LostInTheMovies

Yeah, I have to say the constant and near-ubiquitous demand for Bring Cooper Back perplexes me. Not only do I think what they're doing is more interesting, and that restoring Cooper ends the story just as ending the Laura investigation prematurely ended the original one...I also don't understand how that would even work. *Going in* to this series, I knew that a good and/or fully-integrated Cooper could not be a thing based on this premise. I assumed (having no premonition of the rather ingenious Dougie solution of course!) that the good Dale would remain in the Lodge for 18 hours while the bad Dale rampaged, and/or another character would be guiding us slowly toward him, and/or good/bad Dale would fight for control over the body in the real world. Did people really expect to see the Cooper of s1/2 in a black suit, grinning and sipping coffee and eating donuts, 25 years older but fundamentally unchanged? I just don't get how this would work narratively/thematically at all but since I seem to be in a significant minority, I gotta ask for clarification!

I don't think Lynch's late films are cold (quite the opposite usually) and I definitely don't think they lack deep characterization. I do wonder the extent to which Mary Sweeney brought out the passionate, subjective/impressionistic, empathetic qualities he kept more subdued in his early films (and if her absence is why The Return often feels like a return to the more reserved, distanced feel of his Eraserhead-Blue Velvet work, despite dipping into the style and other signifiers of his more recent stuff). But I really can't agree Lynch's filmography is cold and simplistic toward character overall. FWWM and Mulholland Dr (the last third especially) stand out as major counterpoints to that idea.

I've heard a theory that is holding the warden's dog and showed him the leg as a warning, ala Blue Velvet! Whatever's going on with Mr. Strawberry, I will not *at all* be surprised if Lynch found a three-legged dog and it's going to be making an appearance soon...

Someone else suggested this to me earlier. I don't really think this is where it's heading but it would be an interesting twist and would also go a long way toward addressing what remains the hole at the show's center: what the good/bad Dale split actually reveals to us about his character and larger themes/questions. The way the show handles Diane's response, however, makes me think they are setting up something extremely violent/forceful - which wouldn't match up with the Cooper we knew before, however much we've ironed over his inherent complexities. The nature of Coop's dark side seems to be more subtle/repressed urges than actual hidden actions (as with Leland). I continue to be unsure if they put themselves between a rock and hard place with the climax of ep. 29. EDIT: Didn't see Argobot's post ^ till now. So a lot of people seem to be going in this direction? I actually kind of hope you all are right even though I don't really see it yet. That would be much more interesting, all things considered (although again, I think the nature of the incident would probably be somewhat different than many of us are guessing if it really was the old Coop she's talking about - and the messages to Diane thing throughout the series does seem odd in this light).

My biggest worry - and I'll still *like*, hell probably love, the show if it's the case, but it will feel like it undercut FWWM's power as the final statement on Twin Peaks - is that Lynch's greatest work was created in particular circumstances and now he's without those. Namely, the challenging circumstances of the original TP process (the 3 high points, to me, are the exact moments where he was most attempting to reconcile stuff beyond his control with his vision - ep. 14, ep. 29, FWWM), and also his blossoming collaboration with Mary Sweeney whom I suspect had an underreported (very humanist, very r/Romantic) effect on his sensibility.

I would really like to open the topic up to what people think of the implication that Diane was raped by the doppelganger. While the show could still go in another direction, it really seems like that's what's being suggested. It bothered me on first viewing in a way I'm not usually bothered by the way Twin Peaks deals with sexual violence and/or violence against women. But I can't decide if that feeling is a good thing - we *should* be made uncomfortable by these revelations - or a bad thing - in this case, the development feels inappropriate. Yes, partly it's just that icky realization that now whenever we watch Cooper's recordings on the old show it will come with a pretty heavy asterisk. Yet it also feels gratuitous to me: couldn't this have just been a strong female character who hadn't been victimized by a man she trusted? And yet again, I ask myself if there isn't something judgmental in that very framing, as if her identity is somehow compromised by an experience in which she was helpless? And yet isn't the show *itself* defining her primarily by this trope, if we can limit it to being a trope? This is all reasoning backwards, starting just from the gut feeling. Really seeking other perspectives here. EDIT: I should also note that part of the problem is the identity of the doppelganger. If he has nothing to do with Cooper, isn't part of the discussion surrounding Diane's experience compromised (not her part, to be fair). Shades of the Leland/Bob conundrum here, although I think FWWM handles that well - but the idea of a split rather than possession opens up a whole new question.

This is the best description I've ever read of my own nervousness approaching Lynch's work too. Because he places himself as a conduit as well as creator, one always worries he'll pick up bad signals and not block them. There's a degree of faith (and consequently, doubt) involved.

While it was by far the least of my worries (or eager anticipations), I did kinda think it would be cool if Twin Peaks could find its way back into the zeitgeist. And it WAS cool being in New York the weekend of the premiere and seeing Laura and Cooper on the sides of buses. Nonetheless, it was a pipe dream. As you say, this show is resolutely designed not to provide a clear hook/throughline for viewers and I think that figured even into the marketing beforehand (though I can only see that in retrospect). ABC promoted Twin Peaks in 1990 as "Who killed Laura Palmer?" while Showtime was essentially forced to promote Twin Peaks in 2017 as "Hey, remember Twin Peaks? It's back!" (which in itself would prove a disappointing way in for the nostalgics who tuned in to see a guy stare at a glass box in Manhattan for several minutes). It's also grimly amusing how even as the threshold is lower, Twin Peaks keeps underperforming! After the truly blockbuster pilot, season 1 slipped to midpoint in the ratings. It was moved to a Saturday, where the competition was less fierce, and ended up doing even more poorly than said competition. A movie was funded on the basis that, well, 10 million people isn't a lot for a TV show but if that many people buy movie tickets, we're solid! And then the movie made $4 million. And now finally, in an age where True Detective becomes a media sensation with just a few million viewers, The Return can't even get FWWM numbers. That said, it's true that subscriptions/streaming numbers look strong. I suspect if Lynch/Frost wanted to do a follow-up, Showtime would go with it but might downplay the live TV aspect to emphasize the streaming, probably dropping all the episodes at once (if that's how the cable business can work - I'm not really sure). And likely for a lower budget. Anyway, it's sort of a relief to just move onto the content itself now rather than fixate on the aura (fun as it was to see Twin Peaks on magazine covers - not that my local supermarket didn't just carry over the EW Thor issue an extra week rather than display David Lynch ). Despite its splashy opening 27 years ago, TP was always more about the ages than the moment. Besides, I'm finding it hard enough to keep up with even 1% of all the stuff being written, podcasted, etc as it is! And my sister was finally convinced to watch Twin Peaks, so that's something lol

Great succinct description of the lines Twin Peaks straddles. I can sense the "Emotional Truth" (especially with Dougie) in The Return but it remains a bit hazy for me at present. I suspect it will become much clearer in the back half, see also FWWM following TP & Mulholland Drive's final third.

Wow, any relation between this and the Rammstein intro? Lynch has plausible connections to both, having directed a Rammstein video and included their work in Lost Highway but also being an avowed, devoted Fellini fan (despite not generally being a vocal cinephile of the Scorsese variety), who visited the director on his deathbed.

I didn't even catch how literally he was addressing the doppelganger's statement until the second viewing. Made the moment seem even stronger! (And I love that only in the world of Twin Peaks could I describe an esoteric backwards word/finger-counting exercise as being relatively "on the nose" to someone else lol)

Yes, and consequently Leland rips the pages out even earlier than that. Even FWWM itself seems to forget this chronology, given Annie's line and Lynch's later proclamation (in interviews) that she did write it in her diary. I guess the only way to "fix" it would be assume that she wrote these pages elsewhere and Leland found them too before killing her, but that does kind of undercut the conceptual elegance Lynch/Frost seem to have had in mind.

I am leaning away from the Vegas/TP-are-a-dream/alternate world theory now not so much because of anythint we've seen/heard but just because he casual way hear stories are intercut just doesn't quite register with how Lynch treats similar concepts in his other work - even in the fluid Inland Empire, there is an abrasive/jarring feel to the transitions (plus everything is so surreal). Of course it could just be a new approach for him. But something about that idea isn't quite clicking for me after this episode. I wrote most of my reactions to Part 7 - maybe my favorite so far - here: http://www.lostinthemovies.com/2017/06/twin-peaks-return-part-6-theres-body.html However, one of the few aspects I didn't mention was Tammy. I have to say I'm a bit more onboard with her admittedly bizarre and cringey character this time around, simply because the show itself acknowledges and highlights the ridiculousness of the situation between the tensions with Diane ("fuck you, Tammy") and especially Gordon's extraordinarily childlike treatment of her which made me laugh as well as groan. (I can definitely see Lynch doing this in real life.) It's still a jarring decision to present Chrystal Bell this way (and really, to cast her in the first place), especially after reading The Secr History where Tammy has so much interiority, but I feel slightly better about it now. That said I could see why some would feel as bad/worse after part 7. This is one thing I'm not really clear about yet, dramatically speaking. I appreciated that through the diary entry, they emphasized once again the idea that Leland, not Bob, was the one driving Laura's abuse (yes, this has to do with her perception and what she'd just found out, but I still find the emphasis on this phrasing significant). However, is Coop in the same boat? I often get the sense that one reason Lynch puts so much emphasis on a split rather than possession (it was his idea, he dragged it into FWWM via Annie, and he's brought it up in interviews when he mostly avoids specificity) is because he wants to preserve and separate Coop's goodness from the evil of his double. That makes sense not only a sentimental level (everyone loves Coop) but on a character level too - we may have learned that Coop was flawed and even had his own shadow, but he never indicated the evil we've seem in the doppelgänger. The problem is, though, what does this 18-hour film tell us about human nature and spiritual struggle if it's essentially just a dualistic tale of two opposed entities, neither responsive to the other? I'm not sure he allegory holds up in this sort of story, where much else is, if not realistic exactly, operates on the level of individual motivation and responsibility. Unless they can find a way to reconcile what we know about Cooper with the need for a deeper resonance (or else convincingly retcon him as having been something else all along, which is a stretch).

(Without getting into direct spoilers, this post implicitly and explicitly references some structural details about Mulholland Dr & Lost Highway; don't think it requires tagging but fair warning.) Thoughts on all of this, because it's definitely where my mind has been wandering for the past week: - The room key could arrive in a Twin Peaks town very different than the one we've been watching. However, that brings up issues of narrative/cross cutting reliability which may become too complicated. Because it would lead us to question everything we have *already* seen in Twin Peaks and before long people would be mapping out which TP scenes take place in which universe and it would become too scattershot, unless there was an immediately apparent delineation between the two (think Hill Valley in regular vs alternate 1985 or, what that's obviously based on, Potterville vs Bedford Falls). - The Twin Peaks we've been seeing so far could ALSO be in the same world as Vegas; in other words, BOTH could be part of a dream/fantasy/equally-valid-but-different universe than the FBI/Hastings stuff. (Because I don't think there's been any overlap yet between Twin Peaks and the FBI.) At this point it would mean this world isn't just a bubble around Dougie, it would exist in other places too. But that already has to be true, given the stuff with the assassins. (Think the non-Betty stuff in the first part of Mulholland Dr.; plus Betty didn't show up until that world had been established too.) - Agreed with Mike that the links so far - the box in Argentina, the ring in the body - feel like they could be links between worlds rather than compromising that reading. - There are a LOT of echoes of Mulholland Dr in the Vegas stuff. - Given how Lynch likes fluidity and paradox (granted, probably much more than Frost does) we may get strong indications the Dougie world is a dream/manufactured/embedded within another reality while STILL having things like the room key arriving. So that we can't settle on any one explanation and/or both seem to be true. Think how Pete and Fred seem to be different characters/worlds in Lost Highway yet there are threads that link them (the cops following Pete, the picture that changes to show just one version of Patricia Arquette instead of two). - If all of this is what's going on, it would resemble Inland Empire, in which we're constantly slipping between different realities and identities, more than some of Lynch's other late films in which we spend time in one reality then move to another instead of cross-cutting. (Although if it resembles the last point, with two distict realities eerily overlapping at certain points, as mentioned it would be a lot like Lost Highway.) This potentially stands to be one of the most straightforward yet also one of the most complicated depictions of multiple worlds/identities in Lynch's work. - This is absurd, yet it's there - and *does* fit Frost's M.O. (his love of puzzles). "Dougie, Janey-E, and Sonny Jim" is apparently an anagram for "Josie, Judy, and my Annie, all gone". I am definitely not the one who figured that out.

I haven't watched the side-by-side Purple Room/glass box scene yet. I'm curious but also weary, and felt the need to explain why before I actually watch it. I think for Lynch certainly, but really for most filmmakers (even the most calculated/left/brained), you edit for things like rhythm, narrative, performance, and continuity, before you edit to match up two scenes that are not going to be watched side by side by the vast majority of viewers, perhaps not by any. The poetics of the work always has to come first, before the mathematics (and of course that a somewhat ironic statement, given the often intensely-structured nature of poetry, but think of it like cutting a line off to fit the metre, even if there was more to say). My suspicion going in is that it is a coincidence, but maybe I'll feel differently after watching. I just always wince at the implication that the flow of the material and the sensibility being expressed doesn't demand a certain rhythm of cutting, quite aside from any "neat" trick that is being imposed upon it. As for Frost making a creative/aesthetic decision like that in postproduction, from what I understand Lynch rather zealously protects his turf when it comes to filmmaking as opposed to screenwriting. In a recent interview, he was rather insistent that Frost's creative role ended with the writing. While Frost himself might differ in that opinion (I'm sure he visited the editing bay, and am positive he was present on set at least some of the time), I think he would concede that he stays away from advising Lynch on stylistic matters. Another way in which this project uses a film-directing model rather than a show-running one.

Ooh, now that's an interesting theory. One complication that always bothered me - Laura already gave her diary to Harold when Annie delivered the message. So it wouldn't have been among the scraps that Leland *already* took, and I also wonder where she would have written it at all since she didn't have the secret diary onhand anymore (did she visit Harold one last time? & if so did somebody pick it up off his floor and bring it to the station - but even so, the bathroom door??) So many questions...

It's *gotta* be. Yet I can't for the life of me figure out how the hell that would get inside a bathroom door at the sheriff's station. (Also, they looked well-preserved for 25 years, but I guess being trapped inside a door will do that? *insert Josie joke*)

Doesn't the box shrink down after Bad Coop's hack, not Lorraine's call? Also what is the evidence that Coop's call sets into motion the assassination of his enemies/underlings? It sounds plausible, but wasn't the plot to kill "Dougie" already in motion?

The ring you were reading about from the show and books was probably Cooper's gold ring that the giant takes in season 2. The green ring that Dougie wears (with a modified Owl Cave insignia on it) was invented just for the movie. Although it is mentioned in Mark Frost's recent book.

Chris Holland has been playing with this idea on YouTube with interesting results: https://youtube.com/channel/UCfP8akTCA4m5z_4ctD3gMNw

My God, how many Lynch actors are in this thing? I noticed Jim Belushi, Robert Loggia, David Warner, Ernie Hudson, and maybe one or two others. Thought I saw Diane Ladd in there somewhere too but guess not, nothing comes up on Google. (Ok, wiki lists Brad Dourif too - wow.)

Awesome! When I got back into Twin Peaks a few years ago, I watched Lynch's work chronologically for the first time and it felt so revelatory. The evolution of his work often gets overlooked in favor of the consistency of motifs, so this approach is highly recommended.

This is key to me, as somebody who missed Twin Peaks the first time round and watched it all in a short period, without discussing it with anyone, the first time.

Great point.

First half of MD, probably so; second half has more of a nuanced, naturalistic FWWM vibe I think. By the time Camilla is taking Betty up the hill, it feels much more about two individual characters whose womanhood informs but doesn't exclusively define their identity vs. the archetypes they seem to be playing earlier in the film. In a similar vein, Lost Highway very much revels in the dynamic you point out but from a much more critical/conscious viewpoint that makes it clear just how much of a construct it is. Inland Empire also relies heavily on a heroine's subjectivity (EDIT: and I think I've heard that Laura Dern was very involved in the evolution of some of that material, though I'm not so sure, she certainly was on the record as saying she had no idea what any of it was about so there's that!) - considering it was his last feature and also stars Laura Dern (who may just end up being the first fully-fleshed-out female character of The Return) I think it may end up being a key comparison piece. With all this in mind, Lynch's approach thus far is rather baffling. I wonder if it's by design or just reflective of where he's at.