Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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

Post by Kilmoore »

Snailhead wrote:Hey all,

I'm sad to say that I ultimately am falling into the profoundly disappointed camp. I was among those who was holding out for the final hours to put it all into perspective - not to wrap things up tidily, but to give more weight to what had come before it. There were a lot of great moments throughout the run and I liked part 18 a lot as its own thing but ultimately I think this new series was a big failure, and largely due to pretty bad writing and sloppy storytelling.
As of now, I'm with you. I'm not going into the whole "everyone who likes the show is an idiot" theme so common here, but personally, I just don't see any reason to watch The Return again. I did mostly enjoy it, but since it ended up going nowhere and we only had one scene with the real Cooper, there isn't really anything there anymore. Just seems pointless.

Then again, that was pretty much how I felt about Fire Walk With Me when I first saw it. Maybe I'll come around to The Return in ten years.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Snailhead »

Yeah, I'm curious how I'll feel about it down the road. I was frustrated by Mulholland Drive after I first saw it, but I also was bewitched by the beautiful cinematography and passionate performances - I was compelled to watch it again and figure out what I'd seen. Loved FWWM right away. Didn't think so highly of Inland Empire on the first viewing but it has now become one of my favourite films ever. Unfortunately most of The Return doesn't look all that good - neither majestic and beautiful nor entrancingly ugly - so I doubt I'll rewatch it for the visual experience alone. I will say that the sound design is pretty good throughout.
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Iron_Dwarf
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Iron_Dwarf »

Long-time lurker here. I just want to thank everyone for the wonderful discussions that took place here during the run!

When The Return started I was hopeful, because David Lynch is one of my all-time favorite directors (Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are my favorite films of his, I do regard Inland Empire as his worst). He always has been an inconsistent director so I thought after the mess that was IE he might redeem himself. In the beginning I was quite enthusiastic and really into it. But more and more during the running I felt something was off. One of the first real disappointments was revealing Diane. This thread helped me in articulating this nagging feeling that increased until finally, after the finale (which ironically contained the best part of the whole Return) I concluded this is one of the most disastrous pieces of art I've ever seen and in terms of 'having your head up your ass' to paraphrase Tarantino it's up there or even surpassing the excrement that is Godard's Week-End.

Ultimately there is nothing in The Return that is worth understanding. Narratively, it's a vacuous mess. It's a collection of vignettes seemingly connected. However, in actuality it's a hodgepodge of ideas that Frost/Lynch have had over the years (such as the Dougie plot being based on an old screenplay they wrote). Add to this that Gordon Cole, a once quirky side-character reliant on a limited number of jokes, is suddenly being elevated to main character status. Exemplary is the scene where he looks back over his shoulder at Lynch's own art exhibition in Paris: it's clear that there is an element of narcissism involved. In the end the exploding television in the opening of FWWM (a film I wasn't too fond of either, because the murder of Laura should never have been put on film) is a nice symbol of how Lynch didn't like the collaborative effort that was the original run. He has staged a coup and deconstructed Twin Peaks for the advancement of a vanity project. Visually, it's lazily composed (especially the mise-en-scene) and appalling. The same shock effects Lynch has always used, but to lesser impact.

Although the finale had some arresting moments, it's the Lost Highway idea repeated for the fourth time in a row. What made that film and Mulholland Drive work was that on an intuitive level, the mysteries made sense. The point of a mystery is that one has the feeling it is solvable somehow. Mulholland Drive can be understood, even though it might be difficult to put in words. When a mystery becomes mere obfuscation with random unrelated tangents anything goes: a story of incoherent gibberish is not a story. Any meaning derived is arbitrary. This is one of the big problems of The Return.

As I said earlier, Twin Peaks was a collaborative effort from the beginning, with contributions from Peyton and Engels for instance. Lynch was kept on a leash and his contribution was just one amongst many. Frost seemed to have exercised more control over the series then. This was something I had forgotten when The Return was first announced, giving too much credit to Lynch only. The praise he gets showered with for this is utterly baffling to me. Besides a textbook example of the emperor's new clothes, it shows how pervasive and detrimental the myth of the artistic genius is. As Brian Eno once stated, it's more apt to speak of a 'scenius', someone who can only thrive because he is part of a larger community. In film, too much importance is placed on the auteur theory as well, giving all credit to the director (meaning that Frost sometimes doesn't get enough credit for The Return). What is a director without good people to work with (what is Bergman without Nykvist, or Ozu without Noda)? We see the answer here. Film is the ultimate democratic artform, an amalgamation of the ideas of many people culminating in magic on the screen, which my favorite director John Cassavetes understood like no other.

In the end, how The Return might have been worthwhile was with 9 episodes, Lynch directing on film instead of digital, Frost/Peyton/Engels writing.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Kilmoore »

Iron_Dwarf wrote:The point of a mystery is that one has the feeling it is solvable somehow.
This, exactly this. Anyone can write a mystery if it doesn't have to have a solution. Anyone can build a puzzle if it doesn't have to be solvable. It doesn't matter where Cooper and Laura ended up, it doesn't matter who Richard and Linda are, it doesn't matter what Judy is. Those answers don't exist, and therefore The Return doesn't matter.
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powerleftist
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by powerleftist »

Kilmoore wrote:
Iron_Dwarf wrote:The point of a mystery is that one has the feeling it is solvable somehow.
This, exactly this. Anyone can write a mystery if it doesn't have to have a solution. Anyone can build a puzzle if it doesn't have to be solvable. It doesn't matter where Cooper and Laura ended up, it doesn't matter who Richard and Linda are, it doesn't matter what Judy is. Those answers don't exist, and therefore The Return doesn't matter.
Exactly. People are trying to solve a mystery which is not there. Who wanted to be with BOB again? Do you think Lynch cares? He couldn't care less! He just throws around things hoping something sticks.

Many of you may know that the first appareance of the Red Room was just an idea that got into Lynch's head, like a vision. So he went to film it. He didn't care about what all of that meant. It was cool, and that was it. Everything that The Arm and Laura say it's just gibberish that was later retconned to make some sense. And in that particular time, the sequence worked masterfully.

People spent days trying to figure out why Sarah Palmer freaked out at the supermarket. There is no reason. It just happens, to send a chill down your spine. It has no meaning. It is not a mystery. It is just a thing that happens.
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Iron_Dwarf
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Iron_Dwarf »

TwistedFate_L4 wrote:Also, can we admit that there is a lot of good TV out there these days? TV is where its at.
Will watch some other early 90's series that do not have disappointing returns: Riget, Carnivale.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by poodlerottweiler »

This, exactly this. Anyone can write a mystery if it doesn't have to have a solution. Anyone can build a puzzle if it doesn't have to be solvable. It doesn't matter where Cooper and Laura ended up, it doesn't matter who Richard and Linda are, it doesn't matter what Judy is. Those answers don't exist, and therefore The Return doesn't matter.
This is why I roll my eyes at all the convoluted theories going around. The two biggest are a) Alternate Time Line/Flashpoint comic book logic which I don't buy for one second as neither TP or any other of Lynch's works have ever hinted at time travel and b) It Was All A Dream. The second is most likely and fits Lynch's overall body of work but at what point does it become expected and how often is he going to repeat himself? If you accept the Dream ending you're admitting it was predictable and also insulting to the original run and FWWM.
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referendum
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by referendum »

Interesting to pull the camera back and look at Lynch's wider output.

He has a thing about Francis Bacon and has often compared his own work to Bacon, which for someone who is so reticent in interviews about his sources is worth noting.
I went to see the exhibition he did, The Air is on Fire, at the Foundation Cartier. His photos of factories and nudes were kind of dull. There were alot of them. His paintings are recognisably his own, but the worst of them are also recognisably sub-bacon.

I also went to see the big bacon retrospective in the 80's at the tate. Alot of the reviews at the time were very negative about this exhibition, suggesting that Bacon was a powerfully intuitive painter until the mid 70's, but that in his old age he had lapsed into cliche, repetition, self quotation, self parody, glossy and facile surfaces that failed to disguise a too-easily acheived misanthropy, a stylist who had lost his substance, a once-great original who had lost his touch due to being too lauded and rich, and so on. Pretty much all the criticisms that are being made here about Lynch in TP TR, in fact.
Last edited by referendum on Thu Sep 07, 2017 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by douglasb »

Time travel may not have been something Lynch has done before but Cooper - on some level - meets Laura in the woods. Maybe he only dreams of doing so, but he's dreaming of going back in time.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Dreamy Audrey »

boske wrote:
judasbooth wrote:Well, I've only been here a month, but I think it's time to take my leave. I've said pretty much all I have to say about the show, and I think it's time to move on.

I would like to extend my thanks, not only to my fellow Profoundly Disappointed, but also to those posters who could genuinely loved the show. There have been a handful of exceptions, but I found them almost always polite, fair-minded, engaging and considered in their defence. They prevented this thread from descending into an echo chamber of discontent, and their willingness to engage in debate, in turn, helped me sharpen and clearly define my own criticisms. Perhaps if Lynch had had interlocutors of an similar calibre, we would have witnessed and entirely different Twin Peaks.

Special thanks to all the posters, but especially to Gazebo, ABR, Dreamy Audrey, Gabriel, boske, David Locke, wafer, bookworm, sylvia_north, venus, and anyone else who I may have forgotten. And a special shout-out to the illustrious founder of this thread, misstwrt. This thread has more creativity, wit style and imagination than any Twin Peaks reboot.
Likewise judasbooth, thank you for these great posts, both yours and everybody else's that you have mentioned, they really captured the essence of what was troubling me in words I could not have expressed as eloquently. Also, best regardx to those that have given up a few weeks or months ago and yet were regular here until then. And finally a big kudos to our illustrious founder misstwrt indeed! You did not know what you started back then, and here we are! The finest thread! Godspeed!
Yes, likewise, judasbooth. I really enjoyed reading your posts. Like boske said, they were very eloquent and expressed a lot of my thoughts about the series that I couldn't put into words. Thank you for your great contributions here and goodbye!
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by referendum »

Interesting critical comment from an otherwise positive ( and very engaged ) New Yorker review:

''The series seems divided between the actors whom Lynch, as director, wants to watch [...]and the rest of the cast members, who are directed by Lynch to performances that are altogether more familiar and conventional.

'With the performers whom Lynch directs more traditionally, whose characters are essentially reduced to their dramatic functions, the series’s deliberate, lovingly observational pace, though admirably bold, also turns portentous and vain. If there’s anything that distinguishes the vast political and emotional power of “Twin Peaks: The Return” from the best of, say, John Ford, it’s in this intermittent but inescapable separation of style from substance, the creation of scenes that exist solely for symbol, declaration, information, effect. The series is one of the great recent cinematic achievements; its ideas are profound; its effect is enduring; it will rightly provide much more to mull over and to piece together than a brief essay or two can do—and it’s precisely in that fateful realm of detail-fitting and of interpretive madness that it’s distinguished, to its disadvantage, from the realm of the great movies that inspire it.''

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richa ... the-return
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powerleftist
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by powerleftist »

poodlerottweiler wrote:Alternate Time Line/Flashpoint comic book logic which I don't buy for one second as neither TP or any other of Lynch's works have ever hinted at time travel
Cooper clearly uses Jeffries as a time machine. It's right there. He even tells him the exact date.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by gavriloP »

poodlerottweiler wrote:
This, exactly this. Anyone can write a mystery if it doesn't have to have a solution. Anyone can build a puzzle if it doesn't have to be solvable. It doesn't matter where Cooper and Laura ended up, it doesn't matter who Richard and Linda are, it doesn't matter what Judy is. Those answers don't exist, and therefore The Return doesn't matter.
This is why I roll my eyes at all the convoluted theories going around. The two biggest are a) Alternate Time Line/Flashpoint comic book logic which I don't buy for one second as neither TP or any other of Lynch's works have ever hinted at time travel and b) It Was All A Dream. The second is most likely and fits Lynch's overall body of work but at what point does it become expected and how often is he going to repeat himself? If you accept the Dream ending you're admitting it was predictable and also insulting to the original run and FWWM.
Well, remember this quote about FWWM from Lynch on Lynch book:

Interviewer: The movie plays a lot with notions of time. For instance, Dale Cooper is mentioned in a scene, but he hasn't come to town yet.

Lynch: Exactly. Although I don't really like talking about things, I've got to say this one thing about that scene - where Annie suddenly appears in Laura's bed. This is before Laura has been murdered, and before Coop has come to Twin Peaks. Annie appears, filled with blood, and wearing the exact same dress she was wearing when she was in the Red Room with Cooper in the series - in the future. She says to Laura "The good Dale is in the Lodge. Write it in your diary." And I know that Laura wrote that down in a little side space in her diary. Now, if Twin Peaks, the series, had continued, someone may've found that. It's like someone in 1920 saying "Lee Harvey Oswald", or something, and then later you sort of see it all. I had hopes of something coming out of that, and I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Castledoque »

By the way I feel that the trope of multiverses/alternate realities/dream worlds is now beginning to get really tired. It has been done too many times and I have never really liked it, except in Lynch movies. I always felt that the only director who could do it well was David Lynch precisely because what he showed was not as clear cut as all that. For instance in Lost Highway the different realities are overlapping and Fred Madisson's/Pete's fugue state is both external and internal. Then we got a more straight-forward and easily explained version of the idea in Mulholland Drive and the more mysterious unexplained version in Inland Empire. At the time all this was fresh and new and amazing. Since then it has been badly copied and implemented several times in a way that most of the time cheapens the stories instead of enriching them. When David Lynch came back to Twin Peaks, I was kind of hoping he would either do something different and new or show them how it is done properly. He didn't. Maybe Mark Frost's overexplaining is partly to blame.

The old Twin Peaks and FWWM were beautiful mysteries, the new season is a riddle. Some people are happy with this, I am not.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by SapphireMoon91 »

I've read through a lot of posts from the last few days and just wanted to add my name to the list of the Profoundly Disappointed. I'm sure everything I'm about to say has already been said but I'm posting anyway. I'm an incredibly patient person and like many others, I held out hope that in the end it would be worth it. I never expected a perfect ending but this was kick in the face.
There are things I enjoyed in TPTR, but Part 18 has kind of tainted everything in this new series. After Part 16 I was happy as could be, our Dale Cooper was FINALLY back. I was raving about how much I wanted a Blu-Ray of this so I could watch Part 16 everyday for the rest of my life (which I wouldn't REALLY do but you get the point).
Never has a show made me so happy one week and completely hollow the next. Part of me wonders if Lynch did this just to see if he could get away with it, if anyone would even call him out on this BS ending. In the end, there was no point to this series. The only clips I'd like to rewatch are easily found online. When expressing confusion and disgust on twitter, someone told me "watch the original series." I did! Hence, my confusion and disgust! This was NOT truly Twin Peaks. They used Peaks and it's loyal fanbase to sell this disaster of a story.
This is very much a case of The Emperor's New Clothes. To those who enjoyed it, good for them but no explanation will change my mind and I wouldn't try to change theirs. What happened with this new series is not okay with me and it never will be. I'll stick with Vintage Peaks and write my own damn ending. How anyone, i.e. Lynch, can trash season 2 and act like this us the end all and be all of the series is truly horrifying. Sorry to ramble, happy to be among people who recognize that this was possibly the most wasted opportunity in television history.
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