The Random Twin Peaks Thread

[laughingpinecone]

First I cheered at formalwear!Ontkean, then I saw the shoes...

[NJL54]

I'm a relative newbie, so please forgive if this has come up elsewhere...

Has anyone else noticed how much Waitress (2007) borrows from TP's Double-R Diner staff, specifically Shelly?

-blue uniforms
-emphasis on pies
-Keri Russell - similar features and coloring, hairstyle
-Jenna's abusive, controlling husband
-Cheryl Hines' character similar to Peggy Lipton - older, "mother" figure
-quirky, offbeat humor and characters

Coincidentally, the film's director was Adrienne SHELLY.

It struck me immediately upon most recent TP rewatch.

[Soolsma]

Dunno whoever made this but I freaking love it

In case you didn't notice; it's a fake

[Soolsma]

Those little details, like his hairdo having little trees, love 'em

[Soolsma]

...

[Here Comes That Bob]

This is a random thought so I guess it suits the thread...

But does anyone else get really annoyed with Jean Renault's accent?? I'm in the middle of a rewatch and everytime his character comes on screen I just cannot take him seriously because of his fake and overly caricaturistic accent.

[Agent Sam Stanley]

The accent of the younger brother was a lot worse IMO.
So fake.

[Soolsma]

love this

[Mace]

Agreed! Whenever I see that picture I am reminded of this scene:
Leland "Have you ever experienced absolute loss?"
Cooper "I doubt that any one of us is a stranger to grief."
Leland "More than grief. It’s deep down inside. Every cell screams. You can hear nothing else."

I feel that Leland's description perfectly matches the look on Laura's face. Laura's face expresses both complete horror and absolute loss. Every cell in Laura is screaming.

[Ashok]

Has anyone seen this old set pic before? It's new to me.


https://www.instagram.com/p/BPc_ZueDaGV/

[N. Needleman]

Moved from the 2017 thread:

's not like there's a scene like an opening statement where they say it would be wrong, like she replaced Josie (crook and best friend's girlfriend), or like Frost said that Cooper's fate was always to fall.
30 episodes and a movie don't have the time to spell everything out, but if a detail stays consistent between all additional materials and the show now, chances are it was known to everyone involved.

I guess this shift in views may derive from a more general interpretation of the show, whether we see it as eminently about good people doing good things (like taking the initiative to help a loved one with an investigation) or flawed people doing flawed things (like selling oneself to a prostitution ring because of an idealised view of investigations). We'll all see in a few weeks what balance season 3 will strike.

The truth is, IMO, a lot more complicated - and messy - than that.

First, I think it's always a mistake to view TP through a contemporary TV lens - in which we're now dealing with showrunners who are in constant engagement with media about their process, submitting fully-realized bibles, five year plans, breaking down whole seasons or long multi-year arcs and explaining to journalists how they seeded something for years. From what we understand, a lot of that just didn't happen on Twin Peaks, and wasn't happening often at all at the time - they were breaking the mold for so much future TV, but to the best of my knowledge long, long-term planning and thematic pathways, the kinds we see now, weren't as articulated as what you describe. That happens today, it didn't happen in quite the same way then.

For examples: Audrey and Donna's characters were modulated between seasons at the request of their performers; half of Season 2 was scrapped and reworked on the fly; FWWM and the last seven days of Laura Palmer were not a gleam in anyone's eye. That was all Lynch, all his vision, all his focus, and it came much later. They were not planning for that story of Laura or its resonances or its visceral take on incest and abuse, and from what I've read I doubt very much they were planning for the details of the Season 2 finale cliffhanger either until they suddenly, finally hit on the idea of a big scene which they hoped would get them a big renewal ("He looks in the mirror and it's BOB", was supposedly the quote). Based on what we know of how the show was made, how so many shows were made back then, we have no indicator saying this was something deeply-seeded into the show. That's just not how they worked then. It's exciting for us to think about and to draw the thematic or plot connections between various points for ourselves as thinking fans, but what we know and I think should remember is that a lot of that comes from us and always has, whereas so much of the actual making of the show was just seat of their pants dreaming and creating. No one had ever done it like them.

There's also Lynch and Frost's own dissonances to consider. For the longest time Lynch apparently perceived Cooper as an idealized archetype fused from himself, Frost and the ideals he holds dear - the ultimate Eagle Scout, truthseeker, etc. It was Frost who pushed to introduce the darker backstory with Caroline and Windom Earle, to complicate the character, Frost's brother who wrote MLMT, Frost (I think) who came up with BOB possessing Cooper - while Lynch then stepped in and said 'no, it cannot be that, it will be this,' and then the doppleganger concept is born. We also know Lynch has had no interest in the books and has not read Secret History. I'm not making a judgment on that personally because I don't hew fully to either extreme; I love the books, I like the backstory, I think the synthesis of the two men's vision is the best version of the character and I assume Cooper will be quite tarnished in Season 3. I'm just saying that that conflict in versions of truth or of characterization has always been there, and never been fully deliberate or intentional.

Going back to stylization, though, and the women I mentioned, here's where it stays messy (and please remember I'm a gay dude with no dog in this fight): Audrey, the high school faux-vixen, is presented as a sensual heroine in Season 1. While there's much more to her than that, the sexual tension with not only her and Cooper, but her and the camera's male gaze, is a major part of how she's utilized. Her dance scenes (via Lynch) are deliberately sensual, and she was promoted and marketed heavily by the show and the network as the sexiest thing on TV without having to take her clothes off. This is not something an audience did later, it's the show, the showrunners and the media. Her cherry stem scene becomes overnight legend despite this being, as presented, a nearly-underage (or underage, depending on who you ask) teenager. While the show makes her character three-dimensional and deeply damaged, and acknowledges her faux-image as a desperate need to feel grown-up, while it allows Cooper to turn her down, it does not stop giving Audrey that sexual/sensual agency on-camera, or stop engaging with it with enthusiasm. Instead, the creative team even begins making active plans to romantically pair Cooper and Audrey in Season 2 as the next major story arc. This has all been done in spite of the scenes already filmed in mid-Season 1, and I don't think there was much of a discussion of it being a fatally flawed, bad idea which would lead Cooper to doom. I'm pretty sure they did it because they loved the characters, thought they worked together and wanted to make it happen.

Likewise: Donna, the innocent high schooler, became a far more sexualized character in S2 as per a sudden, external influence. Lynch's own camera follows and is magnetized to her in Episode 8, with Badalamenti's sexy music as characters in the cop shop gawk at her, and plays her in that episode and others for a sense of eroticism, right down to biting James' knuckle in extreme close-up; later, Donna is unmasked as trying too hard to fill Laura's shoes, but the show's willingness to play with her/LFB being a sexy teen goddess, just like Sherilyn/Audrey, is evident and is not something they apologize for or walk back. Lara Flynn Boyle quickly became one of the sexiest women on TV in the '90s and early 2000s, and it began with her image shift on Twin Peaks.

Later: Audrey went from being the faux-temptress to wearing power suits and running her family's business while still, ostensibly, aged 17-18. Bobby, same thing while continuing to have wild sex with Shelly Johnson, who may or may not have been a child bride. The entire Mike/Nadine relationship is played for laughs and fun, and we're intended to see Nadine as a funny sexual dynamo who satisfies Snake. We're intended to see Bobby and Shelly as a fun, sexy, naughty couple, and to see fortysomething Gordon Cole as a suitable mate for barely-legal Shelly - not because they care about her age onscreen, but because Mädchen Amick is a beautiful woman who was in her twenties who David Lynch enjoyed spending time with.

None of these creative choices would be allowed to happen in the same way today without some kind of explicit textual acknowledgement of the various dissonance and social taboos, but again, times were different in terms of how TV treated those things. Also, and most important IMO: The show honestly just didn't care that much. They did what they wanted to do. They acknowledged these issues, of age, forbidden behavior, etc. in their own ways, but continued going towards various tracks.

This is why we talk about the show being heavy stylized - because it was, not just visually or in storytelling or heightened performances, but in how it treated the characters and these issues. Were you going to see multiple high school-aged characters in erotically charged scenes or even storylines with an adult recluse, or an FBI agent, or a mentally ill middle aged woman at any other show on the dial, or even today, with it being presented quite so loosely or matter-of-factly? People would be crucified.

TPTB at TP believed they had created a heightened, stylized world with heightened, stylized characters, and their treatment of important issues had and would continue to fluctuate wildly between broad comedy and gritty, harsh, raw reality, and then sometimes back again. Blackie O'Reilly goes from being the sinuous seductress running the gorgeous brothel in Episode 2 to the shaking heroin addict in Episode 8; Audrey goes from dancing in the Double R to crying and agreeing to stay up and talk with Cooper, her new friend, to being presented by the writers and directors as a plucky Nancy Drew in negligee at OEJ and finally to letting Bobby eat out of her hand by telling him she wants an ice cream cone because she likes to lick. Laura goes from damaged to doomed to irresistible to tragic to angelic across the span of FWWM, and none of those characters are false or invalid; all of them, IMO, are real, all of them are integral to her, all of them are how Lynch saw her, all at once. He said he wanted to see her move, breathe and talk, and that's how he made her do it.

To me this is just how the show is and always was: contradictory, imperfect, talking out of both sides of its mouth about both trauma and sexuality - but also getting away with it, because of the world and characters it created that were several degrees shifted off the axis from ours. It's not our reality, and it was made up as it went along, not fully designed and prepared for, and a lot of it may be messy or incorrect or even sometimes inappropriate in some contemporary eyes, but that's what it is. That's why they didn't hesitate to try to pursue Cooper/Audrey as a major root-for storyline in Season 2, because they felt their show's world would help make it acceptable and allow them to get away with it. That's why they did everything.

Whether we agree with those choices is a question of each of our opinions. I don't agree with everything. I just let it be what it is. I think trying to say it all fits a larger theorem we look back on it with is ultimately defeating, because it's not how it was made. I take what I feel works and let the rest be what it was for the time, the people and the different way of doing things.

[Audrey Horne]

I agree with and celebrate everything about your post, Needle. Fantastic.

[Ross]

Fantastic post Needleman. I only wish I were that articulate with my thoughts.

[Jerry Horne]

CBS puts the hammer down. Copyright infringement is a bitch:

[N. Needleman]

Oh, Sherilyn.