Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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David Locke
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by David Locke »

I thought Part 14 was one of the best of the season. As with the other best ones, it becomes better the more I think about it.

And yet somehow it, like The Return as a whole, also gets worse the more I think about it.

How can I simultaneously say I'm quite enjoying The Return and consider what we've gotten so far to be 14 hours mostly well spent - while also finding the thing a massive disappointment on many levels?

The thing is, while the new episodes are rarely terrible, they're also seldom if ever on the same rarified level as FWWM or Episodes 29, 14, 2, Pilot, 9, 8, most of Season 1, and so on.

I've been entertained, thrilled, surprised, and even deeply moved at times by the best Return installments: 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 14.

But I struggle to think of more than a handful of scenes that I'd actually put up against the best of Peaks or Lynch. Mauve world? Awesome. Much of Part 8? Masterful. Traffic jam scene? Pure Lynch.

But it's not Lynch at his best. Well, maybe those examples... but TR as a whole? No way.

Look, I can't lie. Lynch has good claim to the title of greatest living American director, while also being about 15, if not 18, years past his prime.

Let's say 15. Mulholland Drive was an accidental masterpiece, and its seams show far more than with any of his prior work. This is visible in everything from the smallest aesthetic detail on up: the very bright, TV-friendly soft-focus glow of the Betty section happens to be thematically perfect, but notice also the severe lack of headroom in this portion - caused by cropping to widescreen an image that was originally shot for full-frame.

Regardless, MD is the last Lynch work that feels like it has that same magic to it. Not even the strongest moments he's captured since have had the same electricity, and it is absolutely in large part because the look and feel of celluloid was so central in cementing the uncanny and dangerous yet seductive beauty of Lynch's cinema. He may be fine with a digital camera, but I think DKL is truly one of the masters of film, of celluloid, and I also think the more constrained nature of shooting on film (especially back before AVID/digital editing, and just the whole digital culture of the past decade or two) seemed to force Lynch to sharpen his skills as a craftsman, as an artist.

He may be an Artist above all, but in his best works (most of all TP & FWWM, Blue Velvet, and Lost Highway) Lynch had an undeniably firm grasp on all the aspects of his craft... composition, color, focal length, editing, proportion, contrast, serving the story, form melding with content, etc.

Just look at how tightly directed Lost Highway is. How it knows precisely where it's going even as it seems so off the rails. Look at the economical grace of The Straight Story. Or the deeply humanist, visceral FWWM. Or Blue Velvet, which is painstakingly composed and color coordinated as if a painting, even more than anything else he's done. Even Wild at Heart, which I like but am not crazy for by any means, looks far more appealing compared to the free-floating, wishy-washy, frankly lazy manner of working which has helped sully Lynch's digital work.

There's simply a comparative lack of discipline, a kind of aesthetic laziness, that marks even the better parts of The Return. Form dictates content in this digital Lynch era, but in the unfortunate sense of cheap camcorders or nicer HD cameras allowing a Lynch to let loose and improv it up and work on the fly and indulge his passion for the ugly, the uncinematic, the banal - whatever catches his eye at a given moment.

It's very much purposeful. If Lynch wanted to he could still make a beautifully shot season with digital, but for some reason he wants these cold, flat, lifeless images with either little color grading or grading that gives everything an unattractive, antiseptic sheen.

And that's the thing. How could a filmmaker so intensely entrenched in the subjective, subconscious mind of his characters, the man who made FWWM and LH and MD and BV... all of a sudden turn the other way and, at least with The Return, serve up a cold and distant and mannered product. The visceral feeling of the earlier films is mostly gone as we now see the world through what I can only describe as the eyes of a misanthropic absurdist comic. No brilliant, God's eye view Kubrick/Antonioni-esque detachment here; we're at a distance, but it feels arbitrary and represses more than it reveals.

Just think of all the scenes, so so many, where we watch beloved old characters (or new ones) trade generically stilted dialogue in medium-close ups or two-shots or wide shots. There are other problems at play, but it's hard to get involved or interested in Norma or Ed or Nadine or Jacoby or Diane or Gordon or Albert or Shelly, etc, when both the dialogue and the visual presentation is so.. almost disinterested.

There's little passion or fire here. That's sad; that's a big part of what makes Lynch great. Even Inland Empire has that.

But something has just happened in the intervening years, and the interdimensional of subconscious or supernatural creatures of TR too often seem more a museum exhibit or an art installation than a disturbing jolt of pure uncanniness to the brain, as it was with the Episode 14 and 29 and FWWM and the rest.

Human beings like Laura Palmer and Jeffery Beaumont and Diane Selwyn and Alvin Straight and Fred/Pete and Renee/Alice and Sailor and Lula seem so insignificant to the preoccupations of TR, which is one half Frostian overcomplicated sci-fi exposition-dump and one half Lynchian bleak, absurdist, formalist game-playing directed at no one in particular. Just moving around a bunch of beloved characters and settings and ideas like pieces on a chessboard, most characters lacking much of any interiority, agency, depth, or redeeming qualities.

There's no heart and certainly no sweeping, humane, operatic and soulful sense of the Romantic that marked many of the best Lynch works.

It's dead. Barren. And yet it lives - I do enjoy it for what it is. But things are so abstracted and hermetically sealed in their own postmodernist playground. Part 8, one of the very best if not the best of TR, still lacks an emotional core - besides a scene in which the Giant/Fireman does some alchemical business to better combat the forces of Evil. It works somehow despite the ridiculous notion of Laura being tied up in this sci-fi mythos, purely from the strength of its haunting score and images. But there's not much to grab onto there. Again, lack of a human element. Interdimensional beings are just not the same thing. I feel like TR is finally giving us that self-serious sci-fi-horror-soap that some bits of mid S2 seem to hint at.

It's all left brained mythology building and abstract metatextual constructs, and precious little right brained pathos, deeply felt emotion. I want back the Lynch that had the affective cinematic power to make us cry with Laura in the Roadhouse, then right after that throw us into a 10-minute-plus hypnotically drugged strobe light and loud guitar stupor. Or the Lynch that composed, like a great symphony, the sequence of Maddie's murder and the Roadhouse aftermath. The decrepit old waiter speaks the only words, and they never fail to move me to tears: "I'm so sorry." "The World Spins": something both beautiful and broken but unchanging, unforgiving. We can do nothing but look for solace in Donna's silent sobbing, Bobby's little-boy-lost-in-the-universe look of utter shock and sadness, Cooper staring up and out into the void as if contemplating every solemn mystery of the universe at once; and then, curtains. Silencio, for no more can be said.

I want to feel something approaching that visceral style of image, sound, editing and direction of actors. It's too bad that Lynch is just either uninterested or incapable of producing such potent pure cinema that is felt in the soul instead of deconstructed in the brain like so many encrypted text messages, Clearly Intentional continuity errors, exposition feasts, or over-determined mythos dumps tracing out for us the ever-so-fascinating heritage of the Arm and its latest incarnation.

Geographically we may have made a return indeed; but, more pivotally to me, it's just not in the same emotional universe at all.


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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mlsstwrt »

What a post DL! If only the other DL were doing such a good job!
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by sylvia_north »

David Locke, I'm with you on enjoying it but being disappointed the more I think about it. Is it like, watching a train wreck in slooooowww mooootion? How could he do it indeed. Uninterested and uncapable, either or both.

"Lynch's impenetrability has grown greater in recent years—earlier films like Blue Velvet or even the first season of Twin Peaks feel uncomplicated by comparison. But inscrutability in and of itself is not necessarily a virtue; if a show is designed not to be understood, it also loses opportunities to connect. Twin Peaks's first go-round catalyzed fans by using the tools of surrealism to tell a fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking story. Twin Peaks now has made surrealism less of a tool and more of an objective" -TIME, The New Twin Peaks is Strange and Not In a Good Way
Daniel D’Addario May 2017

Yes I agree judasbooth. Just finished Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own about pattern-seeking and all kinds of observed behavioral and psychological phenomena explain how Return and Lynch could do no wrong in wide swath of the population's opinion.

"Was blocked by the creators" :?: :!: :?: Oh, boy that shoe fits a little too well. Which abuse of star power came first, then- the negotiations, or writing something terribly weak knowing your reputation will sanctify its place in contemporary culture? Gosh golly gee, that's Machiavellian. 'sometimes the author's intent doesn't matter; sometimes the author's intent is worse,' as they say.

"Lynch and Frost signed a contract with Showtime to make Twin Peaks. Lynch and Frost then write a script that violates the contract they signed. Instead of compromising, Lynch drops out- in word only, as he has signed a contract and “quit” via Twitter and not the legal process, which is not how it works- ensuring failure or at least severely hindered ratings for the show. Can normal people do this? Nope." -"Three Reasons Why David Lynch is A Jagoff" Arpad Okay, Observation Deck (Kinja)
nimeoa wrote: And you can call me a blasphemer all you want, but I really hope Q2 takes a crack at this with a fanedit when all is said and done.
I support this. I'd even contribute to a crowdfunding campaign for it, if that was legal. But, like, what would he pick? We knew what was relevant to the overall murder mystery in 1&2. WTF is even the mystery of this?

So far you could cut everything that happens in the Roadhouse for sure, sweeping and Renault, Jacoby and Nadine, the Mitchum brothers and their molls, Audrey, Sonny Jim, everything at the RR, Big Ed and Carl Rodd (unless it's just a cut to Car watching the bad CGI in the powerline,) all of Richard, most of Lucy and Janey-E and the Hutchens, the various hitmen including Anthony's attempt at poisoning, Drugged Out Mom, Monica Bellucci, Jade, French Girl, Tammy walking away, Gordon's hearing aid gags, all the flashbacks, lots of the office stuff and Duncan Todd, Green Glove and Hastings could be abbreviated. Am I missing anything? What's left? *Obviously this is a premature guess , but some of it I'm confident can definitely go.
Or would it be a few short films, renumbered with new parts?
Last edited by sylvia_north on Sat Aug 19, 2017 5:49 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by N. Needleman »

judasbooth wrote:I have the awful feeling it may actually get even worse. What I have noticed is that more and more people are coming out of the woodwork and saying, y'know, the show isn't actually any good. In the comments section on the tvline.com review, a couple of posters made reference to a blind item on the site which stated that a nameless cable TV network desperately tried to offload a newly-completed show onto an online streaming service, but was blocked by the creators of said show.
I hesitate to comment on the 99th post claiming people who like the show are really just deep in denial, but I do want to correct the record on this related topic: The blind item you refer to was actually about the disastrous Shonda Rhimes-produced show Still Star-Crossed, not Twin Peaks. Showtime saw TP's scripts in advance, they knew what it was. Carry on!
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by judasbooth »

David Locke wrote:I thought Part 14 was one of the best of the season. As with the other best ones, it becomes better the more I think about it.

And yet somehow it, like The Return as a whole, also gets worse the more I think about it.

How can I simultaneously say I'm quite enjoying The Return and consider what we've gotten so far to be 14 hours mostly well spent - while also finding the thing a massive disappointment on many levels?

The thing is, while the new episodes are rarely terrible, they're also seldom if ever on the same rarified level as FWWM or Episodes 29, 14, 2, Pilot, 9, 8, most of Season 1, and so on.

I've been entertained, thrilled, surprised, and even deeply moved at times by the best Return installments: 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 14.

But I struggle to think of more than a handful of scenes that I'd actually put up against the best of Peaks or Lynch. Mauve world? Awesome. Much of Part 8? Masterful. Traffic jam scene? Pure Lynch.

But it's not Lynch at his best. Well, maybe those examples... but TR as a whole? No way.

Look, I can't lie. Lynch has good claim to the title of greatest living American director, while also being about 15, if not 18, years past his prime.

Let's say 15. Mulholland Drive was an accidental masterpiece, and its seams show far more than with any of his prior work. This is visible in everything from the smallest aesthetic detail on up: the very bright, TV-friendly soft-focus glow of the Betty section happens to be thematically perfect, but notice also the severe lack of headroom in this portion - caused by cropping to widescreen an image that was originally shot for full-frame.

Regardless, MD is the last Lynch work that feels like it has that same magic to it. Not even the strongest moments he's captured since have had the same electricity, and it is absolutely in large part because the look and feel of celluloid was so central in cementing the uncanny and dangerous yet seductive beauty of Lynch's cinema. He may be fine with a digital camera, but I think DKL is truly one of the masters of film, of celluloid, and I also think the more constrained nature of shooting on film (especially back before AVID/digital editing, and just the whole digital culture of the past decade or two) seemed to force Lynch to sharpen his skills as a craftsman, as an artist.

He may be an Artist above all, but in his best works (most of all TP & FWWM, Blue Velvet, and Lost Highway) Lynch had an undeniably firm grasp on all the aspects of his craft... composition, color, focal length, editing, proportion, contrast, serving the story, form melding with content, etc.

Just look at how tightly directed Lost Highway is. How it knows precisely where it's going even as it seems so off the rails. Look at the economical grace of The Straight Story. Or the deeply humanist, visceral FWWM. Or Blue Velvet, which is painstakingly composed and color coordinated as if a painting, even more than anything else he's done. Even Wild at Heart, which I like but am not crazy for by any means, looks far more appealing compared to the free-floating, wishy-washy, frankly lazy manner of working which has helped sully Lynch's digital work.

There's simply a comparative lack of discipline, a kind of aesthetic laziness, that marks even the better parts of The Return. Form dictates content in this digital Lynch era, but in the unfortunate sense of cheap camcorders or nicer HD cameras allowing a Lynch to let loose and improv it up and work on the fly and indulge his passion for the ugly, the uncinematic, the banal - whatever catches his eye at a given moment.

It's very much purposeful. If Lynch wanted to he could still make a beautifully shot season with digital, but for some reason he wants these cold, flat, lifeless images with either little color grading or grading that gives everything an unattractive, antiseptic sheen.

And that's the thing. How could a filmmaker so intensely entrenched in the subjective, subconscious mind of his characters, the man who made FWWM and LH and MD and BV... all of a sudden turn the other way and, at least with The Return, serve up a cold and distant and mannered product. The visceral feeling of the earlier films is mostly gone as we now see the world through what I can only describe as the eyes of a misanthropic absurdist comic. No brilliant, God's eye view Kubrick/Antonioni-esque detachment here; we're at a distance, but it feels arbitrary and represses more than it reveals.

Just think of all the scenes, so so many, where we watch beloved old characters (or new ones) trade generically stilted dialogue in medium-close ups or two-shots or wide shots. There are other problems at play, but it's hard to get involved or interested in Norma or Ed or Nadine or Jacoby or Diane or Gordon or Albert or Shelly, etc, when both the dialogue and the visual presentation is so.. almost disinterested.

There's little passion or fire here. That's sad; that's a big part of what makes Lynch great. Even Inland Empire has that.

But something has just happened in the intervening years, and the interdimensional of subconscious or supernatural creatures of TR too often seem more a museum exhibit or an art installation than a disturbing jolt of pure uncanniness to the brain, as it was with the Episode 14 and 29 and FWWM and the rest.

Human beings like Laura Palmer and Jeffery Beaumont and Diane Selwyn and Alvin Straight and Fred/Pete and Renee/Alice and Sailor and Lula seem so insignificant to the preoccupations of TR, which is one half Frostian overcomplicated sci-fi exposition-dump and one half Lynchian bleak, absurdist, formalist game-playing directed at no one in particular. Just moving around a bunch of beloved characters and settings and ideas like pieces on a chessboard, most characters lacking much of any interiority, agency, depth, or redeeming qualities.

There's no heart and certainly no sweeping, humane, operatic and soulful sense of the Romantic that marked many of the best Lynch works.

It's dead. Barren. And yet it lives - I do enjoy it for what it is. But things are so abstracted and hermetically sealed in their own postmodernist playground. Part 8, one of the very best if not the best of TR, still lacks an emotional core - besides a scene in which the Giant/Fireman does some alchemical business to better combat the forces of Evil. It works somehow despite the ridiculous notion of Laura being tied up in this sci-fi mythos, purely from the strength of its haunting score and images. But there's not much to grab onto there. Again, lack of a human element. Interdimensional beings are just not the same thing. I feel like TR is finally giving us that self-serious sci-fi-horror-soap that some bits of mid S2 seem to hint at.

It's all left brained mythology building and abstract metatextual constructs, and precious little right brained pathos, deeply felt emotion. I want back the Lynch that had the affective cinematic power to make us cry with Laura in the Roadhouse, then right after that throw us into a 10-minute-plus hypnotically drugged strobe light and loud guitar stupor. Or the Lynch that composed, like a great symphony, the sequence of Maddie's murder and the Roadhouse aftermath. The decrepit old waiter speaks the only words, and they never fail to move me to tears: "I'm so sorry." "The World Spins": something both beautiful and broken but unchanging, unforgiving. We can do nothing but look for solace in Donna's silent sobbing, Bobby's little-boy-lost-in-the-universe look of utter shock and sadness, Cooper staring up and out into the void as if contemplating every solemn mystery of the universe at once; and then, curtains. Silencio, for no more can be said.

I want to feel something approaching that visceral style of image, sound, editing and direction of actors. It's too bad that Lynch is just either uninterested or incapable of producing such potent pure cinema that is felt in the soul instead of deconstructed in the brain like so many encrypted text messages, Clearly Intentional continuity errors, exposition feasts, or over-determined mythos dumps tracing out for us the ever-so-fascinating heritage of the Arm and its latest incarnation.

Geographically we may have made a return indeed; but, more pivotally to me, it's just not in the same emotional universe at all.


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A considered, thoughtful and well-written post. Thank you. Oh, and bonus point for tapping it out on an iPhone.

Interesting point about the framing of the "TV" section of Mulholland Drive. I've got the the newest Blu-Ray, and can't help but notice just how grainy it is. Oddly, I don't remember the DVD being like this, and certainly not when I saw it in the cinema projected on traditional 35 mil back in 2001. Possibly a cockup with the mastering, or maybe a product of the cropping and zooming?

Your point about technological advances and artistic laziness is one that I've debated with friends for a long time. Movies, television and music have changed radically in the past 15 years. Instead of magnetic tape and celluloid, everything is pretty much done "in the box". Shooting/recording is cheap and easy and instead of hands-on editing, we now have ProTools and AVID. Artistic skill and discipline has largely vanished because there is nothing that can't be "fixed" in post or stitched together from literally dozens of takes. I have friends that work in professional recording studios and, make no mistake, everyone, from the lowest-of-low-budget scratchy indie bands to the most mainstream pop is digitally manipulated beyond recognition. The recordings of those "lo-fi" indie bands only go out after the drums have been quantised and the singer auto-tuned to inhuman perfect pitch. Allegedly, David Fincher did 100(!) takes of the opening scene of The Social Network and stitched them all together in the editing suite. Where's the skill in that? Back when there was actual money running through the camera in the form of film, you can bet that everyone on set was 100% focused on the task at hand.

Art thrives on limitation and necessity is, of course, the mother of invention. A lot of artists could do worse that impose some limitations on themselves. Lynch perhaps needs this more than anyone.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

sylvia_north wrote: Yes I agree judasbooth. Just finished Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own about pattern-seeking and all kinds of observed behavioral and psychological phenomena explain how Return and Lynch could do no wrong in wide swath of the population's opinion.
Is that supposed to be an insult :-)
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mlsstwrt »

I know we're getting back into dangerous territory here and I don't really want to see arguments breaking out again. I really do believe that you guys posting here do love The Return and are not just swept up in some mass hysteria. But it's hard not to be skeptical when people on other threads aren't just saying, 'Wow really enjoyed that Episode, not perfect, but great hour of TV' but they're saying (about Ep 14), 'That was the most amazing hour of TV ever created.'

I'm not trying to say that art isn't subjective or that they're not entitled to their opinion but there is such a disconnect between the over the top praise and the quality of what we're being given that it's hard not to wonder whether something else isn't going on. Was Ep 14 really THAT special? I can sort of understand the same comments being made about Ep 8. I hated it but it was out there and different enough that I can see how people may rate it as the best thing they've ever seen. But Ep 14 was maybe, at best, as good as a run of the mill episode of S1/S2 first half. To be clear for me it wasn't even that good. But to say it's better than the Pilot or Episode 14?

So no, for the record I don't think anyone here is being disingenuous about their love for The Return. I think maybe certain others have got carried away. I was so into Twin Peaks when I watched it at 13 years old that the sudden drop in quality didn't really register on the first viewing (somebody else said the same thing a good number of posts ago). I think it wasn't until the second viewing that I realised that after Leland's apprehension and death the show become terrible.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

David Locke wrote: Geographically we may have made a return indeed; but, more pivotally to me, it's just not in the same emotional universe at all.


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I believe the 'emotional core' you are looking is what we are going to see in the last couple of episodes.

We did have a hint of it up until now- the tear falling down Cooper's eye. I believe as he wakes up, regains his memory, we will become more emotionally engaged.

In the meantime, got a light :-)?
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by sylvia_north »

mtwentz wrote:
sylvia_north wrote: Yes I agree judasbooth. Just finished Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own about pattern-seeking and all kinds of observed behavioral and psychological phenomena explain how Return and Lynch could do no wrong in wide swath of the population's opinion.
Is that supposed to be an insult :-)
I think from the smiley you're kidding, but this is the quote I was responding to
judasbooth wrote:
Of course, over on places like Reddit, the true believers are unswayed. But as I said before, it seems more and more like they're actually trying to convince themselves that the new series is good. Seriously, I could paraphrase a lot of the comments like this: "it's suppposed to be tedious and pointless and nonsensical and crappy - that's the whole point" and "I find it tiresome and unwatchable, but that's why I enjoy it" and "it's made in an artistic language that only people like me understand, it's over the head of the normals". Even the biggest fans of the original series knew that all the weirdness and oddity was largely just for decoration - Lynch and Frost as much as admitted that there was no "key" to the clues and symbols - only the truly obsessive would try to find meaning where there wasn't any, or, even worse, claim that they understood the meaning even if the creators themselves said there was none.

I get it, it's human nature to impart significance to, and spot patterns in, random, unrelated things. It's how we've evolved to think. But when this instinct is misdirected, it lapses into superstitious thinking, and in extreme cases, delusional thinking (and, no, I'm not calling fans of the new show delusional). The wikipedia entry for apophenia is instructive in this case. The human capacity for self-deception is great, and I'm in no way immune to this, but sometimes you've got to take a step back, take a deep breath and trust your gut feelings. After all, the Emperor wasn't really the butt of the joke - it was all the others who willingly deceived themselves, ironically because they were afraid of looking unsophisticated or foolish.
No one- none of us- are so special that our opinions and biases come from the ether. I refer to books a lot maybe I shouldn't be so obscure mentioning other people's research. But I think you were joking asking if it was an insult. :D (it wasn't no need to moderate this one)
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

mlsstwrt wrote:I know we're getting back into dangerous territory here and I don't really want to see arguments breaking out again. I really do believe that you guys posting here do love The Return and are not just swept up in some mass hysteria. But it's hard not to be skeptical when people on other threads aren't just saying, 'Wow really enjoyed that Episode, not perfect, but great hour of TV' but they're saying (about Ep 14), 'That was the most amazing hour of TV ever created.'

I'm not trying to say that art isn't subjective or that they're not entitled to their opinion but there is such a disconnect between the over the top praise and the quality of what we're being given that it's hard not to wonder whether something else isn't going on. Was Ep 14 really THAT special? I can sort of understand the same comments being made about Ep 8. I hated it but it was out there and different enough that I can see how people may rate it as the best thing they've ever seen. But Ep 14 was maybe, at best, as good as a run of the mill episode of S1/S2 first half. To be clear for me it wasn't even that good. But to say it's better than the Pilot or Episode 14?

So no, for the record I don't think anyone here is being disingenuous about their love for The Return. I think maybe certain others have got carried away. I was so into Twin Peaks when I watched it at 13 years old that the sudden drop in quality didn't really register on the first viewing (somebody else said the same thing a good number of posts ago). I think it wasn't until the second viewing that I realised that after Leland's apprehension and death the show become terrible.
I try not to write harsh words to anyone online (although I occasionally violate my own rule), even under an anonymous name. I learned a few years ago, 'careful what you think, be really careful what you say, be really, really careful what you write, and be super extra careful what you write on the Internet, where your hurtful words can live forever.

So just a suggestion for all here- there is an implied insult that can be perceived when you do not qualify your opinion as such and try to pass it off as 'fact'. Movie critics do it all the time, but I think it's better on these boards to talk about what does or doesn't work for us as individuals.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by sylvia_north »

And also there's no need to take something personally if it doesn't apply to you :)

Believe me I'm still seduced by Return/everything Lynch like I said in response to David Locke who stated his mixed feelings so the statement applies to me, too.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mlsstwrt »

sylvia_north wrote:And also there's no need to take something personally if it doesn't apply to you :)
Yeah that's the point. I don't want to insult you mtwentz. I kind of felt like it was obvious that comments I've made about this were not really directed at you, Needleman or anyone else regularly posting here.

I just feel like it's ok to comment on a psychological phenomenon, idolatry, etc. Of course that is based on my belief that The Return is horrible. You don't share that belief so there is no psychological phenomenon to comment on as far as you're concerned. But I guess I just don't feel like I'm insulting anyone on a personal level. If I have insulted you then it's really not my intention. I can only make the same point yet again which is that the thread is really primarily intended for those who don't think The Return is very good.
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N. Needleman
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by N. Needleman »

mlsstwrt wrote:I really do believe that you guys posting here do love The Return and are not just swept up in some mass hysteria. But it's hard not to be skeptical when people on other threads aren't just saying, 'Wow really enjoyed that Episode, not perfect, but great hour of TV' but they're saying (about Ep 14), 'That was the most amazing hour of TV ever created.'
Well, not everyone is saying that; I'm not, though I thought it was quite good. But if someone says that are they not entitled to it?
there is such a disconnect between the over the top praise and the quality of what we're being given that it's hard not to wonder whether something else isn't going on.
There is - subjectivity. The sentence you just produced is equally subjective. They praise it, you think the quality is objectively anywhere from terrible to banal or average. Other fans and/or critics disagree, while still others agree with you. That's all there is to it. Whether there is a legitimate 'disconnect' is in the eye of the beholder.
mtwentz wrote:So just a suggestion for all here- there is an implied insult that can be perceived when you do not qualify your opinion as such and try to pass it off as 'fact'. Movie critics do it all the time, but I think it's better on these boards to talk about what does or doesn't work for us as individuals.
Exactly what I've been saying for months, thank you.
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
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boske
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

The Gazebo posted a list of about 10 points yesterday, and I could sign on a dotted line under them. He cited a lack of nighttime scenery, broken/fragmented feel, and a lack of atmosphere, among other things.

Part 8 was not so much about the explosion, Space Odyssey had it almost 50 years ago, achieved under very frugal conditions (64 kB of RAM anybody?). What made the difference was, in my opinion, the presence of night scenes and the lack of fragmentation. Coop/Ray/Woodsman, followed by the explosion, then Fireman, and finally Abe Lincoln Woodsman. It had a flow, the mood was there, it was not fragmented.

So that was episode 8, very good indeed but nothing out of this world. Episode 14 a "finest hour" in the history of T.V.? That must be a clever bait. I did mention "irrational exhuberance" back then, which unexpectedly to me struck some nerves, and it shouldn't have. But if that was not a bait, then yes having someone call it a "finest hour in T.V. history" was pure "irrational exhuberance" in my book.

I get that the people like the show, and I am happy for them. You know, I wish it gets renewed because of and for them. If there was a show that I liked and was not extended, I'd be disappointed. So I am hoping it gets renewed because of these honest fans of it. I am not falling into the same trap again, I'm off the Return as soon as the final curtain falls on it.
depechehenke
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by depechehenke »

boske wrote:The Gazebo posted a list of about 10 points yesterday, and I could sign on a dotted line under them. He cited a lack of nighttime scenery, broken/fragmented feel, and a lack of atmosphere, among other things.

Part 8 was not so much about the explosion, Space Odyssey had it almost 50 years ago, achieved under very frugal conditions (64 kB of RAM anybody?). What made the difference was, in my opinion, the presence of night scenes and the lack of fragmentation. Coop/Ray/Woodsman, followed by the explosion, then Fireman, and finally Abe Lincoln Woodsman. It had a flow, the mood was there, it was not fragmented.

So that was episode 8, very good indeed but nothing out of this world. Episode 14 a "finest hour" in the history of T.V.? That must be a clever bait. I did mention "irrational exhuberance" back then, which unexpectedly to me struck some nerves, and it shouldn't have. But if that was not a bait, then yes having someone call it a "finest hour in T.V. history" was pure "irrational exhuberance" in my book.

I get that the people like the show, and I am happy for them. You know, I wish it gets renewed because of and for them. If there was a show that I liked and was not extended, I'd be disappointed. So I am hoping it gets renewed because of these honest fans of it. I am not falling into the same trap again, I'm off the Return as soon as the final curtain falls on it.
Amen to that. I just want this travesty to be over so I can let go of Twin Peaks once and for all!
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