Stick with it but bear in mind e29 is the only essential part.

Ironically, for last year's Twin Peaks Fest here in Washington, David Lynch filmed a brief special message for attendees. "Pay attention...to what Annie says...to Laura...on the bed." The repeated pauses in the sentence were verbatim (try to visualize Lynch's habitually drawn out cadence of doing things in order to maintain the viewer's attention).

I'm not sure which folks in this forum thread were there last year at for the showing of FWWM at the Seattle Art Museum, but Lynch's message seemed to give everybody in the theatre a good chuckle, and to accentuate two things:

1. Annie is more important than a piece of furniture.
2. David Lynch still respects Twin Peaks.

Your brother should be right. Yes, the second series seems to be a little bit worse also at me. But, I think you have to consider the whole story, the judgment has to come for the entire job. I was very young when I saw for the first time Laura's death and after a lot of years and tons ot other films and fiction wached, I'm sure than nothing remained to me as the Twin Peaks story. Ok, nothing come from TV, sure. That I think is the best peculiarity ot this serie: the caracters and the fact remained in my mind and in my memories for all my live, and to be frank I think I'm in love with Laura from my childwood.

P.S. Sorry for my poor english and regards from Italy

I hope you watch every single eps and judge for yourself. We all have different opinions here and if you already have the dvds, then why not watch them all??? Really, I don´t see the problem in that.

And if some of the subplot bore you, go make some coffee or go to the loo

I love the Dick Tremayne subplot, but you will never know how you feel about that specific one or any other if you don´t watch it. 

Ditte 

I think you should proceed.

If you stop at Episode 16, you'll never get to know anything more about Windom Earle and what went on between him and Dale Cooper.

I am sure by now that you have made the only choice and decided to watch all of season 2. Its interesting reading peoples views. They, of course, all have the benefit of having actually watched all the episodes.

It would seem very silly to stop at ep 16. I cant agree more that SOME of the storylines dropped off as the show went on. I wont give any spoilers but if someone could explain to me the point behind the James Hurley road trip I would be most gratefull!!??

However, it would be pure madness not to arrive at your own conclusion. Back in 1992 people told me "Twin Peaks is naff. Dont watch it" How glad am I that I made up my own mind.

Is this some kind of sick joke?!
 

I know that the A.V. Club's review of ep 16 saw it as as "tacked on" and "too rushed" but if this was the TP team rushing then maybe they're best when they are hurried.

 (ref: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/74234)

I know I'm going to be in the minority here, but if you disregard all of the Windom Earle references, I think that episodes Pilot-16 stand on their own as a spectacular, closed-ended miniseries. The abortion that was episodes 17-22 forever sundried the series, and no matter how good what followed them may have been, the series never really felt whole for me again after Leland Palmer got his brains bashed in. Take out the Windom Earle talk, remove the ridiculous shot of the owl at the end of 16*, and what you've got is a television classic and horror gold.

 Oh yeah, and somehow find a way to convey that Leland/BOB shot Coop. Or just pretend it.

 That's the way I remembered 16 to be, but as I just watched it again, it didn't feel like that at all. It's a classic, I don't even mind about the owl like many here seem to.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

 Good idea. I tend to forget TP Gazette is more than just a forum (despite reading many of the theory pages). I'm still torn on whether to do it or not because I know I won't be rewatching them for a while. I have loads of TV shows on DVD and despite its moments of brilliance and near-perfection Twin Peaks isn't really that high on my list.

Nope. The writing is godawful - Frost's first misstep. Tim Hunter's direction is terrible, and shows no affinity whatsoever with the show's mood or characters. The lightning effects would have been laughable had they been in any show that's not Twin Peaks - as they are they make me weep. I could go on and on, but instead I'll just say I agree with everything LWAPOM said.

Episode 23 gets the mood right. There are some superb scenes with Andrew Packard (him and Pete together is gold), and I like the craziness of Josie's death. I also think James's farewell is ably handled, though not exactly expertly written. For me it's easily the best episode since episode 15.

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

I personally didn't like Josie's death much. As far as I recall, that episode was quite good, it recaptured a feel for things. However, the ending didn't convince me. Seeing the little man dancing on the bed didn't seem quite right. I felt like those elements shouldn't have been attempted by anyone other than Lynch perhaps, otherwise they came off like a parody. And the screaming wooden knob - hmmm, not feeling that really!

What's the correct numbering for all the episodes? I get pretty confused by it. Isn't it, pilot, then 1001 to 1007 for the first season then 2001-2022 for the second season?

I'll never understand the hatred for Ep. 16. I think too many people saw it as a semi-series finale, and feel betrayed that it was not the grand guiginol of raw emotion and epic storytelling that was the Pilot. I, myself, am of the opinion that you can never go home. One of the best, and worst things, Lynch and Frost ever did was that pilot episode. Best, because it's quite possibly two of the best written, best acted hours of scripted drama ever to air on network television. Worst, because they peaked at the beginning; the bar was already set so high that nothing that came afterwards could possibly live up to it.

So yeah, what we got was rushed, and maybe a little bit forced, but I feel that what we ended up with was essentially a cliff-notes version of what we otherwise would've gotten, not some last-minute hatchet job. Given the network's mandate, I think Lynch and Frost did the best they could have.

Personally, at first, I wasn't too keen of Wise's performance as Bob, either, until I gave it a little thought. Bob is essentially the paranormal version of Frank Booth; as Mike tells Coop, he feeds on the pleasures. Bob is id incarnate; the worst-case-scenario of a child never growing up. A being utterly fascinated by bodily functions and carnal pleasures, perpetually in need of having both of those fascinations satisfied. For a being like that, the past 30-some years must've been pure hell, only being able to "be free" during his short dalliances inside Leland's body, otherwise lying dormant and waiting for the next opportunity to break free.

In episodes 14-16, we're getting to see Bob really be Bob for the first time in many, many years; and, being a being more concerned with his own pleasure than with being low-key, he goes a bit overboard; he does all the things he's wanted to do for so long; and a few things that probably just occurred to him at random moments, and which he decided would be fun (ie, playing golf at the Great Northern). Bob, in this case, is total inhibition. In this regard, I think that Wise handled the job quite well. When he's in that jail cell, freaking out, it seemed a pitch perfect parallel to Ronette's flashback of Bob going apeshit in the train car.

Now, this isn't to say that some aspects of Ep. 16 didn't bother me, because, as I said, I view it as a cliff-notes version of what could have been; and cliff notes are never as good as the real thing.

I believe, firstly, that the episode should have been a two-hour event, akin to the pilot, and that Leland's death should've come with about 20-30 minutes left to go in the episode. The pilot has a long sequence at the beginning where everyone reacts to Laura's death, before Coop arrives. I believe this should have been mirrored in Ep. 16, with a sequence of people reacting to the revelation of Laura's killer. What we got at the beginning of 17 was piss-poor compared to that opening "montage" in the pilot.

This is to say nothing of the disservice given to Grace Zabriske and Richard Beymer/Sarah and Ben, the two actors/characters most directly linked with the final revelation. Aside from that copout at the beginning of 17, we never get to see Sarah have any sort of real reaction to the revelation that her husband murdered their daughter, nor do we really get to see Ben's reaction; sure, we're shuffled into his home movies watching (which really, for me, was one of the high points of the post-Laura episodes), but it doesn't do justice to his character. Despite the fact that he's an evil corporate raider, we're given some indications in 1-16 that Ben has a little more going on upstairs than meets the eye, especially in relation to his relationship with Laura. Both Ben and Sarah deserved better closure than what we saw.

The lack of a revelation of Coop's shooter. Trying to use this to drag out the series, and leaving it unconnected to the Palmer case, seemed like a mistake to me. Ditto, to a lesser degree, for the attack on Jacoby. It wouldn't have been that hard to squeeze in, "Oh yeah, by the way, Bob shot Coop... uh, and attacked Jacoby."

Leland's speech. It just didn't quite work for me. Something seemed a bit too cliched/absolving. I get the idea that perhaps the network had more of a hand in writing this speech than Lynch/Frost; I don't think that 1991 was one of those time periods in TV where execs would've been comfortable with the revelation that a guy may have had some culpability in the serial fornication of his own daughter. It sort of dulled the complexity of the Bob/Leland symbiosis.

The owl at the end. I sure hope to God that neither Lynch nor Frost wrote that ridiculous "Where is he now!?" line with the following sequence of Bob entering the owl. It'd been done before, it's been done since. It was a cliche streak in a usually original series. The episode should have ended with Coop saying, "The evil that men do," with a fadeout to perhaps the Twin Peaks sign, or Laura's grave, or the falls, or SOMETHING, other than what we got.

I almost loved episode 23... I thought it was really solid and tense throughout (I knew the episode would be the the one where Josie died beforehand too, so that might've helped some). I've always loved the Catherine-Josie storyline, and thought it was the only strong story at that point in the series, so I was glad to everything geared towards it (though Josie shooting Coop was forced). Still, it started to feel like Twin Peaks again, there was an air of suspense and mystery, and felt like it had been built up to from the beginning. But then the entire episode was tainted by an ending that in a few short minutes managed to totally ruin everything that had come before, with an incredibly lame attempt to imitate Lynch... it was like a dreadful parody of the show, the likes of which hadn't been seen since... well, episode 16 (btw, both of them steal footage from Lynch's great Red Room scene). I can't believe Lesli Linka-Glatter was responsible for that... she's usually a really solid director (she directed the best episode of Murder One, as well as several wonderful eps of TP).

Also, I don't find that the pilot overshadowed the rest of the show... actually, there are a few episodes I prefer to the pilot (all directed by Lynch though...). Basically I think all of season one is perfect, and the first seven episodes of season 2 are flawed but still gold (with the exception of episode 14, which is my second favorite episode, and contains possibly the greatest scene in all Twin Peaks), and ep 15 is quite good, though inferior to what came before. So no, ep 16 doesn't suffer in comparison to the pilot, so much as every other episode in the Laura Palmer cycle (IMO)... I'd say ep 16's problem was more that it couldn't possibly live up to the power of episode 14; they still could have done much better than that though, such as, say... a solid hour of TV.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!