Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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

Post by referendum »

Dreamy Audrey wrote:
referendum wrote:
The only condescending person was the one who attacked our group for having a different opinion.
I have to say this is abit rich, given that people from the profoundly disappointed group have also being trolling the other groups calling anyone that ' has any affection for this shit' a ' pseud' etc.
It is this reek of self-congratulation which stopped me reading the posts in this group, which until a week or so ago this was the best, most interesting and considered thread on the whole of dugpa.
Now it has ( for some people, anyway) descended into taking the piss out the poor deluded fools who have enjoyed the series yadda yadda yadda. And, as you say condescendingly ( and self righteously) attacking other groups for having a different opinion.

Oh well.
How is telling us to "submit" to episode 18 and see the "magic" as if that was the only valid opinion of episode 18 not condescending and how is calling this out rich? I have seen attacks like this on both sides and I have called out people from the disappointed group before for similar comments, too. However, I have seen a lot of nasty comments against people who dislike the series throughout several threads, so don't pretend the disappointed group are the bad guys, while the satisfied are all angels.
i'm not pretending anything. I said it was abit rich writing stuff like this
Dreamy Audrey wrote: The only condescending person was the one who attacked our group for having a different opinion.
when people from this group are doing exactly the same shit as this in other groups.

As anyone who has read any of my previous comments in here when it was still possible to discuss the programme reasonably, i was kind of ambivalent about many aspects of TP, like something alot, but really not liking others atall - and interested in the nuts and bolts of the thing, which dragged me in and fascinated me hence me logging onto dugpa, even while it occasionally drove me mad by how uneven parts of it were ! ( TP not dugpa haha :) ) Anyway Dreamy Audrey, it is only a couple of people from here calling people who like it assholes in other groups so, whatever, you know, not my problem not yours either - but it's a two way street for the minority who get off on that kinda thing, sadly...

best to you etc
//
I
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AnotherBlueRoseCase
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by AnotherBlueRoseCase »

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Last edited by AnotherBlueRoseCase on Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Framed_Angel »

Eh, I saw that the Profoundly Satisfied Support group had emerged and now wish it could've been left well alone without dragging them into this arena for sport. I agree w/ referendum there's been plenty of extreme polarizing views expressed from both sides. Someone pointed out it was like a "double-ganger" thread for co-opting the title and that was enough of a laugh for me at their expense (misspelling even better). For all I know, the voices really reaching (and I mean r-e-a-c-h-i-ng) for validation of a beloved artist's work here and all its merits to be defended, has underlying it a wish to see more Lynch stuff come to the small screen. And rooting for it and championing it brings that goal within some semblance of possibility, in that line of perception.

It's out of our hands anyway really -- but throughout TP:TR my hope as an aside was that putting Peaks in circulation again via Showtime, giving them our blessing for taking some risks, would open the gate further for other experimental filmmakers to do the same. I haven't decided if a favor has been done on behalf of those filmmakers or not but I hope so. Generating noise; us plebes talking about a phenomenon and perhaps even arguing about that phenomenon publicly could prick the ears of decision makers who have means to set up the opportunity for additional projects to "get the green light"~
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Dreamy Audrey »

The Gazebo wrote:I wrote this in the episode thread, about the reading which makes the most sense to me:

"The remaining hour and a half of Twin Peaks: The Return proceeds to dismantle everything that has gone before—all three seasons of it. As foolish as it is to spin theories about any David Lynch film, I’m going to go out on that limb and insist that there was no time travel, no multiple dimensions or alternate realities. What we’ve seen so far, over 48 episodes and more than 25 years, has been the dream of a man named Richard, a man who lives a long way from the misty, haunted forests of northeastern Washington state."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tele ... iewed.html

This ties in with the Monica Belluci scene. Twin Peaks as we know it essentially ends with the sex scene. Everything has been a dream. Highly unsatisfactory, but it gives a plausible reason for all the retconning and fragmented bollox we've had to endure this season.
Yes, the reading of this as a dream is the one that makes the most sense to me too. It could explain the many unconnected scenes, the sometimes repetitive scenes, the meaningless conversations, different pacing, and weird stuff like the green glove, characters changing into someone else or Coop using his room key for the boiler room. However, only season 3 seems like a dream to me, seasons 1 and 2 are too linear and "normal" for a dream. And Carrie/Laura seemed to almost remember when Cooper said her mother's name was Sarah and in front of Sarah's house she screamed like in the "dream" and caused a blackout in Sarah's house. If the scene of her screaming in the forest was Richard's dream, then this must be either a dream as well (and what we saw before was a dream in a dream) or he is delusional. Maybe the entire season 3 is just a dream of good Cooper who is still trapped in the Black Lodge.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by AhmedKhalifa »

For me, it's time to put THE RETURN and all its nastiness behind me. I'm done talking about it. It is what it is, and I don't think I'll ever watch it again. I'll always cherish the first two seasons for their beauty, flaws, and uniqueness. But I need some time to wash away the bad taste left in my mouth after TR. Ironically, without TR I wouldn't have found this group and had these fascinating and insightful discussions with you all. Your love for TP and knowledge of art and cinema is staggering and it was a pleasure to exchange ideas with you. Maybe we'll meet again in other forums and threads. Enjoy life, enjoy TWIN PEAKS, and thanks for sharing. Over and out.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Poiuyt »

AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:Much about The Return is undoubtedly unique. Uniquely bad, uniquely contemptuous, uniquely ambitious, take your pick.

As others have been saying, and for the reasons detailed throughout this thread, it really is one of the worst dramas ever aired. The clinchers were the random “resolution” of the Dougie “plot”, Killer BOB being dispatched by ruddy good WHACK from a Mockney pisstake, the “it was all a dream” cop-out (i.e. everything you ever cared about in TP and FWWM erased) and above all the retcon of Laura’s murder at the hands of Leland, the heart of the entire mythos. That last one in particular really hurt, as it was meant to.

Next time you watch the Giant say “It is happening again” you’ll think “No it isn’t. It never happened in the first place.” Next time you watch Maddie’s murder, Killer BOB might look scary, but then you’ll remember the cheeky chappie who finally dispatched him, and how. Next time you watch BOB hack at Laura in the train car, you’ll chill out a bit because, you know…

But these didn’t just clinch the show’s historic (biblical) awfulness and audience antagonism. They also confirmed a sense that’s been simmering away all summer and then grew this final week, which is that we were always meant to find this awful. We were never meant to enjoy or appreciate it, just as no one was meant to enjoy or appreciate Metal Machine Music. The awfulness was too extreme, too out-there, to be explained just by a loss of ability from the creators. One last time: it was systematically awful.

Meaning that the one group of viewers who have undoubtedly shat the bed, critically speaking, are those posting so rapturously about their investment in the “characters” and “storylines”. Just as they were never meant to warm to the Diane tulpa, never mind hit anyone who criticised her with risible defences about her “womanly strength in a man’s world” etc, so they were never meant to warm to this show. As with that tulpa, their defend-Lynch-at-all-costs blindness means they’ve gloriously missed the point.

Which is that this series was never meant to be enjoyed or appreciated. Appreciation implies a handing over of some kind, a giving from artist to audience, and The Return was never about giving the audience anything at all (except maybe one thing; see below). Instead it was about stripping everything away: expectations/hopes of resolution, of beauty or significance or coherence, meaning, purpose, value, suspension of disbelief, even basic interest and engagement, the murder of Laura Palmer (Who killed Laura Palmer? No one did, sucker), the very existence of all these characters we cared about, etc. If you produced a list of what viewers most value in filmed drama, you’d find that this show tried to strip almost every one of them away. Hence those hundreds of flaws examined so forensically in this thread, and the likelihood that the stuff from months ago about deliberate “shoddiness”, or something very like it, explains them all.

There’s an expression in Advaita Vedanta, neti-neti, the nearest translation of which is ‘not this, not that.’ It’s one of the primary tools (‘anti-tool’ might be better) employed in this strain of Hinduism to help people strip away illusions and attain enlightenment/nirvana. And what does nirvana actually mean? A ‘snuffing out’. Annihilation. Ultimate desolation (in the nicest possible sense). And so the need for neti-neti to strip everything away, such as the illusions of individuality, good vs bad, value in general, time, space, meaning, purpose, coherence, any and all concepts and categories, language itself, existence itself, the lot. Anyone who’s ever gone through this process (‘anti-process’ might be better) will tell you it can be pretty harrowing. Just like watching The Return.

No need to say much more, other than The Return, at least in the creators’ imaginations, may have been a deliberately harrowing stripping away of everything from the audience – the audience’s illusions, as they’d see it – with the aim of priming them for that ultimate desolation, blastedness, bereftness, nothingness (no-thing-ness) so valued in Eastern thought and practice. And there’s something admirably ambitious about trying this through a telly drama.

This series may well have been the worst viewing experience of my lifetime, unprecedentedly bad, uniquely bad, but if some guru told you or I to sit in a pitch-black cave for eighteen hours, we might find that a pretty bad experience too. The guru may still be on the side of the angels, though, in his/her eyes at least.

Now all we need is for our two gurus to drop in to check fans’ reactions.

“Let’s see, the Profoundly Disappointed Support Group has four thousand posts, while the Profoundly Satisfied Support Group has thirty-two. High-five, Mark! We pulled it off.”

Lights snuffed out. Darkness. Nothing.
Thanks for taking the time to write this out. I'm still utterly devastated by the finale and new season as a whole, and it's threads and posts like these that help me to know I'm not alone. I don't know if I can ever watch another episode of this show again, or even another Lynch film, and that pains me to think about. I just want to forget this season ever happened.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by opium »

riesje wrote:
Agent Earle wrote:
Seriously, how clueless can you be???? Ah, well, at least it'll keep me LOL-ing throughout the night, that's fo' sure! :D
thats pretty condescending. I think he asked a valid question about how you would be satisfied, what kind of S3 would you rather have? When I browse through this thread where people just want to strike off character arcs, like that only matters. Lynch isnt intrested in that at all, never was. I think you're looking at a J. Michael Straczynski leading S3, where every character arc is nicely resolved, but thats not why I watched Twin Peaks, and would frankly defeat ANY purpose for this season.
A S3 with the Becky/Steven, Chad/Richard/Red storylines while in the format of an actual show that cares about plotting and character would be just dandy. Of course you'd have Lodge spirits involved and a further exploration of the mythology as to how The Black Lodge has infected the town over 25 years since Laura's death. I wouldn't even mind if Cooper never resurfaced - leaving his disappearance a mystery. Wouldn't mind Frank Truman being the main character, introducing us to a modern, more vicious Twin Peaks. Sarah Palmer being a main antagonist is also intriguing.

I actually don't mind the general ideas presented in The Return as much as I dislike how it was executed. I think if you cut out the time travel stuff and just have Cooper crossing dimensions, cutting the bizarre Diane subplot entirely and the stuff with BOB especially, then you'd have something stronger. I even like the idea of Part 18 though I think the "Richard's Dream" point is lame as hell and would definitely cut that. Cooper being Cooper in a world that's as violent as our own would be harrowing, even more so if we saw him gradually break down around it, becoming more like what we saw him randomly become after the Diane sex scene. If they want to go the cynical route then Lynch needs to fucking earn it.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by blue_tomorrows »

riesje wrote:honest question for all the people who are profoundly dissapointed: what were your thoughts on Inland Empire when it came out?
I love Inland Empire (probably obvious from my screen name and avatar). It's maybe a notch below Mulholland Drive overall, but I think it's pretty close. I feel like one can look at that film from so many different directions and see different themes and aspects highlighted. It improves tremendously IMO with multiple viewings, but even the first viewing was exciting and fascinating to me. I actually find it quite meaningful on many levels -- at least I connect with it, and with Laura Dern's character in particular. And I think the ending is beautiful.

None of which I can say about The Return, unfortunately, as much as I really really wanted to love it.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by kitty666cats »

I did enjoy watching The Return, but I am definitely one of those people is a more of a TP fan before being a Lynch fan. I enjoy the comfy wackiness of the original more than the grim modern despair of The Return. And the verbose, fast paced writing of Frost, Peyton and Engels. I really think the writing should be left to those three, and the mood/directing left to Lynch. Peyton and Engels should have been included in writing the script for The Return.

Lynch really masturbated all over the place and slapped a LOT of people in the face. I like The Return but I also hate it at the same time. And I feel like there aren't many places I can express this feeling without being mocked and written off as not being a true fan, despite knowing SO much more about/ being MUCH more invested in Twin Peaks than all the people I know in real life who are fans. Like, leaps and bounds more into it than any of them. I know this sounds kinda bratty, but the show is a huge part of me/my life, rather than just some fleeting interest that got recently rekindled like all the IRL acquaintances I've mentioned.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by crash_and_burn »

This show, and it's ending has me struggling with a fundamental question again:

What is the point of art, if the goal of art is to be mendacious, callous, dark, depressing and glum, just because you can?

It feels: immature.

Because the way this ended, overall is simply depressing. And for a man who has so recently staked his claim on transcendental meditation and the like, this seems 100 steps back from Inland Empire or FWWM.

It felt like an obvious cliffhanger into a Season 4 that must come, or promises of the resolution on the Blu-Ray, in a sense an insurance plan to make more money (which I'm okay with).

Or, a very intentionally abusive and despairing retcon of an entire mythos to spite a fanbase that has equated Lynch with TP and perhaps he hates us for that, so out of spite he has murdered Dale and TP altogether.

It's one or the other.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by powerleftist »

I think it all comes down to this: David Lynch needed money.

The man hadn't scored a major one since Mulholland Dr. (17 years ago). Inland Empire was a small indie project, awfully shot and poorly distributed. I don't know how many paintings he sells, but I wouldn't hang his ugly art in my house even if he'd pay me. He produces music, but he doesn't play live, and recorded music pays almost zero these days. As far as I know, he hasn't directed advertisements for a while.

The man needed money. I'm from Spain; some years ago, he came to Madrid and sold tickets to have a dinner with him (each ticket costing about 150$). That's some desperate fund raising right there.

Nobody would pay him to direct new things. Inland Empire was a mess (in his own words); that was filmed right before the financial crisis. Since its inception, the film industry has changed, becoming much more conservative and bland. His only hope was a TV show, but who would watch a 12-hours long Inland Empire?

He had to go back to Twin Peaks. It was the only way to get funded. He had to endure the embarrasment of negotiating a contract to come back to the motherfucking cherry pie and the motherfucking owls and the motherfucking silent drapes. What a torture to this creative mastermind! And those vulgar fans, who wanted to know how's Annie... ugh, stupid morons who couldn't stand art!

So he signed the contract and he said those executives: 'yes, yes, there will be coffee, there will be Audrey Horne, there will be Agent Cooper, now leave me alone, don't you know I'm a genius?'.

And he sat down and he purposefully wrote a script designed to piss everyone off and stand above all as the greatest genius of all times. Well, guess what, David Lynch: your career is over.

The greatest mystery of TP:TR is not who what happens with Audrey Horne. It's HOW MARK FROST ALLOWED ALL OF THIS TO HAPPEN.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Agent Earle »

kitty666cats wrote:I did enjoy watching The Return, but I am definitely one of those people is a more of a TP fan before being a Lynch fan. I enjoy the comfy wackiness of the original more than the grim modern despair of The Return. And the verbose, fast paced writing of Frost, Peyton and Engels. I really think the writing should be left to those three, and the mood/directing left to Lynch. Peyton and Engels should have been included in writing the script for The Return.

Being more TP/less DL fan myself, that's what I was thinking since before the season began - that the main writers should be those who so winningly contributed the first time around, namely Frost, Peyton and Engels. Lynch should, of course, still have the power of veto and on-set intervention to do his tricks, winks and nudges and whatnot (what is reportedly his thing) but the gist of the storyline(s) and their writing should have come from those three.

Having said that, I'm anything but happy with Frost's contribution this time around (as well as Lynch's). Obviously, we have no way of knowing (until some concrete info materializes) who though up what in the script(s), but I'm talking about the preceding book which has been well-documented as being all Frost's baby; I take major issue with all the inconsistencies, errors, alterations of what was previously established as TP canon. I have no problem with all the (alternative) historical stuff that constitutes the majority of the book (although I'd rather we'd hear more about those familiar TP folks from S 1 and 2), but the kind of loose, sloppy even, attitude towards continuity with the previous work(s) he displayed really infuriates me as does the endless jerking around when asked by the readers to please explain what (if anything) any of it means - it's a lexicon example of not caring about your own material and the fans it's spawned, of a lazy-ass cop-out (not to mention that with a quarter of a century of time he had to get the facts of the franchise straight, he should've delivered a nigh impeccable product in that regard!). Of course, if the second upcoming book in the fall should turn out to find a way for satisfying explanation of these mistakes (or "mistakes" in that case), I'm willing to take it all back and spiritually apologize to the man. Somehow, though, after what we've just witnessed on the telly, I find that increasingly hard to believe...
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Rhodes »

powerleftist wrote:I think it all comes down to this: David Lynch needed money.
If this were true, why didn't he just write a popular, fan-service script?

He could have written a more popular, more commercially viable script in 10% of his time-investment.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by powerleftist »

Rhodes wrote:
powerleftist wrote:I think it all comes down to this: David Lynch needed money.
If this were true, why didn't he just write a popular, fan-service script?

He could have written a more popular, more commercially viable script in 10% of his time-investment.
He needed money, but at the same time he didn't want to be a fan-service whore. So he tried to grab the money from Showtime with the only thing that could do the trick (Twin Peaks) while at the same time 'maintaining his artistic integrity' or whatever. The result has been, for me, weird and dissapointing.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by claaa7 »

boske wrote:
Redlodge wrote:
boske wrote:If there gets to be a season 4, I hope EW has another one of those collectors issues with a set of custom TP covers. This time let them put Janey-E, Bushnell, Mitchums, Anthony, Cockney Glove Kid, and Ike the Spike on it. And why was the owl on it this time? Better put a very fine bottle of Bordeaux.
Not to be a killjoy but there will NEVER be a 4th season.
Who's going to pay for it ? If it had been a ratings bombshell maybe but not with an average of only 300,000 live viewers a week. Networks are in it to make money and that's the bottom line. Lynch got this deal because the original exec at ABC in the 90's now works for Showtime.
It will not happen.
No, I do not think it will happen either. This was their chance to tell a great story and they blew it. I can barely see there being perhaps a feature film, but even that is doubtful. I mean, who is going to pay for it, what is going to be a story? Cooper trying to save Laura again? Or that Las Vegas prequel joke I posted a few pages back. Which of the original cast would now want to come back again? It is done, Dougie literally stuck his fork into it.
i doubt getting the finance for a feature film would be that much of a problem.. Lynch has made a lot of friends and whatever anyone think of the show we can't escape the fact that The Return is a critically acclaimed TV series by a man that is often considered one of the greatest living American film makers. just like for Terrence Malick, who still manages to draw top names and get movies financed despite them doing terrible at the box office, i think there's several studios that would support such a project.

what i find more disheartening is that so many of the actors are now dead and with the minimal storylines that some of the main cast from the original series got in this show i'm sure at least some of them would turn down more work on TP.. i like TR as a whole, a lot, but i find it sad that Lynch and Frost couldn't honor their original cast by giving more of them meaningful storylines. there's so much more that could have been done in the world of Twin Peaks and while it all came together for me, in some ways i have to see it as a failed opportunity.
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