Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 40: The Return, Part 6

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

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The thing that gave me the most hope that we're almost done with Dougie is that Coop is back in his black suit.

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I listened to The Secret History of Twin Peaks for the first time on a recent road trip, just after watching ep04.

 

While the following isn’t groundbreaking, it definitely felt like one of those 'lore moments' when everything becomes slick with the sheen of clarified recognition, just at the cusp of slipping back into the muddled mystery. A signature dissonance that keeps this geek coming back for more:

 

Has anyone yet drawn this connection between Major Briggs’ revelation at the end of Secret History and unfolding Cooper narrative in the return?

 

Spoiler

 

While dreaming, Briggs realizes that the signal received at Listening Post Alpha (Cooper Cooper Cooper) indicates that Coop is his “next control” after Doug Milford’s death. 

 

He invites him over, intending to take him to the LPA and reveal everything to him, only to realize he’s dead wrong after Bad Coop pays him a visit.
 

Quote

 

He just left. Something’s wrong. The message holds the answer, just as I thought. But I’ve misinterpreted it. Protocols are in place. I must act quickly. I’m heading to the LPA alone. MAYDAY.

 

 

 

 

The message (Cooper x3) has a direct numerical relation to the number of Coopers revealed to us in the new season. While the message seems clear, how it “holds the answer” remains as obscured as the protocols Major Briggs acts upon.

 

I really hope we get to tie at least part of this knot and learn how all of these damned fingerprints fit into the Blue Rose equation.

 

 

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6 hours ago, Digger said:

The thing that gave me the most hope that we're almost done with Dougie is that Coop is back in his black suit.

 

Damn straight. I got irrationally exited by this.

 

CoopDougie.png

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The scene of the run over child seemed to me to be some kind of meta commentary on the overwrought melodrama of the first season of twin peaks. We are given a highly effecting emotional game of a child running away and being caught and hugged by his mother, The game leading to the child's death, The reaction of the crowd, the telephone pole making the sound we heard from the record player at the start of ep1. In the context of the show it feels like this telephone pole is sucking up all the garmonbozia from the crowd, but is the television actually sucking up our garmonbozia? This scene feels like it is constructed just to make us feel those emotions, it does it in such a way that it draws attention to itself as emotionally manipulative. I feel like David Lynch is often, in his work, trying to make us aware that we are watching a construction, ie "its all recorded". As a side note, this scene also made me think that this show would probably be just as effective if it was a silent movie with inter cut cards with all the spoken lines on them. So much of the context can be derived from the expressions of the actors.

 

Another weird connection I made was that because a dime and nickle both show prominently in this episode, will we get some clarity about what Mike meant at the end of the European cut of the pilot, when after shooting bob he asks coop and Truman if they have a nickle? 

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Both coins are dimes, no? Also is the indian dime a real thing?

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Maybe someone will find three dollars in a weird place next week so $3.15 of plot-relevant currency is in play. 

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14 hours ago, Lacabra said:

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? 

 

I think he actually said "case files" but it sounded more like "kayfal" because of the way Dougie speaks. He also kind of looks down at the files he's holding.

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1 hour ago, Guts said:

In the context of the show it feels like this telephone pole is sucking up all the garmonbozia from the crowd, but is the television actually sucking up our garmonbozia? 

I really click with this interpretation! I read it as the kid being sucked into the grid but his green energy thing went into the sky. It's far more logical that all the pain and melodrama of Twin Peaks feeds into the grid through TVs and such, and fuels the Lodge dwellers. But BOB isn't satisfied with the dwindling supply an idyllic little frontier town can provide so he sets out to solve the energy crisis.

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1 hour ago, Guts said:

The scene of the run over child seemed to me to be some kind of meta commentary on the overwrought melodrama of the first season of twin peaks. 

 

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

 

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11 minutes ago, Jake said:

☝️ More like David Flynch am I right?

 

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!

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Numbers within the show frequently are, add up to, or are divisible by 3. It's all over the place. We're fully 1/3 of the way through the series.  I suggest this is why Cooper appears to becoming out of the (Dougie) woods. I'll go so far as to say that the first third of the series will shows him 'lost', the second 1/3 will show him 'returning' and the final third will show us full-on Cooper, 'home'. My 3¢.

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There was stuff to enjoy, but all things considered this was my least favorite episode so far.
 

The show has been really dark since the very beginning of the season, but every episode there's usually *something* unambiguously exciting to help you get through. This episode it seems that something was supposed to be Albert meeting Diane for all of 2 seconds; slim pickings.

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On 2017-6-12 at 2:28 PM, dartmonkey said:

Question - is the junction where the hit and run occurred significant? Is that where Mike drove up next to Leland and Laura in FWWM?

 

Yes, it's the same junction. Almost the same setup too. Mike and Richard are both driving agitated, there is a truck at the junction obscuring the view, both scenes had people crossing the road.

 

Also notice how Mike is swerving all over the road, much like Evil Coop in ep2.

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As a relatively fresh dad, I've had my share of extreme new feelings at parent-child relationships on tv and film. I'm also not a stranger to the creative process, or killing children as a story device for that matter. And it is not like I have never damned any auteurs on the basis the unredeemableness or irresponsibility of their work (Gaspar Noé can freely go have a gruesome occult death somewhere which also unmakes all his movies, there is no universe in which his work needs to exist).

 

That said, (with all those caveats :fart:) I am not that bothered by Chekhov's kid getting run over. The whole vector of the action with the run-stop-caught-run-stop-caught-run-stop-get run over-caught was stilted with that choice Lynchian foreboding and that choice Lynchian purposeful slow clunkiness. Carl's face carries the whole weird scene, and is probably better than all extra faces there. I couldn't help but think as it was happening how fun it must've been for the kid to shoot his own grody death scene, which prolly made it easier to stomach.

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I'm new here, so pardon me if I repeat anything obvious.

 

I'm struck by the dreamy qualities of this episode.  Moreover, I think Dougie/Cooper's whole storyline is happening in a dream of some kind. Sort of obvious with "wake up" and "don't die" (remember that old cliche, if you die in a dream....).  Janey-E and Sonny Jim seem like dream figures - outlines of characters that are only sort-of real.  Dougie is dreaming of magic powers and can only half mutter replies based on what he's observing.  The little backwards moments have already been commented on here and elsewhere. The stilted acting, etc. And I keep thinking back to the heightened reality of FWWM's first sequence (aka "Cooper's Dream") which sees some stylistic similarities in the Dougie storyline. Or how the first half of Mulholland Drive is dreamlike and heightened.


I'm also a dad, and I found the sequence with the truck collision disturbing, but also detached somehow.  From the moment Carl looks up in the trees (anyone else see a face in the leaves?), everything gets dream-like: the weird game the mom and son are playing, etc.  The way Carl looks at her and she almost seems consoled for a second... Perhaps that intersection is a metaphorical one.

 

Anyone else think Lorraine's make-up resembles Robert Blake in Lost Highway?

 

Anyway - great to read all of your posts!  What a great show this is.

 

 

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Maybe it's my problem that I associate a black guy with dreadlocks as the garbage monster from Mulholland drive, but the frigging flames are coming from this guy's car!

 

garbage monster twin peaks return episode 6.jpg

 

Fun fact, the garbage monster was played by a woman, Bonnie Aarons.

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Mike's "Wake up, don't die" reminded me of the goofy aside with the Giant warning Cooper about Annie being in Miss Twin Peaks. I love it ^__^

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I feel like this is another instance where being able to put whatever you want on screen because it's Showtime has hurt the series, much like the random nudity and gore earlier in the series. I don't doubt that Lynch can make the deaths in this episode meaningful, If there's anyone who can weave a bunch of meaningless scenes together and make a story out of it it's him, but I don't think he'll be able to make the gore have a real purpose. A lot of the original twin peaks, and even some parts of the return, have made great use of subtlety and foreboding, and then there's these murders. *sigh*

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It seems like this new Twin Peaks is, like lots of Lynch's non televised work, much more willing to embrace the unreal. I think a lot of the original series, as wacky as it got, Lynch himself seemed to mostly cage off different layers of reality very cleanly for the audience. This is the Red Room and it's tied to dreaming, but you have (mostly) clean breaks between the "real" (if weird) world and the deeper layers at play. The whole setup of Dougie is a huge, blinking neon sign advertising the unreality of modern life, and the emotional distance between people. Only now can you get scenes of Carl watching yellow spirits drift into the sky as part of "reality".I Ihink this season is Lynch knowing the audience is much more comfortable with floundering around in different layers or versions of reality, after films like Mulholland Drive really hit it off. 

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While I agree in the main, I do think that this series is following a trajectory established in the first two. From the introduction of the red room to the Leland/BOB reveal, Josie's death and the season 2 finale/FWWM, it was always moving in that direction.

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