Twin Peaks--The Return

I remember when I first saw Twin Peaks on TV in 1990. All the reviews were saying, "You have never seen television like Twin Peaks." And at the time, no one had. I thought it was completely bizarre, and I had no idea what to make of it, but I loved it. Now that the rest of television has caught up with it, it's back, and it's STILL completely bizarre, and I STILL have no idea what to make of it.

And I still love it.

nighttimer said:

The first season of Twin Peaks was the shit.

The second season of Twin Peaks was shit.

I don't have Showtime, so I'll have to rely on reviews and word-of-mouth whether this resurrection measures up or not, but I have my doubts whether David Lynch can pick the ball back up having dropped it so badly in that botched second season.

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I thought he picked it up as soon as he got back. I LOVED the season finale. The news season is just as creepy and unsettling in 2017 as the first season was in 1990.

There is a lot about FWWM that I find rather disjointed, but I do like the darker aspect of Twin Peaks.

I went to see Mark Frost speak, and he read aloud and played some recordings from his novel. It was about Nadine and Jacoby, and the two feuding brothers. I had gathered from that presentation that the book would be about the quirky characters and the light-hearted aspects of the show. I think we tend to assume that everything funny and quirky (the town) is Frost, and everything weird and scary (the Lodge) is Lynch. But apparently, there is a lot in the novel about the woods and Project Bluebook.

Indeed. I think it has more the feel of Fire Walk With Me, the end of Season 2, Cooper's dream, etc. Although it is more like a long movie broken up into parts, so we shall see. I think that once things get back to (somewhat) normal for Coop, he will need some coffee and cherry pie!

Cernex said:

It feels much less disjointed once you watch the Missing Pieces deleted scenes compilation -or so I felt- There's a fan-edit floating around which added the missing scenes back to FWWM, and MAN do they make a difference. The scene with Bowie actually makes sense now, instead of just being an incomprehensible slideshow!

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Eh, I still don't think I get it. This is what I gathered from the new season and FWWM regarding Phillip Jeffries, David Bowie's character: He went missing for quite some time. He was in the Lodge. He had a doppleganger, as did Cooper, who was out there doing some nasty stuff. He killed a fellow FBI agent. He was in a hotel in Buenes Aires, and he asks for someone named Judy. For some reason unknown, the real Jeffries came out of the Lodge and landed in FBI Headquarters where he babbled incoherently to Cooper for a few minutes. During this time, the doppelganger in Buenos Aires was transported back to the Lodge.

I've read interviews that suggested Judy is Josie's sister. I didn't think she was a real person. When I had just seen FWWM, I thought he was trying to say "Garland," as in Garland Briggs, but in his confusion, it came out "Judy." But then in Missing Pieces, he (the one I think is the Doppelganger) uses the name "Judy" in Buenos Aires.

Yes, that was Ronette! But she was not listed in the credits as Ronette? I don't know what that means, if it is a callback, or perhaps she also has a doppelganger in the lodge.

I noticed the bonzai tree, and also BOB Cooper has a case similar to the one Windom Earle had. But he's not in this season??? What happened to him after he went into the Lodge? And what of Annie?

I am excited to learn about Buenos Aires. I am wondering how they are going to tie Jeffries into this, and I am hoping to see that episode dedicated to David Bowie.

That is an interesting idea about Windom Earle. I really wish he was in this season. I was so relieved to see them acknowledge Annie. I didn't read the novel, but I heard that she was not mentioned, and that when they asked Mark Frost about her, he said, "I can't talk about Annie, but Lana Budding Milford won the Miss Twin Peaks pageant."

aleighrose said:

Episode 8 was incredible! It was like watching the TV equivalent of a Cirque du Soleil performance. I understood what it meant, yet I feel like I couldn't possibly understand what it meant. It answered questions I had never even thought to ask, like "Why do Bob and Laura exist?" It actually made me feel the same way I felt when I watched the third episode of the first season. Amazing how the show can still deliver that kind of shock 25 years later.

Celia: I haven't read Mark Frost's book yet, but from what I've heard people say about it, there are details of the characters' backstories that are different from the ones given in the show. This has some people speculating that it may take place in an alternate timeline. That might explain his comment about Annie. Or it could just be that Frost really hates the idea of Annie. He's said before that he and Lynch had always intended for Cooper and Audrey to be together, but Lara Flynn Boyle was dating Kyle MacLachlan at the time and got jealous of all the time he was spending with Sherilyn Fenn. She coerced the writers into changing the script, which did not sit well with them.

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I don't know if I even believe this. I've heard rumors, but I think it stems from the fact that everyone likes to hate on Laura Flynn Boyle. According to the footnotes from the Gold Box Set I had (before the latest Blu-Ray box set came out) this is what was supposed to happen: Cooper finds Audrey in his bed. The next morning, he is sitting at the breakfast table ignoring her, while she gazes lovingly up at him. According to these notes, it was Kyle McLachlin who didn't want the scene to play out that way. He thought Cooper would never do something like that, and I thought he was right. It would have been unethical and unprofessional and sleazy. I do think Audrey was supposed to be the "Queen," at the series finale, but I don't think they were ever supposed to end up "together." I find it much easier to believe that the writers would listen to an actor who felt strongly about his character's morals than an actor saying, "I'm jealous, so I don't want any sex implied off screen." When I think about it, it just sounds ridiculous.

I like Audrey as a character, but I have never understood why people think she and Cooper should have been a couple. He was a 35 year old FBI agent, who was intelligent, even by standards of other FBI agents. Some people seem to think that she should have become an FBI agent or something, which I also don't understand. What she did was stupid, and it almost got her and Cooper killed. She wasn't trying to solve the mystery because she was a good detective, or even because she cared who killed Laura. She was just trying to impress an older man. I thought it was cute, but it was stupid.

We don't know yet what Audrey is doing now, but she is apparently a terrible mom.

I have heard that, too, but I still don't know if it's accurate. People didn't like Laura Flynn Boyle, and she didn't have anything nice to say about the show, so I think those claims are exaggerated. I don't see why the writers would have even listened to her. I have a hard time believing that the only reason it didn't happen was her. It was a long time ago, and people have misremembered a lot of details about the show. One example of this is how the character of BOB came to be. There were two separate incidents, and they seem to have been conflated.

I do think what she did was realistic for an 18 year old who had a crush on an older man. But I did like the character of Annie, too. She had an innocence that Audrey did not have. In the deleted scenes of FWWM, you do see what happened to Annie.

aleighrose said:

I don't have a Bluray player, so I haven't seen The Missing Pieces except for a few clips that have been placed on YouTube. All I saw from those clips was that Annie ends up in the hospital, unresponsive. Is there more to The Missing Pieces that shows what happens to her after that?

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Yes. She is in the hospital with a nurse. She is suddenly conscious and says what she says to Laura. Then she dies. This is, I assume, the reason Mark Frost said that Lana Budding Milford, officially the worst character in Twin Peaks, won the Miss Twin Peaks contest. Because Annie did die. And Hawk recently confirmed this.

The missing pages in the diary! I have been wanting to know what was on those pages since I first read it when it came out! "PAGE RIPPED OUT, AS FOUND" was always so mysterious. Apparently, there is still one more page left to be found.