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A review by alexampersand
Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier by Mark Frost
3.0
Kind of a mixed bag on this one; it is billed as 'filling in the gaps between Season 2 and The Return', which in itself I wasn't sure if I needed. But it fills in some unnecessary gaps, it connects some useful dots, and then it oversteps its boundaries by trying to explain the ambiguous ending of The Return.
The book comprises of 18 separate 'files', which generally cover one character (or aspect) of Twin Peaks that we all know and love. So first up: there's the direct gap-filling between Season 2 and The Return. We have files containing the histories of Shelley, Ben Horne, Donna Hayward, Norma, Jacoby, Harry Truman. And I was right; I didn't need any of this information. Having biographical content written down always just feels like fan-fiction to me. It's like the Nineteen Years Later epilogue in Harry Potter. It just doesn't feel authentic. And that's how I felt reading about everybody's continued adventures post-Season 2.
And then there's the more mythology-centric chapters. We find out what happened to Annie. We get some concrete(ish) definition of what is up with Audrey. At least, we find out a very specific event that happened to her, which lends some very strong credence to one of the popular fan theories about what was up with her in The Return. The revelations about these two characters felt anti-climactic to me. It's that old case of thinking you want something, until you get it. I was desperate to find out what was UP with Audrey Horne in The Return. And then reading this, in black and white print, on the page, just made me feel disappointed. I preferred the mystery, the ambiguity.
There is also information on Major Briggs, Philip Jefferies, and Cooper's Double, all of which I actually found interesting and enlightening. Not all of it was new information, most of it just put all the dots together. But it was quite nice to read it all laid out, kind of like a Twin Peaks wikia.
Then there are two sections that expand on the finale of The Return and attempt to make things more understandable and concrete; a chapter on Judy and a chapter titled "Today". Both of these give some pretty lore-heavy information. Judy doesn't contain explicit answers per se, but there is a little more elaboration on what Gordon Cole said about Judy/Joudy in The Return, and then there's some implications for what that means in terms of Bob (at least, that's how I read it). I'm not entirely comfortable with lore being explained solely in companion materials, but given that there's no explicit answers or revelations, I think I am actually quite content with the ambiguous nature of what is detailed.
And the "Today" section. There's a very definite confirmation of the identity of the girl in the New Mexico frog-moth scene in The Return. Which, again, feels... unnecessary. If there is going to be confirmation of ambiguous facts, I wish that that would happen within the material itself, rather than confined to the extraneous companions. It makes it feel somewhat less "official", and like it could be retconned at any point. but the "Today" file actually goes much deeper than simply confirming theories. It also explores what happened in the finale of The Return, after Cooper's dimenson-travelling appearance in FWWM and meeting with Carrie Page, and the consequences of his actions. It pretty definitively gives you an answers about what the consequences were. Which right away makes me uneasy because see above re: plot points given away in companion material. But more than that, it creates a headache in terms of dimension and timelines.
So all in all, this book falls in the middle of the road for me. There's some totally unnecessary fan-fiction-esque character catch-ups. There's some interesting and useful dot-connecting between the plot points that we saw but didn't fully explore in The Return. And then there's some fairly convoluted direct explanations of things that were (purposefully?) left ambiguous in The Return.
The book comprises of 18 separate 'files', which generally cover one character (or aspect) of Twin Peaks that we all know and love. So first up: there's the direct gap-filling between Season 2 and The Return. We have files containing the histories of Shelley, Ben Horne, Donna Hayward, Norma, Jacoby, Harry Truman. And I was right; I didn't need any of this information. Having biographical content written down always just feels like fan-fiction to me. It's like the Nineteen Years Later epilogue in Harry Potter. It just doesn't feel authentic. And that's how I felt reading about everybody's continued adventures post-Season 2.
And then there's the more mythology-centric chapters. We find out what happened to Annie. We get some concrete(ish) definition of what is up with Audrey. At least, we find out a very specific event that happened to her, which lends some very strong credence to one of the popular fan theories about what was up with her in The Return. The revelations about these two characters felt anti-climactic to me. It's that old case of thinking you want something, until you get it. I was desperate to find out what was UP with Audrey Horne in The Return. And then reading this, in black and white print, on the page, just made me feel disappointed. I preferred the mystery, the ambiguity.
There is also information on Major Briggs, Philip Jefferies, and Cooper's Double, all of which I actually found interesting and enlightening. Not all of it was new information, most of it just put all the dots together. But it was quite nice to read it all laid out, kind of like a Twin Peaks wikia.
Then there are two sections that expand on the finale of The Return and attempt to make things more understandable and concrete; a chapter on Judy and a chapter titled "Today". Both of these give some pretty lore-heavy information. Judy doesn't contain explicit answers per se, but there is a little more elaboration on what Gordon Cole said about Judy/Joudy in The Return, and then there's some implications for what that means in terms of Bob (at least, that's how I read it). I'm not entirely comfortable with lore being explained solely in companion materials, but given that there's no explicit answers or revelations, I think I am actually quite content with the ambiguous nature of what is detailed.
And the "Today" section. There's a very definite confirmation of the identity of the girl in the New Mexico frog-moth scene in The Return. Which, again, feels... unnecessary. If there is going to be confirmation of ambiguous facts, I wish that that would happen within the material itself, rather than confined to the extraneous companions. It makes it feel somewhat less "official", and like it could be retconned at any point. but the "Today" file actually goes much deeper than simply confirming theories. It also explores what happened in the finale of The Return, after Cooper's dimenson-travelling appearance in FWWM and meeting with Carrie Page, and the consequences of his actions. It pretty definitively gives you an answers about what the consequences were. Which right away makes me uneasy because see above re: plot points given away in companion material. But more than that, it creates a headache in terms of dimension and timelines.
So all in all, this book falls in the middle of the road for me. There's some totally unnecessary fan-fiction-esque character catch-ups. There's some interesting and useful dot-connecting between the plot points that we saw but didn't fully explore in The Return. And then there's some fairly convoluted direct explanations of things that were (purposefully?) left ambiguous in The Return.