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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 23, 2020 12:35:45 GMT
I finished season 1. It's no masterpiece, but a lot of fun when it embraces the silliness like it's an extra-long NCIS story.
I was expecting something a lot weirder, like Mulholland Drive or even Eraserhead. This is actually very tame. It's dreamlike, but more in the sense of a dream being weird when you look back on it. Take the scene at the vet in which Dale and Harry are talking over a llama. It's funny stuff, but not so extremely strange and unbelievable. Just a bit off kilter.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 26, 2020 3:38:18 GMT
"Ha ha, this show isn't weird, it's just a kooky soap parody with murder mystery elements, it's not like this is scary or any -"
Oh. Oh. I was wondering when David Lynch would appear. Hi there. It's good to see you. Can you keep up this surreal horror stuff for the rest of forever, pretty please? This is what I was expecting when I started this show. It just took you until the second season premiere to get into this gear.
That's cool, I liked season 1. But please keep this up. This premiere scared the shit out of me and I love you for it.
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Post by notacrook on Jan 27, 2020 1:00:13 GMT
"Ha ha, this show isn't weird, it's just a kooky soap parody with murder mystery elements, it's not like this is scary or any -" Oh. Oh. I was wondering when David Lynch would appear. Hi there. It's good to see you. Can you keep up this surreal horror stuff for the rest of forever, pretty please? This is what I was expecting when I started this show. It just took you until the second season premiere to get into this gear. That's cool, I liked season 1. But please keep this up. This premiere scared the shit out of me and I love you for it. I think the first 9 episodes of season 2 are pretty incredible, and they really converted me into a fan of the show. It does dip after that for a while, but I was so sold after such a marked improvement over season 1 that I didn't really care. Episodes 7 and 9 are stunning.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 27, 2020 1:07:54 GMT
I had to pause the log lady intro for s2e2 to ponder the question "Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe? What really is creamed corn?" Yeah, I'm changing my signature once I finish this episode.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jan 27, 2020 13:22:06 GMT
I had to pause the log lady intro for s2e2 to ponder the question "Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe? What really is creamed corn?" Yeah, I'm changing my signature once I finish this episode. Glad to hear you're getting more on board with the show now. I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions on the second half of Season 2, which is pretty divisive stuff.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 27, 2020 15:23:25 GMT
I had to pause the log lady intro for s2e2 to ponder the question "Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe? What really is creamed corn?" Yeah, I'm changing my signature once I finish this episode. Glad to hear you're getting more on board with the show now. I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions on the second half of Season 2, which is pretty divisive stuff. I'm a big fan of surreal horror. Sapphire and Steel, a show from the 70's, is a favorite of mine simply because it never actually revealed what the hell it was about (I think you can watch the whole show free on Youtube). The show could be mind-numbingly slow at times, but I loved it for the inherent creepiness of the horrors never being properly explained or understood. Through the Woods, a favorite graphic novel of mine collecting six surreal short horror stories from Emily Carroll, works for the same reason: she understands that nothing is scarier than what we can't picture (wise thinking from someone writing a picture book). I've been wanting to find more stories like these, but it is so very hard searching for this kind of horror. Twin Peaks is scratching that itch, and for that reason alone I'm grateful to it. Mind you, it's only been two episodes of this kind of thing, but even this small amount has me high. If the show keeps on this heading, it'll become a favorite by virtue of me being starved for this kind of story.
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chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
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Post by chris3 on Jan 28, 2020 18:01:59 GMT
Oh. Oh. I was wondering when David Lynch would appear. Hi there. It's good to see you. Can you keep up this surreal horror stuff for the rest of forever, pretty please? Love this! Oh man if that's what you dig then you're going to love the movie. While I do really like Season One, personally I think the first nine episodes of S2 are FAR superior and much more indicative of what I adore about the series. Like others have warned, the second half dips significantly in quality but if you're down for Lynch's surreal craziness it is more than worth trudging through to get to the Lynch-directed finale (my favorite hour of TV ever) and then the movie. That episode and film together make up the peak of the series for me, and then The Return cranks up the surrealism to a wonderfully batshit degree. Very happy to hear that the stranger, darker qualities of the beginning of S2 are your thing, because that means you've got a lot of greatness coming your way. Anymore S1 (aside from the pilot and red room episode) barely feels like Twin Peaks to me.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 28, 2020 21:13:28 GMT
So apparently my Youtube search history decided to merge "Twin Peaks" and "you really like listening to full albums" and popped out a bunch of Chromatics albums at me. I just listened to their cover of "The Sound of Silence" and... whoa. I'm putting them on a list of stuff to listen to when I get the chance. Wow, this song is hypnotic.
Uh, not much to do with Twin Peaks, but David Lynch is a fan of this band and has used them for some of his film scores? Also they did some music for Drive?
Anyway, TP update: "I love you, Sheriff Truman" is the funniest bullshit to ever come out of Albert's mouth.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 1, 2020 2:01:28 GMT
Disc 4 update. I am now through s2e7. I've cooled down on it a lot more. Eps 5 and 6 were really spinning their wheels and not doing much of anything. Ep 7 exacerbates the problem by doing absolutely nothing but looking cool about it. The cinematic equivalent of "falling with style." It's still okay and all, but those glorious heights the season began with are already a distant memory. can't be more specific, gARD o frpr eith cst obn my lso.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 5, 2020 2:39:35 GMT
Disc 5 (s2e8-e-11): This show is so up and down. It was stagnating a bit before episode 9, which was pretty good. And then episode 10 was an utter shitshow of "wait, are we gonna have twenty episodes of epilogue?" before the finale (which was great stuff).
And then episode 11, which cemented that the writers have no idea what the hell they're doing and are just going until someone calls them out on just how ridiculous the show has gotten. And I dug it. Statler & Waldorf as the mayor and newspaper magnate, Andy and Dick's Daddy Drama (starring the evil kid from Home Alone!), Ben crying in a corner watching home videos... heck, even Nadine's tired storyline made me laugh with her crushing on Mike.
Oh, and ew on Denise. The show is trying to be progressive and nice towards her (I think), but she feels much more like a straight white man's idea of "inclusivity" for the sake of it, and makes her a punchline because he doesn't understand her.
That said, other more serious plotlines are less interesting (Josie, Agent Cooper, James), and some plots are on hold or confusing to a ridiculous extent. Remember that James has a mother? Wasn't she mentioned back in season 1, when James said that SHE WAS BACK IN TOWN? Where is she? How is Dale sending his chess moves to Wyndham? Is Bobby's story gonna go anywhere or is he just going to be an annoying clog in the gears of every other story? WHAT HAPPENED TO GIRARD?
Point is, the show is all over the place. There's good stuff, there's bad stuff, and the show is inconsistent about even making specific plots work (the Bob story was sometimes really interesting, sometimes really boring -- especially in episode 8, which was nothing but "HEY LOOK IT'S BOB" for forty minutes).
I still dig it. I like the show the more it goes off the rails, and less when it plays things more straightforward.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 9, 2020 4:48:00 GMT
Disc 6 (s2 e12-15) update: I'm really liking this. In retrospect, I felt that episodes s2 e3-9 struggled to keep excitement going because it was focused too much on the main plot thread, which moved at too slow of a pace. After e9, things have gotten very silly and very scattershot, and a lot of it doesn't work. BUT. The various plots are cycled through so quickly that I don't feel how slowly this is actually moving. If I don't like James's seduction (and I don't), there's Andy and Dick playing private eye (in actual trench coats and fedoras ). If I don't like that (I totally do, stupid as it is), there's the Windam Earle plot. If I don't like that, there's Nadine's weird superpowers back in sitcomland. If I don't like that, there's the most soap opera thing ever going on in Josie's story. If I don't like that, there's General Lee and his far too enthusiastic psychiatrist. If I don't like that, Major Briggs is out there getting cockblocked by the writers every time he tries to explain what the hell is going on. And since there's such a variety, I'm enjoying myself. Also, I like this show when it is being a very, very stupid sitcom and there is a whooooole lot of that on this disc. When the show started, I didn't know who anyone was and found the soap elements annoying. I didn't think that Lynch and Frost liked their characters. Now I'm pretty certain that they don't, but I'm okay with laughing at how dumb the whole thing has gotten. That said, the show is clearly spinning its wheels, and although I'm enjoying myself I still can't fathom why this is so popular. I compared this to NCIS in an earlier post, and that's still a very good comparison. They're both fun shows about silly people being silly, with occasional DRAMA going on. The supernatural horror elements that I loved so much have disappeared in all but the Major Briggs story. The show is not focused in the slightest, with soap, sitcom, detective story and supernatural horror all cycling through instead of meshing. I would have thought that something this popular would be more zeroed in on a particular tone or element, whereas this is chaotic nonsense.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 13, 2020 3:02:08 GMT
Disc 7 (s2 e16-19) update
Before I begin, I wish to note that the menu screen for this disc is 63 seconds of cops eating donuts.
This ties in to my thinking on this show: It's dumb. It's fun, it's a good soapy sitcom kind of goofy. I'm baffled as to why this is so loved, though. In the end, it's really just cops eating donuts. I like that, but if this is such high art, then so is NCIS or Pie in the Sky (actually, Pie in the Sky is pretty great and would probably be hated by everyone here).
Anyway, the show is slowing down again. It is focusing more on Windam Earle, and I don't like Windam Earle. He's a comic book villain with no characteristics outside of "pure evil." He's tiresome. Bob was a villain that was scary because he couldn't be understood. Earle is just a madman.
I'm not sure how I feel about the town becoming all nice. This show used to be full of deceptions and bad stuff, and now everyone is falling in love and vowing to turn away from their evil ways. This is laid on heavily, and although I'm kind of enjoying how sickeningly sweet some of the romance plots are, there are altogether too many of them.
And let's see, three episodes to go and it is clear that the writers don't have the faintest idea of their endgame. This Black Lodge/White Lodge stuff would be interesting if we devoted more than ten seconds an episode to it, but we're not doing that. Instead, we've spent three episodes (maybe more) on "who is going to enter the town beauty pageant!"
This show needs to get its priorities straight.
I'll update you again once I finish season 2.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 17, 2020 3:02:14 GMT
END OF SEASON 2
Well, that was a tonal mishmash of a show that managed to entertain despite being a complete shambles of a narrative that never had any damned clue what it was doing. I mean, the show is fine, it's perfectly fine. I'll check out Fire Walk with Me, because the show was fun. It's just an unfocused mess that never develops into meaning anything at all. But hey, maybe FWWM will be some masterpiece that'll tie all of Lynch's profound statements about humanity.
I mean, fat chance. But whatever, this is still an enjoyable disaster on a scene-by-scene basis, same as it always was.
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Post by Pavan on Feb 18, 2020 19:29:23 GMT
^ Fire Walk with Me is actually a pretty good movie. Sheryl Lee was wonderful in that one.
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Post by Pavan on Feb 18, 2020 19:30:53 GMT
Currently watching season 3. I'm 4 episodes in and it is more Lynchian than the previous two seasons combined. 4th episode is pretty funny. MacLachlan is doing a pretty good job.
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chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
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Post by chris3 on Feb 19, 2020 0:49:16 GMT
Currently watching season 3. I'm 4 episodes in and it is more Lynchian than the previous two seasons combined. 4th episode is pretty funny. MacLachlan is doing a pretty good job. Totally agreed. The season 2 finale really sets off Lynch's wild side and the show never returns to normalcy again. Have you seen Fire Walk with Me? I only ask because quite a bit of the season 3 narrative ties into the film (and also because it's amazing).
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Post by Pavan on Feb 19, 2020 4:55:57 GMT
Currently watching season 3. I'm 4 episodes in and it is more Lynchian than the previous two seasons combined. 4th episode is pretty funny. MacLachlan is doing a pretty good job. Totally agreed. The season 2 finale really sets off Lynch's wild side and the show never returns to normalcy again. Have you seen Fire Walk with Me? I only ask because quite a bit of the season 3 narrative ties into the film (and also because it's amazing). Yes it is surprisingly good.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 19, 2020 23:26:08 GMT
^ Fire Walk with Me is actually a pretty good movie. Sheryl Lee was wonderful in that one. Fire Walk with Me was REALLY good. When it didn't suck. So it was really good about 40% of the time. I liked almost everything to do with Laura. The rest of this movie is complete shit.
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Post by urbanpatrician on Feb 19, 2020 23:43:20 GMT
I feel the same as you. Lynch is a fun director. All his movies are entertaining, and he's the king of the disturbing..... he loves doing the couple of virgin mary female characters who undergo a severe loss of innocence through transforming into a dark tale of prostitution and etc. And for the most part, that's the stuff that rocks me, so I'm all cool with him doing that many times.
But I find it strange people are so narrowed out by Lynch they don't realize he's far from the only director who does this kind of stuff. There a lot of surreal supernatural directors around. Dude....just...... Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr. is far from the king of all culture that they can dominate 25% of all conversations on IMDB. (and here)
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 20, 2020 1:49:45 GMT
I feel the same as you. Lynch is a fun director. All his movies are entertaining, and he's the king of the disturbing..... he loves doing the couple of virgin mary female characters who undergo a severe loss of innocence through transforming into a dark tale of prostitution and etc. And for the most part, that's the stuff that rocks me, so I'm all cool with him doing that many times. But I find it strange people are so narrowed out by Lynch they don't realize he's far from the only director who does this kind of stuff. There a lot of surreal supernatural directors around. Dude....just...... Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr. is far from the king of all culture that they can dominate 25% of all conversations on IMDB. (and here) Laura Palmer makes a spectacular innocent soiled by the world and forced to put on guises for each person around her. I dug all of that, and those elements were enough to save the movie. My problem with FWWM (and the show, too) is that it uses the supernatural elements without rhyme or reason. At its heart, FWWM is just about someone suffering from abuse and creating "characters" to live a life outside of it. At its heart, the show was... unfocused. But key dramatic elements include the search for "goodness" that various characters undergo in the last stage of the second season, as well as looking into the fractured life of Laura Palmer from the outside, seeing someone new each time. And then we get the Black Lodge. It's a macguffin that serves no purpose to the core meanings of the narrative. I really liked the beginning of season 2 when it leaned really heavily into those horror elements, but then the show didn't develop them. It just assumed that "scary is scary." But scary isn'tscary if it is obvious that there will be no payoff (see the finale of season 2). I'm okay with not getting explanations, but the genre elements should support the dramatic elements. By this, I mean that if you want to make a story about... well, a woman who never lets anyone near her, who tries to go it alone and hates herself for pushing back the people who love her (which only furthers her downward spiral), you can enhance that by making her a princess with ice powers named Elsa. A simple picture, but it works, doesn't it? The genre element (ice powers) support the emotional element (cold person who won't let anyone in). What the hell does the Black Lodge have to do with Laura Palmer? Or anyone else in Twin Peaks?
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Post by urbanpatrician on Feb 20, 2020 2:03:51 GMT
I feel the same as you. Lynch is a fun director. All his movies are entertaining, and he's the king of the disturbing..... he loves doing the couple of virgin mary female characters who undergo a severe loss of innocence through transforming into a dark tale of prostitution and etc. And for the most part, that's the stuff that rocks me, so I'm all cool with him doing that many times. But I find it strange people are so narrowed out by Lynch they don't realize he's far from the only director who does this kind of stuff. There a lot of surreal supernatural directors around. Dude....just...... Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr. is far from the king of all culture that they can dominate 25% of all conversations on IMDB. (and here) What the hell does the Black Lodge have to do with Laura Palmer? Or anyone else in Twin Peaks? In FWWM, I ignored the Black Lodge elements because they were more brief. It's during the Twin Peaks series the Black Lodge stuff gets expanded, and makes me go...huh? So yeah... I'm in the same boat as you. Mysterious entities are nice and all, but it can't just only make sense to Lynch. It's not like he's a freeflowing surrealist like Otomo and Kon and Akira movies like that. He's attempting to tie his items together, and in doing so, people can wonder about stuff like the Black Lodge which I agree with you is pretty stupid.
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Post by Pavan on Feb 21, 2020 18:16:27 GMT
That 8th episode! What the fuck was that all about? but i really liked the vibe of it.
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Post by getclutch on Feb 23, 2020 17:34:52 GMT
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Post by Joaquim on Feb 23, 2020 19:50:25 GMT
Was randomly thinking about the season 2 finale this past week so I watched it again and god damn it was like listening to the main theme for the first time again. Chills
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Post by Pavan on Feb 24, 2020 13:06:32 GMT
Finished season 3. Still processing some of it. The good stuff was great and Lynch had a field day with his trademark surreal stuff while the filler stuff was 'meh' and unnecessarily prolonged the story. MacLachlan did a pretty good job.
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