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 »

OK folks.

I'm callin' it a day. This thread has been the one sane place I've seen regarding the steaming pile of manure I've been conned into watching over the last many weeks. It's been an honour and a privilege to be here, but I can also say that I'm kinda finished for real this time. I'll love my 'complete' Blu-ray set of Twin Peaks forever, but that's what it is: complete. The abomination that is The Return is simply something I'll ignore. The image of Cooper walking out from the curtains and back into Glastonbury Grove is the only image my mind requires and I at least got that.

But I can no longer really call myself a David Lynch fan and for a while ahead, no doubt I'll struggle to appreciate any of his work, such is the stench generated by the 18 parts of garbage I've sat through.

I've not been just profoundly disappointed; I've been profoundly saddened and profoundly disillusioned.

Actually, the series finishing is a kind of relief; every week, I hoped something worthwhile would happen and make the tedium worth it, but nothing did. The Emperor really had no clothes and I wasn't wrong.

But, all said and done, I'm not going to spend weeks or months or years griping about something I don't even really consider to be Twin Peaks. I'm already moving on.

So, folks, there are too many of you I wish I could name for being amazing, but it's been great fun chatting to everyone . And I throw down the gauntlet to all of us who have been let down: we have to start making our own films, writing our own books and scripts. We've reached a point where something as bad as The Return is met with sycophancy. That's something in our culture that has to be fought.

So, adios amigos. I'm walking away with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Take care.
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David Locke
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by David Locke »

Gabriel wrote:OK folks.

I'm callin' it a day. This thread has been the one sane place I've seen regarding the steaming pile of manure I've been conned into watching over the last many weeks. It's been an honour and a privilege to be here, but I can also say that I'm kinda finished for real this time. I'll love my 'complete' Blu-ray set of Twin Peaks forever, but that's what it is: complete. The abomination that is The Return is simply something I'll ignore. The image of Cooper walking out from the curtains and back into Glastonbury Grove is the only image my mind requires and I at least got that.

But I can no longer really call myself a David Lynch fan and for a while ahead, no doubt I'll struggle to appreciate any of his work, such is the stench generated by the 18 parts of garbage I've sat through.

I've not been just profoundly disappointed; I've been profoundly saddened and profoundly disillusioned.

Actually, the series finishing is a kind of relief; every week, I hoped something worthwhile would happen and make the tedium worth it, but nothing did. The Emperor really had no clothes and I wasn't wrong.

But, all said and done, I'm not going to spend weeks or months or years griping about something I don't even really consider to be Twin Peaks. I'm already moving on.

So, folks, there are too many of you I wish I could name for being amazing, but it's been great fun chatting to everyone . And I throw down the gauntlet to all of us who have been let down: we have to start making our own films, writing our own books and scripts. We've reached a point where something as bad as The Return is met with sycophancy. That's something in our culture that has to be fought.

So, adios amigos. I'm walking away with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Take care.
It's been great to have you here, Gabriel, always looked forward to your insights whether or not I agreed. You're right that it's not worth expending energy over something that's so disappointing.

Hope to see you back here again sometime! And last but not least - may the road rise up to meet your wheels. :mrgreen:
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Castledoque »

Hi guys, I have been a lurker for some time, but I finally decided to register, because I need to vent my somewhat frustrated feelings about this show.

First thing first, I feel I need to answer a question posed yesterday.
riesje wrote:honest question for all the people who are profoundly dissapointed: what were your thoughts on Inland Empire when it came out?
I absolutely loved Inland Empire when I saw it in the cinema. I have seen it again since and I still like it. I think it is a brilliant bit of experimantal stream of consciousness film-making that goes further with exploration of fractured/overlapping identiies than Lynch's previous work. For the record, though it can probably be interpreted as a dream, that is not the way I saw and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it as a crazy surreal/stream of consciousness exploration of identity/art vs life/fall and redemption/the restorative and redemptive power of art/love and betrayal mostly from the female point of view, all through the prism of an eternal recurring love triangle that culminates in murder and mayhem. That among many other things.

That said, I found the new Twin Peaks underwhelming and disappointing. In truth the first thing by David Lynch I have watched and did not like, and I have seen all his movies apart from Dune. I think and hope he was not trying to troll anyone. Being an artist that works mostly on intuition, I hope that it is simply a case of his instinct betraying him. It has happened before to many great artists. (For instance, I find the last few films by Terence Mallick virtually unwatchable and there is no denying his creative genius.) Maybe with age, David Lynch has become complacent, as is indicated somewhat in his overly flattering portrayal of Gordon Cole, so much different to the much easier going and more humorous portrayal he gave so many years ago. Complacency of the elderly artists is a very common occurrence and it doesn't always affect the quality of their work, but in this case I feel that it has.

Up until the final episode I was enjoying the show. I had some reservations (too many disjointed plot threads, too many abrupt jumps in the narrative -e.g. the arrest of Chad that though satisfactory, came out of nowhere-, too many supernatural occurrences, too much exposition mostly in the FBI sections), but I accepted them as narrative idiosyncrasies of a surrealist filmmaker, and felt confident that they would all coalesce in the end in a satisfactory manner, just as it happened with Inland Empire that had a much more chaotic narrative. I hope I have made it abundantly clear that I was not expecting a coffee and cherrie pies ending. However the ending I saw was a crushing dissappointment. Episode 18 was probably the best directed and more consistent episode of the whole season3, BUT it was completely disjointed from everything that came before. A disjointed ending to a sprawling narrative consisting of disjointed snippets. For me that constitutes a show that is much less than the sum of its parts. And i loved the individual parts (the lost youth drama of Steven and Becky, the desperate existential malice of Richard Horne, even the much maligned almost Capra-esque household drama of Dougie Jones and Janie-E, among others), but topped with a disjointed ending that basically comes out of nowhere, they end up amounting to nothing, no matter how brilliant the ending is by itself. It doesn't help that the character of Cooper changes yet again for a third time in said ending. It doesn't help that although brilliant, said ending feels like a reboot/reimagining of Lost Highway, therefore not that original and definitely much less subtle than anything in Inland Empire (I really need to rewatch that crazy sprawling Laura Dern epic).

But now that the series has ended, I have to wonder: What was the point of all the dropped storylines (Becky, Beverley, Shelly, Red, etc)? Why were they even started in the first place? They took way too much time to be there just for context and atmosphere. If they amount to nothing, they should have been omitted like all the missing pieces in Fire Walk With Me that were eventually released as a separate movie. The woods scene between Steven and Gretchen was utterly brilliant and harrowing, but it came from nowhere and went nowhere. We are not even sure what happened to Becky. Is she dead, alive, missing? I would even be OK with Carl opening the trailer and not finding her, but ending the whole storyline outside the trailer, is way too inconclusive. And if this was the only case I would be able to accept it, but the same thing has happened with 90% of the multiple storylines. They all end unresolved or abruptly. Richard dies suddenly, Audrey is trapped somewhere, Miriam is critically ill in the hospital, Shelly is seeing a dangerous criminal, etc. The Dougie storyline and Ed+Norma are I think the only exceptions. Obviously this is a conscious decision on the part of Lynch and Frost, but it simply doesn't work , it is not good story telling and along with the strange jumps in the narrative expostition I have already mentioned, it makes the whole thing feel like going through pictures in a photo album that suddenly end with empty blank pages. But is it maybe dream logic, something Lynch really loves? If this is the case, then what is the point of all the long expository segments about Blue Rose cases, Tulpas, etc we get on the FBI front? Surely there is some inconsistency here. If the series go with dream logic, the FBI scenes should have been equally mysterious, intense and unfathomable. Very frustrating. It may be post-modern or whatever, but for me it just doesn't work. It is the sort of thing that would be justified with a great ending that would put everything under a different light - and I know Lynch to be capable of producing such endings-, but in this case he didn't.

Which brings me to the ending. What was the point? Yes, just by itself as an hour of very surreal television, it was brilliant. But as an ending to Twin Peaks what does it add? Fire Walk With Me had a wonderful ending with Laura being somewhere far away finally free, close to her lost angel and protected by Cooper. Where is she now? Do we even know? Sure we can make conjectures, but we don't know. And Cooper? Season2 ended with him trapped in the lodge because he met his shadow self with incomplete courage, season 3 ends with him failing yet again, maybe because of incomplete understanding. Did we really need such a complex and long season just to see Cooper fail yet again? Did we really need all these storylines? Even Dougie feels useless and superfluous after the fact, though I enjoyed his story while it was happening. Overall FWWM ending has been exchanged for a cliffhanger and if Cooper deserves what he gets for his mistakes (although I feel that 25 years in the lodge were more than enough punishment), why does Laura have to get drugged down again after all that she has suffered? Plus this turn of events puts all the violence against women so far in the season under a very unfavorable light, but I don't really want to go to a gender discussion, so I am stopping here. Presumably Lynch and Frost came back because they were unhappy with the place they had left the show at with the seaseon 2 cliffhanger and yet what do they do? They end again in a similar note. Why then were they so unhappy with the original ending in the first place?

Finally a conjecture, though I may be wrong. I feel that the Lynch and Frost collaboration that worked so beautifully in the original 2 seasons, has backfired really badly in the 3rd season. In the original run Frost kept Lynch somewhat grounded. This time he seems eager to follow him in his crazy surrealism but he also attempts to understand and explain everything away. The result is again frustrating. Somehow the 3rd season ruins for me the mystery by simultaneously explaining too much and not enough at the same time. Too many dopellgangers, Tulpas, time loops, etc, followed by an almost desperate attempt to bring back the mystery in the last episode. As if Lynch and Frost are in cross-purposes or even worse walking across two lines that start together, but on the way become increasingly divergent, producing on the way a cacophony of sounds. Or maybe season 3 simply suffers from what I call the sequel syndrome. The mythology has now become so complex and intricate that it ends up strangling and suffocating the narrative and the characters and if the original show was a brilliantly distorted mirror image of the "truth" and FWWM a distorted image of that original mirror image, season 3 is now a distorted mirror image of the distorted image of a distorted image, too complex and too convoluted for its own good,as it so often happens with sequels of sequels.

Overall I feel this is an interesting but ultimately failed experiment. The 18 hour movie simply doesn't work, as if the material is too diverse and too sprawling to keep under control and despite the brilliance of the individual parts the complete picture ends up an incoherent mess. In time, I may be able to enjoy the disjointed brilliance of the individual parts and be happy that thorugh them I got a last peak into the brilliant craziness that is David Lynch's mind, but right now I am extremely sad to think that this disappointing series is probably the ending of the uneven magic of Twin Peaks and the last thing to be directed by such a great filmmaker as David Lynch.

(Wow, that was long. Sorry for the rant...)
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powerleftist
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by powerleftist »

@Castledoque: you make an excellent point. The show explains too little and too much at the same time. For instance, we get to know the origin of BOB with great detail; we get to know how tulpas work and what's the recipe to make them, almost as if it was science; the FBI knows too much, which makes rewatching S1 less mysterious since Cooper already knows what Judy is; Major Briggs is kind of a god who knows everything just because; Philip Jeffries is a talkative teapot which is also a time machine and also kind of a god (we could assume that, given enough time, Cooper will also become a god); someone at New York knows how to build a portal to the Lodge using science; Hawk knows too much about the Lodges all of a sudden; Davenport and Hastings know too much about The Zone and even posted it online.

In this regard, S1 and S2 were more mysterious before Windom Earle appeared. There was a Red Room, and a dwarf, and a giant, and it could be a dream, or not, it could be real, or not, it could mean something or being just gibberish. Was BOB real or just a collective hallucination? Then Mark Frost came up with the Lodges thing and started to ruin the magic.
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boske
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

mlsstwrt wrote: I keep asking the question as to why people who love The Return bother to post here at all. Haven't received one response to this. Whenever I ask the question it gets ignored.
Even more interesting is that these people that love the Return and all of a sudden post here do so with a user handle created after the show has ended. They know what was going on in all other threads, they know what we wrote about a month ago, what happened since then, and so on. And yet, they do not have a single post on any other thread, and have signed up for the board after the show was over just for the purpose of complaining how some folks from this thread said some mean things who knows where (can we get some details please?). This feels just like somebody we know with a new alias. I understand people who ended up disillusioned and starting to post here, but for the people who enjoyed the show to do this does not really make sense.
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Gabriel
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Gabriel »

powerleftist wrote:@
In this regard, S1 and S2 were more mysterious before Windom Earle appeared. There was a Red Room, and a dwarf, and a giant, and it could be a dream, or not, it could be real, or not, it could mean something or being just gibberish. Was BOB real or just a collective hallucination? Then Mark Frost came up with the Lodges thing and started to ruin the magic.
Hey! Although today's my last day posting for a while, just thought I'd say I agree with you. The Lodge mythology obviously fascinates Lynch and Frost, while I was drawn to the human drama in the show, where the supernatural aspect was more of an undercurrent – just 'something in the woods.'

I actually remain convinced that even the finale of season two wasn't insurmountable. There were two options for the new show as far as I was concerned: a show about the lodges or a show about Twin Peaks with the town and its citizens as the focus and the lodges as part of the background darkness.

I wanted the latter; they chose the former.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by nimeoa »

Not to harp on it, but I do find it funny that people think we all just wanted the same show we had in 1991. I never asked for nor expected that. What I did expect was something at least similar to Fire Walk With Me, but we didn't even come close to getting that. We got an aimless series of vignettes that quite literally led us nowhere, and a bloated cast of characters who amounted to nothing more than set pieces. I know more about Sam Stanley than I do a about Cooper's doppelganger, and that's just horse shit. Chester Desmond was more developed and played a bigger part in his 20 minutes than Cooper did through the entirety of season 3.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mlsstwrt »

boske wrote:
mlsstwrt wrote: I keep asking the question as to why people who love The Return bother to post here at all. Haven't received one response to this. Whenever I ask the question it gets ignored.
Even more interesting is that these people that love the Return and all of a sudden post here do so with a user handle created after the show has ended. They know what was going on in all other threads, they know what we wrote about a month ago, what happened since then, and so on. And yet, they do not have a single post on any other thread, and have signed up for the board after the show was over just for the purpose of complaining how some folks from this thread said some mean things who knows where (can we get some details please?). This feels just like somebody we know with a new alias. I understand people who ended up disillusioned and starting to post here, but for the people who enjoyed the show to do this does not really make sense.
And still after 270 (lol) pages nobody has answered the question I have asked ten times now. If you love the show why post in this thread at all? I don't think I've posted in any of the other threads since TPTR began. Oh I made one good natured joke post in the satisfied thread. It's not that I don't find those other threads less valuable, I simply don't want to rain on anybody's parade.

Nobody is trying to stop anybody posting here, whatever their comments (that's for Dugpa and the Mods to do). But it's striking to me that we can't have a tiny little place for discourse with others who have been let down by this. I think most of us here feel like we earned our stripes, if there is such a thing when it comes to the right to comment on a TV show! I travelled from frigging Japan to Snoqualmie to see a glimpse of The Return being filmed. Why on earth would I then actively want to hate this?!
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mlsstwrt »

nimeoa wrote:Not to harp on it, but I do find it funny that people think we all just wanted the same show we had in 1991. I never asked for nor expected that. What I did expect was something at least similar to Fire Walk With Me, but we didn't even come close to getting that. We got an aimless series of vignettes that quite literally led us nowhere, and a bloated cast of characters who amounted to nothing more than set pieces. I know more about Sam Stanley than I do a about Cooper's doppelganger, and that's just horse shit. Chester Desmond was more developed and played a bigger part in his 20 minutes than Cooper did through the entirety of season 3.
Nobody will ever accept this. It's easier to reduce us to a bunch of simpletons who can't handle anything more challenging than a slice of cherry pie and Cooper and Audrey riding happily into the sunset.

Gabriel - will miss chatting with you. Enormous thank you for your contributions.
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Gabriel
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Gabriel »

nimeoa wrote:Not to harp on it, but I do find it funny that people think we all just wanted the same show we had in 1991. I never asked for nor expected that. What I did expect was something at least similar to Fire Walk With Me, but we didn't even come close to getting that. We got an aimless series of vignettes that quite literally led us nowhere, and a bloated cast of characters who amounted to nothing more than set pieces. I know more about Sam Stanley than I do a about Cooper's doppelganger, and that's just horse shit. Chester Desmond was more developed and played a bigger part in his 20 minutes than Cooper did through the entirety of season 3.
It's one of those things that become difficult to explain when the arty-farty crowd becomes consciously obtuse. What most of us 'disappointed' people wanted was a season three of the show continuing the style established in seasons one and two (which I'd argue is still present in FWWM) picking up with the characters and their offspring 25 years on. Basically something that takes Twin Peaks 'seriously' for what it is.

It's not surprising so many of us loathe a weird, meta, video sketch show that is as far removed from the old filmed soap noir drama as it's possible to be.

I remember Lynch discussed the possibility of making new Twin Peaks vignettes for the web years ago. Given the utterly disjointed structure of TPTR, I actually wonder whether some parts of the show were culled from ideas for that speculative project.
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Gabriel
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Gabriel »

mlsstwrt wrote:
Gabriel - will miss chatting with you. Enormous thank you for your contributions.[/quote]
You too. It's been so much fun chatting. There's nothing like good company amid 'adversity!!' :)
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Gabriel
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Gabriel »

mlsstwrt wrote:
Gabriel - will miss chatting with you. Enormous thank you for your contributions.[/quote]
You too. It's been so much fun chatting. There's nothing like good company amid 'adversity!!' :)
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by AnotherBlueRoseCase »

David Locke wrote: But, I wouldn't quite agree that Laura's murder was unambiguously retconned - I think it's more precise to say Cooper tried to do this, but failed (it seems so, anyway). But yes, that idea is icky, even if it's Cooper's failed plan more than what the show is trying to literally do. Even just seeing those scenes of the body disappearing and such have a strong affect on anyone who knows and loves the original run. So I can understand how that, among other things, would almost tarnish the show. Which is sad. I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching and loving Seasons 1 and 2 and FWWM. I think I can separate any elements of TR I don't like from them fairly well... I hope.
DavidLocke –

Laura’s body wrapped in plastic disappearing from the shoreline, Pete walking by to get on with his fishing… We’ll just have to disagree about the retcon. I just don't want to watch these things. Even an ambiguous retcon (which I dispute) is way too much.
The comparisons people have made have been spot on - like a final boss in some lame 90s video game, like, well, a superhero movie - the culmination of GreenGloveman's intricately laid-out origin story. And just, God... the fucking use of "I'll catch you with my death bag!" right before BOB-Ball attacks Freddy again, like a stock villain spouting a catchphrase before moving Bond, tied to the conveyor belt, a little closer to the flames/knives/whatever. Most of all, the LOOK of it, of the BOB-Ball, like a giant meatball or a bouncing ball, a beach ball... but mostly like a fucking meatball. What the hell were they thinking? It's not like this level of winking "ain't-this-dumb-but-cool-'cause-we-know-it's-dumb?" idiocy was present in the rest of TR, which was pretty devoid of anything this playful, over-the-top, comic-book-flick conventional.
It’s stuff like this that finally convinced me the awfulness of The Return isn’t just down to incompetence, old age, years away from the medium, and so on. No, this thing was intentionally bad. I’ve tried upthread to understand why they took this route, but honestly I just don’t know.

A word about people claiming Green Glove vs BOB is one of their favourite moments in all of Twin Peaks (these people exist elsewhere on this site; no, seriously). I never wanted to get into the stuff about TR fans undervaluing the original series or not, but let’s just say that anyone sent into raptures by this ending for the BOB who made Laura recite those ‘sticky’ poems in the woods in infancy just has a very different take on the original run and FWWM than I do, to say nothing of Laura’s heartbreaking diary. “Hey, little Laura, the depraved force of nature who did this to you will get his comeuppance from a...” (can’t type the rest out). People who don't just like how BOB was defeated but count it among their very favourite moments in Twin Peaks as a whole (I'm not making this up), have a sniggering, camp puerility that calls into question every other word they've posted.

Gabriel –

Beautiful way to sign off, as we might expect.
We've reached a point where something as bad as The Return is met with sycophancy. That's something in our culture that has to be fought.
Indeed, but it’s not only the TR fanbase that’s gullible and servile to vicious old men. Bizarro world it is.

Onwards.

Mslstwrt –

As usual, the cheering crowds have been more intriguing than the naked Emperor.

One of the oddest segments of the TP fanbase are those now saying, “Yes, The Return was a desecration of Twin Peaks but it’s Lynch and Frost’s show so they can do anything to it they like.”

L&F may have built this church but not in their back garden for their own private use. They invited us in to worship. This is our church too. TP exists mainly in the imaginations of its fans. So we’re hardly going to cheer the builders on as they smash the place up.
I'm not complaining about people criticising this group, outside of this thread. Of course they have every right to do that. I find it a bit weird when they do it IN THIS THREAD. That's surely deliberately antagonistic. The reasons given are always quite laughable though. The only real way that people have found to attack this group is by making the false argument that we're not happy because we didn't get a warm cherry pie version of Twin Peaks, a straightforward continuation of the original. We keep making this same point. That is NOT what we wanted. We just didn't want an incoherent mess.


The volume of straw men from TR fans has damaged this thread and others even more than their ad hominems, leading to constant phantom debates about comments that were never made in the first place. As you suggest, there’s been a real dishonesty about certain contributions and I would add those too of pro critics who have simply refused to acknowledge the show’s blatant shortcomings such as the portrayal of older women as whining harridans.

But throw all this together with the ad hominems and you have something telling. People arguing from a position of strength have no need for such dishonesty. They can go straight for the common ground and argue honestly from there because they know the strength of what they’re saying. Hence the repeated acknowledgements in this thread of the strengths of The Return. No skin off our noses to acknowledge these because we know for sure how weak the rest was. But the Lynch Ultras have simply refused to acknowledge any flaws at all, and that, along with the comically high volume of straw men, speaks volumes about the weakness of their case and implies that at least some of them are aware of this.

Straw men, ad hominems and selective blindness are the classic tactics of fanboys served up a turkey. It was exactly the same on threads last year for True Detective 2. And this makes sense. If your starting position isn’t “I’m neutral about this work, so I’ll just see how it turns out and examine it in detail” but “I’m a fanboy of Artist X, therefore this work is guaranteed to be superb”, of course you’ll keep resorting to dishonesty in online debate. You cannot publically admit, or even to yourself, that the reason you like this thing is because Artist X made it. So when people attack the glaring flaws you cannot examine those flaws honestly because, remember, you must somehow reach the conclusion the show's superb. So what do you do? You play the man, not the ball, or you misrepresent what they’ve actually said. You muddy the water. You have to do so, because if you don’t you’ll have to try to defend the indefensible. It’s a pretty tricky position to be in, especially if you’ve spent months online carrying on like this. Not easy to admit you were wrong all along, and credit’s due to those posters who’ve done so since the finale.

The temptation for TR fans to debate dishonestly is therefore strong. Some of their straw men may, in their heads at least, score them the few points they seem so desperate for. But they should know that, viewed as a whole, when one side of a debate employs way more straw men, ad hominems and selective blindness than the other, it can be pretty revealing about the weakness of their case. Plus dishonest debate is just kind of sad.

Not sure how much longer I’ll be around here, so I’m going to say now that your take on this fiasco has been the most accurate and honest of anybody’s I know, online or off. You’ve been the heart and soul of the magnificent thread, which really has been a privilege to be part of. How you’ve kept your temper at times is beyond me, but then you’re a nicer person that I am. Keep up the good fight, my brother in “hate”/artistic sanity!
Lynch on Trump, mid-2018: "He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history."
Castledoque
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Castledoque »

powerleftist wrote:@Castledoque: you make an excellent point. The show explains too little and too much at the same time. For instance, we get to know the origin of BOB with great detail; we get to know how tulpas work and what's the recipe to make them, almost as if it was science; the FBI knows too much, which makes rewatching S1 less mysterious since Cooper already knows what Judy is; Major Briggs is kind of a god who knows everything just because; Philip Jeffries is a talkative teapot which is also a time machine and also kind of a god (we could assume that, given enough time, Cooper will also become a god); someone at New York knows how to build a portal to the Lodge using science; Hawk knows too much about the Lodges all of a sudden; Davenport and Hastings know too much about The Zone and even posted it online.

In this regard, S1 and S2 were more mysterious before Windom Earle appeared. There was a Red Room, and a dwarf, and a giant, and it could be a dream, or not, it could be real, or not, it could mean something or being just gibberish. Was BOB real or just a collective hallucination? Then Mark Frost came up with the Lodges thing and started to ruin the magic.
Yes exactly this. Just compare all the convoluted mythology of season 3 involving tulpas/dopellgangers (who are different to tulpas), vortexes, woodsmen, white vs black lodge schemes and politics, magic maps, evil entities, years-old well-laid plans to fight them back (all this is getting almost as complicated as ancient greek mythology) with the beautiful simplicity of the pilot of season 1. We are miles away from there. Of course by the end of the original show at the end of the amazing episode 29 and with Fire Walk With Me things had already become significantly more complicated, but somehow the human factor of the drama remained intact, somehow In FWWM Lynch managed to deepen the mythology and at the same time to delve deeper into the drama of Laura Palmer, which is actually an impressive accomplishment. In season 3 somewhere amongst the lodge politics, manufactured people, time loops and alternate timelines, the human element really struggles to come through. I think that is why I liked the Dougie part of the story, his part of the story was the most humane of all. Unfortunately the brilliant, but irreverent, unearned and unfitting ending tipped the balance irrevocably away from whatever human factor.

Still I would have accepted all that as a necessary evil of a long narrative with multiple sequels, if the whole thing was working. For me it isn't and the very fact that most people are now approaching the new season as a riddle to be solved instead of something that brings out thoughts and emotions indicates what I feel is wrong with the 3rd season. Ironically the only part that brings out thoughts and emotions as a proper work of art is the very last episode that would have been great if it was not the final episode of the show called Twin Peaks or alternatively if it had been the very first episode of the new season. As a final episode it undermines everything that came before and tips off the balance causing everything to collapse into a mass of sparkling and beautiful debris, but debris all the same.
Last edited by Castledoque on Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Eva Marie
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:26 am

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

Post by Eva Marie »

Hi, everybody! :D I've finally been able to register, but I've been following this forum ever since part 14. That ep was the breaking point for me and I gave up watching then. Like everyone else - I tried my absolute best to give it the benefit of the doubt, which is how I managed to get that far. I agree with everyone else here that this has been the biggest case of a nude Emperor that I've ever seen and all I wanna do is hang Lynch out to dry. He has taken a giant dump on us and I'm certainly never watching anything by him ever again. I wish I could wipe this whole season out of my head.

The only things I've liked in it were Kyle and Naomi's performances and most of the roadhouse no. I know that the music has been much maligned, but the performances at least marked a break from the relentless tedium and ugliness, and added some sense of reality. Shadow is a phenomenal song. This trip has turned me into a staunch MacLachlan fan - he's been the only thing breathing warmth and humanity into this nihilistic nonsense. What a waste of his and everybody else's talent. :|
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