What if the mystery had never been solved?

[OK,Bob]

I agree that, given that the killer WAS revealed, the handling of the reaction (or lack thereof) of the townsfolk and the series as a whole proved the grossest misstep. Regardless of WHEN the reveal was made, the town should have reacted accordingly.

The blog that LostinTheMovies posted, http://entertainmentguidefilmtv.blogspo ... 20-26.html , summarizes very well where the middle portion of the season 2 failed, and what those story-lines needed. For example,

"Ben Horne's uncharacteristically silly mental breakdown, which causes him to live out the delusion of being a Confederate General near the end of the Civil War, might have made more sense if the writers had directly tied it to Ben's grief over the horrific facts of Laura's life and death."

Had the killer NOT been revealed, then the requirements of the show would've been altogether different to sustain the drama...

[Jonatan Silva]

Initially, there were plans for a third season soon after season two and it can mean that Cooper possession is a clue for trully reason that Laura was killed. As everybidy knows these plans were soon scraped off and the third season didn't happen. Maybe the murder mystery is not solved but we don't know yet.

[Jasper]

Initially, there were plans for a third season soon after season two and it can mean that Cooper possession is a clue for trully reason that Laura was killed. As everybidy knows these plans were soon scraped off and the third season didn't happen. Maybe the murder mystery is not solved but we don't know yet.

Some speculate that BOB's plan all along was to lure Coop to the lodge. It would have been a retcon, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been a plot point for season three. That kind of falls apart with FWWM, where it becomes very clear that BOB is fixated on Laura, and Laura doesn't die through any intricate scheming on his part. Besides, in FWMM Coop is . . . already in the lodge before Laura dies.

[wurmheart]

I believe in David Lynch. I admire his artistic integrity and the clarity of his visions. I think he's one of the greatest directors the world has ever seen and an incredible artist all around. However, i really disagree with his plans to never reveal the killer of laura palmer. i think that wouldve been a terrible idea. I think I can kind of see where hes coming from, wanting to completely deconstruct tv tropes and stuff, but I just dont think that wouldve worked at all. The LOST finale was a disappointment to almost everyone. There was a reason for that. The entire show was about characters trying to solve a mystery. In the end, nothing was really explained. I watched the whole show and could barely tell you how it ended. It was a bunch of philosophical nonsense that seemed grossly out of place in such an over the top show. But more importantly, the established conflict wasnt resolved. In the beginning of a story you're presented with a dilemma and your investment in the story is highly determined by wanting to see that dilemma resolved, or at least progressed and ended somehow. As the show progresses you become invested in the character's goals and want to see that all their work actually meant something. The reason you watch the show is to go on a journey to solve a mystery with those people. When it ends and it feels like things weren't really resolved, its just disappointing. Now, granted, Twin Peaks is not LOST. It just depends on what kind of story youre really telling. I've seen Eraser Head. Couldn't really tell you what the conflict was in that film. But that worked because it was more about emotions, sounds and textures than a coherent narrative. As artsy as it is, the most appealing thing about Twin Peaks is the mystery story. It was an essential part of the show. I'm betting it's what hooked nearly every one of you. I think Lynch was coming from how a mystery's intrigue is from not knowing, but when nothing is ever resolved you end up feelings frustrated and left in the dark. When there is no answer to a mystery, it feels like there never really was a mystery at all. That's what LOST felt like. It all seemed like it was building up to something, but it didn't, so all the clues just felt like gibberish and a waist of time. When you have a mystery story where in the end the mystery isnt resolved, you feel like nothing has happened and youve wasted your time.

So yeah, sad they were forced to reveal it when they weren't ready, but I'm glad they actually revealed it at all. I don't know, maybe Lynch had some brilliant idea he was gonna pull off that I could never even dream of. But I dont think so. I think you have to come up with a really intensely non tradition story to pull that off. Like Eraserhead non traditional. Which, as unique a show as it was, Twin Peaks was partially fairly strait forward mystery story. And I think no ending to that part of the show would have been nothing but disappointing.

[MysteryMan]

To quote Donna Hayward:

"Maybe the sun won't come up tomorrow if you wash your hair. Think like that you're gonna go crazy. What's done is done."

[mlsstwrt]

Yeah, it's like, really? We barely get to see how the town reacts to the fact that one of their most upstanding citizens was a child molester and serial killer! We never see Bobby have a moment like, OH that's why Laura was so fucked up. Or James. Or his former business partner Ben Horne, except for that brief "Leland??" moment.

It just makes it feel like there is very little continuity.

It is a pretty jaw-dropping episode. Watching it again recently, I was amazed at how many jump-the-shark moments are packed into 45 minutes: the goofiness of the wake, Cooper losing the suit, Audrey & Ben starting to wear suits, Audrey & Cooper "breaking up", Super Nadine's jock-toss, etc. Michael Warren has a great post lampooning the wake scene in particular (check out his captions under Coop, Doc, and Pete's conversation): http://entertainmentguidefilmtv.blogspo ... 20-26.html. Tina Rathborne has also said that she really didn't understand at all what the episode was supposed to be going for and this uncertainty is very apparent in her direction: the frequent cutaways to drab, somber looking b-roll in the midst of zany comic sequences; the wake scene awkwardly shifting back and forth between a hymnlike organ and lighthearted percussion; the unmotivated cutting between goofy banter and half-hearted attempts to address the town's tragedy in that same scene. You can just tell that no one, from the writer to the director to the actors, feels comfortable with the direction Twin Peaks is heading in. For that reason episode 17 is really fascinating to me, albeit in a train-wreck kind of way. Like the show has a guilty conscience which won't allow it to repress or deny.

Am just re-reading old threads on here while waiting for updates on the Season 3 thread.

Jaw-dropping is the right word. It really was utter garbage wasn't it? The new series (if it happens) will give us another 9 hours of Twin Peaks. But they HAD more than 9 hours after the Laura Palmer mystery was solved and what did they do with it? For me there was at least 9 hours of sheer nonsense after Leland's death (and even by this time the rot had started to set in). I've actually mentally excised Little Nicky, the Pine Weasel, Evelyn Marsh, John Justice Wheeler, etc from my idea of Twin Peaks because I don't want anything to taint something so precious to me. But even now I find it surreal, more than the show even, how everything fell apart after Laura Palmer ceased to be the central and binding character. I'm so glad that FWWM was made because it 'ended' things on a spectacularly high note. Even now, 25 years later I'm still shellshocked by how badly Twin Peaks fell apart and I don't quite understand it.

To be clear I'm not suggesting that (if it goes ahead) the new series will contain detritus like the wake episode. I'm absolutely sure it won't.

[MasterMastermind]

They didn't even have Leland's wake in Leland's house. Guess that woulda been weird.

[Jonah]

I agree with the people who posted that the culprit needed to be revealed. While it sounds interesting to stretch it out as a kind of MacGuffin, "The Fugitive" style, I think ultimately it would have been a bad idea. It's a shame the network forced them to reveal it so soon, though. But the fact is people were already losing interest, a lot of people were frustrated it wasn't revealed in the final episode of Season 1! Back then I think audiences were more impatient than they are now. Anyway, the way it turned out, the reveal is fantastic, producing one of the very best episodes of the series ever (14).

And, yeah, Episode 17 - 23/24 (depending on your take) ... woah. I mean, there were SO many directions the show could have gone even post reveal, such as focusing on the Palmers more, Bob inhabiting another host, the mystery of the woods, another murder. I just don't know why they went with all that meaningless crap (Evelyn/Little Nicky, etc.) or just didn't introduce the Earle angle earlier. Seems kind of strange in retrospect, though I'm sure the pressure and deadlines probably had a lot to do with that. Still, though, surprised they didn't at least try going in some of the other angles. Maybe they thought (bizarrely) that switching from "too dark" to more quirky/goofy sitcom-style would attract viewers who had been put off by the supernatural or darker elements? It almost seems that after going down an incredibly dark road, hinting at incest and more, they went into immediate backtrack mode, and tried to overcompensate by introducing frivolity and lighter elements to wash away the memory of the darker undertones.

[LostInTheMovies]

I agree with the people who posted that the culprit needed to be revealed. While it sounds interesting to stretch it out as a kind of MacGuffin, "The Fugitive" style, I think ultimately it would have been a bad idea.

This has just come up on another thread, but I also feel like Lynch's constant laments of "it was supposed to be this ongoing, neverending story exploring the town's mysteries against the Laura backdrop" doesn't really pan out. It's sort of a "where there's smoke" phenomenon because he seems to have kept finding excuses not to play the role of showrunner (which I just don't think he's suited for).

Two things really stand out to me in this respect: 1) The only sustained stretch of Lynch-directed Twin Peaks (early season two) is precisely the most cinematic part of the series, when it is building toward a specific climax even though he claims to have hated this; 2) Aside from the pilot, Lynch's episodes really don't utilize the Laura/community connection - even his s1 episode is less about that than, say, ep. 3 or 5. It seems like Lynch had a romantic idea about how much fun it would be to do an open-ended mystery soap but when push came to shove, this wasn't actually what he brought to Twin Peaks.

Maybe they thought (bizarrely) that switching from "too dark" to more quirky/goofy sitcom-style would attract viewers who had been put off by the supernatural or darker elements?

I've wondered this too, especially considering those episode scripts were probably being finalized right around the time of the media backlash against the "too weird"/"too dark" season 2 premiere.

[Kmkmiller]

These are fun discussions, while I've agreed that Lynch talks about the tv thing but seems to lose interest himself I want to provide some counterpoint in the form of what MULHOLLAND DRIVE might have turned in to regardless of logistical challenges.

The centerpiece, the eye of the duck of MULHOLLAND DRIVE is the turn. Betty is the pledge and the magician makes her disappear and she turns in to Diane... in large part because Naomi Watts is just so gosh darn talented, this sequence of scenes makes MULHOLLAND DRIVE the masterpiece it is, ... So with that in mind I would argue that Lynch is a magician and he wants you to not only inspect the pledge, question it's reality, come to believe Betty is real, but go even further and fall in love with Betty. You can get that a little with the movie, for 108 minutes you get Betty, .... But what if.... What if you got Betty for two seasons, say 26 hours of tv, following her through her rise to stardom in the Hollywood machine. I mean you know how invested tv audiences can get with beloved characters. Someone dies on walking dead and half he country goes in to mourning.

It would be quite a shock. So I think what Lynch is saying is maybe not so much that he loves not knowing the answer, he knows the answer, he just loves.... Like all good magicians... Sustaining anticipation among the audience as long as he can... Walking that fine line between knowing and not knowing....

Additionally on this point, though again I agree, consider INLAND EMPIRE.... it starts out you hear "the longest running radio play continuing in the Baltic region...." and even more simply there is a murder in her film ("brutal f-ing murder") but Lynch never plays that as a crime to be solved, insofar as Nikki's story is concerned its more human condition status quo. There's a debt to be paid.

So there's two ways I think Lynch is being honest with himself about long form mysteries...

1. As magician he feels the more time he can spend on the pledge the more payoff there is with the turn and prestige...

2. Spiritually as far as the human psyche is concerned the biggest fish are things like original sin, guilt we are born with carried through the ether at the quantum level. You can't solve those crimes all you can do is get the TM and free your brain from those thoughts.

[mlsstwrt]

I agree with the people who posted that the culprit needed to be revealed. While it sounds interesting to stretch it out as a kind of MacGuffin, "The Fugitive" style, I think ultimately it would have been a bad idea.

This has just come up on another thread, but I also feel like Lynch's constant laments of "it was supposed to be this ongoing, neverending story exploring the town's mysteries against the Laura backdrop" doesn't really pan out. It's sort of a "where there's smoke" phenomenon because he seems to have kept finding excuses not to play the role of showrunner (which I just don't think he's suited for).

Two things really stand out to me in this respect: 1) The only sustained stretch of Lynch-directed Twin Peaks (early season two) is precisely the most cinematic part of the series, when it is building toward a specific climax even though he claims to have hated this; 2) Aside from the pilot, Lynch's episodes really don't utilize the Laura/community connection - even his s1 episode is less about that than, say, ep. 3 or 5. It seems like Lynch had a romantic idea about how much fun it would be to do an open-ended mystery soap but when push came to shove, this wasn't actually what he brought to Twin Peaks.

Maybe they thought (bizarrely) that switching from "too dark" to more quirky/goofy sitcom-style would attract viewers who had been put off by the supernatural or darker elements?

I've wondered this too, especially considering those episode scripts were probably being finalized right around the time of the media backlash against the "too weird"/"too dark" season 2 premiere.

Maybe but I'd like to know just who the hell was making these calls. Either people who didn't understand the show at all or were just desperate to come up with new material, no matter how inappropriate. I still can't get over how bizarre the change was. Which is one reason why I love FWWM so much. It didn't just get back to the darkness of the series, it did so to the exclusion of all humour, wackiness, etc and went further than the series ever had. Don't get me wrong, I did really enjoy the humour in the TV series (fish in the percalator and, my favourite, Cooper and that Llama starting straight into each other's eyes) but the core of what makes Twin Peaks great was always Laura, the show's heart of darkness.

[4815162342]

Personally, I find Leland's death episode more disappointing, though I agree there should have been more of an aftershock. But that episode is supposed to be one of the great ones, and each time I watch the series it seems worse. "BOB"'s cheesy Michael Bay villain posturing..."they made me kill that girl Teresa" "go into the light, Leland" "I see laura" blah blah. It's just weak, and this should be a powerful moment, but I think they ruined it. I wish Lynch had been there to make that story point work properly, he clearly had a different view of Leland and his culpability in FWWM.

[MasterMastermind]

I agree with the people who posted that the culprit needed to be revealed. While it sounds interesting to stretch it out as a kind of MacGuffin, "The Fugitive" style, I think ultimately it would have been a bad idea.

This has just come up on another thread, but I also feel like Lynch's constant laments of "it was supposed to be this ongoing, neverending story exploring the town's mysteries against the Laura backdrop" doesn't really pan out. It's sort of a "where there's smoke" phenomenon because he seems to have kept finding excuses not to play the role of showrunner (which I just don't think he's suited for).

Two things really stand out to me in this respect: 1) The only sustained stretch of Lynch-directed Twin Peaks (early season two) is precisely the most cinematic part of the series, when it is building toward a specific climax even though he claims to have hated this; 2) Aside from the pilot, Lynch's episodes really don't utilize the Laura/community connection - even his s1 episode is less about that than, say, ep. 3 or 5. It seems like Lynch had a romantic idea about how much fun it would be to do an open-ended mystery soap but when push came to shove, this wasn't actually what he brought to Twin Peaks.

Maybe they thought (bizarrely) that switching from "too dark" to more quirky/goofy sitcom-style would attract viewers who had been put off by the supernatural or darker elements?

I've wondered this too, especially considering those episode scripts were probably being finalized right around the time of the media backlash against the "too weird"/"too dark" season 2 premiere.

Maybe but I'd like to know just who the hell was making these calls. Either people who didn't understand the show at all or were just desperate to come up with new material, no matter how inappropriate. I still can't get over how bizarre the change was. Which is one reason why I love FWWM so much. It didn't just get back to the darkness of the series, it did so to the exclusion of all humour, wackiness, etc and went further than the series ever had. Don't get me wrong, I did really enjoy the humour in the TV series (fish in the percalator and, my favourite, Cooper and that Llama starting straight into each other's eyes) but the core of what makes Twin Peaks great was always Laura, the show's heart of darkness.

Plus FWWM was almost made necessary by all that silliness.

[LostInTheMovies]

These are fun discussions, while I've agreed that Lynch talks about the tv thing but seems to lose interest himself I want to provide some counterpoint in the form of what MULHOLLAND DRIVE might have turned in to regardless of logistical challenges. ...

Great points. Yes, ideally, had Mulholland Drive gone forward as the show it still would have ended the same way but with more emotional buildup. Indeed I've often felt like MD plays like the Twin Peaks pilot + the last 1/2 hour or so of FWWM. And if no character in Lynch's oeuvre packs as much of a wallop as Laura Palmer (despite some strong competition) that is probably largely because he sat with her for 3 years and shared her with a mass audience until she become a pop culture phenomenon.

One of the exciting things about this new series, should it come to pass, will be the ability to observe Lynch weaving his dream of the ongoing, in-depth story with his personal penchant for a filmmaking rather than showrunning approach.

[mlsstwrt]

Personally, I find Leland's death episode more disappointing, though I agree there should have been more of an aftershock. But that episode is supposed to be one of the great ones, and each time I watch the series it seems worse. "BOB"'s cheesy Michael Bay villain posturing..."they made me kill that girl Teresa" "go into the light, Leland" "I see laura" blah blah. It's just weak, and this should be a powerful moment, but I think they ruined it. I wish Lynch had been there to make that story point work properly, he clearly had a different view of Leland and his culpability in FWWM.

It's a good point. That scene essentially absolves Leland of all blame. As someone who does believe in BOB being real, not just a symbol of the evil of incest, one of the most complex questions for me is to what extent Leland is culpable in the evil done, especially in the murder of Teresa Banks which strikes me as being of a different kind than the murders of Laura and Maddy. Laura and Maddys deaths feel like the work of BOB, something that he took pleasure in. Whereas the murder of Teresa feels much more like the work of Leland. It wasn't operatic, it was something much more banal. Something necessary because Teresa had learned who he is and started to blackmail him.