Twin Peaks. The Awesomeness Thereof.

[fulselden]

So, this year (or, well, last year, ahahaha HANGOVER), has seen me encounter three TV series that seem to be made expressly with me in mind by thoughtful TV gods – a phenomenon I’d only encountered previously with Buffy. Anyway, while Avatar is just about due for a rewatch and I still haven’t finished Revolutionary Girl Utena, a bout of pre-Christmas flu saw me work my way through all of Twin Peaks, which, while not exactly consistently awesome a la Utena (so far), or even Avatar, nevertheless triumphs over its dead-girl Mcguffin premise triumphantly enough to have won me over within, oh, about five minutes.

Also, Special Agent Dale Cooper, FBI.

And glazed doughnuts.

And pine woods.

I fell, internet, and I fell hard.

 

And, since I got the film for Christmas and watched it in a slightly blurry post-New Year’s state this afternoon, spoilers ahead.

 

 

So, the best thing, the very best thing, about this series is probably, yes, Special Agent Dale Cooper. Really, what a fantastic role, and what a wonderful performance. Also, what hair. Never has hair-oil been so charming, not even on George Clooney. Really, my only regret is that apparently Kyle MacLachlan demanded a smaller part in The Movie, which, hmm. Bad Decision. Really, I’m not sure the film has had time to sink in yet, but, well, it may not have been as bad as I’d come to expect (via vague internet-osmosis), and it explained a lot – almost, I think, too much – while certainly giving Laura Palmer her due, but it was really, oddly, slight. Strangely, given that Mulholland Drive started off as a TV pilot but works very well indeed as a film, this seemed almost like a compilation of highlights from a lost season of the series – albeit one filtered through a little-girl-lost fairy-tale, flowered-wallpaper story, David Bowie and all (why, yes, I did watch Labyrinth at an impressionable age. Why do you ask?).

 

Mind you, that might be my regret at the altered focus of my second favourite thing about the series, which is undoubtedly Twin Peaks itself. The film is heavy on the horrifying domestic interiors – as in every great gothic work, trouble begins at home – but a bit more sketchy on the sense of place. And, oh wow, the sense of place in the series had a kind of miniature-model crispness, Log-Ladies and all.

 

Twin Peaks devotes the same kind of exquisite attention to its various icons of Americana – diners, doughnuts, glasses of milk and cherry pie and hot black filter coffee in white china cups - that David Foster Wallace uses to push things wholesale into the uncanny valley. It’s so punctilious about this, in fact, so powered by the juxtaposition of the spruce and cheap and neon against the wild dark forest (see, for instance, the opening credits – not to mention Laura’s body, dead, sandy flesh wrapped in plastic), that it’s hard to believe that it was actually made by an American in America.

I mean, I know that (arguably) few nations are as invested in national myth making as the US, but Twin Peaks is so deliberate about investigating the sex n’ death n’ picket fences version of small town America, so determined to get to the dark side of creamed corn and convenience stores, so nigh-on fetishistic about ring doughnuts and green formica, that, well, I can see why it was big in Japan.

Really, it was almost as schematic about slotting together all the iconic necessities of small town America as Lars von Trier’s Dogville, the one where the houses are drawn in with chalk. But, y’know, David Lynch seems like a nice guy whileas one gets the feeling that von Trier is a complete wanker. So, there’s that.

 

It also has a strong streak of the kind of fascination with what happens when you put theatre on film which is put across so very baldly in Mulholland Drive’s Club Silencio scene: the Black Lodge, with its red curtains and odd, stagey furniture, smacks of provincial theatre, and the doubling of the roles of Laura and Maddy creates something of the same self-consciousness about the tricksiness and talent of acting that Mulholland Drive is so bullish about.

In short, I guess Mulholland Drive makes much more sense to me now. And, also, I should really watch some more Lynch (the only other film of his I’ve seen is Eraserhead, which is still pretty much my gold standard for horror).

 

And, of course, there’s the overt fascination with eighties’ soap operas, which makes me wish I had slightly more of a grip on soap opera, or indeed TV and film, in general. Twin Peaks is just so fantastically suggestive about the possibilities of television series, and makes so much sense as a kind of missing link between eighties baroque serials and expensive nineties weirdities from the X-Files (which I have fond memories of) to the Sopranos and Six Feet Under (neither of which I’ve seen) varieties, that I’m just thrilled and slightly awed that it exists.

 

Other brief thoughts: Audrey Horne. Rules. Really, for a series that began with a Dead Homecoming Queen and ended with A BEAUTY PAGEANT, Twin Peaks was full of variously excellent female characters, although I could have done without Josie Packard managing the depressing twofer of Dragon Lady and Asian Maid. I mean, I’m guessing the whiteness of Twin Peaks is fairly true to form in the rural Pacific Northwest (please, internet, correct me if I'm horribly wrong here), but Josie, the only non-American character with a substantial part, was constantly on the verge of becoming an interesting character and - to be generous - never quite made it.

And as for Hawk, hmm. The way the series flung itself full-tilt at a lot of the clichés of suburban horror and small-town soapiness makes me wish they could have been a bit more upfront about how exactly they were dealing with Indians, in addition to Cowboys. Really, a new lawman comes into town, shakes things up, becomes privy to unmentionable secrets tied to the very land the new town is built on ... and we get some rock painting suggesting that, yes, the Black Lodge is pretty old? Really? Perhaps there was an ancient burial ground underneath it all as well, huh? I guess I’ll tell myself that they might have gone further, given the glyphs, if the series hadn’t gotten stomped on.

As it is, Hawk is a good supporting character and we have those glyphs mapping out the way to the Black Lodge. Aaaand ... that would be it, as far as Native American input on the world of Twin Peaks goes, unless you count those Haida-ish murals in the Great Northern hotel (which, incidentally, sounds as though it should be a railway). Really, for a series that has quite a bit in common with, say, Picnic At Hanging Rock (at least unease-wise), where the absence of the Australian Aborigines is, y’know, palpable and defining, Twin Peaks is surprisingly uninvested, at least on the surface, in a sense of local past. Which might be part of its bite, I suppose – you can’t get away from them there woods.

 

And, hey, at least Josie Packard was nothing if not amazingly gorgeous. Which is more than can be said for James Hurley, the most tedious of all the Twin Peaks teenagers – who, naturally, got a whole subplot of his very own once Lynch left the series to twist after being forced to reveal Laura’s killer.

Talking of which, wow. Those second season episodes were completely fascinating as textbook examples of how a show can go careening off the rails, through the railings, and fetch up somewhere in un-ironic soap-land, naughty wives and sulky bikers and all. It’s fairly clear, I think, that the writing staff were getting things back on track before the finale, but while, say, I can understand and respect and appreciate a lot of things that went on in late-season Buffy (so, sex is sometimes, uh, a bit fucked up? Even for ladies? Who knew?), I have never, ever seen TV as flaily and out of its depth as those few mid-season two episodes of Twin Peaks.

Watching them on dvd was, well, instructive as opposed to infuriating, but I can see why the third season never made it. Most interesting, actually, is the fate of Audrey: the writers seemed to have realised what a fantastic character they had on their hands, and decided to reward her with a young and charisma-free Billy Zane, while palming Agent Cooper off on Heather Graham. Which, what? I was actually surprised by how well the Cooper-Annie plot worked out (which, considering the finale, perhaps isn’t saying much), but Audrey’s romance with Zane (no, I can’t remember who he was playing. Some rich dude) came across as one hundred percent Mary Sue insert fanfic. Really, a rich, gorgeous, well-adjusted guy shows up and sweeps Twin Peaks’ most eligible off her feet? Really, writers? INELEGANT, I say.

But, well. Twin Peaks gets such a lot of mileage out of its insistent visual and musical motifs (man, what a soundtrack), out of its flashing neon lights and muddy puddles, out of its weirdass plotting and reassuringly true-to-life characters (really, who doesn't know a passel of dumb teenagers and a couple of Log-Ladies?), that I can't really begrudge Lynch his season two awol episode all that much. Really, I just want to start all over again right now, and it doesn't get much better than that in my book.

 

Also, I am amused by the fact that my first post-series act was to go and check out Twin Peaks fics on AO3: oh fandom! Less amused, though unsurprised, by the fact that most fics are pairing-related, oh sigh. Rather touched by the preponderance of Cooper/Albert, which I can absolutely believe, albeit in a rather one-sided way. But, really, what I want to read are weird little character-and-mood pieces set in Twin Peaks. I’ve found some, but not enough. Ah well.

 

Comments

[terajk]

TWIN PEAAAAKS!

And, also, I should really watch some more Lynch (the only other film of his I’ve seen is Eraserhead, which is still pretty much my gold standard for horror).

Might I suggest Blue Velvet? Kyle Maclachlan (with Laura Dern) investigates a murder in a small American town that hides Dark Secrets.

I confess that I...never finished Twin Peaks, even though I have all the DVDs. In the middle of season one I happened to catch The Movie, went: "That's the killer?!" and then just stopped, for reasons unknown. It was probably a sense of the anticlimactic, even though I knew intellectually that Laura Palmer's murder was a MacGuffin. Or maybe it was that that show always gave me a terrible craving for pie. I'll have to watch it again--though if I do it now, my white_lotus Lunar New Year giftee will get a very...interesting present.

[fulselden]

Blue Velvet is obviously a must-see - and, in fact, I told a lie: I've also seen Inland Empire, in which Dern was fantastic, so that bumps it extra high up the list.

And, heh, I totally understand where you're coming from on the pie thing - the day I discovered (via Raymond Carver???) that America had such a thing as chocolate pie had an abiding impact on me, though I suspect the real thing might be a bit too much of a muchness. Anyway, I obviously thoroughly recommend making your way through the rest of the series should you ever be in the mood - I'd say it carries on being pretty damn awesome until Laura Palmer's killer gets revealed, becomes decent again a couple of episodes before the end, and has an amazing finale. Though I guess your experience is kinda an object lesson in why Lynch never wanted to reveal the killer in the first place.

Oh, and I can't even imagine the effect a concentrated dose of Twin Peaks would have on an Avatar fic (speaking of which, I'll look forward to your Lunar New Year story - I wish I'd caught the boat on that one...), but I suspect it might be awesome. I can almost see Iroh getting in an epic contretemps with Cooper over the relative merits of tea and coffee...

[terajk]

Oh, and I can't even imagine the effect a concentrated dose of Twin Peaks would have on an Avatar fic... but I suspect it might be awesome. I can almost see Iroh getting in an epic contretemps with Cooper over the relative merits of tea and coffee...

AHAHAHA! I want that story. See, now that was of epic magnitudes better than what I thought would happen: BOB (LI?) runs around possessing people. Or just vague stuff-in-the-swamp weirdness. Or detective!Sokka.

I'll look forward to your Lunar New Year story - I wish I'd caught the boat on that one...)

I just hope it doesn't suck. I barely write fiction--certainly none this long--and I've never written a story for someone else before. Also, I am the worst anonymous in the history of history. Everyone else's story will be awesome, though, I'm sure!

[lettered]

OMG DOES THIS MEAN YOU WILL BE WRITING TWIN PEAKS FOR US NOW?

I love this show. And Cooper. And Audrey.

Audrey: the writers seemed to have realised what a fantastic character they had on their hands, and decided to reward her with a young and charisma-free Billy Zane, while palming Agent Cooper off on Heather Graham. Which, what?

According to my_daroga and Mr. Daroga, who usually do their research, MacLachlan was uncomfortable with the Audrey/Cooper direction he felt the show was taking. Since Audrey was supposed to be in high school, he thought that Cooper would steer clear of anything that smacked of inappropriate with her. The show didn't need to have Audrey and Cooper hook up. They could've just kept doing what they were doing, but it's unclear whether MacLachlan would've found even that acceptable. From what I understand, MacLachlan really put his foot down. Now, this doesn't mean the show had to concoct Annie and Billy Zane (Lord, I'd forgotten about Billy Zane), but probably without all the hot Audrey/Cooper tension, they wanted to give the characters hot tension with other people. Badly done indeed, show. But I can't help thinking it was MacLachlan's fault, too.

Thematically, continuing in an Audrey/Cooper direction would have worked, especially considering the very end. That's not just 'cause I ship them, either. Though I do.

I have never, ever seen TV as flaily and out of its depth as those few mid-season two episodes of Twin Peaks.

I agree, but I was well prepared for it (by the Darogas). I had thought they meant that the whole second season was suckitude, but it was really a much shorter segment than that. What they did at the end was damn awesome.

James Hurley, the most tedious of all the Twin Peaks teenagers

What is hilarious about James is that he is Angel. He even kind of looks like David Boreanaz. I love Angel, and hate James. What's interesting about this sort of character is it's a fine line between interesting and ridiculous. What I love about Zuko is that he's the same sort of character, but the writers realize he's ridiculous and wanted you to see it too, while still sort of feeling his pain. I feel like the Angel writers only realized that a small percentage of the time (...the Batman writers, too), and James . . . well, James is a such a parody of himself that even had they realized he was ridiculous (which they did not appear to) they never could have redeemed him.

Josie Packard

She was totally hot. Which was a shame, because she became steadily less hot to me as I realized she was never going to get to be interesting. I do think this was a fault of the writers. I also think though that the actress was rather wooden. Of course, we never got to see her do anything really cool, but sometimes I just get the feeling that if we had gotten to the actress wouldn't have pulled it off.

Living here in the Pacific Northwest, I can tell you that the rural areas do seem quite white. The whiteness of the show can be justified in that context. But yes, they could have done some interesting and/or meaningful stuff with Native American culture and the history of the place, and barely touched on it. And the characters of color seemed really shunted to the side. I guess Hawk was a good supporting character, but it seemed to me there was less of him than any other solid supporting character. I felt like he was the only one, really, where we didn't get to see some quirks about his personal life. :o(

s a kind of missing link between eighties baroque serials and expensive nineties weirdities from the X-Files

I saw the connection to the X-Files (or else my_daroga pointed it out to me) but this is a really interesting statement. I like it.

In short, I guess Mulholland Drive makes much more sense to me now. And, also, I should really watch some more Lynch (the only other film of his I’ve seen is Eraserhead, which is still pretty much my gold standard for horror).

Hm. Mulholland Drive still doesn't make sense to me, but Blue Velvet helped Twin Peaks make sense for me. The small American town with Dark Secrets that terajk mentions is much more . . . I dunno, straightforward there. Of course, that's all Twin Peaks *is*, but Twin Peaks is, imo, messy. It's sort of all over the place. It wants to say all these things. Blue Velvet, maybe because it is a movie and had to fit everything into two hours, is a lot more concise. It felt very, "This is my message." For that reason, I actually like Twin Peaks more. Twin Peaks felt a little more real, maybe just because the cast was so large and you get so much into the lives of all the people there. It was by no means realistic, but the experience of watching it felt more real. That said, I quite like Blue Velvet.

I love Eraserhead. If horror was like that, perhaps I would like the genre.

I can see why it was big in Japan.

Have you seen the Japanese MacLachlan coffee commercials?

the sense of place in the series had a kind of miniature-model crispness, Log-Ladies and all.

Hm. Maybe I just didn't feel this way, which was what I meant about it being sort of messy. I think my problem with the show initially was that some parts felt miniature model-ish in a way that felt like parody--some funny, some tragic, but too big (er, or small) to be real. Other things felt like more straightforward portrayals. It wasn't until after a while that these seems felt like they began to blend together, and even then the writing felt a bit piecemeal and clunky. But I'm not sure I'd have it any other way, now that I have it.

I’m not sure the film has had time to sink in yet, but, well, it may not have been as bad as I’d come to expect

I love the film. The darogas tell me people booed in the theaters (though they like it alright). The main failing of it is it does explain rather too much, and I do feel that it has the compilation feel. It's really not very movie-ish.

I was going to tell you the story of sarahtales, and then randomly remembered that you have her friended. So I assume you know. The glory of Sarah's fanfic was that it went on and on and on. There were so many real moments between characters, so many parts where people were just talking amongst each other, being funny and ridiculous, friends just shooting the breeze and learning what friends and family are. I love The Demon's Lexicon series. A lot. In particular the first book. But to me it seemed to be missing something, and that was that it was all plot, without those moments of just . . . being.

Sarah says they have her cut a lot out, and that she writes all those scenes and the editors tell her she can't have things just because they're sweet or funny. So she posts them in little bits on her journal instead. The weird thing is . . . I sort of totally agree with her editors. A story should . . . tell the story, not veer off into a bunch of people sitting around shooting the shit. And yet those are the moments I want.

So, I don't really know how things should work, other than having a story that is well-paced and tells you the necessary info, and then have supplementary works that give you the added bits--or the back story, like Fire Walk With Me. Yes, this was supposed to be about Twin Peaks.

I would not like Fire Walk With Me on its own, I don't think. And I don't think the thing on Fire Walk With Me would have ever worked in the series; part of the charm of the series is not seeing that stuff, and having to imagine it. But I like seeing that stuff; does it mean I shouldn't get to see it; who knows? Anyway, that's how I feel about the movie: it's everything I want, but perhaps it shouldn't have been made. I'm still really happy it was.

I'll have to try Utena, if you liked it that much, and obviously have such good taste! I'm looking forward to Cooper fic from you; I hope you know; *tap tap tap*

[fulselden]

I AM GOING TO HAVE TO AT LEAST TRY FOR TWIN PEAKS FIC. I WILL TRY SO HARD.

MacLachlan was uncomfortable with the Audrey/Cooper direction he felt the show was taking

Huh. That explains a lot (and a bit of poking about on the internet seems to show it's the accepted version of how things went down). I can see why he was uncomfortable - I kept waiting to see how the show would handle the fact that Audrey was, well, a schoolgirl, and I thought they handled it really well until Zane came on the scene - I'd have been more than happy with the tension just singing along in the background after Audrey promised that, ok, she'd come and get him when she was older. Especially given how ... innocent a character they made her, I suppose? But the Billy Zane subplot was just wince-inducing, and I could have done without Annie being an unworldly ex-nun, talking of innocence.

And you're completely right that Audrey/Cooper would have worked fine thematically. Sigh.

What is hilarious about James is that he is Angel.

Ahahaha, that is SO RIGHT. Including the forehead and the somewhat gravity-defying hair! And you're spot on about Zuko and Batman (or at least some versions of the latter, I guess), and the need for shows to realise that their kind of, um, boy-scoutish, capslock EARNESTNESS is pretty hilarious. The trouble with James is that I feel as though they got far enough in the very first episode - oh, look, the sulky biker with a secret is actually a sweetheart - that they thought they didn't need to do much more with him for a while. So he just sort of sat there while the series unfolded around him, poor guy.

It was by no means realistic, but the experience of watching it felt more real.

Obviously, I really, really have to see Blue Velvet. And, hmm, I know what you mean about the messiness of Twin Peaks - I think my miniature-model description probably was a bit off. Or perhaps it was more a response to the cinematography - all those repeating motifs (that chorus-line of treetops) gave the whole programme a circumscribed feel, I suppose, though it certainly wasn't crisp all of the time. Much more like a dollshouse with a variety of mismatched dolls, to stretch a simile. Which is to say that, yes, I definitely got the feeling of seesawing scales, or genres, or what have you - and I'm not sure they ever really levelled it out. But, then, that has a realism of its own, I suppose? Rather like reading a Dickens novel (not in general, mind you, obviously) - Dickensian grotesques may be subject to a very different degree of, hm, narrative magnification than his Pips or Esthers, but then again the world really does have Micawbers and Log Ladies and Nadines, depending on what lens you feel like using. Mind you, I suppose it's something you can only really get away with in quite a sprawling format, as you say.

Oh, and, heh, I wouldn't say that Mulholland Drive exactly makes sense to me now - just that a lot of Lynch's preoccupations and visual tricks and so forth now seem a lot more familiar. As well they should, I guess. All those different levels of performance, for instance - now, there's somewhere that Josie could have really made her mark, thematically and acting-wise. But, alas.

Have you seen the Japanese MacLachlan coffee commercials?

I HAD NOT. Oh, wow, those were priceless. And they were for canned coffee, which is really just the cherry on the, uh, pie.

I know exactly what you mean about Fire Walk With Me, and seeing it in those terms does make me feel much more kindly towards it. I'm still not entirely sure I forgive it for not being a Movie with a capital M, or for putting its cards on the table quite so openly (did the Little Man From Another Place have to tell us he was the arm?), and I wish the opening sequence hadn't been quite so disjointed from the rest of the film (apparently MacLachlan would have been in it but asked for a smaller part? More fool him). But, yes, I'm glad we got to see all those in-betweenish parts, too, and I'm especially glad that Laura didn't just stay that dead girl on a beach or a fuzzy face in a flashback - especially as the internet tells me that that's all they initially intended for her.

And, hm, I do indeed have Sarahtales friended, because she seems to be awesome on a regular basis, but I've actually avoided reading any of her fic because I haven't read any of her published stuff yet, and I thought I'd save her fic for afters. I may have to rethink that, though, if it's as good as you say...

Especially as those off-duty bits are what I tend to crave, as well - though I agree that they probably do need to be sliced out of a novel with a fair degree of ruthlessness. It's certainly one of the things I enjoy about fic, that it can allow you to be guilt-free about appreciating the incidental. Well, that and the porn.

And, well, I wouldn't vouch for my taste in general, but Utena is absolutely fantastic - it has this wonderful (and very Japanese?) appreciation of how much adolescence can be soaked through with nostalgia for childhood as well as being all systems go-grownup, but it also has a big red car of sex n' death, a healthy amount of genderfuck, a greek chorus of shadow-pupppets, and it manages to weave some kind of allegory about the end of the universe through its everyday routine of schoolwork, crossdressing, and swordfights without being obnoxious about it. And it has a truly incredible soundtrack. Yep, recommended!