Twin Peaks Season 3...

[sevendaughters]

Me and the Mrs, a TP noob, just watched the entire thing save for the shit episodes in S2¹.

This was my first rewatch of the new episodes and really watching the first couple and the film were just flimsy pretext for doing this as I've had the boxset since it came out but never the attention span or a good enough viewing situation (poor tellies, rooms you can't darken properly, important things to be doing, etc.). Up to this point I think I would have said that Twin Peaks taken as a whole thing was in my top 5 serials of all time² with Heimat, The Wire, The Singing Detective, and Cracker.

A couple of general observations about the earlier series before I move onto The Return:

- Mrs 7D seems to think this decline in S2 begins earlier than Leland doing interior decoration with his brainbits. The Mr. Tojamura and catatonic Leo stuff seemed to irritate her, and I have to say it did seem a lot more hokey this time around. The show is clearly evolving into a soapy "show about the town" - the supernatural stuff really isn't such a big part even at this juncture - and I can sort of see why people started checking out. For me there is still a lot of quality but I felt some sag. Wasn't even so into the Audrey kidnapping thing either.

- Someone mentioned in one of the old threads³ that there's a genre-mix thing happening here and I think this is interesting and perhaps plays into the general state of postmodernity that American television was experimenting with (cf. Garry Shandling Show, Seinfeld, The Real World). This also happens in a more suffused manner in the last series, but is more notable here as a play on television and filmic style. The ostensible flip into melodrama (ie. "women's drama") in truly compassionate moments comes as a site of sustained "real" feeling - against the oppression and incomprehensibility of the art film, the gore and menace of the mystery/cop elements, the strange phoniness of the comedic interludes (which is their primary appeal to me). To me this suggests something that is vital about that genre to Lynch in much the same way Douglas Sirk and Billy Wilder used melodrama to both subvert flow and also deliver great drama. As much as Twin Peaks is heteronormative and 50s boomery-looking, some of the most potent and beautiful stuff happens between two men.

- One is suspicious, is one not, in these times, about Good Cop portrayals, are they not?


text break photo

Anyway. Reading all of the threads put me strongly in the mind I was in going into TPTR; of trying to join the dots and work out the symbolic meaning of everything and even getting frustrated at certain directions. Even though I came to my original view with an open mind and was largely happy with it, I can also see how I didn't really engage with it in my best sense because of all of these hopes and preconceptions.

Here's a scatterbrained view of the positives and negatives for me:

+ When you see it knowing what is going to happen it actually does NOT seem so "random" but actually...well-designed and....logical? Maybe logical isn't the right word. Well-contained? And yet still open to interpretation? Of course, it doesn't move at an even pace, and at times is actively laggardly. But it doesn't feel like ad hoc improvisation that was skilfully edited by someone whose auteur⁴ cred can get something whiffy past the smell test: it feels considered and credible.

+ Awards are bogus but MacLachlan should have won something for playing 3 characters really well. More importantly the character of Dougie Jones is genuinely joyful when you rewatch without expectation. It is the biggest weight lifted. Mrs 7D, not saddled with 20+ years of hoping, just took these at face value and loved them for it. Someone in the old thread said this reminded them of Peter Sellars in Being There and I AGREE!

- James remains a boil on the arse, his music is asinine and his British mate is ridiculous. I don't have anything insightful here. I never liked James at all and his storyline where he is fixing that woman's Jag in S2 is painful.

- Most of the diegetic music in Twin Peaks occupies a strange space for me in that it is a stylised pastiche of noirish/cinematic Americana that I can't stand to listen to for pleasure, and yet here I can't deny that it works. There is a run of performances in the second half of the series (Lissie, Vedder, The Veils) that ranks in some of my worst-of-telly moments.

+ Most of the stuff that is meant to be emotionally devastating really is. Think about that both in the context of missed emotional opportunities on other television shows, and also in the context of a show that seems detached and cerebral. At times it manages to have a real heft. I think this is why the obsessive focus on plotting and symbolism irks me so much: not because "you're supposed to experience it maaaaaaaaaaan" in that way that people say to excuse a too-open semantic field from someone they love, but because it denies emotional engagement in the tangible aspects of the show. Ed and Norma uniting, Bobby/his dad having a patient talk, Gordon tenderly caring for Albert, Annie and Coop in a boat: this is the heart of the show.

+ / -  Some of the comedy is well-timed and cut just right, some of it goes on too long, thankfully much of it ends up relating to the overall design and thus isn't just w4cKy kOmEdyEE. There's a very short scene of Jerry yelling at some trees. I think the show could have used more of these shorter cut-ins from a host of characters. I remember when I was watching it just before Game of Thrones at the time and both shows seemed to be relying on 5 minute scenes and it became quite oppressive, knowing that every edit was going to lock you into that space for quite a while.

+ Still some things left open, right? Who owns the New York building at the beginning? I could make a list. The ending probably being the main thing for most (although I quite like my Cooper-as-Sisyphus idea from a few pages back). I love the endings; I think that we get typical closure and we get some wider context, just in the way that Bob is an in-story villain but also something attached to something bigger than he/it.

+ / - / ? Still not sure what to make of the very last thing we see of Audrey. The Audrey scenes⁵ were very frustrating for me the first time around. Incredibly so. I skipped one of them. Here they were fine, but also inscrutable and it took that last edit to have it make some kind of emotional sense to me.

+ Lynch is very good in it, as is Miguel Ferrer and Peggy Lipton and Robert Forster and the guy who plays Bushnell and Michael Horse and Dana Ashbrook. In fact Twin Peaks acted as a perfect counterpoint to Game of Thrones, a show which offed many of its older characters played by venerable actors of experience and were left with a dozen emoting brats. Catherine Coulson does more genuinely felt emotion in 5 static shots of her on the blower than the last series of GoT managed.

I think I'd still keep TP in my top 5, although time lessened the earlier work just a hair. The Return was the correct way to continue it in all of its imperfections. At its core there is something magnificent; a bloom that flowered from unlikely conditions. As a folding and unfolding of dream/reality/history I prefer The Singing Detective because I also like brevity.

¹ A friend once wrote to me and another friend saying "I am up to episode 19 of Twin Peaks and it has gone too shit; do I need to carry on?" And the second friend and I ended up writing out what happens between 19 and 27 in a lucid and funny manner that meant he didn't need to see it and these emails are now my own episodes 19-27 of Twin Peaks on demand.
² Well, of ones I have seen.
³ Yes I read both threads in full before posting this. Surprised I never jogged in at the time as I was watching live and browsing this forum.
⁴ A much overused word, auteur - many of the greats are not auteurs in the Sarris/Truffaut sense - but in terms of actively sacrificing in order to have control over a vision, Lynch is an auteur. That said: this is not what makes him interesting.
⁵ An unpopular theory I have occasionally put forward in safe company is that Audrey is meant to be...intellectually challenged. There is a theme of intellectual disability that runs through the initial run that cannot be ignored: Leo, the child-brained woman that the Milfords fight over, Ben, and obviously Johnny.

[mjwilson]

I did think that Audrey was meant to have some developmental issues after the pilot, but it doesn't really hold up after that I don't think.

[sevendaughters]

I did think that Audrey was meant to have some developmental issues after the pilot, but it doesn't really hold up after that I don't think.

yeah it's a flawed theory but S3 almost seems to go back to it

[Peru]

Who owns the New York building at the beginning?

It's Evil Cooper. There's a photo of him there that Albert shows Gordon. He's built the glass case to trap Cooper and/or Judy.

[Mister Six]

That building was likely based on 33 Thomas Street, a windowless, bomb-proof building that houses major telephone/communications exchanges for the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street

That'll be a Mark Frost addition, I reckon.

[Mister Six]

Also, it's been interesting reading your thoughts, Sevendaughters - great post. I'm planning a big rewatch at some point, maybe some mad marathon session although 18 hours in a row might be a bit much.

Regarding S2, if I win the lottery or retire (so never, then) I'll edit out the shitty parts of the second half of the second season to create a series of "improved" episodes.

On the cutting room floor (not a comprehensive list):

• James Hurley's dime store Double Indemnity (he now rides out of town once, and isn't mentioned until he sends a postcard to Donna)
• Ben Horne's Confederate breakdown (he'll fret in front of a projector, lock himself in a room and then come out refreshed)
• All the stuff with the mayor, his brother and the bimbo - it's creepy in a bad way, and tedious in the extreme
• All of Billy Zane

There's probably other stuff but I don't recall it. Everything involving Dick Tremayne stays, though.

[Puce Moment]

An intelligent, sympathetic fan-cut of series 2 would make me rewatch both series. I would love that.

[Mister Six]

If I were to do it (I won't) it would just be the second half of the season, after Leland's death. The change in tone/quality between that episode and the next is jaw-dropping. I wouldn't change the last three or so episodes either, except maybe to cut out Billy Zane or references to stuff that got snipped.

[QDRPHNC]

Good post, sevendaughters. I have been thinking of revisiting The Return (I've seen the first two series maybe 8 times in the last 25 years), and your post is really putting me in the mood to get started.

Off the top of my head, I remember thinking the following things when it went out live. These are mostly negative, because there are too many positives to list:

I really wished they had dropped Albert's sarcasm. It seemed shoehorned in, and also unnecessary - Albert dropped much of his attitude after he and Truman 1 hugged it out. It was never a big a part of his charm as Lynch and Frost seemed to think.

Diane served a purpose, and it was a really "fucking hell" moment when we first see her, but it also took away the mystique. Like seeing Mark's dad in Peep Show or Kenny taking off his hood at the end of the South Park movie.

I loved Michael Cera's scene, and Kimmy Robertson was brilliant in it too.

Robert Forster was great as Truman 2, but seems like it would have been simpler if Truman 1 was simply gone and Hawk had become the sheriff. Since we know Michael Ontkean was on the lookout for Truman's old jacket after The Return was announced, it's possible he had to drop out and it was faster to write in a new Truman than write the character out altogether.

I remember being increasingly charmed by the Dougie storyline, but there were parts of it that dragged. But the slow pace made his eventual return to Cooper all the more satisfying.

The only Roadhouse performance that was kind of lame was Lissie. Thought The Veils performance was really good, although that could mostly be attributed to what we going on during it. That's a very good album though.

Mr C was a phenomenal character. Hard to take your eyes off him. Constant tension.

The early Matthew Lillard plot thread was really interesting. I would have to have to seen it explored more conventionally for a while, like Laura Palmer's murder in S1.

I didn't mind green glove guy, but the fight scene between him and Bob... I don't know. Probably my single biggest issue with The Return. Turned this terrifying force of nature into a ball flying around getting punched.

[Sin Agog]

It's a shame the Olympics committee still insist on rejecting my application to make BobBall an official sport.  You'd think those wacky Japanese would be well into it.

[Sin Agog]

I'm kinda upset that David Patrick Kelly never released any music after seeing him do his song on set.  He has a really lovely high burr.  Would be well into an album of David Patrick Kelly folk covers.

[Puce Moment]

I loved Michael Cera's scene, and Kimmy Robertson was brilliant in it too.

It's a truly nutty scene when you think about it. One of Lynch's strangest.

The early Matthew Lillard plot thread was really interesting. I would have to have to seen it explored more conventionally for a while, like Laura Palmer's murder in S1.

I agree - I don't really know Lillard but his acting and those scenes were fantastic.

I didn't mind green glove guy, but the fight scene between him and Bob... I don't know. Probably my single biggest issue with The Return. Turned this terrifying force of nature into a ball flying around getting punched.

My only real issue with the third season - it was so incredibly silly that I have always assumed it was some kind of joke or reference to superhero movies or SOMETHING.

[Shaky]

Robert Forster was great as Truman 2, but seems like it would have been simpler if Truman 1 was simply gone and Hawk had become the sheriff. Since we know Michael Ontkean was on the lookout for Truman's old jacket after The Return was announced, it's possible he had to drop out and it was faster to write in a new Truman than write the character out altogether.

I'd always assumed Frank was a late ringer for Harry but, interestingly, I heard it suggested a while back that Forster was always intended to be the main sheriff, with Ontkean basically relegated to a cameo. Possibly because Lynch wanted Forster to play Harry back in the day and wanted to work with him again (they have history obviously and he's undoubtedly a far better actor than Ontkean). That adds an interesting wrinkle to Ontkean's evidently very last minute decision to drop out - his would've been a greatly reduced part. Perhaps when he saw more of the script as shooting drew near he simply thought, "Nah, fuck this." After all, Lynch had prior with FWWM when it came to chopping down characters.

No citation for this other than some reasonably convincing internet chat, mind.

[H-O-W-L]

I had a very bitter bout of depression the first time I really realized what the snap of light and the sudden fade to black at the end of S3 meant.

Spoiler alert

Coop didn't just fuck up reality, he literally collapsed any and all existence and realities in the Twin Peaks universe. Representative of the fact it's likely to be the final season ever (or at least was intended to be) and thus that Twin Peaks ceases to exist, even if it exists in perpetuity as a constantly-rewatchable work, ultimately the future chronology of the series has ceased to exist, and, retroactively within the series own timeline, it has ceased to exist both before and after the point Cooper fucked everything.

[close]

Dark Space Low still makes my guts feel funny and makes me grimace, because fucking hell, what a fucking downer. I love it, but what a fucking punch in the gut.

[H-O-W-L]

Also, did MacLachlan get any awards for S3? He really fucking should've.

And the Windswept ending of Episode 5 still fucking makes me tear up.

[drdad]

+ Awards are bogus but MacLachlan should have won something for playing 3 characters really well.

I'd say he actually plays 5 characters, these being:

- Coop
- Bad Coop
- Dougie
- Coop/Dougie
- The odd, detached Coop/Bad Coop hybrid (?) In Part 18

And manages to make each one a separate and distinct personality, presumably without much background or context given by DL. Brilliant stuff.

[Inspector Norse]

+ When you see it knowing what is going to happen it actually does NOT seem so "random" but actually...well-designed and....logical? Maybe logical isn't the right word. Well-contained? And yet still open to interpretation? Of course, it doesn't move at an even pace, and at times is actively laggardly. But it doesn't feel like ad hoc improvisation that was skilfully edited by someone whose auteur⁴ cred can get something whiffy past the smell test: it feels considered and credible.

The Return made me think a lot about an issue I've frequently had with Lynch, which is his, let's say "unique" approach to plotting and storylines. There was remarkable coherence in how all the details fit together, even the nuttier stuff, and there was an obvious desire to deny closure and play the you-can't-always-get-what-you-want card, but this is such a recurring theme with Lynch that I sometimes think he often doesn't know how to end his stories and ideas; instead he lets them spin out in different directions and so sometimes this can lead to places both wonderful and strange, but sometimes you just get blind alleys or anticlimaxes. To wit:

I didn't mind green glove guy, but the fight scene between him and Bob... I don't know. Probably my single biggest issue with The Return. Turned this terrifying force of nature into a ball flying around getting punched.

It's hard to really square the overall impression I had of a controlled, complete vision with the deliberately open-ended nature of some parts of it. I think it's pretty clear that there were some things that Lynch resisted explaining even to himself. Most of what happened in The Return made some kind of sense in the big picture, and things not ending satisfactorily was clearly a major theme of the series, and there were a few sops thrown to the viewer like Ed and Norma getting together, but even though I loved watching pretty much every minute and can get with the ending, I think I struggled to be fully happy with it for this reason.

And on the subject of Green Glove guy:

- James remains a boil on the arse, his music is asinine and his British mate is ridiculous. I don't have anything insightful here. I never liked James at all and his storyline where he is fixing that woman's Jag in S2 is painful.

I actually, for some reason, like James. I feel sorry for him because he is trying hard to do right and be good and get the girl, yet all his storylines and songs are shit and nobody likes him.

I remember when I was watching it just before Game of Thrones at the time and both shows seemed to be relying on 5 minute scenes and it became quite oppressive, knowing that every edit was going to lock you into that space for quite a while.

I remember that summer of 2017 very fondly because every Monday night I'd get that same double whammy. The first week the shows coincided I sat for literally half an hour or more trying to decide which to watch first. And I didn't want either to end - I was just willing there to be one more scene.

[BlodwynPig]

I'm kinda upset that David Patrick Kelly never released any music after seeing him do his song on set.  He has a really lovely high burr.  Would be well into an album of David Patrick Kelly folk covers.

ha, didn't realise he was the guy in The Warriors.

[ImmaculateClump]

I think the second last episode was sort of fan service, it felt a bit scooby doo at times, the gangs all here! That silly glove guy mcguffin, it was amazing! Then we got the real ending in the next episode. I think it was a smashing way of pleasing everyone and drawing a line under the whole thing.

Would absolutely love another series, of course, but I don't think we need one. I might watch series 3 again soon, I haven't seen it since it went out.

[Josef K]

I remember that summer of 2017 very fondly because every Monday night I'd get that same double whammy. The first week the shows coincided I sat for literally half an hour or more trying to decide which to watch first. And I didn't want either to end - I was just willing there to be one more scene.

That first day when the first episodes released on NowTV and I got home with 4 hours of new Twin Peaks ahead of me, after reading glowing reactions here, was the most excited I've ever been for a TV show.

Saw the odd minor spoiler in screencaps, reactions, etc posted on Twitter so I started getting up two hours before work to watch GoT and TP back to back. Happy days

[Custard]

I had a very bitter bout of depression the first time I really realized what the snap of light and the sudden fade to black at the end of S3 meant.

Spoiler alert

Coop didn't just fuck up reality, he literally collapsed any and all existence and realities in the Twin Peaks universe. Representative of the fact it's likely to be the final season ever (or at least was intended to be) and thus that Twin Peaks ceases to exist, even if it exists in perpetuity as a constantly-rewatchable work, ultimately the future chronology of the series has ceased to exist, and, retroactively within the series own timeline, it has ceased to exist both before and after the point Cooper fucked everything.

[close]

Dark Space Low still makes my guts feel funny and makes me grimace, because fucking hell, what a fucking downer. I love it, but what a fucking punch in the gut.

Yep, I think of the ending (and THAT scream) at least twice a week, and it makes me feel a really deep and unrelenting darkness

Such an amazing and unique ending, though. Incredible

[Custard]

Three years ago today THAT finale aired

Only 22 more to go!

[The Mollusk]

I am relatively new to Twin Peaks, having watched the first two seasons and FWWM about a year and half ago, and was extremely skeptical about investing my time in the third season. I'm sure you can understand why, but to clarify: the way season 2 descends into absolute dog egg zone had me practically clawing my eyes out and were it not for my partner telling me to stick it out, I would have given up. Obviously though the season 2 finale is one of the most unsettling and gripping hellstorms ever televised, and I'm firmly in the %u2764%uFE0F camp with FWWM, which was so oddly transfixing I can scarcely remember blinking throughout the entire thing. Not that you would ever remember blinking.

Anyway, my partner's sister's husband fucking detests season 3. I am fortunate to have not witnessed too much blazing, impassioned geekery in my lifetime and so I was quite taken aback by his reaction to my bringing it up before having watched it myself. I remember it really well. In a bar in Stockholm, a couple of beers down but nothing too wild. No sooner had I said the words did his wife, just out of his eyeshot, fire me a glance of wide-eyed unspoken "NO". To him, season 3 is a travesty of television, one of the biggest insults to a classic standard ever dished out. He said it was so unequivocally dreadful that he could no longer enjoy the previous two seasons and his love of the whole thing had been soured forever. I knew that it was quite a polarising chunk of telly but even still I was a bit baffled by this outburst.

Anyway I watched it a few months ago and I thought it was great! I can't wait to see him again and tell him how much I loved it.

[Captain Crunch]

Also, did MacLachlan get any awards for S3? He really fucking should've.

He was up for a Golden Globe in 2018 but missed out.  I remember him saying something about  feeling like a winner every day thanks to his lovely wife. 

[The Mollusk]

I remember him saying something about  feeling like a winner every day thanks to his lovely wife. 

[non capisco]

Anyway, my partner's sister's husband fucking detests season 3. I am fortunate to have not witnessed too much blazing, impassioned geekery in my lifetime and so I was quite taken aback by his reaction to my bringing it up before having watched it myself. I remember it really well. In a bar in Stockholm, a couple of beers down but nothing too wild. No sooner had I said the words did his wife, just out of his eyeshot, fire me a glance of wide-eyed unspoken "NO". To him, season 3 is a travesty of television, one of the biggest insults to a classic standard ever dished out. He said it was so unequivocally dreadful that he could no longer enjoy the previous two seasons and his love of the whole thing had been soured forever.

Tell him to FACK OFF YOU DRY SLICE. Or whatever the Midlands equivalent is.

[PlanktonSideburns]

He was up for a Golden Globe in 2018 but missed out.  I remember him saying something about  feeling like a winner every day thanks to his lovely wife.

Genuinely love this. Perfect thing for him to say

My favourite celeb anecdote since noodl's McCartney/David Blaine one

[The Mollusk]

Tell him to FACK OFF YOU DRY SLICE. Or whatever the Midlands equivalent is.

It's FUCK OFF YER DRY SLOICE

Just messaged him. I'll let you know how it turns out.

[shagatha crustie]

Anyway, my partner's sister's husband fucking detests season 3. I am fortunate to have not witnessed too much blazing, impassioned geekery in my lifetime and so I was quite taken aback by his reaction to my bringing it up before having watched it myself. I remember it really well. In a bar in Stockholm, a couple of beers down but nothing too wild. No sooner had I said the words did his wife, just out of his eyeshot, fire me a glance of wide-eyed unspoken "NO". To him, season 3 is a travesty of television, one of the biggest insults to a classic standard ever dished out. He said it was so unequivocally dreadful that he could no longer enjoy the previous two seasons and his love of the whole thing had been soured forever. I knew that it was quite a polarising chunk of telly but even still I was a bit baffled by this outburst.

Anyway I watched it a few months ago and I thought it was great! I can't wait to see him again and tell him how much I loved it.

This strikes me as an odd reaction. If you liked Twin Peaks enough to care that much, I don't see how you couldn't at least be partly beguiled by the suffusing weirdness that has always been a Lynch trademark. Admittedly I too was unconvinced by the first couple of episodes, but as became apparent that it was deliberately turning our expectations inside out, it became more and more satisfying. What does he think of FWWM?

[Thursday]

Can obviously see being much more into the originals, but I feel like if my parents who were fans back in the day, and who didn't really like Fire Walk With Me enjoyed series 3 overall (They hated episode 8 though, and said they got a bit fed up of Dougie) Then I find it weird for younger people to express such outright hatred.