If Twin Peaks WERE to be continued/concluded in some form...

General discussion on Twin Peaks not related to the series, film, books, music, photos, or collectors merchandise.

Moderators: Brad D, Annie, Jonah, BookhouseBoyBob, Ross, Jerry Horne

User avatar
LostInTheMovies
Bookhouse Member
Posts: 1558
Joined: Tue May 20, 2014 12:48 pm

Re: If Twin Peaks WERE to be continued/concluded in some for

Post by LostInTheMovies »

StealThisCorn wrote:Twin Peaks: An Access Guide To the Town is an invaluable little resource for stories set in Peaks' past. So many interesting tidbits in that little book.
I just bought that on Amazon for a song (one verse, no chorus). Great fun! I'd love to know the writing process behind it (it looks like it has tons of contributors, including Harley Peyton, Bob Engels, and other writers for the show, but is credited on Amazon to Lynch, Frost, and Richard Saul Werman, who is credited for numerous other - real - Access Guides as well).

For some reason I particularly enjoyed finding out the religions of Peaks inhabitants. To wit: the Palmers, Briggs, and Jennings are Lutherans, the Hurleys, Pulaskis, and Packards are Catholics, nobody we know is a Baptist (although a church is listed, with a minister named Oliver Twist), and the Haywards and Hornes are Episcopal (I guess Episcopalians are into wife-swapping?). Pete and the Log Lady are Theosophists, though Coop has been rumored to show up at their meetings.
But I do wonder, what kind of storyline would be as compelling as the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer, with all its twists and turns, red herrings and illogical leaps that, conveniently, pay off, without just becoming a repeat? Laura by another name.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that when Twin Peaks is in perfect harmony, three elements are in play: Laura, who represents the unknown, the mystery, the darkness haunting the town; Twin Peaks, the town and the people which provide the terrain across which the investigation into the unknown will move; and Agent Cooper, who provides us entry into the story and the world as well as relief from other somber elements. The first season keeps these three forces in perfect check but when the decision was made to remove Laura's mystery it was like kicking one leg out from under a three-legged stool.

Instinctively, I've always felt that the only way to continue the show (narratively, I mean - in terms of viewer appeal it was already a lost cause) would have been to use Laura's mystery as a springboard into the mystery of the woods. I thought that's where the show was going when ep. 16 ended with the shot of the owl ("where's Bob now?"). We could have kept checking in on Mrs. Palmer and Laura's spirit could have continued to haunt Cooper (besides, discovering the Leland-Bob connection doesn't mean there wasn't still more to investigate about Laura's links to the Black Lodge), reminding us that she is our gateway into this world (the pilot emphasizes her impact far too much for the show to get away with cavalierly "moving on" as it eventually attempts). Alas, while Twin Peaks eventually kinda sorta went in this direction, it took forever and only in the rewritten finale did it feel like it was coming home again.

Incidentally, the film, though it appears to dispose of Cooper and the town and focus entirely on Laura, still has an element of this triptych in play, while redefining what each element means. Instead of Cooper-Twin Peaks-dead Laura, it's basically FBI-Black Lodge (shadow world of Twin Peaks)-live Laura. And the elements are more separated than they were in the show, with the FBI storyline presented quite apart from Laura's as if to emphasize that the links have been severed (or, as the one-armed man puts it, "the thread [has] be[en] torn...!").
Post Reply