I mostly agree with this. The finale of "Return" has definitely marked it as a very negative, absurdist/existential work. I was expecting a happy ending, and it looked like that might be coming (even in such a clunkily-directed fashion as the police station scene was). Of course Lynch includes those kinds of happy endings, and you'd think that would be appropriate for a show that should be full of emotion and pathos. The whole season was devoid of emotion and introspection, and I guess it's not too surprising that he concluded it in a very dark and fearsome place. The one happy point aside from Ed/Norma (Dougie coming home) felt almost like a perfunctory throwaway. Lynch usually seems like a pretty happy guy, personally, and he's all into personal growth and meditation and all that. Given that, I thought that this show would kind of be about overcoming the depression that the evil spirits in this and his other work represent (the "negative force"). Instead, most characters, including Cooper, just become further victims.AhmedKhalifa wrote:I don't think Lynch hates TP. I think he hates everything that he didn't have total control over, which means basically the majority of season 1 and 2, and TPTR was his chance to retcon/wipe clean/reshape the entire mythology in his image. In doing so he basically undermined if not totally destroyed the foundation of the show and everything that made it special in the first place. I think his worldview has also changed quite a bit in the past three decades. I think he's much less of a romantic than he used to be, and seems to lean more towards nihilism and pessimism now. TR definitely reflects that.
I looked at a review, and they summed it up with the familiar phrase "You can't go home again." I think that idea has swum throughout this show. Many of the characters are in different places than they were 25 years ago, or are stuck in bad situations. So is Lynch. He isn't letting the viewer off easily by giving them what they want, bringing them back in a wave of nostalgia to 1990. He just didn't feel like replicating anything from the previous (which is fine, mind you). As a man in his 70s, this is just what he wanted to do, and his worldview is perhaps darker. A kid gets killed in a hit and run, another is sick with some hellish disease, another is left to fend for himself and witness a car explosion while his mom overdoses, James was in an accident and now stutters, Sarah is possessed by a demon, Cooper is split into a saint and a demon, Audrey is prisoner in some kind of hell, et cetera. Nothing is explained, nothing makes sense, nothing is resolved. This is all good stuff, mind you. I just think, and some others have said this, that these sentiments could have been expressed while also presenting some engaging characters and plots that resonate on anywhere close to an emotional level.