Initial Musings
wonde...@gmail.com
weeks, reading old posts and catching up on the fandom. I recently
finished watching the entire run of "Twin Peaks." It had been on my
"to watch" list for years, but I finally decided to check it out as a
result of "Carnivale" withdrawal. While I did not find as many
similarities between the two shows as I was expecting, I ended up
loving "Twin Peaks" as well. Except for, you know, the last 10 or so
episodes. The lack of continuity and logic kills me like nothing else.
But it's all right because I have gotten really good at repressing
crappy endings to shows I love since Buffy. :)
My favorite character is Audrey, and she is probably the reason I stuck
with the series despite some initial issues. I love her weird
whimsical-ness. Laura annoyed me with her Mary Sue-ness all throughout
the series, but I kind of loved her in "Fire Walk With Me." I think
Laura's character works on a mythic level almost, which I like. I have
inexplicable love for Bobby Briggs, and
I also loved Cooper, pre-Annie. I'm convinced that Annie sucked out
his brain and possibly his personality. The Cooper of the last
episodes was painful to watch because of the extreme stupidity of the
plot, and it just made me think of season two of Roswell with the
disjointed plots, lack of continuity, and character assassination.
I loved the ending in this very detached kind of way. I love the idea
of Cooper getting possessed by Bob. It's dark, creepy, and somehow a
perfect series ender. Yes, it's not a happy ending, but those are
overrated anyway. However, by the time it happened, I really didn't
care about Cooper anymore so it failed to affect me much. And I
certainly didn't care about what was going to happen to Annie (as long
as it got her off the show). So while I appreciate the ending, it kind
of fell flat for me.
Anyway...just wanted to introduce myself since I expect to be posting
here with newbie questions, insights, and speculation. I love that
this place exists. Took me forever to find an active "Twin Peaks"
forum. Nothing is more depressing than coming to a fandom this late.
:)
-Helen
moog
wonde...@gmail.com
boxset, and the difficulty of finding the pilot is what kept me from
checking out the series earlier. I also got partially spoiled for "Who
killed Laura Palmer" while trying to figure out a way to find the
pilot, so I'm very bitter about the pilot issues.
-Helen
Pikemann Urge
> Hi. I'm new-ish, and I've been lurking here for the last couple of
> weeks, reading old posts and catching up on the fandom.
Hi there. Welcome to ATTP! It's a great place. Slow at times but we all
love it here. OT discussion is rife but that's a good sign: we're not
narrow-minded. ;-) We have varied interests.
> loving "Twin Peaks" as well. Except for, you know, the last 10 or so
> episodes. The lack of continuity and logic kills me like nothing else.
Yeah. ;-)
> My favorite character is Audrey, and she is probably the reason I stuck
> with the series despite some initial issues. I love her weird
> whimsical-ness.
Yeah, I get what you mean.
> Laura annoyed me with her Mary Sue-ness all throughout
> the series, but I kind of loved her in "Fire Walk With Me."
I know a girl who is all upbeat, sweet and well-meaning on the surface
but just can't get it together underneath. Not as bad as Laura but she
really needs to stop pretending. Anyway that's beside the point.
> The Cooper of the last
> episodes was painful to watch because of the extreme stupidity of the
> plot, and it just made me think of season two of Roswell with the
> disjointed plots, lack of continuity, and character assassination.
Yeah they screwed up the series for a while.
> as it got her off the show). So while I appreciate the ending, it kind
> of fell flat for me.
I liked it too. Very powerful, particularly the lodge scene where Laura
menaces Cooper.
> forum. Nothing is more depressing than coming to a fandom this late.
Hardly! I mean, I hope TP's appeal grows over time. Shame to have such a
beautiful work ignored and go to waste. It would be like everyone
forgetting Vermeer or something.
--
http://pekarmal.customer.netspace.net.au
www.uncledeercamp.com
"It's stupidity in a can"
wonde...@gmail.com
My issues with Laura came mostly from how everyone else reacted to her.
I could even buy that she tutored Josie, took care of Johnny, arranged
meals for the less fortunate, worked part time at Horne's, worked at
One Eyed Jack's, and was a full time A-student yet still managed to
have time to sleep and take skiing trips. I was just a little put off
by how everyone just loved her, which is part of the reason that I
found Audrey refreshing. (Although, Audrey is more than a little in
love with Laura, but that doesn't come off until later in the series).
But it works in a way. Laura is canonized and she's mythic. She is
not supposed to be realistic, which is okay because she's not an actual
character in the series.
I hope that "Twin Peaks" becomes more popular, too. I have been trying
to make my friends watch it, but it's kind of hard with the difficulty
of trying to find the pilot. You can't just be all, "Hey, netflix Twin
Peaks!" to your friends like with all the other shows. Someone really
needs to release that pilot officially. Also, season two.
-Helen
Trichome
"wonde...@gmail.com" <wonde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi.
Have you seen the prequel, "Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me: Teresa
Banks and the last seven days of Laura Palmer"? It seemed from your
posts that you might not have, and seeing that often resolves fans
Laura-issues. Also, I could e-mail you a copy of Laura's Secret Diary,
considered pretty canonical to the series. It was released in the
Summer of 1990, after the first seven episodes.
Trichome
wonde...@gmail.com
Laura as a character when I had not thought that possible, which makes
me love the movie. But even outside of the movie, I like Laura. She
may not always be realistic, but she's wonderfully tragic and mythic
and that works for me. Besides Audrey, she's my favorite character.
I have managed to find a copy of Laura's dairy, and I am currently in
the process of reading it. I'm enjoying it muchly so far.
-Helen
Davémon
> Hi. I'm new-ish, and I've been lurking here for the last couple of
> weeks, reading old posts and catching up on the fandom. I recently
> finished watching the entire run of "Twin Peaks."
Hi Helen,
I'm always interested in this, how did you pace out your watching of
Twin Peaks? I mean, did you sit down over a weekend and watch all of it
(with no sleep) or watch 2 or 3 episodes a day etc?
--
Davémon
http://www.nightsoil.co.uk
katben...@yahoo.com
> I'm convinced that Annie sucked out
> his brain and possibly his personality. The Cooper of the last
> episodes was painful to watch because of the extreme stupidity of the
I can almost see what you mean, but not quite. I'm not sure if you'll
be able to follow my reasoning because it's pre-disengaged from a
standard that is both universal and positive, but I think it'd be a
cop-out to blame it all on Annie. (Pun intended.) That assessment is
unfair in that it's the kind of sexist judgment lurking behind the less
substantiated claims of sexism we all see as a matter of brainless
routine from time to time. It isn't Annie but Cooper's unquestioned
willingness to believe in romantic love that got him into trouble, and
that trouble, or latent psychosis, was a part of him long before he
ever ventured into Twin Peaks, and probably a part of him even before
the off-screen tragedy at Pittsburgh. To be sure, that's precisely what
Earle took advantage of. He wasn't really able to take advantage of
Annie herself. Are we to blame Annie for being (or having become)
genuinely attractive enough to have brought this destructive latency of
Cooper's out into the light? What I'm saying partially contradicts what
I said in another topic about Twin Peaks being an evil epicenter but oh
well this is where I've arrived.
I read a Twin Peaks FAQ on www.twinpeaks.org (BTW anyone, is that all
the FAQ's there are, or is there a separate FAQ's for
alt.tv.twinpeaks?) in which the insane Cooper was lauded as a hero who
sacrificed his soul for the sake of another, ostensibly Annie. I see
where such a contention comes from but, like your idea, I am
uncomfortable with its defense of what I see as an overreaching
desperation. I've been in this discussion group for just a few months
now, doing quite a bit of overreaching myself as some kind of chain
reaction. I have certainly gotten something out of asking questions and
looking for answers about Twin Peaks, but that something is a
confirmation of the negative aspects in my life, not the positive ones,
and I'm just about ready to turn away so that I can concentrate on
what's left of the positive while I still can. Working on understanding
Twin Peaks *has* changed my life, and I would suppose that if
"intelligent television" actually exists, then that is something it's
supposed to effect in viewers. Deep changes as opposed to mere
opinions.
I watched the series during its original run on network television,
and, unfortunately, in the presence of someone who appreciated the
"intelligent television" cachet without really earning it. He took the
show (as well as me!) as entertainment to show off about at the water
cooler and not as any call for insight. So the company I was keeping
lowered my attention span at the time. But I discovered this discussion
group over last summer on what I thought was a routine fact-finding
mission, and I re-thought it. I stumbled onto alt.tv.twinpeaks in the
process of compiling a list of Albert Rosenfield witticisms. Lurking a
bit notified me that Albert had been my second-favorite Twin Peaks
character for good reason indeed, in spite of his ironic lack of "the
social niceties."
My own favorite character, originally, had been Major Briggs no
question about it. I thought at the time that he was deliciously
square, and I figured how could I go wrong with a character who was
married to the woman who was Radiator Girl in Eraserhead so many years
ago. I wasn't aware of it at the time but it was the Major's Protestant
orientation that I was attracted to. Speaking personally, a Protestant
upbringing - or even just the *illusion* of a Protestant upbringing -
is something I feel I absolutely needed in order to live like a human
being but did not receive, and I have fought all my life to replace
that lack with a sustained effort to heal myself and others. That's a
huge part of what I as an individual viewer have brought with me to
Twin Peaks, and all my observations are heavily colored by that
awareness. In part because of a prevailing lack of faith I both hear
about and sense around me, I feel as though it, my entire life, has
been a drawn-out losing battle.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to meander toward is this: Garland's worst
fear came true, or was revealed to be the tip of an iceburg, during
Episode 29. Flatly put, it turned out that love in fact was *not*
enough. How can we view Annie Blackburne as anything more than a pawn,
or impersonal vessel, in light of that? Is it her fault that she had to
turn away from then re-emerge in an a little backwoods world where so
many people had the spoof soap opera "Invitation to Love" playing in
the background while sustaining their own romantic peccadillos? Is she
worse than the other characters for going so far as the convent to
refine her character in hope of overcoming the drive to commit the same
kinds of little sins? Was it wrong for Annie to have entered the Miss
Twin Peaks pageant? If yes, then on what grounds? Should she have
remained in the convent? I would really hate to cruxify such a
beautiful person as if she were Christ Himself instead of just an
ex-nun willing to believe in Him, but I have this sinking feeling that
many other members of the discussion group wouldn't hesitate to do so.
Perhaps while elevating non-Christian, non-sane Cooper to the level of
Christhood on top of it.
Earle was not permitted to sacrifice Annie through Cooper. On the other
hand we, as viewers of a television drama, can do whatever the hell we
want to do. But are we automatically any wiser than Earle just because
we're on the other side of Lynch's creative imagination? I'd say No. I
don't believe we're any more authorized to judge Annie than Earle was,
even though we do have the luxury of rationalizing that she's only an
imaginary character in a television series that ended however many
years ago.
wonde...@gmail.com
watch with me, so I kind of had to wait until we were all avaliable to
watch. If it were up to me, I probably would have gotten through it
within a week, but it ended up being more around two months with us
watching 2 or 3 episodes a day.
"Twin Peaks" is the kind of show that was meant to be watched on DVDs.
You remember all the little details, and there is not enough time to
give yourself a headache by trying to figure out certain details. And
at the end of it, you get to look at it as a whole thing.
-Helen
wonde...@gmail.com
Oh, I'm not blaming it on Annie, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.
I'm blaming it on the writers. Annie is just a manifestation of
what's wrong with the show that's within the show. I'm very
indifferent to Annie, but I dislike the Cooper of the last episodes
with a passion.
But I would argue with this notion of Annie being attaractive. The
only reason we think that is because Cooper finds her attractive. She
is an utter Mary Sue, IMO. She comes into Twin Peaks, and within a
single episode, displaces Audrey as Cooper's love interest. She then
takes over the role of Laura as the tortured but outwardly nice girl.
Takes over Shelly's place as Norma's bestest friend (yes, she is her
sister, but why didn't we ever hear about her before?). And then she
wins Miss Twin Peaks, effectively displacing everyone on the show who
has been around since the beginning.
I'm also not convinced that Cooper is in love with Annie. His
attraction to Annie, for me, implies things about his character that I
don't like. And Annie is a pawn...of the writers. She is a plot
device put there to get to a certain end and not because she fits into
the show.
Within the context of the show, I agree with what you're saying. But
as far as structure and writing are concerned, I think Annie is a
poorly developed, one-note character. The writers demand we like her
because Cooper does. Which doesn't work for me because by this point,
Cooper himself is hard to like. He has removed himself from the Twin
Peaks people to a point where I got the feeling that he almost looked
down on them (and that is a much bigger argument/theory than I can type
up at the moment, but its time will come).
I agree that Annie is seemingly perfect, but I have a tendency to like
flawed and imperfect characters when it comes to fiction. One of the
reasons "Twin Peaks" appealed to me so much is that every character on
it has issues and everyone has flaws. To me, Annie doesn't fit in.
She, like Cooper (towards the end of the series), is placed on a
pesdastal and is in a place to look down at the rest of "Twin Peaks."
That makes her less interesting for me.
And I can agree with you on the Albert love. I think the only reason he
is not my favorite character is because he's not a regular part of the
show and his character is not developed enough. However, he is the
funnest to watch.
-Helen
katben...@yahoo.com
> Oh, I'm not blaming it on Annie, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.
> She is an utter Mary Sue, IMO. She comes into Twin Peaks, and within a
> single episode, displaces Audrey as Cooper's love interest. She then
> takes over the role of Laura as the tortured but outwardly nice girl.
> Takes over Shelly's place as Norma's bestest friend (yes, she is her
> sister, but why didn't we ever hear about her before?). And then she
> wins Miss Twin Peaks, effectively displacing everyone on the show who
> has been around since the beginning.
> I'm also not convinced that Cooper is in love with Annie.
> I think Annie is a poorly developed, one-note character. The writers demand we like her because Cooper does.
That's just an abject cop-out. If you are upset about being assaulted
by the entertainment industry's (heinous) masturbatory dictates, which
is what I strongly suspect your problems with Cooper and Annie (as
portrayed) really are, then you are *obligated* to take better care of
yourself and the people around you by working to first accept and then
improve your so-called real relationships in your so-called real life.
Your personal problems are not invisible. In other words try getting
rid of your infantile sexual jealousy *before* losing control over it
when you see it in television or elsewhere. First you must own it
before you get rid of it.
You are not entitled to expect that people will dumb down just because
you want them to. Why not wise up instead. It's easier in the long run.
wonde...@gmail.com
How exactly is that a cop-out? I explained in technical terms all my
issues with Annie. I think it's ridiculous that you expect me to agree
with you just because you have such burning love for Annie. I don't
care for her at all. I respect your opinion, while you insist on
attacking me personally instead of giving me anything substantial about
Annie to like. Yes, she's perfect within the fictional universe of
Twin Peaks. I just don't like perfect Mary Sue characters. I muchly
prefer Laura and Audrey with all their wonderful flaws to the so called
perfection of Annie. Flaming me will not change that.
-Helen
Trichome
"wonde...@gmail.com" <wonde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Your critiques of Annie were appropriate and oft spoken here before.
The attack on your position was wild and off the mark.
Trichome
ted.t...@gmail.com
> Also, I could e-mail you a copy of Laura's Secret Diary,
> considered pretty canonical to the series. It was released in the
> Summer of 1990, after the first seven episodes.
>
Any chance of you sending me a copy of this, or of posting it to the
group? I'd love to see it.
TIA
katben...@yahoo.com
get laid well because you have unfinished business and unaddressed
issues.
Please Helen, tell me that you're not fugly and that you're committed
to a truly healthy intimate relationship. Then I'll let your coming on
here and attacking personality types that are better than yours slide.
I'll let your jealousy slide.
I said before that you were being immature, and I'm repeating it here.
If you want to respond to that with a counter-accusation that I'm being
immature and saying OOoooooh she's attacking my character! then that's
not much of a defense now, is it. Yes, I am attacking your character.
You're emitting immaturity in your language (and you're not the only
one on here) and in your dislike of "Mary Sue" types. I had never heard
the term "Mary Sue" before, but I think I can guess as to what it is:
someone who is more attractive and powerful than YOU, and someone who
lives outside the reaches of YOUR willfulness. A freaking fictional
character of whom you're mightily jealous because jealousy has become a
way of life for you.
I don't have "burning love" for any character. I'm content to love real
people in the real world. I'm impressed with how much Annie improved
over a period of time that was not really depicted in the show, but I'm
certainly not imposing that on you or anyone else. That doesn't mean
that I'm not allowed to speak about her, and speaking about her does
not constitute "burning love." You came on here professing hate, at
this point I am admittedly burned out from assholes who sound like you
professing hate, and it may very well be that people have come onto
alt.tv.twinpeaks before to profess the same hate - I wouldn't know
about that because I'm just passsing through. At the most I have
curiosity about a fictional character who happens to be a hell of a lot
more literate and refined than you're showing yourself to be. I don't
have any "burning love" for Annie Blackburne, and to be sure I don't
like you very much, Helen. Stop projecting your latent lesbianism on
me, and stop leaking jealousy all over the place.
(It may be that certain male members in this group are so starved for
attention that they *like* this. Good for you. Get a life.)
I'm sure you'd love to have someone sacrifice his or her life or soul
for you. Well, that doesn't come for free, and it usually doesn't get
inspired by just the statement of insipid preferences or opinions
masquerading as thought. If you want something then take responsibility
for your desires and YOU could stand to raise your consciousness to
avoid insulting people with your little baby-shit emissions, which are
neither invisible nor truly acceptable.
*Kids these days. Not only do they have no experience of decency and
respect; they also seem to hate it.*