Twin Peaks (TV and film series, first appearing in 1990)
Twin Peaks
(TV and film series, first appearing in 1990)
This is maybe TV’s ultimate Cult-hit
and there maybe no other show more influential despite its failure to hold an
audience for even two full seasons.
Part one: the first series, 1990.
“Twin Peaks” was rooted in 1950s Melodramas
but frequently turned towards 1970s Italian Horror, pursuing TV’s cutting edge,
demonstrating both flawless artisanship and artistry of depth, yet throughout
seemed profoundly uncertain of itself.
It was likely influenced by landmark Prime-Time
Soap Opera “Peyton Place” (novel 1956, feature film 1957, and TV show first
aired in 1963), which was also was constantly pushing TV’s boundaries, but when
“Twin Peaks” arrived thirty-years later, “Peyton Place” seemed tame. Add
another thirty-years and “Twin Peaks” isn’t anywhere near tame yet. Critics
Troy Patterson and Jeff Jensen wrote that the show was a “wholly subversive in
its fusion of midnight-movie lunacy and soap opera sentimentality.”
It started with a Murder Mystery in a
beautiful town, Twin Peaks in Washington State, which seems perfect in every way,
but as our Heroes dig deeper, the sordid underbelly of everything is exposed, including
Supernatural Horrors. As we progressed, we learn most of the Evils weren’t
even connected to the Crime, they were just there, unnoticed, because too few
bothered to look until poor Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) met her untimely fate.
So,
who was Laura? A good girl, she’s the total apple of her Daddy’s, Attorney Leland Palmer’s
(Ray Wise), eye. Home-Coming Queen, dating the Captain of
the Football Team, Bobby Briggs (Dana
Ashbrook), volunteering
for Meals-On-Wheels, and caring for the mentally disabled son of the town’s
richest family, Johnny Horne (Robert Bauer). She also had a lot of secrets.
The
story begins with a local Logger, Pete Martell (Marvin John
Nance), discovers Laura’s naked corpse wrapped in
plastic on the bank of a river. The capable, but out-of-his-depth, Sheriff Harry S.
Truman (Michael
Ontkean), initiates a search for evidence, and soon gets word of the discovery
of a second badly injured girl, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), who is in a fugue-state.
Because of apparent
similarities to at least one murder in a different jurisdiction, FBI Special
Agent Dale
Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)
comes investigate. Evidence on the Laura's body seems to confirm that Laura was
the victim of a Serial Killer that Dale was already pursuing.
So far, a normal thriller. But
the weirdness mounts in a million ways, both sweetly mundane (Dale’s tape-recorded
messages to "Diane," and his obsession
with the local coffee and cherry pie) and darkly Satanic (the Serial Killer,
Bob, proves to be a body-jumping Demon, often appearing in the form of Frank
Silva, a Set-Dresser-turned-Actor cast by Lynch after Lynch he saw Silva’s head
pop-up from behind a bed in a set under construction).
The quirkiness is evident in
the first episode, the true weirdness emerges later. Like Lynch’s earlier “Blue
Velvet” (1986, and also starred MacLachlan) surface normalities are played
against deep perversities, and the series wastes little time in getting to those
perversities. Laura’s diary is discovered, and with it, we learn she’s been
living a double life. She was cheating on Bobby with
sensitive, leather-clad, Motorcycle-Gang member James Hurley (James
David Greenblatt); she’s prostituting herself with the help of Truck Driver
and Drug Dealer Leo Johnson (Eric DaRe);
she’s addicted to cocaine, which she obtained by coercing Bobby into doing
business with Leo.
After
Laura's death, Leland has a nervous
breakdown and his shrewish wife Sarah
(Grace Zabriske) offers no support. Then Laura’s look-alike cousin,
Madeline “Maddie” Ferguson (Lee again) arrives, and the family opens their home
to her. That plot-point was a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958)
and evolved late in the process. Lee’s very short scenes in the pilot compelled
Lynch and co-Producer Mark Frost to make greater use of her. Said Frost, “She
was supposed to be a stiff. We hadn’t even written a role–just a couple of
flashbacks.” And Lynch, “It became apparent what a presence she had in a little
tiny video–it was in the pilot–that was shot by someone at a picnic. It’s just
a little bit of stuff, but when she comes up to the camera and kisses the lens,
it’s pretty staggering.”
Maddie’s presence seemed to
provide some solace to the Palmer’s at first, but she innocently triggered a
downward spiral, and all who become connected to her suffer all-the-worse as
the series went on.
Another
character, a reckless Bad Girl wanting to be Good, largely because she has a
crush on Dale, is Johnny’s sister Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), both siblings being the
offspring of the corrupt owner of the Great Northern Hotel
and Real Estate Developer, Benjamin (Richard Beymer). Audrey foolishly goes rogue-uncover
at the Brothel that employed Laura, and what she does with the stem of a
maraschino cherry is a season-one high light.
In this outline I haven’t even mentioned
the much-talked-about Log-Lady (Catherine E. Coulson) because I tried to present the Mystery in a somewhat
linear fashion, but the series wasn’t. The asides were endless, and sometimes the
asides were more important than the Murder Investigation, or if they are
related to the Investigation, they were more about the series’ attempt at Spiritualism
than finding the Killer.
I’ve left numerous central characters out,
not to be disrespectful, but in vain pursuit of coherence. In fact, many listed
above are less important than the Supernatural Dwarf (billed as the Man from
Another Place and played by Michael Anderson); Laura’s Good-Girl best friend,
who covered for Laura and James all-the-while being secretly in love with James,
Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn
Boyle); obnoxious FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer); the more likable
transgender FBI Agent Denise Bryson (David Duchovny); stoic and sometimes
romantic local Deputy Tommy “Hawk” Hill (Michael Horse); hapless
Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz) and his ditzy, always annoyed, girlfriend-then-wife
Lucy (Kimmy Robertson); Dale’s love-interest Annie Blackburn (Heather
Graham); Harry’s love-interest, also owner of the local Lumber Mill and feme-fatal, Josie Packard (Joan Chen), who was the first character to appear on-screen in the
first episode; and there are many, many,
more.
At this point I should say that my
above spoiler, Demon Bob did it, isn’t really a spoiler, and all above listed,
and several others, were legitimate suspects. Possibly borrowing from Catholic
tradition, the show ultimately suggests that Demonic Possession is sometimes the fault of the Possessed. Only those naïve in their
understanding of moral obligations, already profoundly sinning, or in a
specifically Spiritually hazardous location, are vulnerable. The
key to the Mystery is discovering which Sin started the dominos falling, and in
“Twin Peaks,” there are so many Sins to sort through.
The
unfolding proceedings were often problematic, the story often demanded the
characters to behave more-than-a-little unnaturalisticly in service of a plot
that often seemed like it didn’t know where it’s going. Even when the story was
properly focused, the performances were broad and sometimes overwrought, and that
was consistent enough throughout the whole cast, Actors with great experience
and diverse backgrounds, that it was clearly a conscious choice of Lynch, who
Directed 20% of the 30 episodes.
The
intentionalism of this is underlined by the fact that the best scenes were slow and hypnotic, while everything
conventionally dramatic is OTT, a rhythm that created a sense of wit even
though you have to wait for actual jokes. Lynch was always gifted at drawing-forth
the most probing performances from his casts even though he has them play
cartoonish Characters, and here he shows more affection for his Characters than
in any previous project.
This
couldn’t have been realized had the ensemble not been so good, the audience affections reflected a diversity rarely seen (this wasn't like "Family Ties" (TV sitcom, first airing 1982) where Michael J Fox stole the entire show), and the competing affections evoked was far more important than believability. Each
character having a distinct quirkiness that substituted for naturalism,
or as Critic Michael Dean wrote, “It was uncanny camp, at best.”
In
this vast array of memorable eccentrics, Dale stands out. He’s impossibly
clean-cut and he backs up his image with Eagle Scout manners and a profound
longing for the simpler life that the town promises, then betrays. The first
episode establishes his deductive skills, but by the third, we see he’s more Spiritualist
than an Empiricist when it comes to Crime Solving. He lets his search for hard
evidence be guided by dreams, Tibetan Buddhism, and synchronistic ritualism
that is quite silly-looking. Said MacLachlan, “It's a character that'll be etched on my tombstone —
the one most people will remember … And you know, it's nice to have to have one
of those … It was my first television experience, and you don't really know
what you have until it's gone, or until you've experienced more of life. In the
middle of it, I took it a little bit for granted. I didn't have any other
reference, and so only years later now do I realize what a struggle it is to
not just have a hit show, but to make a show that has the kind of impact that ‘Twin Peaks’ had.
It happens once in a lifetime.”
Actor Greenblatt observed that “it seems
to be that certain directors are gifted with a certain magnetism and a certain
sense of visual poetry that most people don't get. I think it's true art.”
Actor Wise, “Twin Peaks was just a
special moment in time. And prior to that time, there just hadn’t been anything
like it, certainly not on any of the television networks…and there really
hasn’t been anything much like it since I think. It just broke new ground in
every way. And I think many shows since Twin Peaks have tried to use aspects of
the Twin Peaks formula, whatever that may be, …I really think it set some sort
of cultural standard. Certainly, in television viewing.”
It is a rare for a TV show to elevate atmospherics above narrative.
Here we have sinister owls, wind whispering through the trees, a stoplight
swinging over an empty intersection, buzzing fluorescents, patterned floors,
red lights and red velvet curtains, odd letters drawn on, ingested by, or
imbedded in bodies, numerology and the way Demon Bob climbed over the foot of the bed.
In a memorable scene, Dale and Harry enter the bank’s privacy room to examine
the contents of a safety-deposit box and find a stuffed deer-head in the center
of the table. “It must’ve fallen,” say the bank employee, who then turns and
leaves, never to be seen again.
Much of the mood of the show emerged from
the extensive use of location filming. Lynch and Frost had knocked-out the
pilot’s script quite quickly and then, according to Lynch, “A friend had
recommended this little town of Snoqualmie Falls, so we drove out there and
literally found the place that we’d written already existing. There was a
little diner right across from the railroad station. There was the sawmill
right in town. There was what looked like, in our minds, the Great Northern
Hotel [actually the Salish Lodge & Spa] on the
hill overlooking the town perched next to a waterfall. It was a really weird
moment of synchronicity.”
It
was dense with pop-culture references, some meaningful, many merely throw-away,
anticipating the deliberate “Easter Eggs” later TV shows would drop to feed Internet
Fan Frenzies, a Culture that was only in its embryonic form way-back-then (Internet
Chat Rooms existed, but they were small, and the first version of Facebook,
called Facemash, was still thirteen-years in the future).
Above
I mentioned homages to Director Hitchcock, other such references included:
Dale’
name references the famously mysterious “D.B. Cooper” who did a short of
Old-West-style train-robbery, only he did it on a commercial airliner,
parachuted over Washington State, and was never seen again.
Another
odd Washington State reference is Sheriff Harry Truman's name, obviously the
former U.S. President but also an 84-year-old man killed by the eruption of
Mount St. Helena’s in 1980.
Vital
clues are provided after the pursuit of a mysterious by a one-armed man (Albert Strobel), just like in the TV show, “The Fugitive”
(first aired 1963 and later a film series appearing three years after “Twin
Peaks” aired).
There
were enough references to the movie “Laura” (1944) that fans began to speculate
that Laura Palmer, like the film’s Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), wasn’t really
dead.
One
of the series sweetest moments had James, Donna, and Maddie sitting on a floor
together and as James strummed his guitar. The threesome sang “Just You” which was
written by Lynch and obviously echoes The Fleetwoods’ song, "Come Softly
to Me" (first recorded 1959). Part of what going on was obvious, the song
appropriately reflected their longing for lost Laura and the growing bond with
each other, and it fit into the 1950s nostalgia that suffuses the show. But the
reference is more complex than that, the original Fleetwoods were (like these
Characters) a High-School-age trio from Washington State, a boy and two girls,
from a town/city with a Lumber Mill about the same population as Twin Peaks. The
trio were successful for a time, but dissolved when the boy, Gary
Troxel, was forced away (Troxel was had obligations to the US Military, James
will be forced away by something else entirely).
Frost
said, "I call the show a cultural compost heap, there are symbols and
characters and expressions from all the shows we saw growing up that echo and
ping down the hallways of Twin Peaks."
This
cultural referencing extended to the casting. The central leads are mostly
young and attractive in a way that High-School-aged Fans would pin their
pictures on their bedroom walls or inside school-locker doors, and a good many
of them owed what stardom they had to prior Lynch projects. But there was also
a surprisingly large number of older and more broadly recognizable Actors, so retirement-aged
viewers (whom the show wasn’t even pitched to) would smile at each very
familiar face. Like everything else in the show, there’s a deliberate
quirky-ness in the Actor’s connections to Classic and/or Cult cinema, like
reuniting Actor Beymer, playing corrupt Benjamin, with another regular player, Russ Tamblyn, who played Dr
Lawrence Jacoby, a Psychiatrist crazier than his Patients. Those two hadn’t
worked together since “West Side Story” (1961).
Peggy
Lipton plays Norma Jennings, owner of the local diner, so in addition to her
own dramas, everyone else in town’s dramas unfold in front of her while they
enjoy coffee and cherry pie. She was famous for her leading role in the TV show
“The Mod Squad” (first aired 1968) but half-retired from Acting after it
cancelation in 1973; she’d only returned to acting full time a short time before, in 1988.
Piper
Lurie plays Catherine Martell, Josie’s spiteful and conspiratorial
sister-in-law. She’d been a 1950s matinee idol, later a three-time-Oscar
nominee, one of which was for “Carrie” (1976), making her among the first half-dozen
actresses to be nominated or win an Oscar for their work in Horror films. She’d
also win a Golden Gold for her work here.
The
whole project emerged when Lynch and Frost had to come up for something to do
after their adaptation of a Marilyn Monroe biography fell through. Actor
Ferrer, as a baby, was photographed in Monroe’s arms while Monroe visited his
mother, Rosemary Clooney, also mother of actor George Clooney, and then-married
to Ferrer’s father, Actor Jose Ferrer, who starred in Lynch’s “Dune” (1984)
which also starred MacLachlan.
Actresses
Zooey and Emily Deschanel are both quite famous, and though they seem
unassociated with this series, their family was. Their mother Mary Jo played
Donna’s wheelchair-bound mother Eileen, and that family represents the series’
island of actual decency in a town where all other normality is a façade. Mary
Jo’s resume including many major films, but generally tiny parts, and this
became the role she’s best known for. And the girls’ father, Eileen’s husband,
Caleb, Directed three episodes though he’s better known as a Cinematographer with
six Oscar nominations.
Hmmm…is
Hollywood as small and incestuous a community as the town in this TV show?
Because of low-budgets and rushed
production-schedules, TV often was only mediocre looking. Cinematographer
Conrad Hall did miracles during the first season of “The Outer Limits” (1963),
but generally, even the best of TV paled before cinema. I remember, as a kid, thinking
that the “The Rockford Files” (1974, main Cinematographer Andrew Jackson), was
pretty amazing looking, but watching it more recently, I see much of that same era’s
ultra-cheap Grindhouse Exploitation fare was often more visually rich. During
the 1980s shows like “Hill Street Blues” (1981, Frost had written for this show,
main was Cinematographer Jack Whitman) and “St. Elsewhere,” (1982, main
Cinematographer Marvin L. Gunter) were groundbreaking in their visual richness,
and also popularized entourage casts and complex, interlocking, story-arcs, so they
anticipated “Twin Peaks” in many ways. Still, I think I can safely say that,
“Twin Peaks” was the most beautiful looking show on TV in 1990, and ranks high
even now.
“Twin Peaks” main Cinematographer
was Frank Byers, he had a half-decade-long resume when this show came out, but
nothing before indicated the sumptuous of the visuals achieved here. The
opening credits, particularly, were pure poetry, and the integration with
Composer Angelo Badalamenti’s score was a rare achievement. When
the show was at its peak popularity, the wind blowing through Douglas Firs
haunted many an American dream.
Lynch
clearly wanted to evoke the melodramas of Director Douglas Sirk, especially
“Magnificent Obsession” (1954), and both Byers and
Badalamenti echoed Sirk’s favored Cinematographer Russell Metty and Composer Frank Skinner.
One must
dig deep in the inspirations drawn from Director Sirk to really understand
“Twin Peaks” surprising depth. In their time, Sirk’s films were hugely popular
but critically unappreciated, dismissed as over-wrought and over-sentimental,
though even-then recognized as work that wished to be taken seriously. Today,
the films are recognized as masterpieces, but mostly indulged for their Campy
pleasures.
Lynch
enthusiastically and unapologetically embraces Camp, but there’s a seriousness
here akin to Sirk’s ambitions. “Twin Peaks” is about grief and trauma, about a
town twisted like a wet towel with its sins like tears pouring out, and it’s
ultimately about dead Laura’s own trauma, the whys of her second life. It had
quirky charm, but also disturbing, and ultimately horrifying, wrote Critic Matt Zoller Seitz,
“It gave you a spoonful of
sugar, then it punched you in the gut.” The “naughty secrets” were tons of fun,
but there was also “persistent sadness, desperation, and dread … Supporting
characters were forever weeping, sometimes wailing in grief as they remembered
Laura. It was an open wound of a show, right up through the end.” It’s worth
noting that often, just before some calm is shattered, the camera lingered on a
photo of Laura, a professional-looking shot, presumably of her as Homecoming
Queen; that photo is in the Palmer house, the High School, and sometimes
appears in places it doesn’t logically belong.
Throughout TV history, music has been important, especially the series’
themes, which stand as cultural landmarks reminding any group of people of the
times they grew up in. But, again, because of rushed-productions, anything
beyond the theme was usually an afterthought. Yes, there were a handful of
exceptions, like “Peter Gunn” (1958), now better remembered for its expansive
score that it’s better-than-average Crime content.
Musically, “Twin Peaks” was far more a landmark than “Peter Gunn.” Badalamenti provided a large handful of evocative themes, used throughout, that were richly sensitive even as the Supernatural Horror and Absurdist Comedy mounted. It mixed nicely with Lynch’s own period-mixing, up-to date technologies and scandals with vintage fashions, hairstyles, and a lot of sampling of music from sources decades in the past. Badalamenti especially liked to have electric guitar and synthesizers play against old-fashioned, soaring, strings. Critic Ben Beaumont-Thomas had especially high praise for “Laura Palmer’s Theme”:
“Beginning
with four brooding synth notes (later sampled by Moby on Go), a piano swells
into teary-eyed romance, before slowly tumbling down into the original motif … Light
emerging from darkness only to be engulfed again … [it’s] not merely a
decorative hood, it's the scaffold from which they're hanged.”
There
were also evocative samplings of contemporary Popular Music, an already a popular
trend, but more notable here than most: The main singer they most drew from,
Julee Cruise, became a member of the cast.
Lynch seems to view popular culture,
not so much as something shaping us, as it was something speaking of our
deepest secrets and needing decoding. Wrote Mike
Mariani, “Lynch’s sensibility both celebrates American
culture and holds a funhouse mirror up to it.” His Pop-Culture obsessions speak
of Populism, but his heart is in the Art-House, and he’s more than happy to be
very demanding of his audience.
Lynch’s promised TV like no one had
ever seen before, and that’s what he delivered. Critic John Leonard, “Everybody
in the continental United States—including my children, my editors, my
enemies—wanted to know about the dwarf.”
Critic
Ken Tucker “Who killed Laura Palmer? Many viewers, tired of the hype, are
saying, Who cares? I say it too, but as praise. Plot is irrelevant; moments are
everything. Lynch and Frost have mastered a way to make a weekly series
endlessly interesting.”
Los Angeles DJ Boyd Britten, "The
cloying, horrid normalcy of the Cosby generation has finally fed up those of us
who never bought it anyway. Hopefully we're going to have TV for people who
like things just a little weirder." His reference to “the Cosby generation”
was a reference to “The Cosby Show” (1984) which “Twin Peaks” was scheduled
against. The “never bought it anyway” statement seems presentiment, as Comedian/Actor/Producer
Bill Cosby was eventually exposed as a Serial Rapist, jailed in 2018, then had
his conviction over-turned in 2021 even though his guilt was undeniable.
Philadelphia DJ “Harvey” said, "I
thought the dream sequence was the strangest six minutes of TV America ever saw
… The big debate the callers had was how the dialogue was done." The trick
was simple, reflecting Lynch’s background in ultra-low budget films and his
being a master of Sound Editing. The actors spoke their lines phonetically, the
words in the script were written in reverse and the Actors also walked
backwards, then the tape was played the other way, so the action was now
frontwards, only eerily so.
Watch-Parties became a thing, even
members of the cast threw them for themselves (with so many plots simultaneously unfolding,
most knew only a sliver of what was going on without seeing the final-cut of an
episode).
In Denver, 200 fans turned out for a watch-party
at the Deadbeat Lounge, and spend the post-show wee hours drinking "Blue
Velvets" and watching the TV show and Lynch’s first film, “Eraserhead” (1977),
on a 30-foot video screen.
In New York City, Artist Mel Odom infused
his Watch Party with an audience participation that harkened back to the
Cult-Hit movie “Rock Horror Picture Show” (1975). His guests would "scream
and run around the room during com commercials because the show can build up
emotion, tension and angst."
In Washington DC, Assistant Press Secretary
Deborah Brunton said that before Press Conferences the subject of Twin Peaks would
come up. “We started analyzing the dream sequence while the press corps all
waited."
In Maryland, Mila Roschwalb went into
the Hospital for a tonsillectomy and when she finally opened her eyes, groggy
because she was still heavily drugged, turned to her mother and croaked,
"Did I miss Twin Peaks?"
Director John Waters, easily as weird
as Lynch, said, "It's like ‘Peyton Place’ gone nuts. It's my favorite
thing on TV."
Comedian Julie Brown, "Any show
that ends an episode with a vibrating dwarf is my kind of TV."
Actress Susan Forristal called it "beautiful
and moody and everything that American television isn't."
“Twin
Peaks” was especially important to
the ABC network because they’d been getting their asses-kicked by NBC on
Thursday nights for the previous five-years; NBC’s had back-to-back sitcom
hits, “Cheers” (first aired 1982) and the fore-mentioned “The Cosby Show.”
Though “Twin Peaks” ratings consistently fell below that double bill, it still
pulled in a larger audience than ABC had managed previously, and that audience
was mostly in the key demographic 18-to-49-year-olds.
The
show also promised to build on its early success because of the “Water Cooler
Syndrome.” Unlike most other TV, people would gossip about the show at work,
word-of-mouth as marketing. ABC was in an experimental mood at the time because
new shows always struggle against other stations more established hits and its most popular new
shows of the previous year had all what the viewers had ever seen before: “America’s
Funniest Home Videos,'' “Doogie Howser” and ''The Simpsons.'' All but ''The
Simpsons'' were on ABC. Unfortunately, all but “Twin Peaks,” were not
especially demanding of the viewer either and all were also cheaper to produce.
The pilot had been the highest rated show
of that entire TV year, but the second episode (often referred to “episode one”
because it was first regularly scheduled one) was somewhat lower.
Then the expected “Water Cooler” bump
didn’t come, and by the four episode it was down 15 points in its time-slot’s over-all
audience-share. Part of that wasn’t too concerning, most of the departing audience
was over-50, never considered “Twin Peaks” target anyway. The problem lay that even
in “Twin Peaks” strongest demographic, 18 -49, its rival ''Cheers'' still stubbornly
held on to too many of them. Still, that wasn’t a crisis just yet, ABC was doing
still 30% better than the previous year. “Twin Peaks” was also doing record
business in foreign markets, which USA TV production was only beginning to
really appreciate the value of.
But the ratings kept dropping even after
that. The following February, now into the second-season, ABC suspended “Twin
Peaks” from its lineup. This came after two major blows to the show’s
popularity: It was moved to a seemingly less-competitive Saturday-night slot
where initially performed well, but then Laura’s Murder was solved, and the new
Mystery wasn’t as popular.
Late-night
Talk Show Host David Letterman was prescient. “The truth of it is, if you stop
and think about it, it might be the kind of show that would kind of have a
limited run, and then would become a classic forever, forever.”
Lynch placed
a lot of the blame on the rescheduling, “We feel very strongly that the people
who like ‘Twin Peaks’ are party people,” and likely to go out on the weekends.
He gave the audience the address of the president of ABC, asking them to write
in.
Fans took to the streets, literally.
In Washington, D.C., a rally sponsored by the ad-hoc committee COOP (Citizens
Opposing the Offing of Peaks) drew over 200 people, many of them bearing owls,
logs, cherry pies, and dressed in Saran Wrap referencing the first images of Laura’s
corpse. Soon, COOP expanded to 5000 members in seven cities. Another group, Viewers
for Quality Television, who previously rescued “Cagney & Lacey” (1982) and “Designing
Women” (1986) from premature cancellation, issued a statement imploring ABC to
give the series "more time to spin its unique web."
The
campaign was only partly successful, the last few episodes had a more
appropriate time slot and the ratings improved, but that was after the
cancelation decision had already been made.
I will commit a heresy here; I say the
show actually deserved its cancelation. Yes, maybe that the time slot wasn’t
perfect, but it wasn’t the main problem. The real issue was that the second-season
was often terrible. Lynch and Frost got involved in other projects
and left the show to lesser hands. (True, Lynch made the feature film, “Wild at
Heart,” while the first-season was in production, but that first-season was
only eight episodes, the second was twenty-two, and therefore more demanding.)
Lynch
also blamed the network for his stepping back from the show. He’d gotten rare
creative freedom, but was frustrated that it wasn’t absolute. He was unhappy
after surrendering to the pressure to solve Laura’s Mystery. “When we wrote ‘Twin Peaks,’ we never intended
the murder of Laura Palmer to be solved…. Maybe in the last episode …”
Giving the flawless beauty
scene-by-scene, it was surprising to learn how much of this was made-up as they
went along. Few involved in the pilot seriously thought it would be picked up
as a series, so not knowing who the Killer was wasn’t a problem. There’s an
alternate version of the pilot shown in Europe (which I haven’t seen) that,
because of contractual obligations, does solve the Mystery, but in it, the
Killer isn’t any of the above-mentioned Characters. Many Characters central to
solving the Mystery, like Maddie and Demon Bob, don’t appear in the pilot
because they hadn’t even been invented until it was already in production.
Lynch continued, “[But then] I was in
an airport one time, going through the baggage claim area, and a woman was
talking to her friends. And I just heard as I went by, ‘I just hope they solve
that murder soon. I’m getting sick of waiting.’”
Solving the Mystery half-way through the second season was a
ratings high point. An indication of the following the show generated, in
Germany it so dominated its time-shot that a competing network spitefully
revealed the identity of Laura’s killer before the episode could be aired. I’m
sure there was a lot of tongue-wagging about that one. But then there was a
problem, Laura was the center of the show, her absence was a presence; but once the Mystery solved, she was really gone.
Still,
but did the show really have to be so self-destructive? If you type into Google
“Worst subplot …” the words “Twin Peaks” are likely to pop-up before you finish
your statement. There are entire websites devoted to that and only that.
Personally, I found the whole thing with Benjamin engaging in a dubiously
theatrical Role-Play-Therapy after being crushed in a business deal by
Catherine, and his family was forced to restage the Confederate defeat in Gettysburg
as a victory for his benefit, particularly insufferable. According to the Twin
Peaks Fans on the internet, my pet-peeve isn’t even in the top-five.
Actor
Wise again, “It was a little too convoluted…. I felt ‘Twin Peaks’ was something
that was never meant to last very long … It was going to burn white-hot and
then flame out quickly. Maybe it flamed out a little later than it should have.”
The
new main Villain, Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh), formerly Dale’s partner and best friend,
now his Evil mirror, was unconvincing, but it did lead us to the remarkable
final episode.
In the
final episode there's a long sequence in a place out of Time & Space called the
Black Lodge, visualized as a Red Room, it’s basically Hell or Purgatory. It’s a
place that Dale had already visited in his dreams and had previously met a
Laura who wasn’t Laura. When the Laura-thing appears again in the last episode,
she says for the second time, “I'll see you again in twenty-five years,” which
we realize now was a threat. Then Dale’s own Doppelganger appears, chases and captures
Dale, and we get the cliff-hanger-to-end-all-cliffhangers, considered by many one
of the scariest moments in the history of TV.
So, yeah,
even those of us annoyed with how the show degraded were screaming for more.
Part two: the
movie, 1992.
So, a
low-rated show had the fans screaming for more. Out of this paradox came the
feature film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992). Oy vey, what a trainwreck.
Lynch’s first film, “Eraserhead” was a Surrealist Horror with a
near-indescribable non-plot because it was really an extended meditation on Industrial
and Spiritual Decay, Sexual Neurosis, and the Mutations that result. In the
following decades following, his successes and failures generally rested on his
ability to infuse that Surrealism into more conventional narratives. Starting
with “…Fire Walk With…” he seemed to display a wish to stop merely messing with
narrative, but go out-of-his-way to destroy it, perhaps indicating he wanted to
return to his still-singular achievement of “Eraserhead.” This is true of all
his feature films that followed, except the audience-friendly and sentimental,
“The Straight Story” (1999), and I have no idea how that one fits into his
cannon.
“… Fire Walk with …” was ill-conceived
from the start, though it included several of the TV show’s Characters, it
rejected the series story-telling style. It was largely devoid of humor, a
particularly serious error in judgement. Critic Emily L. Stephens called the show, “one of the darkest stories ever told on network TV. That
darkness, as much as the illuminating light of its charm and humor, is what
defines ‘Twin Peaks,’ and sustains it so intensely.”
The movie
was more expensive to make than any single episode, but looked cheaper (the new
Cinematographer was Ron Garcia), and as a prequel, it seems uncertain what to
do with the most beloved Character, Dale. Apparently, Actor MacLachlan, who became
close friends with Lynch during their first collaboration, “Dune,” felt abandoned
as the show’s second-season went off-the-rails and initially didn’t want to do
the movie, but ultimately agreed to a small part.
Why was
it even made? Well, apparently, when Lynch returned to Direct the final episode
of the series, he rediscovered the love he’d lost for the show. He negotiated in
vain with another network for a third-season and then chose to launch into this
film having even less idea where he was going than when the show’s pilot got
picked up. “I couldn’t get myself to leave the world of Twin Peaks,” he said,
but here there was no sense he still walked the town’s streets. He scripted the
movie with one of the series’ Writers, Robert Engels, but not Frost, and went
outside Hollywood to get the financing.
It begins
with a Murder only referred to in the series, the unsolved killing of Waitress/Prostitute
Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) which was had eventually led to Agent Dale’s interest in Laura’s
death. Two other FBI Agents Chester Desmond (Chris Issak) and Sam Stanley (Kiefer
Sutherland) are assigned Pamela’s case by the only Character from the series to
appear during the first 20-mins, Regional Director Gordon Cole (Lynch himself).
Desmond and Sam find themselves facing inordinate hostility from the local
Police and there are hints that the Murder might be related to a Conspiracy.
Just as it was about to be solved, the narrative is inexplicably dropped as …
25
minutes in, the action moves from the town to the FBI's regional Offices where Dale learns from Gordon
that one of the above Agents has gone missing, and that Mystery is never
resolved in the film. They are interrupted when another a missing Agent, Phillip
Jeffries (David Bowie), pops up in the offices as if by magic, causes some completely
impossible things appear on the surveillance cameras, says a few things that
make no sense, everyone starts to hallucinate, and then disappears into
thin air. That Mystery is never resolved either, because …
33
minutes in, the action finally moves to the town of Twin Peaks and all the
above Characters disappear. The film becomes somewhat more coherent as it
details last few days of Laura’s life. Still, I found it offensive, not for the
explicit content (of which there was a lot) but because its artificiality
demeaned the pain the Characters endured. Laura’s tragedy has befallen others
in the Real-World, and it’s touchy stuff, but here it’s turned into a stupid
cartoon.
The plot
is already known to those who watched the series, but here it’s realized in an
unconvincing manner: Laura is murdered by someone close to her who was Possessed
by Demon Bob, and her self-destructive secret-life was driven by years of abuse
and exploitation by those Possessed hands. The film begins well-into her
downward spiral and she’s full-aware that Bob is raping her nightly, but
somehow surprised to discover the identity of the human Bob was Possessing (WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?).
Also, the
performances are inferior from the same Actors’ work in the same roles less-than
a year prior. Lee and Wise are standouts both in strength and sloppiness, Lynch
has them going at a hysterical tilt in almost every frame, tempting the
audience to be dismissive of them, but when the hysterics are actually called
for, their rawness does have teeth (the always-full-throttle nature of what
they were doing must have been exhausting). Many key Characters of the TV show missing
and one cast member was replaced, Donna is now played by Moira Kelly.
Also, there
are plot points that are impenetrable without looking stuff up on the Internet:
Agents Albert, Dale, Desmond, Phillips, and Regional Director Gordon, were all
members of the Blue Rose Task Force investigating something-or-other so
super-secret they don’t communicate by memos, by transmit messages between each
other through Lil (Kimberly Ann Cole), who appears in only one scene, has no
dialogue, but sends code through dance movements.
And finally,
the ending, where now-murdered Laura is in the Black Lodge/Hell/Purgatory with
Dale, or more likely his Doppelganger, and she smiles and laughs to see her Guarding
Angel, who apparently has been on a lunch-break since she was twelve-years-old,
fly off to heaven. This ending achieves something remarkable -- it makes even
less sense than the rest of the film.
Production
problems may have been behind some of this mess. Apparently, all those scenes
with Agent Desmond were shot because of Actor MacLachlan was reluctant to be
part of the film. When MacLachlan finally signed-on as Agent Dale, the Agent
Desmond was simply dropped, mid-story, and no reshoots were done to create a more coherent narrative.
There
were potent scenes, but only those involving depravity: the first Orgy in a
sex-club, the second Orgy in a cabin, the Gang-Rape that immediately follows
the second Orgy, and the Murder that immediately follows the Gang Rape. Nothing
supports these set-pieces; one might as well be watching Pornhub (which didn’t
exist in 1993).
It was
Booed and Cannes and the Critics hated it:
Janet Maslin, “Mr. Lynch’s taste for brain-dead
grotesque has lost its novelty, and it now appears more pathologically
unpleasant than cinematically bold.”
Vincent Canby, “It’s not the worst movie ever made;
it just seems to be.”
Owen Gleiberman, “The movie is a true
folly—almost nothing in it adds up…”
And Director Quentin Tarantino, previously a Lynch
fan, was the harshest, “After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at Cannes,
David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see
another David Lynch movie until I hear something different.”
And the film bombed in the USA, though it was huge
in Japan. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know who bothered to watch it,
and only because I was working on this essay.
Lynch’s rough-cut was five hours, but the feature is
only one-and-a-half. The additional materials were edited and released as a
separate film, also one-and-a-half hours long, “Twin Peaks: Missing Pieces” (2014),
which was released straight-to-DVD. It includes many more of the TV show’s cast
members missing from this version. I must admit, I have zero interest in watching.
Considering the incoherence of the film, all clues
adding up to nothing, most not even connected to each other, it seems like this
exercise was just an extended teaser-trailer for some future project. It also plays
perfectly into Internet-based Fan-Culture, which, arguably, would be, finally,
fully-realized the next year. Interest in this terrible film increased as time
went on, and “…Missing Pieces,” was released when the internet had come to
dominate all our lives. Clearly, Lynch was still planning on a third-season/second-series.
Part three: third-season/second-series, 2017
Post-“Twin Peaks” was a difficult
stretch for Lynch. Two TV series, “On the Air” (1992) and “Hotel Room” (1993), failed.
There were four theatrical releases, “Lost Highway” (1997), “The Straight
Story” (1999), “Mulholland Drive” (2001), and “Inland Empire” (2006) and all
did middling-to-badly. All but “Straight Story” and “Mulholland Drive” were
eviscerated by the critics. All but “Mulholland Drive” lost money. “Mulholland
Drive” didn’t make that much money.
During this time, he Produced
others’ work, occasionally Acted, and there was a huge number of short films,
music videos, and music recordings, so it would be wrong to call post-1992 a
slump, but he had slipped out of the spotlight in the mediums that brought him the
most fame.
Decades passed, and “Twin Peaks”
endured. Then, in 2011 it was announced “Twin Peaks” would return for a third-season/second-series,
called “Twin Peaks: The Return.” Lynch and Frost would Write and Lynch would
Direct all the episodes. Lynch was granted a more generous budget than the first
series, which was generous by TV standards, and even-more complete creative control. This
combination of money and freedom was something that he hadn’t been granted
since “Dune,” and even with “Dune” the control was eventually taken away from
him and the movie bombed. Now, a 65-year-old man who’d gone without a hit for
two decades was being given everything he wanted. Stuff like that simply
doesn’t happen.
But Lynch is special. Even his
harshest critics admit that. Even after one of his films affects you like nails
scratching a blackboard, you remain curious about the next one.
Traditional network TV was usually purely episodic
in its storytelling even though the shows have continuing Characters. When each
episode is essentially stand-alone so even casual viewers could enjoy. Though
series with longer narrative arcs were often recognized as the
best-of-the-best, following a story unfolding week-after-week was burdensome
for viewers who mostly took the medium as time-killing relaxation. Every time a
series with more complex storyline secured a loyal audience, others with the same ambition would try only to learn that the potential audience for such
shows was finite.
But those arc-shows can be especially successful with
that most golden of demographics, 18-to-49-years-old, especially those somewhat
better-educated, more affluent, and young enough to not be fully entrenched in
their spending patterns, so the most valuable group to advertisers. Even though
those shows had a smaller audience, those audiences were potentially worth
more. That golden demographic was hard to capture though, they were also often
readers, often bored with conventional TV-fare, and though they longed for TV
that strived towards a novelistic density, they also had other things to do, thus
Lynch’s complaints about the Saturday-night time-slot.
The above mentioned “Hill Street Blues” was a hit
four out of its seven-seasons (seasons two-through-six) wherein it ranked
between #22 and #33 over-all, which was good, but not as good as some less
expensive, more episodic, sitcoms like “Cheers” and “The Cosby Show” which
caused “Twin Peaks” so much trouble. Also noted above was “St. Elsewhere,”
green-lit specifically because of “Hill Street Blues” success (and made by the
same production house) but never rated better than #47 during its six-seasons.
These shows might dominate our memories, but they never could’ve dominated the
available real-estate of network time-slots.
“Twin Peaks” was the next step in that unstable
model, and therefore doomed to struggle mightily even had not been so
self-destructive.
In retrospect, “Twin Peaks” seemed to arrive just-ahead-of-its-time
in an almost Occult-like fashion. Water Cooler Syndrome wasn’t enough, the
series longed for a not-fully existent Internet Fan Culture wherein an audience
could far-more-fully immerse themselves into the second narrative of obsessive
discussion. Another show that came just slightly later, and was clearly influenced by
“Twin Peaks,” was “The X-Files” (first aired 1993 and the above-mentioned Duchovny was a lead
actor) proved perfectly timed to make Internet Fandom serve its purposes. It
wasn’t just Cult-TV like “Twin Peaks,” it was monster hit.
“…The Return” finally aired in 2017, when Internet
Fan Culture was fully mature: Internet usage had jumped from less-than 7% of US
households to more-than 92%. This new media landscape created a situation where
the terrible follow-up movie started receiving a more positive critical re-evaluation,
not because its drama was any more convincing (though some Critics tried to
argue it was) but because the promise of “…The Return” demanded that “…Fire
Walk With…” get near-rabbinical study. All the clues, all the symbols, all the
secret meanings, and the same can be said of the two tie-in
books (I’ve read neither), “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer” (1990) by Lynch’s
daughter Jennifer, soon to be a Director of weird movies herself, and “The
Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper” (1991) by Frost. Popular media had become the new Kabballah.
Add to the Social Media was the new TV medium of streaming.
As Critic James Poniewozik pointed out, the new streaming networks like Amazon
Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, were dropping full seasons at once to cater to binge-watching
(he used the phrase “immersive viewing”). This created a new experience of visual
storytelling. Streaming/binge-watching encouraged denser narratives and longer
arcs instead of them being an inherently risky proposition. The golden
demographic could watch as they pleased, as much or as little, picking it up
and putting it down like a book. TV on their schedule, not the Network
Programmer’s best bet.
The world might’ve caught up with the “Twin Peaks”
experience, and numerous hit shows had already demonstrated it. Its time had
come, but was it still relevant?
In the final episode of the original series, in the mystical Lodge, the Laura-thing
repeated a promised (threatened?) Agent Dale, “See you in twenty-five years,” and in 2017,
it was pretty much on time. Maybe because it was now the future, there’s a
shift in the Storytelling, from Supernatural ambiguity to SF specificity, and a
stronger-than-ever promise that the pieces would add-up. Though still plenty
weird, filled with impenetrable symbols and more than a little numerology, the second
series’ Storytelling is far more disciplined than the first series or the
movie.
This appealed to me the way old Nigel Kneale scripts
did (example: the “Quartermass” series, first serial 1953). The application of
SF rationalities which demanded the Monsters, drawn from Supernatural Folklore,
show their faces in the light. By the end of the second episode, no Mysteries yet
solved, a central confusion from the first series seems to have been clarified:
Demon Bob jumps bodies, causing mayhem by Possessing
the weak and amplifying their sins. Laura was a target for his Possession,
perhaps even half-Possessed already, when she was Murdered, and her Killer was
one who had fully surrendered to Bob long before Laura got into any trouble.
The Laura the Dale encountered in the Lodge in the
first series, we were told, was not Laura herself, but some other entity, a
Doppelganger, but the prequel film ends with Laura, apparently the real one, trapped
in the Lodge with a Doppelganger Dale beside her. The first series ends with
Dale chased by his Doppelganger through the Lodge, and the Dale returns to our
reality is not really him. The Possessions are explicit, but there’s also
indications that the various Doppelgangers are their own physical entities.
Even without knowing fully what the forces of Evil
were up too, it would nice to know how the Doppelgangers, which abounded, fit
in with the threat of Bob. How does a Monster that physically replaces you work
with a Monster that Possesses your physical form? Are we watching “Invasion of
the Body Snatchers” (1956) or “The Exorcist” (1973)?
The second series begins with the Real Dale trapped
in the Lodge; he’s been there for 25-years. Also introduced is a long-haired, cold-hearted,
criminal, Doppelganger, call him Evil Dale, causing trouble in our reality. If
that was unclear by demonstration, the Log Lady soon says as much.
In the second episode, Evil Dale commits a murder,
and the dialogue suggests that the person he killed was another Doppelganger
like himself. Evil Dale is scheduled to return to the Lodge, but he doesn’t
want to go. Real Dale is told by a Talking Tree that he won’t be allowed to
leave until Evil Dale returns. Real Dale does find his own way out, almost
makes it to our world, but lands somewhere (multiple somewheres) even stranger,
yet continues on his journey home.
Without a lot of exposition, Lynch demonstrates that
there is a goal-focused Conspiracy among the Forces of Evil, and that
Conspiracy is being rent by internal dissention. We don’t know what they are
doing, but we see some of the rules of the S,F&H (rules are always
important when presenting impossibilities, like garlic with Vampires, and
silver bullets with Werewolves). We see that Evil Dale is not Dale’s body Possessed,
but a Doppelganger with its own physical form. We see Real Dale struggle to physically
re-entered our world, and when he finally succeeds, there’s two Dale’s chasing
each other around. This might contradict some of the earlier material, but then
the TV show “Star Trek” (1966) also gave us two very different biographies of the
Character Zefram Cochrane (played at
different junctures by Glenn Corbett and James Cromwell),
and at least three different histories of the 1980s-1990s.
Ok, this is still a Lynch series, and by the third
episode, with the introduction of Dougie Jones (MacLachlan again), it appears it
is both “The Exorcist” and “Invasion of the …” through off mechanics of the
SF,F&H, just when I thought I had a handle on it, but whatever. This is
Lynch after all. Still, the impenetrable “Twin Peaks” was finally looked as
goal-focused as the TV series it inspired, “The X-Files.”
An important part of “Twin Peaks” mythology that might have been in the first-series, but it’s understandable if you didn’t see it because I didn’t, then more important in the movie, but no one could tell because it didn’t make any sense, and finally moved front-and-center in this second-series: the Blue Rose Task Force.
Founded after the 1947 Flying Saucer
Incident in Roswell New Mexico, it’s a special unit in the DoD and FBI
dedicated to investigating the Paranormal, which comes pretty close to being a
summary of “The X-Files” concept. Though “The X-Files” Creator, Chris Carter,
acknowledged his debt to “Twin Peaks,” but he probably didn’t borrow that
specific thing because I don’t think Carter understood it any better than I
did at the time.
The first two episodes spend little time in the town
of Twin Peaks, it’s mostly in New York City, Las Vegas, and alternate universes.
At first, there’s only a little Comedy, mostly provided by Twin Peaks residents Andy and Lucy. As it
progresses, and more familiar Characters return, the town becomes more prominent, and the Comedic elements increase.
For this series, the cast is more than doubled,
listing almost 220 Actors and at least one important one is left off the list,
the voice of the Tree.
Among the new characters, the
best is Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard), a High School Principal in Buckhorn,
South Dakota, who’s arrested in connection to a ritualistic Double-Murder. He’s
being framed by unworldly powers, but is transparently lying to the Police none-the-less,
because everybody has some kinda secret here. Detective Dave Mackley (Brent
Briscoe, who had small parts in previous Lynch films) gives an expert
interrogation, executed with a realism that is alien to most Lynch productions,
and is wholly convincing. And Bill’s wife (Cornelia
Guest) is hilarious as woman more concerned about her dinner party than
her husband being taken out of the house in handcuffs.
Fans
will also be pleased to finally get introduced to Diane (Laura Dern, a Lynch
favorite). We learn her last name is Evans, and the loss of Dale was traumatic
for her.
Most of the original cast was present, but the
absences were notable, some of them because they died:
John
Boylan, who played Mayor Dwayne Milford, passed away
in 1994.
David Bowie, who played un-stuck-in-time FBI Agent Phillip Jeffries, passed away in 2016. His character does return, but it’s odd.
Don S. Davis, who played Bobby’s father, Major Garland
Briggs (he had a similar role on “The X-Files”) passed away in 2008. The FX
team managed to resurrect his Ghost for a cameo.
Jack Nance, who had played Pete Martell, Catherine’s
husband, passed away in 1996.
Dan O’Herlihy, who played Andrew Packard, Josie’s husband
and Catherine’s brother, was supposed to be already dead in the first episode, but
in the second-season was shown to have faked his death, then appeared to have
been killed in the final episode, died in the Real World in 2005.
Frank Silva, who played the Demon Bob, died in 1994, though
the FX team did manage to give him a few cameos.
Other actors, still alive, but didn’t return, included:
Michael
J. Anderson, the Dwarf, who was replaced with the Talking Tree. His absence is
alternately blamed on a compensation dispute or health issues.
Joan
Chen, who played Josie Packard. The character died before the second-season,
but her Ghost was trapped in the Great Northern Hotel.
Frost apparently wanted her back and there’s a character that might be her, an
eyeless Ghost, or Doppelganger, or something, but played by a different actress,
Nae Yuuki, another Lynch favorite, unnamed but billed as Naido. If you look the
character up on the internet, she’s somehow connected to Diane and provides a narrative
link to another Lynch film, “Inland Empire” which also starred Character Diane’s Aactress Dern.
Heather
Graham, who played Annie Blackburn.
Michael Ontkean, who played Harry Truman. He retired from
acting in 2011. He did seriously consider coming out of retirement for this
role, but at the last minute, pulled out.
Piper
Laurie, who played Catherine Martell. She was 83-years-old when the third-season
went into production, and wanted to be part of it. Lynch couldn’t figure out
where to fit her into the eighteen hours despite her being the center of
several of the second-season’s wildest doings. She looks forward to a role in a
fourth-season should it ever materialize.
Billy
Zane, who played John Justice, Audrey’s boyfriend after she got over her crush
on Dale.
An
especially notable, but also predictable, absence was Laura Flynn Boyle, who
played Donna. In the movie she replaced Moira Kelly and there was also the issue
that during the second-season the Writers didn’t manage the Character very well
after Laura’s Murder was solved, leaving less use for her here. Regarding this
third-season, scheduling conflicts were cited, but there was also much gossip.
In
the original series, Dale resisted Audrey’s sexual advances because she was too
young and Dale was too noble - Actor MacLachlan was 31 and presumably so was Dale;
meanwhile Actress Fenn was really 25 but Audrey was under-18. But Fenn insists
that were behind-the-scenes reasons:
“So, his [MacLachlan’s] girlfriend, Lara Flynn Boyle,
kiboshes an astonishing thing… I remember saying, ‘David, is this how it goes?
An actor complains, because she’s the girlfriend, and then you change?'
“Now,
Kyle will admit the truth. Then, he wouldn’t. At the time, he ‘No, her
character is too young for me’ … Meanwhile he is with a girlfriend, I’m 24, 25,
his girlfriend is 19. And they bring in Heather, who’s younger, so… whatever …
Literally, because of that, they brought in Heather Graham
— who’s younger than I am — for him and Billy Zane
for me. I was not happy about it. It was stupid.”
MacLachlan’s relationship
with Boyle ended in 1992, leading to rumors about her absence in the movie even
though the Characters of Dale and Donna shared no scenes. The same rumors are
were at play in this production.
If a fourth-season ever
happens, casting will be a challenge again, because more Actors have left the
mortal coil even as I write this:
Catherine E.
Coulson, who who played the Log
Lady, was visibly frail in her few scenes. Her impending mortality was worked
into the dialogue and she passed away before the production wrapped.
Miguel Ferrer, who played FBI
Agent Albert Rosenfield, died just before the series was released.
Robert Forrester, a Lynch favorite, played Frank
Truman, Harry’s brother and the new Sheriff. Forrester passed away in 2019.
Peggy Lipton, who played
Norma Jennings, died in 2019. Though not obvious, she had been battling cancer
even during this production.
A show
returning after so long, and not being significantly recast, must display a
consciousness of the passage of time:
Dale, really
Actor MacLachlan, is remarkably well preserved for a man in his late-fifties.
There were scenes in the original series where he was supposed to be
twenty-five years older than himself but now and now this old man looks better than
himself. This is made into an in-joke as MacLachlan also plays Douggie, a fat schlep
married to Jane-E (Naomi Watts, another Lynch regular). When Dale, now Douggie, takes
his shirt of, Jane-E finds the changes in her husband’s physique quite
fetching.
Benjamin and his brother/business partner, Jerry (James Patrick Kelly,
and the two names are a play on Ben & Jerry, the Real-World Ice Cream
Entrepreneurs) have returned, but are unrecognizable until they start bickering.
Jerry, always a dim-witted Playboy, remains difficult to deal with as he brags
about his success as a Marijuana Entrepreneur.
And though it looked like Audrey had died in the last episode of the original series, but she
lived, unfortunately, the last 25-years have not been kind to her mentally or physically.
Laura’s mom Sarah is back. Even before the end of the first
series, everything she loved had been cruelly and traumatically taken from her.
When we first see her, she sits in a darkened house too large for a person
alone. She’s surrounded by surrounded by empty bottles, dirty dishes, and over-filled
ashtrays, watching animals tearing each other apart on a TV nature-show. She will prove to have a large-ish role in the Cosmic Conspiracy.
Doctor Lawrence seems to have lost his practice and home, no surprise given his lack of professionalism. He now lives in a trailer in the
woods and goes by the stage-name “Dr. Amp” on his shoe-sting streaming-talk-show
that makes the notorious Alex Jones look like Walter Cronkite.
Shelly with three last names because multiple marriages (Mädchen Amick),
was a waitress cheating on her vicious Criminal husband Leo with lesser Criminal
Bobby, who in turn, was cheating on Laura. Now Leo is dead and though time has
been kind to Shelly’s looks, but not so much her personal life. She’s still a
waitress a Norma’s diner and still hangs out at the Road House, once notable
for underaged drinkers and depravity, but now often filled with soccer
moms. She also married, then divorced, Bobby, and is now dating another guy who
- guess what? - is another Criminal. And her daughter, new Character Becky (Amanda Seyfried), is dating, you guessed it, a
Criminal. Shelly’s clearly still sweet on her ex-Bobby
and also has a warm-spot for James, defending him from those who mock his brain
injury, “James is still cool. He’s always been cool.”
Bobby has reformed and, improbably, is
a Sheriff’s Deputy. Bobby, along with Andy and Hawk, all are white-haired and
with deeply lined-faces, while James is still pin-up worthy, though balding. Like Andy, Booby's also put on a lot of weight. In Hawk’s case, the white-haired
look is fabulous.
Long-dead Leland appears to Dale, pleading that Dale save his long-dead
daughter Laura. Laura also appears, and it seems time didn’t stop for her even
in the afterlife.
Above, I made
comparisons to “Invasion of the…” and the “The X-Files,” it’s also worth
remembering “The Outer Limits” as well; those were deeply weird stories told
with traditionally linear narratives. “…The Return” has a more linear story in outline
than the earlier incarnations, but only to a degree.
Key to the present strangeness is Lynch’s famous opaqueness and more so even his
distinctive, drawn-out, pacing. The plot-progress in the first two-hours is roughly
equivalent to what we would’ve seen in a single 45-minute episode (one-hour
minus commercial breaks) of “The Outer Limits,” among the most visually bold
pieces of TV ever produced.
One would’ve thought that when Real Dale finally
re-entered our world, episode three, the chase for Evil Dale would be on, but no. Amnesic, cognitively disabled, and not fully articulate, Dale
steps into Dougie’s life. His fish-out-of-water, idiot-savant-ism is hilarious, and he’s a much better Dougie than Dougie was. That subplot is largely disconnected
from the Cosmic Crisis and completely removed from the town of Twin Peaks. Real
Dale doesn’t start pursuing Evil Dale until late in episode sixteen (of
eighteen) and though the FBI were in pursuit of Evil Dale long before that, they don’t
arrive in Twin Peaks until episode seventeen.
Generally, when one talks about story-telling
being slowed down in a tale that is driven by action (there are seven violent
deaths in the first two hours) it’s a bad thing, but not with Lynch. It’s no
slog as he lovingly lingers, longer-than-average scenes have always distinguished
his work. His establishing-shots do more than establish, they become
contemplative. Here, he takes that idea farther than earlier in the franchise.
Critic Sonia Saraiya quipped, “sometimes, the trees seem
like more fleshed-out characters than the minor characters they are partially
obscuring.”
This is especially notable in
episode eight, which devoted ten minutes to Evil Dale and another criminal Ray
Monroe (George Griffith) double-crossing each other which is interrupted by a
Supernatural visitation. Then it cuts to a six-minute music performance by the
band Nine Inch Nails. This is followed
by a remarkable bit of FX recreating a 1947 Atomic-bomb test and the camera
swopping into the heart of the mushroom cloud, a dialogue- and Character-less
sequence that goes on for another four minutes. Then another three-minutes of
Supernatural weirdness at a gas station, again no dialogue, shot
almost entirely with a single-camera from a single-point perspective, then …
well … it just keeps getting weirder after that.
Other than
the aspects echoing its Soap Opera roots, dialogue is not a big driver in
exposition as neither Dale, nor his Doppelganger, talk much. Moreover, the
longest dialogue scenes are full of non-sequiturs, often uttered by the
overwhelmed and confused.
Lynch plays to binge-watching like no other before
him. The episodes are not fully distinct parts, they seem to be meant to be
seen as a continuous flow, as if he expects us to sit though all eighteen hours
in a single sitting. Other TV with multi-episode arcs end each episode on a
bold dramatic moment, usually a cliff-hanger, but that’s mostly avoided here.
The narrative proceeds a certain number of minutes, then the camera movies off
to (usually) a musical performance (some by the first-series’ Cruise) and the
credits roll during that song, those credits being the only thing distinguishing the closing scene from earlier musical interludes in the same episode.
A conventual novel is often written in a
close-third-person with shifting POVs, its chapters distinct units, and often
the best chapters are almost stand-alone short-stories. But with a novel
written in the stream-of-consciousness style there’s generally only one POV and
frequently have no chapter breaks at all. “…The Return” unfolds with multiple
POVs, but the feel is stream-of-consciousness.
And “…The Return” resolves itself, like the first-series,
with a cliff-hanger that demands an entirely new narrative direction should the
show continue. And it’s pretty clear Lynch wants it to continue. The last two
episodes show the same confident narrative hand as the first two, we trust that
he knows what he’s doing even though we don't. He shifts priorities and visual style (he
embraces cheaper editing tricks over expensive FX to visualize is broken
causalities, much like the conceptually bold, but very-low budget, Cult-TV show
“Sapphire and Steele” (1979)). And that’s only regarding the Dale/Laura
thread, all of the other subplots are not only left unresolved, they’ve not
proceeded far enough to have earned a cliff-hanger. Hell, everybody was talking
about some guy named Bill, but we never learn who Bill is.
It’s beautiful looking, as we’d expect. The new
Cinematographer, Peter Denning, used Byers’s work as a blue-print for capturing
the town, and adds to it incredibly lush vistas of New York City skyscrapers
throbbing with golden light and bleakness of Las Vegas suburbs where you feel
the desert has won even though the houses still stand.
It proved a huge success with Critics and audiences
alike. While the movie got booed at Cannes, the first two-hours of “…The
Return” got a five-minute standing ovation. At the Los Angeles premier, the
audience gave each returning Character a round of applause.
Part four: Dialogue
So, best quotes. First series first:
Dale: "Old habits die hard. Just about as hard
as I want those eggs."
*
Dale: “That’s what you do in a town where a yellow light still
means slow down, not go faster.”
*
Dale: “Women were drawn from a different set of blueprints.”
*
Dale: "I had subconsciously gained knowledge of
a deductive technique involving mind-body coordination operating hand in hand
with the deepest levels of intuition."
*
Dale: “I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a
definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.”
*
Agent Albert "I've Got Compassion Running Out
My Nose, Pal!" (No, he doesn’t.)
*
Ben to Audrey: "If you ever pull a stunt like
that again, you'll be scrubbing bidets in a Bulgarian convent."
*
Catherine: "I'm no pea-brained chambermaid
looking for a tumble in a broom closet."
*
Jerry: "We had those Vikings by the horns. What
happened?"
*
Dr. Lawrence: "Laura had secrets built around those
secrets."
*
Laura’s recorded voice, "I feel like I'm going to
dream tonight."
*
Laura: "I just know I'm going to get lost in
those woods again tonight."
*
Log Lady: ““Fire is the devil like a coward hiding
in the smoke.”
*
Pete: "Don’t drink that coffee! … There was a
fish in the percolator"
*
Shelly: "I've got one man too many in my life,
and I'm married to him."
And even the terrible movie had some great lines.
The Dwarf invented a memorable new word: "Give
me all your garborzonia” meaning pain and suffering.
*
Laura, describing how it must feel to fall through
space: “For a long time you wouldn’t feel anything. Then you’d burst into fire
forever. And the angels wouldn’t help you, because all of the angels are gone.”
And second series:
Agent Albert (while caught in the rain): “Fuck Gene
Kelly, you motherfucker!”
*
Inspector Randy Hollister (Karl Makinen): “This is
what we found in his trunk: cocaine, machine gun, dog leg.”
Albert: “What, no cheese and crackers?”
*
Albert: You okay, Gordon?
Regional Director Gordon, holding his gun which he
didn’t fire: “I couldn’t do it, Albert. I couldn’t do it.”
Albert: “You've gone soft in your old age.”
Gordon: “What?” [Gordon is mostly deaf]
Albert (louder): “I said, you've gone soft in your
old age.”
Gordon: “Not where it counts buddy.”
*
Bobby: “What's going on around here?”
Casino Owner Bradley Mitchum (Jim Belushi): “Took
the fucking words right out of my mouth.”
*
Medical Examiner Constance Talbot (Jane Adams):
“Cause of death … Took me a while, but I think someone cut this man's head off
... Here's the headline ... Actually, I just gave you the headline.”
None of the Detectives laugh or smile.
“Yeah, I'm still doing stand-up on the weekends.”
*
Dale: “I hope to see you all again. Every one of
you.”
First Series trailer:
Twin Peaks - Original 1990
network promos & previews - YouTube
“…Fire Walk with Me” trailer:
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with
Me (1992) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p] - YouTube
“…The Return” trailer:
TWIN PEAKS the return - tv
series trailer - YouTube
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