Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

[Nikki Grace]

Their twenty-second scene, exchanging a couple of lines about well-established aspects of the Mormon religion everyone already knows, didn't reveal much about anything for anyone's benefit.

If anything the scene showed that they are very simple people making assumptions based on wrong or incomplete information.
Mormons can drink coke, and they can even have sex before marriage somehow.


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And it's just a "slice of life" look at them and their ignorance as they go back on the road as essentially professional killers - people who do not value life in the slightest, whose first thought after the murder of a father in front of his child is "Next stop Wendy's!"

[Venus]

Is there a point to Chantal and Hutch?

I suppose some might say I should wait till episode 18 is over before calling any character out as pointless...

Definitely not pointless. Without Chantal we wouldn't have had the classic line Mr C delivered whilst groping her nether regions shortly after Daria's murder!

[Mr. Jackpots]

For me the high point this episode were all the "Over the Top" references

Absolutely, Mr. C Arriving at the farm and playing the arm wrestling game and interrogating Ray Is definitely one of my all time favourite scenes of the franchise now.

"Starting position" hehe. So awesome.

[Rialto]

Is there a point to Chantal and Hutch?

I suppose some might say I should wait till episode 18 is over before calling any character out as pointless...

Definitely not pointless. Without Chantal we wouldn't have had the classic line Mr C delivered whilst groping her nether regions shortly after Daria's murder!

Argh! Still trying to scrub my brain clean of that memory!

[AhmedKhalifa]

God, I finally found a group that doesn't think Lynch is a demi-god and THE RETURN can do no wrong. I'm loving some of the discussions in here. Keep it up

[mlsstwrt]

God, I finally found a group that doesn't think Lynch is a demi-god and THE RETURN can do no wrong. I'm loving some of the discussions in here. Keep it up

Welcome!

I think we still all love Lynch but we don't necessarily think that anything made by David Lynch is by definition genius. Not saying all of those who love The Return do think that way, far from it. But there are a few (just as there are probably a few of us who may have been disappointed no matter what).

I think that, decaying ability aside, Lynch has a very different outlook and is in a very different mood to when he made the original. That's natural, 25 years have passed! I just preferred the old Lynch.

It's funny, a few people have said we don't like The Return because it's too dark. I don't find it that dark at all, just intermittently glib/pantomime funny, spiteful, bleak and ugly. FWWM was way darker than this.

[Endangered_Wulf]

I don't mind a liitle classic David Lynch chicanery but the majority of "The Return" has been disjointed and incoherent. Maybe it's due to Mr. Lynch's dedication to his artistic integrity, maybe it's due to lazy script writing. Either way....we all can agree there is a supreme difference between capturing the imagination of a broad audience and KEEPING it. I fully understood 'The Return' was gonna be different. I get it...but without a solid, cohesive storyline, I don't see how we can expect a season renewal by the fine folks at Showtime. In fact, the very first season of Twin Peaks was very accommodating for the everyday average television enthusiast. The proof is in the pudding. Ratings were through the roof that season and into the 2nd season. That formula worked. Why on earth would anyone mess around with that formula ? The only reason why ratings dropped off was because of the FORCED Laura Palmer killer reveal. Now...in 2017...there is no such pressure. I can't imagine why the Lynch/Frost Team would mess around with what worked in the first place.

As I mentioned before in other posts, I will always support David Lynch and Mark Frost but .... The Return is clearly disjointed and incoherent for the sake of being disjointed and incoherent. That won't be good enough in the long term.

[Redlodge]

In the end it will either be redeemed by the last 5 episodes or continue the downward spiral that is Dougie Jones. I really think that there is this general feeling of having your hopes up then dashed in quite a few instances. Lynch obviously thinks that the medium has become too predictable and is trying to remedy that but I wish he'd done it it a different way. Dougie was OK for a few episodes but here we are 13 episodes in and there has been no progress in Cooper coming to his senses other that a few moments of hope dashed again. I wanted to see the Coop I remembered or at least some form of him as himself not this man baby Lynch decided to make him into. As I said maybe parts 14-18 will redeem the series but I'm not holding my breath. He has pulled the rug out too many times now. Now that Showtime has said there will be no Season 4 we can only hope to get the next 5 episodes with the Coop we all know and love. He was the reason the original run was so successful and we need him back NOW.

[Twin Peaks Podcast]

Heard some people talking on a podcast about all the editing weirdness and how it may be examples of time acting strange in the show.

Then when asked directly if (when the series ends) there's no mention of time being messed with by the lodge or whatever, if the person would finally put these scenes down to just editing mistakes the guy says "no". He'd still assume time in Twin Peaks is weird/being manipulated by something.

To me this feels like he's basically admitting that he doesn't think Lynch capable of making a mistake... Okay then.

[Mallard]

Heard some people talking on a podcast about all the editing weirdness and how it may be examples of time acting strange in the show.

Then when asked directly if (when the series ends) there's no mention of time being messed with by the lodge or whatever, if the person would finally put these scenes down to just editing mistakes the guy says "no". He'd still assume time in Twin Peaks is weird/being manipulated by something.

To me this feels like he's basically admitting that he doesn't think Lynch capable of making a mistake... Okay then.

I may be misunderstanding you, but that doesn't sound that unreasonable to me.

Lynch is definitely not infallible, but you don't have to be a Lynch sycophant to think that he might make some strange, but plot significant, editing decisions w/out ever explicitly recognizing their importance. Lost Highway and Mullholland Drive are basically whole films that follow this format.

[boske]

Now that Ray has been whacked by Mr. C, he will be taking some secrets with him to the grave (or the lodge ): how he got those coordinates, what they meant, who the Hasting's secretary was. Case closed, and all that stuff will go down the memory lane. We are still waiting for those Mr C puke analysis results, that was like, ten parts ago, they are due any time now, right?

[Mr. Reindeer]

Now that Ray has been whacked by Mr. C, he will be taking some secrets with him to the grave (or the lodge ): how he got those coordinates, what they meant, who the Hasting's secretary was.

Well, we now know that she was pretty!

[SnowqualmieJim]

Long-time lurker, second-time poster…

I don’t know if there’s been another show that changed as much during its run as Twin Peaks. Go back and watch that first season, the one that made most fans fall in love. There’s just the right amount of Lynchian weirdness and unpredictability, with plenty of leisurely scenes that focus on developing the characters, but it never lost momentum. The stakes are clear, every character is vivid, almost every line is crisp and memorable, and despite the fact that we’re watching the investigation of a brutal murder, there’s this almost omnipresent warmth: Cooper’s enthusiasm and fascination, Audrey’s infatuation, the goofy-good-heartedness of the entire sheriff’s department and the romances – James and Donna, Bobby and Shelley, Ed and Norma.

That warmth is the element most glaringly missing from The Return; I don’t know what’s happened with Lynch and Frost to make them portray their once-beloved town and characters so darkly, but it’s stark and off-putting. Sure, there’s humor of a sort, but it’s this cold, absurdist slapstick, where a man-child in the form of Kyle MacLachlan, the previous heart of the show, stumbles around like a stroke victim and everyone around him acts like it’s normal, even a doctor.

We learned from the casino scene early on that the Lodge was somehow guiding him to good fortune with the image over the slot machines, which means we know, deep down, nothing all that bad will happen to Dougie. It’s anti-drama, anti-tension. Every episode or two, some bad guy will plot Dougie’s demise, and he’ll obliviously escape the danger, like the Roadrunner escaping the coyote.

Think about it, in the original series, there was this constant sense of tension and potential danger: Leo beating Shelley, Bobby and Mike are out to get James, Hank beating up Leo, the masked man attacks Jacoby, Shelley and Catherine are trapped in the burning mill, Harold Smith is vaguely menacing to Donna… and as demonstrated with Maddy’s murder, almost anybody could die. It was a big cast, almost anybody was expendable!

We’ve coalesced into three separate storylines: Las Vegas, the FBI team, and back in town. Las Vegas feels like this entirely separate Lynch idea that has been reworked around Cooper and shoehorned into a series titled “Twin Peaks.” Does Dougie feel love to his family? Maybe, kinda, sorta? Does Janey-E love Dougie? Apparently, although she doesn't seem worried at all that he's been mute for several days.

The FBI team disappears for episodes at a time, and there’s a strange coldness to Cole and Albert. Coop was once very close to both; you would think Cooper’s disappearance would really haunt them, and they would feel this intense need to know what happened to him. The Lynchian pacing just doesn't fit here; we're watching a top FBI team drink leisurely and hang out with French babes in a South Dakotan hotel while a maniacal killer is on the loose.

And the show “Twin Peaks” has only an intermittent interest in the characters in town in the title. We’ve got 18 one-hour episodes with no commercials, but the show can’t seem to check in on any particular townsfolk regularly. Sarah Palmer’s scenes are great, but we ignored her for eight or nine episodes.

As some others have said, the show has some strong scenes and some fine performances, but they rarely add up to a satisfying episode. Sometimes chilling, occasionally intriguing, often bewildering… but rarely if ever particularly enjoyable or fun to watch. In all likelihood, this is our last visit to this unparalleled fictional town, and it just feels like there were so many other possibilities ignored…

[Snailhead]

^ I agree with a lot of what you've said, however I will say that I think Ferrer has been doing a beautiful job of portraying Albert as haunted/troubled. He used to be very chatty, and is now mostly silent and brooding - that to me is an indication that he's lost in dark thoughts.

[Venus]

Sure, there’s humor of a sort, but it’s this cold, absurdist slapstick, where a man-child in the form of Kyle MacLachlan, the previous heart of the show, stumbles around like a stroke victim and everyone around him acts like it’s normal, even a doctor.

Yes, I have now reached the point of loathing this character. Never thought I would say that. Someone throw a Nadine sandbag at him. It worked for her. Patience is a virtue yes, and maybe we are being lectured into having some through this, but for entertainment purposes there are limits.