Welcome to the second Falls Society Roundtable wherein we discuss a pop culture subject in depth; this installment we take a close look at the pilot episode of Twin Peaks. Read the first roundtable here.
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DP: I have tried watching Twin Peaks twice before. I’ve never gotten more than 20 minutes or so into the pilot episode. It’s just too darn boring. Like, REALLY boring. As I recall, it has long periods of time without dialogue, a snail’s pace story, and a drab setting. It sort of has an eerie feel to it, but it’s wasted on pointless drawn out shots that don’t move the story forward. At any rate, I’m going to give it another try. I promise I’ll at least get through the pilot…
Catchvalve: I’m going to review this episode on Sat. I promise. I fucking promise.
Verity: You better Chris or we all get to break one of your fingers now that you promised. Don’t forget about the organized crime side of our society.
Beedi: Yeah. Me too me too!
The Immortal Goon: I first watched this show the day I was leaving to Ireland. Justin may remember it, I was binge watching it on DVD waiting for my plane to leave. I wanted to see it all. The day afterward, Justin filled me in on who the killer was. The cut on DVD was different than the Netflix cut, which is good and bad. For our purposes, I’m assuming that we’re watching Netflix. So some of the more…strange elements are yet to come.
I, of course, remember the show being on the air but my connection with it was tenuous. I imagine it was not unlike Game of Thrones is now, where everyone was talking about it when it was on all the time. Then comes the big collapse, which we’ll hopefully get to. For me, watching it in total completion in Ireland, it was baffling. It still really is. I’ve never seen a show go so far off the rails, and then make a clean dismount and recovery. It was too little too late at that point, of course. But man, what a terrible thing to happen.
The pilot does, I think, a very good job of establishing mood and character. The distant fog horn and random industrial sounds (more on that later) do a good job of making this noir, even if it’s set in the northwest—and almost deliberately in the way that nature is constantly underlined as a part of the show. Cooper is wowed by the natural landscape, there are sculptures of animals everywhere, and naturalistic elements like the wind and water are on display in almost every scene.
Juke: Angelo’s music is one of the best elements of the show. Add the soundtrack to your rotation (it’s on Spotify) today!
Verity: What kind of bird is that?
The Immortal Goon: One problem I’ve always had with the show is pretty small, but there’s no way that Twin Peaks is 51,201. According to lore, this was a decision made by ABC. Lynch and Frost initially said it was 5,201—but ABC thought that nobody could possibly relate to that. So instead we have these impossibly small town things happening in a town between the sizes of Corvallis and Albany like everyone knowing who the most popular high schooler is, and being on a first name basis with the sheriff.
DP: I like that no people are shown during the intro. We see a factory run by robots, shots of nature, and birds – but no humans. A lingering shot of the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign tells us indeed there is a town here of 51,201 people, yet we don’t see them. Makes the setting seem like a ghost town.
DP: The intro ends around minute 3, and we get a shot of an Asian woman with short hair and lots of make-up. She’s cute. There’s a long shot of her staring off camera slightly moving her head without saying anything, though. That’s kinda weird.
The Immortal Goon: The first shot of the whole series is the Asian woman putting on make-up. Which makes you almost question why they’re showing that.
04:02
DP: Then this fisherman bullshit. He shambles out of his house, leaving his wife in the kitchen, and spots a body down by the water. That’s when things start to feel like the cold opening of an X-Files episode. We have the cheesy synthesizer music, the mysterious dead girl wrapped in plastic, and the hapless old timer who just wanted to go fishing. It’s a quick set-up, really. We already know what’s going on – there’s been a murder (BTW, is the Asian chick IN the house with the old man and his wife?).
05:02
DP: The old man calls the cops, and at minute 5 we’re introduced to the police dispatcher, Lucy. What a gem. It’s immediately clear that Lucy has Asperger’s, as she stumbles over trying to explain to the sheriff what phone to pick up. I hope the rest of the show is about Lucy…and the Asian chick. It could be an Odd Couple type thing where Lucy is constantly talking and being all Aspergery, and the Asian chick is just silent and staring off into space.
05:30
Verity: The painting of a tree in the Sheriff’s Department Lobby may seem like an innocuous piece of set dressing, but with a close look we find that it helps reveal the underlying themes of the series.The painting is placed above “The phone on the table by the red chair. The red chair against the wall. The little table with lamp on it. The lamp we moved from the corner? The black phone, not the brown phone.” Because of Lucy’s strange dialog, we know this place, this lobby, is important; we know to look closely here.
I imagine the painting is covered with a fine coating of cigarette residue, and it’s been hanging there for years. It’s likely a print, but I like to hope it’s an oil, lovingly painting by a long time Twin Peaks resident. Probably a former mill worker, this person is pleased to still maintain a relationship with the trees that have always been a part of their life, by putting their likeness to canvas. Perhaps they sell their work at the craft fair in town, or maybe they have a yard sale.
The painting has a beautiful near-symmetry. This represents the balance of Twin Peaks that is about to come unraveled. The branches that peek into the frame from the right can only be interpreted as the impending darkness to come. The tonality and color palette are perfectly matched to the misty, cold Northwest setting.Trees are a hallmark thematic element in the series, if not the thematic element. We see so many lone shots of branches blowing in the wind, logs being held or planed, and mentions of the trees or forest. Later in the pilot episode, Cooper asks, “Sheriff, what kind of fantastic trees have you got growing around here? Big, majestic.” Sheriff Truman answers simply, “Douglas Firs.”We can’t help but think about this tree in context of the mill. It’s likely going to be cut down. In this way, the painting represents the frailty of life and unavoidable truth of death. After all, we are introduced to this painting at a pivotal moment. Sheriff Truman, and soon the entire town, is about to find out about Laura’s murder. The naive community is about to be forever marred.
Laura’s body is discovered by Pete Martell next to a felled tree. Is this the tree represented in the painting? Of course it is the very same. The tree is dead, Laura is dead, and we’re just getting started, like the log lady said, “There are many stories in Twin Peaks — some of them are sad, some funny. Some of them are stories of madness, of violence. Some are ordinary. Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery — the mystery of life. Sometimes, the mystery of death. The mystery of the woods. The woods surrounding Twin Peaks.” Look to the trees.
The Immortal Goon: Counter to this, I like the industrial feel of the show. In many ways, it’s very Soviet circa 1918 or so. There’s this strange celebration of the peasant masses who live with nature, and the industrial power of the machine destroying it. In conjunction with the often ambient sounds of machines, I wonder how much of this is part of the general zeitgeist. At roughly the same time industrial music, as we know it, was taking off in Chicago. Was this somehow a related phenomenon? A TV show about the rape, torture, and murder of two girls is grim stuff—something the content of music on the scene tried to convey. The seeming randomness of the shots, aside from the deliberate focus of industrial machines (the saw blades, Leo’s truck, the motorcycle, the smoke coming out of the auto-shop sign, etc). A show so reliant on showing close ups of industrial machines and the sounds machines make in the background—that is also nominally about the brutal killing of a 17 year old girl—reminds me, somewhat, of the Kasimir Malevich quote: “Honor to the Futurists who forbade the painting of female hams, the painting of portraits and guitars in the moonlight. They made a huge step forward: they abandoned meat and glorified the machine.”
DP: Anyway, the Sheriff goes to check out the body, and is accompanied by the old man, a coroner, and Deputy Andy. While taking pictures of the corpse, Deputy Andy hilariously bursts into tears, driven to hysterics at the mere sight of a dead body. HOLD THE PHONE. The Sheriff thinks he’s a cowboy. Look at him-
07:38 Walker, Texas Ranger
DP: What a douchebag. Imagine growing up in a small city in the Northwest and this cocksucker was strutting around town with his cowboy hat, thinking he was a fucking god with a badge. I bet Officer [name redacted] is doing that in Newport right now…
[photograph redacted]
I’ve got a cowboy hat and an anger problem.
DP: But I digress…at minute 8 we get to the goods. The Sheriff and the coroner identify the girl as one Laura Palmer. She was a good looking girl (still is…).
Verity: Hahahahaha!!
DP: Thanks! I knew you’d appreciate that reference.
The Immortal Goon: Speaking of the sheriff, I like the naming conventions and the fact that the protagonist is not clear until about half way through. Harry S. Truman (the sheriff) is a president, but also the name of the man on Mt. Saint Helens that refused to leave his house. D. Cooper is, of course, the name of the hijacker that dropped over the Northwest never to be found again. I have no way to know if there was any thought that went into it, but it seems like too many coincidences to exist in a show about the northwest.
The fact that you don’t know he’s not the protagonist is great too. Cooper makes a great G-man with the recorder—it’s a great device for what they’re trying to do. Truman is great, he steps aside, and we immediately find Cooper and Truman as a great buddy team.
Though we should all acknowledge that the real star of the show is Mayor Milford.
06:11
Verity: Great jackets.
08:12
Juke: Not Captain Crunch, but Crunchees on the counter.
DP: Then we get a scene of Laura’s mom trying to find her. Laura’s mom is awesome. She’s a frazzled middle aged lady, smoking first thing in the morning, and she’s got a GIGANTIC microwave in her kitchen. Seriously, it looks bigger than my oven. She can’t find Laura in the house, and when she calls a bunch of townspeople that might know where Laura is, she comes up empty handed. The Mom starts to worry, and calls her husband, Laura’s father. When the father gets the call, he and his sleazy business partner seem to be pitching a country club investment to a bunch of Nordic foreigners. You get the feeling that something isn’t on the up and up. But whatever, cause any day you can con a Viking is a good day. The Sheriff shows up and informs Laura’s father that Laura is dead, and then we’re treated to what seems like an eternity of the mom shrieking. Seriously. First it’s over the phone, then it’s the mom standing in her kitchen just fucking screaming. It’s awful.
Verity: At some point Goon had mused on the topic of Laura’s mother being psychic. I actually find that idea incredibly interesting. She knows Laura is dead before anyone tells her. She has visions.
14:26
DP: I’m starting to lose interest. The show starts out so well with the robot factory, but it is really slipping here at minute 15. Jesus…this pilot is 90 minutes long. Maybe I’ll do it in 15 minute installments. Perfect! Finished with installment one! Next week: the second 15 minutes of the Twin Peaks pilot!
getoregonized: Dan your review is better than any fan review could ever be. At this point I wonder if I should even bother.
10:57
The Immortal Goon: The most problematic subplots are Audrey in the hotel and the wood plant. Thus far, it’s establishment, but one can’t help but to feel that it takes away from the focus of the show whenever we switch to these subplots. So far, the focus should be clearly on Laura Palmer and her stupid friends.
I say, “stupid,” with some affection. The stuff from the school is from before I was in high school, but I remember a time in which high school was like that virtue of my parents that worked in a high school. A lot of the stuff is right on, with the clothes and the hair and whatnot.
To go further into this, Bobby is a jerk. It’s underlined by his parents seeming really nice, and that’s something I ultimately like about the show. I once thought it would be cool to have a show where teenagers are played by adults and adults were teenagers. I got older and realized it was stupid idea, but was heartened to find that was one of the original concepts behind Freaks and Geeks. Twin Peaks is not Freaks and Geeks though as instead of underlining the difference in parents and kids, it blurs it completely. The teenagers are the ones dealing with the real issues, like murder and whatnot. Where it’s not convenient to have everyone in high school, the actors are not defined in age. How old are Shelly and Leo? These lines are blurred completely even though neither of them are in the high school. Even Cooper himself is quite young. And the community itself revolves around the high school, but in a weirdly believable way. This also furthers the story line as some things that seem really stupid, like James not talking to the police about what he knows, a plot point instead of ending with a lecture like the end of an SVU episode. The only problem with this is it makes the business with the mill that much more baffling and out of place.
17:09
Juke: What shift does Shelly work where her shift ends before home room? Graveyard? Justin, help us out here.
23:02
The Immortal Goon: There’s a nice homeroom scene where Donna and James figure out that Laura is dead where we get a pretty neat establishment of the characters we need to follow via role call. Part of what’s great about this is the deathly stillness of all the other students while Donna starts breaking down. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to get from this, like a lot of Lynch scenes, but it’s striking, especially with the ambient machine sound chugging mercilessly in the background.
29:30
The Immortal Goon: The random shots are spectacular. In a lot of ways, this is the best thing about the show. This is especially true when Lynch directs the episodes. Laura’s bedroom. The walls are weirdly Spartan, and there’s a strange duck stuffed animal on the floor. It makes everything uncomfortably claustrophobic.
31:20
The Immortal Goon: Close up of timber machines and saw blades processing wood. Well shot. I can’t say it looks like an educational video, though maybe it should.
34:00
Juke: One of the creepiest scenes.
34:56
Juke: Big Ed has one Small forehead.
38.14
The Immortal Goon: Great shot of the hall with Cooper and Truman facing each other. It looks natural, like a modernist equivalent of what Wes Anderson does with post-modernism. I can go on about this into depressing detail: Lynch is part of the Freudian conception of rationalism that is very much a part of modernism while Anderson is self-referential post-modernism that is very aware it’s a movie in staging. But…actually I can’t go into much more detail than that without another drink.
41:01
The Immortal Goon: Holy shit, a neat scene in the hospital, but most recognizable for the one-armed man getting out of the elevator—Portlander and Goose Hollow Inn regular Al Strobel everyone!
42:12
Juke: When Dr. Jacoby mentions Lara Palmer he starts to stroke the lady on his tie.
42:36
The Immortal Goon: The blinking light on Laura Palmer in the autopsy room is so Lynch…And I think pretty great
49:00
The Immortal Goon: The music while Andy is sitting there on a stump crying in the middle of the rain, in front of the train car where the girls were tortured and repeatedly raped is pretty fucking intense. Especially the end of his conversation: “It’s so horrible…Oh God!”
56:00
The Immortal Goon: A beautiful sky outside the window. The pink and purple is so out of place in the show.
1.01:59
The Immortal Goon: Audrey’s brother Johnny invokes a response I’ll no doubt have many times during the show. “I don’t know what this means, but what a great visual.” Though it does show why Audrey is the way that she is. And, if nothing else, I want to move into that house because of the great stairway.
1.02:46
The Immortal Goon: The deer head on the table without much explanation is great. It makes the scene at the bank so much more weirdly uncomfortable than it should be.
1.04:42
Juke: Our “hero” arrives
1.05:56
Juke: Big Ed’s pants are, um, small.
1.07:15
Juke: If my mom, Cat, was left alone for too long, she’d become the Log Lady.
1.09:06
Verity: That’s a great shot.
Juke: I agree.
1.12:05
The Immortal Goon: You’re right Harriet, “Full blossom of the evening,” is the better of the two options for your stupid poem.
1.18:19
Juke: Hitch hiker’s Thumb?
1.16:20
Verity: Ugh.
The Immortal Goon: The final bar sequence is great because we needed to see that Blue Velvet scene of the somewhat poor singer going over a song for Cooper. This is better than the Blue Velvet version since the woman is dressed like Rob Halford. The legal drinking age in the Road House is apparently 17. You’d think the cops would have an issue with this.
1:21:40
The Immortal Goon: When Donna meets James, there’s regular music with weird ambient vacuum sounds. I like it.
Juke: I like seeing everyone’s vapor exhale from the cold.
1.32:07
Verity: There sure is a lot of phone usage.
1.28:05
The Immortal Goon: Hawk Rulz.
1.32.50
Juke: George Costanza’s mother in-law has a good scream for a cliff hanger (like Sly Stallone) ending.
The Immortal Goon: Clues thus far:
1. Cocaine!
2. Someone named, “J,” that may or may not be James is mentioned in the diary!
3. A safety deposit box with Flesh World (including an ad for the non-Laura victim) and a picture of Leo’s truck! Not to mention over $10,000!
Juke: This episode had a ton of things going on. There was a lot to digest. I feel the show had to get it going this way. Just get everything going and let the roller coaster ride start at the big fall. I love this show because it’s part horror, part crime, part soap opera, part comedy, part drama. It’s got it all! We’re off and rolling!
The Immortal Goon: Beedi, I hear you’re having trouble getting through Twin Peaks. I thought that this summary may help:
Catchvalve: Goddamn I love Muppets.
Verity: So good.
Juke: Damn, this was the title of my Gulls/Twin Peaks parody. *crumples paper and throws it onto the floor with tons of other crumpled paper*
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