Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

[Venus]

Total Camp

Now that is a movie waiting to happen. Do you think Schwarzenegger would star in it?

[boske]

Finally, regarding DougieCoop: we have waited for 26 years for this story to be told. And out of 18 hours they get to spend on it, they spend 14 hours teasing us how Dougie is about to wake up. That to me is excessive and a waste of my time that I'd rather have not been exposed to. I have also been very refrained and reserved in not really speaking my mind of what I honestly think of that attitude. I was expecting a serious and a compelling story, not a mockery of its lead character and its audience. Yes, he/they can do it because they can. It does not mean it is a good or a bright idea, and that I'll go completely quiet about it.

I feel the same as you. Particularly on the attitude part. I won't speak my mind as well but I so very feel you on that.

I really think you guys should speak your mind. The only people you're going to get flak from probably shouldn't be in the thread.

There is a rerun of part 16 commencing shortly on HBO Europe. I think the best way for me to send some sort of a message is to not watch it. Seriously, I saw part 16 just once, and it'll stay like that. I do not feel like watching it at all, and it is not that I am forcing myself not to watch it out of spite or anything like that (as if it would be noticed or would mean that much in the grand scheme of things). No, I seriously do not feel compelled or interested to watch it again. If anyone told me a year ago I'd be like that I'd find it hard to believe.

[Gabriel]

Yeah. If the creators of the show are so contemptuous of it, how can anyone else be expected to take it seriously?

[Agent327]

Curious to hear if this group would be in favour of S4 ? I'm personally torn.

I just don't think a S4 is in the cards. Lynch isn't exactly prolific, and I think he probably dumped all his ideas into TR. Showtime president David Nevins said that, although another season wasn't out of the question, his talks with L&F always revolved around TR being a limited one-off thing. Time will tell. Personally, I don't really want another season. I haven't exactly fallen in love with the new direction Lynch has taken.

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do. Stop catering to fans by shoe horning in the old cast, but bring in the most interesting new actors, perfectly cast for what the script calls for. I still think they could do it....or at least make something more enjoyable than this season if they took another swing at it.

But I'm almost certain that there wont be a Season 4, UNLESS it's crowd funded.

No use signing a petition, fans would have to fund the project.

TP The Return has suffered from extremely low ratings. Some initial interest before a single episode of The Return was shown, purely based on the reputation of the orginal, meant that Showtime got a good number of new subscribers, but on the streaming services it hasn't even appeared to crack the top 20, and the tv ratings have been abyssal.

It's a niche show, much more so than the original. It's not popular enough to pay for itself. Crowd funding is the only possible option the way I see it.

[Gabriel]

Curious to hear if this group would be in favour of S4 ? I'm personally torn.

I just don't think a S4 is in the cards. Lynch isn't exactly prolific, and I think he probably dumped all his ideas into TR. Showtime president David Nevins said that, although another season wasn't out of the question, his talks with L&F always revolved around TR being a limited one-off thing. Time will tell. Personally, I don't really want another season. I haven't exactly fallen in love with the new direction Lynch has taken.

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do. Stop catering to fans by shoe horning in the old cast, but bring in the most interesting new actors, perfectly cast for what the script calls for. I still think they could do it....or at least make something more enjoyable than this season if they took another swing at it.

But I'm almost certain that there wont be a Season 4, UNLESS it's crowd funded.

No use signing a petition, fans would have to fund the project.

TP The Return has suffered from extremely low ratings. Some initial interest before a single episode of The Return was shown, purely based on the reputation of the orginal, meant that Showtime got a good number of new subscribers, but on the streaming services it hasn't even appeared to crack the top 20, and the tv ratings have been abyssal.

It's a niche show, much more so than the original. It's not popular enough to pay for itself. Crowd funding is the only possible option the way I see it.

Face it: if someone not named David Lynch had delivered this show, he'd have been fired, the show recut by the executives and the director blacklisted for wasting insane amounts of money. Showtime paid for a third season of Twin Peaks. What they got was a GCSE drama-quality project with the entire budget blown on Part 8!!

[BOB1]

I rewatched the MIKE parts from 16 and I still think the "grumpy school caretaker" effect is not just an acting issue but it was right there from the script. Look what role MIKE has been given to play: one of a subordinate, not a powerful entity out of this world. He does chores, strange as they are but how else will you call them? He can annihilate a "tulpa" when no longer needed; he can make another seed when instructed to do so. He is grumpy because he walks around with the air of someone who thinks to himself "when is this stupid cooper going to awake" but there's not a thing he can do to advance it. And when he takes Cooper to the tree in Pt.2 he does it in the way a caretaker at school would show a visitor to the secretary's office, not in the master of the house way at all. I must admit that I don't like the acting from Al Strobel this time but I think it's a deeper problem, too.
And is it age-connected? I don't know. I didn't say that and I never would.

There are very few professions where people are better in their 70s than in their 20s to 50s.

Perhaps generally so. But Clint Eastwood was better in his 70s than in his 20s, wasn't he? And David Bowie created what I believe to be the greatest work of his life just before he died. I wouldn't put too much down to age. It's not usually age which is the problem but the burnout.

So as for Season 4, I don't know. Not very enthusiastic about it. Not because Lynch is old but because for the last 15 years he doesn't seem to have been doing much good in film...

[Venus]

I just don't think a S4 is in the cards. Lynch isn't exactly prolific, and I think he probably dumped all his ideas into TR. Showtime president David Nevins said that, although another season wasn't out of the question, his talks with L&F always revolved around TR being a limited one-off thing. Time will tell. Personally, I don't really want another season. I haven't exactly fallen in love with the new direction Lynch has taken.

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do. Stop catering to fans by shoe horning in the old cast, but bring in the most interesting new actors, perfectly cast for what the script calls for. I still think they could do it....or at least make something more enjoyable than this season if they took another swing at it.

But I'm almost certain that there wont be a Season 4, UNLESS it's crowd funded.

No use signing a petition, fans would have to fund the project.

TP The Return has suffered from extremely low ratings. Some initial interest before a single episode of The Return was shown, purely based on the reputation of the orginal, meant that Showtime got a good number of new subscribers, but on the streaming services it hasn't even appeared to crack the top 20, and the tv ratings have been abyssal.

It's a niche show, much more so than the original. It's not popular enough to pay for itself. Crowd funding is the only possible option the way I see it.

Face it: if someone not named David Lynch had delivered this show, he'd have been fired, the show recut by the executives and the director blacklisted for wasting insane amounts of money. Showtime paid for a third season of Twin Peaks. What they got was a GCSE drama-quality project with the entire budget blown on Part 8!!

I do think this is cuttingly true.

[Agent327]

Face it: if someone not named David Lynch had delivered this show, he'd have been fired, the show recut by the executives and the director blacklisted for wasting insane amounts of money.

Not only that, but if this exact product had come out, and fans were told that it was directed by (insert name of some random ex music video director here), fans would have shredded it to BITS, in unison.

The official Season 3 Episode threads, as well as the IMDB page of the return (The page where people oddly give multiple 10's just BEFORE each episode is released), would look very, very different.

[judasbooth]

While Blue Velvet may be his most personal, and therefore authentic, work, I belive that MD was sourced from a similar place.

Very interesting that you consider BV his most personal. While it is a terrific film with personal things in it (the fantasy of hiding in a woman's closet and seeing a mystery unfold), it lacks the surreal aspects that IMO constitute DKL's purest sharing of himself -- his most personal self -- with the audience. IMO Eraserhead is still his most personal film, although I doubt he'd be willing to "rate" his films in this manner if you asked him. I think the most personal aspects of his work are what you rather dismissively call "stylized sounds and visuals" and "abstractions and kookiness." He clearly spends a lot of time in his head, and it seems to me that releasing his subconscious/intuitive visions into the world is the purest unveiling of self. YMMV of course!

I can understand why you say that, but for me, it's the exact opposite. Yes, Eraserhead is a personal film. I mean, it reeks of Lynch's urban anxiety as well as his fears surrounding becoming a new father. But it's a first feature, and like all first features, it grapples with cinematic language and techniques. There's a naïveté about it that is compelling and alluring, but I think that his art was better served once he had become a better, more experienced filmmaker. There's a lot to be said for auteurs becoming directors-for-hire in order to sharpen their skills. Doing The Elephant Man and Dune may not have artistically satisfied Lynch in the way that a more personal project would have, but the limitations and expectations on him by his studio bosses were the making of him as a filmmaker, as opposed to a visual artist who worked in films. The experience he picked up on the way enabled him to make Blue Velvet and thus express himself in a more trenchant way.

Regarding the oft-remarked on "weirdness" that has become Lynch's defining feature in the popular imagination, I don't think it's an all-or-nothing type deal. The uncanny and confusing can have huge artistic power if deployed correctly, but it cannot simply be dropped in at arbitrary points. The language of cinema, just like written or spoken language, has a kind of "syntax". Each "phrase" naturally fits somewhere in the "sentence" - if placed in the wrong place, it becomes little more than nonsense. It's why Blue Velvet works and TPTR does not. In Blue Velvet, the "In Dreams" sequence comes at a crucial point in the story. Our protagonist has just been kidnapped by a buch of psychopaths and taken to a strange house wherupon he is serenaded by a strange man who seems to be disconcertingly calm, yet deeply threatening. The whole bizarre tableau brings us right into the head of our hero, surprised, confused, frightened. Compare this to "1-1-9!" or Wally Brando or "Hello, Johnny, how are you today" or the zombie kid in the car or... loads of stuff that I've already forgotten. What purpose do these things serve? What do they add to the whole?

To be clear, I am both a fan of Lynch's previous work and a fan of Twin Peaks. When I talk about stylised sounds and kookiness, I am not dismissing surrealism or artifice out of hand. As I said, I think that these things can be powerful weapons if deployed effectively. But what I cannot abide is when these things are used in lieu of any depth or substance. Back when he was at the height of his powers, Lynch used surrealism visuals and ambient sounds to more fully express himself. From my perspective, the Return has little of substance to say, and, rather than expressing his most personal self, Lynch is using "weirdness" to obfuscate and distract from the lack of human feeling in the series.

[The Gazebo]

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do. Stop catering to fans by shoe horning in the old cast, but bring in the most interesting new actors, perfectly cast for what the script calls for. I still think they could do it....or at least make something more enjoyable than this season if they took another swing at it.

Just a quick question for you, or anyone else who'd like chip in: Are there good examples of shows that have gone from trying to be big and epic (like season 3, in my view), returning successfully to a more narrow, back-to-basic kind of scope? Although I can't give names right now, my gut feeling is that once you go 'big' (from TP, Bob and the Lodge in seasons 1 and 2 to multiple locations, a whole network of supernatural beings, nuclear explosions, etc, in The Return), it's very difficult to push that envelope even further without it becoming a total farce, but reining it in after these excesses might be even more of a challenge. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation. Any thoughts on this?

[judasbooth]

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do. Stop catering to fans by shoe horning in the old cast, but bring in the most interesting new actors, perfectly cast for what the script calls for. I still think they could do it....or at least make something more enjoyable than this season if they took another swing at it.

Just a quick question for you, or anyone else who'd like chip in: Are there good examples of shows that have gone from trying to be big and epic (like season 3, in my view), returning successfully to a more narrow, back-to-basic kind of scope? Although I can't give names right now, my gut feeling is that once you go 'big' (from TP, Bob and the Lodge in seasons 1 and 2 to multiple locations, a whole network of supernatural beings, nuclear explosions, etc, in The Return), it's very difficult to push that envelope even further without it becoming a total farce, but reining it in after these excesses might be even more of a challenge. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation. Any thoughts on this?

Blackadder.

[boske]

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do.

This is the crux of the matter. This was the mystery, this was the story, what better story would one need to explore and resolve. And they blew it. On a very fine bottle of Bordeau and special agent Tammy Preston. On Chip and Tina and Billy, on that NYC box that has not been seen since who knows when, on face removing reptilians, on that girl with an armpit rash, on Red and his Sparkle. There can be no other story, this was it, and it's gone. Almost.

[The Gazebo]

Blackadder.

Good example. I wish Lynch/Frost had had a cunning plan too.

[Mr. Strawberry]

I would love a season 4. After this, they need to redeem themselves!

I still have faith in Lynch as a director. I think he is more interesting that most other directors, even when he is not at the top of his game at this point.

Improve the show's visuals, get some interesting central mystery as well as stuff for Dale Cooper to do. Stop catering to fans by shoe horning in the old cast, but bring in the most interesting new actors, perfectly cast for what the script calls for. I still think they could do it....or at least make something more enjoyable than this season if they took another swing at it.

Just a quick question for you, or anyone else who'd like chip in: Are there good examples of shows that have gone from trying to be big and epic (like season 3, in my view), returning successfully to a more narrow, back-to-basic kind of scope? Although I can't give names right now, my gut feeling is that once you go 'big' (from TP, Bob and the Lodge in seasons 1 and 2 to multiple locations, a whole network of supernatural beings, nuclear explosions, etc, in The Return), it's very difficult to push that envelope even further without it becoming a total farce, but reining it in after these excesses might be even more of a challenge. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation. Any thoughts on this?

Lexx

For those who haven't seen the show yet, the following spoiler contains one line summaries of each season, so you may want to avoid reading.

Spoiler:

Season 1 is made up of four movies that are fairly serious and moody, but they contain comedy throughout.
Season 2 is a romp through space with the crew on the hunt for food and sex, filled with hilarious misadventures or disasters resulting from stupidity.
Season 3 is an epic struggle of Good versus Evil involving a mysterious ruler across two intertwined worlds known as Fire and Water.
Season 4 returns to the random misadventures and carnal meanderings of the crew with a heavy focus on selfish whims and easily avoidable blunders.

[Gabriel]

Heck, even Red Dwarf could be an example.

The major network season seven went 'epic,' with mixed results, it sputtered for a couple of seasons, disappeared for a few years, got picked up by a minor cable channel, made a terrible, 'meta return' miniseries, then got back to being a comedy about four geezers in space and keeps being recommissioned, even though it's now nearly 30 years since it started.