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Last Week in Twin Peaks Podcasts, Week of May 7 to May 13

Diane Podcast, not the podcast from LONDON, the one 50 miles down the M23. The one near the Downs, not the NORTH Downs, the South Downs…by the sea. The BRIGHTON podcast. They put out a podcast Wednesday. Rosie, Adam and Bob (but not Mark) made some predictions about what may or may not happen in the new Twin Peaks series that is somehow only a week away(!!!). They assume Ghostwood Estates must have turned into something by now, likely luxury apartments, and trees are more of a motif there than a reality. The team also says the new Cooper and Harry will be Mike and Bobby (which I like a LOT). They even puzzle out why Gordon Cole is still involved in the story, and their hottest take is There Will Be A Murder!

They also cinch up the mystery of how they’re covering the new series: They will put out a reaction show every week a new Showtime episode comes out. And they’ve revealed a SECRET: Diane’s started a Patreon where you can listen to outtakes and get the video version of their shows, among other details they’re still working out. I’M intrigued.

There’s more, but honestly, I’m not going to write it all down because Team Diane is such a joy to listen to, you should just do it. But I will mention one last prediction: they each guessed how many donuts we will see on camera in the new episodes. I’m guessing 648. How many do you think there’ll be?

This week’s A Twin Peaks Podcast covered the entirety of Season Two in an hour and a quarter, which is a tall order but the EW guys get it done. They paint a picture of what popular media was saying at the time of the season two debut: A tone of “Love” for Lynch, but an unsureness whether or not Twin Peaks can hold it together and pay off its momentum.

The hosts discuss how the feeling of events hitting the whole town like a wave (Maddie’s murder, for example) goes away in the middle of the season never to return. They discuss the (ABC-mandated?) end of Laura’s killer, as well as the handling of the reveal itself. They think Lumberjack Cooper is the symbol of the grounding the writers appear to have been shooting for after the reveal was straightened out. (Doc likes Dick Tremayne, I feel like mentioning that for the record.) They also believe Miss Twin Peaks is meta-commentary from the show writers, relying on what’s tricky about the treatment of women while commenting on it at the same time. And of course, the hosts love the season finale.

Summarizing ATPP is tricky just because they’re covering so much in a small amount of time. This podcast’s take is good, but like last week they’re leaning on Lynch being THE driving force of the show and didn’t do any major forensics on the other creatives besides mentioning that the other creatives (including Frost) did things but our hosts just aren’t going to talk much about it. I realize they’re framing a story for the new episodes that ARE exclusively directed by Lynch, but they’re reframing history in an overly simplistic way to get there. Not to mention Frost is the co-writer on the new series, so he’s definitely in the picture. You’d think they’d talk about him at least a little. 

 

Investigating Twin Peaks is different than the other podcasts in my feed because it’s a video podcast. (This 26-minute episode is just under 277 MB in case you need to worry about size concerns.) The show is also different because they’re doing a recap from the beginning and they’re only just beginning: here they cover Traces to Nowhere. Our two hosts started this episode at their recording table drinking actual David Lynch brand coffee, and they show still pictures of scenes and characters they’re currently talking about. Don’t think the show NEEDS its visual element but I bet it’s nice for new people trying to keep characters straight.  As far as their information, the host’s research enough to know details about the episode’s director for example, but they dig widely into many things rather than going deeply into any of them. I’d call this a good starter podcast for people that don’t want to dive into the new episodes any time soon.

 

The hosts of The Lodgers recorded their twelfth episode with a guest who’s never watched season two before this, and they cover Wounds and Scars through Path to the Black Lodge (that’s Season Two Episodes 17 through 20).

The podcast’s last episode went more cynical than I’ve heard in a while and this episode was more of the same for the first half, but thankfully became less off-putting as Twin Peaks itself regained its focus. The hosts understand the TV industry and are well researched as far as why TV shows are made the way they are, but I’m still sad they couldn’t help themselves but dress down the show and enjoy being mean (Simon, for example, says John Justice Wheeler works best with Audrey when they dress him like a toddler). I LOVED the first handful of Lodgers episodes, but they only seem to reach the level of the material they’re covering. Thankfully there were great Twin Peaks episodes covered at the end of this podcast, so there’s only an episode and a half of negativity. After they recovered, they got back to their normal level of quality and even explained why they think the plot involving Annie is mostly successful. Based on Lodgers’ track record, I assumed their next podcast would be stellar, and of course it was.

Thanks to the recent article in Variety, they break down the hows and whys of Lynch temporarily leaving Showtime Twin Peaks, and point out just how historically well Lynch works within a budget. Then they broke out an article that helped explain how Miss Twin Peaks’ director Tim Hunter was researching minimalism when he saw what inspired him to make Windom Earle’s face look half kabuki and half death in his first scene. The hosts also did their due diligence and discussed the exploitative nature of beauty pageants before they frameworked the season two finale by way of differences between the episode and the script. They were surprised by how well Nadine sells her pain, and dismayed by how little Donna was given since the end of the Harold arc.

The hosts bring up the Library of Babel, the circular pattern of Twin Peaks, and then get completely philosophical by bringing up the quote “all art aspires to be music”, meaning you need to listen to a song before you can understand it. The hosts think the Red Room sequence is one of those rare moments in television and movies that achieves this. You can’t summarize the red room. You just have to experience it.

The hosts don’t know what their podcasting schedule looks like for the new episodes. They want to take the time to understand the new material before they podcast on it. That leads me to suspect after next week’s coverage of Fire Walk With Me; we won’t see the Lodgers again until the middle of August.

 

Damn Fine Podcast’s Monday edition had on another OG fan, Anthony Carboni, along with our two hosts as they covered Path to the Black Lodge. Carboni’s my favorite guest of their podcast so far (exempting, of course, John Thorne because he’s another level up from everyone). His answer to “what parts of Twin Peaks did you bring into your own life” was Cooper’s optimism and open-mindedness, which I totally endorse. After that, the hosts frame the Miss Twin Peaks competition as a centerpiece in a small town’s year, which absolutely happens. (I’ve been to one of those—my cousin won one year. It’s a genuine thing.) I find it interesting no other podcast put this concept out there so simply. After that, they waxed philosophic about a ton of things which entertained me greatly.

On the podcast’s Thursday show, the hosts covered Miss Twin Peaks with their returning guest Francine the Lucid Dream (of the Pink Room). They point out Jacoby’s total technique of dealing with delusional patients is “yes and”, and Ron decodes the Major Briggs haloperidol-laced dialogue well. They talk about momentum not felt in a while and needed to see the finale as soon as possible.

 

Bickering Peaks had THREE episodes this week: On Tuesday, recaps for the last two episodes of the series, Miss Twin Peaks and Beyond Life & Death, were posted one right after the other just like old times for my crowd that remembers June 10, 1991, better than any other day that year. And on Friday they posted a Season Two Recap episode.

For Miss Twin Peaks, the hosts start out saying how director Tim Hunter intentionally went no-frills with this episode (it was nice to hear it was plain on purpose rather than just bland). Lindsay found a note in last episode’s script that Tim and Tom’s Taxi-Dermy was supposed to drive John Justice Wheeler to the airport–all you Access Guide fans should get a laugh out of that. The hosts dug into Jupiter / Saturn alignment, trying to figure out what it might mean, which reminded me of my own thoughts that turned me into a Twin Peaks locksmith for decades. And at the end of the episode, Aidan does some math and is INSENSED when he figures out that in the last hour of the pageant, no one finds knocked out Bobby, and Andy doesn’t find Cooper.

The Season Two Recap episode had a forensic approach, as they talked briefly about what worked this season and what didn’t. The highs were high, but there was a lot of muddled confusion. Aidan summed that last part up with “Too many cooks and no one had the original recipe.” Their breakdown is essentially a truncated version of their previous 22 podcasts, but unlike any of the other recap podcasts, Bickering Peaks takes into account the audience that doesn’t have time to invest in thirty episodes and just wants one succinct overview of a show’s entire season. I like that about this show. It’s yet another way to be inclusive to Twin Peaks fans.

And what’s that? Did I skip over an episode in the middle? Keep reading; I bet you’ll find it.

 

The Decoding Westworld team is running a Kickstarter for a new podcast called Peaks TV. As a sampling of their style, they did a quick half hour podcast covering the original Twin Peaks pilot. They know their stuff and did a great job connecting Twin Peaks to its past, its present, and how it connects to now. This one could work out well. I’m impressed by its ambition, but I’m not sure where they’d begin their coverage (Don’t know if it would be continuing one episode at a time from the pilot or jumping right into the Showtime episodes).

 

Dishin’ The Percolator had TWO episodes for the finale episode, Season Two Episode 22, Beyond Life & Death.

DONUT WATCH: Dallas’s favorite donut is a Peterson’s Old Fashioned with Maple frosting. Sean’s an apple fritter guy.

The hosts recorded immediately after Dallas finished watching the finale for the very first time. Sean made a good observation that Will Hayward is the Norv Turner of Twin Peaks, which Chargers fans would GET. Dallas does End-of-80s-Movies-style monologues about the futures of all the characters which were always entertaining. They ended the first episode right before the red room stuff. Their second episode reveals Sean as a proud hunter/owner of all 75 issues of Wrapped In Plastic Magazine, and he made a joke about Screaming Laura being Windom Earle in disguise, and I don’t think HE meant it seriously but I totally believe this is the case. The hosts approach the show through comedy, but the insights show there’s genuine knowledge underneath. In the moodiness category, Sean’s daughter was toddling it up just outside the recording room when the hosts were talking their way through Cooper’s confrontation with Earle and Bob in the red room, so the distant scream-talking helped paint a simultaneously funny and moody picture. On-model.

On Friday they sneak-attacked a THIRD episode for the week, part one of their take on Fire Walk With Me, and they finished it off with part two on Saturday with a FOURTH podcast. Sean joked about how Laura’s death really changed Donna, and Dallas said they used James appropriately in this movie, which was one of his few comments because he watched this movie right before they podcasted and he felt every ounce of hurt and pain us OG fans experienced when we realized we were never going to get answers for ANY of our questions the season two finale left us with. Sean and their guest Jon Lorenz tried talking him through his frustration but that’s something only time can fix. Sean and Jon went on to discuss everything from how much is Leland responsible and how much is Bob responsible, to Ronnette’s probability of being meant to be Laura’s first kill after Bob would possess her. And they bring up a wacky thing Robert Engels once told someone about how the movie was at one point supposed to begin: Eisenhower’s inauguration, which was preempted by Lucy giving birth. This was when Mike and Bob arrive here. Engels said, “Can you believe we were going to do that?” Dallas came in with an astute observation: He likes Twin Peaks enough to see what us OG fans pine over, but “season three is never going to pay off for you guys.” (I tend to believe him, but I don’t care, I’m taking it.) It’s quite possible the new episodes might’ve lost a co-host, but I’m holding out hope they’re going to continue podcasting in some form or another.

 

Fire Talk With Me returned from the dead this week. I thought for sure the hosts were in lapsed podcast limbo forever but they surprisingly found their way back to work and brought no guest with them. It was as a friendly conversation…as with Dishin’, FTWM records immediately after Allie watches the episodes for the first time, so the conversation we get to hear has her initial reactions, but unlike Dishin’, Allie really gets the character of Laura and the whats and whys she represents. And so does the other host Jeremy. They didn’t break new ground on theories or anything, but they did a great job celebrating Laura Palmer as a fantastic character and Sheryl Lee as an amazing actress.

Per usual the hosts are not revealing any schedule plans to us other than they’ll be back in a couple of months, which to me means they’re not going to be recapping week to week as new episodes come out.

 

Michael’s Mancave did a quick 20-minute episode about Twin Peaks because they like it a lot, but they revealed quickly they don’t know much about it. They think it’s a David Lynch joint, and they promoted All the fallacies rather than doing actual research. Their enthusiasm was great, but they don’t have much to say.

 

Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson’s episode this week was called TWIN PEEK, in celebration of the new episodes being so close.

Noah Hawley (of Fargo fame) discussed what was so good and influential about TP, and also explained a key factor in the show’s uphill battle with ABC: THE mandate of a network is Sacrifice Everything For Clarity. Hawley was impressed by how Lynch bypassed those notes every show.

There’s a real Twin Peaks in California, with a real-life murder of a woman whose husband wrote a book about the story, and this story is potentially something Lynch knew about when he was hashing out the story with Mark Frost. And also we get glimpses into Snoqualmie Washington (where the pilot and movie were filmed) and its tourism-based around Twin Peaks.

This episode also looks into the Beautiful Dead White Girl trope and its uses both good (Veronica Mars) and bad (practically anything on CBS or Law & Order), as well as a look into the Music of Twin Peaks with Dave Porter (Breaking Bad) and Mark Snow (The X-Files). Snow, in particular, has one hell of an easter egg in the X-Files theme.

 

The guys at Twin Peaks Unwrapped took a break this week from Twin Peaks coverage to talk about the David Lynch film The Straight Story with (godfather of Twin Peaks) John Thorne and Joel Bocko. Per usual, even with the ending “spoiled”, I now feel I really need to see this movie. The story is about the journey, and the internal struggle is the conflict. They discuss how all the characters in the movie are all good people, the real-life story the movie is based on, and Farnsworth’s story being remarkably similar.  They mention how Mary Sweeney brought this to Lynch, and the guys balance their discussion well between looking at Lynch as a filmmaker and as an artist.

At the end, Joel mentions his blog’s Twin Peaks Character Series, which is well worth digging into. And of course, John’s Essential Wrapped In Plastic is necessary reading.

 

There Will Be Drinking Recaps Twin Peaks snuck in a Mother’s Day-themed special episode where the hosts and their moms talk Twin Peaks, and then they have some fun grading the mothering of all the Twin Peaks moms, even Norma’s mom Vivian (spoiler: she didn’t score well).

And the ladies snuck in an announcement that the podcast is teaming up the main There Will Be Drinking podcast to talk through Fire Walk With Me.  It’ll post on May 19th so it’ll be there for weekend listening.

 

The Bookhouse Podcast came back after a month of not podcasting (and before that the last one was in January) with their 17th episode, covering the final NINE episodes of Twin Peaks. Much like Cooper Beckett from Damn Good Podcast, the host of BP completely believes that David Lynch left in the second season of Twin Peaks to make Wild at Heart. I get why (that WAS the popular fable through the 90s before the internet brought the real information to the surface), but you’d hope a host does some homework if they’re spending the time to make a podcast. If it were just the fallacies (and even the intermittent schedule), I’d give this podcast a mulligan, but then they repeatedly call Billy Zane’s character Jefferson Wheeler. There’s carelessness afoot with this podcast’s veteran “expert”. The two newbies are good with their roles, coming up with observations such as Annie’s role in the finale seeming unearned, and I’m happy to know everyone loved Nadine and enjoyed the Dick & Andy scenes, but overall the podcast’s a little too slipshod. Hopefully, they pull themselves together because they expressed intent to cover FWWM next week and have a new episode after each Showtime episode.

 

Twin Peaks Log (the London Podcast this time, the one where you think it is,) put out a self-described MONSTER this week that clocks in at over 4 hours. They gave a friendly nod at the start to Michael Parks who died earlier this week. Then the hosts explained how they’d go scene by scene through the movie and then the Missing Pieces (which they did) after they run an interview in the first hour with Mike from Chinstroker & Punter. With a name like that, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but Mike is now one of my all-time favorite guests from any Twin Peaks podcast. This guy could tell stories and he’s thought about The Season Three That Never Was as much as I have. I want to hit a pub with this guy some time to shoot the shit, and I don’t say that for many people.

Some observations that came up: Per Lynch himself, there are FIVE NAMES removed from the cast list. Other directors didn’t know how to use James; he was great in the movie but mismanaged in the series. Will the new episodes bring redemption to the Palmers. Also, the hosts think Chris Isaak is one of those five names (sounds like guessing for Cylons to me…I’ll guess Heather Graham myself).

 

Who Killed Laura Podcast came back with a quick podcast to let people know they’re still out there. They promised voicemails but more it became a delivery system for their upcoming plans to cover each new Showtime episode with a podcast.

 

Laura Palmer is Dead Podcast covered episodes 2.14 and 2.15 (Double Play, and Slaves and Masters). The hosts noticed how Audrey sounds just like Ben now, liked the horror of Double Play, started a Jacoby malpractice watch, and decided director Diane Keaton got some Lynch right in Slaves and Masters but mostly did TOO much Lynch while the episode’s script relied too heavily on James and Evelyn. This podcast, in every episode including this one, jarringly starts and ends mid-conversation.

 

AND IF YOU ONLY LISTENED TO ONE TWIN PEAKS PODCAST LAST WEEK IT SHOULD BE:

 

Bickering Peaks, as they cover the season two finale.

The hosts discuss how Lynch brings characters back to believability and brings back characters at all. Throughout the episode, they explain the differences between the script and the episode, such as how Earle, instead of answering Annie why he’s doing this, slams her head on the windshield and tells her “twelve rainbow trout!” They connect the becoming-oneness of Neon Genesis Evangelion to the feelings in the lodge here, make astute observations such as Dwayne Milford Jr running the Gazette even though he’s the son of Douggie’s biggest rival, and put Coop’s lodge coffee into these symbolically evocative terms: solid state, liquid state, and in-between state.

I’ve had a theory for a while now that Earle put on Screaming Lodge Laura as his lodge disguise, but Aidan and Lindsay put it eloquently that Screaming Laura was putting on Earle’s face as the face of Cooper’s fear. I love this idea so much, and their take on Annie/Caroline dynamic is spot-on. Then they go all circular, as they talk through all the ways Twin Peaks plays with time, distortion, dreams in pasts and futures. Aidan & Lindsay are a great team and they’ve put together one hell of a recap run with Bickering Peaks. I know there’s still Fire Walk With Me and the new episodes, but it’s always a landmark when a podcast finishes the first thirty and these two Eagle Scouts did it with class, style, and an attitude of inclusion. Dale Cooper gives them a thumbs up and you should think about it too.

 

Not on the list but you released a podcast last week? Leave a comment here so I can add you into my listening schedule. The Twin Peaks community needs to know about you!

Written by John Bernardy

John Bernardy has been writing for 25YL since before the site went public and he’s loved every minute. The show most important to him is Twin Peaks. He is husband to a damn fine woman, father to two fascinating individuals, and their pet thinks he’s a good dog walker.

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