Twin Peaks Rewatch 40: The Return, Part 6

[electricblue]

Loved the melodramatic child death scene and the fun 'lets play in traffic' game the mother and child were playing

that one and the Dougie's boss scene had me laughing the whole time

[Guts]

As far as dreams go, I really think Lynch sees TV and film in general as shared dreams, In fire walk with me, David Bowie (agent jeffries) says "we live inside a dream", I don't think he was referring to the denizens of the black lodge. I think he was speaking as a character trapped inside a film telling other characters that they exist in a dream/film. In an art gallery we don't often think of whats hanging on the wall in terms of verisimilitude, but for some reason we need to see films and tv as a representation of reality. It's probably more accurate to say that they are a representation of our dreams.

[unimural]

This was the first episode in this run where I enjoyed the podcast more than the show. Still a lot of fun.

 

The original run had it's share of detached, meaningless things, but it also had very strong focal points. One being the town and it's people. In this season we haven't really gotten that, which makes it harder to approach said things. Even as Windom Earle appeared and was silly, we saw him interact with the characters we knew, and that helped in keeping things grounded in the shared reality of series. Where James has always been cool.

 

I do suspect this is intentional, but I admit that at this point I'm really looking forward to either some grounding or progress.

[Ozzie]

Yeah, I miss the grounding slice of life quality of the original run, constantly checking in with the ensemble of characters.

Certainly the new run has a lot of qualities missing of the original, though it also gained new ones, which so far I don't equally appreciate. Still, I keep thinking about it and looking forward to the next part.

[Gregalor]

1 hour ago, Ozzie said:

Yeah, I miss the grounding slice of life quality of the original run, constantly checking in with the ensemble of characters.

Certainly the new run has a lot of qualities missing of the original, though it also gained new ones, which so far I don't equally appreciate. Still, I keep thinking about it and looking forward to the next part.

 

I keep looking forward to the next part, too, but it's out of a desire to see this stuff finally get somewhere. I agree with Chris's remarks that nothing has really gotten a chance to breathe. There's way too many threads, some of which we're kept away from for far too long. I'd like to see things start to converge, and I'd really like to start spending more time in Twin Peaks.

It's not that I'm not enjoying what's on screen, but it feels more like a series of David Lynch shorts than a show.

[Crunchnoisy]

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...

 

[Eraserhead72]

Quick brainfart thought.

 

Philip Jeffries went missing. When he briefly reappeared he said "We Live Inside A Dream". And then he was sucked back to a dream version of Buenos Aires (it must be a different reality or he would wouldn't have been missing and simply called back in using a phone). 

 

I'm thinking the exact same has happened to Coop. He's stuck inside a dream version of Las Vegas, but the dream is a literal place that exists in its own universe (a trap created by bob). Like all dream logic, reality gets confused within the dream:

 

Rancho Rosa: The RR

Silver Mustang: White Horse

Sycamore Street: Sycamore Trees

Lancelot Court/Merlins Market: Glastonbury Grove

One Armed Bandit (slot machines): One Armed Man

Dale Cooper: Dougie Jones

... and more parallels i'm sure.

 

All of this tracks to the same dream state that happens to the protagonists of Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Motifs appear in different forms within the dream that relate to something in the real world... and the protagonist eventually finds out the truth and escapes (even if they don't want to).

 

This is why, to me, the whole thing feels unreal. The music is different. The acting is different. We're literally not where we are supposed to be.

 

The reason i mention this here is because Mike then appears in this episode:

 

"You have to Wake Up."

 

So, is Coop living inside a dream?

[Crunchnoisy]

47 minutes ago, Eraserhead72 said:

 

Rancho Rosa: The RR

White Horse: Silver Mustang

Sycamore Street: Sycamore Trees

Lancelot: Glastonbury Grove

One Armed Bandit (slot machines): One Armed Man

Dale Cooper: Dougie Jones

 

I like this.  So is Ike the Spike --> The Man from Another Place?

Janey-E --> Annie

Jade --> ???

Coffee --> Coffee

 

[Guts]

1 hour ago, Eraserhead72 said:

Quick brainfart thought.

 

Philip Gerrard went missing. When he briefly reappeared he said "We Live Inside A Dream". And then he was sucked back to a dream version of Buenos Aires (it must be a different reality or he would wouldn't have been missing and simply called back in using a phone). 

 

I'm thinking the exact same has happened to Coop. He's stuck inside a dream version of Las Vegas, but the dream is a literal place that exists in its own universe (a trap created by bob). Like all dream logic, reality gets confused within the dream:

 

Rancho Rosa: The RR

White Horse: Silver Mustang

Sycamore Street: Sycamore Trees

Lancelot: Glastonbury Grove

One Armed Bandit (slot machines): One Armed Man

Dale Cooper: Dougie Jones

... and more parallels i'm sure.

 

All of this tracks to the same dream state that happens to the protagonists of Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Motifs appear in different forms within the dream that relate to something in the real world... and the protagonist eventually finds out the truth and escapes (even if they don't want to).

 

This is why, to me, the whole thing feels unreal. The music is different. The acting is different. We're literally not where we are supposed to be.

 

The reason i mention this here is because Mike then appears in this episode:

 

"You have to Wake Up. Don't Die. Don't Die. Don't Die."

 

So, is Coop living inside a dream?

 

This is a pretty good idea.  I think you are basically right, but it can be true and still technically exist in the same reality as twin peaks ect. It can just be that coop is trapped in a metaphoric reversed version of the old show, much like the first 30 min of fire walk with me. 

 

[Gregalor]

3 hours ago, Crunchnoisy said:

Jade --> ???

 

Ignoring that there was a Jade on Invitation to Love...

Josie? A friendly woman who used sex to get ahead in life. Ultimately betrayed Cooper (shooting him / dumping him off at a casino).

[Maple Syrup and Ham]

On 12/06/2017 at 7:06 AM, Gattman said:

Does it have to mean anything this is why I think Social Media is ruining shows like this

Not EVERYTHING has to have a meaning this is how I live my life

 

I laughed at the King and I comment and read nothing into it as important personally. I laughed because it instantly reminded me of the scene between Pete and Catherine when she was "disguised" as Takamora. They were at the bar and he asks "Have you ever seen the King and I?". Loved it!

[mikemariano]

16 hours ago, Eraserhead72 said:

So, is Coop living inside a dream?

 

This is really good and articulates a lot of what I only had in the back of my head this week.  I am trying to poke holes in this theory through one assumption: if the FBI and Twin Peaks scenes are still taking place in the real world then a dreamworld Las Vegas can't overlap.

 

Darya and Ray were part of a conspiracy to kill the doppelganger Cooper in the real world. There are hitmen after Dougie as well, but they might not be directly connected.

 

Both doppelganger Cooper in prison and Lorraine in Vegas seem to contact the same box in Argentina, but they still might be calling from different realities and the box might be a "conduit" between the real and artificial worlds, since it seems to be tied to Jeffries.

 

Dougie's wedding ring is in the body of the John Doe, so that's a physical object from Vegas in the physical reality of South Dakota.  But like the Owl Cave ring maybe that totem is allowed to cross realities.

 

Is there anything else?  Right now our only connections from Twin Peaks to Las Vegas can be explained away like any other dream.

[dartmonkey]

The Great Northern room key.

[mikemariano]

8 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

The Great Northern room key.

 

Right!

 

If it shows up in a stack of mail on Ben Horne's desk any supernatural explanation would seem forced.

[FRENDEN]

Coffee being the constant in the doppelganger-ification of all things is pretty perfect.
 

In addition to the dreamlike parallels outlined above, some have pointed out that Janey-E, Sonny (Son-E), and Dougie (Doug-E), all have the same weird appendixes and hint to them all being fake along with their world. 

 

I'm not sold on Dougie's entire reality being a construct that traps Cooper. That feels like a cheat in a way I find hard to articulate. I'd be more satisfied if the only manufactured thing in that slice of the show was Dougie himself. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if y'all were right and that's exactly what happens.

[Jake]

11 hours ago, mikemariano said:

 

Right!

 

If it shows up in a stack of mail on Ben Horne's desk any supernatural explanation would seem forced.

Agreed. It's easy to wave many links in the chain away as "there could be a mystical double" but the room key is pretty tangible. 

 

I believe that the forensic evidence, while flimsy, is starting to build a pretty tangible trail out of twin peaks, out into all of our story arcs, and back to twin peaks, which makes me dubious of the constructed reality theory. (But who knows with this show!)

 

- Major Briggs was visited by Cooper the night before he dies which is super ominous. (Presumably that Cooper is the Cooper we saw yelling "How's Annie?" and is also Mr C/Bad Coop)

- Major Briggs' body showed up in Buckhorn South Dakota (in a crime Bad Coop/Mr C is clearly wrapped up in). His head is missing. Inside his body is Dougie Jones' wedding ring. (From here connections get tenuous or their meanings cannot be divined but they seem very tangible all the same.)

- Dougie Jones is the body/person Cooper replaced when he came out of the lodge (moments after seeing Briggs' floating head, but who knows if that connection is relevant).

- Dougie is being chased down by an assassin who is also targeting a woman who is in contact with the same device in Argentina that Bad Coop/Mr C is in contact with, by some means.

- When he swapped places with Dougie, Cooper kept the key in his pocket and lost his shoes, which feels like it all very tangibly like a physical location change and not some sort of ethereal transference. 

- Jade, who takes the key, exists wholly separately from Dougie/Cooper's POV, and puts the key in the mailbox sending it back to Twin Peaks. 

 

Not every connection is perfectly clean, but the deep underlying lines and places in the plot where characters cross paths feel solid and shared, to me, and not like one of the arcs is actually secretly in a shadow dream realm. But who knows!

[LostInTheMovies]

On June 16, 2017 at 1:43 AM, mikemariano said:

This is really good and articulates a lot of what I only had in the back of my head this week.  I am trying to poke holes in this theory through one assumption: if the FBI and Twin Peaks scenes are still taking place in the real world then a dreamworld Las Vegas can't overlap.

 

Darya and Ray were part of a conspiracy to kill the doppelganger Cooper in the real world. There are hitmen after Dougie as well, but they might not be directly connected.

 

Both doppelganger Cooper in prison and Lorraine in Vegas seem to contact the same box in Argentina, but they still might be calling from different realities and the box might be a "conduit" between the real and artificial worlds, since it seems to be tied to Jeffries.

 

Dougie's wedding ring is in the body of the John Doe, so that's a physical object from Vegas in the physical reality of South Dakota.  But like the Owl Cave ring maybe that totem is allowed to cross realities.

 

Is there anything else?  Right now our only connections from Twin Peaks to Las Vegas can be explained away like any other dream.

 

(Without getting into direct spoilers, this post implicitly and explicitly references some structural details about Mulholland Dr & Lost Highway; don't think it requires tagging but fair warning.)

 

Thoughts on all of this, because it's definitely where my mind has been wandering for the past week:

 

- The room key could arrive in a Twin Peaks town very different than the one we've been watching. However, that brings up issues of narrative/cross cutting reliability which may become too complicated. Because it would lead us to question everything we have *already* seen in Twin Peaks and before long people would be mapping out which TP scenes take place in which universe and it would become too scattershot, unless there was an immediately apparent delineation between the two (think Hill Valley in regular vs alternate 1985 or, what that's  obviously based on, Potterville vs Bedford Falls).

 

- The Twin Peaks we've been seeing so far could ALSO be in the same world as Vegas; in other words, BOTH could be part of a dream/fantasy/equally-valid-but-different universe than the FBI/Hastings stuff. (Because I don't think there's been any overlap yet between Twin Peaks and the FBI.) At this point it would mean this world isn't just a bubble around Dougie, it would exist in other places too. But that already has to be true, given the stuff with the assassins. (Think the non-Betty stuff in the first part of Mulholland Dr.; plus Betty didn't show up until that world had been established too.)

 

- Agreed with Mike that the links so far - the box in Argentina, the ring in the body - feel like they could be links between worlds rather than compromising that reading.

 

- There are a LOT of echoes of Mulholland Dr in the Vegas stuff.

 

- Given how Lynch likes fluidity and paradox (granted, probably much more than Frost does) we may get strong indications the Dougie world is a dream/manufactured/embedded within another reality while STILL having things like the room key arriving. So that we can't settle on any one explanation and/or both seem to be true. Think how Pete and Fred seem to be different characters/worlds in Lost Highway yet there are threads that link them (the cops following Pete, the picture that changes to show just one version of Patricia Arquette instead of two).

 

- If all of this is what's going on, it would resemble Inland Empire, in which we're constantly slipping between different realities and identities, more than some of Lynch's other late films in which we spend time in one reality then move to another instead of cross-cutting. (Although if it resembles the last point, with two distict realities eerily overlapping at certain points, as mentioned it would be a lot like Lost Highway.) This potentially stands to be one of the most straightforward yet also one of the most complicated depictions of multiple worlds/identities in Lynch's work.

 

- This is absurd, yet it's there - and *does* fit Frost's M.O. (his love of puzzles). "Dougie, Janey-E, and Sonny Jim" is apparently an anagram for "Josie, Judy, and my Annie, all gone". I am definitely not the one who figured that out.

[Jake]

5 hours ago, LostInTheMovies said:

Agreed with Mike that the links so far - the box in Argentina, the ring in the body - feel like they could be links between worlds rather than compromising that reading.

 

This is the read that gives the "its multiple realities" theory credence to me, but I still don't like it (or at least don't like the version imagined in my head right now).

 

Jade putting the key in the mailbox was just so nonchalant and human and disconnected from everything else that it has been hard to shake for me. (That and, for all the disconnected dream state madness that infuses Twin Peaks, it's always been pretty tight with its forensic evidence trails. I know it's been 25+ years and anything goes, but "tricking" the audience this way seems unlike Frost or Lynch to me.)

[Nappi]

Kyle MacLachlan and Naomi Watts are both doing a great job in this series! I wish Cooper would wake up already, but I'm also afraid that this would mean that we would have to say goodbye to Janey-E.

 

I expected to detest the Asshole Horne driving over a kid thing, but because the actual scene focused mostly on the emotional side of the tragedy and not the fact that Horne got himself into trouble, I was fine with it. I did not enjoy the assassination scene, though.

[MarkHoog]

Those extras in the street, though.  

[dartmonkey]

There's an interesting article HERE that discusses the first four episodes and many of the intertextual references with Lynch's film work. It also touches on the multiple reality theory, references to the various books that have been published (the Secret Diary, Cooper's autobiography, etc) and several other ideas that have been brought up here.

[Gregalor]

I wish the Cooper autobiography wasn't out of print and nearly $300 on Amazon. Would have been nice if they had re-released all the "canon" books, and not just the Secret Diary.

[dartmonkey]

If one was inclined, one could go to Glastonberry Grove dot net and find the text in html or pdf format.

[richardco]

What is going on with this woman's office decor? 

[registradus]

Am I the only one that thinks/thought Dougie was Evil Cooper? Like Evil Cooper was just using Dougie's life? as a kind of cover? People seemed pretty used to him disappearing. and being an arsehole. and having long hair.