Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
November 8, 2013
No politics today. There will be no Jolt on Veterans Day, November 11. Things get back to normal on Tuesday, November 12.
And Now for Something Completely Different . . .
I'll be traveling to the Pacific Northwest for the first time this week. One of the things I'm looking forward to doing is visiting Snoqualmie, the filming site of one of my all-time favorite television shows, Twin Peaks.
Twin Peaks fans often declare, "the show changed television forever." Contemplating it a good 23 years after it aired, I think the notion of it being a deeply influential show is overstated. I wish it were more influential; the show threw out most of the conventions and "rules" of television. It's not even easy to classify; technically it's a drama, but it often featured ludicrous, silly, even slapstick comedy, along with elements of horror, the supernatural, nighttime soap opera, and mysteries. It's plots feature everything from police procedurals to Nancy Drew-style teen investigators to government conspiracies.
The character-driven dramas with such critical acclaim in recent years -- The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, House,The Wire, etc. -- are a slightly different animal. There are shows that immitate a bit here or there -- The X-Filescertainly shared some of the vibe and cast members, and perhaps Lost had the same grand ambition for a large cast, mysteries, and plot twists. Like Twin Peaks, those shows demanded a lot from their viewers -- "pay attention! This seemingly extraneous bit of dialogue may turn out be very consequential several episodes from now!" -- and struggled with viewer fatigue, as the audience began to suspect or believe that the creators were making it up as they went along and contradicting themselves.
While it certainly opened new doors for those creating television shows, it remains a really unique off-the-wall vision and story that somehow managed to become a brief national sensation. Other shows since Twin Peaks's 1991 cancelation have adopted elements and pieces of the Twin Peaks formula, but no one has really dared to try to emulate the whole thing. I suspect most of Hollywood's screenwriters remember the show's high points fondly, but programming directors think of it as too difficult, too complicated, too demanding of the viewer.
There were other shows that have featured weird small town with secrets, most notably ABC's short-lived Happy Town and Push, Nevada -- but Twin Peaks's overall package of weirdness, darkness, humor, mystery, and intensity set a bar that no one has really dared to cross.
The result is a short-lived show with an intensely dedicated fan base and a not-quite-hit theatrical movie -- which is kind of like another of my all-time favorites, Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity.
So what made Twin Peaks so unique?
The Setting Is the Show
For most of the history of American television, shows were filmed and produced in either Los Angeles or New York. (In recent years, Vancouver has become a filming site of choice.)
I was surprised to learn that only the pilot was filmed on location, mostly in and around Snoqualmie, Washington. After that, they recreated the sets in a Hollywood sound stage and found locations near Hollywood that resembled the Pacific Northwest.
But those key opening scenes and occasional bits of stock footage used between scenes created an almost unequaled sense of atmosphere: an isolated little town, beautiful but with a distinct sense that the whole place is spooky and haunted. "Full of secrets," as the characters keep saying.
   
The Visceral Punch of David Lynch, with a Sweetener
The filmmaking of David Lynch is strong stuff: Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive. His films almost always include a character who represents pure evil, or "the evil that men do."
There is no glamorization of evil, the way a Hannibal Lecter is portrayed as refined and witty, and there's no likeable charm as found in the television antiheroes of Tony Soprano or brutal cop Vic Mackey. Lynch's villains are nightmarish, disturbing, cruel, and there's often a sexual element to their malice and mayhem. You wouldn't want to match wits with them or trade quips with them, and they're rarely funny or sophisticated. They're evil and terrifying and the impulse for cruelty made flesh.
  
"I'm David Lynch, and I approved the nightmares you'll be having tonight."
Some argue that Lynch's depiction of evil, sex, and violence are exploitative, but I think you could argue the opposite, that he takes these subjects seriously. (They are after all, the bread and butter of most Hollywood storytelling. The Law and Ordershows, the CSIs, Castle, NCIS -- almost all of their episodes begin with a murder, and the audience greets them the way the characters do: just another day at the office.) Lynch seems convinced that when something horrible like a murder happens, the audience should feel genuine horror.
Twin Peaks begins with the murder of a homecoming queen in a seemingly idyllic northwestern lumber town . . . and from that event, we learn about the town's considerable problems with drugs, teenage sex and prostitution, domestic violence, incest, blackmail, murder . . .oh, and perhaps a doorway to heaven and hell, or at least the Native American mythological equivalents of them.
Among its fans, there's considerable debate about whether Twin Peaks is meant to be symbolic -- i.e., whether the horrific evils in the town are meant to be a statement about American life or small town life, or whether we're watching a town uniquely cursed and bedeviled by the consequences of the worst impulses of humanity.
It's hard to interpret the series as a criticism of small-town American life or an accusation of cultural hypocrisy, because the town teems with one good-hearted, noble, brave soul after another: Sheriff Truman, Deputy Hawk, Deputy Andy, Lucy Moran, Doc Hayward, Pete Martell, Major Briggs, Ed Hurley, Norma Jennings. Most of the teenagers are "good souls" as well, although they're bedeviled by the rebellious impulses of late puberty. The townsfolk may be naïve or oblivious to some of the evils in their midst, but they aren't complicit in them.
Lynch's world isn't all horror. There's almost always at least one noble hero (frequently played by Kyle McLaughlin) and genuine innocents threatened by that evil. Despite all the dark stuff, Lynch's work usually includes some deep affection for small-town, Norman Rockwell Americana.
Twin Peaks was by far Lynch's most mainstream hit, and I'd argue what made it so much more broadly popular than his films was the recipe of mixing Lynch's intensity and instinct for unforgettable images with co-creator Mark Frost's skill for detective stories, plot twists, and characterization.
You can see how different the tone is when Frost isn't involved in the theatrical release, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The writers of a television series that ended on perhaps the biggest, most terrifying, and most consequential cliffhanger got a chance to make a movie after the series ended . . . and Lynch chose to make a prequel which, of course, doesn't resolve that cliffhanger at all.* Fire Walk With Me is Lynch straight, no chaser, and is mostly a long, slow, agonizing build-up to something we know is coming, the murder of Laura Palmer.
The Mother of All Cliffhangers, Never to Be Resolved
Lynch and Frost insist they always knew who Laura's killer was, but that they wanted to put off identifying the he or she as long as possible. If executives at ABC hadn't insisted they reveal the killer, it's possible the mystery would have gone on for the entirety of the second season. (The network had erroneously promised in the promotional materials that the killer would be revealed in the first-season finale.) In a commentary on the DVD release of the show, Lynch is adamant that the murderer should never have been revealed, because that mystery is what drove the narrative forward. You can see the show's skyrocketing popularity in 1990, and subsequent decline in 1991, stemming from the resolution of that question.
Lynch, Frost, and the other creators also had a particularly mischievous way of dealing with ABC's reticence about renewal, which was to pile cliffhanger upon cliffhanger into each season finale. The first season ended with Lucy Moran announcing her pregnancy; Leo Johnson shot; Jacques Renault smothered to death in his hospital bed; the mill burning down with Pete Martell, Catherine Martell, and Shelly Johnson inside; Audrey Horne in danger of being caught by her father within his bordello; and FBI special agent Dale Cooper shot. The second season resolved most of these questions.
The second-season finale ended on a similarly epic pile-up of cliffhangers . . . none of which were ever to be resolved. The quiet, gentle town doctor has had an episode of violent rage, appearing to seriously injure another key character; the town bank gets blown up with several key characters inside. . . .
But most significant, Dale Cooper has gone into the otherworldly Black Lodge to confront evil in both human and supernatural forms . . . and lost his battle. The closing scene features Cooper looking in the bathroom mirror and seeing Killer BOB looking back at him. Cooper smashes his forehead into the mirror and laughs and rants uncontrollably. Cooper is possessed, and at least at this moment, evil has triumphed utterly, with the town's inhabitants in more danger than ever.
And then the show ends.
* The original script for Fire Walk with Me offers a vague hint of a resolution . . .
38. BLACK LODGE/RED ROOM
Laura is sitting in a chair. As the end credits begin...
We move back to see that Laura is sitting in Cooper's lap in the
same chair.
. . . in which the souls of the murder victim and the man who caught her killer become entwined, sexually and romantically, in a limbo-like existence beyond the physical world. This scene does not appear in the film.
Jim's Best Explanation for What's Going On (for Diehard Geeks Only)
Outside Twin Peaks, there is a doorway to a world beyond our own. Native Americans called the locations beyond that doorway the "White Lodge" and the "Black Lodge" -- mysterious places that roughly align with the Christian Heaven and Hell: One is a place of angel-like spirits who try to help people, and the other a place of unspeakable evil that is fueled by "garmonbozia" -- human pain and suffering in corporeal form that appears to mortals as creamed corn. The spirits of the Black Lodge influence certain townspeople of Twin Peaks in an attempt to get them to commit terrible acts that generate pain and suffering.
During the series, we see three beings from the Black Lodge. The most notable is BOB (note the all-capital spelling) who appears to have possessed Leland Palmer and driven him to molest and murder his daughter, as well as commit several other murders.
There is considerable debate about whether Mike, who takes the form of an eccentric one-armed man, is good or evil. At one point in the series, Mike says, "We once were partners. . . .Oh, but then . . . .I saw the face of God . . . and was purified. I took off the arm, but remained, close to this vessel, inhabiting from time to time, for one single purpose: to stop him! [referring to BOB]." Despite his self-claimed mission of stopping the indisputably evil BOB, Mike cannot be seen as a genuinely good character. In the movie, Mike and the Little Man from Another Place (touching him where his arm would be) demand BOB hand over the "garmonbozia" he has collected from Leland Palmer.
Mike is best seen as an orderly, low-profile force for evil, and BOB an out-of-control, chaotic one. The existence of the lodges is dismissed by most of the townspeople as an old Indian legend. (During the series, there are several scenes indicating the U.S. military is studying the potential existence of the lodges, and the FBI has been investigating for several years.) It may be that the Mike believes that too much overt activity on the part of the Black Lodge will cause humanity to become aware of the lodges, with serious consequences for all involved. ("The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.")
Then there is the Little Man from Another Place. At one point, he says, "I am the arm," suggesting that he is, in fact, a part of Mike that is now a separate being. We rarely see the LMFAP do something evil; he's usually giving cryptic clues, smiling, and doing his otherworldly dance. The LMFAP is probably best seen as a mischievous imp, sometimes seeming to help Cooper, sometimes laughing at him, mostly taunting him about how little he understands what he's investigating. Finally, owls are often seen when the Black Lodge denizens are near, echoing their role as ominous or sinister figures in Native American mythology.
The White Lodge's existence means there are good and helpful supernatural forces at work, but they seem less directly involved with humanity -- we see the Giant, the elderly woman Mrs. Tremond, and her grandson magician. The Log Lady also seems to know some things about what's really going on in town, but much like an H. P. Lovecraft character, her contact with the supernatural has left her mentally unstable and incapable of effectively communicating. Put simply, the White Lodge doesn't understand humanity, and humanity doesn't understand the White Lodge, so the clues usually only make sense much later.
Time works differently in the lodges. The presence of lodge beings makes people smell burnt oil, their hands sometimes shake, and electrical devices malfunction. (In the movie, Dale Cooper suddenly sees himself standing in a different place on a closed-circuit security monitor, appearing to exist in two places at once.)
The FBI has been investigating mysterious occurrences and crimes relating to the lodges for some years before the events of the television series begin. Agent Philip Jeffries (David Bowie) disappeared three years ago, and briefly reappeared before Cooper and his FBI colleagues in Philadelphia, roughly a year before Laura Palmer's murder. His contact with the Black Lodge has left him near-incoherent, but those who watch the series understand he's deliriously trying to explain the supernatural forces he's encountered:
"Believe me, I followed them . . . they live above a convenience store. I've been to one of their meetings. I found something. And then there they were." He points to Dale Cooper and angrily asks, "Who do you think this is, there?" because he knows Cooper will in time become possessed by BOB, or he perhaps erroneously believes Cooper is already possessed. In the film's script, a deleted line of dialogue indicates he's confused by the fact that the year is 1989.
Around that same time, Leland Plamer murdered Theresa Banks, and FBI agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) similarly disappeared after discovering some lodge-related clues.
The presence of the lodges is best seen as a sort of low-level spiritual or psychological radiation affecting the behavior of townspeople:
What happens next? Well, Lynch and Frost have had many opportunities to wrap up the cliffhanger ending and have turned down every one. While several cast members have died since the show ended, most of the rest have gathered for interviews, done a DVD commentary, and a good chunk of the cast agreed to appear in a tribute episode of the show Psych entitled "Dual Spires." There was a persistent rumor that an episode of the The X-Files would travel to Twin Peaks (it never happened) and an episode of Fringe referred to a Twin Peaks character.
If the creators wanted to finish the story, they could have and probably would have. They don't, and as a result, Twin Peaks stands as one of the great unresolved cliffhangers of all time. If it were resolved, perhaps it wouldn't be Twin Peaks.
Having said that, Lynch and the cast made a quartet of commercials for a Japanese coffee company -- and the last offers a version of the happy ending Twin Peaks fans hoped to see -- the successful rescue of the damsel in distress from the Black Lodge.
Readers, thanks for indulging me. Normal politics stuff returns Tuesday.
To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com
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Twin Peaks
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