World of Blue - Archived Forum 2007-2022

I picked what I think are the three most controversial scenes thru episode 7...which is the biggest time waster?

I'm a fan of all three but if I had to choose I'd have to pick the painting of the shovels.

I loved the painting of the shovels and the contraption (which I suspect Lynch built or designed). I hated the Wally scene, but at least it had dialogue. As much as I liked the absurdist nature of the sweeping, placing it near the end of the episode when we wanted more plot before next week was a mistake. I also hate that song, so that made it more painful. If it had been scored with an original Badalamenti work or something, that would have made it go down easier.

Everyone who voted for Wally is dead to me.

Time wasting is relative to the viewer, which begs the question, what exactly does the viewer have to do that's better than watching a scene that bores them?

Save the world? Do the laundry?

When people make this complain it always sounds to be like they think their life is being wasted. But most people really aren't doing much to change the world, what exactly is being spent?

Watching the new Twin Peaks has not at all felt like a waste of time.

The first time I saw the sweeping scene I started cracking up about halfway through it. The second time I started cracking up immediately. If it was only there to troll audience expectations, it did it so well and I love it for that. Not only are we conditioned to think the show is over when we see the Roadhouse, it's almost like Lynch knew a segment of people were going already going to be upset with the pacing up to that point and threw that in there just for them. If these scenes are just there to troll the audience, the sweeping scene is my favorite and Wally Brando the least, but I don't hate that scene at all.

There are so many questions like this that I don't feel comfortable answering until I've seen the whole series. How do we know what's a time waster when we don't know where it's all leading. What if the story of the Golden Shovel's isn't over? There may be more to learn about Wally Brando. And suppose the next time the Roadhouse sweeper sweeps the Roadhouse, he finds a MacGuffin of some sort.

But frankly I'm fine with if these scenes are just there to troll the audience. They are doing it with love.

I like all those three but I voted for the Jacoby painting shovels. I don't think it's a time waster but it could be slightly shorter. The Wally Brando scene is hilarious to me and I really enjoyed the sweeping scene mainly because of the music.

Wonderful & Strange wrote:what exactly does the viewer have to do that's better than watching a scene that bores them?

Save the world? Do the laundry?

And what would be wrong about any of these two options? Both seem better to me than wasting time on boring films.

That said, I liked all three listed scenes (shovel painting the least, I guess, but still I decide to give no vote in this choice of options). I would seriously consider adding the glass box from Ep.1, though. As far as pacing was concerned, that one might have been the toughest.

Shovels. There was a payoff in the sweeping. I'm kind of obsessed with Wally now and I recite his monologue in public it's pants-wetting funny in its absurdity the more you watch it. "except on cloudy days, or at night"

The shovels had a big pay-off later. The scenes also had two major functions. One was to offer us a "damn strange" and uncomfortable return to Twin Peaks. It was filmed mostly from afar and through the trees, with an ominous sound design that was a great departure from the ambiance of the show in the 90s, and with the dialogue almost buried in the sound effects. It's basically all that you don't do in an opening scene... It was calculated to make the viewer feel unwelcome or an outsider, pushing you out instead of drawing you in. It was all the more bizarre that it involved a well known character, if totally out of his environment of long ago.

That vibe continued later with the Lucy scene. She's long been the character who introduces us to others in the police station. You see Lucy and you expect the action will bring you next beyond the front desk and into the inner sanctum, with Harry or Hawk or Andy. Instead we got Lucy turning away a visitor, and us... We got clued that our return to Twin Peaks would have to be gradual, that we're outsiders now.

The second function of the Jacoby shovel mystery is a game with the viewer, twisting our expectations. In the original Twin Peaks, this opening sequence was the discovery of Laura's body, setting in motion the core plot point and mystery of the series. Lynch (and Frost) treated the Jacoby arc as if might be the new central mystery, something to speculate tons about. And it worked, a large part of the audience got trolled. It was a good joke, so not really a time waster. It had to be very long to be funny. A true time waster would have been to prolong this arc beyond these two set up scenes.

Wally Brando... a little masterpiece of absurd humour, a Frost dialogue/character directed by Lynch. A scene like that is like the pure essence of a Lynch/Frost collaboration.

The sweeping scene... now that is a "time waster" in the purest form, and intended as such. The project is written as an 18-hour movie, yada, yada. Lynch ends each part when the clocks run out, but not in blind, stupid way. A very annoying and limiting element of American TV writing (not only American) is the fact it's written as episodes arranged as seasons, with a pre set number of episodes. It's very constrictive. It very often forces writers to either go too fast through good story material to be able to reach a great "season finale" moment, or the very opposite, it forces them to introduce filler arcs to slow things down or hide the fact the main arc is a bit thin, often again because they don't want to be stuck in the middle of something when the end of the season arrives. Or it's done to keep characters busy, because TV writers and execs don't have the balls to push aside for a while characters they don't really need at the moment... because the conditioned audience is keen to hate it when they do that. Season 2 of Twin Peaks was no stranger to some of these problems.

The Return has done away with that problem altogether, with its giant script, movie-like or novel-like, refusing compromises in the story telling. It is what Lynch and Frost considers optimal for the story, with all the scenes they wanted in, and only those.

But Lynch still has to make the runtime. When the clock is ticking and there's not time left (or when the next scene of story fits better in the next part), he can switch to his "padding material". He came up with various ideas, like the music performances. When possible, he's coupled them with Roadhouse scenes. In episode 5, he gave us a warning this isn't a formula.. when the story provided him with a great opportunity for a "long version" of Dale at the statue, making the scene all the more touching, Lynch seized it.

Episode 7 introduced new tricks. He ended on a surreal/bizarre RR scene that may or not impact the storytelling. And he "made time", "wasted time" with an ultra long version of the sweeping scene. I'd wager he also filmed a version where Jean-Michel got the call much sooner in the scene.

Personally I loved that scene. It's boring to tears, and it's the point. To me it's Lynch telling us "See guys, TV forces us to fill up our time, so here's three minutes of pointless sweeping of the roadhouse floor. We won't insult your intelligence by even trying to pretend it's anything but time wasting filler.". 15 sec. in I was smiling, and 1 minute in I was laughing. For all we know, the phone call might lead absolutely nowhere as well... (meaning that scene might have been floating, to be used in whichever episode Lynch had three minutes to kill).

I expect all sort of "creative" time wasters as the series progresses. I wouldn't be surprised the Bing/Billy scene was the start of an absurd mystery with no real connection to the rest of the story that will pop up here and there.

I suspect three minutes of sweeping won't be the "worst" we get, as it's still early in the 18 episode run to peak.

I echo the sentiments of "Mr. Jackpots" and "Strange & Wonderful".

I'd like to add my thoughts to the mix and say the shovel scene I saw as good character exposition. Jacoby is old, tired, and doing his thing before he dies what is it? Well, we soon find out.

The Wally scene referenced Lewis and Clark (mentioned in Mark Frost's recent book by the way) at least but wasn't a timewaster although bit uncomfortable and perhaps depressing but served a purpose. The sweeping scene obviously could've been shorter as didn't really provide a lot in the way of character exposition other than show the bartender as someone who just sits around doing nothing finding entertainment in being devious and evil (something can be said about his brother certainly).

As "AgentEcho" seems to imply above, perhaps this scene meant to troll those who want something formulatory with set conventional pacing.

Well, Green Onions is a classic, so it has to be the shovels.

I don't think any were wasted time upon first watching. That said, I have found myself skipping past the shovels on repeat viewings.

I wouldn't trade away any of them. They all test the viewer's patience, but in a hilariously confrontational way. They dare you to remember you're watching a show. It's very late French New Wave of Lynch (or perhaps they share a common source; that's just where I'm most accustomed to seeing similarly confrontational pacing techniques).

It's refreshing to watch TV in which characters are not just bundles of preference-ranking behaviours, or predictable outcome-oriented machines out to maximise their utility. These people don't waste our time, they spend time with us, and us with them. It's pure expenditure; it's life.