I can’t stand this bloody series. ‘It’s art for the sake of art’. ‘This is really Lynch’s gift to all subsequent media’. ‘There is so much we owe to this series.’
What the hell. It’s just random pieces of script written by monkeys on a typewriter, slapped together. No part of the story is ever finished. ‘Ah but that’s where the depth resides!’. Rubbish. Anybody can write a story that doesn’t properly finish.
Oh I know I will introduce 20 new characters, this will add so much depth. Yeah, they have no motives, no character development BUT I will add this random surreal thing that happens to them, for additional depth. But what happens to X? Who knows! And to Y? You have to guess! And to Z? No one can tell!
Maybe using steel-faced actors will improve the plot? I know I will cast myself in one role with quirky details because it’s so fun. Yeah I don’t know how to act, why? Is it necessary?
And the goddamn music is unsufferable. ‘You can’t separate Lynch’s work from Badalamenti’s music’. Yeah I know they’re both shit. Oh and the effing gigs in the sequel of the series. Aaaaaah!
But at least there is some symbolism! Yes, what is it? Who fucking knows!
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some people need to be spoon fed
May I ask how old you are? I’m not prying, but I’m curious if you watched it when it was new or if you are younger and only know it from DVD/streaming.
I am old enough that I watched it as it was broadcast, and it was unlike anything that had been done on TV before. I don’t even know how Lynch got it made. It landed like a bombshell in the midst of sanitized pap. It was gritty and played with sex, drugs, and evil in a way that made shows like Miami Vice look vapid. It may seem like half finished, trope laden junk now, but it cut the path that every edgy show since had followed. Issues like the duality of people - the homogenized surface facade of presenting how we want to be vs the inner desire and how we are just hadn’t been addressed in that way before.
There is some deliberate hokiness to it. The parallel of the soap opera to the town is deliberate and a wink to the fact that every story is largely the same but dressed up in a new way. Think of “a stranger comes to town, or someone goes on a journey” level analysis. The humor is pure Lynch.
It may seem different in retrospect because it’s done better now. Audiences are comfortable with this kind of thing. It was brand new then, and somehow approved by the same network that approved Thirtysomething and cut 40 minutes of sex and drugs from Scarface.
Without giving too many details: I’m old enough to have watched it on TV years ago and I had to go through it again with my wife recently.
I was in university and I remember being in Montreal in a bar when an episode was about to air. I went to a stranger’s home to watch TV with them and their friends because none of us wanted to miss an episode.
I’m reminded of the first time I saw Citizen Kane. I was a teen back in the 90s, and I thought it was pretty bad. But that’s because a lot of the cinematography that it pioneered became commonplace in everything from adverts to training videos. It was groundbreaking to such an extent that it redefined the fundamental techniques of filmmaking.
That said, Twin Peaks has always fascinated me. The weird, unsettling, menacing, cryptic, and darkly sexual undercurrents that typify most things Lynch touches just struck an instant chord with me.
You’re wrong and Twin Peaks is peak television. Take my upvote.
peakdamn fine televisionFTFY
to me it’s good in historical context the same way the cave paintings are good in the historical context. Do we paint better paintings now? Sure! Are there better shows now? Sure!
But at the time it was a fantastic blend of genres and surrealism that just came out of nowhere like a freight train in the night.
It’s like watching 4 different shows all blended together. I really like it for that boldness. Sure sometimes it doesn’t quite land but that’s ok.
The spots that didn’t land are some of my favorite. Like the civil war reenactment
I live out by where it was filmed - and by an old timber company town. There is a bit of truth to how weird and fucked up they were. Obviously the show dramatized the situation, but it captured the vibe.
Snoqualmie/North Bend? Or was that just the opening credits?
The cafe is in North bend at least.
If it makes you feel any better, the weirdness and fucked-up-ness of North Bend and Snoqualmie has got nothing on the weirdness and fucked-up-ness of Aberdeen/Hoquiam.
I think those are better examples lumber company towns. These days Snoqualmie and North Bend are more tech centric (read: tons of $$). If you ever need a drive, Seleck, WA is a fascinating old company “town”.
No part of the story is ever finished. ‘Ah but that’s where the depth resides!’. Rubbish. Anybody can write a story that doesn’t properly finish.
Lol, I like your style
When a video store near me was shutting down. I picked up the entire boxed set for $5 or $10. I don’t think I even made it through the first episode. I still look at it and think, “maybe I should rewatch this classic show”.
I like weird. I don’t like stupid weird.
I also find his style annoying. How on earth were you able to finish the series?
Great post!
I don’t know that I would go as far as rubbish though. It is mostly artsy fartsy though. I think the thing that makes it interesting is the fact that a show like that was made for a network and ran for more than a few episodes. Very much unheard of for TV to do experimental stuff like that.
I wasn’t a fan at the time, and subsequent exposure to the occasional episode since then haven’t changed that. But I can see the value in it having been. It did break a lot of ground in terms of non traditional shows being made.
I think David Lynch is massively overrated in general. He makes stuff that SHOULD be up my alley (I love weird art) but it just feels so…conceited? He seems like the type of guy who thinks his farts don’t stink
This was really present in season 3 for me. He did this thing CONSTANTLY in that season where the dialogue would end and the scene really should shift to the next scene but instead the camera would hang on the characters as they just stared at each other or started doing some other mundane thing like pouring a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper and it would often go on long enough to get cringey.
It was some attempt at being artsy fartsy that didn’t pan out. Or maybe he was trying to fill time so every episode was 45 minutes or whatever. I generally like Lynch’s work, but he over-extends himself trying to be “edgy” sometimes.
Yeah, I feel like a philistine for not being the biggest fan of Lynch’s more surreal stuff. I quit Twin Peaks after episode 1 of season 2.
Eraserhead was okay I guess. Dune is Dune. It has its pros and cons.
However, I watched The Elephant Man after seeing someone recommend it as a good entry point for Lynch, and it was fantastic.
Highly recommend giving The Elephant Man a shot. It’s much more grounded in reality than most of his other stuff. And based on a real person.
Edit: forgot about Blue Velvet. Didn’t hate that one, but mostly due to the performances moreso than anything else.
Eh.
For me Twin Peaks was about individual scenes that really nailed it. As a whole it can be a little flimsy and David Lynch is a love him or hate him director.
I think there’s a separation between the original 2 seasons and the followup over 2 decades later. The “who done it” of the original 2 seasons was genuinely good as far as I’m concerned. And those seasons had a cozy factor to them as well. Very soap opera.
The new season was much darker, and I do like that, but the direction was a lot sloppier. Holding the main character back for almost the entire season was also a real rough decision that pissed basically everyone off. I do think the origin story (nuclear bomb) episode was one of the cooler episodes of TV I’ve seen in recent memory.
And, as always with Lynch, you never get real answers.
It blew me away because there was nothing on television like it at the time. Twenty years later I bought the gold Twin Peaks DVD collection and didn’t get more than halfway through the first season. Not because it was bad the second time around, but because it was so good the first time around I remembered everything about it.
For what it’s worth, twin peaks is about television. We are the rapacious antagonist.
Twin Peaks was the gateway to David Lynch’s Number of the Day. Every day goes by without a number now and every day without a number is a day wasted.
