Tag Archives: Laura Palmer

My Thoughts Will Never Be Final on Twin Peaks

When that final gut-curdling scream rang out on that oh-so-familiar street in front of that oh-so-familiar house in that oh-so-familiar town from our oh-so-familiar anti-heroine, just as I had after every other hour, I raced to my laptop to churn out my blog post without much thought. I was a bit flippant, and ill-tempered, as that newly settling frustration of Lynch pulling the rug out from under us (again) was just beginning to simmer, and in my post (and haste) I wrote off the whole series to that Lynchian trope of being caught in an endless loop of suffering from which you can never escape no matter how hard you try.  And I still basically stand by that assessment…but oh, Twin Peaks, you are both just that and so much more.  Much like life itself, you are a walking contradiction.  A mirror unto yourself.

Now I’ve had time to digest the finale and read all the wonderful (and eloquent and thoughtful) theories out there in the media and on fans’ feeds.  And I agree with them all.  Those theories are mirrors of my own thoughts.  Nothing I write about here hasn’t been thought of by someone else who already wrote it down (and probably more astutely conveyed). Continue reading →

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Twin Peaks – The Return: Two Hour Finale (Hours Seventeen and Eighteen)

Twin Peaks – The Return: Complete Hour by Hour Guide

NOTE TO READERS – These weekly posts are meant to recap what happened (SPOILERS AHEAD) and provide conversation starters for fans to comment and share theories. Do not read if you have not watched this week’s hour(s) yet.

TWO HOUR FINALE (HOURS SEVENTEEN & EIGHTEEN)

“Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane?”

Like the entire Return in a microcosm (or condensed into a little golden orb, if you will), the final two hours of Lynch’s maddening opus contained a few moments of satisfying fanatic brilliance buried in deliberately obtuse dream logic. Continue reading →

Twin Peaks – The Return: Hour Ten

loglady_return

Twin Peaks – The Return: Complete Hour by Hour Guide

NOTE TO READERS – These weekly posts are meant to recap what happened (SPOILERS AHEAD) and provide conversation starters for fans to comment and share theories. Do not read if you have not watched this week’s hour(s) yet.

HOUR TEN

“Laura is the one.”

Critics have been saying that the Return of Twin Peaks has defied the normal episode by episode recap. More so than ever, I see my blogging about the Return as a diary capturing my thoughts, fears, sarcastic notes about plot points or performances, fan theories, (and yes, recaps) directly following each hour. And blogging as a diary seems, well, hell…fitting, considering Laura Palmer and her own diary. And it was the Log Lady (the late great Catherine Coulson) who reminded Hawk (and us) just before Hour Ten’s end and a sterling performance by Rebekah Del Rio (that dress! that voice!) singing “No Stars” that indeed, yes…Laura is the one.

She’s still the one. But damn, sometimes you just need a recap. And it seems following the everything-defying-atomic! hour eight…these plot-propelling hours since “Gotta Light?” call for just that. Continue reading →

Twin Peaks – The Return: Hour Seven

Twin Peaks – The Return: Complete Hour by Hour Guide

NOTE TO READERS – These weekly posts are meant to recap what happened (SPOILERS AHEAD) and provide conversation starters for fans to comment and share theories. Do not read if you have not watched this week’s hour(s) yet.

HOUR SEVEN

“I Don’t Know Where I Am”

Jerry Horn (David Patrick Kelly) announces this, while lost in the middle of the woods, to his brother Ben (Richard Beymer) at the start of Hour Seven. But really, it’s an echo of the audience groupthink around the new series, and of perhaps the Good Agent Cooper…who, thanks to those recently discovered pages of Laura Palmer’s diary (alas, a fourth page is still missing!) mentioning that creepy dream from Fire Walk With Me where Annie Blackburn visited her and told her about Cooper, and Hawk’s keen detective work, we communally recognize and confirm (as theorized by many fans) is still perhaps trapped in the Lodge.

Meanwhile…Bad Cooper reveals his unique blackmailing techniques using severed dog’s legs to get Warden Murphy to allow him to escape from prison all easy-peasy at 1am with his henchman and a car…but not before Gordon and Albert talked a hard-drinking, “My attitude is none of your damn business!” Diane (Laura Dern – perfect) to come out to Sioux Falls to interview Coop for herself, leaving her to proclaim broken-heartedly to Gordon that something key was missing from that thing claiming to be Cooper (namely, a heart). Continue reading →

Life is very very Complicated and we’re ready for our Mirror, Mr. Lynch

Bob Cooper Mirror

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too. – David Lynch

David Lynch has been saying that the new “season” of Twin Peaks is really just an 18 hour film. And, Jeeze Louise, ain’t the world all kinds of fantastic complicated right now? What better time then for a complicated, complicated film that will last all summer long?

I can’t help but muse upon the context with which we are about to consume this 18 hours, where Bob-willing we’ll get lost in a place both wonderful and strange.

Lynch is a proud Eagle Scout, and his re-entry into the social consciousness couldn’t be more eerily timed as two other Boy Scouts (Comey and Mueller) play detective in an attempt to unearth just what in Sam Hell is going on in the White House these days. Is there a world in more need of Boy Scouts than the world of today?

Be Kind. Be Courteous. Be True. And most importantly…Be Prepared!

Lynch has historically had an uncanny mastery of tapping into…”something”…that may have been unbeknownst to him at the start of the project. What will he accidentally tap into here (what big fish has he caught)? What was it that was so special…so great…about the context in which Twin Peaks enthralled a nation and world over 25 years ago? What is different…or the same… about the context today in which Twin Peaks returns?

What was the original Twin Peaks if not the tale of a Patriarch (Leland Palmer – possessed by Bob) run amok – and a Boy Scout (Cooper) who solved the mystery about what made that mad man tick (but alas, did we ever learn how to make Bob stop)? Weren’t we all Laura Palmer – living under Killer Bob’s tyrannical reign and longing for a way out?

And don’t we all love a good mystery? Don’t we all desire to get lost in those woods again? Can’t you just smell those Douglas Firs? How cathartic does this return to Twin Peaks have the potential to be? What will it say about our shared fears…about the American soul…about aging…about dying…about life?

We all have our hopes up so high…but even if it fails to tap into some sense of what Makes America Great Again…at the very least, I hope this new mystery provides a most pleasant diversion to the turmoil we’ll be roiling in all summer long (and perhaps beyond).

As I immerse myself in this world again, I will try to only report – hour by hour – on what is seen, what is felt. I’ll try to keep politics out of it. But all great art is made greater in equal parts by the baggage both the maker and the viewer bring to it. And, oh brother, we have a lot of baggage to unpack. So Be Prepared!

Don’t let us down, Davy boy…we couldn’t be more ready for complicated if we tried.

And Don’t Forget to Follow the Hour by Hour Spin, Brave Boys and Girls!

It is Happening Again

twin-peaks-25-years-later

Did the faithful ever really doubt that we would see them again 25 years later ?

Twin Peaks is Happening Again…on Showtime…for a limited 9 episode run in 2016 to be directed in whole by David Lynch with scripts by Lynch and Mark Frost.  It will pick up exactly 25 years later just as Laura had always promised us.

I really can’t think of any better news or anything else to say.

Get that coffee and pie ready.  2016 is gonna be a damn fine year for television.  Damn fine!

And smell those trees!

(And as a side note, I’d like to think the Flying Spaghetti Monster and I had something to do with this, and by that, I mean we had nothing to do with this)

Check out the official news on Variety.

Now Let’s Rock.

twin-peaks-01

Continue reading →

That Gum You Like is Going to Come Back in Style

Twin Peaks - Midget Gum

While the midget (later learned to be Mike’s arm) prattled on about polymer oral treats, twas the girl who looked almost exactly like Laura Palmer who told Agent Cooper in the Red Room who killed Laura Palmer…but as all Twin Peakers know…that was 25 years later. After the series finale, were we to believe Agent Cooper (and/or his doppelgänger?) would be trapped in the Black Lodge all that time until the gum he liked was going to come back in style?

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought it would be the cat’s pajamas if David Lynch and Mark Frost would indeed take us back to Twin Peaks 25 years later to see how Coop and Annie and all our friends were doing. Well…it’s been 23 years since we first visited Twin Peaks, which means they have 2 years to get their act together – and naturally rumors abound with Lynch allegedly thinking about returning to TV (hell, isn’t playing Gus the bartender on The Cleveland Show enough for him?) and Frost reminding people how he and David always imagined Twin Peaks as a continuing story. Meanwhile copy-cat shows continue with The Killing still killing on AMC, Bates Motel scaring up viewers on A&E and Netflix attempting to get people hooked on Hemlock Grove.

Thankfully, a new viral campaign to Bring Twin Peaks Back to TV has started over there on the Facebook and apart from the standard fan art, nostalgia, pining and petition signing, they’ve come up with a mondo clever Agent Cooper MISSING Poster Campaign where fans all over the world have been plastering posters every place they can and posting the photographs online.

Continue reading →

TWIN PEAKS (Retrospective and Drinking Game)

READER NOTE – Catch all the Latest on The 2017 Showtime Return of Twin Peaks RIGHT HERE AT THE SPIN!

When I was in kindgergarten, my mother let me stay up late on Friday nights and watch Dallas with her.  When I was ten, the entire family was glued to the TV screen on Wednesday nights wondering, “Who Killed Laura Palmer?”

April 10, 2007 marked the long delayed DVD release of the second (and final) season of Twin Peaks, the ground-breaking television series that aired on ABC from 1990-1991.  For my money, it was the greatest television series ever produced.

Combining classic soap opera elements with a centralized murder mystery, deadpan humor, dark mysticism, a labyrinthine mythology, and a style all its own, Twin Peaks was the co-creation of revolutionary film auteur David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive) and TV veteran Mark Frost (Hill Street Blues). Continue reading →