TWIN PEAKS IS COMING BACK

[BomberPat]

On ‎23‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 5:15 PM, Cousin Jim Bob said:

I thought it good up until episode 4 then it finally felt like Twin Peaks and got awesome.

That's where I'm at. I was unsure about episode 1, but had sufficient levels of hype to see me through, by episode 2 and 3 I was starting to think, "this is bollocks, isn't it?" and being annoyed by how little of it took place in Twin Peaks. After watching episode 4 last night, I'm completely on board.

As far as Mark Frost's book goes I really, really didn't like it. Twin Peaks has its own mythology, trying to tie that into UFO sightings, Roswell and Bigfoot just makes it all feel cheap, and nulls the creativity of the original series. Beyond that, it tries to explain too much - I don't want Twin Peaks to be explained, I want it to be ambiguous. And I don't want it to relate to anything outside of Twin Peaks - there's always been the suggestion that whatever's going on in Twin Peaks isn't isolated to that town, but part of the beauty of the series is that, whatever's going on, you only see it through the lens of this one weird small town. I don't want to see the mythology of Twin Peaks through a New York billionaire's secret experiment, I want to see it through Log Ladies and inept police.

Ep 4 spoilers and rambling;

Spoiler

This felt like Twin Peaks more than any other episode. Everything in the sheriff's office was gold, and I never thought I'd say that Michael Cera doing a dodgy Marlon Brando impression for an interminably long time would be one of my highlights of a Twin Peaks series.

Everything with the FBI was great, too - with the exception of Tammy who, at this point, seems a bit pointless, and ties in to the aforementioned Secret History book, which concerns me. Albert giving Gordon a picture of Mount Rushmore made me laugh out loud, which is a first for this series. Brilliant stuff.

 

I've always thought that Mulholland Drive, even if just thematically, seems to share a universe with Twin Peaks. This series feels more Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway than Twin Peaks, even moreso than Fire Walk With Me.

Reading up on this, I found something I'd never picked up on - in Mulholland Drive's Club Silencio, which I've always thought of as analogous to the Red Room in Twin Peaks anyway, Laura Palmer and Ronette Pulaski are sat in the audience! Not only that, but Phoebe Augustine - who played Ronette Pulaski - appeared uncredited in this series of Twin Peaks, as Cooper is escaping the Lodge. Not only that, but apparently filming has been done for this series in David Lynch's real Club Silencio.

If this series actually ties Mulholland Drive into the Twin Peaks mythos, I'll be very happy.

 

Edited May 26, 2017 by BomberPat

[DJM]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

As far as Mark Frost's book goes

Anyone know where I can read the Twin Peaks book online?

[Merzbow]

I've just got it from Audible, I'd check if you have a free trial available.

[Gus Mears]

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Merzbow]

Mr Jackpots <3 that hilarity made up for the lack of bits in the town itself.

also, to fill the gap between episodes..

Sesame Street likes doing parodies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vftf8TTve4s

[Guy Bifkin]

How fucking shit was that last episode.

[BomberPat]

I enjoyed it. Absolutely bonkers, and incredibly self-indulgent, but an extraordinary bit of TV. I can probably make a stronger case for it as a great bit of filmmaking than I can for it as an episode of a weekly TV series, mind.

[Merzbow]

My favorite episode so far, it was the birth of BOB! But what I'm enjoying more about this 18 part movie is seeing the Coffee and Cherry Pie fans squirm in discomfort.

[BomberPat]

3 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

My favorite episode so far, it was the birth of BOB! But what I'm enjoying more about this 18 part movie is seeing the Coffee and Cherry Pie fans squirm in discomfort.

Ha, I fall somewhere between both camps. I love Lynch at his weirdest (Inland Empire aside), but Twin Peaks needs its Coffee and Cherry Pie. A huge part of the appeal of Twin Peaks is that it's a goofy soap opera, not just that it's weird. And the weirdness of Twin Peaks doesn't just come from the supernatural, and from episodes like yesterday's, it comes from the fact that small towns are weird.

Twin Peaks for me is the same concept as Blue Velvet, it's the unpleasantness hiding beneath the veneer of small town America - and you need to see enough of the veneer for that to work. For me, this series didn't really start getting good until it started moving more into Twin Peaks itself, because then you started to get the balance in place between those two elements.

Now, here's some lengthy pretentious thoughts on the last episode and, broadly, the series as a whole;

That episode was, obviously,

hugely self-indulgent, as the whole series has been so far. This one in particular - Nine Inch Nails, '50s Americana, it was like a whistle-stop tour of Stuff David Lynch Likes punctuated by horribleness. However, I think there's more to it than just directorial self-indulgence - I think there's a conscious effort by David Lynch to make this series the unifying thread of all of his work.

The series has had a handful of references to prior David Lynch projects, but this episode felt more deliberate about it - or maybe I'm just reading too much into things. The hobos/Black Lodge spirits, who have popped up a couple of times already, remind me of The Man Behind The Diner in Mulholland Drive. The scene in the White Lodge was at least partly filmed in Club Silencio; in Mulholland Drive, we see Laura Palmer and Ronette sat in the audience at that same club. Ever since I first saw Mulholland Drive I've felt that it follows the same internal logic as Twin Peaks, if not existing in the same universe, and I feel more strongly about that now.

Other elements of the White Lodge (if that's what we saw) brought Eraserhead to mind - the pseudo-industrial setting, the contraption used to send Laura Palmer's essence (?) to Earth...all reminded me of that movie, and The Man In The Planet specifically. That movie also has backwards talking, and it wouldn't be a huge stretch to imagine that whatever world Eraserhead takes place on is akin to the Lodges of Twin Peaks.

 

As for the episode in question, we know that extreme acts of violence open the doors to the Black Lodge - well, what more extreme than a nuclear explosion to birth Bob? Gordon Cole had a framed picture of a nuclear explosion in his office, too, so there may be more going on here than we realise.

[CTXRussomark]

I genuinely had no fucking idea what was going on in that last episode.  Not a single clue.  I didn't dislike it, but I'm not sure I liked it either.  I came out of it feeling like I hadn't actually watched anything, which was an odd feeling.

[Merzbow]

On a more stylistic connecion to his other work, I did notice that some very Lost Highway like driving shots were used, so close that they could have been ripped right from the movie. And then that led right to Trent and The Nine Inch Nails..

The most invaluable source of info on the harder to spot things has been reddit of all places, the Twin Peaks community there is much more balanced than the sites reputation would have you believe. I feel like I should have read/listened to The Secret History just before and not during this event, so much of it is linked.

[BomberPat]

I can't access Reddit at work, so haven't got round to checking it, but I've heard there's some mad theories coming out of the Twin Peaks subreddit. It's a show that lends itself to that kind of obsessive fandom and attention to detail, and concocting fan theories, so I'm not surprised.

The driving shot jumped out at me too - I hadn't considered how close it was to NIN, that's a nice touch. Though Lynch loves a dark driving shot, doesn't he? Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks both had them too. On another Lost Highway/Stuff David Lynch Likes note, apparently Gordon Cole was whistling a Rammstein song in an earlier episode too.

 

How do you feel about the Secret History book, by the way? I read it before the new series started, and I was really disappointed. Too much time invested in alien conspiracies, and trying to tie the Twin Peaks mythos into a broader context, wrapping it up with historical events and every conspiracy theory you can think of, and I didn't like that at all. It felt like it cheapened the mythos by trying to contextualise, and make it part of something bigger. I don't really want the lore of Twin Peaks to be something understandable, I want it to be weird. And the more it becomes part of a world bigger than Twin Peaks, the less weird it is - because, going back to my earlier point, small towns are weird.

Edited June 27, 2017 by BomberPat

[Merzbow]

I've only just gotten to where it starts connecting the families of Twin Peaks so really all I've listened to so far are real world history lessons and conspiracies. My opinion so far echos yours and I'm guessing it continues down that path for most of the book then?

Oh and regarding the whistling, It also sounds similar to the theme from Amarcord. I've no idea if Fellini is in any way linked to David but I wouldn't be surprised if Lynch was a fan.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Merzbow

[Guy Bifkin]

When is Wally Brando coming back?

 

[Thunderplex]

Wally Brando has been the highlight of the whole thing for me.  Must have watched that scene at least a dozen times since it was on and in tears every time.