A Question For Original TP Viewers

[Dead Dog]

I'm really curious, do any of the original viewers that were following the series in '90-'91 remember what folks thought would happen in the series finale? What were your predictions/expectations? Were there popular fan theories? Did the final episode shock TP devotees, or was that the direction people expected?

I tried to do a google search but couldn't find much info on this. I was 12 years-old at the time and basically wasn't allowed to watch TV after 8:00, so other than Laura Palmer's portrait and the main theme, I had zero knowledge of this wonderful series until I finally watched it in 2008, after years of being a rabid Lynch devotee. I knew Leland was the culprit ahead of time, as some idiot on Netflix proudly spoiled it without warning in the reviews section, but I was taken by complete surprise by the Episode 29. It's haunted me for years (in a good way).

Anyway, hoping some original fans can share some stories with us!

[Jerry Horne]

I remember reading that it was probably the final episode due to ratings. Thus I was a little frustrated at what was clearly a cliffhanger. I suppose I was expecting more of a conclusion. Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart had happy endings. Clearly I should have anticipated it would return 26 years later.

[Mordeen]

It had been cancelled (despite David Lynch stepping in and rewriting the episode to address specific cliffhangers which might force the network's hand to renew) and was aired as a "movie of the week" with two episodes back-to-back and its fate sealed in advance.

However, my group was running several theories before we learned it wasn't being renewed. Highlights:

- Windom Earle would murder Annie and put Coop over the edge a la Caroline (pretty close to the mark)

- Windom Earle would murder Shelly, causing both Leo and Bobby to repent their foolish ways and turn toward good

- Cooper would be forced to kill Earle to save one of the girls, thus opening the Lodge by accident and being drawn in as an unintentional force of darkness


We had a large group with a bunch of divergent theories. Can't possibly remember them all.

-Mordeen

[chalfont]

What I remember:
I don't think many expected the fact that so much of the finale were to take place in the red room. I know I have replied this in another thread long time ago, however: The fact that the red room appears when Coop enters the black lodge came as a big surpise to me - remember - we hadn't really seen the red room since ep2!!...and there was really no clue in the last episodes when the characters was chasing the lodges that the red room would be on the other side.

[Hercousin]

Even though I was only 11 around the time of season 2, I followed all the newspaper and magazine blurbs about TP religiously, and I had a definite sense that it was coming to an end. I don't think anyone anticipated the kind of open-ended finale we got. At all. I mean, we knew who killed Laura but the big questions were "what is the Black Lodge and who are the beings living there?" The hardcore fans were just happy to have the finale aired since there were so many mini-hiatuses in the second season. By the second to last episode I think I'd already read rumors of a TP movie, so I knew there'd be something else to look forward to. Even so, the finale raised more questions than it answered but by then the world at large was done with that universe.

[The Jumping Man]

I'm sure I'll never find it now, but I remember writing up a couple paragraphs of what I thought might happen. Can't remember much except that I expected the "chess game" aspect to play out more than it did, perhaps with citizens of Twin Peaks on a giant chessboard. In retrospect, that's a little too Batman '66, but so was Windom Earle a lot of the time.

[LostInTheMovies]

Like you, I came to the series much later (same year in fact) but since then I've been collecting stories from those who saw the series when it originally aired. This includes anticipation of & reaction to the finale (scroll down on the links for those sections, they're both chronological):

Here from folks on the old alt.tv.twin-peaks newsgroup.

And here from folks on our very own dugpa board.

[Ross]

By the time the finale aired, the critics and public had turned on the show. There was practically no fanfare or expectations from the media or general public about the final. USA Today had a short article the day of the last episode. As for my own expectations, I was obsessed and the wait felt excruciating. I thought we would indeed see the Black Lodge but had no idea it would be the Red Room of Cooper's dream.

I wasn't expecting such a huge cliffhanger, but knew that it wouldn't be an ending. There were rumors at the time that the series could be revived in first run syndication.

Even though the episode is loved today, critical and public reaction to the episode was harsh. Although most people just didn't tune in. Letters to TV guide ripped it apart.

[dugpa]

I expected to see the Black Logde.

[Dead Dog]

Like you, I came to the series much later (same year in fact) but since then I've been collecting stories from those who saw the series when it originally aired. This includes anticipation of & reaction to the finale (scroll down on the links for those sections, they're both chronological):

Here from folks on the old alt.tv.twin-peaks newsgroup.

And here from folks on our very own dugpa board.

Much obliged!

[bob_wooler]

By the time the finale aired, the critics and public had turned on the show. There was practically no fanfare or expectations from the media or general public about the final. USA Today had a short article the day of the last episode. As for my own expectations, I was obsessed and the wait felt excruciating. I thought we would indeed see the Black Lodge but had no idea it would be the Red Room of Cooper's dream.

I wasn't expecting such a huge cliffhanger, but knew that it wouldn't be an ending. There were rumors at the time that the series could be revived in first run syndication.

Even though the episode is loved today, critical and public reaction to the episode was harsh. Although most people just didn't tune in. Letters to TV guide ripped it apart.

This fact will always amuse me: Ep 29 had, back in '91 (according to Wiki), 10.4 million(!) viewers in the US alone, which was, I've learned, considered a very small number for a TV show back then. Today, such numbers would be huge, wouldn't it? The world has certainly changed.

[Ross]

By the time the finale aired, the critics and public had turned on the show. There was practically no fanfare or expectations from the media or general public about the final. USA Today had a short article the day of the last episode. As for my own expectations, I was obsessed and the wait felt excruciating. I thought we would indeed see the Black Lodge but had no idea it would be the Red Room of Cooper's dream.

I wasn't expecting such a huge cliffhanger, but knew that it wouldn't be an ending. There were rumors at the time that the series could be revived in first run syndication.

Even though the episode is loved today, critical and public reaction to the episode was harsh. Although most people just didn't tune in. Letters to TV guide ripped it apart.

This fact will always amuse me: Ep 29 had, back in '91 (according to Wiki), 10.4 million(!) viewers in the US alone, which was, I've learned, considered a very small number for a TV show back then. Today, such numbers would be huge, wouldn't it? The world has certainly changed.

Very true. That was at the very bottom of all shows for the week back then. But now there are countless stations and shows so yes- things have changed for sure.

[TheArm]

I'm really curious, do any of the original viewers that were following the series in '90-'91 remember what folks thought would happen in the series finale? What were your predictions/expectations? Were there popular fan theories? Did the final episode shock TP devotees, or was that the direction people expected?

I tried to do a google search but couldn't find much info on this. I was 12 years-old at the time and basically wasn't allowed to watch TV after 8:00, so other than Laura Palmer's portrait and the main theme, I had zero knowledge of this wonderful series until I finally watched it in 2008, after years of being a rabid Lynch devotee. I knew Leland was the culprit ahead of time, as some idiot on Netflix proudly spoiled it without warning in the reviews section, but I was taken by complete surprise by the Episode 29. It's haunted me for years (in a good way).

Anyway, hoping some original fans can share some stories with us!

Honestly, my admittedly hazy memory of the reaction to the finale back in '91 was one of indifference and apathy. I think the culture of the day had generally written off the show at this point, and virtually nothing was written about it. I know that today it's been sort of rediscovered and hallowed today as a classic, a masterpiece, an influence on virtually every great drama, and the earliest harbinger of modern TV's "Golden Age," but in 1991 the show was mostly seen as a flash-in-the-pan curiosity at best, and an epic failure at worst.

There wasn't much of an Internet to speak of, but I remember generally that after the two-hour Season 2 premiere in the fall of 1990, it was like the series almost suddenly and completely vanished off of the pop culture radar. All of the think-pieces, magazine covers, fashion shoots, Entertainment Tonight and E! News stories, etc. came to a screeching halt. There was a small, brief resurgence of coverage I recall when the killer was revealed in November, but then it went totally silent. It really felt like, after the season premiere and it moved to Saturdays, everyone abandoned the show en masse.

When the finale aired, I remember my weekly newspaper TV guide had a small paragraph mentioning that it was the series finale, but that was it; I think the same was true of TV Guide. I remember EW writing a post-mortem of sorts on the show, but even then it was a fairly negative one that largely wrote TP off as a failure and said that it was a cautionary tale to other TV producers that audiences wanted comfort food like Roseanne and Cheers, and that TV would do well in future to stay away from arthouse-like pretensions. I remember the few reactions to the finale itself that I saw were resoundingly negative and felt the episode was a good summation of why the show had failed (pointlessly weird, self-indulgent, mean-spirited, meaningless, silly, empty, style over substance, etc., etc.). But even then, I'm making it sound like the reaction was loudly negative, when I mostly just remember that no one really cared and it aired with very little fanfare or interest at all.

And yes, as someone pointed out, there were vague rumors for a month or two of TP either moving to first-run syndication or the then-new FOX network until it was announced that there was going to be a movie instead.

Amazing how times change!! No matter how amazing or horrible the new series is, I'm just thrilled to see the original series finally getting the respect, love and appreciation it always deserved, because being a TP fan was a pretty lonely, quiet place for quite a long time.

[Wonderful & Strange]

I think I was 17 or 18. Once we were in the black lodge, I wanted to stay there, the show to keep going for hours. I didn't want to leave the TV during commercial breaks. The whole house used to seem under a spell during episodes, but especially that night. Shadows loomed larger. The cat seemed haunted. Grandmother kept silent.

The ending seemed apt, with Cooper's forehead punching the mirror glass, and I had an impossible hope that the wonder of it all would somehow bring a season 3.

[TheGreatWent]

I was 15 and had just finished my freshman year of high school. My closest friends were all Peaks Freaks like myself (my yearbook from that spring is covered in TP references and drawings!), but due to the constantly shifting ABC broadcasting schedule, even some of them were unaware of the finale. Then Monday June 10th came, and I fired up the old VCR and dove into one of the strangest and most unsettling TV experiences of my life. Weeks after Killer BOB's arm reached from the void of the Red Room (which explains, to me at least, the shaking hands of various characters), I simply felt content to see any sort of 'finale' at all. The show could have just as easily completely vanished without a trace - something that happened to another show soon after: "Golden Years", the Stephen King CBS series that never broadcast its finale due to low ratings (you had to rent the series on tape to see it).

I honestly recall not expecting anything other than a Windom Earle / Cooper showdown, but the recent episodes' BOB / LMFAP / Giant teases told me to expect a touch of the return to the supernatural aspects of the show. But NOTHING like what I watched over the next two hours. For me, Episodes 28-29 (forget those lame titles everyone seems to use nowadays!) were a thank-you card to all of us diehard fans that had stuck around through the ups and downs of this game-changing entertainment. Yes, I felt a bit cheated at first with the cliffhanger - though I had certainly expected something along those lines after all the Citizens Opposing the Offing of Peaks business, and rumbling about the show finding life elsewhere. But even after a few days of thought, I began to see it as a fitting final chapter. After reading My Life, My Tapes, I was convinced that Cooper's fate was sealed from the beginning - that he was always destined to become the ultimate 'host', due to his completely convincing 'cover' of being an upstanding FBI agent.

(For years and years, I had a recurring dream that I discovered the show still airing long after - only now it had become merely an off-beat soap opera with but a trace of its past greatness!)

Now it is time for Lynch and company to cast new spells, pose new questions, and extend the weird and wonderful world that is Twin Peaks....