A preamble to any discussion about season 3; I thought season 1 was superb, with really strong characters, a good plot and was just the right length. Season 2 though is a mess. Once all the Laura/Leland Palmer stuff was done with it felt like they had lots of episodes to fill so that's when they wrote in Windham Earle and his chess game of life and death with Coop, which felt like it needed more setting up beforehand, and it also seemed like there was an awful lot of plotlines that didn't really go anywhere but were thrown in to extend the running time. I feel like the whole season would have worked better being cut down to 12 episodes but still keeping the Black Lodge stuff after the Palmer storyline ended. I also have not seen Fire Walk With Me.
With that said, I really didn't like season 3 all that much, mainly because it was so frigging weird and so many of the storylines seemed needless. I like that they got lots of the original characters back, but most of them felt like they had nothing to do:
- What was the purpose of Audrey's story? I also thought that she woke up in a mental hospital, but I don't understand the significance of that. They put quite a lot of emphasis on Billy, but we dont even meet him, do we? And her husband hears that revelation on the phone from Tina; we dont know what that was either, right?
- What was the purpose of Shelly's story? Or her daughter? Did that plot even go anywhere?
- What was the purpose of Dr. Jacobi's story? Did he even have a story, besides shouting into his webcam a lot about resisting Big Brother or whatever?
- What was the purpose of James' story? Besides hooking up with the London Tahn geezer I have no idea what James even did.
- I don't even know what to say about Sarah Palmer. First time in a TV show I've seen a woman in her 60s become a Void Face Murder Monster.
- The one story of returning characters I did enjoy was Ed & Norma finally hooking up. That one actually felt cathartic for me.
- I have no idea what the purpose of Jerry Horne was, unless it was just intended to be a silly sub-plot about being baked and lost in the forest.
- I didnt really understand the point of Sherriff Frank Truman. I guess its because the actor who played Harry either passed away or didnt want to come back and do it, but why not just make Hawk the Sherriff instead? Hawk was at least as involved in most of the investigative stuff as the Sherriff was anyway.
Okay, so new characters I have questions about:
- What was the point in Audrey's son Richard? He's a violent psycho who does a lot of awful stuff and then dies by lightning, I guess? Did Doppleganger use him to try to find another way into the Black Lodge, or something?
- Was there any point in the London geezer besides giving him a super punch so he could shatter the BOB orb?
- Why did it keep going back to Renee in the Roadhouse? Maybe I wasn't following their conversations closely enough, but did she/they serve any purpose at all except maybe as a lead-in to the music acts?
- I did not understand Tim Roth and his girlfriend at all. So they were a pair of assassins who worked for Doppleganger or something? Was there any significance to the guy who killed them, or was that just supposed to be random bad luck?
- Whats the deal with Shellys son-in-law Steven? So hes a cokehead whos having an affair and then is hiding in the woods in order to kill someone? Or was he going to kill himself and that man just happened to walk by and spook them?
- What was the deal with the couple in the very first episode who decide to have sex and then are killed by the Experiment? I thought whatever was going on there would serve a purpose to the season as a whole (maybe some kind of facility trying to observe or find a way into the Black Lodge?) but aside from Coop briefly passing through when he managed to escape the Black Lodge it didnt seem to come back again at all?
Other general thoughts:
- I liked most of the Las Vegas characters, although I wasn't entirely sure why that businessman was threatening Dougie's friend in order to kill Dougie, or what purpose Tim Roth & his girlfriend served really. They worked for Doppleganger, but I suppose that brings up another point that I didn't really understand what Doppleganger's deal was - was he supposed to be a small time gang leader? Not really what I had expected BOB would do once he got out.
- I felt like the Dougie plotline went on a bit too long, but it was a good payoff when Coop finally woke up and immediately started taking control of the situation.
- I didnt really understand Dougie was he supposed to be a clone of Coop? Near the end Coop says to the one-armed man he needed to make another, so was that suggesting he created Dougie? Was that as an opposite to BOB-Cooper or something? One of the FBI guys said that there was no record of Dougies existence before 1991 or whatever, so he must have appeared around the time BOB took over Coop, which suggests maybe an accident or by-product or those events. Does that mean the real Dougie went back to the Black Lodge after Coop came out, or he was an empty vessel who disappeared when Coop came back?
-Episode 8 was a crazy, glorious mindflip. I didnt honestly understand most of it, but I guess The Experiment (which am I right in thinking was also Judy?) was either created by the first atomic blast, or made its way into our world/reality thanks to said blast, and it birthed BOB? Did it do the same for Mike the one-armed man too? As it says in either season 1 or 2 that Mike and BOB used to be partners and Mike was the only person BOB was afraid of. I have no idea of the significance of the frog-insect, the ghostly Woodsmen or the Got a light guy.
-The stuff in the Black Lodge was really great. As I said to you the other week on twitter, I would love to watch a full-on horror film directed by Lynch. I should really watch his other works as I dont think Ive seen any of them. The noise that Naido (the eyeless woman) made was really creepy, and the first time Coop meets her in episode 2 or 3 where its edited with missing frames was really weird and unsettling.
-What purpose did Hastings (Matthew Lillard) serve? I dont even really understand the breadcrumb trail left by Major Briggs, so I may have missed something.
-I really liked the Mitchum brothers, although I dont entirely understand what was going on with Candy. Was she just generally dim-witted, or somehow also a product of the Black Lodge?
-I really liked Diane too, although obviously she turns out to be a doppleganger of some kind as well.
-What was the deal with the bleeding guy in the police cells? He seemed like he was mid-way through transforming into a zombie.
-I quite liked the last two episodes. I understood that Coop saved Laura, but rewriting history upset things as it sent Sarah Palmer crazy. Maybe whatever he did didnt affect her because she was some kind of cosmic entity so she was aware of Coop changing the course of history?
I dunno, man. Theres a lot of stuff going on and a lot of characters, but I mostly felt like it was random things happening to characters with no development and no arcs, and some of those things happened to coalesce into the actual story towards the end with Coop, Doppleganger, Gordon, etc. Although Im fully open to accept that I may have missed key information, either by not paying attention closely enough or having not known key backstory due to not being a particularly big fan. I dunno. Im glad I watched it but honestly Id hoped it would get a neater conclusion than that. Maybe I just dont know David Lynch well enough given that I expected something clearer and easier to follow.