The Great Went

I've been watching the Sopranos and recently saw the "Kevin Finnerty" episodes that open up Season 6. There are some definite parallels between the end of the Kevin Finnerty storyline and the final scene of Twin Peaks The Return, in my opinion. I hadn't really thought that Laura was "The Dreamer" and didn't really take much stock in who the dreamer was supposed to be, if anyone, but after watching this pair of Sopranos eps I'm fairly convinced that the dreamer is Laura, and content to believe that perhaps the entire series is a dream/hallucination she's having in a coma or on her deathbed. Final Dossier notwithstanding.

Also, what's with Asian people in Twin Peaks actually being white women in disguise? Twice in one show, whereas the average is Never Ever.

When I rewatched the first two seasons I actually skipped the pilot at the beginning and watched it after the end of Season 2. Pretty cool, considering the replication of the dialogue from the Bobby and Shelly Double R scene. Then I watched Fire Walk With Me, and I noticed that the dialogue in the scene with Laura and James (and repeated in Part 17 of The Return), is basically taken word-for-word from James' recounting to Donna of his last night with Laura. I think it's really interesting, and fitting with the figure-8 structure Jeffries hints at, that this dialogue appears in the pilot as a recollection by James, then in Fire Walk With Me as an active scene, then is revisited and sort of remixed by Coop at the end of The Return. Would be interesting to watch the last two eps then fire up the pilot again, or watch FWWM, then the pilot, as a kind of constant loop, forever. I'm not gonna do that, though, I have a family that needs me.

I've seen a theory that they're this Nazi Bell thing that was supposed to channel another dimension or something, but pictures of the nazi thing don't really look like these things imo. Jeffries, to me, is definitely in a tea or coffee kettle of some kind, albeit one whose shape evokes the shape of those white lodge bell things.

Garmonbozia For Her.

Love this idea!

Yeah, she tells Coop/Richard in the car "I tried to keep a clean house... I was too young..." Very similar to Shelly's relationship with Leo. Leo would say things like "A man needs a clean house" (I think he said this to Bobby in Episode 2) and is showing her how to scrub the floor in FWWM. Did anyone else notice the weird thing sticking out of the dead guy's stomach? Evil Bob Orb?

I haven't re-watched but yes, I got the sense that once he exits the lodge in Glastonbury Grove for the "curtain call" he's changed and from that moment forward there is something off about him. I had a theory when I woke up yesterday that since Diane's experience with Coop post-curtain-call may be analogous to the experience Naido has with him in the, what are we calling it, Purple Room? Naido is available to Coop and helps him find the right portal to another world (the 430 mile mark for Diane), but in the process she loses herself (falling into deep space after pulling the lever for Naido, disappearing into the alternate dimension and becoming Linda for Diane). There was someone who mentioned that the way the conclusive scenes were filmed were very corny and mocking of the audience. I think they were intentionally cheesy (I thought Coop's encounter with Naido in Truman's office was lit and shot in such a way that it was weirdly laughable to me) but not that it was really mocking the audience. It had the air of some kind of Scooby Doo ending, where everyone gets together and it's all supposed to be okay, so the chipper lighting, staging, costumes contribute to that, but overlaid with Coop's face and the knowledge that it can't possibly be that simple, considering the magnitude of themes involved: rape, incest, murder, good and evil in essence. If Coop hadn't acknowledged as much by saying "the past dictates the future" or some such, if his head, speaking of living in a dream, wasn't super imposed over so much of the scene of resolution, I'd be inclined to think this was all more cynical then I do. I think Lynch (whether intentionally or not) has a knack for heightening artifice when it can be contrasted against some dark or upsetting idea. He walked the line between realistic/naturalism and theatrical stage-set artifice in the murder scene in Lost Souls and I think the same thing is at play in the Episode 17 resolution. I don't think this was a perfect season. I do think there were some weak points. I think it probably would have been a stronger show if maybe the Audrey stuff just wasn't there in general, and considering how there's no mention of Annie or Donna despite how hugely important the lodge and the legacy of Laura is to this season, I don't see how that clunky Audrey stuff needed to be there either, but that's really nitpicking. In the end, opening things up to yet more conflict, and the idea that Dale is never going to be the same, all speak to a fundamental respect for the material, and putting a premium on the "truth" of the world of TP as opposed to the demands of the audience. Last night I was talking about how some people felt betrayed by the ending to my wife, and she reminded me how we felt betrayed by the ending of LOST, which tied things up so neatly that it shrank the scale and muted the resonance of the original world the show created. What Lynch and Frost have done with Twin Peaks is the opposite and that alone is amazing. There are things I would have liked to have been paid off, but I'm basically satisfied and, in a way, heartened by the conclusion we got, and I will be fine if this is the end of it.

I don't know if it's my computer or what but it looked a whole lot not like teenage Laura Palmer and I just figured they CGI'd "youth filter" on Sheryl Lee's face. IMO when teenage Laura Palmer talks to Cooper it was the weakest part of the episode to me, and one of the more over-the-top-but-not-clearing-the-hurdle visual effects. I was bummed that Cooper tried to save Laura, it seemed very naive for a guy who had been through what he'd been through -- and yeah, I guess now I don't understand if he actually Back To The Future'd all of Twin Peaks or not.

Yeah, it seemed kinda like Episode 17 was Mark Frost's finale and 18 was Lynch's.

Everytime Mike said "Electricity" I thought of this song:

One more thing: I was watching the show on my iMac with headphones on and my dog started barking when Sarah stabbed the photo of Laura and it scared the hell out of me. I paused it, calmed him down, gave him a snack, figured it was something outside that bothered him, put my phones on and started the scene again. He immediately started barking again! One One Nine!

A few thoughts --- the (doo wop?) song when Diane and Coop/Richard are doin' it is a call back to the Ed and Norma scene only this time it's evil. Also reminded me of the scene of Naomi Watts getting onanistic in Mulholland Drive. Once Coop gets out of the red room for the "curtain call" with Diane he acts more like Mr. C but he also has generally good intentions. So he disarms the yokels assaulting the waitress with cold automaton efficiency and scares everyone enough to get the address he needs. ... But he also just leaves all those guys there, so he's not really out to help the woman, it would seem, in a sense that the old Coop would be. Also, obviously in the motel room scene he apparently has no feelings. Interesting and telling in 2017 that Coop has destroyed but also synthesized his doppelganger with himself, effectively dimming if not extinguishing the light of virtue while on the hunt for an extreme evil. Reminds me of that old "look into the abyss and the abyss looks back into you" chestnut or however it goes. I'm grateful for another ride on this Crazy Train. Pretty much ended with exactly as many loose ends as Season 2 it would seem.

Dudes I watched 17 hours of this show before remembering it was a David Lynch joint. Whoops.

You and I must have been watching a different Twin Peaks. BOB starts having sex with Laura when she's 12 years old. Leland was depicted as a total mess. At best he's struggling unsuccessfully with an undiagnosed bipolar disorder or some such. The dinner scene in FWWM where Leland demands to see Laura's locket, and in which BOB is never indicated to be present, is horrifying. He makes amends by being a blubbering apologetic mess. He's an emotional terrorist.

Just to get some last minute wild speculation on the record: I wonder if Audrey's apparent imprisonment/instiutionilation/hypnosis/whatever has something to do with Ben Horne?

In the book Lynch On Lynch, Lynch talks about Leland in a roundabout way and says there's good and evil in everybody -- that he can sincerely be loving and caring at some times and this monster at others. The suggestion is that is contained within all people. And he also talks about Bob as the embodiment of an abstract idea. I think Lynch is more interested in abstractions and surrealist metaphor rather than cleaning up a story. I think the "evil that men do" was basically other people putting too fine a point on the idea that these things are contained below the surface of normal life. But hey, you gotta move the plot along too. He also talks about Sarah Palmer indirectly and speculates stuff like "Maybe she suspected but how can you possibly accuse someone of something like that if you're not absolutely sure, and if you're wrong the reverberation of the accusation would be so destructive, and if you're right it's a total upending of your world." (not an actual quote, just the general idea of his thoughts on her mindset)

I kind of feel like deciding whether Leland is "good" or "bad" is beside the point. The signification of goodness with Leland always seemed very demonstrative and false to me. His revelation of what he had done to his daughter, to me, read as someone finally reconciling with their partitioned self. Someone facing their deeds after dissociating from a fundamental part of themselves for most of their life. Leland's job was basically to exploit the legal system to secure land and sell out the community on behalf of Benjamin Horne. When he's having dinner with the Haywards the night after his hair turns white, he laments the loss of jobs and destruction of the Lumber Mill, knowing full well that it will benefit his employer and thereby himself. It reads as completely disingenuous concern to me.

It would be pretty awesome if Kitchen Glove Iron Fist dude's destiny was to crush a homicidal Bad-Coop-activated TulpaJames in order to protect Naido.

If I'm getting it right, there are a few people suggesting BadCoop raped Audrey while she was in a coma in order to impregnate her so that there could be a decoy of him to put up on the rock? If so, I don't think I agree with that theory. First of all, that's not very pragmatic, if you understand how babies are made. Second of all, this guy has made at least one tulpa of a guy that looks exactly like himself but with different hair color (unless Good Coop made Dougie??) and also at least one other tulpa of Diane, why not just do that instead? We also don't know how the electrocuting rock works. Will it zap anyone that goes up there, or only Coop-DNA-having people or anyone that ISN'T Coop or what? Isn't it plausible he could've thrown any one from his arm wrestling army up there? Or does he literally have to sacrifice his son for some reason? I'm sure we'll get all the answers on Sunday! (Just kidding) I kind of get that BadCoop's motivation this season is essentially to avoid re-entry to the Red Room / Black Lodge essentially forever and in order to do that he needs to kill Good Coop. It seems like he's also trying to fry a bigger fish, something to do with Garland Briggs and Naido and other stuff we don't really understand yet. Something I don't really get is what's up with The Lost Years when he was making himself a drug-runner(?) billionaire in South America. Was that all in service of this elaborate plan, or was it a mirror reflection of some kind of ambition that Good Coop desired? Or is it the inverse of Good Coop's desire to settle down and lead a simple life? Hypothetically, if Bad Coop were to somehow succeed and close himself off from The Zone forever, what then? Or does he actually want to storm the White Lodge and Run Things in The Zone? He is seemingly immortal or can't be killed by traditional means, like a werewolf or vampire, but he also seems to have needed assistance from the Woodsmen and is definitely not the most powerful lodge-related entity in this universe.

It's hard for me to explain, I think The Return is the greatest. Seriously. I love it. But it's cold. Like, that's just its serving temperature I guess. Like a pasta salad, or a Damn Fine Cold Brew Coffee.

Yeah, I've kind of thought of The Return as having a post-human vibe. I guess the manufactured people had something to do with that. But in general, like Mr. C, there hasn't been much heart to it. Maybe the most I felt real humanity in this series was in some Bobby Briggs and Norma & Ed stuff, but mostly the series has been shot as if human beings were aliens or insects to be studied. I've loved it and been obsessed, but it's just lacking the beating heart that was present in Season 1 and about half of Season 2, so it makes it hard to pull off some of the more emotionally demanding/vulnerable stuff. The Diane thing is hard because of the tense stand-off they're in, none of the Blue Rose people are in a position to offer comfort or sympathy. And it turns out she's not a human as-such and can not be trusted. Women's accounts of sexual assault are often met with suspicion in our world without the backdrop of tulpas and body doubles and assassination plots so it's... difficult.

I love this list.

Well said. I'm a little scared that Bad Coop rapes and "traps" women in the convenience store and replaces them with tulpas or holds them in some infinitely repeating dream life or both (like we may have a tulpa Audrey hanging out in Twin Peaks that we haven't met yet?). The reason I'm "scared" of this is because it suggests to me an interdimensional travel utility to sexual violence similar to something like The Legend of the Overfiend, which would really coarsen and diminish the Laura Palmer storyline, as you say, taking it out of the realm of the everyday traumas that people endure and making it a superhero adventure story that literally runs on the debasement of women. *Edit* This is the second time on this thread I've proposed a speculative possibility for the show and then worried about how problematic it would be if it existed, which it doesn't, as of now. I don't know why I'm doing this. Sorry.

I was hanging out with a toddler the other day and his main thing was to shuffle around and randomly repeat things people said to him. He had one or two things he was interested above other stuff and he would follow them around and repeat their name. "Ball, ball, ball..." it was all very Dougie Jones, I gotta say.