Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 45: The Return, Part 10

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19 hours ago, Crunchnoisy said:
  • First thing: with rape you cannot, cannot pull the blanket role-reversal straw-man argument.  It does not pan out.  The politics and power structure of sex are simply not reversible - to attempt to do so paves over a lot more problems than it tries to "fix."  This lighthearted and loving interlude works because they are woman and man in their particular, irreversible roles.  Yes, if you reverse it, it would be perverse.  You can't.

 

I think this is true but the role-reversal isn't really necessary at all.  How would we react if Beverly fucked Johnny?  If he was portrayed with a confused smile on his face as she rode him?  The only real difference is the show inexplicably portrays everyone as assuming Dougie has some sort of agency while portraying Johnny as someone who needs to be constantly cared for.  Dougie is portrayed as someone who literally doesn't know that he needs to eat or use the bathroom, he has the agency of an infant.  

 

I sincerely doubt the show will ever get into Dougie's internal life and whether he ever understood what he was doing, based on the fact that everyone in the fiction assumes he's making his own decisions and is somehow living a life (what exactly has he been doing at work every day?)  Because of this I think it's less of a problem in the world, i.e. a legalistic argument about sending Janey-E to jail is pointless, but the concern is what's being portrayed by Lynch as a fun goof where you strip down the mentally disabled and do with them what you please. 

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I don't think it was played as a fun goof by Lynch, but it is the type of scene that might be played as a fun goof in other movies, and I think Lynch is aware of that. I think we are meant to be aware that Janey E is not acting like a real person, but like a character in a sitcom. Normally TV shows have some sort of built-in audience reaction, whether it's from a laugh track, music, sound cues, or reaction shots from other characters in the scene.  But the way she's filmed in the scene where she's 'seducing' Dougie, with long stationary shots, and the lack of built-in audience reaction (or reaction from Dougie) is supposed to highlight how artificial her character, her situation and her actions are.

 

These scenes, and most others in this show, feel to me more like watching a TV show being filmed than watching a finished, edited TV show. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but intentionally so. I think with Lynch you have to keep in mind that he's not using film as a way to give us a window into a seamlessly crafted, internally consistent illusory world, he's also using the medium itself to transmit meaning. You can't take the actions of the characters at face value without also considering the way that they're filmed, and the way the filmed footage is presented to you.

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I never would have expected this throw-away bit (in my view) to have sparked possibly the biggest topic of discussion so far. I think some are reading way too far into it, but this is cool.

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I still want to stay far away from the "is it rape or is it not rape" argument. That stuff is poison.

 

But I'm still bothered by the sex scene, and I'm still piecing together why.

 

In an earlier post I tried to describe my perspective on what this means for Dougie; but, as I posted it, I knew I was leaving Janey-E's perspective out. It wasn't that I was blind to the fact that she has a perspective; but I needed more time to work through my thoughts.

 

I find the scene sad, not funny, and the reason I'm uncomfortable about it is because I think we're meant to interpret it as comedy, not tragedy. Even setting aside the potential tragic implications of what this means for Coop if he stops being Dougie, which could just as easily be written away; the scene itself represents continued disregard for Dougie and his situation.

 

But for Janey-E, it's just as tragic. She is so desperate for intimacy, to feel respect for her partner, to be attracted to and be seen as attractive by her husband, that even these dark glimpses of Cooper coming through the image of her husband seem to her like a rejuvenation of their relationship. There's a bit of fantastical setting in the fact that Dougie disarmed Ike like he did; but if we allow that to be muted a bit as standard television over-drama what we have here is the tiniest evidence that her husband cares for her, takes care of himself (in a good way), and is even interested in having a relationship with their son. Contrast that to what we know of Dougie: a man who was off gambling in stead of being at his son's birthday party. A man who had rung up life-threatening gambling debt. A man who was unfit (in more ways than one). And, ultimately, a man who has managed to be confused for the Dougie we pervasively have on screen right now: absent, incapable, disconnected, unresponsive.

 

I can't reduce the scene to comedy, both because of what it represents to me about the Dougie character as an unseen rebirth for Cooper; but also because of what it represents to me about Janey-E as an unseen and unappreciated wife and mother.

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4 hours ago, chumm said:

I do think Janey-E's consent is a bit more complicated based on how she started trying to get Coop into bed by saying "Do you find me attractive?  I find you attractive."  This was of course a ludicrous thing for a wife to ask a husband if they have any sort of sex life at all.  We've also had basically zero evidence that Janey-E loves Dougie, she spends all her onscreen time berating or dismissing him, and only seems to show affection for him when he's doing Coop things (disarming Ike, being hot).

 

I get the strong suspicion you aren't married with children.  Janey-E has displayed tremendous love for this man.  She has expressed frustration and anger, but remember how protective she is.  How she aggressively stands up for him, and for their family.  Through it all, she regularly addresses their situation with "WE."  Togetherness. This is a woman who is very put-upon, but that married love runs deep and is fully on display.

 

And that "do you find me attractive" conversation... again, not the least bit ludicrous.  Get married, have a kid or two, and slide into middle age as they grow into preteen years.  That conversation is foreplay, realistic and sweet and reconstructive.

 

Dougie is weird, so is Janey-E, but their married life rings very true.

 

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An aside about Coop's abs...

 

I guess being in the Lodge ages you, but does not impact your physique?  I mean, we don't know exactly what Cooper was up to in there for those years, but it seems unlikely there is a Lodge Gym, and 25 years of just hanging around is not going to leave one with great musculature.  I suppose Cooper has pretty good posture: maybe he was just sitting *really really straight* in his chair for that 25 year stretch and that has worked his core...

 

Or maybe we'll get a flashback of him doing pushups with the Arm sitting on his back, or kettlebell exercises with one of those statues.

 

Interesting point about the missing gunshot wound, too - it might just not have been visible from the angle we got, but one would expect a doctor to remark upon a scar that hadn't previously been there.

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Dougie-Cooper wouldn't have the gunshot wound, though, because that'd be on Cooper's original body, which is currently being driven around by the doppelganger Cooper.

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7 minutes ago, Mike Danger said:

Dougie-Cooper wouldn't have the gunshot wound, though, because that'd be on Cooper's original body, which is currently being driven around by the doppelganger Cooper.

 

I really don't think that's a valid way to interpret this. If this were the way it works, Cooper's Doppelganger wouldn't have a backwards fingerprint.

 

But, ultimately, I don't think much of this matters so far as it's been on the screen. Cooper has a cut physique because that's what Frost and/or Lynch decided they wanted on the screen. Because they wanted to present a contrast between Dougie before and after Cooper. Because they wanted Cooper to be portrayed with confidence and strength.

 

Why doesn't Dougie have a gunshot wound? "When the will is invoked, the recuperative powers of the physical body are simply extraordinary."

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Is Doppelcoop supposed to be in Cooper's original body?  Was there an unconscious body left behind when Cooper went into the Lodge which was then 'possessed' by Doppelcoop?  I didn't think so, but my memories of the end of S2 are pretty hazy at this point.

I thought the doppelganger had escaped, (with its own body) and that Cooper (in *his* own body) has only recently returned to find himself in Dougie's life.  (The Dougie we briefly see in the Lodge is more overweight than Cooper and has slightly different coloured hair, so it would seem he retained his body too)

@anderbubble - so that's the Twin Peaks version of 'A wizard did it?'  :)

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16 minutes ago, BonusWavePilot said:

@anderbubble - so that's the Twin Peaks version of 'A wizard did it?'  :)

 

My touchstone for this tends to be Slumdog Millionaire.

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My understanding throughout this season is that the body we saw popping out of an electric outlet in the beginning of Season Three is the body we saw go into the lodge at the end of Season Two, and a totally different body (belonging to bad coop/mr c) is what walked out of the lodge at the end of Season Two. But I guess that's just totally an assumption.

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I think that's supported by what we've seen so far...  We have the reversed fingerprint on Doppelcoop, the change in physique & hairstyle as Coop replaces Dougie, Doppelcoop's black irises etc.

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Harry Dean Stanton as this sage of the trailer park is my favorite quiet aspect of this season. The fact that we've seen him twice also makes me think his role won't stay quiet. 

 

I hope the revelation on Diane isn't just that she's been playing everyone and is about to heel turn. Her interactions with Cole have been so impactful and heartfelt, I'd hate it to all disintegrate away for a Sweet Twist. There's very little chance i get out of this one unburnt, though. 

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On 18/07/2017 at 3:35 PM, Jake said:

I think IMDB got pre-populated by fans as speculation before the new season aired and then someone (correctly) wiped it right before the premiere and people have been filling it in as the show airs. So any pre-premiere IMDB info shouldn't be trusted. 

 

Oh! Thanks for the clear up

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13 hours ago, Crunchnoisy said:

I get the strong suspicion you aren't married with children.  Janey-E has displayed tremendous love for this man.  She has expressed frustration and anger, but remember how protective she is.  How she aggressively stands up for him, and for their family.  Through it all, she regularly addresses their situation with "WE."  Togetherness. This is a woman who is very put-upon, but that married love runs deep and is fully on display.

 

And that "do you find me attractive" conversation... again, not the least bit ludicrous.  Get married, have a kid or two, and slide into middle age as they grow into preteen years.  That conversation is foreplay, realistic and sweet and reconstructive.

 

Thumbs up on this read. I'm with you here.

Separately, something had been bugging me about the BadCoop / Diane texting interaction and it finally hit me when listening to the TPR episode. If Diane is communicating directly with BadCoop, then the texting timeline doesn't add up.

 

Part 9

  1. BadCoop arrives at the farm.
  2. CUT TO Diane on the FBI plane, where her phone is jammed.
  3. CUT BACK TO the farm. BadCoop uses a burner feature phone to send the "dinner table" text in all lower-case.
  4. Immediately after sending the text, that phone is shotgunned to bits.
  5. Time passes and we can easily assume that the FBI plane is still in the air for a decent amount of time. Certainly longer than the minute between BadCoop's text and the phone being destroyed.
  6. Halfway through the episode, Diane and the FBI gang arrive at the "fucking morgue!" in Buckhorn where Diane checks her phone and finally sees the text message, but it is in all caps.

Part 10

  1. In the hotel, Albert relays that Diane received the text "at 11:13 this morning" and "pinged off a cell tower in Philly" which Tammy traced back "to a server in Mexico."
  2. She replied to that text with "They have Hastings. He's going to take them to the site."

So there's definitely a relay happening here. She couldn't have texted back directly to BadCoop, as his feature phone had been destroyed. The "server in Mexico" - whether it's run by BadCoop or a third party - is probably where the message was reformatted from lower- to upper-case.

 

I don't know where this leads. Does BadCoop know that his messages are going to Diane? Who is Diane actually replying to (does she even know)? If the server admin is a third party, are they working for or against BadCoop? Perhaps, as Chris and Jake surmised, "Phillip Jeffries" is the intermediary and they are orchestrating things differently than we assume.

The possibility certainly exists that Diane is NOT working with BadCoop, which is at odds with most of the internet's immediate reaction.

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I thought it was a decent episode. Storylines are moving along and threads converging. I honestly don't get the upset with the Richard Horne scenes. He's a despicable piece of shit, and his comeuppance is inevitable. Lynch has repeatedly said the show needs to be regarded as an 18-hour movie: -

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/david-lynch-talks-twin-peaks-revival-mulholland-drive-w482337

 

So I don't get why there's this bewilderment because narratives payoffs aren't delivering in what would be regarded as a films second act (Episode 10 of 18). At best you're looking at episode 13 before threads are going to start resolving, and in truth, I doubt Richard Hornes is likely to wrap up at that juncture, least of all because we still have yet to find out what happened to his mother, what she may be up to, and where she is. Her absence from Ben's storyline and Richards cash grab seems to suggest she's likely not in Twin Peaks or involved in the running of the Great Northern at the very least. 

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There's bewilderment because we are human beings, an emotional species that finds comfort in expectation and is confused or anxious when they are defied. It's cool to be a bastion of rationality and say "David Lynch said its structure is unusual," and end the story there, but that 1) is a more unique reaction than you may think it is (see above, re: what we are) and 2) I think that attitude has the potential to limit discussion rather than enhance it. 

 

I'm all for saying that one shouldn't draw conclusions until the end, especially given the unique-for-television structure of this show, but I think it's perfectly within bounds to feel shocked and upset by the imagery and behavior in Richard Horne's scenes even without knowing "what they mean" in the larger picture of the show. Regardless of whether he gets comeuppance, he did these things, the show chose to present them in a specific way, and we watched them. That's going to cause a reaction!

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4 hours ago, Gamebeast23456 said:

Harry Dean Stanton as this sage of the trailer park is my favorite quiet aspect of this season. The fact that we've seen him twice also makes me think his role won't stay quiet. 

 

Secret History of Twin Peaks spoilers

Carl/Harry Dean Stanton and the Log Lady were both abducted by a Lodge spirit as children and have the same three-triangle mark as Briggs, so I imagine Carl's going to be important in some way

 

Good points raised about the two Coopers, fingerprints, etc., I retract my previous comment. 

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22 hours ago, Gailbraithe said:

Like I said, I don't want to be in this argument.  My background is in criminology, and the people making this argument's background is in feminism or something...

 

I'm not going to get into this argument, but I'm replying to this just to give you something to think about.  My partner has many years of experience in criminal justice, both in formal education and work, although she ultimately left the field.  She doesn't agree with you.  A background in criminal justice does not dictate a particular way to view rape, or to view this scene.  Your background informing your view is fine, but you presented this as a kind of special knowledge dictate that set you apart from everyone else, and that's simply not true.

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Okay, so thinking about this thread in general, as much as it saddens me to see the way people were communicating with one another in here, in many ways it also strangely represents exactly why I'm enjoying season 3 so much.  Everyone is watching the same thing, and yet the range of emotional reactions don't feel like they could be greater than they are. 

 

Because of my own background and experiences, I've having incredible personal and powerful responses to this show, and it's difficult for me to see it other than the way I am because of that.  But I appreciate that people like @anderbubble and @Mangela Lansbury and @Gailbraithe and etc. and on are coming to it with experiences and frameworks that are different than mine and appreciating, or seeing, or interpreting things in ways that are different to me.

 

Almost every week these threads have posts about how this was the best or worst episode.  That it's been made gold or ruined by Frost or Lynch.  That this scene meant this or that.  It's kind of magical really.  But please y'all, remember to show some kindness and respect for one another and their reactions to what they're seeing. 

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I thought there were even more classic Badalamenti themes used in last week's episode, but together parts 9 & 10 might have more individual pieces of his than all prior episodes combined. Will that continue?

Many of the scenes are still without any music. And then some are doubled up in an unsettling way, there's been a few instances of that before but it was real apparent in this episode back at the Mitchum place. Fast and snazzy jazz on top of the slow sinister stuff when they're doing the 'shame on us' scene.

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1 hour ago, pokysharpy said:

 

  1. In the hotel, Albert relays that Diane received the text "at 11:13 this morning" and "pinged off a cell tower in Philly" which Tammy traced back "to a server in Mexico."
  2. She replied to that text with "They have Hastings. He's going to take them to the site."

 

So there's definitely a relay happening here. She couldn't have texted back directly to BadCoop, as his feature phone had been destroyed. The "server in Mexico" - whether it's run by BadCoop or a third party - is probably where the message was reformatted from lower- to upper-case.

 


He didn't say Diane's reply was received by anyone, just that she replied.  The only inconsistency would be if you imagine Diane ought to know that BadCoop would immediately destroy whatever burner phone he used to send the text.  But clearly if BadCoop was expecting a response, he's got some system set up that doesn't require the burner phone he had destroyed after using it.

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20 hours ago, Gregalor said:

I'm fully on the side of "There is a cultural problem that's far more prevalent than the man-hiding-in-alleyway image," but sometimes I wonder what other couples' intimate moments are like. "Consent is sexy", yes, but I envision forms being signed before each and every encounter. If you wake up one morning to your partner performing foreplay on you, were you raped because you weren't awake to sign off on it? There are people who will say that you absolutely were.

 

That sort of thing seems only relevant to people sleeping with someone they don't know well enough to know whether or not that sort of attention is something they want to wake up to.   (Although, sadly, I think there are even some marriages where that is the case or where one partner doesn't care what the other one wants.)

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40 minutes ago, Urthman said:

He didn't say Diane's reply was received by anyone, just that she replied.  The only inconsistency would be if you imagine Diane ought to know that BadCoop would immediately destroy whatever burner phone he used to send the text.  But clearly if BadCoop was expecting a response, he's got some system set up that doesn't require the burner phone he had destroyed after using it.

 

Yes, that's true. I'm just saying that the general consensus on the web is "BadCoop and Diane are texting/working together!" but it's entirely possible that they are not.

BadCoop has an IT infrastructure and is in communication with many different people. The BadCoop/Diane texts are demonstrably not direct communication between their phones. A third party could be relaying BadCoop's messages to Diane, and she could be replying to THEM instead of BadCoop. The third party and Diane could be working against BadCoop, not with him, and Diane's reply is a status report on this counter-BadCoop operation.

That's all I meant by my timeline. A plausible theory that counters BadCoop/Diane collaboration.

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Has anyone posted this here? If you want some more of that Trailer Park Stanton flavor with a little bonus Lynch to go with it

 

 

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