ddennism

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About ddennism

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    yrev very good

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  1. Diane saying 'Let's Rock!' made me imagine for a second that she was the one who scrawled that expression across the windshield from FWWM. I mean, I presume she had the lipstick on-hand. Hahaha.
  2. I'm a huge fan of The Return so far, but this tendency in the fandom irritates me, too. I think it irritates me because it reduces the whole show into just an intricate jigsaw puzzle to be solved, where each piece of the puzzle is a formal visual element. That's not to say that there aren't interesting recurring themes throughout the series, though. I've found joy and fascination in watching the contrast between different characters' reactions to situations that feel formally parallel. Here are a few examples: (1) The exploration of conspiracies. The show depicts many characters reacting in contrasting ways to perceived dark conspiracies. (2) Hope and hopelessness in the face of a possibly preordained life. (3) Dreams and visions in either conflict or concordance with the physical world. (4) Characters that are confused about how they feel, or that feel multiple emotions simultaneously and strongly. Other things that delight me about the show: (5) Absurdist humor and arch, bad-on-purpose writing (Andy & Lucy, and many other bit characters). (6) Mysticism unlike anything I've seen elsewhere, that's vague enough to let my mind wander around in, but concrete enough to be an occasional plot element, with elements that interact with more than one character. (7) Captivating and varied music / scoring / sound design. I like abstraction and surrealism, but I am at a loss as to how to convey why you should, too. I also can't really explain why I like some abstract or surreal works of art more than others. If anyone on the forum has the training and language for that kind of art criticism, I'd love to hear about it. I hope you find some things to like in the richness of the show. But if what you liked the most about the original series was the whodunit plotting, then I can understand why The Return would be frustrating, Although, I'd point out that this isn't really new. After re-watching the original series recently, I was surprised by how little screentime is devoted to solving the mystery of Laura's murder. Way lower than I remembered. Way more Mill Machinations and domestic violence. And there are very few 'reveals' in Fire Walk with Me.
  3. That particular photo of Laura I think is meant to symbolize just the good in Laura. Or maybe the sheen of goodness, or an idealized Laura Palmer.
  4. Me last week: "That was okay, but awfully straightforward and plot-heavy. I hope this iteration of Twin Peaks doesn't pull a season 2 and become the thing it's aping." Me this week: "WOW BOB WOW"
  5. Strong women are raped and assaulted hourly in the United States. Being a victim of violence doesn't make you less 'strong' or interesting. I understand the impulse to reject the gratuitous and exploitative, but my feeling is always going to be: if it happens in real life, it better show up on the screen. Writing a victim can be lazy when it dehumanizes the victim only to emphasize how evil another character is. But at least so far, Diane's victimization seems more important to establish her character than to establish Mr. C's. Having said that, my fervent wish right now is that the incident Diane refers to happened before the events of the original series, and that Dale's tapes were recorded by a blithely oblivious Dale Cooper who didn't realize how much he had hurt Diane. The fact that Diane seems shocked in part VII about Cooper's lack of heart indicates to me that the traumatic event at her house happened at least prior to the Dale switcheroo. Why not even earlier? I think we tend to forget that Dale Cooper is not without his own darkness. My parents just started watching the original series for the first time, and, without any exposure to outside media on the series, are convinced that that creepily overeager Kyle McLachlan dude ("You know, from Blue Velvet? In this one he's playing the same guy, but as an out-of-town cop.") is complicit in the murder of Laura Palmer. Just the other day they watched him flirt with an underage high school student (Audrey) and feel vindicated in their prediction.
  6. Laura Hudson at Vulture nails it, again, with her review of part VII, putting into words exactly how I feel about the tension between Lore and Emotional Truth:
  7. Yeah, I had a similar reaction to Tammy in this episode. When Gordon Cole initially tells her to place her hands in front of him, I braced myself for an extremely patronizing explanation of how mirror images work. I was so relieved when it instantly got way weirder, and also confirmed that the three agents are all aware of the "It's yrev very..." thing, without one of them essentially having to turn to the viewer and say, "We're aware of the linguistic oddity in an earlier episode, don't worry."
  8. My favorite scene was the Ike the Spike attack scene, especially its True Crime docudrama aftermath.
  9. I loved Spike for this very reason. His sudden appearance was incongruous in a way that I really dug. We're introduced to him with a scene that establishes that he has a preoccupation with luck: He's tallying dice rolls the way someone does if they're checking to see if the dice are loaded. So maybe he is blessed with uncanny luck, haha. I can't really speak to the whole little person casting issue - but I'd much rather hear from an actual LP about it, to be honest. It doesn't ring true to me that his casting is automatically 'exploitative'. For what it's worth, the only LP I've personally known IRL really seemed to relish how his appearance freaked people out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There's a long history of well-meaning people "standing up" for people with unusual bodies in the context of Freak Shows, only for the supposedly exploited to say, "hey, wait, I LIKE making lots of money from the fact that I look different!" Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous conjoined twins, for example, made so much money from exhibitions that after just a few years of touring they were able to buy a rolling estate in North Carolina. Freak Shows only dropped in popularity after the rise of modern medicine recast the public's view of 'freaks' as something to be pitied, rather than marveled at. Freak Shows could also be nightmare machines of exploitative evil, too, don't get me wrong. Especially when you throw nineteenth century racism into the mix. I'd love to hear from Lynch about this. Unusual bodies are obviously something he's thought a lot about - he made The Elephant Man, after all!
  10. Yeah - I'm pretty murky on the diary chronology myself, so thanks for that summary. My head just made the connection because Gerard/MIKE struggling with his injection was the only scene I could remember from the past that took place in the sheriff department restroom.
  11. I was especially disturbed by the motion of the awl when Ike was stabbing Lorraine, like he was stirring up and mashing her insides. Yuck. I'm not surprised by it, though. The Return seems preoccupied with checking off a list of qualities of 'golden age of television' tropes, much like the original series lived within the genre standards of the 'prestige primetime soap opera' genre. Graphic violence is definitely a part of modern prestige TV. I'm looking forward to the moment where Bobby Briggs gets a humorous interview by a never-seen documentary film crew on the subject of how much fun it is to prank Chad.
  12. Wouldn't it have come from Gerard/MIKE when he was without chemicals, pointing? Doesn't he have scraps of Laura Palmer ephemera from the boxcar at the end of FWWM?
  13. Oh that's interesting. I took it as empathy - Sonny Jim looked so upset.
  14. Dougie shedding a tear while empathizing with Sonny Jim almost made me shed a tear.
  15. I'm realizing while reading and listening along that my brain constructed a taxonomy of Coop souls that seems to differ from everyone else's. Specifically, I interpreted the abstract sequences in the beginning of part 3 of The Return (pink ocean, weird spaceship, eyeless woman, knocking threat, etc.) to represent the permanent obliteration of Good Dale Cooper, and his subsequent replacement with nothing, resulting in a Mr. Jackpots. So we have: 1. Dale Cooper (Good) - Hero of the original series. Naively inquisitive, and a champion for good. Thinks laterally and likes solving puzzles. 2. Dale Cooper (Bad) (aka "Mr. C") - Doppelganger of #1. Confronts #1 in the Red Room at the original series finale, and appears to replace him. 25 years later, has bad hair and is running around killing people. A willing vessel for BOB, or perhaps an avatar of BOB himself. 3. Dougie Jones (Merely Existing) - A boring, pudgy Coop of the treeless suburbs. In financial trouble. Not sufficiently interesting enough for most of his acquaintances to distinguish him from #4. "Constructed for a purpose" by #2, presumably to take #2's place when it's time to be sucked back to the Red Room. 4. Mr. Jackpots (Non-Existing) - A functionally lobotomized Coop in the body and (initially) clothes of #1, occupying the circumstances of #3, after #3 is extinguished in the Red Room. Magically lucky. The doppelganger of Dougie Jones. MIKE and the The Arm are shocked to discover that constructs (such as The Arm) can have doppelgangers. Unidentified Coops: 5. Cooper of the black-and-white room at the very beginning of The Return. Intently receives clues from ?????????. Is actually far away. Probably #1. 6. Blue-eyed coop in the season finale of the original series. Cackle-buddies with BOB. Probably #2. It seems like most people are interpreting Mr. Jackpots as a temporarily mentally-impaired continuation of Good Dale Cooper. When did this impairment happen? We briefly see the coherent, original Good Dale Cooper in few scenes prior to the chaotic rift in the Red Room, so its not like it happened as a consequence of 25 years of Red Rooming it. I also sometimes find myself conflating all four species of Coops as different modes or phases of a single soul. Either way, I love you, Mr. Jackpots!!!