Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work
Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:29 am
I wasn't sure how I was going to vote in this because I have been going back and forth betwixt Like or Love and Heavily Mixed, Leaning Towards Like, until last night. I love the series as a whole, and just feel a few plot/narrative structure adjustments could've made it even stronger. I don't think any of the story needed changed, but I feel a few things could have grown out of the central Cooper story better. Below is a copy and paste from a post I made in the Profoundly Disappointed Thread
While we're seeing a story in progress in Vegas, Cooper drops in and fixes a lot of the ills created by Mr. C and the creation of Dougie Jones in Vegas and pulls it all together. That half hour in Vegas in Part 11 was, to me, worth every moment we spent with Cooper as Dougie and helped return him to himself and Twin Peaks. He is almost the opposite of BOB and Lodge entities here. He feeds on love and happiness instead of garmonbozia to find his way back to himself. I know it's sort of deus ex outlet in Part 15, but I don't think Cooper would have had the presence of mind to go for the outlet when he heard the name Gordon Cole had it not been for the journey he took.
Realizing how satisfying that story was for me, and having the ending truly click in to place for me a couple nights ago, solidified my Like or Love vote. I still don't disagree with myself from a couple weeks ago about tightening the narrative, and I would have preferred a bit more Angelo and that it be shot on film, but I'm ok with it and love what we got flaws and all. Just like the original two seasons.
However, I ended up voting Like or Love. I got to this vote by rewatching the Las Vegas portion of Part 11 last night. Every part of the story that isn't Cooper's journey is mostly us being dropped in to stories that have been in progress for 25 years, but almost everything in the journey undertaken by Cooper is "tight" and has payoff and resolution. Vegas is also the part of the piece that had the most traditional tension, feeling, stakes, and narrative. The other things in Twin Peaks like Becky and Steven are just glimpses in to where Twin Peaks and its inhabitants are now.I would agree that it wasn't great, but it was focused and even when it lost focus, the plot still grew out of the central narrative and just spiraled out. That's why I think that most of the Twin Peaks stuff could've been cut or moved to create a tighter focus. Right from the beginning of the original show, every character we met along the way we knew how they spiraled out of Laura Palmer(or at least we did within the first hour or so of the Pilot if I'm remembering correctly). In TR, we are introduced to arcs like Becky and Steven and Beverly and Tom without them growing out of the story. Looking at it from a narrative sense, the first scene of Ben we should have gotten was the 315 key arriving which could have just been part of the Beverly intro and Jerry weed business stuff, then the Ben and Beverly relationship and Jerry high in the woods could've grown out of that. Then you could have had Jerry watching Jacoby which could have then cut to Nadine. For Bobby, Shelly, Becky, and Steven we should've seen Bobby on the case and then flourished out in to the Becky, Steven, and Shelly of it all from Bobby. For this season, Cooper was the goose that laid the golden egg instead of Laura, so to tighten it and make the plot stronger everything should have grown out of that.
But the problem with that, with the story they told us, would have been that we really wouldn't have seen any of Twin Peaks, outside of the sheriff's station until probably Part 6 at least. People are already upset with how little time we spent in Twin Peaks, so I'm not sure how that would have gone over. The other problem is that they didn't write it as episodes and just wrote one long script that essentially just dropped us in to a show in progress in it's 27th season, only we didn't get to see seasons 3 - 26. Though this could have been remedied if the first Frost book bridged the gap and TSHoTP could've been released after this series concluded.
While we're seeing a story in progress in Vegas, Cooper drops in and fixes a lot of the ills created by Mr. C and the creation of Dougie Jones in Vegas and pulls it all together. That half hour in Vegas in Part 11 was, to me, worth every moment we spent with Cooper as Dougie and helped return him to himself and Twin Peaks. He is almost the opposite of BOB and Lodge entities here. He feeds on love and happiness instead of garmonbozia to find his way back to himself. I know it's sort of deus ex outlet in Part 15, but I don't think Cooper would have had the presence of mind to go for the outlet when he heard the name Gordon Cole had it not been for the journey he took.
Realizing how satisfying that story was for me, and having the ending truly click in to place for me a couple nights ago, solidified my Like or Love vote. I still don't disagree with myself from a couple weeks ago about tightening the narrative, and I would have preferred a bit more Angelo and that it be shot on film, but I'm ok with it and love what we got flaws and all. Just like the original two seasons.