LostInTheMovies

Great find! It seems like Bob Engels' story tends to shift over the years (he himself has admitted his memory is not that sharp) so it's good to hear his thoughts relatively close to the actual writing. I hope that Paul Hagstrom is still with us, and that he was first in line for the Entire Mystery blu-ray last summer! What a long wait. Sometimes I wish I could've experienced the show during its original run, and sometimes I'm just glad I did not have to endure that 1-2 decade dark age in which Twin Peaks was largely forgotten, Fire Walk With Me was almost universally despised, the entire series was almost impossible to get on video, the deleted scenes seemed like they would be locked away forever, and the prospects of any additional material seemed beyond remote. You original, long-suffering Twin Peaks viewers have my respect...

I still hold out that if Lynch directs all of it, it's going to be spectacular. But yeah, 18 has me a bit worried as well as excited. Interestingly, 18 hours of Lynch will almost equal his entire feature filmography up to this point (it triples his episode count for the original series). Whatever else, this is going to be very memorable.

I'm not sure what's intended, but I love this idea. Especially as I tend to see Mike and Bob as the two fundamental forces in conflict Although that still kind of leaves the Tremonds unaccounted for. She does seem to have doppelganger eyes. I've also seen a photo in which she has them (although of course this could theoretically be from another shot that was cut - but fwiw I don't think I've seen any photos of her as Maddy without the lenses). I wonder if this was partly Lynch's subconscious acknowledging that Maddy was most important to him as Laura's real-world doppelganger rather than an individual character who happened to look like Laura. It's worth noting that he was not involved with the episodes in which Maddy is customed to look really different from Laura and that when he directed Sheryl Lee as Maddy for the first time (in the season 2 premiere) he had hair straightened and made a point of her breaking her glasses and declaring she'd never wear them again. He seems to have wanted to de-emphasize her distinction from Laura. He also cut a scene from the following episode in which she talks with Leland and gives more of a sense of her background as a distinct character (revealing that her father has recently died; Leland also invites her to stay with the Palmers indefinitely which would have been a good set-up for episode 14). On the other hand, of course Maddy can't simply be Laura's doppelganger in the Lodge because we also see doppelganger-Laura. I agree that although the doppelgangers are all really creepy, suggesting that they represent the "evil" side, something a bit more complicated seems to be going on with the way they are used.

Great episode, guys. One of the things I've loved about this podcast is your ability to pinpoint and describe the effect of the show's weird decisions - both with and without Lynch, how it actually feels to watch it as it unfolds and what elements make it feel that way. Really looking forward to your coverage of FWWM.

"Oh yeah, how'd you get that elf to talk backwards?"

Are you on dugpa too? (For some reason I thought our previous interactions were just on these boards - they are blurring together to me!) I know, I need a methadone clinic lol... Yeah, I think about that often - what a weird juxtaposition! Or also, imagine somebody flipping through the channels during a commercial break from a Northern Exposure rerun. Hmm, what's the Monday Movie-of-the-Week on ABC? And stumbling across this. Still amazes me that a piece of avant-garde cinema on par with Jean Cocteau and Maya Deren aired in that venue at that time. Wow Bob wow!

The production context helps explain some of this: originally Cooper was supposed to conduct the entire Teresa Banks investigation. I think this was Lynch's way of making a film about Laura Palmer that still included the main character of the series. But Kyle MacLachlan was fed up with Lynch and Twin Peaks at this point (supposedly because he felt abandoned during the second season) and refused to make the movie. Eventually they coaxed him into a cameo, and replaced Cooper in the early scenes with the character of Chet Desmond. So yes, the first part of the movie makes a rather awkward fit with the rest and can seem sort of unjustified in a way that maybe it wouldn't if MacLachlan had been more on-board. That said, I've come to really love the Deer Meadow sequence especially Harry Dean Stanton's brilliant walk-on ("You see, I've already gone places...I just want to stay where I am."). I think the replacement of Cooper with Chet highlights how subversive the film is towards its source, and helps distance us further from the series from the get-go. I also love how inscrutable this whole mystery is, how impenetrable the town appears, which feels like the perfect bait-and-switch setup before we plunge into the stark revelation of Laura's psyche. Although of course that aspect could have still been accomplished with Cooper as the protagonist. Deer Meadow also works as a gateway into the second half of Lynch's career, in which he prefers to tell two or more detached but semi-related stories in a single film (think Lost Highway, which also switches protagonists, and Mulholland Drive). Admittedly though the structure doesn't work quite as well in this trial run as it will later on. Ultimately I feel like the first 40 minutes of Fire Walk With Me may hurt its effectiveness as a standalone film but help it as a perverse conclusion to the Twin Peaks saga. Here's a really good piece which talks about the relationship between the two parts of the film: http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-05-15/film/booed-at-cannes-at-bam-rose-cinemas/ Key passage: "The contrasting halves of the film's bifurcated narrative find two worlds crashing together, the first a plane of frustrated desire and inscrutable mystery, the second a void into which a young woman is swallowed up. The procedural elements of the first are fundamentally disconnected from the tragedy of the second, suggesting that, in the final estimation, we can't rely on institutions to protect us. They're solving the wrong case."

I think this is fair to a point but I also think the writing was on the wall and they kind of knew it. The big fight was to get the final 6 episodes aired. Obviously they hoped to use this as a springboard into a new season, but given the abysmal ratings and ABC's indifference at this point could they really have had much faith in that remote possibility? The writers were scripting a season-ending cliffhanger rather than a series finale, to be sure, but I think both Peyton and Engels have said (in the Secrets From Another Place documentary) that they were not expecting a renewal from the network. Lynch is harder for me to read. You bring up the Lynch on Lynch quote, and obviously returning for this episode initiated an excitement which led to Fire Walk With Me (originally including many hints that TP would continue in film sequels, if not television) so it's probably safe to say Lynch was not consciously approaching this as a farewell to the world he'd helped invent. And yet...considering how much Lynch draws on his subconscious intuitions, and given how obvious it was at this point that the show was not going to continue, it seems like he was directing with one eye on the idea that "this was it." Certainly much of the episode plays that way, and many of the changes he made (bringing back tons of forgotten characters, repeating Heidi's dialogue verbatim, giving Bobby & Shelly closure) don't really seem necessary for a season finale but make a ton of sense when concluding a series. In the book The Passion of David Lynch, Catherine Coulson claims that much of the cast was resentful about being written out of the final piece of Twin Peaks and that Lynch's inclusion of them was in part a gesture toward giving these actors a curtain call, so to speak. Even the fact that Lynch himself returned after such a long absence, when he hadn't directed the previous season finale, suggests that in his gut he was envisioning this as a conclusion, at least to the televised portion of Twin Peaks. Also, I don't think Lynch approached the finale with a long game in mind - seeding a season 3 - because that doesn't seem to be how he works. He's a filmmaker but not a showrunner which is probably the biggest difference between him and Frost. I would be inclined to credit Frost for pretty much all of the plot development on the series (including most of season one) because while Lynch is way underrated as a screenwriter, the nuts-and-bolts of extended arcs and story beats are too alien to how he works. Taking a wide view of the series, it becomes apparent that Lynch mostly absented himself from both long-term planning and day-to-day management, roles which Frost eagerly assumed. I honestly don't think Lynch really knew what he was biting off when he committed himself to a TV series, and that it was more than he was willing to chew. The evidence is anecdotal and fragmented, but suggestive: the fact that he mostly absented himself from season one to direct a feature film (which he has later misremembered as being shot during season two), that the decision was made to reveal the killer despite his objections (blamed on ABC although Frost was still stating this was necessary a few years after the show was cancelled), Lynch's disengagement during the show's second half despite having no real excuses for the distraction (a Japanese art show and a book about spark plugs, NOT Wild at Heart, were apparently the projects that kept him from keeping Twin Peaks on track). Lynch is not much of a planner, and it seems like he thought he could execute a series the way he executes his films (supposedly part of the dispute with Showtime was Lynch's desire to shoot the new series "like a film"): following a muse without necessarily knowing the endpoint, incorporating new ideas as they strike him, gathering loads of material - much more than are needed - and crafting the shape afterwards, and perhaps most of all the cinematic tenet of sticking to a core central theme/image/concept, in this case the mystery of Laura Palmer. This created something of a power vacuum in the partnership and I think Frost quickly filled it (except when Lynch actually directed an episode). Likewise I think Lynch stepped in to direct the finale without a desire to either "burn it to the ground" or set up effective cliffhangers for season 3. Instead, he was probably doing something he had never had to do before: taking something that no longer seemed to belong to him, and making it his once again. The first part of this exchange, which was scripted but cut from the episode, also seems to tie in really well to the final episode. Maj. Briggs talks about fear and love being opposites (setting up the idea that maybe the two Lodges correspond with these states of mind - confirmed later in the season when Briggs says "fear and love open the doors"). And Cooper name-drops Leland, asking if his failure to love himself opened him to Bob. Yeah, I agree. What's amazing about Lynch's work in the finale is how well it actually dovetails with the Frost-guided and (mostly) Peyton/Engels-executed developments of the show's second half, for example the Theosophy-influenced polarities of the mythos, and Cooper's complex backstory. This despite the fact that he apparently had little to nothing to do with these developments, and may in some cases have been unaware of them (his own daughter believes he never read the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer that he commissioned her to write, so I have to imagine he completely ignored the Autobiography written by Frost's brother!). Yet his intuitive improvisations do a better job of following through on all these seeds than what was initially scripted. Go figure.

Leland says to Laura in the train car "I always thought you knew it was me!" so he must have been aware of the abuse. I think he knew what he was doing all along but convinced himself that it was consensual (this is not stated outright but it is frequently suggested that he thinks they share some kind of unspoken but mutually-understood secret). This is part of a larger pattern of denial that has made him such a perfect vessel for Bob and foil for Laura as she struggles against her own denial. This also seems to be pretty consistent with the behavior/mentality of incest perpetrators who alternately deny they've done anything at all, blame the victim for "seducing" them, or decide that they are in some sort of an adult relationship with their own child. If the film is about Laura discovering her father is the mysterious abuser, it is also, on a more buried level, about Leland discovering that his "relationship" to his daughter is and always has been rape. He kills Teresa when she threatens to blackmail him, Maddy when she says she's leaving the home where she has served as a surrogate daughter, and Laura when she tells him "stay away from me": in all three cases he is killing what he cannot control, perhaps a way of manifesting what he feels was his weakness in letting Bob in as a child (which the show suggests accompanied a physical molestation). In the Between Two Worlds interview with the Palmer family, Leland says "I didn't do those things" which is just vague and evasive enough to be perfect Lelandspeak. I suspect his continued denial, even after death, while play a role in the 2016 series. Bob also says "I never knew you knew it was me." This is the film's dual stance, which bugged me as an evasion on first viewing but increasingly feels to me like a recognition that evil is BOTH individual and cosmic (as it certainly is in Lynch's view). We are embedded in the operation of larger forces but retain responsibility for our actions and decisions within that web. See also the Mystery Man in Lost Highway and arguably the Creature Behind the Diner in Mulholland Drive and the Phantom in Inland Empire. With Twin Peaks, Lynch was stuck with a more specific mythology and less ambiguous presentation from the show. Viewed without that baggage, I think Leland's culpability in FWWM becomes clearer. The film also implies that Bob is already inside Laura to a certain extent. It doesn't seem as simple as letting Bob in and losing control from then on. She is able to resist him as her father could not and ultimately the film is about her success in doing so - and his failure. If Leland has no chance to fight Bob, I think this would render Laura's struggle both an unfair double standard and a narrative inconsistency.

One more thing before I shut up (at least for a while): that final scene. Wow. Easily the most beautiful thing David Lynch has ever created. Sheryl Lee should have gotten an Oscar for those 3 minutes alone.

The first time I saw the Pink Room sequence, about 5 minutes in I was thinking "Jesus Christ, this is incredible, this is way further-out than Blue Velvet." About 10 minutes in I thought, "This is further-out than Mulholland Drive. Where the hell are we going?" At about 15 minutes in, I wasn't "thinking" anything anymore as I was just totally immersed and hypnotized by the music and the imagery. And hell, that was the bastardized New Line DVD version in which you could actually hear what they were saying! What a scene, what a song. The entire Fire Walk With Me score is incredible, utterly wrenching. Here's the officially-released soundtrack which doesn't even include some of my favorite themes from the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqg-vJFLtts Moving Through Time, at 40:55 (especially the second half, which begins at 44:40) is particularly noteworthy. But my favorite track is probably the first, the main theme which is also evocatively titled "She Would Die For Love." Much as I love the soundtrack to the show, this music is on a whole different level. Also really underrated: Angelo Badalamenti's score for The Straight Story.

Also, kudos for staying mostly on-schedule. There is another Twin Peaks podcast which shall remain nameless (yes, I have been listening to two - more actually, haha) that started several months before you guys...and still hasn't reached the final episode. The worst part is they managed to get most of the episodes out at least every couple weeks but after reviewing the second-to-last episode they went on indefinite hiatus - two months and counting, and still no coverage of the finale & FWWM (which is really the only reason I stuck with them for the second half of the series). Sheesh. Anyway, I looked forward to downloading your podcast each week and you did not disappoint. Even though I didn't rewatch the series along with you, the week-by-week discussion offered me a new perspective on a show I have binged on pretty much every viewing. Great work, and I look forward to catching some more of your podcasts in the future. I am not a gamer but the Mad Men one at least looks promising. I plan on finally watching the series soon and when I get to the last season I will definitely be downloading your episodes.

Yes! Can't wait to hear the podcast on the film and first-timers' response here. First off, want to totally re-inforce what you guys said above. It is sadly REALLY common for people to download the wrong version now. I think more people end up with the deleted scenes than the fanedit though, which is a bit more palatable as they can still go on to watch the finished film without having much spoiled out of context for them. But they will be pretty confused till they realize what happened haha. I created a guide to the FWWM scenes here as a reference for the confused: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2015/01/twin-peaks-untangling-fire-walk-with-me.html. And here's the last part of my Journey Through Twin Peaks videos: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2015/02/journey-through-twin-peaks-part-4-laura.html. It covers the film as well as the "afterlife" of Twin Peaks (i.e. stuff like the Log Lady intros, the Missing Pieces, and both Mark Frost's and David Lynch's later work). As always, you can watch it in short individual chapters or as single piece on Vimeo. If you just want to leap into the first chapter of the FWWM videos you can start here: I first saw FWWM about 7 years ago immediately after watching the series. Like many here, I had enjoyed the first half of the show immensely and then been very disappointed by the second (except for the finale, which I loved). But I rented all the discs from Netflix simultaneously and binged them (it was just after the Gold Box came out) so it wasn't as painful as I imagine it might have been watching week-by-week. I didn't know much of the history or context of the show at the time, probably less than any first-timers listening to the podcast or reading the forum, so I was really confused by how bad the show had gotten. I'd seen a few Lynch films at that point - definitely Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Eraserhead - so I was really looking forward to the movie. It was not what I was expecting. At all. It really wasn't anything like the show, even the most surreal, disturbing sequences, and the first scene that really shocked me with just how different it was came about 45 minutes in, with the "Wash your hands" scene. I had an unusual reaction to the movie. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, which isn't unusual, but my issues with it came from the remaining connections with Twin Peaks rather than the differences. As into the show as I had been, watching the movie I no longer cared about Cooper, donuts, and red rooms. The movie made me care only about Laura Palmer and I found myself wishing Lynch had dropped every last attempt to link it up to the show and just stuck with the story it seemed he really wanted to tell: the terrible downfall of this character, as moving as it is horrible. I wondered if he wasn't mocking her trauma a bit, however unintentionally, by linking it up to a supernatural tale of possession and the first 30-40 minutes of absurdist humor and bizarre setpieces. But the film stuck with me. The following day I was still shaken by the whole experience, particularly certain sequences (the Pink Room, Mike screaming at Laura & Leland in traffic) and ESPECIALLY Sheryl Lee's amazing performance (I had not been terribly impressed by her on the show but was blown away by her in the movie). I concluded that a movie that had this much of an effect on me had to be some sort of masterpiece, however flawed, uneven, or troubling. Then I went online to look at the reviews (mostly from 1992) and my jaw hit the floor. This film had a 28/100 on Metacric. A 28!!! And the reviews weren't just dismissive, they were savage. The critics savaged everything about the movie, not because they felt it hadn't lived up to its potential but because they felt it had no potential. They implied it was the worst film ever made, called Laura a "typical teenager" (I don't think I found a single review that acknowledged she was an incest victim), made fun of Sheryl Lee, opined that it was cynically made just to satisfy fans ( ) and declared the film boring. It was as if they'd seen a completely different movie. I was a huge movie buff at that point, well-versed in the history of cinema and criticism, but I don't think I'd ever encountered such an enourmous gap between the experience I had watching a movie and the response of the critics. I'm still kind of trying to figure that out. Anyway, I couldn't and/or didn't want to watch the movie again for 5 years. It had been such a distinctive, profound first viewing I just really wanted to let it sit for a while. Last year I got back into Twin Peaks and have watched the film at least a dozen times since then, frequently in relation to essays I was writing or videos I was making. I can say it not only holds up, but improves every time I see it. When The Missing Pieces (deleted scenes) were released, I began to notice the way that the film worked not just as a unique Lynchian film but as a(n admittedly perverse) conclusion to the Twin Peaks saga. The way I put it in one of the videos: strangely, the TV show needs Fire Walk With Me more than Fire Walk With Me needs the TV show. I love Twin Peaks, but to me Fire Walk With Me transcends the show - even justifies it in a way. Many fans feel it's impossible to understand the movie if you haven't seen the show, but I've heard from lots of non-series viewers who loved it. I think the main stumbling block (aside from people who just don't cotton to Lynch's storytelling style and/or tone) are expectations gleaned from the series. Most of the people who really don't like it are fans of the show, and just can't take the abrupt switch-up. The movie really feels like it comes from a different universe. There's a hell of a lot more to say about the movie but I'll halt there for the moment. Those were my first-time impressions - what were yours?

It's a boy! It's a boooy!

Good catch. The dream sequence (with an older Cooper) was originally part of an alternate ending to the pilot. And that alternate ending actually opened with a title reading "25 years later." So that's almost definitely what Lynch was thinking of when he added the line to the finale. Also, interestingly, in the dream sequence the Lodge floor looks old and worn, whereas its bright and shiny in episode 29. It's going to be really interesting how Lynch plays all of this off in 2016.

A bit disappointed more first-timers haven't showed up to share their response. I fear we lost most of them somewhere around the Diane Keaton or drawer pull episodes if not earlier...

That scene is actually in the Missing Pieces, along with

It seems that the writers just got tired of it and realized they didn't know how to script chess moves (in the absence of Mark Frost, who initially came up with the idea): 'According to TP writer and producer Harley Peyton, Frost quickly lost interest in the game and the rest of the writers plotted the moves with sporadic advice from the "self-ordained chess experts" on the set: "We weren't as exact as we should have been," he said. "It became a pain in the ass."' http://www.twinpeaks.org/faqeps.htm#e38 (great collection of FAQ from the old alt.tv.twin-peaks group)

I think the key is that Lynch remains in charge throughout. Because the best bits of the series were often created on the fly/spur of the moment. The Red Room dream sequence, the entire Black Lodge (shot in roughly 24 hours with actors and props onhand to serve Lynch's whims), many elements of Fire Walk With Me (including key components of the ending) were not in the script (hell, even Audrey's dance in episode 2 was improvised by Lynch). *slight True Detective "spoiler" follows - nothing specific, just my feelings about the overall shape of the show* The greatness of Twin Peaks, I think, has always been its ability to go off-script and follow Lynch's muse. I'd compare this to something like True Detective which has a solid script, adheres strictly to it, and delivers a tight final product that nonetheless feels (to me at least) like it played it safe and didn't explore some interesting avenues that opened up as the director played around with the material (ep. 5 & 6 in particular feel like they are tapping into a deeper, richer strain of character and mood than was intended, and that demand something other than the more conventional route already scheduled by for ep. 7 & 8). So while I understand your concerns, I think the problem with Twin Peaks was not that it went off the rails but that it went off the rails with Lynch in the driver's seat. Somehow he knows how to work without a net better than anyone else out there. But then, I say that as someone who likes Inland Empire. I think Lynch's and Frost's script will serve as something of a safety net/guidepost but that many of the greatest bits of the new series won't even have been foreseen by that. P.S. If all you mean is you don't want the show to extend into further seasons, I kind of share your concern there. I could see Lynch losing interest again and the great thing about this upcoming series is his ability to treat it as a single entity, a sort of super-long-form film rather than episodic television whose energy can sag and waver as it did the first time around. But I think the open-endedness refers to how this upcoming story will be told and not for further stories down the road. We'll see...

I think this is Lynch's reward for Chris, Jake, and the Rewatch crowd for soldiering through the second half of the series and making it through to the other side. Good things come to those who endure.

Great discussion of Twin Peaks' second half. One of the things I've enjoyed about your coverage of these later episodes is that you don't skirt around how disappointing they can be and yet you seem equally fascinated by just how strange it is that it's all part of the same show. And you really dig into WHY that is so fascinating. Your ep. 20 coverage in particular had me in stitches. I agree that, while it's easy to pin blame in Peyton/Engels, they deserve some sympathy too. They were really in over their heads. To hear Peyton tell it, he did not want the role of showrunner, describing himself as a dialogue/character guy rather than a plot guy. He is actually directly responsible for a lot of the details people remember best about Twin Peaks: Audrey's cherry stem, many of Rosenfield's lines, the character of Harold Smith, etc. And Bob Engels - who was co-producer and executive story editor by season 2 - also penned some truly classic moments in the first half of the series. From what I've heard (from Reflections and also conversations w/ John Thorne, who wrote the TP fanzine for a decade and interviewed pretty much everyone involved with the show) two camps emerged: Frost/Peyton & Lynch/Engels. I don't think there was much active hostility, but the alignment was clear by the time the series concluded and Lynch invited Engels to co-write the movie. To be fair, Frost was unavailable because he was shooting Storyville (and has also said he was not interested in Lynch's desired approach) but there's still something about the move that feels like a snub especially given the wider context. Peyton apparently clashed with Lynch on several occasions, most notably when Lynch wanted a last-minute adjustment to include Piper Laurie in an episode and Peyton, feeling this was unfair to the episode's director, nixed it. More importantly, I see a different sensibility between Peyton and Lynch. Peyton's sense of humor, which is often very snarky and clever, feels a bit closer to Mark Frost (remember Frost did Invitation to Love) than it does to Lynch, who despite his love of absurdism also has a basic sincerity to his approach. Peyton has also described himself as a "die-hard Frost partisan" despite his tremendous respect/admiration for Lynch. Perhaps due to tensions between them, Peyton was not invited to participate in On the Air, the Lynch/Frost sitcom which followed Twin Peaks (Engels was invited and co-wrote the final episode with Lynch). In Reflections, Peyton mentions that near the end of the series, Lynch was often to be found in Engels' office laughing it up over private jokes, even as Lynch and Frost drifted apart. I think Lynch and Engels definitely have a shared sense of humor: preferring arch, very dry absurdism to the verbose playfulness of Peyton or Frost. This is most apparent in the droll, deadpan In other ways, they may not be so similar. When I first watched the show, I noted that Engels' episodes often emphasized the teenagers' connections to Laura and concluded that he must have been very invested in the Laura storyline, like Lynch. Hence his involvement as co-writer on FWWM, right? Actually, I think this was an incorrect deduction on my part because whenever I've heard Engels talks about the film he mostly ignores Peyton & Engels had a great grasp of the kind of flourishes and details that worked within the Lynch-Frost narrative but I don't think they took it seriously enough on a certain fundamental level. Lynch & Frost had a great time too but beneath their own winks and pranks were a very strong dramatic/thematic purpose and a sense of ambitious storytelling scope. At the risk of sounding dismissive, for Lynch and Frost, Twin Peaks was a passion project. For Peyton and Engels, it seems more like it was a really cool job. Ultimately, the redeeming quality in the show's second can be found less in the viewing, which is often tedious, than in the subsequent analysis. Episodes 18-29 offer a perfect counterpoint enabling us to tease out, by contrast, just what made Twin Peaks so special in the TV landscape.

If you download make sure you don't get the deleted scenes and/or a fanedit incorporating them. Unfortunately I've noticed that this is a huge problem right now especially since the film isn't streaming anywhere. People watch the whole thing without realizing they watched the wrong version, and are really confused. I expect this will happen to at least a few listeners - Chris & Jake, you may want to bring it up on the podcast.

Here is the original shooting script for episode 29. http://www.lynchnet.com/tp/tp29.html I would encourage everyone to read it because it's so revealing. Pay attention not just to what Lynch added/changed inside the Black Lodge but also to what he added/changed outside of it. It was his idea to bring back forgotten characters like Sylvia Horne, Heidi the waitress, Ronette, and Sarah Palmer - the first time we have seen a Palmer since Sarah's ironic line "I want to remember all of this" at Leland's wake, which cut her from the show. The entire diner scene with its feeling of both repetition and closer (in maybe Lynch's most beloved town location) is entirely Lynch's invention. Even Audrey's callback to her Cooper crush ("call the sheriff's station and ask for Agent Cooper") was not scripted. It's clear that in addition to taking Twin Peaks into new territory, Lynch really wanted to return to its roots as well. Anyway, now that we've reached the end of the show I can share Part 3 of the video series I shared in previous threads (Part 4 is devoted entirely to the film). It covers episodes 18-30 (by the show's count) but half of its 8 chapters are devoted to series-wide subjects rather than specific episodes. To wit: the stories of the ensemble, the show in the media (including it's near-cancellation in season 2), the development of Agent Cooper - specifically the differing approaches of Lynch and Frost, and finally the sources of the Twin Peaks mythology. You can see all the videos in Part 3 (including a long Vimeo clip presenting the chapters together) here: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2014/12/journey-through-twin-peaks-part-3-whole.html Or you can jump right into the first chapter of Part 3 and follow the links at the end of each video to continue: Hope both first-timers and veterans find it informative and enjoyable. Despite it's many flaws, the second half of the show offers a lot to digest and even sets up the finale and film in interesting ways.

Originally posted this in the finale thread and then moved it here so it isn't off-topic. This is the last chance to prepare first-timers for the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which is obviously next up for everyone reading this thread. Here are three bits of advice that may come in handy. (I don't think this is too spoiler-y but if you prefer to go for the ride without any expectations about tone, style, or general subject, read no further) 1. Forget about Twin Peaks (for now). I won't get into the details, but there are some major differences between the film and the show in both content and style. Fire Walk With Me ultimately has very different goals from the series. In my opinion, the film actually serves as a powerful and satisfying conclusion to the saga but that can be hard to see on first viewing so forget about that for now! Approach the film as a different entity, less a continuation of the TV show we've just watched for 30 episodes, and more the dark story of a girl who just happens to be named Laura Palmer and just happens to live in a town called Twin Peaks. 2. It's a horror film (sort of). Fire Walk With Me is not gory but it's as psychologically dark, viscerally unnerving, and emotionally intense as any straight-up giallo or slasher movie (more, really). Other than the first 30 minutes (which feel like a different movie) it is not very quirky or "spooky" in the fun way of the show. It's just straight-up scary and uncomfortable and that's how it is intended to be, and where its strength lies. This kind of goes along with point #1. Also, as several viewers who skipped ahead have already stated on this forum, if you are very sensitive to strong depictions of abuse, anxiety, or depression, consider yourself warned. The film isn't just about trauma, it embodies it. 3. Don't try to figure it out (yet). There are tons of seemingly throwaway surrealist details in the movie - this is Lynch after all. They are not as random as they may seem at first, but I think it's best to let them work their magic on a subconscious level rather than try to make rational sense of them. Twin Peaks fans are actually at a bit of a disadvantage here; we recognize Bob, the Little Man, the Red Room and will try to hook them up with their appearances on the show. This is fruitful on a second or third viewing, or in post-viewing discussion, but can be a distracting when first watching the movie (in my opinion). I get the sense Lynch wants to restore these images to the uncanny unknowability they first had on the series, more akin to characters like the Mystery Man or Creature Behind the Diner in his other movies. And it's best to approach them in that same spirit. Laura doesn't really understand who they are, and we are experiencing this world through her eyes after all. I think Chris & Jake have a done a good job criticizing the flaws of Twin Peaks' second season, specifically the aspects that Lynch sets out to reverse in Fire Walk With Me, so hopefully the ground has been prepared for appreciation of the movie. Maybe my advice is helpful, maybe it isn't. In my experience, when first-time viewers reject the film, in my experience it's usually for one or several of the above reasons: they are expecting it to be like the show, they aren't expecting a horror film, or they are baffled by the dream logic. The film does have flaws, to be sure, but in those cases viewers are mistaking strengths for weaknesses.

Now that we are almost at the film, I've posted a bit of advice for first-time viewers. I moved it to the general thread since it's sort of off-topic but if you want to read it, and get a sense of (maybe) the best way to approach what can be a challenging "Twin Peaks movie" (that I think is the best part of the saga, personally) go here: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9887-general-twin-peaks-discussion/?p=359932. Ok, back to the finale...