Twin Peaks

[Vee]

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.

[MissLlanviewPA]

As someone who hopes to see the original series soon, would you guys say this survival guide is fairly accurate?

[DRW50]

Yes, although I think there's only one or two episodes that are explicitly poor - they happen right after the end of Leland. The rest in the back half of season 2 are a mixed bag and don't suddenly go from terrible to great. The "good" episodes have a lot of material that I struggled with (Audrey's degradation, the pine weasel story, Ben Horne's "comedy" mental illness story, Annie/Dale, just about anything Dale, etc.)

[MissLlanviewPA]

Thanks. Both of my parents were huge fans of the show when it was originally on (I was only a year or two old back then), but they both have always made a point about how weird things got during season 2, so when I first expressed interest in seeing the whole series, they asked me if I was really sure if I wanted to do that .

[YRBB]

This is brilliant.

Probably the worst of the worst, along with Nadine's super-strength malarkey.

[Vee]

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.)

Edited October 21, 2014 by Vee

[Soaplovers]

I'm not sure what the point of the Evelyn Marsh storyline was.. was it pre-planned.. or a last minute addition due to other stories being shelved (Cooper/Audrey) or resolved quicker then planned (Laura Palmer's murder mystery).

I actually think the Nadine story had some potential. Didn't she attempt to kill herself at the end of season 1? Perhaps when she didn't succeed, she mentally flashed back to her teen years pre-marriage and pre-eye patch to relive? Sadly, the show treated the story like a farce when it had some potential for psychological study of Nadine. A shame that she remembered who she was just as Big Ed/Norma became engaged... I wonder how that story would have resolved itself.

Also, I think Lucy/Andy were cute as a background story.. but were never meant to be a main story as we saw with the whose the daddy plot the show focused on in season 2. Though I have to admit i did enjoy Lana.. the black widow in training in season 2:)

I do think Josie's story ended at the right time, there was no where else you could go with her character especially the way the show wrote her into a corner in the mid section of season 2. Plus, I think Catherine was kind of wasted in the second half of season 2 after her return from the dead.

As I said before, Annie had potential if she wasn't bought on as a replacement for Audrey in the Cooper story. I think the story they had for Audrey in the second half of season 2 didn't fit her at all.. though I did like the brief interaction between her/Shelly/Donna after Windom Earle started sending all three notes.

Shelly also seemed in limbo the second half of the second season though I think I did like her brief flirtation with the detective (David lynch's character) who showed her that she deserved a guy who valued her.. since I think Leo/Bobby both abused her (Leo physically and Bobby emotionally).

[Vee]

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.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Vee

[DRW50]

I don't think Bobby did anywhere close to what Leo did. Bobby was a dumb kid who was trying to be a man, or his idea of a man, and Shelly was hurt in the process. I think she deserved better than Bobby, or at least what Bobby was at that time, but I also think the fun, innocent flirtation with Gordon was much different than the reality of a man who works around the clock and has an opaque personality.

Nadine's story just demeaned and cheapened everyone involved, and they had no idea how to play it. I thought the Norma/Ed relationship was especially cheapened. Martha Robie did a good job with what she had, and by the end, I did begin to care more about Nadine as she tried to move on with her life while still clearly being in love with Ed. Then they pulled the rug out, and I was so sick of the whole thing that what probably should have been a big moment - Nadine regaining her memory just as she and Mike and Norma and Ed were all going to be happy - felt gimmicky and made me feel strangely angry, the same way I felt about the Ben story and everything about him being Donna's father.

I'm glad Lynch cut out most of the Window stuff. That article you showed me had someone saying the story with Norma's mother was just typical TV. That's how I feel about the Windom material.

[Vee]

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."

Edited October 21, 2014 by Vee

[DRW50]

I meant the amnesia story, not her story as a whole. I thought it worked very well in season 1 and up to the point in season 2 where she woke up (and Ed had had that beautiful monologue about the night he'd accidentally shot her). After that it just seemed forced and off in tone, and I thought the relationship between Norma and Ed, which had been oddly pure and full of old Hollywood longing, just became another quasi-affair. I especially struggled with the scene where Nadine caught them in bed together - it was so disrespectful to them as characters (to Ed and Norma I mean) and was just comedy tropes not worthy of the show.

I thought toward the end of season 2 Nadine's regression finally started to work for her as a character, and I began to care about her dogged, sad attempts at finding her own identity, even as she clearly still loved Ed. I liked that she was trying to make it work with Mike, even though it was a ridiculous fantasy for them both. That's why her getting her memory back felt like a cheat to me, somehow.

Edited October 21, 2014 by DRW50

[Vee]

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.)

[Vee]

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.

[DRW50]

I didn't realize they almost did that with Audrey and Cooper. They narrowly avoided a lot of things with Cooper that would have been a mistake, I guess (a triangle with Harry would have been awful - the purity of their relationship was one of the best parts of the show, especially early on).

[ghfan89]

Kyle has since taken responsibility for the 'rounding out the edges' (his words) of his character, apparently.