2021 Thoughts on Season 3

[dugpa]

I love the toying with the idea that fan favorites Cooper and Audrey are not who they should be for a few episodes, but that should just get you over the hump… and then have them kick ass,

I agree. That is what I was waiting for. Kind of got a bit of that at Judy’s diner at the end but not really Cooper.

[Audrey Horne]

I meant Audrey’s was a great cliffhanger to end an episode on… not a season. And um does everyone realize we waited thirty years to get the exact same limbo the creators were doing to get ABC to get another season? It’s the same setup of What/where is Coop, and what happened to Audrey (now sans Pete).

It takes a special type of effort to come up with some of these storylines.

Frost: Shelly and Bobby are not married anymore.
LYnch: but she’s now dating the local drug dealer.
Frost: Nice! Creates tension that she is with the wrong guy and is possibly in danger. And Bobby once was a drug dealer.
Lynch: he’s now with the police department.
Frost: I love it. Growth and irony and gets him in the action we come up with.
Lynch: Now we’re cooking with gas.
Frost: so where can we take Shelly and this drug dealer… when she finds out she’ll be in over her head.
Lynch: how about we take it nooooo where.
Frost: I like it. Okay, on to the next characters … what should we do with them?
Lynch: how about we have them sit in a room and do nothing?
Frost: I like it. Sorry for the noise I’m doing dishes.
Lynch: Markie, is that a green glove?
Frost: why indeed it is, Mr. Lynch.
Lynch: I have an idea! …also remember we can put boobies in this time.

[Jonah]

Audrey’s was a great cliffhanger to end an episode on… not a season.

Or indeed a series! As that might be all we ever get to see of her.

I could have lived with it as a season ending had another season been forthcoming. Weirdly, I could maybe even have made my peace with it if it had come closer to the ending than it did.

I've been thinking about the placement of it and wondering if it could have worked elsewhere. I do like it happening in Part 16 as it mirrors Cooper's waking up/coming back to himself. But if it had happened at the end of 17, would it have worked as possibly indicating she had been dreaming that world, and that's one of the reasons 18 is now in the Odessa-verse? Even if that's not the case, would it have fit better there? But if it had happened in 18, just before the final scene, would it feel less like an abrupt stop and more like the same possibly finite and devastating ending of 18? Given that the rest of the episode was set (presumably) in a new universe, would it even have worked in that episode? Maybe, maybe not. After all, we don't know for sure where Audrey is or that she's in Twin Peaks, though it's heavily implied she's somewhere in the "real world". (Is the Odessa-verse the real world? So many questions.)

So, on the one hand, taking it out of 16 and you lose the mirroring aspect with Cooper - but putting it closer to the ending in 17 or 18 might make it feel more like an ending than a loose ending.

Frost: so where can we take Shelly and this drug dealer… when she finds out she’ll be in over her head.
Lynch: how about we take it nooooo where.

I have to admit - this made me chuckle.

[Audrey Horne]

Ha, I’m not talking about changing the placement if that is the last thing you see of the character. I meant it would’ve been fine if we were watching this for a month (at most) and get those Cooper/Audrey awakenings and then have more exciting scenes with them.

And yeah, that final episode 17/18 parts I was like thinking okay, they got us again and no way are those two guys not planning on making more. I expected the announcement at the end of the episode.

And forgive some of us (mainly me) - we’ve been shell shocked for four years and need to get some of this out of our system.

[dugpa]

I meant Audrey’s was a great cliffhanger to end an episode on… not a season. And um does everyone realize we waited thirty years to get the exact same limbo the creators were doing to get ABC to get another season? It’s the same setup of What/where is Coop, and what happened to Audrey (now sans Pete).

It takes a special type of effort to come up with some of these storylines.

Frost: Shelly and Bobby are not married anymore.
LYnch: but she’s now dating the local drug dealer.
Frost: Nice! Creates tension that she is with the wrong guy and is possibly in danger. And Bobby once was a drug dealer.
Lynch: he’s now with the police department.
Frost: I love it. Growth and irony and gets him in the action we come up with.
Lynch: Now we’re cooking with gas.
Frost: so where can we take Shelly and this drug dealer… when she finds out she’ll be in over her head.
Lynch: how about we take it nooooo where.
Frost: I like it. Okay, on to the next characters … what should we do with them?
Lynch: how about we have them sit in a room and do nothing?
Frost: I like it. Sorry for the noise I’m doing dishes.
Lynch: Markie, is that a green glove?
Frost: why indeed it is, Mr. Lynch.
Lynch: I have an idea! …also remember we can put boobies in this time.

Shelly and Bobby was also a bummer. I really enjoyed Shelly’s interactions with Gordon in Season 2. To be honest though I can’t imagine what they would have done with her character but what we got didn’t go anywhere.

[Jonah]

And yeah, that final episode 17/18 parts I was like thinking okay, they got us again and no way are those two guys not planning on making more. I expected the announcement at the end of the episode.

And forgive some of us (mainly me) - we’ve been shell shocked for four years and need to get some of this out of our system.

If anything it's proving we still have a lot to talk about the new season - so it's starting to sink in more, we're not even being completely negative about it, far from it - we're analysing it, pondering what things could mean, where it could go - just like we did and do for Seasons 1 and 2. (I never hated it anyway, I've been clear about that - I have mixed feelings, but there's lots I like, it's just not what I waited 25 years for and I'm not entirely sure it was worth it for me personally, though I'd still rather have it than not have it, but I'm one of those people that would have preferred a 1991 Season 3, not for the coffee and cherry pie - but for lots of other reasons. But there is a lot in The Return that I do like.) And it just goes to show, with how we're talking about it now and how you felt there would be an announcement directly after it aired, that even those of us who have mixed feelings on it, still want or expect to see more! So that's a good thing.

Shelly and Bobby was also a bummer. I really enjoyed Shelly’s interactions with Gordon in Season 2. To be honest though I can’t imagine what they would have done with her character but what we got didn’t go anywhere.

I also felt their daughter's arc didn't really go anywhere. We don't even know for sure what happened to her. I wasn't crazy about any of the townspeople's arcs. They felt more like asides, like just glimpses into the town, which is fine to a certain point, but - as an example - why give so much extra time to Chantal and Hutch (both actors said they convinced Lynch to shoot more as they were having fun) eating Cheetos when they could have given us some more with the original characters or brought their storylines more to a close? Not necessarily a happy ending, or even an ending, but something that had a narrative arc of some kind other than just being there. And don't get me started on the roadhouse people - apart from maybe two scenes (the girl crawling on the floor and Mr. C's son) they are something I can definitely say I don't have mixed feelings on - I just thoroughly dislike those scenes and feel they along with Audrey's long rambling speeches about Billy add nothing.

[Audrey Horne]

Shelly is dating a drug dealer. She’s divorced from Bobby. She falls deeper and deeper for drug dealer. She finds out stuff he’s doing, more and more dangerous. She’s in over her head. Does she go to Bobby with info, is her loyalty to drug dealer guy. Is there too much distrust between Bobby and Shelly to work together and gasp get back together. I know that might be too conventional or resemble something at has a dramatic exciting pulse… but I’d remind Lynch and Frost that thier original show had exhusbands kidnap and tie their wives up to burning mills… it was outlandish fun soap opera.

[Jonah]

Yep and that was an episode Frost not only wrote, but also directed.

[Audrey Horne]

Lynch and Frost wrote the first three episodes of the series together. Pilot and Two are extremely Lynchian of course, but episode one’s script is effortlessly breezy and zipping by with some fantastic dialogue… so I know they have it in them.

I’m really just hard on them because I know they can do better… and yes, I know how hard it is to do any of this.

[mtwentz]

I meant Audrey’s was a great cliffhanger to end an episode on… not a season. And um does everyone realize we waited thirty years to get the exact same limbo the creators were doing to get ABC to get another season? It’s the same setup of What/where is Coop, and what happened to Audrey (now sans Pete).

It takes a special type of effort to come up with some of these storylines.

Frost: Shelly and Bobby are not married anymore.
LYnch: but she’s now dating the local drug dealer.
Frost: Nice! Creates tension that she is with the wrong guy and is possibly in danger. And Bobby once was a drug dealer.
Lynch: he’s now with the police department.
Frost: I love it. Growth and irony and gets him in the action we come up with.
Lynch: Now we’re cooking with gas.
Frost: so where can we take Shelly and this drug dealer… when she finds out she’ll be in over her head.
Lynch: how about we take it nooooo where.
Frost: I like it. Okay, on to the next characters … what should we do with them?
Lynch: how about we have them sit in a room and do nothing?
Frost: I like it. Sorry for the noise I’m doing dishes.
Lynch: Markie, is that a green glove?
Frost: why indeed it is, Mr. Lynch.
Lynch: I have an idea! …also remember we can put boobies in this time.

I think it was more like: Lynch and Frost mapped out the main story arc where Cooper escapes from the Lodge, defeats Bob and the Doppelganger with the help of Freddy, and goes back into time and rescues Laura and then loses her to Odessa The mapout included the Vegas and South Dakota storylines, the Sheriff station investigation as well as the origin story in New Mexico. And of course, Mr. C's parallel search for Judy.

Once they knew where they going with the main thread, Lynch and Frost started talking:
Where are Bobby and Shelly at? What is going on in James's life? How had Dr. Jacoby evolved? Where is Ben Horne at, is he reformed/good or still scheming and sleeping around? What is Audrey up to? What about Norma and Ed?

In other words, the intent was not to map traditional storylines as you would have on network TV, but show a 'where are they now' peek at their lives.

They wrote scenes that gave us those answers. We know that years later, Bobby has grown, Shelly is unable to escape patterns she exhibited in her teen years. Jacoby just went totally crazy. James is basically alone and working a low wage job. Ben Horne is struggling between desire and a new found sense of ethics. Audrey is lost, so lost.

I know it didn't work for everyone and I would be lying if I said I didn't want to see more of a Red, and either a Red/Cooper confrontation or a Red/Bobby confrontation in place of Cooper driving from Texas to Washington .

Overall I found the approach satisfying albeit frustrating at times.

[Audrey Horne]

It didn’t happen like I stated above?

Yes, agreed. They most likely had the Cooper in Vegas coupled with the FBI plots. And then everything else was plugged in and stitched together once people were available.

[Jonah]

It didn’t happen like I stated above?

It happened exactly like that.

[Brad D]

For me, Audrey was one of the biggest disappointments. S3 was a chance to really do something with that character and do her justice after the uh, John Justice Wheeler debacle (which I’m guessing Lynch and Frost may be totally unaware of). Maybe it’s too much inside baseball, but knowing her whole purgatory story was literally shoehorned into the series doesn’t impress me. For me, it’s just inconsequential stuff like the roadhouse randoms, serving very little purpose in the grand scheme. One of my many grievances. To think Sherilyn had one scene to begin with is mind numbing.

It’s one thing to subvert expectations and nostalgia, it’s another to basically discard one of the most intriguing elements at hand for a third season. I mean WHAT

[Audrey Horne]

Audrey was obviously the biggest disappointment to me. That first season I felt Cooper and Audrey were two of the best characters ever made in the history of TV. And yes, going into this return knowing certain things was only adding to that. But in retrospect, that character had one of the only remotely interesting or close to an arc in the story. And that was only because Fenn complained.

But the head scratcher to me is Frost and Lynch still connected the two characters by them having a child (out of rape) and then ended it on a bleak ending, and still didn’t give them scenes together. As it stands, initially Audrey’s only scene would’ve been beaten by her son while he steals money, and then the son dies later. This is like if Shelley Long’s Diane character came back to Cheers for the finale and got gangbanged by kidnappers. Maybe this thing happens in real life, but it doesn’t fit the initial style of the show.

The whole show seems so mean-spirited and ugly- Major Briggs had his head severed! I always thought deep down Lynch and Frost were big softies (Lynch’s bird at the end of Blue Velvet) but their work now just makes me feel icky.

[Brad D]

I think I was definitely expecting a tone more in the vein of FWWM. Something more harsh was not a surprise at all. But there is no sense of possibility in this series. Everything is falling in on itself. Decay, decay, and more decay until reality as we know it is gone. Cheers to Lynch and Frost for doing whatever they wanted to do and not surrendering, but did anyone outside of the Lynch echoplex really dig it? I know popular opinion does not exclusively mean success (I think Mozart and Van Gogh died broke) but the whole nature of The Return is basically telling anyone who just watched TP on Netflix to go away. It's a fortress covered in a briar patch and the same ending of FWWM awaits inside.

I really did enjoy the first four hours. A lot of promise there. Hastings, the black box, a few things cooking at the sheriff's. I LOVE the sequence of Coop leaving the lodge, and I'm pretty amused by Mr. Jackpots. I think if all those threads had been stuck with and honored, it could have gone somewhere cool. (aside from way, way, way too much Dougie gaiting around) As time has passed, I'm sort of warming up to the idea of part 18. But so much of The Return (and the original) felt negated, as if Lynch and Frost wanted to sort of play in the sandbox of TP and get paid, but not necessarily build on what came before. A concerted effort to build the universe out with books and a series that actually connect to each other would have been cool. But screwing with the past (literally) just wasn't much fun in hindsight. Why on earth do you re-write Big Ed's scene from episode 8 in that first book? It was perfectly acted by McGill, perfectly directed by Lynch - and also captured Rosenfield's essence. I suspect Frost did not remember he had already nailed that scene with perfection on the page. All that time later, I just feel like Lynch and Frost lost the thread of what drew people to Twin Peaks. What I watched was the David Lynch Variety Hour, starring David Lynch, with special guests from Twin Peaks. The pedestrian viewer of TP does not care who writes and directs, they just want a good story and enthralling characters. Those two things did not make it though the percolator IMHO. Would have been cool to see TP re-define the zeitgeist again, but it was not meant to be.