Crunchnoisy

My pleasure. I found myself humming the serene Badalamenti main title through most of it. Thanks for nearly a decade of entertainment.

Thank you!

This week was a very FBI-heavy episode. It seemed an appropriate time to unveil... Gordon Remo and Albert Rodkin!

Mark Frost, is that you???

Cooper Math Question: On Major Brigg's secret note, we saw COOPER/COOPER and Truman says "Two Coopers..." But the note actually read (I think)... COOPER / COOPER / COO COOPER = Bad Coop COOPER = Good Coop COO = Dougie, who appropriately only seems like half a person. Not profound, but kind of neat.

Albert! Finally. Delightful. The "Marbles" exchange -- an actual, genuine moment for Albert. That's the first real taste of Albert we've gotten this season. Apologies, I don't count "Fuck Gene Kelley." All the Albertisms up to this point have felt a tad bit tacked on for my taste. Albert has come across as a remarkably deferent character who isn't actually worth "apologizing for." ... But I liked the episode a lot. We finally got to spend some time with some characters.

We must pause to reflect that he explicitly tells us it's an excorcism... so I'm curious what the badcoop character will be next time, without the core of BOB. Will it be Dougie2, electric boogaloo? And that's not just a tired joke. We know how important electricity is to this mythos... an electric boogaloo could mean... something.

Come Episode 11, I bet the "Mother" (garmonbozia-barfer) will be revealed to be a Guild Navigator.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but how is "Goodness Vs Badness" not Good Vs Evil? And you say "a specific type of evil" I saw no evidence of that. What this dream depicted was the most general forms of evil possible: indiscriminate mass-destruction of war and the indiscriminate individual destruction of bare-hand murder. For a clever narrative like Twin Peaks, those are probably the two least interesting and least specific forms of evil. And on the other hand, goodness, what little is depicted, is shown as Gold, and Pretty White Girl. Again, less interesting, less specific choices could not be imagined.

You're right on one hand. On the other hand, even though it's Twin Peaks, there are boundaries that the show itself sets. I'll explain myself with an example, which i will then refute: Imagine that the whole thing in Black & White Sequence is actually in Bad Coop's mind! That would account for the presence of Bob and Laura, even as it also dreams of a nuclear explosion and frog-bugs. Also, that would rebut my criticism about "good versus evil," because now it's not good versus evil, its a Coop-The-Character's perspective - a specific way, with specific touchpoints. For me, that solves everything. Twin Peaks isn't about Good Vs Evil... That's a fragment of our ol' buddy Coop remembering the murder case that consumed him (literally). But. The show presents us with superimposed datelines in that dream. Which are, in the parlance of most film, even Twin Peaks, external to the characters. Hard Datelines = We are not in Coop's brain. [ but maybe coop inserts datelines on his own inner turmoil, i mean look how he incremented it by 5 in that silly way ] - ... naaaah.

The more I think about this episode, I realize that I liked pretty much everything... ... except the pervasive evidence that Twin Peaks is being reduced to Good-vs-Evil. Everybody on this thread saying "it's too early to judge if it's going that way" are behaving like Star Wars Prequel apologists... you KNOW what you're looking at. Stop trying to wiggle around it. The Frost Giant has turned into a Palmer Orb of Golden Goodness! Sigh.

Sigh. Siiigh. Let's explain everything! Sci-fi atom bomb bullshit! Good versus Evil! I see a heavy coat of Frosting on this one. And here's some gamonbozia. Literally vomiting in our face. Concepts at the expense of characters. I did like the dateline ticking ahead 5 years. That moment - that was genuinely funny. Perhaps almost Lynch saying, "Look, Frost put all this shit in here. I'm gilding it as much as I can, but I got like 45 pages of this shit to get through. So, uh... 5 years later."

All right! After the last episode, I'm very happy. THIS is more like it! So much good stuff... it's going to take us all week to 100% this episode, if that's even possible. the only thing that I wondered about was the dumbass way Andy seemed to be investigating the hit-and-run. Who tells the police to go away with a promise to meet them later? I get it... Andy's milquetoast. But he's also a veteran cop in a not-small-town which has its share of murders & death. He knows how to be a cop, I think. MJD

I like this. So is Ike the Spike --> The Man from Another Place? Janey-E --> Annie Jade --> ??? Coffee --> Coffee

It seems like the general vibe I have absorbed, like so much creamed corn, from this week's discussion is: "ehh... I guess we'll wait one more week before we start worrying!" Fingers crossed, Flynch and Lost...

Or Mark Lost, right? Get it? Ha? Because he's neck deep in a meandering mythos, much like a certain show that his own TV legacy helped create!

As someone very put off by the hit and run scene, I'm nevertheless on-board with your interpretation. And normally, I'd smirk at your idea that our TVs are supposed to be absorbing our own meta-bozia... but I think you're right. That's the message. Lynch isn't dumb - he knows what a wide-swing nameless-kid-killing is, so it definitely seems like commentary. Even a DARE. Like, I dare you to internalize this, audience. I dare you to feel pain and suffering, as if these were real people. Now, the reason why I buy into this so much is partially due to Dougie! Flynch is quite clearly DARING us to say "fuck this" with the whole Dougie bullshit. Kyle Mc can certainly keep it afloat, but it's drawn out to annoy us. Flynch is being puckish. Daring us to hate it. Daring us to expect... anything we want. MJD

I'm with you. I considered a break from the series. But the first 5 eps we so, so good....

I disagree. Being a parent has everything to do with the symbology of children in an artist's work. I am, indeed, going to far as to say this means effectively all artists (who are not sociopaths). Kids are that fundamental. You don't get a choice. I grant that Lynch likely makes an exercise of compartmentalizing. Maybe he said, (Remo-Cole-Voice) "fuck dad-feelings! We're gonna run over a kid!" But... Putting aside Lynch as a parent. Lynch as a talent can do better. He wasn't on a deadline to write these stories. That death was cheap. Dumb. Hollow. I have no pitchfork. My general reaction is just, "Come on, David...."

Bathroom Update for Chris and Jake: Hawk says very brusquely, "Use the ladies room, Chet." They, themselves, are in the Men's Room (complete with urinals). Foul Ball: Running Over Fake Kids. I'm glad this episode is #6. If they had run over a child in the first episode, I think I might have checked out immediately. On the OTHER hand, if they had run over a child in the first episode, then we would have had the child as a New Laura Palmer, as an Actual Person and not just a plot device. Introducing a mother and son just to destroy them, without names, without context... no amount of lingering on extras justifies that. I'll be very surprised if Frost & Lynch are able to retroactively lend gravitas and worth to that death. Sorry: father of two boys here. But, Lynch is a dad too. I would expect cheap exploitive child death from some 20-something Tarantino-binging fanboi director, not him. Anyway. MJD/Crunchnoisy

If anyone is looking for a ready-made 2D runny-jumpy cartoon sprite, feel free to use this one. The artwork itself is all original, though it was drawn on the Spelunky sprite-sheet for reference (not sure if that's a grey area). His name is "Plato" but he's just a general-purpose super-deformed blue-toga backwards baseball cap sunglasses wearing man. Link to the whole sheet (PNG): http://www.duj.org/images/char_plato.png Crunchnoisy (MJD)

Wah! That's ... dammit. Well, I drew it too fast to realize that. I was too caught up in the fact that Chrispy-Remo-Os were not Os... not even seeing that wasn't quite the fundamental problem. I'm sure experienced cereal makers deal with this problem all the time... MJD

Very serious "Serial" discussion. But forgive me, due to the non-linear editing of the episode, I spend the entire time assuming that this was the opening bit. I for one, would buy at least one box of Idle Thumbs cereal. I feel we have not yet had a good video game cereal. What will be the Citizen Kane of video game cereals? MJD

Ok, I went and created a riff on Plato's Turd Factory. MJD

This is impossibly classy, considering the subject matter. Well done! MJD p.s. Now my mind has gone to the place where it appears that stone Plato head has a turd beard.