Is Lynch better with constraints? (Spoilers)

[Novalis]

I don't see Lynch as breaking rules or defying conventions so much as attempting to change convention, through prefigurative action that shows us what else could become a convention. One of the most basic ideas in art-theoretical understanding is this: if an artwork or series of artworks depends upon a certain form or number of conventional elements then the artwork is also about those things. Lynch is using 'conventional' elements -- he's making them conventions by using them over-and-over again. However, without the wider collective effort of other directors and artists, they will not become conventional in the sense that prestige-TV methods are conventional. In this respect his de-emphasis of plot and character-development and emphasis on tonality and atmosphere can be regarded as something undertaken in a pioneering spirit. Rather than aiming to frustrate peoples' received tastes he seems far more to me to be offering the opportunity to broaden and advance our tastes, to get out of the efficiency-is-everything 'rut' we're in, historically speaking.

[referendum]

"Mr. Reindeer" .... there is a sense of reality about the way most of the returning TP-dwelling cast members are being treated: as slices of life rather than true "storylines." It's very much a check-in to see where they happen to be on these particular few days....

Yes. And if Lynch was operating under ' constraints ' it is exactly that kind of casual checking in which does not contribute to the central plot which would be first victim. People complained about the ' Sarah drinking alone' scene as being too drawn out. Well, yeah but how else do you show repetitive cyclical drinking in one 3 or 4 minute (?) scene. We checked in on the character to see how she was doing. We saw. A tense sad little vignette full of a sort of dread. Which a more plot driven / 'constraints' version of TP would have dumped on the cutting room floor or put it on the extras DVD.