Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 45: The Return, Part 10

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2 hours ago, pokysharpy said:


The possibility certainly exists that Diane is NOT working with BadCoop, which is at odds with most of the internet's immediate reaction.

 

I think the Jefferies mediary is the more interesting choice, and not much of a reach.  Jefferies in Mexico?  Sure. Jefferies, what little we know about him, could be down there.  And he would care about the Site.  It's a fun mystery at this moment.

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It seems reasonable to think that Diane has been working for cooper all this time without realizing he is "bad coop". He may have told her lies about being undercover or that the fbi was corrupt or whatever.

 

Also did anyone else think of jingle dell from wild at heart with cole drawing and the xmas decorations. 

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It's hard for me to believe that Diane would be willingly working with Cooper given her reaction when she met him and when Gordon and Albert were first trying to convince her to come with them. It really felt like Diane had spent the last 25 years trying to forget about Cooper, I can't see how she could have been interacting with him. Even the idea that she was working with Jeffries directly against Cooper in the intervening time seems weird to me. I think whatever Diane is doing is something that started after her meeting with Cooper in prison. And if she's working with Cooper she must be doing it unwillingly.

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Okay, I have a theory about why Diane might be working with BadCoop.  If we are assuming that Richard is Audrey's son, the product of BadCoop raping Audrey in the hospital, and if it is correct, as many assume, that BadCoop also raped Diane, then might Diane not also have a child?  What if that child is Linda? And what if BadCoop somehow uses threats against Linda as a way to control Diane?  To me, that would clear up why Diane is horrified by BadCoop but why she might do things for him.  Also, it would provide a balance Richard. Maybe, somehow, This hypothetical Linda is the opposite of Richard, a very nice, pure young woman.  

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I have trouble believing Diane is being coerced or tricked.  Yes, it is bad storytelling to introduce a character we've heard referenced by our hero who seems to have a long lasting relationship with someone he trusts implicitly and turn her into current Diane.  We have no reference on who or what she was before.  But, Gordon and Albert seem to be the wisest, most resourceful, and most loyal to their duty- if anyone would be able to get Diane out of a jam it is they, and there would be no good reason not to inform them.  If she knew Coop was bad news or different she could have told them way before now, and after seeing more death should have informed them after the text message.  

 

Diane does not seem to be a good person.

 

The only explanation of the text outside the obvious- that she knows exactly who sent it and what it means- is that Coop texted Jefferies and Jeffries texted Diane, or maybe that Diane was pretending to be Jefferies, but again, I see no reason not to tell Gordon everything.

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Just saw someone propose that the weak link may not be Diane but might be Albert! Albert is actually the holder of a ton of information and is in a position to manipulate things. He could be lying to Gordon about sending things to Jeffries. He could be lying about Diane's text. He could be going on dates with the medical examiner to try and get info from or tamper with the Briggs investigation (or get Dougie's ring). Maybe Albert is the fake Jeffries?

 

That is wild and unfounded speculation on my part (based on a single tweet linked below) and I hope it isn't true but he is definitely a character with a lot of defacto unquestioned agency in the story right now. 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/anvilone/status/887555197009920000 

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8 minutes ago, Digger said:

But, Gordon and Albert seem to be the wisest, most resourceful, and most loyal to their duty- if anyone would be able to get Diane out of a jam it is they, and there would be no good reason not to inform them.

 

Diane doesn't like or trust them, or the FBI as a whole, for reasons that are still murky but which Gordon and Albert seem fully aware of. I'd say her being secretive with them doesn't necessarily mean she's in league with Badcoop, even though her encrypted message is obviously extremely suspect. I do think it's plausible that she's working with Jeffries ("Jeffries"), but it's not clear at this stage what her role or objectives are if she is.

 

For the reverse to be true – Diane working with Mr C in full knowledge of the situation – the whole police-station interview, her conversation with Gordon afterwards, basically everything she's done up to this point would have had to be faked, which is obviously possible but seems weird from a storytelling perspective (you'd expect some kind of tell; I don't think deception is usually hidden from the audience in this show?)

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1 hour ago, Jake said:

Just saw someone propose that the weak link may not be Diane but might be Albert! Albert is actually the holder of a ton of information and is in a position to manipulate things. He could be lying to Gordon about sending things to Jeffries. He could be lying about Diane's text. He could be going on dates with the medical examiner to try and get info from or tamper with the Briggs investigation (or get Dougie's ring). Maybe Albert is the fake Jeffries?

 

That is wild and unfounded speculation on my part (based on a single tweet linked below) and I hope it isn't true but he is definitely a character with a lot of defacto unquestioned agency in the story right now. 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/anvilone/status/887555197009920000 

 

My reaction to this is simply "I don't want Albert to be bad", which is kind of dumb. But, also, I don't think it makes any sense for Albert, as we know him. He's a self-declared pacifist, with basically no reason to work with or for someone with as divergent an ideology as BadCoop, plus there doesn't seem to be anything for him to gain from betraying Cole and the FBI. Unless he's being blackmailed, which BadCoop certainly has the means to do. However, that would be pretty unsatisfying for me from a storytelling perspective, unless there's some damn good reasoning behind it.

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I agree on all points. I don't want him to be bad, and I don't think it fits with my understanding of who Albert is. I was most interested in it as something to put on the table to bust up the "it's definitely Diane" assumptions a little bit. 

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I would believe Diane is working for the wrong side before Albert. Even then, I, too, have trouble reconciling her reaction in the prison scene with the idea that she is aiding Bad Coop. Maybe Jeffries, but that hasn't been developed at all either. 

 

Some people have speculated Gordon could be up to something nefarious, but I have trouble with that idea as well. He obviously knows more than he lets on, but without him and Albert as protaganists the whole thing gets really messy (moreso than already, that is). Clearly there is something amiss, and unless it is some sort of convoluted Reverse Double Cross involving Gordon, I will assume Diane is hiding something until shown otherwise. 

 

I have faith it will be resolved in the next few weeks, but I'm truly baffled at what Diane could be up to because the prison scene was sooo convincing to me. The obvious explanation is that she has been acting since Gordon and Albert showed up and has been in communication with Bad Coop for some time, and knew she would be surveilled during the prison meeting so put on a show. But that seems unsatisfying to me. 

 

If nothing else, it has added some more mystery and suspense, but wherever it's going, I hope Lynch and Frost handle this part of the story carefully because it seems really easy to screw up by making it either too complex or too simple.

 

The show is definitely playing with the concept of time in both obvious and subtle ways, so maybe that has something to do with Diane's behavior? 

 

On another (possibly related) note, the FBI is now going to make its way to The Zone with Hastings (who saw and spoke to Briggs there), while Hawk, Bobby and Truman are following Briggs' direction to a site near JackRabbit's Palace. Is it the same place, either geographically, or separate entryways into some other space/time where they will all cross paths?  

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Given that we've seen BadCoop do weird magic with communication technology it seems silly to assume anything based on out understanding of how real world text messaging works. We also don't know if Diane knew BadCoop was the one who sent the message. Maybe Diane was expecting a text from someone else and BadCoop was basically phishing, because Diane has to reply to the message for the phone magic to work, that seems like the kind of surrealist logic we're operating on. I mean, he transferred a tracking device to a truck by taking a picture of it's licence plate.

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14 hours ago, Jake said:

There's bewilderment because we are human beings, an emotional species that finds comfort in expectation and is confused or anxious when they are defied. It's cool to be a bastion of rationality and say "David Lynch said its structure is unusual," and end the story there, but that 1) is a more unique reaction than you may think it is (see above, re: what we are) and 2) I think that attitude has the potential to limit discussion rather than enhance it. 

 

I'm all for saying that one shouldn't draw conclusions until the end, especially given the unique-for-television structure of this show, but I think it's perfectly within bounds to feel shocked and upset by the imagery and behavior in Richard Horne's scenes even without knowing "what they mean" in the larger picture of the show. Regardless of whether he gets comeuppance, he did these things, the show chose to present them in a specific way, and we watched them. That's going to cause a reaction!

Amusing as the implication is that I'm some unfeeling replicant. I'm merely pointing out how Lynch described it, Jake.  The only thing the return is doing that's different than say most TV drama is it isn't heavily invested in trading in the short narrative payoffs and pacing that are part and parcel of typical television scripting.  They're there (Albert on his dinner date with the mortician for instance), but that's not the journey Lynch & Frost are taking us on. 

 

A lot of peoples frustrations with what they're seeing is indicative of a Pavlovian expectation as to how things should deliver, based on years of a steady diet of largely formulaic TV scripting and more pertinently pacing. Given how in its day the original Twin Peaks irrevocably shifted the paradigm of typical 90s network TV drama, it's not really surprising that Lynch & Frost would eschew the typical beats of Cable TV and do their own thing.  I doubt that the return will have as widespread an impact on the TV landscape as the original show did in its day, but it certainly illustrates how trite a lot of current TV drama is, in comparison.   

 

 

  

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5 hours ago, Kadayi said:

Amusing as the implication is that I'm some unfeeling replicant. I'm merely pointing out how Lynch described it, Jake.  The only thing the return is doing that's different than say most TV drama is it isn't heavily invested in trading in the short narrative payoffs and pacing that are part and parcel of typical television scripting.  They're there (Albert on his dinner date with the mortician for instance), but that's not the journey Lynch & Frost are taking us on. 

 

A lot of peoples frustrations with what they're seeing is indicative of a Pavlovian expectation as to how things should deliver, based on years of a steady diet of largely formulaic TV scripting and more pertinently pacing. Given how in its day the original Twin Peaks irrevocably shifted the paradigm of typical 90s network TV drama, it's not really surprising that Lynch & Frost would eschew the typical beats of Cable TV and do their own thing.  I doubt that the return will have as widespread an impact on the TV landscape as the original show did in its day, but it certainly illustrates how trite a lot of current TV drama is, in comparison.   

 

 

  

 

I think people overstate the merit of sticking it to 'traditional storytelling' in a medium. There's no inherent reason that F&L's approach to narrative in this season is inherently better or worse than 'standard' conventions. It's interesting, I want to see how it pans out/get a feel for why they chose to structure a story this way, but you don't get a prize just for eschewing conventionality, and you aren't inherently more or less worthy for it. I think back to like, David Foster Wallace describing his frustration with writing students who strive to make the overarching impression of their work their own cleverness, and how frustrating it can be, especially for someone who recognizes what you are doing but doesn't necessarily think your ability to make the choice justifies making it, or makes it inherently worthy. 

 

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So after this episode, Naomi Watts posted a snippet of a text conversation with Lynch on her instagram and it's very bizarre.

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35 minutes ago, purps said:

So after this episode, Naomi Watts posted a snippet of a text conversation with Lynch on her instagram and it's very bizarre.

 

Reminds me Joan Chen's in-character letter to DL

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I also am perplexed by the hangups created by the Richard Horne scene! I don't really understand what Jake or Chris would need for that scene to make more "sense." I agree that it was brutal to watch, and part of the reason why it was so effective is precisely because we understand just enough about what's happening on screen to be upset by it. If people are suggesting it was exploitative, I don't really see. If anything, the honest violence of this scene felt refreshing to a lot of TV/movie violence that I've seen recently, where the violence is pitched as transgressive but really just amounts to the same old tired "are you shocked by how twisted we're being?" trope that is more for enjoyment than unsettling the audience. (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones.)

 

That scene told us a lot about Richard Horne, his relationship with his family, and the relationship of the Hornes in general.

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Inspired by the backlash to this episode, I feel encouraged to say that y'all are drinking the Prestige Television Kool-Aid :lol: . If I come off as aggressive, just understand that I feel like I'm in the out-group for my generation's supposed "golden age of media". On the podcast and on this forum I am reading some incredibly strong assumptions about media that I just plain don't agree with. I am genuinely confused by what the zeitgeist deems "good media" in 2017, and the current discourse around TV is very off-putting to me. Twin Peaks has been my return to watching a TV after a long hiatus, and the podcast and this forum have usually been an oasis from the typical discourse that occurs these days... except when it comes to this episode. I just need to let out some pent-up steam I think.

 

On 7/17/2017 at 0:46 PM, Argobot said:

This episode was so frightening and so funny. I can't believe it all worked so well together, but Lynch and co have someone managed to pull off some of the most incongruous tonal shifts. Richard Horne is a truly great villain, both because how believably monstrous he is but also because of how vulnerable we've seen him. Given how Candy's scene went earlier - where I was excepting the Mitchum brothers to react violently to her remote control incident - I similarly thought that maybe Richard's scene with his grandmother would play out along the same lines. Instead, Lynch goes all in on making you really uncomfortable and sad, focusing so much on Grandma Horne prone on the floor, while her grandson violates her home and her son. It was brutal to watch.

 

I was initially skeptical about this season being as long as it is, but at this point, my skepticism has completely worn off. The pace is amazing and I want to live in this world for as long as possible.

 

Totally agree! 

 

On 7/17/2017 at 5:27 PM, ihavefivehat said:

After watching this episode and the new episode of Game of Thrones back to back, I've realized that plot progression is the probably lowest form of entertainment. The most profound sensations it can instill are the momentary pleasure gained by seeing what happens and the compulsive desire to know what's next. 

 

I won't go as far as to say that "plot progression is the probably lowest form of entertainment" but there is definitely this view that a story in 2017 must have set ups and payoffs akin to loading and firing a piece of artillery; a TV show *must* oil up the chamber, slide in a ten pound shell, calculate the trajectory, wench up the cannon to the correct angle, fire the payload with an ear-shattering explosion, all in perfect military-style precision, over and over again. The warheads *must* strike their targets directly and the camera will swoop around and terrible "classical" music will play. Why is this good? This attitude about TV totally dominates any conversation that's had and I can't stand it.

 

A big point of is confusion is "wasted time." How people convinced themselves that watching some TV is a waste a time and other TV isn't, based on a show's ability to cleanly set-up and payoff plot points is mind-boggling to me. Not liking a scene or and episode of a TV show is fine, but when the given reason is "it was a waste of time" I don't understand what you're saying. This idea that later on second viewing a previously bad scene can be retroactively rehabilitated into a good scene is completely bizarre to me. Yes, things can be augmented on rewatch, but turning a bad scene into a good one?

 

I feel like people have real reasons for not liking certain scenes, but they're dodging those reasons when they bring up "wasted time". Richard Horne's attack on his grandmother is an excellent example of this. No one is saying why it's bad, in fact on the podcast you guys call it powerful and effective, to paraphrase, right? But people are saying that it's needless or a waste of time. Jake also says that there isn't any context to the scene to make it "meaningful". Every bit of context to Richard's actions is laid out: 

 

- He hates/is awful to women: the bar scene where he assaults the young woman
- He is not just dealing drugs, he is a user himself: I called this in his introductory bar scene and people didn't agree with me :P

- Despite being the grandchild of the richest man in town, he is not living the high-life: look at the vehicles he drives. For guy like him this must be excruciating.

- He is on full tilt: the coin trick Big Time Drug Dealer fucks up his head, and insults his pride, and a high and emotional Richard runs down the kid

- To cover up the hit and run he bribes Chad and kills the witness. This is officially a Crime Spree.

- Kinda hard to deliver on his end of the deal he made with the Big Time Drug Dealer now, isn't it? Talk about being screwed. He needs to get out of town, and fast.

 

So when he shows up to get money from his grandma, it's totally the expected thing to do. To my sensibilities it is the perfect scene at the perfect time in the show. The juxtapositions are potent, the depravity and cruelty are palatable. It raises questions about how Audrey, someone who has a good head on her shoulders and unlimited resources, could have raised a kid like this. In a show with so much magic and dream sequences, the scene felt like it could have been grabbed directly out of a true crime novel. No punches are pulled, nothing is left unsaid. So I strongly contend that the scene contains meaning. But even without any of that: how could a later scene provide meaning to this sequence, unless there is already something there?

 

"It's a waste of time" is one of those phrases that seems to have incredible explanatory power, but in fact doesn't do anything to tell me why you didn't like something.  "I don't know why I'm watching this" ;  "I want another scene to *fix* this broken one." Not being in the "in-group", I am totally lost as to what you mean here.

 

I haven't seen Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, or any other of these wildly popular and respected TV shows. I tried watching an episode of BBC Sherlock and it was so incredibly up its own ass I couldn't handle it (it's a show about a camera crew worshiping a narcissist, as far as I can tell). I feel totally out of the loop on current tastes and bewildered by what people consider good entertainment these days :wacko: Maybe I should sit down and watch these shows, but the way the discourse around TV has changed since these shows came to prominence has severely turned me off watching any TV at all. Somewhere between "X-Files and Lost didn't end well" and "We are in the golden age of TV" I got off the TV train and from what I see I don't want to get back on.

 

On 7/17/2017 at 6:09 PM, Gamebeast23456 said:

I often come back to wondering how the specifics of the edit job we're seeing contribute to these problems. I have to imagine there's another, alt-universe cut of this show that re-orders things and gives more immediate payoff to the kid plotline. I'm almost certain that spinning plate is about to get sucked back into the gravity of the A plot, but the fact that this kid was killed weeks ago and we've gotten, what, three scenes? that even mention it is frustrating. 

 

The whole timeline of this season is super alienating, especially at the pace of the show and watching it week to week. When did Dougie and Ike The Spike face off and we originally saw the crazy local news story on it? Three or four real world weeks ago? Now we finally snap backwards in time to the casino guys who are just seeing this now. It feels like this show is quietly playing with time in a way that isn't fully considered, or, just as likely, we haven't seen the actual reasons yet. 

 

It seems like the Revival will be incredible fodder for re-cuts and fan timelines. The official version is so spaced out. 

 

Genuinely, I love it when this happens. What you call problems I call strengths. What you call alienating I call welcoming. It's so rare to find someone that agrees that X is X and Y is Y but we apply opposite qualitative judgments to it.

 

If I could be an extreme asshole for a moment, just the mention of fan edits makes me cringe into a little ball :lol:  "Let's take our media and make it like the other media, so in the end everything is exactly the same and easier to digest." I just imagine people clutching a dozen Harry Potter books whenever they post to Reddit, struggling to type out messages without dropping their store-bought identity on the floor.

 

By the way, the show has had a consistent one episode featuring Dougie = one day of Dougie's life timeline, so it hasn't been three or four weeks between Dougie's encounter with Ike. Part of Janie E's function on the show is seemingly establishing what happened "yesterday" in each episode that Dougie is in.

 

On 7/19/2017 at 8:22 AM, Gamebeast23456 said:

Harry Dean Stanton as this sage of the trailer park is my favorite quiet aspect of this season. The fact that we've seen him twice also makes me think his role won't stay quiet. 

 

A perfect example for why I don't want to leave this world just yet, and also, what it means to have a "good scene" in my view. Stanton is playing a humble tune on his guitar and it's ruined by the drugged-out millennials. He's bringing beauty to an ugly place but it's dashed by things out of his control. It's a strong juxtaposition. It's a well made scene. It's effortlessly charming and then pungently revolting. It calls back to his role in Fire Walk With Me, the only guy who could brew good coffee in the fucked-up anti-Twin Peaks. Oh, yes, it calls back to something, but it's not a stupid #$@* pay off. I could never see these characters or location again and be happy.

 

Ok, that's enough confused ranting for today :lol:

 

On 7/17/2017 at 4:03 PM, Gregalor said:

With each episode, I'm becoming more and more confident that we don't get Cooper back until the last episode. There's, what, 8 episodes left? I can totally see it taking 7 more episodes to do whatever it takes to snap Dougie out of it, at the pace this show moves.

 

I thought about this a few weeks ago and decided that it would be very good. Let Cooper regain his full mental faculties only in the last five minutes. Let him do something heroic, give a thumbs up, and let him leave and join Laura in the White Lodge. A single tear rolls down Gordon Cole's eye. Roll credits. I want this is because so much of what makes Cooper great are his scenes with Michael Ontkean's Sherrif Truman. Of course, Ontkean is a lousy actor, but their chemistry was so incredible it was the major thing that defined Cooper for me. He also has great chemistry with Cole, Albert, and Audrey, but Harry is the one ;) .

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32 minutes ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

 

 

Genuinely, I love it when this happens. What you call problems I call strengths. What you call alienating I call welcoming. It's so rare to find someone that agrees that X is X and Y is Y but we apply opposite qualitative judgments to it.

 

If I could be an extreme asshole for a moment, just the mention of fan edits makes me cringe into a little ball :lol:  "Let's take our media and make it like the other media, so in the end everything is exactly the same and easier to digest." I just imagine people clutching a dozen Harry Potter books whenever they post to Reddit, struggling to type out messages without dropping their store-bought identity on the floor.

 

By the way, the show has had a consistent one episode featuring Dougie = one day of Dougie's life timeline, so it hasn't been three or four weeks between Dougie's encounter with Ike. Part of Janie E's function on the show is seemingly establishing what happened "yesterday" in each episode that Dougie is in.

 

 To make myself clear, I was referring to two-three weeks of real-world time, not narrative time. I think a confounding factor in the structure of this season is that Lynch thinks of it as a 18-hour long movie, but people who are watching it week-to-week still just consume it as any episodic narrative that you don't have the benefit of catching up with once everything is released. 

 

Also, for what it's worth, we are watching a show that is a direct sequel to one of the most popular, acclaimed series ever. We aren't  far away from popular fiction territory, even if this new season is more esoteric and self-selects it's audience more than the old show did. 

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54 minutes ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

I haven't seen Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, or any other of these wildly popular and respected TV shows. I tried watching an episode of BBC Sherlock and it was so incredibly up its own ass I couldn't handle it (it's a show about a camera crew worshiping a narcissist, as far as I can tell). I feel totally out of the loop on current tastes and bewildered by what people consider good entertainment these days :wacko: Maybe I should sit down and watch these shows, but the way the discourse around TV has changed since these shows came to prominence has severely turned me off watching any TV at all. Somewhere between "X-Files and Lost didn't end well" and "We are in the golden age of TV" I got off the TV train and from what I see I don't want to get back on.

 

 

Sounds like you hate internet fan culture. These shows are all very different from each other.

 

Sherlock is shlock, imho……………… If you're interested, try some Breaking Bad or Mad Men (not very good until season 3, becomes amazing) and avoid the fans.

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2 hours ago, Existing user? said:

Sherlock is shlock, imho……………… If you're interested, try some Breaking Bad or Mad Men (not very good until season 3, becomes amazing) and avoid the fans.

 

The idea that the first two seasons of Mad Men aren't very good is astounding to me. I think that show is great from start to end. Also for as well made and watchable and fun as Breaking Bad is, it's totally schlock. The opening storylines involve having to chemically dissolve a criminal in a bathtub, which crashes through the floor and splats. It's delicious fun to watch but also it is what it is.

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1 hour ago, Jake said:

 

The idea that the first two seasons of Mad Men aren't very good is astounding to me. I think that show is great from start to end. Also for as well made and watchable and fun as Breaking Bad is, it's totally schlock. The opening storylines involve having to chemically dissolve a criminal in a bathtub, which crashes through the floor and splats. It's delicious fun to watch but also it is what it is.

For what it's worth, I actually think Better Call Saul might have higher ambitions than Breaking Bad ever did. It's cut from the same ultra slick, winkingly kitschy cloth, but there's very little wish fulfillment or perfectly sprung traps. It's just flawed people careening off each other, centered on classic, beginning-of-time narrative of rival brothers. 

 

Also, I think there's usually arguments to be made for raw technical mastery, and Breaking Bad deserves that argument. It is SO GOOD at being a TV show, maybe the best at it, even. 

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11 minutes ago, Jake said:

 

The idea that the first two seasons of Mad Men aren't very good is astounding to me. I think that show is great from start to end. Also for as well made and watchable and fun as Breaking Bad is, it's totally schlock. The opening storylines involve having to chemically dissolve a criminal in a bathtub, which crashes through the floor and splats. It's delicious fun to watch but also it is what it is.

 

Fair! BB is super pulpy, intentionally and wonderfully so. Much better schlock than Sherlock, I would assert.

 

I'm aware that my low opinion of the first two seasons of Mad Men is not a commonly held view. For all the great production design, social insights, and sound concept, I find the early goings heavy handed and on-the-nose. I really had a hard time getting through it! Eventually I just skipped to season 3 and it was like a different show. It became one of my favorite shows ever, a wonderful treat every week (accompanied by your podcast in the final season). Eventually I went back to complete season 2. It was more palatable having become attached to the characters but I still couldn't love it.

 

Might be a weird reaction … I wish I could explain it better!

 

PS sorry for the thread derailment!

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I don't think Richard Horne's action lack context in that sense that we don't understand why he did what he did. But we know him so little that I lack context on who he is as a person. That to me makes the scenes more distressing (in a good, effective way) because this monster of a man is just letting loose on people and that's all we've ever seen of him. Why did he become like this, is there a 'reason' even if it's not a good one?

 

The unknown makes it more unsettling than if he had just been set up as "here's this villain rich kid who does whatever he wants and doesn't care."

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There is some context to what he's doing.

 

1. He's got a bad deal going with magic big time drug dealer

2. He's killed a child, so he has to skip town, hoping to escape the police and the drug wizard

3. He kills at least one more person

4. He needs money fast, he goes to his grandmother. He probably knows they have a safe.

 

The scene's still pretty much the same if you keep that in your head or not IMO.

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