Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 40: The Return, Part 6

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i'm confused about the location of the trailer park... i thought it was in deer meadow, oregon but apparently it's close enough to be driving to twin peaks every day? am i missing something?

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I thought all the stuff with Janey-E was really good in this episode. I got the sense that she has just had to deal with a ton of bullshit that Dougie has brought  on her and was really fatigued by having to manage it (especially the scene with the phone call where she sets up the deal in the park). And it was just really fun to watch her be a total boss in the park to the punks who Dougie owed money.

 

Are the guys in Vegas who Dougie owes money too for sports gambling related to the woman who was killed this episode? Or are those two completely separate threads? (I need to go back and rewatch that stuff because those threads are all mixed up in my head and I don't really think I have what is going on straight in my head). 

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My memory is that she was talking to them about Dougie's car still being parked there but I can't remember now. 

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2 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

It would be really interesting to hear a Twin Peaks first-timer's perspective - does anybody know one? 

Not personally but in the UK there's this TV show called Gogglebox where you basically watch normal people watching different TV shows and reacting to them, basically "youtube reacts" the TV show.  They showed them the Twin Peaks The return part 1 and 2 and everybody hated it. Was quite funny to watch actually. 

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Dougie seems to be being chased by two disjoint sets of goons: one pair are sent by Lorraine to murder him, and their failure leads to Lorraine herself being killed by Ike the Spike. The others are just small-time loan sharks (who might be linked to the guys who get blown up trying to steal Dougie's car, or might not). The fact that they fold completely in the face of Janey-E suggests they don't have anything to do with the first group, who seem a lot more motivated.

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33 minutes ago, suzyisbored said:

i'm confused about the location of the trailer park... i thought it was in deer meadow, oregon but apparently it's close enough to be driving to twin peaks every day? am i missing something?

Yeah, that is strange.
Also did you notice that they called back the number off of the utility pole from Fire Walk With Me.
It was originally shown in the trailer park when Carl shows Agent Desmond where Dpt Cliffs trailer is...then the pole seems to direct him to the Owl Cave Ring. It's called back in the this episode when Carl embraces the mother holding her child in the street.
It obviously has something to do with Carl and electricity, but odd that it shows up in two different locations looking pretty much identical.  

utility pole.jpg

utility pole 2.JPG

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51 minutes ago, gormanate said:

Are the guys in Vegas who Dougie owes money too for sports gambling related to the woman who was killed this episode? Or are those two completely separate threads? (I need to go back and rewatch that stuff because those threads are all mixed up in my head and I don't really think I have what is going on straight in my head). 

 


aeonofdiscord already posted the answer but I was in the middle of typing this reply so I'll still post it.

 

Up until now, I think Frost & Lynch would have us believe that the people Dougie owed money to, and the people trying to kill Dougie, were one and the same. Or, at the very least, it was ambiguous. There were clues that they weren't the same people previously, namely, it wouldn't make sense to have assassins camp out with rifles and set car bombs over a $50,000. I'll try to run down the thread: 

 

- In Las Vegas, Patrick Fischler is asked by his assistant why he allows a very bad person to use him, to which he replies, "You'd better hope you never meet a man like him", to paraphrase. 

- Dougie escapes Rancho Rosa with Jade undetected by the hitmen

- the hitman call Lorraine. She texts "Argent" to the device in Argentina, which shrinks into a marble or something. She is really upset.

- [Bad Coop hacks into the dark web through the prison landline and alerts his dark army to begin the process of eliminating all of his enemies and breaking him out of prison]

- Patrick Fischler is typing on his Thinkpad when he gets a red square, which tells him that there is an envelope in his safe. He retrieves the envelop and notices a dot on it, and his expression tells us, it's an important envelop.

Ike 'The Spike' Stadtler gets the envelop and...

- Lorraine is on the phone talking about the car bomb ("Are there any bodies?") She hears a scream and gets super murdered. Doguie is next! :o Maybe Patrick Fishcler's days are also numbered? 

 

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9 minutes ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

 


aeonofdiscord already posted the answer but I was in the middle of typing this reply so I'll still post it.

 

Up until now, I think Frost & Lynch would have us believe that the people Dougie owed money to, and the people trying to kill Dougie, were one and the same. Or, at the very least, it was ambiguous. There were clues that they weren't the same people previously, namely, it wouldn't make sense to have assassins camp out with rifles and set car bombs over a $50,000. I'll try to run down the thread: 

 

- In Las Vegas, Patrick Fischler is asked by his assistant why he allows a very bad person to use him, to which he replies, "You'd better hope you never meet a man like him", to paraphrase. 

- Dougie escapes Rancho Rosa with Jade undetected by the hitmen

- the hitman call the Lorraine. She texts "Argent" to the device in Argentina, which shrinks into a marble or something. She is really upset.

- [Bad Coop hacks into the dark web through the prison landline and alerts his army to begin the process of eliminating all of his enemies and breaking him out of prison]

- Patrick Fischler is typing on his Thinkpad when he gets a red square, which tells him that there is an envelope in his safe. He retrieves the envelop and notices a dot on it, which by his expression tells us, it's an important envelop.

Ike 'The Spike' Stadtler gets the envelop and...

- Lorraine is on the phone talking about the car bomb ("Are there any bodies?") She hears a scream and gets super murdered. Doguie is next! :o Maybe Patrick Fishcler's days are also numbered? 

 

Some impressions:

 

This is a dumb thing to get upset about sometimes, but the problem with having so many known or semi-known actors is that when someone like Jeremy Davies shows up (Daniel Faraday from Lost), and I recognize the person but I can't figure out where I know from them and holy shit this whole scene is garbage now because I'm distracted but seriously where do I know this guy from?!

 

Holy crap this was super useful to read, and I did not do a good job of keeping this stuff straight in my head. Thank you!

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20 minutes ago, Woodfella said:

Not personally but in the UK there's this TV show called Gogglebox where you basically watch normal people watching different TV shows and reacting to them, basically "youtube reacts" the TV show.  They showed them the Twin Peaks The return part 1 and 2 and everybody hated it. Was quite funny to watch actually. 

I'd guess most people would find it interminable. Do you think there's any way to get somebody into it without making them watch the original series or assuming they're fans of Lynch's film work?

 

I thought Deer Meadow was supposed to be an hour or so's drive from Twin Peaks. Leland was driving there for his meetings with Teresa Banks, no? Laura went there so it can't be hours away. Not sure how that marries with actual world geography - I'm assuming real Oregon is quite a way from the Canadian border.

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4 minutes ago, gormanate said:

 

Holy crap this was super useful to read, and I did not do a good job of keeping this stuff straight in my head. Thank you!

 

Glad to be of help! :)

 

Some impressions:

 

This is a dumb thing to get upset about sometimes, but the problem with having so many known or semi-known actors is that when someone like Jeremy Davies shows up (Daniel Faraday from Lost), I get distracted to the point of frustration. The actor even makes the same dumb squinty face he used in all of his scene's in Lost.

 

Having a little person be the utterly psychotic and mindless murderer, just a few episodes after patting yourself on the back for having a positive trans character in the 90s... I love Lynch's work, but why you gotta do stuff like this man? They guy made an entire movie about treating different and differently-abled people with respect. I've been listening to Lynch talk about getting ideas through Transcendental Meditation and staying true to those ideas as he develops them into films: "I was meditating and while I was transcending I got the idea of a midget grinding a shoemaker's awl into a woman's guts." I had the same idea when I was 14 and listening to Tool albums on repeat. 

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11 minutes ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

I love Lynch's work, but why you gotta do stuff like this man? They guy made an entire movie about treating different and differently-abled people with respect. I've been listening to Lynch talk about getting ideas through Transcendental Meditation and staying true to those ideas as he develops them into films: "I was meditating and while I was transcending I got the idea of a midget grinding a shoemaker's awl into a woman's guts." I had the same idea when I was 14 and listening to Tool albums on repeat. 

 

It's my impression that Lynch sees the process of filmmaking as one of discovery rather than creation. He gets an idea, and it comes from somewhere, and it exists "over there" and you learn more about it. Lynch's strength comes from his willingness to identify and portray the idea nakedly and without the filter of cultural or personal expectation.

 

The side-effect of this, though, is that he portrays things that might not actually be the result of his conscious, intentional, thought; but from his subconscious, automatic thought. And we aren't as defensible in our subconscious as we are in our conscious minds. But with Lynch, we get to see the subconscious, with all its faults.

 

 

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Insensitivity aside, I thought the murder scene itself was very effective. Difficult and nasty.

 

Are people getting the name Ike the Spike from the credits?

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I don't really see how Ike the Spike is any more insensitive than The Man From Another Place. Why having a little person play a hitman disrespectful? 

 

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1 hour ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

 

- the hitman call Lorraine. She texts "Argent" to the device in Argentina, which shrinks into a marble or something. She is really upset.

- [Bad Coop hacks into the dark web through the prison landline and alerts his dark army to begin the process of eliminating all of his enemies and breaking him out of prison]

 

 

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?

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Did anyone else find the murder scene with Ike "The Spike" Stadtler especially disturbing? It's probably the most gruesome murder I've seen in Twin Peaks. It didn't have the suspension of belief like being murdered by a special effect, and I found myself looking away from the screen for the first time in the series.

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7 hours ago, Mike Danger said:

Someone had to point this out to me so I'm posting it here: the papers Hawk finds in the bathroom could be the pages from Laura's diary with "The good Dale is trapped in the Lodge."

 

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*)

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6 minutes ago, LostInTheMovies said:

 

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.

Wouldn't it have come from Gerard/MIKE when he was without chemicals, pointing? Doesn't he have scraps of Laura Palmer ephemera from the boxcar at the end of FWWM?

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14 minutes ago, baladec said:

Did anyone else find the murder scene with Ike "The Spike" Stadtler especially disturbing? It's probably the most gruesome murder I've seen in Twin Peaks. It didn't have the suspension of belief like being murdered by a special effect, and I found myself looking away from the screen for the first time in the series.

I indeed found it pretty repulsive and out of keeping with Twin Peaks' usual style. I mean, it's incredibly graphic but doesn't really contain an iota of the sense of horror that made BOB's murder of Maddie in the original series so terrifying. Instead it just felt needlessly unpleasant to me. Then again while watching the E3 trailer for the new Wolfenstein game I was again rather repulsed by the graphic (albeit fairly normal for an FPS game) violence on display there so maybe I'm just at a period where I'm waking up to the uncomfortable reality that quite a lot of my entertainment frequently depicts extremely graphic violence.

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22 minutes ago, baladec said:

Did anyone else find the murder scene with Ike "The Spike" Stadtler especially disturbing? It's probably the most gruesome murder I've seen in Twin Peaks. It didn't have the suspension of belief like being murdered by a special effect, and I found myself looking away from the screen for the first time in the series.

I was especially disturbed by the motion of the awl when Ike was stabbing Lorraine, like he was stirring up and mashing her insides. Yuck.

I'm not surprised by it, though. The Return seems preoccupied with checking off a list of qualities of 'golden age of television' tropes, much like the original series lived within the genre standards of  the 'prestige primetime soap opera' genre. Graphic violence is definitely a part of modern prestige TV. I'm looking forward to the moment where Bobby Briggs gets a humorous interview by a never-seen documentary film crew on the subject of how much fun it is to prank Chad.

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1 hour ago, purps said:

I don't really see how Ike the Spike is any more insensitive than The Man From Another Place. Why having a little person play a hitman disrespectful? 

 

I think part of it is that 2017 is a different time than 1991, and new characters face more scrutiny than those that were already in the original series. This is true even for returning characters: If Denise hadn't been in the original series, then I would have taken issue with them getting David Duchovny to play the part instead of hiring a trans actor. But it was an acceptable thing to do in 1991, and the only way to have the character return was to get David Duchovny again. So I'm fine with it.

 

I think the issue that people are taking with Ike is not there is something inherently bad about a little person playing a disturbing hitman. It's also not inherently bad to have a middle eastern person play a villain, or to someone with a deformity play a dumb loser, or an asian actor play a mystical wizard, or to have a woman play a character who does nothing but spend money and complain to her husband. However, these things become an issue when these actors are ONLY used to play these roles. Ideally, the casts of American movies should average out to being roughly representative of the demographics of America.  But little people are rarely given roles as just regular people, and when they are their characters are still usually defined by their size. Sure, it's probably better than them getting no parts at all, but this excuse can only take you so far. The problem is not with Ike in isolation, the problem is that Lynch only uses little people to play creeps.

What makes this especially shitty is that the actor who played Ike did an AMAZING job, and his deranged creepiness owed more to that than his appearance. I think it was great casting. I just wish it was balanced out by having a more varied cast play the normalish folks.

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29 minutes ago, ddennism said:

Wouldn't it have come from Gerard/MIKE when he was without chemicals, pointing? Doesn't he have scraps of Laura Palmer ephemera from the boxcar at the end of FWWM?

 

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...

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2 minutes ago, LostInTheMovies said:

 

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...

Yeah - I'm pretty murky on the diary chronology myself, so thanks for that summary. My head just made the connection because Gerard/MIKE struggling with his injection was the only scene I could remember from the past that took place in the sheriff department restroom.

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He was actually in the restroom?! Good work!

 

I have noticed that Al Strobel is credited as Philip Gerard and not MIKE. Where was Gerard last time we saw him (chronologically) before season 3?

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33 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:

He was actually in the restroom?! Good work!

 

I have noticed that Al Strobel is credited as Philip Gerard and not MIKE. Where was Gerard last time we saw him (chronologically) before season 3?

Does anyone remember how he was credited in the original show and FWwM? Did it remain to consistent? Or did we get a "Piper Laurie as Catherine Martel and Mr. Tojamura" type situation? 

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