Friday, June 15, 2018

Twin Peaks - Watched Five Episodes

It's not grabbing me. While David Lynch's 1990 - 1991 television series Twin Peaks is held in high regard by some, including a friend of mine, it has all but lost me. It happened suddenly: episode four was my favourite; after I knocked off the fifth one I realized I was watching a soap opera. (This began to happen during the fourth episode, but I let it go.) Also, the atmosphere is beginning to wear thin. And the background music is starting to annoy me.

Who killed Laura Palmer? Do I care enough to finish all 30 episodes?

Admission: I've never been big on murder mysteries. I've never read an Agatha Christie novel, for instance. (Cut to the chase: Colonel Green did it with the hand-phaser on the bridge.)

I'm well aware it's the journey that matters; and there are some interesting characters that inhabit the town of Twin Peaks. Character is the most important part to me; which is why I like Richard Linklater's films, for instance.

I will stick with Twin Peaks. Give it a fair shake.


2 comments:

Jawsphobia said...

Lynch relinquished some control in season 2 so it has a couple of story elements that are tame, such as a housewife who loses her memory and believes she is a high school student again and people are too polite to confront her with reality as she attends classes and believes her husband is just her boyfriend. Lynch never wanted to reveal who killed Laura Palmer. Maybe it was intended as the kind of Mystery Box JJ Abrams now talks about which is a bluff. But they do reveal who killed her and only when Fire Walk With Me came out did we learn the events leading up to her death and the kind of person she was. The more recent Limited Event Season 3 which I have started watching is fascinating. Lynch milks some of his arty sequences a bit much as if they are time filler, but the actual scenes in the main body of the show are both funny and suspenseful and we finally meet "Diane" who Cooper leaves dictations for on his recorder. It subverts expectations well, maybe too well, bringing back the surviving cast and at least up to the point where I'm at (disc four of the set) denying us the peppy mode of Cooper in the same way Last Jedi denies us peppy Luke.

Simon St. Laurent said...

Interesting.

Thanks!