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March 28, 2024, 07:11:15 PM

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Twin Peaks Season 3...

Started by Mister Six, June 06, 2018, 01:56:17 PM

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Mister Six


hedgehog90

Quote from: Shameless Custard on June 28, 2018, 08:15:18 PM
OR MORE TWIN PEAKS

Wouldn't Frost have been there too?
That's a genuine question, since reading the Twin Peaks books I've wanted to know more about Frost's involvement.
I haven't read Room to Dream yet but I heard a lengthy snippet regarding the Showtime deal and it made no mention of Frost, while the project was at risk of losing Lynch or being canned.
Did he have any say? Did execs even meet with Frost?

garbed_attic

This is probably more of a Frost than a Lynch thing...

Dr. Jacoby is loosely based upon Terence McKenna, right? Well, McKenna believed the atom bomb to be as the starting point of the last 67.29 year cycle of life until the singularity!

(obviously, the good doctor was proved wrong, but I do wonder if it was an influence - there are definitely some intriguing intersections between McKenna's ideas and Twin Peaks)

hedgehog90

Almost a year since first watching The Return it still occupies a large presence in my general thoughts and daydreams.
Every now and then I'll come across something that seems to describes or reminds me of elements from Twin Peaks, and the excitement I get from it is wonderful.

The other day I started reading the the first book of Confessions by St Augustine of Hippo, a Numidian theologian and philosopher from the 4th century (a wild departure from my usual reading habits).
The actual book I found pretty impenetrable (I haven't returned to it since), but the foreword which biographed the author was fascinating.
Not least due to the subject's involvement, before becoming a Christian, with a theology that until then I'd never come across called Manichaeism.
The description of this religion was so evocative of Twin Peaks lore that I would have fallen off my chair had I not been lying on a bed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

I know it's not all that different to broader, more familiar notions of Gnosticism (of which I only have the vaguest understanding of). Abstract notions of light and darkness and duologies that seem to permeate our existence* were nothing new to me either, but the way it was written about in this book - connecting this ancient, dead philosophy with this weird little TV show that I continue to be obsessed by - was really thrilling.

* It almost appears that they had an intuition for the supposed nature of matter and anti-matter, long before modern-science or any basis of understanding, which is also fascinating to me.

Custard

Just a heads up that the DVD and Blu-rizzle of the third series are currently on sale on the Amazons.

DVD - 15 pebbles
Blu - 22.49

rue the polywhirl

Quote from: Shameless Custard on August 24, 2018, 05:21:37 PM
Just a heads up that the DVD and Blu-rizzle of the third series are currently on sale on the Amazons.

DVD - 15 pebbles
Blu - 22.49

Also available at HMV. Support the High Street. I know Amazon clicks support this site but the extra money that you do or not save should be made as a direct donation instead as a means of providing better support for CooBo.

mothman

Is it bad that I can never hear St. Augustine of Hippo mentioned without thinking about how he felt after his conversion by Ambrose of Milan?

Dog Botherer

Anyone got any Twin Peaks podcast recommendations? Started yet another rewatch and thought it'd be fun to listen to the thoughts of others doing the same.

Ja'moke

Quote from: Dog Botherer on September 03, 2018, 09:56:37 PM
Anyone got any Twin Peaks podcast recommendations? Started yet another rewatch and thought it'd be fun to listen to the thoughts of others doing the same.

Jeff Jensen and Darren Franich of EW just did a rewatch and made a new podcast about it: https://art19.com/shows/twin-peaks-podcast

Dog Botherer

Quote from: Ja'moke on September 03, 2018, 10:10:51 PM
Jeff Jensen and Darren Franich of EW just did a rewatch and made a new podcast about it: https://art19.com/shows/twin-peaks-podcast

That'll do nicely, thanks!

sevendaughters

Alan Moore: not a fan of TP:TR

QuoteDB: I don't recall ever seeing anything else like that ending here in the U.S. except perhaps for the season-two finale of Twin Peaks. I'm wondering if that was a show you watched, and if so what your thoughts are about it — especially the ending. (I'm also interested in your thoughts on the recent Season Three, if you watched and are inclined to comment).

AM: Yes, I was a huge admirer of the first two seasons of Twin Peaks. I greatly enjoyed season two's closing episode, and subsequently arrived at an interpretation of Fire, Walk With Me that, to me, was satisfying and answered all of my really important questions about the series. At the end of last year I watched the box-set of season three, and without wishing to denigrate all of the perfectly legitimate reasons why people loved that (presumably) final season, I'd have to say that with the exception of a few arresting images and atmospheres, I kind of wish I hadn't bothered. Elements that I either hadn't noticed or which hadn't especially bothered me the first time, like the fact that the titular town is presumably twinned with Midsomer in that both have tons of bizarre murders and absolutely no black people, seemed a lot more intrusive in season three.

Another thing that stood out was Lynch's customary Bizarro-Republican stance, whereby the intrusive supernatural evil in his stories always seems to be firmly rooted in the underclass. Structurally, it also seemed that there was rather a lot of irrelevant padding, notably the slapstick "Dougie Jones" digression, which didn't seem to have anything atmospherically or thematically to connect it to the main narrative in any meaningful way.

Overall it seemed to me, as a large amount of Lynch's later work does, to be relying on disconnected set-pieces and ultimately not saying very much. This may, of course, be a fault with me rather than with David Lynch, but while some of the most arresting and affecting moments in Lynch's work have seemed to be plucked straight from the director's subconscious mind and dreamlife, the ones that have best worked for me are those moments that, while dreamlike, work within the context of the overall narrative: for me, the dead man who is still standing upright in Blue Velvet or the whole of Henry's collapsing and hallucinating mental landscape in Eraserhead work perfectly within their contexts, while a golden Laura-Palmer-infused egg sent from another dimension to what is apparently a nuclear test-site, which then hatches into a sort of insect-frog hybrid that subsequently crawls into the mouth of a sleeping young girl who, unless I missed something, is never seen or referred to again, really doesn't, at least for me. If everything is weird, then, relatively speaking, nothing is weird. All of this is, of course, entirely subjective, and it may well be that the season three of Twin Peaks that I watched was significantly worse than the one everybody else was witness to.

Disagree with you there mate!

https://paleymatters.org/alan-moore-remembers-patrick-mcgoohans-the-prisoner-part-2-93aadbfb11e2

NoSleep

QuoteThis may, of course, be a fault with me rather than with David Lynch, but while some of the most arresting and affecting moments in Lynch's work have seemed to be plucked straight from the director's subconscious mind and dreamlife, the ones that have best worked for me are those moments that, while dreamlike, work within the context of the overall narrative: for me, the dead man who is still standing upright in Blue Velvet or the whole of Henry's collapsing and hallucinating mental landscape in Eraserhead work perfectly within their contexts, while a golden Laura-Palmer-infused egg sent from another dimension to what is apparently a nuclear test-site, which then hatches into a sort of insect-frog hybrid that subsequently crawls into the mouth of a sleeping young girl who, unless I missed something, is never seen or referred to again, really doesn't, at least for me.

The Laura Palmer "egg" was seen clearly heading in the direction of Washington, not New Mexico. I guess you'd have to read the Final Dossier to confirm that the girl was (or could have been, at least) Sarah Palmer, but it does seem like he's missed the point of having a character with no apparent reference to the rest of a story; that you might ponder where that bit of the jigsaw might fit.

Ja'moke

Also, the whole Dougie storyline, to me at least, was to show the goodness at the heart of Cooper. Dougie was basically Cooper in raw, child-like form, falling in love with the world all over again.

Bhazor

If he's upset about the Dougie storyline not mattering I wonder how he made it through the Sawmill storyline, the drug smuggling storyline, the domestic abuse storyline, the Andy paternity storyline, the James affair storyline, the chinese investor storyline, the Nadine age regression storyline, the Big Ed/Nora storyline or the first 45 minutes of Fire Walk With Me. David Lynch is not the guy you go to for taut 90 minute no fat narratives.

Apart from Straight Story I mean.

Shaky

Moore is so off the mark with his summation of the Dougie storyline I'm wondering if he's simply being a bit arch and contrary for the sake of it. I understand if people think that plot went on too long but it's baffling not to see the obvious connection with everything else that was going on in S3. That Dougie was intended to be a stripped down, pure essence of Coop was pretty clear from the start.

Maybe Alan's beard got in his eyes or Glycon did a poo on his TV.

NoSleep

Quote from: Ja'moke on September 04, 2018, 01:29:14 PM
Also, the whole Dougie storyline, to me at least, was to show the goodness at the heart of Cooper. Dougie was basically Cooper in raw, child-like form, falling in love with the world all over again.

I think Dougie was blessed with extremely good fortune (something that Coop mentions as a trait of his own, too) rather than being good of heart (Coop would have been suspicious of hanging around people like the casino bros). That said he had innocence. And he was constantly being led by signs from the Lodge (when it wasn't somebody else doing the leading).

colacentral

He got confused and blamed the show for it, poor sod.

Twed

It sounds like he watched it in a vacuum, in which case I can understand coming to those conclusions. Twin Peaks would be so much worse if you didn't discuss theories and meaning with people.

Mister Six

What Twed said. The "no black people" thing is a cheap shot, considering the number of black people likely to live in  tiny Washington lumber town, and inaccurate - the original film had at least a couple of black characters.

The absence of Native Americans other than Hawk and maybe that woman who showed Coop the Ghosted house is more awkward, however.

hedgehog90

Here's an excellent video by Wow Lynch Wow! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKUegHc9Yvo

I'm very compelled by the idea that Mr C has always existed within Cooper, Mr C wasn't 'manufactured' as such in the Red Room, but split from Cooper, BOB just gave him strength.
I've always considered and known that on some level, but somehow it just didn't click (until now).

Also, the idea that Mr C is the controlling presence in the Cooper/Dougie/Mr C combo we see in the Odessa diner totally works IMO, similar to how we see a glimmer of BOB in the Mr C's jail-cell mirror as the controller/guiding-force.
It also just occurred to me, that if we suppose everyone has a good and evil side it stands to reason that Cooper's evil side is an ideal host for BOB, being such a minimal/benign presence within Cooper in the first place surely allowed for a very effective takeover by BOB... no conflicting inner struggle as we saw with MIKE and Phillip Gerard.

Also very interesting to see the super-cut of all the Coopers responding to coffee near the end of the video. I don't think I ever noted the significance of the triple-Coop entity's total ambivalence when the waitress pours him a cup of coffee, which is much closer it is to Mr C's reaction to coffee in the sheriff's department than either Dougie or Cooper-classic.

So, if we assume Mr C is the leader of this amalgamation we can therefore suggest that during the interaction with Mrs Tremond on the porch of Sarah's house, Mr C departs the trio and joins Judy (for some apocalyptic black-lodge fucking no doubt), leaving the Dougie/Cooper duo outside in the dark, supremely confused.

The tone of the ending seems so dark, it's silly not to assume that something bad happened.
By this theory, the absolute worst case scenario happened. Mr C (with some remaining essence of BOB) has finally found his Judy.
Fucking hell.

I've barely slept for the last 2 days so please excuse any incoherence, I think it makes sense.

chveik

Quote from: Twed on September 04, 2018, 04:12:18 PM
It sounds like he watched it in a vacuum, in which case I can understand coming to those conclusions. Twin Peaks would be so much worse if you didn't discuss theories and meaning with people.

All the discussions I've seen seemed to be quite patronizing (if you don't like it, it's because you're not intelligent enough...). Well, I haven't read the threads in here and I assume that people on CAB don't do this sort of thing (journalists and people on the subreddit used this argument a lot at the time though). I've thought a lot about it since it aired and I agree with pretty much everything Moore says on this article. I thought that the magic from the first 2 series was lost, not because I'm a nostalgic fanboy, just because I didn't really care with the storylines (and the many plotholes) and all the 'avant-garde' stuff left me cold. I wasn't really interested in the mythology in the first place, I just enjoyed the ambience, the investigation and the quirkiness of the characters. There were too many characters in this series and as a result it was quite hard to empathize with them. I don't mind people discussing about theories as such, I just didn't think there was some philosophical depth in The Return (unlike LOST or The Leftovers for instance). When you hear interviews of Lynch he seems to be mostly interested in new age and buddhism, and that's not my cup of tea. There were some beautiful moments in there (I didn't mind most of the Dougie storyline) but on the whole it didn't work for me.
Bit of a useless post I guess, I generally prefer to talk about things I enjoy. But I also think Moore makes some good points about Lynch's recent work ("If everything is weird, then, relatively speaking, nothing is weird"). You need to have some sort of stability in your storyline in order to create "weirdness" around it (like he successfully did in Twin Peaks season 1 with Cooper's investigation). Also the fact that some of the actors aged badly (or died during the shooting) deprived The Return of the joy of the  original series.
But I agree that it was/is more exciting than most of the TV shows nowadays.

Desirable Industrial Unit

Quote from: hedgehog90 on September 05, 2018, 12:58:32 AM
So, if we assume Mr C is the leader of this amalgamation we can therefore suggest that during the interaction with Mrs Tremond on the porch of Sarah's house, Mr C departs the trio and joins Judy (for some apocalyptic black-lodge fucking no doubt), leaving the Dougie/Cooper duo outside in the dark, supremely confused.

(I've not watched that video yet)

It's possible to get lost in this stuff.  The split Coopers were aspects of his personality, but the one we end up with at the end is the same we first met all that time ago, just a bit more jaded and rattled.  Mr. C. isn't a presence within him, he's a muscle that's been flexed far more recently than it ever had been before.  He has to be changed in some way by all of it.

Twed

Quote from: Shaky on September 04, 2018, 01:48:49 PMThat Dougie was intended to be a stripped down, pure essence of Coop was pretty clear from the start.
Indeed. This was one of the clearest things in The Return. The point of Dougie was to show the pure part of Coop was split from the evil one. That was the point of the bits where Dougie would channel Coop and do awesome FBI stuff to help people, despite his stupor.

Mister Six

Quote from: chveik on September 05, 2018, 01:25:02 AMI just didn't think there was some philosophical depth in The Return

The whole thing was a critique of modern America. "Reformed" Ben Horne sits in his office, trying to fix things with money while letting his family disintegrate; people live in squalor, squatting in houses outside Las Vegas, where rich crooks run casinos; Mr C is driven by his wants, whereas Dougie merely experiences the world as it happens... the entire world is shot through with corruption and decay. Lynch and Frost have both spoken about this stuff in interviews, although I think that much of this stuff was more influenced by Frost than Lynch.

Peru

 
Quotewhereby the intrusive supernatural evil in his stories always seems to be firmly rooted in the underclass

Apart from in Twin Peaks where it comes from a middle class family.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: chveik on September 05, 2018, 01:25:02 AM
All the discussions I've seen seemed to be quite patronizing (if you don't like it, it's because you're not intelligent enough...). Well, I haven't read the threads in here and I assume that people on CAB don't do this sort of thing (journalists and people on the subreddit used this argument a lot at the time though). I've thought a lot about it since it aired and I agree with pretty much everything Moore says on this article. I thought that the magic from the first 2 series was lost, not because I'm a nostalgic fanboy, just because I didn't really care with the storylines (and the many plotholes) and all the 'avant-garde' stuff left me cold. I wasn't really interested in the mythology in the first place, I just enjoyed the ambience, the investigation and the quirkiness of the characters. There were too many characters in this series and as a result it was quite hard to empathize with them. I don't mind people discussing about theories as such, I just didn't think there was some philosophical depth in The Return (unlike LOST or The Leftovers for instance). When you hear interviews of Lynch he seems to be mostly interested in new age and buddhism, and that's not my cup of tea. There were some beautiful moments in there (I didn't mind most of the Dougie storyline) but on the whole it didn't work for me.
Bit of a useless post I guess, I generally prefer to talk about things I enjoy. But I also think Moore makes some good points about Lynch's recent work ("If everything is weird, then, relatively speaking, nothing is weird"). You need to have some sort of stability in your storyline in order to create "weirdness" around it (like he successfully did in Twin Peaks season 1 with Cooper's investigation). Also the fact that some of the actors aged badly (or died during the shooting) deprived The Return of the joy of the  original series.
But I agree that it was/is more exciting than most of the TV shows nowadays.

I feel you. I've not rewatched it and only watched the first part of the return on crappy phone, so didn't get the "Full" Experience. Reading these threads turned me off rewatching as I believe watching Lynch's output for the first time requires some sort of detachment from blabber initially.

I'm intending to rewatch over autumn if I can and seeing how I feel about it.

QDRPHNC

Alan Moore is one of those people whose opinion I'll always give credence to, as I consider him a supremely intelligent and masterful creative mind, up there with Lynch himself. I don't agree with everything he said, but given the source, it's food for thought.

colacentral

I think he's too far up his own arse to see the wood for the trees myself.

Why does he talk about everything being weird? Lynch's work has never been self-consciously weird; that's what all his imitators get wrong. Watching through that lens already undermines any opinion he has on it.

drdad

Quote from: Bhazor on September 04, 2018, 01:48:38 PM
David Lynch is not the guy you go to for taut 90 minute no fat narratives.

Apart from Straight Story I mean.

The Straight story is chock-full of odd little narrative digressions, though.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: colacentral on September 05, 2018, 04:30:41 PM
I think he's too far up his own arse to see the wood for the trees myself.

To be fair,.I'm sure you could swing a cat and find someone of the same opinion of Lynch. I think genuinely creative people have to be up their own arses to some extent.