These are my favorite of the ones you listed. They're what I take as "Inland Empire mode" Lynch, brief scenes that act as microcosms. I have a strong preference for literature/film that is fragmented and vignette in nature (it's why IE is my favorite of his films). I especially like the booth chat about the encounter with the uncle--two characters talking about something eerie and reality-distorting without actually seeing any of it, like the story told by the visitor at the beginning of IE or the retelling of the dream/dreamlike experience of Nastassja Kinski's character in the deleted scenes. There's something hypnotic and dreamy about it. Overall, I find the booth chats extremely important to the season and that they give color and a sense of the town as character, and I wish the original series utilized the bar space in this way or just leaned more into vignettes. The Pilot was a series of free-flowing vignettes that never settled on one character in particular, and the Pilot script even moreso. FWWM returns to this feeling of fragmentation, and again, its script even moreso. And just like Cooper doesn't even show up until quite a ways into the Pilot, same for Laura in FWWM. We never see the Principal from the Pilot again, same as we never see the Deer Meadow Sheriff again.Things grow, fall apart, and branch out at their own pace instead of residing in conventional plots. My favorite thing about S3 is that it actually retained this quality for once and leaned into a fragmented, free-flowing style. I think the original series lost something with a lot of potential by settling on a concrete, stable cast of regulars, as much as I like how some of that turned out.
I liked her acting in the role, and I love her scene with Ben when they're listening for the sound. The throughline of the subplot between her and Ben is interesting enough, and worth it for that one scene. I find it interesting we don't see more of her, and that she's put in a minor limbo where it's unsure whether Ben has crossed the line or not. The one scene with her husband feels uncomfortable and realistic in a way that I'm not sure I've seen anywhere else; I know from my own life the neurosis that can occur when taking after an extremely ill dependent, and that this has burdens that erode you and even can, at some points, transform you into a nasty person. I don't agree whatsoever with estimations that this scene was cruel or cynical; to my mind, cynical would be to pretend sickness can't embitter the sufferer and the carer. I find that to be a similar trend with many choices in the Return; they seem real to me, and I'm glad they're explored.
They're funny, and I find it odd when people call them purely political rants and dislike them on that premise, because I find the premise false. There's what feels like legitimate social grievance, sure, but it's also somewhat satirizing the modern detachment/constant engagement with politics that everyone experiences from their living rooms. The idea that Jacoby has developed into a basement pundit that characters like Nadine watches is ridiculous, hard to swallow, and not what anyone would have penned for those characters. But that's exactly how reality feels, and how it feels when I hear my parents regurgitating propagandic talking points. Reality defies and people have changed. It's also surprising that Dr. Amp is more or less satirizing/winking at both Lynch and Frost, given that his shovel schtick can be read as a dig (pardon the pun) at TM, despite Lynch truly believing in it 100%, and at Frost's vitriolic armchair tweeting. Why it works for me is a combination of the above; it's layered and doesn't feel like a cheap excuse to inject actual political takes into the show, but is more about the general trend in society that makes that almost obligatory for media nowadays. I also find the thesis as I see it behind the snake oil quality of his racket interesting, because it has a positive causal effect on Nadine. Self-help is literally BS, but it can help people because it's not really about the truth of anything--things seldom are. That's a balanced take that seems idiosyncratic and legitimately subversive compared to the usual potshots.
I'm aware many take this as misogynistic, but I don't think it's any more misogynistic than the existence of Brad is misandrist, as if Brad is somehow speaking for all men. I know women in real life who are mentally ill and where it manifests as incessant, projected hostility. Is there an argument there for the need to treat her character at more length or develop her instead of using her as a means to develop Frank (by showing what his patience is tried by) or Chad (by showing his incapacity for empathy)? Sure, but in actual life too there are people who exist solely as beligerants, because they present themselves only in those terms, and walk into rooms only to project hostility and excuse themselves in anger.
I can tell that a lot of my responses might seem like excuses which only function while I'm defending the show, so I want to reiterate that these are separate things: when I watch the show, I appreciate these things actively in my recognition of them on-screen. It's why A Woman Under the Influence is one of my favorite films, despite my awareness of how many people (Pauline Kael and many, many others) took issues with it for various, well-argued reasons, including the same charge of misogyny. Why do I like it? Because when I watch it, I see my mother as I knew her in my actual life rendered accurately on-screen. I can't say the emotion I feel is enjoyment, but it's a film I would defend with my life, and its existence makes my life feel acknowledged and seen.
This is maybe my least favorite of the things you list. I think Chrysta Bell did good as a first-timer, and something about the method of being new to acting and the character being new to her role as an inner-circle agent married together well. I especially enjoy her interrogation of Hastings. What I don't like is that her character feels unresolved unless you read the Frost books, where her character actually has an arc by the end of TFD. Her christening as an agent and her learning lore work less as thematic elements and more as exposition, and I would have preferred her to have both in-season instead of having to jump to a different media aspect of the franchise. The nature of her role as a fledgling is begging for more of a sense of her development trajectory; I mean, that's usually the hook to a story built around the character--it's odd and missing the point to position a fish-out-of-water character in only a subplot of a larger story, especially as a minor player. Because she isn't sufficiently her own character, she seems like a lost opportunity who is justified just by the fact that as part of an ensemble she contrasts against Diane so well.
EDIT: Fleshed some things out a bit more.
