Freddie's fight scene in part 17

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missoulamt
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by missoulamt »

That screenshot of Freddie with the green glove says it all really.
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N. Needleman
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by N. Needleman »

Yes, it's glorious.
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
Poiuyt
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by Poiuyt »

A more accurate comparison would be to the Josie doorknob scene (well, shot)
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by Agent Earle »

Hey, I like the Josie doorknob scene!
Poiuyt
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by Poiuyt »

Heh, it's not my favorite, but it's also, what, 15 seconds? So no harm, no foul
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bowisneski
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by bowisneski »

Xavi wrote:
missoulamt wrote:Hopefully we can stay on topic without getting personal. It's a discussion forum after all where a difference of opinion is a good thing.

Would Nadine killing off Bob in the original have felt like a suitable finale? Probably not.

I don't see how Freddie with the green glove is more appropriate.

Bob should be handled with care, because of his epic nature and it was fine up to that scene. But when "battling" with Freddie it suddenly went to a comic relief situation almost. As if TP was a computer action game. It was in stark contrast to the subtlety of the original. Bob was often over the top there as well, but it was always frightening. The feeling watching Freddie's fight scene was not one of fear but disbelief at how they chose to go about it.
Factually the green glove superpower did not come out of the blue, whereas Nadine's superpower in "the original" did. It lasted until TPS3 for Nadine to progress from an annoying flat character to a mature emphatic human being, thanks to Dr Amp's golden shovel.
I would actually say that Nadine's super strength was introduced in Episode 2 when she bends the rowing machine.

Nadine wouldn't have been appropriate in either scenario(especially in the 90's), but I might have preferred her to do it since she was a citizen of Twin Peaks. As I've said elsewhere in this thread and other threads, I would've been fine with it being James. I know that would've been a huge turn off for some people, but I think it would've worked better since I've always assumed James at least understood something about BOB and the fear he inspired. I think that Freddie having no real context or understanding of what he was doing dilutes things as well. Perhaps if we had seen his scene with the Fireman or he said the Fireman filled him in about his destiny/BOB it would've felt better to more of us.

And I wouldn't even compare it to a video game because(unless it's a game that errs on the side of comedy) your final or penultimate villains are usually treated as serious threats. I guess BOrB was a threat to Freddie, but I didn't feel any menace nor like anyone I cared about was in danger. Yes, I get that is the point, but I think they could've done it better and preserved the deus ex machina approach to question the reality of the world without feeling like BOrB is indeed a video game villain that errs on the side of comedy over menace.
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by missoulamt »

Well said, bowineski.
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AgentEcho
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by AgentEcho »

The whole thing was conjured up to be the most absurd resolution to the BOB problem precisely because the audience would be expecting a resolution that would involve a heroic, satisfying action by one of the leads, probably Cooper. Subverting audiences expectations was part of the text of the whole season and this is no different. If there's no way that a super powered green gardening glove from a shop in London being the one thing the world that can pound a bouncing found footage demon ball to oblivion wouldn't sound silly, it's because it's supposed to be silly.

Of course the audiences who demand their conventional audience expectations be met and who will consider any deviation from this a "flaw" or going to have more problems with Season 3 than this one scene.
missoulamt
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by missoulamt »

Isn't that cutting Lynch/Frost a bit too much slack? Ie, it was intentional on their part to offer the unexpected, even if it meant achieving a less than satisfying end result on the whole.

Going by that logic, they might as well have filmed Jacques' co-worker sweep the floors for 18 full hours. "It was meant to be an experiment, we wanted to find out just how patient our TP fans are" etc...
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bowisneski
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by bowisneski »

AgentEcho wrote:The whole thing was conjured up to be the most absurd resolution to the BOB problem precisely because the audience would be expecting a resolution that would involve a heroic, satisfying action by one of the leads, probably Cooper. Subverting audiences expectations was part of the text of the whole season and this is no different. If there's no way that a super powered green gardening glove from a shop in London being the one thing the world that can pound a bouncing found footage demon ball to oblivion wouldn't sound silly, it's because it's supposed to be silly.

Of course the audiences who demand their conventional audience expectations be met and who will consider any deviation from this a "flaw" or going to have more problems with Season 3 than this one scene.
Would it have been any less absurd or silly to have Nadine or James do it? Because one of those I questionably support and the other I am/would've been much more on board for.

And I would say that statement about convention is painting with far too broad of a brush. I would point to a history of my posts, especially this one about my rewatch, or even my history of discusssion with the Profoundly Disappointed folks over in that thread, to show that the things I love aren't specifically conventional. I thought the pace ended up great, would've actually been ok with what we got being stretched a little more, and would've liked more Dougie. I would assume people that were looking for something more conventional would be irked by those things, but I can't speak for anyone else.

I didn't need resolution to BOB. I feel like anyone but Cooper or Laura dispatching BOB would've been easy to frame as unconventional or BOB not getting resolved at all. For me, it's not that that scene the way it exists is so much bad/unconventional as it just doesn't feel of a whole with the rest of the season or series as a whole. Again, yes, you cand point to ridiculous things in the original series that are silly but they still feel of a whole. I guess that the argument then becomes that makes it unconventional, but even something unconventional should fit within the world.
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

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missoulamt wrote:It's easy to over-intellectualize things. I read one comment earlier in the thread where the poster suggested that one must do as Dr. Amp says, dig yourself out of the shit, to really learn to appreciate the greatness of the Return :) It becomes a little far fetched.

At the end of the day, it's all down to personal taste and what moves you. On a whole, TR felt disappointing to me. Not because I was expecting it to follow in the same footsteps as the original, but because I was hoping it would be as strong.

Would Nadine killing off Bob in the original have felt like a suitable finale? Probably not.

I don't see how Freddie with the green glove is more appropriate.

Bob should be handled with care, because of his epic nature and it was fine up to that scene. But when "battling" with Freddie it suddenly went to a comic relief situation almost. As if TP was a computer action game. It was in stark contrast to the subtlety of the original. Bob was often over the top there as well, but it was always frightening. The feeling watching Freddie's fight scene was not one of fear but disbelief at how they chose to go about it.
The way I see it, I think this debate is divided into at least 3 points of view. There are the people, like me, who like the scene mostly because of what it means, and how it fits into the larger tapestry. Secondly, there are people who purely like the scene for exactly what it is on the surface, including how it feels, it's level of execution and its place in the plot. Then there are people who simply don't like it for reasons that I do understand. As you say, all points of view are down to some degree of personal taste, and I think all of them are worth examining and have some degree of truth to them.

Yet what I find to be a common trend (everywhere and about anything) is that many who simply don't like what they've seen because it's silly, doesn't fit into the Twin Peaks world, doesn't achieve the right intensity, or whatever other perfectly acceptable surface reasons...those people also don't seem to be interested in the intellectual approach to the scene at all, not at all interested in what Lynch/Frost might have been going for on a non-plot related level. You claim that it's easy to over-intellectualize things and imply that it becomes silly to do so at a certain point, but do you really not see how much sense the intellectualizations of the scene make as laid out in dovetailing theories by eyeboogers, Cappy, myself, and plenty more across these boards? To be clear, I don't see any over-intellectualizing taking place: The Return was always about itself, about storytelling, about subverting expectations, etc. Those things, along with how they dovetail with deeper themes (the unending and unendable battle of good vs. evil, the deconstruction of our hero are but two of many that apply here) and moods and experimentation with digital textures and effects, were the real story to me all along, and so thinking this way was part of my enjoyment and on that level Freddie absolutely makes a lot of sense. It helps that I also like the scene in and of itself - the way it looks, feels, etc., but even if I didn't I would still do my damnedest to understand why the scene is the way it is. Because I don't think you're wrong when you say that you look at the scene with disbelief. The question for me is always: Am I intended to feel that way - in this case some element of disbelief - and if so why? Why did Frost want to experiment with extreme Deus ex Machina? Why do I not feel as much fear? How does that fit in with what I've already seen and what happens next? Because it really and truly fits, even if I don't really and truly love it. There's definitely something there to reckon with.

Now, I think your opinion is valid and I struggle with the basic plot function of the scene myself. Would I have preferred some other kind of showdown? Could another kind of showdown have made as much sense and been more surface-level fulfilling/less baffling based on my understanding of The Return? Maybe, sure. But you've made two threads recently, and both of them have posed some pretty interesting questions that have yielded great discussion. But in both instances, based on your wording, I've immediately wondered whether or not you were looking for some clarity or other ways in to the material, or whether you were just looking for people who agreed with you and even wondered if there was any point in my responding. I've noticed in both cases it's more the latter. I'm not sure why I'm pointing this out except to say that it does seem to me like if there is a thoughtful discussion of the scene's merits, you don't come across as being interested in it because you disagree with the scene so much on a plot-based level. Perhaps there is a way it could have been Freddie and the scene could have been intensely scary (for you), and you would have still liked it, so perhaps it's more the execution of the scene. But once again, why is the scene the way it is? That's quite an interesting element to examine, and there's plenty there to look into. While those who purely like the scene for its randomness and intensity may disagree, I think the scene is actually begging the viewer to analyze it.
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by LateReg »

bowisneski wrote:
AgentEcho wrote:The whole thing was conjured up to be the most absurd resolution to the BOB problem precisely because the audience would be expecting a resolution that would involve a heroic, satisfying action by one of the leads, probably Cooper. Subverting audiences expectations was part of the text of the whole season and this is no different. If there's no way that a super powered green gardening glove from a shop in London being the one thing the world that can pound a bouncing found footage demon ball to oblivion wouldn't sound silly, it's because it's supposed to be silly.

Of course the audiences who demand their conventional audience expectations be met and who will consider any deviation from this a "flaw" or going to have more problems with Season 3 than this one scene.
Would it have been any less absurd or silly to have Nadine or James do it? Because one of those I questionably support and the other I am/would've been much more on board for.

And I would say that statement about convention is painting with far too broad of a brush. I would point to a history of my posts, especially this one about my rewatch, or even my history of discusssion with the Profoundly Disappointed folks over in that thread, to show that the things I love aren't specifically conventional. I thought the pace ended up great, would've actually been ok with what we got being stretched a little more, and would've liked more Dougie. I would assume people that were looking for something more conventional would be irked by those things, but I can't speak for anyone else.

I didn't need resolution to BOB. I feel like anyone but Cooper or Laura dispatching BOB would've been easy to frame as unconventional or BOB not getting resolved at all. For me, it's not that that scene the way it exists is so much bad/unconventional as it just doesn't feel of a whole with the rest of the season or series as a whole. Again, yes, you cand point to ridiculous things in the original series that are silly but they still feel of a whole. I guess that the argument then becomes that makes it unconventional, but even something unconventional should fit within the world.
I don't believe it would have been as meaningful had it been Nadine or James. Or rather, allow me to rephrase that. It would not have been as meaningful to The Return, or would NOT have fit it as well. I do feel like this scene feels far more ingrained in The Return than the sillier elements of season 2 are in Twin Peaks, because The Return has so much going on when it comes to storytelling and subversion, as well as Cooper's psyche and the focus on evil on a large scale rather than just one girl or town. Freddie is very much directly tied to all of this. BOB was defeated by an absurd impossibility, basically, because there is no defeating BOB, who is the personification of the evil that men do. There's simply no way to really defeat that; to imply some sort of high-stakes dramatic victory where Cooper simply wins would feel equally cheap and perfunctory. On the other hand, yes, I like and agree with others' contribution to this topic as well, who state that BOB was defeated because he simply isn't that important, whereas Judy is, which works at a plot level as well as a meta level, and in which Freddie still serves the same thematic purpose. Instead of a clear victory that we all feel good about, many of us find bafflement and question what we see, which leads directly into Cooper's ripping Laura from peace/enlightenment - another faux happy ending - and then winding up trapped between two worlds in search of a far greater evil.
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by missoulamt »

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Late Reg. To cut a long story short: I'm more into the way something feels than whatever intent Lynch and Frost may have had behind it. Similarly, I don't feel the need to dissect every part/episode to connect all the dots, even though I sometimes try to subconsciously (is there a black lodge connection between Laura, Leland and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway in that they all carry the same face painting, purple lips and white face at various points?)

Bowineski said it well: "I think that Freddie having no real context or understanding of what he was doing dilutes things as well." Freddie basically feels like a voice actor flown in from London to cut this scene without any real understanding of what he was doing except taking direction from Lynch. It could easily have been a video game or a college student directing his/her first Crowdfunding project, from an acting perspective. To me, it has little to do with the feel of the world of Twin Peaks. I don't necessarily need James to do the fighting, I would much have preferred the mystery of not knowing where Bob ended up. The CGI graphics detract as well and comes across as cheesy to me.

Personally, I felt Zabriskie provided most of the fear in TR. She literally is Sarah. Or Strobel saying "don't die" while doing that backward crawling motion. Both things very much in tune to the feel of TP, for me.

Then there are other elements of TR which worked less well. Forster, more or less sounding as if he was reading from a script given to him by Lynch, being one of them.

Not saying someone is wrong for liking all of it, I just feel it's quite "hit and miss". Maybe that would have been less evident if it was slightly edited down?
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

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missoulamt wrote:Bowineski said it well: "I think that Freddie having no real context or understanding of what he was doing dilutes things as well." Freddie basically feels like a voice actor flown in from London to cut this scene without any real understanding of what he was doing except taking direction from Lynch. It could easily have been a video game or a college student directing his/her first Crowdfunding project, from an acting perspective. To me, it has little to do with the feel of the world of Twin Peaks. I don't necessarily need James to do the fighting, I would much have preferred the mystery of not knowing where Bob ended up. The CGI graphics detract as well and comes across as cheesy to me.
Hey, no problem. It's just such an odd crossroads to be at, you and I. I look at what you wrote, over and over again in this thread, and I think, YES EXACTLY, YOU'RE NAILING WHAT'S GOING ON THERE, THAT'S IT! You're feeling a lot of things that I feel (bafflement, letdown, randomness) and that may very well have been part of the creators' intent, but it feels like you're just not interested in how it applies to what you've seen before and after because the scene just doesn't work for you, which I get. But he absolutely is a voice non-actor flown in from London without any real understanding of what he was doing...much like the character himself. Absolutely. That's the scene right there, in a nutshell. That's the choice they've made, so we have to ask why, I think. Look at the way Cooper strolls in and says, "Are you Freddie??!!" I almost LOL at that line every time, our hero marching in just after his doppelganger is defeated by a lowly secretary and looking for some Hail Mary that he's pinned humanity's hopes on without ever having met the guy. That's all there. We're seeing the same scene in nearly the exact same way, lol. But beyond the substantial way I see the scene tying and then leading into everything, I also greatly admire the atypically artful lightshow execution, and found it intense even as I'm baffled, a sensation that is quite unique and yes, almost comical. That's the grounds on which we most differ, I think. I appreciate the scene in and of itself, so I search for more, whereas you don't, and then see less of a reason to look further. Or maybe the scene is just such a sin that it can't be overcome, no matter how much sense it makes. I get that, too.
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Re: Freddie's fight scene in part 17

Post by bowisneski »

LateReg wrote:I don't believe it would have been as meaningful had it been Nadine or James. Or rather, allow me to rephrase that. It would not have been as meaningful to The Return, or would NOT have fit it as well. I do feel like this scene feels far more ingrained in The Return than the sillier elements of season 2 are in Twin Peaks, because The Return has so much going on when it comes to storytelling and subversion, as well as Cooper's psyche and the focus on evil on a large scale rather than just one girl or town. Freddie is very much directly tied to all of this. BOB was defeated by an absurd impossibility, basically, because there is no defeating BOB, who is the personification of the evil that men do. There's simply no way to really defeat that; to imply some sort of high-stakes dramatic victory where Cooper simply wins would feel equally cheap and perfunctory. On the other hand, yes, I like and agree with others' contribution to this topic as well, who state that BOB was defeated because he simply isn't that important, whereas Judy is, which works at a plot level as well as a meta level, and in which Freddie still serves the same thematic purpose. Instead of a clear victory that we all feel good about, many of us find bafflement and question what we see, which leads directly into Cooper's ripping Laura from peace/enlightenment - another faux happy ending - and then winding up trapped between two worlds in search of a far greater evil.
You raise a ton of good points and I get all of that, but it doesn't resonate with me on any real level in the end. Cooper's super imposed face gets all of that across much better to me(insofar as questioning the reality of the situation).

The way it's shot is visceral, well lit, and great for what they did and had to work with, but you hit the nail on the head of one of my biggest problems with this sentence "It would not have been as meaningful to The Return, or would NOT have fit it as well." I would say it does work better when you look at The Return on it's own, really fitting in on an intellectual level with the absurdity and meta-ness of The Return. However, when I look at The Return as part of the series as a whole piece of work, which is more how I interact with it, it just doesn't work for me.

In regards to your next post where you bringing up Lucy shooting Mr. C, I thought that was wonderful and surprising. It's sort of what I was talking about with James and Nadine. It's silly and ridiculous that Lucy would take him down, but that totally works for me.

And I also love the idea of Freddie showing that the evil in Twin Peaks is part of a much larger worldwide evil, but I still think they could've gotten the idea across in different ways. While that isn't engaging with the work on what exists, I don't know how else to express my feelings about the scene and my engagement with it without using hypotheticals.

And MissoulaMT, don't even get me started on thoughts of Lynchverse and the stellar portrayal of Sarah in The Return.
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