FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Moderators: Brad D, Annie, Jonah, BookhouseBoyBob, Ross, Jerry Horne

Which option best describes your overall reaction to The Return as a complete work?

Poll ended at Sun Nov 12, 2017 7:09 pm

Like or Love
228
65%
Heavily Mixed, Leaning Towards Like
41
12%
Heavily Mixed, Leaning Towards Dislike
44
12%
Dislike or Hate
40
11%
 
Total votes: 353
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bowisneski
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by bowisneski »

I wasn't sure how I was going to vote in this because I have been going back and forth betwixt Like or Love and Heavily Mixed, Leaning Towards Like, until last night. I love the series as a whole, and just feel a few plot/narrative structure adjustments could've made it even stronger. I don't think any of the story needed changed, but I feel a few things could have grown out of the central Cooper story better. Below is a copy and paste from a post I made in the Profoundly Disappointed Thread
I would agree that it wasn't great, but it was focused and even when it lost focus, the plot still grew out of the central narrative and just spiraled out. That's why I think that most of the Twin Peaks stuff could've been cut or moved to create a tighter focus. Right from the beginning of the original show, every character we met along the way we knew how they spiraled out of Laura Palmer(or at least we did within the first hour or so of the Pilot if I'm remembering correctly). In TR, we are introduced to arcs like Becky and Steven and Beverly and Tom without them growing out of the story. Looking at it from a narrative sense, the first scene of Ben we should have gotten was the 315 key arriving which could have just been part of the Beverly intro and Jerry weed business stuff, then the Ben and Beverly relationship and Jerry high in the woods could've grown out of that. Then you could have had Jerry watching Jacoby which could have then cut to Nadine. For Bobby, Shelly, Becky, and Steven we should've seen Bobby on the case and then flourished out in to the Becky, Steven, and Shelly of it all from Bobby. For this season, Cooper was the goose that laid the golden egg instead of Laura, so to tighten it and make the plot stronger everything should have grown out of that.

But the problem with that, with the story they told us, would have been that we really wouldn't have seen any of Twin Peaks, outside of the sheriff's station until probably Part 6 at least. People are already upset with how little time we spent in Twin Peaks, so I'm not sure how that would have gone over. The other problem is that they didn't write it as episodes and just wrote one long script that essentially just dropped us in to a show in progress in it's 27th season, only we didn't get to see seasons 3 - 26. Though this could have been remedied if the first Frost book bridged the gap and TSHoTP could've been released after this series concluded.
However, I ended up voting Like or Love. I got to this vote by rewatching the Las Vegas portion of Part 11 last night. Every part of the story that isn't Cooper's journey is mostly us being dropped in to stories that have been in progress for 25 years, but almost everything in the journey undertaken by Cooper is "tight" and has payoff and resolution. Vegas is also the part of the piece that had the most traditional tension, feeling, stakes, and narrative. The other things in Twin Peaks like Becky and Steven are just glimpses in to where Twin Peaks and its inhabitants are now.

While we're seeing a story in progress in Vegas, Cooper drops in and fixes a lot of the ills created by Mr. C and the creation of Dougie Jones in Vegas and pulls it all together. That half hour in Vegas in Part 11 was, to me, worth every moment we spent with Cooper as Dougie and helped return him to himself and Twin Peaks. He is almost the opposite of BOB and Lodge entities here. He feeds on love and happiness instead of garmonbozia to find his way back to himself. I know it's sort of deus ex outlet in Part 15, but I don't think Cooper would have had the presence of mind to go for the outlet when he heard the name Gordon Cole had it not been for the journey he took.

Realizing how satisfying that story was for me, and having the ending truly click in to place for me a couple nights ago, solidified my Like or Love vote. I still don't disagree with myself from a couple weeks ago about tightening the narrative, and I would have preferred a bit more Angelo and that it be shot on film, but I'm ok with it and love what we got flaws and all. Just like the original two seasons.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by Saturn's child »

referendum wrote:i realise this is childish, but everytime i come to this thread, i always misread it as : Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Wank
:lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by IcedOver »

I read some comments passed to me by a co-worker from comics writer Warren Ellis, who said that the show may have been missing some "connective tissue". That's a pretty succinct way of describing some of the myriad problems with the show. What would it have hurt for Lynch just to have connected a few things? I highly doubt that Lynch had some master narrative to which he only put in pieces; rather I think it was very clumsy and rushed. However, if he did have some things connected, such as Sarah being the girl from 1956, why not just reveal that? It's not as if the mystery of that is overly interesting, but revealing it would have made things more compelling. That's just one of a ton of examples that I don't need to reiterate.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by douglasb »

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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by mine »

IcedOver wrote:I read some comments passed to me by a co-worker from comics writer Warren Ellis, who said that the show may have been missing some "connective tissue". That's a pretty succinct way of describing some of the myriad problems with the show. What would it have hurt for Lynch just to have connected a few things? I highly doubt that Lynch had some master narrative to which he only put in pieces; rather I think it was very clumsy and rushed. However, if he did have some things connected, such as Sarah being the girl from 1956, why not just reveal that? It's not as if the mystery of that is overly interesting, but revealing it would have made things more compelling. That's just one of a ton of examples that I don't need to reiterate.
Yeah I think it would have hurt him. I think setting a bar so low as to how connected/explained/made sense out of things have to be allows him plenty of artistic freedom. It also makes the writing ridiculously easy.
Sarah being the girl from 1956 is one of those Twin Peaks fan theories that acquire nearly canon status. How many were there about the original show and FWWM that The Return disproved? And not with alternatives that were necessarily better. I saw this after every episode of The Return. People confidently stating what Lynch clearly meant with this or that only to be disproved when the next episode dropped.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by mtwentz »

mine wrote: Yeah I think it would have hurt him. I think setting a bar so low as to how connected/explained/made sense out of things have to be allows him plenty of artistic freedom. It also makes the writing ridiculously easy.
Sarah being the girl from 1956 is one of those Twin Peaks fan theories that acquire nearly canon status. How many were there about the original show and FWWM that The Return disproved? And not with alternatives that were necessarily better. I saw this after every episode of The Return. People confidently stating what Lynch clearly meant with this or that only to be disproved when the next episode dropped.
Frost and Lynch spent a good 3 years writing the script, I can assure you it was not 'ridiculously easy'.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by marchug »

Heavily Mixed, Leaning Towards Dislike.

As a collection of vignettes, Twin Peaks Season 3 "The Return" was phenomenal. There are pieces of that which will stay with me forever. As far as a storyline or the writing goes, it all pretty much fell apart at the end. Or, lack of end (imo).
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by sylvia_north »

mtwentz wrote:
mine wrote: Yeah I think it would have hurt him. I think setting a bar so low as to how connected/explained/made sense out of things have to be allows him plenty of artistic freedom. It also makes the writing ridiculously easy.
Sarah being the girl from 1956 is one of those Twin Peaks fan theories that acquire nearly canon status. How many were there about the original show and FWWM that The Return disproved? And not with alternatives that were necessarily better. I saw this after every episode of The Return. People confidently stating what Lynch clearly meant with this or that only to be disproved when the next episode dropped.
Frost and Lynch spent a good 3 years writing the script, I can assure you it was not 'ridiculously easy'.
Were you there? Did you log hours? It's just as much of an assumption it wasn't ridiculously easy, too.

Automatism/psychography is a surrealist/esoteric thing-- lots of automatic writing has been done at the real Glastonbury Grove. IE was basically spontaneous.
Nothing wrong with the writing being easy, if it was.

It's human nature to follow the path of least resistance, and artistic to just be playful, not to mention artists privilege to just let the script become it's own expanding organism at its own pace in a hands off/brain off way. Take the craziest spontaneous idea and roll with it. :idea: 8)

Not saying it was written drunk or asleep, but I don't think it was constructed like a ship in a bottle.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by pinballmars »

I loved it. I think about it every day. It's one of my favorite things I've ever seen.

For me, the most memorable quote from Lynch himself about his own work is that he considers his biggest influence to be real life. And, even with its many fantastic elements, I think that the new Twin Peaks might be his most ambitious manifestation of that. Life is full of unanswered questions and stories that end abruptly. Just living and working and stepping outside at all, people appear and disappear in our lives all of the time. We overhear the conversations of strangers. We see little scenes of other peoples' dramas. We hear gossip secondhand or even "thirdhand" about people we've never met. It happens so often that we don't even notice or think about it.

However, Lynch, who, when he was younger, went to the same restaurant everyday and ordered the same thing strikes me as a big people-watcher and eavesdropper. I relate. I have a thing that I do where I go out for a solo breakfast or lunch and write down the things I hear and then try to make a poem out of it. It's just for me.

And I think that sensibility informed the new Twin Peaks a great deal. It's committed to it in a rare way.

This is a big canvas. Likely very little to nothing was cut for time. When it leaves a question unresolved, it's not an oversight. Lynch knows damn well what he just did. WHY, as an artist, did he do that? Maybe one's enjoyment of the new Twin Peaks depends on how interested you are in that question.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by mine »

sylvia_north wrote:
mtwentz wrote:
mine wrote: Yeah I think it would have hurt him. I think setting a bar so low as to how connected/explained/made sense out of things have to be allows him plenty of artistic freedom. It also makes the writing ridiculously easy.
Sarah being the girl from 1956 is one of those Twin Peaks fan theories that acquire nearly canon status. How many were there about the original show and FWWM that The Return disproved? And not with alternatives that were necessarily better. I saw this after every episode of The Return. People confidently stating what Lynch clearly meant with this or that only to be disproved when the next episode dropped.
Frost and Lynch spent a good 3 years writing the script, I can assure you it was not 'ridiculously easy'.
Were you there? Did you log hours? It's just as much of an assumption it wasn't ridiculously easy, too.

Automatism/psychography is a surrealist/esoteric thing-- lots of automatic writing has been done at the real Glastonbury Grove. IE was basically spontaneous.
Nothing wrong with the writing being easy, if it was.

It's human nature to follow the path of least resistance, and artistic to just be playful, not to mention artists privilege to just let the script become it's own expanding organism at its own pace in a hands off/brain off way. Take the craziest spontaneous idea and roll with it. :idea: 8)

Not saying it was written drunk or asleep, but I don't think it was constructed like a ship in a bottle.
It also has to be taken in consideration that TR was more "directed" than "written", in the sense that the look/feel/mood of the scenes is regularly far more articulated than the writing let alone how a scene fits in the larger narrative.
Laura Dern's quote about Lynch being very specific about Diane's lipstick color juxtaposed to how underdeveloped the character and how she barely fits in the story is an example of this. Both Dianes are never more than the type of not white male character who's sole purpose is to prop up the white male protagonist. Tulpa Diane has that role within Gordon's task force, while real Diane is that relative to Dale. There's no lower bar than turning her into Dale's long lost love out of the blue. Not even a semblance of an attempt of making it fit into Coop's biography as we knew it is in fact a ridiculously easy approach to writing.
Another example comes from Lynch's account of how Freddy came from his box of ideas. The idea is barely developed but is practically forced on the part of the narrative that connects The Return to the previous incarnations of the Twin Peaks universe. This kind of approach is again ridiculously easy since it makes obvious that the bar is set comfortably at anything goes.

I agree that there isn't anything wrong with writing (or creative process in general) being easy. But in this case the specific easy approach seems to have been picked out of convenience and rationalized into having some superior artistic value by default. It was merely a convenient choice and I believe that the jury is still very much out as to weather it worked or not.
I don't think much would have to be sacrificed for a more coherent narrative around at least one theme or character as was the case with the original show and FWWM. It's just that tweaking even part of the elements so to get the narrative at a level close to the previous incarnations of Twin Peaks would require putting in an effort that the creators couldn't have been bothered with. Lynch himself doesn't exactly deny that. Every time he's asked about explanations he all but confirms they aren't there as far as he is concerned. I don't think this is an issue per se but it really isn't the best approach to an 18 hour season based on a well established narrative/universe.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

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pinballmars wrote:WHY, as an artist, did he do that? Maybe one's enjoyment of the new Twin Peaks depends on how interested you are in that question.
You're right.
But that poses a bunch of can of worms opening questions. Is why he did more important than what he did and consequentially is the artist more important than the art which leads to the question does the art have the same merits when separated from the artist.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by Novalis »

mine wrote:I agree that there isn't anything wrong with writing (or creative process in general) being easy. But in this case the specific easy approach seems to have been picked out of convenience and rationalized into having some superior artistic value by default. It was merely a convenient choice and I believe that the jury is still very much out as to weather it worked or not.
I don't think much would have to be sacrificed for a more coherent narrative around at least one theme or character as was the case with the original show and FWWM. It's just that tweaking even part of the elements so to get the narrative at a level close to the previous incarnations of Twin Peaks would require putting in an effort that the creators couldn't have been bothered with. Lynch himself doesn't exactly deny that. Every time he's asked about explanations he all but confirms they aren't there as far as he is concerned. I don't think this is an issue per se but it really isn't the best approach to an 18 hour season based on a well established narrative/universe.
I think the highly compressed nature of the filming schedule, shooting and editing the equivalent of nine feature films in the time it usually takes to do one, is something we need to keep sight of here. It may be that the limitations and accidents of this schedule placed great pressure on the written material, or it may be that the written material was in any case more of a very flexible and rough guideline that could be freely adapted to circumstances. We don't know much about so many factors involved in what must have been at times a very hectic production process, beyond what Sutherland has revealed about there being very little cut. Is your complaint, then, not so much that the 'easy way' has been taken, but rather that long-term planning might have been thrown out the window on lots of occasions in favour of lots of short to mid-term plans? You seem to be echoing a number of people who have voiced concern over a lack of 'connective tissue', as if the season lacks something like a spine that can articulate all the smaller pieces into one organically connected mass that moves more or less in symphony.

I agree with the view that there are many vignettes in this season, but not that it lacks a thoroughgoing sense of narrative. However, as I see it, many of the connections to this backbone (Dale Cooper's epic -- and tragic -- 'Odyssey' as others have aptly described it) are implicit, operating often on a subliminal or barely conscious associations. A case in point: the 'side stories' of Jacoby, Nadine and Big Ed can be viewed both as self-contained mini-arcs with no connection to Cooper's voyage home, and can also be seen as dealing with deeply sympathetic or resonant themes to what is happening for Cooper. Even miniscule fragments like Hailey Gates' "one-one-nine!" woman or the frantic mother and her puking daughter in the traffic jam outside the RR bring to bear an acute situational urgency to what is going on in the main trunk of the story. Long, wide, lingering shots of slow activity like painting shovels and sweeping floors have a similar, but opposite effect: for me they beg us to dwell on those resting places or plateaus of tension in the overall dramatic envelope. And sometimes these Lynchian conventions are used in surprising ways, as when in pt. 15 some very wide shots of Gersten and Stephen in the woods creates a very stifling, heady and restive atmosphere that feeds as much into the highly dramatic conclusion (Cooper electrocuting himself) as does Ruby crawling across the roadhouse floor or Chantal petulantly munching away while pointing out the planet Mars to Hutch. True, I will not claim that each part has a certain theme (in the manner of a Sesame Street episode -- brought to you by the letters a,b, and the number 2) and the story proceeds only in this blocky, brick-by-brick nature; dramatic tension and release also works through contrast and counterpoint, after all, and parts which were each saturated through with their own tonality would not work except as mood pieces. But I am claiming that there is an overall structure to the beast, which articulates its many limbs and allows it to rise up and walk.

My argument here is that the tendons and muscles of this beast are not so much written, as you yourself observe, but are produced by the direction (and the editing! we must not forget the editing!). The connective tissue is something that wouldn't easily show up in a script, I'm claiming. It's something that can be felt, however. While this might seem to some who are eager to accuse the team of copping-out on the narrative front, the onus or burden of discovering the connective tissue has been placed on the equipment of the viewers, on their sensitivity to the variety of ways that different scenes and mini-narratives can chime or 'rhyme' with what is going on in the main trunk, accentuating it or in some cases throwing different lights on it. Now, to me, this way of working is in fact deeply continuous with Twin Peaks S1 and S2, which I finished rewatching in full just days ago. In fact the theme-of-the-week feeling, which I dismissed as too simplistic here, is probably more true in the case of the old seasons: when certain events happen to one set of characters it generally happens to another character group in a slightly different way, on a per-episode basis, particularly in the more Lynchian episodes. There, the thematic threads that run through entire episodes were often much more overt. Lynch has become subtler, perhaps, or has adapted his way of working from the episodic soap format of S1 and S2 to the more cinematic ambitions of S3. It's often said that what has to be spelled out on TV can be told in the curl of a lip or blink of an eye in film -- I think this difference also amounts to there being a greater interpretive onus placed on a cinema audience. Does this mean that film-makers are inherently lazy when compared with the writers and directors of TV shows? I would say no; they still have to do the hefty and substantial work of capturing on film those telling gestures of lips or eyes.

I suppose I'm not saying much -- just that the 'low bar' view when it comes to narrative connections may be looking in the wrong place for them. As comprehensive as an overarching narrative might be in tying things together for an audience, assigning each tributary its place and value within the whole, I think that it will always still depend in the last instance on the effort of the viewer to meet it halfway. In this respect, Lynchian work has always been far more demanding. It's not that we have to put meat on the bones of a disconnected skeleton -- this beast is meaty enough -- but that we are purposefully being challenged to feel our way around with little to go on other than how we feel and what 'rings true' for us: as in life, there's no assembly manual. Not because Lynch couldn't write one even if he wanted -- I don't believe that, and I'm pretty sure he has his own pet theories about what goes where and why (and very precise ones I bet). But because he, like some others artists of his generation and spiritual proclivity, doesn't buy the 'intentional fallacy' that just one person (or even one production team) has a special, privileged key that will unlock all the mysteries of an artwork.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by mtwentz »

sylvia_north wrote:
mtwentz wrote:
mine wrote: Yeah I think it would have hurt him. I think setting a bar so low as to how connected/explained/made sense out of things have to be allows him plenty of artistic freedom. It also makes the writing ridiculously easy.
Sarah being the girl from 1956 is one of those Twin Peaks fan theories that acquire nearly canon status. How many were there about the original show and FWWM that The Return disproved? And not with alternatives that were necessarily better. I saw this after every episode of The Return. People confidently stating what Lynch clearly meant with this or that only to be disproved when the next episode dropped.
Frost and Lynch spent a good 3 years writing the script, I can assure you it was not 'ridiculously easy'.
Were you there? Did you log hours? It's just as much of an assumption it wasn't ridiculously easy, too.

Automatism/psychography is a surrealist/esoteric thing-- lots of automatic writing has been done at the real Glastonbury Grove. IE was basically spontaneous.
Nothing wrong with the writing being easy, if it was.

It's human nature to follow the path of least resistance, and artistic to just be playful, not to mention artists privilege to just let the script become it's own expanding organism at its own pace in a hands off/brain off way. Take the craziest spontaneous idea and roll with it. :idea: 8)

Not saying it was written drunk or asleep, but I don't think it was constructed like a ship in a bottle.
Lynch has stated that this thing took years to write. To me that indicates it was not an easy process.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

Post by Agent Earle »

mtwentz wrote:
sylvia_north wrote:
mtwentz wrote:
Frost and Lynch spent a good 3 years writing the script, I can assure you it was not 'ridiculously easy'.
Were you there? Did you log hours? It's just as much of an assumption it wasn't ridiculously easy, too.

Automatism/psychography is a surrealist/esoteric thing-- lots of automatic writing has been done at the real Glastonbury Grove. IE was basically spontaneous.
Nothing wrong with the writing being easy, if it was.

It's human nature to follow the path of least resistance, and artistic to just be playful, not to mention artists privilege to just let the script become it's own expanding organism at its own pace in a hands off/brain off way. Take the craziest spontaneous idea and roll with it. :idea: 8)

Not saying it was written drunk or asleep, but I don't think it was constructed like a ship in a bottle.
Lynch has stated that this thing took years to write. To me that indicates it was not an easy process.
Or maybe he and Frost were just doing other things while they were writing it, not devoting their full attention to it. That would explain all the sloppiness in regards to (not) sticking to the facts as they were established by previous franchise installments.
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Re: FINAL POLL!!!!!!! Your Reaction to The Return as a Complete Work

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Novalis wrote: Is your complaint, then, not so much that the 'easy way' has been taken, but rather that long-term planning might have been thrown out the window on lots of occasions in favour of lots of short to mid-term plans? You seem to be echoing a number of people who have voiced concern over a lack of 'connective tissue', as if the season lacks something like a spine that can articulate all the smaller pieces into one organically connected mass that moves more or less in symphony.
No. It's a matter of degrees and balance. All the pieces, smaller or otherwise, aren't either belonging to the same animal attached through connective tissue to a skeleton or belonging to a plethora of different animals scattered throughout a butcher's table. There's plenty in between.

Novalis wrote:I agree with the view that there are many vignettes in this season, but not that it lacks a thoroughgoing sense of narrative. However, as I see it, many of the connections to this backbone (Dale Cooper's epic -- and tragic -- 'Odyssey' as others have aptly described it) are implicit, operating often on a subliminal or barely conscious associations. A case in point: the 'side stories' of Jacoby, Nadine and Big Ed can be viewed both as self-contained mini-arcs with no connection to Cooper's voyage home, and can also be seen as dealing with deeply sympathetic or resonant themes to what is happening for Cooper.
But Cooper never becomes enough of a backbone for anything else to have any meaningful connection to it. Or better said it's so vague that anything can be fit to it if one needs it to. Cooper isn't on a journey, let alone one of Odysseaic proportions. He's literally in a steady state 16 out of the 18 episodes and than becomes merely a plot device. The doppelganger slowly disappears in the background and never adds to anything. Assuming your reading is correct (and I wished it was, trust me) would it be so wrong to actually write a journey and showing what (or if anything at all) is happening to Cooper?

But what i'm far more interested in is where do you draw the line between barely conscious subliminal and not there at all. It's what it comes down to in my opinion. There is a minimum bar to be expected since it's inevitable that in a creative process a human being would be in specific enough state of mind that leaks in the work giving it some hint of a cohesion.

Novalis wrote:True, I will not claim that each part has a certain theme (in the manner of a Sesame Street episode -- brought to you by the letters a,b, and the number 2) and the story proceeds only in this blocky, brick-by-brick nature; dramatic tension and release also works through contrast and counterpoint, after all, and parts which were each saturated through with their own tonality would not work except as mood pieces. But I am claiming that there is an overall structure to the beast, which articulates its many limbs and allows it to rise up and walk.
But TR does work best as a collection of mood pieces. The moods are the one thing that it manages to articulate well. I must be one of the few people who actually liked the car rides in the finale. I've said it before, it fits in with a reoccurring theme of the last 2 episodes - people reluctantly moving towards their "destinies". No one in the last two episodes (except maybe Cooper up to when he reaches to sheriff's station) is confident in what they're doing. It's really well done.

Novalis wrote:My argument here is that the tendons and muscles of this beast are not so much written, as you yourself observe, but are produced by the direction (and the editing! we must not forget the editing!). The connective tissue is something that wouldn't easily show up in a script, I'm claiming. It's something that can be felt, however. While this might seem to some who are eager to accuse the team of copping-out on the narrative front, the onus or burden of discovering the connective tissue has been placed on the equipment of the viewers, on their sensitivity to the variety of ways that different scenes and mini-narratives can chime or 'rhyme' with what is going on in the main trunk, accentuating it or in some cases throwing different lights on it.
Which is exceptionally close to my assessment that the team found it more convenient to free themselves of just this particular burden. It's as if we saw the same thing but put separate subjective spins on it. If you think about it our arguments aren't even necessarily mutually exclusive.
Novalis wrote:Now, to me, this way of working is in fact deeply continuous with Twin Peaks S1 and S2, which I finished rewatching in full just days ago. In fact the theme-of-the-week feeling, which I dismissed as too simplistic here, is probably more true in the case of the old seasons: when certain events happen to one set of characters it generally happens to another character group in a slightly different way, on a per-episode basis, particularly in the more Lynchian episodes. There, the thematic threads that run through entire episodes were often much more overt. Lynch has become subtler, perhaps, or has adapted his way of working from the episodic soap format of S1 and S2 to the more cinematic ambitions of S3. It's often said that what has to be spelled out on TV can be told in the curl of a lip or blink of an eye in film -- I think this difference also amounts to there being a greater interpretive onus placed on a cinema audience. Does this mean that film-makers are inherently lazy when compared with the writers and directors of TV shows? I would say no; they still have to do the hefty and substantial work of capturing on film those telling gestures of lips or eyes.
It has less to do with the with audiences (who are likely to be one and the same) than with the lengths. TV shows have to dilute their storylines to fit them to a number of episodes while trying to sustain the audience's interest. Movies are free of that. FWWM arguably is more directly explicit and concise than the original show was. TR isn't subtle (especially not when Lynch is in front of the camera), is actually pretty blunt it's just that most of it is self contained within individual vignettes contrary to the very strong themes of the original show and FWWM.
Novalis wrote:I suppose I'm not saying much -- just that the 'low bar' view when it comes to narrative connections may be looking in the wrong place for them. As comprehensive as an overarching narrative might be in tying things together for an audience, assigning each tributary its place and value within the whole, I think that it will always still depend in the last instance on the effort of the viewer to meet it halfway. In this respect, Lynchian work has always been far more demanding. It's not that we have to put meat on the bones of a disconnected skeleton -- this beast is meaty enough -- but that we are purposefully being challenged to feel our way around with little to go on other than how we feel and what 'rings true' for us: as in life, there's no assembly manual. Not because Lynch couldn't write one even if he wanted -- I don't believe that, and I'm pretty sure he has his own pet theories about what goes where and why (and very precise ones I bet). But because he, like some others artists of his generation and spiritual proclivity, doesn't buy the 'intentional fallacy' that just one person (or even one production team) has a special, privileged key that will unlock all the mysteries of an artwork.
I always enjoy your posts. And to that point, for example in the structures and mechanisms thread, you aren't just making the effort to meet the narrative's threads half way, you go way beyond that because the creators didn't put in the effort for just half the way to be enough. It's not even as if Lynch denies that. He's not even vague, if he doesn't give you explanations is because there aren't any which he'll point out anytime he's asked for any. TR is primarily a collection of mood pieces and I wouldn't be surprised if Lynch admitted so himself.
It's just too superficial to compete with real life to really resonate in any meaningful way. It's as if The Return depended to much on its bubble to be fully appreciated.

I want to go back to something I asked above. At which point does one conclude projecting/confirmation bias or any similar psychological mechanism outweighs what is conceivably actually there more or less intentionally? I think it's in a way an unanswerable question but it seems extremely relevant when it comes to this particular subject.
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