TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

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Agent Earle
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Agent Earle »

Wonderful & Strange wrote:
The same conservative fans who disliked the original show are the same group who dislike it today. They want "proper" storytelling or else they lose patience.
Yeah, right. It must be comforting living in alternative reality.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Wonderful & Strange »

Agent Earle wrote:
Wonderful & Strange wrote:
The same conservative fans who disliked the original show are the same group who dislike it today. They want "proper" storytelling or else they lose patience.
Yeah, right. It must be comforting living in alternative reality.
Stop projecting.

The critics agree with me, not you.

The people who dislike the show are reactionaries longing for the same show they saw in 1990. That's nostalgia.

The haters now and then are both longing for more "traditional" narrative. That's conservative.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Aerozhul »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Aerozhul wrote:I love both shows, they are probably my #1 and #2 most favorite shows ever, with TP edging out GOT for #1. Having both of them back to back on Sunday nights has been like the best night of TV ever in my life, so much fun!

I think The Return is better than GOT Season 7, but I don't understand why we can't just enjoy both for what they are. They're both about 100x better than anything else on TV, pretty much ever.
Curious if you've read the books? I think I'd enjoy the last couple seasons substantially more if I hadn't.
I read all of the books, but after I'd already watched the first 5 seasons of the show. They didn't really lessen my enjoyment of the latter seasons, but maybe if I'd read them all prior to watching any of the series, I'd feel differently? My only gripe about the most recent seasons is how fast characters are jumping from continent to continent. However, I'm not sure how they could execute the many plots without throwing that inconsistency out the window.

Back on topic.....I wonder if all of the critical acclaim of TP:TR will result in good blu-ray and other streaming sales for those that missed it on Showtime?
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Aerozhul »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Aerozhul wrote:I love both shows, they are probably my #1 and #2 most favorite shows ever, with TP edging out GOT for #1. Having both of them back to back on Sunday nights has been like the best night of TV ever in my life, so much fun!

I think The Return is better than GOT Season 7, but I don't understand why we can't just enjoy both for what they are. They're both about 100x better than anything else on TV, pretty much ever.
Curious if you've read the books? I think I'd enjoy the last couple seasons substantially more if I hadn't.
I read all of the books, but after I'd already watched the first 5 seasons of the show. They didn't really lessen my enjoyment of the latter seasons, but maybe if I'd read them all prior to watching any of the series, I'd feel differently? My only gripe about the most recent seasons is how fast characters are jumping from continent to continent. However, I'm not sure how they could execute the many plots without throwing that inconsistency out the window.

Back on topic.....I wonder if all of the critical acclaim of TP:TR will result in good blu-ray and other streaming sales for those that missed it on Showtime?
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Aerozhul »

yaxomoxay wrote:
whoisalhedges wrote: The Hound: "Fuck the plot."
Now we know... Diane is The Hound's tulpa!!!

At any rate, I am happy about it. I like both shows, and this summer I had the chance to watch TP followed by GOT... ultimate proof that TV series are now much better than many feature movies (that's probably why movie theater ticket sales are at the bare minimum). GOT S7 was kinda rushed... TP was the opposite!




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Exactly how I feel.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

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The haters now and then are both longing for more "traditional" narrative. That's conservative.
If you go over and take a look at the 'profoundly disappointed' thread you will see it is not as simple as that.

There are some people, sure, that regret that this series is not a continuation of what went before, in terms of tone and character and narrative style and image quality and music, and so on.
But most people have a problem with aspects of this series as what it is now - not as what it isn't or could have been and never set out to be.

Problems that people have with TP TR unconnected with series 1/2 include
- dislike of digital image quality
- feeling that the whole thing is messy and disconnected and goes from scene to scene in random order, and is far too long and badly edited with too many pointless scenes.
- lack of warmth, lack of any real interest or investment in the characters as anything more than cardboard cut outs.
- the ' meta ' aspects - Lynch putting himself at the centre of his own drama as actor, the self-consciousness of it all
- the stilted and occasionally poor or apparently deliberately unconvincing acting, or hamming it up, the awkwardness of some of the performances.
- the over explicit ' literal' spelling out of the supernatural elements and the ''mythology dumps'', the B Movie clunkiness of the exposition.
- the fact that the only sympathetic characters are over 60, a general feeling of sourness and misanthropy about ' the state of young people today'
- the way female characters are portrayed ( all wives are shrews, none of the women have any agency)
- the whole ' Dougie' storyline outliving it's interest a long time before the 13 episodes it was given.
and so on.

All these ( and many other points raised in the ' disappointed' thread ) are valid observations and even if you like the series some of these criticisms have some merit or at the very least raise questions worth asking. TP TR is a great thing but it has been quite uneven in places, definitely had it's highs and lows, and there have been some really awkward moments. It is wrong to say that everyone who has a problem with this series - or really is disappointed in aspects of it - is a hater, or is conservative. In fact, it is probably quite a conservative position to take, to suggest that anyone who has a problem with TP TR ' doesn't get Lynch' or ' doesn't like weird stuff'. The truth is more interesting than that. The people on this board almost by definition are Lynch fans, that is what dugpa is for. So it is maybe worth listening to the voices of those who have taken an intense interest in this series, who usually like Lynch's work, but who haven't liked everything about TP TR as unequivocally as you or the Washington Post have.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Agent Earle »

Wonderful & Strange wrote:
Agent Earle wrote:
Wonderful & Strange wrote:
The same conservative fans who disliked the original show are the same group who dislike it today. They want "proper" storytelling or else they lose patience.
Yeah, right. It must be comforting living in alternative reality.
Stop projecting.

The critics agree with me, not you.

The people who dislike the show are reactionaries longing for the same show they saw in 1990. That's nostalgia.

The haters now and then are both longing for more "traditional" narrative. That's conservative.
You started your post by saying people who dislike this season disliked the previous ones. I don't know about projecting, but that's plain BS. It won't do you or the show any good to try to shoehorn those who don't like it (and there are more than a few) into your skewed version of reality.

The critics agree with you, you don't say?! My, I should go and stand in some corner.

Oh, and by the way, you do know that the original Peaks was, by the time it was finished off, reviled by your famed critics. Same goes for FWWM. Hmmm, I wonder what that could mean... Did they have it wrong the first time and right this time? Or is it the other way around?

Enjoy your alternative reality.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

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referendum wrote:- feeling that the whole thing is messy and disconnected and goes from scene to scene in random order, and is far too long and badly edited with too many pointless scenes.
- lack of warmth, lack of any real interest or investment in the characters as anything more than cardboard cut outs.
- the ' meta ' aspects - Lynch putting himself at the centre of his own drama as actor, the self-consciousness of it all
- the stilted and occasionally poor or apparently deliberately unconvincing acting, or hamming it up, the awkwardness of some of the performances.
- the over explicit ' literal' spelling out of the supernatural elements and the ''mythology dumps'', the B Movie clunkiness of the exposition.
- the fact that the only sympathetic characters are over 60, a general feeling of sourness and misanthropy about ' the state of young people today'
- the way female characters are portrayed ( all wives are shrews, none of the women have any agency)
- the whole ' Dougie' storyline outliving it's interest a long time before the 13 episodes it was given.
I completely disagree with all of these, especially about the women, and more but that's a longer conversation.
The people on this board almost by definition are Lynch fans, that is what dugpa is for. So it is maybe worth listening to the voices of those who have taken an intense interest in this series, who usually like Lynch's work, but who haven't liked everything about TP TR
The bulk of the traffic on Dugpa is for hardcore Twin Peaks fans and has been for many years. A subsegment of hardcore Twin Peaks fans are the ones most vehemently angry or critical about this revival. Dugpa now has a dedicated thread for people who hate the show. And a segment of hardcore fans also reviled FWWM. The commonality is the fanbase.

I'm not saying people can't have valid reasons for disliking the show because they absolutely can, but saying, as several others have (but not you, I don't think), that the demarcation line is "Lynch fans vs. Peaks fans" is not correct. Hardcore devotees attacked FWWM and they attack The Return today, and in both instances there is at least some element of fan expectation and ownership over how they expect Twin Peaks to behave and be conceptualized according to their own standard. So what I'm saying is that suggesting there is not an issue of fans taking ownership and feeling they are being disrespected is not seriously addressing the issue IMO.

For God's sake, we still have people insisting Lynch despises Hawk, Andy and Lucy despite making Hawk the prime mover in story at the Sheriff's Department and having Andy visit the fucking White Lodge. Ed and Norma get a massive fan service happy ending and people are still saying he hates the characters and the iconography of the diner, etc. Audrey Horne's subplot goes from challenging and baffling to revealing her creeping centrality to the narrative (with Richard, DoppleCoop etc.) followed by a showcase performance and massive cliffhanger and people think he's pissing on Audrey and Sherilyn Fenn. At some point people have to rock up and face the fact that they are projecting their own discomfort and anxiety over how Lynch has executed the revival onto the material itself, and are personalizing it to such a degree that they feel Lynch must have it out not only for them but for everything about the show that they love. And this has been going on for months. That is about fans as fans - and this board is full of mostly Twin Peaks fans who both like the new show and hate it. And I adjusted my post because I don't think you're actually saying this, but I have to make it clear that it's not Lynch fans vs. aggrieved Twin Peaks fans. It's just Twin Peaks fans. And there is at least some issue of entitlement and expectation. Both in 1992 and today.
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by referendum »

So what I'm saying is that suggesting there is not an issue of fans taking ownership and feeling they are being disrespected is not seriously addressing the issue IMO. [...] I have to make it clear that it's not Lynch fans vs. aggrieved Twin Peaks fans. It's just Twin Peaks fans. And there is at least some issue of entitlement and expectation. Both in 1992 and today.
yeah sure, i tried to deal with them in the first sentence, the TP fans people who compared it to the first one ^^^^ ''taking ownership and feeling they are being disrespected'' - you put it well. I nearly used the word ' betrayal' - some people have said they feel betrayed by this current series. So: agree with you. Fans blood can rise high.

But:

The ones who interest me, who i tried to refer to above, are the people (over on the disappointed channel) who have problems with the show on it's own terms, not in comparison to what happened 25 years ago.
Who as you say, are also going to already be fans of S 1/2 - i have yet to come across someone who really likes TP TR but hated S 1/2. ( Although having said that, there were some people on the Guardian website who said even though they liked TP 1/2 at the time, they prefer TP TR now, either because it has lost the hokey soap opera parts, or because S 1/2 (from today's perspective) looks dated, or because it is ' more mature'. There are - unsurprisingly - all kinds of shades of opinion :) ).

The point i was trying to make was a simple one, that it is possible to find aspects of this series of TP problematic, or even dislike it, without being ' conservative' or a 'hater'. You can like the series as a whole, and have reservations about some aspects of it, or find it very uneven. It is not necessary or obligatory to like everything about it, in order to find it fascinating and be really invested in the programme to the point where ( gasp ) it temporarily takes over your mind or even ( groan) to the point where you end up having to join dugpa to talk about it ( aaaagh).

You say:
I completely disagree with all of these, especially about the women, and more but that's a longer conversation.
Yes it is a longer conversation, one that has been taking place on the disappointed channel, and also ( for the latter point) on the Gender thread, so that is why I suggested ' wonderful and strange' took a ' peek ' at the thread, instead of hiding behind the generalised 'hater/conservative' thing. There has been some pretty interesting and considered stuff written there.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by FlyingSquirrel »

I've never seen GoT and don't have any particular desire to. I'm growing weary of the "darker and edgier" trend in modern entertainment - which may sound like a strange thing to say from a TP/Lynch fan - but to me, at least, Lynch doesn't ask us to "root for" characters who go down the antihero path in the way that, say, The Walking Dead does.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Novalis »

FlyingSquirrel wrote:I've never seen GoT and don't have any particular desire to. I'm growing weary of the "darker and edgier" trend in modern entertainment - which may sound like a strange thing to say from a TP/Lynch fan - but to me, at least, Lynch doesn't ask us to "root for" characters who go down the antihero path in the way that, say, The Walking Dead does.
Well said. It's true I'm not without misgivings at some of Lynch's work, but one thing I really appreciate in Twin Peaks is the 'straight arrow' character of Dale Cooper. Incorruptibles -- uncompromising people who can't be bought and have no cynical, grubby motivations -- are truly the most radical concept around right now, and a subject most writers and networks wouldn't touch for fear of being seen as idealistic, not 'gritty' enough, etc.

What aggravates us thinking folks (we watch Twin Peaks so I think I can call us that) is that we can see how cynical, gritty 'realism' (in which there are no avowedly good people, only grimy antiheroes struggling against each other in a moral vacuum), is a convention like any other, as fixed in time and place as any other. We can see how this vision of the world is pushed because it reduces all questions to pragmatics and logistics, and erases all the really troublesome questions like how to go about making life meaningful and how to relate to strangers. No doubt some of us are sick to the back teeth with having it shovelled down our throats. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the world outside and has less than zero bearing on our lives.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by The Gazebo »

N. Needleman wrote:Hardcore devotees attacked FWWM and they attack The Return today, and in both instances there is at least some element of fan expectation and ownership over how they expect Twin Peaks to behave and be conceptualized according to their own standard. So what I'm saying is that suggesting there is not an issue of fans taking ownership and feeling they are being disrespected is not seriously addressing the issue IMO.
[...]
And there is at least some issue of entitlement and expectation. Both in 1992 and today.
There is no doubt you have a point here, for me anyway. While I like to think that I didn't have any particular expectations for this season (other than much more surrealism than we've gotten so far), I'm pretty sure there were things I took for granted. One of the major ones was the tone/look/ambience of the old show. With that a thing of the past, the show added unfamiliar locations, a hugely expanded and literal mythology and a fragmented way of telling the story. I hope you're able to at least acknowledge, if not outright agree, that The Return has been so far removed from the original that even calling it a continuation of Twin Peaks is a stretch for a few of us (and I realize that people might disagree about what Twin Peaks actually represented at its core).

Furthermore, the concept of 'entitlement' is often connected to some level of 'lack of sophistication' (here you might disagree, and the choice of term is mine). Having read and participated in the thread for the disappointed, I sometimes feel like an illiterate simpleton compared to others who have major issues with the show. My point is that two people with the same level of expectations (and similar exposure to challenging television/cinema) might have ended up on each side of the fence during the course of this show, which to me indicates that there is still some way to go before we reach a critical consensus of The Return's brilliance.

(For the record, I still hope that given enough time, I'll learn to appreciate this season. My own sarcasm in various posts over the past month must be read as an attempt to let off steam, instead of ending up in the newspapers, as Louis CK would have put it :) )
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by Framed_Angel »

Wonderful & Strange wrote:
Agent Earle wrote:
Wonderful & Strange wrote:The same conservative fans who disliked the original show are the same group who dislike it today. They want "proper" storytelling or else they lose patience.
Yeah, right. It must be comforting living in alternative reality.
Stop projecting. The critics agree with me, not you. The people who dislike the show are reactionaries longing for the same show they saw in 1990. That's nostalgia. The haters now and then are both longing for more "traditional" narrative. That's conservative.
Weird seeing distilled and reductive labels and line-in-sand kicking in a Lynch forum. And extrapolating, or at what point did one lone critic at WaPo become "The Critics"? : \
I take the 'reactionary' label as a compliment though. For one thing, is Lynch not more likely to appreciate a complexity of reactions than mere, straight-forward accolades?
He appears humble when he accepts awards so accolades not to be discounted of course.
But I suspect the artist behind this production that's the subject of so much conflicted opinion, cares less about being fawned over or which is the "correct" way to receive his work, and has indicated with several earlier works there are many ways to interpret them.
WIth The Return, for me it comes down to not how to interpret but how one experiences it, that is open to possibilities beyond just one.
And I don't want this to be mistaken for "just create for the sake of provoking"! Because I'm not about that either.
The more a viewer starts to narrow the meaning[s] into Only One That Is Correct however -- that just goes against everything I learned as an art student back then, and art enthusiast now.
I find lots to criticize and plenty to enjoy about TP:TR. If Lynch himself isn't going to tell me how to take it in - - does it really do the man any service me telling others with divergent experiences to appropriate more of my appraisal and expertise?
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by mtwentz »

Framed_Angel wrote:
Wonderful & Strange wrote:
Agent Earle wrote:Yeah, right. It must be comforting living in alternative reality.
Stop projecting. The critics agree with me, not you. The people who dislike the show are reactionaries longing for the same show they saw in 1990. That's nostalgia. The haters now and then are both longing for more "traditional" narrative. That's conservative.
Weird seeing distilled and reductive labels and line-in-sand kicking in a Lynch forum. And extrapolating, or at what point did one lone critic at WaPo become "The Critics"? : \
I take the 'reactionary' label as a compliment though. For one thing, is Lynch not more likely to appreciate a complexity of reactions than mere, straight-forward accolades?
He appears humble when he accepts awards so accolades not to be discounted of course.
But I suspect the artist behind this production that's the subject of so much conflicted opinion, cares less about being fawned over or which is the "correct" way to receive his work, and has indicated with several earlier works there are many ways to interpret them.
WIth The Return, for me it comes down to not how to interpret but how one experiences it, that is open to possibilities beyond just one.
And I don't want this to be mistaken for "just create for the sake of provoking"! Because I'm not about that either.
The more a viewer starts to narrow the meaning[s] into Only One That Is Correct however -- that just goes against everything I learned as an art student back then, and art enthusiast now.
I find lots to criticize and plenty to enjoy about TP:TR. If Lynch himself isn't going to tell me how to take it in - - does it really do the man any service me telling others with divergent experiences to appropriate more of my appraisal and expertise?
This was just one critic but the overall critical consensus has been very positive. 72% on Metacritic I believe.
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Re: TP:TR Gets Glowing Review in the Washington Post

Post by The Gazebo »

mtwentz wrote:This was just one critic but the overall critical consensus has been very positive. 72% on Metacritic I believe.
Listen, it's hard to argue for The Return's failure when critics are hoisting it up the flagpole. I would walk around with a degree of smugness myself if my opinion aligned with the critics. However, I firmly believe that this particular show needs a few years for some form of consensus to build, simply because of its divisive nature. I've already hinted at the critcs' fear of losing their cultural capital if they went swimming against the tide while it still matters. In a few years time, this risk is lessened, and we might get their true opinion. If highly experienced critics are still trumpeting The Return's excellence, I'll readily accept the fact that my appreciation of true art has its limits.
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