Twin Peaks Rewatch 22: Double Play

[Jake]

This is a bleak episode of the show. Man.

[SirJakoz]

I would just like to point out that after the scene with Donna in the bar there is a brief cut to James that everyone should go back and watch. He does a totally inexplicable slouch move where he springs off the pole with his neck and then sits down and puts his head in his hands and I don't understand how that take ended up in the show. As a bonus, the scene even has that terrible "just you..." song which cuts off awkwardly as it fades to commercial. It's ~24 min into the episode, go watch it.

 

EDIT: I mad it into  .gif:

 

He's such a flawless actor

[Elen]

That is....remarkable. Like a distillation of the James essence in one little gif.

[Jake]

Hey all, the episode is up!

And so is the pre-discussion thread for next week's!

[Argobot]

This was all good, but the best part (to me) is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comparison. This part of Twin Peaks is like Buffy Season 6.

[Jake]

Yeah we're in a totally shitty Buffy Big Bad era right now. Is season 6 Ben and Glory? Woof.

[Argobot]

Season 6 is Warren and Evil Willow and Spike/Buffy sexing down a house.

 

"We're adopting a baby!" is this show's sexing down a house.

[Jake]

Season 6 is Warren and Evil Willow and Spike/Buffy sexing down a house.

 

"We're adopting a baby!" is this show's sexing down a house.

Hahaha oh man okay. Fart fart fart. Buffy is all kind of bad after season 3, as far as the big picture goes. Lots of good small stuff but wooof forever.

Anyway can't wait for Twin Peaks 2016 and X-Files 6 episode mini-series. What a weird time for TV.

[BigJKO]

I'm so, so happy that they're both limited runs of 9 and 6 episodes. Now they can hopefully tell a good, shorter story in those worlds without worrying about having to serialise it or whatever..

 

David Lynch was suddenly very skeptical about Twin Peaks 2016 happening, but Showtime apparently quickly said this is still happening; This was all just the usual contract negotiation stuff or something to that effect.

[AgentCoop]

Can't disagree more about Buffy. I thought Season Five was excellent and Season Six is probably my favorite BTVS season.

[mikemariano]

This show has so few episodes left and I can't believe we haven't even hinted at:

The pine weasel or Billy Zane.

 

Jake and Chris: You were both pretty unimpressed with the Andrew Packard storyline.  But what were you expecting?  We knew from the beginning in the series that Josie had married Catherine's brother and that he had died in a mysterious boating accident.  Twin Peaks is definitely enough of a soap opera that we knew Andrew Packard couldn't possibly really be dead.

 

I guess it would be more interesting (and more soap-opera-y) if it came after a high point—like Truman and Josie elope after she returns to Twin Peaks.  A happy married couple!  But then Andrew Packard comes back from the dead!  Having him show up while Josie is an indentured servant is just ugly, and Dan O'Herlihy doesn't have much chemistry with Joan Chen.

[Apple Cider]

My interpretation of Leo's capacity is that he's effectively got damaged verbalizing and limited physical movement but that his thoughts and personality are effectively untouched or in some ways, perhaps amplified? Leo was always a really malicious, abusive person and what's hindering him is just his lack of physical control or ability to speak on a more comprehensive level. His lack of control over his life, his situation and more importantly, his wife, has definitely made his desire to escalate the abuse or just outright kill Shelley go up quite a bit. Some of the earlier episodes where we get the hint that maybe he's plotting and faking some of his lack of cognizance makes me feel that he's been hatching a scheme for a while. 

[Argobot]

This show has so few episodes left and I can't believe we haven't even hinted at:

The pine weasel or Billy Zane.

 

Jake and Chris: You were both pretty unimpressed with the Andrew Packard storyline.  But what were you expecting?  We knew from the beginning in the series that Josie had married Catherine's brother and that he had died in a mysterious boating accident.  Twin Peaks is definitely enough of a soap opera that we knew Andrew Packard couldn't possibly really be dead.

 

I guess it would be more interesting (and more soap-opera-y) if it came after a high point—like Truman and Josie elope after she returns to Twin Peaks.  A happy married couple!  But then Andrew Packard comes back from the dead!  Having him show up while Josie is an indentured servant is just ugly, and Dan O'Herlihy doesn't have much chemistry with Joan Chen.

 

You're right that the show does telegraph that something will happen with Andrew Packard, but it comes so late in the game when the mill plot has devolved into a complex web of nothing. It keeps trying to top itself and ends just being incredibly boring. Plus, we already had Catherine fake her death and now we find out that her brother did as well? I guess it runs in the family.

[Jake]

This show has so few episodes left and I can't believe we haven't even hinted at:

The pine weasel or Billy Zane.

 

Jake and Chris: You were both pretty unimpressed with the Andrew Packard storyline.  But what were you expecting?  We knew from the beginning in the series that Josie had married Catherine's brother and that he had died in a mysterious boating accident.  Twin Peaks is definitely enough of a soap opera that we knew Andrew Packard couldn't possibly really be dead.

 

I guess it would be more interesting (and more soap-opera-y) if it came after a high point—like Truman and Josie elope after she returns to Twin Peaks.  A happy married couple!  But then Andrew Packard comes back from the dead!  Having him show up while Josie is an indentured servant is just ugly, and Dan O'Herlihy doesn't have much chemistry with Joan Chen.

I was expecting what we got, which is total garbage. But that doesn't mean that total garbage was inevitable. Like... don't mistake plot, or trope, for execution. They could have done ANYTHING with that setup, and they chose to do something that is basically unwatchable garbage.

[mikemariano]

It comes so late in the game when the mill plot has devolved into a complex web of nothing. It keeps trying to top itself and ends just being incredibly boring.

 

I was expecting what we got, which is total garbage.

 

Yeah, these points make a lot of sense.  Instead of Andrew Packard's mysterious death being an idle curiosity in the backs of our minds, it becomes a front-and-center pointless time suck.

 

I do enjoy David Lynch getting the final word on the mill subplot in the last episode, though.

[Chris]

Season 6 is Warren and Evil Willow and Spike/Buffy sexing down a house.

 

"We're adopting a baby!" is this show's sexing down a house.

 

 

Yeah we're in a totally shitty Buffy Big Bad era right now. Is season 6 Ben and Glory? Woof.

Are "sexing down a house" and "big bad" terms specific to Buffy or are you guys just using crazy phrasing to describe things I don't know about?

[Argobot]

Are "sexing down a house" and "big bad" terms specific to Buffy or are you guys just using crazy phrasing to describe things I don't know about?

Big bad is a term that was never uttered on Buffy, but became the default way fans described each season's main villain (different one each season). Well, I think maybe Spike called himself the big bad once, but since you have no idea who Soike is that doesn't matter.

Sexing down the house is a dumb phrase I made up to refer to an episode where two characters have such aggressive sex it knocks down the condemned building they are having sex in.

[Chris]

Big bad is a term that was never uttered on Buffy, but became the default way fans described each season's main villain (different one each season). Well, I think maybe Spike called himself the big bad once, but since you have no idea who Soike is that doesn't matter.

Sexing down the house is a dumb phrase I made up to refer to an episode where two characters have such aggressive sex it knocks down the condemned building they are having sex in.

Oh cool

[Guts]

I never understood how dale managed to have an affair with the woman he was protecting, when her husband was his partner and the man he was protecting her from. Was earl going out to pick up Chinese food when they got together. All i can think about is the movie stake out but with awkward verbose men sitting in chairs and saying things like touche. What did Caroline witness if she didn't know her husband was the person she was being protected from? Could she not see through one of his stupid disguises. 

 

I read Frost's book the list of seven, about Arthur Conan Doyal having strange adventures, and I think Windom Earl is his attempt to have a Moriarty type character to vie with Coopers Holmes. He seemed to be really interested in that, considering list of seven came out in 93. The problem is that it is shoehorned into a show that didn't need another super-villain. You can't beat BOB.

 

This was one of the episodes i started skipping when i would run the vhs tapes of twin peaks in the background while playing master of magic in the 90's.

 

You can get the digital book of The king in yellow for free on kindle, I have been reading it lately and its a pretty good book of short stories loosely connected by people reading a book called the king in yellow and going insane. Nice 1890's meta fiction.

[Twig]

Oh cool

it's not

[Turgid]

My understanding is that Caroline witnessed her husband's crime somehow, but didn't I.D. him specifically. She was taken into protective custody and Earle and Cooper were assigned to her (probably at the request of Earle, and probably against FBI rules). During that, Cooper fell in love with Caroline. I don't know to what extent he expressed this to her or Earle, possibly he didn't at all. Conjecture: Earle killed her but spared Cooper for whatever insane reason. Earle went insane before the original crime, but from Cooper's perspective it wasn't until after Caroline's death since Earle hid it before then.

 

Alternatively, Earle was always a murderous psychopath and simply faked his insanity to avoid suspicion that he killed his wife. Or some damn plot like that, honestly I can't be bothered to go back and check what Cooper said.

 

I'm still watching this show, but for a few episodes now it's been pretty boring. I want to see Audrey do something again.

[Jake]

it's not

Correct. What can you do though?

[Twig]

Close your eyes and pretend it doesn't exist. ;_;

[Elen]

Was earl going out to pick up Chinese food when they got together. All i can think about is the movie stake out but with awkward verbose men sitting in chairs and saying things like touche. What did Caroline witness if she didn't know her husband was the person she was being protected from? Could she not see through one of his stupid disguises.

Asking the tough questions. (Tough questions that the writers didn't bother to ask, sadly.)

 

The Moriarty thing makes sense, but it's kind of a pedestrian plot to begin with and is not executed well at all. The things that make Cooper interesting and cool aren't the same things that make Sherlock Holmes interesting and cool, and giving him an unnecessary cookie-cutter nemesis is a bummer.

[syntheticgerbil]

"LOVE ISN'T WRONG, JAMES!"

 

"I'm gonna go check my butt."