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- I really liked all of Season One, all of Season Three, and Firewalk With Me. I liked Firewalk With Me on my first viewing. Im interested in reading Jennifer Lynchs The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer at some point.
- I liked approximately 3 episodes from Season Two: Episodes 1 & 2 and Episode 7.
- I really struggled to watch the rest of Season 2. Ive only been able to force myself to watch up to Episode 14. I really did not enjoy these episodes (3-6 & 8-14) at all. The latter group of episodes (8-14) was particularly bad, and these episodes seemed to become progressively worse, for me.
- I do plan on eventually trying (again) to at least make it through the rest of Season Two (i.e., Episodes 15 22, the ones which I still have not seen), in order to appreciate the final episode of Season Two (which many folks here have recommended as worthwhile)
- On the other hand, I really liked Season Three as a whole (despite the fact that its very different from Season One), and I even liked each individual episode of Season Three. And while I did indeed like certain episodes of Season Three a lot more than others, for me personally, none of the episodes in Season Three were as bad as Episodes 3-6 & 8-14 of Season Two (though again, I havent yet seen Episodes 15-22 of Season 2).
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That's really interesting that you don't like the first chunk of season 2 - I really am wracking my brain as to what might be different in it
Although yeah man - definitely watching the finale of S2
as you get into the last few episodes, some signs of life start to come up. There's still bad stuff, but it seems to be going somewhere again. Then Dave comes back for the finale and it's just a great 2 hours with the thickest dose of dark wood atmosphere the show ever managed to pull off...
Update: I did end up watching Season Two Episodes 15 - 22 (also picked up Jennifer Lynchs The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, incidentally), and Id definitely agree, the final episode of Season Two was excellent.
And so I ended up finding merit in all of the Lynch-directed episodes of Season Two (all four of them: 1-2, 7, and 22), but personally did not find much artistic or entertainment value in any of the other episodes from Season Two.
And while I can see how others might have found them at least entertaining, I guess I would have a hard time seeing how any of the non-Lynch episodes of Season Two could hold up as art.
On that point, it was interesting to see Mark Frosts comment in the foreword to The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (which I just picked up), where he actually makes a specific distinction between the first 'nine hours' of the Original Series, and the rest of the production:
https://books.google.com/books?id=AtAmwA7mK5gC&pg=PT4&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false
...a dream conjured into life by two friends over twenty years ago in a lightning strike of creative freedom and exuberance, a vision shared and brought to life...
With no studio leaning on us, over the course of eighteen months we produced nine hours of the show in splendid isolation, before a minute of it was ever broadcast. This was, in the best sense of the word, an amateur endeavor: driven by our love of the work, not the cold-blooded professionalism that drives most of this industry
Three principles guided the work: Trust our instincts. Fight for what we believe. Dont let other peoples fears become ours
David has always felt we made a mistake early on, giving in to heavy network pressure... I agree with him now. We let their fears become ours and it cracked the magic
Coming back to another point discussed a few pages back, in relation to Season Three:
...More music [in Season Three] would have been good, too. I won't do it, just because of the time involved, but I have thought about going over the show with it's own OST and some spare use of the original show's ost and putting in some score to a lot of the long silent scenes...
Agreed. More frequent use of the existing OST would likely have gone a long way. I can understand the appeal of using certain tracks only once, but if they were able to make multiple uses (by my recollection) of
'Accident Farewell', it's not immediately clear to me why they couldn't have done the same with some of the other stellar tracks (
'Heartbreaking',
'Dark Space Low',
'The Fireman',
'The Chair') from the OST.
Having watched the final (Lynch-directed) episode of Season Two, I found it notable that music was a continuous presence in the episode: for about 42 minutes of the 50-minute runtime aside from 2 minutes in the very beginning and a 6-minute silence at the bank
there was music present continuously, helping to sustain the mood/atmosphere. And of course
the extremely powerful Under the Sycamore Trees scene was brilliantly punctuated by music, just as some of the powerful moments in Season Three were brilliantly punctuated by music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl7t5s37WbQ
Roberta Rietti: In my opinion, one of the most beautiful Ending Credits scene ever.
Music: 'Windswept', by Johnny Jewel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NPG2Fb0iy8
Thank you again, Mr. Jackpots
Music: 'Heartbreaking', by Angelo Badalamenti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUfF3gorLE
Twin Peaks: The Return - End Credits
Music: 'Dark Space Low', by Angelo Badalamenti
As I mentioned in
my previous post, I liked Season Three quite a lot (and easily prefer it over Season Two), but I do still think using the OST a bit more to create atmosphere/emotion (during the course of each episode) would have gone a long way towards bridging the gap, for fans who were not quite able to get on board with Season Three. Curious what others think about this.
