"

shot of him wiping blood from his mouth after killing blackie faintly foreshadows later shots of earle in garmonbozia ecstasy

yeah that was a good description of being under the influence of opiates

I've never liked how easily Audrey swept her father's ownership of One Eyed Jacks under the rug after she was rescued.

oh also: john jacob jingleheimer wheeler billy zane is some terrible shit.

while watching this last night I told my kid "this actor went totally bald sometime after this" and then I looked it up and he was apparently bald when he made twin peaks.

anyway, we'll soon be on to Fire Walk With Me, and I'm debating watching the official cut vs one of the two fan edits that weaved in the Missing Pieces scenes. There are two: one is comprehensive and added in everything bar one scene, and the other is more selective and apparently flows better. I think I'll do that one; several of these scenes (the full Bowie/Jeffries scene, for instance) are critical to the Return, and the family scenes with the Palmers are extraordinarily good.

audrey is pretty visibly depressed for a while after her return iirc but somewhere around the civil war plot yeah she seems to get over it. maybe hard to follow thru on network tv with a scene as mythologically traumatic as audrey in white kitten mask / ben w cigar, at least any further than: "the things you must have seen" "i saw so much"

billy zane stuff is truly unbearable but there's one or two moments i like between him and "good ben".

Curious about the fan edit but Missing Pieces is great as a separate unit. I prefer to resist the (irresistible!) urge to make Twin Peaks make sense.

I last read the Coop book when I was a teenager and remember a surprising number of entries about masturbation habits.

i always read jennifer lynch's laura palmer book as regular part of rewatching show-- either between s1 and s2 (when it was published) or right after s2e3 (where it appears in the final shot)-- but for some reason have never read any of the other books, including the mark frost stuff around the return

if an episode ended w a cliffhanger closeup of coop's masturbation diary i would def read it tho

while Brenda Strong has had an admirable career in acting

Sue Ellen Mischke!

The Frost Return era books are a bit of a slog.

Palmer Diary > Coop book = Access Guide > Coop Tape >>>>>> Frost Books

I think the Josie plot and the Widow Milford plot are tied for my least favorite storylines, it just seems like they never actually knew what sort of character Josie was for the entire run of the show, and I find the fidgety whimpering performance really hard to watch after a while. And the widow Milford stuff is just super gross.

That scene where Gordon discovers he can hear her is completely delightful because of her reactions while talking to him.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Sunday, October 1, 2023 12:59 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Gordon's infatuation with her is one of the true highlights of the series.

― clemenza, Sunday, October 1, 2023 1:00 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would agree but for the kiss, which torpedoed the potential sweetness for me -- i couldn't see it as anything other than the showrunner giving himself an excuse to make cow eyes at & smooch a young actress for whom he was horny, and her having to pretend to be excited by it

One of the things that bugs me out is that Leland's funeral was so well-attended by the town. Presumably, people heard about what he did? Seemed like more of a send-off for Ray Wise.

Yeah the Frost books (history and dossier) are fucking unbearable

actually, I take that back; they aren't unbearable, and the history one even has some interesting stuff in it, but they are very much in the vein of "frost attempting to force a sensible mythology onto everything" and the extent to which that works varies widely because that is not Lynch's bag or vision, so it's almost like he intentionally did everything he could too fuck that up with the Return.

The second Frost book seemed so rush that at one point it alludes to a section on what happened to Shelly and Bobby after s2 that isn't there.

mill plot is the only plot, including who-killed-laura-palmer, that actually runs uninterrupted from the first episode to the last

wait, there is also Nadine/Ed/Norma, which also is the only storyline that continues on into the Return in a normal manner and actually is resolved in a way that made everyone happy.

oh that's tru! wonder if there is a nadine/ed/norma update in literally every episode tho. maybe. the mill plot otoh is like-- it's halfway thru season 2 and they are still ending episodes with dramatic turns in the mill plot, like you care, or even understand.

I just remembered that my Twin Peaks bluray set has some bullshit audio lag problem and I have to figure out a way to deal with that before watching it with the kid.

Why can't we have nice things

the showrunner giving himself an excuse

agree that the scene was and remains highly yikes, but fwiw Lynch was never the showrunner, and had no regular role in the production beyond recurring ensemble member at this point

ah yeah, my mistake

I was disappointed to see that the Z to A blu ray set is OOP and goes for like $500 used, but if there is an audio glitch that makes me feel better actually.

It was on The Complete Mystery and they didn’t bother to fix it when the contents were moved to Z to A.

It doesn’t happen to everyone, it seems to be a combination of TV/bluray player that does it but it’s pretty common. It’s worse on certain episodes/discs, particularly on the Missing Pieces. The audio gets out of sync with the video.

Many xps The show is confused as to what note to strike with Earle. He’s talked up like some sort of Lecter-style menace, but most of the time on screen, he’s a 1966 Batman villain. And the plots don’t make him look smart—they make Cooper look dumb. The ace FBI agent can’t find a dude who’s hiding within driving distance of town? Call in a grid search, if the FBI thinks Earle is such a threat!

I think the Josie plot and the Widow Milford plot are tied for my least favorite storylines, it just seems like they never actually knew what sort of character Josie was for the entire run of the show, and I find the fidgety whimpering performance really hard to watch after a while. And the widow Milford stuff is just super gross.

I agree. James is the officially designated hate character, but I find Jose’s baby-voiced simpering more irritating—though it’s a nice moment when you see her drop the act in season 2.

Cooper is less wholesome on my recent rewatch. He’s the upright FBI agent, yet he’s not even in town a week before he joins a vigilante group in kidnapping suspects and holding them at the Roadhouse—no informing of rights, no lawyer—and he’s frequently just letting himself into locations without warrants. I don’t think the show means for us to look at it that way, since we "know" TP law enforcement are the good guys and thus “justified”, but still. Guess I’m just less tolerant of that sort of copaganda these days.

One of the things that bugs me out is that Leland's funeral was so well-attended by the town. Presumably, people heard about what he did? Seemed like more of a send-off for Ray Wise.

This is the low point of the show to me. The previous season centered grief so much, and yet the show just breezes past the fallout from this revelation. (Which I understand from the oral history is a result of new writers coming in and wanting a clean slate.) Donna finds out her best friend has been molested for years by someone Donna has spent much time with… yet she has little reaction to that news. Ditto James, and does Bobby ever even comment on finding out who killed Laura? Jacoby finally realizes the horrifying secret Laura had, which he had attempted to uncover for the last year… and is utterly unfazed at the funeral. And to further trivialize it with the Milford slapstick!

When I rewatched it all before The Return aired, the episode with the wake was definitely the s2 nadir for me.

I was, maybe, 12 when Twin Peaks was first shown in the UK, and the Leland reveal episode was the first I ever watched. Maybe that's the best way to watch Season 2: be too young to have any sense of quality control, and watch it before you've seen the first season.

If I cared enough, I’d learn how to do a fan edit so I condense that stretch of season 2 down into a handful of episodes that serve to set up the finale.