Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

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mtwentz
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by mtwentz »

AXX°N N. wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:44 am
missoulamt wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 11:14 pm Since you don't know them you don't really emphatize with them. Compare and contrast with the original, where you really got to know the characters and subsequently felt for them.
We don't know Sarah Palmer or Leland Palmer at all when they're introduced, but I had no trouble empathizing with them in the Pilot as they learn the bad news. Really, every character was introduced grieving over a person we don't know yet, without knowing their relationship. I've said it before, but I feel S3 more closely resembles the Pilot than anything, because they both skip from character to character and setting to setting, not just later major ones but big scenes with minor characters like the school principal with his announcement, and are very "vignette"-esque.
My first feeling of empathy in The Return was Bill Hastings, when he was being interrogated. I had no idea what his background was, except that he was principal of the local high school. I just could feel his pain as his whole world started crashing around him in an instant. From respected local citizen, to accused murderer.

In some ways, maybe there is a a parallel between that scene with Hastings and Leland finding out about Laura's death in the original pilot.

Edit: We never get to know the name of the hit-and-run mom. Not a single spoken line but I felt a ton of empathy for her.

Curiously, I did feel empathy for both Richard and Steven. Both completely irredeemable characters, yet at the same time, tragic in their own way.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by Histeria »

AXX°N N. wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:44 am It almost feels like the 26th season of a show and we're tuning back in randomly.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by missoulamt »

100% empathy towards Leland and Sarah in the pilot. But those are iconic scenes by iconic actors. Steven and Richard have some ways to go before they belong in that Hall of Fame. This is also the reason why I wish they had given more air time to the old cast, superior in every way.

In response to "The point is to show a very grim 'slice of life' in rural America." Whose point? Lynch's? Yours? :)

Capturing a grim slice of life in rural America was the key to the original show's success. Sarah's scenes in TR had the same quality.

A snivelling Steven feels like a waste of time by comparison.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by Jonah »

Histeria wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:17 am
AXX°N N. wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:44 am It almost feels like the 26th season of a show and we're tuning back in randomly.
!
I'm not so sure that's necessarily always a good thing, though.
missoulamt wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:57 am In response to "The point is to show a very grim 'slice of life' in rural America." Whose point? Lynch's? Yours? :)

Capturing a grim slice of life in rural America was the key to the original show's success. Sarah's scenes in TR had the same quality.
While I suppose it was probably the point, I agree - I'd caution saying it's the actual point unless we're sure it is? Have Lynch and Frost said it is? Besides, surely the randos-in-the-roadhouse scenes accomplished that point enough. They were plentiful and difficult to watch. Did that have to spread so much into the main show's narrative and characters too? At a certain point, I felt like saying, I get it, I get it. It had all the subtlely of a sledgehammer.

But you know, I'm not sure the point of Twin Peaks was ever to portray a slice of life in rural America. Maybe here and there, in parts. But it was more of a heightened version of reality, exploring the lurking underbelly of corruption in a small town ala Blue Velvet, soap opera characters and storylines (some, like me, say it was a parody of soap operas; Lynch disagrees and say it was an actual soap opera) with very liberal doses of the supernatural that became stronger as it progressed.

In any event, I'm not sure Twin Peaks - both the original or The Return - is necessarily the ideal vessel for such slice of life stories, at least to such an extent. And I'm not sure they did it terribly well. As I said, for one thing it wasn't subtle and felt VERY heavy-handed, artificial and heightened. Should a good gritty slice-of-life feel that way in its construction or should it be more authentic and naturalistic and blend more seamlessly with realism? It didn't work for me, at least, especially as they continued to also explore the supernatural and other storylines. It just felt too much, out of place, and depressing - but not in a pointed way, as if it was trying to be depressing, if you get what I mean. That's not to say the world can't do that kind of stuff well - I thought the original series and FWWM delved into corruption in small towns, drug use, quite well. But The Return was much more hit and miss in that respect.

At times it really just felt to me Lynch and Frost either didn't know what to do with the characters, didn't have strong enough subplots worked out to support the main arc of the story, or just weren't interested in developing them. Which is fine - but I'd caution not to say it was the point when it may have just been one of those reasons. It just felt like artifice to me - slice-of-life in place of developing something deeper. Not all the time, but a lot of it.

They're welcome to do what they want of course and I welcome all sorts of different approaches to the story should it continue, but I continue to think Twin Peaks worked best when it was a soap opera (or parody of such) that ventured into nightmarish, supernatural realms. And I also think branching out to so many different locations was a mistake. I don't want the original series back - that's impossible at this stage - but I think the show's core strengths was its setting and its chosen genres at the time. Of course it can change and evolve like all great art can - and perhaps should - but I still think it was strongest when it was following its initial premise (perhaps not initial as in Pilot, which was if anything grittier and more realistic again than perhaps the original series or The Return, but the overall premise moving into Season 2, when the supernatural became more of a core feature of the show).

It's funny to think, though, if you look at the pilot - it may never have gone in a supernatural direction and could have remained a more "realistic" soap opera/soap parody with hard-boiled detective elements. And, yes, perhaps those slice-of-life vignettes might have arose naturally then too.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by AXX°N N. »

missoulamt wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:57 am But those are iconic scenes by iconic actors.
Yet at the time, there were dismissive reactions and nobody knew who they were. On my first watch at age 18, I found the characters weird and didn't feel sad at all. Many years and rewatches later, it becomes surreal to see my own reaction in others. I'll never forget, for instance, Grace Zabriskie describing how some when viewing the pilot felt so embarassed at her performance, and found it so cringe-inducing, that they even laughed out loud. There were some hurt feelings on her part, but she chalked it up to discomfort at the realism. I've had friends dismiss the acting (including Grace's) of the Pilot as bad or overacting, and, with luck and patience, found that they changed their mind on later rewatches. Not to say you will or should change your mind, it just fascinates me the split in opinion TP causes and has always caused. It gets kind of paradoxical; I'm not sure I'd even call Grace's performance realistic, and it's certainly stylized, but in a way which makes it more real than something grounded. "Realism" becomes a shaky term. There was a PBS special back in the day with Mark Frost and a dismissive tv critic in attendance; the critic's main problem was what he felt as a lack of realism, and his definition of "realistic" seemed to be "lacking anything weird." And Frost's rebuttal was, to paraphrase, "I've encountered people like this in my actual life."
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by Histeria »

missoulamt wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:57 am
In response to "The point is to show a very grim 'slice of life' in rural America." Whose point? Lynch's? Yours? :)
Why does it matter?
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

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You know, just to go back to the supernatural element for a moment. I know Lynch envisioned the red room early on and it became a part of the original pilot - and, interestingly, was depicted in the international pilot as a real place, NOT a dream - but otherwise the show didn't really begin to become supernatural until Season 2, though it was hinted at before, primarily due to the choice to have Bob in the show (which I know in some reasons, was just as a mask for Leland that may not have even existed, though clearly the show continued to make it clear he did exist as it went on). I just wonder if they always planned to go supernatural. I know LOST wanted to go into sci-fi and fantasy territory early on, but had to promise the network they wouldn't, which is why it was initially more of a castaways-on-an-island type thing until it started to grow stranger. In that respect, both shows share a similarity - they both started more rooted in reality and slowly grew weirder.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by JackwithOneEye »

as a viewer in 1990-91, the supernatural elements took me by complete surprise.

I was a big Dune fanatic as a kid, I had the toys and loved it but I was well aware nobody else did. Eraserhead had it's surreal imagery, but it was so midnight cult niche, The Elephant Man was his big hit, and Blue Velvet had turned his career around after Dune was so trashed, so I had thought when I watched the TP pilot, this was going to be like a Blue Velvet series, that Lynch had found his footing in dark whodunnits that had it's quirks, but largely realistic, and wouldn't be keen to go back to anything fantasy related. When Sarah has the vision of the necklace at the end of the pilot, I thought, oh it has a touch of supernatural, but that's probably it. And when the dream sequence aired, I though ok, that's probably as far as he'll push it. When we learned more about Bob, and Ronette identifying him by his sketch, I thought he's a homeless drifter red herring who knew something, was maybe sleeping or living in the train car, but wasn't the killer.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by mtwentz »

Just to remind everyone- supernatural/fantastical storylines existed side by side with more conventional soap opera storylines in S1 and S2. This is not the exact same as the grim realism of Steven/Becky being in the same show as Freddy, but also not that far off. That was part of the charm of the show. We could switch between Cooper walking through some red curtains and into another dimension and then switch to a scene about Donna’s biological father.

Also, FWWM is very much a mixture of grim realism and the fantastical supernatural. We have a story of sexual abuse, incest, drugs etc side by side with a story about inter dimensional beings living above a convenience store.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

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A mere point of reference-in speaking with Mark Frost, he flinched at the term supernatural and insisted it was “mythological”.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by mtwentz »

I agree- it is not really supernatural. I would have used 'metaphysical', although I guess mythological works too.

And in Lynch's hands, I think the term might be 'psychological'.

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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

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yeah, I loved how the mythological stuff ran in tandem with soapy love triangle stories and the like.

when Dark Shadows bailed on being a straight soap and veered into the fantastical, they left all that behind.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by Soolsma »

I think supernatural would imply that the non-supernatural stuff, the seemingly natural stuff, works according to a laid oud set of verifiable rules. This would be contradictory to the show in it's entirety being surrealist in nature.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by Jonah »

I think Frost is splitting hairs a little, though I can certainly understand he may not like the term, especially given its meaning may have evolved to have more connotations in recent times in popular films, etc. But at the risk of splitting a few proverbial hairs myself, I have to say - depending slightly on which definition and which dictionary you go with, of course - at its core "supernatural" basically just means attributing something to some force beyond (current) scientific understanding or the (established/understood) laws of nature - which is a fair evaluation imo of Bob, the red room, the lodges, etc.

Mythological does apply here too, though in a somewhat more arbitrary sense, I think (i.e. while much of the show's own mythology is of course based on - or at least draws from - some established myths, I think the connections can be more obscure or sublte as opposed to the Red Room or Twin Peaks itself being a direct retelling of a Greek myth, for example). So both definitions work - but I'd lean towards preferring the term supernatural myself, without any modern connotations or other implications.

I also don't think it implies anything other than its basic definition so I wouldn't agree that it implies the "natural" stuff follows a set of rules or makes the show - outside the "supernatural" realm - any less surrealistic. However, I do think that is an interesting take for discussion re how the "natural" and "supernatural" are both surrealistic and whether one lends itself more to surrealism than the other of if both could fit the bill equally.

I think its simply describing the show taking a route into exploring storylines that could be attributed to an understanding that lies beyond science and nature. The show itself often alludes to this, that there's something strange in "these" old woods, that Twin Peaks is unique, that the characters don't understand the forces at work - even though they've been in sync with nature, they still lie beyond it. After Episode 2, the show continued to venture more into the supernatural, and we can use a variety of synonyms for supernatural - and again I understand Frost and others preferring different terms - but in essence it was (at least partially) a supernatural show.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

Post by Jonah »

If you're all happy to continue with the thread going in this direction - discussing Twin Peaks in general (and I don't think there's as much need to reign in off-topic discussion as long as it's still Twin Peaks related) - I'll leave these posts here, but I also am trying to be conscious of the fact that many visit this thread looking for the latest news or speculation or little tidbits even if there's no news and often don't like to see pages and pages of discussion that isn't related to the possibility of Season 4/Wisteria. I could move the last several pages of posts to the General Twin Peaks Chat thread or even a new thread. I'm busy IRL at the moment and only dipping in and out - and moving so many posts is very time-consuming - so will leave them for now. Let's see how it goes...

As we haven't been "on topic" for several pages now, I do want to let anyone who is coming here looking for any news or updates on Season 4/Wisteria know there hasn't been anything of note lately. I believe the last thing I saw was @fatecolossal posting one of Lynch's videos on Twitter. Seemingly, Lynch is "fed up". I'm not sure if that's alluding to the pandemic or just in general - but it's the last update I saw (and I only glanced at it). Things in TP Land - or Wisteria World - are very very quiet right now.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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