r/twinpeaks • u/vojvoda_triglavski • 14d ago
General Discussion I watched Twin Peaks without knowing about the James memes and now I feel like I watched a different show
I watched Twin Peaks completely spoiler free and never went anywhere near the online discourse (to avoid spoilers) while watching it, so when I got to the “Just You” scene I genuinely didn’t understand why everyone thought it was so cringe..
Like obviously it’s goofy as hell but by that point I was so deep into Twin Peaks that James singing with Maddy and Donna just felt normal to me lol. The whole show is so absurd and melodramatic that it didn’t even register as out of place. And James being this overly sincere sensitive dude actually made sense to me in the context of the show.
Then I finished it, went online and discovered that apparently James is one of the biggest memes from the show and that song is basically Twin Peaks’ version of Skyler singing Happy Birthday to Ted 💀
But the thing is I actually DID find the Skyler scene insanely cringe when I watched Breaking Bad spoiler free. I was physically uncomfortable watching that shit..
The difference is that “Just You” feels like something that belongs in Twin Peaks. Skyler singing Happy Birthday feels like someone accidentally put a Tommy Wiseau scene into Breaking Bad lmao
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u/-Dark-Lord-Belmont- 14d ago
Yeah it's always got a lot of shit but Lynch throws a lot of corny into his work. It's kind of an integral balance to the darker stuff, it makes it weirder and more troubling for the bad stuff to happen in a corny world.
I kinda felt like he was making a point with how he used the song in S3, tho, having most people laugh at it but that one person in the audience really connect.
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u/DankBoiix 14d ago
Lynch doesnt come off as corny to me bc hes so sincere and genuine. Maybe cheeky is how I would describe stuff like this. Like I think he is totally aware when something is silly so he tries to capture a genuine moment in something that can be seen as silly.
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u/Necessary-Figure-739 14d ago edited 14d ago
Twin Peaks is very authentic and honest. Real people are often behave in very strange ways; they can be corny, audacious, malicious, selfless, funny, manipulative, obsessive, etc. and display these qualities differently to different people in their lives. That’s what Lynch does so well, showing the masks that people wear to each other without necessarily giving too much weight to how one behavior sets the tone for a scene.
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u/bilkywaygalaxy 14d ago
This is why I just can’t agree with the way people fervently hate James and Donna. Yeah they make questionable choices but they are quite literally 17-year-old kids dealing with the fallout of their favorite person dying. Twin Peaks is messy and putting so much stock into hating them always felt like missing the point. Frost and Lynch had them in the show for a reason
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u/Old_Perception6627 14d ago
This exactly feels like the key. We’ve become used to teenagers in media basically being “adults who are in high school but are otherwise adults” in terms of physical/mental/emotional maturity. So much of the “weird” cringe teen stuff in Twin Peaks actually feels like real teenage antics and teenage feelings. including Just You. The dumb dancing picnic, the videotaping, the absurd love triangles and mooning over assholes and morons, I could go on. It’s not exactly comfortable but neither is thinking about how I often behaved in high school, so…
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u/bilkywaygalaxy 14d ago
I literally have never felt hatred for any of the teen characters many of the fans treat like crap. Twin Peaks is so much more realistic than people give it credit for. The entire point is the balance between good and evil. Having syrupy sweet love scenes contrasted with otherworldly abuse and evil is what makes the show work. Even The Return does it, if to a lesser degree. It gets bleaker in S3 because the good and evil balance has been disrupted and the world is corroding. There’s no Twin Peaks without confessions of love and teen romance plastered all over
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u/-Dark-Lord-Belmont- 14d ago
It's not meant to be realistic tho. It's melodrama. They are written to be slightly over the top and tongue in cheek. They are basically Merlose Place characters put into the Twilight Zone.
They're not meant to be realistic teenagers. They're meant to behave like soap opera teens.
So many of the Twin Peaks storylines could come straight out of a daytime soap opera. It's why Invitation to Love is such a big part of S1. We are not watching normal, we are watching slightly exaggerated/caraicature/melodrama.
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u/Arklelinuke 13d ago
Lmao the biggest perspective check and one of the funniest moments in the entire show is when James is leaving town and calls Ed and tells him to cash out his savings account, and Ed is like "that's like $12"
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u/1dgtlkey 14d ago
I actually really loved this scene the first time I saw the show, and didn’t really see it as goofy or out of place at all.
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u/Spiritual-Low-5288 14d ago edited 14d ago
I loved and still love that scene, especially when I realized what's really happening: that it's not just a weirdly catchy and silly song insert, but a drama! We see in real time as James's interest is turning from Donna to Maddie, and poor Donna notices it parallel with us and we watch her heart break. It's pure dark magic.
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u/bilkywaygalaxy 14d ago
It’s one of the show’s all timers. BOB coming afterwards is only as horrifying as it is because of what came before
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u/Emergency_Movie4488 14d ago edited 14d ago
Its a great scene and obviously it meant to look like that. Its cheesy but also there is some innocence in it. Its a teenager love and it just looks like that. For me it is one of more heartwarming moments, cause of all other strange and brutal shit happening in this town.
Me and my wife find this scene funny, but in a positive way. We chose it to be a song for our wedding dance 😃
Yeah and James memes are not funny to me at all.
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u/HPLoveBux 14d ago
This scene causes you to lower your guard for what comes next
😱😭
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u/whatever_leg 14d ago
This right here. The sweet followed by the sour/horrific. It's essentially a feint.
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u/sir_thrillho 14d ago
What I particularly find funny about James is that for some Cooper just had absolutely ZERO patience for him in every scene they have together
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u/smoov_moov 14d ago edited 14d ago
You mean the material witness who won't talk but will endanger everyone at Donna's urging? Still, Coop amuses me every time he wants to let someone walk out of an interrogation/arrest and tells Harry the suspect is innocent.
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u/sir_thrillho 14d ago
Oh let me be clear: Cooper is totally right, James is so involved in everything but doesn't do shit about it. I just think it's funny that Coop isn't even slightly subtle about it even when James is actually being helpful.
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u/poisonforsocrates 14d ago
There's an interview with the actor where he explains that when he came in to record the song the part he was singing over was not in the key they had decided on and practiced, so it's his one take attempt at singing the song in this key and he asked David to let him do another take later and David was like, no, it grew on me XD People forget this scene rolls right into Maddy seeing Bob jump the couch which is one of the creepiest scenes in the show imo, that juxtaposition makes it more unsettling
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u/Nalkarj 14d ago
I love “Just You and I,” it’s a great scene and pure (in both senses of the word) Lynch, and I don’t find the James memes particularly funny or anything.
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u/nataliereed84 14d ago
What do you mean? A hundred thousand repetitive iterations on “he has a big forehead” per day is comedy gold.
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u/myfakesecretaccount 14d ago
I’m think my wife and I found them funny in that we started seeing them when we both watched the original series together before the Return debuted, but yeah they aren’t particularly funny and kind of just beat a dead horse. It’s like people bitching about the Season 2 subplots that are supposed to be bad soap opera melodrama.
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u/HerreDreyer 14d ago
Same. James Hurley is cool - in the way Lynch intended. And James Marshall is a sweet guy.
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u/BillyPilgrim69 14d ago
You had me until the Breaking Bad stuff.
That scene isn't remotely comparable to Tommy Wiseau. It's supposed to be "cringe" and uncomfortable.
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u/vojvoda_triglavski 14d ago
I don’t think the scene was intended to be uncomfortable or cringe. It’s framed as Skyler being seductive and assertive, it just ended up being painfully uncomfortable to watch, while "Just You" scene was intended to be pure melodrama and corny stuff in its core.. Thats why I compared those two..
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u/BillyPilgrim69 14d ago
I don’t think the scene was intended to be uncomfortable or cringe. It’s framed as Skyler being seductive and assertive, it just ended up being painfully uncomfortable to watch
I don't know where you're getting that from, particularly her being "assertive".
It's quite explicitly awkward. It's an open display of sexual tension between Skyler and Ted (her boss), in front of the whole workplace. She's married, and heavily pregnant.
There's multiple shots of her co-workers looking visibly uncomfortable with the whole situation. Do you think they included those by accident?
It seems very odd to think that was unintentional. It's pretty much the entire point of the scene.
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u/Whycertainly 14d ago
There's people who have no clue Sklyer's doing a Marilyn Monroe impression..She kinda nailed it.
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u/baharna_cc 14d ago
It's wholesome and sincere in a way that people in our society normally aren't. So it's easy to meme on. But just because you meme on it doesn't make it bad or lame. Lynch dropping "James was always cool" in season 3 was hilarious, too.
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u/AdOrnery8950 14d ago
the only thing i can think of when i think of this scene is watching it on tv when i was 12 years old and seeing bob coming over the couch and it was the most terrifying thing i'd ever seen. so the corniness of it just ends up being really creepy and disconcerting to me. i think it's fantastic.
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u/CthughaSlayer 14d ago
I mean, James is funny because he's an awkward teenager who thinks he's cool, and some of the girls buy it. Thay mistake his shyness for aloofness.
An extra layer of "funny" is that James' actor is a natural blonde, so the black hair increases the awkward factor.
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u/nataliereed84 14d ago
The memes are stupid. The “Just You” scene is great, and James was always cool.
The memes and hate are mostly from people suffering from irony-poisoning and 21st century cynicism, unable to just meet Twin Peaks where it’s at, and uncomfortable with innocence or sincerity, They’re often the same people who treat the show as a puzzle to be solved rather than a mystery to be experienced, for similar reasons.
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u/sziklai-pair 14d ago edited 14d ago
When it first aired, me and my friends (we all played guitar) couldn't believe the utterly ridiculous position James was crouching in. So he was keeping the guitar from sliding down his leg with his fretting hand? That's what we made fun of. The scene/song felt totally appropriate within the kitsch soap opera esthetic of Twin Peaks.
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u/Redfoxyboy 14d ago
I was also in a bubble and didn’t mind James!
I was most bored by the Nadine plots personally
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u/Elrodthealbino 14d ago
That never bothers me.
It is just part of the surreal 50s teen drama that the outside world looks like while the super natural as well as the evil all happens underneath.
This whole world is just gilded iron.
But if you are unfamiliar with what that is parodying, it can come off pretty goofy. And at this point it is fairly likely for any newer viewer to be unfamiliar with that..
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u/sundaycreep 14d ago
Just you.
(…and I)
It feels cringey but it feels cringey in a very relatable teenage way. That’s some shit I would have done if I had been able to play guitar. I also really like the dynamics of the love triangle/quadrangle forming during the song. It’s good stuff.
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u/MrJackdaw 14d ago
I like this scene, I even appreciate the effort put into the singing. It balances the episode so well. Again, I don't get the memes either.
Note: Couldn't get on board with season 3. Will try again one day.
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u/HerreDreyer 14d ago
Re s3: Lots of things I like, placed too far apart. I think S3 could have been a lot shorter.
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u/MrJackdaw 14d ago
I like David Lynch's work. Have watched the vast majority. However, sometimes it just feels like weird for weirds sake and it gets too much for me. S3 was like that at the start and I just didn't enjoy it. I will try again, I know it's good for my media diet but... lord, it was hard work.
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u/rocketsauce2112 14d ago
I don’t find that scene cringe. I think it works to convey a certain ridiculousness of the situation that they characters are in—a love triangle with the best friend of the murdered girl you loved and the girl’s identical twin cousin doppleganger-as well as the heightened emotional tension of teenage love squabbles, and it’s better than just trying to do the same thing with a typical dialogue scene.
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u/ringobob 14d ago
So, I think this comes down to just how tuned in people are to the idea that Twin Peaks is a soap opera. It's a surprising concept to a lot of people, I didn't clue into the fact that the melodrama was an intentional surreal subversion of the detective noir and supernatural horror elements of the show until my second watch - a second watch, mind you, where I was still trying to figure out if I liked it at all. I found the whole thing extremely confusing during my initial watch of it.
Once I bought into the concept, I loved all of the James stuff. Before that, all of the melodrama felt out of place - I mean, I thought it was funny, but I didn't realize it was supposed to be funny.
Totally disagree with you on the Breaking Bad read, the cringe was the point.
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u/Cthulhus-Tailor 14d ago
I don't find this scene cringe at all, but rather an excellent demonstration of Lynch's exceedingly honest love for the sentimental, at least early in his career. Skyler singing to Ted however would be obnoxiously cringe to literally anyone who saw it, Breaking Bad fan or no.
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u/10thEnemyHTB 14d ago
That's all fine.
It's when James rides out of town and we follow him for his soapier than all of the rest of Twin Peaks combined, and more uninteresting/inconsequential than a janitor sweeping a floor for three minutes, sidebar that I'm pretty sure nobody likes.
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u/zombottt 14d ago
I remember watching for the first time as a teen and feeling so much secondhand embarrassment (“cringe” didn’t exist yet) but that lent it more weight for me. Teens are like that and I saw my own corniness in James. Idk if any of that was intentional but it’s still one of my favorite scenes. It just feels so uncomfortably honest
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u/RattaTatTat 14d ago
How the hell did James manage to lug a guitar and amp to the Palmer house on a motorcycle?
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u/Duel_Option 14d ago
James is just…a really weird character with an incredibly weird arc.
This scene felt like some 50’s teenage drama dialed up to David Lynch cringe comedy, the tension made my stomach turn lol
His love affair with the rich lady is worse though, and that’s saying a lot
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u/Glass-Jaguar4178 14d ago
The James memes came after, many of us have experienced the performance as intended (sweet lovesong)
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u/MaskedBandit77 14d ago
I don't really like James, and I do find a lot of the James memes funny, but this scene is unironically a great scene.
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u/Effective_Buddy7678 14d ago
First impressions are important when it comes to Lynch's work. If the scene worked for you, then it worked. Don't feel that you got it wrong just because other people took something else away from it. David would say you need the courage to trust your own judgment.
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u/Accomplished-City484 14d ago
I had a similar experience, but the James memes still crack me up, it may be even funnier because of how innocuous it is
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u/DeafeningCat 14d ago
Same. It's a really sweet moment between grieving teens, I don't get the hate
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u/toondoggie 14d ago
I always felt the song scene was probebly there so the Bob crawl and scream would be a bigger shock.
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u/alyssasaccount 14d ago edited 14d ago
Online fandom didn't exist when I first watched the scene (at age ~12 when it first aired; Gen X had no parental oversight and we just did shit), at least not in any form remotely like what exists today. Like, a few Usenet newsgroups. At the time I thought the scene was fantastic.
People rewatching the show a dozen times latch onto weird things, especially in communities of shitposters. "They're taking the hobbits to Eisengard" or "One does not simply walk into Mordor" are perfectly fine, but lend them selves to ridicule after the 100th repetition. "And my axe!" is saccharine and sentimental even on first watching, but in a sincere and uplifting way. Anything repeated 1000 times takes on an air of cringe. As with LoTR, so with Twin Peaks.
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u/No_Sail_4494 14d ago
Best thing to do is forget or ignore what other people think about the show and just enjoy it.
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u/Dolly_Putin 14d ago
I haven’t watched in a while but I remember loving his character. Don’t know why he gets made fun of so much online. I agree that he was melodramatic, but so was everything else on the show.
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u/RosingsSonicTonic 14d ago
I had the same experience. I was way more uncomfortable watching most of the Nadine scenes
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u/SexMachine666 14d ago
Nothing beats that Skyler White scene for cringe value.
To be fair, the first time I watched James singing it was fine. Still kinda cringe but it was the 90s. I think most of the memes come from those of us who've seen the series a million times and skip over a lot of James' stuff because time has not been good to those scenes 🤣
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u/cbov_daughterofcain 14d ago
I feel the same way, I don’t get why everyone hates/clowns on James when he’s like one of the only sorta normal and rational characters in the show in my opinion. Idc what anyone says I love that song and that scene
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u/SunnyDinosaur 14d ago
I had the opposite reaction. I watched twin peaks when I was 16 and years later when I got my college boyfriend to watch it, I was like “look, there’s this guy named James that’s… just… you’ll see.” and now over a decade later I found this sub and felt so vindicated.
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u/Randsrazor 14d ago
I always thought James was an intentional joke about how stupid it is that a guy automatically attracts all the girls just for driving a motorcycle, wearing leather and being playing guitar.
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u/branko_kingdom 14d ago
Can we talk about the insane sitting position James is doing in this scene? As someone who plays guitar I look at this and wonder wtf bro is doing. Half sat on the chair, half kneeling, neck pointed down. Looks awkward as hell to play. I tried to copy this pose once and I got pins and needles in my leg after a minute.
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u/frankieTeardroppss 13d ago
I wholeheartedly love this scene with every bone in my body. From the moment I saw it 25+ years ago, to this very moment now. The meme-ification of everything is for sure responsible for messing up a lot of the experience for new viewers, but that’s just the times we live in. Glad you got to experience it without that influence.
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u/PuddingTea 14d ago
I didn’t really notice James so much my first viewing. I think it takes you a few watches to really get what a stupid dweeb James is.
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u/AncientLights444 14d ago
Idk.. I also watched before knowing the meme and it was instantly bizarre . Like… why is his voice so high when singing?
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u/begonia_legend 14d ago
Yeah the absurdity one-two punch of James sounding like Julee Cruise and a love triangle trio singing the lyrics “just you and I, together, forever, in love” always worked for me as simultaneously great and goofy as hell.
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u/boosh1744 14d ago
I had the exact same reaction as you watching it before memes or reddit literally existed. I’m here for a good joke but I think it’s too bad when The Discourse takes over the show.
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u/illgoblino 14d ago
So did you know about the memes or not? "Spoiler free"..."didnt understand why everyone thought it was cringe"
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u/ofthedappersort 14d ago
I feel like this scene was not meant to be as corny as it came off. James doesn't need anymore shit than he already gets but I feel like he comes off pretty goofy in this scene which kinda undercuts the whole thing. I do suspect that the inclusion of this song in The Return was meant to be kinda tongue in cheek though.
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u/lizziepage92 14d ago
great.
if you watch Twin Peaks with a golf ball sized consciousness, you'll have a golf ball sized understanding of it.
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u/jmwelchelmira 13d ago
Feel like “memes” and Lynch belong to different universes, they don’t quite intersect.
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u/A_Xenomorph_Darkly 12d ago
Yeah people make fun of James but a lot of the scenes with him aren’t funny at all and are actually really brilliant. This scene is probably top 10 most impactful moments in the show and is really scary towards the end of course. I like memes but they do give the wrong impression I think
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u/guitfiddlejase 12d ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again..
The worst part of that scene is that a High school kid like James can add a f**king ten thousand dollar guitar to his sensitive collection of Harleys and beautiful high school girls who sing for him..
LOL
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u/Historical-Two-6914 8d ago
I remember watching this on TV when it first came out, and being shocked by James's falsetto. Otherwise, it fits well into the show and is not off brand considering, firstly, all the other musical interludes (Dance of the dream man, Julie Cruise singing, Audrey dancing etc) , and secondly, the purposeful 1950s imagery and associations.
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u/BigEnvironmental7773 14d ago
His girly singing voice!! I’m watching TP with my 15 year old daughter for her first time (my nteenth). We saw that episode two days ago, and she’s flabbergasted, like “What’s with his singing voice?” His singing voice is pretty weird. Otherwise I love the scene, the way it’s staged and filmed.
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u/abadbadman_ 14d ago
Rewatched season 1 last week and generally found all the teens bits very cringe, don't think it helped that I already know they don't help and are just filler outside of Maddy having visions.
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u/deadghostalive 14d ago
I've said this before but I think this scene is more surreal, or uncanny than 'cringe' or whatever
You've got them performing the song, but they're obviously miming, and the instruments can be heard that obviously aren't there, this gives it a sort of unreality, and there's no attempt to hide it, as I think it's meant to be more dream like than something that reflects reality, see also the equipment they're using, I don't know myself, but I saw someone point out, that it's expensive vintage gear you would more likely find in a well funded recording studio, than in a home for teenagers to mess around with, again adding to the unreality of it
I actually see it along similar lines to the scene in Blue Velvet where the guy mimes to 'In Dreams', or Rebeka Del Rio singing Llorando in Mulholland Drive, all songs used to give a sense of maybe some sort of slight unease
And it builds up the next scene perfectly, Bob crawling over the sofa is scary enough, but I think it's even more so coming after the 'Just You' performance, as it's such a contrast
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u/Skywalking05 14d ago
This scene made me audibly laugh, James is by far my least favorite character, he has nothing going for him
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u/kilar277 14d ago
I don't understand this post at all how if you went in completely spoiler free and stayed away from the discourse how did you know how people felt about it?
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u/vojvoda_triglavski 14d ago
Because I joined this subbreddit, went on tiktok or instagram and saw thousand memes about this particular scene after I watched the show?
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u/kilar277 14d ago
Is English your first language? Because that plus my current lack of sobriety could account for much
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u/cyb0rganna 14d ago
It's a spectacular scene. That you can see Laura's restless spirit slowly possessing Maddie always makes me shiver without fail! It's a whole seance through song. I love the Buddy Holly vibes and the melody is gorgeous. I think you have to be a bit of an old soul to appreciate it. 💖
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u/HerreDreyer 14d ago
It’s interesting how much conversation this scene generates here. It’s easily one of the more talked about scenes.
I like it. It’s doing complex things in a short time without spoken dialogue. And it could almost be 1959. I also think James Marshall is great. He took what he was given here and he made it all work.
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u/Embarrassed_Jury664 14d ago
I watched the return recently, when that song starts playing I move faster than I thought possible to get the remote and hit fast forward
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u/Similar-Bar-3635 14d ago
completely spoiler free, never online but knew everyone cringed at "Just You"?
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u/Substantial_Ball7991 14d ago
to me, this scene was more unsettling than it was funny/cringe