Super Frat

Okay, there’s going to be some spoilers ahead, so fair warning. Although I was a fan of the original series, I could only get through four episodes of the current one. That in a nutshell, is what I think of it.

I may still review the rest of the season, but I have to say it was brutal just to get through those episode. Lynch and his crew try so hard to be weird and disturbing, it just comes off as tiresome after a while. The pacing also feels all wrong. The original show, for it’s fault, drove things forward at a good clip. One of the things that drove it forward was the energy from Kyle Mclaughlin.

His character, despite the weirdness, was like Agent Mulder only chipper. For Lynch to dull that in this reintroduction of him just makes the whole series drag. We get it, Cooper was trapped in the black lodge for 25 years and it messed him up. But that’s not the Dale Cooper I remember. The Cooper I remember would come out of that lodge using a trick to keep his sanity or maybe just not be effected by it at all. That certainly would’ve moved things forward.

Basically, it four episodes of “C’mon! Get on it with it!” Even Miguel Ferrer, who plays Albert, seemed dull. In the original series, he was such an intense asshole! Now he’s just kind of there.

But the part that really doesn’t work for me is that nothing makes sense after four episodes. There seems no consistency in the Black Lodge and the physics (or magic) of it. In the series, it seemed almost unknowable and now, Lynch spends so much time there, it becomes boring. Visual after visual, new character after new character— You just lose the thread. In the original show, at least you knew the characters were all in one town.

I may go back and watch the rest of it anyway, just to see if he pulls it together, but it feels like a chore and that doesn’t sound like entertainment to me.

I give the new Twin Peaks (first four episodes) four out of 10 keggers.