Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
I am off to a slow start trying to squeeze this into my already packed TV-watching schedule, but I am seriously interested in this so I am making an effort. I started on my lunch break yesterday, like I said I would, but the pilot is 1.5 hours so I only saw about half. That said, I am hooked!
I love the girls and their clothes and hairs and shoes and cigarette-smoking. It almost makes me miss high school, or some alternate reality high school where I was cool and tall and not all dorky.
I'll be honest, I literally knew nothing about this show, so I had no idea what to expect and I was not prepared for
*
the brilliantly acted reaction of the mom at her daughter's death.
I was having a rough mood day and I thought a little light TV watching might help ease the funk. MY BAD.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting back into it and reading what you guys have to say cuz you** are a billion times better at pop cultural analysys than I am.
I assume I will find out who killed Laura Palmer by the time I finish watching the pilot, right? Right?!
*(Do we need to do spoilers for a 24-year-old show? I'm going to say yes, because I am blessedly unbespoilt for this so far, but I won't be mad if we don't end up sticking with it.)
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
When this show came on way back in the day I only ever caught the first episode and maybe, maybe one or two other episodes. Other than knowing that a lone FBI agent was investigating the murder of Laura Palmer, I remember nothing else that happens. I don't know the relationships between the town folk. I don't remember the allies and enemies. I don't remember how just about everyone was a suspect. The only other thing I know (but from people talking about it rather than first hand knowing) is that it got really weird.
When it was first available and everbody was all excited I rewatched the first episode again. It was and still is a great first episode of television. Now that I'm not distracted by being anxious about a trip I can properly focus on watching it again. I may even rewatch the first episode again again.
As a final also, the television show psych did a Twin Peaks themed episode that was totally on the mark and totally hilarious. I'm not saying you need to watch psych just for that episode, but psych is a p funny show. (For those that can stand it. It's not for everyone.)
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
I have never watched that but I actually did go to high school with Sherilyn Fenn, though I didn't know her. That makes it much more difficult to convince myself I wouldn't be completely ignored by/invisible to the characters.
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Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
Okay. Just rewatched again all of the pilot episode.
I'm trying to remember if anything on television was serial at the time. I can't remember anything. Most shows were still episodic, even hour long shows. The only serial stuff was miniseries. That's definitely something that was different about Twin Peaks.
The use of music was very interesting. Also very serial in nature. There's the sweeping romantic style music playing when people are talking about Laura Palmer. Then there's the up tempo jazzy stuff when Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) is vamping across the screen. I don't know what it means yet.
It's way too early to predict anything though I'm very suspicious about Shelley Johnson (Madchen Amick). If not her then certainly her husband.
I can already see a lot of the David Finch-ness of the project. Even though it's still very much mainstream at this point. Some of the characters are just that little bit odd. They do add to the feel of the town.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrotherMan
I'm trying to remember if anything on television was serial at the time. I can't remember anything. Most shows were still episodic, even hour long shows. The only serial stuff was miniseries. That's definitely something that was different about Twin Peaks.
Soaps have been episodic since forever.
Plus Beverly Hills 90210 came out the same year, which was another evening drama about high school students. I could see how the one that got all weird didn't last while the banal one became wildly successful.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
We started on the weekend. Made cherry pie for the occasion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrotherMan
I'm trying to remember if anything on television was serial at the time. I can't remember anything. Most shows were still episodic, even hour long shows. The only serial stuff was miniseries.
Soap Operas. Which are a pretty big reference point for Twin Peaks. They even lampoon the influence with that soap that characters watch.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
I don't remember liking Catherine Martell as much as I'm liking her now.
Maybe I've gained a new perspective on and appreciation for mean old ladies or maybe just because I can watch earlier episodes knowing later character development things or something, but she is pretty great.
Just being mean to Eraserhead all the time, and
S1, Episode 1
putting that fish in the coffee pot just because LOL sucks to be you drinking that fish coffee that stupid Eraserhead made. (OK, I'm making some assumptions, but that's OK because I am right.)
and then
S1, Episode 7
in the mill, when she's asking Shelly who she is and then, "Sssh, I'm thinking!" like everything's all normal.
Also, this is really not a spoiler at all, but what the hell.
S1E5:
OMG I FORGOT ABOUT GORDON COLE UNTIL I HEARD HIM ON THE PHONE. OMG HOW DID I FORGET? Because the thing is I do love his work independently of this, but also I am p. sweet on David Lynch, like I sometimes watch videos of him just puttering around cooking and woodworking and stuff please nobody tell Matlock or I will be in big trouble.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
HEY LOOK!
The Log Lady Intros, where the log lady would introduce each episode on the original airings, are on YouTube! They're not on Netflix or Hulu, but it looks like this is a bunch of them at least:
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
bey and I bingewatched Season 1 over the weekend.
I like it! I like it a lot!
I'm going crazy because I want to look stuff up on the wikipedia, but I don't want to spoil myself for season 2, so in the meantime I just have to use my own brains to think about stuff, which I hate!
I have heard this show compared to Lost with the asking more questions than it answers. I feel like it has done okay so far, but I know that is part of the benefit of binge-watching. Something that left viewers hanging for weeks or more in real time got solved in just a couple of hours for me.
For example:
Most or all of the elements of Cooper's weird-ass dream (log cabin with red drapes, arms bent backward, the music that plays all the time, etc...) get addressed within a few episodes. Also whenever somebody gets a mysterious phone call, the caller's identity is usually revealed that same episode, maybe just after a commercial break, which is good cuz that had the potential to get annoying otherwise.
I do have one beef, though.
It was in the second half of the pilot that I really got hooked. When he pulled the paper letter out from under the girl's fingernail and got that sick gleam in his eye and said "We have a lot to talk about, Sheriff" I was like, Okay! Here we go!
But it feels like they haven't gone anywhere with that thread since. They found the J in her stomach and revealed that the bird took a triangle-shaped bite out of the poker chip, but what is the deal with the fingernail letter? I feel suckered since that was exactly the thing in the pilot that got me all interested in this hokey shit in the first place!
Also my other beef is that it is way too hard for me to keep track of who is married to whom, and who is having an affair with whom. Plus all the fatherly white dudes look the same to me, as do all the brunette girls, so even when I know which characters are doing what to each other, I don't usually know who I am looking at on screen at any given time. Especially when they start putting on disguises, damnit!
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
First: I can't believe we don't have a dedicated shakesteve smilie. CIMRINAL OVERSIGHT ITT.
Second, I'm shaking at you because I was going to really spread this out. Give you all the time to watch it. I was going to just watch, like, one episode a week because SOMEBODY said THEY WERE BUSY. But now?
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
:shakebort: Dude that's the thing is I'm so fucking busy all the time that I had to take advantage of the weekend to bang some of this shit out. Plus with the cliffhangers and whatnot, that's the only way I have the patience which I specifically alluded to in my post.
I had to at least watch the season to uncover pea's ep 7 spoiler (which, I know, right?!!), but at 22 episodes it will probably take me until the show time show comes out in 2016 to finish.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
As a general and not spoiler observation, I think there's a vague impression out there that Lynch is just some weird guy who throws weird shit around to be weird, which is just not true.
He is actually one of the least sloppy storytellers out there. He doesn't throw stuff out just to fuck with you, so when he's fucking with you, he's doing it for a reason. Some of his movies you really have to watch a bunch of times before they start making sense, but they always end up at least mostly coming together. Which isn't to say that I totally understand everything, just that I trust that most of the things that seem to be loose ends or that otherwise don't fit a coherent storyline are just parts I'm still missing.
Twin Peaks was a little different, because it's not just his project and because it was a TV series with all the attendant things that interfere, like TV executives and ratings and stuff, but it is still not sloppy.
OK, so.
S2E2:
Oh holy shit fuck yessss. I was just starting to doze off (because I have an extremely soporific couch and I have to wait until all loud botherers go to bed and stuff to watch in peace, see) and then: The living room song, holy shit that scene is hilarious and perfect as a sort of James theme--this vacuous teen dreamboat pretty boy who makes smart girls act stupid*--I love it and then BLAMMO now that I was again questioning what I ever found scary about some sketchy old guy in a jean jacket, BOB OVER THE COFFEE TABLE HOLY SHIT YISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
* Also David Lynch loves sticking really hokey 50s style crooner songs in weird places.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
Ha ha, oh, I guess I'm not done yet.
So one other thing about the show is that supposedly, Twin Peaks was originally imagined as more soap opera like, so that the Laura Palmer story would just be one of many stories in it. So imagine how much better the world could be today.
And I'm just gonna be stupid for a minute and post little clips because sometimes things are so good they make me itchy or something.
Re: Twin Peaks: some kind of watching party thrad or anything
Twin Peaks was a craze welcoming me to the United States freshman year in college. I watched one episode crammed in a basement rec room with like 60 people and remember exactly none of it. Maybe it's time I gave it a shot. If nothing else, I'll enjoy the Simpsons' multiple references to the show more.