Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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

Post by waferwhitemilk »

Venus wrote:But all the promise it started building just completely disappeared when we got to Sarah Palmer in the bar. I'm trying to think of some more sophisticated way to put it than what a load of crap, appalling, awful, terrible, ridiculous, unbelievable, stupid, jarring....the list goes on. In my opinion, it took away completely from the episode and trashed it. I also, in my opinion, feel that it has taken away from Grace Zabriskie's excellent acting and made her character a bit silly, which is something I never thought I would say about her. I always felt Sarah's pain. Always. I understand loss. Her acting is very true. But to give her character a face door with a violent monster behind it that can take away half of someones throat and kill someone.....enough said. Is Lynch/Frost taking the piss or are they serious about this? I didn't subscribe to the trolling thing at all - I just thought they are off their game, but after this.....maybe?
It's all gone pear shaped!!!

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

Post by Aqwell »

I'm rewatching episode 14 and noticed this:
(click to enlarge)
Image
Image

Same shot used twice, the second time in a darker tone.
Temporal glitch, lodges cosmic shit or... whatever.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Rialto »

Small point: when Frank Truman calls Gordon Cole to tell him about the missing pages from Laura's diary, why doesn't he mention the massive fuck off clue that Major Briggs left for them?
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by kleio »

Rialto wrote:Small point: when Frank Truman calls Gordon Cole to tell him about the missing pages from Laura's diary, why doesn't he mention the massive fuck off clue that Major Briggs left for them?
The clue that leads to the portal? I think it was because he wasn't sure it would lead to anything. Better to check it out and report actual details than just some cryptic little message. Frank seems like a very pragmatic person, so he wouldn't be inclined to pass on anything he hadn't confirmed for himself.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by referendum »

waferwhitemilk wrote:
Venus wrote:But all the promise it started building just completely disappeared when we got to Sarah Palmer in the bar. I'm trying to think of some more sophisticated way to put it than what a load of crap, appalling, awful, terrible, ridiculous, unbelievable, stupid, jarring....the list goes on. In my opinion, it took away completely from the episode and trashed it. I also, in my opinion, feel that it has taken away from Grace Zabriskie's excellent acting and made her character a bit silly, which is something I never thought I would say about her. I always felt Sarah's pain. Always. I understand loss. Her acting is very true. But to give her character a face door with a violent monster behind it that can take away half of someones throat and kill someone.....enough said. Is Lynch/Frost taking the piss or are they serious about this? I didn't subscribe to the trolling thing at all - I just thought they are off their game, but after this.....maybe?
It's all gone pear shaped!!!

]
let me give you another take on this. People have written on this forum about ' wish fulfillment' on TP TR. This started off with dougie in the casino and was most recently written about re Sonny Jim Gym and car in ribbon. So, for me, as a sort of non fan TP viewer, that scene was very funny on a wish fulfillment level: if some greasy misogynist redneck comes up to you in a bar, sneering horrible things at you, chances are you want to bite their fucking head off.

This you then do. <applause>
''let's not overthink this opportunity''
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by waferwhitemilk »

Let me give you my take on it, I'm a 41 year old man. When prior to The Return i rewatched the original series again (after seeing them when they aired and couple times after) I again had months of nightmares, was scared to brush my teeth, almost didn't dare get up from bed to pee etc. This is the only show that has ever scared me so much! On top of that it was beautifully shot with great music, charming and quirky characters, a stylish intro, lots of things to like, lots n lots but mostly.. paralyzing fear. In a way I'm relieved that The Return hasn't scared me at all and in fact i suspect it has definitely helped me get over my fear over Bob, altho I still wouldn't wanna watch FWWM late at night to make sure. But so yeh, this crippling fear the original series brought to the table, that was truly something unique for me and something that isn't there in The Return at all, with the cgi effects and more of a B horror schlock feel like in the Sarah Palmer scene. Just wanted to share :D
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by pinballmars »

I am madly in love with TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, but I like this thread. I think THE RETURN should be controversial. People should be arguing about it and raging over it. David Lynch's vision for it as an 18-hour feature film continues to intrigue me (it explains its weird rhythm, its digressions, its lack of interest in ending its installments on traditional TV-style cliffhangers), as do his statements about how cable television is "the new arthouse".

And TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN is an arthouse film. I'm not saying this means that you're a stupid philistine for not liking it (seriously, I'm not saying that; I don't attack people for their personal taste, as it's a pointless endeavor that goes nowhere and only brings out the worst in everyone, from the attacker to the attacked). But that also means that it's going to be difficult and perplexing. And that's the history of art films. L'AVENTURRA was booed at a screening at Cannes. AU HASARD BALTHAZAR divided a lot of great critics fiercely. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD and everything by Jean-Luc Godard are perpetually controversial. And David Lynch is a director who's seen his films be hated and celebrated, often in the same year.

I guess the main reason I post here is because someone a few pages back used THE RETURN's divisiveness against it. THE RETURN is "dividing the fans" (or something like that) and for him that's bad.

Whereas, I say THE RETURN divides people and that's perfectly fine.

I think it's fun, though the really interesting thing to me will be to see how it ages in five, ten, twenty years. It's hard to tell. To pick a movie that's close to home, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME in its day was so, so hated by critics and the media. I'd say that it got even worse treatment than hate; it was outright dismissed and ignored and regarded as irrelevant and completely unwanted (correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Roger Ebert even reviewed it--and he was into savaging Lynch at the time). Today, it's been re-evaluated favorably.

THE RETURN is an 18-hour behemoth. It will be easy to criticize it as an indulgent mess. (And maybe they'll be right; maybe I'll change my own tune two decades from now when I'm 60).

Or maybe it will be written about as a gorgeously mystifying large-canvas work by one of film history's most distinctive visionaries, a piece that luxuriates in the joy of mystery and moves at a hypnotic and eccentric pace. After all, future audiences will know going in to expect something different.

But, like how the next four hours of this truly unpredictable movie will go, I have no idea.

We'll see.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by waferwhitemilk »

Are you guys gonna discuss Jean-Luc Picard for pages on end again?
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by judasbooth »

I understand that there are loads of folk that are genuinely enjoying the show. That's great. Honestly. My intention (and I share it with the rest of the posters on this thread) is not to dump on anyone's experience or somehow try to convince them that they're wrong. Experience is subjective, and I'm genuinely happy for everyone who can find the satisfaction in the show that has totally passed me by. This thread, however, is for those Lynch/Peaks fans that are Profoundly Disappointed with the show. A "safe space" in the modern parlance. There are literally thousands of other forums where fans of the new show can rhapsodise to their hearts' content about how much they love it. Allow those of us on the other side this small space to commiserate without trying to lecture us on why we lack the understanding to fully appreciate the show. Our opinions are as legitimate as yours.

But still, the same points keep being made. Like how this is somehow "the purest expression" of Lynch's art and how he has forged ahead artistically and visually. Last things first: there is little in here that Lynch hasn't done before. I alluded to it in a previous post - the most "Lynchean" moments are so-called because they recall his previous work in a way that lapses into self-parody. Like the silly routine from SNL way back in 1990. Or perhaps people mean that the stream-of-consciousness/automatic writing/speaking in tongues quality of the new show somehow makes it "pure expression". Let's be clear: bunch of random stuff =/= artistic purity. Bunch of random stuff = laziness.

Lynch famously likened artistic expression to "catching the big fish". He is by no means the first artist to talk in these terms. Keith Richards famously believes that songs are no written, but "received". The artistic mind is a mind that is open (it kind of fits with one of my favourite flights of fancy - that ideas, beliefs, stories, songs, etc are living things that use human consciousness as a host. Based largely around a misunderstanding of Dawkins' meme theory and probably nonsense, but fun to speculate on, nonetheless). But art cannot exist without craft. The idea for the red room, according to Lynch, came to him in a flash of inspiration while leaning on the roof of a car in the midday sun. The idea may have begun there, but the red room as we saw it in Twin Peaks was a result of hard artistic graft. Likewise, Blue Velvet. As he says, all he had in the beginning was the title and the idea of a severed ear. It took loads of work to go from there to the finished idea. Stephen King made much the same case in On Writing. Ideas, he says, are like fossils. You have to painstakingly dig to get the things out of the ground. You don't just find them lying there. Yesterday might well have come to Paul McCartney in a dream, but you can bet your arse he laboured over it to come up with the song we know today. People love the romantic idea of the artist whose works fall, fully formed, out of the sky. Artists, they say, as blessed. Touched by supernatural inspiration unlike us mere mortals. But it's a myth. Great art is not random, not cheap, and not tossed off. When artists start believing their own myth, the only way is down.

Leaving Lynch aside for a moment, consider two figures from the music world. Morrissey has spent the last quarter of a century buoyed by a rabid fanbase who hang on his every word, telling him how much of a singular genius he is. Accordingly, his artistic output for the past, oh, 20 years has been marked by self-parody and sharply diminishing returns. He stopped trying because he didn't need to try - just keep doing the same schtick over and over and the fans will be happy. Contrast this with Neil Young (a mere two months older than Lynch), a man whose artistic career is marked by a restlessness and a refusal to rake over old ground (I saw him live last year and he was incredible) lest he "turn to rust". What's the difference? One stopped trying, the other didn't.

Again, please understand that I'm not a Lynch "hater". I'm a longtime fan who has become severely disillusioned with what he has lapsed into. But I'm not going to give him a free pass based on his past work, and I'm not going to pretend that he's still a cutting edge artist. Lynch has been Hollywood's pet avant garde-ist/surrealist for the last 20-odd years. He lives in Hollywood. He has Hollywood pals. He's just as much an insider as any other director you could name. Unfortuntely he has been painted in a corner and has been so defined by his past work that all he can do now is a weak retread of his glory days.

I previously said that the main flaw in the new show is that the creators either forgot or misunderstood what made the original show so great. It wasn't the surrealism or the weird pacing or the supernatural elements. These were just the icing on the cake. The real heart of the show was the characters and, well, the heart. Likewise Lynch himself. He seems to be conforming to a misunderstanding of what people thought made him great. His films were great because they had a compelling dramatic thrust and a beating human heart at the centre. The weirdness was a signature flourish, but was never the main point (if you don't believe me, watch The Straight Story again - light on weirdness, big on heart).

By living up to a caricature, the depth to Lynch's work has all but disappeared and we're left with is weirdness and violence and cruelty and nihilism with no context. The elements of the new TP could have been delved into, instead we have silly retconning, surface oddity and a jumble of potentially interesting ideas that go pretty much nowhere. I mean, what's the use of catching the big fish if you're going to serve them up raw?
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Framed_Angel »

I get why some people feel their earlier appreciation of S1-2 is altered by the experience of this TP:TR.
I anticipated The Return even with a a grain of salt, not understanding how you could 'go home again' and repeat what was accomplished in a conflux of timing, inspiration, collaboration, innate trust of personal vision and a backdrop of long-standing mainstream shows that were getting lame. I told myself to be prepared to hate it until it proved otherwise.

Re-watching S1-2 to get ready for TPTR there was a point I desired to write in a blog entry or two my own appraisal of the show as it was conceived 25+ years ago, its mystery and its aesthetic and emotional impact. I wanted to wait and get around to watching Lynch's other works I hadn't yet seen though (Eraserhead; and Dune), so I didn't write my essay but I made lots of notes.

I can barely look at those notes now. It's hard to explain, so don't jump all over people who have expressed here their ambivalence about the new series. Read between the lines. I will need to digest what I've been seeing these past couple of months before I can re-approach the old show (although I've surprised myself having gone back to check a few scenes on youtube of S1 or 2 and it's amazingly engaging still).. And over time, shock wears off and depending on the individual, some level of reappraisal may yield a streak or three that can be carried from The Return in a way that's gratifying.
Aqwell wrote:I was on board with the possession thing of the original TP (Mike & Bob), Iiked the woodsmen introduced in episode 8 of TPTR, even the scary mutant bug frog. But now this new kind of evil possession/manifestation is too much to swallow, too abstract. I was ready to see the bug coming out of her mouth, but this cheap effect of Sarah taking her face off, nope I'm not buying it. No more than the poor visuals of Doogie Jones reduced to a golden marble. Cringe worthy.
It has a lame quality for me too. I'm putting up with it for one reason only. I've been particularly attuned to Lynch's use of doors, doorways, in his work. Visually and almost to excess the number of doorways characterizing any number of TP S1-2 interior scenes, a fair number in FWWm and MD and then again with The Return, although too much else has distracted me in TP:TR to notice as much. I'm baffled as anyone why Lynch would resort to this imagery for alluding to some distress within S. Palmer's person. The fact it opens like a door (rather than removed completely?) with a hinge is what keeps my attention -- while hoping eventually for a fuller explanation of course~
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by waferwhitemilk »

Haaaaa judasbooth, as a long time Morrissey follower i made that parallel with Lynch in my mind a lot these last couple months also! The success & wealth allowing them to isolate themselves from any criticism or outside influence, the total unwillingness to even consider their peak is in the past now, the increasingly sickopantic tone of the declining hardcore fanbase (check morrissey-solo.com), the doublingdown on the eccentricities, the name becoming a brand and family business. I mean just look at what Morrissey's cousin produced as a clip for Moz's "hit"single of his most recent album:



On the other hadn both of these artists have brought me joy in the past, so i shouldn't be too meanspirited. And i do wanna like their new output, but i have a hard time at it for the most part.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

judasbooth wrote:The idea for the red room, according to Lynch, came to him in a flash of inspiration while leaning on the roof of a car in the midday sun. The idea may have begun there, but the red room as we saw it in Twin Peaks was a result of hard artistic graft.
Thank you for another great post judasbooth. I do recall Lynch explaining the circumstances of the genesis of the Red Room. It is worth pointing out that while the room itself may have been conceieved then, the idea of a confrontation with one's shadow in the very environment of subconsciousness predates Twin Peaks by about 70 years, circa 1917. Not mention the original Dweller of the Threshold in the Bullwer-Lytton's work.

The following image is taken from C.G. Jung's "Liber Novus", titled the Shadow:
Shadow.jpg
Shadow.jpg (27.3 KiB) Viewed 7766 times
Yes, the colors, the position that the shadow occupies, the checkboard floor are all there. I do not want to take anything from Lynch's original Red Room work here (which certainly does appear original to me), but would simply like to reiterate what you have just said: what used to be deep is now shallow and banal, used to pick slot machines and cherry pies.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by judasbooth »

waferwhitemilk wrote:Haaaaa judasbooth, as a long time Morrissey follower i made that parallel with Lynch in my mind a lot these last couple months also! The success & wealth allowing them to isolate themselves from any criticism or outside influence, the total unwillingness to even consider their peak is in the past now, the increasingly sickopantic tone of the declining hardcore fanbase (check morrissey-solo.com), the doublingdown on the eccentricities, the name becoming a brand and family business. I mean just look at what Morrissey's cousin produced as a clip for Moz's "hit"single of his most recent album:



On the other hadn both of these artists have brought me joy in the past, so i shouldn't be too meanspirited. And i do wanna like their new output, but i have a hard time at it for the most part.
Very few things bring me as much joy as the Smiths at their most empathetic and joyous. That will never change. Morrissey, however, has transformed from a hero into loathsome self-regarding bigot, revelling in his own myth and firing out dog-whistle screeds denigrating sundry non-white people around the world, sanctimoniously lecturing those he deems inferior (everyone) and expressing more love for animals than his fellow human beings. I stopped making excuses for him a long time ago, but a combination of rotten records, inflammatory public statements and that godawful novel of his pretty much did it for me.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Venus »

judasbooth wrote:I understand that there are loads of folk that are genuinely enjoying the show. That's great. Honestly. My intention (and I share it with the rest of the posters on this thread) is not to dump on anyone's experience or somehow try to convince them that they're wrong. Experience is subjective, and I'm genuinely happy for everyone who can find the satisfaction in the show that has totally passed me by. This thread, however, is for those Lynch/Peaks fans that are Profoundly Disappointed with the show. A "safe space" in the modern parlance. There are literally thousands of other forums where fans of the new show can rhapsodise to their hearts' content about how much they love it. Allow those of us on the other side this small space to commiserate without trying to lecture us on why we lack the understanding to fully appreciate the show. Our opinions are as legitimate as yours.

But still, the same points keep being made. Like how this is somehow "the purest expression" of Lynch's art and how he has forged ahead artistically and visually. Last things first: there is little in here that Lynch hasn't done before. I alluded to it in a previous post - the most "Lynchean" moments are so-called because they recall his previous work in a way that lapses into self-parody. Like the silly routine from SNL way back in 1990. Or perhaps people mean that the stream-of-consciousness/automatic writing/speaking in tongues quality of the new show somehow makes it "pure expression". Let's be clear: bunch of random stuff =/= artistic purity. Bunch of random stuff = laziness.

Lynch famously likened artistic expression to "catching the big fish". He is by no means the first artist to talk in these terms. Keith Richards famously believes that songs are no written, but "received". The artistic mind is a mind that is open (it kind of fits with one of my favourite flights of fancy - that ideas, beliefs, stories, songs, etc are living things that use human consciousness as a host. Based largely around a misunderstanding of Dawkins' meme theory and probably nonsense, but fun to speculate on, nonetheless). But art cannot exist without craft. The idea for the red room, according to Lynch, came to him in a flash of inspiration while leaning on the roof of a car in the midday sun. The idea may have begun there, but the red room as we saw it in Twin Peaks was a result of hard artistic graft. Likewise, Blue Velvet. As he says, all he had in the beginning was the title and the idea of a severed ear. It took loads of work to go from there to the finished idea. Stephen King made much the same case in On Writing. Ideas, he says, are like fossils. You have to painstakingly dig to get the things out of the ground. You don't just find them lying there. Yesterday might well have come to Paul McCartney in a dream, but you can bet your arse he laboured over it to come up with the song we know today. People love the romantic idea of the artist whose works fall, fully formed, out of the sky. Artists, they say, as blessed. Touched by supernatural inspiration unlike us mere mortals. But it's a myth. Great art is not random, not cheap, and not tossed off. When artists start believing their own myth, the only way is down.

Leaving Lynch aside for a moment, consider two figures from the music world. Morrissey has spent the last quarter of a century buoyed by a rabid fanbase who hang on his every word, telling him how much of a singular genius he is. Accordingly, his artistic output for the past, oh, 20 years has been marked by self-parody and sharply diminishing returns. He stopped trying because he didn't need to try - just keep doing the same schtick over and over and the fans will be happy. Contrast this with Neil Young (a mere two months older than Lynch), a man whose artistic career is marked by a restlessness and a refusal to rake over old ground (I saw him live last year and he was incredible) lest he "turn to rust". What's the difference? One stopped trying, the other didn't.

Again, please understand that I'm not a Lynch "hater". I'm a longtime fan who has become severely disillusioned with what he has lapsed into. But I'm not going to give him a free pass based on his past work, and I'm not going to pretend that he's still a cutting edge artist. Lynch has been Hollywood's pet avant garde-ist/surrealist for the last 20-odd years. He lives in Hollywood. He has Hollywood pals. He's just as much an insider as any other director you could name. Unfortuntely he has been painted in a corner and has been so defined by his past work that all he can do now is a weak retread of his glory days.

I previously said that the main flaw in the new show is that the creators either forgot or misunderstood what made the original show so great. It wasn't the surrealism or the weird pacing or the supernatural elements. These were just the icing on the cake. The real heart of the show was the characters and, well, the heart. Likewise Lynch himself. He seems to be conforming to a misunderstanding of what people thought made him great. His films were great because they had a compelling dramatic thrust and a beating human heart at the centre. The weirdness was a signature flourish, but was never the main point (if you don't believe me, watch The Straight Story again - light on weirdness, big on heart).

By living up to a caricature, the depth to Lynch's work has all but disappeared and we're left with is weirdness and violence and cruelty and nihilism with no context. The elements of the new TP could have been delved into, instead we have silly retconning, surface oddity and a jumble of potentially interesting ideas that go pretty much nowhere. I mean, what's the use of catching the big fish if you're going to serve them up raw?
Are you Mark Frost? :lol:
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

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