Lolo De Puzlo!

Glad you mostly enjoyed it! We will say that you have to be in a good mood to watch Fire Walk with Me: it's a powerful film, but it's incredibly upsetting, too. As for S3, it gets off to a slow start, but when it's moving, it has some of our favorite character moments in the whole series.

You’ve probably already heard this bit of show lore but, in the show’s defense re: season 2 writing, the network stepped in to force them to reveal the mystery early (something lynch never wanted to do) which forced them to come up with a bunch of new plot threads they hadn’t intended for.

I’ll also go to bat for Denise given that it was 1990 and Duchovny does a really fucking good job under the circumstances. And also in season 3 she comes back (still slightly awkwardly, but lynch as Gordon basically says “trans rights”).

As for the orientalism and lack of PoC on the show: yeah. Extremely fair criticism and probably the biggest negative thing that sits in my mind when I rewatch the show.

These are all basically the opinions most sensible people would have. I really love the show but came to it after playing Deadly Premonition with a lot of expectations and none of them were that half of it would be dedicated to the most hilariously absurd plot points imaginable. They changed TV forever with just a few episodes and then ended up going in on Nadine getting super powers. Incredible stuff.

Personally, I thought Season 2 dipped towards the middle, but picked up when Windom Earle showed up because he was an entirely absurd character and his over-the-top nonsense chessmaster villain bit was a breath of fresh air after the majority of the season had been spinning its wheels.

Entirely agreed on it feeling like they were writing by the seat of their pants. The second season makes it pretty clear they had zero plans for what to do with almost everyone in the cast long-term, even if revealing the culprit in the murder earlier than intended forced them to change things.

Also yeah, the weird orientalism of the show gets super uncomfortable at points. I was genuinely stunned watching it that no one had ever mentioned the whole weird plotline with Catherine disguising herself in yellowface for a couple of episodes. How does that never come up??

I would like to offer: Fire Walk with me while brutal is one of the best movies I have ever seen, and Twin Peaks: The Return is the single best season of television I have ever seen.

Season 2 is rough, but the other stuff meets or exceeds the quality of season one because it’s all Lynch, all the time.

Also, as a trans woman, I think Denice is mostly fine. I’d prefer if she wasn’t played by Duchovny, but she’s not a gross joke, and she’s portrayed with empathy and TBH realism for the 90s.