Mr. Reindeer wrote:
I have to disagree with you on Episode 16. While it has a nice moody quality to it (kudos to Tim Hunter), it spends WAY too much time over-explaining things like the gum (boo to the writers). I really hate the way it undermines the dreamy weirdness of the Red Room dream by ascribing some half-assed meaning to everything. In Lynch's world, the not-knowing is a lot more fun. That episode feels like someone making a sequel to 'Eraserhead' and explaining exactly who the Lady in the Radiator was (or like the last season of 'Lost' - "Oh, by the way, the Whispers were dead people"). I also despise the fact that it relieves Leland of culpability (Cooper easing Leland into the afterlife is beautifully executed by Hunter/MacLachlan/Wise, but I hate the fact that the writers tried to turn Leland into a sympathetic, unaware bystander to his own actions).
I have to disagree with your interpretation of this episode - I don't think it overexplains anything, but simply strives to give some much needed words to the horror that preceeded it. The style is just incredible throughout and it contains several of the show's most iconic set pieces, particularly the one with Cooper and the waiter/the Giant at the Roadhouse ("That gum you like is going to come back in style.") and the one with the dying Leland Cooper cradles in his arms during the smoke alarm's outpour - not to mention the terrifically poignant conversation of the policemen and Major Briggs that's held at the episode's end, followed by the shot of the spooky woods, bathed in hallucinogenic colors, and the owl/Bob flying into the camera.
The only non-Lynch directed episodes from the "post-Episode 14 era" that truly feel Lynchian to me mostly from start to finish are Episode 15 (Caleb Deschanel - Leland is wonderfully sinister, terrific suspense sequence when he gets pulled over; the gorgeous "Louise Dombrowski" cut) and Episode 27 (Stephen Gyllanhaal - terrific example of a director making the most of an average script, adding his own flourishes which elevate the material in the same way that Lynch did with the scripted stuff in Episode 29).
I wholeheartedly agree with you on the subject of episode 15/16, a strong candidate for my favourite TP episode of all (that Louise Dombrowski scene is too cool for words!). I don't remember anything in particular sticking out of episode 27/28 - I find it very consistent with that particular batch of episodes leading up to the finale.
All of the non-Lynch-directed episodes in season 1 are great. For me, all of season 1 remains magical: the comedy/quirkiness gelled perfectly with the darkness. Lynch does two kinds of comedy: the weird/unexpected variety (e.g., Henry's "Oh, so you ARE sick!" in 'Eraserhead') and the slapstick variety ('On the Air'). I vastly prefer the former style to the latter (I can appreciate well-done slapstick; I just think that style is something Lynch doesn't execute particularly well, whereas he is better than anyone else at pulling off the "weird" type of comedy). Season 1 is full of the former (Leland dancing, Nadine's curtain runners, Waldo the bird). Season 2 is full of the latter - and I attribute the beginnings of this squarely to Lynch (for me, the only moments that don't work in Episode 8 are not in the script and were presumably added by Lynch - the moronic "hospital food" gags, and the embarrassingly drawn-out sequence of Andy stumbling around). Unlike the comedy in season 1, these moments feel like an entirely different show from the incredibly dark ending to the episode.
While I do agree that there is a strong merit of Season 1's consistent tone and the perfect balance between its seriousness and its humor, I still think people tend to make too much of it when comparing it to Season 2. Yes, the latter is much more erratic and over-the-top silly, but also more tragic and profound and filled with so much of what's now regarded as trademark TP mythos. Yes, that sequence of Andy stumbling around is borderline idiotic and has no place in an otherwise very grim S 2 opening.
Although Lynch himself started it, the other writers picked up on those moments and went way overboard with this style, creating a show that had nothing to do with what Lynch and Frost had initiated with the Pilot (even Harley Peyton admits they fell in love with this style of comedy a little too much). Season 2, even in the largely terrific run of episodes from Episode 8-14 (which rivals and surpasses season 1 in its best moments), began to feel like two wildly different series as soon as Nadine got super strength. After Episode 16, that stuff usurped the series.
True enough. Particularly your point of view about the first part of S 2 surpassing S 1. And yes, I do agree the latter S 2 had way too much idiotically humorous stuff which might've seemed hilarious to people running the show back then but is now nothing else than ho-hum.
In terms of story lines that worked for me in the later patch of Season 2: Major Briggs getting an expanded role and the increasing prevalence of the Black Lodge/White Lodge (minus the unfortunate Owl Cave sequence in Episode 25, which was poorly-written and directed, and looked like a set from a 1950s B-movie); some of the Windom Earle stuff (particularly the Project Bluebook clip, where Welsh is PHENOMENAL - I wish he'd given us that version of the character for the entire season); Ben Horne silently watching old films (beautiful score, Beymer's best performance on the show); Denise Bryson; Thomas Eckhardt (not really the story line itself, but I love David Warner); the pine weasel (don't ask me why - I dislike most of the slapstick stuff, but that sequence tickles me for whatever reason). There's probably more, but not much. Some of the other stuff is fine for what it is (I enjoy the Ben Civil War stuff), but far afield from what TP should be, IMO.
Hm, some corrections here: the majority, not just some, of the Windom Earle stuff is great (true, his disguises were sometimes a tad much but he's otherwise a marvelous opponent to the main protagonist, fatefully tied into the latter's past); the character and actor that need to be mentioned alongside Eckhardt/Warner in terms of greatness are Andrew Packard/Dan O'Herlihy (it's a shame both of them, Eckhardt and Packard, had so very little to do); what's sorely missing from the list of "workable" latter S 2 stuff are the Jean Renault miniarc and the romance between Cooper and Annie Blackburn; Denise Bryson is way overrated and the pine weasel needs to be lumped together with Little Nicky, Nadine the Superwomen and Ben-the Civil War-Horne as one of the season's lamest moments.
I've never understood the theory that season 2 gets better starting with Episode 24 or 25 or whatever. Aside from the phenomenal Episode 27, that patch feels very much of a piece with everything that came before it, and Episode 28 (the beauty pageant) is as embarrassingly awful as anything else in the series (kudos to Fenn for refusing to parade around with the other women).
I never understood that theory also; mainly because I think it's from episode 21 (Leo Johnson's rejuvenation, the Dead Dog Farm standoff, Windom Earle finally making his grand entrance via the creepy corpse he leaves at the sheriff station) that S 2 picks up steam again
I think the three slowest episodes are 18-20, when Jean Renault practically single-handedly saves the series' honor.