A few question regarding the storyline

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krupuik
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A few question regarding the storyline

Post by krupuik »

Hey guys,

I just finished watching Twin Peaks but I still have some unanswered questions, so I decided to ask them here.
(I'm from Germany and we don't have a Twin Peaks Forum, so please excuse my English).

First: Why where there so many storylines? F.e everything about James and Donna, wasn't that completely irrellevant? Was there any meaning? I considered most things concerning Bobby, Shelly, Donna and James as boring and still don't see the connection to the main plot.

Second: How did Sarah Palmer not notice the fact that Leeland was posessed? I mean he molested Laura throughout her childhold and in Fire Walk with me he was clearly behaving strange sometimes. How is it possible he could do all that stuff without his own wife noticing or Laura saying anything about it or something about BOB in general?

Third: What happened to that Special Agent in Fire Walk with me? Again I don't see many connections between the murder of Theresa Banks and everything that happened to Laura (besides the fact that Leeland/ BOB killed both of them). And what did Cooper do in that movie anyway?

Last: Was Windom Earle also posessed by BOB?

I hope you guys aren't upset about those questions if they're dumb. But the series is older than me and plus I watched it in English (witch is not my first language), so maybe that could be the reason.

Thank you very much for spending your time!

Have a good one

Krupuik
Ygdrasel
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by Ygdrasel »

krupuik wrote:Hey guys,

I just finished watching Twin Peaks but I still have some unanswered questions, so I decided to ask them here.
(I'm from Germany and we don't have a Twin Peaks Forum, so please excuse my English).

First: Why where there so many storylines? F.e everything about James and Donna, wasn't that completely irrellevant? Was there any meaning? I considered most things concerning Bobby, Shelly, Donna and James as boring and still don't see the connection to the main plot.

Second: How did Sarah Palmer not notice the fact that Leeland was posessed? I mean he molested Laura throughout her childhold and in Fire Walk with me he was clearly behaving strange sometimes. How is it possible he could do all that stuff without his own wife noticing or Laura saying anything about it or something about BOB in general?

Third: What happened to that Special Agent in Fire Walk with me? Again I don't see many connections between the murder of Theresa Banks and everything that happened to Laura (besides the fact that Leeland/ BOB killed both of them). And what did Cooper do in that movie anyway?

Last: Was Windom Earle also posessed by BOB?

I hope you guys aren't upset about those questions if they're dumb. But the series is older than me and plus I watched it in English (witch is not my first language), so maybe that could be the reason.

Thank you very much for spending your time!

Have a good one

Krupuik
1) Because the town and its people are interesting. And Laura's life was tied to all of these people, while her demise was enabled by the evil that infected the town and woods. (Sidebar: I don't get people who focus too much on the 'main' plot to get any of the others going on...I keep getting lectured by those types to skip all the X Files 'filler' :lol:)

2) Have you ever been the wife of an unpredictable, occasionally aggressive, possibly crazy person? Speaking up never goes too great. And his odd behavior after Laura's end would likely just be assumed as stress. As for Laura speaking up: "Hey guys, I'm being raped nightly by a ghost named Bob!"...Yeah. XD (Also, molestation is often hidden in families, and few would ever even consider 'possession' as a valid explanation of any behavior anyway.)

3) The agent was transported to the Black Lodge. Cooper, trapped in the lodge, exploited the lodge's non-linear time passage to try and prevent the events that led to Laura's doom before they ever happened. He failed.

4) Explicitly, no. But there are theories relating to that. BOB and Windom both possess knowledge of Cooper being injured in the past from a stabbing, and Windom becomes madly obsessed with the Lodge, so some believe BOB possessed Windom at some unseen point prior to the series.
Last edited by Ygdrasel on Wed May 27, 2015 2:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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krupuik
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by krupuik »

Hey man, thanks for answering! Really put some light in my darkness.

to 1) I get that. For example Andy and Lucy were very entertaining, just like Nadine and Ed. But am I the only one considering everything about James and Donna was absolutely boring?

to 2) Leland molested Laura for a long time. In the movie Leland also behaved very strange. At one point Laura even saw Leland raping her. I just wonder how Sarah did not even suspect anything about her husband. (Also after Lauras death)

Everything else completely makes sense now. Thanks man!
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Ross
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by Ross »

#1 Twin Peaks is first and foremost a soap opera.
krupuik wrote:But am I the only one considering everything about James and Donna was absolutely boring?
Most TP fans don't like them (especially now), granted I'm not one of them. But they don't have a ton of fans.
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Ygdrasel
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by Ygdrasel »

krupuik wrote:Hey man, thanks for answering! Really put some light in my darkness.

to 1) I get that. For example Andy and Lucy were very entertaining, just like Nadine and Ed. But am I the only one considering everything about James and Donna was absolutely boring?

to 2) Leland molested Laura for a long time. In the movie Leland also behaved very strange. At one point Laura even saw Leland raping her. I just wonder how Sarah did not even suspect anything about her husband. (Also after Lauras death)

Everything else completely makes sense now. Thanks man!
1) James and Donna are widely considered the dullest of the cast, actually. Especially in season two.

2) Few would jump to molesty conclusions with family, regardless of circumstance. And one might assume that Sarah did know but didn't stop it. She can see BOB, remember. She may have known Leland was prey to a monster, and just been too traumatized or frightened to deal. Speculation, of course.
Twin Peaks has layers, man. Twin Peaks is an onion. 8)
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Ross
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by Ross »

Ygdrasel wrote:Few would jump to molesty conclusions with family, regardless of circumstance. And one might assume that Sarah did know but didn't stop it. She can see BOB, remember. She may have known Leland was prey to a monster, and just been too traumatized or frightened to deal. Speculation, of course.
Plus Leland was drugging her.
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OK,Bob
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by OK,Bob »

Ross wrote:
Ygdrasel wrote:Few would jump to molesty conclusions with family, regardless of circumstance. And one might assume that Sarah did know but didn't stop it. She can see BOB, remember. She may have known Leland was prey to a monster, and just been too traumatized or frightened to deal. Speculation, of course.
Plus Leland was drugging her.
Yes: Cooper specifically mentioned in episode 17 that Leland drugged Sarah "to keep his actions secret, " and we see him doing so in FWWM...
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by 4815162342 »

The drugging scene in FWWM implies that Sarah was complicit. Leland gently forces her to drink, and she sees the horse. I think she knew she was being drugged and willingly ignored it. I don't think the series supports this view, but the series has a different view of Leland as well.
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Audrey Horne
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by Audrey Horne »

Ross said it best, it is a soap opera.

Also remember this was week to week, long before binge watching came into fashion.

And it is a murder mystery, or at least started out that way. Most of the fun ( and frustration) came from everyone being a suspect. From Lucy to the Principal. So while some might be bored by Donna cooing to James, "we have to figure this out ourselves," it's tinged with someone yelling at the screen, "Yeah, because you killed Laura!"

If you pick up any whodunit novel, most will be filled with red herrings.
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by LostInTheMovies »

Good answers so far, but I'll throw my hat in the ring to because why not.
krupuik wrote:First: Why where there so many storylines? F.e everything about James and Donna, wasn't that completely irrellevant? Was there any meaning? I considered most things concerning Bobby, Shelly, Donna and James as boring and still don't see the connection to the main plot.
In addition to the soap (and murder mystery) aspects that others mentioned, there's also the fact that after the murder was solved, the writers weren't really sure where to take the story next (there was a lot of network pressure to reveal the killer, but Twin Peaks was not originally planned as a show that would sustain itself past the initial mystery). There was plan to focus on Cooper & Audrey's romance, but the actor Kyle MacLachlan (Cooper) nixed that - allegedly because his real-life girlfriend was the actress playing Donna and she didn't like the idea of him hooking up with Audrey. So the writers had to scramble to come up with other plotlines. Additionally for whatever reason - and there still isn't a great clear answer on this (because some of the excuses given don't ring true) Lynch and Frost essentially stepped back after the mystery ended and allowed other writers to run the show. Talented as they were with dialogue and character, plotting was not really their strong suit so they kind of threw everything at the wall to see what stuck.
Second: How did Sarah Palmer not notice the fact that Leeland was posessed? I mean he molested Laura throughout her childhold and in Fire Walk with me he was clearly behaving strange sometimes. How is it possible he could do all that stuff without his own wife noticing or Laura saying anything about it or something about BOB in general?
Others have covered this well. Leland drugged her but more importantly, she is - like many, many spouses of abusers unfortunately - in denial. I think she does kind of suspect what's going on but the knowledge is repressed and manifests itself in visions and other psychic phenomena. Even with the supernatural trappings, the show and the film are very true to real-life domestic abuse situations.
Third: What happened to that Special Agent in Fire Walk with me? Again I don't see many connections between the murder of Theresa Banks and everything that happened to Laura (besides the fact that Leeland/ BOB killed both of them). And what did Cooper do in that movie anyway?
Many people will say Desmond went to the Lodge but the truth is we don't know, and Lynch doesn't want us to know. He freezes the frame right before the FBI agent touches the ring, which is not a technique he uses anywhere else. It's like he's rubbing it in our faces that it is an uknowable mystery what happened to him. Maybe we will find out more in 2016.

The connection between Teresa and Laura is the Leland/Bob killed both of them because he threatened their power (both as Leland, and as Bob). Teresa was going to blackmail Leland once she discovered that he was Laura's father (Jacques says this in the nightclub scene, and the Missing Pieces deleted scenes show it explicitly). Laura told Leland to "stay away from her" the morning before she is killed. Likewise, on the show, Maddy is murdered when she tells Leland she's going to leave the Palmers' household (where she has become a surrogate daughter to them) and return to her home in Missoula. Leland/Bob have a problem with women they cannot control.
Last: Was Windom Earle also posessed by BOB?
I don't think so. I think if anything he is somewhat of a poseur. He longs desperately for the evil and power of Bob and the Black Lodge but he can't sustain himself in that realm. In a way, as ever, he's the reverse of Cooper. Cooper wants so much to be good and do good that his fear overtakes him in the Black Lodge. Windom wants so much to be bad and do bad - to be powerful in his evil - that his own desperation becomes his undoing. Basically, the Black Lodge seems to punish anyone who tries too hard, whether they are trying too hard to resist or trying too hard to take over. Excessive willpower doesn't go over well in David Lynch's world.
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lilyofthevalley
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by lilyofthevalley »

I wanted to address further the domestic abuse situation. For one, god bless you for not knowing how abusive families work. Ugh, very lucky. But my father was excessively domestically abusive towards my family and all we could do was go through it and then ignore it because life would go on. A lot of repression goes on in families like that. Also, what people have to understand is that because abuse victims have been so scared and so manipulated by their abusers they will then start to protect them. The victim will even throw themselves under the bus before even their abusers, by saying things like "oh it was my fault, I got in his way" or "oh it was my fault, I was a bad daughter or tempted him in some way". This has happened in multiple relationships for me where the man has been abusive in some fashion. My mother did this for some time until she got fed up but since we're a Latin American family she wanted to stay together "for the kids" so we had to sort of just go through the abuse and then act like it never happened. This happens a lot at family gatherings, for example. We'll all act friendly to each other and like nothing horrible has ever occurred. Its very much a disgusting practice, but human beings in general don't like bringing things up that will make things "tense" and "uncomfortable". My mother is actually abusive in a much more subtle and insidious way but thats another discussion altogether. I just wanted to high light especially that people who are being abused start to unfortunately protect their abuser--because not many people know that or the psychology of abuse. This also happens because in domestic abuse situations the person loves their abuser, so it would be like admitting to yourself that their love for you and your entire world is fake as well as sort of selling the person you love down the river so to speak. The abuser sees this love the victim has for them and uses it to their advantage by administering scare tactics and manipulation. Really sick but true as I've been through it first hand many times. Sorry for the essay guys, I just want more people to understand the psychology of abuse as its a very important subject for me.
Red Lodge
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Re: A few question regarding the storyline

Post by Red Lodge »

Hello

I think your reply is very telling and very important. At the time the pilot came out in April 1990 I was involved with somebody who had suffered a great deal of abuse at the hands of her 'loving' father. Her pain was horrific. Perhaps due to the similarity between Laurie and the person I knew, both having L as their first initial, such memories and associations continue to draw me back to Twin Peaks. I truely appreciate Mr. Lynch having the strength to take on such a subject. To me, Twin Peaks falls between a metaphor and an allegory on the subject. If the new shows stray away from the subject so be it, but I hope the new viewers understand the truth behind the monster that Mr. Lynch called Bob.

Red Lodge
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