LostInTheMovies

Lynch made it abundantly clear in April 2015 that the series was going to exist on his terms or not at all. Wanting a Lynch-directed Twin Peaks which is also designed more to your liking is wanting to have your cake and eat it too. We don't have to accept The Return without criticism, but we do have to accept that it's this or nothing.

I like Twin Peaks for two reasons. One is that, in its odd way, it adds up to a fascinating if uneven whole. But the other, and the primary attraction to me going in, is that it features oddly and frustratingly paced vignettes that are unsettling and humorous: in other words it provides a framework for Lynch to do his thing. If that's all The Return ends up being, I'll still be glad it exists. Film/television can be narrative among other things, but the actual content is the sensation it imparts moment to moment and those experiences are valuable on their own terms regardless of how they "add up."

I'm loving Candie and really hoping her and Dougie/Coop have a bizarre mutually oblivious interaction. And, in the abstract, I do like the idea that she's more significant than she seems. That said, even putting aside the logistics of why one person would reappear in their old form while another wouldn't, Lynch would never let anyone other than Sheryl Lee play Laura or anyone vaguely representative of her.

What value does the concept of a shadow self have if it exists entirely separate from the dominant self? If Lynch/Frost are going this route, it feels like dime-store Jungianism, employed for dry sci-fi/fantasy adventure. Some of the worst aspects of how the series initially handled the Leland/Bob stuff, totally psychologically and dramatically flat. My big question going in was, "how can they possibly made the good/bad Coop situation dramatically resonant?" and I fear the answer may be, "They're not even going to try." Except in an abstract, intellectualized, thirty-steps-from-visceral fashion which is honesty worse than not even bothering. Still hoping we get more, but I'm prepared for Twin Peaks to be excellent Lynch audiovisual art and rather subpar narrative. Sadly, this will also make me respect Frost a lot less.

Which is bitterly uninteresting and dreary imo but I fear you're probably right.

I do have some concerns that Lynch won't be able/willing to pull everything together into an emotionally/psychologically resonant big picture like he did with FWWM, Mulholland Drive and (arguably, I guess) Inland Empire due to process as much as anything else: each of those other works was created on the fly (MD and IE overtly so, FWWM as part of larger Twin Peaks but also in the process of its own individual creation to a lesser extent). Whereas The Return was constructed almost entirely ahead of time, which may not be his strongest mode? We'll see, I still have a lot of hope for a transcendent, tying-it-all-together-but-in-a-Lynchian-way final 2 or 3 hours but I'm not banking on it. Now that said, I don't think we have to worry about the Richard thread being a non sequitur. We're already 90+% positive he's Audrey's son and I'd say, given where everything is heading and how Frost has been tipping his hand throughout, 50+% positive he's evil Cooper's kid too. I don't love that development by any means, but it does ensure relevance.

Awesome avatar.

The Big Ed thing actually frustrates me more. The longer Audrey is absent, especially as Richard goes on the rampage, the more positive I am that her reveal is going to be really pivotal. There's a reason we haven't seen her. But Ed? What purpose can delaying his appearance possibly serve? If anything, it undermines the power of waiting for Audrey (although the fact that he's in the trailer mitigates that somewhat). But we'll see.

My biggest concern is that at the end of the series we do learn that, and also that bad Coop is simply just a bad guy who looks like Coop rampaging around, and Maj. Briggs traveled through some vague dimensions to deliver these messages, etc. In other words, I'm worried we end up with an ep. 16 - a rather pat tying-of-the-bow in which the plot content is too distanced from the supposed psychological resonance - just this time directed by Lynch himself. I'll be glad the series exists, because it provides the opportunity for so many brilliant Lynch sequences (pt8 itself is a standalone audiovisual masterpiece) but as a piece of Twin Peaks it will seem wanting, redundant, and unnecessary. Thanks to the intervention of the finale and FWWM I think the original Twin Peaks, for all its ups-and-downs, ends up being BOTH a collection of brilliant moments, sequences, and episodes AND a narrative journey that takes us somewhere profound. The Return is already the former; the latter remains to be seen. But it definitely *could* be: a lot rides on those last 2 or 3 hours. If there's any filmmaker I can trust to deliver a powerful conclusion that deepens the pre-existing material in unexpected, even unforeseeable ways, it's Lynch.

I wholeheartedly endorse this sentiment, especially in a real-world sense. Although on a more tongue-in-cheek note, given what we saw of Ben's efforts to "right past wrongs" on the old series, maybe they're better off with him not doing anything...

This is a great reference.

She's totally ridiculous but I think this was the episode where I finally decided I liked her. Maybe it's the fact that Diane is now around, so it feels like at least this isn't some "women in the FBI" stereotype, maybe it's just how consciously over-the-top her last few appearances have been, but I now feel like her absurd vamping and posing is just an individual eccentric TP character trait and it just makes me laugh because it's so bizarre and out of place. Still really hard to reconcile with the book though.

The book is incredible, all the more so for being a spin-off of a hit TV show. There can't be anything else like it, I'd imagine. For anyone who hasn't read it in a while and is thinking of re-visiting with the new series (or perhaps is just reading it for the first time, though I think the written form suits it quite well), I'd recommend checking out the recent Audible release in which Sheryl Lee narrates the audiobook. It's a daunting task for a near-50-year-old woman to portray a character who ages from 12 to 17 (and seemingly much more of a span than that, given her experiences) but so far from what I've heard she pulls it off with poignant sensitivity and warmth...almost with a sense that Laura is looking back from beyond the grave, with great wisdom, and re-visiting/re-experiencing her youth. I listened to a bit of it before The Return and am planning to pick it up again whenever the character returns to the series in earnest (right now it feels such a world apart from what we're seeing).

I appreciate the response, as I really do seem to feel differently so it's good for me to get inside that concept that way. It's just hard for me to see how Cooper, back in his body and with all his senses in the real world, doesn't feel like a resolution of the story's central crisis. Yes, the doppelganger could still be out and about and Coop would have to stop him but the most anxiety-inducing portion of the narrative would be finished. We could all breathe a sigh of relief and settle in and sit back as our hero solved the mystery that mattered less than his own return. And I can't help but feel that's the last thing Lynch wants, probably rightly so. I think the bittersweet missing of good old Cooper, forcing us to scrape for what we can from what we see, is as much part of the flavor of The Return as the sadness and intense curiosity surrounding Laura's secrets were a part of the flavor of the original Twin Peaks. That's how they seem similar to me, or at least one way they do.

The diary also essentially says that Laura raped Harold, which I think is a step too far for the character, honestly -- in every other situation she may behave badly or take advantage of people but she doesn't quite go as far as BOB would want. I suspect that the incident is more the result of different mores/perceptions in 1990 (in terms of female-on-male assault or a psychological condition trapping one in a situation to which they don't actively consent) and wonder if Jennifer Lynch would prefer to write it differently today if she had the chance.

I very much agree and suspect the second half (or last third, or whatever it may be) of the work will be quite different but...let's be honest, the films usually get MORE disorienting and dislocated at that point. So if anything I'd suspect we'd see less Twin Peaks after that transition (which we may already have reached with the last episode). However, I'll readily admit I have no idea and certainly haven't predicted any major turns so far, and wouldn't have it any other way...

My point is that BOB was unable to achieve his aim with Laura, but was with Cooper. I really am not on board with the idea of reducing her to BOB-bait when she was an active and heroic presence in the narrative, underscored by the fact that she achieves something that the more expected hero could not. Even if he re-emerges/overcomes BOB in pt. 18 that's still 25 years of impotence/a loose doppelganger to account for. I'm not necessarily saying Coop is evil or a horrible failure or anything for letting that happen, but it still marks him out as unable to pull off what Laura does, for whatever reason. One thing we probably agree on...Cooper's identity cris(e)s can't be resolved until the conclusion of the story because that IS the story. Regarding the Q2 edit, I haven't been able to see it yet unfortunately (I don't/can't generally mess with torrents and missed it during the brief window it was up on YT). One of these days... I'm curious about it as an experiment, and I'm sure there are things I'll like about it but I really dislike how it is used to obscure the integrity of the theatrical cut as it exists. And I think it's practically a crime to encourage new viewers to seek it out first, as I've seen many do. The FWWM screenplay is honestly kind of a mess, much improved in the cutting (as well as decisions Lynch made during production). I've been led to believe that Q2 with a few exceptions (like cutting the awkward Diane sequence) follows the script's structure pretty closely. Is that not correct? And the aesthetic stuff just never gets a mention in the praise, which blows my mind. Long master shots with little to no music are a totally different tempo than the way Lynch cut the actual film, which leans heavily on close-ups, dissolves, and strong score/sound design. I strongly dislike the notion that such formal integrity gets no consideration at all. 1992 Mary Sweeney and 2014 David Lynch cut different works, and at the end of the day they should be treated as such. (Also, just a tip: you double-posted.)

Cooper lost to the doppelganger, but the finale consistently implies that this is BOB's victory as well. As for life/death, I don't think that necessarily has relevance as to who defeats/doesn't defeat BOB. Many seem to be concluding that Cooper's scene with the giant takes place after (or, anyway, apart from) the rest of the narrative we've seen so far and I'm inclined to agree. Something about it felt different from when we see him in the Lodge later on. I think Cooper may overcome BOB yet, but suspect it will be with Laura's help...somehow. I also have a hunch (sorry, folks) that his physical form may not survive the victory anymore than Laura's did.

But Laura defeated BOB, while Cooper lost to him.

Sorry to sound harsh, but I HATE the "Q2 is better/more canon than FWWM" argument with the fire of a thousand BOBs. To be honest, I find this utterly impossible to comprehend as FWWM and the Missing Pieces aren't even edited, sound-designed, or scored as similar movies: hell, Lynch doesn't use similar shots for much of the material. Arguably Lost Highway has more in common, stylistically, with Fire Walk With Me than The Missing Pieces do. Raw footage from the same shoot does not the same movie make. And how can a movie which cuts from a doomed teenager's despair on the night of her death to goofy shenanigans at the sheriff's station be a much better movie?? I'm glad The Missing Pieces are out there, I enjoy watching them, and I think they helped build a sense, indirectly, that Fire Walk With Me was a crucial part of the story. But the thing I despise most about their existence is the excuse they provide to dilute both the aesthetic integrity of the cinematic feature narrative as its own form and the radical gesture of centering a spin-off of a popular TV series on the subjective experience of an abuse victim.

Out of curiosity, I just looked up the ages of the Riverdale cast and it definitely still seems to be a thing (the actress who plays Josie is nearly 30)! It's especially striking for Lynch because he hardly ever used child actors before The Return. I can probably list of all the examples, including even TV commercials, on one hand. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if The Return has already has more child actors than all of his other features combined.

And if they think the episode is so obviously bad, why are they assuming Lynch is making it for himself? I.e. if something appeals to Lynch about this episode, what is it and how can we access it too? It sounds like the OP is equating "for himself" and "nonsense" when they obviously aren't equivalent.

Watch out Ray, you may end up in a wooden ornament!

I liked the inventiveness and ambiguity of having the frogbug be Laura, which was my initial instinct, given the way we move directly from the Laura gold ball descending over earth to the egg hatching in the desert, plus the fact that we hear a horse whinnying in the end before cutting back to the girl in bed - this plus her age suggesting she might be Sarah. However, the Woodsman's message *does* seem to be closely tied to the frogbug's entry and it's hard to imagine a couple innocent people needed their skulls crushed so that Laura could enter the world. Besides, we see plenty of eggs released alongside Bob and such emphasis is placed on the gold ball's color in an otherwise b/w world (except for a brief moment when it first enters the "movie") that the egg's grayness doesn't seem to match. That said, one possibility (a stretch) is that the girl was supposed to die from the radio message but in fact the frogbug's entry saves her. Or, maybe less of a stretch than it initially seems, that the two events are "coincidental" in the Lynchian sense: not causally related, but thematically so. There does seem to be some kind of fuzzy correlation between adolescent romance/sexuality, the frogbug, the atomic blast, the woodsmen, and the violence visited on the townspeople - as if the feelings stirred from this date/kiss blossom into a perverse, overwhelming mini-apocalypse for the whole town (which seems rather disproportionate but feels fairly Peaksian/Lynchian). The coin she picks up - with a copper Lincoln on the front - certainly seems to have something to do with the figure who descends from the sky immediately afterwards (sorry if this has already been mentioned - I'm slowly making my way through the thread), but the lookalike quality of the Woodsman is no coincidence - Lynch/Frost hired an actor whose resume primarily consists of Lincoln impersonations. There's a rich sense of interrelationship between the spirit world and the human psychology that reminds me of FWWM more than anything else in The Return so far.

Thanks - btw, this episode felt super-End of Evangelion to me at times.