The Official Twin Peaks Thread (TOTPT)

[rustinglass]

The show is running now in a portugues tv channel.

SPOILERS

Yesterday was the episode that Leo wakes up and attacks Shelley.
I think the show got boring after Leland died I hope it starts getting interesting again soon.
David Duchovny transvestite...funny.

[modage]

okay, wow.  we JUST finished watching the entire series.  (all thats left is FIRE WALK WITH ME which we are rabidly anticipating.)  well, lets see...

okay, when i heard that the first season was great and the second wasnt as good i tried to remain optimistic.  and when i got through the first season i was so obsessed i couldnt even IMAGINE how it could ever get bad.  when i watched the first few episodes of season two, i thought they were as good or even better than anything in season one so i thought i was in the clear.  in fact, every episode up till 14 i thought were all on an equal level of greatness.  each episode more engrossing, with further twists in the story and new character developments.  it was fantastic.

however, immediately after the killer was revealed in episode 14, the show didnt slowly go downhill.  it was an immediate drop from 20,000 feet.  episode 15-28 ranged from watchable to downright terrible.  when lynch left to do wah, (and who knows what the fuck frost was doing, but he should've kept a closer watch on things), they didnt know what to do with the show.  the entire windham earle storyline was handled just downright awfully.  just the worst villian of all time, inhabiting cheesy disguises and delivering hideously written dialogue he is perhaps one of the major factors for the shows decline.  hardly a replacement for BOB, this guy is a snidley whiplash mustache twirling plotting evil type of awful.  

also the addition of new characters (and coincidentally love interests) for audrey and cooper billy zane and heather graham were just so forced.  (not to mention the framing that almost happens when james leaves town and meets that woman!  ugh, puke).  believing that these characters would be motivated a certian way just didnt seem like they were being true to their characters at all.  plotlines in the first 14 episodes always seemed to develop organically, but everything after that seemed so forced like they were just reaching for anything, not having any clue where to take the show.  as a result it turned into a joke.  not creepy, the characters hardly resembled their earlier incarnations.  what had started out as "DAVID LYNCH DOES A SOAP OPERA" had simply become just "A SOAP OPERA".  and soap operas SUCK.  

it was really sad to watch those 14 or so just terrible episodes just holding my head in my hands going 'what happened?'.  the actors tried their bests but unfortunately werent given much to work with.  even with the revealing of the killer, or the introduction of coopers old partner, had lynch stuck around they could've made it good and interesting and weird.  the last episode compared to teh previous 14 was good, but not one of the best.  it was nice to spend so long in the red room, but the quick tying up of any other loose ends in the show and it ending on such a downer note was disappointing, *but as i realize by that point it was too late.  all lynch could do was take the reigns and ride off the cliff with his beloved creation.  possibly more thoughts later, or discussion if anyone wants it.

[NEON MERCURY]

mod-age.,

i see your points.about post 14 episodes..but you didn't like how those latter episodes were about the black/white lodge red room and the owl cave..and the mysterious sides/paranormal stuff in twin peaks?..i will admit that some sh*t was stupid..like nadine's super strength..its been a while since i rented the second season vhs tapes..but i still liked the second season just as much...and david duchovney..and david lynch show up in season 2... 8)

oh yeah..about fire walk w/ me ..i think you'll love it.....its more dark/disurbing than the tv series which put off some but it delves also into the mysterious aspects in season 2 black lodge/white lodge ...red room..its a good comopanion piece to the latter half os season 2......also, its just flat out brilliant sh*t....it works as a beautiful stand alone film too......

[modage]

i like the idea of the black and white lodges, but the execution was terrible.  if lynch hadnt returned for the final episode there wouldn't have been any payoff on them at all.  i wont say the second season was terrible, because the first 7 or so episodes are great but after episode 14 there is a huge and immediate drop in quality.

[MacGuffin]

Lynch said that he never wanted the mystery to end, but felt somewhat pressured to by ABC. ABC also changed the night Twin Peaks aired, which didn't sit too well with him either. So when you watch Fire Walk With Me, as soon as the opening credits end, you might get an indicator about Lynch's experience in working in television, or it could be a message that this movie is nothing like the tv show. You decide.

[Ghostboy]

So when you watch Fire Walk With Me, as soon as the opening credits end, you might get an indicator about Lynch's experience in working in television, or it could be a message that this movie is nothing like the tv show. You decide.

Man, that was a truly brilliant way to open the movie.

Themodernage, I'm anxious to hear what you think about the movie. My immediate expectation? You won't like it, and you especially won't like the first thirty minutes. Or possibly vice versa.

It took me two viewings of it to really appreciate the whole thing -- the first time I saw it, I hadn't seen the show, so of course I had no idea what was going on. The second time, I had just finished watching the entire series, and was able to appreciate it, but still found it jarring. Now, it's grown on me, and while I still have problems with the first act, there are some things about those early sequences that I think are amazing, too.

I think what gets most people is that, while the show was disturbing, it only hinted at the things that Lynch explores in the movie, and it also had a charming colloquial air that is entirely absent in FWM.

[NEON MERCURY]

pic. spoiler for FWWM



don't look if you haven't seen the film yet....













-this is pure genius..that one pic sums up twim peaks for me..and just more reasons why lynch is phucking amazing...the colors..the props/production designs....his sounds he creates.....this sequence and also..the one w/ bowie and the whole "we're not going to talk about judy"..
flat out briliance...there is no other director working to day that conveys so much w/ energy and sound and just surreal beauty.....well, malick would be a close second......
also, there are some funny stuff in thet film w/ isaac and sutherland...

[modage]

Themodernage, I'm anxious to hear what you think about the movie. My immediate expectation? You won't like it, and you especially won't like the first thirty minutes. Or possibly vice versa.

well, i hate to be pegged down so easily but i have to agree with you.  i just watched Fire Walk With Me which makes today a sad day for that was the last new entry in the Twin Peaks universe i'll ever get.  i did not hate the movie, or dislike it, in fact while watching it i was completely entranced but it didnt add up to a very satisfying experience.  

i was prepared for the movie not to be like the tone of the show, and not star many of the regulars and be dark and weird and knew that it was pretty universally panned when it came out.  BUT that didnt stop me from being incredibly excited to be able to go back into that universe one last time (and under lynchs COMPLETE control) to see what else he had for us.  but unfortunately it was not much else.  

chris isaak's acting was awful, and i can see how on paper the opening 30 wiht the detectives might've been a sort've quirky return to the tone of the show and had the casting been better i might've felt that way about it.  but, like you thought i would think, it seemed rather pointless. like, had the movie opened with the cooper saying he knew somethign would happen agian and he didnt know where, we would'nt have been any worse off.  so the opening seemed a bit pointless.  also: the scene where they decipher what the girl meant was just horrendous.  and i couldnt figure out if it was how it was written, or just how they delivered the dialogue.  (like, i kept thinking 'if cooper had said this, would it have been funny/cool?')  

characters seemed to do things that werent in their characters.  (i dont believe that donna would've done anything other than drag laura immediately out of the bar when she followed her there).  laura was supposed to be homecoming queen who had a dark underside nobody knew about, but in the film she was a spaz constantly, not to mention a whore and a drug addict.  how could everybody not have known the way she seemed to (not) hide it!

cooper IS twin peaks, so the task of making a film without (mostly) him is a feat of impossibility to begin with.  and the idea of lynch who loves to fly by the seat of his pants doing a PREQUEL was not a sound one simply because fans of the show know everything that comes afterwards and everything has to match up or its inconsistent.

the main problem of the film though, even forgiving all those faults is that it didnt seem to really do what i thought it would which was delve a little deeper into the mysteries of twin peaks.  it didnt help me get any closer to solving any of the mysteries, or lay out any new ones for me to ponder.  the film was a by the numbers recreation of the events we'd been told all about over the course of the series 30 episodes.  so, my problem was that it didnt DO anything besides just connecting the dots.

oh, except for david bowie.  what the hell was that all about?

[NEON MERCURY]

the main problem of the film though, even forgiving all those faults is that it didnt seem to really do what i thought it would which was delve a little deeper into the mysteries of twin peaks.  it didnt help me get any closer to solving any of the mysteries, or lay out any new ones for me to ponder.  the film was a by the numbers recreation of the events we'd been told all about over the course of the series 30 episodes.  so, my problem was that it didnt DO anything besides just connecting the dots.

oh, except for david bowie.  what the hell was that all about?

......No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!     .................you must watch it again.........

man, ....well here s my take on the film....and yes it s bias since i m down w/ lynch.but first off i can see why you would be put off w/ the darker tone of twin peaks.......as ghostboy mentioned in the tv series twin peaks(the universe) has a certian breeze of 'cozy' feel to it....and fire walk w/ me(fwwm) is harsh...............bu ti l tell you what i think abou tthe film and in turn it may help yopu see my poitn or answer you questions.......but.

>the first 30 mins ..are awesome ..i like the dialogue abetween the two characters..it s phuckign funny like the sh*t in the diner and when the ugly waitress says something like you "wanna hear about the specials?"..."we aint got no specials"...that sh*t is funny to me.and that type of cheesy(?) humor is spread throughout the first 30 mins......also, i love the whole mystery  about  what happened to issac after he grabbed the ring.....it s open to debate and personal inquiries.........my guess is that he went into one of the lodges........

>another thing is i love it when lynch was in the tv series and his whole scene with the 'blue rose case"....and the nasty chick w/ the red hair......i dont tknow its just cool to me to see lynch 'acting'.and onscreen

>mod-age, you mentioned about what happend w/ bowie's character......i believe he went to one the lodges and then dissapeared but before he explained about about his experiences...IMO opinion what happened and where bowie's character went is about to happen to issac's character.....there are countless opinions and you may want to look around on the net for twin peaks related stuff......i did myself and it helped me appreciate a phenomenal experience with an even better perspective.......

> i thought leland s performace was incredible..........makes me sad he was in jeepers screeper 2.........

>i loved all the surreral sh*t and wonderfull imagery in the film during bowie s'flasback' scene, or when laura goes inside the painting, the END....

>also, the scene with laura and donna in the (roadhouse ?)......was brilliant the music, the images, everything..........i loved that brooding and pounding music..

........there is so much more but it s been awile since i saw it last but......you are making want to start a marathon viewing soon.. ......but i did at first have the same reactions the first time i saw it.........but watch it again give it another shot perhaps experience twin peaks this way....

the way i watch it is [FWWM, season one, season 2, FWWM].it sthe bestr way IMO...........

oh and one lasst thing.......there has been major talk about the deleted scenes in FWWM.i think that there is a total of 30 mins of cut material that adds SIGNIFICANTLY!!!! to the story........but lynch want s to have the scenes scored and composed w/ the same amount of artistic value as the theatrical feature.. but that takes time and $$$$$$$$$$.........so who knows when or if we'll see them...........

[Keener]

I'm currently addicted to this show like a madman. I made the mistake of renting the pilot from work, and it was the tacked-on ending version. Still, I'm engaged in the show regardless. I just wish I had known better. I'm to episode 4 and am getting the second season on KaZaA so I can watch Fire Walk with Me.

Has anyone seen the SNL parody? It's also available on KaZaA. The SNL cast do the Peaks characters they do well, especially Hartman as Leland. I was hoping Victoria Jackson would do Lucy (it only makes sense!) but she does a good Audrey.

[foray]

Here's some interesting philosophical tangents that stem from Twin Peaks the series:

Twin Peaks 1 is a television detective serial that revolves around the question of who killed Laura Palmer, a small town American sweet heart. For two seasons the show followed an FBI agent as he unravelled a seemingly endless web of connections between this dead prom queen and the shady underworld of a north-west logging community. Rather than proceeding along a logical path of clues to the murderer, the FBI agent Dale Cooper, becomes more and more intwined in the world that he interprets. The murderer, known as Killer Bob, has a puzzling proximity. He lurks in the shadows of this film noir town, but he also occupies the unmarked roads and abandoned cabins of the unconscious. For most of the series Agent Cooper doesn't really try to clarify the contours of good and evil in Twin Peaks, instead he demonstrates how to live in such a complicated world. When the show is cancelled a killer is finally revealled under a certain amount of contractual obligation, but by this stage the case of Laura Palmer has posed too many problems to be resolved by a single arrest. The creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost have produced a world where the interpretation of signs is an ongoing project that makes things move, change, or to use a Deleuzo-Guattarian term, "become".


Strictly speaking, Twin Peaks can not be soley attributed to Lynch and Frost. During the second season a variety of film makers were invited to try their hand at the Twin Peaks formula. And the show generated publications such as Laura Palmer's Diary and a travel guide to the imaginary town, which offered different author's perspectives on Twin Peaks. To blur boundaries further Twin Peaks not only extends itself through different authors but it invents new roles for Lynch and Frost. On American television Lynch and Frost produced their own commercial breaks, using actors from the cast. When the series was cancelled they made a feature length prequel based on the days leading up to Laura's murder. And Lynch not only produces, writes, and directs various episodes, but he acts the part of Agent Cooper's FBI mentor, who occassionally totters into Twin Peaks offering advice. But attributing specific contributions doesn't really help us understanding how this dynamic called Twin Peaks works. The Lynch-Frost assemblage outlines a plane of consistency, a vibrating plateau of matter, across which meaning is developed through unpredictible encounters. And this is the rub, I mean this is why Twin Peaks interests me in the context of my larger interest in the methodological implications of Gilles Deleuze's work for writers in the visual arts. Twin Peaks is a world very much like our own, where interpretation has no stable basis; a world where the credibility of underlying psycho-analytic, sociological, or linguistic structures has rapidly waned. The meaning of Twin Peaks the television series, and Twin Peaks the murder mystery, can't be reduced to such a priori structures, but conversly, it involves more than the romantic freeplay of meaning unfolded in a show like Northern Exposure. There is a certain weight in the movements of the opening sequence, which creates a sense of necessity within the chaos of this world. Following Deleuze and Guattari, I want to call this composition of meaning a "plane of consistency."


Twin Peaks begins with a question: `whatever could have happened to give us this?' Deleuze and Guattari claim that this fundamental relation to secrecy characterizes the novella as a literary genre. The novella "enacts postures of the body and mind that are like folds or envelopments . . . states of the body when it is surprised by something that just happened. 2 In the opening scenes of Twin Peaks we are given a series of postures acted on by something imperceptible. A girl runs across the school yard screaming, a mother cries, unknown characters tremble with fear. Intense close-up shots of faces, phones, and rotating fans reverberate with the secrets which are folded up in their postures. The present moment appears with a suspended kind of significance. The past has a indiscernible immediacy.3
We've seen this element of suspended surprise in Lynch's work before, particularly in early films such as The Grandmother (1970) and Eraserhead (1977). The vomiting torsos and decomposing figures in Lynch's paintings and installation works similarly pose a question to the past: Something harrowing has happened, but what? Mark Frost on the other hand, is known for writing television scripts such as Hill Street Blues. A television serial is more like a tale than a novella, because it is excited by the future. Hill Street Blues is exemplary in this respect. From the hectic morning briefing at the beginning of each episode, the actors move rapidly through a series of attitudes and positions to a point of fatigue or frustration at the end of the day. Every day in the police force is a new day of discovery. Deleuze and Guattari explain that this type of "tale is the opposite of the novella, because it is an altogether different question that the reader asks with bated breath: What is going to happen?" 4

These two aspects of time - the secrecy of the past in Lynch and the encounter with the future in Frost - are brought together in Twin Peaks. We can call this a plane of consistency; a dynamic mode of composition which holds together divergent forces in a zone of intensity or multiplicity.

When Deleuze writes about these vibrating planes of consistency, he is not simply opposing the multiple to the One, or the chaotic to the linear. Deleuzean multiplicities have their own principles of organization, which prevent them from being recuperated by a dialaectical exchange between the multiple and the One. This is evident in the way that Deleuze and Guattari zig-zag their theory of literary time between the novella, the (detective) novel, and the tale. Together they constitute a "determinable multiplicity" which is not ordered from above, but organized from within. Different signs express these vectors of time from different perspectives, and consequently create new lines and tangents of duration. The field of forces defined by this particular constellation seems to be derived from Nietzsche's model of the dice throw; an important point of reference in Deleuze's theory of time.
In Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, the metaphor of the dice throw is used to construct an alternative to dialectical progression. Deleuze explains that there are two moments in the game of dice: the moment when the dice are thrown (on the earth's table of immanence), and the moment when they fall back in a certain combination (on the transcendent table of the sky). 5 The first moment, which is highlighted in the tale genre, refuses control and order by affirming the chance of future encounters. As we throw the dice or follow the tale, we don't look elsewhere for difference to be determined, we expect differences to arise internally, from the immanent field of possibilities. In Nietzschean terms this is the "being of becoming"; pure multiplicity. In the second moment, something is performed within the chaotic world unravelled by the throw. The dice fall back, or a posture is enacted, uniting all the fragments of chance in a single moment. A coherent whole is formed, which affirms the neccesity of specific being, but because it is founded in chance this second moment cannot refer an a priori structure or order that might maintain it. Like the suspended postures of the novella, this second moment expresses the turbulent immediacy of a previous moment. Nietzsche says that it is the return of the first moment. Or as Michael Hardt explains, "the two moments imply one another as a perpetual series of shattering and gathering, as a centrifugal moment and a centripetal moment, as emanation and constitution." 6

In the passage from A Thousand Plateaus where Deleuze and Guattari discuss literary genres, the detective novel is actually described as a genre which tends to seperates these two moments and order them into a teleological progression. The single moment in question for the detective, has already happened and remains to be discovered. In terms of the dice throw, the detective relies on a large number of throws before he obtains the `truth' of this past event. This is essentially a warning by D&G not to separate the past, present, and future into discrete periods, and to always be concerned with their necessary complicity, even when one dimension dominates. The creators of Twin Peaks understand this complication, and know how to accept every fall of the dice. The series begins with the second moment of specific being, but this already appears within the chaotic unfolding of the television series. Lynch and Frost twist the detective genre, so that it tenders an ambiguous, two-fold relation with time, which is necessary for movement through multiplicities.
When the postures in the opening scenes of Twin Peaks, folded and moulded by something imperceptible, begin to unfold it becomes clear that Lynch and Frost are not interested in an answer. The unfolding does not explain the postures as much as it complicates them in a dice game which combines characters, serialises subjectivity, and extracts meaning from the internal and ever changing resonnances distributing the plane of consistency. When the crying faces of Laura's mother and the policeman photographing Laura's body fall back it seems that they must have both been very close to the dead girl, but despite having the same combination on their faces, the similarity of their postures lies in difference. The policeman is a softy who can't help crying when he has to deal with something tragic, and the mother's hysteria is so excessive, eventually manifesting itself in visions, that she seems to be effected by something even she does not understand. The different moments of the series are not linked together in a logical way, rather, the unfolding of attitudes and positions concealed in the postures is a complication and diversification of being. Each stage of unfolding is a repetition of the internal difference involved in the present moment. As Howard Hampton has observed, the postures of Twin Peaks "begin a dialogue among themselves" which work against any linear reading of the storyline. 7 The concept of becoming that we find in Twin Peaks plays havoc with common-sense notions of time to the point where the episodes can be enjoyed out of sequence, and a prequel can still keep people interested even though Laura's murderer has been revealed.


This play of sameness and difference is produced by the eternal repetition of difference in every posture. The posture of a body, which is the moment of being, is always returning as another synthesis of the flow of chance which unfolds around it. The dice player who accepts every throw brings the two moments together in a whole which has no opposites, no limitable other, but which is always open ended and dynamic. This is the non-dialectical synthesis which Nietzsche called the eternal return; the eternal return of the same as different.
Later in the first series, Agent Cooper persuades the local law inforcement team to set up a rather wacky Ouija-board-cum-game-of-chance, designed to help direct the investigation. After taking them into the forest and giving them a short speech on the Dali Lama, he assigns each of them a role in harnessing the forces of his perculiar game of chance. The sheriff calls out the names of suspects, one deputy holds a pail of rocks which Cooper methodically throws at a bottle carefully set up some distance away by another deputy, and the secretary takes cryptic notes on a blackboard.

Like the viewer, Agent Cooper is trying to make his way through this web of complications. Each clue to the murder and each posture of a suspect is in excess of itself, sticky with the complications and connections of multiplicity. As the interpreter of signs, Cooper never ceases making connections, linking up semiotic chains, bringing new dimensions of time - dream time, historical time, baseball time - into play. Cooper accepts the violence of signs. He is affected by the encounter. In the Tibetan forest scene, for instance, the letter `J' and a disjointed dream affect his body in such a way that its cognitive faculties are redistributed to create a body with an open assemblage of organs; a body set free from the organism. the police force turns into a giant brain, relaying its thoughts back and forth between a bucket, a milk bottle, and a blackboard. Along with Zarathustra, Agent Cooper might exclaim: "in an instant I shall be nothingness . . . the complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur - it will create me again! I myself am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence."8

If both the subject of the investigation and the signs being interpreted are produced within this radical becoming, then the meaning of signs can not be derived from a preexisting linguistic structure, nor can the investigator assume a critical distance from the world which entangles and creates him. In these conditions the subject becomes an image or a screen, a sign amoung other signs. Expressing a turbulent universe in the specificity of his or her being. Synthesising divergent series in the repetition of his or her postures.

Felix Guattari might describe this type of subject as the "true art work", that is, "the infinite body . . . moving through all the incredible mutations of any one life time."9 It is this post-human aestheticism which Twin Peaks tenders so well; the body as an art work, truth as a continually reconstituted fiction. Nietzsche applauds art for precisely this ability to magnify falsehood, to raise a world of pure appearance and error. "What is required", Nietzsche explains, "is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words . . . to be superficial out of profundity."10 This type of modal existence displaces all fixed notions of identity to make room for a rich system of creative intensities.

It is when we reach this threshold of surface tensions, learn to work with affected faculties, and begin operating by contracting and dilating the movement of the images we encounter, that we might grasp what Deleuze means when he says: "My ideal, when I write about an artist, would be to write nothing that could cause him sadness, or if he is dead, that might make him weep in his grave. Think of the artist you are writing about. Think of him so hard that he can no longer be an object, and equally so that you can not identify with him. Avoid the double shame of the scholar and the familiar. Give back to an artist a little of the joy, the energy, the life of love and politics that he knew how to invent."11

Stephen O'Connell
1995

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/visarts/globe/teaks.html


f.

[Bethie]

I have been meaning to start watching Twin Peaks for months. Today I rented/watched the pilot episode. I'm intrigued and excited to start watching the series. yay for me!

I made the mistake of renting the pilot from work, and it was the tacked-on ending version.

ut oh. I may have done that too.          

[Bethie]

I just finished Season 1.  Those bastards sticking me with "To Be Continued"  shit!  What happens to Agent Cooper at the end   .  I'm predicting he's wearing a bullet proof vest yes?



Silly me not reading this whole thread until after I finished watching the pilot. sooo uhhh I already know who killed Laura Palmer cause I *accidently* watched the tacked on scenes on the VHS.  oops. Regardless, I still love this show.

To play along with the boys on who the finest chick is- I also have to go with Fenn. She does a great job at playing the vindictive bitch

Anyone else think Bobby is a fag? He tries to be all cocky and tough but this kid is just not pulling it off. I laughed my ass off though in episode 5 when his parents and him go to Dr. Lawrence Jacoby for a  counseling session.

How come Laura's cousin didn't drink that coke that James bought her in episode 3?!?! That just upset me a little

[MacGuffin]

Silly me not reading this whole thread until after I finished watching the pilot. sooo uhhh I already know who killed Laura Palmer cause I *accidently* watched the tacked on scenes on the VHS.  oops.

Not really. While the second season does use some of those tacked on scenes in certain episodes, the killer is different.

[Bethie]

ohhhhhh fo real? sweet deal kid  8)