Steve Roby ([info]steve_roby) wrote,
@ 2009-05-17 19:22:00
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Current music:Angelo Badalamenti: Twin Peaks - Season Two Music and More

Twin Peaks
Finished watching Twin Peaks on DVD earlier today. I missed it during its original run on TV; saw a bit of one episode and was mystified, so I passed on it. I first watched it in daily reruns circa 1995, wondering how people had managed to wait weeks or months between episodes. It was all I could do to wait a day, sometimes. The scene in which the Giant appears to Cooper at the Roadhouse saying "It is happening again" while Maddy is attacked still gives me chills. When the Laura Palmer storyline ended I watched a video of the movie Fire Walk With Me, and despite the self-indulgence of the first part of the movie, I found it as enjoyable as a horribly depressing, creepy, and disturbing movie can be. I found the show went downhill after the Laura mystery was resolved, so a few years later, when I watched it over again with my Laura, who hadn't seen it, we skipped the last several episodes of the show.

Watching it again, there's no denying that the show did lose its direction a bit after the end of the Laura Palmer mystery. The storyline involving James being caught up in a plot to kill a woman's husband really didn't work at all, being too generically soap opera-ish, and the crazy Ben Horne Civil War storyline was, conversely, too quirky. But those last few episodes I skipped the second time around were a lot better than I remembered, as the Windom Earle story picks up speed and combines with the Black Lodge thread. Seeing several characters finding redemption or love just as something very terrible is about to happen really cranks up the tension. The last episode is as disturbing as the show gets, with a minimum of physical violence.

Back in 1995, on my first run-through, I didn't think that the movie being a prequel that essentially retold a story we knew was a bad idea; this time around, I have to think of it as a lost opportunity to carry the story forward. It's been some time since I watched FWWM . I'm sure I'll still like it when I get around to it this time, but I'll be regretting that the chance to tell us what happens next wasn't taken.

Overall, though, damn, what a show. It's one of my all-time favourite SF/fantasy TV shows, even with relatively little fantastic content. Great cast, great characters, great music...


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[info]scottpearson
2009-05-18 02:05 am UTC (link)
I was a religious viewer of the show during its original broadcast. The pilot film and that first short season are stunning. In fact, I used to get together with a friend and buy a bunch of baked goods to eat while we watched, because they always has so much bakery in the sheriff's office. But it lost its way when Lynch was not there, and the post-Laura Palmer stuff was hit and miss. I thought FWWM was a bit of a mess and it really should have been used to wrap up the story.

Back in the early 1990s when I worked at B&N one of my coworkers came up to me and said, "Some author by the name of Mark Frost is going to come by to sign his new novel. You ever heard of him?"

"Of course. He co-created Twin Peaks," I said excitedly. "He's coming to the store?"

Since I knew who he was, I was put in charge of him. Mark had just published The List of Seven, an enjoyable Victorian pastiche, and I got to hang out with him a bit while he signed. I asked him what the hell was the deal with the David Bowie agent from the future in FWWM. He said he didn't know, that was just something Lynch did.

"This is what it's like working with David," he said. "You remember that dream sequence in the series when the little boy holds out his cupped hands and they're full of creamed corn?"

"I do actually." The kid was played by Lynch's son.

"Well, we did that because creamed corn was served at lunch that day, and David just had this idea about having his son hold out his hands full of it. That's what it's like working with David."

So that's my kind-of David Lynch story, courtesy of Mark Frost.

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[info]steve_roby
2009-05-18 01:12 pm UTC (link)
Huh. Garmanbozia explained at last.

In the documentaries in the box set, various people talk about the show losing its way because Frost was working on Storyville and Lynch was working on Wild at Heart during the second season, but things improved later in the season when they came back to the show, and Frost says they woud have been more involved in a third season, if there'd been one. People were pretty open and honest about the second season slump.

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[info]julioangelortiz
2009-05-19 01:12 am UTC (link)
Pretty much agreed with everything you said. I was pretty young, about 13 when the show was on the air, but wow was I enthralled. After the murder mystery was resolved I still watched the show and liked the Black Lodge storyline, even if the series finale makes me want to scream to this day (in a red curtain / Black Lodge doppelganger sort of way)...

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