#if nothing else let this post be an impassioned recommendation of Fire Walk with Me

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I've been watching Twin Peaks for awhile in my quest to consume the Hannibal Cinematic Universe (i.e. stuff that served as an inspiration for the show in some capacity). I was sick this week and speed-watched the rest of season 2 I had left.

I'm probably in the small minority here, but I actually got more hooked on season 2 than season 1. No, most of it wasn't exactly "good" - the fact that they were grasping for subplots to pad out the rest of the season was pretty apparent - but for some reason I was still more engaged. Aside from "The Skill to Catch a Killer," most of season 1 just kind of failed to land for me - in honestly similar ways to season 2, but I failed to see the former as some kind of masterpiece that the latter fell short of.

I actually think that even though I'd excise parts of it, I enjoyed the Cooper/Annie romance more than most people - when you take out Cooper marveling over her ~childlike wonder~, they have kind of a cute neurodivergent for neurodivergent vibe going on. And I liked the character and I'm frustrated there's not more exploration into her in the revival. The finale was also great - the extended black lodge sequence was just a masterpiece in horror in the way I expect from Lynch - where the scariness comes from how surreal and wrong it all feels.

But yeah, in general, I don't think I love the show much. Possibly Lynch just makes better films than TV, because even in season 1, the subplots felt a bit too extended and stretched too thin. Also it suffered from my bugbear with TV, which is that it felt like a precursor to the bingeable Netflix limited series - that is, it wasn't nearly episodic enough. Hannibal has been my gold standard for a show with an overall arc in which every episode feels contained and like its own artistic statement, and this show fell waaaay short of that. Very ahead of its time (derogatory). I was always curious what Mulholland Drive might look like as a TV series, as Lynch originally planned, but watching this show made me grateful that his wings were clipped in that regard.

Speaking of which - I watched Fire Walk with Me with my best friend, and that film, I absolutely adored. My best friend agreed and said, as the credits were rolling, "That was better than... all of Twin Peaks," and I completely agree. I'm kind of shocked that it was poorly reviewed at the time, because it's one of Lynch's best films for me, right up there with Mulholland Drive. It helps that I was prepared for it to be not a deep dive into the lore, but a character study of Laura Palmer, and in that it's absolutely wonderful. (Though the smattering of cosmic horror and weirdness is also fun and gives it some unique flavour.) Sheryl Lee is absolutely mesmerizing in the main role - her body language and expressiveness is just beautiful and unlike anything I've ever seen.

And the movie honestly made me care about Laura in a way that the characters weeping over her in the show's pilot never did. I was intrigued by the narrative mechanism of a dead girl as the gaping hole in the middle of the narrative, but frankly the way it was done in the show didn't inspire me at all - the premise of a tragic dead girl who was desired by all but understood by none had just been done so many times, and the show, imo, didn't comment on it in a compelling way, narratively or stylistically. But this film, on the other hand, really sold me the narrative of Laura - constrained by forces beyond her control, but still her own distinct person rather than just a symbol; doomed by the narrative but so much more than her death. And the visuals and soundscape of the film just beautifully capture the creepy tension that's so often present in Lynch's work, but also this profound and inescapable melancholy. It's an incredibly visceral movie, but absolutely worth watching.

Right now, I'm three episodes in with The Return (season 3), and I'm... not sure I'm liking that any more than the original show.

I was never sold on the mundane subplots and folksy interludes of the original show, so I was excited for more of a straight-up horror story. But I'm not sure I'm sold on what they're doing with the revival? I think, despite the enthusiastic reviews, that it is falling victim to 21st century TV revival bad habits. My best friend also watched these first few episodes with me, and he commented that Lynch was getting a little carried away with modern special effects technology, and honestly I agree. The Red Room is a great horror setpiece partly BECAUSE of how understated and low-budget it is. It's not elaborate! It's simple design that's rendered uncanny through how familiar its surface-level trappings are to us. Extended sequences of Cooper floating through space and getting engulfed in purple smoke and taken into a weird purple dimension honestly just... feel like they're trying too hard to be out there.

That said, there was a really cool sequence that really relied on visual glitchiness and the stop-motion effect in a way that really mounted the tension in that eerie Lynchian way, and reminded me a lot of the sequences in Inland Empire. One thing I really love about Lynch is the way he explores the concept of simulation, and the horror of cinema itself, and that sequence really captured that feeling for me. So I am interested in what else he does with this series, and in terms of where the plot is heading.

But honestly another problem I'm having with it is that - although I found the more mundane character subplots and soap opera antics of the town in the original series to be tedious - I think that not confining the revival largely to the town itself is a mistake. This revival is making me realize that I actually liked how small stakes the horror story of the original Twin Peaks was - yes, there's an entire eldritch dimension lying alongside the town, but the stakes are mostly confined to how this affects the town and its people. I don't care for the way this revival is stretched out over basically the entire country - it feels, again, like it's falling victim to the 21st century need to make the stakes consistently bigger and bigger, because clearly that's the only way to make people care. The original run of the series was honestly refreshing in that regard, in a way that I didn't even realize as I was watching it. The seemingly larger scale of season 3 just makes it feel kind of emotionally cold to me. As I said, I'm curious about what's going to happen, but I'm not sure I'm going to be very emotionally invested.

Also, as an aside, I don't love the amount of naked women we see alongside clothed men. The big discussion on Lynch is always how much he toes the line between the male gaze and the women's subjectivity being molded via their awareness of, and intentional self-presentation towards, the male gaze. It's a tension that produces an interesting campy effect. But I don't see any of that kind of self-awareness here - the naked women just feel like set dressing, and it's uncomfortable.