Twin Peaks (Season 1) with Eva Anderson

Blank check with Griffin and David

Blank check with Griffin and David

Don't know what to say or to expect

All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check

Welcome to Blank Check.

My name is Griffin Newman.

I live in Blank Czech.

I am known as downtown Griffey Nooms.

There is a story behind that.

There are many stories in Blank Czech.

Some of them are sad, some funny.

Some of them are stories of madness, of violence.

Some are ordinary.

Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery, the mystery of life.

Sometimes the mystery of death.

The mystery of this studio.

The studio surrounding blank check.

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, but begins with two.

Two friends.

And I was one of them.

The one leading to the many is the podcast.

The podcast is the one.

Now.

That's the log ladies' introduction.

Yes.

To the pilot.

Correct.

For Bravo TV, I assume.

Was it Bravo?

Oh, those were all done

after.

Look, it's one of the things about me that people would often be astounded by that I never watched this show.

You don't have the lore.

You're new to the lore.

Well, there's a lot of it I got by osmosis, but some of it I've been confused by.

And it's very interesting to watch this show now

after multiple waves of like memes.

Well, it's initial obsessive grip on the culture.

Right.

Then it's lingering.

I was alive.

I wouldn't have been watching.

I would not have been watching, but I was alive.

My ears were perfect.

Toddler Griffin just sort of osmosis, like something on ABC.

That's really turning people's heads.

I drop in Hollywood Reporter in the crib.

I was leafing through.

I had an Amy Archer mobile.

An Amy Archer mobile.

Wow.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then there's, yes, it's like lingering sort of legacy, it getting replayed on Bravo, it finally going to streaming, which I feel like gave it a huge modern win, and then the return and all this sort of stuff.

I was watching this, and I'm like, it's astounding how big certain characters loom in culture relative to how small they are on the show.

Like the log lady.

Yes.

And then I'm like watching it on the, I got this fucking cinder block of a fucking Blu-ray set, right?

That has like everything on it.

And I start seeing there's the option, oh, watch with previously on with preview, with log lady intros.

And I was like, okay, that's what I'm missing.

When it aired on broadcast, people were seeing the log lady at the beginning of every episode.

No.

Wrong.

This was done later, like 10 years later.

He filmed them all in 1993 when the show was syndicated to Bravo.

I guess back in the day, it's like, well, you only have 28 episodes where you're not going to syndicate to like real TV, but there's something called Bravo now.

So wait a second.

The quote I just did is something that actually wasn't part of the proper thing.

It's on the DVD.

It's on DVD.

I feel like the Log Lady introductions have become quite important.

Well, let me say something else then.

Yeah.

Yeah, there you go.

Oh, but that's a damn fine podcast.

Okay, great.

Wow.

Damn fine.

Podcast.

I sent a text and said, Does anyone want coffee?

And Ben's response was one word.

Wait.

I got you covered.

I brought coffee today.

Brew in a pot.

It just felt right.

Yeah, no, this, you're absolutely right.

David's got a half-empty McDonald's cup full of water and

of course.

That's right.

Yeah.

But the other, the other two.

Do Do you think there's a McDonald's in Twin Peaks?

Absolutely.

Have you been there?

I mean, I've been.

Our guests are shaking their head no.

Guess says no.

It does exist, and I lived there.

Yeah, David, what are you talking about?

I mean, I mean, it has a different,

it has a different name in reality.

I think you're being rude.

I think you're being rude to our guest's homeland or motherland.

But there's no McDonald's.

No, there's a burger place called Small Fries.

Oh, really?

Good name.

You asked me to introduce the show, and I think I already did about about as simply as I could have in the opening.

But this is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies and sometimes TV shows.

Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.

Baby.

Yeah, this is actually part of our Leslie Linka Gladder series.

One of the great TV shows.

We're doing kind of a sneaky, it's like a Christopher Macquarie.

We're going to piecemeal a gladder series.

Now and then.

She did direct now and then,

the iconic VHS classic of any millennial youth.

And did she do another FIFA?

It's called The Proposition, and it stars Madeline Stowe and Kenneth Branagh and Robert Loja.

Came out in 1998.

I don't really know anything else about it.

Poorly received.

I see.

Okay.

Talking about cult TV shows with sacred object DVD collections and such, the one I was obsessed with, unsurprisingly, was Freaks and Geeks.

Sure.

And there was the...

I directed a few of those.

I was going to say, I don't know if you guys remember, there was the high-end, sort of like limited run

Shot Factory the yearbook yeah with the the multiple commentaries on every that's like the original to me the original like TV box set that was so special yeah my most sacred object but it came in the yearbook replica that had like 200 pages of writing from everyone who ever worked on the show about everything sure

and like recaps on every episode and I just remember

she only did one but she did Kim Kelly is my friend which might be the best episode right Appetow said that

he hired her onto it because Leslie Mann had worked with her and said she's the best director I've ever worked with.

And he said, when I watched her work, I understood why.

Wow.

Anyway, this is a mini-series on the films of David Lynch.

It is called Twin Pods Firecast with Me.

Sure.

And today we're talking about Twin Peaks season one.

The first season of Twin Peaks.

What do we hate doing on this show?

Television.

Hate doing seasons of television.

And if we must do them often it is against our will on patreon punted to patreon we've only done

uh television once before on the main film that's not true we did it twice and it broke us and we basically vowed to never yeah we did roadies and sensate we did the back

to back we did two seasons mini-series in our first year of being blank check that ended with and these filmmakers have now recently done a season of television right right i didn't watch senseate that was one where i was like boys that's on you It was a different era for the show.

If you were going to pick Rhodes or Senseate, I would say, I would now probably say Sensei, but Rhodes probably spoke to Ben more.

Yeah.

I also did.

Roadies is forgotten.

Like, people who are in Roadies would deny being in Rhodes.

Roadies is not watchable anymore.

Like, Senseate, it's like, oh, it actually ran for two seasons.

Then fans pushed for a finale episode.

That's nice.

They did it.

Yeah.

It's kind of interesting.

It speaks to their

Netflix Blank show.

It's fun.

You'd find both of those shows interesting.

You never saw Rhodes?

No.

Do you remember what Roadies is?

It's a Cameron Crow show, right?

Cameron Crow and Winnie Holzman.

Okay.

So it's like Cameron Crowe and my so-called life making a show about present-day Rhodes

as part of a.

They didn't make it in the 90s when they were good at doing things.

They made it in the 2010s for Showtime.

Who is in it?

Who's in it?

Who isn't in it?

Imogen Poots, Rafe Spall, Machine Gun Kelly,

Finesse Mitchell.

Yeah.

What's his name?

Taylor Salad, Ron White.

I like Ron White.

Tisha Castle Hughes.

Yeah, she was one of the Rhodies.

They were all Rhodes.

Was MC Ganey on it, or am I imagining MC Ganey was on it?

I'm just thinking about Ron White, and you're kind of like, MC Ganey might be here.

He might have also been on it.

Roadies.

Is it on HBO?

What was it on?

She was on Showtime.

It's on Showtime.

And it doesn't exist.

It's in the red room.

Gagino and Luke Lee.

Justin?

Yes, right.

I'm, I'm also,

what was the Scorsese show about rock and roll?

The one

that Griffin was in every episode.

Okay, so those two get, I'm sorry, Griffin, those do get combined in my head sometimes.

Eva, this is the first time anyone has shown disrespect to vinyl.

I can't believe this rudeness.

Which also gets big stuff in my head with, I'm dying up here.

Sure.

Oh, that's that one was tough.

Right.

I watched every episode of that one.

This is why it's weird that you missed it.

I love TV shows about stand-up comedy.

They always nail it.

Well, they always throw away their routine and get real.

Yes.

Every episode.

And it works.

And people love it.

And it changes the world.

It does.

Even in Baby Reindeer, it works.

It works in every time you do it.

It's always working.

I'm never watching that shit.

I'm talking about some of the most forgotten television of the last 10 years.

An episode about one of the most impactful TV shows of all time.

Last time we talked about Studio 60 for like an hour.

Okay, so we're not going to do that this time.

We have to talk about Twin Peaks, but I was just wanted to check, does this really, we really never did TV on main feed again.

This is the first time since

Sense 8 or sorry, since Roadie's.

I'm pretty sure.

Wow.

That's a good drummer girl.

We did Paranoia Agent recently.

Right.

Or it was Jane Campions.

Top of the Lake.

Both of those were on Patreon.

Yes.

One Great Season, one demented season.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I feel like Top of the Lake might have been the first time since the Rhodey's Sense 8 thing that we broke the rule and did a full season because it felt like

this is she's really a part of this show.

But look, we usually try to talk our way out of it, and this is a case where it was undeniable.

It's not only do you have to do it, but you have to figure out a complicated way to cover all of it.

Uh, our guest today,

a former resident of Twin Peaks, a very real town where she lived.

Yep, Eva Anderson, the best guest and podcast ever.

Oh, thank you.

I'm so happy to be here, guys.

And thank you so much for asking me to cover.

We

were thinking of who

felt like

a guest, right?

Yes, it was like, is there any guest who could fit?

Is it too big an assignment?

And then I was like, crazy to just throw even ask.

Feels like an obvious ask.

And then you said, this has a very specific personal meaning to me, season one in particular.

Do you want to just come out and say this?

Well, just after season one, between season one and two, my family moved to the town where they filmed Twin Peaks, and I lived there for 10 years.

Because of the show, right?

Yes.

Largely inspired by?

Your family was like, we just love the vibe, And so let's go there.

Yeah.

Okay.

What's the town called?

I'm sorry.

There's three towns that make up the show.

Okay.

They're in a row in the Snoqualmie Valley.

The first town where I lived is called Falls City, Washington.

It has the Roadhouse.

Okay.

The next town is Snoqualmie, Washington.

It has the Lodge and the Falls.

And the third town

is North Bend, which has the cafe.

Wow.

But they're all very close together.

They're just in a row.

That's like one, two, three.

Route 202.

Yep.

So

you spent like your adolescence here.

Middle and high school.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then

when I graduated high school, right around that time, my parents got divorced.

Everyone moved.

So like there was no more footprint as soon as I graduated high school.

Right.

Like everyone couldn't go back.

Post-high school, there was kind of a Twin Peak Season 2 vibe where things went off the rails quickly.

Very, just weird detail.

I don't know if you guys know this, that when my parents split up and moved, my dad moved into the house from Inception.

No, what?

Which house?

Which house from Inception?

The main one where the kids are.

Sure, yeah.

The one he's trying to get back to.

He's trying to get back to.

So we live in the back.

I think it's like floor three in his mind elevator or whatever.

I can't remember.

It's in Pasadena.

My brother and I lived there for seven years.

It's Leonardo's head.

It's not in Pasadena.

I know.

This is obviously years before Inception.

Years before Inception.

It's a very nice-looking house.

Beautiful house.

It's made by Green and Green who made

the Gamble House and like Doc Brown's house house from a bucket.

Is what you're saying right now real?

It is actually true.

Spin the top.

You're trying to spin the top.

Oh, wow.

It's all the way over there.

So just rolled right from this place to that place in a very strange way.

Also, just side note, like my brother was like, do not get super high in C-inception.

He warned me.

Because of the house in the city.

Because he spotted the house first.

And then he was like, when you go, just be aware the house is in it.

When you lived in Fall City.

Yes.

like

what year are we talking you moved we moved in 1990 the summer of 1990 so like it had just

aired yes the first season had just aired yes

in may 1990 and season two starts in september 1990 but there probably isn't even much it was there tourism yet a little bit just a little bit there was like japanese tourism weirdly um and like uh and there was like a little

best tourist on earth finding it right away yes there was a little gift shop where they sold like twin Peaks stuff.

Sure.

They sold like the diary of Laura Palmer, which was written by

Jennifer Lynch.

And people would go to the cafe because that was the,

it hadn't changed.

They hadn't changed it for the show very much.

Right.

And years later, when they filmed The Return, it had gone through like a bunch of evolutions.

And then they had, they restored it to the

original.

So it's now, I believe, if you go, it should just look.

It was a Tweety Bird themed cafe in the middle.

It's still called Tweeds, but then they made it just look like the original for the return.

Connor Rowley, friend of the show, will be on an upcoming episode.

Is a Twin Peaks obsessive?

Cool.

We were doing George Lucas' talk shows in Seattle earlier this year, and he was like, I want to go to all the Twin Peaks.

Look at that.

Yeah, it's like 45 minutes to an hour.

Make an effort to go to the Laura Palmer House and all these things.

Didn't join him on any of them.

This was in March.

And I was like, I'm going to be an asshole if Lynch wins this competition that is currently going on, where he's the tipped front runner.

And I didn't go to any of these locations.

But the thing he told me was that they got a pie at the diner and it was terrible.

Sure.

And then they bought a pie to go and brought it to one of the show and tried to get audience members to eat it.

And every local in the audience was like, everyone knows the pie is bad.

Do you have any memory or experience with the pie?

Yeah.

And do you remember it being bad?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's really bad.

It's kind of wild.

I understand they don't want to solely exist as a tourist attraction.

That they never fixed it.

I would just put a little extra effort into that

if I were them.

Twice, a couple times as adults, my brother and I have had individual work in Seattle.

Your great brother Dash.

My great brother Dash, my great little brother, my great big little brother.

One of the great big little brothers.

He's very tall.

He's tall.

He's really tall, but he's my little brother.

But we will be in Seattle, get an Uber, take it to the cafe, order the pie, eat the pie, take a picture of the pie, send it to each other, go, still sucks shit.

And then go all the way back to Seattle.

It's like $200 worth of Ubers.

But it's nice to see tweeds, tweeties.

Oh, yeah.

This is what I like about you, Eli.

You're such an experiential person.

You really are.

You're too.

But like, right, you, you put so much effort into an experience you know will suck, but you're into that.

You're like, this is going to be great.

You're going to curate that.

And I love that in March, they still hadn't fixed it.

It was bad when I was a kid.

Yeah.

I think that, right, there's just a problem there.

It's just, it's never going to be good.

It's just like, but how is that an unfixable problem?

It's also so funny that coffee.

It's hard to make good pie

on a bigger scale, like that's going to sit out.

It's not that hard.

I'm not really pretending that it's a coffee shop.

They don't make that many pies a day.

I'm doing my best to do it.

Like, four in 20 Blackbirds makes more cherry pies a day than

it doesn't even need to be the best pie on earth.

It doesn't need to live up to the show.

It needs to be at least perfunctory, which everyone has told me it is well below.

Yes.

And it's just so funny because I've only ever had this opinion with Dash and the fact that Connor came to it immediately.

And then the audience, without being fetished.

It was like, we buy this pie.

Everyone in the audience will try one.

And the audience was like, we all live here.

We know it sucks.

Shit.

It's kind of no one's taking a slice.

The Tom's restaurant up in

Morningside Heights, the Seinfeld restaurant.

Everyone knows that place sucks.

No offense to it.

Yeah.

And if we have any listeners from Tom's, that's another place that people go because they're like, look.

And then they go in and they're like, wait, this is like

a diner.

Like, how is it bad?

Is there any impetus for them to make it better?

The money's coming in.

They're going to sell so many fucking slices of pie a day.

In fact, they may say it ain't broke.

Why, Treasure?

Like, we could screw something up here.

But it also

says something else about the general area:

is that things

I always wonder if Lynch was just like sensing a way in which things are just a little off there.

Yeah, sure.

Sure.

Things are just weird there.

Yes.

And having grown up there or lived there for so long, I was just like, there is a vibe there.

Maybe it felt accurate.

It felt, and the pie being good would not make sense in that place.

Maybe I would go, if I went to Twin Peaks, not Fall City, Twin Peaks.

Yes.

I might be like, hmm, this town is kind of weird and depressing.

And scary stuff seems to happen here all the time.

I do like the aesthetic.

Yes.

I like the vibe.

Sure.

I think I'm going to clear on out.

Yeah.

I'm going.

You'd move.

And Dale Cooper's like, takes one, you know, bite of that pie, and he's like, hmm, I love it.

Well, isn't this one of the key things of the show that you're like, is Dale Cooper the normal one or the weirdest one?

He's the weirdest one.

He's a freak.

He's so stupid.

Right.

Well, he's kind of in that way where it's like

his reaction to the pie and the coffee.

Right.

Does that mean that the pie and the coffee are excellent?

Or is this a sign of his insanity?

His like incredible optimism.

Also, watching this time, the coffee he likes isn't even from the diner.

He likes any cup of coffee anyone pours for him to be.

He is served black coffee at his throat.

There's the

water.

There's the fishy coffee is the only coffee he doesn't like.

And that does disturb him profoundly.

It sticks with him.

Yeah.

That the coffee has been spoiled.

Is there something in the water?

There's fish in the park.

In that part of the country.

is that maybe it's like our bagels here is there something about the quality of the water that is making the coffee enhanced in some way well that is one thing too

that is true is that the pacific northwest is all about coffee in a big way sure

invented starbucks land of starbucks right drive-through espresso yeah like leave in the live bait shops also sell espresso everywhere sells espresso and this show is kind of broadcasting that at a time before coffee has gone really nationwide.

Coffee culture has taken over in that kind of way outside of offices and home breakfast tables and whatever.

Breakfast tables.

What the fuck am I coffee?

Breakfast tables.

Listen, we're here to discuss Twin Peaks, the 1990 television mystery serial drama series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch that aired on ABC.

Quite impactful.

Which was a phenomenon briefly and then a phenomenon in a larger way.

after its

departure.

It's so wild to just like dig into the actual timeline and be like, it was only eight episodes the first season.

Yes.

It premieres across like April and May of 1990, and it is canceled within one year.

Like they do a 22 episode season two that starts in September.

By one year later, the thing is like done, done, done.

And then Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me coming a year after that is like the last Hail Mary Pass that people turn on.

And you're like, this entire phenomenon has been contained within 24 months.

It's so crazy.

And the arc of it, the like rise and fall, and in the public perception at the time, the even further fall down into like the depths of hell.

But always had its sort of Star Trek-esque die-hards

who then sort of gathered around all the ephemera, the aesthetics,

it getting turned into Trotsky's, you know, like, which is a very funny thing to do around a show that is profoundly disturbing, but also is incredibly charming.

And funny.

But also, like, video games like Alan Wake or

a lot of horror stuff is just

a hundred.

In a loving way.

There's so many things.

There's something odd about small towns, if you think about it.

I disagree.

Twin Peaks.

So,

Ben, you had never seen Twin Peaks.

I've had seen Twin Peaks.

Ben had seen Twin Peace.

I'm trying to remember.

That's why I'm doing this.

You saw Twin all of season one.

Like, what extent?

I watched up to a certain point in season two.

Right.

A lot of people sort of tail off in season two.

Me too.

Right.

Yeah.

Griffin, you had never seen Twin Peaks.

He's going under the table to get his inception top because he's so worried.

I was very worried.

I'd never, I'd seen the pilot only.

Right.

I'm sure.

Right.

Yes.

Why did you resist?

I don't know.

I actually don't know.

You know what my memory is?

I'm trying to get off.

I'm trying to line up timelines here.

When did the return air?

2017.

So that I want to say was

Mason.

Were you trying to say, like, it's the tick or something?

Like, you were working on the title.

I think I was trying to watch it in anticipation of the return coming out, going, like, now's the time for me to actually get into it.

My best friends and roommates at the time, Sophie and Hawkin, had watched it maybe a year or two earlier when it was on Netflix, and they were like, You would love this.

And then I think I was like, Okay, it's time for me to finally do it, knowing this new season's coming.

I think my brain could not handle it in the midst of tick production

when I was already losing my mind.

mind, and then I just never kind of went back around to it, which was my failing.

I watched it like so many people in my generation.

I was too young for Twin Peaks, obviously, on air, but I'd heard about it.

So I wasn't the only one.

Yeah.

But I'd heard about it.

And my father especially would talk about it with some reverence, not just for the show, but just kind of like, that was crazy

when it was like a thing for a couple of months later.

And then, like so many kids, I bought the DVDs when I was 18 years old and watched them in college yes and loved them and also washed out somewhere in season two the first time around

everybody does i think it's a bit of a rite of passage um not to say i think twin season two is very interesting and we're going to have lots to say about it i've watched it all do not fear that's later sure eva what's your experience of twin peaks apart from the fact that you lived there well because okay we had We had the laser disc, which had the European cut of the pilot, which was as long as a movie.

Yes.

And has the red room.

Yeah.

It ends with the red room.

Yes.

We will briefly touch on how strange that thing is.

But that was the only Twin Peaks I watched probably till I was almost 30.

Okay.

Was just watching that

wild.

So your parents are watching it and they decided to move there and you are just kind of like, okay, you don't really understand why.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I also think

I was like, I was eight.

Like, right.

I mean, I was like, we were too little for Twin Peaks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

But I also like, I think it was all just too much.

much like in my like when normally people were watching in college i was like it's like pee wee being like i don't need to watch it donny i lived it like i was just like i don't need to engage with this right now yeah and so by the time i finally did

um i loved it it was great and i just finally sat down i was like why that's crazy that i haven't watched this yeah and i and i and i I've watched it many times since.

But yeah, it took me a long time to be ready to just like crack my knuckles and like be like, I'm going to engage with this thing.

And yeah, yeah, I mean, season one is just like, it's so, it's so,

it's so perfect.

It's great.

It's just so wild.

You're like saying stuff like Alan Wake, and there's so many examples of things that feel so influenced by Twin Peaks.

And especially if you think about like the 10 to 15 year period in between

the show ending and the sort of maybe second, third wave that leads to the return coming around.

When its legacy was a little bit, they blew it.

It was amazing and it got fucked up.

The amount of work that is like deeply, clearly influenced by it and trying to recapture some element of it, it feels like the kind of thing you watch season one and you're like,

I can imagine the universe in which these eight episodes played.

No one watched them.

Everyone who watched it was profoundly changed by it.

It had a sort of like, you know, only 100 people ever saw the fucking Velvet Underground live sort of energy and people stuck to it.

And it's this weird unfinished project.

The weirder thing than it collapsing so quickly is that it was so big so briefly.

That remains kind of astounding, and it feels like a very early lesson of, oh, the audience is not as dumb as TV people think they are.

In this era, like up until that point, you read about like the anticipation of the show coming out and being like, people are going to hate this.

Right.

This is not passive viewing.

It doesn't hold your hand.

It's too weird.

This is going to flop.

And then it like blows up.

But also one might argue that what ruined it is the TV person believing the audience was stupid.

The second they had a hit and then they had to try to game it out.

Have you watched season two yet?

I've started it.

I'm a handful of episodes.

You're going to get into that.

Sorry.

I realize what, you know, I think you'll see.

I'm still in the good chunk.

But it's not just, I think the fandom gets a little too simple with like, well, Iger made them reveal the killer and that ruined the show.

I don't agree that that that ruined the show.

I think it's just like

it was no one making that show is equipped for the absolute marathon of 22 episode season television at the time where it's like, okay, you better have all your storylines ready to go and, you know, a way to sort of sustain interest in an ensemble that is like 40 people deep, like consistently.

Yes.

And you can see the show kind of be like, what should we do with some of these guys?

Should we try this?

Forget it.

You know, like you see them kind of caught off guard, everyone caught off guard by this thing being a huge success.

I'm like, what the hell do we do?

You know, like, not just like, let's solve the murder, but like, what should all these people do?

That's the thing.

I feel like the Lynchian elements, the sort of surrealistic things, the more genre-y things loom really large in culture where I'm like, oh my God, the arm is in one episode the entire first season.

It's true.

Log Lady appears like twice in season one.

Like all this shit that has been like so outsized that I'm watching this for the first time and I'm like, there are 20 characters in this I've never heard talked about.

I've never seen me.

Wow, I want to know who your faves are.

Who are like regulars.

And you're like, this has such an expansive cast of like naughty soap opera, relationship dynamic backstories across like quote-unquote normal people.

And let's say normal people on a weird slide.

Yes, the weird stuff in Twin Peaks is

just a thin sliver of the running time.

And the first season has almost no scary stuff.

Correct.

But like that's

in and out.

When it is scary.

Yeah.

That shit, in a way the place spamming.

And so the show doesn't even try to, really.

This is when the show was about to premiere, and there was a USA Today article called High Hopes for Twin Peaks.

Because I do, you look at the press at the time and they were like, this is a weird thing for a network to be trying.

This feels like this weird experiment, eight episodes short season premiering at the end of a television season.

This is almost feeling like a burn off or some weird flyer.

And there's a guy, media analyst and advertising executive, Paul Schulman, who said, quote, this is right before it premieres.

I don't think it has a chance of succeeding.

It is not commercial.

It is radically different from what we as viewers are accustomed to seeing.

There's no one in the show to root for.

And you're like, the guy is succinct.

He is kind of correct in that based on the models of what shows had been successful up until that point, that is right.

And then you put it in front of people and everyone is like, well, I've never seen something like this before.

The mere fact that it was kind of brand new does feel like what grabbed people in the first place.

Here are some of the hottest shows, though, on TV.

I know the number one, which this was scheduled directly against, was Cheers, right?

This is like peak of Cheers.

I would say it's kind of the end of Cheers, but like Cheers was very, like, had a weird sort of rise near the end of its run.

Like, we're going to do ratings game at the end of this episode, obviously.

Get ready.

Okay.

I hope, you know, but yeah, Cosby Show, Different World Cheers, right?

That sort of NBC Thursday night lineup is huge.

Wander Years and Roseanne on Tuesdays for ABC.

Those are like the crown jewel of ABC's lineup.

They also, of course, have one of the top 10 shows in America, America's Funniest Home Videos.

Of course.

It is crazy to think about that being like, everyone's like, time to sit down and watch that.

Like, that's prime time.

We must see the new funniest home videos.

I mean, that's basically what MTV's 24-7 programming is now.

That's what I'm saying.

Now it's like, yeah, that's just garbage you plug holes with.

Back then, it was like 8 p.m.

Well, because they're

There used to be one place.

Exactly.

You're like, cameras have been in homes in a widespread manner for like a decade.

Tops.

And there's this fucking oil underneath the ground that no one else is bringing up.

The amount of videos that people have in their fucking cupboards.

Of dads getting hit in the nuts.

And no one gets to see them.

This toddler is coming towards this wall at an alarming rate.

Like, surely not.

Like, surely this kid won't run into this fence.

Anyway, Golden Girl's Empty Nest, also crushing right now.

Those are the biggest shows.

Is Hill Street Blues still on the air?

Yeah, are there any dramas?

Okay.

So the biggest dramas, because you're right to say, like, what the hell?

Like, which of the primetime soaps are on right now?

The biggest dramas are Murder She Wrote,

Matlock,

the TV version of In the Heat of the Night, which is on NBC.

A lot of old people detectives.

Which was, that that was right.

That's Carol O'Connor post on the family where they're like, I think I have another racist

place.

Yeah.

LA Law.

That's probably the number one

sort of new era of television kind of thing.

Like, oh, this show is more modern, right?

Like, versus

In the Heat of the Night.

Then, I mean, okay, then I'm going down the list here.

But, like, Dallas is off the air.

Dynasty's off the air.

All of those have ended.

No, dallas is still on okay as is like falconcrest but they've dropped out of the top 30 shows melrose place hasn't started yet dynasty is just finished melrose place has not started 90210 has not started well

i guess because that is the main

thing this show is i mean the the the dynamite pitch for this show is what if david lynch did the weird version of a primetime soap right 100 that's enough of a proven genre at this point soap aesthetics and stuff and soap storytelling styles, but then like Lynchian horror, but then also it will be a cop show.

Yes.

It's a lot of things at once.

In fact, let me open the dossier.

Okay.

Between the release of Blue Velvet in 1986 and the premiere of Twin Peaks,

David Lynch was involved with some other stuff that never happened.

Something called Goddess, which is about Marilyn Monroe,

which is also maybe going to be called Venus Descending.

That was going to be about the Kennedy family.

And that is where David Lynch meets Mark Frost, who had worked on Hill Street Blues.

Frost wrote the screenplay.

Lynch wants to direct it.

And

that is where they get together.

The studio hated Mark Frost's script.

David Lynch liked it.

So, you know,

they click very quickly.

But that thing never comes together.

It's a shame because I feel like all movies about Marilyn Marnbrow turn out really well.

Definitely not cursed.

Yeah.

None of them are boring or upsetting.

David Lynch goes over to Dino de Laurentis and says, do you want to make Ronnie Rocket now, please?

Blue Velvet was a hit.

Dino de Laurentis says,

no,

I don't want to.

I don't know if you talked like that.

Spinning a pizza pie on one finger as he gives a thumbs down with the other hand.

Yes.

There is also something called One Saliva Bubble, which is another another of his screenplays that you can find.

Yes, process

that emerges now.

And

he works on that with Mark Frost.

That is a comedy about two guys who work, two Cretanist guys who work at a research facility.

One of them laughs and a bubble floats out of his mouth, goes down a hallway around a corner and lodges in some sensitive equipment and shorts it out.

And then you cut to outer space and see a satellite

deploy a ray gun weapon that fires and then a countdown starts.

That was the pitch.

Delivering exactly what it promises on the tin.

It's a movie about one saliva bubble.

Steve Martin and Martin Short get attached as the two Cretans.

Sounds pretty cool.

A saliva bubble has never floated down a hallway.

Well, David Lynch disagrees with

your negative thinking on storytelling here.

And then Dino Dillarentis runs out of money.

And so he

cannot produce it.

That's such a shame.

It sounds pretty cool.

It sounds fun.

Around now, he also makes The Cowboy and the Frenchman, which we've discussed briefly, I think, on our shorts episode, which is with Harry Dean Stanton.

It has similar vibes to Twin Peaks.

Does feel like it's maybe a little bit of a transition point for him understanding how to make,

I don't want to say a more mainstream version of his thing, but how to lean into the comedy a little more in a way that makes it perhaps a little more accessible.

Right.

But it's got similar look and tone to Twin Peaks, I'd say.

Yeah, no, I think you're right.

And the other thing he does around now is he produces Floating Into the Night, the Julie Cruz album, which obviously the music of that is very pivotal to Twin Peaks.

Yeah.

And so that's all happening.

Okay.

The reason I asked about

Hill Street Blues and if it had ended, and I didn't even know that Mark Frost came from that.

He did, yeah.

But I feel like that show is often cited as this kind of breakthrough in audiences are smarter than we think they are in like, oh, it's got very complicated narratives.

Lots of characters.

Yes.

And there are threads that are going on across seasons.

Or badly complex, too.

Yeah.

You don't have to root for a hero.

It's a grounded show and it's in a genre that everyone knows very well.

David's.

It's just so weird that that guy said there's no one to root for in Twin Peaks when Dale Cooper is like the person you root for.

I bet his argument is he's too weird.

But yes, he is the guy you root for.

And then he said something Picasso.

It's a very something Picasso.

Something Picasso.

I do love it when they thank God that pretty much.

Sorry, did I say right here the name media analyst Cal Hockley.

Hockley Criffin.

And we all know Cal Hockley committed suicide in the Great Depression, of course.

Which they just tag on at the end of Titanic.

Just like when in Legal Law.

The guy, they're like, and also her ex-boyfriend got fired for cheating or whatever.

Like, you know, fuck him.

Right.

She's like, eh, Cal Hockley killed himself anyway.

Yeah.

Tony Krantz is a hot shot agent at CAA who basically is like, David, you need to do television.

Kind of weird that he thought this.

I was going to say.

I'm not sure why he thought this.

An insane pitch.

I think most people would not think that.

And if you think about his career at this point, which we've covered, right?

Yeah.

It's like midnight movie sensation.

Right.

Then he goes straight to, oh, surprise Tony Oscar's success.

Oscar Atour.

Right.

Reasonable box office performer.

Then he jumps to big franchise blockbuster.

It's a disaster.

Yeah.

Then like Blue Velvet is like, okay, I'm getting back to my thing.

I'm synthesizing it.

It's a movie that's certainly the center of a lot of conversation.

He gets one lone Oscar nomination for director.

He does.

But it's a movie that gets a lot of controversy.

It does well considering what it is, but it's not like a huge crossover success.

The guy's certainly a subject of conversation, has defined himself as an artist, but it does feel like an odd moment to be like, obviously, we should do this in a weekly format.

He just hears.

I hear you're working with Mark Frost.

That guy's a TV writer.

Do you want to do television?

You know, does that sound interesting at all?

They initially have an idea for a TV show called The Lemurians about the continent of Lemuria, a place where evil prevails, which disappears into the ocean, and FBI agents with Geiger counters search out to kill the remaining Lemurians.

What the fuck is that?

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

They pitch that to NBC, and NBC is like, no.

And then Branda Tardikoff at NBC is like, I mean, do you want to make that into a movie?

And they're like, no.

So then instead,

Krantz says to Lynch, can you write something about the real America like you did with Blue Velvet?

Supposedly, they maybe also watch, they were somewhat inspired by Peyton Place, the classic film and soap television show.

Right.

And

they

wisely were like, what if we did like a cop show crossed with a soap opera?

It's just funny that they're like, their first pitch is like, okay, aliens from the sea.

And NBC is like, no.

And they're like, oh, cop show, but like with soapy elements.

And the ABC is like, Yes, thank you.

Yeah, uh, it was going to be called Northwest Passage, it was going to be set in North Dakota.

Uh, and uh, they developed the town, they drew this map, they were like, It's gonna have a lumber mill, there's gonna be a lake, a body will wash up on the lake.

Like, they thought about this sort of Dickensian setting first, and then they populated with the character short stories.

Um, and they pitch ABC on like the mystery of Laura Palmer, that will be the foreground, but then it will recede and we'll have the soapy character stuff.

And ABC was just kind of like, all right.

I mean, truly, I think they were like, okay, we'll order a pilot, like

something.

They pitched it in 88.

There was an 88 WGA strike, and it took them like almost a year for ABC to finally be like, go make it.

What?

Yeah.

And they would make it together.

Griffin, you looking something up?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, I can tell you something.

I have the thing I was looking at.

Okay.

And this is from INDB Trivia, so likely is false.

Great.

But it jumped out to me.

Okay.

The population in Twin Peaks was originally only supposed to be 5,120.

Yes.

However, there was a backlash against rural-themed shows at the time.

This is a classic bit of Twin Peaks lore.

I have no idea if it's real or not.

As networks were fearful that the burgeoning urban and suburban population of America would not be able to sympathize with shows set in small farming or industrial towns.

So then it was bumped up to whatever it is, 51,000.

They added a one.

Right.

And Mark Frost's internal lore has always been that's a typo.

Yes, it's a typo.

It's a 5,000 person.

But it is funny to think about like all the other

stuff.

You're citing something that is maybe not real.

I framed it that way on purpose.

Well, okay.

Just thinking about what are the other 40,000 people up to in Twin Seeks?

Like, where do they live?

Like, what apartment complexes do they live in?

There is is a reason I'm bringing this up, whether or not it's real, which is

all those other nighttime soaps we're talking about are very like lifestyles of the rich and famous, fabulous.

Shallas dynasty, Peyton Place, sure,

whatever.

Yep.

Whether or not there was truly fear at ABC around this, I do think that was like a key to this show working is like, this is in a different milieu.

These are like just real people.

I think the small town thing is obviously so pivotal to success.

The people seek the vibes.

Yes.

I have no, I mean, it doesn't make any sense that the sign says 50,000 people live there.

That's why I'm bringing up.

Which is why it's always driven people crazy.

And it's clearly 50,000 people don't live there.

Yes.

I've never understood like that.

And then there are people who, like, I've read the note of like ABC was afraid of the thing you just said.

Sure.

That seems insane.

I get the smaller thing of ABC being like, that's kind of tiny.

Like the more just literal like vibes of like, well, anyone fucking care?

Sure.

Can you make it a little, just feel a little bigger?

Yeah.

um but also

annoying that the population is just wrong yes it just drives me crazy I can also see the like Mark Ross or David Lynch isn't on set the day that they shoot the shot of the the art department made the sign wrong yeah sure yeah it comes in they're like oh can we shoot this now I guess how many people let's find out how many people live in Fall City Washington let's find out yeah but it also 2,000

you're saying it's insane 2,000 people insane thinking to say well people won't want to watch a show about a small town that's the exact kind of insane that you hear from television executives all the time.

And it does feel like, despite the fact that it then becomes immortalized because it's in the fucking opening credits, that is the kind of like, how do we take this note without really taking it?

If we change the number on the sign, we don't have to change the feel of the town at all.

Ben?

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag, it's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being being on mic, oftentimes when sponsors buy ads based on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love that they get a little bonus ben on the ad read, but technically, that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That's true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

This is laser targeted.

The product.

We have copy that asks, is the product a porch movie?

it certainly is and what is today's episode sponsored by the toxic adventure the new toxic adventure movie is coming to theaters august 29th macon blair's remake of reimagining reimagining whatever a reboot of the toxic Avenger now david and i have not got to see it yet but they sent you a screener link yeah i'm gonna see it we're

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Yeah.

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Let me read you the cast list here in billing order, as they asked, which I really appreciate.

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Tremblay is Toxie's son.

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Okay.

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Yes.

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Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

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Fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

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It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like a snack.

David, sizzling.

Yep.

And then Elijah Wood plays like a dang-ass freak.

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

I just got to say, the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

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Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

And so when I heard that they were doing this new installment, I was really emotionally invested.

It was in limbo for a while before our friends at Cineverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just something that means a lot to me.

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Okay.

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it's really funny it just it it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want in an updated version cinniverse last year released terrifier 3 unrated yeah big risk for them there i feel like it's a very very intense movie and one of huge hit more interesting yeah theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years want to make that happen again here

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Summon the nuts is in reference to a

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I'm going back to the dossier.

Do it.

The research dossier.

Sure.

So, Cooper, as you might understand, as you might guess, that is David Lynch's avatar.

Wait, what?

I know.

I know this sounds crazy.

Mark Frost, apparently, you know, more the snappy dialogue guy, Lynch Lynch says.

From everything I've ever understood about this show, Frost is more the TV writer mind, obviously.

He's a little more responsible for thinking about how the show moves week to week, how the mysteries progress.

Lynch is more responsible for the look of the show, the aesthetics, obviously the red room and everything like that, the tone, the music, sure.

But Dale is Lynch.

Yeah.

So, like, a lot of the Dale stuff is being driven by Lynch.

But they do write the pilot together.

There's a lot of sort of twin peak speculation about

whose is what, right?

You know what I mean?

Like, that's sort of hard for people to figure out.

Sure.

Some things I think are obvious, like what I'm talking about.

Some things it's like, no, actually, that was Mark's idea.

Blah, blah, blah.

Also, any break.

Any successful partnership.

But they say they write together and it's kind of like a mind-management.

Any successful partnership like this, at some point, it becomes more symbiotic than you would imagine, even if the starting point is like Lynch does the weird shit, Frost does the structure.

Right.

At some point, they're going to get good at understanding both sides of it.

Lynch is a treat boy.

Lynch is a good boy.

Please elaborate on that.

I love it.

I mean,

didn't he famously work at Bob's Big Boy and drink milkshakes?

Or lived there.

Oh, ate all his things.

He went there every day for five years.

He's a treat boy.

Yes.

He just wants to do the fun stuff.

How does he stay trim?

It's incredible.

I don't know.

I was watching a, forgive me for bringing his name to this conversation, Charlie Rose clip with David Lynch.

That's not so bad.

Wait, wait, are you watching, you mean the clip where he says he eats tuna fish every day?

Yes, where he talks about his meals.

Yeah.

So, I mean, the man has a fixation thing, like, no matter what the meal is.

That's the thing that sucks about Charlie Rose.

He gets good answers out of people despite not being good at his job.

He's the world's worst interviewer.

He is actually maybe the worst interviewer that has ever existed.

But for 30 years, he basically was the only person hosting a podcast.

Yeah.

Right.

Where he had a format that was loose and conversational enough and open-ended enough.

And there's actually time for people to talk.

They can give a complete answer.

And he's got this minimalist set and he booked good guests and you're just like, oh, fuck, you constantly got to go back and watch Charlie Rose interviews and watch this dumb drunk go like, so Twin Peaks is a movie?

And he's like, no, it's a TV series.

And television is what now?

I'm on it right now.

Is that the box I put my beer inside?

My groceries.

He had that thing recently where he talked about eating Cheetos.

Charlie Rose recently talked about Cheetos.

Oh, okay.

Lynch said that when he was asked to play

John Ford in Fablemans, that the one thing in his contract was that his dressing room was filled with Cheetos.

With bags of Cheetos.

He's only allowed to eat them on set.

Right.

Oh, he was.

He's a treat boy.

He's like, I'm going to get my treats.

I think one of the producers said that about him, and then he was asked about it in an interview.

And they were like, Do you love Cheetos that much?

And he's like, I have to put guardrails around it.

If I eat one, I'm going to eat the whole bag.

This is how he stays trimmed.

Just thinking about him sucking his fingers.

Well, that's right with Lynch.

You don't like to think about him like getting on the scale and going, like, oh, I should lose five pounds.

Like, that's just not how he operates.

But the whole eating routine thing, and in that Charlie Rose interview, he's like, I eat two things every day.

I have like tuna fish with lemon and then chicken chopped into little pieces with a tiny bit of soy sauce.

Yeah, it's, yeah.

Let me find the tuna fish.

We've talked about this, I think.

And his explanation is like, because everyone was always like, what's this eccentricity?

What's him only eating at Bob's Big Boys for five years?

And his explanation, that rose clip.

Feta cheese, olive oil, vinegar, tomatoes, and tuna fish.

It's sort of like a Nisswa's salad.

That's lunch every day.

He's a Mediterranean diet boy.

Yes.

And he cycles through what it is, but he'll go through a prolonged period where it's I eat the same thing every day unless I'm traveling.

Right.

And then he gets to

Cheetos or whatever.

Or Sakai.

The routine is important because

limiting the decision-making process in as many aspects of my life as possible allows me to spend the rest of my day in imagination land, basically.

He was like, I wear the same thing, I eat the same thing, I do everything at the same time because that structure keeps my life on rails.

And then I feel like when those decisions are removed, your brain starts going to weirder places.

I love that.

Which does feel like

watching that clip kind of feels like a turnkey to the Cooper character.

Very much.

Absolutely.

In his setup and the whole

unconventional detective thing.

Yes.

Right.

Except Cooper eats anything you put in front of him.

Correct.

It's true.

He's a bit of a Griffin Newman.

Yes.

Garbage fell.

But that garbage belly.

That idea of like, I'm going to have a weird approach to finding the clues.

Yeah.

Right.

Kyle McLaughlin is the only choice, obviously, for Dale Cooper.

Lynch says, yes, it's a guy.

He says he was born for the role.

He says he's got a lot of perky childlike faces that really fit in.

He says he loves gadgets, like that Kyle would always have like little gadgets, little like Swiss Army knives and lighters and stuff.

And he just felt like all of that was very Dale Cooper.

He's also, he's so fucking boyish in Dune and Blue Velvet.

And in this, he's like gotten like 10% more grown-up man in him.

I was thinking about this.

It was like, oh, he finally, they finally like grew together into a character like Lynch and because there's something,

I like, he's not very good in Dune, even though I love him so much.

And then Blue Velvet, he's just not my favorite part of Blue Velvet.

Sure.

But then it's just like it all comes together in Agent Cooper.

It all makes sense suddenly.

Lynch also sort of says without being critical that he thinks that when he was directing Kyle,

he really could get him to kick up the Cooper way up.

Sure.

And other directors were afraid to do that.

And Kyle would maybe bring it down slightly.

And Lynch likes, you know, really goofy Dale Cooper.

But don't you think part of the magic of the show is like the weird, erratic, like sometimes he's huge and sometimes he's more muted.

Honestly, I do.

That's a good point.

Yes.

I mean, if he were a cartoon character the entire time, but like, yeah, the magic of the show, not I'll do a little more dicey, but yeah, is that Dale, Dale is like, I had a dream and we simply have to go do this right now.

And Truman is just like, okay,

sounds good.

Like, it's not like what any TV executive would be like, where's the conflict?

Why, why does Truman go along with everything Cooper says?

Cooper's insane.

Right.

And so annoying.

And he's a city slicker.

And he's a fed.

And instead, Sheriff Truman's just always like, yeah, oh, he had a dream.

Well, I mean, it's a pretty weird town, so I guess we'll do that.

When people discuss like buddy cop as a sub-genre, almost all examples are they hate each other and they're fighting.

They're first act, at least.

First act, hate each other.

Second act, they realize common ground.

Third act, they're together.

These are lethal weapon movies where obviously the underlying idea the whole time.

Which I was going to say, right?

You're right.

Right.

And this is actually a buddy cop cop thing where the one cop is like, sure thing, whatever you say, buddy.

Oh, put on the disguise, go to a brothel.

Yeah, sure.

In the entire series, there is one time that Truman is kind of like,

Cooper.

It basically never happens.

Yeah.

Anyway, we'll talk about it.

Sure.

Joanna Ray, his legendary casting director, obviously loves to present Lynch with photographs.

Lynch loves to look at photos.

Finds a photo of Cheryl Lee, a Seattle-based actress.

Yes.

Obviously, Laura is not really intended as a big character, but

he's very

truly gay.

She has the right look thing.

And then it was, yeah.

He meets with her.

She says she was so nervous.

And he was like, how do you feel about being dipped in gray paint and wrapped in plastic?

And she was like, okay.

And then they film the home video sequence and he realizes like, I need

to act here.

So he didn't plan for Maddie originally.

Oh, that's so cool.

So Lynch brings her back, obviously, right first is Maddie, and occasionally Laura builds a whole movie around her.

Right.

Plans the movie around her.

But that's all him discovering, like, that's so cool.

Right.

I mean, she's like the one local hire

that becomes a significant role because it was like, we don't need to cast a real actor for this.

This is like

two shots.

She's not speaking, whatever.

We need to have a meeting about that.

You're a corpse.

Yeah.

No, you're right.

She is pivot.

I mean, she is.

He wanted an excuse to go get a treat.

I think it does sound like David Lynch.

A treat meet.

Weird.

The meeting was at Bob's Big Tree.

But yeah, you think, like, on paper, it's like she stole a photo from like her yearbook photo

and a film shot of her playing dead.

Right, right.

But it's like, yeah, like it's like Juliana Morgolis and ER or whatever.

It's like once they start working, they're like, you're good.

We need more of you.

Juliana Morgolies, of course, was supposed to die in the first episode of ER.

So apart from that, though, you've got a lot of, I feel like,

sort of vets

and young ingenuous, right?

Like that's the casting, right?

You've got your like Ray Wise, the two Westside Storyboys, Jack Nance, Jack Nance, Grace Zabrisky, but then, of course, you also have like Machinamek, Lara Flynn Boyle, you know, Peggy Lifton is over in the vets side, you know, but like uh,

the vets, which are Lynch's old friends, who he got fucking regular work on network TV.

He was the most amazing.

He tastes like art school buddies.

So good.

Which I forget what episode I said this, and it's probably one that's going to come out five months from now.

But, like, there is, I think, a fascinating, under-discussed aspect of Lynch, which is he places very different type of actors in the same project, in the same scenes.

That, like, when people talk about the uncanny Lynch tone, I think part of it is that, like, he's not looking to synthesize people onto the same wavelength.

He will have people who are like ostensibly non-professional actors who just have the vibe or the look he wants.

He will have people who are like very serious young actors.

He will have people from old Hollywood school

in a weird heightened style.

And like he likes the sort of conflict between these people not really feeling like they're talking to each other.

They shouldn't be in the same frame.

I love that.

I mean, it's wild to think about, especially now when all television makers are so spendthrift and like want to reduce the number of regular cast members and people who are on every episode are technically like guest stars or whatever.

And this show starts and you're like, are there 30 regulars?

Two minutes of credits.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the actors' names keep going once the show starts.

Right.

Josie Packard, written for Isabella Rossellini, legendarily.

She passes.

Okay.

Maybe because she's sort of at the end of her rope with Lynch.

I don't really know.

And so they refigure that for Joan Chen, who'd just been in The Last Emperor and is kind of like a similar kind of like out-of-towner, right?

Energy, even though she's a very different actor.

Russ Tamblin, he met at a party with Dennis Hopper through.

Cool.

You know, Richard Boehmer talks about like he was a friend of Joanna Ray's, and Lynch would do things like, you should dance in the next take.

And Boehmer would be like, I'm talking about like this deadly serious murder.

And he's like, it'll be great.

Like, you know, like stuff like that.

Catherine Coulson, right, we know had worked with him on a short film like years ago.

And was married to Jack Nance, someone he's known for decades at this point.

Yeah.

There's so many, it's hard to get through all of this casting.

Like it's, you know, but like guys like Michael Ankeen was like a guy, right?

Like he, he, he's in like a bunch of, he's in Clara's Heart and like postcards from the Edge and stuff.

Like he's like a guy.

Yeah.

I think he had a TV show.

The rookies.

Okay.

Whatever.

But then you also have like Mark Frost's dad, the great Warren Frost.

Yes.

You have,

I mean, who else?

And Piper Laurie, she's a fucking Oscar winner.

Yeah, she got homie for an Emmy, right?

She got homie for lead actress on this, I think, largely because she was kind of legendary.

She's so good in this.

She does rock.

Just get ready for her season two, Griff.

Okay.

What I was going to say is,

you've been prepping, you've been making jokes all season about the insanity of Twin Peaks being so much based around high school drama and it all being these people in their mid-20s who don't even, he doesn't even make the effort to like show them in school.

There's like a company.

I mean, there's the iconic shot of Laura Flimboy sobbing in school, but you so rarely see them at school.

And also Audrey leaning against her locker.

Yes.

Right at the start.

We'll get into all that.

And Eva has a very strong take that she wants to share that she's been been

playing track for over tech.

But I read that Manchin Amchak, I'm saying

Amic.

Manchin Amic originally read for Donna.

Makes sense.

And then they cast Lara Fumbo, but you're like, you're so good.

We're going to write a part for you.

And then the part is like, quote unquote, adult woman.

It's true.

Right.

She's in the same pot as the other young engineers, but she's not in school.

Right.

There's this central tension around like, oh my God, Bobby's having an affair with an older woman.

And you're like, everyone's the same age.

And Audrey, you're like, is this creepy that she's like flirting with Cooper?

Right.

But then she's Amex playing an older woman.

Not to spoil, but Audrey, of course, is intended as Dale's love interest.

And then he objects or

someone objects.

That gets written out.

And then they cast Heather Grammas's love interest in season two, who is younger than Sheryl and Fenn.

Sure.

Not younger than the character Audrey, but like it doesn't, anyway.

The TV in the 90s, man.

I mean, the 902 weren't.

I mean, there was no

teenagers, right?

Like, all the teenagers were played by like 25-year-old teenagers.

Yeah.

Well, they're 50s teenagers, too.

Yes.

I think that's part of it.

They're like Blackboard Jungle teenagers.

Westside Story teenagers.

Yes.

Which is part of, right, the charm of Twin Peaks is that there are bad boys, but they feel like 50s bad boys.

But then you're like, oh, what are they doing?

They're like, prostitution and cocaine dealing.

And you're like, oh, well, that's distressing.

And you're like, well, yeah.

Do you think that when Sherilyn Fenn Fenn walked in for her audition, Lynch literally fell out of his chair?

Like, burst into flames.

But, like, what were you doing?

She's the most like Lynch-y lady imaginable.

She also just looks somehow exactly like the 90s version of a 50s teenager.

She's gold race at the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

They filmed.

the show for the pilot for 4 million bucks.

They had a great time, 21 days of shooting.

One week per episode.

Like, it's crazy that they got this done.

I wouldn't have been surprised if you to read that this show was a weird example of him fighting for more days to be able to pull off what he wanted.

It's like, no, they basically worked on regular TV turnaround for that point.

That's crazy.

Um, the contracts required an alternate ending for a pilot for the pilot so it could be distributed as a film in Europe.

Uh, they had no ideas.

Uh, Lynch meets set famously, meets set

dresser Frank Silva.

Uh, and

you know,

I mean, there's just this iconic story of like they're dressing Laura Palmer's bedroom.

Frank's in there doing his thing.

He's moving furnitures around.

He moves a chest of drawers.

It's in the doorway.

And someone says, Frank, don't lock yourself in the room.

And Lynch is like,

Frank, are you an actor?

And he's like, sure.

And he's like, do you want to be in it?

Like, he just sees him over in the corner and is like, ooh.

And,

you know, Bob is born.

And they have him sign a big contract, basically.

And they just start shooting footage of him.

And

here we go.

Where like they realized that he was being caught in the reflection

of Lore Palmer's eye when they discovered the body.

No, they were shooting a pan in the room.

Yes.

And I guess he's in there and Lynch has the idea of like, you know, crouch next to the bed behind the bars.

Everyone can read that.

Because even at the point where this is so, you know, crucial to the Lord.

Even at the point where he decides we're going to make you an on-camera character, the guy's still doing double-duty as like

a set guy.

And sometimes he'd be setting up shit and they'd be like, no, actually, it helps

if you're on camera at this part.

They shoot, you know, basically a shot of her room and they're like, we fucked it up.

You can see Frank in the mirror.

And David's like, no, that's good.

Good.

And Frank Silva, who by all accounts was a nice guy,

becomes the personification of the depths of human depravity as Bob just looking like that.

Becomes like the guy with this kind of scraggly hair

and a jean jacket.

And it's just that's Bob.

He does a great job for a non-actor, man.

He died of HIV complications

right after this ended, basically.

Oh, man.

Like right after Firewalk With Me, I want to say.

Yes, in the mid-90s.

Yeah.

I can look up the exact date.

Like he had the exact arc of this show and then basically died tragically.

100%.

Died in 95.

Yeah.

He is very present in the return, but obviously just as an image.

And,

you know, that's a thing.

And then the Red Room, Mike Anderson was a guy, Michael J.

Anderson, who plays the arm, the man from another place,

was supposed to be in Ronnie Rocket, maybe.

So Lynch had met him

and had done some stuff with him, like camera tests or whatever.

And

as the way Lynch puts it, like one night in the evening, he's out in a parking lot leaning against the car, and the metal was very hot, and the red room scene leapt into his mind, and little Mike was there, and he was speaking backwards.

Which is something that Anderson said he used to do as a child that he taught himself how to do as like his version of pig Latin.

Right.

Right.

I mean, this is all, this is like, I feel like this is the fundamental mythos of Twin Peaks is this sort of David Lynch's describe description of accidental storytelling and, you know, these, these beautiful images we think of.

It's like, ah, it came to me when I touched a hot car.

Isn't this sort of like what the red room represents?

Like not within the narrative of the show, right?

Hot car, but especially like looking at Cooper as an analog for Lynch, right?

And his approach to mystery solving, being an analog to like Lynch's creative process, that the red room is like entering some flow state where there are like no bad ideas, right?

Where you're sort of just like opening your brain up to,

am I touching the bad things?

Am I finding the miracles?

Sure.

Wait, am I missing something?

Is the man from another world Mike's arm?

Yes.

I didn't know.

You need to start to really care about Twin Peaks to unpack all this stuff.

Like you can just watch Twin Peaks and have a good time and vibe with it.

That's what you can also

put together all of its logic.

It's pretty much there for you to assemble if you want to be a dork about it.

You just don't have to be.

I will be upfront and say, I basically watched it this time the way you're saying the first way because I felt like trying to come in and be like fucking deep and expert.

I just didn't know he was that conversation.

So, Mike, I am like excited to watch this 18 more times across the rest of my life.

He says that he cut off his arm, you know, to become good.

And again, we're leaping ahead here.

And yes, the man from another place, I can't remember when.

It might be in Firewalk with me, you know, says, like, I am the arm.

And it's not important.

And it's also, it's like, that's not like, this is what I love about Twin Peaks.

That doesn't make any sense.

No.

It's not like you knowing that you're like, ah, well, of course he was his arm.

Arm is where evil is stored in the body.

It's like, it's like, you know, it's not like that solves the question for me.

It's like the whole one-armed man thing that like Frost and Lynch use the fugitive as a big touch point for developing the show.

Frost and Lynch know what they're doing.

Right.

You take things that people recognize, but then you also add in surreal logic.

Well, he said, and this is the thing that sort of starts to doom the show is he's like, our plan was always the fugitive, you're so fascinated by this guy's ongoing journey in the sense of this larger narrative and hanging over it is this thing of like, he's got to find the one-armed man.

He's got to find the man who killed his wife.

He's got to absolve himself and his reputation.

But you never actually really make any progress on that.

That's not really what it's about.

It's kind of the MacGuffin that keeps him moving on to the new things.

And that was their thing of like, maybe we just never solve the Lore Palmer thing.

We know what the answer is, but that's not really the point.

That's the entry point into these characters.

So they put a one-armed man in this as an homage.

And then similarly, he shows up on set and Lynch is like, you're a good actor.

Plot line.

Like, I think he was not really supposed to do anything.

And I sound like this.

Mike is great.

So great.

Mike Anderson?

Yeah.

No, no, Mike.

Mike the one arm man.

His dog is incredible.

Al Scrobel.

You are a professional television writer.

You have been in many rooms.

Yes.

I've been in much, much lower stakes versions of these types of things.

But there is this feeling, especially when you're on set, when you're gestating ideas, where someone has an idea that's really exciting and everyone riffs on it for like 20 minutes and there's like energy in the room.

And then someone says, I mean, we obviously can't use that.

Right.

Right.

That's too interesting.

Right.

You're all laughing at this joke idea.

And it's like, but that's like too silly.

We can't do that.

Right.

And it's so frustrating.

And Lynch feels like a guy where he's just like, I'm not accepting the, we shouldn't do that or we obviously can't do that.

This is like when I was working on Comedy Bang Bang and we had a

non-speaking Jack Nicholson impersonator in a scene.

Yeah.

And he kept saying into my ear because I was sitting next to him as an extra, this is as good as it gets.

And

I finally just like walked over to Scott Auckland and I was like, hey, Scott, this guy keeps saying this is as good as it gets.

And then they just were like, okay, let's get him like a little contract.

He's going to talk now.

We got to pay him more.

Right.

I mean, Comedy Bang Bang actually feels like the perfect show for like, there's nothing you actually can't do.

It's a show that basically perpetually takes place in a silly red room.

Exactly.

100%.

Right.

Yeah, the best kind of show.

He never said, he does.

That's not the line, too.

It made me so happy.

Right.

No one in as good as it gets is like, wow, this is as good as it gets.

Yeah.

He says, what if this is going to be a good thing?

It's not going to dance out how life is great.

It's the opposite.

Yeah.

He made up a line, a Nicholson line, and he was just like, this is as good as it gets.

Right.

Yeah.

It is.

That's it.

Anyways, wow, this feels like my last detail.

David Lynch, and I just like this quote.

Angelo Angelo Para La Mienti.

Angelo Para Mienti.

That's the theme song.

Lynch's direction to him.

The music should start dark and slow.

Imagine you're alone in the woods at night and you only hear the sound of wind and possibly the soft cry of an animal.

And then he'd start playing and David would say, Good.

Now get ready for a change because you see a beautiful girl.

She's coming out from behind a tree and she's alone and in trouble.

So, go to a beautiful melody and then reach a climax and let it tear your heart out.

And that is the theme song of, you know, the theme music of Twin Beats.

It is, it's so bizarre because obviously, like, all his musical pieces go through like movements and waves, but you take any one of those pieces and at any single moment, it is simultaneously like serene.

Yes.

It feels like it could be playing under an ASR video.

Pure moods.

Right.

Like, hugely romantic, sweeping, old-fashioned drama, and like deeply unsettling.

Yeah.

Like he's somehow hitting all three notes simultaneously at every second.

That is the magic of it all.

And you think about audiences locking into this show, just the mission statement of the opening of just like, here's like pure moods over like serene footage of fucking

lumber mills.

Like the fact that the saw is so early on

in the intro and does feel like this relaxing element somehow just kind of completely calibrates you to the tone of what the show is.

I think if you watch Twin Peaks and you skip the intro, which these terrible services like you do now, you are, it's like running without warming up or whatever.

Right.

Like you're going to pull a muscle.

You need to slide.

It tells you how to watch it.

Bob Iger had just taken over ABC.

Now he does something.

I don't know what he does right now.

Masterclass on leadership.

That's right.

He does masterclasses on leadership.

He pretends to run for president.

So he hadn't ordered this pilot.

It's presented to him, and he liked the pilot.

ABC is like, we can't put this on air.

This is basically pornographic.

Not pornographic in terms of sex.

Just like, this is too bizarre.

Like, this will not vibe with

whatever they had on air.

People will storm our offices with pitchforks and torches.

Iger has a gigantic fight with a room of New York executives.

He wins, and the show is ordered as a mid-season show of eight episodes, obviously.

And as I think any Twin Peaks diehard will tell you, the first season of the show was written in advance.

Sure.

Was filmed with full complete scripts.

And that does speak to the experience of watching it versus season two, where it's a more traditional TV show where they're not written

all the way through, obviously.

And they're trying to anticipate stuff.

The idea of...

Okay, season one was a success.

What we should do is give Lynch and Frost another year to come up with eight jewel-cut episodes, which would have been the right decision, is something they probably could not even conceptualize at that point in time.

It would not have made sense for anyone to say, let's do less of a hit show, even if creatively it's a bad idea.

But also, the idea of like having a writer's room that they're not in while they're on set, like doing Twin Peaks, that makes me sick to my stomach.

It's so weird.

You cannot do that.

I was just digging into a little bit.

I mean, we'll talk about all in the season two episode.

But like, there are all these contrasting reports of like, at no point was ever anyone else really named the showrunner.

That's a huge problem the show has in season two.

There's no real showrunner.

Lynch is not writing much anymore.

Frost is even kind of taking a step back and no one's really filling it in.

Right.

Where like sometimes David was around and Frost was really gone, but he was never as around as he was in season one.

Sometimes Frost was around, but Lynch was gone.

Sometimes it was neither.

The myth that needs to be dispelled, I think, for a lot of people sometimes is that Lynch was doing wild at heart during season one.

No.

A lot of people think he departed for season two.

He's in season two.

Yes.

Like he has a role in it.

Right.

Like he starts

like right after season one.

I'll give you the exact thing.

No.

No.

Oh, right after he does the pilot.

Lynch shoots the pilot and the third episode,

which is a very crucial episode, Zen or the Skill to Catch a Killer.

Then he goes off to do Wild at Heart.

And he says, when he came back, he says, I don't really know what was going on with the show.

It felt like a runaway train.

I think if it had been me and Mark writing together in every episode, we would have been okay.

but that was basically impossible, right?

You know, because it's too much.

And so at that point, there's a writer's room and they have kind of like guidelines.

You know what I mean?

They made a, yeah.

Like kind of like, these kinds of things should happen.

These kinds of things shouldn't happen.

These kinds of stories should be, we should be moving towards them.

But like, as you will especially see in season two, there are some storylines that are so.

fucking bananas that you're just like where did this come from and was this one line that someone said like hey i think they should do like a civil war reenactment it.

Sure.

And the guy's like, what?

Okay.

Like, I don't know how some of this stuff made it all the way to the finish line.

Eva, have you ever

seen it?

I was going to say, I wanted him to say, like, they had a writer's room.

They were shooting little basketballs.

They had a.

It's so weird to think about just a normally staffed writer's room

trying to just La Croix.

Nerf guns.

I think that.

Most of the narrative shows you've worked on, you've been there from the start of the show.

Have you ever joined a show on like a second or third season?

Ooh, yes, but not ones that went.

Like I was on the second season of Why the Last Man, but then that got canceled a few weeks in.

Yes,

it's a great time for television.

It is.

It's fun for that.

But yeah, no, I usually start.

I mean, Comedy Bang Bang as well.

I was in the first season, but narrative shows.

Yes, I've usually started the show.

It just always feels like such a weird thing to me.

And I know tons of people who have done it.

And no one is like, this is insane.

But the idea of like joining a show that is already off and running that you have seen that you have watched yeah and now it's like now everything you're writing up for a thing that you're entering midstream is canon does count is real right you're actually the fan fiction is no longer fan fiction

that on top of the like new kid in class energy of like, oh, most of you have already been working together and I'm just coming in here and every idea I have is supposed to be as valid as yours.

Like, it just feels so strange to have a show that's so much about these two guys' dynamics.

And then in season two, be like, can we just hire 10 people?

The answer is no.

Right.

It's like, but also the idea of when I think about those jobs a lot, if you're starting really late, like multiple seasons in, how do you not just pitch things that be like, we already talked about that?

We did that.

We tried that.

It doesn't work.

Like

forever.

That part of it.

That would be so, I would be so scared.

Like thinking about people coming in and writing for The Simpsons now.

Oh, I know.

And it's like, how do you pitch an idea?

Yeah.

And we know people who have that job.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And it just like boggles my mind to be like, right.

Yeah.

I assume a show like that, it's kind of like, okay, buddy, welcome to The Simpsons.

Here's how this works.

And you, you take it easy for a sec while you learn the right, because they must have such practices

embedded in like the process, right?

Like, or like a.

a proceed, like a law and order type show, right?

Where it's like, okay, we do this, we do this, we do this.

This is not an easy, an easy show to synthesize.

And if you're trying to game it out from a distance, you're going to get it wrong because it is so much just about these two dudes.

But season one is very much not that.

They have Harley Payton and Robert Engels, who write a couple episodes with them.

But, you know, it's a much more contained process.

Did you enjoy it?

What do you think, Griff?

I liked it quite a bit.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting that

as I'm watching season two right now, I feel myself getting even more into it.

Into one?

Well, you love the characters at this point, you know, yeah.

And I'm like coming up on the reveal episode, which I know what the reveal is, and I know everyone's prepped me for like this is about to fall off a cliff.

It's such a good episode.

I have friends who defend the back half of season two more.

I do know opinions in that vein, but I, yeah, I don't know.

It's like, it's hard to, um, I don't know if you felt this watching this, uh, you know, slightly later in your life, but it's like weird to watch it fresh when you've had this sort of like pre-digested ephemera of the show around you for so long.

And it's not just like,

oh, when I was like 20 and I started watching Cheers for the first time.

And I'm like, I know all these reference points.

I know the basics of what Cheers is, but it's not like there's a dense mythology to it and there's 11 seasons of a show.

And I'm like, these eight episodes have been like

so lionized in the culture

that it's weird to actually just watch it and like put all that inside and engage with what it actually is.

Because as we said, there's so much less weird stuff or the real out there stuff in the first season than there is in the sort of

sprinkling.

Just a sprinkling.

It's true.

It is very much about

the town and the people who live in it.

And the weird stuff is basically a couple glimpses of the

Black Lodge slash red room, some visions you know some kind of spooky visions and there's weird comedy there's the sort of energy you wouldn't expect on a show like so fun like i this time i was just like nadine is so funny yes like all the big ad and nadine sins they're just i'm like this is a funny lady i sent you guys the um

the the s nl parody yeah that was like pretty famous and you think about a what interesting point in the culture where basically the idea of s nl getting to parody x

whatever it is, felt like finally someone's going to take this down, right?

Like you're tuning into SNL.

The season premiere for season 15 is Kyle McLaughlin hosting right as season two of Twin Peaks is about to start.

He's responding to the

cultural tidal wave that these first eight episodes have created just a few months earlier.

Yes.

It's almost like the speed at which Roget John Page hosts SNL after Bridgerton blows up on Netflix.

Right.

Usually it's not that fast for someone to get get put up onto the SNL stage, right?

And you feel the energy from the audience during that Twin Peaks sketch of like, here we go.

There's no Twitter.

Yeah.

There's no fucking college humor shorts.

No one's been able to make fun of this thing yet, right?

And they're trying to hit like all the points on it.

And at the end of the sketch, Mike Myers comes on as Michael J.

Anderson.

And the audience is like, here we go.

Finally, someone's acknowledging that this thing was fucking weird.

And it's so weird to watch that and be like, he was on the show for four four minutes at that point.

Yeah.

But, and, and kind of, I mean, I'm sure there had been like reruns or whatever, but like, it's still, it's like, I think they watching the show must have kind of been like afterwards, you were like,

did I imagine like this part?

Like, that's the way

you have to think about.

I mean, on the Blu-ray box set, they had like TV bumpers for like watch Twin Peaks again from the beginning that I think was running that summer.

Like they gave people a second on RAM.

It's only eight episodes.

Yes.

But both of the that episode, I watched the monologue and I watched the Twin Peaks parody.

And both of them are really built around jokes of here's the answer to who killed Laura Palmer.

Who shot Mr.

Burns?

Right.

Like everyone's on edge about this.

They had, did you see like TV Guide had a poll?

Yeah.

Where people were voting on who they thought did it.

Who is the who are the officers?

It was everyone, but like everyone thought Dr.

Jacoby did it.

Well, he is the most sort of loud red herring.

Yes.

I mean, we're sort of guys.

We're not going to spoil, spoil season two or whatever, but like

also, I guess.

It was spoiled for me years before I watched it.

I think it's kind of hard to be a person engaged in the media and not know the answer

because so much of the discourse around what went off the rails talks about that episode and what happened there.

And do you know who killed Laura Palmer?

I do.

We won't say it here.

That's after the reveal, the next episode.

That's when you stop.

That's when I stop.

I think a lot of people in in our generation who were catching up with Twin Peaks just kind of naturally knew, well, this seems like a good place in any to kind of wind this down.

I got other stuff to do.

So I think 2001, they released the first season on DVD.

Yeah.

And then they never put out season two.

Oh, it took many years.

Yeah, eventually there's the full.

And then they did the gold box set.

But there was like an extended period where you could only watch season one.

Interesting.

Where season two was even out of circulation.

Do you just want to say?

No, no, should we not?

Maggie Simpson.

Maggie Simpson.

Maggie Simpson did it.

Laura Comer tried to steal her candy.

I didn't know who shot Mr.

Burns.

I watched that live.

Kid at school spoiled it for me and felt really pleased with himself.

Yeah, well,

kids do.

The other SNL sketch, The Motlo.

No, no, but I think this is a little impressive.

Let's talk about Twin Peaks after this.

Right after this.

Okay.

Yes.

There's the one that's the full parody that's Chris Farley's first appearance on the show.

Wow.

Where he plays Leo.

And the whole premise of the sketch is that Leo's walking in and saying, I did it.

I'm guilty.

He's very good.

He's very good.

Yeah.

And from like where you leave the show at the end of season one, you could see that being like, well, Leo's certainly wild and out by the end of the season.

He seems super dangerous and crazy.

The minor bird called Leo out.

Right.

And Cooper keeps on going like, this is interesting.

This gives me some new ideas in the case.

And everyone's like, he just confessed, except that the case is closed.

Right?

The monologue is Kama Laughlin comes out and he's like, I had this fun idea to do sort of a question and answer with the audience.

I don't think anyone's ever done this in their monologue before.

And the first question is, like, how do you pronounce your name?

And he's like, it's McLaughlin.

And they're like, oh, great.

Thank you.

And the second question is like, where are you from?

And he says the name of his town.

It's the most mundane thing.

Right.

Like the audience is laughing at like, these are uninteresting questions and answers.

And then the third guy is Jim Downey stands up and he's like, hey, less of a personal question, more of a Twin Peaks fan.

Who killed Laura Palmer?

And he goes, oh, it's Shelly the Waitress.

Funny other questions.

And then like a stage hand comes and goes, Kyle, there's a call for you in the control room.

And he gets in there and he picks up the phone.

He goes, oh, David, hi.

They show a still photo of David Lynch.

They say the voice of David Lynch.

And then you just hear like,

oh, David, no, I hadn't thought about that.

And it's like 30 seconds of this voice yelling at him for ruining the show.

And the audience explodes at the reveal of it being David Lynch.

Even though the guy's not doing a David Lynch impression, but it's just they know what that is.

The idea of him was so big at that point.

And then he comes out and he was like, I was just kidding.

We don't know who the killer is.

But both sketches are based around like, everyone wants to know this fucking answer.

And this show is one of those classic examples of like moonlighting is also cited as like, the motor of the show is the thing that you can never actually get to.

Yeah.

And the second you get there, everyone's going to fucking lose interest.

In that sense, it is wild where this season ends.

Yeah.

This season ends with Cooper getting shot and the mill burning down.

And not really being any closer to answers.

No.

No.

They're, no offense to them, horrible cops.

Yeah.

Like, they're not good at solving the murder of Laura Palmer.

No.

They're throwing rocks at bottles.

They do throw rocks at bottles, and that's an interesting take by them.

And they do have a sort of, you're right, they have a sort of

overflow of scumbags.

Yes.

So they can't just be like, well, Leo seems aggro.

Yeah.

He probably did it.

Like, you know, he's the one.

And Laura does had such a dark life

that it can't just be like, oh, well, Laura was mixed up with this person.

It's like, well, no, she's mixed up with like eight shady people.

So yes, they have that going against them.

But I do like, they never really figure anything out.

And then the killer is revealed to them kind of, you know, without their intervention, really.

Sure.

I don't know.

Which is fine.

I don't don't care i think so much in like the lynch all his post blue velvet work how much he is sort of reacting and responding to how much talk there was of like misogyny and sort of like um

uh

was was he using like abuse as a plot device you know is he being like uh

exploitative or whatever um and it it does feel like he is a guy who is like um earnestly emotionally empathetically interested in domestic abuse, not using it as like a hot button to push.

Yes.

But the show starts in such an interesting point where you're like, here's this like young woman with this angelic like high school photo who's discovered in these horrible circumstances.

And most shows would do like, she was the perfect girl and she's murdered, who would do such a thing?

Sure.

And they're so upfront with like the last 48 hours of her life were insane.

They were pretty insane.

Like they uncover the sort of secret double life of Laura Palmer basically immediately.

Yeah, it's not a huge secret.

Right.

Which is part of why the case is hard to solve because you're just like, oh, she was in with so many bad people.

All of these threads are intertwined.

It's not like she has one on-edge boyfriend.

It's also like Bobby's big speech at the funeral.

You know, we all did it.

Right.

You know, like, that's the point, right?

And like.

Just like Blue Velvet, right.

The real point is like, this town is beautiful.

Yeah.

And it is something that you're just like, I want to be here, but it's, you know, there's so much horrible stuff turning away from it.

I'm like the receptacle for all of the like sins and darkness in this town.

Rot, right?

I won't speak to, well, I guess it's more of a season two thing, but yes, like I think that Lynch is

very

you know, drawn to horrible darkness and the unspeakable crimes of abuse that Laura suffers.

Right.

And in Twin Peaks, you can watch it and you can be like, well, Bob did that.

He's a monster that causes evil.

He's a supernatural force.

Right.

But obviously, Bob is just a manifestation of like unspeakable things.

Like if you just want you, you can watch the show as like sci-fi of like if Bob is a monster who inhabits people and makes them do bad things.

It's like, or is Bob just David's way of processing the most unimaginable things?

That's exactly what I do.

But also, Bob doesn't inhabit Leo.

Like he doesn't inhabit other people in the castle.

That's terrible shit.

He has a bad vibe.

I will say, I'm going to say, I don't want Bob to come at me.

I do think he has kind of a negative vibe that he brings to the party.

And I do think he's kind of bringing the vibe down at Twin Peaks generally.

I think so.

Even though he's only inside one person, basically, he's still, I do feel like there's a, as Twin Peaks goes on, the point is like, we're very close to, you know, the darker world here.

I think it's what you said about Black Lodge.

There's this like.

interestingly pure, almost childlike view of like, you know, what we've talked about this, but the like, the blue velvet velvet thing of like, look at this perfect lawn.

And then like six inches below, there's worms and a deer and all this sort of shit that people read as him saying, oh, secretly, all of these places are evil, which is not what he's saying.

What he's saying is what he finds confounding about the world is that these two things exist dancing against each other, right?

That's cool.

And

yeah, Bob is like him,

in my view, much like what you said, is him being like, I do not understand how people can be outwardly nice and polite and capable of something this evil.

You saying there's an argument that like, well, that's a face and that's an act that someone puts on to cover up their evilness, but he's still like, this type of action is unfathomable to me.

And the only way that someone could be capable of doing that

and also making polite conversation is if there's some other force at play that I don't understand.

And also if someone like the FBI and a sort of a hero from another era steps in and is like, I'm here here to solve the case.

Right.

And it's like, what happened?

This awful thing happened, Dale.

Like this terrible, terrible thing happened to a young woman.

And here's what, you know, we were finding out about it.

And he's like, hmm, must be like a monster.

Like, you know, like, that's what I can defeat.

I can't defeat like ambiguous inhuman behavior, you know, like, but I can fight like evil spirits.

Like, right?

You know, like, I don't know.

That's like, it's a perfect thing for Dale to try to deal with.

And I think as Twin Peaks goes on, especially in the return, it's about the limits of what Dale can achieve.

Like, Dale thinks he can deal with this stuff, but he can't.

And especially this town that basically has this pipeline for commodifying young women.

Yeah.

Like, basically, waiting until the moment they get.

Well, Night Jack's is a legitimate establishment.

I'm not questioning that.

It's a very strong business model.

It's really nice.

Like, I say, it's maybe the nicest brothel.

It is the nicest,

disgusting underage brothel that is a cocaine.

It does.

It's like Adam McGoyne's exotica of like brothel.

Dude, Dude, Adam McGoy's Exotica is a where you're like, who had the money to build this?

It's huge.

Like, is this CD or is it like Disney?

It's massive.

Sorry.

No, I was just going to say, if I saw One Eye Jacks like featured in like an architectural digest spray, I'd be like, this place is lovely.

If you weren't telling me what the business was.

Look, I have a membership.

I just hang out at the bar.

It's just you don't have to fuck any other.

You put your laptop there.

You just go there to write.

Yeah, exactly.

You can gamble a little bit, but it's like, you just get a martini and you chill.

One-eye Jacks is a is a good epitome of like, you know, summation of Twin Peaks, right?

Where you're like, God, yes, vibes immaculate.

What happens here?

Oh, incest, you know,

child abuse, drug dealing, like terrible, terrible things.

Everyone who works with that.

This guy who's like got his fingers in all of the like quaint businesses that the town uses, the fucking perfume counter as a pipeline to funnel young women into prostitution.

That's why Twin Peaks.

So I had seen Twin Peaks, but now we're doing David Lynch.

I'm going to watch Twin Peaks and I'm like, ah, man, like, is it going to bum me out to mainline Twin Peaks?

Like, Twin Peaks is disturbing.

Yeah.

And I'm watching.

I was that pushback when we were doing Park Shen Wook

where you were just like, a lot of kids dying.

And Rhodes as well, who similarly.

Park Shenwook remains the most bummed out I was delving into a filmography that I had largely seen.

A lot of dead kids.

A lot of things.

Run straight through.

And JJ, our researcher, who loves David Lynch, has been in a little bit of a like.

He's in a funk.

Yeah.

I'm not.

I love this shit.

For whatever reason, it tells the stories in a way that I can handle better.

And I've been very happy having just Twin Peaks on and thinking about Twin Peaks, even though, yes, then I will be like, oh, God, but it really is about something that's awful.

I do think, I mean, and I think that's the reason why some people, especially at the time, now I think this has basically been dropped as a conversational thread.

But like, is there something crass about the way that Lynch keeps going back to this as a subject or inciting plot points or, you know, dramatic centers or whatever?

And I do think it is just him constantly trying to wrap his head around how could this happen?

Right.

Right.

In somewhere that I love or somewhere that I think is cool.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it is just, I mean, this is cultural conversations we're constantly having are just like, it happens so much more than you think it does.

Yeah.

I mean, if it's like this in Maholan Drive, too, it's like

the magic of Hollywood or the magic of, you know,

this veneer of any form of polite society or business or right normal quote-unquote behavior.

David Snapchat.

David, what?

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Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

There's one other person in the room right now.

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

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uh the pilot begins uh with uh laura palmer's corpse is discovered wrapped in plastic what do you guys think of that i don't know how to tackle twin peaks like i don't know how we do this sure are you gonna do the summary of the entire season yeah let's do it uh line by line no this is what i'm saying like

I don't know what we do now.

What do we do now, Griffith?

David's glancing at the clock in the round.

Should I talk about standout characters, maybe?

Yeah, I feel like going through it episode by episode maybe makes less sense than talking holistically about the scene and plot lines.

Yeah, I mean, that's maybe the best way to go.

The character is the better way to go through it.

Because it's also, that's, I mean, obviously the crime is keeping you engaged and wanting, you know, wanting to see this through.

But I love the character

in

the chat.

That is very like, there is a certain weird, angelic serenity.

She's being presented to them in this sort of beautiful, terrible way.

She's painted in like almost stylized, like blue, frozen lady makeup.

Right?

Yeah.

Like, there's something, there is this odd, and even just the way the plastic splays around her and whatever.

And she's connected to kind of the river and the waterfall, which is so iconic.

It's where I had my first kiss.

Wow.

The waterfall?

Yeah, the waterfall.

Whoa.

This must be so weird for you.

Did someone like take you to the waterfall?

Yeah.

Like, oh, I'm being taken to like makeout point.

Like, this is like where it all happens in Falls, River or whatever that Snow Call me Falls.

Most of the other people you were growing up with there had watched the show or similar to you, where they were like, too weird.

Oh, no one watched it.

No one watched it.

Yeah, no, I don't, no one.

I was in middle school too.

Like, no.

It's also a time when it's harder to just watch.

Like you said, like, the show was less available.

I would check back in with some like middle school friends who were cool and be like, hey, did you ever watch Twin Peaks?

But I'm not sure.

Are those waterfalls nice?

They're so cool.

And the Lodge is really cool, too.

Everyone would have their like prom like parties there and stuff.

But they, it's a good place to, like, yeah.

The Snow Call Me Lodge is like an incredible building.

And the falls are shocking.

They're very tall.

And Mount Psy, which is what Twin Peaks is, it's just a single mountain, not two, is also a really fun hike.

It's a big bit of a goof.

Yeah, I was going to say that.

I'm not going to lie.

Yeah.

I hate being lie.

I hate these goofs.

It is a beautiful, drizzly

weird place.

Yeah.

I mean, can can you?

That's my climate.

Like, it's, I imagine

it's a damp place.

Yeah.

You would love it.

A damp place.

It's very England-y.

Yeah.

Did you guys have airing closets?

That's a very British thing.

Errand closets?

An airing closet.

You mean like a mudroom?

No, I feel like a mudroom is that's where you like take off your shoes before you walk into your house.

No, most British houses have these things called airing closets that are like basically a less damp room because your whole house is so fucking damp because you live in England.

So there's this one room where you can dry shit out.

Anyway, oh wow.

Wait, hold on.

Hold on.

How does it work?

How does it work?

I have no idea.

Ours was like with airing cupboards.

Sorry.

Ours was like with the boiler.

Okay.

Like the boiler.

It heats things up.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Eva, do you remember like your dad's explanation or justification of what drove him, like what it was exactly that he responded to?

Like when he pitches to you guys, we're moving.

You had been living in Los Angeles at that point.

Yes.

And it was a combination, I think, of just my parents wanted to leave Los Angeles.

There had been an earthquake that had freaked my mom out.

And I think they wanted to

get to a different, just go somewhere else.

And I think they settled on

this area very quickly.

My dad had around this time also been meeting with David Lynch about a script he had written.

I was going to say, it's kind of surprising they never worked together.

Yeah, it does.

It does make sense.

My dad adapted the book Geek Love and briefly, like, David Lynch was going to make it.

Yeah.

Right.

It never happen.

Was he going to act in it as well?

No, I think it was, but he had some of those Bob's big boy meetings.

Yeah.

And so he did, he did say he drank lots of milkshakes.

Um, but I don't know why.

I mean, it's beautiful, but it's so different from LA.

And it was like a such a, just a wild move.

Your dad also did a TV show.

I was curious.

Like, this is a Dave's World dashboard.

You went to your dad's.

Like, he was flying to LA to do two days a week on Dave's World while you were living.

Five days a week.

That's wild.

And then you come back for the weekend, basically.

Yes, for several years.

That sounds hard.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend anyone do that.

Your dad, the great Harry Anderson, whose work I idolize, always in reading about him and some of the things you've told me, had that kind of fascinating thing of just being like very successful within show business and having kind of like a deep distaste and distrust for show business.

Yeah, exactly.

Where I understand the impulse to be like, oh, you and your brother are getting older.

Do I want to raise the kids here?

Do I want to be in this?

If I have enough power that I can live somewhere else and still do the work,

can I make my own rules?

It's just funny that this is the thing that he sparked to and then was like, I'm moving there on the town of demons.

He took a full year.

I know.

It was a town of demons.

No, he took also a year where he just like didn't work at all and he was like a volunteer fireman.

Wow.

In

False City, yeah.

And also like an umpire for a little league.

He did like a lot of small town jobs and then he was like, I'm bored.

i'm going back right dave berry i'm gonna be him i'm gonna play dave berry on the show with shadow stevens what's his world like yeah what's that guy's world like yeah um weird weird weird choices overall i'm mom if you're listening to this i'm probably wrong about a lot of it sure she was on my podcast does she really yeah she likes to listen to podcast episodes hi those moms um all right so okay all right let's characters okay so dale cooper yes what do we think of him i played by tom mclaughlin he's a special agent in the fbi FBI.

I texted you guys this.

Yeah.

I was just, let's just get into it.

Problematic.

A cab.

Problematic fave.

Eva wants to drag Dale Cooper on Maine.

He has not aged 12.

I think.

No, no, not really, but it was a fun text chain for us to be saying that he was a fuckboy.

I do think

we were doing the fake

sex.

I do think that

Dale's limitations are crucial to later Twin Peaks.

i think in season one well i can't speak to that yeah uh i think in season one that's less true he's more of this really fun ingredient sure yeah of just like everyone else is the small town guy and he is so into the small town but he's an oddity among it is it's interesting to me that it's like what if fox mulder never left like he shows up to do an ex-file in some weird town where they're like yeah the fucking you know whatever jersey devil lives here and he's like i like it here yeah i'm i'm just gonna stay it's kind of like your dad, where he was just like,

we should move here immediately.

But it's also the thing of being like,

usually the cliche would be like, I can't believe I'm hanging out with these yokels.

And then he just immediately, like, I love it.

These are good people.

Everything's cool.

It's good people.

The food is great.

The trees are great.

I'm doing the opposite of what you think.

And whenever you get glimpses of the agency or they come to visit him, you're just like, the vibes are so much more aggressive.

I mean, Albert, who is one of my like favorite Twin Peaks characters.

Incredible.

Oh, the great.

When he shows up right like he's the one who's like this place sucks like why are you into this and this is the guy from any other mystery cock show you've watched right this is he would be exactly the fish out of water right where he's like oh small town like you're not even dressing there's a season two episode where he's like you're not even dressing well anymore like why are you wearing a flannel shirt it's so funny yeah um but uh but yes but dale he likes coffee he talks into a tape recorder to diane the unseen assistant this is what what I was going to say, that we've talked a lot about how funny David Lynch is as like a person and his behavior and his whole energy and how his movies are often very funny.

But I feel like he rarely has a character that is funny in the way that he is funny as a person.

Yes.

Like this is, we're talking about how much he is an analog

for Lynch himself.

But this is also the only character that captures that weirdness for me.

Isn't just like, this is is Lynch's sense of humor, but this is the behavioral oddness of Lynch.

And I wonder if the key to that is having the collaborator in Mark Frost, having someone working with him who also has a perspective a step outside of Lynch.

I will say that there's a lot more of it in the return in a very nice way.

Like funny guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also, as you said, like he and McLaughlin growing together.

Yeah.

But even just other characters, you're like, this guy's just here for fun.

Yeah.

Yes.

Cooper in season one, well, he's trying to solve Laura Palmer's murder.

He's very drawn to her.

Sort of, right?

Like her story.

And they immediately identified like she has a ton of drugs in her system.

Sure.

She's tangled in this like knotty web of like relationship intrigue with a bunch of other kids at

school.

The public presentation of her is she's the prom queen.

She was the girlfriend to Bobby Briggs, who is the son of a military man and is, you know, the sort of sensible sort of golden boy.

Although he's the James Dean type of the town as well.

Although I would say the James Dean type is James Hurley, who she's secretly dating, but she wasn't really that entangled with James, who she actually thought of as a sort of sweetie pie, more than like a dark

boyfriend type.

And she was actually also a sex worker.

I was going to say, who was maybe part of One Eyed Jax, but would also just like be a random sex worker.

She was a drug addict.

The facts they get at immediately are she had a bunch of cocaine in her system.

She had three sexual partners in the last 24 hours of her life.

Like all these things that just immediately feel incongruous with the still sweetie pie.

Yeah, just this tutor, this nice thing.

Right, and then right tells us she was a tutor.

She was, she did meals on wheels.

Yeah.

You know,

her dad is, you know, a lawyer who's a part of this, you know, big part of the city.

Like, you know, she grew up in this picture perfect life.

Yada, yada, yada.

I think it's at the beginning of season two where Russ Tamblin says the the thing of like, it almost feels like he's implying that Laura Palmer killed herself and Cooper pushes back on it.

And he's like, I'm not implying she killed herself.

I'm just saying she might have allowed herself to be killed.

Which feels like the key to the character is this feeling of like there was so much suffering going on for someone who was trying so hard.

Yeah, that's that's like really well put.

Yeah.

But I would say throughout season one, we learn lots of things about Laura, but we don't learn who killed her really.

And

Cooper will have these dreams where he goes to another place

with a chevron floor and red velvet curtains.

A room similar to our room.

People ask the kind of room we record in, and it is very lodgy.

We don't have a chevron floor, though.

I'd like, I want to.

We have big red curtains, but then the walls are white, but it's similarly just a weird, perfectly cubed, windowless room.

What if we had some statues?

You know, like a little Venus de Milo.

I go a Buster Keaton statue.

Really quick, when I was in Moscow years ago with Amy Nicholson for the Moscow Film Festival, I went to a knockoff sleep no more that they had in downtown Moscow.

And Eva, you will go to a knockoff sleep no more in any country.

And the way they onboarded you in Russian was they brought you to a room that looked exactly like the Black Lodge and they played the Twin Peaks theme.

Oh, so it was over.

Yeah.

And then they gave you some Sleep No More masks that they had stolen from Sleep No More.

This rules.

And then they sent you into the mansion, which was full of, you know, dancing people.

But it was very funny to just be like, oh, you're just just doing, they just did you're using the shorthand.

Oh, like this kind of vibe.

Yeah, it's like this, all of Twin Peaks.

It's just stolen.

But as you said, there's a lot less of that in the first season.

And he's more drawn to this

life

and these people.

He loves the aesthetics of the local cops, their coffee, their donuts.

He thinks they're like good moral people.

Yeah.

Which is so interesting because he's basically entering this like den of immorality in a weird way.

He's He's cheating and lying.

Right.

And like he meets Josie Packard, and the first thing he says to Truman is, like, how long have you been sleeping with her?

Like, it's not like he's

morally upright in that way.

Sure.

But he sees like goodness in the good characters of Twin Wales.

It is wild how much sex everyone is having with everyone.

That's why Dale Cooper on the show.

Correct.

Dale Cooper fucks anybody.

If the story is true, Laura Flynn Boyle saved us from maybe

feeling weird about Dale Cooper.

Lynch and Frost at the time were were like, that was going to be one of our big threads for season two.

And one of the reasons the season went

very lost in season two was because we couldn't have them end up together.

And I'm like, I think history, it's probably better the way the dynamic plays out.

Exactly.

Of like the tension of it, like she's got a big crush on him.

He does the right thing.

Instead of being like, yeah, sure, I will, I'm going to fuck this teenager.

Right.

Audrey, who is the

high schooler who goes the least to school of these high schoolers who should never go to school?

You're like, I'm like, is Audrey even enrolled?

Like, is anyone aware that she's not at school?

There's one episode where someone says to Ben Horn, like, you know, your daughter hasn't been seen at school in three months.

And he's like, oh, yeah, where is she?

And it's like, she fucking lives at one-eyed jack.

She's like an FBI undercover agent, sort of.

Like, I mean, like,

isn't she supposed to learn algebra or whatever?

She's just going around your hotel bothering groups of people.

But I like that she's sort of his weird version of like an encyclopedia Brown, Hardy Boys, Nancy,

Nancy True.

Yes.

Yes.

She's funny because she should be entangled in the, there's sort of a love triangle, right?

Like a love rhombus.

Because it's like Laura now dead.

You're banging.

Go on.

Hey, Rhombus.

Bobby, her boyfriend.

James, her actual boyfriend.

Donna, her best friend, but Donna likes James, right?

That's what's funny.

Everyone in this show is cheating on everyone else.

And you're like, wouldn't this person be upset?

And they're like, no, because they're having an affair with the other other one.

I've actually worked up about that guy.

Right.

Everyone has two partners.

Right, like, because Bobby actually really likes,

you know, Shelly,

the Machinamic character.

But Shelly's married to Leo, who's abusive.

But Leo actually likes evil.

Right.

This is like fucking evil.

She's going balls deep and evil.

Right.

Yeah.

And then, right, of course, you know, then you have Peggy Lipton, the beautiful, perfect.

Beautiful Peggy Lipton.

How do you feel about her, though?

She's so gorgeous.

Yes.

As Norma, the diner owner, the double R is the diner, and she really loves Big Ed, but Big Ed is married to

Jesus.

What's her name?

Jesus Christ.

What you said her name?

Nadine, right?

Nadine, the great Nadine, who is, of course, insane.

And again, this is, it's like, it's,

it's another great Lynch thing.

Nadine is clinically depressed slash bipolar or something, right?

Like she has like a medical, like mental illness.

She also has one eye.

She does have one eye.

We learn one eye.

But she does not work at one eye jacks.

No, she doesn't work at one eye jack.

These are the subtleties.

But like some of the nuances.

Nadine is a sad character.

And Big Ed, his love for her is real.

Like, you know, like you get, or like his protectiveness for her, even though he doesn't like want to be married to her.

Ed, I think, is like one of the former characters.

I love the show.

I love Ed so much.

Yeah, because like Bobby, I mean, not Bobby, James isn't even his son.

Yes.

No, James is just his like ward.

It's just a guy who shows up on his mic and is like, how you doing, James?

You need some advice today?

But, but, like, Ed's like, like, so Nadine is like compellingly tragic, yeah, but also she's obsessed with making silent drape runners, right?

And that is objectively just fucking funny.

Like, when she's yelling at him about cotton balls and oil and stuff, she's annoying.

Get into season in season two, she thinks she's a teenager and gets superpowers.

Big Ed explains the whole history of the relationships where it's sort of like there were these kind of sliding doors of like, yes, these moments where we could have broken up and then something tragic tragic happened and we were fused back together.

But also, the Peggy Lipton was like his high school sweetheart.

Everyone thought they were going to get together and then they were like on a break.

And then, like, briefly, this one moment, they get married very quickly, him and Nadine.

Yeah, Peggy Lipton's so hot.

Her husband, who's her evil husband?

Norma's evil husband?

Yes.

Fuck.

One of my least favorite characters.

He's just a little.

Hank's a great actor.

Great actor.

Love that actor.

And Chris Mulkey is the actor.

I feel like he never has much to do in Twin Peace.

He's a little one-note as Rich.

He's just like, I'm worse than Leo.

Right.

Is he?

He's

kind of better end.

Can I give you my take?

He's snake from The Simpsons.

Oh, he is.

Where it's like, I'm a criminal.

You mean that's a bad thing?

Right.

I'll shoot someone.

And he's even sort of got the hair.

And you're like, I get that your whole identity is doing crimes.

You don't seem that bad.

You sound illegal.

Whereas Leo, it's like, dude, like, Leo feels like a guy that I would be like, hey, how you doing?

And he's like, the fuck?

And I'd push me across the room and I'd be in a fight with a a guy I'd never met.

Leo has great fashion, though.

I kept noticing he had really good shirts and jackets.

Leo is played by Eric DeRay, who is Joanna Ray's son.

With Aldo Ray.

With Aldo Ray.

Yeah.

And so, in a way, you're kind of like, oh, they just, because like Leo in season one, especially, it's like, he's not that important.

Sure.

He's just

Shelly's awful husband and he's mean to her and he's very obviously a possible Laura Palmer killer.

Maybe too obvious.

Right.

And you're like, ah, did they just give this guy a role just kind of being nice, right?

To join a Ray, I guess.

But he kind of, especially later, he kind of rocks like the actor.

Like there's a weird, crazy humor to him.

Yeah.

And he's sort of

kind of like what you're saying about Chris Mulkey, like a cartoon in a nasty way, but like in kind of a pivotal way, right?

I don't know.

Yeah, no, no, no.

I agree with you.

Yeah.

Can we talk about all the teenage boys together?

Okay.

So the teenage boys, we got Bobby played by Dana Ashbrook, my personal favorite.

I love Bobby.

I guess, is Bobby more the like

Warren Beatty, Splender in the Grass archetype?

Sure, but he is the golden boy.

He's supposed to be kind of like the football star, right?

He's supposed to be.

So he does have that like, you're tearing me apart energy, which is it's why I invoke James Dean.

That's fair.

He's maybe not the James Dean character archetype, but I feel like in the emotionality of the performance,

he's got the James Dean energy.

He's got the anger.

He's also like,

he's like one of the jets.

Yes.

Yes, because James, even though he has the

aesthetics of Marlon Brando or whatever, like this biker boy, James Dean, whatever, he's a very sweet boy.

Like he's very soulful.

And he's more emotionally bottled.

Right.

And Laura was clearly drawn to him, not because she wanted to fuck him, but because she like saw the kind of sweetness and sadness in him.

Yes, right.

The actor reminded me of his name uh the actor is of course uh james marshall jumpstrominas has

key role beyond key role in a few good men oh of course he's really good in this right really good and i was like what why did this guy not have a bigger career and he comes back for the return or whatever i read that he launched a like 15 million dollar lawsuit against accutane the acne oh the crazy acne medication that he had very bad acne and was taking it in these early days of his acting career and then it caused him serious health problems And it sounds like one of these

stuff is really intense.

I mean, it's like, especially back in the military.

But he had a trial where fucking Rob Reiner and like, I think David Lynch was a witness as well.

Wow.

Like all the people who worked with him in the early 90s were like, this guy was about to blow up and his career was completely derailed

because of this medication.

And I believe the case was thrown out.

There was some small settlement.

Sure.

But if it's upsetting, he's good.

Really, really fucking good.

He's great in Twin Peaks.

I will say he is objectively, without debate, the actor most screwed over in season two.

They give him the one storyline that is unwatchable and it takes several episodes where they truly, do you know what I'm talking about?

Maybe you didn't mention it.

I forgot.

But where they truly are kind of like, what should James do?

And they're like, James goes off to this story and you'll see it.

But I do think he's a great presence.

Yeah, he has a great presence.

I do feel like it's interesting.

This time I ran, I was like, all the teenage boys are also also beautiful women.

Yes.

So true.

They're very pretty.

Like, Dana Ashbrook's very pretty.

Oh, yeah.

Very, very pretty.

There's also something with his Accutene face, not Dana Ashbrook, right?

James Marshall.

James Marshall, where like he is so smooth looking.

Yeah.

Right.

There is that weird, unnatural quality.

He has a bit of a Kendall thing.

Being on this like insane medication.

He has crazy, both looks like have like the bone structure.

Kissable lips.

Yes.

The most powdery mouths.

Beautiful mouths.

Right.

Are there any other boys we we need to talk about?

There's a blonde boy, but I don't think he needs to be aware of the character.

Oh, no, but he's.

I love that guy.

Yeah, he's fun.

I need to find his name because

he never leaves the show, and he's even in season, he's even in the return.

Pretty much everyone's in the shower.

He's a sycophant.

But that actor is also just someone.

What the hell's his name?

You're talking about Bobby's best friend.

Yeah, Bobby's best friend.

What the hell's his name?

Oh, God.

Cut this all out.

All right.

Keep it all in.

Double it.

Oh, God.

Cut this all out.

All right.

Keep it all in.

Double it.

Mike, Mike Nelson.

Right.

It's the other problem.

There's like multiple mics.

There's multiple.

Played by Gary Hirschberger, who I also know right from Six Feet Under.

He's the villain in Six Feet Under.

Thank you.

The villain in Six Feet Under is death.

Death, yeah.

Well, no, I wouldn't say Six Feet Under is about accepting death.

No, he's the guy in Six Feet Under who represents the like funeral chain.

Oh, yeah.

Who's trying to like absorb them into like whatever it is?

You know, that's fun.

Anyway, love that actor.

Should we talk about

sort of like the Mill?

Yeah, the Mill faction.

Right.

Sure.

Just to wrap the boys.

Like, it's like James seems like the bad boy.

James actually, basically, a good boy, one of the bookhouse boys who we can talk at.

You know, he's sort of an honorary or a fledgling bookhouse boy.

And then, right, Bobby,

the golden boy, with his dad is one of my favorite characters and it's a very important character later on,

Garland Briggs.

He is basically a drug mule.

He and Leo are basically like running drugs into town

under the auspices of more evil

guys, but they're two one-eyed jacks, right?

And basically four-eyed jacks, rather.

Yes,

you know,

yes.

And, you know, Bobby is an interesting character and who will kind of clean it up in the return, which you'll see.

And he has, in my opinion, the greatest moment of acting in the return that like makes me cry.

But

he's kind of just a nasty little fucker in season one.

Like, there's nothing nothing lovable.

He's a fucking monster.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's full of pain.

He's full of pain.

But he's also just a little, he barks like a dog.

He's a little bitch.

He's cruel.

Yeah.

But there's also, there's the thing, and you know, he's grieving to some degree and he's dealing with his guilt and whatever.

Yeah.

But there's that thing of like, if you start a show with a dead body and then you're like, great, we got to interview her boyfriend and immediately find out he was cheating on her.

Yeah.

You're going to jump straight to fuck this guy.

Yeah.

And also they're like, Laura Zeni's like, huh?

What?

what are you talking about because the first episode like twin peaks is largely not so sad yes but the first episode is really sad like donna crying in the classroom like obviously grace of briski just screaming like you know like

freaking out josie shutting down the mill grief it's right it's like it's more like this town has kind of been cooking it knew something was wrong yeah and laura this angel is dead and it's like the whole thing is cracking open now everyone kind of has to look at the evil they've been trying to ignore.

Yeah, and it's fucked up and then every time Dale is like damn good coffee, you're like Thank God this guy's here, man

He's chilling me out like everyone else is freaking me out.

Uh the mill.

Okay, so yeah, the mill.

There's a mill Griffin.

Yes,

which is it's quite a complicated series of it's it's run by Josie Packard.

Right.

It's kind of the financial center of the town.

Sure.

Her husband has died somewhat recently in a boating accident.

Yes.

Watch out for season two.

Run by Josie, who is, right, who has inherited it and is

an out-of-towner.

Am I?

She's from China.

I was going to say, am I wrong for assuming, knowing that I still have not watched a lot of the show, that she was someone who went through the One Eye Jacks pipeline?

You are wrong for assuming that.

Okay.

Yes.

I just thought it was interesting.

The way they talk about later in the season when you're watching Audrey go through it and you're hearing her meet the other sort sort of women there that the whole idea is like and this is how you get access to the wealthiest men in town this is how you get their ears her backstory is just that she met Andrew Packard who's the dead husband at like some black tie event in hong kong and he like brought her over but of course the idea is that like she is an exotic foreigner yeah and everyone is a little suspicious of her for this reason including Cooper um including Cooper she's sleeping with she's also sleeping with the sheriff right but uh and Cooper's immediately like bad idea don't do that, but he kind of respects it, though.

He's kind of like, All right, Truman, yeah, you know what I mean.

And then there's Catherine Martell, the brother

of Andrew Packer.

I mean, sorry, so you know, Andrew Packer was her brother, yeah,

and she's married to Jack Nance, Pete Martell, who we love, who discovers the body, yeah, but it's mostly just there

from Jack Nance, right?

Right, be a silly guy, but no, what were you gonna say?

She's sleeping with and she is sleeping with Ben Horn, who uh played by Richard Boehmer, Boehmer, who is the head of the

hotel.

Right.

The quiet moment.

And general.

Right, exactly.

Business interests.

Who is

the most evil character in Twin Peaks?

Apart from like Bob.

Yeah.

I don't know if we're counting like Bob.

Amoral.

Right.

And who I think we just keep your eye on him, Griffin, as we go through Twin Peaks, because I think the journey of Ben Horn is very interesting in that the show both does and doesn't punish him.

Sure.

And if you like write down everything that Ben Horn did did is involved with, you're like, this man is like a monster.

Oh, I'm hating him already.

Right.

And I think Boehmer is so good.

Yeah.

Which is so funny because he, you know, he's, he's a total stiff in Westside Story.

Right, correct.

Just the only other thing I know him in.

Yeah, same.

He's the lead of Westside Story obviously.

Right.

And your takeaway is.

He's Tony?

Yeah, he's kind of Tony.

Yes.

Isn't that crazy?

That's

a good thing.

Little of an impact in that movie.

You don't.

I mean, he looks, he's a handsome guy.

That's about all you can say, right?

He's like a total zero.

That part is cursed.

It's

a cursed role.

Yeah, I mean, that is, yes, I think that's true.

And he's so good in this because he kind of underplays this language.

I agree.

Yeah.

Like,

he could be more arch-villainous in a way.

And like, Piper Laurie is actually the closest thing the show has to like a classic soap opera villain.

Yes.

You're kind of rooting for her.

She's kind of delicious.

Well, let's.

She seems kind of evil.

Let's unpack this a little bit.

It feels like this town used to be a sort of company town centered around the mill, right?

Sure.

And that slowly but surely, Horn has been building all these other businesses.

He's got this kind of land empire, and then he has the secret empire of like prostitution and drug runs.

There's both like he has his fingers in like four or five front-facing businesses.

Quietly, he owns all the sort of like hub businesses of the town.

Yeah.

The mill is still seemingly sort of thought of as like the financial core of the town, even if it's maybe not the main financial core.

Possibly being poorly run by Josie is sort of the well, Josie now owns it, but Catherine is still basically running it.

She basically seems to function as like the manager from day to day which i think causes her the additional frustration that like that's it seems like that was probably the relationship between her and her brother that she did the day-to-day and he ostensibly controlled the purse strings because he was the male right and that was their inheritance and now she's like still stuck in this position with this wife that she never really trusted that she thinks-in-law is technically right yeah yeah that she doesn't like yeah yeah

um and then she's sleeping with the guy who's actually kind of controlling all of the financial levers in the town.

But the mill is this kind of contested.

It's like, capture the flag.

This is the castle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Horn covets it.

Capture the flag.

Burn it down.

Yes.

Yes.

What do you, yeah, what do you guys think of Catherine Martell played by Piper Laurie, who is so crucial in season one and then exists in season two and does wild stuff, but it's

doesn't really

best examples of the show kind of not knowing how to keep wheels spinning of like kind of like, what should we do with the mill in the town now?

Like,

there's so many characters.

It's a lot of characters.

She's kind of doing a riff on almost like her carry, like, Stephen King's carry.

I think he loves casting people who come with baggage in a positive way, right?

Teen baggage.

Absolutely.

Well, it's a lot of child stars.

And a lot of children.

It's a lot of children of movie stars.

Yeah.

Right.

It's a lot of people like.

Associated with teen movies, too.

Right.

But like

Richard Boehmer, Piper Laurie,

fucking Peggy Lipton to a degree.

Yeah, absolutely.

You're watching all of them thinking about what they had done decades earlier.

You have people like Miguel Frere who are coming in who are like children of stars, you know?

But yes, I think.

Peggy Lipton, I think, had not done anything

since like the 60s.

Yeah, she had retired to raise her kids.

I guess the early 70s is when the mod squad ends, basically.

And she did a mod squad TV movie in 79.

But like, she truly had retired.

Yeah.

Lynch is basically plucking her out of our memories and like 20 minutes giving her back.

Piper Laurie feels more relevant than all these people because Carrie had at least been a comeback that happened in between the two eras of her career.

And that's why I do feel like that's why she gets, she's great.

I love her.

She's hilarious.

But like, that's why she's getting Oscar and Golden Globe.

Not, I mean, Emmy, sorry.

You know, like, you know, because she's the big, one of the big names.

I love when she catches Shelly tied up in the mill and she goes, hmm, let me think.

Like, she has a really great delivery of just like, not, not going to untie you just yet.

Right.

I'm gaming this out.

It's just like such pure just wickedness.

But also, like, in a show where the murder doesn't happen,

she would be the central character, right?

Like, she's like the JR.

Or the villain.

Yeah, the JR, exactly.

Right.

She'd be the person everything revolves.

Antagonist, protagonist, or whatever.

And

she pushes a lot of action.

Yes.

And she does do that in this show, sort of.

But it is funny watching this show, kind of like watching early X-Files or whatever, and these other shows, like pre-I do think Buffy and stuff like that in the later 90s, start to invent what we think of as like modern TV storytelling, right?

Where it's like you got your big arc, you got your mini arcs, you got your episode arcs.

Talking about we're kind of pulling from Twin Peaks and going, like, okay, what did they do right here?

What did they do wrong?

Yeah, thinking more.

Build this in a way that it's sustainable.

Because Twin Peaks is like, right, let's just roll lots of snowballs down the hill.

Some of them will collide.

Yeah.

Others won't won't at all.

Right.

Some storylines will carry through.

Some storylines will kind of abandon or shapeshift or what, you know, it's like you're seeing prototypes of what I'm talking about.

It's funny that like even within the same decade, I don't know if it's five or six years later, Joe Dante does Erie Indiana, which is like the children's TV show.

That was great, but was also sort of like, can we do Twin Peaks for kids?

It feels like it's overtly that.

Yes.

And even that is like, we know how to keep this on rails.

And then Lost is like, we're going to keep it on rails.

No, we aren't.

Right.

We're just going to do all the same stuff again.

I mean, lost is kind of the most fascinating mirror of this thing, except they kept it on for seven or eight years.

But the cultural relationship to it was so similar.

But lost is also, if you read the pitch for lost and like what they're, you know, they basically lied.

Yes.

And they were basically like, no, it won't be a mystery show.

We promise.

It's going to be because we can do the flashbacks.

It can be a cop show and it can be a lawyer show and it can be a, you know, we can do all this stuff through the flashbacks.

And it's like, no, pretty quickly, it's just going to turn into what's going on with the island.

Like that will be such an overriding din.

It was also like, wasn't the president of ABC at the time was like, Survivor's a big hit.

We should do scripted Survivor.

Yeah, I think that is like, yes, right.

To JJ.

No, first he went to someone else who has a credit on every episode of Lost, God Bless Him.

He has nothing to do with the show.

He wrote a different, it's like Stranded on an Island plot, and they threw it out.

Jeffrey Lieber.

Anyway.

And then I think JJ was.

And then JJ takes over and JJ breaks in Linda Lock.

Put 10% of Twin Peaks on top of the Lost on an Island thing.

Right, exactly.

It's weird that he's the researcher for the show.

It is weird.

I think JJ just likes to work, and that's why he's moved over to our show.

Huge development tool at HBO Max, and like nothing's gotten made out of it.

Crazy.

So even though he's gotten like $400 million, he just needs something to do with his time.

He's just bored.

But I have some bad news for him.

He's going to have even more things to do with the time because he's fired.

He is fired.

No, it's just great.

Thank you for doing a Twin Peaks dossier, JJ.

Yeah.

There was another person I was thinking of like that.

While I was watching this, I was just thinking about where like this is so thought of as like the David Lynch show, right?

And then people who go like one step below that understand that Mark Frost is the important co-author

of this thing.

But so often in these cases where it's like you bring a person from movies in to create a show, then they just fucking bounce and people get associated with these things, but it's like all they did was set the table and then leave.

And even JJ, who uses Lost as sort of the springboard to his movie career, it's like he still gets so much credit for that show.

Yeah.

But all he did was the play setting and directed the pilot incredibly well.

Yeah.

You know, but people still, when that show was like in its final seasons, people would be like, oh, JJ, what's he thinking?

You know, and he was sort of personified in this way versus like

even the drifting involvement that Frost and Lynch had in season two is more than JJ ever had post-episode one of Lost.

Yeah.

No, read the Mo Ryan book.

He's not even mentioned in that channel.

JJ had nothing to do with Lost, basically.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He would occasionally

swoop in to direct an episode for Funsies or whatever, but yeah.

Did he direct other episodes?

JJ, yeah, he did.

I can even look it up.

Okay.

Let me look it up?

Yeah.

Look it up, Davey.

Look it up.

How many

overall-ish episodes did Lynch direct of the series?

Because David was

thinking that Lynch only did one or two in season two, and he did far more than that.

So David Lynch directs the pilot.

He directs episode three,

Xander the Skill to Catch a Killer, which is the episode with the dream,

with the throwing rocks at bottles and all that.

Frost does the finale.

Frost directed the finale.

Those are the only episodes he directed of season one.

In season two, he directs May the Giant Be With You, the first episode back, which is another feature-length.

That's a 90-minute episode.

I forget if it's right, if it's broken into two games.

It was a 90-minute episode in two.

And like, again, it's like the ones he directed, you're like, oh, of course he directed this already.

The imagery i remember is from this uh and he directs the episode after that or i'm that's what i'm trying to see griffin he does the reveal episode right and then he goes away he comes back to do um

lonely souls which is the not the reveal episode no uh which is i think that is six

six

you keep saying six i think it's episode six no it's episode seven seven it's also tough to track because they insta season two still keep calling them like chapter 14.

he directs right Lonely Souls.

It's the episode where I would say the killer is revealed.

I don't want to spoil.

Where a terrible thing happens.

Okay.

But it's not the episode where the killer

gets caught and confessed.

I'm thinking of the Lonely Souls.

See, it is happening again in this episode.

Another Lynch thing.

And then he directs

the finale.

Beyond Life and Death, which is amazing.

But at that point, it's kind of crazy because he's really been gone from the show for sure.

He's sort of part of the show, but he's,

well, he famously basically threw the script out.

That show is mostly, not mostly, but much more set in the Black Lodge and stuff and has lots of David Lynch stuff in it.

And it's very clear that he's kind of just like, let me at least end this show on my terms.

Sure.

If nothing else.

But that's it.

Can I say something?

Yeah.

Six.

Six.

I was getting jealous of Eva saying it seemed like a lot of fun.

Six.

Six.

Six.

Sorry, six.

I just watched it again.

I watched the souls one again, like two days ago.

Right.

Abrams directed The Pilot of Lost.

Abrams.

Come on.

Show me.

Look it up, David.

Look it up.

Okay.

And he directed.

Maybe that's it, actually.

Well, he wrote, he wrote other episodes.

But I, yeah, he's.

I thought he directed one more episode of season one.

Anyway, Ben, what's up?

How about we talk about the

police force?

Oh, yes.

We didn't have to.

Let's talk about some characters.

Yeah.

Because we got Andy.

Sweet Andy.

Yes.

We've got Hawk.

Hawk.

One of my favorite characters who is.

I mean, I'll say it.

Yeah.

So hot.

Oh, yeah.

And what about the tracker thing?

You know, it has an age wai.

Yeah.

But what about

what's her name in the office?

I was going to say, my favorite character.

She's the best.

Unsurprising.

I was going to say.

Lucy.

Lucy.

Kevin Watson.

My favorite character.

Do you know what happens with them in season three?

Do you know a thing about them in The Return?

Oh,

I just put it together.

I'm so excited for you to see the thing.

There ain't it.

I mean, there are.

That's my favorite thing in The Return, possibly.

I think it's a lot of people's favorite thing in The Return.

There's just one scene about them that you will love.

Okay, great.

Objectively, Andy,

you know, basically you have like...

Harry Truman, straight hour, straight arrow sheriff.

You've got Hawk, his loyal kind of side,

you know, deputy, whatever, who's right, like knows the woods and knows about the spirits and all that.

Sure.

And then you have Andy, who is.

Disney's goofy.

Right.

Bad at everything.

His hair is

how to cut.

Well, he's got like, it is one of the most

coloring patterns I've ever seen.

Yeah.

He's got like a bouffant and he's going bald around it.

It's not like his hairline is good.

In season.

It's not like he just has a bald patch in the back.

It's like he's got the horseshoe and a bouffant and then a ring of baldness directly.

Every turn, it's the same.

Yeah, incorrect.

And I assume they're styling his hair that way, but it's crazy that his hair looks like it.

It's so funny.

But he's literally like stepping in fucking pate cans and rakes and shit.

No, my husband walked in while I was watching, and he's just like, What other show would just have all this going on?

And then these two dip shits, like Lucy and Andy, just total freaks.

Isn't that a perfect example of, well, that's funny, but we can't do it.

Exactly.

That won't match with the.

This is a dark murder mystery.

There shouldn't be someone like, yeah, crying at like the sight of anything and like shooting his gun and

the think I keep coming back to, which is like the weird degree of like crossover success that Lynch had for being such a bizarre artist.

I think the key to that is that he's funny.

Yeah.

That like comedy transcends shit.

People, if they're laughing, won't really get too hung up on what they understand or not.

Yeah.

And it's not funny in spite of itself.

It's just funny.

It's just funny.

So in the return, they both have a vague, like, the thing with Andy, especially and Lucy, do they ever help directly?

Like, does Andy ever get anything done?

I mean, he should remember.

The French bartender.

Right.

There's sometimes where it'll kind of happen almost by mistake that he doesn't.

Yeah, I saw one of the season two episodes, Jump Ahead, he steps on a loose floorboard that hits him in the face, and underneath it, they find it.

He feels something.

That's sort of right.

Andy is like,

it feels like Dale's opinion would be kind of like,

he's crucial to the alchemy of what you guys do, even if it doesn't seem like he does anything helpful, right?

Like, that's what Andy's there for.

Right, where he's Officer Mr.

Bean.

Yes.

Lucy does like hear a clock and identify it at one point.

That's the only thing she does.

It's not a problem.

Lucy also feels like a sort of magic force field around them.

Yes.

Of like, if someone tried to bother them, they'd have to get through Lucy first, who is impenetrable.

Yes.

So, like, in a way, she's good by being kind of bad at her job.

Yes.

Or whatever, by being whatever she is at her job.

She's sort of crucial to again to the process.

But I also love the

coach a guy to tell him how to tell a woman how he feels trope.

Yeah.

Of them just trying to push him towards her the whole season.

Can I just say also that it is crazy that in the Saturday Night Live parody that Victoria Jackson played Audrey and

not Lucy.

I mean

a twin to her right Victoria Jackson is basically a copy of Lucy.

Yes.

Ben, have you seen this sketch?

No.

I mean how many women were on as Snow Venge?

It's like, there's not a lot, right?

Two things that are really famous in the sketch beyond just like, oh, it's the first big parody of Twin Peaks, right?

Are it's Farley's first sketch.

She comes on as Audrey.

She does a variation of the tying the cherry stem into a knot thing.

Where she puts a ribbon in her mouth and pulls out one of those

curly ones that you put on top of her.

It's so pretty.

It's great.

It gets an applause break, right?

And then

whatchamacallit?

Jan Hooks comes on as Nadine.

Yeah.

And then she leaves, and Cooper says something about, like, I wonder if we'll see the log lady.

And

Truman is played by, well, this is the other side of the world.

Kevin Nillen.

Kevin Nillen plays Truman, and he goes, I don't think we'll see her, mainly because we only have two women in the cast and they both already appear.

It's Victoria Jackson and Jan Hooks.

And then Jan Hooks comes back on out of breath as the log lady.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

that's a good joke.

But it's also crazy to think about season 15 of SNL having two women.

They panic-added Julia Sweeney mid-season.

That's so funny.

And then Nora Dunn comes shortly after.

It is so nuts that, yeah, that it was kind of like, women on SNL, like, we'll allow for it, but there'll be a copy.

Two years of that, they actually have a good, like, yeah, we're getting close to, right, the sort of momentum.

Elene Clayhorn is coming in.

You had like a good bench for Melanie Hutzel and whatever.

At this moment, they're freaking out about only having two women to portray the entire female cast.

Melanie Hutzel.

Melanie Hutzel.

I haven't thought about it.

Melanie Hutzel.

Melanie Hutzel.

Melanzel.

Melanie Hutzel was kind of like a less annoying Victoria Jackson, in a way, right?

At least Hutzel was cute.

Right.

Well, I mean, like, Victoria Jackson, beyond

the turn her life took later,

she's kind of wondering annoying as a comedic actress.

She can be funny, but

it's a slim range.

She doesn't have a ton of moves.

Yes.

Right.

I'm trying to be nice.

Well said.

She has a few moves.

Ellen Cleghorn was funny.

I feel like Clegg Claghorn got a bad rap.

Ellen Cleghorn, like, I feel like every 18 months, there is another wind of like, why didn't Ellen Cleghorn have a better career?

Yeah, why didn't that happen?

Right.

And it's like, you know, whatever, systemic racism.

She was great.

Anyway,

should we do more on the SNL Twin Peaks sketch, though?

I feel like

that's the other thing I want to say.

I knew we got something.

Thank you.

Phil Hartman plays Leland Palmer.

He plays Ray Wise.

He does an incredible impression.

He's great.

And the audience is like exploding.

Unsurprisingly.

Right.

Like Hartman is made for that.

Yes.

The audience is exploding, and you feel them like laughing at the energy of like, finally, someone's acknowledging how weird this performance is.

Yeah.

And

can we just say, real quick,

how fucking great he is.

Yeah, he's such a great performance in Twin Peace.

I think, I agree.

Yes.

Beyond Cooper or above Cooper.

Cooper, it's tough because it's like, right, you're talking about like, it's like

such a virus.

Right.

Yeah.

On a technical level.

Yes.

Scene to scene.

And it's like.

I don't know how he did that.

That's my thing.

He's like the perfect Lynch actor.

It's kind of crazy they didn't work together in any movies.

Well, he's in Firewalk with me.

Of course.

Well, I'm saying he's only within the Twin Peaks universe.

I believe so.

For Lynch, yes, I think so.

Possibly just because he is honestly such a profound presence as Leland.

How could he?

It might be distracting, right?

You know, in a way to, yeah, but anyway, Kirman is doing the dance and he's doing the bulging eyes and the crying and the laughing and all this stuff and sort of playing the mania of it and the big swings, which he does really well.

And the audience seems to be laughing out of recognition of like, yeah, that guy is insane, right?

This is the weirdest performance we've ever seen.

Yeah.

Now, without spoiling anything for listeners, the things that have been spoiled for me culturally, I'm watching this show and I'm like, this performance makes more sense to me knowing some of where this character's going, right?

Yes.

But at the time where people just like, this is just nuts shit.

This is just a guy doing like Nick cage moves constantly wall to wall it's the thing i have long bumped up against i had a big art talk argument is not the word a conversation with my brother about this recently okay the great i don't know how to talk about this without talking about the future storylines in twin peaks sure but leland is just i guess Part of it, oh, to weird grief is.

Right.

I guess the way to grapple with how he's behaving is, sure, yes, grief.

Grief is what's powering.

But that audience is recognizing that, like, this performance is something that we have a guy who basically every time you see him is like, ha ha ha, ha, how's everyone doing?

Shall we dance?

You know, and then just starts like singing an old song and crying.

And everyone's like, oh,

listen, his wife is also, she's pretty

much a weird family.

Yeah.

Look, and it's just the miracle of Ray Wise is that he knows how to somehow, dare I say it, ground all of those.

He does.

No, he isn't.

What's incredible where you're like, and to know that he did not know the grand narrative plan from the beginning,

that Lynch only told him shortly before they shot the season two episodes, that he's just being given whatever on paper and going, like, okay, I'll make it work.

He doesn't have the pieces to justify it.

Okay, the dancing when he's crying and they're trying to hide it from the Icelandic investors.

And so what's their name?

Hyperlorian.

He's like, kind of, they're all kind of doing like a improv mirroring kind of like it's like this is the thing we do.

It's so funny and sad and just is a great, I think, encapsulation of like this series and what it's doing.

It's like all of these things happening at once.

Yeah.

Can I give a quick Ray Wise anecdote that's not the one you think I'm going to say, David?

Well, I love the one that I would think you were going to say, which is the Pammers Club story.

Shout out to PTR.

I sat next to Ray Wise at the Saturn Awards and I accidentally spilled an entire glass of wine on him.

Aww.

He didn't erase you with X-ray vision or whatever.

He gave me absolute Leland Palmer, maniacal, smiling face and went, that's all right, my boy.

As he was like dabbing dabbing off his lap.

That's sweet.

And I true, he was like, It's all right.

It happens to all of us.

And you should apologize.

I apologized profusely.

I don't think, I think I would like turn into a marble or a

mountain of smoke.

Say you're sorry again, right now.

Ray wise, I'm sorry.

I'm wiser now than I was back then.

One is the other.

I was 20, and I had been invited as like a plus one seat filler to the Saturn Awards.

Oh, wow.

And I was like, open bar, I can't drink anywhere.

Was he nominated for Reaper?

I bet he must have been.

I remember him presenting an award and doing a whole speech about, like, finally.

Or no, it was the opposite.

I think it was like, for some reason, they've cast me as the devil on a TV show.

I don't know why.

His only Saturn numb is for Firewalk With Me.

Interestingly, he was just a presenter.

Yeah, he was just.

What a wonderful performance.

And of course, he lost to Robin Williams for Aladdin, normal.

What?

He's so good in Good Night and Good Luck.

He's my favorite performance in this incredible movie.

And he's great in RoboCup.

No, he's always good.

Always good.

Like, the end of the

terrible guy.

Yes.

Connor, Twin Peaks fanatic, always has been trying to book Twin Peaks people on George Lucas Talk Show.

I'd say half of George Lucas Talk Show's continued existence is just Connor creating a structure that allows him to send asks out to Lynch collaborators.

But the worst structure.

The structure where his ask has to be like, so I'm going to be in character as George Lucas.

And they're like, huh?

I don't, I didn't do a single.

The first thing is, whatever we get a Lynch person,

the 10% that he still will do the Lucas character disappears.

And he just starts asking questions that only Connor would ask.

He can't even frame them from the perspective of George Lucas anymore.

It's so funny.

Early on in the show, when we do it at the UCB and we had an inconsistent crowd, he was like, I want to do a show called Lucas Lynch.

That's all about the weird parallels between Lucas and Lynch and them almost doing Return of the Jedi together.

We couldn't book anyone on it.

It was like the worst show we'd ever done.

And then we're in deep pandemic marathons and he was like, like, I want to do Lucas Lynch again.

And we did it and it was good.

We had like Dana Ashbrook on.

We had Kimmy Robertson.

We had maybe the last interview Angela Balamante ever did.

Whoa.

We had a lot of people.

When you hear that, you're kind of like, hmm.

Right.

Should we keep this going?

Of course, in like Connor's like, you know, A to three brain, he was like, we'll build this around a marathon of on the air.

We're not watching

on the air.

That's like Doughboys doing McDonald's or whatever.

Anyway, anyway.

get out of the pandemic and we're starting to do live shows again.

And we're going to LA.

It's the first time we've done LA in fucking forever.

And it's like, who are the big ass?

And Connor's like, Ray Wise, get Ray Wise.

We booked Ray Wise on the show.

We're backstage.

And Patrick, producer booker, has been like going back and forth with Ray Wise's people and like staying in touch.

And it's like five minutes until the show.

And Patrick texts the manager and says, Hey, do you have any ETA on Ray?

He's not here.

And the manager's like, that's weird.

I checked in with him an hour ago and he said he was driving over.

Okay.

And we're like,

oh, no.

We get, we're like getting Ray just do the show and I get like, I guess Ray's not here.

I guess we're doing the show with one guest.

I think we had Darcy Cardin, so it was great without, or it was, no, it was Amy Mann solo without Ray Wise.

Okay, so great.

The show ruled, right?

But as we're going on stage, Connor's like, we're going to walk off stage and read a terrible headline about Ray Wise.

We're going to find out that Ray Wise got in a car crash on the way to the show, and it's going to haunt us forever.

What an awful thing to say.

Absolutely.

Well, Connor loves saying the worst thing like that.

Like when the pandemic started, and he said,

fuck, why am I forgetting?

Griffin, carry on.

What happened to Ray Wise?

And Patrick's like, his manager said he'd get right back to me.

We get off stage.

We don't see a headline.

We're like, weird.

Never heard from them ever again.

Ray Wise just never showed up.

He vanished.

The manager never got back.

No, he ghosted.

He said he was driving over.

He just saw it in and out.

Yeah.

I kind of respect that.

I do.

I think Ray Wines just was kind of like, I'm not doing that.

But he was like, I'm on my way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, and then when his manager was like, hey, you never showed up to that thing, he was like, yeah, I didn't want to do it.

Just never speak to them again.

We can burn that bridge completely.

But was kind of perfect.

It was, it was, let's say this.

He was the funniest guest to say didn't show up.

He Googled a picture of you, Griffin, which he flashed back to the echoey memory.

He was the wine boy.

It was the wine boy.

You never know.

And in like silent slow motion, he was like,

his hair turned white again.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Leland is, yes, just a very powerful character.

Very sad, very scary, very funny.

That's the Twin Peaks match.

He's all of that.

The nightmare of being in Laura's house, I think Lynch especially, you can feel Lynch behind the camera.

It's under, you know, the episodes that he worked on.

That image that he goes back to over and over again, he goes back to it in Firewalk with me of um

you know oh grace zabrisky what's you know what's the mom's name uh

sarah walking down the stairs with the fan going

and like the light being so you know which is basically just

it's it's a portent of something terrible happening and it's also just an ordinary thing it's a kid being put to bed right like right and the way lynch can make that like mundane thing so scary and make being in that house so scary which is just a sad house house, like, because Laura's dead.

So it's just, you know,

Sarah being scary and crazy, screaming, seeing things.

Grace Obriski can scream.

Like Grace Gabrisky says, like, she'd do like 17 takes of screaming and like David Lynch would be like, do you have one more?

Like, and Grace is like, I'm all the way up.

And David would be like, I think you can go higher.

Like, I think you can go crazier.

And would, and she says, and he would be right.

Like, he would get it out of me.

That's crazy.

And then Leland Wright, just this like dancing on the edge of whatever, you know, weird insanity and sadness.

And

it's, yeah, it's the stuff that like makes my skin crawl the most, which I think is like

I was listening to

Oz Perkins on Big Picture.

Sure.

What will now be a very old interview related to the run-up to Long Legs?

And the term he kept using was like what he tries to do in horror and what he finds effective in horror movies is when you're somehow able to touch the membrane.

I love that.

And obviously, Oz Perkins is very obviously inspired by things like Frimbigs and Yes.

No, but I feel like that's the Lynch thing of like the stickiness of these things where you're like, why does that performance get to me that image, that line, that piece of music?

Lynch just is able to identify these things that like touch the membrane.

And sometimes they are accidental.

They're discovered.

They're found art.

That's, hey, you, the set dresser, you're now a character.

Sometimes it's someone like Ray Wise who he can perfectly direct to like capture that in every line reading.

But it is, it is the other factor for me on top of his work being funny that cuts through from a lot of more abstract sort of work that a lot of audiences would be immediately allergic to.

Like it makes you, it's funny and also makes you sick.

It makes me physically sick sometimes to watch this.

But it's in both cases, what are we talking about?

Physiological responses that are not, that are uncontrollable, right?

If you're watching just some like, and this is when audiences turn on him in the back half of the 90s, and people are like, Lynch has gone too far up his own butt.

That's when they're like, This is just weird shit, and I can't find any grounding in it.

Yeah, but for a while, this first run, he was able to make these things that were making people laugh and were giving people a pit in their stomach.

And they're like, undeniably, I feel something when I watch this, even if I don't understand it.

I love that.

Yeah, rules.

Doom, do, do, do, the Hayward family, comparatively

right.

Donna's family.

So normal and nice.

Lovely Dr.

Hayward.

Their house seems warm.

That's true.

Yeah.

I think Laura Funbole is incredibly good on that.

She's so good.

She's great.

And she's one of those people where just like over the next 15 years, she became so big as a figure and a name, as an idea.

She also became a bit of a David Lynch character.

Yes.

Like, you know, where she plays these bombshells

on the practice and like, you know, in movies and stuff, which she's not really here.

No.

She's kind of the sweetest character, right?

Innocent in a lot of ways.

But, like, I, I, anytime I watch her inside, I mean, like, I didn't have this experience watching Men in Black 2, right?

Where she's fine, but you watch this and you're like, oh, right, she was a really good actor.

That's why this all started.

Yeah.

She's amazing on Twin Peaks.

And it's the kind of part that, in theory, should be harder to play because she's less internally complicated than almost all the other characters.

She is the real Nancy Drew.

Like, she and then Maddie, when Michael Lee shows up as Maddie,

the cousin of Laura Palmer, who looks exactly like her with different hair, like they start to do the real Nancy Drew thing of like, well, let's crack it.

She will figure it out.

And Audrey, too.

And Audrey.

But Audrey kind of hates them.

Audrey's like, fuck you, guys.

I'm doing my own investigation.

She's also kind of.

I'm going over the border, baby.

I'm going to maybe sleep with my dad.

It's going to be normal.

We'll try it.

She's kind of the emotional linchpin in terms of being the one person who's kind of processing this normally.

Not to say there's a normal way to grieve, but everyone else's response is so kind of bizarre and inscrutable and a little bit terrifying.

And she's just constantly bringing it back to like, she was my best friend and she died.

I think Ben is right, though.

This is a human being.

It's that she's in a more normal home.

Yes.

Yeah.

And she's not, say, like, married to Leo or whatever, you know, like, and that, like, her boyfriend is James, boyfriend, pseudo-boyfriend, sure, who's also nice, protective,

not too, not too wild.

They do seem like the only characters who could possibly leave Twin Peaks.

Right.

And not like be crazy people.

Like burst into flames on the border.

Yeah.

But it's a lovely performance.

Yeah.

I'm trying to think, you know,

what else?

I think we should just Jacoby.

Oh.

Because he's.

Well,

I can't talk about him, but he's my therapist.

So I have a doctor-patient thing with him.

I send him an tapes.

And David, and he listens to them while he sits in his tiki room.

Are they horny?

Yeah, the horny.

They're a little horny.

Yes.

They're horny on request when he asks for a horny one.

Sometimes he wants them.

Yes.

It's quite.

David, can I just say?

He's doing great work.

He's really settling it all down.

No notes.

Yes, it's revealed that

Laura's

therapist, psychiatrist, is a guy who wears red, blue, 3D sort of, you know, framed glasses.

Has kind of a tiki Hawaiian vibe to his life.

Yep.

Is played by the great Russ Tamblin, who is obviously also in West Side Story.

And like

fucking The Haunting.

Yes.

Yes.

He's in.

He's got a great face.

Oh, he's great.

And he's a guy who touches a lot of different like Westerns and Foreman movies and movie musicals.

A real guy that it makes sense Lynch met him at a Dennis Hopper throne party and was like, why haven't we worked together?

well that's the other thing he was like much like hopper this guy who was sort of like a studio system young character actor who then became the sort of odd countercultural figure in the hollywood hills

crazy energy do you guys know what jacoby does in season three in the return no i'll just tell you that he has a podcast

oh yeah

and that's not really explaining much but he he's he he'd be getting online ben in season three ben got excited about that and i'm getting competitive oh you're like we we got to shut him out, box him out of the market.

Yeah.

Jacoby, I feel like, like Leo, especially, and somewhat Ben Horn,

is one of the most obvious like red herring characters in a way, where it's like

he just seems like someone who killed Laura Palmer.

Therapist who had

perhaps

a brush on her, and I'm insane, and I dress in a weird way, and I'm very unprofessional.

My house has sound effects.

And Dale is like,

I don't think this guy did it.

You know, I had another dream the other day.

Let's go somewhere else.

That's the thing, right?

He's almost too weird, but he's a great presence.

Ben Jacoby, are you into him?

He's so fun.

The detail that he saves the umbrellas

over the years, the box of umbrellas of different tiki drinks he's had and then labeled where,

the year, who he was with.

Cocktail umbrellas, to be clear.

Not

much.

Cocktail umbrellas.

But that is, I don't know.

He's great.

Yeah.

I love how odd he is.

Never explained why he has those those glasses.

Is it weird to say that he's almost the only character in the show to me who feels like specifically out of the 90s?

Sure.

Whereas everyone else is sort of like one foot in the 50s, one foot in the 90s.

There's something about his idolization of almost 50s culture.

Right.

He does have that.

That is from a modern perspective.

Sure.

I think he's kind of, it's like, you know, the land of one-eyed, one-eyed men, the land of blind men when a man is king.

Like, he's the most normal.

Well, also in the land of one-eyed jacks.

That's true.

Right?

Like, it's like Jacobi is the only one who's like, this town is crazy.

I'm crazy because this town, like, I live here because it's filled with craziness.

I guess this is because everyone else is like, we're normal.

What do you mean?

We run a restaurant or a steel miller.

He's the one character who could be on like a 90s NBC sitcom.

Yes.

Without change.

Hey, doctor.

Right.

He could be.

A good doctor.

He could be.

Why don't you put this tape in a coconut?

He could be Chandler's therapist.

Yeah.

And you'd be like, yeah, of course.

Like, that's the weirdness of him as you said is that makes him sort of more normal i'm seeing here he was chandler's therapist and he asked him if he could be any more crazy well that set him on a really bad path

david's laughing bird my own stupid terrible chase yay

uh okay uh do you enjoy jacoby um yeah okay what happens in season one that we're not talking about like the minor bird gets shot

you really feel for the minor

fun episode to be like we gotta keep we gotta to feed this minor bird till it gets happy again and then someone kills it.

Jacques Renault.

Jacques Renault, the kind of obscene bartender at one I did.

It's a great performance.

A really good performance.

He's really good.

Yeah.

Who has a minor bird that yells Leo no?

This is true.

Leo now.

Yeah.

Leo now.

Season one of Twin Peaks.

I'm just trying to make sure, like, you know, there's things in season one we need to touch on before we get to season two.

Laura has an R under her fingernail, sure.

That's the only censorship note they got from standards on the show was that the shot of the letter being found under the fingernail was too explicit, so they had to use a different

piece of colour.

It is kind of a nasty notion.

Yes.

Yeah.

And in Firewalk With Me, you see like the nail being lifted, which is which is always kind of grooting.

Yeah.

I mean, have we talked enough about Bob and Mike?

I think so.

They live together above a convenience store.

They sure do.

Like, we don't see much of them, but we do see them in the dream episode, Bob give the firewalk with me monologue.

I mean, Mike, you know, Mike gives that monologue.

And Bob giving the, like, death bag monologue and all that.

But these are just, it, like, grappling with it out of context or out of, like, without the full context of the show.

Sure.

It is hard to wonder what audiences make of that.

Like, I mean, it does feel like.

Where they're like, I think Ben Horn did it, and Lynch is like, maybe he did.

Did you see this scene where a weird spirit just monologued at the camera?

But that's what's so wild about this show briefly being so successful, where all of these things made audiences lean in.

Yeah.

Like the less they understood, the more they became engaged with it.

It's like, not to do future episodes, but it's like the guy coming out from behind the dumpster.

It's like, then you forget about that for two hours, but it does like, it's a, it's a, it sets, it sets your brain on a certain mode.

Well, I just always think about like the lost fucking four-toed statue thing.

Yeah.

Right.

Where you were like, that was this moment that for me is a perfect encapsulation of the entire dynamic and the conflict about that show existing as a cultural object that we were in conversation with, where you're like, this is season four.

And now there's an image that's being introduced that is so outside of any of the weird shit that we've already been trying to solve.

I think it was the finale of season three, but yes.

And you're like, we're adding a new thing.

And the characters literally point at it and go, four-toed statue, that's weird.

And you're just jotting it down in your brain where you're like, I'm adding that to the list.

I need to know what this is.

My favorite thing about the four-toed statue.

And then there's never anything.

Well, this is right, where it's like, it's such a great moment in that episode.

They're like, wow, that's a big foot.

The foot is so big, the statue must have been colossal.

And Saeed's like, yeah, the other weird thing about it is that it has four toes.

And fans are like, four toes.

Four toes.

They've got the charts going.

And people are like, do I move the smoke monster down?

Do I deprioritize trying to crack that one?

Because the four toes is now the key to the whole thing.

And what is the answer?

It's like, there was a big statue built there a long time ago by Egyptian-type settlers or whatever.

That's it.

And they admit it's cool because it's weird.

They also admit that that's the point in the show where they're like, we're going to be treading water if we don't decide on a fixed end point.

Otherwise, we're going to have to keep creating new mini mysteries just to string people along.

And you're like, that's probably what Twin Peaks should have done.

Yeah.

Did it want to stay on air longer?

Right?

Even though it ultimately pissed people off with Lost.

I forgot about this.

They wrote that it was six toes, and ABC was like, that's too many toes.

And Hughes and Lindelof were like, well, as long as it's not five toes, we're fine with it.

And they were like, four toes, it is.

So actually, it was a network note for it to be four toes.

Such good execs on this show being like, I just love the execs.

Like, I need to do something.

It's like, that's just too many toes.

Stay there to be.

You have nailed the exact pathology of everybody.

Network note people.

Why can you just say too many toes?

Too many toes.

Too many toes.

Too many toes.

So,

yes, Cooper has this dream about Mike and Bob and Laura.

Laura in the red room.

And sometimes her arms go back.

And a little man.

And he is the arm.

You know, and she's given all of these, he's given all of these clues and these sort of coded dialogue.

Obviously, it's yes,

we don't need to go through through that.

It's

knowing all of a sudden he's

whoa, David.

You're just that was so weird.

You're just talking backwards for a while.

I don't want to play this.

Um, and then Cooper uses the stuff from the dream to

investigate every part of the mystery for several episodes, yes, right?

As if those are actual clues.

And as I said, I truly do love that, right, he devotes police resources to a dream he had, and Shruman and Hawk are like, yeah, whatever.

Do you want to join our crew?

Our bowling league.

Yeah.

And,

you know, it all builds to this point where they do finally arrest someone who is Jacques Renaud from One Eyed Jax.

Who just kind of fits the profile in the true crime sort of like our reality.

This is the sort of guy you find who killed the young woman.

Right.

Yes.

He's almost, it almost seems like he's openly bragging about it.

Right.

He has so little filter from the world of filth that he lives in.

And Leland kills him in his hospital bed.

He gets shot by Hank, right?

You know, like, you know, or whatever.

Or does Hank shoot Leo?

Hank shoots Leo.

There are like three shootings that happen in the final game.

Yeah.

Hank shoots Leo.

Jack gets shot, but then he also gets smothered to death by Leland because Leland, you know,

thinks he's Laura's killer.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

And then Cooper is shot by an unknown gunman.

The revelation of that, by the way, one of the worst things Twin Peaks ever did.

I'm ready.

Well, they don't do a very good job.

But he gets shot, mystery.

And the mill burns down.

Leo burns it down with Catherine trapped inside.

Ben Horne does this, right?

No.

Oh, it's with Shelly's trapped inside.

Shelly is.

Oh, but Shelly's trapped inside because Leo's mad at Shelly.

Because he's because he's cheating at Shelly.

Right.

Because she stole his shirt.

Right.

Catherine saves Shelly, but then they're still trapped inside.

Then they're still trapped in solar.

Catherine was sent up by Ben to go.

Oh, yeah.

Ben wants to be trapped in the fire.

Right.

Ben wants to sort of tie everything because he wants the mill to burn down so he can have the land to do more stuff.

He wants everyone to die in the mill.

And at that point, you've

basically gotten the reveal that Joan Chen was in cahoots with Hank.

Yeah, who might have killed Andrew?

That was my

takeaway.

Correct.

Right.

More on that later, but certainly Josie seems, you know,

suspicious as well.

Josie's another, like, did she do it?

Character.

Cooper has expressed suspicion or

racism.

How much do you know about this lady?

Can we trust her?

Sure.

A little bit, yeah.

She's treated like in a racist manner.

But Cooper seems like he's got body language cues that he may be like, she might be up to no good.

But Hank's whole thing,

very much on game of him being the snake jailbird of Twin Peaks, is just constantly reminding people that he was in jail, that he spent time in jail and sort of talking about the balance of like what he's owed for the time he gave up.

Yeah.

And it feels like, yes, he is this guy who isn't the

receptacle for all the sins of the town in the way that Laura was, but he's the guy who's sort of taken the hit for all of it.

He's done the dirty work.

Everyone seems to have this weird relationship to like,

did he do something?

Does he hold some secret for them?

Is there repayment he's owed?

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's a lot of soapy stuff that they're

we'll deal with it later.

Yeah.

One thing too.

Yes.

The soap opera within the show.

Well, yes.

Which is so fun as just a little through line throughout.

I believe Lynch did not appreciate.

Huh.

And like, that's why it's less notable in season two.

They kind of do less of it.

It's a very fun Invitation to Love, which is a great title.

Yeah.

And there was a plan, I think, in season two, to do a crossover with Invitation to Love, like the cast visits the town or something like that.

And Lynch was like, no, enough.

Like, I don't like that.

But it was more of a Mark Frost thing, and he filmed it all with his friends, essentially.

I like it too.

I also just like

that.

I like shows within shows.

I like internal mythologies like that that are funny.

I feel like there's a moment at the end of episode two.

That's something that Sam Lake, the guy who did Alan Wake and Max Payne stuff, he loves to do that.

Have little internal shows running on televisions while you're walking.

Anyway, he cares.

I forget who it is, but there's some scene where one character, the show, is playing and they look over to the TV and they recognize that their life is mirroring the show.

It's

what's his name?

Leo.

Yes.

He gets shot and is dying.

Right, right, right.

The bad boy on the show is also dying.

I just like that it's an unspoken moment, but it's like almost this character in his face being like, oh, this town has sort of become become like a soap opera.

Yeah.

All this crazy shit's happening all the time.

Yeah.

Now, for ratings game, I'm trying to look up the best way to do this, Griffin.

Okay.

I have the ratings of the week.

Yeah.

I think that's the best way to do it.

For the premiere?

Yeah.

For the premiere.

That seems like the best way to do it, right?

Because, like, the season is less interesting because Twin Peaks was not really, you know,

a top 30 show.

Yeah.

Is there anything else you want to say before we get to the Rings game?

I think

it's

Piper Laurie did it.

Get her.

Okay.

You want to put money on it?

You know what?

I mean, I feel like I've said this.

I watched this show for the first time in college on my TV.

Like I said, I bought the DVD.

And the end of the first episode when Sarah starts screaming.

And that's not even her seeing Bob.

That's the second episode.

Sure.

But it's just her screaming and seeing Jacoby taking the locket from the coconut or under the rock or wherever it is scared me so much that I like couldn't go to sleep.

Yeah.

Like it's that lynch thing where it's just like her emotion is too profound or something.

And it like rattled me so intensely.

And it comes out of nowhere.

Trying to think of other things like that.

Eva, are there other key locations in this show that relate to key moments in your life?

With your adolescence?

Did you have

second kiss at the Black Lodge?

Not really.

I mean, the river was a big thing.

Sure.

But other than that, no.

What was the vibe of the river?

It's cold.

Were people swim in it?

Was it just a hangout spot?

Ben,

you look like you want to say something.

So, because you're asking about

the specific area,

right?

Locations,

how they're significant.

There's sort of a surprise.

There's sort of a surprise.

Uh-oh.

He's taking off his headphones.

So I'm going to grab something.

Do you maybe want to

share?

Yeah.

Oh.

Doon.

Doon.

Okay.

Ben's doing a dance.

He's putting a stool in the middle of the room.

Do.

Doon, doon, doon.

Now he's backwards dancing over.

Okay, he's taken out a cardboard box.

Uh-oh, what's in the box?

Oh, coffee.

Okay, looks like this is from

Tweety's.

A damn fine cup of coffee.

Is this the coffee we've been drinking this whole time?

Whoa!

Whoa!

And

oh my god, is it

the world's shittiest pie?

Wait, you didn't get this.

Wow, it looks bad.

I mean, no offense to it.

I had it shipped.

No wonder you reacted with like sort of a pause when we were like, are the pies bad?

And you were like, you had an odd response.

Yes.

I was like, are we doing this already?

Oh, sure, sure.

I shipped the pie to Ben.

Oh, my God.

And he brought it to the studio.

Wow.

And so this is the pie.

They ship it from Tweed's Cafe.

So this is the actual pie.

By the way, I was looking online.

Thank you so much for this.

I was looking online because I was like, oh, I should order some of the David Lynch signature cup coffee.

And it seems to be completely discontinued.

Oh, really?

I like that there's at least

a Tweedies-themed Twin Peaks coffee.

I will say, quite a good cup of coffee.

It was a good cup of coffee.

It smelled good, too.

Oh, now that's why you're mad that I didn't drink the coffee bed.

Yeah.

The coffee,

you can see from the distance, the pie has visible sugar covering every inch of it.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

It looks very

like entimants.

Yes.

Yes.

And that's not, that doesn't seem like a byproduct of it having been shipped.

It just doesn't feel like this was actually made by a human being and not a robot factory line.

Here, my plan was to surprise you guys with how bad it is.

Okay.

But obviously.

Is it a cherry pie?

It's cherry pie.

I think it should be.

The word is out.

The word is out.

The pie is bad.

I had heard it.

But I'll say, I didn't try a slice during that show where everyone else was talking about it.

So this will be your first time trying to get it.

This will be my first time trying it.

I'll see for myself.

What if I love it?

Been taking a photo.

I think it's entirely possible you might love it.

And I was like, I was willing to risk that too.

I was like, is it just my childhood associations that make me resentful of the pie?

Or is it bad?

I mean, not to sack the deck.

I don't like cherry.

Okay, great.

So I'd say there are a few hills to overcome

for this pie.

I think the issues, the sins of the pie are not necessarily the problems.

The cherries aren't the problem.

The problem is more structural.

Also, when you get this pie at the cafe, it is covered in soft serve ice cream.

I can't imagine.

I mean, because this is like, this is a.

Thank you for prepping all this.

This is a high-quality, well-designed

little postcard that comes with it, specifically for the Gold Belly Tweeties Cafe Pie Collaboration.

They must be selling so much fucking pie.

I was only thinking about Taurus coming to the place.

Yeah.

But to share with

me.

This is wild.

It's crazy.

Yes.

Yeah.

Ben was, we had like a secret email chain about this.

Incredible.

A baked cherry-filled legend, which special agent Dale Cooper describes on the show as this must be where pies go when they die.

And no wonder you wanted to do the episode here.

Yeah.

Insurance, the world's famous cherry pie was born.

The schedule day off.

Today, Tweety still serves a damn fine cup of coffee and the same damn good cherry pie Agent Cooper loved, a pie locals and visitors from the world over search out and can now have shipped from coast to coast through Gold Belly.

Okay, Ben is using what weird combination of.

He's using like a knife and a fish spatula

and like a huge knife, like a fucking crocodile dunte knife.

It's so funny that Connor brought a second pie to the show.

Yeah.

What was he thinking?

I mean, look, he's like me.

He was questioning his own judgment.

Correct.

And wait, look, Connor, we will have Connor on to talk about it himself.

Okay, good.

Okay, I'm taking this piece right here.

I'm just going to try this piece that already fell off.

Huh.

I mean, here's a...

I don't hate it.

No, I hate it.

No, I don't hate it.

You don't hate it.

Well, the filling's really bad.

I feel like the crust, my issue has always been that the crust has no salt in it.

Interesting.

I mean, the crust is

mediocre.

It is very mediocre.

You've won ribbons for your baking.

Yes.

I'm picky of that.

Pie is my favorite dessert.

It's like my favorite sweet food.

Yeah.

Eva, here's a question for you.

It's edible.

I was thinking maybe

it's edible.

It's edible.

It's not great, but it kind of feels like a supermarket pie.

Yeah.

You know, which I realize is not good.

Like, you want higher quality.

Yes.

I'll say this.

I think it's probably

getting a slightly warmer response from David and I because it was shipped from Gold Belly.

Yeah.

I think if I was sitting at a counter in the diner and they served this to me.

Covered in soft serve ice cream.

Disgusting.

Right.

I think I'd be

more put off than this where like my bar of expectation is already low and I'm probably giving it some generosity of like, well, it probably tasted better before they shipped it.

What do you think, Ben?

This is bad.

Yay!

Eva, when you eat it, this is like bad.

From the

cherry when you eat it on location,

is the crust firmer, or is it always this kind of thing?

It's always like this, it's always covered in this crust.

I was giving it that, like, and it's like there's too much cornstarch or something in the filling, so it like dries your mouth out.

It does, yeah,

yeah.

This is like

this is crust

that is just,

it feels like

somehow a homemade version of like a gas station pastry.

Yes.

Does that make sense?

It feels like it's been sitting, you know, in a fridge for two weeks, right?

It's been sitting for one day.

I know, I know.

Feels like.

Right.

We're saying it tastes 13 days more refrigerated than it actually is.

So what this does for me is it calls everything about Agent Cooper's judgment into question.

Yes.

If he loves this pie,

then he's wrong about everything.

Yeah.

This is important.

I'm glad you did this because it is important.

We need to understand firsthand.

A, he's a fuckboy.

Yep.

Problematic.

He has no sex in season one.

He uses words that are not allowed.

And he's wrong about the pie.

Yeah.

Fundamentally.

But he does flirt with Audrey in season one.

Yes.

Which is not cool.

But he also puts his foot down.

He says, Audrey, I've taken an oath,

a certain kind of behavior.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He won't do teenage.

I think my review is the same as David, which is, it's not good, but I'm still eating it.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

We've been recording.

It's not administered.

That is true.

Yeah, there is that.

I'll give it up, though.

Of course,

I lost the top.

Thank you, Ben.

I lost the top.

Thank you, Eva.

And thank you, Eva.

Oh, guys.

And no thank you to Tweeties, although I will enjoy the rest of this coffee.

The coffee

was good.

Coffee's good.

It smells good.

It's, if you, because it came whole bean, bean.

It's a nice bag.

And

it's very dark roast and it's almost like resin-y.

It's like kind of sticky.

So, Randy's coming.

I got it.

I got to go.

Let's see.

Hold on.

Let me see.

What else can we talk about?

Do you want to talk about how resiny the coffee was again?

Did you get them to ship any napkins?

Oh, come on.

I'll get you a napkin.

I know.

I'm joking.

Yeah, you've literally

got a diner.

Let's

go.

I've got a damn desk.

It's not not dirty.

It's full.

It is sure.

It's full of love and objects of meaning.

It is.

I do keep

insane how much stuff is on Griffin's desk.

You can say this.

I feel,

when my desk is barren, it feels uncomfortable.

I'm like, what is that with all this space?

Or, of course, you're really comfortable right now.

It's like

at home.

That's my twin noise of cricket.

We're talking basically the first weekend of April in 1990.

Okay.

Was the highest rated movie of the season?

Yes.

Okay.

Right.

It was basically

neither.

Compared against other two-hour slots, right?

Right.

Yeah.

So

it earned a 33 share, which put it in fifth place for the week.

And yes, the highest single rated, like the highest rated single movie, if you think of the pilot as a sort of feature-linked thing.

Basically, an out-of-the-box hit.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

It never quite hit the, like, the pilot was watched by like 36 million people Its average as a show is more in the sort of 18 to 20 million range obviously numbers like that now would be unheard of

solid hit, you know like um

but wait, let me see

this is okay.

So number one Griffin.

I mentioned it before is not cheers

no that is number two LA Law

nope LA Law not in the top 10.

You mentioned it before.

Yep.

as a hilarious appointment viewing.

It got a 22.3

murder she wrote?

Nope.

Murder She Wrote is nope, not here.

Hilarious appointment viewing.

22.3, I guess, Nielsen rating.

Is the number one show on television?

America's funniest home videos.

America's funniest

videos.

One show on

ABC.

I mean, when I was a kid, I thought those videos were funny.

I couldn't.

Did you, did any of you try to make your own videos?

No.

But I would make home videos, but I would not try to do

comical ones.

I was just hitting my dad in the nuts.

No, I was going to say, see, I wouldn't do that, but I kept on trying to stage funny mistakes.

Yeah, that's a rather

fun.

Right.

And they never would have gotten past their elite screening process.

Yeah.

All right.

Number one is America's Funniest Home Videos.

Number two is Cheers or the 21.9.

Yeah.

America's Funniest Home Video is still on.

Number three

is a show I just mentioned.

That you just mentioned?

Yeah, one of the top two shows also was number three.

What?

Oh, it's because it aired two episodes.

America's Funniest Home Video.

America's Funniest Home Videos is also number three.

Holy shit.

That's

the first year of it airing.

Saggy.

When does it start?

Great.

Saggy.

Oh, it's Sagittarius.

It's Sagittarius.

Bergeron is barely a glint in the eye of America's Funniest Home Videos at this point.

He could do the voices.

It began in 1989.

So, yes, this is its first season.

So, it truly is like, holy shit, we have found gold.

And it's like first season of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Where they're like, How many nights a week can we put this on?

Yes, right.

How many funny home videos can we find?

Number four at the box at the TV ratings is another sitcom,

America's Funny So Media.

No, on NBC, okay.

Um, it's not Seinfeld yet, because that's this is the dark ages for Seinfeld.

Sure, it's uh, Cosby, it's the Cosby show, its own sort of yeah, dark ages now.

Number five is Twin Peaks.

Number six is sports.

It's, do you want to guess?

Sports.

What kind of sports it was?

I guess it was High Lie.

It's the, I assume, the final of the NCA, college basketball.

March Madness.

March Madness, the final.

Number seven is a spin-off of the Cosby Show.

A different world.

That's right.

Wow.

Number eight is

kind of, I think, a show Eva probably would have vibed with.

Documentary show of sorts.

There you go.

Yeah.

Were you a fan?

A little bit.

Yeah.

Number nine is another sitcom on ABC.

It's another sitcom this time on ABC.

Was it a TGIF show?

Was it Full House?

No, it was not Full House.

It was not a TGIF show.

This was Tuesday.

This was a Tuesday.

Yeah, this is ABC's biggest sitcom.

This was ABC's biggest sitcom.

Yeah, people sometimes forget this is an ABC show.

It wasn't Home Improvements, too early for that.

People forget it was an ABC show.

Was it built around a comedian?

Yes.

It was.

Based on the comedy styling of?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Roseanne?

Yes, Roseanne.

One of the most important shows of the 90s.

Yeah.

And it birthed the greatest comedy of the 2020s.

I love the Connors.

Yeah, you like the Connors.

Yeah, the Connors.

I thought you meant Roseanne's Twitter feed.

The Connors legitimately rolled.

Connors is good.

Yeah.

I heard it's great.

It's great.

Number 10 is the only thing I don't know.

It is a NBC sitcom that ran for two years.

It's a comedy anthology television series.

So it was kind of a lovely show.

It's not a sitcom.

No, it's a variety show centered around a very famous person, very famous comedian.

So it's the blank-blank show?

Like that, but it's like her third or whatever, you know, like a version of a.

It's not the Mary Taylor Moore thing.

No, no.

Who else?

Who else?

Someone who was kind of like a TV legend at this point?

Yeah, she's a legend.

And the show is not called the blank-blank show.

It's her name and company.

Blank and co.

She's still alive.

She's 91 years old.

Is it a modern Carol Burnett thing?

Carol and Company.

Wow.

Who was in the cast of Carol?

Well, Jeremy Piven was.

Well, Richard Kind was.

Wow.

And then Terry Kaiser, Anina Barone, Peter Krause.

Peter Krause.

Holy shit.

He must have been a baby.

Megan Fay.

That's the crew.

Wow.

Yep.

Carol.

Had some guest stars.

Betty White.

Okay.

Christopher Reeve.

Swoozy Kurtz.

Tim Conway.

That's about it.

Okay.

Ran for two seasons.

Seems like it was doing pretty well in that first season, much like Twin Peaks, and it fell off because they answered Who Salt Corner.

That is your ratings game.

The mystery of the first season was who killed Harvey Cormann.

Season two.

Harvey Harvey Corman was like, I'm still alive, and everyone stopped watching.

I think that's enough for Twin Peaks season one.

David just dramatically closed his laptop, looked at the clock, has decided it's enough.

Yes, you guys are doing a firework.

Do you want to save pie for tomorrow?

Do you want to have the rest of the pie?

Sure.

I mean, this thing will keep.

It's going to, yeah.

I think that would be a really

nuclear

thing to do to our guest server.

Well, our guest

is also in New Orleans.

Oh, you're right.

Oh, so then you just have to do that again.

Or we could try and just ship it out.

Or we could just throw it away.

I mean, you know, there's a lot of things.

We probably throw it away.

Yeah.

How about this?

My landlord was actually the one to receive the package.

So I'll be like, we saved you a slice.

Here you go.

There you go.

Yeah.

And then she'll be like, thank you.

Ew.

All right.

I got to go.

David's got to go.

Yes.

Got to go see Deadpool and Wolverine.

Got to what?

Go see Deadpool and Wolverine.

Not to die.

Jeez,

seriously.

Wait, you should bring the pie with you.

Wrap it up.

Scream.

Or you know what?

You know what?

I could go.

You guys could do 10 more minutes of pieces.

David, David, can I, can I, seriously, before you go, you should stop by a CVS and buy some medical tape.

Oh, because I might split my size.

I think so.

It's true.

But this guy knows he's in a fucking movie.

It's horrifying.

And now he knows he's in a cinematic universe.

Oh, and he knows people don't like the cinematic universe anymore.

I just hope you start rapping up.

Eva, is there anything you want to plug?

Yeah.

If it's

it's it's the it's the winter, yes.

This will be September, October.

Let me look quickly.

It'll just be around the time that Interior Chinatown will stop airing Honolulu.

This will come out on September 29th.

Okay, in November.

Okay.

So in two months.

Yes.

You'll check out Interior Chinatown.

I'm very excited for that show.

It sounds very cool.

It's very, it's got a lot of weird meta

creepy stuff too.

It's in conversation, definitely, with this show.

You're the best.

You're the best.

Hey, thank you for being here.

Thank you, Griffin.

Just to restate, just because I feel like it is a thing that people are having a hard time keeping in their brains, but Twin Peaks Season 2 will be on our Patreon

on the 11th of October.

Is that correct, Ben?

Yeah, it is correct.

And then we will be doing, obviously, Firewalk with me on main feed and the return split into four episodes on main feed to end this series.

But that's how the totality of Twin Peaks will be covered.

Great.

And more pie and coffee will be consumed.

Just keep sending pies out to you guys.

Absolutely.

We'll buy a good cherry pie.

Yeah, maybe.

This was the Brooklyn Bakery.

Forge Wayne Blackberry.

They do have a sour cherry pie right now.

And maybe next time we drink some of the Nightmare Before Christmas coffee I have, that's been fucking.

That stuff is toxic.

It is disgusting truly couldn't barely

get a smell it I couldn't get the flavor out of the coffee I'm just telling you Oogie Buggy's mud slide it's like a

little character to it the Santa one I'm not going to defend all right Griffin wrap us up thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe thank you to Marie Barty for helping to produce the show Jobo and Pat Reynolds for our artwork David this is who we are.

This is where we live.

No, it's not.

We are in this lodge.

No, I reject that.

It is not who we are.

It is happening.

And the rejection, That's the tension that keeps people coming back.

That's the mystery.

That's the lower palmer mystery.

Listen to me.

We're not doing this for the rest of our lives.

Not three-hour episodes is the norm.

That's why I got the fucking tucker.

Well, what do you want me to do?

Start shocking.

I've seen the seconds.

All right, fine.

You both have to wear shock collars.

I'm into it.

Thank you to Joe Bo and Pat Reynolds for our artwork.

Thank you to Lee Montgomery and the Great American All for a theme song.

J.J.

Birch for our research.

You're fired and rehired.

Thank you.

He's back.

He's back.

JJ Birch, colon, the return.

It's happening again.

Thank you to AJ McKeon for our editing, also our production coordinator on the show.

Tune in next week for Wild at Heart.

You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including your Patreon, blank check special features, where as we said, that's where you're going to want to go if you want to hear Twin Peaks season two.

There's only so many slots.

Yeah, it is what it is.

And we're going to do a very robust conversation about a very cool season of television.

It'll be robust.

And we'll eat some more shitty pie.

Yeah.

And as always, six.

Six.