Pilot

Diane, it's 5.40 pm. Welcome to the first episode of Twin Peaks Peaks. This is not another Twin Peaks podcast really at this point. But my name is Ashley and this is Matt.

Hi. And we're going to be re-watching Twin Peaks in anticipation of the upcoming revival. On Showtime, I'm proud to say first episode sponsor. We really landed an amazing opportunity here, two complete unknowns with a cable network behind us.

That's a lie, sorry. Sorry. But it's just super enthusiastic. Feel free to contact our agents.

Yes, do contact our agents. Ashley is my agent. I am Ashley's agent. And I'm sure we can work something out.

Yeah. We were only asking six figures. In any case, we are in Matt's bedroom about to discuss the pilot episode. My recording studio slash bedroom.

Thank you. I mean, just a few more cats and you have a cat ranch. We only have one cat here. OK, anyway, the pilot.

Yeah, that's what we're here to discuss as is befitting of a first episode for the podcast. I think I watched the pilot when I was either 17 or had just turned 18. I believe I was on the verge of turning 18 when I first watched it, which is I watched it on. And this is the thing.

By the way, if you couldn't tell by our baby-ish voices, we weren't even alive when the pilot premiered either of us. So I was just about to turn 18. It was the summer of whatever year that was, I guess, 2010. And Netflix streaming wasn't even a thing yet.

I feel like that's how for you, I don't think it was. Was that actually Netflix for like eight years? But was that actually a service at that point? Oh, yeah.

OK, then maybe I'm just remembering. But Twin Peaks definitely wasn't on it. Yeah, probably not. Take yourselves back to the olden days of 2010 or there about when TV streaming was not as ubiquitous as it is now.

Yeah, you can just go to Amazon and order a pair of socks and then watch Six Feet Under. Yeah, you could order Six Feet Under on DVD with your socks. Exactly. And wait two to four weeks for them to arrive.

Yeah, that was probably even the tail end of Blockbuster video. Yeah, there were probably a couple locations open at that time. Yeah, a couple of sad, sad locations. Anyway, I did actually stream it though.

I didn't get the DVDs or watch it some other conventional way or pirate edit or something. It was actually available for free streaming on CBS's website. You could watch the entire series. Yeah, I think CBS used to do that.

Star Trek was up there too. Was it? Yeah, we'll start Trek used to be up there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, original series.

Yeah, anyway, it was everything I think but the pilot. You could stream for free on CBS. And I started watching it because I had actually, this will come up, I'm sure, in more detail in a later episode. But I had had an experience in North Bend, the town where Twin Peaks, a lot of locations, the Double R diner and so forth, actually existed and was used as the filming location for pretty much everything, the pilot actually.

So I knew the show existed. North Bend was about half hour from where I lived in Washington. And I went to the town and then I came back and I was like, I'm going to finally watch the show. And I was about not very far into it when my mom found out I was watching the show and then was like, I can't.

Like, I can't be in the room while you're watching that show. Because this is a story that we will expand on a couple episodes from now. But there is a moment, and it's not in the pilot, but there's a moment where my mom was just like, no, I can't do this show. And that's my beginning with Twin Peaks.

And I did like marathon that show basically. But you'll get more little. Yeah, we'll expand on our origin story that later date. What did you do first?

Watch it. It actually wasn't as a freshman in high school or not high school college, which is where you and I met. So this would be probably a year after you watched it. And I remember it just became this thing.

We went to a very small college and it became this thing where you had to watch Twin Peaks. And it became very weird. It was on Netflix at that point. And I remember there was a big cult around it and who you invited to watch Twin Peaks alone in your room late at night.

Oh. Yeah. But I was not having that experience. Because you were in high school.

Well, I was not having an experience with Twin Peaks. But more accurately, I wasn't then rewatching it while we were in college with special guests coming to my shitty cramp dorm room. So that was your initial experience of the show then? Well, OK.

So the first time I watched the pilot, I remembered it took me several starts to do it, just because the pacing was so slow. And I found it very difficult to be invested in. And I often have this problem with camp where it's sometimes difficult for me to read what is purposeful and what is not purposeful when it comes to camp. I had the same experience with the pilot queerist vote, which is a very campy show at least.

And it's like initial run. But there was one day that I was feeling not so hot. And I just laid in bed, unable to change Netflix and just watched the whole pilot. And from then on, I was hooked.

OK. Now, we do have more than a few differences in our background coming to the show. Had you watched a bunch of David Lynch stuff already at that point? So you were prepared more for his style.

Whereas I, to this point, still, haven't seen, I think, any of his movies apart from Fire Walk with me. Really? Yeah. Really?

Because I had seen Mochaal and Drive, which will come up later, I had seen parts of a racerhead and parts of Blue Velvet by the time that I was watching Twin Peaks. Yeah. No. Actually, it goes back to that point about my mother, where Blue Velvet is also the one movie she will never watch.

Again. So I don't know. I think she already knew that about Blue Velvet by the time Twin Peaks premiered. And then I was like, I'm going to give this show, directed by the same person who I think is a total creep who's given me nightmares.

Like, I don't know how she possibly thought that was going to work out for her. That's interesting. But anyway, so there were David Lynch and VHS tapes in the house or anything. And I still haven't gone back and watched it.

Because I'm usually a very, especially when it comes to movies, I can go through a TV show on my own, which is weird to say now because now when you go watch a TV show, you basically binge watch it. Oh, yeah. But I don't often go on my way to just sit and watch a movie by myself. Yeah.

I find it really difficult to watch movies to a certain event. It's almost like a middle form story telling at this point, because you get the short form of an episode, but also the long form of a multi episode arc. And in some senses, I feel like a movie is both too short and too long at this point. I think it's interesting to think about what else was on TV at the time, just briefly before we launch into it.

I just wanted to think about the fact that I think Simpsons was in its first or second season at around this time or about to premiere. Was it when did the pilot premiere? I don't know. You're a Simpsons fan.

No, no, no, not the pilot of the Simpsons. The pilot couldn't be teaching. I know. I do.

It's April. Oh, I have it written down. Oh, she's flipping through notes. This is actually flipping through notes.

This isn't some audio theater you're hearing. No. So it premiered on April 8, 1990. And the pilot is set on February 24, 1989.

Yeah. OK. Yeah. No, it's so contemporaries on TV.

Simpsons, I believe the Golden Girls was not yet done. It's just that's all I have to say is I was thinking about that. Like, what else is on? Cheers would have already ended at this point.

Really? Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not.

I think Cheers was over that early. Because it's a lot. We're still a ways out from the reason I'm saying it's like, it's a ways out from Frasier, right? You're right.

That is a ways out from Frasier. We're still not at cost-out at Scramble Dinks yet. We've done a lot of talking around Twin Peaks so far. We have.

Let me check on the TV TV season. We promise you this is a Twin Peaks podcast. I mean, is it at this point? No, it totally is.

Don't worry because we're going to talk about the pilot right now. You have written down some notes about the actual production. This is a David Lynch and Mark Frost production. And I'm sure we will touch on the intricacies and details of that creative partnership as time goes on as we go through the show.

But also, I've got that particularly local connection. And you have it up here. Thank you. I have the list of the show.

You have the wiki article up. I saw. If what you would guess is like murder, she wrote, The Simpsons was on at the time. Murphy Brown, Designing Women, Who's the Boss, The Wonder Years, or Than.

I was going to say, wow, I was going to say, a lot of these Twin Peaks has to be the most, apart from the Simpsons, Twin Peaks has to be one of the most notable shows from this era. But I'm totally wrong. You got Cheers, you got Designing Women. But at the same time, these are all multi-cam shows that are shot on the sound stages.

That was my actual point. This is a show that I think the pilot was actually shot on film. Yeah, I think so. Maybe wrong there.

Back Checker. Also, if anyone listens to this, wants to fact check after the fact and contact us, that would be great. That would be so cool. Anyway, because that means you're listening.

So the television landscape is not, I think, prepared for something like Twin Peaks, but even not prepared for a show that has a focus on a small town. It's not like a cartoonish image of like, hick life or something. This is. Yeah, I mean, basically what you're looking at right now are sitcoms and procedurals.

You're looking at something that's very episodic and formulaic with a limited setting and a limited cast. So for David Lynch to like, come to TV after already having a career in film and propose this somewhat broad-reaching TV show with a huge cast that specifically wasn't going to be shot on a sound stage in LA. Like that's very new and that's very different at the time. So I think unless you have some particular production notes, you want to cover.

You do? OK. Let's start there. I am all have you know, itching.

I am itching to talk about the opening moments of the show. But let's set the stage for how we get to North Bend, Washington, and get that group of people together. Yeah, totally. So David Lynch was already an established director at the time.

So he had a racer head under his belt, doing Blue Velvet. And Mark Cross was coming from Hill Street Blues. So he had the TV background at the time. And it seems like basically ABC was comfortable taking this project on because of Mark Cross' previous success in television.

But the show itself was originally titled Northwest Passage. Did you know that? I did know that. And set in South Dakota, which would have been a very different show.

Yeah. And then there was like a real Northwest Passage in South Dakota. So they moved it. But both David Lynch and Mark Cross have some like civic Northwest, like Northern States background.

And I think that authenticity really bleeds into the series. Yeah. Lynch is from Montana, right? Yes.

OK. And Mark Cross spent some time in Minnesota growing up. OK. So Northern States, yeah.

OK. No, it's like Northwest by any means. Certainly not what? Five minutes from the Canadian border, whatever they describe in pieces being.

Yeah. When they say it's basically at the corner of Canada and Idaho. Yeah. So it's West Eastern Washington, not Western Washington.

And a couple of interesting notes. So when ABC took this project on, they basically stipulated that they wanted Lynch and Ross to film an ending. So that if the pilot tanked, they would sell it as a self-encapsulated movie in Europe. OK.

And so those sequences actually ended up being Cooper's dreams in later episodes. Huh. All right. Yeah.

I knew because there's, I actually have, we can see it right here. I have a Warner Brothers hits tape that is the Twin Peaks pilot. I think if I were to get up and cross the room, which would be bad podcasting, bad podcasting etiquette, and flip the tape over, it mentions something about the ending that was specially made for the pilot. Yeah.

So. Yeah. Didn't know it was re-incorporated into the show that way. Yeah.

I'm curious to re-watch it and see what that might look like. Well, if we can get a VHS tape player. It would be a test tape, someone. Yeah.

I own that purely because I saw it for $1 in a store. And this is what, you know, 1920 at this point. I'm like, I love Twin Peaks. I'll spend $1 on a cassette tape.

I actually left it. Your dedication knows no. I left it in one of the dorms at our college for a while and then took it back because no one had, like, watched it and adopted it as their thing. So it was just your thing at that time.

It was just sitting there. Another interesting fact. So the first Frost Lynch Adventure was a show called The Lemurians about a squad of detectives who root out an infiltration of alien beings. NBC decided not to err it, but it sounds like the Twin Peaks X file crossover of our dream.

So David Lynch, if you're listening, please bring that back. Bring it back. Please bring it to Showtime. So on the note of this, it's like my brain is broken now.

It's a show that Addis Face was going to be about aliens. I think so. I'm literally just quoting the description. I haven't investigated the actual pilot script that was written by any means.

Because yeah, I guess that just that short description seems so bereft of you on. So it's like, yeah, we've got invaders. Let's take them out. As I'm sure, well, before we get to the plot, we'll say some things about how to watch the show along with the podcast and spoilers and all that.

No, no, no, no. We don't have to start over at this point. But I think what's special about this show and what all these circumstances that led to it being made and being picked up even before it became kind of the hit it was on TV at that time, it's so weird. And that just sounds like a terrible pitch.

That's what I was searching for. That's what all those long pause and the grinding gears are about. That sounds like an awful pitch for a TV show. But I mean, the X-Files made nine seasons into movies out of a very similar presence.

I suppose. And at that time, Fox was doing a bunch of dumb shit on the rest of its lineup. Yeah, Fox was like a baby network at the time. But right now, I think even 1990, are we pre-Fox or is this?

We, well, Simpsons are on Fox. No, right. Yeah. OK.

Simpsons are on Fox. So we're very baby Fox. Yeah. X-Files was like its first step into being a real-ass network.

Yeah. OK. But even as far back as 1990, NBC was squandering. Squandering its treasures.

So something has never changed. Exactly. One more fun fact before we really get into it. Did you know that Mike Cross wrote most of the more verbose characters like Ben Horn and Lynch really focused on Yell Cooper?

Huh. Interesting. Yeah. When describing their process, it seemed very collaborative and that they were really trying to work because one mind, but they did say that there was sort of a divide between the more articulate verbose characters and the characters that really spoke to David Lynch naming Yell Cooper.

Yeah. Namely Dale. Namely Dale. David Lynch's OC.

No, we'll get to David Lynch's OC. We'll get to David Lynch's OC. Now, just before we launch in, so we've got Kyle McLachlan and a couple other actors who are, at this point, already regular Lynch collaborators in the show. So it's not like it's not just like this is David Lynch gets tapped to make a TV show.

Anybody who would have been in the know at that point and would have been a fan of his would have also seen that the starring role is Kyle McLachlan and you've got a couple other past Lynch collaborators in there. And that I have to imagine that some of the buzz before this premiered, at least in that community, however large or small that may have been at that point of Lynch fans would have been pretty big. Yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to find the woman who plays the Laura's mom.

There's a real terrifying performance at Racer Head. Oh, Grace of Risky? Yes. She has some truly bone curdling moments in this pilot.

So should we start to talk about what happened in this episode or rather talk about how we're going to talk to our listeners about the episodes? Yeah. So we're going to try to keep this spoiler friendly. So we're not going to directly talk about spoilers and upcoming episodes, but I think we can allude to later events and reveals that I think you can safely anticipate.

But we definitely want to make this a podcast that anyone can just pick up and listen to as they're exploring 20th for the first time. Yeah. So if you're really spoiler-averse, I'm the type of person who, if someone tells me what happens in a single episode of a TV show and I haven't watched it yet, I'm like, OK, fine. You know, it's not going to prevent me from watching it and getting enjoyment out of it.

And people leave things out. I'm sure we'll leave things out. But if you want to watch the pilot now, either on your rewatch or this is maybe your first time watching it, and you've not yet watched it, pause this, go watch it. Open Netflix.

Yeah, open Netflix. Take the DVD set that your weird uncle gave you and pop in the first disc or something. Watch the pilot and then come back. Cool.

Hey, now you're listening. All you knowobs are here to hear us talk about what actually happens in the pilot. Yeah. So I was mentioning this too earlier.

I have watched this about three times at this point, three or four times I've watched the actual pilot. I guess this is my fourth. And I hadn't realized that the first shot is Josie Packard. I knew that the first event was Pete going out to fish and finding the body.

But I didn't realize that we opened on Josie doing her makeup. Yeah. So and Josie, in this episode, is actually one of the characters who I feel like is most both from that positioning and in kind of the few details, the few expository details you get about her, set up to be one of the mysterious residents of Twin Peaks. So yeah, the first person you see on screen is Joan Chant.

And this is definitely without a doubt her biggest role, the thing she's most known for. Yeah, she was on Genghis Khan, the Netflix. OK. Or that might not be the name of it.

The Genghis Khan series on Netflix. I know that she actually runs a food blog now. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. And then there was a post, an accompanying post where she talked about her time with Twin Peaks. I won't get exactly to the what the content of that was because that would maybe that that cast us ahead, you know, episodes and episodes down the line. But yeah, so you see Josie, Josie Packard, and then the first line uttered by anybody is uttered by my boy Pete, one of my favorite characters, gone fishing as he looks at Catherine.

And they both kind of exchanged their mutual look of disdain for one another. A very, very strained relationship summed up in two words in a glance. They say the least. And then we follow Pete out to the beach.

And that's where we come across the body, wrapped in plastic. And that really ties off the chain of events, obviously, because the body is the body of Laura Palmer. Who, coming back to the show every time, it's, I love how much the nail in the pilot that everybody in this town knows this girl. But at the same time, you already figure out within like, not even half of the pilot, that everybody knows her in a slightly different way.

Yeah. They do not take a long time. Like, I feel like say a newer TV show might to trickle out details about this girl's multiple lives. Yeah.

You get it pretty fast. But more importantly, I think the impact is sold, the impact of her passing is sold very well in the first half of this episode. Yeah, it really affects everyone in the town. And I think that that's pretty interestingly contrasted with, and this is jumping ahead, Ron at Pulaski, who survived, but is suspected of being being victim to the same perpetrator.

And I think that there's a pretty strong contrast between Laura Palmer, a perfect student, girlfriend of Bobby Briggs from the football team. Like, cute, hunky football player. Ashvick versus Ron at Pulaski, who comes from like a working class background, who is already, you know, working in the sex tree. And I think that we definitely see a commentary of sorts on like the Madonna for it to cut me.

Oh, yeah. I mean, the show, the first punch it doesn't pull in the whole episode is showing her body. Yeah. You know, I don't know the promotional materials, even like the newspaper ads then, we're all who killed Laura Palmer.

Yeah. Like that was used to promote the show, which then countless shows since then have aped in their kind of just like, here's our catchphrase that leads to our mystery. Or, you know, shows have like kind of a catchphrase for each season. But who got Laura Palmer was like the reframe and Pete wanders out the lonesome fog horn blows, turns the corner and then you see her dead body.

And I remember I've read this on some Twin Peaks website and it may have been a direct pull quote from a review or something, but that the writer said like Laura Palmer's body is the deadest thing you'll see on television. Like it was it was striking to say the least, especially for the time, because now you have a paintable, just Dexter, Dexter, dead bodies everywhere. But just the plastic that body with like hints of, you know, you can see there's some blood, but you don't get a clear look at anything except her face. And then that's just completely completely gone blue.

And yeah, it's it's not a regular TV show. Like to me, if you set aside just the very opening moment, you know, when you're like, who's who's this person looking at herself in the mirror? Who's Josie Packard? It immediately goes up against not be a regular TV show.

And then before you even meet the main character of the show, you get a solid half hour with the townspeople as they react to this news. We talked about Bobby the football player, but let's maybe talk about the diner. Unless there's something else you want to visit on the beach first. There's a moment when they send up the police.

Yeah. Yeah. Andy. Oh my God.

Andy is actually like I said, Andy is yeah up there in terms of favorite characters for me. And when we start to feel more comfortable talking about what we want to see in the revival, I have some I have some things to say about. Well, actually, actually many of the people on the police force of Twin Peaks, where I want to see them in the future. But yeah, I'm really interested to get to that.

But now it's not the time. Andy's squeamish, sad, teddy bear reaction to the dead body, which is also Sheriff Truman, Michael Ankeen. Is that how you say his last name? I'm not sure.

Go with it. Michael Ankeen, Sheriff Harry S. Truman, also just like great, great name. Just being like, again, Andy, like after the last however many times you still can't keep it together.

How many murders are in this town of 5,000 people? Oh, yeah, that's a well, 51 something thousand according to the sign, which does this look like a town of 50,000 people, though, because ABC asked that the number be changed because a town of 5,000 people sounded unrelatable. Yeah, yeah, that's one of my I do know that true of your factoid. It's still me that true of your factoid.

So, well, there you go. I love that the signs. It's one of those definite and congruities are just like, this is, you don't need to be happy to do this episode. You don't need to be many episodes in your site.

There's this is an account of 50,000 people. Why is this sense like that? The Twin Peaks metropolitan area. You know, it's just one of the many mysteries of the show.

Where are they? I want answers. Maybe you'll get them. 50,000.

Where are they? I have some ideas. I have some figures in the past. They've already been taken at this point.

So, the diner? A diner. Yeah, I mean, we meet all of the cast. And what I think is interesting is, you know, the characters became so noteworthy.

And I think that, you know, everyone has a favorite Twin Peaks character, the side sale Cooper, you know, that they love. But it's interesting because Lynch and Frost were saying that they focus on the town itself and the landscape of the town before they focus on any of the characters. And I think, for a certain extent, that really informs the character because you're not like, well, why is this person in Twin Peaks? They're all people that you could see living in a small town in a civic Northwest.

Yeah. There's there's very few characters we're introduced to here who we don't get a context of their place in the town. Obviously, we have the cops. We meet Harry.

We meet Andy. We meet Lucy, the receptionist. And with the context of the diner, we're actually we're actually kind of keyed off to who Bobby's going to be because I think we go to we go to Laura's mom, right? Yeah.

They bring in the cops to look at the body and then they've got to inform Laura's mother and Laura's father. And there's this. I remember it's a pretty abrupt cut from them. I'm discovering it's Laura to Laura's mom just like saying come down and you get that great shot, which is a couple of times in the pilot up the stairwell with the fan with a fan.

Just one of those things where it's like, you show me that even like it's just like for a millisecond I feel like I swim in these. And Laura's gone. She says, oh, Bobby, and then we go, where's Bobby? And we get Shelly and we get Norma and we get Bobby and we get the establishment of the diner, which is one of the most beautiful and I would argue you could put it on any list of like iconic TV locations.

And we get it in its full glory because this is in North Bend in the town of North Bend the way that diner looked then. It later is swapped out for a set, which I feel like is a very good recreation, but it's not perfect. But here you see it in its full glory and it looks great. Yeah.

And you get some of the show's humor with, I wish I remember the character's name, but she's the German waitress. Oh, yeah, I was going to bring her up because I feel like we never see her. Well, that's well, without spoiling too much. We will see the German waitress again.

But she comes in late and then there's just like innuendos thrown around about your man in sausage and she's giggling and we're like, aren't we focusing on this terrible tragedy around this dead girl? And it's like, no, you're going to take some twists and turns on this pile of loan in terms of one moment. It's, it's very weird and it's serious and people are screaming and crying. And then there's just jokes, jokes and jokes.

And then Bobby turns on that eerie music as he leaves the diner. Yes. And Bobby flirts with Norma because that's the thing that Norma does. And then is Norma one of your, they're all the girls.

All the girls are the things that your girls, that makes sense. Bobby and Shelley drive off and then we get our first hint of not appearance of until later Leo. They just, I love the music hit and we have to talk a lot about the music because it's one of the many things that makes this show great. Angelo, I don't want to get it wrong.

Vadala Mende, like, is that the correct conversation? Oh, it's not, I'll learn it guarantee. I promise that there's just this huge hit when you see Leo's truck parked out in front of the house. And I do remember actually my introduction to the show when that happened.

And it like, it like maybe stand up like folds up in my seat and be like, this is, this is a serious, like there are a few, few more effective uses of music to be like this, this is a fact of a pantschittingly scary moment for these two characters than just that like loud bomb when they see that truck parked out there. And then I think we transition to the high school because Bobby is fucking late in the rest of the high school is about to finally find out what has happened to Laura. Yeah, they call Bobby the principal though. For us, we see Mike, the name is Bobby and Mike later becomes a good and different way.

But for now, it's just, you know, these two shitty high school co-appareters who really shitty people. They're girlfriends. And then that's when we see Audrey. We see Audrey close to then and we see Donna.

We see Audrey smoking in high school, which is how you know she's cool. You see her changing her shoes from the saddle shoes to the red heels. And then we get like a glimpse of like the Donna Audrey friendship that we like should have had. The brief passing the hallway.

Yeah. Audrey Audrey is like, if not Cooper, who he's still not gotten to yet. Audrey is like the other huge breakout character. Oh, yeah.

I would say. Huge. And this show, this episode does a great deal to establish that. And then even the next couple of episodes past that like already they could have had her just be a troublemaker in the town and people would have been like a shit for.

But then they bring in her relationships with other people with a show and it only gets. Yeah. She's a very well written character. Unlike some characters who become very boring.

Some characters become very boring indeed. So yeah, we get up. I think one of the things that people when I've told friends to watch Twin Peaks and they watch the pilot or pilot in a couple episodes, the thing I always your back from them is like they're so much crying and screaming. And this gets back to your camp comment from earlier where you're trying to distinguish.

Like was that what kind of before you were incapacitated and just had Netflix open and watch the pilot? Is that what stopped you? Was it like a crying in the classroom? Yeah, I think it was both like the pace and the camp.

It was like there wasn't like a sense of there being like a fast enough pace to like pay off. And like it seemed like the slowness was just building up to these very campy moments like Donna crying in the classroom. I know someone else that I knew who first watched this show said like, aren't you not supposed to have people crying in your screenplays? Isn't that like a faux pas?

I have never heard that before. But then again, I have not of the theatre. But there is quite a bit of crying in this episode. Quite a bit of crying.

Yeah. So we meet Laura's family. We meet her friends. We meet Donna and James James breaks that pencil, which is also I mean so many moments that I think stand out in people's mind is like, quintessential Twin Peaks moments are actually a lot of them are from the pilot, which I think speaks to I mean everything about it.

But particularly David's approach to like really wowing them on the first go out is just like the images he chooses to use and the way that characters are introduced along the way. And we are already doing, you know, we're recording this and we're pretty fresh off of the most recent season of Orange is the New Black coming out. And I will use that as an example of a show that has a huge ensemble cast where you're juggling multiple storylines. And within this 90 minutes of the pilot, you're expected to follow these characters throughout the course of a single day.

Yeah. And I think it does a really good job of like that's such a huge ask. Follow characters through a single day that the audience hasn't met before and give them a good sense of who these characters are as this transformative event happens that just. And you're not invested in Laura's death at all.

Yeah. As a viewer. It's absolutely nuts. It's like all asked for any TV show.

And I don't think many TV shows would dare to attempt that these days because there's there's it's like too much ground to cover and yet you get a pretty good sense of who these people were before Laura's death and a decent idea, at least for the near future of what this is going to do to them, what this is going to bring out these people. Definitely. As I was mentioning to you earlier, I feel like in a different format, you know, these events would have taken up, you know, four to six episodes. You could do it kind of or interested in black soil where you're like focusing in on a cultural character's influence with you.

But I think that the way that everything is sort of woven together in the style and the pace that it is that really works. And I think it's somewhat challenging for the audience, which is always kind of like welcome, in my opinion. Yeah. But it also gives for those of you listening who are re-watching, I think the pilot, for me, always, I always notice, like I said, just about the beginning and then a couple other points, I always notice new and interesting things when I watch it or things are, you know, suddenly new to my eyes that I passed over before.

Like this moment in the high school, before the, you know, do the announcement on the PA and talk about Laura, you're just on the hallway. And there's the shot of a guy who dances off doing these wiggly arms. Yeah. And it focuses on this guy.

This guy is not a character in the show. He's not anybody. It's just this amazing moment that it's one of those, it's one of those little, little David Lynch touches that is so perfect. And I had never focused on it before I re-watched it for this.

And I was just like, I have to talk about this. It's a, I want a gift of that scene. I want to know who that guy is in Twin Peaks. But I also kind of don't because it's so beautiful.

We'll be in the right way. That's the important question. Yeah. His style of dancing was really reminiscent of that.

That was the dancing that will later become significant. Ooh, foreshadowing you're saying. It might just be me projecting like importance onto this weird dude having this weird moment. Or there may have been just a strange extra.

And then David was like, we'll keep it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we'll give it a couple of things.

That will go to in a moment. But what I saw that was weird at the high school is that girl running across the courtyard screaming like, who was she? Like, that's her connection to Laura because she never comes back. Right.

Oh, yeah. How does she find out before everyone else? And why is she so upset? Yeah.

There's there's a palpable tension. And it seems like they're like keeping home room in and then not doing anything for a while. So like the rumors start flying. But you know, did that person know Laura?

Did that person have a connection to what was going on at girls life? We don't know. Yeah, I remember now. Maybe.

Maybe. The breaking point of mass hysteria. Who knows? Yeah.

Um, I think so we get all this action at the high school and the other the only other people we visit before this. We see the Martels. Um, you see Big Ed and Norm and uh, what's your name? Oh, no.

Maybe I patch. Oh my God, I just wear a seat in the show before. Now it's fine if you haven't and you're listening, but if you're making the podcast, we should have character names on the ready. No, it's fine.

I really, this is going to take. Anyway, we on this subject, we get the, we get the drape runner. Nadine. Yeah, Nadine.

Yeah, it sounds like a name. Nadine. We get Nadine and Ed's whole drape thing. The seeds of that.

I would watch just like the cutscenes of Nadine's drape runner saga. Yeah. This. Yeah.

You don't get to see the even close, you don't even scratch the surface, but I think all of Nadine's lines in this episode are all around the drapes. Um, and that may also be true of episode two. I guess we'll just have to watch. Uh, so we see them and we see, I think more importantly, we, uh, because this is a big player moment, we don't just see Audrey.

We see Ben Horn and Ben Horn is the, I'd say in my mind, the other one who like, uh, like Josie Packard is set up to be, uh, someone with some, some spooky dealings, if at least because, or at least because he is obviously mega rich and he's courting these no regions. Oh my God. Uh, my air sacks have never felt better. Yeah.

Um, well, and it's interesting that, um, we Lynn Palmer, Laura's father and Ben Horner introduced together, um, you know, they're business partners. And I think that over the course of the series, they, you necessarily grow apart because of what happened to Laura. Um, but it always is, uh, kind of clear for me to remember that their business dealings are so intertwined. Yeah.

I always like get fuzzy on this fact is Lee Lind, his lawyer. Yes. Okay. All right.

Um, yeah. It's, there are certain things that are just like, I know everything about these characters and there's something that's just like, but what, what, what do you, what's it exactly that you do, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, and Palmer? Um, also, so the great Northern, uh, uh, Ben's establishment, uh, which is where our, our hero, let's say, is going to, uh, stay for, uh, the time being where Dale's going to get a room, uh, with a beautiful waterfall and everything, actual place, actual place. Those are snow quality falls.

Uh, I have a picture of me with some of my friends from high school in front of it. And actually a mutual friend of ours, our friend Lucas, uh, his dad was a chef there for a while or working the kitchen. I think I think it was interesting. Yeah.

Um, so we got, you know, it's almost as though we live in a small town where everything is connected. Uh, no, it's not. It's not like that at all. Um, but, uh, we'll add that to our list of places to check out when we eventually go to North Bend.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, North Bend is, there's lots of sea there and there's a diner and they have a bunch of different sandwiches that's actually, we'll get to that in the future, but they have like 60 different sandwiches and sandwiches are not, not as boy, way to say sandwiches aren't really a twin piece thing. So I don't get why they probably put cells on that.

That's, that's my story. Interesting. Now, uh, by and coffee though, that's another matter. And I think that now we should talk about our boy, everybody's boy, the special boy, especially in Dale Cooper, AKA, Kyle McLachlan, AKA Mayor, Portland, yeah, AKA, Trey McGoogle.

Trey McGoogle? Oh, is that, uh, yeah, it's a character from Sex and the City. Okay. And he's also a character on, um, also plays a character on How I Met Your Mother, right?

I don't want to talk about your mother. I think he plays a character that's literally called the Captain. Okay. How I met your mother is not, it's not my type of show.

So this is all, you know, a half remembered episodes from when I had nothing better to even sit at the friend's house who loved that show. But like point being, if you've never seen the show before, you've totally seen Kyle McLachlan's Hands and Mass Race before. Yes. Maybe you've seen him in Dune, another David Lynch production.

Lou Velvet. Yeah. Um, so yeah, Kyle McLachlan is most notable of the, of it. And currently the only one signed on for the revival is formally, formally legally binding.

David Lynch's, David Lynch's guy. And it's like, his introduction is almost like, it's, there's, I would read it, you know, I, well, I like to read it a little bit. You can, you as the person who has more theory and actual language to talk about this kind of stuff under your belt can shoot me down or like provide a better way of talking about it. But I like to see his arrival in the town almost as like David Lynch is saying, like, I have, I have established this world.

And now I am going to call in my big gun to set a lot of things in motion. Yeah. Um, really, I was, I was going to say, I mean, the first 36 minutes before we see, you know, Cooper are really purely expository, um, because you're just touching on these different people and establishing their characterization, their connection to Laura, their place in the town. And Kyle McLachlan is really sort of a catalyst for most of the action.

Yeah. And this is also our introduction to, uh, Dale Cooper's partner, Diane, uh, who he leaves many, many, uh, tape recorder messages for. And I'm sure you and I will have more to say about Diane in the future. I've always wondered like how long does it take for Diane to get these tapes?

Is he just mailing them to her when he finishes? Is he holding onto them? Is she only going to transcribe them when he gets back to the little, like, it's a very good question. There is a moment in this episode.

Um, Dale shows up, introduces himself to the sheriff and quickly goes about, you know, and this is like, I always, when I watch the pilot, um, try to place, I think, you know, what time of day I think it is. And he says the time of day is he's, you know, approaching town, but then, you know, they're in the hospital, they check in on Ronette and then, um, I hope you have a production note about this one. They actually go to see Laura's body. Um, yeah.

Yeah. Let's talk about that moment. Yeah. Yeah.

All I want to say is that conclusion of this is he records a message about send this, send this piece of evidence to Albert and then Albert turns up like that, like very fast. So, you know, there's, there is some question as to how fast these tapes are flying to Diane, but anyway, the autopsy room. Yeah. Um, the light of the fluorescent light in that actual physical space was just flickering and David Lynch was like, all right, this is creepy.

I love it. Let's incorporate it. And I think this might be misremembered, but there's that line where the, the, the doctor, uh, I think Dale asks, can you leave us alone? Can you leave us alone?

And the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Jim? And then, yeah, what's your name? Uh, I think that was just a, uh, a club. That was like a genuine flow of that was that dude's actual name, the actor's actual name.

Yeah. And it stayed in because I mean, kind of like a professional, like a, like a total pro. It did not break character. David Lynch was like, this is real.

This is a take. That's a, that's a, that's, you know, this is something I hope to not be let down by when I actually go and watch all the Lynch movies is that these moments are kind of peppered throughout Twin Peaks, um, especially, especially this first season, uh, where things just seem happenstance and are really interesting and beautiful as a result. Like that's, that's a piece of, it's not, and it's not like happening like, oh, you know, the way we did the dialogue was that we had people improv it out and then we just kind of like cut things away or, or picked natural dialogue from people having a conversation. It's, it's a, it's a real interaction and a mistake that has managed to make it its way into the world and made it feel more real as a result despite it, you know, despite all the dressings of murder, mystery and date, time, so take off and so forth and all the, all the copious amounts of crying.

Yeah, we've got, it was even more crying before we reached the end of the pilot. Yeah. One of the other comments that I get from people when they watch this first episode is that some of them think that Cooper's a little creepy because he shows up and he's got a purpose and he does the little sides. Like, what are the name of these big, beautiful trees?

Yeah. You know, his, his energy, I think to, to some people who aren't like, maybe like, you were, I just like, so down for the, the energy he gives off from moment one. I just like, he seems creepy. He can't be here with good intentions.

And one of the moments that I do see that kind of, I do see that take on up and thinking through is when he goes up to Laura's body and then immediately knows where to look and finds the R curled up in a fingernail, which tells you that this is, and it's established at the town meeting that this is a similar murder and he was already on this case. That's why he's been brought in and that he has a history and some idea of or weird sense for you start to see that come through how this crime and generally how people's behavior is going to play out. Yeah. But let's, let's touch on that town hall meeting because we get a couple other players introduced to it, right?

Yeah, I mean, we get the log lady. She's like, some lights, chilling with her log and her introduction being who's that lady with the log? We call her the log lady. Done.

Great show A plus television. We can end the podcast right here. That was all we needed to get to. We get, we get the mayor of Twin Peaks, who will float back in and out with the show.

And this is like, so we know most of the people say for those two in the room when we get there because we've got Josie, Catherine, Pete, Ben, and they're gathered. And this is one of those things you can take as like a really small town or not. But the addresses that they're like, they're like the heads of the city. Sensibly.

And we don't end up getting to know any of these other characters, too. I feel like something else is that the show has already told us and it's a pretty big world and a huge number of characters to keep track of. But there's no hinting of like whether or not you're going to the show doesn't concern itself with leaving things open ended as to create more intrigue. It's not like, Oh, who are the rest of these people?

And like, are we going to find out what their deal is like? No, everything is like on the table for you to go from, from this moment on. And there are like red herrings within that group, definitely. But no one's going to pop up in the town hall meeting.

You know, and you're just like, Oh, okay. One of the other players in front of you says, like, emerged on the scene, like, no, you are pretty well established with who you're going to be following this town, who's not going to come come in at a later date. Yeah. And that's, I think that's, I think about lost.

You are so right. You know, surprise is another civilization on the other side of the waterfall. Yeah. Surprise the lost spoilers.

It was a boy like her other shows. Personally, I don't get a fucking vote, but everybody knows that in lost second season, you find out more people to ride the plane crash. And there's like another group of people. Third season, there's this notion that two people who are just background characters are going to come out into the four and B main characters.

And Twin Peaks would never fucking play that game with you. No, not at all. It was not going to expect you to care about. It was not going to expect you to care about.

Yeah. They're not going to expect you to care about some extra who had no thought put into their character from day one. Everybody has some arcs that they are already in love. Yeah.

Which is definitely refreshing compared to like some current TV shows. Not to put anybody on blast, but I hope not speaking past anything here, but we're starting to get towards the meat of the pilot because there's some ideas of, you know, after some questioning of who might have been involved or more importantly, who was the last person to see Laura? Yeah. They go through the Palmer home and they find this video tape among other things.

And then we get some scenes of questioning with Bobby and Donna. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to Log Lady real quick.

OK. Have you seen all the log weight introductions? Yes. Yes.

I believe actually when I was watching it, I think when I was watching it on the CDS streams, I think those all came with the another for Bravo television, right? Yeah. When Bravo started doing this in the kid episodes in 1993, he's when David Lynch wrote the Log Lady introductions that same actress did with the log. Catherine Coulson, right?

Yeah. Yeah. OK. But the one, I'm not going to read all of it, but the log lady introduction for this episode and Casey hasn't seen it because they aren't on Netflix, which is kind of weird is to introduce this story, let me just say it encompasses the all.

It is beyond the fire, though few would know that meaning it is a story of many that begins with all and I know with one and I know her. The one leading to many is Laura Palmer. Laura is the one and I think that really encapsulates kind of the vibe of the pilot is that like 80 is going to in a sense focus on Laura and then the scope is going to broaden to these other characters that we've already been introduced to. Yeah.

So we get a sense. I mean, like from the first scene, especially the first scene in high school, Bobby, he's an asshole. We also meet Bobby's parents, interestingly. Yeah.

His dad, Major Briggs, portrayed by the venerable character actor Don S. Davis, who will later go on to play Scully's dad and ex-files and he will end up as, I believe, another general or maybe is it major big in the show? I think. Yeah.

So I think it's major. He's he's Briggs because Bobby Briggs. Yeah. So I think he's a general Hammond in Stargate SG one.