I finally watched Twin Peaks: The Return. It took me eight months, and watching it by myself made me feel like I missed many important parts by not discussing its unique qualities with other people. In what would count as a Late to the Party, except I just missed the party and am not that late to it, I figured I would make a thread for people to discuss the show with me, how they feel about it, what parts they like, etc.
It feels silly to rate something like this, but my 3.5/5 Letterboxd review is below:
How do so many people love this? It is possibly the most audience-alienating thing I have ever seen. It is long, and slow, and just when you think it can’t get longer or slower it does get longer and slower. But it’s also beautiful, in its own way. I started this in March, and I would take 2-week breaks in between episodes; each episode is simultaneously so dense and so empty at the same time, and I never felt compelled to come back.
The first season and a half of Twin Peaks, which I watched last year, is one of my favorite works of television ever, and the second half of Season 2 is very underrated (I think I like it about the same as this). There are beautiful moments in this, scenes of almost staggering power and emotion, even if the emotion isn’t there on the screen. Most of what isn’t beautiful is functional, but a decent chunk of it isn’t- it’s pointless. It’s more than pointless, because it’s pointless in a way that changes Lynch and Frost’s original thesis (not that I have a firm grasp on what that thesis is). Scenes purposefully drag to fill out episodes (it should have been 13, maybe 15), and I don’t care that those stories don’t end, but I care that they end without purpose.
I feel like I’m in the minority for merely liking something everyone else loves, and it’s bizarre that everyone else loves this.
This review feels negative, here’s a list of non-specific things that I loved about this show, and there’s a lot more I’m forgetting about
-the first few episodes are genuinely thrilling because you have no idea what will come next
-Episode 8 is great! Every scene has genuine thematic meaning!
-McLachlan obviously kills it, but Lynch also kills it from a performance standpoint
-the reveal of The Character in episode…6? 7? you know who
-Sound design
-Ed/Norma/Nadine
-the genuine sense of humor
-Grace Zabriskie
-Dougie’s family scenes
-the scene where James and Freddie sit and tell each other stories
-most of what the ending is doing but not how it is doing it
I cried twice, both at Catherine Coulson and continuously through the last ten minutes of episode 17. that’s when the characters are truly feeling understandable feelings, where Lynch and Frost want you to share those feelings. The best part of Twin Peaks is the deep, almost inhuman sense of feeling that its characters have; think about Leland’s grief dance, or Cooper defending the town to Albert, or Bobby and Shelly realizing they’ll have each other. More of that, please, and more Black Lodge/Red Room, and less driving next time.