What if the mystery had never been solved?

[philosofish]

What if the mystery of "who killed Laura Palmer" had never been solved, as Lynch (and Frost?) preferred? Wouldn't Cooper have eventually been seen as incompetent? What would be his excuse to remain in Twin Peaks endlessly? Maybe the whole Leland possessed by Bob plot wouldn't exist, or would it? "Fire Walk With Me" wouldn't exist, or would be a very different film. Maybe we wouldn't know as much as we do about the lodge.

Would we even be here?

"Maybe, maybe the sun won't come up tomorrow if you wash your hair. Think like that and you're going to go crazy."

[Agent Sam Stanley]

I think people would eventually get tired of it and stop watching, just like happened to Lost.
I remember, Lost was on season 3 and still everytime one mystery was solved, 20 new mysteries were added to make people scratch their heads and make things even more confusing. Viewers eventually got tired of it and tuned off. I believe the show was still popular when it ended, but I think at least half of its initial popularity was gone.
Same happened to The Killing (american remake). They finished season one without solving who killed Rosie Larsen, that almost killed the show. It almost got cancelled twice before they could give it a proper ending.
Apparently it's not a wise decision to keep viewers in the dark too long when it comes to mysteries.

I love the way the killer was revealed in TP, still stands today as one of the most powerful moments in prime time TV.
As for Leland's arrest and the way they wrapped the case, well, feels a little bit rushed. I'd give a few more episodes. We spent 14 episodes to find out who did it, and then 2 to wrap things up. Plus the plot change is too abrupt. That's what bothers most viewers.

[LostInTheMovies]

What if the mystery of "who killed Laura Palmer" had never been solved, as Lynch (and Frost?) preferred? Wouldn't Cooper have eventually been seen as incompetent? What would be his excuse to remain in Twin Peaks endlessly? Maybe the whole Leland possessed by Bob plot wouldn't exist, or would it? "Fire Walk With Me" wouldn't exist, or would be a very different film. Maybe we wouldn't know as much as we do about the lodge.

Would we even be here?

"Maybe, maybe the sun won't come up tomorrow if you wash your hair. Think like that and you're going to go crazy."

I think if they could have gotten away with it, Lynch and Frost would have revealed it eventually, but probably not until the series finale. Or perhaps, if they didn't explicitly reveal it, they would have planted enough clues for the viewers to figure out on their own. But I don't believe they would have left it completely unsolved in the sense that we couldn't know, or that there wasn't even a "correct" answer. After all, what would be the point of designating Leland the killer in that case (something that was supposedly done very early on). Also, I don't think Twin Peaks was ever as "postmodern" as critics took it to be at the time. For all its narrative games and playful sense of trickery, it ultimately did have a very serious purpose. Both Lynch and Frost had distinctive worldviews expressed through their storytelling, and to simply say, "Hey, there's no right answer!" doesn't seem consistent with their ethos, however much they enjoyed ambiguity and eschewed overexplanation.

Anyway, while it ultimately cut the series short, I can't say I'm dissatisfied with the course the reveal took. It yielded some of TV's best episodes and one of its most compelling arcs, as well as a film masterpiece that could never have existed had the question remained open for many seasons. I also wonder how long the series could have sustained the mood and tension of season one, especially when spread over 22-episode seasons. I think revealing Laura's killer after 14 episodes was fatal to the show but also probably necessary: at heart, Twin Peaks was something more like a miniseries or a long-form movie than a conventional TV show.

[StealThisCorn]

I think if the plan was to have Maddy come up dead, wrapped in plastic, the list of tenable suspects would have narrowed considerably. I can't think of anyone besides Leland who had any meaningful contact with her anyways, and his increasingly bizarre behavior was already singling him out. Maybe they should have killed off Donna that way instead and spared us the many agonizing later plot lines involving her and especially making James leave and never come back. Sorry to any James and Donna lovers out there.

While I love the brutal scenes of Leland/BOB murdering Maddy in the living room, I do wish they had drug it out a few more episodes because I like the idea of how much it has been built up that Ben Horne could be the murderer. I don't really like it when the characters in the show suspect him because he really does have a lot of "circumstantial" evidence against him (and just being a slimy rat bastard in general), but yet the viewer has already seen Leland do it and so is just waiting around for the characters to figure it out.

I do wonder if they could have managed to not to reveal who the serial killer was if they could have introduced other mysteries that were just as interesting (the Packard Sawmill Conspiracies were not just as interesting and Windom Earle came to late and wasn't, in my opinion, handled particularly well) and solved those to keep the viewer satisfied forward momentum was building, while still dropping clues to the murder mystery here and there to build anticipation for a big reveal. And then even after revealing it, they didn't need to rush things and wrap it up so neatly like they tried to do. That could have provided a natural springboard into the spiritual mysteries of the show, since while Leland may be locked up, the real serial killer, BOB is now out there somehow and will require more than just mundane detective work to apprehend. I wish they wouldn't have just ignored whatever happened to Philip Gerard, Sarah Palmer and Ronnette Pulaski for almost the rest of the season either.

[LostInTheMovies]

As for Leland's arrest and the way they wrapped the case, well, feels a little bit rushed. I'd give a few more episodes. We spent 14 episodes to find out who did it, and then 2 to wrap things up.

Agreed. I always found episode 16 awkward and unsatisfying for numerous reasons. Lately I've begun to realize its potential despite its many flaws (it's one of the most fascinating episodes for me as well - frustrating but never boring). Somewhere beneath the desperate and somewhat hollow exaggeration, there's a compelling denouement struggling to get out. Although its depiction of Bob is often cartoonish, it asks some compelling questions about his nature, planting the seeds for the film. Although the Road House "discovery" takes advantage of the show's supernatural aura withou actually evoking Lynch's surreal touch, there are very intriguing elements at play (among them, the ring=knowledge motif and the idea that Laura must be the one to implicate Leland; that said, I could certainly do without the shoehorned-in gum). And although Tim Hunter's direction is too flamboyant and baroque for my tastes (the freeze-frames, the endless canted angles) there is something effective and, in an odd way, honest about the episodes high energy: as if for the first time, Twin Peaks is losing its cool and acknowleding that it's in over its head. It's a pity that instead of embracing this uncertainty and moving forward into the unknown, the show immediately retreated into pretending it could be a wacky sitcom in which Laura Palmer and the darkness she represented were just a distant memory. Both episodes 16 and 17 (with it's transparently confused/confusing wake scene) are fascinating messes that reveal so much about what one could call Twin Peaks' midlife identity crisis!

[StealThisCorn]

I always found episode 16 awkward and unsatisfying for numerous reasons.

So true. I cringe when hearing Cooper say Leland danced because the Little Man danced (Audrey danced too! the Little Man dances later even after Leland is done with!) or his hair turned "gray" because BOB is a long-grey haired man (his hair turned white!). I wasn't even really satisfied with how the letters were just spelling "Robert". BOB is never called "Robert" and it feels really random and simple. When I first started the series, I thought the letters under the fingernails were going to turn out to be something a lot more interesting and meaningful.

and 17 (with it's transparently confused/confusing wake scene)

Yeah, it's like, really? We barely get to see how the town reacts to the fact that one of their most upstanding citizens was a child molester and serial killer! We never see Bobby have a moment like, OH that's why Laura was so fucked up. Or James. Or his former business partner Ben Horne, except for that brief "Leland??" moment.

It just makes it feel like there is very little continuity.

[LostInTheMovies]

That could have provided a natural springboard into the spiritual mysteries of the show, since while Leland may be locked up, the real serial killer, BOB is now out there somehow and will require more than just mundane detective work to apprehend.

^This! Although ep. 16 disappointed me when I first saw it, I was very excited by the ending. Brilliant, I thiught, they've managed to "solve" the mystery yet open up an even bigger one! Sadly the subsequent episodes drop the ball in the desperate (if understandable) attempt to reconstruct the show as a quirky but nonetheless conventional TV show. But go back and watch the pilot...EVERYTHING in it is related to Laura Palmer and the irresistible desire to know not just who killed her, but why she was killed, who she was, and how her life and death relate to the larger community and it's overwhelming sense of guilt, grief, and inexplicable unease. The pilot is simply too strong for its own good, foreclosing any possibility of the show succeeding without the Laura mystery remaining at its core. The ONLY way the show could have moved beyond revealing her killer would be to treat that revelation as just one building block in a larger mystery, never forgetting how (and with whom) it began. Lynch has often used the analogy of the goose that laid the golden eggs but he's also spoken of the Laura mystery as a tree with many branches. Attempting to remove Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks is like slicing the roots off a tree and then acting surprised when the tree dies.

I wish they wouldn't have just ignored whatever happened to Philip Gerard, Sarah Palmer and Ronnette Pulaski for almost the rest of the season either.

^This too. It always amazes me that Sarah's final line in the show (at least until Lynch improvised a way to shoehorn her into the finale) is, "I want to remember EVERYTHING." Almost like the creators knew what they were doing.

[Fernanda]

"He is BOB, eager for fun. He wears a smile; everybody run. Do you understand the parasite? It attaches itself to a life form and feeds. BOB requires a human host. He feeds on fear and the pleasures. They are his children. I am similar to BOB. We once were partners."

Cooper's "conclusion", as scripted:

"The man next door was Robertson - Mike said the people Bob inhabited where his children - Robertson, son of Robert, the name being spelled under the fingernails."

[LostInTheMovies]

Yeah, it's like, really? We barely get to see how the town reacts to the fact that one of their most upstanding citizens was a child molester and serial killer! We never see Bobby have a moment like, OH that's why Laura was so fucked up. Or James. Or his former business partner Ben Horne, except for that brief "Leland??" moment.

It just makes it feel like there is very little continuity.

It is a pretty jaw-dropping episode. Watching it again recently, I was amazed at how many jump-the-shark moments are packed into 45 minutes: the goofiness of the wake, Cooper losing the suit, Audrey & Ben starting to wear suits, Audrey & Cooper "breaking up", Super Nadine's jock-toss, etc. Michael Warren has a great post lampooning the wake scene in particular (check out his captions under Coop, Doc, and Pete's conversation): http://entertainmentguidefilmtv.blogspo ... 20-26.html. Tina Rathborne has also said that she really didn't understand at all what the episode was supposed to be going for and this uncertainty is very apparent in her direction: the frequent cutaways to drab, somber looking b-roll in the midst of zany comic sequences; the wake scene awkwardly shifting back and forth between a hymnlike organ and lighthearted percussion; the unmotivated cutting between goofy banter and half-hearted attempts to address the town's tragedy in that same scene. You can just tell that no one, from the writer to the director to the actors, feels comfortable with the direction Twin Peaks is heading in. For that reason episode 17 is really fascinating to me, albeit in a train-wreck kind of way. Like the show has a guilty conscience which won't allow it to repress or deny.

[Fernanda]

BOB is never called "Robert" and it feels really random and simple. When I first started the series, I thought the letters under the fingernails were going to turn out to be something a lot more interesting and meaningful.

Bob was spelling his name; a signature on a demon's self-portrait. He was inscribing himself in his victims. His attempt at co-opting a "feminine identity" moves him further from MIKE and denies their wedding vows. From Cooper's dream: (sarcastically) "I had so much wanted to sing with him again."

Tania Modleski is especially helpful on the subject of the repressive construction of male identity through literality in "Lethal Bodies: Thoughts on Sex, Gender and Representation from the Mainstream to the Margins," in Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age, pp 135-64.

"Our lives exist in a symbiotic relationship between the symbolic universe - the world in which we are theoretically existing currently - and the post-symbolic universe of the Black Lodge. Within 'our' world the big Other is theoretically absent apart from its representation within the camera's lense. Within Bob's world, the big Other is Bob: Bob is the symbolic logical excess that cannot find a place within 'our' world yet exists theoretically nonetheless. Bob governs a dimension in which the inversion and convolution of the boundaries structuring symbolic reality - words becoming corporeal, bodies becoming linguistic - find a physical formulation."

[StealThisCorn]

Bob was spelling his name; a signature on a demon's self-portrait. He was inscribing himself in his victims.

Fair enough, but c'mon. Is the demon who has existed "since the beginning of time"'s name really Bob or "Robert"? Would such beings actually have human names? I like it for what it is--it's a playful twist to have the incredibly creepy and monstrous spirit have a name like "Bob" (and probably once was part of a twinning motif with "MIKE and BOB" mirroring "Mike and Bobby", though whatever this was intended to signify seems to have been lost long ago in the script).

I'm not sure what I would have done with the letters, but the way they introduce their mystery in the pilot, makes me question whether they were intended to end that way in the series, though I suppose the ending of the European pilot does have "Bob" explain they were spelling his proper name, "Robert", even though he's just a psycho in the hospital basement in that version.

[philosofish]

It seems to me that Twin Peaks could never have been a long-running series, at least not without radical changes, whether the LP mystery was ever solved or not. I don't see how Cooper could have stayed permanently in the town without leaving the FBI, and maybe becoming a "quirky" private detective or something. Ugh.

[LostInTheMovies]

Bumping this thread. It got diverted into a discussion of ep. 16/17 but I'm keen to know what other people think of this big question - should the killer have been revealed? It's really several different questions.

If yes, then...

- should it have been revealed later?

- should the show have ended with this reveal in ep. 14? (hypothetical, since TP obviously was not going to be a miniseries at this point)

- how should the show have followed up on this reveal?

If no, then...

- should the show have revealed the killer eventually, or truly never at all?

- do you think the show could have survived as an ongoing mystery or just that it would have been a more artistically-satisfying way to go out without solving the crime?

- how do you think the show should have unfolded with the mystery unsolved; as Lynch/Frost's (supposed) original plan to let the mystery simmer in the background while other storylines took the foreground, or in some other way?


I have a double posture on the reveal. I think it kills the show as an ongoing series while turning it into a greater, more profound work of art. Not only are the best parts of the saga - Maddy's murder & the Road House, Cooper's odyssey into the Lodge, Laura's last days in Fire Walk With Me (and arguably even Lynch's later films) - ONLY possible because of the "premature" reveal, but without telling us Leland killed Laura the series would essentially be a fun, fascinating tease. The whodunit would still seem like a mere plot device - which may indeed be all it was to Lynch and Frost at first. When that changed, I think Twin Peaks ascended to a new level.

[Rami Airola]

Bumping this thread. It got diverted into a discussion of ep. 16/17 but I'm keen to know what other people think of this big question - should the killer have been revealed? It's really several different questions.

If yes, then...

- should it have been revealed later?

- should the show have ended with this reveal in ep. 14? (hypothetical, since TP obviously was not going to be a miniseries at this point)

- how should the show have followed up on this reveal?

Yes, absolutely. First of all, most of Twin Peaks fans probably agree, that the reveal of the killer is perhaps one of the best scenes ever in audiovisual entertainment, and the final episode is one of the best tv series finales ever, if not the best. Without the reveal, we wouldn't have had those. I find only one fault in the killer's reveal / Maddy's murder scene: The part where Leland throws Maddy to the wall doesn't have the impact it needs to have. The POV shot is too slow to give the feeling of causing death. It kinda feels like it even slows a bit just before the camera hits the wall. It has always irked me, but apart from that the scene is perfect.

Secondly, maybe we should admit that the initial idea of Laura's murder becoming secondary issue and the secret lives of the townsfolk becoming the primary issue just wouldn't have worked no matter what they chose to do with the killer's reveal. Basically the reveal was exactly that; they lost the Laura storyline and focused on the citizens of Twin Peaks, which in fact was what the original idea was supposed to be.

If they wouldn't have decided to reveal the killer, what on earth they would've done with the second season? If Laura was supposed to get into the background, there probably wouldn't have been a need to get a giant to give clues, and to have interesting stuff with Mike. The search for Bob probably wouldn't be there. I would assume they would've done more stuff with the Packard sawmill plot and Horne's Ghostwood project and stuff like that which were not the most interesting things in the first season.

Maybe the reveal of Laura's killer just brought out the fact that David and Mark just didn't have what it takes to come up with lots of interesting stuff about regular townsfolk.


The point when the killer was revealed was good. There was no need to reveal it sooner or later.

Repeating what has already been said in this thread, I think the biggest mistake after the reveal and the death of Leland was that it was forgotten way too soon. To me, the story of Laura has always been almost as much, or even equally as much, about Leland. There is tons of stuff they could've explored what comes to a person who has been sexually abusing her daughter for years and who has been drugging his wife to hide that. But they chose to say a couple of lines about that and never went further with it. They could've let some of the townspeople to shame the memory of Leland, and then perhaps in some way show that this person would've had his own skeletons in the closet. Just because the killer has been revealed and died doesn't mean they should abandon him completely. They went on so long with dead Laura. They could've put another five or so episodes to fully explore the legacy of a troubled father. Being dead is not a reason to forget anyone in Twin Peaks.

I'm so glad David seemed to understand this when he went on to make FWWM. The scene in the end when Leland is walking to the circle of sycamore trees and we see the "make-up" version of Leland shouting in agony goes straight to the core of the story of Leland. I'm really glad David gave the character of Leland that little scene. In one image he showed more about Leland than what they basically gave in the whole series.

[LostInTheMovies]

Re: Rami,

I think the biggest disappointment in all of Twin Peaks is that we never got to see the community's reaction to Leland. It feels like all the stuff with Doc Hayward & Truman & Judge Sternwood in ep. 11, in which they basically unleash the clearly deranged Leland to kill again because "his daughter died," he is their friend, and his family goes way back (!), is perfect set-up for the town to visit its own demons, but it never pays off in the town's storyline(s).

The ONLY moment that essentially gives us the town's perspective is the one with Donna walking and crying after Leland grabs her while dancing. The follow-up scene positions this as being about Maddy's disappearance, but Tim Hunter and LFB play it (and the preceding moment of shock in the Palmer household) so that it feels just as much about Donna's dawning realization of what Laura went through - and at whose hands she went through it.

Other than that, what do we have? The talk in the woods at the end of ep. 16 which is really more about the Bob question. Cooper comforting Sarah at the beginning of ep. 17 which also ends up being about Bob and only about Leland inasmuch as it lets him off the hook. The terrible wake sequence in which Leland is never mentioned once (!!!) - compare THAT to Laura's funeral (I sometimes wonder if the actors were even told whose wake they were attending haha). A headline in a newspaper whose story we can't read. And Ben's casual aside about Leland being a "homicidal maniac."

I suppose part of the lack of response is due to the complications of the Bob issue. By hammering this point so strongly in Leland's capture and death, the series ensures that any fallout from the reveal also has to address the community realizing supernatural demons were in their midst which opens up a whole other can of worms. Are other people trying to protest Leland's innocence via Bob? Is Bob being concealed from the community? Are people wondering when Leland was Leland and when he was Bob? Are they paranoid about another Bob in their midst? I began typing these questions as evidence that the show had painted itself into an impossible corner but now I'm realizing these are potentially interesting avenues as well.

The more I think about it, the #1 missed opportunity is Doc Hayward. Imagine if you will, that Donna goes home crying to him, telling him Leland tried to molest her, maybe even kill her. Doc is the guy who accompanied Leland to the morgue. Who solemnizes the playful opening of ep. 1 by sadly shaking his head over Laura's autopsy report. Who protects her body from Albert before the funeral, inadvertently tips Leland off about Jacques, invites the Palmers over for dinner and observes Leland's collapse, witnesses Leland's confession to killing Jacques (why is he there? but it works), and angrily defends Leland to Cooper afterwards. One of the kindest men in Twin Peaks, a man who loved both Laura and his good friend Leland. Can you IMAGINE the horror and anguish that would have gone through his mind if Donna said this? And then if he'd gone to the sheriff to report it or find out more (or because they called for a doctor) and discovered Leland there mid-breakdown and witnessed his death? What a moment for that character, essentially the follow-up on fifteen episodes of preparation. Questions of did I know/suspect underneath? Did I put my daughter in harm's way? What does this mean not just for my understanding of Leland and Laura, but of life period?

Instead, the first time we see him after he was contemptuously drawing blood from #1 suspect Ben Horne he's giggling about the mayor's shenanigans at his best friend/serial killer's wake. Aside from everything else, what a complete travesty of dramatic potential.