Worst ongoing plotline in the second season of Twin Peaks (SPOILERS)

Nadine, suffering from amnesia, returns to high school with superhuman strength

The three I really hated were Nadine back in high school, James' love triangle, and the Civil War stuff. I know many people like the latter--the appeal completely escapes me. I love everything having to do with Windom Earle. I guess I'll register the only Civil War vote.

Isn't the first season pretty short, like 10 eps or something? And the second is more the standard 22 or whatever? I watched season one for the first time recently since the original air date and actually had some trouble with it, but most disturbing was how many memories of the show I had that were from the second season, and not the first.

So, maybe this belongs in more a general-purpose TP thread, but I just watched the pilot for what I think must be the first time (when I watched the show my roommate didn't have that DVD and just gave me a recap). It's actually really striking how different it is from where the show ended up...I feel like a lot of things changed gradually, just in terms of tone and focus, so that by the time it got to this round-robin goofball show of high school Nadine, Civil War Ben, and Andy/Dick/Lucy antics, you didn't exactly notice where it had all changed. But man - the pilot is damned spooky, brilliantly loose-ended (in the sense of there being no really strong effort to set up plausible murder suspects), almost unrelentingly downbeat, and incredibly human. The opening scenes with people reacting to this horrible crime are really, really affecting...you can see why people would have wanted more of this show! (Audrey notwithstanding, who seems totally unsympathetic and annoying in this iteration.)

I wonder if the ongoing project of exposing all these people as having their own dark secrets and skeletons in the closet actually robs the show of its emotional impact in this way, even more so than making half of them into clowns. Of course the "dark secrets" thing is kind of thematically crucial so it's a no-win. But man, that pilot was great. Long, but really nails the eerie emptiness of being out in the woods in the dark.

Yeah, season one is only eight episodes - ends with Cooper getting shot by a mystery assailant in his hotel room.

The pilot is very different in tone--closer to something like River's Edge, but better. Grim and serious. I think of the principal breaking down during his announcement of Laura's death, or (as I remember it, unless I'm thinking of Elephant) the shot of student running past the classroom screaming. I can't remember if the tone changed suddenly, or if it was more of a gradual thing.

Yeah, student screaming is totally in it. Everybody just seems totally shaken and shattered. Even things like Truman being really short with Andy about him crying, sort of feels out of character based on later developments - or just, Harry's on edge and trying to keep it together himself.

otm dr. c

I was introduced to and immediately absorbed by the show when i was thirteen or so, right around the same time I had my first real experience w/ the death of a friend. A kid I was friends with died in a car crash & the degree to which that wrenched MY community from within i guess i found some parallel with in the TP pilot & the subsequent reverberation of grief, dread & uncertainty throughout the first & early second season.

Pretty sure they didn't set up the killer from day one, but rewatching that pilot when you know who it is, your mind picks up on so many hints. For instance, Leland apparently knows his daughter is dead before hearing it from the police.

Yeah, it's subtle, because it also reads just fine as "he just got this phone call from his wife and can just kind of sense the dread in the air and what Harry's probably about to tell him." I was also really interested in his reaction shots at the morgue when he sees Laura's body.

Bob is in the pilot, and Bob killed Laura so

Also right when he's on the phone with his wife, and she asks if he was with her. The instant he says "No" a police car drives into view, pretty much right into his head the way the scene is framed. He says "Maybe she was with Bobby". Bob. Bobbby. Eh?

Maybe reading too much into this.

I'm just realizing that, despite having seen everything through about the middle of season 2 more times than I can count, I might've only ever seen the last stretch of the season once. On the VHS boxset, before any of TP was available on DVD. I probably should rectify that. That said, I do remember being the most underwhelmed by the James storyline.

I think the realisation that a crossbow is far more terrifying than a gun drags Windom across into classic for me.

Also I really should rewatch all of this.

FYI - it's all streaming on Netflix, if people are into that kind of thing.

Nadine high school

Yeah that's a pretty big shark jump plotline, jarring in that it doesn't just go against tone or characters but general physics. Maybe if she was later revealed as being possessed by a White Lodge spirit or something it would make more sense.

Gotta say though, it is super nice to see Big Ed and Norma end up together, however briefly.

1) As someone has suggested, I think TWIN PEAKS would have worked better had subsequent season(s) been short, like 10–11 episodes rather than 22 or whatever. But the current situation where the creators of high-profile shows like MAD MEN can negotiate very short seasons wasn't in place in 1991 (in fact it's really THE SOPRANOS that permits these short seasons, and that wasn't until well after TWIN PEAKS was just a memory).

2) I don't everything David Lynch touches turns to gold or anything, but 75% of what went wrong with this series can be traced to Lynch's lack of involvement. Nearly every episode he directed is a noticeable jump in quality, and even the non-Lynch episodes in season 1 (when at least he was involved in laying out the overall plotlines) are superior to most of season 2. As soon as Lynch jumps back in for the final episode, the series gets a crazy jolt as if the last few--dire--episodes didn't even happen (literally in some cases: Lynch abandons or ret-cons several of the season 2 plotlines in 45 minutes).

3) I can't remember who has said what about this, but I'm pretty sure they knew the dad was the killer from before the production of the pilot. They played a good hand it not letting the audience know, but there is too much pointing to this in retrospect (not just in the show but in the books that came out in the interregnum between the two seasons) for it not to be true. Obviously Lynch really settled on the "themes" he could draw out of this resolution only with the film (TP:FWWM).

BTW I wonder how much of the incest/abuse theme Lynch had in mind from the beginning and how much was imagined for TP:FWWM.

In other words, was he forced to submerge that theme heavily in the series and then gave it full play for the (very R-rated) movie? Or did he not really settle on it until the series was over or nearly over?

Obviously in retrospect this theme helps to bind together much of the show, but it also renders parts of the show somewhat thematically incoherent IIRC.

I mean obviously he wasn't selling the show to networks as "This show about incest and parental abuse as the root of all sadness and evil"! But did he plan on this and just keep his cards close to the vest -- or did he only realize this as a central theme gradually?

Anyway.

Which of the season 2 plotlines gets the abandon/retcon treatment, in your eyes? Not disputing it at all - just haven't watched this in a while and was kind of not paying attention to when one episode ended and the next began.

James Hurley by a mile. Some of the others were v stupid but at least fun. Nothing involving Gordon Cole should even be on this list. He is going to write an EPIC POEM about this pie!

Given that Twin Peaks was meant to be as much a pisstake of yr average 80s soap opera as it was a murder mystery or anything else, a lot of these still make sense within the context of the show. That says, the James storyline still blows.

The Andy/Dick/Lucy plotline is quite sweet really.

I don't everything David Lynch touches turns to gold or anything, but 75% of what went wrong with this series can be traced to Lynch's lack of involvement. Nearly every episode he directed is a noticeable jump in quality, and even the non-Lynch episodes in season 1 (when at least he was involved in laying out the overall plotlines) are superior to most of season 2. As soon as Lynch jumps back in for the final episode, the series gets a crazy jolt as if the last few--dire--episodes didn't even happen (literally in some cases: Lynch abandons or ret-cons several of the season 2 plotlines in 45 minutes)

I think people tend to reach a bit with stuff like this. If Lynch was really that anti- a lot of what had been happening over those episodes, would he have turned up playing a recurring FBI agent in a plotline that doesn't really go anywhere?

i don't think he was anti- anything. i just think his level of involvement in terms of planning out plotlines and so on was pretty damn low.

So, last night some friends and I were talking about Twin Peaks and I posed the thread question; when the Billy Zane plot came up, one of them told me that they'd heard that this began because Kyle MacLachlan and Lara Flynn Boyle were dating (?! did not know this!) and she objected to the chemistry between Cooper and Audrey. If true, this also leads me to wonder whether the Annie story was also ginned up for this reason: give Cooper the least sexually charged relationship of possibly any couple on the show.

love this thread. i'm more forgiving of S2 than most people i know), but even i can't deal with jaaaaaames.

another poll I have no time for bcz RESCREENING is impossible for now. I remember basically none of this after 20 years.

have some of you watched the whole series 4x or something?

2x (once on VHS, once on dvd)

Pretty sure this last one was the 3rd time for me.

someone mentioned 'Josie Packard' to me recently and I couldn't even guess who she was

have some of you watched the whole series 4x or something?

1st viewing = initial TV run
VHS viewings = had dubbed copies of the whole series, showed them to my then-g/f (now wife).
DVD viewings = got the Gold Box when it came out, have watched that in it's entirety at least twice, and a few episodes (pilot, last ep, etc) more than that

Used to have them from when I taped all the episodes off the telly, but no longer have a VCR. So maybe x4 times but not for years and years. I do occasionally watch the "..and it was on that vacation that I shot out Nadine's eye" just for Albert's reaction shot. Oh and "dolts, dunces, dullards and dumbbells .."

Albert is so great.

I love you Sheriff Truman

i watched the same worn-out VHS copies that everyone in this college town had been checking out for a decade, it was almost impossible to see what was going on in some of the season 2 ones.

(chillwave twin peaks)

k some of you should at least check out Peyton Place then

lol

I haven't, but then I think watching TP that much is borderline insane

Thanks for your contribution!

way to compare a soap opera you can't remember to the oldest American soap opera

posts very much in character etc

xp

I love you Shakey Mo

are you repeating a joke you didn't get in the first place

I remember the Albert Rosenfeld scene, smartass, as he's one of the only characters who isn't a 2-dimensional archetype.

what's it like to be able to hate things you can't remember

it's like being an asshole, just for yr reference

"2-dimensional archetypes" was not meant as a dis, btw. They can be usefully employed in the proper environment. As they are here, bcz that aspect of TP is part parody.

when ppl talk about such characters like they were created by Dostoevsky, it's tiresome tho.

Oh god the Josie Packard subplot was horrendously awful. I had forgotten it. Almost deserves to win just because it was so incomprehensible and overwritten and drawn out over so many episodes.

While I like lots of the second-half-of-S2 stuff (James’ Wild Ride excluded) and love the Diane Keaton episode, as far as preparing for S3 goes you can just skip to the finale and FWWM.

and The Missing Pieces of FWWM I would say

While I like lots of the second-half-of-S2 stuff (James’ Wild Ride excluded) and love the Diane Keaton episode, as far as preparing for S3 goes you can just skip to the finale and FWWM.

― insecurity bear (sic), Saturday, December 14, 2019 2:51 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

my ocd tendencies would never permit this. What's The Missing Pieces?

The parts of the FWWM screenplay that were filmed but cut from the released film; Lynch edited a sort-of-feature out of them for a DVD bonus feature.

There's also a fan edit that cuts 99% of them back into original screenplay order, which I watched on my pre-season-3 rescreen.

I’ve always told people “there’s an episode that ends with an owl flying toward the camera. Stop. Skip to the season finale.”

That said, I remember the three-episode arc with David Duchovny very fondly?!

paul I agree that the back half of season 2 has a lot of letdowns, but season 3 might be the best season of TV I’ve ever seen. it is not to be missed

I liked Denise a lot, and I remember her as redeeming the episodes she was in, though that may just be wishful thinking. My vote for worst plotline would be Cooper falling in love with Annie, just because cringe-inducing terrible dialogue is harder to suffer through when it's Coop delivering it.

That said, I remember the three-episode arc with David Duchovny very fondly?!

Also touched on wonderfully in S3.