Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 40: The Return, Part 6

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4 hours 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?

 

I'm finishing up The Secret History and I seem to remember it mentioning that Deer Meadow is just one county over. How Twin Peaks is near both the Oregon and Canadian border, beats me.

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God damnit, Richard Horne running over that kid hit me so hard... I had to stop and take a break from the episode...

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Some quick searching says Gerard's last appearance before season 3 is in 2.09, "Arbitrary Law" (the episode where Leland dies) when Cooper and Dr. Hayward argue about giving him his drug and he points them to the Giant to find BOB.

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Some quick thoughts 

- Happy to see Jeremy Davies reprise his role as Dicky Bennet from Justified

- I think this is the first musical outro that moved me at all. What is the name of the band? This song is really good shoegaze/dreampop 

-I really enjoyed the ruminations on aging in this episode: Harry Dean Andersons whole little arc is beautiful and heartbreaking, especially in the context of Good Coop slowly coming back to life and realizing how much time he lost. 

-Naomi Watts' is always so good. I wish she was in stuff more often. 

-Laura Dern in a Mulholland Drive blonde wig is the totality of all looks 

-The whole chain of events that leads Hawke to those notes just had me constantly groaning. I hope we get past his heritage eventually 

-Fuck Chad 

-Using a dwarf actor for this character is really setting off my "David Lynch equating deformity to evil/deviance" angst. 

 

This show is really unafraid to be as problematic as possible right when I'm really into it. 

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41 minutes ago, BigJKO said:

God damnit, Richard Horne running over that kid hit me so hard... I had to stop and take a break from the episode...

 

I agree. That was much more brutal than the murder scene for me. I really wish they didn't feel it was necessary to actually show him being hit by the car. The plot point could have been made with him hitting an adult instead of that kid. It seemed to be a little bit in bad taste to me.

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7 hours 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?

 

2 hours ago, Gregalor said:

 

I'm finishing up The Secret History and I seem to remember it mentioning that Deer Meadow is just one county over. How Twin Peaks is near both the Oregon and Canadian border, beats me.

 

There's an addition to the sign that reads "NEW" so it's called the New Fat Trout Trailer Park in the series where it was just the Fat Trout Trailer Park in the movie. I'm not sure if this means he moved the location or started a whole new one or simply updated the name. The numbers on the pole were the same as the ones in the trailer park from FWWM so it's probably meant to be the same place, but they couldn't actually film in that same exact location as before for whatever reason. The sign itself is also in a completely different spot. Whatever the reason, I'm assuming it's supposed to be in the same general area around or between Deer Meadow and Twin Peaks because it is still within driving distance.

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2 hours ago, Gamebeast23456 said:

- I think this is the first musical outro that moved me at all. What is the name of the band? This song is really good shoegaze/dreampop 

 

That's Sharon van Etten.

 

I really liked her latest album, so seeing her as this weeks Roadhouse Gig (tm) was a pleasant surprise.

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You can like something and still dislike things about it! I really like Twin Peaks, but I think the whole Spike thing was awful. 

 

4 hours ago, UnpopularTrousers said:

[tropes are harmful and lazy]

 

You nailed it.

A: "We want a character who is complete nonsense and shockingly violent, who do we cast?"

B: "I think the audience would respond strongly to a little person because little people are weir-"

C [a sane person]: "Guys, seriously, what the fuck are we doing here."

 

5 hours 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? 

 

You could totally make the argument that using a little person play TMFAP is insensitive, and like all tropes, lazy. When a "different" kind of actor only shows up in your work to portray a "weird" character, you're being lazy and exploitative. Spike is worse than TMFAP because he isn't simply weird and off-putting, he is weird and off-putting and a mindless butcher of human beings.

 

6 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

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

 

It was totally ineffective for me because we've seen professional hitmen on the show, and criminals who spend time conspiring murders, and in comparison Spike is just "lol random". He charges into the building with an awl, kills everyone he sees, and leaves soaked in blood. Seems like his plan is easily defeated by: someone with a gun; someone who could overpower him; encountering two people at once; a video camera; a witness hiding in a closet, etc.

 

My other issue is that Twin Peaks has so many outs for how Spike can exist in this universe. He could be blessed with uncanny luck. He could literally be a magical construct. He could just be another wacky guy in this kooky world of irreverent characters! 

 

4 hours ago, Goose Malloy said:

I indeed found it pretty repulsive and out of keeping with Twin Peaks' usual style. [...] 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.

 

Yup, I think it's pretty normal to mature out of depictions of meaningless violence. It was sometime after Bioshock Infinite that I decided that games where you murder hundreds of human beings with headshots were not my thing anymore. I also have less tolerance for seeing men randomly kill women in brutal detail. There's a big difference between establishing an abusive relationship that turns violent (Laura and Leland, Shelly and Leo), and having a man grind an awl in a woman's stomach for shock value or humor or whatever they were going for, devoid of meaning and consequence.

 

5 hours ago, LostInTheMovies said:

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?

 

I think you're right about the box shrinking. I put that other bullet point in square brackets because I was just having a bit of fun and speculating. Indeed, the plan to kill Dougie was already in motion, but something has changed because Spike has been called in, and I'm confident that Bad Coop's phone call is what has made that change.

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I'd been really enjoying this series until this episode. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood for Lynch tonight.

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Just for clarification, you guys mention that Hawk and Chad were in the women's restroom, but I'm pretty sure Hawk says to Chad, "use the women's washroom", implying that they're in the men's. That makes me think it has something to do with Gerard...but who knows...

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13 minutes ago, WickedCestus said:

Just for clarification, you guys mention that Hawk and Chad were in the women's restroom, but I'm pretty sure Hawk says to Chad, "use the women's washroom", implying that they're in the men's. That makes me think it has something to do with Gerard...but who knows...

 

Yeah, we both wrote that down incorrectly. My review of this episode: Something about it caused Chris and I to flail around and make a lot of mistakes about what was happening. 

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30 minutes ago, TurboPubx-16 said:

My other issue is that Twin Peaks has so many outs for how Spike can exist in this universe. He could be blessed with uncanny luck. He could literally be a magical construct. He could just be another wacky guy in this kooky world of irreverent characters! 

 

I loved Spike for this very reason. His sudden appearance was incongruous in a way that I really dug. We're introduced to him with a scene that establishes that he has a preoccupation with luck: He's tallying dice rolls the way someone does if they're checking to see if the dice are loaded. So maybe he is blessed with uncanny luck, haha. 

 

I can't really speak to the whole little person casting issue - but I'd much rather hear from an actual LP about it, to be honest. It doesn't ring true to me that his casting is automatically 'exploitative'. For what it's worth, the only LP I've personally known IRL really seemed to relish how his appearance freaked people out.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

There's a long history of well-meaning people "standing up" for people with unusual bodies in the context of Freak Shows, only for the supposedly exploited to say, "hey, wait, I LIKE making lots of money from the fact that I look different!" Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous conjoined twins, for example, made so much money from exhibitions that after just a few years of touring they were able to buy a rolling estate in North Carolina. Freak Shows only dropped in popularity after the rise of modern medicine recast the public's view of 'freaks' as something to be pitied, rather than marveled at. Freak Shows could also be nightmare machines of exploitative evil, too, don't get me wrong. Especially when you throw nineteenth century racism into the mix.

 

I'd love to hear from Lynch about this. Unusual bodies are obviously something he's thought a lot about - he made The Elephant Man, after all!

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The opening scene to this episode was a real heartbreaker, man! Cooper actually sounded sad when responding to the policeman. Clutching something familiar to his chest and curiously poking at something else he recognises, I just find everything with this cooper either heartbreaking or hilarious it's really amazing to watch. I know a lot of people think that he's suddenly going to snap in to life, and we get a suggestion of that here from the one armed man but I'd be okay with never getting the OG cooper back. Instead he just slowly learns to be a real distinct person. 

 

And when he says "... Help Dougie" :' (

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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

 

 

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I really love how this season is a rumination on aging as a result of its' own historical context. There's been so many great scenes about the effects of time - from the log lady's appearance to Cooper's reaction to Sonny Jim and the whole FBI subplot. I thought the scenes with the trailer park owner really worked as a self-contained short film about aging and loss (coincidentally, I've been enjoying this season of Twin Peaks the most when it feels like a series of short films and tone pieces). Personally, I was really moved by the car accident, even granting that it is totally melodramatic. The buildup to it is just so good. It's all about Carl Rodd externally reckoning with mortality. The conclusion had it's own strange power to it, where Carl is the only person who isn't spellbound by the visceral horror of it and is able to empathize totally with the feeling of sudden loss. I think there are definitely some icky underpinnings to get us there, but there's just something that really moved me about it. 

 

Also, on the subject of aging and mortality, I thought Cooper contemplating the connection between Dougie's boss's boxing promotional poster and the guy in front of him was also super powerful and understated. 

 

The theme of aging also really hits me every time we see Albert (especially with the meta-textual fact that Miguel Ferrer passed before the show aired). It's really crushing to see what this character has already been willing to do to try and save his friend. I think the spiritualist/deeply moral side of Albert was slightly cobbled together and loose fitting in the original run, and I'm really glad we get to spend some more time with him. His path has truly been a strange and difficult one. 

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9 minutes ago, Crunchnoisy said:

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Not to excuse Lynch, but I was recently perusing his book Catching The Big Fish and I was again struck by the degree to which Lynch sees his work as almost entirely internal and about only itself. He wants us to think that these characters can only be representative of their own situations, and is therefore heavily predisposed, in my estimation, to be wanton about this sort of thing at times. I mean, look at the body count in this episode alone. Of course, this internality cannot literally be true - but I  don't think  being a father would ever have anything to do with how he would choose to use the symbology of children in his work. He thrives on seperation between the pain he inflicts on characters and real life pain. He did make Eraserhead after all.

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You guys mention not believing that 25 thousand would be acceptable when 52 is owed. I assumed that they were just trying to pull a fast one because they are dealing only with Janey and she asks them how much he owes them. What I don't understand is why Janey didn't just give em the 50 out if the 400 thousand? Anyway that bit was great. 

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9 minutes ago, Gamebeast23456 said:

 I  don't think  being a father would ever have anything to do with how he would choose to use the symbology of children in his work. He thrives on seperation between the pain he inflicts on characters and real life pain. He did make Eraserhead after all.

 

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...."

 

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It's interesting that Chris and Jake thought the coin trick was reminiscent of the creamed corn trick. They're probably totally right, but for whatever reason I saw that whole scene as being filmed from Richard Horne's perspective. He took some crazy strong coke, his perception of time got all weird, and the coin guy started moving all hurky-jerky. Then he pulled off some "What's that behind your ear? It's a coin! My, my, what dirty ears you have!"-level slight of hand but it blew his mind because he was unbelievably high. But thinking back on this now, it was probably just regular Twin Peaks weirdness. 

 

I also wanted to bring up my favourite Dougie moment of the episode: When he went up the stairs to see Sonny Jim, he put his foot on the first step and then put his second foot on the same step and paused before continuing up the steps in a more fluid manor. It was this little moment of hesitancy that highlighted what great job Kyle Maclachlan is doing. 

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It seems to me that I am just fundementally seeing a different emotional premise for this scene than some people are, which is fine. 

 

I see it as basically going: disheveled, older man is introduced, he talks about his own mortality and the feeling that his time is running out and how those feelings manifest in visiting the town every week, he sits on a park bench and is entranced by the earliest stages of a new life, there are few things as pure as a parent playing with their child and it heartens him in some way to see the possibility in a new life, but then it's dashed. I think this scene only works, in my particular reading, if it's a young victim because it reinforces the fears of the character whose perspective we implicitly follow. Death comes here as sudden, if this innocent child can be randomly killed with no context, there's no saying what could happen to an old man. It's pretty rough to see violent death without context, but that's not unheard of in real life. 

 

Yes, it's crass and brutal and Lynch does not build to it at all, but I feel like that's the point. It moved me considerably. In the context of a TV series that is concerned with plot progression and all that, I can see why these scenes might seem superfluous or just confusing, but that's just not how I'm viewing most of this show. I'm content to watch a new hour of new Lynch filmmaking every week and just see what hits me. 

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Anyone else catch that when the security guard at the beginning asks Cooper if he's taken anything/been drinking anything, Cooper says (unless I misheard this in which case it's embarassing) "eeffoc", coffee backwards? 

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7 hours 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 found it to be quite disturbing because it was just so jarring. The rest of the episode was slow, even the kid getting hit crossing the street had a gradual build to it. The scene reminded me a lot of the ultraviolence found in Nicolas Winding Refn's films, ie violence that is so abrupt & unabashedly graphic that he proudly compares it to pornography.

 

It almost seems, much in the way that a different band closes each ep, that Lynch is playing us a violence mixtape: the Bad Cooper stuff was incredibly No Country for Old Men -esque, the two kids on the couch was very Nightmare on Elm Street, the crime scene was Seven-y, kid getting hit was classic Peaks melodrama, etc.

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Because Bobby mentioned that Cooper visited Major Briggs before his death (AKA BadCoop killed him), I assumed that the doppelganger removed the pages from the diary to escape detection.

 

Why would the doppelganger know about the diary pages if Cooper didn't?  Why hide the pages instead of flushing them?  Why would the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department let a bloody-foreheaded Cooper rifle through the evidence from a case that wrapped up weeks prior?  I like baseless speculation, that's why!

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