the TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN non-plot-specific summing-up thread

ie, people who have seen it distill their impressions for people who haven't yet.

I already know 'too much' (Dougie, Coop's reawakening, glass box) so keep it to vague and glittering generalities, if you can.

(I would've revived an older thread but Search seems to be fucked again.)

lol morbs you know incredibly little

yeah perhaps but there's more i know and i'd prefer not to know anything, ideally

but it's 2017, a bad world

it's a hugely inventive and affecting series of concepts and vignettes that don't always conclude, with specific ruminations on time (the passage of it, the indistinctness of it) and moments of fan service where you might least expect them. it's also rewarding in ways that absolutely will not be clear until you've seen the entire thing.

It's about owls basically

twin peaks the return is an anagram of ornithology twank

It's basically about never being able to go back home, in the end.

(That statement is simultaneously glib, literal, and probably more symbolically apropos than I even realized when I typed it out.)

^ in agreement with Old Lunch.

and moments of fan service

aloooooowly i turn....

There are a few moments where Lynch gives the fans exactly what they think they want, and a few others where it seems like he's going to give the fans what they want but yanks it away at the last minute, but the bulk of it is about completely smashing the hopes and dreams of the coffee n' cherry pie set. You will be pleasantly surprised by at least that much, Morbs.

Disagree based on 16 episodes. The coffee n pie set are strawmen to a whineyesque degree because the show was never just that to anybody, and inasmuch as might have been expected there were indeed significant elements of fan service involved without that ever having become the entire point or another inhibitor to it being something distinct and new

The tone of the show varies wildly from episode to episode.

Scene to scene, def

i understand this is a different animal, but the original was similarly varied scene to scene. A young film critic seeing it earlier this year said it seemed more 'soap opera' and less 'Twin Peaks weirdness' than he'd expected.

in the orig series rewatch i am appreciating how Albert sort of functions as a series skeptic: "Is (the giant) related to the dwarf?"

Yeah I think cooper is our guy who tells us it's all ok just feel yr way around and Albert is that other guy

since there is a Judy in this edition I assume that's another Vertigo ref

don't forget judy garland

i wish i had all of these on DVD so i could just mail them to you!!

Saying there's fan service in this is so literal yet misleading it's like a prank.

(Sheriff Cable voice) got a fan in the Palmer house, has a service...

morbs you could just steal this series off the internet

Morbs, I honestly think you'll love the new series once you get to it

Xp as many people have said this feels a lot like "if mulholland dr pilot had been picked up", I think a mistake ppl make tho is assuming every single one of the threads in md would have "gone somewhere" if it had continued on

― K-hole MacLachlan (wins), Tuesday, 6 June 2017 12:41 (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^not a bad summing-up of the return from 1 week in

ince there is a Judy in this edition I assume that's another Vertigo ref

it's the same Judy from the last edition

we're not gonna talk about judy

i don't remember a Judy

but I'm only up to ep12 in the reatch

*rewatch

there is no Judy in the original series. The name "Judy" is briefly uttered in FWWM.

shame on you, sic

Technically there is a Judy in the original series, she's played by molly shannon

ok fine

we're not going to talk about molly shannon

I would have died laughing if her character turned out to be important in the Return

i loved that one scene where she plunged her hands deeeeep into her armpits, then held the odorous fingers up to her nostrils and inhaled so deeply. the intake of her breath seems especially crisp (sound design by david lynch showing here) and it lasts a couple beats longer than you'd expect. then: "Starring Kyle McLachlan"

since this thread has served its major function i'd like to say thanks also - it's been a lovely and stimulating thread and it's been a good time! an excellent reminder of what ilx is at its best!

i'd like to say thanks to ilx lurker, Priory, who sent me a helpful email off the back of this thread. I was unable to reply to your message since I couldn't find your details (ilx mail doesn't allow one to simply respond to a message!) - anyway, thanks and please de-lurk. x

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8-_aJ1BiFE

FWWM is the last edition!

wrong thread obv!

Now that it's over, I've signed up for a free month of Hulu & Showtime and am binge watching. With all the weekly episode synopses that have been published (AV Club, Vulture, etc.), what's a good one for spotting small details, making connections and theorizing? Bonus points for a good comments section.

I'm generally wary of recap culture, but my favorite episode-by-episode discussions of The Return have been Joel Bocko's writeups on lostinthemovies.com and the conversations on the podcasts Diane, Lodgers, and Counter Esperanto.

i can't say i read a ton of recaps, but whenever i ran across the Vulture recaps i thought they did a pretty good job and i usually learned a thing or two as well

Just watched 17 then dinner then let's do this

Your optimism is cute

unless you know something I don't, dinner is guaranteed and the download of ep 18 is fine

I'm generally wary of recap culture, but my favorite episode-by-episode discussions of The Return have been Joel Bocko's writeups on lostinthemovies.com🕸 and the conversations on the podcasts Diane, Lodgers, and Counter Esperanto.

Cosign all of this. I've heard the av club & culture reviews are good but haven't really read anything about the show beyond bocko's blog & the ilx thread

i've pretty much only read jess zimmerman's recaps on vice, those are all excellent

Emily Stephens is probably the best writer at the AV Club and her recaps were quite good

Dinner was good

ayyyyyyy love dinner

Jesus do I really have to go through all the bad takes before giving out about this on the other thread

oh boy you've gotta see the second season finale. honestly you can watch it in isolation & get along fine if you don't want to (understandably) go thru all of that very uneven season. i think it's the best thing Lynch has ever done.

(Episode Nine + three or so)

might agree that 9-10's the dip but 11 is great ("keep your blood", turkey jerky, "...you're not gonna tell me what she said?!") and tho the cherry pie is the most defiantly dreamlogiced thing in the show i love 11 for "mr. jackpots, thank you again!" "thank you... again"

sorry, first one there should be 12

oh boy you've gotta see the second season finale. honestly you can watch it in isolation & get along fine if you don't want to (understandably) go thru all of that very uneven season. i think it's the best thing Lynch has ever done.

otm, if you were to watch just one thing lynch has ever done, the back half of the final s2 twin peaks episode would have to be it. unparalleled and properly haunting.

yes, that and the amazing episode 8 of the return, and I'd maybe even throw in the final episode of the return...among the best bits of Lynche's oeuvre

I admire Episode 8 and never want to watch it again.

I'm not a Lynch fan who gives much of a shit about the original show

fp bait

cross out "not"

You're a lynch fan who gives much of a shit about the original show?

I should poll my replies

This thread reminded me that I saw three or four episodes of nu-Peaks and then forgot to continue with it (which is to say, was not compelled). A lot of you folks like it, though, and I had a neighbor loudly sing its praises at length last summer, so maybe I'll dive in again. It brought to mind the cast of Twin Peaks dropped into the middle of a Phantasm miniseries.

i never know which twin peaks S3 thread to revive. anyway this is silly but fun

Where do you fall in this #TwinPeaks alignment chart? pic.twitter.com/YyupEvEBmm

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) June 15, 2018

Mr. C is not lawful wtf

yeah, they kind of stretched it with that one. i guess, that compared to doppelcooper and booper (their terms not mine) he's more lawful, more inclined to sort of blend into society, enough to get a table at a diner and shit like that.

laughed today remembering that scene where Cole calls Truman and when Cole shouts into the phone, Truman pulls the wrong end of the phone away.

Sad about Robert Forster. I know the cast was old but I never would have imagined there would have been so many deaths already.

Don't discount the possibility that the script may be cursed.

They discovered something inside the story

Twin Peaks Season 4 cast changes

Frank Silva ... Stock footage
Michael J. Anderson ... A cartoon talking dead tree
Michael Ontkean ... Robert Forster
Robert Forster ... John Saxon's voice through a walkie talkie
David Bowie ... An enormous coffee pot
Don S. Davis ... A cardboard cutout
Miguel Ferrer ... A sarcastic elk who only appears as a reflection in a coffee cup
Warren Frost ... An old light bulb that's somehow been burning for over 100 years
Harry Dean Stanton ... Some dried acadia leaves in a velvet bag
Jack Nance ... A fish in a percolator
Frances Bay ... A wistful sigh of regret
Jimmy Scott ... The desiccated corpse of Jimmy Scott
Peggy Lipton ... Clarence Williams III
Catherine Coulson ... Moira Kelly

would watch

Left off with episode 8 a year-plus ago. Probably do 8 & 9 this weekend. It's now or neverrrrr….

Do it!!!

of course I barely know who some characters are now

takeaway from 2nd look at "Gotta Light?" is NIN is still boring

eps 9 & 10 were p weird and grim, save for Dougie-Janey sex scene

weird and grim is the prevailing twin peaks season 3 mood

psyched for you to finish morbs

if only to know your thoughts on the last episode

Yeah, 'weird + grim' pretty otm as descriptor of The Return. Not sure I'd be up to watching it at this particular moment, tbrr.

that dougie-janey sex scene is one of the strangely uplifting sex scenes i can think of

well I meant weird as in even more narrative stasis than usual, not Lynchweird

also, only Lynch-related but not specifically for The Return (sorry), but i watched Todd Hayne's Safe the other night and was struck by how it seems to be both influenced BY Lynch (esp with certain close-ups of flowers and neighborhoods looking like Blue Velvet) and also an influence ON Lynch (the front of the car highway shots at the beginning of 1995's Safe (Lost Highway in 1997, and Mulholland Drive a couple years later); the shots of mansions up on a hill (also in Mulholland Drive). not just the subject matter of those things, but also the cinematography. The highway scenes, especially, made me think "Lynch MUST have seen this"

When I watched the dead don’t die I had the strong impression that it was the first major post-tptr work, & was vindicated to see an interview with jj where he praised it & said something like “why isn’t lynch given as much money as he wants to do whatever he wants”

It isn’t just you, doc, the four episodes after part 8 are def seen as weird and static by a lot of people. I adore this stretch obv (esp part 12)

I think Wild at Heart also has the road shots, which was before Safe. He uses that a lot.

While stuck at home I’ve rewatched all things Lynch, even the commercials and *shudder* the Duran Duran movie. The Return holds up well, even if it sometimes works better as a collection of Lynchisms than a coherent narrative. It helps to know that a lot of minor subplots won’t resolve and that it doesn’t really matter who Billy is. I love the last episode maybe more than Got A Light? Still not sure about the green glove bit.

I started reading the screenplay to Ronnie Rocket, and interestingly enough it features a character who is transformed through vague electrical “magic” into a passive character who repeats back what others say, like Dougie.

psyched for you to finish morbs

will try to finish b4 i'm finished, could be tough with 2019 film poll also comin' up

u guys are killin' me, no really

I see by a search i'm not the first to point this out (Reddit), but Cooper in eps 17-18 could've learned from Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" Star Trek episode that you can't fix history.

There's a sort of just (if grim) comeuppance in Cooper learning this, bcz I never accepted the character's face-value heroism as many seem to, with his annoyingly sunny "give yourself a present" Boy Scout shit.

Have to admit I was hoping "Richard and Linda" would result in a Thompsons music cue.

"My dreams have withered and died" would have been a little too on the money.

https://www.avclub.com/paul-giamatti-twin-peaks-the-return-1851072447

lynch wanted paul giamatti to play one of the mitchum brothers but they couldn't make the scheduling work

OTOH Jim Belushi's casting really added to the uncanny not-rightness of the Dougie sections

Green glove kid is the only casting that bugs me. The entire green glove thing bugs me. Am I remembering right that Pete was going to wear the green glove but it was reworked because Jack Nance died?

I'm still saving the last two episodes to watch. I enjoyed it so much I couldn't bear to watch the last ones.

And now I've forgotten it all so I'll have to watch the whole thing if I want to finish it.

it might not make the difference you are presuming tbh

Green glove kid is the only casting that bugs me. The entire green glove thing bugs me. Am I remembering right that Pete was going to wear the green glove but it was reworked because Jack Nance died?

yeah was kinda daft, but didn't "Pete" die at the end of the original series?

I think lynch said the green glove stemmed from an idea he had for jack nance back in the day, not for twin peaks specifically (nance died over a decade before the return had even been conceived)

There was a cutaway & an explosion in the original finale — it was a cliffhanger! — but had nance been alive in 2014 I’m 100% sure he would have been in it one way or another

Yes, I was taking my info from the Mark Frost book where he stated he had died in the explosion but now realise that the book was released in 2016

"If David Bowie can be a boiler..."

Just had to familiarize myself with the episode 16 you would have last watched, this one has the amazing scene with Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh and the crazy neighbour guy! haha

People are under a lot of stress, Bradley.

lynch wanted paul giamatti to play one of the mitchum brothers but they couldn't make the scheduling work

― na (NA), Wednesday, December 6, 2023 10:15 AM (yesterday)

Agreed with the OP commenters suggesting to just watch Lodge 49 instead.