Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 4: Rest in Pain

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Guest Fingus

I have no idea how I missed that the road house boys were fighting darkness. I thought them roughing up the smuggler was just backwater justice, but when they mentioned on the podcast it being a secret society I was completely surprised. There are a lot of subtleties that I miss until Jake and Chris mention it, probably because it's my first time watching and I'm not very bright, but that seems like a pretty major thing to not notice. Am I alone in this?

Also I did not notice it's Laura playing her cousin. But in that case it's such a strange thing to do that I didn't even make to comparison.

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Speaking of the Bookhouse Boys: I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Bernard's hilarious accent and huge overacting. It was amazing. I wonder where that character is supposed to be from.

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Speaking of the Bookhouse Boys: I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Bernard's hilarious accent and huge overacting. It was amazing. I wonder where that character is supposed to be from.

I think he's supposed to be french canadian...

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I think he's supposed to be french canadian...

 

That's what I figured. Still, I'd be interested to know where he and his brother are from specifically. And what they're doing out west (running drugs, I guess.).

 

I know that these questions don't really have answers, I just think it was a weird character trait to give somebody and it hints at a lot more. Basically, I want a Twin Peaks spin-off about these dudes.

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That reminds me. Even though it isn't stated, Leo Johnson seems super duper Canadian to me as well, and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually, it struck me: with that lovely blonde ponytail, and big, stupid doughy meathead face, he basically looks just like a professional wrestler (for those of you not in the know, many wrestlers are canadian).

 

Unfortunately, the long hair look isn't really in vogue anymore, but just look at some of these specimens.

 

Intentional? Maybe. Twin Peaks would have been conceived and written right around the peak of Hulkamania, when the WWF was basically at it's peak on pop culture exposure. Curt Henning (Mr. Perfect), who has a very similar look to Leo, was a heel (villain) at the time and would have feuded with Hulk during that period. And you don't get much more heel than Leo.

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I will not be surprised if this show suddenly has a wrestling scene. In fact, I'm holding out hope that it does.

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I have no idea how I missed that the road house boys were fighting darkness. I thought them roughing up the smuggler was just backwater justice, but when they mentioned on the podcast it being a secret society I was completely surprised. There are a lot of subtleties that I miss until Jake and Chris mention it, probably because it's my first time watching and I'm not very bright, but that seems like a pretty major thing to not notice. Am I alone in this?

Also I did not notice it's Laura playing her cousin. But in that case it's such a strange thing to do that I didn't even make to comparison.

Nope, totally with you. I feel not bright listening to the podcast and hearing about things I didn't catch in my viewing. I should probably pay more attention since watching this is now an event and not just passively absorbing the usual episodic series. Old, bad habits are hard to break, especially when most modern shows are so effortless to follow (and they'll recap anything important all the time anyway).

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I wouldn't feel too bad about it. There are so many little details that go into Twin Peaks. You're gonna miss stuff. This is like my 4th time rewatching the series and I keep seeing stuff I never noticed before. I mean, some of it is likely just stuff I forgot, but also there is a lot of stuff you might not pick up on the first time around, or won't seem significant until you've rewatched it, or your brain just flips off for a moment and you plain miss something, or you don't make some connection, etc.

 

I think it was a good observation Jake made about how everyone seems to misrecognize Laura. I'd say that people's inability to see things as they are is a pretty important overall theme for the show.

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Do they have a set schedule for the podcast? I'm itching to get to the next episode but I wanna wait until the pod has been cast so I can follow up with it immediately. This one came out on a Tuesday AFAIR?

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Yeah its every Tuesday but like, later in the day. Seems to come out about when I leave work (West Coast timezone)

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Not directly related to this episode, but I didn't see a general comments thread.

 

This is the first episode where it felt like Chris was just reading verbatim from notes more often than actually discussing the episode. I understand you need to recap things somewhat, but it came off as completely mechanical. Most of the quotes really didn't need to be read word for word like that. In my opinion it lead to a much less interesting discussion that sounded more forced than past episodes.

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I wouldn't feel too bad about it. There are so many little details that go into Twin Peaks. You're gonna miss stuff. This is like my 4th time rewatching the series and I keep seeing stuff I never noticed before. I mean, some of it is likely just stuff I forgot, but also there is a lot of stuff you might not pick up on the first time around, or won't seem significant until you've rewatched it, or your brain just flips off for a moment and you plain miss something, or you don't make some connection, etc.

I think it was a good observation Jake made about how everyone seems to misrecognize Laura. I'd say that people's inability to see things as they are is a pretty important overall theme for the show.

I think, especially with Lynch, it enhances the experience understanding that not everything that happens has an express purpose when it comes to furthering the plot. Things just happen a lot, and the beauty is in personal interpretation.

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Things just happen a lot, and the beauty is in personal interpretation.

 

I think this is a really important thing to realize with David Lynch. Especially, if we are speaking about anything that David Lynch writes or directs on his own, there is definitely some level of scrutiny passed which you can delve but really can't support. You can put together a lot of fan theory around what he is trying to do, but in the end, David Lynch has been very thorough in speaking about his love for inscrutability.

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Guest LostInTheMovies

One thing I'm surprised no one brought up is how ridiculous it is that they recast Laura as HER COUSIN and then made her an almost central character.

Thats a thing I love about Twin Peaks. Its chock full of meta-moments that absolutely confound me but mean almost nothing to the characters. All interactions on why Maddie looks exactly like Laura just with dark hair end with, "Yeah, huh, how about that."

 

Also the cousin's name is Madeleine Ferguson which references two characters' names in Vertigo (1958). I don't want to spoil Vertigo or Twin Peaks so I will leave it to the curious and/or experienced to suss out any potential parallels. Also, in the upcoming episode there will be several references to characters in Laura (1944), followed a couple episodes later by a Double Indemnity name-drop. And a certain key character will be named after a throwaway line in Sunset Boulevard. I think for the most part these references are just for fun, but there are occasionally deeper connections to suss out.

 

I recently uploaded a video tribute to Twin Peaks which touches on the Vertigo-Laura-Twin Peaks link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ai_jEi7GjM. Fair warning: the video spoils major plot points in Vertigo & Laura. It does not spoil any upcoming plot twists in Twin Peaks, although it does include a clip from season 2 (which reveals two characters' physical changes, if that counts as a spoiler). It also discusses The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch, which some viewers may want to avoid even though it was published before the second season.

 

Side issue on that: do veteran viewers feel it's best to avoid The Secret Diary until after watching the series? I read it afterwards, so I don't know if it would have tilted me in any particular direction. I would, for what it's worth, recommend reading it at some point - it ends up being a lot more than just a fluffy spin-off and offers some real insight into Laura's character than we can't find on the show.

(Supposedly Sheryl Lee used it as a guide to her own performance in Fire Walk With Me - does revealing what FWWM is about count as a spoiler?)

 

Incidentally I tried to create an account on this site but the verification was "name a podcast on this site" and for some reason neither "Twin Peaks Rewatch" nor "Twin Peaks Rewatch Podcast" were recognized as valid answers. :/

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Yes, I remember having issues with creating an account with that as well for verification. Just pick another show like Idle Thumbs or some such under the shows page.

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I would avoid discussing FWWM outside of spoiler just because I think it is fun for people to experience that on its own, but that is just me. I am only a user not a moderator.

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We're treating Fire Walk With Me as the final episode of the show even though its events predate the pilot, so any discussion on the cast itself will be in the spoiler section.

Also we will update the test to create a new account. Sorry about that.

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We're treating Fire Walk With Me as the final episode of the show even though its events predate the pilot, so any discussion on the cast itself will be in the spoiler section.

Also we will update the test to create a new account. Sorry about that.

 

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

that it is a prequel (I've encountered newbies who have no idea who it follows, when it takes place, etc).

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...

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Go with Idle Thumbs, that is guaranteed to work. I guess they haven't updated the list of names for the security question yet since the Rewatch is so new.

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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:

 

I can understand how John Leonard would hold this view a few episodes into season 1 (I remember viewing the show primarily as "fun" up until episode 14). But it frustrates me how common this perception remains today. Look at the recent coverage of Twin Peaks' return and most columnists treat the show as if it's purely a fun jaunt into surrealist comedy: the write-ups are all about coffee, pie, and the occasional dancing midget but completley avoid the darker turn the show took in season 2 (they briefly mention the show went off the rails after the killer was revealed, but seldom discuss the nature of said reveal). I think this also points to a larger misunderstanding of Lynch. Because he doesn't operate self-consciously, with a heavy-handed emphasis on message, it's often assumed that he is just a formally-minded postmodernist, heavy on emotional affect but light on thematic substance. Yet with the possible exception of Wild at Heart, all of his films have incredible depth and present a very firm (if not overly-intellectualized) philosophy.

 

I recently inteviewed Martha Nochimson, author of several really excellent Lynch books, and she had an interesting observation on this subject:

 

"Modernism is about the direct communication of a work of art onto the nervous system of the person. There are people who believe that’s chaotic. I am not one of those people. I believe that neuroscience is on our side: that everything begins with the nervous system. Everything begins with the capacity of human begins to form images in their minds. Judgment is a product of the communication with the nervous system. Which is very fast. Thinking is extremely slow. Thinking works on all the impulses. Thinking is no better than the ability of a human being to receive all kinds of sensory images and impulses. There is no possibility for judgment without that initial contact. So a work of art that communicates directly to the nervous system, which is what Lynch’s work does, is the basis of understanding. The artist gives this to you and then it is our job to reflect on what we have seen and judgment follows. For somebody like ... [the author of the New York piece] who wrote about nothing in its beautiful head, they’ve got it upside down and backwards. They think it’s the intellect that tells the passions what to do which is a 2000-year-old tradition. It may be that in some instances it is true, but not with art. Anything that is valuable with Shakespeare doesn’t come from the head, it comes from a much deeper place. The modernists have seen a truth that was there all along, but has now come out into the open and we have a different form of art. Lynch is that kind of artist. And so is Orson Welles and I also think Alfred Hitchcock."

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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): 

 

Sorry, your question is valid and presented well, but I am missing a link to the referenced article. Could you post it here. I have some thoughts on this, but I would need to go back and read the original article.

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Sorry, your question is valid and presented well, but I am missing a link to the referenced article. Could you post it here. I have some thoughts on this, but I would need to go back and read the original article.

 

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)

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Guest Michael Straight

I waited to listen to the podcast until I'd finished watching through the show for the first time, so I'm just catching up.

 

I was glad to hear your discussion of the music.  Episode 4 is the one where it really hit me how weird it is, reusing the same few themes, even in places where they barely seem to fit.  In the funeral scene you have the romantic part of Laura's Theme during the eulogy, then the dark part during the fight breaks out, and then suddenly back to the romantic part again as Leland is bouncing up and down on the coffin.

 

Jake compared it to a cheap soap opera, but it reminds me of the C64 Adventure Construction Set, one of the first make-your-own-RPG/adventure game programs.  They only had room on the disk for one overture/theme song and then they broke it up into bits that you could use as fight music, victory music, the peaceful areas, the mysterious areas, etc.



But overall, I really like the music.  The repetitiveness gives a lot of events a creepy sense of "it's happening again."  And I really like the pacing thing Jake pointed out when you hear the romantic part of Laura's Theme and you know it's getting to the "dark" turn and you know something's going to happen, or maybe just that there's going to be a reminder that there is a dark side to whatever is going on at the moment.

 

And I think even the snappy "Sam & Max" music that Chris hates is important.  I think one of the sources of Agent Cooper's strength is his utter disregard for the concept of "cool."  It wouldn't occur to him to be embarrassed to be seen tapping his foot to that music.  Sometimes it's used for Cooper, sometimes for various wacky hijinks, sometimes for the kids doing well-meaning but out-of-their-depth investigations.  To me that music represents kind of the good side of Twin Peaks not caring about the opinions of the outside world. 
 

Hmm.  Now that I look at the soundtrack, I see that I'm conflating in my head two tracks "Audrey's Dance" and "Fresh Squeezed."  I'm not sure if I've noted a difference between how they're used or whether my interpretation accounts for Audrey Dancing to this kind of music and calling it dreamy, except maybe it might represent her being enthralled with Cooper.

 

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