David Locke wrote:The original series (and also FWWM but ESPECIALLY S1 and S2) were not just artful, but amazing escapism. And not in a cheap sense but in the best sense. You felt like you lived in Twin Peaks each episode. It was a warm and comfortable and cozy place, with a sinister and ominous core, but even the evil in it made it no less enjoyable to spend time in. Darkness was always enticing in its own way, or at least balanced out by Angelo's immersive score and the orange/red-tinted, earthy, eye-candy surroundings, and the sense that Good existed just as darkness did.
And that's a big part of the appeal and why I, and many, return to those episodes and that film, from 1990-1992. It feels all of a piece despite FWWM obviously having a different approach.
Now here comes TP:TR 25+ years later, and naturally it's completely different. And you have to accept this to get any enjoyment out of it. And I have accepted it. And I do enjoy it... but, I doubt I will ever hold it on the same level as the original Peaks material. (...)
So I do very much like TP:TR, it has had a lot of great stuff, but I suspect that the best is yet to come... and even that I'm not sure I'll ever hold in the same regard as the 1990-1992 TP. We'll see, I guess.
Yes, we'll see. but so far I have exactly the same feeling!
And of course ...
counterpaul wrote:... I also think it's important to note that Twin Peaks, as a piece of art, was always (at it's best, at least) about complicating, rather than embracing, that cozy warmth the town exuded. I think it's absolutely crucial to always remember that, at its core, Twin Peaks is the story of a town that essentially let a young victim of abuse die so that it could hold on to its denial. "All you good people," as Bobby says at Laura's funeral.
It's built into the story from the very beginning. It essentially is the story.
Of course, that doesn't invalidate the charm. And it doesn't mean that everyone in Twin Peaks is rotten at the core. It's not that simple. The tension between the truth, the fact that BOB basically manifested out of everyone's inability to state it (and, thus, their inability to help Laura before it was too late), and the fact that most of the people in town are in fact genuinely good people, and that the charm of the town is also genuine, is what defines the brilliance of the show.
But to watch it and not acknowledge that tension--to let the charm stand uninterrogated--seems dishonest to me.
But I don't see any contradiction here. What counterpaul has written about is just the next level. It's going deeper into it and it's making the fans love it even more. Because it turns out it's not
only "the cozy warmth" and you can find endless mysteries there. The tension makes it alive all the time. Without it, probably the appeal of Twin Peaks wouldn't be alive after 25 years, either. What was needed was what you both write about: creating a place which people loved AND the tension which is built into the story.