So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

[IcedOver]

I'll take the best parts of "Return" (minus the last two) over perhaps episodes 16 through 26 of the original, but no, overall it's inferior.

[Agent Earle]

The Return is shite and to call it "Twin Peaks" is an abomination. Better than the original?! Don't make me laugh. Frost, Peyton, Lynch & Engels all the way baby!

[Mystery Roach]

It's still too soon for me to commit, because TP, FWWM, and TR each bring something unique and wonderful to the table that is Twin Peaks. Of course I'm inclined to lean more towards TR right now because it's new and I'm still totally obsessed by it, but one thing I can say for sure is that it's a much more cohesive and consistent work of greatness than the original series.

I love the original series with all my heart but I think I prefer The Return as a "complete work," warts and all.

One aspect of TR that doesn't get the recognition it deserves is its sense of humor. I'll admit that it's bone dry most of the time and occasionally irony drenched or even a bit mean spirited. But this thing got genuine howls of laughter out of me like no other show (or film) in recent memory.

I wouldn't fault anyone for being put off by the multiple drastic tonal shifts even within a single episode, but its ability to go from genuine excitement and horror, to total absurdity, and then back again really struck a chord with me. Masterfully done in my opinion. And if it wasn't intentional (which is an idea I would entertain), then I thank whatever stars had to align to make it happen.

So many scenes are absolutely perfect, subtle comedy. And sometimes it turns your expectations into a punchline, allowing you laugh at yourself and the insane, surreal improbability of the whole thing. I think these moments came across as alienating or even malicious for some viewers (which is fair enough), but I pretty strongly disagree with that angle.

I completely agree about the humor. I've had some enormous bouts of laughter watching this show, and it's definitely intentional. Lynch always fills his work with absurd humor, even if sometimes it gets overshadowed in our memories by other elements. Even Inland Empire has some outrageously funny moments in it.

[AgentEcho]

I'm not really ready to make a call on this. At the moment I feel the highs are slightly higher with the original, the lows are WAAAAAAY lower, but The Return is more consistently engaging and fascinating. I think in a few years The Return will be what I more frequently re-watch.

[Cipher]

Is it possible to say I think it vastly elevates the original run while also not feeling ready to make that call?

For what it's worth, I still feel Fire Walk With Me is the best thing under the Peaks name.

[ScarFace32]

For what it's worth, I still feel Fire Walk With Me is the best thing under the Peaks name.

Yes Fire Walk with Me. The song with the bass when they are dancing and the convenience store scene

[Tailsun]

It's still too soon for me to commit, because TP, FWWM, and TR each bring something unique and wonderful to the table that is Twin Peaks. Of course I'm inclined to lean more towards TR right now because it's new and I'm still totally obsessed by it, but one thing I can say for sure is that it's a much more cohesive and consistent work of greatness than the original series.

I love the original series with all my heart but I think I prefer The Return as a "complete work," warts and all.

One aspect of TR that doesn't get the recognition it deserves is its sense of humor. I'll admit that it's bone dry most of the time and occasionally irony drenched or even a bit mean spirited. But this thing got genuine howls of laughter out of me like no other show (or film) in recent memory.

I wouldn't fault anyone for being put off by the multiple drastic tonal shifts even within a single episode, but its ability to go from genuine excitement and horror, to total absurdity, and then back again really struck a chord with me. Masterfully done in my opinion. And if it wasn't intentional (which is an idea I would entertain), then I thank whatever stars had to align to make it happen.

So many scenes are absolutely perfect, subtle comedy. And sometimes it turns your expectations into a punchline, allowing you laugh at yourself and the insane, surreal improbability of the whole thing. I think these moments came across as alienating or even malicious for some viewers (which is fair enough), but I pretty strongly disagree with that angle.

I completely agree about the humor. I've had some enormous bouts of laughter watching this show, and it's definitely intentional. Lynch always fills his work with absurd humor, even if sometimes it gets overshadowed in our memories by other elements. Even Inland Empire has some outrageously funny moments in it.

I actually have yet to dig into the bulk of Lynch's filmography so I didn't feel informed enough to comment on it, but Eraserhead is one of my all time favorites and indeed has much more of a sense of humor than its reputation lets on. It took me a while to figure out that my urge to laugh at certain situations was OK. "Oh, you ARE sick" is one of the funniest lines of all time right in the middle of a surreal nightmare.

Even still, I found myself fighting against the sense of humor in TR. It took a handful of episodes until I really fell in sync with it.

A bit unrelated but I watched Mulholland Drive for the first time just a few weeks before The Return wrapped up. Needless to say I'm happy I did given how much of TR feels cut from the same cloth. I'm already craving a rewatch of both!

[Skip Bittman]

I much prefer it to the original, which was already one of the best television shows ever made. How they managed this still impresses the hell out of me.

[djerdap]

I definitely need to rewatch the whole thing to make proper judgment. At this point, I think the new Twin Peaks is a more unique, complex and consistent vision of a director not distracted by TV restrictions. That being said, I think at this point I still prefer the Lynch-directed episodes of the original TP (in particular Episodes 2, 14 and 29) to anything in the new one.

[Trudy Chelgren]

Fire Walk with Me is better than The Return, The Return is better than the majority of the original, select episodes; the Pilot, 2, 3, 4 and the first episode of Season 2, are superior to The Return.

[writersblock]

I prefer "The Return"

Not that it makes me love Season 1 and 2 any less... far from it. But the risk / reward factor present here, combined with the fact I never thought it would happen and the unflinching vision of Frost / Lynch made me appreciate it all the more.

Some days I feel like I am the dreamer... because this shouldn't have ever happened in the real world

[writersblock]

I sat through all 48 episodes, Fire Walk With Me, and The Missing Pieces last week and loved the whole thing... but Fire Walk WIth Me, The Missing Pieces, and the Return held my attention more that Season 1 and 2... I felt like I was working through them just to get to the stuff I wanted to rewatch. I did love them all, though.

Weirdly, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I wasn't bothered by the Jean Renault or Evelyn Marsh storyline at all. I remember hating the DIane Keaton episode for so long... but the Albert appearance among other things shone out as good moments from the series, in what I still consider the worst episode made. Weird.

[Rhodes]

The original show had a lot of potential: some nice, innovative ideas, lovable characters, a promising main plot, etc.
But overall it was far from a brilliant show with some minor flaws (Evelyn, Little Nicky). To the contrary: the vast majority of both season 1 and 2 was mediocre or even weak. It was the standout brilliant moments that were the exceptions. We know that the production process was not professional at all, but rather a mess. And it showed.

What was great about season 1 and 2: the pilot, "do your palms ever itch?", Coopers dream about Laura and the dancing dwarf, the scene with Tibet and the bottles, MIKE explaining about himself and BOB, the Audrey dance, Maddy's murder, Alberts "I love you, sheriff Truman", Audrey working a cherry, the grandson doing his magic tric with the creamed corn, Jacoby fooling around with ping pong balls, Cooper in the black lodge and his doppleganger and the finale mirror scene. But besides these epic scenes (that make up no more than 10% of screentime), we had 90% that was mainly just bad (in my opinion). And it has gotten worse over the years. The original really didn't age well.

I think The Return was vastly superior. I agree completely with the poster who said: "The only problem with the Return was that it made the original show dated and silly".

My expectations for The Return were sky high. However, untill the scenes with Monica Belushi, Audrey and the final 90 minutes, I was only 90% convinced (and just a little bit unfulfilled). But the whole "Who is the dreamer approach" made this the best season of any television show in history.

[Trudy Chelgren]

I'd also like to say it's pretty astonishing how a story of inter-dimensional conflict and divine intent was wrapped up in stories of insurance fraud, small-town crime, family life and values post-economic crisis, and finding yourself again, (or not - I knew Out of Sand was written for the show!) and that, most of the time, it worked.

[EddyEdson]

For me the original run was TV-with-quirks & I'm not into TV. There were bits and pieces of it which I thought were really good - all of them in the Lynch-directed episodes - but I didn't fall in love with the thing as a whole or care very much about most of the characters.

I thought FWWM was at a whole different, excellent level, despite some flaws.

So from S3 I was hoping for something more like FWWM, less like the original series, and it delivered on that.

At least the cinematography, the acting, the directing, the scene-by-scene texture of character and emotion.

But frankly I thought that a lot of the writing was pretty crappy. At the macro-level, for example, I thought futzing with Laura's beautiful and tragic story from FWWM was just a mistake - making her into a Cosmic Force of some kind for me simply detracts from her FWWM story as a human being.

At the micro-level, exposition elements like "Project Blue Book" and "Jowday" for me were just lame and interest-sapping. Etc etc etc.

But crappy writing was certainly a factor in the original run, with much less of the good things about S3.