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Last Week In Twin Peaks Podcasts, Week of April 30th to May 6th

Counter.Esperanto kicked off the week with a recording of the dread-laced Lovecraft story “The Music of Erich Zann” as read by host Karl’s dad, Karl the Elder, with background mood supplied by host Jubel. It was a spooky thing about the transportive effect of music on the body and soul of a musician. These guys aren’t quite sure how they’re covering the new episodes but they’re going to feel their way through it just fine. This show is ALWAYS worth a listen.

Damn Fine Podcast is still coming to work twice a week to finish all the TV Episodes and Fire Walk With Me before the Showtime premier date, and they started Monday with On The Wings Of Love with hosts Ron and Tom and their guest Brian Burnett. They point out that the original air date of this episode was the point of one era ending and one beginning, as it had old stalwarts such as Cheers but also had the debut of a mid-season replacement show by the name of Seinfeld.
The hosts bring up the collection of classic cars that Doc Hayward must have (as Donna drives a number of classic cars over the course of the show). Ron thought this episode had Lynch being the best he’s ever been as Gordon Cole, and Tom thought the Edward Perkins disguise Earle put on this week was the line in the sand for Earle being considered funny, and therefore less scary than the other villains (THIS was your line, Tom?). Tom recovers though with a nice metaphor: To us viewers, Mystery is either the broth or the sauce, and characters are the meat. Mystery flavors the story but HOW is your perspective. I think that’s going to stay in my head for a while.

A Twin Peaks Podcast is EW’s take on Twin Peaks podcasting and it’s pretty good. Doc Jensen and Darren Franich are the hosts so it’s well-spoken and thoughtful. This first true episode covers their take on all of Season One, and the main takeaway is that they LOVE and consider ESSENTIAL the vibe Lynch brings to Twin Peaks (rightly so, and to illustrate, they point out how Lynch makes the teen drama scenes rich & textured), and the key to understanding what Twin Peaks is about comes from the dynamic between Kyle McLachlan & Michael Ontkean. The only tricky issue I see with the hosts is they’re talking about Twin Peaks primarily as a Lynch show, leaving also-essential co-creator Mark Frost mostly off to the side with the other important people in the group effort. Not sure how to feel about this right now but I’ll keep an eye on this tone to see if they get more inclusive in future episodes.

Twin Peaks: The Gifted & The Damned returned with the headline How Involved Were Lynch and Frost in Season 2? Plus Double C (Condescending Coop).
Bubba & Mork (yes, this is how the hosts refer to each other along with their slick “professional” patter. You get used to it) started by going through their new iTunes reviews, then their black lodge (worst) and white lodge (best) minutes of the last four season 2 episodes, which I won’t summarize here (you can listen if you want to know). After that they went into their real-life encounter with Amy Shiels at the Mark Frost Secret History of Twin Peaks event at the LA location of the tour. At 63 minutes they get to their discussion topics and I have to say I’ve never noticed Cooper being condescending myself. They’re making a case that (for example) when Cooper tells a waitress to wait so he can judge the coffee quality and express approval, this is him being condescending. Again, I just don’t see it that way but to each their own.
Their second topic is one I’ve been hugely interested in for years, but they tangentially explore it at best. To be fair to the hosts, that’s all you can do because attendance is barely documented. Their conclusion is that Lynch was around more than people think, and Frost is probably gone more than people think. Not much to it but I’m glad somebody’s talking about it at all.
The guys wrap up the episode going through their feedback and reveal both hosts are on the side that secret cast members (meaning people like Heather Graham not on the list of 200+ official cast members) will be appearing in the Showtime episodes.

On this week’s Bickering Peaks, Aidan and Lindsay watched Path to the Black Lodge. They call out the pawn scene for being the biggest case of absurdism since Diane Keaton directed, and when John Justice Wheeler needs to leave because a good man’s been murdered the hosts get really close to an opinion that there might be a show rule in place that Audrey Horne needs to be in love with someone connected to the lodges. What they do say is JJW exclusively becomes a plot device because this is his last moment on the show and his show impact was MINIMAL (And I’m pretty sure this opinion had nothing to do with Lindsay’s interest as an Audrey/Dale shipper).
Our hosts bring up the Talbot Mundi book that is “accidentally” referenced for lodge mythology, and Aidan thinks that creepy violin music cue would’ve been ditched for something more subtle if Lynch were directing. When our hosts talk about Annie’s deep blue dress, Lindsay brought up Emma’s (youtube’s The Vlog Lady ) Annie theory which I wish more people talked about because it’s a fun one, and Lindsay also talks about how Annie and Cooper’s scholarly flirting is off balance because the director had Heather Graham taking at Cooper and looking past him rather than TO him. I always wrote it off as Annie’s shyness but there’s a good observation here to be had.

Showtime put an advertisement in the new Alice Isn’t Dead podcast by the way. Smart spot-on advertising if I do say so. If you’re not listening to this, it’s a drama by the Night Vale people where the journey IS the story. High five to Showtime for appropriate advertising.

Dishin’ the Percolator came back with tangents about Don Rickles and Chris Kataan before diving back into Miss Twin Peaks (Other than Dallas and Sean working in the entertainment industries and me not, these guys are right in my life stage and I love seeing into their lives with their wives and young kids. I could listen to their tangents all year). Dallas thought this episode was the first one that felt like Law & Order, meaning he could predict the plot points before they happened, but wasn’t calling that a negative because he knows you have to put things in their places before a season finale. Sean’s an OG fan like me since he was 11 years old and will love Showtime Peaks even if it takes place on the old Friends sets, but Dallas is a comedian who’s never seen the show before and my favorite part of Dishin’ is his growing enjoyment of Twin Peaks, even during the season two dips. These guys are my podcast slate’s comfort food.

Twin Peaks Revival covered Fire Walk With Me this week and neither host Brian nor guests MIFotos or Da Professa liked it. They’ve only seen the movie a couple times each and would proudly declare themselves Team TV Show. If you’re trying to understand the original TV Peaks fans who initially felt alienated by the movie, this is a good podcast to listen to for anthropological purposes.
Generally speaking, their opinions could be summed up like this: “we already knew the old stuff, and the new stuff didn’t add anything.” None of them thought Sheryl Lee could deserve an Oscar, and they didn’t care for the writing either (Da Professa in particular doesn’t think Lynch can write dialog to save his life. It kind of ruined the show for her). All three people could’ve done with looking at this movie with a bit more open mindedness but they explained their cases well enough they weren’t going negative just to be negative. They were hurt by the fact the movie steered so far from the TV Show and went backward rather than forward. It’s an honest reaction I myself held onto for about ten years (except I came around on Sheryl Lee’s amazing acting by my third viewing).
TP Revival usually finds its bread and butter by framing everything in a snarky tongue-in-cheek comedic tone but they pretty much played this one straight and I appreciate that here.

Tory & Brian from The Shift have decided to cover Twin Peaks & put out a teaser where they say nothing about their interest in Twin Peaks. At least one of them knows enough to call their show The White Lodge but otherwise all I know is: They’re only covering the Showtime episodes. They’ll have listener feedback. They like Ren & Stimpy. Not a lot to go on.

Damn Fine Podcast came back with their second entry of the week on Thursday and brought guest Joseph Scrimshaw with them. They reminded me the Batmobile entrance and owl cave are one and the same.
They also wax philosophical about the auteur nature of David Lynch and how his work always connects to something human no matter how weird he gets, and then they contrast with how the Major Briggs scene missed that connection (but then wondered if they had an old CRT screen if it’d feel more correct). Also, they loved the boat date, but didn’t like the wine tasting scene?? Hmph!

British podcast Twin Peaks Log covered the last two episodes of ABC Twin Peaks (Season 2 Episodes 21 and 22), and hosts Mark & Becky were pretty happy about it. Mark called out a great line Ben said to Audrey (“You make the rest of us look like primates”) and he brings up Pennywise the Clown, which reminds me of Claire Laffar who sent feedback in to the original recap podcast, The Twin Peaks Podcast. Becky feels like fate (rather than Windom Earle) is opening the door to the Black Lodges, and for some reason Mark thinks Audrey’s speech could be cut entirely out of the show (and THEN how would Audrey be in the contest?). Becky thinks the mysterious voice coming out of Sarah Palmer is either the Giant or the One Armed Man. She has no idea how we were able to wait for 27 years and says it must have been excruciating, which I can totally sympathize with. These two are definitely covering Fire Walk With Me before May 21st.

Which is something that can’t be said for There Will Be Drinking Recaps Twin Peaks…there’s still no mention at all if they’re going to cover Fire Walk With Me, but this week the ladies had a blast coving the 1991 Twin Peaks porn parody Twin Cheeks. Cait and Murda watch it live while recording and we all figure out the people who made the thing probably never watched Twin Peaks at all. This podcast is always good for good vibes and laughs (even when they’re covering normal Twin Peaks).

On Thursday the Laura Palmer Is Dead Podcast came back with THREE episodes. I don’t know how they’re going to finish all their episodes before the premier on May 21st, but they covered SIX episodes (Season 2 Episodes 8 through 13), stretching from Leland’s final days in town to Jean Renault’s last episode. The hosts wanted episodes 8 & 9 to trust the audience more and explain less. One of the ladies thought it’d be amazing if it was Sherilyn Fenn playing Louise Dambrowski (and we know it wasn’t but that would have made it so WEIRD). She also sided with Lynch that the killer’s reveal should never have happened, but that would mean the Sherriff’s department wasn’t good at their jobs and that’s especially not fair to Hawk.
The hosts also debated which was the most important sexual tension: Audrey and Cooper, or Cooper and Harry, and while they didn’t say it seriously I think they meant it when they said Cooper and Harry won. (and really who can blame them?)
All the hosts loved Denise, and asked a simple question for Josie: Do you pick your sister-in-law’s offer of being her maid in servitude or do you live free in a cabin in the forest with the man who loves you? And they mistook the Jean Renault plotline for a B-Plot even though it’s an A-plot. As you might expect, the mood got a little down by the end of their third episode, but the hosts stayed pretty happy overall, even if they did have to talk about their own lives to keep their conversations going.

The Red Room Podcast came back on Friday with a catch-up episode. Before Scott and Josh talked about other tv shows, Scott mentioned the Blue Rose Magazine’s second issue will be all about the audiobook version of The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer as read by Sheryl Lee (which they both agree is a SPOOKY listen) and the third issue will be an episode guide of the Showtime parts. Also, Scott’s favorite side character is Big Ed, which is hard to argue with.

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

Twin Peaks Unwrapped, celebrating Ben and Bryon’s 100th episode, featuring Predictions on the Return of Twin Peaks with Deer Meadow Radio’s Mark Givens.
Ben’s a lifer so we know why he’s still podcasting, but Bryon was the newbie at the beginning of the podcast. Why’s HE still doing the show week after week? In typical Stockholm Syndrome fashion, he says he could’ve gotten out but he’s invested now. Poor guy.
The guys looked at the next handful of Log Lady Intros (there’s only two left for next episode), and they interspersed phone calls of congratulations from John Thorne to Charlotte Stewart and everyone in between. Their feature was a conversation with Mark Givens, who let spill officially that he’s working on a book on the Hazel Drew murder case with David Bushman, but then refused to divulge whether or not his wife was going to be his new Deer Meadow Radio co-host when the Showtime episodes start. After that, they began making predictions of what they expect to see from the new episodes:
Ben said something about Cooper (according to FBI’s official records) being declared dead. All three hosts think there’ll be a new Donna. Probably won’t see Twin Peaks the town until the second episode. Mark thinks Josie and Windom Earle will make appearances. They made more predictions but I’ll stop with the most important one: Ray Wise will play the Bob figure because then both literally and figuratively Laura Palmer will be able to finally confront and defeat her father. Besides that I’ll wrap this column up with a quote from Mark: “I’m just ready to watch the show, I’m tired of predicting.” Amen. Aaaaaaaaamennnn!

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

Written by John Bernardy

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

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  1. Thanks for the shoutout, John! This is turning out to be quite the go-to blog!

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