Digger

It's my theory, but Lynch and Frost have not given me enough info to give it any legs.

It's already been made. "Owed" was never my word it was yours. I also did not demand anything. As for the disrespect, I go back to the pet metaphor, making an animal believe it is going to get something you withhold from it is disrespectful. You know it wants the food or the toy, and you are enjoying its reaction, and then continuing to promise and withhold is disrespectful. I also saw many of the scene choices as going nowhere and revealing nothing, so that seems like a waste of time, also disrespectful. You can disagree, of course, and find those scenes valuable. I didn't enjoy, for example, Dougie. Now I have tried to make it meaningful. I have decided Dougie was Cooper's chance at happiness, and that by creating the tulpa he has given up a part of himself and allowed that part domestic bliss and no Blue Rose wackiness or giant evil entity insanity. That Coop gets a happy ending. I have very little in the show to back this up. I don't know if new Dougie has much awareness of the world. He said only one word, "Home." Is he able to do and say more. Dougie one was not a great husband, was that because he was made of the vices evil Coop was made of. Don't know. No explanation. INformation deliberately withheld. Disrespectful. You'll never know, and I've not given you enough information to understand.

Not really what I meant. All of the discourse over the last 25 years between the work and the audience and the audience and themselves shape its viewing and understanding. In this sense the audience is the artist or creator. We have shaped it's popularity, its interpretation, given it meaning, importance and relevance. Twin Peaks is a situation very different from other media in that it has been gone for such a long amount of time. The closest I can relate it to are comics. Some characters have existed for decades. An author can upset an audience by making, what the audience views as unwarranted changes, toss out lore and history, or rework it in a way that goes against reader's interpretations and understandings. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't think an audience's specific wishes are helpful, an audience doesn't know exactly what it wants, often it wants the exact thing it had before that they loved so much, which is impossible because it too has changed. That same audience wants to be surprised and enthralled. But, what Twin Peaks is now I don't think is only what Lynch and Frost created.

It seems many believe we owe unwavering allegiance and lack of judgement. I don't think owed is right word. Any artistic offering is open to reading and critique. Why is Twin peaks any different. I don't think one could argue artists can not offend or disrespect their audience, or that work can miss the mark, or be bogged down or too dilute. These are characters and a world that has been pored over, examined and loved for over 25 years. The characters, place and feel have been internalized. I believe an audience can have expectations and opinions. The audience who have followed this work for so long are, in my opinion, part or the creative team as well.

I have trouble with this reading too. What was Lynch then focusing on? It seemed mostly mood and tone, and usually the same mood and tone (uncomfortable, strange, withheld) is that 18 hours worth of compelling?. It wasn't really character he was focused on, because we didn't spend enough time with most of them to know them any better or much at all. The new characters appeared for brief scenes sometimes 5 or 6 episodes apart. Their storylines were disjointed or dropped. I also don't think it accounts for Lynch often in the character of Gordon Cole winking at the audience and basically saying I know what you want to see but instead here's a french woman. I know what you want to know, instead Hawke tells us we don't want to know about it. One might just roll with it, but the disrespectful interpretation whether intentional on Lynch's part or not is still obviously valid.

The sex scene was especially weird because there was no context for it. Diane had said they had only kissed once before, and the kiss in the car didn't seem overly sexual or romantic, Coop told her to do it and she did. Them having sex in the motel seemed weird because they were on the trail of something or heading into another world. Why would you stop at a hotel to have sex (for the first time). Neither of them seemed very excited about the prospect or during the act. I don't think it is them. I guess Diane could be covering his face because it reminded her of the rape, but why would she continue, surely Coop would stop and comfort her.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about this. It's like playing a joke on an animal or a child, maybe you're not doing it to be mean, maybe you think it is funny. Lynch and Frost antagonized their audience in almost every episode, the only time I thought it was funny was when Coop was in the coma and someone said something to the effect of "He may never come out of it." That was all the audience needed waiting for Dougie to wake up and then have him in a coma for the rest of the season. He wakes up in the next scene. You got me Lynch. I mentioned a bunch of the other trolling in previous posts, so I won't rehash them, but ask yourself this did any of the Candie scenes or Jacoby scenes serve any purpose, move the story or reveal character or plot, and when plot was revealed was it often rushed and unsatisfying. Take Freddie, we are introduced to him in an exposition dump he gives to James. Now imagine instead of that we get to see this happening on screen asshole Freddie in his sad life, gets a visit from the Fireman. Revelation! We witness his attempt to buy the glove and tension! he can't seem to get it, then wham, the glove is real and has real power as we see him clock the teller. Maybe he tries to go back to his old life; it sucks, he heads to Twin Peaks and now we see the town through his eyes, we see the inhabitants we missed through him, we see how they've changed, and we have him set up in a heroic arc so when his showdown with BOB comes it means something. Isn't that more interesting? Take some time with any of the characters, Jerry Horne and his bizarre 500 mile journey, Ben Horne and his new mistress- was the a reason we had those scenes or met her husband one time? Audrey is introduced near the end of the season, can't seem to leave a room, leaves the room, dances and wakes up somewhere? Tammy Preston spends her time vamping, giving knowing looks, or confused looks (a shame because I loved her in the book) and the reason she's important is because one time Cole said she was top of her class and impressive- did we get to see her be impressive? Episode 18- lots of driving and empty stares. What does Coop know or not know? What was Diane seeing when she was having sex? Why were they having sex? Is that why they were at the hotel? Why does Diane not react to seeing herself? Was she switched when Coop came back? All of those are fun questions that won't be answered, but really don't need to be mysteries. Would you rather have those questions answered or more dialogue at the roadhouse which may or may not be real and may or may not be about characters we've seen (but under different names)? What was the greater or deeper meaning of any of that? Is questioning it devaluing it, or placing the appropriate value upon it?

I have to think of the dream and dreamer as a metaphor. The dreamer is any of us filtering, making sense, making judgements of the world through our own experience and senses when these same events can be viewed completely differently by anyone outside of us. As dreamers we are creating the world we live in and imagine it is reality and that we know reality, when all we know is OUR reality, and our reality is mutable and inconstant. "The past creates the future" and Cooper's latest journey add another wrinkle in that time and destiny are dreams, if they can be changed then the one who does the changing is the dreamer, but like a dreamer has little control on the full effects of any decision's outcome. If time is inconstant reality is only one of an infinite possibilities. If the series is an actual character's dream than it is all but worthless. No character has agency or importance, no encounter, mishap or mistake has any meaning. There were never any rules, and there need not be any logic. The only meaning that could be derived is possible insight into the dreamer, but even then is it a reflection on the core of their being or the pizza they had for dinner?

I'd forgotten about the cell phone seed. I guess Mr. C. was doing actual magic with his technology, maybe he made those devices himself like he made Dougie and Janey-E which would explain their bizarre functionality. Episode 17 was a lot very quickly. I remained convinced the pacing for this season was way off. Much time was spent accomplishing little, never giving us enough time with the characters to know or connect to them. The reveals happened in flashes and spurts and rarely when they were earned. instead it is in exposition at the wrong time- Cole explains who Judy is and what Cooper's mission was, finally and only partly, to the only other two people in his Blue Rose splinter group in the penultimate episode when he has had that information and more since season one. Episode 18 then arrived to remind me of the things I disliked about this season. Long sequences of people staring expressionlessly into the distance. Vast stretches of nothing happening in the service of creating mood? no indication of what is happening, what people know, or what they think about it. It seemed like a good deal of time-wasting. I am compelled by the idea of Carrie/Laura, but I feel sure if there were a season four it would be consumed by the new Dougie Jones, boring Becky, magic drug dealer, and an exploration of Odessa, and when answers are finally given it will be in one episode at the end when a character tells us things he's known since the first episode, and it will be resolved in a sequence much shorter than the nonsense scenes. Were there great moments this season, yes, and when they happened it was easy to forget the filler in between. Then the filler came back a stayed for too long.

It's hard to know what Leland was or would have been, having been inhabited by BOB since he was a child. BOB in evil Coop is a different entity. In evil Coop he doesn't hide (although Coop does not always seem aware of his presence- see the "I'm glad you're still with me scene early in the season). Evil Coop and BOB seem to be working together BOB happily feeding off the mayhem Mr. C provides. It also seems he lend Mr. C some kind of power or enhancement with his presence, and possibly helped him create the tulpas in the first place.

If anyone in Twin Peaks jail is Diane, then I would go with bleeding repeater, the drunk guy. It would help me accept Dougie more if being pulled into the lodge did some communication scrambling.

Was that figure in the movie Dougie was staring at Chet Desmond?

I got the feeling Diane helped bad Coop set up the Dougie thing. Diane went from "Fuck you, and I can't even tell you if Briggs was mentioned" to "Here's a lot of personal information." Dougie was set up with many enemies, if Diane hates her sis, then here's a way to get at her, much like what was done with Bill Hastings and his wife. It seems impossible that Diane wouldn't know what her sister's husband looks like. She knows his name, and the couple has been together for ten years.

The world is a little less full of truckers.

Yeah, I wish I could, but I would like resolution. What happened to Annie? What's going to happen with Dale? Can Bob be vanquished? I want answers to these questions, so I continue watching only to get strange back rubs and mediocre pie.

This argument doesn't make sense. the "version of the show that only exists in the expectations of the audience" is standard plotting, this season it's battle of the Coops and what is up with the lodges. When plot happens it is in service of this storyline. Unless you're arguing that Lynch is at the reins and will do as he pleases, but that seems only to reinforce the audience taunting. Twin Peaks is being treated like it's a variety show with random seems and different acts loosely connected to one another with a purpose only to create a mood and not coherence or motion. I'm done arguing this. I see a little of what you're saying, and I'm OK with some distractions and disturbing mood pieces, but the ratio of these to actual plot and development is off. We're 13 episodes in and new plotlines are introduced when old ones are stuck, ignored or retread. I believe the authors know what they are doing and it feels disrespectful. Albert's response to the rude french woman was staring and silence, is that a payoff or a surprise, is that out of character? A hit and run we see witnessed by dozens of people gets little to no response for days when it seems like that would be a huge deal in that town. Andy doesn't question the truck owner and never seems to follow up on the meeting he was supposed to have. Dougie Jones is barely functional and he is pushed along a life that isn't really his, no one attempts to help or understand, the doctor checks his heartbeat, and remarks on how he's lost weight, the end? If Dougie has had episodes like this before there should be some sort of treatment plan or more testing or something. Cole sees a giant black hole in the sky and strange figures (also witnessed by Albert) and they never talk about it for us to see. Bill Hastings is ignored for four episodes and then suddenly we find out he was into the supernatural and had an encounter. Was the Candie fly swatting scene amazing enough to take time from any of those stories? These are the big questions and the main plot, and moving them along or clearing them up is purposefully avoided, Lynch makes nods to this obfuscation in almost every episode. It seems disrespectful to me. Perhaps it is supposed to be funny. I don't find it so.

I'd have to argue that we've seen much development in Cordon, Albert, Candie, and Tammy, but I don't think anyone would enjoy that discussion. Given Lynch is a filmmaker who has both created and consumed media for decades, that he has studied the craft of it, it is very difficult to think that he is not making specific choices to an end. He knows what viewers want to see, and what they want to know and witholds it. In almost every episode this season he (often through the character of Gordon Cole) seems to be looking at the audience and winking (or taunting)- see the giant glass box of nothing watched for who knows how long, waiting for something to appear, the french woman who won't leave so the audience can't get information it wants, the arm wrestling match "Starting position is more comfortable. You made me uncomfortable when I was here and here. See how this is uncomfortable. Starting position." Motion in any direction is arrested, rewound, rehashed. Lynch is doing this to the viewer. The viewer is Dougie being shepherded through a world which makes no sense to it, latching onto and repeating the last bit of information it was fed. We're the dopes. We're the lucky charms. It's possible the presentation is wrong. I believe all 18 episodes should be released at once, or in longer increments 2 hours or four hours at a time. Maybe the editing is a mess. I can not tell when anything is happening or if the time frames in each place match. Yes, perhaps this will be explained in the final installments, but I'm not sure that makes this good. I know the original Twin Peaks did similar things, it took a season and a half to find out who murdered Laura, but I think in that time we got to know the people and town, saw conflicts introduced and resolved, go a decoder to the strange world of Twin Peaks. This season seems a lot less charitable in its disseminating of information and (to me) time wasting.

I don't think this comparison works. I have not watched Better Call Saul, but what you describe is not evident in Twin Peaks this season. Saying viewers want Dougie to be bad ass Coop might be true for some, but saying there has been character development in any of his scenes, or the rude French woman scene, or the various interludes at the Bang Bang, or delivering and painting shovels or the long time spans of people staring dead eyed into the distance don't seem to bear that out. I am not saying there need to be explosions and murder each episode, but motion in some way, in character in plot, in world. My point in the original post is that things are drawn out to no end but to mess with the viewers. Plotlines are ignored for weeks at a time and then resolved off screen, and instead of seeing that (Andy's investigation, the hit and run) we get it 3 episodes later in an expository scene (Hastings interview, Truman and Horne). It seems like bad story telling and a disdain for its viewers.

Like the arm wrestling, mostly a holding pattern. I would think the FBI would have flagged any Cooper info, so I'm not sure the Fuscos throwing the paper away ends that, but we have found out very little about the Cole investigation that we haven't already known. Dougie's progress is the same, he seems to take steps forward, but recognizing coffee and pie doesn't seem like progress given we're at episode 13, and is that progress really progress or just luck thht one time? Is he wearing that suit because he chose it, is he dressing himself, does he understand how to pee yet, is he attempting to communicate or only mimicing sounds? The world is moving around Dougie, and he is kind of like a mascot or good luck charm. I don't see what makes the Dougie storyline interesting, funny, important or innovative, except that Dale Cooper is inside him somewhere. Evil Coop has been looking for coordinates since the first episode, and if it ends up they're just Twin Peaks where he first appeared that seems useless. So, maybe things are proceeding, but so much of the show seems to be making sure nothing moves very far= to me, frustrating.

Didn't this episode feel like too late? It was nice to spend some time with the original Twin Peaks cast, but mostly what we found is nothing has changed, and with five episodes left I find it hard to be interested in any new storylines, feeling like they will never move or be resolved considering how slowly everything else is moving. Doesn't it seem like this should have been much earlier in the season? Even Audrey- I have no idea what is going on there, and I can't work up a whole lot of feeling for those scenes given she's just appeared, has had two scenes in 13 episodes, and again, may never reach any sort of resolution. Could someone please explain how this season is "innovation?" It seems more like evasion and obfuscation. Early in the season the sluggish pacing and long stretches of static made it seem like the scenes were really only about creating a mood, but then it always seemed the same mood- tension without a release, without connection. Nothing ever seems to move forward. Every episode there is a scene where it seems like Lynch is giving the middle finger to his viewers, this epsiode- the arm wrestling scene; we all knew it was a bad idea and that Coop would win. Coop knew this too. Coop plays with him- no emotion on his face, returns to starting position, allows the guy to feel like maybe he has made progress, back to starting position, then Coop almost winning. Lynch seems to do the same with his audience, never moving forward, overall the match is a useless and rigged exercise.

I'm guessing Billy is they guy Andy went to question- the truck owner who didn't show up for his interview and that the Chuck that Audrey referred to was Richard.

Because I loved Twin Peaks. I loved the characters and the quirkiness, and I keep trying to like this show, but story just isn't happening. It's pointless to try to figure anything out because it is purposefully obtuse. The important things happen off camera and then are related in long scenes of people staring at each other and saying things the viewer already knows (like the Truman/Horne scenes this episode, the Blue Rose scene at the start), or characters saying or behaving in ways that make no sense (the French lady, anybody at the club). I don't think we've seen any characters make a progression. Characters are acting in ways that don't seem to fit what we knew about them, and we don't get enough time with them or any of the new characters to connect with anyone. No one acts the way people do, which is unhelpful, some weirdness is quirky or scary or confusing, but if every character is unfathomable, and no rules of the universe are established or explained it all becomes nonsense. It seems the story teller is purposefully keeping viewers from the story, and will explain some of the strangeness we witnessed in the last two episodes when one character explains it to another. I think they probably should have started with the last episode, then a viewer could parse what is meaningful and what is random. The show seems to me to be really disrespectful of its viewers.

"It's a goddamn bad story, isn't it Hawk?" Sarah Palmer She's right.

I wondered the same thing. It sometimes seems like Dougie has more to say when he's off camera. How did the sex happen, how did the Mitchum brothers get to gym set. Is he dressing himself now? Is he choosing that suit? Does he know how to get to the bathroom by himself now and eat? The podcast mentioned the strangeness of giving a 30 million dollar check to him, but everyone seems to be fine with him the way he is. I have real trouble believing the Mitchum brothers would want to have a meal with him in that condition or take such pleasure in his company. How did he order the food? How long did these epsodes last for the original Dougie, why was he taken to the doctor to check his heart and weight? It seems like they would have some course of action, or more tests if this wasn't a first time happening. Dougie is so confusing on so many levels. I don't understand how he fits in the universe, why people react the way they do to him, why he gets no help, why he's constantly forced into work, if he has moments of clarity we don't see, how he perceives what's going on around him.

This season Lynch seems to be big on silence and blank stares, and when characters do speak it often seems incomplete, confusing or disconnected with a purpose to disturb, confound, or obscure.