The Antipodean

I've still loved this series, no matter how much it meanders, and I actually think ep 18 was a terrific, if horribly bleak, finale.

The NY Times writers had the best single summation of this series for me. I feel like it's a perfect rebuke to a culture of gluttony binges and stale nostalgia. Lynch is a painter, and this show is constructed like a giant piece of abstract art. I absolutely agree it's not for everybody, but I was enthralled. Give me this over Game of Thrones any day.

joliom

I need to rewatch it all again. But my initial reaction to Episode 18 was disappointment. It felt like Lynch just edited together a bunch of outtakes. The series had lots of moments I didn't care for, but overall I really enjoyed it. In short, the stuff that worked really blew me away, and made up for any little misfires along the way. But that final episode just took all the wind out of the sails.

kefrank

I watched the finale yesterday and have been ruminating on it since then. Here are the conclusions I've come to:

I'm not buying these analyses that suggest The Return is some kind of brilliant deconstruction of television reunions. Even in all the meandering, Lynch includes too many callbacks and moments of fan service for that to be the case. It feels more like it simply doesn't know what it wants to be.

I'm also not that big on the notion that it's the television equivalent of a well-executed abstract painting. If it's an abstract painting, then all the Dougie stuff is like a stick figure comic strip drawn in crayon over the top of the beautifully abstract brush strokes.

Part of the brilliance of the original series (and to a slightly lesser extent, of Fire Walk With Me) is that it blends the everyday, conscious interactions among unique and memorable characters with the more mysterious, esoteric, subconscious elements in a way that feels both striking and oddly synergistic. Even when you can't really connect the dots, something like the original Red Room sequence delivers a jarring and gripping layer that still somehow feels cohesive (not so much narratively, but emotionally or experientially in some way). The Return, in my opinion, isn't nearly as effective at marrying those conscious and unconscious layers.

Dreams are full of incongruity, discontinuity, and uncertainty. But when you're dreaming, you experience those surreal things as if they are a cohesive reality. When Lynch is at his best, in my opinion, he draws the viewer into that experience of being in a dream. The Return falls short of that for me.

While I think The Return is a case of the whole being less than the sum of its parts, some of those parts still represent some of the most memorable and mind-bending sequences of any television series to date: all of episode 8, Bobby responding to the shot fired outside the RR, and the shootout on Dougie's street to name just a few. While I probably won't revisit all of The Return in its entirety, I will revisit some of those sequences again and can appreciate them as standalone vignettes that take place in the Twin Peaks universe.

Shannon Nutt

It was the best thing on TV. My dislike of one episode (okay, two - I didn't like 8 much either) doesn't change that opinion. That's why the finale feels even more like a sucker punch.

caligulathegod

The whole series was essentially a rumination on Lynch's entire career and art. There were obvious parallels to his other films and paintings. He also was quite emphatic on the theme of dreamers who dream within dreams, but who is the dreamer? The show also became quite meta. The owner of Laura's house was the real owner. The Log Lady and her fate was shared by Catherine Coulson. Audrey was constantly talking about her lover, Billy (could it be Zane from the original series? The clue might be Eddie Vedder performing under his real name and the mention of "Audrey's Dance", which is the actual name of the track). And it goes on.

But the ultimate clue was in Lynch's information dump. He explained that Judy, or jiāodāi, was an experiment and an extreme negative force. It was the "ultimate evil" in Lynch's world. Well, Lynch has been trolling us for years. "We are NOT going to talk about Judy," says Phillip Jeffries. Why not? 交待 or jiāodāi is Chinese for "To Explain." Lynch is notorious for not explaining his art so take it how you will. He purposefully filled this show with Lynchian Red Herrings which had us over-analyzing for weeks. WE were the ones watching the glass box and recording everything instead of just letting it wash over us. It turned out to be the biggest shaggy dog story of all time. Dreams are not meant to be explained.

Supermallet

I like this take, although I think there are some explanations for what Lynch put on the screen, but not the tidy expositional explanations we expect from narrative fiction.

caligulathegod

I probably should not have implied that it isn't meant to be understood, but that some of it defies explanation.

Dan

very interesting stuff. I do wonder if Judy (jiao dai) was intentional all the way back with FWWM, but I like it, as it summarizes his philosophy on talking about his art in general.

The more I think about part 18, the more I like it, aside from the long driving scenes. I'd kill for an additional 15 seconds after the scream & black out.

caligulathegod

I suspect. He had a fellow artist say the line. Judy has probably been his pet name for the concept all along.

starseed1981

Jefferies mentions Judy in FWWM. Judy is also the creature that spits out Bob in episode 8 and the figure in the box in episode 1 (I think). I'm assuming Judy is in Sarah Palmer now which would explain the boxing television loops and why she tried to destroy Laura's photo when Coop saved her.

Supermallet

Not to mention Sarah pulling off her own face and ripping a dude's throat out.

starseed1981

Oh yeah, totally forgot about that lol

rocket1312

As long as you're willing make the effort to put the pieces various pieces together, you can make a sort of sense of everything that happens re:Judy, etc.

What I'm still confused by is the idea that this is all somehow a dream. (Not a new s3 concept by the way. Jeffries talks about living in a dream in FWWM.) If it's all a dream, then who cares? What's the point of any of it? Are the god like beings (Judy, fireman, etc.) outside that dream? Are the final scenes of Cooper and Laura taking place outside of that dream? If so, and if everything that happened prior to the finale was a dream, then why does Laura start screaming at end? Is anyone else bothered that this new season seems to have robbed FWWM of it's more or less happy ending?

kefrank

An interesting theory on the finale here, though I find much of it a bit too speculative/reaching:
http://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/

Dan

That's quite comprehensive. It's not perfect, but I think it lays the groundwork for filling in (some of) the rest of the blanks. I think there are things that will never be explained fully, but still "fit" into the overall mystery of it all.

stvn1974

I watched all 18 hours backwards and heard a bunch of satanic messages. Plus Paul McCartney seems to be dead.

mkdevo

Episodes 17 & 18 of ‘Twin Peaks: the Return’ are meant to be watched in sync

https://medium.com/@onantiad/episode...nc-81352ce38e8

Dan

While it's interesting how some stuff lines up (like the final sequence) I highly highly doubt Lynch & Frost would ever want folks to actually watch it that way. Sabrina Sutherland (the producer of the show) flat out said it was not the intent, but she's not Lynch or Frost so I can see why some folks might doubt her.

I think it just speaks more to the idea that the events the episodes may be occurring simultaneously in different timelines or whatever.
I could be wrong, but Lynch doesn't really cut back and forth between different scenes or use split screen to show stuff happening at the same time; he likes to show one scene at a time. So, if two scenes really ARE simultaneous, Lynch might include some hints that suggest as much... but I don't think he'd go so far as to expect viewers to go through the effort of watching two episodes in sync, DSOTM/WoO style.

caligulathegod

Yeah, if he didn't want chapter stops, he's not going to expect anyone to do that.

islandclaws

No, they aren't. Sabrina Sutherland, the E.P., just did a reddit AMA and said that is definitely NOT the way to watch them.

dex14

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starseed1981

Interesting that the box art says "The Third Season" and not "The Final Season".....

dex14

It'll be back.

Dan

Ehh... I think it's just because they made such mistakes before, calling the existing Blu-ray set "The Entire Mystery"

starseed1981

Her AMA was pretty good. And she more or less confirmed that Frost was only a writer on the first drafts. Interesting that Lynch has never read The Secret History Of Twin Peaks though. I wonder if the upcoming blu-ray will include all the international cuts of the The Return that she mentioned. A 2.5 hour free TV version of it would be scatterbrained as all hell haha.