Well I don't remember if it was Lynch, Frost or some Showtime executive, but I'm fairly sure someone said, even before the premiere, that season 3 followed the journey of agent Cooper back to Twin Peaks. Maybe it meant that it's literally about the journey and well, as already pointed out by someone else, "the return" is not only referred to the return of the show, of the town, but to the return of agent Cooper to his old self and to the town, because it's the main subject of the season. I'm just speculating, but maybe they thought that it would be the most interesting story. I get that many people might be frustrated with this idea, but it sure keeps very far from cliches, fan service and pointless nostalgia.
By the way, I give OP props for inclunding the option that it might be a choice Frost made. For reasons I can't explain every time someone is unhappy with something in TP season 3 it's all Lynch's fault. Audrey didn't come back before part 12? Blame it on Lynch. Audrey is not what people expected? It's Lynch's fault. Part 12 is titled let's rock and there's no explanation of what happened to Chester Desmond? God damn him and his hair. And so on. God they wrote it together.
The old Dale Cooper would be out of place in the world of today. The gum that he enjoys is no longer in style.
The old Dale Cooper would be out of place in the world of today. The gum that he enjoys is no longer in style.
Well Twin Peaks itself is no longer the place that it used to be. It's no longer the idyllic small town where life seems to go on pleasantly slow, everyone is cheering you and drinking coffee and eating donuts and cherry pies. People now live in disgusting trailer parks, struggle with health care, traffic jams create madness (especially if madness generated the traffic jams in the first place), corrupted cops are working in the sheriff's department and all the drug smuggling and domestic violence that used to happen secretly is now on display. Twin Peaks has become Deer Meadow-ish.
As much as I am enjoying watching Twin Peaks and am thankful that we are getting any kind of continuation of Twin Peaks at all (I think all Twin Peaks fans never expected any kind of continuation, let alone an 18 hour David Lynch directed, Lynch/Frost co-written series), there is one huge element that is missing.
So here is the biggest question I personally have about the series:
Why do you think that when David Lynch and Mark Frost decided to return to the world of Twin Peaks that they would decide to not have Kyle MacLachlan portray the Special Agent we all know and love and want to see? There were so many directions they could have had this series go, and knowing some fans waited over 25 years for this, why do you think they decided to have Cooper's character so minimalized?
(A) They are planning on a Season 4 where Cooper would figure prominently, so they wanted to build up to a Season 3 cliffhanger
(B) David Lynch purposely wanted to torture fans of Twin Peaks, even if Mark Frost would have preferred having a more active Cooper
(C) Mark Frost purposely wanted to torture fans of Twin Peaks, even if David Lynch would have preferred having a more active Cooper
(D)They wanted to deviate from the expectations of what fans of the show wanted to see in order to be unpredicatable
(E) None of the above (please state your opinion)
This is such a complex series. When you consider all the ways David Lynch works and all the ways Mark Frost works and then put them into a pot and stir them up, I think the result could only be something completely unexpected, even to the creators. Clearly, production irons out details and the final result is deliberate, but I think there's a life-of-it's-own quality to the story vs. the this-is-david-lynch storytelling. I was thinking about Cooper using that rock-throwing method to come up with suspects. Where do great stories come from? One person? Two people? I think these guys got on the path and wrote down what they found. Whatever the process, I think any perception of the creators intentionally choosing plot or character details, especially with the viewers in mind, is too simple. This is a massive story presented quite succinctly and so well that it's impossible to identify the forces and motives behind what is one of the nicest gifts of the year.
As for Dale being out of place in the modern world: he was already a retro character in 1990. That degree of earnesty and cheerfulness was at home in 40s/50s in regard to TV characters. Even in the original, TP seemed frozen in time by 90s standards.
I mean that the town back then was intentionally steeped in times past, not the show itself.
I've had the feeling that it's all set-up for another season for several eps now. It plays like a really drawn-out pilot.
When they first began writing, Lynch and Frost sat down with some donuts and coffee at a Winkie's and said, "What's the one thing our audience most wants to see?"... "OK, then Dale Cooper is what we will hide from them."
They are building up our expectations, drawing us into the story, making it a challenging story rather than a rollick down memory lane. I didn't know what they were going to do with the show to avoid making it a lame reboot/sequel. At this point, I am in love with their decision.
Furthermore, I really like Dougie Cooper. Those moments when we see his longing--seeing him drawn to the statue of the law man, to the badges and American flag, playing with Sonny Jim--I feel like we're seeing the unadulterated pure, childhood Dale Cooper. We already saw 30-something, expert Special Agent Dale Cooper in the original.
Yes, I was peeved at first when I realized we wouldn't see Special Agent Dale Cooper at least till the very end, but now, I'm liking this other aspect we see. Plus, we see the incredible good Karma that Special Agent Coop built up. Who else would be lucky enough to be guided to randomly purchase cherry pie?!
As for Dale being out of place in the modern world: he was already a retro character in 1990. That degree of earnesty and cheerfulness was at home in 40s/50s in regard to TV characters. Even in the original, TP seemed frozen in time by 90s standards.
Not in the most recent episodes, but earlier in Season 3, all the cars were 70s Camaros and the like. (very ugly cars that connote bad business in my opinion--the opposite of the 50s) So I thought there was an element of time freezing, but instead of being frozen in the idyllic 50s, it was having elements of the gawdy late 70s/early 80s. I still feel like that's how Diane is dressing.
B and D
As others have said, making it a fan service nostalgia fest would have pleased some viewers but ultimately been an empty artistic endeavor. And really, if all we want is more of the same, we can see that on Blu-ray already.
Let's not also forget that we probably would have been watching DoppelDale for most of season 3 had the original not been cancelled.
There is a WHOOOOOLE lot of middle ground between "making it a fan service nostalgia fest" and making the lead protaganist a vegetable for 12+ episodes, a whole lot
Perhaps the message isn't received via the middle route, though. People are having trouble getting it as is with Lynch and Frost beating us over the head with it.
Well, they needed to deal with the whole thing of Cooper being stuck in the Black Lodge for 25 years, and how to sort out the Evil Cooper stuff. Perhaps once Frost and Lynch got writing, they got excited by this storyline about Dougie. It could have been a lot of fun to write all that stuff.
And this is the thing. David Lynch has said that he believes the creative process is more important than the end result. So when creating The Return, their main goal was to enjoy the process of creating it. The end result that we are watching is just the "fruit" of that fun creative process.
Peronally, I've been enjoying most of the Dougie stuff, and I know that if I ever want to see the old Dale Cooper again all I have to do is crack open my Definitive Gold Box Edition DVD set.
If Cooper had come back to his regular self in a relatively quick amount of time it would have come off as disingenuous if not preposterous. He spent 25 years in the lodge and then went through an extremely bizarre and terrifying process in order to return. One can only imagine how this would effect him, especially when you take into account his doppelgangers sabotaging of the process which could have only compounded the problem of his return.
I mean, if the journey back to Dale Cooper didn't take a long time it would trivialize everything that happened to him. There has to be a definite weight to the things Coop has experienced, not just with this season but the previous two seasons as well, or else it all falls apart and we lose the Truth that drives the story.
I personally really enjoy perceiving things from the pure eyes of Dougie. Coop greatly admired Annie's pure perspective and now he's getting to experience it in his own way in full. It's a very meditative and smooth experience for him I think. He's just sort of gliding along the waves. I find this to be completely refreshing. It also maintains the mystery of the future very well.
If Cooper had come back to his regular self in a relatively quick amount of time it would have come off as disingenuous if not preposterous. He spent 25 years in the lodge and then went through an extremely bizarre and terrifying process in order to return. One can only imagine how this would effect him, especially when you take into account his doppelgangers sabotaging of the process which could have only compounded the problem of his return.
I mean, if the journey back to Dale Cooper didn't take a long time it would trivialize everything that happened to him. There has to be a definite weight to the things Coop has experienced, not just with this season but the previous two seasons as well, or else it all falls apart and we lose the Truth that drives the story.
I personally really enjoy perceiving things from the pure eyes of Dougie. Coop greatly admired Annie's pure perspective and now he's getting to experience it in his own way in full. It's a very meditative and smooth experience for him I think. He's just sort of gliding along the waves. I find this to be completely refreshing. It also maintains the mystery of the future very well.
Good point. And can you imagine, if we had Dale back from the start or near start, would the series be interesting or would we feel like we were watching the same series we watched 27 years ago?
Fire walk with