Twin Peaks on Blu-Ray Due 29th July 2014

Yeah, that was jarringly bad.

Did they clean up the lousy animation for the blu-ray at least? I remember that being terrible.

 

It was almost like a a bad soap opera parody. There's always a memory loss and everyone has to play along or else they will disturb the patient's delicate condition.

 

I liked Ben's Civil War reenactment as well. I'm with you on James out of town adventure. But why do you hate Josie's death so much? The confining of her spirit to wood thing?

The "little Nicky" storyline is the worst for me.

 

Amazon stops selling the Blu-Ray box due to all the complaints of out-of-sync audio. C'mon CBS, issue replacement discs.

 

It was just so sloppy and unearned; came out of nowhere and led to nothing beyond Truman being drunk for a day or so. I was annoyed at the writers somehow throwing in the Black Lodge stuff, presumably to remind us of the cool weird stuff that used to happen on the show (particularly annoying in retrospect as all that would soon be brought back organically and with logical connection to the lead characters) but in service of a minor character that had never been utilized as a significant driver of plot, just as background. They told us that Truman was in love with her, but I never saw any scenes that showed any evidence of it. She died unexpectedly, and without any logical explanation (just dropped dead and, as we were told next episode, only weighing 65 pounds) as to cause.

If they had kept up with fake soap opera playing on the TV occasionally, they might have been able to make her death melodramatic enough to play as satire, but this just seemed weird. Not postmodern weird, just bad writing weird. Her spirit being trapped in the wood seemed pointless in service to what someone thought was a cool visual effect, but not much else. How did any of that match with Bob or the arm or Garmonbozia?

It also called in to question Dale Cooper's police work. He actually called her a "hardened criminal" after a season of her only being used as a passive, frightened, panicked girl too trapped to show any agency. I would have loved it if Josie had been revealed to be some brilliant evil mastermind instead of the eternal puppet. There were only two non-caucasian actors/characters on the entire show, and both of them were firm stereotype cliches. If they had to kill off Josie, could they not have spent some time in the preceding episodes making her death meaningful, either through plot or character development?

It came out of nowhere, meant nothing, was never brought up again, didn't tie into any of the show's other series of mysteries and had the audacity to toss in a handful of Lynch's signature visual gimmicks just to pretend it wasn't a kid pretending to be a grown-up.

 

Shoot. What's the issue? Do we need to send something back? I've not opened the set yet.

I can't read through this entire thread because . . . I've actually forgotten enough of this show that I will basically be coming to it again for the first time, and I don't want anything to be spoiled. And I can tell there are spoilers swimming in these waters!

 

I think this was the problem with the show relying too heavily on surrealism as part of the storytelling in season 2, and bringing it too far into the foreground. What happens is that ambiguity crosses the line into incoherence. Because it's surreal, logic can't be applied to it, but then that allows for lazy, absurd scenes like BOB putting Josie into a doorknob. Since when was he able to just materialize in a room and kill somebody? Why did he go to the trouble of possessing people if he could do that? Why was he interested in Josie all of a sudden? (Oh right, he was drawn by her fear or something.) I think as you say they were just desperate to put something Lynchian into the show again after a run of lousy episodes, and she had to be written out for whatever reason.

 

Well it was a parody of soap operas to begin with.

 

It was a cheap shot to help revitalize ratingsIMHO.

 

Watching the show again when it came out on DVD, I found the entire second season to be considerably weaker than the first, not just the middle section of it. Right from the beginning, it isn't as good, though the suspense of the murder mystery kept me from noticing the first time around. For one thing, many of the lousiest storylines were already well underway before the murder was solved, like Nadine's amnesia or everything involving the Dick Tremayne character. But everything about the show was more uneven, and it felt like they were all trying too hard to keep up with David Lynch in the weird department. The writing and directing in the first season is much more restrained and tightly controlled.

 

I would have never thought back in 1991 that Heather Graham would become a movie star (if a minor one) while the other, far more charismatic and talented younger actors on the show would all disappear into TV guest star obscurity.

 

Josie was certainly revealed as an unsavory individual in Season 1 - speaking perfect English to Ben while double-crossing Catherine and planning the mill fire, paying Hank $90,000 to setup Andrew's boating accident, etc.

The writers do fumble when they have Josie seem genuinely surprised to see "two sets of books" for the mill's finances - since she was in on the scam all along she'd have known about the rigged ledgers.

 

Josie's death happened at a time that the series' future was in doubt. Apparently, there are some details in the script, and some bits that didn't make the final cut, that could have pointed to a more interesting treatment of Josie's death. It's explained here:
http://twinpeaksarchive.blogspot.com/2011/07/between-two-worlds-josies-fate.html

 

Here's a nice summary of the Packard plotline. It doesn't add any new information but it's nice to have that long storyline condensed:

http://www.twinpeaksgazette.com/article-articleID=97.cfm.html

 

There are numerous reports of the audio not being in synch on at least one episode and "The Missing Pieces". I just packed my unopened copy up for Amazon and I am sending it back as I only have a few days until I pass the allowed 30 day return policy. I figure that I will get a full refund now and play it by ear later. After 30 days things can get weird with returns/defects and I do not feel like dealing with a possible replacement disc and such when I do not have time to watch it right now anyways.


https://twitter.com/TwinPeaksArchve

 

Here is a link where others discuss the issues:

http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2580

 

I pre-ordered this set, so it showed up on the day of release. Since that was also the day of release for the Werner Herzog blu ray set, I've been slowly picking away at Twin Peaks, arriving at the end of the second disc (Episode 7) when I first heard of the synch problems. Sure enough, I found synch problems in Episode 9 and a "Missing Pieces" that was way, way off. I discovered all of these errors way past the Amazon 30-day return window.

I decided to take a shot, anyway. I emailed Amazon about the problem, explaining that finding the errors through normal (for me) viewing would have taken me more than 30 days and that finding out about the errors otherwise was simply a bit of luck. I got a very quick reply, noting that this would be a one time event on Amazon's part, with a link to a return label. That email was followed by another telling me I would get a refund minus a re-shelving fee. This morning I found an additional email refunding the re-shelving fee, so I am getting a total refund.

Just FYI for all you Amazon customers. I'll re-purchase once I hear of the synch problems getting fixed.

 

I finally got around to "The Missing Pieces" after watching all the episodes and the movie in order. Glad to report I didn't encountered any sync issues (I'm using a PS3 and selected the original stereo track in all cases).

"The Missing Pieces" is really special. No, it doesn't quite work as a movie in it's own right but it is a very satisfying parallel experience to the original film. Strongly recommend viewers watch them back to back, as they are really two sides of the same coin. Would love for Lynch to release a mega-cut that integrates the footage back into the original film, but until then this is a very satisfactory alternative. BTW, the 2x4 scene with Pete is HILARIOUS.

There are other films with a TON of deleted footage that can be assembled in this nature (Spinal Tap comes to mind) but I can't think of any other instances where the discarded footage helps round out and complete the original film to this degree-- nor any other instances where the missing footage was edited together with so much care.

 

That Thing You Do released a directors cut and while most of the footage is unnesseceary to the overall plot im very glad they did. I dont get very much from bonus scenes if they arent inserted in the movie or tv show.

 

So any word about a fix on the audio issues?

 

R2 bd box got synch problems as well?

 

Although it ruins the mystery, after watching the entire series and then Fire Walk With Me, I kind of wished I had watched the movie first to get all the back story on Laura Palmer.

 

That's what I'm planning on doing.
Only seen FWWM.

 

That's what I did several years ago when I finally got a copy of FWWM. I recommend it as the best way to get the most out of the whole TP experience.

 

It actuallu makes me want to want the entire series again..ha..I'm planning on at least watching the International Pilot with the additional footage.