Episode 14

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FauxOwl
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Re: Episode 14

Post by FauxOwl »

David Locke wrote:I absolutely love them both, but I think I'd probably put the finale just a hair ahead of 14 as the greatest episode. Just because 14, despite how amazing it is, does have a more traditional Peaks structure where there's a bunch of subplots (Shelly/Bobby, Harold, Nadine, Ben and Audrey, etc.) that occupy the time before the monumental final act. Whereas in the finale, there are only really three subplots (things not related to the Lodge/Cooper's quest), and these three are all each put to rest in a single masterful scene. It's more economical, and gives more time of course to the amazing Black Lodge sequences, which are the high point of the series for me. But this is pretty small stuff, as 14 is basically a perfect episode and its final moments are some of the most moving ever composed for television or cinema.
Honestly I could go both ways as well with regards to 14 and 29. It might just depend on what the last episode I saw was. But when I go with 14, it's because it's really just masterfully crafted from start to finish and every scene, even the subplots with Shelly/Bobby, Nadine, the Tojimura/Catherine reveal, all really work... it may be the only episode in the second season you can say that about. I'm splitting hairs here, but if I had to pick a weak point in episode 29 it'd be the Ben/Doc Hayward scene. It was a bit of a soapy scene, however, I won't knock it without pointing out it still had a very bizarre feel that distinctly sets it apart from scenes of that ilk. Nevertheless, these two episodes are toe to toe, and if Episode 29 were something of a launching point for the new season, both in terms of story and style, I would be very happy.
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FauxOwl
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Re: Episode 14

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LostInTheMovies wrote:
I certainly found the scene very uncomfortable the first couple times I saw it, but for whatever reason it was only this year - the first time I'd seen it in over 5 years - that it really got past my psychic defenses and upset me on a profoundly visceral level (it took FWWM to do that to me the first time I watched Twin Peaks). Now, I agree - it's one of my favorite scenes in Twin Peaks but also one I don't like watching. Small note, but one thing that bugs me is when tributes or documentaries (like Secrets From Another Place) include little clips from the scene and narrate over it. I think it should be handled with greater care to respect the power of the sequence: if it's going to be shown, show it in a way that facilitates rather than steamrolls the horror.
Good point regarding the tributes/documentaries.... and incidentally, I should point out that I did notice when watching your own documentary covering the scene, this aspect was particularly well handled. The visceral chill of the scene really came through even as you were putting it in context and adding your perspective. Very well done.
Great post and great point. I've been pondering this question a lot lately, especially now that Lynch is returning to Twin Peaks. I get that he didn't want to reveal the killer initially; what I don't get is why he maintains that it was a mistake. The message of an ongoing mystery would have been "Knowing what happened to Laura Palmer is not important" while the message of FWWM is "There is absolutely nothing more important than knowing what happened to Laura Palmer." These two concepts are entirely antithetical.
Thanks, and I agree. We are of course, as admirers of Lynch as a filmmaker and artist, free to disagree with him on some points, and this is one occasion for that myself. I do understand his perspective, but it is a little baffling how strong he continues to make the point considering the commitment he has given to the reveal, to the point of fashioning an entire feature film focusing on it. But I would never want to totally understand how Lynch thinks and works... that's part of his appeal as an admirer of his work.
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: Episode 14

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FauxOwl wrote:Good point regarding the tributes/documentaries.... and incidentally, I should point out that I did notice when watching your own documentary covering the scene, this aspect was particularly well handled. The visceral chill of the scene really came through even as you were putting it in context and adding your perspective. Very well done.
Thanks, glad to hear it. That was certainly my intention. Recontextualizing footage from a film (or TV series in this case) is always tricky, but it's more obvious with a scene that powerful.
Thanks, and I agree. We are of course, as admirers of Lynch as a filmmaker and artist, free to disagree with him on some points, and this is one occasion for that myself. I do understand his perspective, but it is a little baffling how strong he continues to make the point considering the commitment he has given to the reveal, to the point of fashioning an entire feature film focusing on it. But I would never want to totally understand how Lynch thinks and works... that's part of his appeal as an admirer of his work.
That, and the work speaks louder than the man every time. Although I would love to find an interview where someone directly asks him these questions, simply to hear his response or (more likely) non-response.

I also think it would be fascinating to visit an alternate universe where the killer isn't revealed in season 2 and find out what happens next. Would Lynch really hold off for several seasons - even keep her tragedy a secret forever? Would he actually allow the mystery to recede into the background as other details emerged? Or would he find his desire to "see her live, move, and talk" too strong, to the point where the mystery was increasingly foregrounded, and maybe a prequel film would even BECOME the reveal? Because season two plays an awful lot like it's Lynch who needs to reveal Laura's tragedy, not the audience/network. In other words, which came first - the decision to reveal Laura's killer, or Lynch's desire to share her suffering? Was the latter simply a byproduct of the former? Was his desire to luxuriate in the aura of mystery even greater than his desire to experience Laura? Was it possible for the latter to keep the former in check perpetually?

Here's the interesting thing about Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire: they all square this circle by offering mysteries which remain perpetually mysterious while ALSO diving into the heart of darkness.

Although it's 25 years after the fact, I suspect that 2016 will at least partly answer some of the above questions. If I'm nervous about anything, it's that the new series would muddy the waters about what happened to Laura ("questions about the truth of it all" - Between Two Worlds). I'm not sure how that's even possible, but with Lynch you never know. I think it's the one and only thing they could do that would leave me feeling truly disappointed. I know Lynch doesn't like clarity but in some cases it feels necessary. Hell, I even had issues with FWWM the first time I watched it because I wasn't sure it was clear enough (specifically, I wondered if the few remaining Twin Peaks-isms of the movie - the FBI investigation, the Lodge mythology, BOB-as-an-actual-demon - hadn't become more of a hindrance than a help in understanding what Leland did to Laura). But it's all quite complicated, because I can think of counterarguments - trauma isn't "clear" to the victim, why should it be to the viewer?, etc. I spent forever trying to properly word this post haha.
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Gabriel
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Re: Episode 14

Post by Gabriel »

Part of me wonders if the series would have worked better taking the Columbo route after the Leland reveal. Rather than wrap up the mystery in two episodes, maybe Leland would be deputised and become a Bookhouse Boy and we, as viewers, would keep wondering when BOB would emerge. Ultimately, Leland would suspect he is the killer and have to deal with it. Maybe that's too 'modern' for a series of that era to deal with, but imagine how fascinating Leland as a character would have been if he'd been kept on.
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: Episode 14

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Gabriel wrote:Part of me wonders if the series would have worked better taking the Columbo route after the Leland reveal. Rather than wrap up the mystery in two episodes, maybe Leland would be deputised and become a Bookhouse Boy and we, as viewers, would keep wondering when BOB would emerge. Ultimately, Leland would suspect he is the killer and have to deal with it. Maybe that's too 'modern' for a series of that era to deal with, but imagine how fascinating Leland as a character would have been if he'd been kept on.
That's a very interesting possibility although it might have frustrated audiences even more than sustaining the mystery. I think that's a bit like what we'll see in the new series: I expect evil Cooper not to have been found out yet (though he must have gotten better at his job). Someone also suggested an "alternate realities" thing in another thread and I won't be surprised at all if Lynch and Frost go that route. That's basically what Lynch has been doing for the past 20 years in his films. Although it would certainly make Frost's book seem pretty pointless.
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Re: Episode 14

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Audrey Horne wrote:
At the same time it is problematic. The two follow up episodes change and we are two steps ahead of Cooper, and therefore yelling at our screens for him to wise up. And where Cooper could always surprise us (the rock throw is the perfect example, or the reflection of James' motorcycle on the videotape) that element is now lost. And Laura basically being a school teacher and giving Cooper the answer from the back of a text book is the biggest stumble of the series up to that point. If they could have Cooper surprise us again with more info it would bridge us knowing the killer before him with him knowing info we didn't.
Yes. Exactly this.
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Jonah
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Re: Episode 14

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14 is my all-time favourite. I think 29 is technically better as it's so much more surreal and powerful while 14 really only takes off hugely in the last 15 minutes - but those last 15 in the Roadhouse interspersed with Maddy's murder are so great it's always been the episode I love the most.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Episode 14

Post by Audrey Horne »

Here is one of the call sheets for the episode. I'll try to scan more of them from my collection to the corresponding episodes.
Peaks 2002.JPG
Peaks 2002.JPG (203.86 KiB) Viewed 21093 times
God, I love this music. Isn't it too dreamy?
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: Episode 14

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Audrey Horne wrote:Here is one of the call sheets for the episode. I'll try to scan more of them from my collection to the corresponding episodes.
Peaks 2002.JPG
Wow - ok, this one's REALLY interesting for several reasons. The big one...Ray Wise has said he found out he was the killer the day after the Emmys. Just looked them up & they were held on September 16, 1990 (in Pasadena, where I live - which is kind of surprising; other than the Rose Bowl I didn't think there were too many big events held here, but I digress...). So that means he was told AT LEAST 4 days after they had already begun shooting ep. 14. So they most likely really did tell him a day or two before the scene was shot.

Another interesting thing about the call sheet is that Al Strobel is listed - which (I'm guessing) means his scenes were actually shot rather than discarded before shooting. It seems unlikely to me that they would have him come to set, get him in makeup/costume etc, and then not use him. Although I guess if anyone could get away with that it would be Lynch.

This makes me really curious if they shot the Leland/Maddy scene in ep. 9. You don't happen to have the call sheet for the RR Diner scenes for that, do you?

Thanks for these! They are really eye-opening.
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Re: Episode 14

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MoondogJR wrote:I have searched all over the internet for TP-scripts and for this episode I have only found the script with the Ben-kills-Maddy scene. the script never made any sense to me because indeed, in the next scene Ben is getting arrested in his office so he never could have been on the place of the crime... :roll:
I think the full pages of the script wasn't leaked. I also can't believe the episode has no script.
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Twin Peaks Out of Order #2: Episode 14

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Re-watching Twin Peaks from my least favorite to favorite episode...

Previously: Episode 2 (http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=44279#p44279)

In response to my previous write-up, commentator David Locke wrote "Just as Episode 14 was Lynch's summation of Season 2 ... [episode] 2 is his summation of the more lighthearted Season 1." Watching the two episodes back to back really highlights this point. What 2 captures perfectly is the first season's sense of excitement and wonder, with characters intersecting to form a tapestry larger than themselves. Episode 14, like the second season it belongs to, is colored more by sadness and separation. If season one was characterized by a vibrant, explosive sense of possibility then season two is defined by limits. The townspeople are all separated from one another, isolated in little pockets of the narrative that no longer seem connected to a bigger picture. And 14 takes this process of removal even further: Harold Smith kills himself, Maddy tells the Palmers she's going home (to, not accidentally, Lynch's birthplace of Missoula, Montana), and Shelly quits her job with an unexpectedly poignant farewell. I have always wondered why this little moment is so moving, why it feels like such a palate cleanser and preparatory note for the violent reveal to come. Tonight, I realized one of the reasons: as Shelly hesitantly and apologetically tells Norma she can't work at the RR anymore, Norma is completely accepting. She has often behaved like a mother figure to her employee and in this situation she acts lovingly and supportively, letting Shelly go and assuring her that she can come back whenever she wants. This is the exact opposite of the situation with Maddy and Leland. Oh sure, he mouths the same words to his niece, but his polished delivery conceals the tremor of anxiety coursing through the living room and motivating the ominous camera movement. In the work of David Lynch, words can be deceiving but images seldom lie...we just have to open ourselves up to whatever reality they are conveying. When Leland sees Bob in the mirror, does this mean that Leland is Bob? That the lovable, eccentric small-town lawyer, loving husband and father, is actually inhabited by a demon from the woods? Or does it mean that Bob is Leland, that the specter of darkness flitting along the town's periphery is in fact a tumor growing within the Palmer home, that deep down inside Laura's grief-stricken dad is rage, jealousy and maniacal pleasure in the power that killed her and now her cousin. This is truly a reveal that poses as many questions as it answers, particularly given Mary Sweeney's masterful cutting of the sequence - dissolving between Bob, drowned in terrifying oversaturation, and Leland, conveyed in sickeningly naturalistic photography. This is the only episode of Twin Peaks that Sweeney edited, and she has attributed her and Lynch's deep bond to the experience of cutting between the horror of the Palmer living room and the deep sadness of the Road House (Sweeney went on to edit and produce most of Lynch’s subsequent films, giving birth to his son and living with him for 15 years - the director’s longest romantic relationship). This is also the last episode that Mark Frost would write solo for Twin Peaks (he collaborated on three more scripts). Compared to the more colorful Harley Peyton, Frost's teleplays tend to have a certain plainspoken efficiency to them. Like the pilot, episode 14 carefully weaves together several plot strands while complementing the main action with side stories that feel thematically linked. And in a way, despite his increasingly avant-garde flourishes (there's nothing like the ball-bouncing sailors or Sarah's vision of the horse in the pilot), Lynch's direction is also very matter-of-fact. Shelly's and Bobby's situation no longer seems cartoonish and soap-operatic, playing instead like a slice-of-life. Bills pile up as their exhausted demeanor betrays how far they are in over their heads. The Mike-possessed Phillip Gerard, commanding the camera magnificently at the end of ep. 13, now seems slightly disheveled, more like a street-corner prophet. He might be mad, he might be brilliant, he might be both - but you can't quite tell just by looking at or listening to him. Meanwhile, the real Nadine can be glimpsed beneath her adolescent delusions, as flimsy a cover as her eyepatch, desperate self-deception played for pathos as much as comedy. Like all the other delusions and attempts at escape, this can’t end well, and the violent sexual explosion of that red cherry foreshadows Maddy's own bloody demise at the episode's end. Despite its reputation for fantastical exaggeration, Twin Peaks has always had a streak of uber-realism as well. When it premiered the critics spilled as much ink on the dead air, subtle gestures and casually naturalistic decor as they did counting Lynch's visual quirks. The depiction of Maddy's murder may be the logical culmination of this duality. Several viewers have observed that 14 (which takes us to the exact midpoint of the series) feels like it should be the end of Twin Peaks. Tony Dayoub writes, "Had the show ended with this episode, especially with the end credits roll over Cooper's face half-dissolved into the red curtains, it would have been almost a perfect TV series. The end is so poignant because of the previously superheroic Coop's utter failure to catch the right guy." And on the Log Ladies podcast, the hosts (who are both watching the series for the first time), remark to one another, "This feels so much like a series finale." The reason isn't simply that the question posed by the pilot has been answered. It's that the scene at the Road House essentially sums up the core experience of the show: an overwhelmed sense of the darkness existing in this world, an inability to accurately locate and overcome this darkness, and a cocoon safe enough to keep most of its inhabitants unharmed but thin enough for them to hear, as the Log Lady says, "the night wind ... the magic rustling that brings on the dark dream. The dream of suffering and pain." This is what Laura whispered to Cooper in the episode I discussed last night, and if he was smiling then, he isn't smiling now. He will, however, be smiling at the end of the next and final episode of this rewatch: a sinister smile because he has come to know the darkness all too well.

Next: Episode 29 http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=44355#p44355
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Framed_Angel
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Re: Episode 14

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I watched this last night, from my gold box collection. I can only bring myself to view the murder but every so often. I want to keep its power intact and let my recall of it grow hazy between viewings, if possible.

What most struck me with last night's viewing. Whereas before, the sound effects stood out most as far as sensory; and the experiencing from victim's POV as someone earlier mentioned here - - I always marveled how readily I could feel Maddy's panic, shock, horror at what's happening, and the distinct feeling BOB was feeding off of that fear with his visible delight. The transformation of Leland's personality, now deranged, corrupted.

This time, what stood out was Sheryl Lee's performance and I suppose Lynch's direction/ blocking or such. Maddy is shown running from corner to corner (in slow motion but still). Trapped. The room feels so claustrophobically inescapable. On reflection I'm wishing she'd darted out the front door not up the stairs. But here she is, and it reminds me of nothing so much as when I last saw a mouse dropped into a snake's cage. The snakes I've seen on these occasions have not gobbled up their treat right away but slowly hone in on their prey, in one case I saw the mouse wasn't even aware it wasn't alone until.. then you watch it perceive the snake approaching.. there's perceptible panic in its reaction -- And this is EXACTLY what I was reminded of seeing Maddy apprehend her murderer in that awful living room.
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PeaksCarnivaleLost
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Re: Episode 14

Post by PeaksCarnivaleLost »

One thing that bothers me is Leland's comment that "You just missed her / I took her to the train station" when asked by James/Donna about Maddy's whereabouts.

One or 2 eps before this one Maddy stated she would be driving back home.

I can see if this is just a scramble up with BOB not caring about accurate details but James/Donna just blew it off like it was gospel. I think if they were hanging out for a week or so prior to that they would indeed know if Maddy had her car in Twin Peaks or not.

It would be much better to get some kind of knowing look out of Donna/James "hey wait, didn't Maddy say ..." and then you are waiting for BOB to freak out and possibly attack the kids.

In this instance it's just a continuity error.

All in all enjoy the 2nd rewatch this year. I hope to post better comments than nit-pickers going forward. :)
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David Locke
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Re: Episode 14

Post by David Locke »

The Roadhouse scene is an emotional powerhouse no matter how many times I see it. Not much new to be said here. But what really separates this episode from most of the rest is that emotion. Even the quite strong Episode 15 which follows can't help but feel like a disappointment because it doesn't continue the compassion and sadness witnessed just the night before; somehow it all feels like business as usual. The same pretty much holds for Episode 16 and certainly the ridiculous 17. The Pilot was unique for TV because it showed so much naked emotion, grieving, etc. I think TP is at its best when it lingers on this. It's at its worst when it brushes the bruising stuff to the side and focuses on the wacky and the banal and the "suspenseful" purely for the sake of it. I don't want to boil it down to another case of Lynch's touch vs. everybody else's but it is pretty much only Lynch who brings this great emotion to the show, and without him we would not have the ending of this episode which is just one of the most moving things imaginable. It pushes every button, but not in a manipulative way.
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Re: Episode 14

Post by TwinPeaksFanatic »

When I think of what I love about Twin Peaks or where I think it shines the brightest, even within the darkness, it's always episode 14.

I wrote a recap for the episode, which can be found here --- > http://twinpeaksfanatic.blogspot.com/20 ... de-14.html

:D
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