Subject: Re: Second Season Failings
From: joe@zitt (Joe Zitt)
Date: 1991-07-20, 22:16
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

as215@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Alexander Aingworth) writes:

> > However, soon into the second season, Lynch and Frost
> > just disappeared into the shadows, and many an incompetent
> > writer and director played a part in ruining _Twin Peaks_.  I
> > have yet to figure out why David Lynch and Mark Frost allowed
> > this to happen, aside from lazy disdain regarding a then
> > successful show.  At this terrible turning point in the brief
> > life of _Twin Peaks_, the standard episode content became
> > outrageously bogged down with inane sub-plots, like Audrey
> > Horne's romance and Ben Horne's Civil War -- things any idiot
> > can create . . . things that only serve as an annoyance and
> > an insult to intelligent viewers.  In fact, at this sad
> > point in the career or _Twin Peaks_, the fascinating mystical
> > aspects of the show were reduced to a mere few minutes per
> > episode.

Welp, I would say that the turning point happened at the death of Leland.
Some of my favorite stuff happened early in the second season -- my
favorite character on the show was Harold Smith, and the slow build-up
to Maddy's death and all that worked quite well.

That being said, I do think that nobody did any planning ahead for how
to continue. The whole schmeer with Windom Earl, the Lodges, and all
that amounts to handwaving. Even the Red Room sequence, while captivating,
seemed to be an accumulation of images, where I doubt even the creators
could explain what it meant (not that I necessarily see that as a bad
thing). I think that we on a.t.tp have expended a >lot< of mindsweat
to retrojustify substandard stuff.

I think that TP may well have had at least one clear effect on "Golden
Years" -- King has said that this is conceived and created as a seven
part series, with an option for continuation, rather than a completely
open-ended show.

To the best of my recollection (I just got my second season tapes back
after having loaned them out for several months), if the show had ended
with 2009, it would have felt complete. True, BOB was still at large,
and his whole whateverness was unexplained, but that felt appropriate,
as I don't think any explanation could have lived up to the feel of the
unknown.

And, >that< being said, I hope the movie happens, as I think the prequel
could be quite good. I think Lynch/Frost really have their hearts in
that part of the story, and lost interest as it trailed off. I remember
hearing that they were planning something like a 400-page book on the
history of Twin Peaks, so they have a lot of background to draw on.

For that matter, the end of the series, as it now stands, did have a
kind of tragic conclusiveness. Upon rereading Cooper's "autobiography",
it does seem that he and BOB et al were on a collision course from
early on, and Cooper is equally "gifted" and "damned". That Cooper
loses in his quest seems appropriate, and it would take something
really amazing for him to get out.

...blather, blather, blather... blah, blah, blah...

It is happening again.      It is happening again.      It is happening again.
Joe Zitt ...cs.utexas.edu!kvue!zitt!joe (512)450-1916