Things Are Getting Strange

Finally! An entertaining James subplot episode! Mostly because of some real, real weirdness in and around the bar Evelyn spends most of her time. Elsewhere we talk about Windom Earl and Leo's acting - and how interesting it is to see Leo's role and participation in the series get completely reframed. Support the show

Leo's back! He's risen... From the slaaaaaaaaab. Not sure how coming back from brain-death turns you into Frankenstein's monster but here we are! Regrettably James's subplot is ongoing, but at least the Lana - or the Twin Peaks succubus - plot seems to be coming to an end. Support the show

As part of Checkmate, we get a little side-tracked into how The X-Files could almost be a spin-off from Twin Peaks - still staring Duchovny with Anderson, but with Duchovny remaining as Denise. Possibly better we got the series' as we do. Alas, we are stumbling into Twin Peaks ' infamous troubled season 2 period where the soap opera aspects ramp up and things get weirder. Just not in the...

Content Warning: the episode of Twin Peaks discussed contains depictions of transphobia and domestic abuse/violence against women. zzzzzzzzzz Wait! Ignoring the James scenes, the episode is still fun if a little distracted. We discuss Bobby being terrible (what else is new?) and a theoretical otherworld where meeting Denise irrevocably changes Audrey's entire career. Also the Black Widow does...

Content Warning: the episode of Twin Peaks discussed contains depictions of transphobia. Seeing as its the episode somewhat confusingly titled Masked Ball, it means David Duchovny is here! We talk a lot about his role as Denise and how Twin Peaks manages to largely side-step a lot of problems with how she is depicted and treated in the episode. We spend a lot less time on James' new sideplot,...

So... now what? Well, the series needs to keep Cooper in town, so there's a very abrupt owls coming home to roost moment for the wildly illegal stuff he's pulled previously in the series. But we also have other plotlines that won't just end... Though the series does seem to have completely forgotten Maddy even existed. Support the show

Well. We're here. Now the cast catch up with the viewer and the whole who killed Laura Palmer part of the plot is resolved. But there's another 13 episodes to go... Outside of murder, the other plots from the series continue... Support the show

Something of a dramatic reversal into comedy after the darkness of the last episode... We discuss why some people aren't keen on this, but get into the likely reason why Twin Peaks is like this.. Support the show

Content Warning: discussions of sexual abuse, violence against women, murder of women, abuse of minors and yellowface. So, we come, inevitably, to the horse in the Palmer household. With all the horrors that entails and all the reveals. Please bear in mind the content warnings - we don't dwell on the details but do touch on what happens and the associated discomfort. Apart from the unmitigate...

Cooper finally contends with his litany of illegal actions! For a few minutes. Then he starts withholding medication... Twin Peaks continues! We talk about James's perplexing timing to resolve last episode's cliffhanger and how Shelly is evaporating audience sympathies in her and Bobby's escapades. Bonus points if you know what a vicuna coat is and who's most likely to own one....

Back to Twin Peaks ! We briefly talk about upcoming X-Files news (both old and new!) and The Amazing Digital Circus finale (don't worry, we're not about to spoil anything) before diving headlong into the Pacrific Northwest. We get hung up on how ambiguous the layout of Twin Peaks itself is even now and celebrate that Audrey is finally getting rescued! Support the show

We get a bit hung up on how Maddy's hair has changed over the course of the series. And reach silly conclusions about the potential Laura Palmer-ifiction of every woman in Twin Peaks. Sort of like Third Impact. Or carcenisation. Otherwise this is a kind of a place-holder episode with setups for the future and some typical soap-opera moments. Where has Mike gotten to...? Support the show

If you're watching along with the series, what perpetual cynic Albert believes in might come as rather a surprise in The Man Behind the Glass . Especially moments after his giddy glee about the pop-culture provenance of the gun used to shoot Cooper. While discuss Doctor Jacoby's surprising home-life, Donna's improbably horrible timing and why we are at best indifferent to James and...

So much coma! We wind up talking about how much of a trope the soap opera coma is... and how Twin Peaks weirdly (for Leo anyway) plays it closer to reality than most... We get side-tracked onto The Fourth Kind for a while purely because of how it used owls and how that might be a kind of inference back to this series... Support the show

Twin Peaks gets off to a slightly unusual second season start... We discuss comas and how it feels so oddly distanced from season 1. Also get minorly fixated on the previously unmentioned Hayward daughter. Support the show

Hard to ignore how good Piper Laurie is in this episode. And in general in this series! We've reached the all too soon end of season 1 of Twin Peaks and it feels like everything's happening, so many cliffhangers and dangling plot-threads! And somehow while talking about the series we loop in things like Clueless and Psychonauts ... Support the show

Watch as Dale Cooper fends off Audrey's attempts at seduction in order not to bring the FBI into disrepute shortly before making use of the Bookhouse Boys because they need to do something across the Candian border! Not saying he shouldn't have resisted Audrey, but the latter also feels distinctly dodgy. At this point in the series everyone seems to be converging at One Eyed Jack's...

Twin Peaks continues to tease that a solution to its central mystery can only be imminent! Birds singing and perpetual music get their explanations here! But in the meantime, we continue to complain about James, continue to enjoy every time Bobby shows up on-screen, and remain hopelessly fixated on Maddy and who's playing her in this series. Also the mill-arson plot is just getting more tangl...

Feels like everyone is turning out to be psychic in Twin Peaks ... Laura Palmer, Sarah Palmer, Dale Cooper... Hank Jennings?! Or at least we don't have a good way for him to call right after the letter he sent (presumably days earlier) was opened. But! For those who know the kind of things Twin Peaks is famed for may be interested that this is the first time an owl has an on-screen presence....

You may be shocked - SHOCKED - to learn Twin Peaks immediately swerves away from naming Laura Palmer's killer despite explicitly promising such an answer last episode. Such is the way of Twin Peaks , and these days its well known this was never quite what David Lynch and Mark Frost wanted to focus on, and yet... the answer is out there still. In the meantime we talk a fair amount about the fu...

The Red Room makes its appearance in Twin Peaks! If you've been wondering how the series has the reputation it has, it all ramps up from here. We talk backwards talking, our "clues" for the central mystery, compare the series to (variously) Insidious, Neon Genesis Evangelion and professional wrestling! Also come to a startling realisation about the Horne brothers... Support the show

The soap opera continues, though we will note how Cooper seems to travel. Or at least which items seem essential. We're still a bit early, not quite to the kind of thing Twin Peaks would become famous for... But there's still some weirdness. We talk a lot about Laura Palmer's astonishingly active pre-death life and the odd bits and pieces that would normally get cut out of this kind...

Join us as we take a trip into the Pacific North-West... To a town with a population way too high for how its depicted. And an eccentric population. We are, of course, talking about Twin Peaks this time. Taking in the views of the feature length first episode (critically not the International Pilot version of this which we will get into later), we find that the series is a lot more subdued this ea...

Alas we have reached the end of Darkplace with so much of the series still left unglimpsed... What sights and truths could it reveal? Maybe that Dean Learner actually can act since once again he actually does for a brief moment. Given the title and subject matter for T he Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shoggoth , we end up talking about HP Lovecraft. But there's also some Clive Barker and Q...

Looking past the less than subtle "borrowing" of John Carpenter's back-catalogue, we end up zeroing in on the actual theme of Scotch Mist ! Doesn't have much to do with xenophobia, fog, mist but is very prevalent in the episode! Inevitably we also talk a lot about Stephen King... Support the show