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

[WhiteLodge90]

Mini rant before I head to bed.

I'm really effin pissed at Michael J Anderson now more than ever. It's very painfully clear Lynch had big plans for him for this new show but he had to go and be a schitzo/asshole and ruin it for everyone. Lynch had to give his lines obviously to the one armed man who was one of my favorite minor characters of the original but he works best popping up in the outside world in important moments. Not as a red room spirit. I had hoped they would've given him his arm back so he could at least be evil again and have some personality but instead he was kind of just there.
I know some enjoyed the tree arm thing and saw it as an FU to Anderson and while that may be the case it was more an FU to the fans because that really didn't resonate with me unless there's a greater payoff with the evolution of said arm. Having a major villain be a literal arm on a tree kind of loses it's luster.

Side notes on Red room spirits

After watching the first three episodes I'm finding it highly unlikely we get Desmond, Stanley, Josie or Jefferies.

[Frank Silva]

[TheMx]

I also think that the glass box demon is the doppelganger of the arm that got out of the lodge.

And - I loved the first two parts. It doesn't need to be perfect for me to love it, but it came quite close!

The FX are perfectly fine, as some of you have stated, this is just lynchs style (done very well imo!)

[Chester Desmond]

Mini rant before I head to bed.

I'm really effin pissed at Michael J Anderson now more than ever. It's very painfully clear Lynch had big plans for him for this new show but he had to go and be a schitzo/asshole and ruin it for everyone. Lynch had to give his lines obviously to the one armed man who was one of my favorite minor characters of the original but he works best popping up in the outside world in important moments. Not as a red room spirit. I had hoped they would've given him his arm back so he could at least be evil again and have some personality but instead he was kind of just there.
I know some enjoyed the tree arm thing and saw it as an FU to Anderson and while that may be the case it was more an FU to the fans because that really didn't resonate with me unless there's a greater payoff with the evolution of said arm. Having a major villain be a literal arm on a tree kind of loses it's luster.

Side notes on Red room spirits

After watching the first three episodes I'm finding it highly unlikely we get Desmond, Stanley, Josie or Jefferies.

Agreed. His presence is missed. A shame they couldn't get it together however, it made me chuckle that Lynch replaced him with an electric tree with a talking mango head... talk and a recast!

[Mr. Reindeer]

I loved how all these odd creature effects and stuff look straight out of Lynch's paintings and other artworks.

Exactly this. He's making the same type of art that he's been making for the past 10 years, just on a different canvas. I can understand some people feeling like the CGI is "bad"/cheap, but I'm sure the vast majority of it is intentional.

Actually, The Little Tree From Another Place is actually older than that. He's the cover star of Julie Cruise's "The Voice Of Love".

I totally got that vibe too! But it's a mesh of things. Yes, the "clay cheesehead ants" sculpture, but also Henry's dream in Eraserhead where the tree is onstage while Henry's head pops off. And, as my girlfriend pointed out, the weird pulsating "head" bears an undeniable resemblance to the shape of MJA's cranium.

Also,the gramophone (in black and white!) has very distinct INLAND EMPIRE echoes.

Overall, I found parts lacking and/or disjointed on first viewing, but I expected to be challenged on a first viewing. IE took me until the third time through to really appreciate it, and it's now one of my all-time favorite films. That's compounded here by the fact that we're viewing a small part of an 18-hour film. I refuse to pass any judgment at this point, but overall I'm thrilled that DKL (predictably) is choosing to do his own arthouse-on-a-cable-budget thing. More comments to come in the Part 3/4 thread.

[Mr. Reindeer]

Agreed. His presence is missed. A shame they couldn't get it together however, it made me chuckle that Lynch replaced him with an electric tree with a talking mango head... talk and a recast!

Despite my ban on talking during the show, I couldn't help turning to my girlfriend and saying, "OF COURSE this is how Lynch recasts."

[asquideatingdough]

I also loved every minute of it and rewatched the first two immediately after finishing them the first time.

It seems like Bad Coop has a certain control over some folks (Jack, Phyllis Hastings). Right before he does what he does to Phyllis in her house, he compliments her on how well she can portray human nature. There's something up with her. I thought she did a pretty terrible job acting when the cops showed up at her door but after the scene with her and Bad Coop, I think that bad acting was definitely intentional.

Also, she and Ruth Davenport's faces looked somewhat off (after their demises), almost metallic. I don't think they are true humans, or at least not Phyllis anyway.

And was that a drawing of an owl on that playing card Coop showed Darya? That's what I saw the second time through.

[Wonderful & Strange]

Pure genius.

Effects are perfect. Exactly what Lynch wants.

[BEARisonFord]

I'm pretty wide eyed and sad for the people that are inconsolably disappointed, considering I feel like even without any spoilers and knowing so little, the writing has been on the wall for what this series was going to be like if you're a pretty avid Lynch fan and have a fair amount of common sense. I more or less got exactly what I expected, for better or worse. I wish the blow had been softened for some of you!

Regardless, It's pretty surreal to be sitting here discussing new episodes of Twin Peaks, and I'm pretty stoked we get to do that. I loved so much of what I saw tonight. All the NYC glass box stuff, the Matthew Lillard murder plot, Loved the ghost in the jail cell.

It's certainly jarring seeing the red room in digital hi-def, but it is what it is. Loved seeing Carel Struycken and Al Strobel.

[Cstar84]

Probably in feel this sits closest to MD for me. The lack of music was the single most jarring thing for me initially, but I can't see how something this dark would work with a jaunty jazz soundtrack.

This does indeed feel like the MD series Lynch never got to make (albeit with more radical supernatural/surreal imagery a la Inland). Though I do suspect more and more of the atmosphere of Peaks is going to be revived as both the characters and viewers get closer to resolution.

I would agree with this opinion, I would bet a lot of those unfilmed ideas from a Mullholland Drive series have found a home in this series.

I like how in every other Lynch production he implies things and let's you come to your own decision on what they mean, this is very literal, not very figurative. He is saying: THIS is what THIS means and not giving us to the option to figure it out on our own.

Trying to take your view seriously, but could you tell us what exactly you think is spelled out so literally? Because I'm not seeing it.

[twin-b]

I loved how all these odd creature effects and stuff look straight out of Lynch's paintings and other artworks.

Exactly this. He's making the same type of art that he's been making for the past 10 years, just on a different canvas. I can understand some people feeling like the CGI is "bad"/cheap, but I'm sure the vast majority of it is intentional.

I thought the whole thing was about entering a world, getting drawn in. Doesn't intentionally bad graphics break the spell and pull viewers out of the world? Some of us, at least.

[Cipher]

I thought the whole thing was about entering a world, getting drawn in. Doesn't intentionally bad graphics break the spell and pull viewers out of the world? Some of us, at least.

I'm extremely confused about how people got through two seasons of Twin Peaks, or Lynch works like Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. or Inland, without thinking there was always an intentional layer of artifice. Half of Twin Peaks' goal was to be as heightened and stylistically soap-opera-esque as it could be!

[Chester Desmond]

This does indeed feel like the MD series Lynch never got to make (albeit with more radical supernatural/surreal imagery a la Inland). Though I do suspect more and more of the atmosphere of Peaks is going to be revived as both the characters and viewers get closer to resolution.

I would agree with this opinion, I would bet a lot of those unfilmed ideas from a Mullholland Drive series have found a home in this series.

I like how in every other Lynch production he implies things and let's you come to your own decision on what they mean, this is very literal, not very figurative. He is saying: THIS is what THIS means and not giving us to the option to figure it out on our own.

Trying to take your view seriously, but could you tell us what exactly you think is spelled out so literally? Because I'm not seeing it.

Read the entire thread. Many have said the same and articulated the examples of it being literate much better than I can right now, I am just too upset to do so on a point by point basis, I am trying to forget what I saw to be honest.

So much cringe and cheese. I was, from what David Lynch himself said, prepared for more of the beauty and mastery that was FWWM, this was nowhere near it.

[Driftwood]

I guess I'm just wondering now what the "good cgi" version of a tree with a brain on it that is a manifestion of a former killer's sentient severed arm is supposed to look.

People keep talking the like the whole red room is cgi or something too, it looked like it just had the colors digitally cranked up on it to me. Pretty sure those were actual real curtains and all.

[Chester Desmond]

I loved how all these odd creature effects and stuff look straight out of Lynch's paintings and other artworks.

Exactly this. He's making the same type of art that he's been making for the past 10 years, just on a different canvas. I can understand some people feeling like the CGI is "bad"/cheap, but I'm sure the vast majority of it is intentional.

I thought the whole thing was about entering a world, getting drawn in. Doesn't intentionally bad graphics break the spell and pull viewers out of the world? Some of us, at least.

I agree with you. I am trying very hard to suspend disbelief and become immersed but the hokey 1990s video toaster like video effects (among other things) made that impossible.

They are just bad, really bad.

Why was CGI needed for the red room floor and curtains? Every previous red room scene used a real set.