Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

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Would you like to see a 4th season happen?

Yes
171
65%
No
45
17%
Unsure
48
18%
 
Total votes: 264
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Wonderful & Strange
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Wonderful & Strange »

I'm not surprised Lynch is open to returning. I've thought, and predicted, all summer long that Lynch would like to continue.

The only question was critical and fan response. Critical response has been an overwhelming success, and the streaming numbers have been a success too.

The only potential stumbling block were the conservative fans of the old show, and conservatives in general who believe narrative always must be Aristotelian -- who have proven to be vocal minority (especially here) with little influence. Not to mention this is exactly the kind of people Season 3 is designed to confused and annoy -- very similar to the reactionaries who found the original show too strange.

So we may have to wait longer than usual for a new season, but this shouldn't surprise us given Lynch's uncompromising vision and style. In fact, I don't want Twin Peaks to be produced every year like other shows if it will lessen the quality.
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Agent Earle
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Agent Earle »

Wonderful & Strange wrote: The only potential stumbling block were the conservative fans of the old show, and conservatives in general who believe narrative always must be Aristotelian -- who have proven to be vocal minority (especially here) with little influence. Not to mention this is exactly the kind of people Season 3 is designed to confused and annoy -- very similar to the reactionaries who found the original show too strange.
It wasn't that long ago that you claimed "the conservatives" (whoever they might be, I know no such person among the ones who like(d) Twin Peaks) were not fans of the old show, that they were the ones who brought it down and that they are identical to "the conservatives" who hate the new show and try to bring it down as well - so now you're prepared to admit they are fans of the first show, after all? Hm, I guess you're an ideal reader of The Secret History then.

Moreover, you've just called it: The Return's main purpose was to confuse and annoy a certain group of people (the ones whose stance towards the show over the years was instrumental in getting it back on the screen). Wow, whatta noble artistic purpose!
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by writersblock »

I am changing my mind about this constantly.

If a new season diminished the quality of anything (which I doubt) then I would go with no.

But... Yes!
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Novalis
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Novalis »

I still have reservations: If it happens I'd like to see a further season go in a different direction completely, facing a new mystery, and stop trying to rework old ground. I think the Laura-Cooper story is all but exhausted now.

That said, I have adjusted my vote from 'unsure' to 'yes'.
As a matter of fact, 'Chalfont' was the name of the people that rented this space before. Two Chalfonts. Weird, huh?
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by AgentEcho »

Novalis wrote:I still have reservations: If it happens I'd like to see a further season go in a different direction completely, facing a new mystery, and stop trying to rework old ground. I think the Laura-Cooper story is all but exhausted now.

That said, I have adjusted my vote from 'unsure' to 'yes'.
I would guess that Laura-Cooper would still factor into any continuation. I've interpreted much of the new season as a declaration how vital Laura and what happened to her is to this fictional universe he created. But also Lynch seems to be motivated as much by how his art is created and who he collaborates with as what the final product will be and the experience the viewer has with it (see Preston, Tammy). So working again with Sheryl Lee and Kyle Maclachlan would probably be just as important as having anything left to say about Laura and Cooper. (I'd be really happy to see Sheryl Lee have a larger role, personally).

If there is a new season I hope I remember the lessons I've learned from this season. Namely, don't expect anything, just be open to the experience.
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mine
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by mine »

Novalis wrote: Lynch's view on this is quite typical of what many of his generation of artists came to believe, funnily enough. In this ethos, once a work is made public its connection to a producer seems to evaporate, even while traces of the production process are purposely left in.

'[T]he voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins' claimed Roland Barthes, the year before 'Mai 68' and two years before Foucault replied with his equally notorious essay 'What is an Author?'. These writings resume feelings that had already been given voice earlier on in the century by the New Critics. But these texts had massive repercussions and influences in the art world. In the humanities there was a general feeling that appeals to the authority of an author or producer insufficiently accounted for the meaning and significance of works and texts; such appeals were held to fearfully police meaning's 'proliferation'. The old biographical methodology and connoisseurial accounts that had relied on a 'life-and-works' model of interpreting and appreciating art were seen as outdated and conservative -- it was up to the reception of the crowd what a work meant. I'm not claiming Lynch was explicitly taught these attitudes (his study of fine arts in Boston was perhaps a touch too early in his timeline for that any case) but that there existed within the artistic and literary communities of the late 1960s a 'structure of feeling' (Raymond WIlliams' term) in which people came to reject the author figure as a source of interpretive authority. The importance formerly accorded authors' and artists' names was recast as a mere function of organising and collating works on the part of collectors and critics. The word of the producer could not act as a guarantee or source of meaning. These factors deeply influenced individuals such as Warhol, for example, and led him to the adoption of his purposefully gnomic silence over meaning when confronted by would-be interviewers. By 1971, when Lynch was leaving Philadelphia and heading for Los Angeles and his work on Eraserhead, this structure of feeling would almost certainly have reached him, filtering down through contacts in the art world and their discussions.

While all this context may shed some light on the social genesis of Lynch's outlook, I do think that Lynch has held onto this attitude beyond its historical scope, for different reasons. The 'death of the author' idea has now lost a great deal of its potency and traction, but Lynch has steadfastly repeated its core lesson: to publicly create something is in some sense to die, to be interred beneath one's creation and the vicissitudes of its reception, cast adrift on the tide of culture and its favourite hermeneutic of the hour. But for Lynch I sense his withdrawal from interpretation is not just based on whatever structuralism 101 might have filtered down to his artistic milieu, but is far more something with spiritual implications. He speaks endlessly of creating worlds and feelings and moods (often without naming them) that he wants us to enter. He wants us in there in order to arrive at our own conclusions, and refuses to say yea or nay to these in terms of how they might tally with his intentions. If they are our intuitions, then they are the right ones, he will claim. So something else is also going on there, something that is vaguely reminiscent of 1950s and 1960s 'Human Potential movement' thinking -- Rogerian (after Carl Rogers) and vaguely 'spiritual' in its implicit belief that the universe is unfailingly provident for those who authentically seek answers. You only have to add what we know of Lynch's dalliance with the Maharishi and TM to reach an understanding of how that would gel together with certain western-filtered Asian religions. What may have began with 20th century paradigm shifts in the relation of artistic production and consumption of meaning ends up dovetailing, in Lynch's world, with a view of creativity and art as being inherently spiritually meaningful for the individual and yet silent in a social, shared register. To be honest, once you clear away the veneer of orientalism and 'depth', it's actually a very protestant (i.e. individualising) vision. Meaning is atomised into as many monads as there are people. I don't actually like that aspect of his talk; under the pretence of being non-directive, it is highly directive.

Apologies for the length and tangential nature of this post. Maybe it can live somewhere else in the near future, but I wanted to express it before it evaporated.
I think there's another complemental reading of Lynch's stance, especially in the context at hand. He was asked that in what can be defined as a Lynch safe space and I believe he doesn't appreciate being expected to even have had those answers when he produced the art that prompted the question.
I don't think it's so much about the refusal to provide explanations as much as annoyance at being expected to have written and created the art approaching it as if there had to be an explanation. It's not that he refused to give an answer, he doesn't have one.

I don't think there are universal rules when it comes to how or if at all explicit art and the artist has to be in terms of explanations, interpretations and motives. Songwriters for example may purposely shape their lyrics to be vague enough so that references to their private lives aren't discernable, welcome whatever readings of their words by the public but at the same time oppose their art to be used when taken into contexts they aren't comfortable with. It varies greatly but in any case is defined by the artist and dependent on the art, specifically how abstract it is.
I think Twin Peaks is taken for granted to be far more abstract and unconventional than it is. Neither the original show nor FWWM had a narrative that deviated from a conventional one that much. They were both very concrete stories with surrealist elements at the periphery - even though it's usually assumed to be otherwise.
The Return it's not enough of a departure from that and more importantly is inevitably associated with what came before so that it can't claim answers aren't important just because it assumes there don't have to be any. It kind of has to justify the lack of answers.
In Twin Peaks Lynch seems to approach scenes like living paintings. They are relatively self-contained and what they convey in isolation is far more important than what or if they have any meaning in the larger narrative. This is why I believe The Return has a bunch of potentially interesting movies comprised of carefully selected scenes in it, but the whole 18 hours together it's not that effective. In TR Lynch can be exceptionally effective at conveying very specific moods and emotions in specific scenes but since he refuses to put them in context that provide a semblance of an explanation as to why their existence are justified beyond him feeling like it, robes them of any deeper meaning than what they provide at face value. It must be very liberating from his perspective because by refusing explanations and answers he can do whatever the hell he feels like.

With Audrey specifically it comes down to a)by the time we encounter her in TR we are already familiar with her backstory (a non particularly imaginative soapy one at that) and we have a couple of clues as to what happened since (clues that are again not particularly imaginative and soapy) b) what we see of her doesn't really pose any other questions than the one Lynch was asked. An interesting follow up question would have been why an explanation about Audrey's state isn't important while some for example relative to Blue Rose were so explicitly given?

I don't think it's the public fault if they seek those answers, is he as a creator that didn't succeed at producing TR in a way that made those questions feel unnecessary if that was what his intent was as he seems to be saying. When he explains you shouldn't expect him to provide answers he innadvertedly contradicts himself by giving you very specific direction about how you should perceive his work.
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Pinky
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Pinky »

I'd definitely like to see a fourth happen. I didn't know I wanted one until they seemed to start in that direction towards the end of 17, but by the finale's end it seems pretty obvious imo. I mean, if it doesn't happen, what we got was one hell of an ending and it's more than good enough, but I think that they'd have given us something even more powerful if they knew that they were done. I don't mean in terms of ambiguity or anything, I just think that if they didn't have to worry about writing themselves into corners for any potential further seasons, they'd have had the freedom to go further at the ending.
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by crash_and_burn »

Pinky wrote:I'd definitely like to see a fourth happen. I didn't know I wanted one until they seemed to start in that direction towards the end of 17, but by the finale's end it seems pretty obvious imo. I mean, if it doesn't happen, what we got was one hell of an ending and it's more than good enough, but I think that they'd have given us something even more powerful if they knew that they were done. I don't mean in terms of ambiguity or anything, I just think that if they didn't have to worry about writing themselves into corners for any potential further seasons, they'd have had the freedom to go further at the ending.
I agree. The only dread I experienced from the finale was associated with the idea that there might NOT be a fourth season.

The optimist side of me felt the way it ended though, was an indicator that they wanted to be able to continue and reboot TP further, if possible.

I sincerely hope it continues, I really want to see how everything in Odessa ties in to the bigger picture. Also, for the sake of Kyle, Sherilyn, Sheryl, James, Madchen and of course David and Mark.

They all deserve the work.
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by N. Needleman »

AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Novalis »

N. Needleman wrote:Relevant.
Ah so. Green glove guy was Lynch's creation after all.

Boxes full of ideas, eh? That sounds promising.

That table looks very useful. I could use a table like that.
As a matter of fact, 'Chalfont' was the name of the people that rented this space before. Two Chalfonts. Weird, huh?
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by N. Needleman »

I knew Freddie was all Lynch. That whole ridiculous/wonderful monologue was so him.
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

Just had an earth shattering thought:

If Season 4 takes place in an alternate timeline, then we could very well see the return of Hank Jennings!
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by Venus »

Wonderful & Strange wrote:


The only potential stumbling block were the conservative fans of the old show, and conservatives in general who believe narrative always must be Aristotelian -- who have proven to be vocal minority (especially here) with little influence. Not to mention this is exactly the kind of people Season 3 is designed to confused and annoy -- very similar to the reactionaries who found the original show too strange.
This is a very naive and narrow minded statement. Hear the other side, see the other side. Not everything is so black and white least of all people's reaction to TPTR.
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by DoppelBocker »

by Novalis
That table looks very useful. I could use a table like that.
Only thing I don't like is reaching under the table to grab things. That bottle of wine's pretty far back there; gonna have to tilt a bit get it out without hitting the top.
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Re: Poll: Would you like to see a 4th season happen? (SPOILERS PERMITTED)

Post by writersblock »

It's strange, because I loved The Return - even more than Season 1 and 2 - but I would have voted No even a week or two ago... because it felt like a perfect way to end it - but this is me speaking as someone who thought "How's Annie?" was the perfect ending to the show, too.

But now I am thinking about what they could do with it and where they could go. Because there is so much, to me, that they could do.

I know that, no matter what I came up with, Lynch and Frost would probably still pull the carpet from under me.

But if I can see the potential of how this show could continue, then the two geniuses that came up with this return could too.

Season Four - Bring it on!
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