Ha, yeah, a lot of people now (sadly) seem hung up on the soap opera aspects and find the music and performance style distracting. Which may mean it's hopeless anyway but...my feeling is even if they are not going to like Twin Peaks they should not be allowed to die without having at least seen the Red Room scene. Period.BOB1 wrote:Do such people exist?LostInTheMovies wrote: I often tell people who are having trouble with the pilot.
Plus I like to shock them if they think they know what to expect from the pilot.
Anyway, I actually did not get to see the pilot until after ep. 1 & 2 because I started watching the series before the Gold Box. I stopped after ep. 2, realizing how much I was going to like Twin Peaks and wanting to re-start it properly. So I'll never know how I would have reacted coming to it fresh!
Personally, I have tremendous respect for the pilot (which is beautifully structured and executed) and would definitely rank it among my top episodes but I'll also admit it doesn't "grab" me in the same way ep. 14 & 29 do. I think this is partly to do with where Lynch was at in his career. If there's a first and second stage to his work (and I think there are, although there's a lot of different ways you can look at his body of work) then the beginning of Twin Peaks lies in the first stage and the ending lies in the second. He had really transformed as a filmmaker over the course of its run, and even more so by the time Fire Walk With Me came out. I find Lynch's early works are a little cooler and more distanced/restrained while his later films are messier and more immediate/passionate. There are other differences as well: tendency toward male vs. female protagonists, dual narratives, less optimistic conclusions.
They are works I admire more than fall in love with (which is not a knock - Eraserhead may in fact be Lynch's most perfect movie). But the films that hook me most, that I revisit and feel the most moved by are his later ones. Anyway, for me Twin Peaks falls into this pattern as well. The pilot feels like a sibling of Blue Velvet in many ways while Fire Walk With Me arguably has more in common, stylistically and narratively, with Mulholland Drive (or heck, even Inland Empire though that would be a tougher case to make) than Blue Velvet. This is just personal preference, though - I think they're all tremendous accomplishments.
Btw - out of curiosity (since we're talking personal preference!) - what is it about ep. 2 that doesn't capture you as much as the others?
