LostInTheMovies

Yeah, that is a rough patch. And not to discourage you from resuming (because it is worth struggling through, for the - few - bits that pay off in later, much better episodes and the film) but it's probably gonna get a little worse before it gets better. But it does get better. And then the final episode is arguably the best of the entire series. Someone made a really good and to my mind pretty accurate chart of TP quality:

Good post. The question of when/why Twin Peaks' popularity dipped fascinates me too and I've spent a lot of time looking into it this year. To a certain extent this will always remain ambiguous because all we have to go by are Nielsen ratings. These have some inherent flaws when judging a show like TP (where people watched in groups, and also watched repeatedly via VHS tapings etc) and even to the extent they are helpful they don't tell us WHY viewers dropped away. That said, there are some things we can deduce. 1) The season 2 premiere aired on a Sunday night, just like the pilot (far and away the highest-rated episode of Twin Peaks). The following episode, however, aired on a Saturday as did all the other episodes through (I think) February. This has to be a big part of the dropoff because the demographic that made Twin Peaks at least a semi-hit in the first season skewed young, affluent, hip. The types of folks who are usually out on a Saturday night. This was remarked upon right away when ABC announced Saturday as Twin Peaks' new night (back in the spring, when it was renewed for a second season) and though Frost initially played along by saying that the weekend was perfect for social viewing, he later claimed that he and Lynch were shocked by the move. To this day a lot of people feel the execs sabotaged the show, and that this may have been the biggest single factor in its failure. That said... 2) The move to Saturday doesn't explain the critical reaction or, anecdotally, the average viewer reaction to the s2 premiere which was largely negative. This spring I rounded up lots of commentary on TP both from 1990-91 and later years. Laying the excerpts out in chronological order does offer some indication of the general response, although obviously it's just a sampling: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2014/06/gone-fishin-collection-of-commentary-on.html To get more specific, here come the dreaded spoiler tags... EDIT: Just re-read the Newsweek article and stumbled across this line: "Says New York attorney Franz Paasche: "There is this uncomfortable sense that the whole show is a joke on the viewer." This REALLY seems to have been a common theme to the backlash. Which brings us right back to that question I asked about what how new viewers perceive the show's purpose (or lack thereof).

I have a question for newcomers to the series (re-posted from a less busy thread): In the New York article Chris & Jake mentioned on the podcast, the author speculates that perhaps "Twin Peaks has nothing at all in its pretty little head except the desire to please" in contrast to other prestige shows (he cites, for example, The Singing Detective and The Prisoner). At this point in the series, do you have a similar impression of its tone and purpose? I guess this could be separated into a few different questions: Do you consider the show primarily as fun entertainment or as something else as well? Do you think the themes and motifs of the show are there just to bring us into this world or are we supposed to (or can we) take them seriously? Do you think Leonard's definition of meaning gives short shrift to the importance of style, mood, and emotion?

How far in are you out of curiosity?

EDIT: Man, if I was a newcomer watching this show for the first time I would be very intrigued/frustrated by all the secretive discussions haha. And probably doubling back on these forums as soon as I finished watching. Meanwhile, I've got to come up with some non-spoiler-y discussion points.

Heck, I'd go all the way back to the Log Lady walking in but then I'd have to include the Tojamura sequence which, while fun ( still kinda comes from a different universe). But pretty much everything from the moment we fade up from the last commercial break is tremendous (I love "I'm going to get a sandwich."). Not that the rest of the episode slouches. Side note: I love how Lynch uses up commercial breaks on the show. Does this in his last episode as well, even more notably - there's a break every few minutes so that the final half of the episode can just be experienced straight-through. I didn't watch Twin Peaks when it was on but you can see this on the discs/streaming by when the scene fades to black.

Ah yes. She was so brilliant. Chase has spoken of the influence of Twin Peaks on Sopranos, but I've gotta think there's an I, Claudius influence too. Hell, just look at the character's name!

Oh, I know, but when I saw " '91" (year of T2) I couldn't resist.

No! Btw, love I, Claudius. What it lacks in production values does it ever make up for in juicy scenery-chewing. John Hurt's Caligula gives me goosebumps.

Also, re: the New York article, even granting that Leonard was grappling with the show in its very early episodes without the 20/20 hindisight we have, the Warhol analogy strikes me as particularly inapt.

Agreed - ground zero with Lynch's work is the emotional experience. I just left a comment on another board w/ an interesting quote that addresses this: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9701-twin-peaks-rewatch-2-traces-to-nowhere/?p=327318 (last part of the post).

^This. And I think that's a huge part of the backlash, at least on a subconscious level. You don't see many people address this openly - it's always about "oh, it's weird for weird's sake" or "they were never going to solve the mystery" or "it lost the magic." But the big turning point in popularity,

"its everything Twin Peaks is in like eight minutes"

Weird - I could've sworn the hosts posted a link to the article in this thread, but now I can't find it! Here it is: http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/twin-peaks-new-york-magazine-cover-story-john-leonard.html EDIT: (link fixed, h/t SickNotes)

Well, according to Lynch and Frost - and we only have their word, since they didn't share it with anyone else - they had decided on the killer very early on (whether this means the pilot or when they began writing season one is unclear to me; I wouldn't be surprised if the pilot was written without knowing though there's evidence there if you look for it). They didn't want to reveal it publicly till the end of the show (sometimes they say "never" which doesn't make sense to me) but between the two of them they had a specific idea who they wanted it to be. Here's an interesting quote from Frost on the subject: "We started with this image of a body washing up on a lake," says Mr. Frost. "It took us a while to solve the murder. We had to know the town before we could make up a list of suspects. Only after we knew most of its people was the killer revealed to us." (http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/08/arts/television-when-blue-velvet-meets-hill-street-blues.html) This is from April 8, 1990 (the day the pilot aired, and a good six weeks or so before a second season was commissioned) - so unless he's lying, they knew who the killer was going to be before they planned to reveal it. Some of the actors and writers seem to suspect they were full of it, but they - particularly Frost - are very insistent on the subject.

Just finished listening to this episode, so I'm finally caught up. I'm really glad you brought the New York article in the discussion - it really captures how the show was received at the time, and suggests why it eventually went out of fashion. To my mind the key passage is (emphasis mine): "Wittgenstein had a philosophy, and Pynchon has some politics. Lynch is merely moody, more of a Warhol. Though beautiful to look at, there isn't much of anything inside his soft labyrinth except an unimportant secret. Unlike, say, The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan, or The Edge of Darkness, the brilliant British eco­thriller that Channel 13 refuses to run, or The Singing Detective,which Lynch says he's never seen, Twin Peaks has nothing at all in its pretty little head except the desire to please." This seems to have been quite a common perception in the spring of '90; the TV critic for the L.A. Times said something very similar within a week or two of this article, and many others concurred. Open question for any newcomers to the series - and perhaps I'll have to post this in another thread if this one has died - do you agree? Do you feel "Twin Peaks" has any larger meaning or theme or that it's primarily a mood piece? Does being a mood piece necessarily negate "meaning"? Do you view the show primarily as entertainment, as art, as something in between? My own thoughts:

No worries, I figured it out! As for FWWM, gotcha. I certainly didn't intend to give away any plot points - just wondering if it was kosher to actually discuss I'll play it safe and keep anything about it within spoiler tags. Incidentally, very cool that this forum is full of people who haven't seen the show before. Like an introcast X 100. One of the things I find most fascinating about Twin Peaks is to observe viewers' reactions as they watch it for the first time and respond to key events (maybe because I have so much trouble remembering my own initial responses, even though I first watched it in 2008). So I will be in pig heaven here...