The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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I find the changes pretty baffling. As they end up just frustrating rather than enriching the stories and characters we know. The Horne stuff directly contradicts the events in the 2nd half of the series. Something like Audrey's note to Ben for example adds nothing since it makes no sense in the context of where things were.

I did enjoy the historical stuff.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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Boy Scout Andy Packard looks a little like a Frost.
That bomb at the bank provided the final punctuation mark to the end of the final sentence of the final chapter of the Packards' prominence in Twin Peaks. Thomas Eckhardt played the last card in their game after all. Authorities never did publicly identify the 'third victim' who died at the bank, so Andrew Packard rose from his grave only to be sent hurtling back there by a second explosion. Given that Cooper had figured this all out, and passed the information on to Truman, it must have been decided somewhere in the corridors of power that some truths were simply too incovenient to reveal.

This time Andrew stayed dead. The explosion was explained away as the tragic outcome of a gas leak from an antiquated boiler meeting an opportunistic spark. The Packard Mill and all its properties passed back into the sole possession of Catherine Martell, the grieving sister, and her grief was genuine, make no mistake about that. Survivors bear the brunt of tragedy, especially if they had a hand in creating it.

She was the only resident of Blue Pine Lodge now, and with no living heirs or relations, Catherine became a recluse. She never spoke or wrote about what had happened, so one question remains unanswered: Who exactly was she grieving for? All of them perhaps; brother Andrew, certainly; husband Pete, for all his shortcomings - at least in her eyes - probably; maybe even Josie, the worthy opponent who had tested her like no other.

Given her amorality and cold contempt toward people, it's difficult to view Catherine Packard as a sympathetic figure. She was, however, tragic in the tradition of Greek drama, as one highborn with many gifts who falls victim to her own hubris.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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N. Needleman wrote:
The chief has given me the ring mentioned above to take along, but with emphatic gesture indicated it should be left in its pouch and under no circumstances worn. - Meriwether Lewis, 1805
Oddly the first descriptions of the ring only mention it having a metal setting, yet Agent TP's annotations call it the jade ring. A mistake? Or perhaps I missed a later description?
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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Ross wrote:
N. Needleman wrote:
The chief has given me the ring mentioned above to take along, but with emphatic gesture indicated it should be left in its pouch and under no circumstances worn. - Meriwether Lewis, 1805
Oddly the first descriptions of the ring only mention it having a metal setting, yet Agent TP's annotations call it the jade ring. A mistake? Or perhaps I missed a later description?
I think it's semantics. Maybe about the coloring vs. materials. Or Lewis was misinformed. Preston and the FBI have never actually come across the ring as far as we know. Annie is wearing it in the Missing Pieces when the nurse takes it off her. Where it goes after spring '89 is anyone's guess - and Major Briggs presumably had no opportunity to see it on Annie.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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speedbeatz wrote:The constant "Verified" and "Confirmed" notes from TP seemed a little silly, but what if they're supposed to indicate to us what sections to believe, and which ones to question?
I'm still in the early going (i.e., before the series-related stuff kicks in), but so far, the "Verified"/"Confirmed" notes seem to act as an indicator of which parts of the book are factually accurate to our real world. I.e., the "verified" Lewis & Clark journals are taken [almost] verbatim from the real journals (including the reference to the map Twisted Hare drew - except that the actual journal simply says "the mountains," "not "two mountains" - Frost taking a little creative license). I appreciate this - it's Frost playing fair with the audience, flagging which parts are actual history and which parts are his imagination (unlike, say, Dan Brown, who mixed some truly interesting historical facts and theories with his own moronic invented nonsense). This way, we can tell (without Googling) which parts of the book are actually teaching us some cool American history. :)
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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N. Needleman wrote:
Ross wrote:
N. Needleman wrote:
Oddly the first descriptions of the ring only mention it having a metal setting, yet Agent TP's annotations call it the jade ring. A mistake? Or perhaps I missed a later description?
I think it's semantics. Maybe about the coloring vs. materials. Or Lewis was misinformed. Preston and the FBI have never actually come across the ring as far as we know. Annie is wearing it in the Missing Pieces when the nurse takes it off her. Where it goes after spring '89 is anyone's guess - and Major Briggs presumably had no opportunity to see it on Annie.
Right- that's why I'm wondering how Agent TP knew it was a jade ring?
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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Ross wrote:Right- that's why I'm wondering how Agent TP knew it was a jade ring?
Doesn't Lewis mention it's green? Or somewhere.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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N. Needleman wrote:
Ross wrote:Right- that's why I'm wondering how Agent TP knew it was a jade ring?
Doesn't Lewis mention it's green? Or somewhere.
I don't think so. I went back and looked for mention of a color. But maybe I missed it somewhere.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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My mother informs me that my great-great(?) grandfather was wounded during the conflict with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce in the summer of 1877 that Frost discusses in the book - she watched the show with me in '90-'91, so as the family history buff she was particularly intrigued by that section. Small world.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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The continuity errors that directly contradict what we as viewers saw on screen are baffling and frustrating. What if a fan doesn't buy the book? They have one version of events and the readers have another? It simply doesn't make any sense. Retconning historical pre-show stuff is one thing but retconning something viewers saw and could easily re-watch at any time and point out the error is something entirely different, IMO.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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Speaking of weird inconsistencies, I'm wondering when all-American boy scout Andy Packard picked up his thick British accent. :lol:
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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I find the Ben and Ed/Nadine errors glaring, but at the same time I also find them relatively inconsequential 25 years later. This isn't the first time TP tie-in book material has left me flummoxed, and most of the stuff that's been drastically changed pertains to subplots that were, frankly, unpopular with the larger audience. We know this thing like the back of our hands but a lot of people don't. While I'd love to know why Frost chose to change or made a mistake on certain points, it doesn't really diminish my enjoyment much. This thing is a fantastic read - it's a towering achievement and greatly expands the mythology as well as the texture of the town and its existing characters. The occasional mishap with Ben Horne or Ed and Nadine really doesn't diminish that much for me, personally. If they were pretending that, say, Annie or Wheeler outright never existed, though, I'd find that a bridge too far.

Incidentally Josie's origins are also retconned, at least beyond the very few lines that Andrew and Eckhardt only briefly mention onscreen. According to an Interpol file obtained by Cooper, she was in fact the enterprising, murderous daughter of a Hong Kong triad boss she had executed. But unlike the Ben thing, that discrepancy between that and Eckhardt/Packard's story of a slum girl from Hong Kong is covered and explained:
Enter Andrew Packard. We now know that Josie was actually 27 by the time she met her soon-to-be American husband, not the 21 she claimed. When the two met during a state-sponsored black tie "mixer" at the Hong Kong Trade Center, Andrew believed Josie was an art and design student from a local university, hired to work as a hostess for the evening. He was also sufficiently swept off his feet to buy that she was Josette Mai Wong, a plucky orphan girl from the slums of Taiwan, not a patricidal sociopath looking to escape a death order.

[...] To set this up, and make her escape from the vengeful triad prior to Packard's arrival, Josie bought protection from a Hong Kong import-export man, a South African emigré named Thomas Eckhardt, using herself as collateral. During Andrew's business trip, Eckhardt made a successful play to become Packard's local contact in Hong Kong. When Packard left to head home, Eckhardt thought that Josie would be staying with him in Hong Kong; her disappearance seemed to take him by surprise. If he knew that she'd left for the Pacific Northwest to join Packard, Eckhardt took years to find her there. Which is one of the reasons to suspect Eckhardt knew her intentions all along, as part of a comprehensive plan he and Josie had devised.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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The Ben/Catherine/Audrey thing is particularly frustrating to me. It essentially flips the narrative so that Ben is in charge of the land and the Ghostwood development and not Catherine. Negating the whole Stop Ghostwood thing and more importantly erasing the growth Ben and Audrey went thru. Her letter then becomes pointless as it ignores what has come before it, and flips her reason for being at the bank from helping Ben to opposing him. What do we as fans get from or take away from that?
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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I am inclined to agree on Ben and Audrey, and I liked that growth and development between them a lot. At the same time, I know a lot of people felt it was too forced and artificial given the kind of sleaze he had been, that it was a betrayal of the traumatic, darker narrative where Ben had helped turn Laura out.

I felt the transformation was earned in the writing and performances, but I can agree Ben's worst self was glossed over a bit too much in the transition. It seems Frost may have chosen to go back towards the original conception, but I would rather they not undo Good Ben to do that, since Doc Hayward's assault seemed poised to revert Ben to type anyway.
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Re: SPOILERS: The Secret History of Twin Peaks

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From the Bookhouse Boys, their favorite books -

Hawk: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Hunter S. Thompson
Andy: The World According to Garp, John Irving
Lucy ("included because she buys all the books"): The Stand, Stephen King
Harry: To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Big Ed: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig ("Read it five times; next time through I think I'm really going to figure it out")
Frank Truman: Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
Cooper: The Official Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The Warren Commission Report
Cappy: The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn
Toad: R. Crumb Sketch Book, Robert Crumb
Hank Jennings: Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
James: Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
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