Twin Peaks

[DRW50]

 

You're right. I forgot that one. I guess it counts. 

 

I wonder how many viewers at the time guessed that Mr. Tashiwa (or whatever his name was) was Catherine. My mother guessed in the episode it was revealed. I guess they didn't really try to keep it too much of a secret given that she did have that scene in the lodge with Pete. Did you know about it ahead of time (as I did) or was it a surprise to you? 

 

Watching these again I'm reminded of how even with Joan Chen being a bit iffy as an actress, she adds a lot of heart and tries so hard to put across what Josie is feeling and just how much Josie is in over her head. If there is ever more of the show I hope we might get one last go-round with her.

[Vee]

Mr. Tojamura. I think Mr. Tashiwa was from GL. 

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I actually don't recall the Tojamura plotline from my first viewing. I don't think everyone knew, no, but you can check the old alt.tv.twin-peaks archives for that - I know Joel Bocko did a post about their archives on his site. I don't have a lot of clear memories of S2 from when I was little beyond the season premiere and episodes 13 and 14, and then the last couple episodes minus the finale (more on that in a moment). I was absolutely spellbound by the opening of the premiere with the Giant and Cooper in the hotel room, while most adults were apparently infuriated. Spirits and strange beings showing up made perfect sense to me as a child, whereas a lot of critics felt it violated the tenets of TV at the time. I remember wondering where Catherine was because she was a favorite of mine, and hoping she'd be back. I would scan the TV Guide descriptions over the next few weeks hoping to see a sign of her mentioned. But the scene with Maddy watching the rug (and seeing her own bloodstain from her future murder) frightened me, and much of Lynch's stillness and slow scenes in those two hours left me uneasy, waiting for something bad to happen. I was absolutely terrified of BOB and when he made his presence known in the final sequence of the premiere (Ronette's nightmare) it was pretty horrifying. I didn't watch much of the next few episodes closely (and didn't see the Just You and I sequence at the time) because I was scared he would appear again. The Harold material got freaky too when he rakes his face after catching Donna and Maddy with the diary and Sheryl Lee does that trademark scream. That scene really spooked me.

 

I watched the big reveal episode despite having the jitters, but the minute they got to the slow Louis Armstrong scene in the Palmer living room with Maddy saying goodbye to Leland and Sarah I was very nervous and had a feeling she wasn't going anywhere. I didn't realize David Lynch was directing it - I didn't really have any concept of that sort of thing back then, but I knew it made me feel like the premiere did. By the time they got to the record skipping in the Palmer house as Sarah began crawling down the stairs I was ready to go hide under my mother's dining room table for the duration of the end of the episode. I stayed there and just listened to the end!  It was almost as traumatic as seeing the sequence a few years later, when I was a teen in high school rewatching the whole series on Bravo. My dazed mom had to tell me what happened. She did the same with the finale, and actually did a decent job recapping episode 29 - I watched the first half of the two-hour finale with Annie getting kidnapped from Miss Twin Peaks, but I didn't watch the second half because again, I knew what the Red Room meant and I was terrified BOB would turn up. I had no idea the show was cancelled.

 

I think Joan Chen is really good at certain things, and underrated with the right director or in her native language. I think she did very well as the villainous Josie - her scene with Ben is a favorite of mine. She just seems to revel in it. But they got stuck using her as sort of the softer side of the tortured noir femme fatale, being victimized as opposed to playing the victim, and that doesn't benefit Chen. I think Lynch would've used her better had he taken a firmer hand, as her final scene was his idea and gives her a mythic resonance in the larger story. Like a lot of female characters in his films and in film noir overall, Josie is both lost in her world and caught up in her own deceptions. It's a classic archetype. She wants out but doesn't want to give up what she's bled or killed for ("I won't leave this office without my money."). She kills a bunch of people to get what she wants, but they rarely let Chen play that - they needed to make her harder. To me despite the muddled story and choices, the character is still really compelling because it's such a classic noir tale and Josie is way more than what she appears, and the show only scratches the surface yet leaves her as part of the deep mythology (even hinted at in Season 3). So yes, I'd love to see her again and I think Lynch would too, which is why he kept adding her back in after her death in some way. The crux of her character, really, is in Lynch's first close-up of her in the pilot, which he again replays in the flashback scene in Part 17 after Cooper undoes Laura's death - listening to music only she can hear.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Vee

[Vee]

[DRW50]

 

[Vee]

[Vee]

Johnny Jewel of Chromatics (and "Windswept", the song that is Cooper's recurring motif in Vegas) releases an album of Twin Peaks outtakes.

 

 

[Vee]

[Vee]

[DRW50]

I love Catherine Coulson and the Log Lady but that Kickstarter is just too high. I hope it works out for them though.

 

Anyway, this is great:

 

 

Today is Dana Ashbrook's birthday, so I have a reason to post this again:

 

 

[Vee]

[Vee]

On June 2:

 

 

[Vee]

Lynch talks to Rolling Stone and is still playing it coy:

 

 

[Vee]

[DRW50]

Russ Tamblyn has joined Twitter.

 

https://twitter.com/RussTamblyn

[Vee]

It's Alicia Witt!