mattgrecocreative
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Posts posted by mattgrecocreative
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Chris and Jake talking about the Hank-Josie cliffhanger of this episode, and then Jake mentioning "JJ Abrams cliffhangers" for a moment made me think of something. While I could never say in full confidence that with Lost, JJ Abrams (but more so Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse; the actual showrunners) were the first to put a cliffhanger before every commercial, they definitely made it a huge trend in today's serialized golden age. (I think this technique was made even more noticeable by the ever-present trombone "bwaaaAAAAHHHH" right before a scene would cut.) IMO, this actually used the structure of commercial breaks in an inventive way. And this made me made me wonder if the Twin Peaks revival had been picked up by a network with commercials if we would see something like this. The majority of the Twin Peaks episodes usually operate on a low-key level. Yet it'd be odd to see a show now a days that didn't leave you hanging at least a bit before each break. Even a lot of comedies do this now. We know this won't be a problem with Twin Peaks being on Showtime, but I often think about what Twin Peaks could've looked like on different networks or in different time periods.
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I
-Toad, the gross diner-goer is introduced very briefly in this episode.
He later shows up in probably the worst subplot/episode of Twin Peaks, in season 2 when Norma is worried about the restaurant critic
Oh god, the restaurant critic! It's things like that and the James-and-the-cougar storyline that are making me dread some parts on the horizon of this re-watch...
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An interesting thing I noticed about the show that you kind of commented on is that the idiosyncratic nature of the universe allows for actors to get away with what may not traditionally appealing acting. There are some geniunely bad performances (James), but then also there are performances that are so bizarre and intriguing I don't know what to think of them (Leo, Nadine, Pete)
So well put. It's like in The Room (also mentioned above by another user); by all accounts the horrible acting/everything was not intentional, but then you can use the revisionist defense of "wasn't it so off-putting, creepy, idiosyncratic?" "No, it was actually just bad. You're not fooling me." With Twin Peaks I'd be willing to bet most takes chosen in the edit were intentional though. Just wanted to touch on this though.
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I have to blame myself for that one, I lazily used the first term that came to my mind, which was buckets. And you're right, a slider is a much better way of describing it.
As for that quote from Ray Wise, that's interesting about filming
the death scene with Ben Horn too. I'm assuming it was done to prevent the correct identity being leaked to the public. They did this on LOST with who was in the coffin. They shot three different people in there, including Locke.
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In my personal opinion not culled from any other site. I believe that we as humans shift our understanding throughout our lives into three categories on a continuum: the probable, the possible, and the impossible. When we read or watch fiction, we sort the world that is being created into these categories so that we can expect the world to play by certain rules. We do this in real life when we are children. Monsters under the bed (in the closet) are possible until we have enough experience of them not grabbing us to sort them into the impossible category. In opposition to this, logic dictates that you can't do this, because you can't prove the absence of something. But, in order to live our daily lives we have to be illogical so that we don't fear monsters under the bed or realize every waking moment that there are missiles that can annihilate us all. We sort those things closer to the impossible because of the experience of them not happening constantly, because we must. Otherwise, we wouldn't be any less scared of the dangers of monsters or nuclear war than the day we first learned about them. This could be called something, but I don't know the philosophical term. Twin Peaks is slowly letting us know how possible and probable the magic in their world is.
This is really eloquently and wisely said. I don't think everyone sorts their lives into buckets like this, or these exact buckets, but it is definitely true of a lot of people.
I just wanted to mention one thing about your comment on
Leland being the only impatient one in the vision scene because of him being the killer. And now we're debating if they had decided if he was the killer at this point in the show's production. I think we all agree that Lynch and Frost wouldn't have decided who the killer was until - public knowledge - the network pressured them into solving it. But we know that the network didn't do this UNTIL they saw the ratings declining. Which was season 2. So I doubt they knew at this point that it was Leland. So that's just worked out retroactively for them thankfully, but looks intentional.
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That is definitely a standard thing, but I guarantee it's for no reason other than it's a TV show, and there is only a certain amount of time in an episode, and money for shooting on location.
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Scott's piece is incredible. He even has the right details on the chalkboard. His episode with Bagel, Peter Chan, Levi, Lee, etc. in the Broken Age documentary was amazing.
Anyway, this made me remember my favorite part of the rock-throwing scene: Andy determined to declare that getting hit in the head "didn't hurt at all", followed by Truman's sick burn on him.
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Just a note to Chris: Albert calls Lucy in his introductory scene "Curly" (as in her curly hair) not "Carly/Carlie."
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Korax posting a gif of Lucy sticking her tongue out made me think of other gestural insults we don't do from the 90's anymore.
1) Flipping people off, but with your ring finger, so you were allowed to.
2) Brushing your throat with your fingers out towards the person.
3) The thing where you karate-chopped with one arm into the crook of your other arm, raising its fist.
4) "Suck it."
Other than this moment with Lucy though, Twin Peaks may not serve as the best show to remind us of anymore forgotten things of the era. It certainly is timeless and of its own world.
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I really love the move the original Wicker Man (1973). I think Twin Peaks and that movie have strong similarities. They both have morally upright, pure law men who journey to a small back water community to solve the mystery of a missing/dead girl. The Wicker Man's protagonist is as repulsed by the community that he finds as Agent Cooper is infatuated with Twin Peaks.
They also both have uncomfortably-extended scenes of women dancing over music. Audrey in the diner this episode and the blond woman in the hotel (or whatever it was) room in Wicker Man.
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He just exists in this world so well.
That's a great way to put it. Or even when he might not be fitting in that well, he still marvels at what he's seeing every day and is so glad to be in the world. Case in point: when he warns Truman about Albert not being good with social niceties, and after Albert starts insulting everything, Cooper just keeps looking over at Truman with a grin that says, "see? Isn't he exactly what I said?"
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Agreed with Chris. I even remember the tone of the shots as Josie makes her announcement to the mill workers as nothing but grief-stricken, while her voice and face are empathetic towards that.
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My fault, doesn't matter whether we think it was good or not, still technically a spoiler. Fixed it above.
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All the great talk about Josie and Joan Chen and how she felt about her character makes me think of all the unfortunate handling of minority characters on Seinfeld.
About her malapropisms specifically, anytime Michael Scott would make one of those in The Office...my favorite thing ever. No comment on the show's handling of them at all, just sprang to mind.
As I was watching Nadine's scene, I was struggling to find a way in, to not tune out.
And then I remembered that soon she will have a super-strength storyline. Ugh.
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Whenever I see James on his bike going down a lonesome curving, stretch of road, I think, "Ugggggghhhh, we get it. He is a loner."
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Oh man! Great episode guys!
I've seen the series before but I still got bummed out after listening to the spoilers, so if you're senile like me don't listen to the spoilers even if you've seen it before
Also thanks nj00s for clarifying the Norwegian thing. I'm a Swede but I couldn't tell if the accent was real or not. Also a Swede asked question... weird Scandinavian coincidence xD. Also my mom was watching this when it was airing and waiting to deliver me and my brother which explains a lot of things.When I first watched the show and still today I I'm fascinated fascinated how my "boring" and ordinary parents and everyone they knew watched this because it was the big thing on TV. And boy is it bizarre and strange at times, must have been interesting for a audience who ordinary don't experience strangeness like this to suddenly be attacked by it, unexpectedly too! It feels as if it aired today that kind of demographic wouldn't watch this kind of thing but I might be wrong.
Anyway, first post, hello to all of you! I've almost listened to all Idle thumbs episodes twice because my previous job was boring and allowed me to do so
I think you're absolutely right that if TP aired today, not nearly as many people would watch it. Maybe the pilot, but as with most serialized shows today, the weirder it gets from there, the more viewers drop off. You saw it with shows like Lost and Fringe.
And just to mention one more show from back then that seemingly everyone watched: Grace Zabriskie (Laura's mom) also played Susan's mom on Seinfeld. She was equally heartbroken when she found out her husband was having an affair with John Cheever.
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So excited for this Twin Lords Rewatch podcast. The tone, taste and cinematography (which I supposed are all tone) get you so enveloped in the world that if, like me, your original watch of Twin Peaks was in large binge chunks on Netflix, when you come up for air you don't really want to be out of that world quite so soon. There are a lot of shows like that for me. Mad Men, Fringe, Hannibal. All great shows that are/were incredible for the majority of their run. Which makes the clunkers stick out so much more, just like the ones we know are coming in season two of Twin Peaks. And with all of those shows, it's usually a case of that tone being pushed too far to the other side. With TP, the examples that come to mind are
James sleeping with that lady, Donna hanging out with that guy who is scared to leave his home, a lot of Josie moments, and Heather Graham.
The End of Mad Men: "Severance"
in The End of Mad Men Episodes
Posted
I sent this into the cast as well, but I really was curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
I thought this episode showed a great, and troubling, range of Don dealing with the loss of several women from his life. In the first scene in the diner, when Don is telling a story to three women and Roger, he carefully makes sure to call his childhood home a boarding house, not a whorehouse, effectively avoiding having to speak about those women. Later on at his apartment, Don is with a new woman who spills red wine on the carpet. This is the exact spot where Don "murdered" another woman from his past in a fever dream (Madchen Amick from Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks Rewatch). As Don covers the wine stain and they begin to get intimate, she finds an earring of Megan's under the bed, which Don speaks ostensibly lightly of and throws away. And finally, looming largest over the episode is Rachel Katz/Menken.
He learns of her death from his secretary, he attends her funeral and tries to find understanding with her sister, then goes to make sense of a dream about Rachel with one of the waitresses at the diner.