Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 42: The Return, Part 8

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I'm not big on TP lore, but before this season I had always operated under the assumption that the beings in the Black Lodge were sort of at a remove from humanity, and that their motivations only occasionally intersected with what happened to human beings on earth. This assumption, when I think about it, isn't based on much be more than my read on how a lot of scenes in the Red Room and with The Giant are presented. Still, I'd be lying to say I feel absolutely nothing wrt my assumptions about that being dashed. The Black Lodge realm seems super invested in humans, maybe to a fault. 

 

This episode did seem to be a really tight pairing between Frost and Lynch in a way I really can get behind. I think we are right to label Frost the lore king of Twin Peaks, especially since Lynch always seems to be more mecurial and spur of the moment in his creative process. I thought it was an exquisite and bold exposition vehicle, with absolutely CLASSIC Lynch sound design. There's lots of bombastic sound in this episode, but my favorite might actually be the moody, droning tones that accompany the whole Mr. C resuscitation sequence. Really unnerving and understated. 

 

Regarding the existence of evil before the bomb, I'd argue the point of making the bomb the forking moment is the level of power humans have now harnassed. Obviously, WWI and II were no slouches on the weaponized destruction front, but the amount of potential destruction behind the bomb was unparalleled. The general evils of humanity now had the access to the most powerful weapon ever, one that crystalizes every abstract single threat into something huge. 

 

I really enjoy that the Question Mark Guy formally known as the Giant viewed the exact footage that the audience does on an old fashioned projector. 

 

Showtime should really just put up the episode we will miss next week online. 

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That was really heavy for an episode. I still don't know what I watched. It wasn't Twin Peaks, but it was an explosion of visual and audio signals.

 

I almost lost my mind listening to the tragic Hiroshima song while Lynch put out an artistic display of explosions within explosions. Then the episode turned out to be a silent movie homage and then a 50's b&w scifi horror homage.

 

This is some crazy show. I don't like these turns that this episode pulled, but I can't stop watching it. Most of my friends already gave up, but I'm signed up to see this ship sail to the horizon or to the rocks in the end.

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11 hours ago, FRENDEN said:

 

Edit: Shout out to Gordon's office having garmonbozia and the bomb hung up -- I think he knows a lot more than has been let on in regards to his Blue Rose cases.

 

YES! I made that connection, too.

 

And re: the "Got a Light" guy, I'm not often scared by television but that whole last part of the episode 8 had me as terrified as I was the first time I saw the scene with Maddie's vision of Bob climbing over the couch. I've been watching these on streaming with a really nice pair of headphones and concur with all who said that the sound design was really on point the last episode. The electric crackling behind the "Got a Light" guy's voice was really effective.

 

It's funny but I'd forgotten I'd written in and was startled to hear my name when I was listening to the last episode but what I loved about the original podcast run was that it wasn't just a dry plot recap and although the current "Rewatch" episodes aren't really "rewatches" I still think the guys do a good job of talking about the episodes even if the lack of foreknowledge of events does make it a different kind of discussion.

 

So I had to jump back on the forums because I think this episode is exactly the kind of message Lynch has for TV recap culture. He's often said that he thinks movies should only be the movie itself, no commentary, no "extras" and his television episodes run the same way. Can you put the images he gave us into a narrative without destroying the essence of the images? I don't know.... I'm actually curious enough to (hate?) read some recaps to see what the consensus of "tv recap culture" is on this episode.

 

For the record, I loved it.

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Some parts of the abstract bomb scenes were uncomfortably similar to a dream I had once.

 

That's not a joke, by the way. a couple moments in there felt like they were literally plagiarized from a dream I had years ago. It was a weird experience, to say the least.

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12 hours ago, gormanate said:

Bob/Laura being literally a cosmic battle is something I do not like. 

 

9 hours ago, wonderboy said:

Also, I don't think stories about cosmic struggles are automatically shitty and overly reductive to the human consequences of the forces at hand. Or rather they're just about something else entirely. 

 

In writing this post I've realized that I think the opposite, that is; adding Good vs Evil cosmic lore does indeed make it shitty and overly reductive to the character's stories. In addition, I think it's a lazy and boring trope. I'm not saying that this is definitely what is happening here. I'm not passing judgement on The Return before I've seen it all. I actually enjoyed the episode. I'm just a bit worried, is all.

 

Two other works come to my mind: Lost and Persona (Shin Megami Tensai). The narrative concerns realistic characters with realistic, if extreme, conflicts. These characters are taken from their regular lives and thrown into a magical world. The regular world and the magical world intertwine in mysterious ways that tickle the viewer's imagination and make for excellent discourse. Then, the big reveal: behind the curtain are none other than the forces of Good and Evil! "Woah, that's so rad!" I say to myself. Then after an hour I realize it sucks. It sucks because cosmic forces Good and Evil are boring and pat. They lack depth, and are largely derived from rudimentary religious traditions*. 

 

Traumatic experiences should be faced head-on with compassion and honesty. Putting them in a "greater context" of a cosmic struggle is patting us on the head and saying, "There is a bigger picture here, it is terrible what happened to Laura but larger forces are at work." To me, Laura's abuse is the picture. Bob as a living-and-breathing metaphor for the darkness inside Leland gives us insight into the overwhelming terror a victim of abuse faces. Having a character like Cooper explore evil through metaphoric dreams is cool. Having our heroes fail to stop Bob because they lack spiritual maturity is powerful stuff. If what we're supposed to think is that, (deep sigh), Laura is not a normal human being, but a creation of the White Lodge to counter Bob, then for my experience it's fair to say that this removes meaning from the story we were told.

 

From a perspective of Lore, which in a lot of ways is the garmonbozia that fans of media need to sustain themselves, the Cosmic Battle is the ultimate trope. The murder of a small-town American teen is the A-Plot for our entire universe. Every moment in history can be connected to it, so whatever the writer is interested in can be shoe-horned in. Nothing is insignificant, not even the crumbs left over from a slice of delicious cherry pie, because the fate of the universe is at stake. It brings up (insufferably boring) questions about the Powers and Abilities of the cosmic beings that we can use to fill out fan wikis. The story can end with an epic anime-style battle.

 

Lost spoilers:

 

Guys, remember when Lost ended in an anime-style fist fight with leaping double superman punches? You don't? C'mon, Terry Quinn was possessed by the evil spirit, Matthew Fox was bequeathed super powers from the good spirit, and they fought like Goku and Vegeta. Yup, your brain made you forget that. 

 

 

10 hours ago, Gailbraithe said:

I have a feeling we just watched Gordon Cole's origin story.  I definitely think the Boy (1956) is Gordon.

 

I really hope they keep that kind of thing to an absolute minimum. Frost and Lynch have been so creative in the past, there's no need to use this trope either. They've already spent capital on, "Oh my god, look at how this character has changed in 25 years!" without actual re-investment (yet), so if they do the Star Wars prequel thing too... 

 

*Not trying to offend anyone:

 

 

I'm struggling to come up with the right adjective for what I want to convey. As one example, the notion that the Bible contains one being of pure good and another being of pure evil who fight over humanity's souls is not supported by the text. Anyone who does a deep-dive into their own spirituality and honestly tries to tackle the big issues will quickly drop simplistic notions of good and evil because they are simply not useful to one's spiritual growth or well-being, because they don't offer insight into reality and cannot help with someone dealing with grief and trauma.

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2 hours ago, Ford said:

I get why some like this, but as a viewing experiencing of an episodic show it was beyond frustrating. It would be one thing if all the episodes were available, but they're not. 

They are available to binge watch, on Amazon Channels. That's actually how I'm watching the show, and it has been very tempting to take a day off work to watch them all at once.

 

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I feel like I'll enjoy this show a lot more if I come back to it at a different point of time, or if I wait until I'm in the right frame of mind to watch episodes. Trying to watch this episode when I wasn't feeling particularly patient just resulted in me turning it off around the time the giant showed up, not because it was bad, I just skipped around some and thought "I know exactly what this is going to be, and I just don't know if I can handle it today"

 

I think years from now when I re-watch, I'll probably better be able to appreciate this episode

 

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Great post TurboPubx-16 , you nailed it I think. There was so much complexity in the relationships between Laura/Leland/Coop, that is removed now its just a cosmic fight between forces from outside earth. The human characters might as well not exist at all. It explains away their behavior with a wave of the hand. It was never their fault! They were puppets! David Foster Wallace wrote that Lynch's characters seemed to wear evil, rather than actually being it. I guess that's the interpretation we have to apply to all of Twin Peaks characters now too.

 

Lynch has a history of these kind of stories though. What is Frank Booth except a pure symbol of evil. There's not a lot of complexity in that character. However, Blue Velvet is saved by having Jeffory. A character who is wavering on the edge of goodness/darkness. Jeffory's facination with Frank is what makes that movie so interesting.

 

No-one is conflicted in Twin Peaks. We have amazing visuals, with a shallow story. Kinds like a CG Super hero blockbuster. Its a really dull vision of good and evil.

 

I really hope this turns around and I'm proved wrong.

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41 minutes ago, 510home said:

They are available to binge watch, on Amazon Channels. That's actually how I'm watching the show, and it has been very tempting to take a day off work to watch them all at once.

 

 All of the Return episodes are not available making this episode particularly ungrounded and frustrating until the others are released. 

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Didn't catch this the first time around, but it appears that what people are calling The Mother is what dopplecoop seems to be after. lIdYpN5.jpg

 

Also, I think it's pretty safe to assume that this is the same creature that appeared in the glass box and is what was following Cooper in the purple room when the girl said "My mother is coming".

 

Still not sure if the mother is supposed to be the creator of all the lodge beings or just Bob? I initially assumed just Bob but if this is what the girl in the purple room was referring to, then it implies she was created from the mother as well. I'm still not clear on who the woodsmen are. I have to rewatch as I can't remember if they are first shown in the 1945 segment before or after we see the mother vomitting the eggs.

Speaking of which, I don't think people's theory that the bugfrog that hatched is connected to laura makes sense, since we see the same eggs being vomitted by the mother. Which happens before the Giant sends the glowing orb to earth. Not sure if the bugfrog is supposed to be Bob or something else. Since during the vomitting scene we see several eggs and also a black orb with Bob's face in it. Which implies to me that bob and the eggs are different. Not sure...

 

I also have some mixed feelings about turning Twin Peaks into a enormous good vs evil cosmic battle. I feel about the stuff in this episode the same way as I felt about Frost's book: I think this stuff is really interesting and cool but I don't know if it's what I want from Twin Peaks. 

 

Edit: Also sorry for the enormous image I can't figure out how to make it a more managable size on this forum lol.

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Again, it remains to be seen just how reductive or literal of a direction this lore stuff is gonna go. It's possible that interpreting this all to mean Laura is the cosmically pre-destined chosen one is completely wrong. Or only partially true (meaning unclear to what extent real human qualities vs mystic forces determine the outcomes in her life). Again, as long as the human consequences of whatever this mystic bullshit is are portrayed in an honest or particularly moving and interesting way I'll be okay with that. And if it all devolves into some kind of insane cosmic anime (I saw some viewers comparing last nights episode to the End of Evangelion) then I might be okay with that too. 

 

Side note - the gotta light? sequence with the couple in the car is the most terrifying thing I've seen in a long time. Not only did the scene remind me of some really awful things (and frightening memories) I've been through personally, but I also thought the direction of the scene did a perfect job at getting across the stress/fear/confusion of the situation that's so total (from sound design, to camera motion, to lighting, to the actual events taking place on screen) in the way that only Lynch really does horror. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, wonderboy said:

Again, it remains to be seen just how reductive or literal of a direction this lore stuff is gonna go. It's possible that interpreting this all to mean Laura is the cosmically pre-destined chosen one is completely wrong. Or only partially true (meaning unclear to what extent real human qualities vs mystic forces determine the outcomes in her life). Again, as long as the human consequences of whatever this mystic bullshit is are portrayed in an honest or particularly moving and interesting way I'll be okay with that. And if it all devolves into some kind of insane cosmic anime (I saw some viewers comparing last nights episode to the End of Evangelion) then I might be okay with that too.

 

 

 

Yeah, I'm honestly surprised at the level of conclusion jumping that happens after every episode.   Like, I think collectively we're batting about .150 on actually being right about anything in the show so far, and most of the stuff we've been wrong on has ended up being delightful anyways (like the golden shovels).  I'm certainly not ready to declare that the show is about cosmic good and evil from what is still a pretty ambiguous episode. 

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Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if Showtime called Lynch's bluff when he said he wasn't going to do the show and somehow got someone else to do it. This hypothetical is inherently strained because I doubt such a project would ever actually get done, and the cast and fan reaction would be horrible, but I also am not sure people uniformly knew what they were in for when Lynch got a big budget and double the time. 

 

As much as I want Lynch to be the guy who tells complex and nuanced interpersonal stories, that's probably not him. Mark Frost probably has input, and he probably worked with him trying to give this story volume, but deep characterization has never been Lynch's ballgame. I think a lot of trouble he gets into as a writer springs from his education and background, his emphasis on the power of symbol and image and sound. He's a cold director. 

 

I'm not really walking away upset from however this new series decides to twist and turn the original characterizations. This episode, and the opening episodes of the season, are absolutely what I'm here for. I want Lynch to run wild and build his big, ugly symbology, be as cold and inhumane as ever. It will probably weird me out and piss me off, but that's what I expect. The way he chooses to speak about humanity just doesn't usually come from dialogue or characterization, though he has his moments. 

 

Also, one last thought -- what are the odds on us getting a Stephen King in The Dark Tower situation, where Gordon Cole is actually very literally playing the role of David Lynch, the liason for the author. What if the actual story of this season is Gordon Cole going from "I don't know what the hell is going on" to lore master Gordon Cole.

 

Laura Hudson still remains one of the few people able to match up with this show in terms of understanding how it tries to short circuit rewatch culture. Her write ups are so good.  

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13 minutes ago, Gamebeast23456 said:

Laura Hudson still remains one of the few people able to match up with this show in terms of understanding how it tries to short circuit rewatch culture. Her write ups are so good.  

 

seriously though, just read everything Laura Hudson writes.

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12 hours ago, Owlsy said:

I'm too invested to stop, but I'm going to drift to the finish line on this.  I really want to be sprinting.

You make a great point, and it's exactly what's bothering me as well. TP The Return is fascinating, spellbinding and 18 new hours of Lynch I never thought I'd get, but it also moves a deeply beloved show into different territory, one I wasn't quite prepared for. And I equally love it and feel dissappointed by it, if that makes sense. It's Lynch after all 😊

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44 minutes ago, JustFlo said:

You make a great point, and it's exactly what's bothering me as well. TP The Return is fascinating, spellbinding and 18 new hours of Lynch I never thought I'd get, but it also moves a deeply beloved show into different territory, one I wasn't quite prepared for. And I equally love it and feel dissappointed by it, if that makes sense. It's Lynch after all 😊

 

After a conversation with the lady this morning, I've been thinking about the relationship of TP and family.  Revisiting TP after 25 years is kind of like spending a lot of time with family that you haven't seen much since you were a kid.  They've aged, changed, and also as an adult you're seeing things that were present before that you were blind to.

 

Family is a big deal in not just within the fiction of TP, but in its creation.  Both Lynch and Frost have each had 2 family members involved in its creation at some point, I think? 

 

tldr: Twin Peaks is your weird uncle who you loved as a kid but makes you kind of uncomfortable as an adult because you can see things now that you couldn't before.

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Having had a night to sleep on it, I've had a few more thoughts about this episode.

 

I'm not ready to jump on the cosmic battle between good and evil bandwagon yet, but I'm also disappointed that it seems to be heading in that direction.  Laura may have been created as a "anti-toxin" to "cure" the world of BOB, without the fate of the world necessarily hanging in the balance.  It also seems to really undermine the "BOB is the patron saint of rape!" theory that some people are invoking to justify the "Evil Cooper raped Diane/Audrey" theory -- Ep. 8 really goes a long ways towards explaining why BOB wanted to corrupt Laura.  If Laura was created to heal the wound that is BOB, then BOB would want to corrupt Laura to prevent his own destruction.  This would suggest that BOB specifically targeted Leland so that he could gain access to Laura and ruin her, rather than suggesting that BOB chose Leland at random and targeted Laura because BOB is all about forcing his hosts to rape the people they care about most.

 

Also, and no offense to the people suggesting this theory, but the idea that the frogbug was anything but evil is crazypants.  I mean clearly the Woodsman's broadcast was intended to help the frogbug find a host, and it's hard to believe anything related to the Woodsman is good. 

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The frog bug crawling into the girl's mouth, the foot lingering like a hand waving out of the darkness, then disappearing....

Bob's hand emerging from the darkness at Glastonbury Grove, episode 28.

That bug is Bob.

 

The Hand.jpg

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I'm reluctant to take any symbol in this show, especially stuff that happens outside our reality, too literally unless it's explicitly spelled out. Garmonbozia is pain and sorrow, but it looks like creamed corn as it's being eaten. When I saw the Laura Face Orb, for whatever reason I didn't immediately assume "that's Laura Palmer's soul, being sent to earth so she can become a human and have all that stuff happen to her". I took it as a sort of symbol of what her life meant - the coexistence of suffering and joy and, in the end, powerful defiance - and /that's/ what was sent into our world, and maybe it has echoed in other people besides Laura. If we ever see the 1956 teens again, I'm guessing it will be shades of this.

I do get the concerns - plenty of ways these kinds of allegories can remove humanity and collapse depth. When you say something is cyclical or fated, you suck a lot of agency out of the characters involved. When you have a character represent an idea, other facets of them can get pushed aside. But there are usually many other opportunities to (re)establish their humanity, and FWWM is the pretty-good standard I hold Lynch to for that. We'll see!

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1 hour ago, Bjorn said:

 

Yeah, I'm honestly surprised at the level of conclusion jumping that happens after every episode.   Like, I think collectively we're batting about .150 on actually being right about anything in the show so far, and most of the stuff we've been wrong on has ended up being delightful anyways (like the golden shovels).  I'm certainly not ready to declare that the show is about cosmic good and evil from what is still a pretty ambiguous episode. 

The meditation/philosophy stuff Lynch is into seems to be very much about the erosion of a persons micro concerns and being open to greater forces/connectivity and the spiritual power of love and all that stuff so I wouldn't be shocked if it goes in that direction. I like cosmic horror when it's just a completely nihilistic nightmare - I think what's making this season so hard to process for a lot of people is the kind of personal attachments they have to characters as part of a fandom. I wouldn't go so far as to call it entitlement, but I don't think Lynch has given much thought if any to the kind of internal relationships viewers have built with the world or the characters. Obviously, for someone who has an emotional connection with a character like Laura Palmer it may matter a lot what kind of exposition is to come. I'm trying not to take anything literally and avoid the urge to tie it all up neatly in my mind like a fanwiki would. 

 

Also some thoughts on the atom bomb - it may seem like an obvious metaphor or a sort of lame plot device in 2017 but keep in mind Lynch and Frost grew up in an era where the fear of nuclear conflict was extreme and very much justified. The moment in history when humans built a weapon capable of making our species extinct (and then immediately committing an extremely brutal war crime with said weapon) feels like a turning point. The potential for nuclear conflict is still an extremely serious and critical issue today. I think lorewise the first use of such a weapon (in a test) opening some kind of portal to the lodge that barfs up a bunch of evil shit into the world makes sense - a moment in history which involves a literal massive release of energy that happens to have only the most hideous and savage intentions behind it. It isn't something people in our culture think about much but the existential threat of nuclear arms is still looming over us.

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55 minutes ago, JustFlo said:

You make a great point, and it's exactly what's bothering me as well. TP The Return is fascinating, spellbinding and 18 new hours of Lynch I never thought I'd get, but it also moves a deeply beloved show into different territory, one I wasn't quite prepared for. And I equally love it and feel dissappointed by it, if that makes sense. It's Lynch after all 😊

I'm just really enjoying the novelty of 18 hours of interesting, chewy material. I'm never bored, even when 'nothing' is happening. I'm literally leaning towards the TV on the edge of the sofa. It's not giving me what I'm pretty sure I want (a fully functioning Coop and less lore) but at this point Cooper could find Laura Palmer coming out of the shower and I'd still be thankful it exists.

 

I'm also appreciating the weekly release. I miss that from other shows. A binge rarely feels good, except for ticking the box, and this benefits from percolating time.

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Weird to me that anyone considers the show as 'dangling the cooper thread'/'manipulative' especially after a feast of an episode such as this one. Seems to me like the need to Have Cooper Proper and Have Cooper Proper Now comes from a place of impatience and borders on a demand for fanservice. 

 

Also for anyone who... liked (?) the bomb zoom I would highly recommend Bruce Conner's experimental film Crossroads. I can't find the actual film but Operation Crossroads videos contain the footage he used. In the moment I felt like Lynch was somewhat visually referencing it in particular. 

 

 

 

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20 minutes ago, marblize said:

Weird to me that anyone considers the show as 'dangling the cooper thread'/'manipulative' especially after a feast of an episode such as this one. Seems to me like the need to Have Cooper Proper and Have Cooper Proper Now comes from a place of impatience and borders on a demand for fanservice. 

 

Also for anyone who... liked (?) the bomb zoom I would highly recommend Bruce Conner's experimental film Crossroads. I can't find the actual film but Operation Crossroads videos contain the footage he used. In the moment I felt like Lynch was somewhat visually referencing it in particular. 

 

 

 

 

It's not fan service. It's the only coherent narrative the show runners have given us to latch onto. The rest has been music videos and unrelated vignettes.  I'd argue the old cast cameos are much more fan service than anything we've seen with the Cooper thread. 

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4 minutes ago, Ford said:

 

It's not fan service. It's the only coherent narrative the show runners have given us to latch onto. The rest has been music videos and unrelated vignettes.  I'd argue the old cast cameos are much more fan service than anything we've seen with the Cooper thread. 

 

I conflated your 'dangling the cooper thread' comment with the desire to see our old quippy cooper back immediately, my bad

 

i still think folks should turn off their instinct to find issue immediately and just bask in the fire a bit

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1 hour ago, JPL said:

I'm reluctant to take any symbol in this show, especially stuff that happens outside our reality, too literally unless it's explicitly spelled out. Garmonbozia is pain and sorrow, but it looks like creamed corn as it's being eaten. When I saw the Laura Face Orb, for whatever reason I didn't immediately assume "that's Laura Palmer's soul, being sent to earth so she can become a human and have all that stuff happen to her". I took it as a sort of symbol of what her life meant - the coexistence of suffering and joy and, in the end, powerful defiance - and /that's/ what was sent into our world, and maybe it has echoed in other people besides Laura. If we ever see the 1956 teens again, I'm guessing it will be shades of this.

 

 

This is where I'm at. I did go and read some recaps and you guys were right that Laura Hudson has the best one by far. It was disappointing to see other recappers explicitly putting their assumptions about the dream imagery down as fact.

 

I have to admit skimming through large sections of the Secret History book because I find X-Files style alien conspiracy kind of tedious but I did like the use of the Trinity nuclear test. I'd been listening to another podcast about the Wonder Woman movie and why they didn't use WWII as the setting, which seems like a much more obvious choice, except that the weapon of mass destruction in WWII was in the hands of the "good guys"... Maybe I've watched too much Japanese media but even if we've forgotten to be scared of nukes here, the psychic scar left by the bomb is very real.

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