The Great Went

Fair enough, I'm not really in a position to quantify degrees of problematicness. It's also not like the original run didn't already have a white lady dressed up as a fat asian guy with an outsized cartoon accent for like 7 episodes. And anyway, Fake Diane is probably just based on an Original Diane who is also Laura Dern but wearing a different wig.

I guess because we would have a white actor playing a character "derived" from a character played by an asian actor, and the highly stylized exoticizing treatment of traditional Eastern style/decor/fashion with regard to the white character is not just meant to indicate a personal interest in arcana of Asian culture, but meant to signify an underlying authentic Eastern identity. I say problematic in the sense that it generates a lot of problems and red flags in the politics of representation, not necessarily in the sense that it is "wrong" or "bad."

(D) I half expected Diane to "die" in front of the Blue Rose Gang the way Josie did at the Great Northern before she ended up in a wooden drawer pull. Diane looked really thin and was acting kind of similar.

This episode was wonderful. Diane acting like a sassy .gif in the red room was really something else. Also -- Wait just a goddamn minute -- If Naido is the real Diane... (A) Why don't the guys from the FBI recognize she's not really Diane or did they never see her before? (B) that makes Diane's whole orientalist costuming thing waaaaay more problematic. ' Edit: (C) It also makes it seem legit that Naido is also Judy, and even that the character could still be the sister to Josie, problematic racial depiction and all.

PLEASE PLEASE let this be the answer.

Truman goes to Ben and not Audrey, but Ben also says Richard "never had a father" and doesn't mention his mother, so I'm left to assume Audrey had some sort of presence in his life. I guess it's possible that Ben is such a chauvinist that he wouldn't think not having a mentally present mom was a big deal, but that would be counter to most of the rational/empathetic people on earth, among whom I think we're supposed to count Ben Horne despite his mostly being evil in Season 1. I do think there's some credence to Audrey not being well, or considered a viable adult to talk to for some reason. Maybe it's a coma, but maybe she's just generally inaccessible. Maybe she doesn't live, technically, in Twin Peaks, so Truman can't just pop on over to her weird No Exit house. Weird thing about this place to me is that there is no contemporary technology to be seen. All the guy's work is on paper, and all the decor is really old. I kind of half-expect Charlie to blip out electric-Mr.-C-and-Woodsman-on-the-stairs style as Audrey is choking him. Cut to Audrey wearing a VR helmet and strangling a Teddy Ruxpin in a basement. No wonder Richard is so messed up!

Definitely odd, but I'd chalk it up to nit-picky aesthetic revisions of set pieces, which is a thing Lynch is known for. As in, maybe he just didn't like the way the bottom half of the desk looked and wanted it to "disappear."

It looks like there's a mirror along the bottom portion of the desk. It's reflecting the chairs in front of it.

Also, just tonally, it's a more serious scene so it's a no-brainer to not have the funny business happening. I like your take, though, and I do think it's significant that no one has ever rolled their eyes when she tells them what line to pick up. If you actually watch the Sherrifs Truman faces in the various seasons, they are plausibly benefitting from the blinking light information and not reacting like "Duh" or anything. I did think about this a little. The way Ed busted into the Double R felt fairly presumptuous to me, if for no other reason than the dynamic between them this season wasn't really established, it's just been riding off what we know about them from the preceding 2 seasons. This was one of the sequences that would have far far less significance if you hadn't watched the other 2 seasons (kind of hilarious to hear that at some point David Lynch said you didn't need to see the original run of Twin Peaks to watch The Return). And to go from zero to "marry me" seemed a bit much, considering they had even been there before toward the end of Season 2 before it apparently all ended when Nadine "woke up" (which to me actually points to a degree of unreasonable martyrdom on Ed's part -- any husband would be within his rights to be like "look, you lost your mind and were bonking a high school boy for a week, sorry we're going through with the divorce." -- considering that, I would think Norma's interest in Ed would have diminished a lot, especially with the passage of 25 years). Having said all that I was watching this alone in the middle of the night with headphones on and I said "Yes!" out loud and did a fist pump thing so it worked its magic on me despite everything.

I'm gonna just imagine Janey E is Judy until I hear otherwise.

Charlie is my candidate for tulpa.

I haven't seen any spoilers, but after having listened to a different Twin Peaks podcast, their discussion of the themes of the episode and some idle speculation on there, I'm fairly confident Good Coop is gonna maybe or maybe not come back, but more than likely going to die, and we all need to brace ourselves for that. I'm speculating here, but I would think in terms of symmetry with Laura Palmer, sacrificing himself to protect or release others would be the way he goes out.

I totally respect your difference of opinion!

I didn't know what to make of this, but now that you mention it, I would tend to assume, if she's dead, Gersten's dialogue suggests she killed (or appeared to have killed) herself or that she overdosed. ...but I sure hope none of the above and that she's alive and eating cherry pie. He also has that thing when he's flipping out on her and threw the coffee cup out the window where he says something like "I know what you did!" ---Is this just boilerplate abusive guy stuff, like she didn't wash the dishes, or is there some bigger stuff they're involved with? I thought this episode was great but would prefer if they were still doing the Roadhouse Playlist bit at the end when Charline Yi freaked out. That band was not-so-hot imo.

possible theory: Dougie Jones was somehow made out of a Cooper head on a Major Briggs body? What if Diane is not colluding with BadCoop and she thinks Dougie looks like Major Briggs for some reason?? (Spooky music cue).

I thought the Audrey storyline and the Ed and Norma storyline both seemed like they could have taken place in the third or fourth episode and made for more gratifying/exciting tv, although they would set you up for a payoff that may never come. I kind of feel like there likely won't be any payoff in either of these storylines (I mean, I don't really actually care too much about Norma's pie recipe unless the decline in quality of her pie actually hastens the descent of Twin Peaks into complete bedlam, which would really be something...) and maybe that's why they were introduced so late? But I'd also say the original Twin Peaks also felt very much like a middle finger to the audience when it came out. Think about the end of Episode 3: "Harry, I know who killed Laura Palmer!" then the beginning of Episode 4: "Meh, I forgot. But I do remember other stuff in that crazy dream... Also, I love breakfast food!"

This is rad. Thanks for the link!

Glad to be of service! Mike Kelley is my other David Lynch.

Since we've reached this place in the conversation, it's making me think that a theme of aging ties in with the narrative ideas of the past and present and future sort of jumbling together, our place on the timeline seemingly more arbitrary as things progress. Perhaps the series is shot with the psychological timeline of one for whom linear time is breaking apart. I'm also tempted to tie Audrey into this -- we know for sure she suffered severe bodily, and presumably psychological and neurological, trauma in the explosion. If she's not actually still in the coma, it's safe to assume she is permanently changed by it. With Laura Palmer (and possibly Leland) trauma seemed to open up a window into another world --one of intense horrors and incredible insights--and perhaps this is something like what Audrey is experiencing. ....or maybe not!

Also, the awkward pacing and mixing of the sound on that conga line reminded me of this semi-painful bad-on-purpose video by the late conceptual artist Mike Kelley:

Yeah, it would make a lot of sense for Earle to be a part of the Blue Rose task force, but I think he's associated with Project Blue Book and maybe his breakdown/crime-spree predates the Blue Rose? Also, I think they are just ignoring he ever happened because he's so lame. I feel like EvilCoop is the promise of early-Season-2 Windom Earle teasers fulfilled, in that he's a character who's actually as evil/brilliant/scary as Shakespearean Vaudeville Act Earle was not.

I thought it was a good episode of Rewatch. Come on, man. One thing that was articulated well in the podcast was the notion that Audrey's husband is gas lighting her. I'd seen him described as being emasculated by Audrey, but it read to me that he was manipulating her completely, allowing her to lash out while he pushed the right buttons to keep her where he wanted her. The Richard-is-Chuck theory makes the most sense to me, but who calls a Richard Chuck and not Dick or Rick? My own theory is that Richard immediately surpassed Little Nicky in childhood evil and his mom referred to him as Chucky (as in Child's Play) because it was the nineties and it stuck within the immediate family and their circle of friends. I'm sure this theory is correct. Time will vindicate me.

Has it been speculated anywhere (other than right here right now) that design on the green Fire Walk with Me ring is a geometric abstraction of the weird inkblot ant head thing on Hawk's map and on Mr. C's playing card? It's not really a 1:1, but it's got the same general elements.

Hi All. It's my first post here. so... I wasn't really a fan of this episode, but having made it through a recent rewatch of the entire series, nothing here can compete with the sublime badness of Deep Season 2. My thought about the Audrey scene, which I didn't think worked, was that I was reminded of something that Matthew Lillard said in a ComicCon interview-- that his sobbing/snorkeling scene was done in two takes and he just had to prepare so that it was hopefully as good as it could be and then did it twice and that was it and he was terrified. I wonder if that's the case with most of the scenes in Season 3 -- it would certainly track with this Audrey scene. I got the sense, not that it was improvised, but actually that Fenn got a boatload of awkward dialogue and maybe not a lot of helpful direction and some fairly uncharitable editing/blocking. Completely possible all that stiltedness is intentional but I still maintain it didn't really "work" -- the intentionality didn't transmit, at least for Audrey, as much as it seemed on the bad side of amateurish. But it can't all be "Gotta Light?" and vomit kids, I guess. Looking forward to Fenn hopefully involved in some scenes that play to her strengths in the back half of the season. Fingers crossed!