Vee

Are you ready for more ancient TP minutiae from the depths of the Internet at 5 AM on a Saturday? I thought you might be.

So one of the few licensed tie-ins I never got a look at as a kid was Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town, published in 1991. It has long been rumored that this mock guidebook, apparently written in-universe by some of the show staff (possibly with contributions from Lynch and Frost), may have had hints to future storylines. One such rumor was about the annual Twin Peaks Passion Play and a crucial local football game, as detailed in an old fan essay:

Access Guide to the Town offers clues as to what would have happened in the next season of the series, had it not been canceled. Take the story of the football game. "Mystery play saves Peaks season."

While this comment appears as part of a football game headline in the book, it is tantalizing, given the book's earlier reference to a Twin Peaks "Passion Play," taking place at Glastonberry Grove (in the book, a circle of twelve douglas firs; in the series, sycamore trees). The historical passion plays were forms of what were called mystery plays, because they dealt with the true nature of the universe, the greatest mystery of all (in their case, Christian beliefs). According to the book, this Passion Play, when it is held, occurs in the month of April. Given that each episode of the series covers the events of a single day (except for a couple exceptions), we can extrapolate that the end of the non-existent third season would have brought the storyline into the month of April, 1989. The book says that the Passion Play is meant to illustrate the victory of good over evil.

The implication of all this is that the main thrust of the series' plotlines (BOB, the Lodge, etc.) would have been resolved at the end of the third season. The reference to the mystery play saving the season appears in large and bold print in the book, as do two other important statements. "He began to run the wrong way." This may be a reference to the BOB-possessed Cooper. "The best thing in our lives and we did it together." The town would have to stand united in action (unlike the blind eye they turned to Laura) in order to win.

In addition, there is a marginalia which gives the comment of a coach: "The goal post is in the shape of an H and that means Hell and that's what you have to go through to get some points." Not just a reference to Cooper's coming experience dealing with BOB and the Lodge, but to what nearly all heroes in mythologies the world over must do at some point: Descend into the underworld. Not incidentally, Gilgamesh's descent into the underworld was through a mountain with twin peaks.

Probably nothing, but an interesting little thought. It would be just like TP to have the fate of Cooper's soul hanging in the balance juxtaposed against a school football game.

Vulture's promised piece about TP alumni and their status today is up.

“The phone rang, and it was David [Lynch], and he was calling from Paris on Skype,” [Catherine] Coulson says about learning the show was returning. “He said, ‘We wanna be working together with you, and we’re gonna do Twin Peaks.’ We chatted for a while about the Log Lady, how she had matured a little bit. Then I said, ‘What can I tell people?’ He said, ‘Tell them it’s too early to talk about in detail, and don’t play in the street.’” As for Lanterman’s namesake hunk of wood, Coulson says, “I have kept the log in a secure, undisclosed location. In case it was called upon to come back, I’ve been very carefully protecting it.”

“I texted [Peaks production coordinator] Sabrina [s. Sutherland] and said, ‘A little birdie told me something that I think I’m supposed to be excited about,” remembers [Kimmy] Robertson about when the news broke on October 6. “And she said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve known for some time, and I felt so bad I couldn’t tell you.’ And she said David Skyped her, and said, ‘Tell her I can’t call her now, but I want to see her in November and explain it all to her, but tell Kimmy’ … Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you this. Never mind. He said something. David said something.”

More at the link.

From a NYT article on the Angel Ball:

Kyle MacLachlan wasn’t confident that he would make it the whole night. “If you see someone slumped over drooling on the table, that would be me,” he said.

Mr. MacLachlan’s old TV show, “Twin Peaks,” is making a return after a 25-year absence. Would his character, Dale Cooper, come back on the Showtime reboot?

“According to what I’ve been hearing, next year we’ll start filming at some point,” he said. Well, he’s thinks he’ll be filming it. “I’m hopeful I’ll be involved. It’s not definite, definite, definite yet.”

Officially, he is in negotiations.

If it helps, Carl, Mark Gatiss is with you.

I loved Dana Ashbrook's performance and I hope he appears, but to me Bobby was a supporting player you don't have to have. I loved Shelly, Norma and Ed, Andy and Lucy, Catherine, etc. but I also don't think any of them are absolutely necessary. I think the people who are absolutely necessary are Cooper, Laura, maybe Harry, the Palmers, possibly Audrey and a few others. After 25 years, to me almost everyone else is negotiable. But I really doubt they won't deal with Bobby in some fashion if they're going after so many of these others. Plus, we really have no idea whether or not he's in - Ashbrook just doesn't have a social media presence to tell us.

Lynch always loved digging up the Haywards and the minor characters - he brought back Donna's sisters for the Season 2 premiere, like Harriett the poet, who was fantastic in the pilot and again in that episode. He brought Eileen Hayward back a number of times, and gave the family a very good scene that was deleted from FWWM - it's in the Missing Pieces, and it strongly implies that they and others in town knew more about Laura's dark side than they let on. Probably Warren Frost's best work in the series.

I never need to see Donna again unless it's Moira Kelly - that would be lovely, and a very nice additional marriage of the show to the film - but I wouldn't mind seeing her sisters or children. And I think James Marshall is very attractive today. In a sense, James the perpetual, traumatized naïf and his Bookhouse Boys connection might be more germane to the town today.

I don't know the details on how close Peggy is to Lynch - I have recently heard she is - but if she is confirmed I am thrilled. Norma is a favorite of mine. And I was sure Lynch dug up Everett McGill for a reason, along with Frost friending Harry Goaz.

Piper is 82, but she still works and, judging by recent videos, is still fit as a fiddle. She's not doddering around. She can do it.

I doubt those interviews mean "nothing." But we'll see. I am holding out for David Bowie and Phillip Jeffries, but I am not holding my breath on that one. I think Dana Ashbrook may be back too, especially with Don Davis dead. I think Frost and Lynch may be keen to see Major Briggs' dream of his son fulfilled.

Yeah, I saw that pic (and you on Twitter, you sneak!). I've heard before that she and the production are not close today, but maybe they did patch it up, who knows. She does look even worse than that now, and her acting has collapsed worse than her face.

I have seen Piper Laurie since and while she is definitely old, she is still Piper Laurie. Catherine was one of my favorites as a kid and I'd be happy to see her no matter what.

I do hope they confirm Peggy Lipton. And I know Amber Tamblyn has been present in a lot of TP extras and events with her dad in the past, and she's grown into a great adult actress in a lot of films (as well as entering the Quentin Tarantino stable, though her role in his next film was recast with Jennifer Jason Leigh). I would love to see her on the show.

The WTTP twitter continues to bubble with rumors:

Sources say Everett and Kimmy are in. I need strong evidence before I'll say the same about Harry Goaz.

Personally, Frost following Goaz on Twitter(?) was enough for me, but we shall see.

I had to post all of this incredibly dated recap special. ABC's own Alan Thicke - the dad on Growing Pains, for those of you younger than dirt - would like you to know that he is a "Peaker" and he wants answers just like you. Also: Cop Rock!

I think they didn't necessarily knew how the relationship with Cooper and Truman would play going forward from the pilot, which no one seriously expected to be picked up to series. They didn't know how deep it would go. I agree about their friendship and I think the showrunners did, too.

I think they needed the Cooper/Audrey scene in Episode 6 and were smart to do it. I don't think the romance was scrapped at that point, either, but much later in Season 2 - they were clearly building to it before and during her rescue (beautifully so, in true soap opera fashion) up until the BOB reveal and perhaps a little beyond when the Laura arc wrapped. I think Dale refusing her then made the romance more legitimate later, after Audrey began growing up. But, oh well. And I do think MacLachlan regrets his role in things today - his commentary is very diplomatic, but that's how I take it.

Also, I did like the Ed/Norma/Nadine bed scene, myself - I felt like the characters were moving forward enough that they could have screwball comedy like that, that they weren't just weeping in the corners and in secret meetings. I cared so much about Norma that I was a little relieved she could get something as light and silly with Ed and Nadine as bedroom farce, that their relationship was actually sort of happening in fits and starts, finally.

It's interesting because I'm not sure how much the Nadine role would have become if not for Wendy Robie. She has maybe three lines in the pilot IIRC, and she's just a screaming lady with an eyepatch, a sight gag. I think they expanded the role because they liked her. A lot of the stuff that developed going from pilot to series is really intriguing. (And I did learn today that, allegedly, the original opening of Episode 6 did not pick up with Cooper and Audrey still talking after he found her in his bed - instead, it was to start with them at breakfast the next morning, leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not they'd slept together.)

I think the actors knew how to play the Nadine stuff, always - they just played it straight. When Nadine is despondent about the drape runners in Season 1, Ed grabs her and tells her not to give up with such conviction, like it's life or death - "don't you give up!" - and it is hilarious. But it works because it has an emotional truth, because Ed genuinely cares for her despite not being in love with her, and Nadine's story has that same truth. That was the inherent comedy and tragedy of all of it, especially when Lynch or Frost wrote or directed the episodes. Lynch was always extremely fond of stuff that went over the top into tragedy, then comedy, then back again, like Laura's funeral, or Sarah's many hysterical meltdowns early on. Grace Zabriskie was nervous about going too far over the edge, but Lynch told her it would work.

I think the Nadine story was on the extreme end of that sort of sensibility, which is why I think a lot of people don't like it (and even I think it was on too much). I also think the creators were more fascinated with things like longing and need than any consummation - which is why Laura and her story were so important to the larger show and community, the free-floating senses of guilt, of loss, of longing, whatever else. Even Donna and James's hopeful new romance, after Laura dies, is ultimately doomed - they're always longing for each other, or he's riding away. All those things were part of the show, like Ed and Norma always wanting to be together, to be free, Nadine always wanting her husband to love her. Which is probably why they reset it, who knows. I think Wendy Robie says in the new book that Nadine always had that undercurrent of sadness to her, even in the comedy episodes in Season 2, especially when Lynch directed her. She said that when Nadine regains her memory, she knows what she has lost (with Mike Nelson, etc.).

There is some great, heartbreaking stuff for Ed and Norma in the FWWM deleted scenes, at the diner - he comes in with Nadine, who ushers him out immediately, then Norma sits down at a table after the place clears out and cries. Ed rushes back in, she smiles through her tears and puts on a happy face, and as soon as he leaves her she crumples. Later there's a bit with them alone, curled up in Ed's truck at night, listening to the radio. Norma tries to get the radio to work despite garbled static and white noise and she says, "it's you and me, Ed. You can barely hear us."

According to, I think, Mark Frost or Harley Peyton, the Evelyn Marsh thing was a deliberate attempt to key into classic film noir again - a huge thing for both Lynch and Frost, which influenced many of the show's original storylines. The Evelyn story is a classic noir setup, but agonizingly executed. I think it's either Frost or Peyton who has said in the recent past that Evelyn was miscast, and that perhaps setting up a storyline with James Marshall as its central figure with no other regular castmembers, set outside of Twin Peaks, may have not been the best idea. Frost has also said that they wanted some sort of palate cleanser after the Leland arc before bringing in Windom Earle - which is why they had the whole Jean Renault thing, which I think Michael Parks played brilliantly - but that he now thinks they should have brought Earle in sooner, and that completely moving on from Laura and the Palmer family in the interim had been a mistake.

Frost says, and he's right, that Laura and what happened to her and "the pervading sense of guilt" in the town is what drove so much of the show. They had always intended to move deeper into the mythology, the secrets of the woods, the Black Lodge, etc. and I think they were right to do so, especially in the final stretch of episodes. But there's that wandering period in the middle which turned a lot of people off. Plus, they did not have the major Cooper/Audrey romance they intended to hang so much of the back end on originally, which I think would've sustained them better. It's clearly being set up well into Season 2 with the whole One Eyed Jack's hostage crisis, until Episode 18 or so when they have them separate entirely.

That is what happened to Nadine - she regressed. I liked it, but I didn't need a whole season of it. And I know the Josie story, which is byzantine and perhaps overly complicated from the beginning, also had real issues due to Joan Chen apparently being away for part of the time and later, wanting to take off to do a film. (It's unclear whether she would have been back for Season 3 or not in some way, but I have heard from people who would know that they expected her back regardless of Josie's death.) I think it succeeds in doing noir a lot better than, say, the Evelyn story but I wouldn't call it a great success - I think the stuff Josie is remembered for best is her haunting intro and exit, and the idea that no one ever really knew her. Which is interesting in and of itself. I also think they changed a lot of plans once they got the go-ahead as a series, saw Sherilyn Fenn and MacLachlan together, and decided against the original thought from the pilot, which was some sort of triangle between Cooper, Josie and Truman.

I don't think Bobby abused Shelly emotionally. I do think he was a dumb kid and that he treated her like crap because he got caught up in another world and lost his head for awhile. The Bobby/Shelly stuff at the diner, the return of Sarah Palmer, etc. - none of that was in the original finale script Frost, Peyton and Engels wrote.

Mark Frost was and is indispensable to TP - he made sense of a lot of Lynch's visions and dream logic, and they work together very well. He made a lot of the characters happen. He is also not just a meat and potatoes TV guy; he's into as much of the metaphysical stuff and lore and mythos as Lynch is, and is a great writer and author. He is also the guy very into the Sherlock Holmes side of the show, and was big on giving Cooper a "Moriarty," which was Windom Earle. He wrote great episodes. But having seen his original finale script - it's a smart piece of writing, not a bad show, but I have to say I'm really glad Lynch dumped most of it and rewrote it on the fly. While many of the basic plot points are the same, it's too literal-minded, IMO, and too much of one side of the Lynch/Frost partnership on its own. In the original script, the Black Lodge was a sort of shadow version of the Great Northern, Windom Earle had a great many speeches (and sang "Anything Goes"), there were little flashback tableaus for Windom and Caroline, and there was a weird sort of Nightmare on Elm Street-style setup with a dentist's chair and BOB in scrubs and a whole silly thing. Laura Palmer only appeared at the very end for a moment, as a sort of guardian angel warding BOB off. The "Glastonbury/berry Grove" Arthurian allusion is made even more literal by the appearance of a "Lady of the Lake" in the river who rises and hands Truman a sword. There was no Little Man, no Giant, no waiter, no coffee, Jimmy Scott, no dopplegangers, no Leland, etc etc. So for Lynch to come in when he did was, I think, only right. But would I diss Mark Frost? No. He's an incredible writer, and it's so important for him to be back. It's important for them to be back together.

I love all those terrible stories! Except Evelyn Marsh. And I really don't need John Justice Wheeler, either. And I have almost zero time for Annie.

I think most people say the show really kicks back up again after the episode which ends Josie's storyline. I would agree with that, although both Annie and Wheeler are present and were stop-gap substitutes for stories that had to be rewritten. But I think the last five or six episodes are very strong, while the interim has ups and downs but is still very unique. And given that the show is, IMO, very strong until the Laura Palmer arc ends, I think that's a good round-up. Most media critics ignore the entire second season, or after the Laura arc ends, and that's just not fair nor true to the show, or the incredible finale. They had very specific plans for the back half of Season 2 which could not be enacted, and there is a middle section which is eccentric and sometimes fun (for me, anyway) but which lost a lot of viewers. They recovered well, I felt, but by that time critics had turned on the show. (Actually, they'd begun doing so with the Season 2 premiere, which is excellent but directed by David Lynch and very deliberately slower, darker and more supernatural than what had come before.)

I think they already have their lesson in Bob getting eaten.

In case anyone has an interest: Here is an archive of the weeks upon weeks of hours upon hours of cast and crew interviews from USC's recent Twin Peaks retrospective. The page linked features the final Q&A dealing with FWWM, but it also has links back to the many other Q&As about the series as a whole. At some point I shall watch it all from the beginning.

Whenever Kirkman drops in to write a show, we get more of his random, clunky speeches dropped into people's mouth out of the blue, like Bob suddenly speechifying about Washington. The rest was fine, sans the author clearly jizzing himself getting to redo the cannibal speech from the comics at the end. Poor old Larry Gilliard.

Judging by his behavior, though, I suspect both Bob and the cannibals will meet the same end as the comic.

Yeah, which I gave up on later than I should have.

Connor was really OTT last week, too. It's a bit much like GH - if every person is either OTT bitchy or boring wallpaper I can't remember (or Viola Davis), what's there to watch but a circus?*

* - see also: Ryan Murphy

I did not buy Harry Potter Kid in his rant to Keating about the poor, poor drug addict he has a hard-on for. That was Cliche Network TV 101, bad writing and he delivered it badly. I lost a lot of respect for Keating when she went for the cliché and took that case.

I don't remember/care about any of the other kids except for the gay guy and the fratboy. The chick insecure about her bicurious man is too over the top. This is junk TV I am watching for Viola Davis, it's slick but it's too frantic and not rocket science.

From a new Hollywood Reporter article on TP:

Now Showtime is reviving Peaks for a nine-episode run set to air in 2016, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of its cancellation. "This was a journey interrupted," says Frost, who'll co-write the new episodes with Lynch. "We've had a quarter century to think about where we wanted to go next. But we will serve no coffee and pie before its time." Die-hard fans will remember the final episode, in which the ghost of Palmer appears before the FBI agent and says she'll return in 25 years. "I have absolutely no idea where they're going with the new show," says Sheryl Lee, who played both Palmer and her brunette cousin Madeleine Ferguson. "I sure hope there's a place for at least one of my two dead characters."

The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes. Ghostwritten by Scott Frost, series writer and brother of co-creator Mark Frost. The Frost brothers are also the sons of actor Warren Frost (Doc Hayward) - and the siblings of ATWT star Lindsay Frost, who played Betsy Stewart on that soap.

Another ABC promotional tie-in they were excited enough to greenlight. I read bits and pieces of this as a kid in bookstores, but never had a hard copy of it the way I did Laura's diary. It starts in Cooper's boyhood years and is an interesting read thus far.

I do hope if they must have Donna (which they mustn't) they'll use Kelly, who I always preferred. I'm not sure Lara Flynn Boyle is still on good terms with anyone at the show (or in Hollywood), honestly. I know Lynch was very put out when she, Sherilyn Fenn and MacLachlan opted or mostly opted out of FWWM. He patched things up with the latter two long ago but apparently this is not the case with Boyle. At the same time, I can frankly see Lynch being fascinated with what's become of LFB and her face as sort of a tragic creature. I saw something terrible she was in not long ago and she can barely speak, let alone act. She looks like Swamp Thing. It's difficult to watch - makes Jackie Zeman on GH look like a minor touch-up.

Almost any of the others have had more of a career than James Marshall, who disappeared after being the It Boy of the moment in the early '90s. I'm okay with giving him another moment, the others will be announced. And I expect TPTB know better now what he can and can't do, story-wise.

Looking at the pilot and Season 1 again this week Marshall definitely had that sort of sweet sad boy thing going, which always made him less masculine than most of his female partners, and I suspect that fascinated Lynch/Frost. His stories got so terrible, but early on he was instrumental to helping flesh out Laura for the audience.

I do wonder what Moira Kelly is doing these days. She was big for a bit in the '90s too, then she quietly left The West Wing when the role didn't pan out. That's the last I've heard of her. She was wonderful in FWWM, not that I need Donna back.