Twin Peaks

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Just finished rewatching the entire run of Twin Peaks. Delightfully bizarre! I'm disappointed that it got cancelled, presumably because the executives making that decision didn't "get it".

Anyone else here seen this programme, and what did you make of it all?

I really liked the first season. A lot. A whole lot. But I wandered off sometime fairly early in the second season. Something I really liked about the show went away in the second season and I'm not articulate enough to say what it was, but it was just boring to me in the second season.

Lynch is often hit-or-miss for me. Some of his work is so great that I obsess over it and other parts of his work just don't do anything for me at all. I don't know what it is, but for me he is either amazingly awesome or flat and boring.

Perhaps that's the risk when being unusual. If you try something strange and new, it can be very effective - it could also be a load of tosh, and the reason it hasn't been done is that it doesn't work!

Maybe.

Eraserhead and Blue Velvet are my favorites. Blue Velvet is rather linear and accessible while Eraserhead is more cryptic and unexplained but I love them both. I like weird. I think part of it for me was that season one of Twin Peaks felt very natural while season two felt more forced.

I'm wondering if season one was all written when the show started and then season two had to be written on a deadline and there wasn't enough time for it to properly flow. I could see Lynch being someone who doesn't work well under a tight deadline. He's such a perfectionist (from what I've gathered from interviews) and may need time for his ideas to properly percolate.

Slightly off topic, do you think he's on the spectrum? My "aspie-dar" goes off when I watch him in interviews or listen to his commentaries.

I hadn't considered that possibility. I tend not to rely on my aspiedar. It returns a lot of false positives. Though maybe it's closer to say that most people have a slight tinge of aspiedom about them?

I don't think I've heard of Eraserhead. Blue Velvet was interesting, though I kept thinking there should be red drapes everywhere...!

My aspiedar very rarely ever turns on. I don't "trust" it, in the sense that I don't feel qualified to diagnose people (and get annoyed at all the "diagnosed" dead people) but every now and then, I get this feeling about someone and watching David Lynch interviews really turned that on.

Eraserhead is black and white and VERY surreal. Some people find it disturbing. The story wanders through all kinds of strange territory and leaves at least 80% of things unexplained. The best I can tell the plotline, it's about a man (Eraserhead) who lives in a bleak, industrial city. He marries and they produce an extremely deformed infant. The stress breaks up their marriage. He listens to the lady who sings to him from inside his radiator. And then it REALLY gets weird.

I absolutely loved Twin Peaks. Back when I was in college, everyone in the liberal arts classes would watch Twin Peaks on Wednesday night, then the next day, we'd all talk about what we saw before class would start. I know Lynch had wanted the story to branch off with various story lines, with the murder of Laura Palmer drifting off into the background, only to resurface from time to time. But then, the network demanded he reveal Laura's murderer, putting the kibosh on his original plans. Perhaps the series should have ended there. But Lynch had tried to soldier on as best as the circumstances allowed. Despite the machinations of the imaginationless network philistines, David Lynch still pulled off a remarkable feat for television. I still miss Twin Peaks, even to this day.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I hadn't thought about network interference. That would explain a LOT about why it went downhill in the second season. Thanks.

I saw it when it first came out and found it mesmerising. I loved the music in it too. Especially when Moby made it into a dance track.

It is good music. Astonishing how well they did, given that they only had about 4-5 pieces of incidental music throughout the first season.

I really liked Twin Peaks, even the second season. In fact, I probably enjoyed the second season even more than the first, despite its flaws. The second season just had more of a sense of the supernatural when I really enjoy. Once they started looking for the Black/White Lodge, it was full on supernatural. Wyndem Earl was a great bad guy and I would have loved to see how his character would have developed if the show wasn't going to get canceled. I don't think he would have been killed off so quickly.

I love Twin Peaks and David Lynch. Glad to see that i'm not the only fan of him here in the East Midlands OP

I was so impressed I went out and bought a log.

ruveyn

Another East Midlands! Goodness!

Having finished Twin Peaks, we are currently rewatching The X-Files. My impression first time through was that it started out interesting, got better, got overly complicated, found a sense of humour in the later series and then fell apart completely in the ninth and final series. They lost all track of what was actually going on. Mulder's sister was apparently abducted by aliens, the military and a random serial killer according to three different storylines.

Never really got into the X-files.

Have you seen many of Lynch's films? I recommend Mullholland Drive as a good starting point, if not.

Never really got into the X-files.

Have you seen many of Lynch's films? I recommend Mullholland Drive as a good starting point, if not.