Twin Peaks

[mfunk9786]

Yes, but it was crazy to ever think that Lynch would give fans what they want, because his aims always seem to lie on some other plane. But these last couple episodes in particular have felt a bit giftwrapped, which is something I’m not used to with this particular artist. Yes, the withholding is part of that, but to me that’s more about trying to have the show earn these later moments in a way that is contextually honest and not just fan service, “hey look at all these characters you love - they’re back, baby!” pandering.

[flyonthewall2983]

My guess that the trade-off to that would be is that, bar any FWWM-type spinoff movies that could follow, this Sunday's finale is truly the end and that is the reason for all this coming home to roost.

[flyonthewall2983]

Of all the genuine warmth and emotion on display throughout the past 16 episodes, I am particularly moved (after watching The Art Life) that Bushnell Mullins was named after someone so important to Lynch as an artist and who's own kindness was crucial to his early development.

[terabin]

I kinda wish that we had two more weeks, an episode each Sunday, rather than a 2-parter tomorrow night. Just sad it's all ending....

[denti alligator]

I kinda wish that we had two more weeks, an episode each Sunday, rather than a 2-parter tomorrow night. Just sad it's all ending....

I've got the final two episodes of season 2 to re-watch. Can't decide which to watch first, those or the finale of season 3.

[terabin]

RE denti: I think it makes sense to watch the finale and be a part of all the inevitable water-cooler talk. I'll be out camping tomorrow night with my wife and eight-month-old and I'm regretting that decision just a tad. Oh well, Monday night I'll get to watch and then be in on all the madness.

[oldsheperd]

I'm fine with the two parter and it ending. I can cancel my Showtime subscription.

[John Cope]

I continue to wish all of it had dropped at once so I could have seen this three months ago. Dragging it out did it no favors for me.

[Finch]

All I want is for at least Part 18 to be another Gotta Light? style hour. If that happens, I'll be in heaven. Regardless of what airs tonight, The Return has been a wonderful experience for the most part and it easily beats the shit out of the dire second season (everything post episode 14, episode 29 of course excepted).

Best Parts prior to seeing the finale: Part 8, 3, 11, 16, 2
Worst Parts: Part 12, 9, 4, 7, 6

[flyonthewall2983]

If Criterion doesn't release this which seems unlikely anyway, I do hope that Paramount will put this out on 4K Blu.

[whaleallright]

I'm wondering if anyone knows of any writing (esp. from trade magazines like Variety) on the production of this series that actually suggests an understanding how it was shot. I know that as it was being made, Lynch and Frost kept the process under tight wraps. But given that this series was made all at once, not by episode (not completely unusual for contemporary "event" television), and by one director who runs his own post-production facilities (pretty unusual), I'm curious how those circumstances relate to the finished product.

Also, this is probably not a question that will be answered for a while, but I'm curious what relationship the finished product has to the supposed "18-hour movie" script that I'm guessing was submitted to Showtime (if certainly not to the whole cast) out of contractual obligation. Has such a script leaked anywhere?

[John Cope]

Awesome. Fucking GREAT. Cooper and Laura and us tethered together forever in incomprehension. Deeply inscrutable and strange in all the best ways, not merely obscure, ways I had almost given up on the show providing. Recalled for me the equally superb Harry Dean Stanton/Freddie Jones episode of Lynch's Hotel Room which I still consider among his very best works. I hope this is it, finish, though I'm sure the ultra amped up incoherence will incline many to want more, forever more to explain it all away.

[Finch]

Part 17 was a mixed bag for me. Freddie fighting the Bob globe was terrible. Not sure how I feel about them retconning FWWM and the original first season. Part 18 on the other hand I thought was very good. I knew we were headed for another cliffhanger with 15 minutes to go. I think I heard Sarah say "Laura" before Laura/Carrie screamed. And what was Laura whispering into Cooper's ear that made him so shocked in Part 2 (repeated here again)?

I think Mssrs Lynch and Frost have gambled a bit too openly on there being a fourth season. Given the retconning that takes place in part 17, if they don't get the opportunity to address this in another season or even a feature film, they risk stripping the first season AND FWWM of a lot of their power.

[YnEoS]

Hmmm, I can't say I'm a particularly a fan of this ending, though I enjoyed many moments of the show. I'm okay with unanswered questions, prefer not to have everything in the universe spelled out into too much detail, and all, but I'd prefer the endings felt a bit more final rather than feeling like ending on an off-beat all the time.

Kind of early on the show I figured I shouldn't be resting on my hopes in the finale and just enjoying the ride with the characters we had, and overall I really enjoyed all the characters and events this season, though perhaps not quite to the same level as season 1 and the beginning of season 2.

I was kind of hoping that given the uniqueness and rarity of a project like this and the amount of fans invested in the show, Lynch would give us something slightly more resolved for a finale, and I'm a bit disappointed that it stopped where it did. If there's a Season 4 I'll definitely keep on going, just wish somewhere in the series he could end on one of his high moments, even if its still vague/ambiguous/unresolved.

[oh yeah]

I've been fairly mixed on The Return as a whole, but this was pretty fantastic. All the Green Glove stuff aside, Part 17 was great, but then 18 - wow. It's not perfect but I'm very satisfied with what Lynch did here. The ending (if it really is the end) would be the most audacious since The Sopranos - more so, really. And I also got an odd last-few-episodes-of-Mad Men feel from Cooper's road trip/Odessa odyssey. From the 430 switch onward, it was a classic Lynchian mindfuck, and I'm still processing it. But the season as whole is still by no means on par with the original run and FWWM to my mind.

[mfunk9786]

There are so many moving pieces established throughout this season that are treated as stinking, useless garbage by this finale. It was not something I expected, and when I said earlier in this thread that Lynch’s generosity was surprising a few short episodes ago, I hope my statement is a bit clearer now.

My takeaway is this:

Spoiler

Through all of this white lodge/black lodge/Roadhouse imagery - floating orbs and BOBs and gloves and noble FBI agents and casino owners - we have had exposure to an outsized world of profound morality, immorality, and most of all, heavy handed metaphor. Evil occurs because evil inhabits a man or a woman that you may know very well, and it makes that person capable of truly horrible and horrifying things. Goodness occurs because someone understands their surroundings and the possibility of true human grace that exist within them, and the ways in which they may rescue us from evil.

But what we were exposed to in the finale was an admission by the creator of white lodges, black lodges, metaphors exploding from wall to wall to wall - that the horrors that can happen to an average person do not have the gift of David Bowie or letters under ring fingers or lodges or electricity outlets - they are gifts and punishments that are beyond even our metaphorical comprehension. By setting up approximately a dozen plotlines that could’ve been neatly sewn up in a final episode or two, Lynch created a scenario where he could be a hero of those who wanted to be happy with what they “got” out of the Return - what little interesting clever business had colors shaded into line drawings that’d been crafted before our eyes as we went along, right up to and including Episode 17. But real life doesn’t, even over the course of 25+ years, easily slide into our expectations, our hopes, our metaphors.

Real life flicks matches at us, when we are at our most innocent and vulnerable. You want to play with fire, little boy?

[oldsheperd]

Spoiler

So I assume Cooper and Diane crossed over into some type of Mandela effect? I don't know. Is Carrie screaming because she realized that she's met herself? What was with Cooper asking what year it was? what year is it?

Gotta say the ending of part 18 was pretty haunting and unexpected. I see a lot of parallels with Lost Highway in the last episode.

Oh and.... Chalfont/Tremond if you don't recall.

http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Mrs._Tremond

[mfunk9786]

I do believe that the screaming was related to something horrible going on within that house. I do not think it matters what year it was. Or whether Carrie truly was connected to Laura Palmer in any way beyond the deeply spiritual.

In other words: The timeline or the “lore” does not matter. The suffering does.

[JamesF]

Would Mark Frost be releasing a tie-in book called The Final Dossier if he and Lynch intended to make another season, even if they had the opportunity? I suppose nothing's impossible, but I suspect this is Lynch's swan song and that, to him, enough of the answers are contained within, if you know where to look for them.

[mfunk9786]

But do Lynch or Frost have any interest in the who/what/when/where/why/how being something laid out for us viewers and readers to piece together? If I took anything away from this final chapter it is that the fantasy of Twin Peaks is over, the same way that Betty’s dreams of Hollywood stardom are over. You can carefully set up thousands of dominoes, but it means nothing if they’re all set on fire.

[kcota17]

How does everyone feel about

Spoiler

the reveal of Judy being "jow-day"? I was pretty disappointed by that. It seemed like a quick and lazy reveal. That and the green glove / BOB orb were the only disappointments to me.

[Cold Bishop]

I didn't mind that reveal. It's clear whatever original meaning was attached to that name disappeared somewhere in the 90s, and it lines up with where the rest of the series was going anyways. Rewatching the series, it's clear that Lynch constantly lines the show with random bits of info, precisely so he can be inspired to find a meaning later on. This fits his m.o., modus operandi.

And I agree that other scene was silly, but I can't help, in view of Part 18, that it was somewhat intentional: a silly burlesque of fan service, followed up by the cold water of what it really means trying to recapture something 25 years gone.

[flyonthewall2983]

I've been satisfied enough with the little payoffs for secondary and tertiary characters both new and old throughout this season, to say that I'm good with what happened. All of it. What little clarity I can find can be found in what funk is saying, and I can't disagree with any of it even if I tried.

What a fucking good show. I hopped aboard this train a little late, but I'm glad to have experienced this as it unfolded with those here and elsewhere who have lived with the original for much longer than I, going back to 1990.

[oh yeah]

Part 18 just gets better the more I think about it (and rewatching helps). What an incredible piece of work. Along with Part 8 it's got to be Lynch's most masterful work since, well, Mulholland Drive. The scene in the coffee shop was beautifully directed, not to mention the ending. And God, how dark that ending is! But it feels right. Fated, almost.


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[Finch]

I'm a big fan of Part 18 as well. Part 17, on the other hand, really makes me wish they'd written that sheriff station scene differently. I liked Freddie punching out Chad but the scene with Bob was pathetic. Not least because I don't think a lot of fans were hoping for that; on the contrary, many people, myself included, were dreading this. That, and another exposition dump at the very start, leave me flabbergasted at people thinking Part 17 was a perfect hour. Part 18 though manages the feat of presenting an even bleaker ending than Episode 29 while still leaving the door open for another season AND with an intriguing hook, too.

And now that we've seen the whole thing, I still think The Return is a far more successful endeavour than the second season but it's not been without bumps along the road: it wastes the likes of Jennifer Jason-Leigh on bit parts; Ray Wise is literally in the entire season for two minutes; the digital photography hasn't always been flattering; some of the new characters weren't fleshed out (Steven, Becky for starters) and the season had pacing issues (did we really need to spend several minutes on the Buckhorn officers trying to open Ruth Davenport's door in Part 1?). That said, when The Return worked, it was at times transcendent and very often extremely good. Parts 8, 18, 3 and 11 are for the ages.

Here's my wishlist for season 4 IF it ever happens:

a tighter script and less on-the-nose exposition
if filming on digital, at least slap some film grain on it in post
fewer new but better rounded characters