Differing Views on The Return

[Audrey Horne]

Wow, based on these comments, I have got to watch this show!

Probably my main problem, not even what I feel are endless meandering scenes and a lack of a cohesive narrative spine to hang the Lynch ethereal on, is the overall tone. I feel it is so bleak and mean spirited to their babies, these characters they loved. I’m not saying this is I Love Lucy and there aren’t dark tones to this world. But I always thought it was intended to be more It’s a Wonderful Life than the latest a Netflix doc of a serial killer.

I was shocked that they did all this planning to end it exactly where season two ended - their fan favorites Cooper and Audrey again both in cliffhanger limbo. I was like all right, you got us… there’s probably a To Be Continued after the finals credits. It takes a special kind of work to do all that planning to get us right back to where we started and end it with an “eh.” And that “what year is it” is some basic Twilight Zone 101 storytelling.

[Jonah]

Wow, based on these comments, I have got to watch this show!

Ha, I love this comment.

It reminds me a bit also of this:

I love reading about meta-commentary and hidden meanings, but that all falls incredibly flat when actually rewatching the scenes and episodes and storylines and not enjoying them one bit.

Now, let me make it clear - I'm not knocking anyone who loves every bit of The Return or your comments, I enjoy reading them, but man, do I wish I could view the show through your lenses - your comments make it seem a lot better and deeper than it actually is - or, wait, let me correct that - better than I actually found it personally, and this is from someone who actually liked at least half of it, not even one of the profoundly disappointed. But I guess that's the great thing about any art - everyone can experience it differently.

[Jonah]

Ike the Spike is not played by a good enough actor to make his reaction to the broken spike as funny as it should be.

That whole scene was horrifically misguided, gratuitous, humiliating and cruel.

I'm usually able to defend Lynch's work against accusations of misogyny because I generally feel it's justified in the text.

But that scene makes me deeply uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons. And it's my biggest problem with The Return.

About that... I was actually goung to revive the "Gender in Twin Peaks: The Return"-thread, but as there is a discussion here already....
Not only do I view this scene as indefensable, I see it as a pathway to a more critical view on the gender dynamics in The Return in general.

There is this whole argument that the excessive and sever brutality towards female bodies in The Return were a deliberate attempt to criticize gendered violence by confronting the viewer with it. And I get that and it was very much my first reflex watching it back in 2017. With this scene, however, that whole line of reasoning falls flat as it was quite obviously played for laughs. Having to admit that, this made me suspicous about the portrayal of women in The Return in general. A portrayal, where ton of women are framed as victims with no agency (and - having read a little in the old threads, I know this word 'agency' pushes some people's buttons, but it is how I, and others, see these narratives), where women's dead bodies are framed as sexy, where old women are not particularly seen as desirable but at best motherly (at worst as pathetic) while young women are very much reduced to their beauty and objectified by the older men and so on and so forth.

Why is the Ike the spike scene funny and why should it be OK to have scene be funny?

So much for getting away from us potentially fighting, but I would really like other people's viewpoints on this (or at least I think I do, promised!).

Didn't notice this comment before. This reminds me as I was discussing Mulholland Drive above, wasn't the person accidentally shot by the hitman in MD a woman too? Those scenes (and other scenes) all felt very similar to me. Like just huge elements in The Return that would have felt more at home in the MD series, or perhaps one of Lynch's other movies (maybe Wild at Heart? Haven't rewatched it in a long time.)

As for the gendered issues, I'm not sure what to think of that. I mean, the original series is all about a dead girl, and there is some literature and articles out now that criticizes this approach (including quite a well-known article), that it's a dead girl trope that's in a lot of works and continues to be popular. I saw someone on reddit recently complain that the new series of Dexter again features a serial killer targetting primarily women and they felt the original series had done that enough, that it's overplayed and offensive. Perhaps it may be true to life (women being victims of violence) but I kind of see the points being raised. Not really wanting to direct the thread in this direction but it might make an interesting idea for a new thread especially if I can find that article that discusses the trope and uses Laura Palmer as a primary example. Also, the use of female nudity and females in general in The Return might warrant more scrutiny - it definitely felt like an imbalance there, as too the lack of diversity, etc. I think some of these things have been touched upon in other threads but never fully discussed on here.

Found the article here: https://newrepublic.com/article/117323/ ... n-tv-trope (also another one here - https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/t ... ra-palmer/). If anyone wants to discuss this more, let me know if there's already another thread on this - or if you want to start one, go ahead.

Anyway, for now, I'm mainly just replying to this comment as was browsing through some of the thread and the Spike bit reminded me of the woman being shot in MD by another hitman, though of course the latter was much less gratuitous.

[JackwithOneEye]

i think all art is problematic/ offensive if you think about it hard enough. literally everything ever made. there's always something you could find and say it objectifies someone, perpetuates stereotypes, tropes, glamorizes war, violence, etc

[enumbs]

Yeah, but you can still have interesting discussions about particular shows and the kind of moral and political implications they might carry. Lynch’s views on race and gender are perfectly germane areas of conversation.

[JackwithOneEye]

there's some growth with the Denise Bryson scene, fix your hearts or die, as compared to the Baron Harkonenen molesting the young boy and his skin lesions, or the implied fey stuff with Dean Stockwell/Ben and Frank kissing Jeffrey I guess. but Lynch is definitely a man of his time.

if you pick any movie, book, whatever ever, you can always find something that is iffy.

(i've read some mainstream novels and short stories from the 1950's, 1960's recently and the sexism , misogyny, racism, and just casual references to homosexuals being perverts/deviants/ sub human, just astonishing to modern eyes.)

[missoulamt]

I don't dwell on the plot details - I believe that is counter-intuitive to the methods of The Return, and I find it impossible to refer to parts of the story as never amounting to anything. It's about how it feels and the mood it conjures and the ideas that are contained within - to me, that's where the narrative resides. The puking girl is grotesque and strange and fits in with Part 8's nod to classic genres, but it mostly, along with the rest of the sequence, points to an encroaching malaise that cannot be understood or halted; the way The Return interacts and predicts the mood of the modern world is fascinating, and the puker plays even better now after an unforeseen disease overtook our reality. There's also the mention of a long-unseen uncle, which harkens back to FWWM and points to the confusion over a missing uncle in a future roadhouse conversation. And the honking lady is hilarious to me, another of many examples of meta-commentary positioned within the narrative. On the nose and obnoxious, yes, but wildly hilarious, and, in my opinion, a moment that is less about the viewer and more about the world at large. "Why is this happening???!!!"

Isnt's this over-intellectualizing things a bit?

I see a lot of comments about meta-commentaries etc when it comes to discussing TR, as if it was an art installation carefully constructed in a way that is almost too "clever" for the average viewer to understand. I don't agree with that "narrative".

For me, if you remove Bobby from that scene, it literally has no connection to the world of TP whatsoever. Which goes for a lot of the scenes in TR. The Mitchum brothers etc. Maybe this is one of the reasons why there were so many disappointed viewers when it first aired?

[Histeria]

i think all art is problematic/ offensive if you think about it hard enough. literally everything ever made. there's always something you could find and say it objectifies someone, perpetuates stereotypes, tropes, glamorizes war, violence, etc

Whataboutery.

The discussion isn't about all shows, it's about this one. And specific points of order about this one. One of a few oddly defensive posts in this thread.

That's ignoring the suspect premise of your point even if it were a valid one. All art is 'problematic/offensive' (love the conflation and co-optation of those two terms there), really? What's problematic in, say, Petit Maman or Nighthawks or Moonlight Sonata?

Theres a huge difference between depicting misogyny in art and the art itself bring misogynistic.

[sylvia_north]

Are you really suggesting that The Sopranos and The Wire are acclaimed because of Hollywood corruption? Come on.

There’s a a few reasons why arbiters of taste decide something is good and I don’t defer to them because they don’t influence my own opinion, but I was making a [dry] joke. That you commented on it as if I was deadly serious makes me wonder if you underestimate how many careers depend on kissing the right asses and posing as a fashionable aesthete.

fuller realization of Lynch's aesthetic for television and deconstruction of the hero.

... for better or for worse

Until there’s a book about it, I’m not taking a generic, glowing review at face value. Anyone in media or publishing knows DL is a genius, and that they risk looking like an idiot if they disagree in print. I wonder how she really feels though.
I’ll also accept a feature length article.

Sopranos did nothing for me. The Wire I found unwatchable. Those are low bars to surpass.

You said you’d accept a feature length article, but would a long form interview do? The conversation with Joel Bocko (Lost in the Movies) is best, but the one with Scott Ryan is also quite interesting.

https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2019/08 ... d.html?m=1

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/th ... 9EmukzBSe/

She does hate the Wally Brando scene, if that makes you feel any better.

Cool, thanks. Nochimson has insights on DL not many others do so she’s earned my consideration.
I like Michael Cera so I enjoyed that moment, except for being reminded that they lobotomized Lucy and Andy making them 100x less endearing than they were in S1-2. Ontkean was smart to have not participated.

[sylvia_north]

I don't dwell on the plot details - I believe that is counter-intuitive to the methods of The Return, and I find it impossible to refer to parts of the story as never amounting to anything. It's about how it feels and the mood it conjures and the ideas that are contained within - to me, that's where the narrative resides. The puking girl is grotesque and strange and fits in with Part 8's nod to classic genres, but it mostly, along with the rest of the sequence, points to an encroaching malaise that cannot be understood or halted; the way The Return interacts and predicts the mood of the modern world is fascinating, and the puker plays even better now after an unforeseen disease overtook our reality. There's also the mention of a long-unseen uncle, which harkens back to FWWM and points to the confusion over a missing uncle in a future roadhouse conversation. And the honking lady is hilarious to me, another of many examples of meta-commentary positioned within the narrative. On the nose and obnoxious, yes, but wildly hilarious, and, in my opinion, a moment that is less about the viewer and more about the world at large. "Why is this happening???!!!"

Isnt's this over-intellectualizing things a bit?

I see a lot of comments about meta-commentaries etc when it comes to discussing TR, as if it was an art installation carefully constructed in a way that is almost too "clever" for the average viewer to understand. I don't agree with that "narrative".

For me, if you remove Bobby from that scene, it literally has no connection to the world of TP whatsoever. Which goes for a lot of the scenes in TR. The Mitchum brothers etc. Maybe this is one of the reasons why there were so many disappointed viewers when it first aired?

I forgot how much yarfing is in Return. Dumb land, Pregnant Lula, Six Men Getting Sick, Fred in his cell in LH, Frank Booth mentions puke- another one of DL’s favorite motifs. Lo, someone wrote an article about it just last month. Personally I don’t think it’s as deep as all this, but it’s like rape. It gets a cheap reaction.
https://25yearslatersite.com/2021/11/01 ... -they-die/

Found the article here: https://newrepublic.com/article/117323/ ... n-tv-trope (also another one here - https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/t ... ra-palmer/). If anyone wants to discuss this more, let me know if there's already another thread on this - or if you want to start one, go ahead.

I was trying to find the full essay about Twin Peaks from Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, but all I can find is this quote people grabbed from it: “these female victims represent a blank canvas, a ‘neutral arena on which to work out male problems.’” It’s how you start a mystery, “ Because this figure cannot tell her story, she becomes whatever those around her choose for her to be. The assumption, Bolin writes, is that “women are problems to be solved, and the problem of absence, a disappearance or a murder, is generally easier to deal with than the problem of a woman’s presence.” https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/ ... cult-woman

I don’t think we need art to help us confront the reality of mostly male perps and female victims, over and over and over again, as we are confronted with it all day every day. I don’t think that’s what artists who have this fixation are doing.

The Surrealists, using Marquis de Sade as a touchstone, have always found transgressions of female bodies to be not only sexy, but the ultimate transgression. The more gratuitous, the more visually and emotionally stirring.

Everyone’s read Exquisite Corpse by now, and the trivia in Lynch’s Room to Dream about acquiring a photograph of Elizabeth Short’s body taken before sunrise when she was discovered, thus DL now has a memento by an killer that was never convicted, encapsulates just what a thrill violent killings are to artists and lovers of mysteries. And who would be a more perfect recipient of this gift than David Lynch? Speaking of vomit, Lynch returns to battered and dead women like a dog returns to its vomit. It’s just his thing. Oh, and meditation and woodwork.

Women are obsessed with crime stories because we’re obsessed with avoiding being killed. Why are male artists (and so many men who kill) obsessed with it, really, past an abiding necrophilic curiosity?

[Kilmoore]

Wow, based on these comments, I have got to watch this show!

Marvelous! This is how I feel reading theories and speculation about S3. If, like, 1% of this stuff actually had any base on anything that happened on screen I might have enjoyed S3 more.

[Kilmoore]

I feel it is so bleak and mean spirited to their babies, these characters they loved.

I don't think they did love them. Both Lynch and Forst walked away from the show during the original run, and Lynch repeatedly said over the years that Twin Peaks is dead and he has nothing to add. They only watched the pilot episode before doing S3. All the evidence points to them just caring so much less than anyone on this board, for example.

[Jonah]

I feel it is so bleak and mean spirited to their babies, these characters they loved.

I don't think they did love them. Both Lynch and Forst walked away from the show during the original run, and Lynch repeatedly said over the years that Twin Peaks is dead and he has nothing to add. They only watched the pilot episode before doing S3. All the evidence points to them just caring so much less than anyone on this board, for example.

I have to mostly agree though I recognise that Frost wrote two books and gave some characters (such as Ed and Norma) happy endings, and Lynch was willing to change Fenn's role on request and also clearly loves Laura Palmer and Cooper and feels Carrie Page "calling" to him. So I do think they love some of the characters, but I also felt a very cold distaste from them towards many of the characters and a kind of rudimentary feeling about returning to their stories and the town itself - only wanting Audrey to be the owner of a beauty salon who is attacked by her son (there might have been a bit more to it than this but we don't know), the way they treated Gersten Hayward (and potentially would have Donna's character), many more example but those are just two.

There was just a sort of feeling of indifference or just throwing out some very basic stories for these characters and also not managing to fit others in at all that just surprised me. I certainly didn't get the feeling this was being written by writers who were longing to get back to characters and a setting they had created 25 years ago. There was some enthusiasm but it felt very muted, mostly focused on Coop - and even then, he was a different character for 95 percent of it.

That sort of anti-nostalgia feeling can be felt throughout the show but it doesn't feel like a purely conscious decision. Yes, I'm sure a certain measure of it was intended and by design, but much of it comes across as a form of distaste and/or indifference from the creators. I'm sure many will disagree or argue all of that is part of the carefully structured brilliance of The Return or tell me I didn't get it - as whenever a criticism is floated on here that is usually the response. Don't want to appear snarky - as I said, I enjoy reading most of the comments - but let's face it, most of the time any genuine criticism of the show presented on here is responded to in one or both of those ways. FYI telling people they don't "get" something really is very condescending.

Again, like AudreyHorne and derolli touched upon, I think the show often sounds better and much more layered in the forum comments than the actual show which just doesn't feel to me like a carefully designed puzzle box (some of it does, such as Coop's journey, but a lot of the side stories just do not). Many of the complex meanings attributed to it frankly feel like they're just being inferred by fans and weren't intended as such - though of course with any work of art it can be hard to tell, but I definitely feel a lot of "the curtains were just blue" going on here. I certainly appreciate the intelligence and analysis. I'm just not sure The Return always warrants it. Having said that, I did appreciate a lot of the commentary on Coop's character and the fractured parts of him and kind of came around on that reasoning. But some of the analysis - particularly in those cases where everything is being presented as a carefully deliberated meta commentary on some part of life as we know it when it just feels like throwing random story points in - feels like a reach.

[Jonah]

Found the article here: https://newrepublic.com/article/117323/ ... n-tv-trope (also another one here - https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/t ... ra-palmer/). If anyone wants to discuss this more, let me know if there's already another thread on this - or if you want to start one, go ahead.

(...)

I was trying to find the full essay about Twin Peaks from Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, but all I can find is this quote people grabbed from it: “these female victims represent a blank canvas, a ‘neutral arena on which to work out male problems.’” It’s how you start a mystery, “ Because this figure cannot tell her story, she becomes whatever those around her choose for her to be. The assumption, Bolin writes, is that “women are problems to be solved, and the problem of absence, a disappearance or a murder, is generally easier to deal with than the problem of a woman’s presence.” https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/ ... cult-woman

Fascinating comments - and this may indeed warrant a thread of its own. I do think it's an interesting trope and I think it's become very prevalent in the TV landscape. Laura Palmer herself was also based on a project Lynch and Frost were considering based on Marilyn Monroe, which is another example, sadly a real life one, of this. Then we have shows like The Killing. And most recently, the recent season of Dexter New Blood, where a serial killer is shooting women and presumably presenting them as preserved hunting trophies.

I love the Laura Palmer mystery, it sucked me in as a kid, but it's impossible not to see this trope - and the image of her lying dead and naked wrapped in plastic contrasted against her prom queen photo as a certain fascination particularly by males. I myself even had a crush on - or at least a fascination with her - as a young kid, of like 10. So seeing this through adult eyes, you can certainly recognise a certain distaste with the trope. When are we going to get a show that asks us Who Killed Larry Palmer? and have the camera gaze on his face, his partially naked or Adonis-like form, and create a mystical fascination with him. And would the public be so enthralled by such a mystery? I wonder, certain people would, but I'm not sure it would ever enrapture the viewing audience to such an extent.

[mtwentz]

I feel it is so bleak and mean spirited to their babies, these characters they loved.

I don't think they did love them. Both Lynch and Forst walked away from the show during the original run, and Lynch repeatedly said over the years that Twin Peaks is dead and he has nothing to add. They only watched the pilot episode before doing S3. All the evidence points to them just caring so much less than anyone on this board, for example.

Many of the complex meanings attributed to it frankly feel like they're just being inferred by fans and weren't intended as such - though of course with any work of art it can be hard to tell, but I definitely feel a lot of "the curtains were just blue" going on here. I certainly appreciate the intelligence and analysis. I'm just not sure The Return always warrants it. Having said that, I did appreciate a lot of the commentary on Coop's character and the fractured parts of him and kind of came around on that reasoning. But some of the analysis - particularly in those cases where everything is being presented as a carefully deliberated meta commentary on some part of life as we know it when it just feels like throwing random story points in - feels like a reach.

Funny you should mention that, when Twin Peaks first aired, I told some of my fellow fans who worked with me in a coffee shop that Cherry Pie was Lynch's symbol for the loss of American innocence, the antithesis of Apple Pie, and a representation of female sexual liberation. They rolled their eyes at me and said, 'Oh God!'

I stand by my original analysis!