Twin Peaks Rewatch 28: The Path to the Black Lodge

[Chris]

Twin Peaks Rewatch 28:

 

 

The Path to the Black Lodge

This week on Twin Peaks the darkness that permeates the town is felt with a potency we haven't seen in a long time, and Windom Earle is on occasion the actual vicious, driven, and brilliant villain we have been told so much about, but it's all still in service of a spooky treasure map found in a haunted cave. Points for trying, but we may be too little too late at this point. Two weeks until the finale!

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Subscribe to the RSS Feed
• Subscribe on iTunes

• Episode 29 Pre-Discussion Thread
• Catching up? Listen to the Rewatch archive.

[Jake]

I have no idea at all what's going to happen. Now that that doof was trapped in a chess piece I am past my last memory of Twin Peaks, that isn't Fire Walk With Me.

[Cleinhun]

"He's taken another pawn, Harry, but he didn't tell us his move. Windom Earle is playing off the board"

[LostInTheMovies]

I like this episode. Aside from the horse costume, this is one of Windom's best episodes where he actually comes off as somewhat menacing. I quite like that video of him too. In the annals of Twin Peaks attempting to be Lynchian without Lynch, Stephen Gyllenhaal (yes, that Gyllenhaal) comes closest to the mark with a lot of moments here and the closing montage is great set-up for what's to come.

 

Well, 2 more episodes. The next is a dud imo. But the on after, whoo boy. Hopefully Lynch will return to present Twin Peaks before we get to his return on past Twin Peaks.

[richardco]

I like this episode. Aside from the horse costume, this is one of Windom's best episodes where he actually comes off as somewhat menacing. I quite like that video of him too. In the annals of Twin Peaks attempting to be Lynchian without Lynch, Stephen Gyllenhaal (yes, that Gyllenhaal) comes closest to the mark with a lot of moments here and the closing montage is great set-up for what's to come.

 

Well, 2 more episodes. The next is a dud imo. But the on after, whoo boy. Hopefully Lynch will return to present Twin Peaks before we get to his return on past Twin Peaks.

Yeah, this is when Earle finally started to creep me out.  I actually found the horse costume to be quite menacing.  Is this the episode where Earle's face does...that thing?

And yeah, next episode is a bit of a clunker, but the finale is great!  Gave me nightmares for a solid week.

[LostInTheMovies]

Yeah, this is when Earle finally started to creep me out.  I actually found the horse costume to be quite menacing.  Is this the episode where Earle's face does...that thing?

 

That's the next episode. I think it's the highlight of that episode and also the best Earle moment overall. And it seems like something Lynch ended up borrowing himself for FWWM (though he didn't come up with it). Then again, it could've been a callback to the makeup he used 20 years earlier in The Grandmother and The Alphabet.

 

According to Reflections, director Tim Hunter got the idea from all the Mizoguchi films he'd been watching, with characters in

white face paint and blackened teeth.

 Don't know what it means in Twin Peaks, but it's cool as hell!

[SuperBiasedMan]

"He's taken another pawn, Harry, but he didn't tell us his move. Windom Earle is playing off the board"

 

Then the next person is murdered inside a giant checkers piece...

 

 

Also I really was not pleased to see the Giant appear just to give Cooper a silent warning of bad thing coming. He literally just waves his arms about. That's not the cryptic mysticism of Twin Peaks at all, his message is totally clear, just vague and banal.

[agorman]

I'm surprised how much I liked this episode! A lot of the shots and scenes were unsettling/creepy (its unfortunate that the surrrounding narrative has a fraction of the potency of the laura palmer stuff). To me, this episode really brings back some of the elements of what drew me into the show in the first place (the diner scene and dripping syrup scene worked for me).

The horse costume was goofy to me. Having Earle sing during Home on the Range seemed to me trying to evoke the creepiness of Leland singing the Mares Eat Oats song and it fell kinda flat to me.

I thought Billy Zane's departure was pretty dumb but enjoyed Pete's presence in it.

[Elen]

The horse costume is absurd, as is the dart target thing, but that video is genuinely unsettling and saves a bit of Windom Earle's plot for me.

 

Stephen Gyllenhaal (yes, that Gyllenhaal) comes closest to the mark with a lot of moments here and the closing montage is great set-up for what's to come.

Yes, I loved some of those moments he threw in there. People have already mentioned that weirdly ominous shot of dripping syrup, and the Mayor's voiceover of, "This isn't right! There's something wrong here..." over a montage of the town is a very Lynchian, unsettling touch. It reminds me of Sarah Palmer's outburst last season where she wonders what's been going on in her house.

 

Pete's offer to take Audrey fishing as the cure for a broken heart is easily the best thing to come from Billy Zane. I love Pete.

 

One of the big bummers of late season 2 (probably the only one that gets worse instead of better) is the deterioration of Donna's character. She was usually hampered with difficult plotlines (and a big dead weight known as James), but I thought Lara Flynn Boyle did a nice job and I felt for Donna much of the time. Now she's just awful. She's on what should be a supportable quest, trying to push through lies her parents have told her, but instead she comes off as hugely petulant and obnoxious. Shame.

[Fingus]

This episode is definitely a noticeable rebound to the Good Old Twin Peaks. I realize that what resonated with me in the first season was that while the story followed the main plot about Laura's murder investigation you still get the sense that there are uncanny elements operating in the background. Out of sight from both the characters and the viewer, but still so overtly present. My frustrations with the center trench of season 2 is not how is regresses to silly soap opera pulp, that was always a charming facet of the show, but rather that it lost that creeping ambient presence. In this episode I'm feeling it coming back in full force. Possibly a bit too much honestly, the arm shaking is creepy but anything but subtle. But they only have two episodes left, so I guess they gotta go all out.

Some great character moments I'm this episode too! Audrey and Pete bonding over fishing is of course the best. But I was pleasantly surprised by Bobby and Shelby! Bobby finally had a great moment if honest introspection and the two of them finally had some real chemistry. Really cute!

Same with Cooper and... Uh, nun girl? Up to this point she had been such a non-character I actually didn't learn hey name. But the scene at the diner and the roadhouse really sold me on the two of them. Her little monologue about not being afraid any more was really great.

And hell even Wyndom Earle was good in this! Literal horseplay notwithstanding he actually felt threatening for once, and seeing the contrast between his hammy supervillain act and the stuttering nerd om the video tape managed to flesh out his character a fair bit. I wish that video tape Wyndom was what we got from the beginning.

Also the opening scene with the police officers struggling with the giant chess piece as a backdrop was delightful.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Same with Cooper and... Uh, nun girl? Up to this point she had been such a non-character I actually didn't learn hey name.

First time watcher, huh?

I do agree with the Bobby sentiment. In my head, his rare moments of being a decent person stem from his father's influence because Briggs very clearly wants to foster emotional growth even if Bobby's Persona rejects that heavily.

[sclpls]

I really love the scene with Cooper and Annie where the camera just pulls back, and the music just starts getting sinister. It is like such a powerful reminder that what I really love about the show is not any of the storylines really, but just shots that are visually arresting, something that has been lacking for awhile in season 2, but this episode has in spades. For that reason I even like the horse costume. Ridiculous? Sure, but also striking. Like, even with all the lore mumbo jumbo I don't even care about it really because the show is back to looking really cool and I guess I am okay with liking the show for reasons that are more style over substance.

[mikemariano]

I like this episode. Aside from the horse costume, this is one of Windom's best episodes where he actually comes off as somewhat menacing. I quite like that video of him too.

 

Welsh is so good in that video—completely disturbed, but completely sincere.  It made me hate the cackling, theatrical Windom Earle even more.  This actor can be subtle!  Why is he so dumb instead?

 

We never get an explanation for the shaking hands in this episode, do we?  I guess it just ties into Bob's shaking hand as he emerges arm-first from the Black Lodge?  Maybe that's enough.

 

And who's this guy?  Sheriff Truman's stunt double?

 

 

According to IMDB Cappy was in Episode 14 AKA Episode 13, too?  And he has his own Twitter gimmick account!

[agorman]

I legitimately thought that was Truman at the beginning of that scene.

[Elen]

I am flabbergasted that there is a gimmick account for that guy. What on earth...? (And from 2011, too, not even the recent Peaks renaissance of the last year or so!)

[Vasari]

Then the next person is murdered inside a giant checkers piece...

 

Things get really crazy in Season 3.

 

"Harry, he's turned the crank, and snapped the plank, and booted the marble right down the chute. Now watch it roll and hit the pole, and knock the ball in the rub-a-dub tub, which hits the man into the pan."

[syntheticgerbil]

I really liked that part where Audrey asks for a vehicle quick and Pete says, "I have a truck, it runs great-" and then Audrey cuts him off. Other than that, I wish I could stop watching this garbage show already, but I will stick to the end.

[SirJakoz]

 

Yeah, nice to see you again, John.

 

No one can remember his name

[Jake]

The podcast episode is up!

[richardco]

Wow.  So bad computer overlays and UI are like a visual effects Wilhelm scream?

I remember that stupid scream almost ruining Session 9 for me.

 

I'm really going to miss this podcast when it's over.  Holding out hope that maybe we'll get some bonus Lynch film episodes, but I imagine that Chris and Jake will probably be relieved to a have lightened workload week.

[syntheticgerbil]

I saw that Reddit thread about the purposeful mishandling of technology in TV shows and I'm skeptical. I found it looking up Life which I did because of Idlethumbs. Like I can believe a lot of them are doing a shitty job on purpose because they work on disposable shows and have no appreciation for what they are working on and don't care about the integrity. I just really have a hard time believing not only so many writers do a mediocre job because they think it is funny but that directors also think it is suitable to troll with bad technology logic and effects. I get the feeling there's gotta be some rookies out there who just want to write a good episode that makes sense and is relatively well researched. Maybe they quickly move on to better quality shows though or start moving on to movie scripts so there's no overlap. I have no idea how it works.

[LostInTheMovies]

Wow.  So bad computer overlays and UI are like a visual effects Wilhelm scream?

I remember that stupid scream almost ruining Session 9 for me.

 

I'm really going to miss this podcast when it's over.  Holding out hope that maybe we'll get some bonus Lynch film episodes, but I imagine that Chris and Jake will probably be relieved to a have lightened workload week.

 

Yeah, an earlier Twin Peaks Podcast (called, appropriately enough, the Twin Peaks Podcast) covered all of Lynch's films after they did Fire Walk With Me, but the episodes were spread out over months, basically when it was convenient for them to tackle each film on their own schedule. If Chris & Jake want to take that approach it would be awesome. I'd love to hear their thoughts on Lynch's work - and to hear the forums discuss them too.

[Dewar]

Yay, I've finally caught up. I stopped watching for some reason right before Maddy was murdered, and have spent the last week furiously watching Twin Peaks and listening to podcasts so I can be caught up in time for FWWM, which I purchased the first time I watched the show but never had the stomach to actually put it into my DVD player.

In doing some digging about the Josie in the knob thing (this ties into this episode, I promise) I came across this link: http://twinpeaksarchive.blogspot.com/2011/07/between-two-worlds-josies-fate.html

I had subtitles on, and this episode is the one where Pete is standing, looking above the fireplace, and seeing that he sees Josie's face. Such a bizarre throw away line to have at the start of the scene where Audrey wants Pete's truck. If I hadn't read that blog, I'd have no idea what was going on.

[lighthouseshine]

Question that's been bothering me, and I don't think it was mentioned in the episode — after Ben Horne tells Audrey that Billy Zane left and she runs off to the airport, he abruptly spins his head around and looks at something back in his office, as though he's startled. It's never mentioned again, and I was wondering if anything's known about it?

[mikemariano]

Question that's been bothering me, and I don't think it was mentioned in the episode — after Ben Horne tells Audrey that Billy Zane left and she runs off to the airport, he abruptly spins his head around and looks at something back in his office, as though he's startled. It's never mentioned again, and I was wondering if anything's known about it?

 

It is likely Josie-related, according to Twin Peaks Archive:

 

As Audrey hurries off, Ben whips around clearly startled and staring in the direction of his fireplace. Who or what has he seen? Quick cut to Pete in the lobby of the Great Northern. Pete, staring and gesturing to the fireplace exclaims, 'Josie, I see your face!'. Both of these bits are missing from the script. It's not much of a stretch to say that Ben perhaps also sees Josie.