Something I think a lot of people aren't getting when they try to rationalize the disappointment of old fans if that Twin Peaks used to be a character-driven show. One of the things that made Twin Peaks so successful and influential was it's extremely strong characterization.
You were following the characters in Twin Peaks. The lore and the mystery were the backdrop that occasionally reached from the background and gave you a good shake. But first and foremost, Twin Peaks was about the dramatic lives and intersections of a whole town's worth of characters.
Even the season two finale, which people say is the show's weirdest, was character driven. Hawk warned Cooper he has to face his shadow self with perfect courage. Cooper goes in alone to save Annie and a vigilant Harry waits outside for hours. Andy, knowing what is going on over his head, tends to Harry by offering him breakfast rather than ask what's going on. In the meantime, Benjamin Horne is confessing to Donna that he's his biological father. Doc Hayward, in a break from character, reacts violently and throws him into the fireplace while Donna sobs and screams about her paternity. The onus is on Donna's mother for the first time, an inconspicuous character, who suddenly is shaded with a history of betrayal. Audrey Horne chains herself to a bank vault to protest her father's development, Pete and Thomas detonate a bomb, and Leo is trapped beneath a spider cage in Windom Earle's hideout.
The hugest and most palpable difference is that old Twin Peaks focused on people and characters and relationships. It was about what made them hurt and what made them scared and what made them cry. We saw deep into their hearts and souls and cared for them. And when crazy inter-dimensional travel happened, it was still about them. It was still about them and what they wanted and how it was going to affect everyone around them.
New Twin Peaks is not like that at all. We don't get to know any characters. Characters rarely make appearances in consecutive episodes. They don't have deep conversations. Dougie is literally a non-character. That's how polar opposite the show is. The show's protagonist is a vegetable who cannot think, barely feels, and cannot actualize any individual motivation.
The old show had so many funny and charming character moments. It was so quotable. Season 3 has no fish in the percolators.
The reason the new show is leaving me cold and disappointed constantly is because there is no heart to it anymore. It is completely devoid of emotion. There are rare scenes with Albert and Gordon, or Gordon and Denise, but everything else is pure surface-level fuckery based on the lore and no characters.
When every single character you meet is presented as an enigmatic question mark, you can't feel compassion and interest in them. They become set pieces and props for a cosmic mystery. We are regularly meeting people we've never met before and then saying goodbye. Because they don't matter. Only the faceless space demon matters.
I was on board for all manner of twisted ambiguity. I was not on board for an eighteen hour movie with no protagonist.
People laughed, but for me, the best scene of the show is when Bobby sees Laura's picture and cries. Because I know Bobby. I know what he's been through and how Laura affected him. I know why it hurts him and how it takes him back to a person he isn't anymore. We meet Bobby grown up, but that scene makes him a teenager again and it's really sad. Laura Palmer casts a long shadow.
Bizarre trips through the atom bomb, scenes totally detached from character and location, do not make me happy the show came back.
I am trying not to jump the gun. There's still a lot of show left. We'll see how it comes together. But right now, I am perpetually disappointed. No more buddy drama. No more silly side antics. No more love stories. No more character study. Just... something else.
