Parts 1 & 2 - My log has a message for you & The stars turn and a time presents itself (SPOILERS)

[Jonah]

The scenes with Catherine Coulson were so heartbreaking

But as for the show itself, I got more of a full-blown David Lynch vibe, than a "Twin Peaks" vibe if that makes sense.

Yes and yes!

[firefly2193]

My first reaction is I loved it. It was SO off the wall and completely unexpected, even for someone who knew it would be just that. The FX wasn't great - but nor was it in TP original. There were some seriously fucked up scenes - the demon that came through the glass box, seeing Dale literally beat people up, Laura getting brutally sucked in (out?) of the red room.

The opening scene is facisating - particularly the dialogue. I can't remember it now but really it has no context even after watching the two parts (noises from the speaker? A random number?). And the significance of the black and white is intriguing, the true black lodge? As well as the Giant being credited as ??????

What I did find...odd, at least within these two parts on their own, was the editing. So many (currently) disconnected parts. I feel like the Ben/Jerry scene and the Dr Jacoby scenes, given how completely isolated and unconnected (perhaps pointless) they were, could've been left out.

Some things were jarring but I loved that. It appears like many old concepts may be re-contextualised and many new concepts about things we know (the red room, the spirits) are going to emerge. There seems to be a much grander scope to all this than I ever imagined.

Hearing about Agent Jeffries was incredible. If Jeffries knows Bad Coop - was Jeffries a bad guy? Bad Coop sounded like him and Jeffries were on the same side.

The end had me back to being almost in tears. Somehow the combo of Lynch and music is absolutely magic. I liked the line 'James was always cool' - a message from Frost/Lynch to fans? Haha.

Honestly what shocked me most about this was that Mark Frost co-wrote all this stuff. ALL of this seemed like Lynch's feature work. There was none of what we would normally have recognised as Frosts sensibilities. If people thought he would 'reign' Lynch in, it's now clear there is no sign of that happening.

Big lingering questions - Agent Jeffries good or bad? Who set up this insane cube in New York? What happened to Laura? What did it mean when we saw Cooper arrive in the cube before the two young people arrived, and then disappeared again, only for the kids to get killed by what happened next? What did the murder in SD have to do with it all?

Yeah I have a lot of questions. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.

[the woods]

a very different feel with digital video... the waiting room so much brighter!
not quite what i was expecting, that is, beyond the assumption that it would defy
my expectations.
lots of merry surprises...and funny moments.
i'm going to try my best to wait until next week's regular airing to see 3 and 4.
i like the idea of watching weekly it like the old episodes. so happy to see catherine coulson.
i am so very glad this happened!!

[Jonah]

is the evolution of the arm now the TTFAP? (the tree from another place)

LOL

[Skip Bittman]

Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks had a mutant baby in Eraserhead's apartment and it's fucking beautiful.

The Glass Box! One to get your mind spinning.

[BookhouseBartender]

So much to unpack, soak in, ponder. But the single word that keeps popping to mind? Ambitious. This is a sprawling epic with lots of moving parts, and it's surprisingly literary - constructed and paced like a novel. Which in and of itself can be a very problematic thing for a television show. Such pacing doesn't always translate.

There were brilliant moments, funny moments ( "I have the key!" made me cringe and laugh at the same time), horrifying, creepy, and laughably bad moments (the CGI is TERRIBLE - there's no excuse for such bad fx, not in this day and age). There were moments that were true old school Twin Peaks, and moments of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, even Eraserhead. This is no mere exercise in nostalgia. It's just as many of us thought - this is Lynch's "statement," his sprawling, uneven, maddening magnum opus, with Peaks as it's beautiful, beating heart.

Going back to that epic scope, yeah, many of the scenes which did not take place in Twin Peaks itself felt distant and cold, with very mannered acting (which is, I think, deliberate). Yet, to balance it out, there were moments that felt warm and familiar, with more down-to-earth acting (ALL the old Twin Peaks characters and sequences, for example. And the earlier parts of the South Dakota sequence. Again, that stark contrast had to be deliberate). There were a couple of genuinely heart breaking moments (involving The Log Lady ). It had Grand Guignol in its DNA too. I'm not as worried by the newbies overshadowing our old friends as much now because it seems, at this rate, the newbies are mostly going to die horribly before that can happen. Being that this has been called Cooper's odyssey to get back to Twin Peaks, I think our earlier speculation here that, as the season progresses, Peaks itself and the people in it whom we know and love will grow more prominent, is spot on.

I wanted to love it more than I did, but... I mean, I loved PARTS of it, and I genuinely liked most of it. I'm impressed by the sweep, by the attempt. Intrigued by the surprisingly complex and even cooly cerebral nature of the 2 episodes, which threw a LOT of insane ideas up on the screen and somehow kept even the surreal sort of linear. But the execution overall, the tone and mood just feel...a little off. "Listless" is the best word I can come up with.

Right now, I'm fascinated. A little disappointed by some of it, but overall generally relieved. That's in no way a bad thing. I think...

[GreenIsItsColor]

Seeing Log Lady like that broke my heart.

I'll have to watch parts 3 and 4 tomorrow, I'm still digesting what I saw. It's left me with that overwhelmed feeling like Lynch's works tend to do to me so that's a good sign. Love all the dark humor in it as well. I think mtwentz might be on to something about the world seemingly off-kilter. I'm missing Badalamenti's music!

[Jonah]

Still goggly-eyed and sleep-derived but can't sleep so reading through all your posts.

[FlyingSquirrel]

The Black Lodge doesn't feel evil anymore. It's like they want to help Cooper leave whereas in S1/2, they felt like malevolent spirits. I"m not sure what they hell they are now.

I don't care that it was the ending to the second episode, the "ending" of episode 2 was the dumbest thing I've seen. No cliffhanger or anything. A band is singing on stage and credits roll. WTF was that?

I've always assumed that the boundaries between the White and Black Lodges are malleable and that not everyone we see in the Red Room is a spirit of the Black Lodge or otherwise on "team evil." So far we saw:

• The One-Armed Man - probably a good guy in that he turned against BOB and stopped killing
  The Arm - ambiguous, perhaps representing OAM's "evil" side that he turned against, but played more of a neutral/observational role in the original series
  Laura Palmer - if this is the same Laura that died in FWWM and had the vision of the angel, she's also probably on the side of good
  Leland Palmer - appears to be the "real" Leland (no weird-looking eyes) who was free of BOB at the time of death and clearly hated what he'd done, so also inclined to help Cooper rather than hinder him
  The Giant - always an ally, if the B&W scene was even meant to be taking place inside the Lodge

[SpookyDollhouse]

On the FX: I bet Lynch went back and saw the effects and it led to this:

Lynch: I want the FX to look like THIS!
FX ppl: Wait...like that?
Lynch: Yes
FX ppl: ....ok

That said I absolutely love it. THat is all.

[Jonah]

And Lucy's line about "Which one?" of the Trumans has me thinking we'll be seeing Frank Truman from TSHOTP soon.

We might see both of them. Maybe a brief Ontkean cameo. Who's sick and who's fishing? I can guess it's probably Ontkean sick, Forster fishing, but could be the other way around!

[Driftwood]

yeah I thought the cgi looked exactly like how cgi in a weird lynch thing would look. the tree looked like some kind of claymation thing. I thought it was great.

[Mugunghwa]

Loved it.

This is not Twin Peaks at all, but 100% Lynch mode. I think it's stunning from start to finish.

The scene that amazed me was:

Spoiler:

The weird shadowy alien figure shredding the faces off the two people on the couch. That was beautifully shot.

[Gabriel]

If the original show was 'Blue Velvet: the Series,' then this is 'Eraserhead meets Inland Empire, via Lost Highway: the series.'

For me, the excessive digital look, the weird FX and the lack of a proper score make it feel cheap. It makes it feel like a bunch of actors popped in on a day off to record a couple of scenes the way actors do if they're making a short for a charity telethon.

Don't get me wrong, this a whacked out, fun fantasy show, but this isn't the filmic, emotional, grounded-yet-surreal drama series by an enfant-terrible filmmaker from the 1990s that led to a beautiful movie. This is an elderly David Lynch let loose with a load of money to make a thematic sequel to Inland Empire. I liked the final scene and the song, but I'm not engaging with the characters right now; rather I'm seeing actors playing roles.

I'll wait and see; I like the show, but I don't particularly feel like I'm watching Twin Peaks. Very torn.

[WhiteLodge90]

Couple of things intitally thaat came to mind. Won't be able to really have a full view of it till I watch it again

- Ben and Jerry scene felt very off. I don't know. Something about it just felt awfully cut up and didn't make sense. Weird dialogue and pacing. I hope this is explained much more
- I hated the evolution of the arm. They should've just given Mike his arm back. It looked kind of hokey. I hope I'm wrong with this and there is more to it.
- Like everyone else I found much of the Red Room CGI to be disheartening. I also think what made the original Red Room so spooky is that we only saw it in small glimpses.
- Shelly has a kid and I get the sense she's cheating on her husband with the guy that winked (Clearly her husband is probably Bobby)
- Two Truman's one is sick one is fishing. Guyessing Harry is the sick one. Maybe we'll still see him
- I liked Bad Coop but it definitely wasn't the same as blend in Bob.
- Log Lady broke my heart. What a warrior Catherine is.
- If Hawk is the hero of this new show I'll be super psyched.