Rushy's Twin Peaks sperging

[Rushy]

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN MEGA-RANT THAT NO ONE WILL UNDERSTAND (massive spoiler alert): PART 1 OF 18

We start with some basic issues

1) The first thing people have to know about this show is that it's not structured as a television season. It's an 18-hour film. Which means that the episodes themselves are basically just chunks, without a three-act structure. As you can imagine, that's a pretty piss-poor concept unless you have 18 hours to spare.

2) Even though COVID wasn't a thing yet, there's a COVID type separation of the cast. Because not only is most of the original ensemble back, but there's like a hundred new characters for some reason. So Lynch had to carefully decide when he can film with who. As a result, almost everyone are boxed into their own little storylines, on their own sets. Ben Horne doesn't even leave his office for the entire season. It's very offputting.

3) Stylistically, the season does not attempt to duplicate the warm tones, heavy music or overall atmosphere of previous Twin Peaks entries, making it feel like the odd one out of the bunch.

The season opens with Cooper being advised by the Giant in what Mark Frost says "might be" the White Lodge. So I guess he's not trapped? Or he is, but the Giant can just telephone him like that?

The Giant's role in the show is to give Cooper clues, so let's examine what he says.

*He points to a gramophone making noise and says "Listen to the sounds. It is in our house now." Does this have any payoff? Maybe...? The gramophone noise reappears seventeen episodes later when Laura Palmer is kidnapped. Is the White Lodge ever invaded? Well... Cooper's evil dopplegänger tries to do it... I guess? But he's not related to Laura's kidnapping, I think. The answer is no, it's just vague nonsense.

*"Remember 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone." All of this is a reference, again, to Parts 17 and 18. I'm getting the vibe that maybe this scene was originally meant to come much later, but Lynch inserted it at the beginning to try and round things out. 430 miles is how far Cooper had to be from Twin Peaks to enter the alternate timeline in the finale. Richard and Linda are the identities that Cooper and Diane take on in the alternate timeline. And 'two birds with one stone' is what Cooper told Gordon Cole (off-screen) in season 2 before entering the Black Lodge. Referencing his attempt to defeat Windom Earle and Judy at the same time. Judy is a rant for a whole other day.

This scene already introduces one of my biggest issues with The Return, which is that Cooper is not on the same level as the audience anymore. We have no idea what he's up to or how he knows the things that he knows. How does "remember 430" tell him that he needs to be a certain amount of miles from the town? Why doesn't he remember Richard and Linda if he remembers 430? When did Cooper even become capable of time travel shenanigans? What the f*ck is Cooper supposed to be at this point?

Our next scene is Dr Jacoby getting some shovels. Aaaaaand that's all we see of him in this episode. What a grand return for a legacy character lol.

We cut to New York, where some guy is being paid to stare at an empty box. Then his girlfriend comes in and they start bonking on the couch. Why there? Why not at one of their apartments? This place is literally surrounded by cameras. Then some eldritch monster appears in the box, breaks out and kills them. It's later implied that Cooper's dopplegänger set up the box and the guy watching it, and it's also implied that maybe he was trying to trap Judy or something. But like who cares? It doesn't lead to anywhere or tie into the storyline very much. So why add it in?

We're then reintroduced to Ben and Jerry Horne. This is one of the few good scenes of the episodes. The brothers show signs of the sparkling wit they used to have. My only complaints with this scene are that the office is filmed in a really unflattering way (it felt like a massive space in the original series) and that Ben's actor is visibly tired and doesn't have the same charisma he used to. But obviously I'm not gonna rag on Richard Beymer, he's an icon of Twin Peaks and I'm glad to have him back. Jerry becoming successful at growing marijuana and making more money than Ben does is a very funny idea.

In the sheriff's station, we're reintroduced to Andy, Lucy, Hawk and... another sheriff Truman. Michael Ontkean didn't want to come back, so for some reason the writers didn't just give his lines to Hawk, but they invented a random new brother who's taken over. It's stupid. Robert Forster does a decent job, but it's a thankless role. The Log Lady calls Hawk, and tells him to start investigating Agent Cooper again. I guess it's forgivable that she tells him 25 years too late, because maybe the spirits didn't want him out before then... or something. But this isn't a bad part of the episode for the most part. The characters in the sheriff's station still feel like themselves (I love Andy's beer belly haha).

Finally, we get to see what Cooper's dopplegänger is up to and it's... weird. I think Kyle MacLachlan does a great job performing it, but the material he gets is very questionable. How and why did Cooper's dopplegänger go from this maniacal figure in season 2 to a dead-eyed Javier Bardem impression? Why is the dopplegänger not taking advantage of being a dopplegänger to ruin lives as a corrupt FBI member? Anyway, all he does this episode is recruit some gangsters. We'll see what for later.

The rest of the episode I barely want to talk about. It's a murder investigation into the death of some school secretary called Ruth Davenport. We don't know it yet, but Davenport and a school principal named Hastings were in league with Major Briggs, who's like f*cking Quantum Leaping between realities or some shit (???). Cooper's dopplegänger murdered Davenport, decapitated Briggs and framed Hastings for both deaths. He also left a ring inside Briggs' stomach - the wedding ring of Dougie Jones. So I guess he's trying to frame Dougie too? Two birds with one stone? Eh? EHH?? GEDDIT?!

Inside Hastings' car is a piece of flesh, which seems to only be there as a reference to David Lynch's film Blue Velvet. It's never brought up again.

A very confusing and inauspicious start to what will be a very confusing and inauspicious season of television. I will review each of the 17 remaining parts to detail the absolute dumbfuckery

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

1) The first thing people have to know about this show is that it's not structured as a television season. It's an 18-hour film. Which means that the episodes themselves are basically just chunks, without a three-act structure. As you can imagine, that's a pretty piss-poor concept unless you have 18 hours to spare.

Streamingshit in general has barely felt like a TV season in a long while.

[Rushy]

Yeah, but it's one thing to have a 6 or 10 episode movie, and quite another to have 18 of the fuckers.

[Lindsay's Liver]

I don't know how you made it through 18 episodes when you don't get what Season 3 is even about, Rushy.

In any case, I love Season 3 and I've never watched it in one 18-hour sitting. I don't think I would want to do that. The best way to watch Season 3 is the way we did it in summer of 2017. Every Sunday night, for about four months there was a new episode and you'd watch it and be baffled by it and then immediately go online and trade theories with people. That was so much fun.

So I wouldn't get hung up on the "18-hour" movie thing.

[Rushy]

I'm not saying you should sit through 18 hours, I'm just saying the pacing is fucked. There's no three act structure. You can tell the scenes were filmed in a way so that Lynch could cut and edit them around whichever way he wants. It doesn't really live up to the confident pacing of the original run or Fire Walk With Me.

Anyway, I'm surprised you think I don't know what season 3 is about when I haven't even talked about the nitty gritty yet. There's a LOT to dissect about the main plot and how useless it is, I haven't touched on any of that yet.

[Old Black Man]

Better get my coffee and pie, this is gonna be a good thread.

[Lindsay's Liver]

Anyway, I'm surprised you think I don't know what season 3 is about when I haven't even talked about the nitty gritty yet. There's a LOT to dissect about the main plot and how useless it is, I haven't touched on any of that yet.

I'm not talking about the plot. What I mean is that "Twin Peaks" is partly about a tone of mystery and things that will never be spelled out for you because David Lynch doesn't care for things like that. He loves his unanswered questions and his dream logic. People who love "Twin Peaks" love that while everything in your post is opposed to that.

For example, here's a thing that you seem to miss because, while the series implies it strongly, no character stops to explain it to us like you seem to want:

This scene already introduces one of my biggest issues with The Return, which is that Cooper is not on the same level as the audience anymore. We have no idea what he's up to or how he knows the things that he knows. How does "remember 430" tell him that he needs to be a certain amount of miles from the town? Why doesn't he remember Richard and Linda if he remembers 430? When did Cooper even become capable of time travel shenanigans? What the f*ck is Cooper supposed to be at this point?

Okay, much like how the Evil Cooper has Bob, this Godlike force of evil, within him and helping him to do weird things with electricity (the police interrogation scene) and win arm wrestling matches, the Good Cooper has supposedly positive forces from "the Lodge" within him. They are guiding him and protecting him in his catatonic state.

This is clear in the casino scene. Cooper isn't using supernatural power to make the slot machines pay off. He barely understands where he is. What's happening is that good forces from the Lodge are guiding Cooper toward the machines that are primed to win.

[Lindsay's Liver]

Also, why the fuck are you censoring the word "fuck" in your posts, Rushy? ("f*ck")

This is a true Lynchian mystery.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

You have to say it loudly and proudly, dammit.

[wulfenlord]

Finally a containment thread uwu