Evenreven wrote:
-The writing for Cooper stays great, even in the worst episodes. The scene where he wonders if he can live up to being a deputy and is 100 percent sincere about it, is laughable on paper, but Kyle acts like being a deputy in a small town is somehow more noble than being an FBI agent. That's indeed looking at the world with love and to me it builds Cooper as a character. His love for the seemingly small (but still important) things isn't played for laughs, like his love of coffee, pie and ducks on the lake is.
Totally. I agree, that Cooper is consistently written and acted tremendously well throughout these maligned episodes. Even as Windom Earle gets a bit too over the top, Kyle MacLachlan never ever does, and so you stay with Cooper and want to know what's going to happen to him in a very real way.
I have to add, my favorite moments beyond the Cooper stuff in this middle section are Ben Horne's mental breakdown. It gets over the top too with his civil war enactment, but somehow it works for me - I think the actor delivers, and you understand why Ben would react this way.
And the budding Cooper/Annie romance cracks me up every time. It's so tender and awkward.
Some Cooper and Annie favourites:
Cooper: "My symptoms suggest the onset of malaria, but I've never felt better in my life."
Cooper: "When I speak to you I get an odd tingling sensation in my toes and in my stomach."
Annie: "Interesting... I'll get those donuts!"
Harley Peyton wrote great lines for Cooper. He gets a lot of shit - and some of it deservedly - but a lot of what we think of as great Cooper and Audrey moments (together or separately) is his work. Sure, Coop is an amazing character before Peyton entered the picture, but episode 3 takes him to a whole new plane. He also loses some of the inherent perversity in his character - he seems somewhat nasty when checking out the marked Fleshworld page, and the grapefruits should be freshly squeezed (a comment that felt a bit cheap to me, although it's fun). But in episode 3: "Audrey, that rightward slant in your handwriting indicates a romantic nature. A heart that yearns, be careful." That's Cooper to me.
I laughed a lot during Ben's civil war scenes, but it's still a bit much. However, the scene where he's losing it - after the confrontation with Hank - is amazingly funny. Few actors can grin better than Beymer.
I love Cooper and I love Kyle MacLachlan and I think that every moment Coop is on screen is invariably a pleasure. I do have to say though that I noticed that the way that MacLachlan played Cooper in the pilot and in the finale are a bit different to how he played it in the other episodes. Maybe Lynch kicked his performance up a notch, I'm not sure. But I felt in these episodes that Cooper, as loveable as he was, had a bit more of an "edge" to him; like he was one step ahead of everyone and always knew a little more than he was telling. I dunno, did anyone else ever notice this or is it just me?
THere is definitely a difference. Some of the other directors pull out a more human side to Cooper, which I also like. Lynch's Cooper is always a little bit otherworldly.
It might have something to do with it. He's pretty likable in episode 2, 8 and 9 though. Isn't it in episode 2 where he pinches Truman's nose? I think it's more due to the actual situations he encounters. In the pilot he hadn't really settled in town yet, and in the last episode he was chasing his former partner who had kidnapped his girlfriend.
It seems the general opinion is that Twin Peaks went wrong in Season 2, but to me that's not really true. I think episodes 8-16 are just as brilliant, if not more so than Season 1. Heck, I'll even give them episode 17 ( Leland's wake ) as a nice coda on the whole Laura storyline. But the following 5 to 6 episodes are mostly really bad...the Evelyn/James story is straight out of Red Shoe Diaries or something, and Little Nicky is just lame. Ben's nervous breakdown is ok until we get to the Civil War crap. I mean, when we have Audrey dressed up in Gone With the Wind stuff it's just lame.
The problem is certain characters ( I'm looking at you, James and Donna ) are only interesting as windows by which we found out information on the really interesting character, and that's Laura. With the mystery of Laura solved, they just aren't as fun to watch. Having said all that, I find the last 6 eps or so to be a step in the right direction and truly enjoy them ( for the most part ) But the show was never as brilliant as that first story line ever again, and if the show had continued I highly doubt it would have been.
I'd agree with that, plus the final episode was super-good. The thing is, for the show to realistically survive early 90s network TV, they needed a big hook for the next story, something easy to hype. Cooper and Audrey could have worked, it was really the only thing big enough, but they had to get into it right away. Barring that, Windom Earle should have been an excuse for some stunt casting. (I like the guy they used, but they couldn't really hype him up). Who would've been a big (TV-level) star, circa 1991?
Having only watched TP recently for the first time, I'm a bit of a novice, but the two plotlines I found dull in series 2 were Ben Horne and the civil war and Nadine's strength/affair with Mike. Both added nothing for me. I found Evelyn/James interesting enough, although admittedly entirely unrelated to anything else happening. At the risk of stating the obvious, the weakest episodes were the four or five after Laura's killer is revealed.
I wouldn't regard the second season as something, which is noticeably worse, than the first season.
I know, some people do so. Here's my opinion: One shouldn't forget, that the whole mystery begins to envelope just in the second season. I agree, that the nature of some characters was changed. But as we remember, it was exactly after the episode, when Leland Palmer died. For me the line dividing both seasons goes through exactly at this point. That's why the criticism of the second season is half motivated at least. The second reason to love the second season is WINDOM EARLE. IMHO he belongs to the characters, who seem always to be underestimated due to the unclear reasons. I always was astonished by him. He was actually the only person superior to Cooper in matters of mystery, who won the race to the Black Lodge outstripping Cooper in every move. And maybe he is the only person, who conceived the mystical nature of evil (the nature of fear and pleasure Mike was talking about) Remember his voice in the Black Lodge and how he spoke to the major in the last episode:) And the phrase, which seems to be also somehow forgotten: ,,I tell you, they have not died, their hands clasp yours and mine." Sounds like a magical spelling... Just like Fire Walk With Me lines.
For me the part, which is possible to call ,,weak" is only since Leland Palmer died and before Windom Earle appeared. As you maybe know, Mark Frost told once, that it was the biggest mistake, that such a character as Windom Earle was introduced too late. But maybe such move makes sense - to dilute the suspense before the new plot line.
I used to like the Earle inclusion, thinking he added a sense of mystery, but I find him a bit cheesy today. Too much of a standard villain. On the other hand, there are excellent things happening in other parts of the show that is somehow connected to the Earle storyline - things that all have that special Peaks atmosphere: the explaining of the dugpa phenomenon, the alignment of the planets, the shaking of the hands in the diner signalling something is about to happen etc...
Personally I wouldn't call him ,,standard". We actually don't really know, what happened to him in the past leading him to such a madness. Even Cooper doesn't know it for sure. I like the scene of 29 episode very much, when Earle is sitting near the computer, realising, that the petroglyph is actually the map to the Black Lodge while Cooper is dancing with Annie. His mad laugh is amazing.
It's exactly passages like the one you mention that makes me feel the way I do about Earle. Welsh's somewhat over the top acting makes finding the way to the Black Lodge almost a bit cartoon-ish, if that makes sense. By comparison, I much prefer Cooper's and Briggs' "connection with the woods", as well as the Log Lady's.
But some think Windom was a great addition, which is the cool thing about discussing TP
I think, you are right about the cartoonishness of Earle. But if one looks a bit further, a lot of characters are very expressionistic. Ben Horne, Jerry Horne, Leland ( even if he is possesed by BOB) and many others. And Cooper isn't an exception. The behavior and the emotional expression of Audrey and Nadine, for instance, is sometimes abstruse too. It's not about acting, it's their nature, I think. Maybe it is just less obvious. But from my opinion, it's the thing, that makes them unique.
That is simply a trait of Lynch's expressionistic style. I call Wild At Heart a gallery of abnormal and perverse people.
But of course many men, many minds.
I think the performances of Ben and Jerry Horne, Leland and Cooper are more timeless though. I can't think of a scene of theirs I would want to change (only exception being Ben's war breakdown dragging on for too long
Windom, however, while he was impressive, scary and intriguing to me as a first time viewer at 12, his "act" hasn't aged as well as the others, imho.
