Am I missing something with Twin Peaks?

Submitted by [deleted] t3_z5syfp in television

I have never seen Twin Peaks before and it always had a bit of status as an almost legendary show.

First season was quite good I'd say, pretty interesting storylines moving in tandem.

But second seasons is... Well it's just bad. Drawn-out boring music numbers, crazy ass story lines like 50 year old women going to high-school and hitting on school children and every adult being completely ok with that????? It's ok because she thinks she is a teen???? Whole love triangle and baby stuff.... It feels like where was material for 8 episodes like the first season but contractor wanted full 22 episode season so everything is stretched out and some completely irrelevant to the show storylines happening. I'm halfway through the second season and really wanna to stop watching this awful season.

So my question is why is this show so highly regarded?

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ptwonline t1_ixxw9tl wrote

S2 after the initial mystery was solved really went off the rails when David Lynch left. That part of the show/series is considered the weakest by far.

The series became a classic for S1 and the start of S2. You have to remember that TV was different at the time--there was never anything like this on TV before.

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kingdazy t1_ixxw5sp wrote

Part of the mystique was the era it came out. There was nothing like it at the time, it blew people's minds.

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LupinThe8th t1_ixxxks9 wrote

So, the story goes that Lynch and Frost got screwed by the network.

They A) ordered more episodes than the creators had expected for season 2, B) insisted that the mystery be solved (it was never intended to be - the answer is obvious in hindsight, but they were never planning to explicitly reveal it) and C) made it be solved by episode 8, with a huge chunk of episodes left.

Lynch and Frost kind of got fed up and left it in the hands of others...for a while. If you tolerate it for a while it does get good again. The last couple of episodes are exactly the mindfuck Twin Peaks deserves to be, and worth sitting through the slog that is the middle for.

Also, after this you get the movie Fire Walk With Me, which is maybe the best film Lynch ever made, and then from 2017 Twin Peaks: The Return, which is maybe the best anything Lynch ever made.

So yeah, you're in for a bit of a rough patch, but I think if you stick it out you'll be glad you did. There's still gold in them there Peaks.

(And if you want more network-bullshit-free material, Mark Frost has written a couple of books which are fully canon, those are worth a look too.)

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KithKathPaddyWath t1_ixy6wia wrote

Yeah, ultimately, solving the mystery was a mistake and it's the kind of seismic shift that's really hard for a show to just kind of... keep going after.

But I really think that season 2 gets a lot more hate than it deserves. There's definitely a rough period after they wrap up the solving of the mystery, but I think they did manage to rebound after a certain point, and there's a lot of good after that point. There are still flaws, and it's not as good as season1, but it's still pretty good television. The stretch of episodes that really struggle is not as big as many make it out to be.

And yeah, The Return is fantastic. The Secret History of Twin Peaks and The Final Dossier are also a lot of fun. They work as a great story, and the format, the structure of how the story is told, is so interesting and works so well. They do, of course, work best in tandem with the series. There are some bits in the book that can make you kind of obsess over "is this just a mistake, or is Frost trying to tell us something about what's happening in canon" that end up being kind of frustrating, though.

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and The Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes are also really interesting additions and quite good.

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DMPunk t1_iy3l1ox wrote

Relative to the rest of the show, the middle of season 2 of Twin Peaks is pretty bad. Relative to almost any other television show, it's damn great.

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KithKathPaddyWath t1_iy8lm4o wrote

I think this is a really fair point. I feel like sometimes it's not always necessarily fair, at least with some shows, to compare the worst parts of the show to the best parts of the show, at least if you're only comparing it like that and not comparing it to other shows at all.

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e_x_i_t t1_ixypop3 wrote

I still find it bizarre that the network forced them to resolve the mystery soo early in the season, I have no doubt the series would've gotten a third season if the big reveal was saved as the season finale cliffhanger.

I never knew about the episode order thing, not sure what either of them were expecting tho since 22-24 episode seasons was the standard at the time.

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DiggyMcGriz t1_ixy1c2y wrote

The second season of Twin Peaks is… yeah.

Though the finale is quite special. Try to power through to it. Best of luck making it through the James Out of Town Fieldtrip.

The thing with Twin Peaks is the people who love it recognize some of it is bad. It’s a bit like Doctor Who in that you’ve got moments of brilliance mixed in with some real dreck. But when it’s good… there’s really nothing out there like it before or since.

The other issue you’re likely running into is that if all you got out of s1 is that the storylines are good… you’re likely missing all the stuff Twin Peaks is doing under the hood. There are many hourslong youtube video tongue baths that will make their cases on what Twin Peaks is “really”about. But, personally, I’ve found it hard to ignore that a LOT of the “random” shit in Twin Peaks concerns itself with criticizing modern (well, 90s) television storytelling sacred cows as well as the average television viewer themselves.

Anyway, tl;dr: Twin Peaks is both amazing and awful. It invites and requires flexing some critical thinking meta analysis muscles most prestige TV, even the quality shit we churn today, does not require.

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e_x_i_t t1_ixyp4s7 wrote

The mid point of Season 2 can be a real drag and I tend to fast forward through some of it whenever I do a rewatch. It really picks up again around the last 8 episodes or so tho.

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QuintoBlanco t1_ixy7sjv wrote

The first season is highly regarded.

At the time, the second season wasn't as well received, but fans of the show still enjoyed watching the show, mostly because there was nothing like it on television.

As to why the show is legendary, Twin Peaks is a deconstruction of traditional television shows and a comment on America.

The stuff you think is irrelevant is in fact relevant.

Having said that, the second season is flawed and simply not as good as the first season.

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Roook36 t1_ixzivbl wrote

Have to imagine the state of television at the time. Just about all weekly shows were episodic. Each episode written as a single story that didn't connect to any others. If you wanted a serialized show you had to watch soap operas on one of the 3 or 4 networks that aired television. The high budget ones were on late at night. Falcon's Crest, Dynasty, Dallas, etc.

Twin Peaks was one of (if not the first) serialized genre shows with a mystery box element. Surreal imagery, a wide range of odd characters, and fantasy and horror elements. Nothing like it had been on TV before. It became huge and the "Who killed Laura Palmer?" mystery entered the zeitgeist and was as commonly talked about as Who Killed J.R.? around the watercooler.

Then season 2 comes around and the network tells Lynch he has to solve the mystery for the audience and reveal who killed Laura palmer and move on, something Lynch never intended to do. Unfortunately, there just wasn't anything to move onto. Once the mystery was solved the show was pretty much done. It limped along awhile and got a movie but David Lynch pretty much left and still talks about how he hated the second season

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/david-lynch-twin-peaks-season-two

The real legacy of the show is what it inspired. X-Files was heavily inspired by it, with Fox Mulder becoming the Agent Dale Cooper of the show, a "spooky" agent who investigated strange phenomena and mixes pseudoscience and mysticism into his investigative techniques and theories.

It also opened the way for more serialized genre shows like Buffy to tell longer story arcs. And other mystery box shows like LOST.

So most likely, by now, you've been ingesting a steady supply of what made Twin Peaks great at the time, but which has been refined, evolved and filtered into hundreds of various horror/sci-fi/fantasy serialized TV series.

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sleevieb t1_ixxxi1i wrote

Wait until you see the re launch season from a few years ago.

Or find out Bobs whole existence is from a crew member accidentally being reflected in a mirror.

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Tzki47 t1_ixzhdip wrote

fellas don't drink that coffee, there was a fish in the percolator

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aestus t1_iy0jbtq wrote

The second season picks up again towards the last episodes. Either push on through or read recaps.

Twin Peaks The Return is a whole other beast. Whether you like it or not is down to taste but there is no other series like it, before or after.

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DMPunk t1_iy3l9vk wrote

The "Seinfeld was never funny" trope

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PonyKiller81 t1_ixy04n7 wrote

Came here to say while I enjoyed watching the first series, honestly my favourite part was the haunting intro credits. The theme song, the visuals, mesmerised me everytime.

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audioaddict321 t1_ixy55cw wrote

🤣 I was just saying that a few years ago I decided it was time to watch it. My dad loved it (and David Lynch in general) but I never watched when it aired- I was only 13 or 14 and totally uninterested. Watched the first two episodes. Dinner with my dad, told him I was finally watching it and mentioned something I found odd. "Well, because that's who killed her..." 🤦🏽‍♀️ 25+ years I managed to not know the spoiler, but he assumed everyone knew it and I was just watching to watch. I was having a hard time getting into it anyway, so I stopped there.

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Keythaskitgod t1_ixya26r wrote

Saw it a few yrs ago because i was too young back then. Gotta say its the craziest show i've ever seen.

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Pascalwb t1_ixz6x4s wrote

yes, it just turned into bunch of random nonsense.

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eventhegreyscant t1_ixzrbtt wrote

Power through, watch FWWM and if you don't like that either, then The Return won't be for you. But if you love FWWM, you'll more than likely love The Return even more.

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The_Meemeli t1_ixzy9x0 wrote

Network executives screwed over series creators Frost and Lynch for most of the second season.

It's worth getting through, though. The end of the season is quite good, with Lynch properly taking the reins again, the movie "Fire Walk With Me" is dark but very good, and the third season "The Return"/"A Limited Event Series" is a total mindfuck.

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PreciousRoy666 t1_iy02vgx wrote

Twin Peaks is one of my all time favorite shows but it's a hard sell. The second season isn't very good and neither is the movie. I'd say that in season 2, after the killer is revealed you should commit to watching everything having to do with the FBI, police, or Briggs family in some way. Everything else you can kinda tune out for cause it's not that great (though, I actually enjoy the Nadine stuff). You'll def want to watch the last 2 episodes fully though.

Then you should watch the movie + The Missing Pieces (a movie of deleted scenes). You could watch the first couple episodes of The Return if you're really curious and then go back to watch the movies but it's generally recommended to just watch the movies first.

The Return is one of my favorite seasons of television. It feels like the culmination of Lynch's entire career

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rocketsauce2112 t1_iy065mu wrote

It goes through a rough stretch in mid season 2 due to creative issues. It gets better towards the end and the actual ending is pretty great. Then the film Fire Walk With Me and the third season are fantastic. Imo it's all totally worth it in the end.

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cyberdork t1_iy3gvvl wrote

Even though S2 has some of the most intense scenes. Go to the light, it is happening again and of course the entire final.
People tend to forget this, because of all the filler plots.

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fasdfasfsd t1_iy73xe1 wrote

Probably my favorite show, but I watched most of season 2 on double speed to get it over with.

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Suddenly_Seinfeld t1_iy0o8o9 wrote

I love twin peaks but it goes to absolute shit when Lynch leaves the show.

I’m sure someone out there has put together a watch order/super cut of just the episodes Lynch directed. You can honestly skip all the boring shit

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TheEmpressIsIn t1_ixylvyg wrote

just skip to the final episode of season 2; it is incredible! and you won't miss anything.

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eventhegreyscant t1_ixzqb2h wrote

You kind of need to watch the final three episodes to have context for what's going on in the finale though

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mickeyflinn t1_ixytk9f wrote

> So my question is why is this show so highly regarded?

Because people ignore the comical shit show that was S2 or they make excuses about it.

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Maninhartsford t1_ixze6lb wrote

I'm more of the mindset that a show having a bad part doesn't mean the whole thing is bad. Old expression, but "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater"

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Fleaslayer t1_ixxyb0y wrote

Just to make sure, did you watch the original 1990 version, or the far inferior 2017 remake?

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pazuzu_lives t1_ixxzbwp wrote

Not sure whether it's dumber you think season 3 is bad or that you think it's a remake

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[deleted] OP t1_ixy4ccd wrote

It wasn’t a remake. It was season 3.

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kingdazy t1_ixxymva wrote

I actually didn't even know there was a remake, and I'm kind of morbidly curious now.

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undeadsasquatch t1_ixxz1c3 wrote

There isn't a remake, the 2017 show is basically season 3, it takes place 25 years after season 2.

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kingdazy t1_ixxz66v wrote

Oh. Eh. No thanks. Thanks for clarification before I actually went to find out.

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undeadsasquatch t1_ixy0ye4 wrote

"The Return" is actually some of David Lynch's best work, absolutely worth watching if you loved season 1 but hated most of season 2.

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kingdazy t1_ixy10ib wrote

Huh. That's a pretty strong statement. Perhaps I'll give it an episode.

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Iannelli t1_iy24hgo wrote

It's an absolute, utter mindfuck. There is one particular episode that is like an insane hallucinogenic mushroom trip. I would not "give it an episode." It's worthy of being explored fully.

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grow4road t1_ixxzl5c wrote

It’s pretty fucking awesome, though. Worth checking out.

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