Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

[Rialto]

So, back when us disappointed-ers were bemoaning the fact that we had nearly an entire season of DougieCoop, certain fans were v dismissive. The main criticism seemed to be: "Cooper's been trapped in some Black Lodge hell dimension for 25 years - you could hardly expect him to snap back to his old self just like that!"

So........

[AnotherBlueRoseCase]

When Lost Highway came out I seem to remember there being a lot of talk about the Balthazar Getty character going through a psychogenic fugue state (think it was that character, apols if got the wrong one!). Is this entire series Audrey's fugue state and her way of working out who she is? I believe Lynch finds it an interesting state. Did he use the idea for this series too? Considering the clip of her in the white room at the end it's a possible.

As a viewer I found the episode trite and excessively twee. When Cooper awoke so abruptly and adopted the Super Coop persona (all he needed was a cape), it actually felt like the entire scene was taking the piss, hollow and fake. Like it was being played for laughs and it was intentionally badly done. Maybe it's all been done like that because it is in Audrey's imagination though it doesn't make for good viewing. I was thankful seeing Cooper return to himself (yes, I was) however it didn't feel genuine and I felt like he was going to say, 'Alrighty' as Kyle did when he was Trey McDougal in his Sex and the City character - he didn't feel like Dale Cooper. It all felt forced and not natural. It should have felt joyous and euphoric. It was a massive anti-climax imo.

The Audrey dance scene, even in her imagination - was it a 'you can never go back' footnote, a commentary on history not being able to repeated. Even if it was that it was still wrong, wrong, wrong. Quite cringey. On an online Q&A with Sherilyn Fenn I actually asked her how she felt about doing that dance scene in the original series and she said it was really embarrassing. I wonder how she felt about doing this now?

Lynch/Frost simultaneously tweeted to say that gum you like is coming back in style. Well it's been chewed so much that it has become tasteless and there's absolutely no flavour left.

Insightful as usual, Venus. I hope you're wrong about such a risible revelation in the finale, but fear you may not be.

[Framed_Angel]

On an online Q&A with Sherilyn Fenn I actually asked her how she felt about doing that dance scene in the original series and she said it was really embarrassing. I wonder how she felt about doing this now?

That is so interesting, I wonder how she meant "embarrassing." When I think back on her dancing in TPS1, I recall at one point into her dance after being in her own reverie she looks up shyly at Donna maybe. So your mention if she felt awkward doing it, reminds me of what Lauren Bacall said in her autobiography. The look that got her career launched was a sort of downturned head, eyes looking up because she felt shy about some way the photographer was directing her to do. Bacall points out the subtle irony that what was a moment full of awkwardness would go on to become identified as her signature look.

[mtsi]

To me, about the entire show, warts and all, is the mindset of the viewer.

On opening night, I had a friend pm me and tell me TPTR was shit and I was gonna be so bummed.

I turned on part 1 and immediately agreed. I disliked it immensely. I started part 2 and was more saddened. After part 4, I was truly worried.

A few days later, I decided to go back and rewatch. Not only did I NOT despise thr first 4 episodes, I quite enjoyed them and found them visceral and challenging. Complex.

I had come predisposed to disliking it due to my friend's perceptions. Was he wrong? Not for him...he genuinely found massive flaws. I, on the other hand, took my emotional investment and bought his perception and it was wrong for me.

The show has completely failed in some ways and been gloriously powerful and unique in other ways. I cried last night. It was unexpected and cathartic.

I hope those of you truly despise the show find some joy. I have and thank God....not a moment too soon.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

[mlsstwrt]

Mike (lodge Mike) has become something of a bitch hasn't he?

[Aqwell]

Those who say "it's bad" got their use of language wrong.
It's rather "i don't like it" because it's a matter of taste after all.
Therefore: I like it and am sad you seemingly can't or won't for whatever reason.

Je ne sais pas ce qui m'énerve le plus, Lynch devenu complètement gateux ou tous ces fans incapables de faire la différence entre une bonne série (ce n'est pourtant pas le choix qui manque de nos jours) et un ratage total comme cette horreur qu'on se farcit depuis trois mois. Au moins Lynch a une excuse lui (vieux farfelu décrépi + artiste). Tous ces urluberlus qui crient au génie je me demande sérieusement de quelle planète ils débarquent ou bien ce qu'ils fument... Le monde est-il devenu à ce point dingue que les pires merdes sont encensées comme des chefs-d'oeuvre incompris ? Parfois le public peut-être encore plus désespérant que Lynch lui-même.

Voila, fin du petit coup de gueule dans la langue de Molière.
Exotique n'est-ce pas ?

[Venus]

To me, about the entire show, warts and all, is the mindset of the viewer.

On opening night, I had a friend pm me and tell me TPTR was shit and I was gonna be so bummed.

I turned on part 1 and immediately agreed. I disliked it immensely. I started part 2 and was more saddened. After part 4, I was truly worried.

A few days later, I decided to go back and rewatch. Not only did I NOT despise thr first 4 episodes, I quite enjoyed them and found them visceral and challenging. Complex.

I had come predisposed to disliking it due to my friend's perceptions. Was he wrong? Not for him...he genuinely found massive flaws. I, on the other hand, took my emotional investment and bought his perception and it was wrong for me.

The show has completely failed in some ways and been gloriously powerful and unique in other ways. I cried last night. It was unexpected and cathartic.

I hope those of you truly despise the show find some joy. I have and thank God....not a moment too soon.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Do you know, I may read on here as that mindset but (and I'm not in denial) I've actually kept an open mind to it all. I'm not someone who likes misery for the sake of it and gets entrenched in a feeling and mindset of 'whatever happens I'm not going to like it'. I can only look at it from my point of view. Not yours or anyone elses and purely from my own perspective I have not enjoyed it. But each week I tune in and I clear my mind of what has gone before and prepare to embrace and hopefully love what I see. I prepare to embrace the cognitive dissonance of it all. But for me it fails to deliver time and time again but on the occasion it did ok imo, I said that here too. I just need to buy one of those golden shovels for the script. I wonder if they come in bigger sizes. I'm pleased you've enjoyed it though. I laughed when I watched it, not really in a good way though unfortunately.

[Venus]

So, back when us disappointed-ers were bemoaning the fact that we had nearly an entire season of DougieCoop, certain fans were v dismissive. The main criticism seemed to be: "Cooper's been trapped in some Black Lodge hell dimension for 25 years - you could hardly expect him to snap back to his old self just like that!"

So........

Yeah, about that...

[judasbooth]

When Lost Highway came out I seem to remember there being a lot of talk about the Balthazar Getty character going through a psychogenic fugue state (think it was that character, apols if got the wrong one!). Is this entire series Audrey's fugue state and her way of working out who she is? I believe Lynch finds it an interesting state. Did he use the idea for this series too? Considering the clip of her in the white room at the end it's a possible.

As a viewer I found the episode trite and excessively twee. When Cooper awoke so abruptly and adopted the Super Coop persona (all he needed was a cape), it actually felt like the entire scene was taking the piss, hollow and fake. Like it was being played for laughs and it was intentionally badly done. Maybe it's all been done like that because it is in Audrey's imagination though it doesn't make for good viewing. I was thankful seeing Cooper return to himself (yes, I was) however it didn't feel genuine and I felt like he was going to say, 'Alrighty' as Kyle did when he was Trey McDougal in his Sex and the City character - he didn't feel like Dale Cooper. It all felt forced and not natural. It should have felt joyous and euphoric. It was a massive anti-climax imo.

The Audrey dance scene, even in her imagination - was it a 'you can never go back' footnote, a commentary on history not being able to repeated. Even if it was that it was still wrong, wrong, wrong. Quite cringey. On an online Q&A with Sherilyn Fenn I actually asked her how she felt about doing that dance scene in the original series and she said it was really embarrassing. I wonder how she felt about doing this now?

Lynch/Frost simultaneously tweeted to say that gum you like is coming back in style. Well it's been chewed so much that it has become tasteless and there's absolutely no flavour left.

Oh, I hear you. Someone posted above that "season 3 just started". We had to endure about 15 hours of abject tedium to get to this point and Cooper's awakening was so delayed that it was going to be anticlimactic no matter what. That said, I can totally dig Super Coop and he is absolutely welcome as far as I'm concerned. After all, he isn't just some nondescript cop show detective, he's Special Agent Dale Cooper. And we're only going to get - at best - two hours of him. I mean, I'm sure we all remember his opening monologue in the Pilot, don't we? In a matter of minutes, we had the hero of our story. Now he's been missing in action for most of this series and it's probably the last we'll see of him. I don't foresee a 4th series.

The original Twin Peaks (the town, that is) was a place with lots of dark secrets, horrors and unseen wickedness. As a character Cooper was the embodiment of all the good things human beings can be, in short he was our protagonist, the kind of person that we all secretly hope to be. Without the old Cooper as the moral centre of the show, this series has been taken over by darkness, pessimism and nihilism. It didn't have to be like this, that's why it frustrates me so much.

I really, really hope that the whole series hasn't just been Audrey "doing a Bobby Ewing", although it's a definite possibility. Lynch's last three features have basically been based around the same theme of imagined lives and fugue states. If Lost Highway was the prototype, Mulholland Drive was the acme, and Inland Empire was... well, let's not talk about that.

[The Gazebo]

I sometimes wonder if my overall enjoyment would have been better if I hadn't read the episode threads. To me, they sound much the same: "Wow, that was the greatest hour of television I've ever seen. Now, let's obsess over minute details in the furniture as if they have profound meaning, before launching into my theory on how the golden balls could actually be representations of portals in and of themselves, in which doppelgängers use glitches in the time/space continuum to create new pathways between the white lodge and the convenience store, while Tulpas reemerge as representations of the dreamlike state contained within the green glove." (No offence intended - it's just that the subject matter up for discussion takes the form of a foreign language to me)

I just have to accept that we might want different things from a tv show. Watching the original, I never got bogged down in these kinds of speculations. I went along for the ride, in awe of the story, the mood, the characters, the filmic quality and the results of the wonderful camera work. And yes, motifs (owls, the fan, the woods, etc). And here is the thing that half puzzles me, half annoys me: Those of us who had problems with The Return initially, were urged to sit back and enjoy the ride wherever it might take us, but that's exactly what I did during the original show. And as others have pointed out, it seems that this advice isn't necessarily heeded by many of the fans themselves. For every post trying to articulate the experience of watching this and that scene, or the artistic quality of those scenes (and praise be to those attempting to smell the Douglas firs and relate their experiences), there are x number of posts that seem to be more concerned with applying meaning and intent to that little speck on the edge of the painting - and only that. If this was the intention of Lynch/Frost, they've certainly succeeded.

Episode 16 was a pretty decent watch for me. Well, as good as it can be when you've stopped caring about the plot or the characters.

[Agent327]

Here's my last bit on this.

Those who say "it's bad" got their use of language wrong.
It's rather "i don't like it" because it's a matter of taste after all.
.

But are you then honest enough to also jump on people who happen to use the phrase "That was great"?

If people cannot say "That's bad" because it's all subjective, no one should be allowed to say "That was good" either.

Unless you jump on both sides for using such language you are simply showing bias, demonstrating that you instinctively dislike criticism of the new show and that praise for the show does not have to meet the same standards.

[Agent327]

As a viewer I found the episode trite and excessively twee. When Cooper awoke so abruptly and adopted the Super Coop persona (all he needed was a cape), it actually felt like the entire scene was taking the piss, hollow and fake. Like it was being played for laughs and it was intentionally badly done. Maybe it's all been done like that because it is in Audrey's imagination though it doesn't make for good viewing. I was thankful seeing Cooper return to himself (yes, I was) however it didn't feel genuine and I felt like he was going to say, 'Alrighty' as Kyle did when he was Trey McDougal in his Sex and the City character - he didn't feel like Dale Cooper. It all felt forced and not natural. It should have felt joyous and euphoric. It was a massive anti-climax imo.

The Audrey dance scene, even in her imagination - was it a 'you can never go back' footnote, a commentary on history not being able to repeated. Even if it was that it was still wrong, wrong, wrong. .

I think you're giving the show too much credit if you think there is this much deeper meaning with the 'Super Coop wakes up scene', and you think that it was intentionally poorly executed. If this had been the very first episode of The Return I would be willing to go along with you. The problem is that scene and the tone (the hollowness, the lack of believability or grounding in anything relatable) is perfectly in line with the quality of the rest of the show.

It was done to show that Coop is really back, kicking ass. I'm pretty damn sure that's IT. And it could have been done better. The whole season has had that kind of semi 'tone deaf' feel. Where many things, while not always truly terrible, could have been done a bit better.

In other words, If that scene was purposely fake and hollow, 95 % of the return is purposely fake and hollow. I refuse to believe that.

And btw, what you saw as fake, a parody, hollow and fake, being played for laughs....others experienced as the perfect "Cooper is really back" moment.
And example from the main thread from Nighthawk:

I wasn't sure if Kyle MacLachlan could still pull off the character of the old Cooper, but boy was I wrong! Seeing that effortlessly authoritative manner and lighting quick thinking back onscreen was a fantastic pay-off. Perhaps it's fan service, but it's so great nonetheless. The "I am the FBI" line is obviously an instant classic that it was setup to be.

And he is certainly not alone. If Lynch wanted to turn this into parody, I think it would have been obvious to almost everyone. He doesn't often do 'subtle' of this type.

It simply wasn't very well done, and in my view you'd have to be an extremely grateful, uncritical viewer to be blown away by it.

[boske]

Je ne sais pas ce qui m'énerve le plus, Lynch devenu complètement gateux ou tous ces fans incapables de faire la différence entre une bonne série (ce n'est pourtant pas le choix qui manque de nos jours) et un ratage total comme cette horreur qu'on se farcit depuis trois mois. Au moins Lynch a une excuse lui (vieux farfelu décrépi + artiste). Tous ces urluberlus qui crient au génie je me demande sérieusement de quelle planète ils débarquent ou bien ce qu'ils fument... Le monde est-il devenu à ce point dingue que les pires merdes sont encensées comme des chefs-d'oeuvre incompris ? Parfois le public peut-être encore plus désespérant que Lynch lui-même.

Voila, fin du petit coup de gueule dans la langue de Molière.
Exotique n'est-ce pas ?

J'ai compris la plupart bien que je ne suis pas francophone (vraiment). "Vieux farfelu décrépi" pas trop mal! "Sérieusement de quelle planète ils débarquent?" Evidement ils débarquent de planète du maïs. Salut!

[douglasb]

This thread has been notably harsh on Lynch - Frost less so. Yet I wonder if the lack of simple entertainment that many have highlighted should be laid at his door. I think you could see a problem even before the series began - that hidden supposed message in the spines of books in an image in TSHOTP. That kind of clever-clever wink-wink shtick that is a smokescreen for the lack of a decent story. I can appreciate it - even if I have to have other people point it out - but first and foremost make the ride worth taking. Then you can have your esoteric fun.

[sylvia_north]

This thread has been notably harsh on Lynch - Frost less so. Yet I wonder if the lack of simple entertainment that many have highlighted should be laid at his door. I think you could see a problem even before the series began - that hidden supposed message in the spines of books in an image in TSHOTP. That kind of clever-clever wink-wink shtick that is a smokescreen for the lack of a decent story. I can appreciate it - even if I have to have other people point it out - but first and foremost make the ride worth taking. Then you can have your esoteric fun.

The 3D stuff was like xmas beware the double. so good! I thought TR was gonna be a lot weirder! All in all, it has been taking kind of stale acid. Pretty fun, but you keep waiting for things to really happen. Not Jacoby on ayahuasca fun!