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Title:
Twin Peaks: The Second Season
Region:
One
Genre:
Cult Television Series
Stars:
Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Joan Chen, Laura Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Mädchen
Amick, Jack Nance, Sheryl Lee, Richard
Beymer, Rus Tamblyn, Don S. Davis, Frank Silva, Ray Wise, Catherine E. Coulson,
Dana Ashbrook, Peggy Lypton, Everett McGill, Eric DaRe, Wendie Robie, Ian
Buchanan, Michael J. Anderson, and Piper Laurie
Guest
Stars: Miguel Ferrer, Dan O’Herlihy, Heather Graham, Michael Parks, Carel
Struycken, Don Amendoilia, Billy Zane, Kenneth Welsh, Hank Worden, David
Duchovny, David Warner, Chris Mulkey, Al Strobel, Clarence Williams III, Ted
Raimi, Julee Cruise, and David Lynch
Writers:
Mark Frost, David Lynch, Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, Barry Pullman, Tricia
Brock, and Scott Frost
Directors:
Duwayne Dunham, David Lynch, Tina Rathbone, Tim Hunter, Stephen Gyllenhaal,
Jennifer Lynch, Lesli Link Glatter, Caleb Deschanel, and Mark Frost
Executive
Producers: David Lynch and Mark Frost
Feature
length: 18 hours and 1 minute
Extras:
Insights From Series Directors, Interactive Interview Grid, Season Two Log Lady
Introductions, David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE Trailer
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 5.1 and Brazilian Portuguese Language Monaural Sound
Subtitles:
English Closed Captions and Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Three Two-Disc Think Packs Within A Glossy Cardboard Slipcase
Sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, and Monaural Sound
Years
of Television Broadcast: 1990-1991/DVD Release: 2007
Home
Video Distributor: CBS DVD And Paramount Home Entertainment
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
About two weekends ago from the time of this
writing, I was house sitting over a few days and brought with me CBS DVD and
Paramount Home Entertainment’s Twin Peaks: The Second Season to pass
the time and get some work done. I wrote four pages of notes about the series
for this review and intended on posting my review before the Easter/Passover
holiday. Unfortunately I not only had to shift around my original intended
online publishing schedule, but I lost my notes so this review is being written
entirely on memory from a set I screened two weeks ago and as such some elements
of this discussion may not be as detailed as readers have come to expect.
However the series on DVD can still be discussed and I do remember enough to
give my informed opinion. People in North America waited six years for this DVD
set to come out for reasons that frankly no longer matter since the second
season of Twin Peaks is finally here and those of you who have the first
season DVD set that was released by the now defunct Artisan Home Entertainment
as well as the Asian import DVD containing the American television version of
the pilot, can now take a breath of fresh air while relaxing and sipping a damn
good cup of coffee. The packaging of the second season set is close enough to
the style of the original with a glossy slipcase featuring Kyle MacLachlan as
Agent Cooper on the cover and the six discs come housed in three slim think
packs or what is sometimes referred to as slim keep cases.
Major Spoilers
Warning
If the first season of Twin Peaks was
the introduction to the town’s eccentric characters and dark secrets that
contained the mystery of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” then the second season
asks the broad question of why and presents us with what is in some ways a
tragedy. The tragedy of Laura Palmer’s death as compounded by the revelation
of her killer and then the tragedy of FBI Agent Dale Cooper since if the prequel
film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me made any impression upon me it is that
Agent Cooper’s soul is trapped within the Black Lodge. A netherworld of
opposites occupied by entities that are both benign and malevolent in nature.
They represent the illusion of duality in the universe as well as the light and
dark sides of nature that is within us all. They also represent the fact that
there is much more out there than we can perceive or understand and this makes
our world both a wondrous and potentially frightening place depending upon our
point of view, which like the series characters shifts with each moment. You
don’t have to be dead to be trapped in the Black Lodge and since this other
dimension is beyond what we would perceive as linear time, I submit that Cooper
has always been within the Black Lodge, which accounts for some dialogue in Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as well as the fact that after Laura Palmer’s
death, Cooper is present within the Black Lodge to comfort her since they are
and always will be two lost souls. Since the victim of possession by Bob is not
necessarily aware or in control of all of his or her actions during the
possession, the flash forward 25 years in the future from the year 1989, which
is when the series takes place, could suggest that the elderly Cooper in the
Black Lodge has either reunited with his soul and does not yet fully realize
what has happened to him or his body is dead and thus it has reunited with his
spirit in the Black Lodge and temporarily taken the form of an older Cooper the
same way Leland Palmer’s spirit within the Black Lodge once again has his
original hair color back. These entities pretty much can choose to present
themselves however they choose, which may account for the reason why The Man
From Another Place and Bob do not have dead glazed over eyes, but Laura, her
cousin, and father do. Laura’s eyes actually change from normal to a dead like
glaze during Cooper’s visit.
The attempts of the giant (Carel
Struycken) to warn Cooper through cryptic clues not to let his girlfriend
(played by a baby faced Heather Graham) enter the Miss Twin Peaks contest fall
upon eyes and ears that misunderstand the warnings much like the way Laura fails
to understand the vision she gets of Cooper’s girlfriend in the feature film.
Cooper won’t arrive in Twin Peaks until after she’s dead so the message
seems meaningless and confusing to her. We exist trapped within the field of
time or at least that is how it seems and like the image of people chained in a
cave where they only see the shadows they project, but can’t tell the
difference between what is the shadow and what casts it, the denizens of the
Black Lodge are trapped in what might as well be Hell where repetition and
fruitless desires evoke echoes that are misinterpreted continually and always
will be because time as we understand it means nothing in the Black Lodge and in
possibly the White Lodge too. They could both be the same place. Ultimately
everything that happens in Twin Peaks like the TV show and feature film that
followed it is already scripted and recorded and as much as we would like to
warn Dale Cooper ourselves of the danger that awaits him, all we can do is watch
the story as it has been presented to us and enjoy it for what it is regardless
if you agree with my take on the show or not because while a point of view may
change over time, the series stands outside time and like Cooper, Laura,
Cooper’s girlfriend, and Leland Palmer too, the action can be viewed over and
over again on DVD, but nothing can change what happens now because it all has
already been produced and thus has already occurred. This is the reason why I
see the second season in many ways as the tragedy of FBI Agent Dale Cooper.
If
you want any hope then at least I can offer this, if David Lynch is the
co-creator of the series and more or less might as well as be the creator or God
that presides over these characters then if the stars align in a certain way
then maybe one day what we understand as the fate of the characters that inhabit
Twin Peaks will change for “one cannot go against the word of
God…”
End
Of Major Spoilers
Like
many programs that were produced during the late 1980s and early 1990s, I
believe Twin Peaks was shot on film, but edited with video. I may be
wrong in this belief because the episodes certainly look better on DVD than
another series distributed on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment that was in
production on syndicated television with first run episodes during the same time
as the second season of Twin Peaks originally aired and is available on
DVD too. Compare early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD
to Twin Peaks and you will notice a certain amount of video noise from
the masters used to create the discs. Now Twin Peaks: The Second Season
looks much better then the early DVD seasons of Star Trek: The Next
Generation and if the film exists, maybe they were cleaned up or at least
double checked to ensure the quality was not lacking, but my guess is the show
was probably edited on video and thus that would account for the minimal, but
still evident video grain that can be seen on the screen while watching the
episodes on these DVDs.
Twin Peaks: The Second Season is presented on DVD in the original (1.33:1) television broadcast aspect ratio with a remixed English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack and a Brazilian Portuguese Language Monaural Soundtracks encoded as options along with English Closed Captions for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired and Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese Language Subtitles encoded onto all six discs as options. Newly recorded interviews with select series directors discussing the episodes as well as their admiration for both the show and series co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost and the sixth disc features an interview grid that can enable the viewer to play through all the new interview clips as one reel or individually in any order the viewer wishes. Each episode can be viewed individually or collectively one after the other with or without the videotaped Log Lady Introductions, which can also be viewed separately too. The trailer for David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE is included on disc one and wraps up the extra value material within the six-disc DVD box set. The interactive menus feature animated transitions to standard interactive still fame menus and all are easy to navigate.
I
must note that watching Twin Peaks The Second Season on DVD is a much
better experience than watching it week to week and I feel I got more out of
watching the show now than I did back in 1990 and 1991. The overall season holds
together much better and one can really get a great sense of the wonderful sense
of humor, irony, and imagination David Lynch has that is greatly appreciated by
his fans. Twin Peaks: The Second Season is available on DVD-Video now at
retailers on and offline courtesy of CBS DVD and Paramount Home Entertainment
and it is my hope that since the original DVD releases of the pilot and first
season are now out of print, CBS DVD and Paramount will reissue both in one set
and even perhaps include an option that would allow viewers to see either the
American TV version of the pilot or the European stand alone feature film
version through seamless branching.
©
Copyright 2007 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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