AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:David Locke wrote:boske wrote:
Yes, saw that too. Just imagine how that scene was being directed:
"Thrysta , you now look at the camera and appear subtly agitated, yes, good, good, like that". What a joke.
At least TR didn't end with Cole/Lynch waking up suddenly in bed after another of his Monica Belluci dreams, the sheets soaking wet
Remember, it could always be worse...
I'm not sure it could have been worse, David. I'd have taken a Lynch wet dream over Green Glove SMASHES BOB TO SMITHEREENS!!! and a retcon of Laura's murder. Such a wet dream would just put the cap on an appallingly poor series. It wouldn't badly tarnish my favourite film.
Cheers for your posts in this thread BTW. Outstanding work.
Thanks ABR. I've always enjoyed your posts as well, you're a very good writer even when I don't agree completely. And I definitely have a more positive opinion of TR than you do (I generally think I like it, even though it's absolutely a very flawed mess... and I'm not sure if my goodwill towards it will last). But uh, yeah, BOB-Ball '17, as I think one poster calls it, was easily, hands down
the single worst sequence in all of Peaks. Yes, including the Little Nicky thought-bubble; yes, including Nadine going back to high school and throwing some kid 1,000 feet in the air; yes, including everything Evelyn Marsh; yes, including Ben Horne's Civil War phase, or the pine weasel, or Lana's witchy woman enchantin' the whole sheriff's station with her sexy wummen powers... no, as lame as those things were, at least they were not meant to be an extremely serious scene, a scene which shows the defeat of THE villain of Twin Peaks, at least the original run. (Some of them were also fairly brief, compared to the extended BOB-Ball scene which makes us watch in its entirety with no respite).
Many have said the scene's intentionally absurd, so as to highlight the dramatic mind-fuck of what follows, as if saying "Ha, there's your tidy comic-book ending - now let's really get down to business..." And I get this, and it's probably true, but it still doesn't make the scene any better. It doesn't make the CGI any less laughably bad (previously I was mainly only finding Duncan Todd's headshot especially amateurish-looking, but this?!?) It doesn't make the whole fucking premise - the Green-Gloved young man with the stereotypical Cockney accent, has been Chosen by the Fireman to defeat BOB - any less stupid, any less of an easy way out, any less antithetical to what TP is about, or should be anyway.
The comparisons people have made have been spot on - like a final boss in some lame 90s video game, like, well, a superhero movie - the culmination of GreenGloveman's intricately laid-out origin story. And just, God... the fucking use of "I'll catch you with my death bag!" right before BOB-Ball attacks Freddy again, like a stock villain spouting a catchphrase before moving Bond, tied to the conveyor belt, a little closer to the flames/knives/whatever. Most of all, the LOOK of it, of the BOB-Ball, like a giant meatball or a bouncing ball, a beach ball... but mostly like a fucking meatball. What the hell were they thinking? It's not like this level of winking "ain't-this-dumb-but-cool-'cause-we-
know-it's-dumb?" idiocy was present in the rest of TR, which was pretty devoid of anything this playful, over-the-top, comic-book-flick conventional.
Ugh, I just get frustrated the more I think about it... Cooper's involvement is somehow even worse. "Freddie, kill him!" The fuck?
Oddly, I actually love Part 18. I think along with Part 8 it's the only time we've gotten something really exceptional, original and well-executed in most every way - to me, probably Lynch's best work since Mulholland (which isn't saying much, but hey). Is it a coincidence that 8 and 18 are also the two hours of TR that go furthest away from the aesthetic/general M.O. of the other episodes? I can also pick out, say, 3, 7, 9, 11 and 16 as standouts, but I'm hesitant to say that they're anything special. Overall, the structure (or lack of one) really screwed TR. It really does feel like 18 hours of footage dumped on a desk, lazily sorted out but forgetting some pieces here and there and ultimately creating a narrative structure that feels incomplete when it doesn't feel plain pointless. To look for quality in many episodes, you have to go to specific scenes... the cross-cutting and relation between the disparate stories was surprisingly shoddily done.
But, I wouldn't quite agree that Laura's murder was unambiguously retconned - I think it's more precise to say Cooper tried to do this, but failed (it seems so, anyway). But yes, that idea is icky, even if it's Cooper's failed plan more than what the show is trying to literally do. Even just seeing those scenes of the body disappearing and such have a strong affect on anyone who knows and loves the original run. So I can understand how that, among other things, would almost tarnish the show. Which is sad. I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching and loving Seasons 1 and 2 and FWWM. I think I can separate any elements of TR I don't like from them fairly well... I hope.