Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

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.

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.

show knows this is weird imo. the episode where coop reacts with boyish enthusiasm to his induction into a vigilante organization is the same episode that 1) introduces maddie 2) introduces "emerald... AND jade" on invitation to love 3) reveals catherine has been maintaining a second, cooked ledger for the mill ("there were two... i swear there were two") 4) features truman talking about the town's "dark side" as the "price" they pay for being "a long way from the world" 5) features coop asking diane to check his pension plan for rules on outside real estate investments 6) ends with hawk explaining that everyone has "a dream soul that wanders" ("where do they wander?" "faraway places"). so it's apropos when coop sternly accuses ed of stepping "outside his jurisdiction" by eavesdropping in a bar, then immediately drops any pretense of lawfulness when it's explained that this is okay because ed is part of an underground vigilante society with which coop will soon himself be wandering up to canada. one of his souls is still doing childish fbi cosplay; the other is falling faster and faster.

(show's portrayal of the fbi in general is of course absurd and is indeed an uncanny-ized version of decades of tv copaganda cliches, just as the rest of the show is doing w soaps)

One of my favorite posts:

Windom Earle's mind is like a diamond: cold, hard and brilliant

cut to ted raimi in a giant chess piece

― in a soylent whey (wins), Friday, May 5, 2017 11:55 AM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

so we did Fire Walk with Me last night and I chose to view the Blue Rose edit, which is available on the Internet Archive. This edits in all of Missing Pieces except for a few scenes which weren't core to the story (like that hilarious scene of Pete and Josie talking to the old dude from the bank about 2x4s). Frankly this is a superior cut of the film and closely adheres to the screenplay that has been floating around forever and I'd be hard pressed to think of what Lynch would have done differently if he chose to do a real Director's Cut. It's over three hours long now and none of these scenes are superfluous (maybe the deer meadow fight could be shorter, that's it). Highly recommended.

RIP Piper Laurie aka Catherine Martell.

Holy moly, it never clicked that Catherine and Carrie’s mom were the same person.

xp aw no

She was on a podcast only a few weeks ago talking about her experience making Carrie. Sounded so lively and healthy. RIP.

Well, my oldest daughter turned 14 and we watched the pilot tonight.

Man, it’s so good. The show definitely has its ups and downs but the pilot is so perfect.

i would like to add my voices to the general concern that this is not a good documentary about the fbi

So many of the cast are gone now. I've always felt that Piper Laurie was a somewhat "unsung" (or at least underappreciated) member of the original cast – maybe b/c her character didn't tie into the underlying mythology (and she also didn't return for S3).

But she was so good in that role. You could pair Catherine with any other character, and the sparks would fly in a specific & unique way. I feel like she kept the original series anchored in the "faux–soap opera" concept – almost like a "straight man" of sorts, gently villainous without chewing the scenery – and was able to handle even some fairly loopy developments without losing her way.

I guess that's why Lynch and Frost couldn't, or wouldn't, find anything for her to do in The Return, which excised those soapy elements. I thought it was too bad; an interviewer asked her about it and she had been interested in doing it.

yeah, there really wouldn't have been much for her to do in the Return (not that that stopped him bringing James back); I think she would have deserved a more prominent role but as packed as the Return is with storylines, even though it was 18 hours long, I'm not sure there was really space.

We started the Return last night, my first time rewatching in full since it aired. It really does make a lot more sense the second time through.

Yes did a second watch recently and it does

Xp could have just had a little unconnected scene with her regardless was my thoughts

I kind of like how not everyone, well, returns in The Return... it feels right, like Catherine probably still wouldn't be hanging around (notwithstanding that I would have loved to see her).

Yes fair cop

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.

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.