mtwentz wrote:Since The Return, I've thought more about the afterlife, dualism, identity, memory, amnesia, the passage of time and ultimately, whether 'we live inside a dream', then I ever have in my life.
I think the folks who were disappointed were looking for something that wasn't there (the soap opera and/or murder mystery aspects of the original series) without realizing they missed what is there: one of the great 'mind bending' psychological films of all time.
That's some of it, but the desire for the expected mystery stuff had to disappear a few hours in, if people kept watching. I'm sure casual or just curious fans ditched early on. For me, I had more issues with what was on the screen, how it was working in and of itself, after I got over the shock of the new direction of the show. You still can't help comparing it to the original, even subconsciously. Even if I rewatch it, some things might never work, but a lot still does.
I do feel that I was overly negative in my feelings towards the show, though. I'm generally a humbug, though, and rarely heap praise on something right away (and if I do, I'm more likely to enjoy it less on second viewing). The show's got a lot to unpack, and I still haven't re-watched the final two to give them a better appraisal. The ideas you mention are present, although what continues to piss me off is the assertion by anyone that the whole thing is just a literal nighttime/bedtime dream of whatever character. If anything, it's dream as metaphor.
The show is without question a difficult and challenging work, even challenging at times from an endurance perspective, which I suspect was the point in some cases. I'll certainly take it over most scripted dramas today. For some reason I keep coming back to Sam Stanley himself in "Designated Survivor", the most standard and unsurprising example of the form that I watch today, as sort of the opposite of this show.