The stars turn: the TWIN PEAKS 2017 spoiler thread

Critical scene: delivering shovels to Dr. Jacobi

I appreciated how disconnected and nearly unintellible the first episode was. But by the end of the second, it felt like all the strands were coming together. This show is truly uncompromising. Love it.

I imagine the room with the glass box is probably some wing in Lynch's house where he conducts his experiments with time and space.

only two episodes in, far far better than i was expecting. the cinematography in particular is staggering (except the weirdly conspicuous effects as bradnelson mentioned upthread). biggest distraction/downside so far is this is the whitest thing i've seen since the last australian thing i saw.

I cheered when Cera showed up, mostly because I ended up being correct in guessing what role he would end up playing.

also i was hoping to have no idea what's going on and that's exactly what's happening xp

so far is this is the whitest thing i've seen since the last australian thing i saw

That's not surprising. The reports did say that people were going to be outraged.

I mean, that was pretty obvious from the cast list, and also everything else lynch has ever directed

true, and i'm not outraged, it's just way too obvious when set against every other contemporary show and also real life

Oh true, I'm just mildly joking about it.

I mean I also noticed that I'm 4 episodes in and there hasn't been a single scene that passes the Bechdel test either.

the Denise scene..."I told them to change their hearts or die" was great but the rest...woof. that and the Chrysta Bell stuff make it very clear this is being made by two old dudes and does pull me out of the spell for a bit.

I'd break this down as about 25% awe-inspiring, 50% engaging, 15% shrug-inducing and 10% groan-inducing. Which is honestly about the same batting avg as the original run

I mean I also noticed that I'm 4 episodes in and there hasn't been a single scene that passes the Bechdel test either.

yeah, for all that this is avant garde as hell and will probably advance television 15 years overnight, traces of 70-year-old white man are indelibly all through this

I think it's gonna fall from popular discussion in record time, if anything the decline in viewership for this from now to the finale will be even more precipitous than the original run lol

definitely, this is not in any way mainstream

Chrysta is very beautiful but good god she cannot act

The only bad thing about this is the lack of badalamenti incidental music. It's absence is really felt

This is amazing

Hour four had the least horror or surreal imagery but I bet is the one that makes the most people check out, soooo much slow comedy & weird affected dialogue, interminable scenes of dougdale/Lucy/Andy being aliens, Chrysta bell, Gordon & Denise (man that was tough)

And yes peter deming is knocking it out of the park, this looks amazing

I predicted that there would be totally unreal-looking cgi effects and that I would love them btw, but on both counts I didn't predict just how much <3

No surprise that Lynch would pull a FNORD on expectations

This is for the fans for sure

Feels like Lynch is taking the piss

EPISODE 4 TALK

interminable scenes of dougdale/Lucy/Andy being aliens

most of this stuff didn't work imo. dale getting stuck in the revolving door was fantastic, but the casino bit went on far too long (cooper's not mentally checked in, we know, really dave, we get it), and the whole bunny scene with hawk was a total misfire.

at least episode 4 ends with the feeling that the narrative strands are starting to come together. until the last 15 minutes it felt like several movies all playing at once.

also re the alan partridge discussion in the other thread: due to age, andy's face looks awfully like when alan is suddenly pissed off about something.

They seem to be doubling down on the scene in the missing pieces where everyone in the sheriffs station is really spaced out. I wasn't on board at first but horse & forster made it work for me & by the time cera showed up I was loving it - "except when it's cloudy, or at night". (There seems to be a slight suggestion that he has inherited some of the pretensions of his possible biological father)

I'm a little shell shocked tbh. I loved the look, sound & feel of this, felt properly extreme & nightmarish, but turning it over in my head it feels like something is lacking - it feels very vast and inhuman, like it was literally made by aliens. These two weirdos have both drifted quite far from where they were before, & ultra-frostian cosmic sci-fi, literalism & overabundance of story fits weirdly into ultra-lynchian incomprehensibility - or maybe I'm afraid that those things are replacing lynch's vaguenesses that evoke very specific emotions.

Idk I feel like frost actually used to be v good at writing for coopers guides, but MIKE in the red room being like "ok here's what's going on & what you need to do next - remember your doppelgänger? Well," when previously even outside the lodge he couldn't explain living above a convenience store without sounding uncanny; also bad coop explaining the black lodge to random goon.

Otoh the giant's dialogue was great, idk it could just be that I stayed up all night & am hollowed out a bit. Just not feeling much on an emotional level other than jaw-clamping tension. It actually reminds me of mulholland dr a bit, where for the whole 1st hr or so I'm just on edge the entire time. I'm hoping that in the next 14hrs (!) we get more of the emotional connection to characters that I get with that & all other lynch films

Relatively sparse music might be contributing to this too.

To be clear I adore this but also feel weird about it & like it's walking a tightrope & I may end up kinda hating it.

Real Dougie is best character tho

(There seems to be a slight suggestion that he has inherited some of the pretensions of his possible biological father)

i'd completely forgotten about that. i wasn't feeling that scene at all but in hindsight it makes sense.

turning it over in my head it feels like something is lacking - it feels very vast and inhuman, like it was literally made by aliens.

there's no warmth at all. the original series, for all its faults, was packed with rich and deep characters. here the same characters are largely going from point to point because the plot demands it. evil dale is cold and cruel, hawk is cold and analytical, gordon is cold and inquisitive, etc etc etc etc. even denise came across cold. lucy and andy are relatively warm but so far they're the comic relief and little more.

but MIKE in the red room being like "ok here's what's going on & what you need to do next - remember your doppelgänger? Well,"

yeah, it was all a bit obvious, with mike and laura explaining stuff in such detail that it felt like they were talking not to dale but to us. i don't expect lynch to come at me with the cliffs notes, especially when the rest of the show does the exact opposite.

also the brain tree (despite being a great set piece) felt a bit like someone said to lynch "you do you" and he did.

it sounds like i'm complaining a lot (and i am) but on the whole i enjoyed the hell out of this. it's nothing like anything, even twin peaks, and as long as it's doing something interesting and new i'm all in.

just quoting myself for a second:

i don't expect lynch to come at me with the cliffs notes

is it possible that we're seeing the lynch-frost seam here? i'm guessing frost has over-egged the dialogue and lynch has just gone with it.

also, dale drinking the coffee and snapping back into dale was perfect. i smiled so hard my face split open.

There's the log lady, bobby's tears and the roadhouse and I think we will get to an emotional centre at some point

But yeah who am I kidding this is dazzling. The thing in the David Blaine cage, the thing in the cell, woman's head on man's body, everything in buckhorn, bad dale using the dictaphone, the playing card, all the gnarly digital effects, that room with the eyeless woman - it's just too much

Btw did hawk see something out at Glastonbury grove? He doesn't mention anything to anyone

re: warmth, I feel like that's all gonna come from the original characters, most of whom we've still spent very little time with.

I like that they're actually giving Hawk stuff to do, he mostly just stands around in the original series

So yeah these episodes so far are fucking insane. I'm in awe.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m4xIy1rlJKs

Words I never thought I would say: the Michael Cera bit was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time!

I can't decide if I hope we never see Wally again or if the entire rest of the show should be about him

The thing in the David Blaine cage

everything about that box was delicious. maybe i'm analysing too hard, but i thought lynch was either (a) telling the audience to persevere because something will happen soon or (b) taking the piss out of viewers who've been waiting for this show to start and having no idea what to expect.

There's the log lady, bobby's tears and the roadhouse and I think we will get to an emotional centre at some point

i mean not that i want to set an expectation on this but yeah, it seems we're coming into it from a real sharp angle

Some of the quibbles here aren't incorrect upon thinking about it, but none of that really registered while watching these. First and foremost this is utterly hypnotizing. Totally sucked in.

And I'm not sure how alienating this is? I was watching this with a handful of people who had little or no connection to the show and they were glued to it too.

i don't know if this is precisely the case but i do appreciate that evil dale seems stuck between cooper's actual personality, believing that he is truly undercover, and being an unencumbered source of evil, basically just like leland

Some of the quibbles here aren't incorrect upon thinking about it, but none of that really registered while watching these. First and foremost this is utterly hypnotizing. Totally sucked in.

I went back to remind myself of how it opened and from the moment I saw that slowed-down shot of the screaming girl from the pilot I was enthralled all over again & ended up rewatching all of parts 1-3 so yeah turns out I just love this

Part 3 with the pink planet, eyeless woman, ronette pulaski(! I think) on the sofa, the "mother" banging on the door, major briggs floating head, electrical sockets, rancid garmonbozia puke, dougie in the red room: a masterpiece

yeah, pretty much immediately in the pantheon of Great Lynch Sequences.

i loved Good Cooper materializing on the floor out of the smoke/socket and just kinda lying there smiling all dopey. hilarious.

ronette pulaski(! I think)

Yup, that was Phoebe Augustine, though she's mysteriously only credited as "American Girl"

carel struycken was credited as "?????????"

Yeah I saw that & was like wut - also Walter olkewicz is credited as jean-michel renault, al strobel as phillip gerard and carel struycken as ?????

Part 3 is so fat trout/above the convenience store that I forgot to include some of the incredibly weird bits in that sequence, like "119!"

Xp

snap

I hope we only get brief shots of renault tending bar & it's never explained

btw how many other nerds thought of Richard & Linda Thompson during the opening sequence of the premiere?

meee

a la senor droolcup, i hope it becomes canon to refer to reactive baby dougie cooper as "mr. jackpots"

HELLLOOOOO

otm

everything about that box was delicious. maybe i'm analysing too hard, but i thought lynch was either (a) telling the audience to persevere because something will happen soon or (b) taking the piss out of viewers who've been waiting for this show to start and having no idea what to expect.

Whatever assorted narrative ends it serves, it's also part of his ongoing meta-narrative about cinema and perception, who's watching whom, etc. I love how he first shows you the box, and then the room from every angle, and then finally the perfectly-lit shot of the guy sitting on the couch, which is what "the box" sees. He loves pulling back the curtain on himself, showing how the magic is done, and then still making you go "wow" when he does the trick.

(David Foster Wallace would have loved the box, it feels like something out of a James Incandenza movie.)

It occurs to me this morning that Laura’s diary opens with a little key and not a combination, to which I say: yeah but still though

I'm doing a Lynch rewatch; next up is FWWM which I'm dragging my heels on a little bit. I like the movie a lot but it's probably the hardest Lynch to get through what with all of the incest and rape and misery. Looking forward to the Missing Pieces which I think I've only seen once, so it should still have some surprises for me. I mainly remember the scenes with Big Ed and Norma parking and Pete explaining something to Josie about lumber measurements.

I started writing lumber dimensions but realized that could be read two ways when talking about Twin Peaks.

I have the diary on audiobook with Sheryl Lee reading it but I haven't been able to make myself start it yet.

We're watching Twin Peaks with my 14 year old and she's digging it. I think we're two episodes away from Leland's big reveal which should be fairly upsetting. We're going to save watching FWWM for a few more years