Twin Peaks

[Vee]

Is that really a hint on her part, though? She seems curious herself.

[Soaplovers]

Watched the last episode of season 1 and the first episode of season 2 is almost like watching two different shows.

Donna and Maddy especially are like two different characters. I am going to guess this was done on purpose to spoof characters changing on a dime to.fit the plot..just like soaps do?

[Vee]

It's a little more complex than that. Over the summer break, a number of actors on the show capitalized on the show's success and began offering creative input. According to some of the writing staff, Lara Flynn Boyle was insecure about Sherilyn Fenn's popularity as Audrey, and began requesting the show deliberately skew the Donna character into a similar direction - more sexy clothes and demeanor, more of a smoldering vixen persona. She tried hard to put that change across in Season 2 in her performance - too hard - which is why her character becomes dramatically different and colder at times. (For her part, Sherilyn Fenn apparently tired of Audrey's flirtatious persona and asked the writers to make her "more like Katharine Hepburn" - with power suits and working in the family business, as you will see.)

Watching today, I think the change in Donna plays a little more organically, as a petulant teenage girl desperate to keep her boyfriend by invoking the spirit of her dead friend. The show plays with the idea of Laura's sunglasses being a talisman for her behavior, but they don't dig too deep into it. In the end, Donna's wearing Laura's things and trying to be more like Laura to win James eventually catches up with her. I have a lot more patience for LFB in the role now than I did a few years ago, because she is incredible in the pilot and Season 1, and she still does a lot of good work in Season 2 when she isn't trying quite so hard.

The Season 2 premiere is dramatically different from Season 1, much more dark and supernatural. It was directed and heavily worked over by David Lynch, who did the first two episodes of the season, and its shift in tone almost immediately alienated critics, who expected a conventional mystery. That was the beginning of their turning on TP overall. I think the premiere is a masterpiece. I remember being spellbound watching it live on ABC when I was 8 or 9 - it was very strange and frightening and funny. I was incredibly agitated and tense about the endless waiter scene (a classic Lynch device) while Cooper lay on the floor shot, but I wasn't angry. At the end of the episode, however, I ran from the room when they showed Ronette's terrifying nightmare. That was always Lynch's way; the slow build, the absurdist pauses, the strange comedy, and then absolute horror.

[Vee]

Sheryl Lee and Dana Ashbrook at the Twin Peaks UK Festival last year.

[Soaplovers]

I think the Maddie change was due to a red herring thrown out to the audience (i.e. Vertigo) to make viewers wonder if Maddie is perhaps Laura in disguise. Thinking about it, I can buy Donna shifting in personality.. but it just happened so quickly that it seemed jarring. Perhaps if the show didn't have the structure of each episode taking place in one day's time and advancing day to day... it wouldn't have seemed so jarring to me. I do agree Audrey went from the last episode of season 1 with twisting the cherry stem in her mouth, to acting almost demure by the 1st or 2nd episode of season 2. Perhaps the shock of seeing her father walking in to sample the new goods snapped her back into reality.. and realized her games have a price? Just a theory

Just finished viewing episode 2 of season 2. It's interesting that Windom Earle was mentioned so early in the season. I did read in the previous posts that the show regretted not introducing him earlier.. and seeing that he was referenced this early makes me wonder why they held off. This episode would have been a perfect way to start the ball rolling on this so that by the time the Laura Palmer mystery was wrapped up, this story was already kicking into high gear. Then the show wouldn't have had to panic when it had to derail the other plots. I know that both Lynch and Frost were doing other things, but surely they could have left detailed outlines for the writers to pick up the slack?

Lastly, I still think the Annie character could have worked even with Heather Graham if she wasn't instantly paired with Dale Cooper..imho.

[Vee]

The day to day episode thing is just part of TP that I let roll off me. It happens.

Maddie-as-Laura was a major fan theory at the time, but I'm not sure the show ever actively engaged with it. I think the change in her look was to emphasize the resemblance as part of where she ends up in Season 2.

Audrey, I don't think she changes until she returns from One-Eyed Jack's. I think everything in Season 2 is very, very solid until the end of the Laura mystery. They chose to take a small break before introducing Windom Earle because they thought some other short-term thriller stories might be a palate cleanser, which I can understand. But while I have more time for some of those foibles for others, those episodes are far from perfect - the show picks up again later and is much improved IMO, but it is different.

Lynch and Frost did oversee and sign off on most everything that went down in those middle episodes, especially Frost. But they left much of the day-to-day to Harley Peyton and Robert Engels, both of whom were very talented and did some of TP's best stuff but who, by their own admission, went too much for "absurdist comedy" while left to their own devices.

[DRW50]

To me there wasn't a huge change in Maddy. She'd slowly become more of what she saw Laura as being starting at the end of season 1, with the wig. This just continued, until finally she snapped out of it (sadly too late to save her life).

Donna did change, and some of it was a put-on (the sunglasses and "sexy" smoking), but part was also just LFP struggling with the material, which was itself struggling. There was a lot of fan hate for Donna's behavior with Harold, and the decision to have her angstily talking with James about their relationship right after Harold had clawed his face and suffered a huge setback thanks to her deception. This is where Donna and James both feel more like pieces or pawns than actual characters, and that continues on, to the point where I just did not care about anything they did (that melodrama at the end of the season about Ben being her father didn't help).

I watched the premiere with my father and he was annoyed with the lengthy scene of Andy getting hit in the head with the floorboard. I remember it mostly because it felt somewhat forced (as did a lot of the Andy/Lucy/Dick stuff this season), like the show knew fans wanted wackiness but no longer felt interested in writing it.

[DRW50]

I know some Audrey fans thought the Daddy's Girl stuff was a drag on the character and prefer season 1 Audrey. I can see why Sherilyn wanted more...I just don't know if her working with her father was the best way to go about it. I would have instead had her continuing to help solve mysteries. But I have a limited tolerance for Ben, which colors my view.

[Vee]

I loved the whole Andy slapstick scene. That's all Lynch, right down to the timing where it just goes on and on. He never tired of that humor.

I don't know that there was ever fan backlash against Donna over Harold or any of that, at least not back when the show aired - nobody was looking at it in that way at that time, I don't think, it was all about the mystery. As for watching it again recently, I think that she's manipulative in the story but I think the story itself works and she's very good in it with Lenny von Dohlen. It's one of the few times LFB's whole coarse act really plays. Watching it again I think Harold was never going to give anyone that diary - he was too obsessed with having that piece of Laura to himself - and that diary was what they needed to crack the case. I sympathized with Harold as a viewer, but even as a kid when I watched him claw his face (which was very scary at age 9!), I never thought he could be trusted to give up his secrets.

I don't think Maddy changes either. I think her look does, for a specific reason.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Vee

[DRW50]

Her behavior in the story works, but the lack of followup makes her look awful and I think it takes away her integrity as a character.

Maybe Lynch wasn't tired of it and I just was, I don't know. I did like Andy. The whole thing just seemed a little, "This is Twin Peaks, it's what we do," somewhat perfunctory. I think season 1 got the tonal balance right. Season 2 was darker, no doubt, but I think you can still have comedy with darkness. I just don't know how often they got it right in season 2.

Watching the start of that video - hearing that about how Bobby wasn't supposed to smile surprised me. I guess it shows how Lynch was willing to work with the actors and not stick to a vision of a character.

I loved Maddy. Watching the series over again I'm still impressed with Sheryl's commitment to the role and not just making Maddy a Laura stand-in. That means when she's murdered, you feel the loss, instead of just seeing it as an artistic moment or a horror moment.

[Soaplovers]

Maddie was very different from Laura. She seemed more mature, more innocent, yet also kind of confident. I don't think Laura would have felt guilty if she and James had kissed like Maddie had. I do wonder if rumours of the third character had been true.. if she would have been different from Laura or Maddie.

[Vee]

It was true about the third character. I don't know what they would have done, other than she had red hair and might also end up dead. We may yet see one in the new series, but I think it's more likely we'll see much more of Laura.

I think Donna only really reconciled herself with what happened to Harold at the end of Episode 14, in that great scene in the Roadhouse where she says she violated his world. At the same time she's doing that, she is - like a typical teenager - sort of denying to herself why Maddy would have left town without telling her ("She never said anything to me"). It's obvious James isn't buying it so they don't say anything else. It's a great bit with her and James Marshall which has minimal dialogue from Lynch and a lot of mood and physical work on their part, and it's one of their last really good scenes together. Their stuff in Season 1, which is so earnest, plays much better for me today than it did when I was a more cynical teenager - LFB really puts herself in the hands of Lynch and Frost in the first season and does great work, and James Marshall does well with what he is good at - but I think what happens with them in Season 2, in the first half, with Donna sort of acting out (and then blaming Laura, which is a great scene) is also resonant. I have much more time for Lara's work than I used to, even the stuff where she (along with Donna) is working against herself. The writing seemed to get it when she didn't.

You get the sense Maddy was a very sheltered young woman in her life in Missoula. She's a few years older than Donna and James and has her own apartment, but it's easy for people who have a difficult time coming out of their shells in the adult world to gravitate back to something more comfortable. Which she does, and then she gets over it (and then she dies). There was a scene cut from Episode 9 at the Double R where she and Leland talk, and Leland suggests she stay with them in town and not go back home. It's a very tender bit, but also foreboding in hindsight.

Incidentally, Shelly's part was apparently all but nothing until they got Mädchen Amick (who Lynch calls "Madge-kin"). Then they beefed it up considerably.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Vee

[Vee]

It's astonishing looking at Episode 29 again and going back over the original teleplay Mark Frost, Harley Peyton and Bob Engels wrote - while a lot remains, there is so much that is different and was utterly thrown out by David Lynch and made up on the spot, and not just in the latter half with the Black Lodge sequence. The entire opening in the police conference room is dramatically different in tone, sparse on dialogue - much of the original exposition is cut or reworded - but full of those weird repetitions and languid rhythms in that Lynchian way ("Pete! The Log Lady did not steal your truck. The Log Lady will be here in one minute."). Mood is oppressive and enchanting, and they deliver all the same facts in a much more supernatural way. The whole Log Lady interlude where she arrives with the oil and tells her husband's story about the Lodge is new, as is Ronette Pulaski's return. They make Ronette say "Laura Palmer" (just as Annie explicitly did in the previous episode, where Norma says the town has a lot of healing to do - for the first time in a number of episodes, they said her full name) and Hawk explicitly mentions the bloody towel and Laura's diary pages from the original crime scene, all essential elements of the original mystery. None of this was in the original script, nor was both Pete and Earle marveling at Pete's twelve rainbow trout. Ray Wise's name is also back in the opening credits - he is not listed as a guest star.

The Windom Earle and Annie sequence where he draws her into the Lodge is also very different. A speech is cut, and instead the focus is on Annie muttering her prayers while being dragged through the night with a flashlight on her face. Lynch also makes Kenneth Welsh much scarier. And the final Mike/Nadine/Ed/Norma scene has the great opening, also not in the original script, where Ed enters snapping his fingers, and he and Norma do a cute little dance by the fireplace as Doc Hayward tends to Mike and Nadine, with Ed and Norma blissfully happy for a moment. In the script, Nadine's return to "normal" is much more tough - calling Mike a bozo and ordering everyone around with ease. In the final scene, she just breaks down and screams for her drape runners.

That's just the first third of the episode. Everything in the Double R with Shelly, Bobby, Major Briggs, Sarah, Dr. Jacoby and so much more was not in the script, it was all invented on the day.

It's not to say that any of the work in the script by Frost, Engels or Peyton is bad - they scripted so much of the very best of the show in both seasons, and are incredibly gifted, and Mark Frost was and is very important to the show. But Lynch is always the x factor where takes something to a totally different place from its foundation.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Vee

[alexisfan07]

Also this was a response to one of my tweets. I think this means Sherilyn, Everett, Wendy and James Marshall are in?

https://twitter.com/ThatsOurWaldo/status/551966089878708225

[Vee]

(I posted that on page 11.)