Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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

Post by Audrey Horne »

No kidding! I think Cooper’s return to self should have been in the middle, and sorry I don’t think we really needed the Watts and Sunny Jim characters for his arc. It’s too crowded. And Audrey’s mirror should’ve also been in the middle, amping us up for the rest of the season with her saving herself. Low, frustration in the first half, crescendo in the middle and all the pieces colliding in the last third. And how did they miss the obvious of eventually having Mr. C cut his hair, buy a suit and pose as Cooper for the last few episodes?

Firm up a real investigation in Peaks with the drug trafficking... then we get a straight forward narrative alongside the surreal. Have Diane destroyed in the same manner so it raises the stakes that it could also happen to Audrey. Have Coooer and Mr. C ultimately be one and the same. Ending of time travel, drop it. No.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Kilmoore »

Agreed 100%. Very simple fixes that still would have allowed S3 to have its own persona and keep the themes and styles that apparently make it art. It didn't need to be a shit story to be art, that was just the result of bad writing.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

Audrey Horne wrote:No kidding! I think Cooper’s return to self should have been in the middle, and sorry I don’t think we really needed the Watts and Sunny Jim characters for his arc. It’s too crowded. And Audrey’s mirror should’ve also been in the middle, amping us up for the rest of the season with her saving herself. Low, frustration in the first half, crescendo in the middle and all the pieces colliding in the last third. And how did they miss the obvious of eventually having Mr. C cut his hair, buy a suit and pose as Cooper for the last few episodes?

Firm up a real investigation in Peaks with the drug trafficking... then we get a straight forward narrative alongside the surreal. Have Diane destroyed in the same manner so it raises the stakes that it could also happen to Audrey. Have Coooer and Mr. C ultimately be one and the same. Ending of time travel, drop it. No.
Without debating the quality of what we got or if your suggestions would have been better, I'm quite sure that Lynch/Frost probably thought about the Mr. C posing as Cooper scenario and immediately discarded it because it would be exactly what we'd all expect to happen. In fact, as the series was airing, I remembering reading people thinking that would happen and thinking it myself, and I think a lot of what we got in The Return was based on leading the audience in one direction and then never actually going to the apparent destination. That's why I think they definitely thought of doing that: because it obviously seemed like it would happen and never did.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

LateReg wrote:
Audrey Horne wrote:No kidding! I think Cooper’s return to self should have been in the middle, and sorry I don’t think we really needed the Watts and Sunny Jim characters for his arc. It’s too crowded. And Audrey’s mirror should’ve also been in the middle, amping us up for the rest of the season with her saving herself. Low, frustration in the first half, crescendo in the middle and all the pieces colliding in the last third. And how did they miss the obvious of eventually having Mr. C cut his hair, buy a suit and pose as Cooper for the last few episodes?

Firm up a real investigation in Peaks with the drug trafficking... then we get a straight forward narrative alongside the surreal. Have Diane destroyed in the same manner so it raises the stakes that it could also happen to Audrey. Have Coooer and Mr. C ultimately be one and the same. Ending of time travel, drop it. No.
Without debating the quality of what we got or if your suggestions would have been better, I'm quite sure that Lynch/Frost probably thought about the Mr. C posing as Cooper scenario and immediately discarded it because it would be exactly what we'd all expect to happen. In fact, as the series was airing, I remembering reading people thinking that would happen and thinking it myself, and I think a lot of what we got in The Return was based on leading the audience in one direction and then never actually going to the apparent destination. That's why I think they definitely thought of doing that: because it obviously seemed like it would happen and never did.
It's very difficult to judge if something any of us would have thought of would have been better without seeing the final result, but here's where I thought things were going:

I thought Mr. C was going to take Richard under his wing, and they were going to arrive in Twin Peaks together. Either Mr. C was going to take out Red for his son, Richard was going to take out Red with his new found powers, or it was going to turn out Red was working for Mr. C all along, and Red, Mr. C and Richard would join forces somehow.

In any case, in my scenario, there was going to be a final confrontation between Cooper and Mr. C, although I had no idea what form that would take. But it would end up with Cooper killing Mr. C and Richard and maybe Red, but finding out the only way to kill Mr. C, he would somehow sacrifice himself and Cooper would die in Audrey's arms, a redeemed man moving up to the White Lodge. Meanwhile, the spirit of Laura would descend and take care of the Woodsmen.

I think what we finally got was better than anything I could have written (Even though the ending wasn't completely satisfying from an emotional standpoint in the sense we didn't get the much sought after 'closure').
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I do think the “evil twin impersonates the main character and creates mayhem and reputational damage” thing has been done by everyone from Bonanza to Gilligan’s Island to Sabrina the Teenage Witch to Lost. I’m certain L/F could have come up with a satisfying, original take on the formula (The Prisoner did a wonderful episode called “The Schizoid Man” that gives a psychological edge to the trope), but overall, I’m personally glad they steered clear of the obvious approach, even if I didn’t always find the Mr. C storyline completely satisfying.

As MT said, it’s tough to say whether our own “alternate reality TP:TR” ideas would actually be better in execution. But it did strike me while thinking about Kilmoore and Audrey’s comments that a Cooper doppelganger who acts like original-recipe Cooper might have been much more disarmingly terrifying and disturbing than Mr. C, as good a performance as Kyle gave. Just imagine a character who commits acts of depravity, violence and rape, and then gives the ol’ cheerful thumbs-up and says, “DAMN good!” Maybe DKL and Kyle decided that that would have been twisting the knife too much for fans of the character and tried to differentiate Mr. C from classic Coop a bit more? My skin crawls (in a good way) imagining what that version of the character would have been like.

In regards to Kilmoore’s question about the lack of classic Coop in the show: sure, it’s disappointing on some level. I was so amped when the theme music kicked in and Kyle nailed the old demeanor in Part 16. It does make me sad that we didn’t get to see more of him doing that. We may never have the chance again, and there is a sadness that they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. But I love the Dougie stuff, and I love Part 18. I guess if I had my druthers, depending on the day and which way the wind is blowing, I might say that a little Dougie material might have been trimmed to give us more of Cooper doing his thing a bit earlier. But part of the devil’s pact that Showtime entered (financially) and we entered (emotionally and artistically as fans) is that, if this show gets made, it gets made exactly the way Frost and especially DKL want to make it, without compromise. I may not love every choice, I may wish for things we didn’t get, but ultimately I don’t have much interest in thinking about what might have been because there IS no “might have been.” We were either going to get nothing at all, or we were going to get the exact show L/F wanted to make, for all its quirks. I came to terms with that well before a second of the series ever aired, and now that it’s out, I’m thrilled that we got option B, but obviously YMMV.

And ultimately, the structure of Cooper’s journey works so well for me. The whole point of the piece is his fragmentation. The doppel isn’t an evil twin like in the other shows I mentioned, a completely separate entity who just happens to look like him— it’s a PART of Cooper, his dweller on the threshold, and he CAN’T be fully himself as long as it’s free in the world. That’s the drive of the season (laconic as the pacing often seemed). It falls in line with most of DKL’s later works which tend to deal abstractly with fractured identities. That may be part of the divide between me and Kilmoore, too. Sure, I came into this as a TP fan who wanted to see Dale Cooper again. But I also came in as a DKL fan who wanted to see another work on par with MD or IE. I got a weird melding of the two, with DKL giving an unpredictable iteration of the MD/IE treatment to Cooper, which I find incredibly exciting, even if that structure means we had to sacrifice spending time with the Cooper personality we know and love.

In any event, as I’ve said before, DKL seems to have grown weary of the “boyish wonder” side of Cooper quite some time ago. The portrayal in FWWM is noticably toned-down, in what in retrospect seems like a definite transition to the more dour Mr. C / Richard iterations. Why that occurred is anyone’s guess. DKL of course created the original “boy scout” version of Cooper along with Kyle in the Pilot, but also tended to give Dale a slightly harder edge in most of the episodes he directed than Dale had elsewhere in the series. Perhaps DKL felt like other writers and directors softened Cooper too much and FWWM/TP:TR were a swinging-pendulum reaction to that? Whatever the reasons, due to FWWM, I sort of mentally intuited and prepared myself for the fact that Cooper might not be as cheerful and buoyant in TP:TR before the new season aired. Not that I had ANY inclination about what we ultimately ended up getting!

It’s also worth noting how quickly this series has always evolved — from the distinctly earthbound human drama and tragedy of the Pilot to the surreal dream ending of Episode 2 to the balls-out mythology of Episode 8 and early season 2 to the slapstick comfort food of later season 2 to the uncompromising arthouse weirdness of Episode 29 to the R-rated psychological rawness of FWWM. Aside from a period of some stagnancy in the back half of season 2 (notably when the two creators were in absentia), this has always been a franchise way more interested in experimentation and reinventing itself than playing by the rules. We’ve had 27 years now to live with the original series and find ways to unify its WILD tonal inconsistencies in our minds, coming to view it as one long piece. It’s easy to lose sight of how often the original show gave viewers whiplash — in both positive and negative ways — by refusing to be any one thing for very long. I think, after living with it for some time, people will come to realize that TP:TR is very much part of that same experimental journey. Which isn’t to say that anyone has to like the choices made...but I think they’re very much in line with the type of series TP has always been, albeit inevitably reflective of the changes that both creators and the TV landscape overall have gone through over the subsequent quarter century. DKL has spoken about the fact that Francis Bacon is the only painter whose career he admires from start to finish. For everyone else, he may love certain phases of their careers, but other periods lose him. I imagine that he would be very sympathetic to the disappointed who simply do not relate to the type of artist he has evolved into, even while he has no regrets about adhering to his vision.
Last edited by Mr. Reindeer on Thu Feb 08, 2018 9:46 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

Kilmoore wrote:I refuse to believe that anyone who is a fan of original Twin Peaks wasn't disappointed that out of 18 hours we got 15 minutes of Cooper being Cooper. There is no way that didn't let you down.
Yes, absolutely that was a letdown, especially considering that when he comes back, he mostly interacts with the new characters. The usage of the "TP" theme in the LV context (as they drive past what are clearly cast and crew trailers -- one of many goofs) was a very poor decision. However, as the show went on, and in the months since, what has bugged me less are the differences from the original (as jarring as they were at first) and more the internal problems with this show in and of itself.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

IcedOver wrote:
Kilmoore wrote:I refuse to believe that anyone who is a fan of original Twin Peaks wasn't disappointed that out of 18 hours we got 15 minutes of Cooper being Cooper. There is no way that didn't let you down.
Yes, absolutely that was a letdown, especially considering that when he comes back, he mostly interacts with the new characters. The usage of the "TP" theme in the LV context (as they drive past what are clearly cast and crew trailers -- one of many goofs) was a very poor decision. However, as the show went on, and in the months since, what has bugged me less are the differences from the original (as jarring as they were at first) and more the internal problems with this show in and of itself.
More than anyone here, you're always talking about the show's "goofs"...what if they're not actually goofs? You seem to get hung up on them and were wrong about a few of them actually being goofs while the show was airing (ie, Miriam still breathing in the trailer after being attacked by Richard in Part 10) while others you pointed out may be intentional (Dern - a world class actress and a tulpa - not crying actual tears during her conversation with Mr C in Part 7) while still others don't matter (Au Revoir Simone wearing the same clothes in both performances in a place that may be a meeting place between two worlds). I just think it's a waste getting hung up on such things and I've always despised the goofs section on IMDB, many of which are also incorrect and reek of missing the forest for the trees.

The Vegas thing you reference as a negative I admittedly didn't notice...but I like it. Because as many people pointed out in countless examples, Lynch is often interested in showing the seams of this production, and part of my thesis of the layers of the show has to do with the constant and increasing intrusion of elements of the real world, especially from part 14 onwards, so who is to say that the trailers you see in Vegas weren't left in because Lynch liked or wanted them within the frame?

I know, I know. I just seem to be forgiving all the flaws. But, I'm not a "goofs" kind of guy in the first place, and this latest you pointed out does tie in to other stuff going on in the show.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:I do think the “evil twin impersonates the main character and creates mayhem and reputational damage” thing has been done by everyone from Bonanza to Gilligan’s Island to Sabrina the Teenage Witch to Lost. I’m certain L/F could have come up with a satisfying, original take on the formula (The Prisoner did a wonderful episode called “The Schizoid Man” that gives a psychological edge to the trope), but overall, I’m personally glad they steered clear of the obvious approach, even if I didn’t always find the Mr. C storyline completely satisfying.

As MT said, it’s tough to say whether our own “alternate reality TP:TR” ideas would actually be better in execution. But it did strike me while thinking about Kilmoore and Audrey’s comments that a Cooper doppelganger who acts like original-recipe Cooper might have been much more disarmingly terrifying and disturbing than Mr. C, as good a performance as Kyle gave. Just imagine a character who commits acts of depravity, violence and rape, and then gives the ol’ cheerful thumbs-up and says, “DAMN good!” Maybe DKL and Kyle decided that that would have been twisting the knife too much for fans of the character and tried to differentiate Mr. C from classic Coop a bit more? My skin crawls (in a good way) imagining what that version of the character would have been like.

In regards to Kilmoore’s question about the lack of classic Coop in the show: sure, it’s disappointing on some level. I was so amped when the theme music kicked in and Kyle nailed the old demeanor in Part 16. It does make me sad that we didn’t get to see more of him doing that. We may never have the chance again, and there is a sadness that they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. But I love the Dougie stuff, and I love Part 18. I guess if I had my druthers, depending on the day and which way the wind is blowing, I might say that a little Dougie material might have been trimmed to give us more of Cooper doing his thing a bit earlier. But part of the devil’s pact that Showtime entered (financially) and we entered (emotionally and artistically as fans) is that, if this show gets made, it gets made exactly the way Frost and especially DKL want to make it, without compromise. I may not love every choice, I may wish for things we didn’t get, but ultimately I don’t have much interest in thinking about what might have been because there IS no “might have been.” We were either going to get nothing at all, or we were going to get the exact show L/F wanted to make, for all its quirks. I came to terms with that well before a second of the series ever aired, and now that it’s out, I’m thrilled that we got option B, but obviously YMMV.

And ultimately, the structure of Cooper’s journey works so well for me. The whole point of the piece is his fragmentation. The doppel isn’t an evil twin like in the other shows I mentioned, a completely separate entity who just happens to look like him— it’s a PART of Cooper, his dweller on the threshold, and he CAN’T be fully himself as long as it’s free in the world. That’s the drive of the season (laconic as the pacing often seemed). It falls in line with most of DKL’s later works which tend to deal abstractly with fractured identities. That may be part of the divide between me and Kilmoore, too. Sure, I came into this as a TP fan who wanted to see Dale Cooper again. But I also came in as a DKL fan who wanted to see another work on par with MD or IE. I got a weird melding of the two, with DKL giving an unpredictable iteration of the MD/IE treatment to Cooper, which I find incredibly exciting, even if that structure means we had to sacrifice spending time with the Cooper personality we know and love.

In any event, as I’ve said before, DKL seems to have grown weary of the “boyish wonder” side of Cooper quite some time ago. The portrayal in FWWM is noticably toned-down, in what in retrospect seems like a definite transition to the more dour Mr. C / Richard iterations. Why that occurred is anyone’s guess. DKL of course created the original “boy scout” version of Cooper along with Kyle in the Pilot, but also tended to give Dale a slightly harder edge in most of the episodes he directed than Dale had elsewhere in the series. Perhaps DKL felt like other writers and directors softened Cooper too much and FWWM/TP:TR were a swinging-pendulum reaction to that? Whatever the reasons, due to FWWM, I sort of mentally intuited and prepared myself for the fact that Cooper might not be as cheerful and buoyant in TP:TR before the new season aired. Not that I had ANY inclination about what we ultimately ended up getting!

It’s also worth noting how quickly this series has always evolved — from the distinctly earthbound human drama and tragedy of the Pilot to the surreal dream ending of Episode 2 to the balls-out mythology of Episode 8 and early season 2 to the slapstick comfort food of later season 2 to the uncompromising arthouse weirdness of Episode 29 to the R-rated psychological rawness of FWWM. Aside from a period of some stagnancy in the back half of season 2 (notably when the two creators were in absentia), this has always been a franchise way more interested in experimentation and reinventing itself than playing by the rules. We’ve had 27 years now to live with the original series and find ways to unify its WILD tonal inconsistencies in our minds, coming to view it as one long piece. It’s easy to lose sight of how often the original show gave viewers whiplash — in both positive and negative ways — by refusing to be any one thing for very long. I think, after living with it for some time, people will come to realize that TP:TR is very much part of that same experimental journey. Which isn’t to say that anyone has to like the choices made...but I think they’re very much in line with the type of series TP has always been, albeit inevitably reflective of the changes that both creators and the TV landscape overall have gone through over the subsequent quarter century. DKL has spoken about the fact that Francis Bacon is the only painter whose career he admires from start to finish. For everyone else, he may love certain phases of their careers, but other periods lose him. I imagine that he would be very sympathetic to the disappointed who simply do not relate to the type of artist he has evolved into, even while he has no regrets about adhering to his vision.
Incredible post. Of course I think they could have worked wonders with the Mr C in Cooper attire scenario. It would have left us guessing who we were seeing, it would have been menacing as all hell. I chalk up their disinterest in doing that not only to it being the obvious thing to do, but also because that is where we left Mr C at the end of season 2...forced to pose as Cooper for at least a few days. So they probably felt the character was beyond that, which fits with their 25 years later approach to storytelling. It would have been fascinating to see Mr C have to resort to impersonating Cooper again after all those years, but as you said it just wasn't what Lynch was interested in, as he was rather interested in the fragments of Cooper's being. Now, could Mr C as Cooper have worked even in that context late in the game, a symbol of the two nearing a symbiosis? I definitely think so. But by not doing that it made the Richard Cooper of Part 18 so much more surprising, ambiguous and effective.

And I totally agree about being jazzed at the return of Dale with the Twin Peaks theme in Part 16. Absolute perfection, but bittersweet that it couldn't last. And I love what you say about the experimental tonal shifts smoothing out over time, and it all goes back to Matt Zoller Seitz's article about Peaks' primary function being to serve as an experimental playground for the creators. And that's something I didn't really take into account until we got into the new show, but which caused both the old and new show to be so groundbreaking.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by IcedOver »

LateReg wrote:
The Vegas thing you reference as a negative I admittedly didn't notice...but I like it. Because as many people pointed out in countless examples, Lynch is often interested in showing the seams of this production, and part of my thesis of the layers of the show has to do with the constant and increasing intrusion of elements of the real world, especially from part 14 onwards, so who is to say that the trailers you see in Vegas weren't left in because Lynch liked or wanted them within the frame?

I know, I know. I just seem to be forgiving all the flaws. But, I'm not a "goofs" kind of guy in the first place, and this latest you pointed out does tie in to other stuff going on in the show.
Oh, come on now, don't be ridiculous. They were left in because neither he nor anyone else noticed them in this hurried and slipshod production, not to "show the seams" -- just like any other goofs. Maybe he liked the shot of Watts smiling, and they couldn't reshoot. I'm also not normally someone who notices goofs, but the ones in this show were unavoidable. I recall pointing out Johnny breathing, not Miriam, that if he was supposed to be dead (which we didn't know), he was breathing. Dern and Lillard crying without tears isn't a goof, just a flaw in the performances. It's okay, you can admit the show has a flaw. It's not hard.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

IcedOver wrote:
LateReg wrote:
The Vegas thing you reference as a negative I admittedly didn't notice...but I like it. Because as many people pointed out in countless examples, Lynch is often interested in showing the seams of this production, and part of my thesis of the layers of the show has to do with the constant and increasing intrusion of elements of the real world, especially from part 14 onwards, so who is to say that the trailers you see in Vegas weren't left in because Lynch liked or wanted them within the frame?

I know, I know. I just seem to be forgiving all the flaws. But, I'm not a "goofs" kind of guy in the first place, and this latest you pointed out does tie in to other stuff going on in the show.
Oh, come on now, don't be ridiculous. They were left in because neither he nor anyone else noticed them in this hurried and slipshod production, not to "show the seams" -- just like any other goofs. Maybe he liked the shot of Watts smiling, and they couldn't reshoot. I'm also not normally someone who notices goofs, but the ones in this show were unavoidable. I recall pointing out Johnny breathing, not Miriam, that if he was supposed to be dead (which we didn't know), he was breathing. Dern and Lillard crying without tears isn't a goof, just a flaw in the performances. It's okay, you can admit the show has a flaw. It's not hard.
Sure, but there's more than one way to look at any given thing. You really think that all the people editing sound and image didn't notice any of these goofs (the camera in the mirror in part 2 - easily one of my favorite and most mysterious things about The Return, btw, or the microphones in Part 8, or the obviously inserted-in-post production "whisper" in Part 2, which goes a long way towards proving correct theories about Lynch showing the seams)? And if they did, that they also didn't make a conscious decision to leave it in the final product rather than CGI it out? You really can't see an argument that he's showing the seams, even if you find the argument worthless? You really can't see how some people might think that some of these things - intentional or not - add to the final product, and tie into the incursion of reality especially on display in the final 5 parts? I do remember you pointing that out about Johnny now - my mistake - but at the time, rather than waiting to see if he actually was alive in the next part, I recall that you were using it as further evidence of the show's rushed production, like it's detracting from the experience for you, and I just couldn't ever see myself being so focused on such a "flaw." I just think in the long history of dead bodies in movies dating back to the beginning of film, goofs like that are a less important aspect of criticism than our current culture perceives them as nowadays. Maybe they don't bother you as much as I've ASSUMED based on your comments, but if they do I think that's a shame and really missing the point.

And I don't see why you think people have to cry tears while crying. Sean Penn was intentionally not shedding actual tears during Mystic River. It wasn't a flaw there and it doesn't have to be a flaw here. This is what I'm getting at. These things you perceive as flaws seem antithetical to what I'd view as an actual flaw. Honestly, on a very basic level I think you and I just disagree about a lot of things. Full disclosure: I think you're my doppelganger, as more than any other poster on this board I've found myself in disagreement with you, over and over, pretty much about everything and not just limited to The Return...despite the fact that you're more positive than a lot of people in this thread! It just is what it is, and we seem to just have differences in our fundamental approach and how we see things and what we view as important or how we view potential flaws. But I stand by these "goofs" not being a flaw that detracts from the series, but rather adds to it. I also admit that hearing you call this production slipshod really boggles my mind, as I feel almost every element of this gargantuan undertaking is the exact opposite of slipshod. And beyond that the reason I find the word "slipshod" troubling is because I think that if you start to notice things and get it in your head - correctly or incorrectly - that it is the result of a slipshod production, then it will continue to reinforce the notion that this was indeed a slipshod production; your viewing may be colored by that notion. Conversely, if you hadn't gotten that in your head, you may be thinking slightly differently about what you're seeing as you wouldn't have gone down the slipshod path. You may be right. I may be wrong. But there's something to the way we process things based on whatever it is we get in our heads.

I just watched an episode of Rick and Morty where they discover TV from other dimensions/parallel universes, and they remark about how much looser TV seems over there, and it reminded me of The Return. There's a commercial for doors that don't actually open, and rather than the commercial ending when it ends, the camera follows the guy in the commercial as he leaves the set and gets into his car and drives home. I found that little vignette amazing, and it instantly became a reference point for how I feel - effortlessly feel - The Return operates.
Last edited by LateReg on Fri Feb 09, 2018 11:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

IcedOver wrote:
Kilmoore wrote:I refuse to believe that anyone who is a fan of original Twin Peaks wasn't disappointed that out of 18 hours we got 15 minutes of Cooper being Cooper. There is no way that didn't let you down.
Yes, absolutely that was a letdown, especially considering that when he comes back, he mostly interacts with the new characters. The usage of the "TP" theme in the LV context (as they drive past what are clearly cast and crew trailers -- one of many goofs) was a very poor decision. However, as the show went on, and in the months since, what has bugged me less are the differences from the original (as jarring as they were at first) and more the internal problems with this show in and of itself.
Months before the first episode aired, I predicted (and hoped) the series would be based on the Bad Cooper, who would dominate the screen time, and the Good Cooper would not be released from the Lodge until maybe the very last episode.

So, in my case, I actually saw about as much of the 'old Cooper' as I expected. What I didn't anticipate was a third (Dougie) and fourth (Richard) Cooper. But the screentime the old Cooper got was about what should have been expected, given the way the original series and FWWM left off.

Edit: I did leave open the possibility that Good Coop would beat Bad Coop early on, but then I figured we still wouldn't really have the old Cooper back, because Good Coop might veer into some gray ethical areas trying to cover up the past crimes of Bad Coop.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by bowisneski »

Kilmoore wrote:Back on topic:

I refuse to believe that anyone who is a fan of original Twin Peaks wasn't disappointed that out of 18 hours we got 15 minutes of Cooper being Cooper. There is no way that didn't let you down.
I'm a huge fan of the original to the point where I have gotten every person I've ever dated and my best friend to watch it and tried to get many others in to it. And you're right, I have to admit I was indeed let down with those 15 minutes, but I think for different reasons because of having different definitions of Cooper being Cooper. The way I saw it we got about an hour of Cooper being Cooper in Parts 1-3 plus post Sheriff Station exit in Part 17 with a regressed Cooper appearing for about 15-20 minutes from awakening in Part 16 through exiting the Sheriff's Station in Part 17.

Besides that warm fuzzy feeling seeing it happen with the music and "I am the FBI" line, it felt hollow and unnecessary(except from a fan service perspective) and I was actually disappointed with seeing the Season 1 and 2 pre-Lodge version of Cooper in 16 and 17 after getting the taste of aged Cooper in Parts 1-3, I wish he hadn't shown up at all. After all that time, I wanted to see a melancholy, broken, and downtrodden Cooper still trying to do the right thing with only the occasional hint of his old pep. More of how he felt to me in Parts 1 - 3/the second half of Part 17 and definitely more of what we got in Part 18. The post Lodge escape Part 18 portrayal is honestly what I had hoped we would get all season pre-release. But that gets into wants and expectations vs engaging with the work we got.

Also, I think we had to spend most of the season without him(whether you count all of the appearances of non-Dougified Cooper or just the 15-20 min where he feels just like he did 25 years ago) to have the impact and loss of and return of Cooper exist for future viewers who can just binge it all and didn't experience any portion of the 25 year wait(I only had to wait 10 years of it). Whether or not Dougie had to be part of that is debatable because you could've just had him disappear until the end of the season after he goes through the outlet, but then I think you would've lost the heart of the season which resided in Vegas.

You could completely cut the Vegas stuff with just a few rewrites and created a tighter more focused season, but that would've just left you with the bleak story of what Twin Peaks has become and Mr. C's journey. Since the town of Twin Peaks is no longer a candy coated safe haven with a dark underbelly, but a place with darkness fully out in the open, they attempted to retain some of that original feeling with Vegas. That's where the fresh perspective, some over the top soapyness, warm veneer, and the pie and coffee was. The perfect example is the Mitchums. They were terrible and planned on murdering Cooper, just like Ben Horne, but, just like Ben Horne, by the end of the season I liked them because of their personalities. I also think having Cooper spend time with a family helped reinforce what the Lodge and his quest had taken from him. Again, whether or not that worked for you is the debate. It worked a hundred times better, and I actually wished there was more Dougie, on my one sitting rewatch.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by laughingpinecone »

mtwentz wrote:
IcedOver wrote:
Kilmoore wrote:I refuse to believe that anyone who is a fan of original Twin Peaks wasn't disappointed that out of 18 hours we got 15 minutes of Cooper being Cooper. There is no way that didn't let you down.
Yes, absolutely that was a letdown, especially considering that when he comes back, he mostly interacts with the new characters. The usage of the "TP" theme in the LV context (as they drive past what are clearly cast and crew trailers -- one of many goofs) was a very poor decision. However, as the show went on, and in the months since, what has bugged me less are the differences from the original (as jarring as they were at first) and more the internal problems with this show in and of itself.
Months before the first episode aired, I predicted (and hoped) the series would be based on the Bad Cooper, who would dominate the screen time, and the Good Cooper would not be released from the Lodge until maybe the very last episode.

So, in my case, I actually saw about as much of the 'old Cooper' as I expected. What I didn't anticipate was a third (Dougie) and fourth (Richard) Cooper. But the screentime the old Cooper got was about what should have been expected, given the way the original series and FWWM left off.

Edit: I did leave open the possibility that Good Coop would beat Bad Coop early on, but then I figured we still wouldn't really have the old Cooper back, because Good Coop might veer into some gray ethical areas trying to cover up the past crimes of Bad Coop.
Interesting! (and I was wondering about the gray ethical areas of Good Coop being or not being held responsible for Bad Coop's crimes, and that slippery bastard went and disappeared from reality again before anyone in-universe could even ask themselves that question :lol: )

As yet another diverging opinion, I was surprised by how little 'regular Coop' we got... ...and I hate pt16 Coop. I appreciate his role in the story if I frame him in a certain specific way, which I find very easy with the way the story continues, but I've found nothing in interviews to support my interpretation that it's intended to be anything but a 'crowning moment of awesome', which I reeeeally loathe. "I am the FBI" within 20 minutes of the FBI storyline culminating in the tragedy of killing Diane? That's rough, buddy.
'My Coop' is only in the red room/purple ocean scenes, in the FWWM time travel, and in the very final scene. That's not a lot of Coop! Thankfully I find the Vegas storyline full of moving Cooper moments, and I appreciate this kaleidoscope approach to Dale Cooper in general, so I'm good. But damn if that pt16 doesn't leave me squinting...
Last edited by laughingpinecone on Fri Feb 09, 2018 12:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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LateReg
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

bowisneski wrote:
Kilmoore wrote:Back on topic:

I refuse to believe that anyone who is a fan of original Twin Peaks wasn't disappointed that out of 18 hours we got 15 minutes of Cooper being Cooper. There is no way that didn't let you down.
I'm a huge fan of the original to the point where I have gotten every person I've ever dated and my best friend to watch it and tried to get many others in to it. And you're right, I have to admit I was indeed let down with those 15 minutes, but I think for different reasons because of having different definitions of Cooper being Cooper. The way I saw it we got about an hour of Cooper being Cooper in Parts 1-3 plus post Sheriff Station exit in Part 17 with a regressed Cooper appearing for about 15-20 minutes from awakening in Part 16 through exiting the Sheriff's Station in Part 17.

Besides that warm fuzzy feeling seeing it happen with the music and "I am the FBI" line, it felt hollow and unnecessary(except from a fan service perspective) and I was actually disappointed with seeing the Season 1 and 2 pre-Lodge version of Cooper in 16 and 17 after getting the taste of aged Cooper in Parts 1-3, I wish he hadn't shown up at all. After all that time, I wanted to see a melancholy, broken, and downtrodden Cooper still trying to do the right thing with only the occasional hint of his old pep. More of how he felt to me in Parts 1 - 3/the second half of Part 17 and definitely more of what we got in Part 18. The post Lodge escape Part 18 portrayal is honestly what I had hoped we would get all season pre-release. But that gets into wants and expectations vs engaging with the work we got.

Also, I think we had to spend most of the season without him(whether you count all of the appearances of non-Dougified Cooper or just the 15-20 min where he feels just like he did 25 years ago) to have the impact and loss of and return of Cooper exist for future viewers who can just binge it all and didn't experience any portion of the 25 year wait(I only had to wait 10 years of it). Whether or not Dougie had to be part of that is debatable because you could've just had him disappear until the end of the season after he goes through the outlet, but then I think you would've lost the heart of the season which resided in Vegas.

You could completely cut the Vegas stuff with just a few rewrites and created a tighter more focused season, but that would've just left you with the bleak story of what Twin Peaks has become and Mr. C's journey. Since the town of Twin Peaks is no longer a candy coated safe haven with a dark underbelly, but a place with darkness fully out in the open, they attempted to retain some of that original feeling with Vegas. That's where the fresh perspective, some over the top soapyness, warm veneer, and the pie and coffee was. The perfect example is the Mitchums. They were terrible and planned on murdering Cooper, just like Ben Horne, but, just like Ben Horne, by the end of the season I liked them because of their personalities. I also think having Cooper spend time with a family helped reinforce what the Lodge and his quest had taken from him. Again, whether or not that worked for you is the debate. It worked a hundred times better, and I actually wished there was more Dougie, on my one sitting rewatch.
Yes, I think one of the interesting things about watching The Return - and this goes along with what IcedOver and I are talking about - is that it's possible to be disappointed and happy at the same time. I think it's built on that kind of give and take. So, yes, of course I'm disappointed we didn't get more Cooper. Of course I wanted him to RETURN, along with the town. I think we were supposed to want that, and then I think we were supposed to not get that. So yeah, I'm disappointed in a lot of things. And I think the show is gloriously imperfect by design. Some people are gonna get into that and others are not.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

laughingpinecone wrote: As yet another diverging opinion, I was surprised by how little 'regular Coop' we got... ...and I hate pt16 Coop. I appreciate his role in the story if I frame him in a certain specific way, which I find very easy with the way the story continues, but I've found nothing in interviews to support my interpretation that it's intended to be anything but a 'crowning moment of awesome', which I reeeeally loathe. "I am the FBI" within 20 minutes of the FBI storyline culminating in the tragedy of killing Diane? That's rough, buddy.
'My Coop' is only in the red room/bw scenes, in the FWWM time travel, and in the very final scene. That's not a lot of Coop! Thankfully I find the Vegas storyline full of moving Cooper moments, and I appreciate this kaleidoscope approach to Dale Cooper in general, so I'm good. But damn if that pt16 doesn't leave me squinting...
I think that Part 16 Cooper is awesome, but I also think it's more than just that. It's finally what we want, and it's too good to last. In the study of identity, it's also an example of how Dougie contained all the best traits of our Cooper - once Cooper finally wakes, he's fully formed because that's just who he is - he didn't need to gradually come back to himself, he was always there inside Dougie in the form of our Cooper's core components that can't be changed. I think you're right to question what you're seeing there, even as my instinct was to just love that moment and want to live in it forever, which fits the themes of nostalgia. And I love how that moment ends with Diane freaking out, remembering, and then marching her way to Cole's hotel room to the same theme we heard when first introduced to Evil Cooper. I think that's a perfect and meaningful swing, and one of my favorite transitions; I felt it deeply...specifically that something wasn't quite right. At any rate, I think that there's a lot going on in that Cooper scene and it's ok to doubt what you're seeing. Personally, I never found it hollow like some people did, but maybe I should have.
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