Twin Peaks: Rest in Pain Rewatch
August 7, 2014 10:03 AM - Season 1, Episode 4 - Subscribe
Amid the emotionally charged burial of Laura Palmer, Cooper begins to puzzle out his cryptic dream, and Laura's cousin Maddy (and doesn't she look just like her?) comes to town.
New episodes posted every Tuesday and Thursday. Some spoilers, but both re-watchers and new viewers are welcome.
Watching: available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and for free on Hulu and CBS's site.
Previous Episode Threads: S1 Pilot, S1 Traces to Nowhere, S1 Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer
Bonus Stuff: Homer Simpson watches Twin Peaks and Twin Beaks on Sesame Street's Monsterpiece Theater
New episodes posted every Tuesday and Thursday. Some spoilers, but both re-watchers and new viewers are welcome.
Watching: available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and for free on Hulu and CBS's site.
Previous Episode Threads: S1 Pilot, S1 Traces to Nowhere, S1 Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer
Bonus Stuff: Homer Simpson watches Twin Peaks and Twin Beaks on Sesame Street's Monsterpiece Theater
They're 3D. I've never found any reason for them, except that Jacobi seems to like kitschy Americana, although that becomes increasingly focused on Polynesian kitsch as the show progresses.
A member of Biff's gang in Back to the Future, appropriately nicknamed 3D, also wears these glasses all the time. He was played by Casey Siemaszko, but another member of the gang, Match, was played by Billy Zane, who is an almost totally forgotten cast member of Twin Peaks from the second season.
In conclusion, Twin Peaks is the Twin Pine Mall in Back to the Future.
posted by maxsparber at 12:39 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
A member of Biff's gang in Back to the Future, appropriately nicknamed 3D, also wears these glasses all the time. He was played by Casey Siemaszko, but another member of the gang, Match, was played by Billy Zane, who is an almost totally forgotten cast member of Twin Peaks from the second season.
In conclusion, Twin Peaks is the Twin Pine Mall in Back to the Future.
posted by maxsparber at 12:39 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
I didn't even realize Sheryl Lee could act until the final moments of Maddie's narrative arc.
And then there's Fire Walk with Me, in which case I agree with David Foster Wallace that Sheryl Lee deserved an Oscar just for showing up.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:28 PM on August 7, 2014 [2 favorites]
And then there's Fire Walk with Me, in which case I agree with David Foster Wallace that Sheryl Lee deserved an Oscar just for showing up.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:28 PM on August 7, 2014 [2 favorites]
Oh man Billy Zane, don't remind me. I have a "Worst Subplot" poll for season 2 ready to go for when we get to that point.
Invitation to Love is a great tool. A couple of episodes ago, it was juxtaposed against Shelly after she suffered horrible domestic abuse. In this episode, it shows some sort of generic soap opera drama, immediately before Twin Peaks introduces a character straight out of a soap opera plot twist- the "twin cousin" of Maddie.
As we find out later, the residents of Twin Peaks are all too eager to force Maddie to fill the void left by Laura. I think when Maddie is at a point in her life where she's not quite sure of who she is- she's probably still figuring that out. This makes it easy for her to get lost in Laura's identity.
Other notes: Despite his eccentricities, Jacobi seems to be pretty good at what he does, at least with Johnny.
Bobby, I agree with your message, but your delivery could use a little work. Try to contain that fire of contrariness just a bit.
Cooper and Audrey have such great chemistry on screen. While I'm glad the show never made them a couple, but that effortless spark between them is nowhere to be found in their later relationships.
"Don't ruin this too!" I love the delivery of this line. You can just hear Sarah's YEARS of anger and irritation with Leland.
posted by Dr-Baa at 1:34 PM on August 7, 2014 [4 favorites]
Invitation to Love is a great tool. A couple of episodes ago, it was juxtaposed against Shelly after she suffered horrible domestic abuse. In this episode, it shows some sort of generic soap opera drama, immediately before Twin Peaks introduces a character straight out of a soap opera plot twist- the "twin cousin" of Maddie.
As we find out later, the residents of Twin Peaks are all too eager to force Maddie to fill the void left by Laura. I think when Maddie is at a point in her life where she's not quite sure of who she is- she's probably still figuring that out. This makes it easy for her to get lost in Laura's identity.
Other notes: Despite his eccentricities, Jacobi seems to be pretty good at what he does, at least with Johnny.
Bobby, I agree with your message, but your delivery could use a little work. Try to contain that fire of contrariness just a bit.
Cooper and Audrey have such great chemistry on screen. While I'm glad the show never made them a couple, but that effortless spark between them is nowhere to be found in their later relationships.
"Don't ruin this too!" I love the delivery of this line. You can just hear Sarah's YEARS of anger and irritation with Leland.
posted by Dr-Baa at 1:34 PM on August 7, 2014 [4 favorites]
Dr-Baa: "In this episode, it shows some sort of generic soap opera drama, immediately before Twin Peaks introduces a character straight out of a soap opera plot twist- the "twin cousin" of Maddie. "
Not just that: Invitation To Love even goes so far as to introduce an actress playing a dual role, keyed exactly to the moment when Maddie first walks in the door. I'll admit, on my initial viewing I was half convinced that Laura wasn't really dead, but had somehow switched places with her identical cousin (a hot dog makes her lose control!) and that it was actually Maddie dead in the ground. I'm still kind of ticked that that particular thread never panned out, but at the very least it was a nice way of keeping Cheryl Lee around if they needed to do more Laura flashbacks, etc.
posted by Strange Interlude at 3:52 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
Not just that: Invitation To Love even goes so far as to introduce an actress playing a dual role, keyed exactly to the moment when Maddie first walks in the door. I'll admit, on my initial viewing I was half convinced that Laura wasn't really dead, but had somehow switched places with her identical cousin (a hot dog makes her lose control!) and that it was actually Maddie dead in the ground. I'm still kind of ticked that that particular thread never panned out, but at the very least it was a nice way of keeping Cheryl Lee around if they needed to do more Laura flashbacks, etc.
posted by Strange Interlude at 3:52 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
Okay, finally sat down to watch with dinner a little bit ago. Of course this episode is a bit of a comedown from the all-time high of last time, but there's still plenty of interesting stuff to parse:
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:53 PM on August 7, 2014
- When Coop describes his dream to Harry and Lucy, he specifically says that they were in the dream too. It's possible that more might have happened in the dream, but we definitely don't see anybody besides Cooper/BOB/MIKE/Laura/The Dwarf in the aired version. Could there be extra material that was edited for broadcast?
- Continuity? The show seems to alternate between "Rosenfield" and "Rosenfeld" (no "I") for Albert's surname. He spelled it out in the previous episode, so I assume that's definitive enough.
- Holy cow, Invitation To Love is even cheesier-looking than I remembered. Going with my previous comment, I'm think we should pay close attention to how it juxtaposes with the "real-world" action of the show from here on out.
- I think I'm coming around on Bobby, but only to a point. He pretty much hit the nail on the head during Laura's eulogy, and then proceeded to take the hammer and pound himself in the face with it.
- During the pan across Nadine's tacky porcelain tchotchke collection, I spotted one sporting an eyepatch. I'd forgotten the whole sad backstory of Nadine as the invisible, stalkery hanger-on to Ed and Norma's high school romance. It's almost as though Nadine's delusional fixation caused Ed, through no fault of his own, to become trapped in a life that he never asked for or even wanted.
- Speaking of Big Ed, I'm amazed to see that they're still running with the "drugged beer" retcon from E02, even working it into the reveal of the Bookhouse Boys. Related: If I ever start my own secret society, you bet your ass that we're going to have a combination bar/library as our HQ.
- The leitmotif of tonight's episode seems to be secret passages and compartments:
- Audrey looking through the peephole in the Great Northern. (shades of both Psycho and Lynch's own Blue Velvet)
- The breakaway panel on the bureau where Shelly hides the bloody shirt and pistol.
- The false bottom in Catherine's desk drawer that hides the second ledger.
- Maybe more?
- Now that Season 5 of Arrested Development has been announced, I think we need to get Russ Tamblyn and son-in-law David Cross to do a scene together as Lawrence Jacoby and Tobias Funke, since unorthodox psychiatry seems to run in the family.
- To counter anybody who accuses Lynch/Frost of "making it up as they go", I submit Hawk's little speech about "waking souls", over the image of Leland dancing alone. Did anyone else notice that Leland's jacket has bold vertical stripes, while everything else in the scene (the log slats, people's sweaters, etc) is horizontal? He's not just crazy, he's dressed wrong.
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:53 PM on August 7, 2014
When Coop describes his dream to Harry and Lucy, he specifically says that they were in the dream too. It's possible that more might have happened in the dream, but we definitely don't see anybody besides Cooper/BOB/MIKE/Laura/The Dwarf in the aired version. Could there be extra material that was edited for broadcast?
The dream he describes is pretty much what happens in the "extended" cut of the pilot.
posted by crossoverman at 6:23 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
The dream he describes is pretty much what happens in the "extended" cut of the pilot.
posted by crossoverman at 6:23 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
"Don't ruin this too!" I love the delivery of this line. You can just hear Sarah's YEARS of anger and irritation with Leland.
This is something I've wondered about through various rewatchings (and might be answered in Fire Walk With Me, but it's been longer since I've seen that). Before Laura's death did Leland pal around with Ben and Jerry, partying and carrying on? I think he's depicted as more of a family man, but there are scenes later in the series where it seems like he was friendly with the brothers at one point.
posted by codacorolla at 9:01 AM on August 8, 2014
This is something I've wondered about through various rewatchings (and might be answered in Fire Walk With Me, but it's been longer since I've seen that). Before Laura's death did Leland pal around with Ben and Jerry, partying and carrying on? I think he's depicted as more of a family man, but there are scenes later in the series where it seems like he was friendly with the brothers at one point.
posted by codacorolla at 9:01 AM on August 8, 2014
I would assume he was chummy with them- not enough to take the boat up to One Eyed Jack's with them, of course. They probably treated Leland as one of the gang to his face, but kept schemes to themselves behind his back (this being natural in Twin Peaks, of course).
posted by Dr-Baa at 9:16 AM on August 8, 2014
posted by Dr-Baa at 9:16 AM on August 8, 2014
Leland was Ben's attorney, and Ben was his primary client. With all the Norwegian and Icelandic wheeling and dealing, Leland was probably hanging out at the Great Northern a lot.
posted by Lucinda at 9:31 AM on August 8, 2014
posted by Lucinda at 9:31 AM on August 8, 2014
This is the episode in which we get to meet the Bookhouse Boys! I had a Bookhouse Boys patch on my old backpack. I don't think I ever met anyone who knew what it was at first sight.
posted by Elly Vortex at 2:56 PM on August 8, 2014
posted by Elly Vortex at 2:56 PM on August 8, 2014
I have mixed feelings about Maddy. One of the most stunning things about the pilot is just how much about Laura is communicated in showing various characters' reactions to her death. It is clear from the very beginning that she was a Special Person in this town, and it is done SO WELL that it captures the imagination right away. People get seriously invested in learning about what happened to this mysterious girl that they don't even see on screen. It really is an amazing feat of storytelling, and done mostly without the crutch of flashbacks.
But then, they bring Maddy to the show, and it almost feels to me like they just wanted a stand-in for Laura for the other characters to play against so you could see even more how special Laura was and how much everyone loved her and etc. They went to such lengths in the pilot to craft this beautiful void left by Laura, and stage the story inside of that void, and then they just plopped a lookalike into it because... something. Too subtle for American viewers?
That said, she does bring something to the show in that you get to actually see on screen some of the creepiness and horror that Laura experienced. At the time we obviously didn't know that Fire Walk With Me would be made, so we gobbled it up.
posted by annekate at 4:33 PM on August 8, 2014
But then, they bring Maddy to the show, and it almost feels to me like they just wanted a stand-in for Laura for the other characters to play against so you could see even more how special Laura was and how much everyone loved her and etc. They went to such lengths in the pilot to craft this beautiful void left by Laura, and stage the story inside of that void, and then they just plopped a lookalike into it because... something. Too subtle for American viewers?
That said, she does bring something to the show in that you get to actually see on screen some of the creepiness and horror that Laura experienced. At the time we obviously didn't know that Fire Walk With Me would be made, so we gobbled it up.
posted by annekate at 4:33 PM on August 8, 2014
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James' discovery of Maddie is priceless, though, He just goes up and sticks his empty head right in front of her and says "Who are you?" When I rewatch the series, I often pretend James is saying that to people just at random, like he just forgets who people are every so often.
I love Invitation to Love. I was friendly with Peter Michael Goetz, who plays the bearded paterfamilias in Invitation to Love, and he always seemed a bit perplexed at how obsessed I was with the fact that he was on Twin Peaks, although he was even more perplexed by the fact that me and my girlfriend were thrilled he was in the movie C.H.U.D.
Invitation to Love is purely a Mark Frost creation, and thinking about that led me to the realization that if you treat Twin Peaks like a Frost tv show, instead of a Lynch tv show, it seems like the weirdest example of 1970s Minneapolis regional theater ever.
posted by maxsparber at 11:44 AM on August 7, 2014 [3 favorites]