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

[Rhodes]

It was miles and miles above the original, which today is just a quirky melodrama.

Not all narrative is interested in character/heart as the main focus (teenage writers are capable of stories with heart). The Return is a parable about the inability to return home, and many other ideas, like performance and stillness over plot.

It's an avant garde narrative, and people who only appreciate or understand traditional Aristotelian narrative can't and won't enjoy it.

But when you consider the level of artistic achievement in The Return, the conversation isn't really about comparing it to the original, but comparing it to some of the greatest artworks ever created.

It's like comparing Happy Days to Apocalypse Now.

Hear hear.

[douglasb]

Wow.

There's a scene where a guy doesn't know how to urinate.

[sylvia_north]

just a quirky melodrama. ...It's like comparing Happy Days to Apocalypse Now.

Yep, just a quirky melodrama (not.) Twin Peaks S2 set this all up for TR and it wouldn't exist without the groundwork laid, the grounded and the far-out mythology.

I think sometimes presence of heart makes the avante-garde crowd itchy under their berets, because anything resembling sentimental is Happy Days, clearly. DL has been telling the same story since Lost Highway, and others are just as proficient at the mind-bendy and the 'nothing much going on in a scene' too. (I seem to recall a senile room service waiter and an overall leisurely pace to TP that rejected easy solutions.) FWWM was just as "Apocalypse Now" as TR. Classic narrative, or "experimental" - ain't nothing new under the sun.

Calling it a challenge is really underestimating the viewership and mistaking lack of interest for lack of understanding. Lynch hasn't really been counter culture for most of his career.

If in general, media has become more extreme in sexual and violent content, and TV has tried harder to be edgy and artsy like cinema in part because Twin Peaks paved that path, that doesn't make upping the darkness and stripping out the humanity more artistic- it just means it's conforming to the demand for titties, heads getting exploded, and more sci-fi twists- you know, cool shit for the terminally jaded.

Equal achievements. Both have their merits and flaws.

[Agent Earle]

It's apples and oranges. If Frost and Lynch had been able to make the original the way they made The Return, who knows how incredible it would have been? But, as it stands, I think The Return is a far more consistently great and cohesive artistic statement.

Yeah, that's it's main problem. More of a cinematic/televison work and less of an artistic statement would've been just what the doctor ordered. Alas, it was never meant to be.

[referendum]

sylvia north : '' it just means it's conforming to the demand for titties, heads getting exploded, and more sci-fi twists- you know, cool shit for the terminally jaded.

''

ha, Lynch has had the 'cool shit for the terminally jaded' badge pinned on his lapel since blue velvet. Maybe even eraserhead counts. But you are right, a friend of mine watched abit of this new TP with me, and said '' why do you need the violence?. I guess that's a Lynch thing.''

On another note, I watched FWWM a couple of days ago, was amazed how close it was in tone to TP TR.
But edited with a snappiness and a lightness of touch that TP TR's occasional straining at significance does not allow for.

[Audrey Horne]

Yeah, that first season is pretty tight... this one had some good ideas, but... um, yeah.

[Cipher]

I think sometimes presence of heart makes the avante-garde crowd itchy under their berets, because anything resembling sentimental is Happy Days, clearly. DL has been telling the same story since Lost Highway, and others are just as proficient at the mind-bendy and the 'nothing much going on in a scene' too. (I seem to recall a senile room service waiter and an overall leisurely pace to TP that rejected easy solutions.) FWWM was just as "Apocalypse Now" as TR. Classic narrative, or "experimental" - ain't nothing new under the sun.

This is ... interesting. Not only because there's been a genuine move toward sincerity at least in the hoity-toity high-art writing world within the last few years, as opposed to a trend toward cynicism beforehand (and these still butt heads a bit among the most celebrated writers), but because I would never particularly deem to call Lynch an unsentimental artist. For all the ugliness and violence he pours into his domestic hells, there are several films where he's down in the trenches with his characters, never eschewing empathy. He doesn't usually offer catharsis and comfort in combination, but I think he leans more sentimental than cynical.

Though he does have his colder works. Lost Highway is one. Perhaps the second half of Mullholand Drive (and I think it becomes something of a twin to Lost Highway in that), and yes, to an extent The Return, which spends more time above and beyond its characters than most of his work.

Then again, the original run occasionally looked down on its characters to, in its heaviest moments of pastiche, some of which Lynch was responsible for, some of which he wasn't.

That isn't a knock on The Return, necessarily, and there are times I think it's absolutely dripping with sincerity -- for example the abstract episode 8. But it's a different mode for Lynch and one that occasionally did play into moments of the series I like less.

None of this is about which I like better between The Return and the original. I'm still not sure I could say. The Return has higher highs and I think is more worthwhile as a whole. But it depends on the framework of the original and the areas in which it falters (gender!) are major.

[Novalis]

It doesn't answer the thread question at all, but since a few have taken this position, and I agree with it, I will take it too:

Nothing beats FWWM.

[referendum]

It doesn't answer the thread question at all, but since a few have taken this position, and I agree with it, I will take it too:

Nothing beats FWWM.

i tried over the weekend watching FWWM and then carrying on to the first 3 parts of TP TR. They are recognisably parts of the same thing. Of course I know it will all go abit pear-shaped after that, but...

[powerleftist]

I would be scared of living in a world where someone would prefer The Return to the original run.

But this is not the case since I am sure nobody truly thinks so, they are just trying to be the coolest kids in town.

[Mr. Reindeer]

I would be scared of living in a world where someone would prefer The Return to the original run.

But this is not the case since I am sure nobody truly thinks so, they are just trying to be the coolest kids in town.

Maybe wait until you've been registered on a message board for more than a week before you state your opinion as objective fact and insult anyone who disagrees with you?

Or even better, maybe just don't ever do that.

[Cipher]

I would be scared of living in a world where someone would prefer The Return to the original run.

But this is not the case since I am sure nobody truly thinks so, they are just trying to be the coolest kids in town.

Okay.

Number of times the original series made me cry: 0

Number of times The Return made me cry: 4, with several other instances of very sincere empathy or unsettled feelings

It'd be great if I didn't have my sincere emotional reactions policed via accusations of pretentiousness.

(Number of times Fire Walk With Me makes me cry: 1, but it's so sublime as a culmination it's hard to beat)

The cry count is worth a lot to me in determining which pieces of fiction I love.

[Trudy Chelgren]

powerleftist wrote:
I would be scared of living in a world where someone would prefer The Return to the original run.

But this is not the case since I am sure nobody truly thinks so, they are just trying to be the coolest kids in town.

I would be scared to live in a world where supposedly tolerant individuals do not appreciate the existence of opinions other than their own with maturity. Oh, we're talking about a TV show? That's cute.

[sylvia_north]

I think sometimes presence of heart makes the avante-garde crowd itchy under their berets, because anything resembling sentimental is Happy Days, clearly. DL has been telling the same story since Lost Highway, and others are just as proficient at the mind-bendy and the 'nothing much going on in a scene' too. (I seem to recall a senile room service waiter and an overall leisurely pace to TP that rejected easy solutions.) FWWM was just as "Apocalypse Now" as TR. Classic narrative, or "experimental" - ain't nothing new under the sun.

This is ... interesting. Not only because there's been a genuine move toward sincerity at least in the hoity-toity high-art writing world within the last few years, as opposed to a trend toward cynicism beforehand (and these still butt heads a bit among the most celebrated writers), but because I would never particularly deem to call Lynch an unsentimental artist. For all the ugliness and violence he pours into his domestic hells, there are several films where he's down in the trenches with his characters, never eschewing empathy. He doesn't usually offer catharsis and comfort in combination, but I think he leans more sentimental than cynical.

In accord 100%. I'm not the one who called Twin Peaks v 0 "Happy Days,a quirky melodrama." The observation was for the breed of DL fan that has pretenses of avante-garde taste (beret-wearers, or scarves if you're in LA) and thinks TR lacks heart - it doesn't- and that elevates it artistically, or it's experimental qualities trivialize those relatable/human "Aristotelian" themes. There's heart in TR: Albert and Gordon, Hawk and the Log Lady, DougieCoop and family "you've made my heart so full." Catharsis and comfort are totally the ends of MD, FWWM, IE and EH, in a way that's almost quaint, ditto episode 16.

Nothing beats FWWM.

And how ps TR also made me cry like a b*tch.

[Cipher]

There's heart in TR: Albert and Gordon, Hawk and the Log Lady, DougieCoop and family "you've made my heart so full." Catharsis and comfort are totally the ends of MD and FWWM in a way that's almost quaint, ditto episode 16.

Ah, cool. I might have misread the tone of your post above. Sounds like we totally agree.

I also think it's telling there were some fans -- on both the disappointed and enraptured side -- who read the presentation of scenes like Ed and Norma's reunion as being so grandiose it was cynical. I think that says more about the audience than about the work. To me that scene is one of absolute, unbridled pleasure -- a suit Lynch's works slip on as easily as they do atmospheric horror. It's raw sentiment, and it reverberates off the footage's landscapes just as comfortably as the more usual sense of unease.

Other moments?

Dido kissing Laura's orb just after the soundtrack swells with its creation: absolute love after twenty minutes of unpalacable dread.

The Log Lady's death, as you mentioned, as well as Cole's "sometimes I really worry about you" to Albert.

The aftermath of the hit-and-run? There's a level of artifice in the bystander reactions I still grapple with, but Carl and the mother's moment is given room to breathe and absolutely be what it is.

Laura reaching out to Cooper's hand in the forest? Fuck.

Even ones with a less distinctly identifiable emotions I think come across with utmost sincerity:

Little moments like Dougie-Cooper focusing on his scribbles as the soundtrack fades in? Still one of my favorites -- just a quiet joy in the power of human expression.

Ben and Beverly's romantically tinged scenes searching around the office for the hum? A completely sincere series of intimate moments between two people in a room. I love all of those.

There are absolutely colder moments throughout The Return, and ones that play above their characters' heads. I'm still not sure I love those or even feel the right balance was struck, but all the moments above are powerful on their own, and there are others still. (More powerful by contrast? I'm not sure yet; ask me again in a year.)

Both horror and joy in Lynch's works are usually exactly what they are.