TWIN PEAKS--THE RETURN.

After 18 episodes of the new TWIN PEAKS, I have to say that I was underwhelmed. I went into the series with an open mind and knowing that Lynch was not going to tell a traditional story in a traditionally cinematic way. And on that I was right. However, while I was hoping to see something that I would find both artistically pleasing and challenging, I was left with a true mess--a situation in which I was actually hoping that an outside hand had stepped in and filed down the hard edges of Lynch's unsettling vision. 

To give you an example of this--I was thinking that I would like to see a work that might challenge me the way MULLHOLLAND DRIVE did, but without the confusing excesses of INLAND EMPIRE.

That's really about the gist of what I want to say about this series. I'm glad it was produced and I'm happy that a lot of my friends got a big kick out of it, but ultimately I did not enjoy it and I am not completely happy that I invested so much of my leisure time watching it. Maybe that will change, later. There have been works by artists that I initially disliked and later came to enjoy. But I rather doubt that will ever happen with this (hopefully) final series of TWIN PEAKS. 

Lynch does not tell linear stories. Also, he is obsessed with the idea of alternate reality and enjoys plucking at the threads of reality and our perception of consciousness. He is the cinematic equivalent of a jazz musician. He gives you glimpses of notes that your square ass can follow, and then intersperses those lines of notes with a litany of discordant melodies.  Lynch has given us inconceivable puzzles, but he has also failed to give us the keys to solving them. If there is meaning in the stories that he has chosen to tell the past few years, then the explanations for them reside only with him, and he isn't willing to share the answers within the body of those works. He even has told us as much.

You either get it, or you don't.

I get it...but just as I'm not a big jazz fan, I have grown weary of Lynch's shtick. I just doesn't work for me.

The ending was a moment of classic horror, though. I'll give it that much.

"My cow is not pretty, but it's pretty to me."-- David Lych.

"It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It is better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for someone else." -- David Lynch.

The author of the confusion.

The puppet.