The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

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Eater of Iguanas
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The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

Although I'm one of the less active board members, I've really enjoyed the past couple years of mostly lurking, absorbing the remarkable range of other people's very thoughtfully expressed opinions and reflections, including those of people whose feelings differ sharply from my own. It's helped me to process the huge impact on me of this approximately 24 hours of television, which I watched on original airing at the impressionable age of 17-18 years.

But there's one aspect of my Twin Peaks experience that I've never seen addressed in quite the way I would, and I wanted to write down some of the thoughts thereon that have been rattling around my skull for the past quarter-century. That would be my ambivalent feelings about the entire supernatural mythology that's built in Season 2 (and expanded in FWWM), especially as regards the Laura-Leland narrative.

As I've commented before a few times, I'm much harder on S2 than even most of the fans. I've rewatched S1 countless times, and no doubt will many more - for me, it's the "real" TP. But I've only rewatched 2 it in its entirety once - just last year - and I have serious doubts about whether I'll ever do so again. I have all the common complaints about the post-Leland apocalypse - the "WTF?" plotlines, the "who cares?" new characters, the cheesey sitcom goofiness, the forced quirk, the grotesque abandonment of emotional and dramatic consequences, the boredom and embarrassment. But I see the problems as wider than that, and they go almost back to the beginning of the season.

Just past the S2 premiere (which I mostly loved then and still do), I felt like I was watching a different show than the one I had fallen in love with. There are a number of reasons for this, having to do with factors like pacing, tone, quality of writing and direction (sheesh, Harold Smith is boring). But moreover, I was never fully on board with the turn towards the otherwordly in the explanation for Laura's downfall and death (and Leland's), even though it undeniably produced some powerful and haunting passages.

For me, the show was a (admittedly surrealistic) story about "the evil that men do," or "the banality of evil," to use two cliches - and maybe "the banality of good," too ("Ducks on the lake!"). The air of mysterious portent, the dream visions, these were used to express these notions in a semi-conscious way. It was a portrait of the weirdness of ordinary people and ordinary lives. Laura's brutal destruction was the ugly side of that weirdness, growing straight out of the cozy American domesticity around her, not a consequence of mystical attacks from elsewhere. The mood and the hints within the story seemed to make some sort of perverse conspiracy among the townspeople a likely solution (and that would have been more satisfying, if more disturbing and less conducive to a long-term continuation of the series). Even Truman's vague mutterings about "something evil in these old woods" was consistent with this, as long as the concept remained amorphous. To have it rather suddenly shift into a Manichaean good vs. evil fantasy - a story about demonic possession, to be blunt - was disappointing. In taking off into more fantastical realms, it paradoxically became more banal. At the end of E13 (or S2E6), Strobel's performance and Glatter's direction are magical, but I always get this little sinking feeling when he says, "I am an inhabiting spirit." My response shifts from "Oh my god, what is happening here?" to "Oh, I've seen this movie before."

The reappearances of the Man from Another Place and the Red Room in S2 just exacerbated this feeling for me. When the Leisure-Suited One appeared on Josie's bed, cutting a sheet to that distinctive sax, I might have audibly muttered, "Ugh." It felt like a desperate callback to earlier glory - writers and producers trickling with flop sweat and saying "How do we remind people how amazing this show used to be? Umm, let's bring out our weirdest icons again!" Systematizing these inexplicable visions from the subconscious as literally existing beings and places with goals and rules loosely derived from commonplace genre tropes just exacerbated their banalization. The rigorous efforts on this and other forums to figure out the rules of the mythology from the scattered clues across the Peaks-verse always bemuse me. It's clear to me that it was made up on the fly, and retconned a number of times - and a definitive accounting doesn't seem desirable to me anyway, as I prefer ambiguous Peaks to systematized Peaks. I get the impression a lot of fans await "answers" in S3, where I'm more interested in further mysteries. I hope Lynch and Frost complicate and muddy the Lodge mythology, rather than clarifying it.

I even felt this way about the finale - much overrated to my mind, though I consider it now one of the better episodes of S2 and one of the few worth multiple rewatches. At the time it aired, I was so bitter and disheartened about the collapse of the show and what we knew by then to be its unceremonious termination that I was not in a frame of mind to respond generously - my overwhelming feeling was "Jesus, back with the red curtains and the little man again? They really are out of ideas - it probably is time to pull the plug." While it's grown on me, it still feels banal compared to the disruptive shock of seeing the original dream sequence. All the talk of "souls," the bursts of fire and such, and the punch-me grin of Kenneth Welsh increase the feeling that the Red Room has been domesticated into a gussied-up tale of a wizard battling monsters. The quiet moment in the pilot of Ronette Pulaski staggering across the bridge, wind whistling around her, seeming to teeter on the edge of a plunge into open air, was a far more potent image of the implacability of evil and our frequent defenselessness against it.

Of course, the end of the Leland storyline made all this much worse, appearing to utterly absolve Laura's abuser/killer, going out of its way to make the wrap-up as safely undisturbing as possible under the circumstances - a failure of nerve and imagination that's been discussed around these parts a fair amount in the past, so I won't say much more about it here.

It's all a bit as if in the last third of Mulholland Drive, the Cowboy had turned out to be a secret agent chasing down a rogue government scientist (the man behind Winkie's) who'd been mutated during an experiment and was now opening up portals between alternate dimensions - completely absolving Betty, by the way, since Diane is just her evil doppelganger from another universe.

Another big problem for me is that - brace yourselves for some serious blasphemy - Frank Silva doesn't do it for me. I used to be surprised by the terror and awe with which so many fans regarded Killer Bob. His first couple appearances were fine - the E2 dream sequence, the shocking end of the S2 premiere. But after that, I tended to find him silly - an old carny making faces at high school couples in an effort to prime them for the rattletrap haunted house ride. Eye of the beholder, I guess - obviously he still haunts the dreams of many people. But out of all the sinister emissaries of another world in Lynchland, he's the least effective for me - even Al Strobel and Mike Anderson are more unnerving. I've imagined what S2 would've been like with Robert Blake's utterly terrifying Mystery Man from Lost Highway appearing in the Palmer living room or stepping from behind the red curtain - that would've been a different story (or transplant him into the place of Kenneth Welsh and you've got a better Windom Earle).

Now, I have come to a more nuanced position in recent years - over decades of reading and viewing fantasy, horror and weird fiction, and thinking and talking and writing about them, I've developed a greater appreciation for the ways in which the supernatural can be used as an objective correlative for personal, psychological and moral qualities. And some great stuff came out of the mythology - among them, Ray Wise's ferociously committed, hilarious and creepy tour de force as White-haired Leland; the sublime Roadhouse ending to E14 (maybe the greatest scene in the whole series); the Two-Coops chase in the finale with MacLachlan's startling momentary grin into the camera. But the reservations above still nag at me whenever I'm watching even the better second-season episodes.

Whew! What a blowhard. And I haven't even addressed my related thoughts on FWWM and The Secret Diary. Responses, thoughts and demurrals all very welcome. Thanks for reading.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by FrightNight »

TP S 1 is merely a quirky crime show, an idiosyncratic whoddunit and a soap opera parody, TP S 2 is something totally beyond the comprehension of human mind and imagination and it's where the REAL stuff begins. Had post-S 1 TP continued and ended the way S 1 conducted itself, we wouldn't be here all these years later, out of our minds about where in the world the next piece of TP mythology will lead us ... Quite simply, there's no TP without S 2.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Eater - This is a great, thoughtful post. There is a part of me that wishes TP could have been split into two shows - the realistic, dark tragedy about small-town violence and deviance destroying a fragile human life (see Top of the Lake for a vision of what this show may have looked like), and the kookier mythology-based story. The Lodges and all their denizens are iconic and fun, but they undeniably cheapen much of what was promised in the pilot. Despite my love for the show and much of the Lodge stuff (particularly Episode 29 and FWWM), I find myself imagining every now and then what it would have been like if the rest of the show were more of a piece with the pilot, without becoming so focused on the supernatural (as Lynch has said, "The pilot is the thing"). It's still incredible to me that the ABC version of the pilot doesn't have a whiff of the supernatural whatsoever except for that subtle out-of-focus glimpse of Bob in the mirror.

The fact that TP defines/explains its mythology more than any of Lynch's other films does set it apart, in both positive and negative ways, I think. On the one hand, it's more fun to parse out stuff like the relationship between the Lodge spirits than it is to analyze, say, the nature of the Bum Behind Winkie's because we have more information with which to form theories (yet the "explanations" the show gives us are still vague enough that every single one of us probably has a different interpretation). This makes TP a bit of an intellectual exercise, in addition to possessing the pure visceral pleasure/terror that Lynch's surreal scenes always carry - and I think that's a huge part of why I come back to it and think about it more than any of Lynch's other works, even though I like some of his other films more than TP. On the other hand, as you've said, some stuff is over-explained or feels like a cliche from another movie (Owl Cave).

I anticipate that season 3 will give us some answers, but will hopelessly muddy the waters with new mysteries and vagaries, giving us plenty to chew on for the next 25 years. For instance, I don't think the good/evil stuff will be as Black and White as it appeared in some episodes of season 2. Both the MFAP and Mike present themselves as benevolent at points, but clearly have darker agendas (see FWWM) - and the Giant, whom most fans accept as a helpful White Lodge ambassador, is "one and the same" with them. My hope is for few cliches, and a healthy dollop of ambiguity with every "answer." With Lynch cowriting and directing, I don't think I'll be disappointed.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

FrightNight wrote:TP S 2 is something totally beyond the comprehension of human mind and imagination
Yikes! Bold words, my friend! I can't think of a work of art about which I'd say that - given that they're all created by human minds and received by them, too. But I salute your passion.

This is what's so fascinating about this forum, and about the show that spawned it - all these wildly differing interpretations. For me, S1 is by far the more mysterious and perplexing version of the series, with its subtle undercurrents that undercut the ordinary surfaces and its unexplained, barely glimpsed emanations of the sinister and otherworldly. S2 is often just a quirky horror movie. We'll have to agree to disagree on that.
FrightNight wrote:Had post-S 1 TP continued and ended the way S 1 conducted itself, we wouldn't be here all these years later...
I might partially agree with you there - though I hadn't thought about it this way before, it seems that the struggle to parse the mythology is a major hook for a lot of fans. Which by extension means it's part of the reason there's a market for S3 at all, an incentive for Showtime to pony up the cash and to otherwise give Lynch what he wants.

*I* certainly would be at least as obsessed with the show if it had continued more in the vein of the early episodes - I would love it that much more, with fewer reservations.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

Thanks, Reindeer! Glad you found it interesting. And that's very observant about Peaks giving us more concrete story on which to focus our never-ending stare than, say, Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive.

To clarify, I don't have a fundamental problem with preternatural themes in TP - they're right there from Sarah Palmer's vision at the end of the pilot (I would say that's a much stronger whiff than the glimpse of Bob). And I don't consider S1 terribly realistic for the most part - it always had a more or less heightened quality, sometimes dreamlike, sometimes parodic. I just wish those elements had been developed with more subtlety in S2. (Come to think of it, though, a realistic sense of the workaday world of the community is something that came across strongly in S1 and was largely lost later).

You're right that after the series, Lynch has been more interested in blurring the good/evil line - progressively moreso, I would add, if you look at the later films. I hope, and on a good day expect, S3 to hybridize the two seasons and the Lynch who's evolved since.

Thanks for reminding me again that I need to check out Top of the Lake.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Eater of Iguanas wrote:And I don't consider S1 terribly realistic for the most part - it always had a more or less heightened quality, sometimes dreamlike, sometimes parodic. I just wish those elements had been developed with more subtlety in S2. (Come to think of it, though, a realistic sense of the workaday world of the community is something that came across strongly in S1 and was largely lost later).
"Realistic" was perhaps a poor word choice, but there was definitely a believability in season 1 that dissipated. Very few of Lynch's films are technically "realistic," but they always feel like fully-realized internally consistent worlds, no matter how bizarre. TP had that in season 1, and lost it dramatically in season 2. Even the parodic moments in season 1 tended to carry an ominous undercurrent and fed into the overall mood. For example, I find Bobby genuinely threatening in the early episodes. His weird over-the-top behavior, while definitely goofy, somehow makes him even more off-putting and unpredictable. He lost that edge rather quickly, as did many other characters (perhaps inevitably).

If I had to put my hopes for S3 into two words, they would be "believable" and "nuanced."
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

Yes, very true.

I've noticed that about Bobby before, too - well stated. Every time I rewatch the pilot and that still-startling moment comes with him and Mike barking and howling at James, I think "Where did this guy go later?" (Does anyone know if this scene was improvised or in the script, or somewhere in between? It feels like the sort of on-set inspiration only Lynch would come up with, and only he could pull off.) And the Bobby in S2 hanging around the Great Northern in a suit running errands for Ben Horne in anticipation of some scraps is tough to reconcile with the shivery "Laura said Bobby killed this guy" moment in the pilot. Of course, Lynch does his best to square that circle in FWWM, by showing the killing as largely unintentional. But it still comes across as more "consequence free" storytelling. That's a thread I hope Lynch & Frost pick up in S3. In my imagination, Bobby has turned into his father - he's been to the military and is a crew-cut, lecture-spouting straight arrow with a delinquent teenage son who's driving him crazy, and suddenly the long-ago killing comes back to haunt him in some way - a blackmail plot, or a vengeful relative, or something.

This sort of character devolution happens a lot as TV shows wear on - in another thread, I used the example of Homer Simpson growing dumber and more oafish over time. I suspect a major reason is simply the pressures of creating at such an accelerated pace - it makes nuance and consistency difficult to maintain. That's a big reason premium cable shows operate at a much higher level, on average - with fewer episodes per year, and a less fixed schedule for when the next season has to start, more care can be put into each scene. L&F have that advantage in spades, having written the script at their own pace and without outside pressures.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Ped »

Well written post and thoughts OP. For me personally, the whole Twin Peaks experience extends greater than than just the show itself. I was just a little too young to appreciate what was happening off-screen during the latter stages of S2, but the shows dip in form, weird storylines, the 'indefinite hiatus' and initial critic reaction to FWWM are all part of the on-going mystique that the show has set in TV history. I don't like to criticise the show that I love too much. We wouldn't be forum members of Dugpa if we didn't love it, but for me, S2 and its weaker episodes are as much an important part of the folklore as S1 and the pilot. There's nothing better than see fans argue over the merits of Harold Smith, Windom Earle, Annie Blackburn and Evelyn Marsh. This is what brings us together and kept the dream alive for 25 years.

Have to disagree with your view on the finale though. There has been many hour long TV episodes of outstanding quality in recent times. The Battle of the Bastards and Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, the train robbery in Breaking Bad, the Cassius Clay v Sonny Liston Mad Men episode and The Soprano's finale all spring to mind. The Twin Peaks finale is up there with them. I caught this in the UK at 10 years old and it blew my mind. Still does. Little Jimmy Scott singing the Sycamore Trees, the Red Room with Bob and LMFAP and that BOB head smash mirror ending. All praise is deserved in my opinion.
Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

Thanks, Ped. Interesting thoughts there.
Ped wrote:...the shows dip in form, weird storylines, the 'indefinite hiatus' and initial critic reaction to FWWM are all part of the on-going mystique that the show has set in TV history...There's nothing better than see fans argue over the merits of Harold Smith, Windom Earle, Annie Blackburn and Evelyn Marsh. This is what brings us together and kept the dream alive for 25 years.
I can see this, and it's a little more true for me now that the show's return to prominence, and imminent resurrection, have taken much of the bad taste out of my mouth. Still, I think a stronger 2nd season could have given us plenty of mysteries to chew on for the next 25 years, without having to suffer through Little Nicky and the Milford sibling rivalry and Leland's ghastly wake and so on (I'm fairly sure it would have been canceled regardless - one way or another, TP was ahead of its time, and IIRC ratings were already dropping fast in the back half of S1).
Little Jimmy Scott singing the Sycamore Trees...
No argument here! I still think that's the finest musical piece to come out of Twin Peaks - by a hair. Have you heard Xiu Xiu's cover version? It's... well, don't listen to it late at night by yourself.

I just rewatched the first three eps of S2 this weekend, and was reminded that another problem for me was that the Diary, which had been released over the summer hiatus, was still fresh in my mind. That book played a weird part for me in these issues. For those who read it, the big pivot in the story towards the supernatural and the centrality of Bob didn't even happen onscreen - it happened in Jennifer Lynch's pages. I had my reservations about this while reading the book, but it was still powerful and ambiguous enough that I mostly went along for the ride. Thus the appearance of Harold, the discovery of the secret diary at his place, Leland's recollections of "Mr. Robertson" at the lake, even Bob's appearances, etc., all felt like the show playing expository catch-up.

[UPDATE: Crap, I've got "Just You and I" stuck in my head now.]
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by FrightNight »

Granted, Little Nicky and the Milford siblings rivalry are up (or down) there with the shittiest subplots of any series. But I firmly stand by my conviction that the "Just You and I" song is an unsung pop hit that should've been everywhere a quarter of a century ago :) Not to mention the whole James-Donna-Maddy singing shenanigans and later Bob's appearance which, in my mind, enters the contest for the greatest TP scene ever! Now that I think about that particular episode, the 2nd in Season 2 ("Coma"), it's probably my single most favourite episode, easily surpassing E 1 (the pilot), E 9 (the S 2 opening) and E 30 (the finale) and just about surpassing Eps 14, 15 (the killer's revelation), 16 and 17 which I count as TP's greatest episodes stretch. While I'm at it, I don't think the dreaded E 18 (Leland's wake) is as atrocious as everyone else seems to think (though it does contain too much of the Nadine the Superwoman stuff, another subplot that I absolutely abhor), as it offers a nice, if rather abrupt, transition into the post-Laura Palmer phase of the show (Cooper's suspension, him and Audrey finally putting that-which-was-in-the-air-between-them to rest, re-entrance of one of my favourite villains, Jean Renault, and one of the most intriguing endings in TP history, with Briggs' disappearance and the awakening of the mysterious force in the woods/the appearance of the spooky silhouette/aliens? - too bad the the latter never lived up to its promise, apart from some savoury Project Blue Book ramblings).
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

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I disagree with a lot of your points Eater, but this is indeed a great post. Twin Peaks is like no other show for me, in that I kind of love all of it, including the objectively weaker material. Now, on the first few viewings I did have a lot of problems with the episodes from 17-24 or so, but with more viewings I've softened on them to the point where now the only ones I really find irksome are 17 with its ghastly Leland wake and 22 with its deathly dull script and Keaton trying too hard to spruce it up with quasi-Lynchian flourishes. (Even 19 grew on me recently, if in a kind of guilty-pleasure way). Don't get me wrong, the other 17-22 hours aren't Great, but I still enjoy them, and enjoy the remainder of S2 which gets really strong especially from 25 onward. It's hard to explain, but basically all of Peaks has the "Twin Peaks vibe" to it, the music, the warm color tones and beautiful imagery, the mysterious woods and eerie supernatural implications... and so I just kind of love all of it. Even the way that Peaks combines a more conventional, literal approach to crime-fiction with Lynch's style actually makes it all the more intriguing to me, this clash of styles. It's only when the balance is tipped entirely over to the literal-minded, mystery-lacking part, as in Frost's Episode 7, that I get bored. But that's basically the only episode that feels that way to me -- even the S2 slump has that distinctly mysterious, ethereal and sinister Peaks atmosphere, if less of it than usual perhaps.

And I do agree with the idea that the show would not be nearly as big of an obsession to me if it didn't have S2 (not to mention FWWM, which is my favorite of all things Peaks). Sure, S1 is kind of flawless in a certain way (even with my quibbles over Frost's finale). But it's also less.. interesting? than what comes next, as messy as S2 gets. I kind of like the way that S1 has spooky intimations without ever tipping its hat as Supernatural, but I do prefer the high points of S2 and FWWM -- Eps 8 and 9, 14 and 29... I think the mythology and supernatural stuff here is really strong and intriguing. I think it can be argued against most when it's at its most literal-minded, as in 16 where Coop runs down all the things the Little Man did in the dream and compares them to Leland, etc. But I don't have a problem with the supernatural stuff just on the face of it. I think it makes the show more interesting and unique even as it becomes more flawed. Because I kind of think S1 isn't all that unique anyway -- it's superb, but it's also exactly the kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge postmodern detective story that critics can claim to love without risking "embarassing" themselves by praising a genuine "soap opera" which takes itself fully seriously. Lynch, to his credit, always took his work seriously, but there is that more PoMo playful edge to much of S1 which I'm honestly glad was done away with in S2. I like the sincerity, pathos, passion and horror that comes with that tonal shift in S2, even if it does lead to more conventional "horror-movie" moments (my pick for worst of these, though, is probably the Shelly/Leo attack when he wakes up from the coma in Ep 21 -- everything from the staging, dialogue and music cues seems straight out of some direct-to-video slasher flick. Generally though I think the show veered away from this kind of generic cheese pretty well.)

As far as BOB/Silva, I actually don't mind his appearance on Josie's bed too much -- it's the Little Man appearing after that makes no sense and just seems completely gratuitous. (Why would he be dancing, anyway? It just seems like a callback to the RR dream, whereas BOB is at least engaging Coop with the matter at hand: Josie's death). Also, I have a soft spot for Ep 23 and consider it one of the most underrated -- it plays like the most assured and best-directed hour since 18, probably 16 actually, and it leads the show back onto solid ground.

Anyway, to sum up the most important point: whereas most of S1 takes a more detached view to the heart of darkness at the core of the story, FWWM is amazing partly for how fearlessly it examines the very things much of the series shied away from. To me, the best episodes -- 14 and 29 -- are the best because they don't hold back either. So I guess I don't put as much emphasis on S1 as a thing unto itself because to me it's less intense, less intriguing, less truthful even -- I focus on the entire series as a complete entity, even with all its weirder and weaker detours. That's why the "Entire Mystery" box-set and how it framed the entire series plus FWWM as a complete entity not to be divvied up was so important.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

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" But I firmly stand by my conviction that the 'Just You and I' song is an unsung pop hit that should've been everywhere a quarter of a century ago :) Not to mention the whole James-Donna-Maddy singing shenanigans and later Bob's appearance which, in my mind, enters the contest for the greatest TP scene ever!"

I agree. This was a brilliant scene, with its retro styling, aggressive red colors notorious in TP, sweetness of melody, and the merciless dark turn at the end. Absolutely perfect. This also serves as Maddy's only (if memory serves me right) supernatural warning for what is about to happen to her.

In response to OP, I think that season 2 dropped the ball in many ways, some examples being Lucy's baby, Nadine's super-strength, Dick Tremayne, Tojamura, Catherine Martell and Josie storylines, James' excursion, but the supernatural elements were well placed. Even Garland Briggs' abduction, which many people tend to revile, felt eerily well executed in the world that was created. I think that Twin Peaks really returned to form in the final few episodes, except for ongoing, mediocre storylines that had to be continued to some sort of conclusion. Heather Graham was a great addition, and Lynch's Gordon Cole immediately created an iconic character. The Black Lodge scenes are classic television, generally unmatched to this day in terms of their sheer audacity of vision. There are many movies/shows that build up to a climax of showing some alternate reality, but how many actually live up to it without a cop out? I can't think of many instances beyond Twin Peaks.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

Thanks again everyone for the great responses. It's been a real education on this forum, and particularly this thread, to see so many intelligent and discerning people making considered defenses of the much-maligned Season 2. I'll continue to hold it down on the playground and thump it on the nose from time to time, but I respect the familial care you show for it. I'm starting to wonder if general disappointment in S2 has become a minority position in the Peaker community. Until recently, I'd thought it was the conventional wisdom. Hard to say from the sample here - naturally this forum is populated largely by a self-selected group of the show's most ardent admirers.

The most interesting pattern emerging from the comments is the divide over which version of TP is more "conventional." Obviously, that's a vague term wide open to subjective definitions. For me, the slow burn, withholding quality of the first season, its refusal to give answers, its focus on mood, all stand out; the second's more full-throated melodrama, camp and slapstick, and its parceling out of concrete explanations, felt more like "TV TV." But for most on this thread, it seems S2's greater flamboyance and its headfirst dive into the otherworldly are the bolder choices.

I wonder if there's a "generation gap." Are S2 fans more likely to be younger people who saw the show relatively recently, in binge-watch form, rather than "lifers" like me? It's difficult to convey how radical a break with the prevailing TV style S1 was; mainstream TV drama has come such a long way in 25 years, and so many recent and current shows pursue more or less TP-like storytelling or aesthetic strategies, that S1 can look much more staid now. I may be totally off base - it's just a random guess.

Clearly Twin Peaks contains multitudes.
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Re: The Supernatural, Silva and the Season 2 Problem

Post by David Locke »

Eater of Iguanas wrote:Thanks again everyone for the great responses. It's been a real education on this forum, and particularly this thread, to see so many intelligent and discerning people making considered defenses of the much-maligned Season 2. I'll continue to hold it down on the playground and thump it on the nose from time to time, but I respect the familial care you show for it. I'm starting to wonder if general disappointment in S2 has become a minority position in the Peaker community. Until recently, I'd thought it was the conventional wisdom. Hard to say from the sample here - naturally this forum is populated largely by a self-selected group of the show's most ardent admirers.

The most interesting pattern emerging from the comments is the divide over which version of TP is more "conventional." Obviously, that's a vague term wide open to subjective definitions. For me, the slow burn, withholding quality of the first season, its refusal to give answers, its focus on mood, all stand out; the second's more full-throated melodrama, camp and slapstick, and its parceling out of concrete explanations, felt more like "TV TV." But for most on this thread, it seems S2's greater flamboyance and its headfirst dive into the otherworldly are the bolder choices.

I wonder if there's a "generation gap." Are S2 fans more likely to be younger people who saw the show relatively recently, in binge-watch form, rather than "lifers" like me? It's difficult to convey how radical a break with the prevailing TV style S1 was; mainstream TV drama has come such a long way in 25 years, and so many recent and current shows pursue more or less TP-like storytelling or aesthetic strategies, that S1 can look much more staid now. I may be totally off base - it's just a random guess.

Clearly Twin Peaks contains multitudes.
I definitely take your point about S2 containing a lot of stuff that's actually more conventional than S1, more hewing to genre (whether horror or soap opera or whatever else). But I think that S2 feels to me, on balance, more experimental and more unconventional than S1 -- if only for the surrealistic brilliance of Episodes 14 and especially 29. For instance, however shocking and TV-breaking the RR dream in Episode 2 surely was at the time it aired, I feel that even then its positioning as "only a dream" places it in a more palatable and easily understandable, mainstream-acceptable context... whereas the happenings in the Red Room in Episode 29, on the other hand, cannot be easily "explained," are ostensibly real yet with many impossibilities and elements that are even more disquieting and disturbing then the contents of the Episode 2 dream, etc. Season 1 definitely has a unique tone and feel to it, which is mostly down to the jolt of putting Lynch's style in a soap/murder mystery series -- so that we get all the expected tropes but we also get this incredible sense of place and emotion and texture and feeling, a kind of realism within the surrealism, which was at that time basically never found on television. However, more broadly, I think S1 has a consistent tone throughout and is pretty easy to place as a parodic, postmodern and occasionally surreal 'riff' on the soap, the cop show and the detective mystery. Season 2 feels to me, if nothing else, certainly more complicated than that in its approach and multitude of different styles and ideas -- and so this patchwork of genres and forms not typically combined, along with Lynch's flourishes, makes for a strange sensation despite the ostensible familiarity of each trope when taken in isolation.
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