Twin Peaks Rewatch 19: Masked Ball

[James]

When the episode started with that 50's-style music and a motorcycle approaching from the distance, my heart sank.

The one thing you can say for that music is that it's tragically well-matched to my namesake: a naff and hilariously soft mockery of the traditionally tough (if not outright mean) biker aesthetic. He's so completely wet and rubbish, and that cheesy tune is his perfect match.

[Ozzie]

I'm surprised that for the most part I enjoyed the episode.

Awful aspects first: All scenes involving James were even worse than I remembered. Not only is the actor who plays him one of the weakest the series has to offer, but he found an equal in the actress who plays Evelyn. The lines are terrible, but the delivery is even worse. For comparison look at Ben Horne's lines when he has to exposition dump all over Hank regarding what happened to him over the past few episodes. Those aren't well written either, but the actor knows how to deliver them.

The brother characters don't feel like they fit into Twin Peaks, therefore the whole wedding business falls flat.

The little Nicky storyline doesn't aim for much, and the problem is also that the character apparently is meant to be mischievous judging by his actions, but his expressions don't read that way at all. I would have hoped for more than poorly executed slapstick.

I neither hated nor loved Nadine's scenes, but the music was absolutely awful in them. Blargh.

 

Otherwise I enjoyed the scenes Ben Horne, Denise, Cooper and Catherine were in. Denise is the best new character since Harold I think.

 

I greatly prefer this episode to the last one.

[LostInTheMovies]

Just listened to the cast and yeah, generally agreed. Weak episode for sure but lots of enjoyable bits.

 

Re: Hawk's speech, the funny thing about them presenting this as Native American lore, is that it's antecedents are almost entirely late 19th century/early 20th century British/American Theosophy and Theosophy-flavored mystical writing. The "dweller on the threshold" comes from a British novel of the 1840s (Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lighton) by way of Madame Blavatsky & her disciple Alice Bailey, whom Frost has cited as a big influence on Twin Peaks. The Black/White Lodge stuff is harder to pin down, but seems to have something to do with Blavatsky's concept of the Great White Brotherhood (which sounds super-Aryan but was not supposed to be a racial thing...I think), as well as Aleister Crowley and the Order of the Golden Dawn. The literary antecedents seem to be the adventure book The Devil's Guard - which also prominently features dugpas (who will appear later) and (according to Frost) the book Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune (also a Blavatsky acolyte). So yeah, indigenous North America...not so much.

 

I agree the delivery and presentation is hokey BUT I really love the concepts in play so I'm a sucker for this scene. Plus I just find it so fascinating how this little throwaway bit of dialogue, tossed off to a minor scene written by a freelancer deep in the second season, turns out to hold be so key to the show's themes (even when you reflect back on some of the stuff that's already happened).

 

In the final episode, Hawk's speech about the shadow self perfectly predicts what will happen to Cooper at the end of the series. This may seem like an on-the-nose plant but I'm not so sure...Reflections makes it sound like Cooper's Bob possession was a last-minute decision by Peyton & Frost. Furthermore, the key echo of Hawk's "shadow self" concept is obviously borne out by Cooper running away from his doppelganger in the Lodge. But this WASN'T in the script - it was something Lynch himself improvised, and we can be fairly certain that Lynch had nothing to do with writing Hawk's dialogue in this episode.

 

What's even more amazing is that in Fire Walk With Me, Laura's struggle follows the same thread: she must overcome her own shadow (Bob within her) and align with her higher self - represented in the film by an angel. The irony being that Alice Bailey's entire conception of the dweller on the threshold ALSO involved an "angel of the presence" (who is never mentioned on the series nor in the Fire Walk With Me script, but was improvised during the shoot by Lynch based on a prop he and Sheryl Lee discussed - the portrait of the angel on Laura's wall). I don't know, that element of coincidence/synchronicity just really intrigues me!

 

That's a big info dump but I did attempt to present it in a succinct and visually appealing way a few months ago, with this video - "The Twin Peaks Mythology." Warning - it includes spoilers for the rest of the season:

 

 

I am only now reading that this was the last episode of 1990, with nearly a full month's gap between this 12/15/90 episode and next episode's 1/12/91 premiere.

 

I guess because of Christmas/New Years/etc. there isn't a huge need to have a cliffhanger (Andrew Packard?), but there's nothing in this episode that would make me anticipate what next year's Twin Peaks had to offer.

 

Yeah, and unsurprisingly the ratings were the worst they'd ever been when the show returned in January, down to a 10.3 - sadly that too was a higher rating then the show would ever receive again until the finale, which barely beat it with a 10.4. By comparison the pilot earned a 34.6. The ratings are all on wiki and it's pretty interesting to look at just how steady the show's decline was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twin_Peaks_episodes. I think the only real bounce came with the killer's reveal and the season 2 premiere. Otherwise, from the pilot onward it was down and down and down and down. The pilot was the highest-ranked TV movie of its entire season, the finale - also aired as a 2-hour TV movie (by combining what were intended to be the last two episodes of the season) - was beaten in its own timeslot by reruns of Northern Exposure...

 

Anyway, back to this episode's "cliffhanger," the podcast's mockery of Catherine/Andrew's "this was planned all along" conceit had me in stitches.

[Argobot]

Just listened to the cast and yeah, generally agreed. Weak episode for sure but lots of enjoyable bits.

 

Re: Hawk's speech, the funny thing about them presenting this as Native American lore, is that it's antecedents are almost entirely late 19th century/early 20th century British/American Theosophy and Theosophy-flavored mystical writing. The "dweller on the threshold" comes from a British novel of the 1840s (Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lighton) by way of Madame Blavatsky & her disciple Alice Bailey, whom Frost has cited as a big influence on Twin Peaks. The Black/White Lodge stuff is harder to pin down, but seems to have something to do with Blavatsky's concept of the Great White Brotherhood (which sounds super-Aryan but was not supposed to be a racial thing...I think), as well as Aleister Crowley and the Order of the Golden Dawn. The literary antecedents seem to be the adventure book The Devil's Guard - which also prominently features dugpas (who will appear later) and (according to Frost) the book Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune (also a Blavatsky acolyte). So yeah, indigenous North America...not so much.

 

I agree the delivery and presentation is hokey BUT I really love the concepts in play so I'm a sucker for this scene. Plus I just find it so fascinating how this little throwaway bit of dialogue, tossed off to a minor scene written by a freelancer deep in the second season, turns out to hold be so key to the show's themes (even when you reflect back on some of the stuff that's already happened).

 

While this mythology come from an interesting place -- thanks for posting all that, by the way! -- I generally dislike its inclusion in Twin Peaks. Mostly because it is happening so late in the show and feels very disconnected from a lot of the stuff that preceded it. Twin Peaks is best when it presents a morally complicated view of its universe. The woods around Twin Peaks start off as being this very nebulous concept. They're kind of like the unchecked Id and the effect they exert on the town can be extrapolated out to represent the effect that baser instincts and emotions have on humanity. Now the woods just fill the same role as the Hellmouth on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's a very specific thing that is only relevant to this one specific place and doesn't carry any other symbolic weight beyond that. 

 

The Black/White Lodge dichotomy distills those other concepts into something simply and kind of boring. What does "perfect courage" even mean? It's just an empty phrase that sounds cool, but if you try to actually apply it to reality, it loses all value.

[Jake]

Like everything else, I'm glad that even the Black/White lodge concept gets blurred and smeared around by Lynch in Fire Walk With Me.

[LostInTheMovies]

While this mythology come from an interesting place -- thanks for posting all that, by the way! -- I generally dislike its inclusion in Twin Peaks. Mostly because it is happening so late in the show and feels very disconnected from a lot of the stuff that preceded it. Twin Peaks is best when it presents a morally complicated view of its universe. The woods around Twin Peaks start off as being this very nebulous concept. They're kind of like the unchecked Id and the effect they exert on the town can be extrapolated out to represent the effect that baser instincts and emotions have on humanity. Now the woods just fill the same role as the Hellmouth on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's a very specific thing that is only relevant to this one specific place and doesn't carry any other symbolic weight beyond that. 

 

The Black/White Lodge dichotomy distills those other concepts into something simply and kind of boring. What does "perfect courage" even mean? It's just an empty phrase that sounds cool, but if you try to actually apply it to reality, it loses all value.

 

Great points. I certainly prefer Lynch's inexplicable plunges into the uncanny to all the speechifying and I agree with you inasmuch as these moments threaten to dilute the mystery of the first and early second season.

 

Yet part of what fascinates me about Twin Peaks is the way it manages to include both approaches. I think without Lynch's last-minute interventions in the finale and Fire Walk With Me, all the Hawk speeches in the world wouldn't amount to much. In fact, I might actually reverse your last statement. I think as an empty phrase "perfect courage" (and the Lodge/dweller lore that goes with it) comes off like a cliche, but when applied to reality - that is to say, when Lynch shows

Cooper's failure (and Laura's triumph)

in visceral terms rather than describing it abstractly - it becomes deeply meaningful and much more complex than that phrase would suggest.

 

And here's the thing: I suspect (and some cases, am certain) that Lynch never would have had the opportunity to create these scenarios without the framework Frost began establishing in the second season. Certainly Lynch was, understandably in many cases, not a fan of specifying Laura's killer (and his link to Bob), creating a larger spiritual framework for the show, or

allowing Cooper to become "corrupted" by Bob.

And yet, forced in these directions (and determined to reconcile them with his own sensibility), he produced the best moments of the show, created some of his strongest work to date, and (in my opinion at least) opened the door to the bulk of his future work. Without those turning points forcing Lynch to evolve his approach, I doubt we'd have Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire - let alone Fire Walk With Me.

 

"Mostly because it is happening so late in the show and feels very disconnected from a lot of the stuff that preceded it."

 

I think that's a key observation. It wasn't until I read an old alt.tv.twin-peaks post (coincidentally under discussion in another thread right now) that I realized how fundamentally the Bob/one-armed man/Red Room imagery of the first half was disconnected from the Lodge lore of the second half of the series. I tended to lump them together and mentally bridge the gap, like most viewers. Google the many discussions of "Black Lodge" + "Fire Walk With Me," consider that in fact Lynch never actually uses that phrase in the film, and you'll see what I mean! It's easy to forget that Lynch and Frost had really different visions of what a supernatural mythos should look/feel like - in fact I'm not sure Lynch would ever even want to use the world "supernatural." And yet somehow (for me at least) these differences come together in the end and make the messiness of the show's growing pains worthwhile.

 

At any rate the show's schizoid presentation of its mythos essentially results from the Lynch/Frost divergence/miscommunication, which makes me really curious to see how Lynch and Frost actually collaborate in 2016.

[LostInTheMovies]

Also, one other thing that's interesting about Frost's imported mythology - I think it's actually closer to Lynch's sensibility (though he didn't import it) than first glance suggests. Because Theosophy emerged in 19th-century Europe, a lot of it sounds really dualistic but it's basically building on Eastern nondualist concepts that really ran against the grain of Victorian Christianity. So, for example, the "dweller on the threshold" is not actually an external opponent one must face, but one's own shadow. And - though this is often obscured later in the series - the Black and White Lodge as presented by Hawk are not so much two completely binary opposed realms but steps along a path: one has to pass through the Black Lodge to attain the White. These are, at their core, very Lynchian ideas because even in the more black/white moral universe of his early films there is a sense that the characters' primary struggle is with themselves (something that gets realized more fully in the second half of his career to the point where it becomes THE defining thematic trait of his work). This is another reason I feel like the specificity of this ethos helped Lynch grow as an artist.

[Elen]

Sorry to interrupt the heady parsing of mythology (which is very interesting), but this:

I also have to admit I had James Hair in my Senior Photo taken cira 1994. I think I was re-watching the VHS Box set back then and thinking, Man that hair rocks. It is not a proud moment for me.

really made me laugh! It is a rather tragic haircut. I'm not sure it's worse than the gelled-down with flipped-up (sometimes frosted!) bangs which was popular with boys when I was a kid, in the late 90s.

[Argobot]

Totally goofy aside: The actress who plays the Mitford's young wife was in a hilarious late-80s teen girl movie, appropriately called Teen Witch. I, a former teen girl, was in love with this movie when I was 12 and it was my only exposure to that actress before watching Twin Peaks. It never fails to make me laugh and really helps ease some of the more intolerable scenes with that character on TP.

 

Important trailer:

 

 

Actual scene from this movie that I somehow watched and enjoyed.

 

[syntheticgerbil]

Ahahahaha, THAT'S WHERE THAT TOP THAT RAP IS FROM!

Amazing!!!!

 

Can we all just watch Teen Witch instead of finishing the final episodes of Twin Peaks? I'm starting to just want to listen to the podcast and not actually wanting to watch the show anymore.

[BobbyBesar]

I think to the extent they pull it off, it's largely Duchovney's doing. Another actor could have easily taken the same dialogue and really vamped it up so that Denise was just a cartoonish drag queen (it's unclear from the writing if Denise was intended to be a transvestite or transgender, or if the writers even know the difference). But his performance is so low-key and charming that we end up laughing with Denise rather than at her. One of the few true gems of the mid-season.

Well, she still puts on her panties one leg at a time, if you know what I mean!*

 

 

*I don't.

 

Also, I'm glad and slightly amazed that somebody else made the Teen Witch connection.

[Apple Cider]

The Teen Witch rap is singularly one of the best moments captured on video.

[LostInTheMovies]

Yeah, I'm with the consensus on the Teen Witch rap thing. I was almost falling out of my chair... Man, I was not expecting that lol.

[kickinthehead]

I LOVE David Duchovny's depiction of Denise. He completely lives in the character and his body language and mannerisms are fantastic. It's been a while since I've seen this episode so I was worried there'd be some sort of insensitive cringe moment coming, but the character is handled very well. Coop continues to endear himself with his gung-ho attitude. Major credit to the actors.

 

As for James, maybe this dumb thing I made will soften the blow, or make it worse? This is all I could think of during this scene.

 

[Afterward]

Thank you, Derek.

[Elen]

If the episodes getting worse means more hilarious YouTube videos in these threads, I can live with that. Those are all amazing.

[marblize]

can't wait for the spinoff

 

[jakejohnlewis]

Just signed up for the forum to say that this is the worst Twin Peaks episode yet, but my favorite Twin Peaks Rewatch episode so far. Go figure.

 

Re: the listener email about other podcasts like this one, I listen to a bunch of the StoryWonk podcasts, and they do a similar thing. StoryWonk Sessions analyzed every Pixar movie in turn, and their podcast Dusted is in the middle of an episode-by-episode rewatch of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I wasn't a fan of Buffy before listening to their podcast, but they make a strong case about it being one of the most revolutionary TV shows on the 90s, and now I'm hooked.

 

Now I'm going back to read all the forum threads for TPR. Keep up the good work.

[NorthernBoreus]

How did we get to this point

 

 

(Thanks, kickinthehead)

[SirJakoz]

[LostInTheMovies]

Believe it or not, there was recently a YouTube video which compiled all of the James scenes into a supercut "pilot" for a James-only show. It has, tragically, since been taken down.

[Atlantic]

When Chris and Jake were talking about Pete/Jack Nance's crazy eyebrows at the wedding:

 

Jake: "I guess he's got The Log Lady"

Chris: "She's no Catherine."

 

... which is true and not true. The Log Lady is played by Catherine E. Coulson.

 

I thought it was funny.

[SirJakoz]

Believe it or not, there was recently a YouTube video which compiled all of the James scenes into a supercut "pilot" for a James-only show. It has, tragically, since been taken down.

 

Oh man, I'd love to watch that

[Zeppin]

Regarding the listener email asking for podcast recommendations on film technique it's hard to recommend an audio only medium like podcast for something that's focused so explicitly on the visual elements of what is fundamentally a visual medium. I can however recommend a great YouTube channel run by professional editor Tony Zhou called Every Frame a Painting. Zhou is very focused on the compositional elements of film and so his videos largely deal with things like blocking, transitions, and camera movement. Two really good examples of the channel are is his two most recent — his video on

 and his video on the classic

. Although a lot of these concepts don't apply as much to television prior to the 2000s due to the constraints of a 4:3 film ratio they'll still serve to make a viewer much more aware of the artistry of visual media.

[Woodfella]

Best thing in this episode is Pete. He doesn't have any lines and is only on screen for seconds but through some hilarious facial expressions he perfectly conveys the feeling of being sat at a wedding with people you don't know/ like. Obviously not typical wedding guests but still.

Most enjoyable scene in the episode. I went to my Mother's wedding recently, I made that face on several occasions.

Also there was one really odd bitb where Cooper looked directly at the camera.