Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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Gabriel
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Gabriel »

Aqwell wrote:They spent 4 years to come out with things like 119! HELLOOO-OOO-OOO ! and the other Doogie lines...
That's not depressing at all. :|
It felt like a school pupil wrote a bad piece of GCSE drama coursework, stole their dad’s credit card and let loose with a video camera.
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Mace
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Mace »

I‘m not only disappointed with where the story went but also how the story was told. I had very high expectations going in so the overall trajectory of Lynch & Frost’s narrative was a big letdown. There are several episodes and many scenes that I did like and I am intrigued by the multiple theories that The Return has spawned.

There is one scene, however, that I continue to struggle with. It doesn’t work on any level with me:
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6AADC421-E179-4E3B-B45C-7EE5929F8072.jpeg (100.53 KiB) Viewed 12280 times
Being a fan since 1990 I had at least a dozen different scenarios for how I thought Season 3 would play out. To me The Return was 25% wonderful and 75% strange.
Last edited by Mace on Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mtsi
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtsi »

Just think how good this would have been were there constraints on the length and focus, ala traditional TV, or a studio driven film. Lynch is pretty damn awesome when he's held to material and tightening up a scene. He's awful when unleashed.

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Poiuyt
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Poiuyt »

It was definitely one of the weirdest, most fucked up things ever made for premium television.

Whether or not that translates to "good," of course, is open to interpretation.
LateReg
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:"Twin Peaks" Was The Ultimate Argument Against Nostalgia - BuzzFeed
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonwillmore/what-year-is-it

'Twin Peaks: The Return' Finale: Why It Defied Nostalgia - Vulture
http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/twin-pea ... algia.html

Twin Peaks: The Return Defied Nostalgia - Yahoo
https://www.yahoo.com/.../twin-peaks-re ... 27688.html

These pieces are written by fans of the show. There are plenty more like this.

I doubt those vehemently denying that TR is anti-nostalgic were also doing so when the above articles appeared, just as none of them jumped into dugpa's thread on Lynch's self-references and furiously denied their existence.

But bring these two together and point out the blundering clash between them and suddenly it's a different story. The desperate scrambling about above to deny these two aspects of The Return is just absurd. They exist, they clash, it's a horrible blunder. How you accommodate this blunder into your admiration for the series is up to you, but stop insulting our intelligence and wasting our time with silly denials.
I stopped reading the thread for a couple weeks and have just resumed so I'm not even sure if this conversation is still going on, but...I love those articles and agree with them. I still don't see how the show being anti-nostalgic doesn't square with Lynch thinking back about his career (to clarify: I don't think the references to his career are intentional, he's always had the same visual motifs; but I do think that there's something going on with his fondness for the actors he's worked with and he's having fun repurposing them in The Return). That's no small part of what the show is about: pondering the passage of time. It makes perfect sense that Lynch can both ponder that passage, reconfigure it, and ultimately arrive at the conclusion that you can't go home again, and that thinking you can is dangerous. That all makes perfect sense to me - showing how people change and things can never be the same, showing the conflict between revisiting the past and wanting to defy it - and all of it is central to the power of the show.
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KnewItsPa
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by KnewItsPa »

Thought about TP:TR today for the first time in ages. The thought was how disappointing it was. Just came to share that.
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IcedOver
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

KnewItsPa wrote:Thought about TP:TR today for the first time in ages. The thought was how disappointing it was. Just came to share that.
I also haven't been thinking much about the show in the last month plus, and still have not re-watched the last two parts. Looking on this forum, I'm reminded of the show, and I have the same reaction. I've never vacillated so much on the quality of any work of art, ever. Sometimes I think it was brilliant in how unexpected it was, how much of a "fuck you" to every audience it had -- old timers and newbies. Then I wonder why it couldn't have been both that "fuck you" as well as have at least some meat that was conventionally satisfying. I keep going back to Mr. C for some reason, and how disappointing his arc was. So much time spent with him with no satisfying payoff. People desperate to apologize for the show can rationalize that fact any way they want, but I can't help but look at that and the scarcity of Sarah as things that were flubbed, things just very poorly handled by Lynch -- not part of a grand scheme about the absurdity of plot or whatever.
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Gabriel
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Gabriel »

KnewItsPa wrote:Thought about TP:TR today for the first time in ages. The thought was how disappointing it was. Just came to share that.
Yeah, I’ve dropped in a couple of times, but basically TP:TR has made me give up on Lynch completely. Pretty much not bothering to watch TV at all nowadays. Not even sure I’ll bother with old TP anymore either!
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Kilmoore »

I've sort of felt like watching the original episodes again. While faulty, at least they tried to tell a story and had characters and spirit. That's my gripe with TR. Not any vague anti-nostalgia theories, just the way the story is built. I'll take Evelyn Marsh over the bleak pointlessness of TR any day.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

Kilmoore wrote:I've sort of felt like watching the original episodes again. While faulty, at least they tried to tell a story and had characters and spirit. That's my gripe with TR. Not any vague anti-nostalgia theories, just the way the story is built. I'll take Evelyn Marsh over the bleak pointlessness of TR any day.
Even though I'm wildly mixed on this show, I'll take it over the doldrums of season 2.
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Agent Earle
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Agent Earle »

Wadda joke. The Return can go stand in some corner when it comes to Season 2!
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

Agent Earle wrote:Wadda joke. The Return can go stand in some corner when it comes to Season 2!
Compared to episodes 8 through 14, yes, this was nowhere near as good on straight quality. I'll take it over anything after that, though, including the series finale perhaps. The shows are so different, though, it's almost inaccurate to call them by the same title.
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Agent Earle
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Agent Earle »

IcedOver wrote:
Agent Earle wrote:Wadda joke. The Return can go stand in some corner when it comes to Season 2!
Compared to episodes 8 through 14, yes, this was nowhere near as good on straight quality. I'll take it over anything after that, though, including the series finale perhaps. The shows are so different, though, it's almost inaccurate to call them by the same title.
While I don't agree with your assessment of the later part of S 2 (I personally am a great fan of it, always have been), I wholeheartedly do regarding the title of the new show - a lot of confusion and animosity would be avoided if they simply removed the title "Twin Peaks" or maybe included it only as a subtitle, "A Twin Peaks Tale", for example). I'm flabbergasted as to how can you rate S 2's finale lower than the new show - is it because it contains Windom Earle & Annie? :)
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

Agent Earle wrote: While I don't agree with your assessment of the later part of S 2 (I personally am a great fan of it, always have been), I wholeheartedly do regarding the title of the new show - a lot of confusion and animosity would be avoided if they simply removed the title "Twin Peaks" or maybe included it only as a subtitle, "A Twin Peaks Tale", for example). I'm flabbergasted as to how can you rate S 2's finale lower than the new show - is it because it contains Windom Earle & Annie? :)
Perhaps it should have been called "Twin Peaks, or, The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence" (Ronnie Rocket's subtitle, reused in this series). That's more accurate as to the content of the show.

As for the original show's finale, I hadn't watched it since perhaps 1993 or so before I watched it again on BD. It just didn't resonate with me as much as it did in 1991. I'd put it as the worst of the Lynch-directed episodes of the original show. Unfortunately, the decision was made to continue the very thin plot threads of that episode . . . all the way through this season. Episodes 15 through 29 have a lot of good stuff going on at times, to be sure, but I think that despite its myriad flaws, I'd put "Return" as better in pure quality than just that segment.
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Agent Earle
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Agent Earle »

IcedOver wrote:
Agent Earle wrote: While I don't agree with your assessment of the later part of S 2 (I personally am a great fan of it, always have been), I wholeheartedly do regarding the title of the new show - a lot of confusion and animosity would be avoided if they simply removed the title "Twin Peaks" or maybe included it only as a subtitle, "A Twin Peaks Tale", for example). I'm flabbergasted as to how can you rate S 2's finale lower than the new show - is it because it contains Windom Earle & Annie? :)
Perhaps it should have been called "Twin Peaks, or, The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence" (Ronnie Rocket's subtitle, reused in this series). That's more accurate as to the content of the show.

As for the original show's finale, I hadn't watched it since perhaps 1993 or so before I watched it again on BD. It just didn't resonate with me as much as it did in 1991. I'd put it as the worst of the Lynch-directed episodes of the original show. Unfortunately, the decision was made to continue the very thin plot threads of that episode . . . all the way through this season. Episodes 15 through 29 have a lot of good stuff going on at times, to be sure, but I think that despite its myriad flaws, I'd put "Return" as better in pure quality than just that segment.
I'm curious, which were the other plot threads of the S 2 finale that you consider were continued by the new series? Other than the obvious doppelganger cliffhanger stuff that was, in my view, one of the best if not the best cliffhanger in television history and of course they couldn't avoid picking up from that (since it was probably 90 % of the reasons why the show never left people's minds and S 3 was coveted for after all this time), I don't see any other threads that were directly elaborated by S 3, at least not in any great detail. Sure, there were people from the finale that were in the new series (Ben and Audrey, Shelly and Bobby, Nadine and Big Ed etc.) but their continued storylines were so far removed from what went on in the original they might as well be completely different characters.
The finale is for me one of the holy trinity of Lynch-directed episodes of the original Peaks, right up there with E 14 and E 9 (an underdog which doesn't get the praise it deserves). Then comes the pilot, followed by the S 2 opening and, lastly, E 2.
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