Any pro-TP:TR hornblowers should probably be wary of using the "wait until it's over to pass judgment" line. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a very valid point...but it cuts equally both ways. (Alright, maybe not QUITE equally...my love of many individual moments in the show to date will probably stand regardless of how potentially awful the ending is, whereas mlsstwrt quite rightly notes that he shouldn't have to watch 18 hours of something he hates to get to a great payoff). I think the ending will be at best challenging and at worst messy, and I won't be at all surprised if many of the current "true believers" end up joining this thread as the clock ticks closer to the end.
The "savior Laura" thing makes me uneasy as well, but the beautiful presentation of that scene (and my trust in DKL, particularly his consistent devotion to doing right by Laura) make me comfortable enough to wait and see how it plays out. To date, TP has a touch-and-go history of engaging with the sexual abuse elements of its story in a satisfying manner (the eternal Episode 16 vs. FWWM Leland/Bob debate -- are the two depictions reconcilable? how much of each approach was Lynch vs. Frost vs. Peyton? does DKL mean it when he has Leland deny culpability in Episode 29 and BTW, or is he just depicting a man in denial even after death?). The obvious touchstone in all this is FWWM, by far the most in-depth and serious journey into this aspect of the TP world, and as a result of that film the general assumption is that DKL is the champion of addressing abuse in a serious manner whereas Frost/Peyton were more interested in blaming spirits and playing mythological games. However, an abundance of evidence shows that the reality may be a bit more complicated than that. It's all been discussed at length elsewhere, so all I'll say is that, as a massive DKL fan who has loved TP:TR thus far, I can't state with any confidence that DKL won't bollocks up Laura's character with some messianic silliness...and this indeed is the flavor most of us have gotten from that (one brief dialogue-free) scene. He seems to be throwing in aspects of pretty much every aspect of his career to date...maybe he still has a draft of
Dune: Messiah lying around that he decided to incorporate.
The upside is that most of what DKL does -- particularly when it comes to the TP mythology -- is ambiguous enough that it can interpreted 4 or 5 different ways. See the Leland/Bob stuff from the original show, which I think was often mishandled in terms of implicitly washing Leland's hands...but it can all be read a number of different ways, and ultimately Episode 16's whitewashing doesn't negate the stronger elements of the original series for me the way it might if the series unambiguously told us that Leland was possessed and had no culpability whatsoever.
Btw, earlier in the thread I expressed my hope that those disillusioned with the show could separate the new series from the old, and I used
The Godfather, Part III as an example. I was reminded of another personal example of this over the weekend. The James Bond films are a huge guilty pleasure for me (go ahead, judge).
Casino Royale was a revelation, probably the first 007 film I would actually deem a great movie since
From Russia with Love. The subsequent couple of films were fine...then came
Spectre, which essentially retconned everything in the Daniel Craig films...
Now, even given how moronic
Casino Royale looks through the
Spectre lens, I can still go back and appreciate it as its own self-contained film. Do elements of the
Spectre retcon occasionally bubble to the surface while I'm watching? Sure. Do I kinda wish
Spectre just hadn't been made? Well, yeah. But nothing is going to cheapen
Casino Royale for me. It's a near-perfect Bond film as far as I'm concerned, and nothing can ever take it away from me. I truly hope mlsstwrt and others are able to achieve a similar level of separation re: the old Peaks, although of course we all compartmentalize differently.