I just viewed Ep16 for maybe the third or fourth time and as powerful as it is, the whole thing feels sort of limp and anti-climatic.  I really think all of the key scenes are great -- Cooper finally remembering the killer's name, Bob/Leland locked in the interrogation room, Leland's death, etc. -- but wouldn't it have all been so much better if we didn't learn Leland was Bob two episodes earlier?

 What do you guys think?  Do you have the same feeling I do about it, that for all the wonderful direction and performances you're left thinking, "Yeah, but I *knew* that!"?  And if so, how do you think they could have gotten around spoiling Bob's identity?  Maybe just shown Bob himself killing Maddy, instead of Bob-as-Leland?  But then maybe it would have to have taken place somewhere other than the Palmer house.

Just some thoughts.  What are yours? 

Well, I get your point, but I have to say that I think the way they reveald the killer to the audience was probably the best way they could do it. It was so briliant and shocking. I think it maybe would be some sort of anti-climax if they just caught Leland, because the whole episode is really about catching the killer, so it would been kind of 'expecting' so to say... The way it was revealed was so non-expected. Sort of like a slap in the face. Genius!

The murder scene is great, among Lynch's best and should not have been any different. Ep 16 could've been good but the whole thing seemed imitative of previous episodes, and threw in over the top acting to substitute for emotion, and corny "magic" scenes to fill in for surrealism... at least that's how I see it.

I've always liked 16, but I can see where you guys are coming from.  It's a shame, really, that either Frost or Lynch didn't direct.  As for teh dialog being cheesy... well, Frost DID write it... so go fig.  :)

I see what you mean, TremorMilo. But I agree with the others. That murder scene with Maddy was brilliant and I love those eps the way they are.

On top of that, I think it was important to see Leland for what he really was in those eps. Those eps revealed the ugly face of the town of Twin Peaks and I think it was a great visual way to show us that things and people aren´t what they seem.

Ditte 

I agree with the others,too!

I love those episodes just the way they are !:)I think they're great!

I posted this in another thread, but the thoughts fit better here.

- The writing is weak, in my view. There are some good things, like Hawk reassuring Cooper that he's on the right path. But on the whole it's just not very good. "Bob" speaking from the cell with maniacal grinning and saying "I have a thing for knives" and "I guess I sorta did. Kinda."? Not good.

- The cop-out. I think this is the most unsatisfactory solution to the storyline I could think of. Bob is just a spirit and he can leave his victims at will. That makes it a purely sci-fi yarn with none of the implications the story really has. It's interesting that in FWWM - the final word, so to speak - you never really know when Leland is Leland or when he's Bob. Laura often sees him as Bob, but then again his lines about "dirt way under this fingernail" makes you doubt how clear the lines really are. And the murder scene makes this even less obvious "I always thought you knew it was me". The more concrete Bob gets, the less powerful he is as a metaphor, in my opinion. And in episode 16, they make Bob so concrete he loses all power. The "where is Bob now" is the typical ending you expect in a cheap b-movie. Its only objective is being a cliff-hanger. When Cooper says "Is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter?" I unfortunately have to say a big yes. It happens every day. And I think Fire Walk with Me has a much more sophisticated and meaningful way of dealing with this. Since Leland turns out to be the killer, incest and child molestation became a theme of Twin Peaks - and episode 16 jumps over the entire problem. Critic Lisa Kennedy said: "... Laura Palmer is hailed as this year's breakthrough dead girl. 'My father killed me,' she says, but Cooper still gets the last word." The feminist fanzine "A Color and Activity Book" affiliated with Bikini Kill and the Olympia scene reprinted Kennedy's article under the header "FUCK TWIN PEAKS" (Greil Marcus reprints this in his new book). In a way, I agree. Thankfully, Twin Peaks is better than that particular episode.

- The directing is also a big problem, though. When I see Ray Wise going insane in his cell, I'm just thinking is this the same actor who gave me shivers when he confessed Jacques's murder? I don't think Tim Hunter really had much of a way with the actors. Episode 28 has similar problems. I can imagine liking this episode a lot more with a different director - Todd Holland did a great job with the confession scene in his earlier episode, he could have done some nice things.

Or come to think of it, this is the one episode Lynch himself really should have directed. It's extremely important in the storyline. Later on he scrapped Frost, Peyton and Engels' ideas for the Black Lodge in episode 29 and inserted his own brilliance there instead. I have an idea the line "I guess I sorta did. Kinda" wouldn't have survived a Lynch-directed shooting.

I can agree that Leland's final scene could have been done better, but it's never bothered me that much. I guess this one is heavily down to personal preference - I had to laugh at Evenreven's hatred of a particular line in the scene, because for me that is one of the best bits! (btw - I'm pretty sure the line is "I guess I kinda sorta did")

And while I do completely agree with the idea that the more concrete BOB becomes, the less effective he is as a metaphor, I think this partly comes down to what you consider to be "concrete". I mean, quite early on in the season we learn that Leland knew BOB from his childhood  - and now, once we know who BOB is and what he does, is the metaphorical aspect of the character ruined because we are asked to believe that Leland was inhabited by the "spirit" of BOB from a young age? For me personally, no. In fact, the metaphor continues, and Coop himself eventually becomes BOB - the point being (if you take the metaphorical interpretation) that even the great and the good can be corrupted. And, to touch upon the feminist debate for a moment, you could understand the final episode of TP to be a representation of the outlook that "every man is a potential rapist" - and I have to ask, does ideology get any more feminist than that?

Bob remains a metaphor for me - even throughout the final episode.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: even when Leland is lying on the floor of that cell - talking about how "they" made him kill Theresa, the metaphor still works for me, because it is all about being inappropriately influenced into doing something bad - and those influences can be people, objects - or even yourself.

What I REALLY don't like is in the next episode when the writers underestimate the audience's intelligence so much that they have a character (Albert, of all people!) spell out the metaphor, just in case you didn't get it: BOB is "the evil that men do"

None of the writing bothers me, until Leiland's death. (Which, by the way, was very surprising to me, considering his head wound barely looked bad enough to require stitches, let alone cause death.) The whole "they made me do it" and the head-cradling, and afterward the dimestore mysticism and psychoanalysis -- yeah, totally lame. But I rather enjoyed Ray Wise's goofy Bob-isms. Yeah, I know, he was kinda doing the cop-out Pacino/Oldman/Walken thing of laughing maniacally and shouting a lot... but those guys I named are really good actors, and so is Wise. "WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO! [beat] That's a yes," makes me laugh every time. The only choice Wise makes that I don't understand is the totally deadpan "catch you with my deathbag" stuff -- kinda sounds like bad high school Shakespeare. But then again, so do the characters of Bob and Mike -- maybe Wise was just emulating that.

I agree with pretty much all your points on the cheesiness of the "transient spirit" idea. Again, the only time it really BUGS me is during Leiland's death scene -- that, and the way they felt the need to show us Bob's reflection in the mirror about four times in the series, as though we were too stupid to figure it out.

As far as the feminist stuff, I don't know. It's pretty obvious to me that Lynch has serious issues with women in the first place, and can't respect a woman as a protagonist until she's been put in a sexually compromised position of the nastiest order (i.e., raped by her father and prostituted to every man in the northwest, or raped with a pair of scissors and stripped naked in public as in Blue Velvet, or molested in such a way that she ends up "liking it" as in Wild at Heart). When it comes to anything that is declared possibly misogynistic/racist/homophobic, I personally need to play it by ear and see if the thing feels ugly to me. Cooper getting "the last word" sounds like a bit of a stretch to me.

Let's not forget that Lucy's pregnancy -- not just out of wedlock, but with the father in dispute as well -- came almost directly on the heels of a scandal that nearly got Murphy Brown censored and/or canceled for simply portraying single motherhood. It's not Bikini Kill, but it ain't bad.

Finally, I don't think anyone would dispute that Lynch should have directed this one, should have directed all of them, and should have maintained a closer relationship with the series overall. I can only imagine what season 2 would have been like if Lynch had done more than just lay down ideas in between other projects. There wouldn't have been any goddamn human-throwing at Nadine's cheerleader try-out, I can tell you that much.

"Why not be composed of materials and combinations of atoms?" Mrs. Tremond says this in the script of FWWM (a scene deleted from the movie).

Why not show the evil that men do as combinations of atoms (as a man)?

This makes it kinda easier to stick with the metaphor aspect of things.