Frohike

Another moment of reversed footage ("backwards" blinking) seems to happen in episode 18 at 41:30, during Laura/Carrie and Dale/Richard's night drive. There's a 15 second shot from outside of the vehicle that shows Laura looking back at the car that's following them & it seems to be playing in reverse. This is the only instance I can find of this effect occurring in the Richard/Lindaverse.

I don't know if this has been suggested yet, so I apologize for any redundancy, but I'm curious to see people's opinions on this. I think that Laura's initial disappearance and scream in ep 17 is actually caused by her final awakening & scream in ep 18. We're dealing with two overlapping repercussions of Cooper's actions. Coop's hubris initially leads him to alter past events (erasing Laura's murder), only to be foiled by his future, more integrated (& sadder) self in the Richard/Lindaverse, where he tries to further rectify what he did and... successfully awakens & loops Laura back into the torment she was fated to undergo prior to season 1 episode 1. Cooper fixes his fix, effectively resetting everything. It's kind of a depressing figure 8 of a read, but it seems to mesh with the vibe of that static shot at the end that, at least to me, connotes something eternal and almost archetypal in Lynch's/Frost's mythology, the concept of the infinite, hermetically looped secret.

I had a simpler reading of that moment. The overlay happens when all of the Fireman's clues are about to come together and really can't until Cooper has this first epiphany that effectively unhinges him from the reality of the scene. He's present but also has a larger awareness, seemingly out of time, of what is occurring. Are the Fireman's hints happening at precisely that point in time? I... don't see why not, but I'm not sure that piece of temporal continuity is particularly important in the context of the registers of time & reality that Cooper begins to understand at that moment.

As a continuation of my earlier thoughts on the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice as a mirror to Cooper & Laura, I'm also struck by the parallels of the overarching Peaks mythology (Judy, BOB, etc) with certain flavors of Gnostic myth. Posted this on reddit earlier but I figured you all would enjoy picking it apart too. Judy seems to be a Lynchian equivalent to the old Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, a malevolent force that created a physical reality that contains aspects of divinity but is in fact a trap, a trick... a dream from which to awaken. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge This Demiurge really does consider everything to be 'explained' but is in fact as deceived as it is deceiving. I also find the Gnostic concept of the "divine spark" to be conspicuously perverted by Lynch's use of electricity, "black fire," and "gotta light": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Spark

Some puzzling phrases when Cooper talks to Jeffries: "--Philip? --Please be specific --The date: February 23, 1989" Jeffries skips the acknowledgement and gets straight to business. It's implied that he just needs a date to send Cooper into. It seems like Jeffries can use the same "tech" that the Fireman uses to send people anywhere at any time. I'm actually starting to wonder whether Jeffries "finding" Judy was just a lie; when BadCoop finished his conversation with Jeffries and asked about Judy he was told that he had just met Judy. I think most viewers assumed this meant the woman who opened the door. I think it was the entity behind the door: Jeffries himself. "There may be... someone. Did you ask me this?" This might imply that someone else had come to him with a similar request to go back to that night. Who could this be? Is Audrey traveling in the same space as Agent Cooper, maybe lurking behind the walls as she usually did. What did she contribute to the dream of that timeline?

I'm having a hard time understanding your statement. Cockney Hulk Smash was... fully expected and glorious. I mean, in my experience I guess. It sounds like you didn't enjoy it so much, but I'm not sure that implies some trickster director who has some sort of contempt for your personal expectations.

Time for a rewatch of season 3. Also to the above poster, I think it's important to distinguish "contempt" from simply disregarding viewer expectation as a formal limitation.

I also think that it's significant that the powerful "negative" force has a name that is possibly based on the Chinese verb "to explain" (jiao dai): http://dictionary.pinpinchinese.com/definitions/t/交待-jiaodai Like the will to lock everything down and assign linear meaning is somehow an implicitly destructive force.

I'm getting hints of the Orpheus & Eurydice myth, where Orpheus is granted passage to the underworld to bring Eurydice back on the condition that he not look back until they've passed the threshold into our world. Of course this rule is broken, he looks back, Eurydice is taken away and Orpheus eventually is torn apart by Maenads and his soul taken into the Underworld be be reunited with Eurydice. This season's ending seems to be a blending of that concept and a re-imagining of what would have occurred if Orpheus had been at least partially successful and broken his own timeline before being banished into an infinite recess of possible worlds forever dictated by his muse, his Eurydice. The past dictating the future over and over again. While I'm on the subject, I enjoyed the mystical concept of dictation in this series. There are so many instances of intra-diegetic note-taking, note retrieval, memorizing coordinates, dictaphones, gramophone recordings. It's like the idea of dictation carries an obligation not only to transcribe what's being said, but to somehow transmute what's being dictated into significance at just the right places and just the right times. Take those dictations into other contexts, and they reverberate & fall apart. And as stated above, one of the core acts of dictation, recording, and eventual loss of self in that message is between Laura and Dale. That final frame was an amazing way to end it.

: - ) Probably a hieroglyph of the "smile" that Diane described as preceding her rape. I thought Jerry was yelling BIG BINOCULARS BIIIG BINOCULARS, like his altered mind assumed he was using the wrong ones (the "demagnifying" ones) I enjoyed the scene where the sound of DougieCoop's heart monitor traveled to Gordon Cole. Another moment of non-diegetic sound/music edits bleeding into the diegesis. (was Coop actually travelling electrically for a bit there, like the woodsmen?) The "heart of gold" bit with the Mitchum brothers seemed like it was playing around with the gold seed idea, particularly with Candy's weird knowing/spacey/creepy grin

I'm starting to think that Judy is in fact Diane, who is acting as a double agent for Jeffries. Completely unsubstantiated, talking out of my ass conjecture, but there it is. Also, I think this is the first time in the series that the horror of what is going on in Twin Peaks finally pierces the veil of the Roadhouse performance. Those performances are always sort of enshrined on stage and aloof, with lyrics that touch on plot elements or dynamics during the episode. They almost carry a religious vibe to them, sort of ambiently oracular. But the woman's freakout on the floor makes it clear that the darkness of Twin Peaks is finally breaching through & coming to a head. It was pretty harrowing to watch, not only because of what the woman must have been going through but also because it seemed to have broken a previously unspoken rule with these scenes, almost as if the show itself was breaking down. Stunning moment.

I'd be more annoyed by it if the direction weren't clearly fucking with viewer anticipation. I mean come on, the cherry pie scene was totally dangling Cooper in front of viewers and it was fantastic. The follow up to it in this latest episode was equally well played. That's some skilled Cooper-edging.

Milquetoast man was oddly mesmerizing.

fellintooblivion's path is a strange and difficult one.

Otherwise you'll never, in a trillion years, experience the show. You'll think you'll have experienced it, but you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness, that you think you've seen a film... on your fucking telephone. GET REAL.

Gordon and Albert were definitely speaking in code when talking about the coffee vs the milk. The blocking and positioning of Diane on a high stool was odd but purposeful, I think. When Albert pauses after suggesting "the milk... for the cat... " *Diane looks down at them* "... on the roof," it seems like he's suggesting that they not talk about the hard stuff in front of Diane who is literally sitting above them, at which point he brings out a doctored version of the photo and trails off conveniently when discussing the actual location that the fake coordinates would indicate. Re: Candy, I think her behavior definitely seems to indicate some sort of Zone exposure. Some folks compare her to Dougie, but her moments of disconnection actually remind me of Jerry's ordeal which apparently is still ongoing? Also, Chris, I think you were more flabbergasted by the torn off wound than you needed to be since it was a uh... band aid.

Jerry Horne's scene at the beginning of this episode made it seem like he has somehow channeling other characters. He almost sounds like a lost Dougie or some reverberation of Coop. Consider these lines in the context of the later Dougie scene with the cops and his inability to speak without echoing the other person: Jerry: "Someone stole my car." (<-- this really reverberates with the exploding car investigation) Ben: "What?" Jerry: "Didn't I tell you?" Ben: "Jerry, what's going on. Someone stole your car?" Jerry: "You say the same thing." (<-- again pretty close DougieCoop parallel here, like he's witnessed what Coop is doing) Ben: "What? Jerry." Jerry: "I think I'm high!" (... didn't Dougie in the Black Lodge say something along those lines? forget) Ben: "Oh good lord, Jerry." Jerry: "I DON'T KNOW WHERE I AM!" (<-- could be either Dougie or Coop in this situation) He really doesn't seem or sound like himself. It's like Dougie got into him somehow while he was perched up there in his tree. Owl, maybe, or he stumbled into the BL entrance in the woods?

I think this episode contains the most uncomfortably sustained moment of ominous ecstasy I've ever seen. Anywhere.

Anyone notice that Sonny Jim blinked backwards?

I think people's exasperation with the Lucy scenes might be causing some elements of her character to be missed. Considering how "hard-wired" and menacing the circuitry is between the Black Lodge and the diegetic "real" world (like... literal wires & pipes), I actually find Lucy's struggles -- with presence & absence, dual name confusion, wirelessness, and automated devices like the thermostat that operate while no one is looking --- to be oddly prescient of the alchemical quasi-logic that the agents just accept and assimilate. Wired systems & names are her domain, and both of those are rather charged in the Twin Peaks universe. The way she delivers her lines to Andy after her fall makes it seem like she does understand how cell phones work, but part of her finds it completely abject and wrong in spite of herself. When someone is looking for someone under an ambiguous name, or using circuitry to communicate, and/or assuming the circuitry functions seamlessly without explanation, Lucy sets them straight. In her view, these things & rituals operate with specificity, monitoring, & instructions. If something is assumed to work without monitoring, Lucy is suspicious. In Lynch's world... what IS a thermostat doing when no one is looking (glass cage, anyone)? If people start losing specificity with names, stop heeding instructions, or relay phone messages without hard wires, horrific things creep in, and apparently not just in Lucy's context. I think part of her brain functions in the Blue Rose spectrum of logic, without quite understanding why and without the ability to completely synthesize everything the way the agents do, and I think she's fascinating because of that. She's more than just a comedic prop.

I understand that "it's anime" might have felt like a slight overgeneralization. But I also think some of you are over-representing the genre with a few cherry picked titles. A huge percentage of it is, in fact, precisely the medium of "spectacle" for it's own sake that they were talking about. For every Haibane Renmei or Mushishi, there are legions more anime (that aren't limited to the shonen sector of titans or giant mechs), including "slice of life" which very often carry similar habits of breaking the fourth wall and interjecting off-color humor and fan service during odd moments.

I think you mean this interchange with his therapist: That's totally what I thought about when watching Don's "epiphany."

You guys totally forgot the scene where Peggy told Pete about their illegitimate child... basically just to punch him in the existential gut (her motivation? kind of unclear). It works all too well. See ep. 13 (Meditations in an Emergency).

There's definitely a patina of death surrounding Don. He spends large sections of the episode talking to memories of women in his life, and Katz's death brings up echoes of his first wife, Anna. All of the diner scenes have a dreamlike aura to them, as well. When they're wearing the tuxedos in the initial scene, it's actually kind of hard to visually place them in the 70's. It almost carried more of a 50's vibe, aside from Roger's mustache. The closing scene had some seriously stilted dialog and almost felt like a Twin Peaks scene. I had to rewatch it because the writing took such a weird turn, or rather the woman's delivery made the language seem strange somehow. Almost oracular. Unnerving, to say the least.

Also try some stuff outside of English lit canon (writers you won't hear about in most high school or 101 courses). Larry Eigner was a revelation for me, personally: http://www.concentric.net/~lndb/leigner1.htm He's sometimes associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement but I really think he falls outside of most poetry schools of his time. I later discovered that he suffered from cerebral palsy and that each poem took substantial physical effort to compose, which is visible in the considered and spare quality of his form. I've also been a fan of Li-Young Lee. A few of his poems are here: http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/lee.html I recommend following Ron Silliman's blog if you're interested in the contemporary poetry scene (lots of links to talks, events, etc): http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/