Argobot

LostInTheMovies, I really enjoyed your take on the movie. Your insights have been so much fun to read and I can't wait to hear more. While I don't necessarily disagree with what your suggesting about Laura accepting her dark side in the end, I think I might disagree with how the movie reacts to that final decision. It's why I asked Chris if the movie ever gives Laura a chance to save herself from her death or if her death is fated. I know it's literally fated because it's what kicks of Twin Peaks the TV show, but I can never tell if the movie-universe gives Laura any outs. The Log Lady confronts her outside of the Bang Bang Bar and says something along the line of "when a fire like this starts, it's very hard to put out." That to me suggests that Laura has some agency in what's happening to her and if she managed to pull back from the sex and drugs, maybe she could save herself from Bob. Looking at it that way, it's hard to see the end of the movie as a success on Laura's part. That might be a depressing interpretation of the film, but I think it's almost just as depressing to believe that Laura accepting herself is also what triggers her death. I don't think the movie is bad because Laura dies, I've just never been able to get a good read on what it's trying to say about fate and people. Maybe I'm too naive about what it's like to be a young woman in Laura's situation and I'm looking for an escape that just wouldn't exist. One thing about the ring though. I like imagining that it is not literally connected to the Black Lodge. Laura and Leland see Teresa Banks wearing it, so it has a connection for both of them to their vices. Laura seeing it every where is a reflection of her fear that she is Teresa Banks, and wearing the ring in the end is her acceptance of that fact. Maybe not wearing the ring, like Cooper suggestions, would be a sign that Laura is no longer like Teresa and could therefore hope for a better fate. Then again, maybe the ring is just the Black Lodge manifesting a sign of who Bob will murder next. Who knows!

I haven't watched it but everything I've read about it makes me really dubious, so my suggestion wasn't super serious. It would be kind of interesting to watch a current show that is so clearly influenced by old Twin Peaks in the lead up to new Twin Peaks, to kind of bridge the gap between the two, but not if the current show is actively bad.

I suggest a Wayward Pines watch to fill the gap until new Twin Peaks is out.

Man, I really love this movie. I've seen it three times now and it keeps getting better and more interesting with each rewatch. How ballsy of Lynch to start the Twin Peaks movie with a completely un-Twin Peaks town and detective. Everything about the Chris Isaak stuff in the beginning and his experience with the shadow Twin Peaks - the mean versions of Andy, Lucy, and Truman; Teresa Banks' corpse vs angelic Laura's; the dirty version of the Double R that isn't staffed with ridiculously beautiful women - is such a great foil to the main show. I almost think the first thirty minutes of this movie are the best (almost!) because of how efficiently they tear down audience expectations. You wanted quirky Twin Peaks?? Well here's a small, crappy, realistic American town instead.

This movie is a testament to how great Sheryl Lee is as Laura Palmer. Also, it has my favorite dirty bar music. I went to Noir City in SF this year and I swear they played this song in the break between movies. I absolutely love it.

I tried to have as few expectations going into this episode as possible, because I honestly had no idea where it would end. I'm mostly happy with how everything got wrapped up, except for the Peggy and Stan thread (for as cute as their declarations were, I think those characters and their dynamic is much more interesting when they were friends). Joan got the standout send off of the whole cast. Molly Lambert in her Grantland review of this episode made the great point that Joan has had the biggest arc out of anyone on the show; she went from a woman who believed in and worked to uphold patriarchal structures, to the owner of Holloway and Harris. I'm glad her happy ending didn't involve being tied down to that CA real estate guy, and it seems like Joan was pretty happy about that too. Who else was pleased that Harry Crane's last scene was sulking out of the office while holding a tin of cookies? And now for the really big question: how do people interpret the ending? I saw it as cynical juxtaposition of Don's Nirvana with the Nirvana that is being sold through the Coke commercial. The idea being that all emotions, even enlightenment, are manufactured and sold to us. I've seen a lot of interpretations that suggest the ending means Don actually went back and made the Coke commercial and that hippie retreat was his inspiration. That seems too clean for this show and undercuts a lot of the interesting progress Don made over the past few episodes, if in the end all he does is go back for that One Great Pitch. Maybe someone who interprets the ending in that way has an explanation for why it works for them?

I see what you're saying Syntheticgerbil, about how this stuff can kind of start looking like hypocrisy after awhile. I'm not saying that no one is allowed to watch something with problematic content and call themselves a feminist (it would be impossible to do this anyway) but I do wish there was a little more introspection about this stuff. There is this definite attitude that you can be one of the Good Ones by attacking an easy target (your Witchers, your Bayonettas) and then not have to examine anything else in your cultural diet and that is frustrating to see play out online. Again, I want to reiterate that I think it's impossible to avoid this shit because it's everywhere. Anyone who says they have a 100% problem free cultural taste is kidding themselves. I do think that we can all be better at being honest wrt to the flaws in the shows we like.

I like the theme of feeding off others, both literally and figuratively, if only because it supports the cannibalism theory! Also, Weiner has a great interview with the NY Times today about how little he cares what the audience wants from the finale and it's all kinds of wonderful: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/arts/television/matthew-weiner-the-creator-of-mad-men-prepares-for-another-fade-to-black.html?ref=arts&smid=tw-nytimes

Yeah, it's definitely left ambiguous but I assume it was cannibalism. The set up was just too involved for it to have been something simple as murder.

How did everyone read the WWII vet's story about the Germans. I assumed he ate them but other reactions I've read online make it sound like he only killed the Germans.

Haven't rewatched the ep yet, but I remember really enjoying all the callbacks in it. Can't wait to see the finale again, especially since I've now seen FWWM.

I definitely agree that this movie's sexual themes have an obvious feminist interpretation. Penetrating your characters with a phallic weapon (see: almost all horror movies) is pretty clear in its meaning. What I'm less convinced about is the idea that Alien is feminist because Ripley is a woman and men don't listen to her. Sexism and gender are not present enough in the film to support that argument, for me at least. All the gender issues are what we bring to the movie and I've never been a big supporter of Death to the Author.

I want to pushback against this idea that Ripley's interactions with the rest of the crew are directly informed by her gender. Her character is set up as the standard second-in-command bore who is killed before the movie ends. At its core, Alien is just a slasher movie in space. It came out on the heels of Carpenter's Halloween and definitely owes a lot to that movie. If Ripley had been played by a man, the character would be nothing more than an expandable sidekick. That's why it was such a shock in 1979, audiences were expecting Dallas to be the movie's big hero. Weaver's presences adds an unavoidable gender dynamic, but one that the audience puts on the movie, not what is actually present in the film. She's not a Final Girl and her femininity is never established beyond the mention of her daughter. This makes it easier to not read traditional gender dynamics in any of the scenes where Dallas or Ash or any other male crew member disagrees with her. It's also what helps make the underwear scene so much more visceral; for the first time the audience is really confronted with Ripley's femaleness and it makes us fear for her in a way that movie has never allowed us to up until that point. Is it okay to call a movie feminist just because its main character is a competent woman? Ripley certainly is a great character, maybe in no small part because she is a woman and subverts standard horror movie expectations. Is that all we need for something to be considered feminist? I don't know if it's a failing of society or feminist theory, but labelling a movie as feminist has never sat right with me, mostly because I'm never quite sure what people mean by it.

Earle's creepy white face and black teeth at the beginning of this episode was the highlight for me. Genuinely unnerving because it goes uncommented on and then ramps up to something even more unnerving. The rest of this episode was not very good.

In my perfect world, this podcast would have been 45~ minutes of just Betty talk, since her plot is what resonated with me the most. Giving any other character life-threatening cancer so close to the end would have felt like a cliche, but with Betty it feels so expected. I know realize there was no way that this character was making it out of this show alive. Betty is the receiver of all the ills of this world and those ills have metastasized to kill her (This is both symbolically true and factually true; I bet the only reason Betty smoked was so she could stay skinny to fit the standard of what a woman from her background should look like). It seems so unfair that the character with the least agency and freedom has the roughest ending, but like Sally said, we love the tragedy of it all. How insulting that Betty's doctor doesn't even tell her the news of her cancer; he shares it with Henry with Betty off to the side. She's never been allowed to be more than a pretty doll passed between the men in her life (her father, Don, Henry, Gene, her sons) and is denied respect right up to the end. Choosing to not receive treatment and accept her fate is the first completely independent choice Betty has made on this show. It's almost relieving to see her finally take action, even if that action will lead to her death. What a great way to send off such a complicated character (I agree with what was said on the cast; Betty is wonderful and the hatred she receives from much of the Mad Men viewing audience is completely unwarranted).

The Cooper/Zane scene will be even better if it's Zane's last appearance on the show. First he pours his heart out to Cooper about being head-over-heels in love, then he gets a telegram (??) and is never heard from again. I hope the telegram was from James Cameron.

I was also kind of amazed everyone forgot the Peggy/Pete scene, until I thought about how the show really works to make you forget it. Outside of that one moment, Peggy and Pete never directly address their shared past. The writing in later episodes (and a lot of the non-verbal acting) displays a shared history of some kind between these two characters that is clearly significant, but since nothing is explicit it's really easy to forget the details and only pay attention to the larger picture. The surface-level glimpse at the Peggy/Pete relationship makes it feel more realistic, like you're actually watching two people with hidden motives and interests interact, versus watching two characters with well-established and repeated backstories. I especially like that Peggy's character is not defined by her decision to give up her son. It clearly affects her emotionally, but it's not her whole identity. It makes Peggy's line to Stan about not knowing lots of things about lots of people much more significant.

So many beautiful callbacks in this episode. Besides the threat of Diana showing up again, I thought this was an amazing episode. For as unrealistic as Joan's savior boyfriend is, I find myself really wanting her to end up happy. I don't really care where the other characters land -- I fully trust Weiner to do them justice even if they don't get a happy ending -- but I really want Joan to be in a good place. I was so distraught when she was the only one who didn't have a national ad campaign assigned to her during that McCann meeting, especially after Don flat out told her that she'd have to let go of Avon for the possible Sterling Cooper West. Give Joan what she wants, Mad Men!

Yeah, amazing

Remain this episode On the Wings of Lore

Does anyone understand the meaning behind Earle using the same drugs as Gerard? I get that on the surface it's supposed to tie those characters together - and therefore tie Earle to the Black Lodge and Bob - but what does it actually mean in the world of Twin Peaks? Gerard used the drugs to suppress to Mike, but Earle used them to appear crazy. That's some amazing drug, apparently. Also, how do you fake being crazy??

The early Betty/Glen stuff demonstrates Betty's stunted emotional development. She definitely revels in the attention, and she's so childish that she doesn't see what's wrong in the situation. Contrast that to Don's flirting with Sally's friend. He definitely knows what's going on and yet continues to encourage this girl. Sally is full justified in calling him out.

I think Joan has become one of the most human characters on this show. She definitely did not start out that way. In earlier seasons, she was quick to use her looks to demean other people (particularly women), but has managed to move past that to become a truly empathetic person. It's a nice contrast to the critics leveled at beautiful Don and Betty in this episode. Joan has probably had the most growth out of any character on this show, including Peggy, who has grown professionally but is still really stunted emotionally. To answer the question raised on the cast: there's no way Joan was being serious about giving up her kid. I rewatched that scene and it's clear from their conversation that Joan is throwing this guy's unsaid, but heavily implied ultimatum in his face. Maybe there are shades of seriousness in her attack, probably due to the incredible frustration of being a single mother in that period (or any period), but I doubt it extends farther than that.

Really loved when this show suggested that being arrested twice for prostitution made Jose a hardened criminal and not a victim of horrible circumstances. Where did all the previous care for the women characters go? Back when I first watched Twin Peaks, a friend suggested that I stop after Heather Graham shows up. So I watched all the mid-season 2 garbage and then quit right before this episode and have only seen the finale. My friend gave me very bad advice as I mostly enjoyed what I saw in this episode. Even Earle manages to be a little creepy and threatening (although, how nice of the Man Who Murders People to maintain an honorable chess code that he must obey because he is such an honorable MURDERER). Annie is the Dawn of Twin Peaks.

So far this show is really not selling me on the Diane character. She's so underwritten and exists soley for Don to cast his own marital problems against. It's frustrating to watch, especially in a episode with so many of Don's other women who have actual personalities and agency. I have no idea what the take away from Pima is meant to be. Peggy is still idealistic about romance? We learned that in the previous episode with the impromptu Paris plans, so it felt redundant this week. I'm fine with Mad Men introducing new characters in its final episodes, but not ones who are so incredibly unformed. If this was meant as a place-setting episode it was a really poorly executed one.