Since there is no new Twin Peaks episode this week, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the season 3 so far. It has already been a hell of a ride!
I'll admit I'm not great on Twin Peaks details. Some people are really good at catching the signposts that David Lynch plants throughout the episodes. I'm usually too stressed to be academically cognizant of those details. So I'm not even going to try piece things together as such, یا predict what might happen next.
I have really enjoyed the reboot so far. Perhaps in some ways, مزید so than the original series. The first 2 seasons were characterised, یا so it seemed to me, سے طرف کی the disruption of the image of 'idyllic' small town America سے طرف کی the intervention of extreme violence and seediness. In this new season, the reboot, the notion of Twin Peaks as idyllic is still there (ie the ڈنر, کھانے and precious Shelly still being a کرن, رے of sunshine), but it is much, much less visible. Even the Sheriff's Department is darker and مزید tense than during the first 2 seasons (ie the new recruits are kinda dicks, Truman and his wife have troubles, even the lighting of the interior seems literally darker and deeper).
The violence is also مزید explicit this time around. The first 2 seasons contained violence, but not this explicit, and most of the مزید serious violence was implied. But in the reboot, the hit-and-run death of the young boy was confronting, as was the death of Darya, the assassination of Lorraine سے طرف کی Ike The Spike, and the Woodsman running around crushing skulls. And, for me, the scariest moment of the reboot so far was when Sam and Tracy were slashed to death سے طرف کی the creature from the glass box.
The دکھائیں is also is also revelling مزید in the abject (in every sense of the word). Alongside the مزید explicit violence, think about Doppel-Cooper-BOB's post-car crash vomit, یا the Woodsman-esque spirits digging through Doppel-Cooper's guts to reveal a BOB globule (a BOBule, if آپ will...). And frog-bugs crawling into mouths... Cooper's experiences getting to the Purple Room, and then in the Purple Room, in particular made me feel physically sick. Not really in a bad way, if that makes sense...? That sequence was stunning, but it rips your feet out from under آپ and hangs آپ upside down the entire time. There is a constant feeling of dread, but also movement, as Cooper actually gets to re-enter the world, despite the danger he is enveloped in. Hope and dread at the same time. This sequence is one of my favourite things that I have ever experienced on television.
I’m also really loving the new locations, یا the revisiting/re-imagining of previously visited locations. I'd always really loved the Black Lodge. It was creepy and significant and disorientating. I still love the Black Lodge, but experiencing مزید of the White Lodge in this 3rd season has been amazing. It is just as odd and incongruent as the Black Lodge, and, to some extent, they share the same uncanny vibe. And of course they do, because they occupy the same cosmic space; two sides of the same coin (well... a many-sided coin, perhaps...). Anyway, my incoherent misunderstandings aside, the White Lodge has really shone in The Return, particularly the moving, astounding and confounding sequence from episode 8 (where ??????? births a Laura Palmer orb from his golden head sparkles).
The Black Lodge has also of course continued to be a real highlight too. Any scene there is spectacular. The small doses of Black Lodge Laura Palmer that we have seen so far in the reboot have probably been some of my favourite Laura Palmer moments so far. She is gloriously creepy and mysterious. I have also really enjoyed the barrier breakdown between the Black Lodge and the 'real' (if آپ can call it that!) world. Those moments where Cooper has seen through to the Black Lodge have been truly creepy and desperately significant for whatever is happening/will happen to Cooper.
But perhaps the biggest hint that we are unlikely to get this ending is in the return (there it is again!) of perhaps the most sinister storyline of the show. When actor Walter Olkewicz appeared as a bartender in the background early on in the reboot, we tried to pretend that it was simply a case of David Lynch bring back some of the original actors as little winks to the audience (helped سے طرف کی the fact that he was not initially identified as Jean-Michel Renault in the show's credits). But that extremely uncomfortable and sinister extended scene in the bar confirmed for us that the Renault family business is still thriving: the Twin Peaks sex trafficking industry is still booming. Stories we think might be dead are definitely still alive and still horrifying.
There are, of course, still delightful lighter moments. The real Cooper's return to the world has provided some hilarious moments (from his love of coffee, to confusion about how to pee, to his success in the casino). Andy and Lucy are still as cute, sweet and innocent as ever. And the Horne brothers are still bumbling about to great comedic effect. Dr Jacoby's سونا shit-digging shovel was also, well, سونا (although I have an uneasy feeling about it... which is kinda a dumb thing to say about anything in Twin Peaks because everything gives me an uneasy feeling...).
That generalised uneasiness I guess brings me to episode 8 of the reboot. Not only did this episode shake up Twin Peaks' format, it kinda shattered our idea of what an episode of TV could even look like. It is most certainly an art piece مزید than an episode of television. And as such I suspect that many did not like it, and I suspect further that if those who had never watched Twin Peaks (or any David Lynch work) might dismiss it as pretentious and/or self-indulgent. I suspect this could be especially true for people who have always watched Twin Peaks as a TV show, rather than narrative یا mythology.
While its presentation was complex and unique, this episode was providing us with narrative points of significance much like a traditional episode of TV would. We got a sense of how BOB can operate in this world (when Doppel-Cooper is shot and the BOBule appears with the help of some spiritual minions); we saw a BOB birth, of sorts; we saw a Laura Palmer birth, of sorts; we saw a frog-bug birth, of sorts. These things matter to the narrative, as they connect to things we've experienced in the past, and will undoubtedly connect to things we will experience in the future.
For me, what might be considered سے طرف کی some as the less narrative parts of the episode aimed to get the viewer to experience anxiety and uncertainty. The idea that BOB and various other unknown (or possibly known) entities were spewed forth as a result of the first nuclear detonation (a man-made disaster that would spawn a great many مزید man-made disasters) is مزید than a little terrifying. Disorientating us within the blast served to induce that feeling of unknown terror potentially born from man-made interventions. This does make آپ think about what cosmic consequences there could be to the things we do. We actually don't understand much about our universe, so how can we possibly know what happens to the universe when we detonate a nuclear bomb, especially since we don't seem to care much what happens at a local level when a bomb goes off... What are we doing when we detonate a nuclear bomb?
I think if آپ asked every viewer of that episode what they took from it, everyone would have a different answer. I've read a few reviews and analyses of the episode and it is clear that we are all as baffled as each other, but happily so.
An episode like the 8th of The Return is a really good example of how it is a little bit futile to try and predict where Twin Peaks storylines are going یا where they'll end up. When simple things like the return of Jean-Michel Renault (well, ok, that isn't exactly simple...) can come suddenly, but not unsurprisingly, and up-end what we thought we knew, trying to foresee how the events of episode 8 (or any other episode for that matter) work within the rest of the دکھائیں is not a task I'm personally up for. I've seen a few people try to piece things together, but like I said, I'm not great with the Twin Peaks details. I'm much مزید about the experience of watching Twin Peaks: the way it pours bees into my brain. It takes me to weird and wonderful and horrifying places, and leaves me with a buzzing in my head about what it made me feel, when it made me feel it and how it made me feel it.
So I have no idea what is coming اگلے in the rest of The Return. Hell, I'm uncertain of what I've already experienced. But for me, that is the fun and significance of the show. It is about the feeling of having bees poured into my brain.
