This episode was all about waiting and patience (and the color red).
Diane came through a red curtain (waiting room reference), the scene with French girl in the red dress was painfully long, same as the scene with Audrey (who was wearing a red jacket btw).
Waiting for what then? Well Sarah Palmer said it!
I felt that the 'joke' in this episode was that it felt like one of the mid to late season 2 episodes done by TV writers, with no input by Lynch or frost.
Also, it seems to respond to every criticism about the show at this stage by exacerbating it. So "it's too slow" becomes- it gets slower. "We haven't seen enough of some characters" becomes- throw in repeated footage of Dr. Amp. "There are too many narrative threads" becomes- add a whole bunch more.
Like the turnip joke - it's funny, but looking back, we could have had a great hour of Twin Peaks rather than a joke at the expense of the audience.
In fact, that sums it up for me. Why agree to do a new season of Twin Peaks just so most of it can be a joke at the expense of the audience??
In fact, that sums it up for me. Why agree to do a new season of Twin Peaks just so most of it can be a joke at the expense of the audience??
Well said... we'll just have to wait and see if 12 links up somewhere else.
In fact, that sums it up for me. Why agree to do a new season of Twin Peaks just so most of it can be a joke at the expense of the audience??
Well said... we'll just have to wait and see if 12 links up somewhere else.
It's funny that people are saying Lynch isn't pandering to fans or an audience. True. But I think the whole show is obsessed with its audience. It seems to make continuous reference to its audience - seems so often to be speaking directly to it or purposeful subverting expectations. In one way or another, the show is continuously thinking about or second-guessing its audience.
As for not considering fans. I think the show is entirely reliant on a kind of fan audience that is prepared to believe there is a meaning to a succession of unrewarding scenes with seemingly no payoff.
I have to state here that FWWM is one of my favourite films of all time - so I'm no stranger to a lack of conventional explanation.
I feel that at the 12 hour mark of an 18 hour experience, if there is no hint of resolution, then the resolve will have to be rushed or Deus Ex Machina or not come at all.
I've enjoyed being part of this forum and discussing it a lot more than actually watching it I think!!??
I really wonder what people will think when they watch this for the first time two years from now on their own in four days - without reading wild theories each week! Ha!
Thanks to everyone on the forum. I'm on a love/hate moment with the show. I'm in it to the end!
"Like the turnip joke - it's funny, but looking back, we could have had a great hour of Twin Peaks rather than a joke at the expense of the audience. "
And the joke also misses the mark by addressing the wrong kind of slowness. Fans are not complaining that the show is slow in pace, but that it's slow in CONTENT.
I absolutely worship the series Rectify, because it is a masterpiece of being slow in pace but packed full of content. Its scenes were deliberately slow in order to give the audience time to soak in all of the artistic layers within them and let the acting breathe. You were never bored watching it. You did not want it to speed up.
This isn't what The Return is giving us. There is no content to unpack during the slowness so far. I'm sincerely hoping that the frustrating scenes are pieces of the puzzle which will make sense in the end like MacLachlan said. If not - The Joke will really backfire on Lynch/Frost and makes them look like obnoxious idiots ungrateful to their fans.
With some shows a season covers an entire year. With some, a day or a week per episode. The Return is twelve episodes in and has covered fewer than twelve days in the lives of the characters. In the town of TP itself, we may only be on the third day of events but for us it has been THREE MONTHS. To me, it's exactly what groovy-llama-fan just said. It's not the pace of individual scenes as much as the overall pace of the plot. What's going on during those slow-paced scenes doesn't seem to be moving us forward in plot or in time. What to us in the audience happened two months ago, back in June, happened yesterday or the day before to characters on the show. How can it NOT feel like it's dragging?
"Like the turnip joke - it's funny, but looking back, we could have had a great hour of Twin Peaks rather than a joke at the expense of the audience. "
And the joke also misses the mark by addressing the wrong kind of slowness. Fans are not complaining that the show is slow in pace, but that it's slow in CONTENT.
I absolutely worship the series Rectify, because it is a masterpiece of being slow in pace but packed full of content. Its scenes were deliberately slow in order to give the audience time to soak in all of the artistic layers within them and let the acting breathe. You were never bored watching it. You did not want it to speed up.
This isn't what The Return is giving us. There is no content to unpack during the slowness so far. I'm sincerely hoping that the frustrating scenes are pieces of the puzzle which will make sense in the end like MacLachlan said. If not - The Joke will really backfire on Lynch/Frost and makes them look like obnoxious idiots ungrateful to their fans.
Totally agree!
Do people really think that Lynch & Frost have the time or inclination, to produce a TV show that is a joke in response to a few fans' impatience or lack of understanding?
The sense of entitlement from some fans and lack of respect towards the creators of Twin Peaks is saddening.
Lynch has already done a grand audience mockery with Inland Empire, so yeah - he does have the time and inclination. Coincidentally, that film buried his movie career.
Lynch has already done a grand audience mockery with Inland Empire, so yeah - he does have the time and inclination. Coincidentally, that film buried his movie career.
Do you believe that he sets out to mock his audience?
This is one of the things that makes it good TO ME. I, like some others (Lynch apologists??), are thinking we'll come back to the Audrey scene down the road and think, "wow! It was so much better than I first thought."
Recall back to Episode 5, titled "Don't Die, Don't Die." It seemed to be a message perhaps to fans who were watching expecting a nostalgic return straight to Twin Peaks and instead got two hours of Eraserhead-esque Black Lodge business followed by a dribbling wordless Cooper wandering around a casino. MIKE and Lynch were maybe saying, "Don't Die [Don't quit. It will be worth it in the end!]
Episode 11 was the most Twin Peaks-filled we've seen, and I certainly got a humongous rush out of it, expecting for all things to continue evolving in that direction. Lynch being Lynch had to break up my expectations. If he didn't do enough of this, it would turn into just any other TV show.
I continually return to thoughts of longform classical/romantic music and how many obstacles composers like Wagner or Mahler put up between the audience and the final resolution to a peaceful chord. Those composers could have written shorter, faster-paced pieces that move straight to the final cadence. Instead, they frequently break up the momentum and introduce diversions in the key, moving us further from the resolution our brains crave. Thanks to all that diversion, our craving and expectation builds up more and more, and the final resolution is all the more heavenly.
The return of Dale Cooper could be like Wagner's "Liebstod." I'm not sure Lynch/Frost will resolve things so peacefully; maybe we'll get no resolution. Nevertheless, the tearing our hair out and yelling at the TV "You won't tell me what Tina said on the phone??!?!?" is part of the trip!!
As for Lynch playing with the audience, that's how Gene Siskel described him during the famed debate over Blue Velvet. Siskel says, "like all the good directors, he wants to play you like a piano." Ebert didn't understand. (I think it was finally with Mulholland Drive that Ebert saw the light, understood the mashup of comedy and horror, and gave a lynchian Lynch movie a good score.)
I only got into David Lynch starting in 2014--by way of Twin Peaks, then followed by the movies. The fact that he is in touch with the audience, playing with the audience and frequently portraying us on screen, is one of my very favorite elements.
Did Inland Empire lead to anything in the end? I have yet to see an ep of The Return that comes anywhere close to the magic of the original. It's so relentlessly cold and nihilistic in spirit. Clever and artful, but cold. MacLachlan's performance is just about the only human, genuine thing about it, and so far this whole trip has turned me into more of a Kyle fan, than a Lynch/Frost fan.
Fire walk with