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

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

Post by Venus »

No surprise but without question, I prefer the original 2 series to The Return. I even prefer the worst of series 2 to the The Return. Though I am completely honest and I did find the last two eps of TPTR intriguing to watch in parts and would have been interested to have seen where they went with it. A shame they left it to the last minute to do that imo. But definitely the first two seasons are superior to TR for me.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by mtwentz »

Venus wrote:No surprise but without question, I prefer the original 2 series to The Return. I even prefer the worst of series 2 to the The Return. Though I am completely honest and I did find the last two eps of TPTR intriguing to watch in parts and would have been interested to have seen where they went with it. A shame they left it to the last minute to do that imo. But definitely the first two seasons are superior to TR for me.
Hey Venus, glad at least you saw some glimmer of hope in the last two episodes. For me, those last two very evocative of some of the European Pilot and (of course) FWWM. The sound design throughout the series was excellent IMHO, but completely out of this world in 17 & 18.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by referendum »

there is a basic difference between the series 27 years ago and the one now that is worth drawing attention to.

27 years ago the cast were young and hot. Now several people are dead and many of the rest are pensionable or semi-retired. That alone might suggest a shift in perspective.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Gabriel »

mtwentz wrote:Hey Venus, glad at least you saw some glimmer of hope in the last two episodes. For me, those last two very evocative of some of the European Pilot and (of course) FWWM. The sound design throughout the series was excellent IMHO, but completely out of this world in 17 & 18.
Yeah, the ending finally gave me something to get to grips with. I just felt I wasted the previous 16 hours.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Hester Prynne »

I enjoyed TR, and while some of the parts were some of the greatest hours of tv I've watched in a long time (I wish they had made Part 8 into a film similar to FWWM), my heart will always be partial to the original series. There was just something magical about that first season that is hard to replicate, and I appreciate that they didn't try to do that with TR. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss those elements in TR, but given that it ended with different realities/timelines/identities, it leaves the characters that we knew and loved from the original series preserved in a way - their outcomes in TR may in fact not be where they ended up after all, or may just be one version of many outcomes/stories.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Nikki Grace »

BGAP wrote:
Nikki Grace wrote:
Agent Earle wrote: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!
I like the scope of the eighteen hour format, in my opinion it works better and more cohesively, especially with how retrospectively you can see how timings have been played with and echoes across the series. The original is a beautiful work of art but I really dislike a great deal of season two, and while many of the network constraints led to some of the great moments on the show (because sometimes limitations can lead to creative inspiration), I also find occasions when it leaves me wanting and unfulfilled. So The Return was more of a success for me in both of those areas.

I didn't want to get into a competitive thing, I love both, and it goes without saying that both rely on each other. I think The Return is a better all round endeavour however, at least for my preferences and taste in Twin Peaks. I also love how the ideals of the characters and Lynch-Frost responsible for writing them have changed over the quarter century; I would refer anyone again to the wonderful article written that I linked to talk about how Cooper's character has evolved to do what he had to do in the finale. The show feels more world-weary but in a way that is very realistic and prescient.

Speaking of which, did anyone else find echoes of Tarkovsky in The Return? Especially the ideas about sacrifice. I am not sure if David Lynch or Mark Frost have ever made reference to his movies.
Yes! Also noticed echoes, if not blatant references, to Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, Terence Malick, Alain Resnais and of course, Stanley Kubrick.
Yes haha, someone pointed out on Twitter that the Apollo carpet from The Overlook Hotel in The Shining was recreated for one of the FBI scenes. That's more of an explicit reference, Lynch doesn't tend to do many of them. On the subject of Tarkovsky, I would love to know, but I know how Lynch detests talking about other films in any great length. Given how he was in the art scene in the 60s and a student of AFI's Film Studies program (where he saw most of the avant garde shorts he has talked about later on in life) in the 70s it is likely he saw some of Tarkovsky's movies. The theme of sacrifice was very big in The Return and in the same destructive, apocalyptic way as Tarkovsky. I can definitely see some Brakhage in it now you mention it. Where were the Malick allusions? Speaking of Malick, it's a shame that Jack Fisk didn't reunite with Lynch as production designer on The Return - but I do love the work of Ruth De Jong!
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Nikki Grace »

Gabriel wrote:
mtwentz wrote:Hey Venus, glad at least you saw some glimmer of hope in the last two episodes. For me, those last two very evocative of some of the European Pilot and (of course) FWWM. The sound design throughout the series was excellent IMHO, but completely out of this world in 17 & 18.
Yeah, the ending finally gave me something to get to grips with. I just felt I wasted the previous 16 hours.
I know what you mean; the idea of wasted time and potentially irrelevant plot lines was what put me off initially swaying over to preferring The Return, but that was when my interpretation of the finale was a bit too literal and I had the idea that essentially everything before episode 16 had next to no effect on the overall plot, which I now know is not true. I enjoyed very much the new approach to mystery that Lynch and Frost took, much more puzzle piece, completely open ended veering into abstraction; not everyone's cup of tea (or coffee) admittedly, but I like it because it gives me a lot to think about and oddly enough having no answers is sometimes more fulfilling than having some. My favourite non Lynch movie is Picnic at Hanging Rock, incidentally!
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David Locke
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by David Locke »

TR is definitely better than Episodes 17 to 22 and Episode 28 of the original, and the best of TR is better than Episodes 17 to 28. But overall I very much prefer the original series.
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Here Comes That Bob
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Here Comes That Bob »

The original is infinitely better.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by TheAlien »

The Return immersed me maybe even more than anything else Lynch has created (which is really saying something). In many ways it makes the original series pale in comparison to me, but then the original series in some sense has a different trajectory, which makes comparisons useless.

As much as I love the original series, The Return almost made me forget the original series even existed :lol:

Though one thing that does pop to my mind, is that The Return; despite it's humor, doesn't have that sense of warmth and community that the original season had. In other words, the original series gave us more of the light at the end of the tunnel, than the Return. I don't see this as a takeaway necessarily, but it is something to note.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by TheAlien »

referendum wrote:there is a basic difference between the series 27 years ago and the one now that is worth drawing attention to.

27 years ago the cast were young and hot. Now several people are dead and many of the rest are pensionable or semi-retired. That alone might suggest a shift in perspective.
Yep, good point :)
For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex—asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.
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Doctor S
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Doctor S »

After a couple of full viewings, I'm in the camp of those who prefer The Return. But I'm also someone who, for the past 20-odd years has preferred Fire Walk With Me to the show. I'm fully aware that both attitudes are 1) completely subjective preferences and 2) probably impossible to truly gauge given how necessary it was to have absorbed the original show first.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Agent Earle »

In retrospect, it wasn't necessary to view S1-2 prior to The Return at all - the latter was basically a totally different show and didn't give jackshit about that from which it grew. All the pre-existing characters were pale shadows of their former selves, their former storylines were not only dropped but it pretended they didn't even exist, it's like the whole shebang was concocted to throw the original content into the mud and roll it in it and stomp on it. All in all, a pathetically poor, lazy even (or careless at best), set of artistic and storytelling choices and a big F-U to the diehard, 25 years-long fans.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by mtwentz »

Agent Earle wrote:In retrospect, it wasn't necessary to view S1-2 prior to The Return at all - the latter was basically a totally different show and didn't give jackshit about that from which it grew. All the pre-existing characters were pale shadows of their former selves, their former storylines were not only dropped but it pretended they didn't even exist, it's like the whole shebang was concocted to throw the original content into the mud and roll it in it and stomp on it. All in all, a pathetically poor, lazy even (or careless at best), set of artistic and storytelling choices and a big F-U to the diehard, 25 years-long fans.
The other view is that The Return was a wonderful ride-bumpy at times to be surr- but ultimately rich and satisfying for the majority of diehard fans of the original series.
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Re: So is there anyone else who prefers The Return to the original?

Post by Mr. Jackpots »

Thatfabulousalien wrote:The Return immersed me maybe even more than anything else Lynch has created (which is really saying something). In many ways it makes the original series pale in comparison to me, but then the original series in some sense has a different trajectory, which makes comparisons useless.

As much as I love the original series, The Return almost made me forget the original series even existed :lol:

Though one thing that does pop to my mind, is that The Return; despite it's humor, doesn't have that sense of warmth and community that the original season had. In other words, the original series gave us more of the light at the end of the tunnel, than the Return. I don't see this as a takeaway necessarily, but it is something to note.
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