Twin Peaks

So I'm assuming the third season is really the one to watch? I've watched the first two seasons as well as Fire Walk With Me and haven't really been impressed.

My grandma recently got out of the hospital and I decided to stream some TV shows with her while she was recovering. She's watched just about every TV murder mystery and I like sci-fi and paranormal thrillers; so based on the reviews here on the forum it looked like Twin Peaks was the perfect fit. Now I have watched some of David Lynch before and have always harbored mixed feelings about him; while I don't really care for his noir style, trying to keep up with what he's showing you can be cerebrally stimulating. I knew this would be a show that would require focused attention; Lynch makes you dissect everything, if you're looking to veg out in front of the TV for some mindless entertainment you will have no clue what is going on later.

The long and the short of it is, I would only recommend the original series to people who are absolute connoisseurs of murder mysteries and also happen to enjoy soap operas. The show is mainly about the stories of individual characters and their relationships with each other and their various love triangles/squares/whatever. There is a LOT of character development, but much of it doesn't seem to go anywhere; it felt like Lynch was wasting my time with superfluous diversions to pad the length of the series, unless you enjoy the soap opera element. On the same token, you can't completely ignore these segments either, because you never know what obscure details will tie into the main plot later. I found the paranormal aspect (the reason I actually watched the show) to be a small but integral literary device that is employed to tie the story together, but most often relegated to the back burner and only rising to prominence on a handful of occasions. Most often I would get a 5 minute segment of intellectually titillating material followed by an hour or two of make out sessions between characters I care nothing about, largely spurious sidebars, and "offbeat humor." I can count the number of times I actually laughed at the show on one hand. Most often it feels like it is trying to be artsy but comes off as a little autistic.

The first season was terrible. The only paranormal aspects that stick out are Cooper's dream about the Red Room, the rock throwing divination which is presented in kind of an absurd way (one of the parts I did laugh at), the Log Lady's Log which is rather straightforwardly revealed as some sort of scrying/clairaudient device, and Bob makes a couple of brief appearances in which you have no context to place them. It was about 10 minutes of interest out of 6 hours of boredom. Some of that boredom was required to set the stage, but it felt like the majority of the first season was designed to waste as much of my time as possible as the plot meandered vaguely around Laura Palmer's murder with no real purpose or direction. I can certainly see why Lynch and Frost were under pressure to wrap up the Laura Palmer case because the main plot as I understood it was proceeding at a glacial pace. We decided to stick with it to see if it got better. At least the final two episodes had some action regarding the circumstances surrounding the mill fire to placate us.

The second season was more mixed. I would almost recommend skipping the first season entirely, but it does eliminate some context that would make the show's "learning curve" much steeper. It had more of a paranormal focus although it was still kind of secondary until the middle of the season where Laura's murder gets resolved. The plot still felt like it was dragging its feet at the beginning of the season, but it seemed like it had found a direction now. The middle of the season where Cooper was closing in on Laura's killer and revealing Bob under the guidance of the giant was the only part where I felt really engaged. For three or four episodes it felt like there were less frivolous soap opera-y sidebars and we were finally getting down to the paranormal core of the story. My grandma had given up on the show twice before, but she's never been able to walk away from a murder mystery, so she watched until Bob was released from Leiland's body and then she gave up on it for the last time. Since we were about 3/4 of the way through it, I decided to watch it until the end. What followed were about 5 more episodes of Twin Peak's stereotypical soap opera BS, after which point it started to get mildly intriguing again as it wound up to its rather lame ending. The second season was not as irredeemably bad as the first one, it did have some high points and I would not have been surprised to see John Keel's name in the special thanks at some point, but my overall average attitude was one of indifference. This show requires you to invest a significant amount of boredom into it before it starts to get interesting. It would have been much less of a slog if the first season were eliminated or pared down to 2 or 3 episodes.

For all of the character development that is in Twin Peaks, I certainly didn't feel any special connection to any of them with the partial exception of Cooper. Most of them come across as either idiotic or rather evil, there are a few who are kindhearted but a bit dumb, such as Harry, James, and Donna. Cooper is the protagonist and only one I really admire, armed with his paranormal knowledge and open mind he is the only one qualified to get to the bottom of what is really going on. He could easily be a member of this forum. Even Cooper had this...I don't know, overly Norman Rockwell type happy go lucky spin to him which I found rather annoying. I find a somewhat more serious John Klein (Mothman Prophecies) or even Fox Mulder type person more believable here, but that's just me. It's like everything is kind of a caricature...Cooper as the hero is set up to be such a contrast to the foreboding darkness and overwhelming STS-ness of the Twin Peaks world that they took him a bit too far for me to take him seriously. Some other characters that I liked were Hawk, (his native American heritage gives him insight into what's going on) the Log Lady, (started out in the idiotic category, but her psychic abilities make her an outcast and she tries to cope with it while desiring to help) and Major Garland (a little eccentric but also knowledgeable and willing to help in his own way). There were a couple of women who were introduced late in the story who were more flat characters that I didn't really have an opinion on one way or the other. It was hard to care about Laura Palmer, whom the show was ostensibly about in the beginning; she came across as a drug-addled prostitute who liked leading on her friends. Fire Walk With Me congeals her story a little bit and I gained an appreciation for where she was coming from. I guess if your father is possessed by a demon with its sights set on you and he molests you on a regular basis that would lead you to do all sorts of crazy things.

Twin Peaks seems to throw all kinds of interesting ideas out there about window-fallers, spirit attachments, extrasensory perception, and hyperdimensional realities, but it felt like it was just playing around and never quite delivered on a thought expanding or spiritually instructive experience like I thought some episodes of Star Trek and Twilight Zone did. Although I'm curious to see where they took it in the third season, I don't see a reason to invest another 16 hours of my time and $35 into it unless it's waaay better.
 
Twin Peaks seems to throw all kinds of interesting ideas out there about window-fallers, spirit attachments, extrasensory perception, and hyperdimensional realities, but it felt like it was just playing around and never quite delivered on a thought expanding or spiritually instructive experience like I thought some episodes of Star Trek and Twilight Zone did. Although I'm curious to see where they took it in the third season, I don't see a reason to invest another 16 hours of my time and $35 into it unless it's waaay better.

To me, this show is certainly not spiritually instructive, there's something rather dark, disturbing and creepy about it (as about all David Lynch's movies that I've seen, except maybe Elephant Man). It's not uplifting, it doesn't really make you think or reflect on human relationships, it just makes you depressed and gloomy. Even though it can be compelling in some way and yes, it gives you hints about hyperdimensional stuff, I wouldn't recommend it (and this is coming from someone who watched all 3 seasons and the movie, and who used to enjoy them). Looking back, it's not something I'd enjoy watching again. Generally speaking, I'd put Lynch's work in the "negative dissociation" category - so, something to avoid.
 
I guess that's what irked me the most about it. There's really no balance between light and darkness; it's pretty much all darkness. While this is somewhat tolerable in a two hour movie, watching hour after hour of it becomes degrading. I think the depictions of the demons and how they operate are probably fairly realistic, which makes the show interesting to a degree, but there is really no exposition of a light side to resist the world the demons control. There's vague allusions to a White Lodge, but the Black Lodge is basically the center of the universe and rules the roost. Even Cooper seems to be kind of a 4D STS depiction of what they think an STO being would be like: carefree, eternally happy, sacrificing himself for others to oppose their agenda, and ultimately unable to accomplish anything worthwhile. A lot of screen time is given to the various romances that occur between the various characters, but they are virtually all STS orgies with the partners trying to use or consume each other in some way while some kind of wistful music is being played that I guess is supposed to touch your heart. The few exceptions to this rule seem to arise completely out of the blue with no basis. During one particularly boring episode I kind of daydreamed that I was seeing the human world through the eyes of the Mothman; it was permeated with a cold indifference and incapable of appreciating anything that was good and beautiful. No emotional depth or nuance to anything. It's like it was standing behind me wriggling its finger through my skull and trying to drag me down into its miasma. After watching enough David Lynch movies you begin to wonder if it actually happened at some level LOL. Since the humanistic element obviously wasn't there, I had hoped they would just get down to the intellectual meat of the story, but once the fluff is removed that meat seems spread rather thin. I believe Frost is influenced by Theosophy, and that would be typical Blavatsky style; to endlessly loop around a mystery while never being able to come to the point of it. From beginning to end, the world of Twin Peaks seems like some type of hyperdimensional STS dreamworld.
 
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From beginning to end, the world of Twin Peaks seems like some type of hyperdimensional STS dreamworld.

I think the above nails it, and it's even more obvious in the 3rd season - which Lynch hasn't absolutely confirmed would be the last, showing, if that was needed, that there won't ever be any resolution to that story, and the characters are forever trapped in that dreamworld/loop, with no hope of transcendence or moving on. The last scene hammers the point home (spoilers ahead, if anyone chooses to watch it): Laura Palmer, apparently entrapped in an alternate reality by so-called higher 'benevolent' forces in order to protect her from the ultimate Big Bad (which isn't Bob but an entity named 'Judy'), screams in terror as she's brought back to her childhood home, next to a baffled Cooper who managed to enter her alternate reality bubble through a portal opened thanks to some kind of sex magic ritual he performed with his ex secretary (disturbing scene). Let's add that Cooper, by entering that portal, undergoes a baffling personality change from STO-like to STS, turning into a dark, cold and ruthless character who apparently loses much of what made him humanly endearing. So, to sum it up: Cooper is lost (in every way), Laura screams, and all the lights go out - the end (?!).
 
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Lynch is a very strange director, a little crazy I think so. I like 2 movies by him: Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story that is the story of a man that goes with a little moto to see his brother at the other side of the country and it is a very beautiful road movie.

Lynch is the major part of the time incomprensible, and his last movie, Inland Empire was, for me, absolutely absurd and boring. But eh! He is well considered as a director so this is my humble point of vue. And I think he is a little nuts. But he is an artist! And the majority of them are crazy... so they say :)

I never saw Twin Peaks.
 
The long and the short of it is, I would only recommend the original series to people who are absolute connoisseurs of murder mysteries and also happen to enjoy soap operas. The show is mainly about the stories of individual characters and their relationships with each other and their various love triangles/squares/whatever. There is a LOT of character development, but much of it doesn't seem to go anywhere; it felt like Lynch was wasting my time with superfluous diversions to pad the length of the series, unless you enjoy the soap opera element. On the same token, you can't completely ignore these segments either, because you never know what obscure details will tie into the main plot later. I found the paranormal aspect (the reason I actually watched the show) to be a small but integral literary device that is employed to tie the story together, but most often relegated to the back burner and only rising to prominence on a handful of occasions. Most often I would get a 5 minute segment of intellectually titillating material followed by an hour or two of make out sessions between characters I care nothing about, largely spurious sidebars, and "offbeat humor." I can count the number of times I actually laughed at the show on one hand. Most often it feels like it is trying to be artsy but comes off as a little autistic.

Well, I don't entirely agree. Yes, you might be disappointed if you expected paranormal galore, but isn't what you describe here actually closer to the real world? The paranormal is a very minor aspect of our lives, and indeed most of us have no contact with it whatsoever. It is through our seemingly mundane interactions that the "hidden hand" plays out... I remember how when watching Twin Peaks, me and my wife had many discussions about the morality of the characters, their decisions, motivations etc., which I think is a good sign. Good movies/series, to my taste anyway, portray the moral complexity of life, the complexity and struggles of our souls. Twin Peaks had that, IMO.

So I actually liked the mix in Twin Peaks between murder mystery, paranormal and soap opera. And I must say I really enjoyed the character development, as well as the humor. Just the scene where Cooper bursts into the Sheriff's office for the first time - that was such a hilarious play with the "FBI comes to the scene and nefariously takes over from the good local cops" cliché!

That being said, I agree with you in that I generally don't like Lynch movies either. It's just too dark and too artsy for my taste. And some of that shows in Twin Peaks as well. I read somewhere that Lynch was so dissatisfied with where the producers took the series at some point that he quit for a while. I think this might have been a good thing - the producers seem to have kept Lynch's dark and artsy escapades in check, at least partly. This seems obvious when you compare the original Twin Peaks to the Fire Walk with Me movie, which I found horrible - just dark, perverse, disturbing stuff.
 
There's vague allusions to a White Lodge, but the Black Lodge is basically the center of the universe and rules the roost.
Isn't it precisely what happens in our world?

Even Cooper seems to be kind of a 4D STS depiction of what they think an STO being would be like: carefree, eternally happy, sacrificing himself for others to oppose their agenda, and ultimately unable to accomplish anything worthwhile.
We see it differently. To me first Cooper's qualities are vigilance and his ability read signs. Saving Annie wasn't worthless to Cooper. It was his choice to walk the path of shaman and accept evil spirit from the girl. Copper is a real down to Earth hero, not Batman or Captain America. Sorry you couldn't appreciate it.

From beginning to end, the world of Twin Peaks seems like some type of hyperdimensional STS dreamworld.
Just like we have here.
 
To me, this show is certainly not spiritually instructive, there's something rather dark, disturbing and creepy about it (as about all David Lynch's movies that I've seen, except maybe Elephant Man). It's not uplifting, it doesn't really make you think or reflect on human relationships, it just makes you depressed and gloomy. Even though it can be compelling in some way and yes, it gives you hints about hyperdimensional stuff, I wouldn't recommend it (and this is coming from someone who watched all 3 seasons and the movie, and who used to enjoy them). Looking back, it's not something I'd enjoy watching again. Generally speaking, I'd put Lynch's work in the "negative dissociation" category - so, something to avoid.

I dunno, I thought Lynch's exploration of the creation of his Bob character (evil incarnate) in The Return was really well done. The psychopath who needs the souls of good people to feed to his STS overlords was born from the flames of the first atom bomb explosion in America. Seemed like a very apt metaphor to me, and just a beautifully filmed sequence of television. There really isn't anyone else creating art that explores the creation of evil in such a way that feels as spot on as that.
 
We see it differently. To me first Cooper's qualities are vigilance and his ability read signs. Saving Annie wasn't worthless to Cooper. It was his choice to walk the path of shaman and accept evil spirit from the girl. Copper is a real down to Earth hero, not Batman or Captain America. Sorry you couldn't appreciate it.

Yeah, I mean the Dale Cooper character was and is a hero of mine. I wanted to be an FBI agent after seeing Twin Peaks, because of the qualities that Lynch gave his stand-in Cooper. He is not a John Wayne-type, but rather a man who can use the firm grip if necessary but also relies on intuition and reading the signs from the universe to find the evil that lives in Twin Peaks.
 
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and different strokes are for different folks, I suppose. My only real issue with Cooper was his overly glib and loquacious mannerisms. Here we have this federal cop investigating a heinous crime, who is working on becoming the town shaman/exorcist, and in his casual time he conducts himself like he was just cut out from behind a white picket fence out of a 50s edition of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Maybe he was geared toward an era where people were more gabby or something...As far as John Wayne goes, well he would be terrible except for some bizarre comic relief in an alternate timeline or something. I can see it now. "I know how we're gonna get Bob. We're gonna go in there blow the sh*t out of him, locked and loaded." As I said earlier, I think Fox Mulder makes a better far out FBI agent next door kind of guy than Dale Cooper. He had the right mixture of glibness, seriousness, intelligence, open mindedness and personality to fit the role, I think. Cooper has a lot of the same qualities, except the charm and chattiness seems exaggerated to a point where it seems disingenuous or hard to take him seriously at times. People I have encountered who were somewhat like Cooper on the surface were salesman trying to be irresistibly likeable in order to make a buck. Outside of that, Cooper was a perfectly respectable hero as far as he goes. When he was in his cop mode (analyzing evidence, fieldwork) he was obviously very intelligent, conscientious, dedicated, noble, and interesting, which is why I said I considered him the most admirable character of the cast. After a while I was able to mostly overlook his overabundance of suburban charm, but the juxtaposition still annoyed me from time to time and contributed to my overall sense that everything in this program is just a little bit off. Anyway, it wasn't my movie to make so to each their own.
Luc said:
Well, I don't entirely agree. Yes, you might be disappointed if you expected paranormal galore, but isn't what you describe here actually closer to the real world? The paranormal is a very minor aspect of our lives, and indeed most of us have no contact with it whatsoever.
The pacing in Twin Peaks is more true to life. That's not necessarily a good thing; it depends on what you're looking for. 80% of my life (including sleep) is probably just mechanical monotony, going through the motions, the other 20% is choices and individual experiences of various sorts, with maybe .1% of that being really interesting. I don't want to spend two weeks of my life to go through the same proportion of some fictional characters' world in order to learn every minute detail of their lives, I want to get to the .1% that is interesting and whatever slivers of the 20% and 80% that directly support the .1%. If I were to make a movie about my life, there is probably only 3 or 4 hours of material of a general enough interest to string together into a coherent narrative. Even then it wouldn't be enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, but the intent would be to keep it mildly interesting throughout. I approached Twin Peaks with the wrong expectations. I read some about it and knew it was going to take off in a paranormal direction eventually and was expecting a high strangeness event every episode which would become the subject of furious speculation/investigation which would then reveal a pattern that would unlock the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder and whatever Bob was. Kind of an X-Files miniseries with a more stable cast, a more localized focus, and Bob and the Black Lodge taking the place of alien colonization as the main plot with a few standalones to mix it up. From this point of view, I walked away from Twin Peaks feeling like you could cut the episode count in half and still not sacrifice much of the overall story. While the series does meander to that eventuality, that's not really what it is. From the more soap opera-y point of view, you have no main plot per se, but about 20 subplots with Cooper's being the meridian around which they coalesce and the paranormal element being just a backdrop that sets the whole thing into motion. I think that's how the creators originally intended it, and from that angle cutting down the content is wholly unacceptable. Different strokes for different folks, it just wasn't for me.
aimarok said:
We see it differently. To me first Cooper's qualities are vigilance and his ability read signs. Saving Annie wasn't worthless to Cooper. It was his choice to walk the path of shaman and accept evil spirit from the girl. Copper is a real down to Earth hero, not Batman or Captain America. Sorry you couldn't appreciate it.
Meanwhile Cooper's spirit is in stasis and the only person who might have the constitution to mitigate the influence of the Black Lodge or broker some sort of truce has been effectively neutralized while Bob takes over his body and continues doing his thing to countless other victims. That's hardly what I would consider a victory. What's worse is that apparently he is brought back from the dead, so to speak in season 3, just to be put right back in the same predicament at the end. It's terrible, like STS making a complete mockery out of the hero's journey.

I think we can all agree that Twin Peaks covers the subject of evil pretty well and what an uphill battle it is to overcome something so firmly entrenched, the way it sneaks into people's lives and subtly devours their souls. If you want to watch a soap opera infused with the essence of such works as Mask of Sanity and Hostage to the Devil, dark and with no apparent resolution, and have the time and inclination to ponder the minutia of its every interpersonal interaction, Twin Peaks might be a good show. If that isn't precisely your thing, I think you will be disappointed. And with that I think I'm closing the book on my long-winded commentary on Twin Peaks. It is just a TV show after all.
 
I think we can all agree that Twin Peaks covers the subject of evil pretty well and what an uphill battle it is to overcome something so firmly entrenched, the way it sneaks into people's lives and subtly devours their souls. If you want to watch a soap opera infused with the essence of such works as Mask of Sanity and Hostage to the Devil, dark and with no apparent resolution, and have the time and inclination to ponder the minutia of its every interpersonal interaction, Twin Peaks might be a good show. If that isn't precisely your thing, I think you will be disappointed. And with that I think I'm closing the book on my long-winded commentary on Twin Peaks. It is just a TV show after all.

Thank you for that! You confirmed for me that spending more time watching it to try and figure out where the heck it was going would have been a waist of time for me. I think I would almost rather watch grass grow.

Some people dig it though, so that's cool. I thought maybe the problem was I no longer partake of a certain herb that mike actually enhance the watching the paint slowly peal off the wall paced drama unfold, a little more doable.
 
Thank you for that! You confirmed for me that spending more time watching it to try and figure out where the heck it was going would have been a waist of time for me. I think I would almost rather watch grass grow.

Some people dig it though, so that's cool. I thought maybe the problem was I no longer partake of a certain herb that mike actually enhance the watching the paint slowly peal off the wall paced drama unfold, a little more doable.

:lol: As Neil said, different strokes for different folks.

Personally, I loved the original Twin Peaks, I thought they were charming, funny, heroic, intriguing and mysterious all wrapped up into one programme.

I enjoyed Fire Walk With Me too and found it uncomfortable but cathartic to see how the abuse and harassment of Laura by Bob during her child/teenage years drove her to lead a hedonistic lifestyle, use guys and make foolish decisions. It reminded me of the foolish things that I had done while growing up and it helped me to understand a little better why I had done them- to escape home life and feed off of others. The movie was an excellent example of this osit, and also showed how badly your life can go when you make such reckless decisions.

The new series of Twin Peaks, in my opinion, was just off the wall crazy, I couldn't really follow it, it was super slow, and half the time I found myself thinking "what the hell is going on here?!". Maybe I'm just not artsy enough though ;-D
 
“The new series of Twin Peaks, in my opinion, was just off the wall crazy, I couldn't really follow it, it was super slow, and half the time I found myself thinking "what the hell is going on here?!". Maybe I'm just not artsy enough though ;-D


@Jenn The new series is my reference point. I don’t remember the first series. I either didn’t watch it or only some of it.
 
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