Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 45: The Return, Part 10

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3 hours ago, marblize said:

What about Bad Gordon?

 

I rewatched the original DoppelCoop in prison interview and Gordon's strong insistence that he be given his phone call read as maybe fishy to me in hindsight...

At the time I'd thought Gordon was requesting he get a call solely to trace it, but that didn't end up happening. 

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Doesn't Gordon say something like, "Make sure he gets his phone call, and let us know how it goes?"  Or something?   Like, it was clear Gordon wanted the warden to relay who was called and what was said, I thought. 

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27 minutes ago, Bjorn said:

Doesn't Gordon say something like, "Make sure he gets his phone call, and let us know how it goes?"  Or something?   Like, it was clear Gordon wanted the warden to relay who was called and what was said, I thought. 

Yeah. Instead the warden got played I guess. 

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not sure if this has been posted but the song playing behind "Hello Johnny, how are you today" was Charmaine, also prominently used to torturous ends in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

 

 

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It seems destined that we're not going to get Cooper back (or Audrey) until the very end of the season. Worse, we may not get them "back" at all. If that happens, will everyone just give Lynch a pass? I'm having a big issue with it as a fan of the original series. If TP is going to be something different, at least bring closure to those elements, otherwise it's just intentional audience manipulation IMO.  

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On ‎7‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 6:30 PM, Jutranjo said:

There is some context to what he's doing.

 

1. He's got a bad deal going with magic big time drug dealer

2. He's killed a child, so he has to skip town, hoping to escape the police and the drug wizard

3. He kills at least one more person

4. He needs money fast, he goes to his grandmother. He probably knows they have a safe.

 

The scene's still pretty much the same if you keep that in your head or not IMO.

I think the problem everyone has is not a flaw in this logical progress, but there is no context for this horrible story within the larger narrative.  Aside from his last name, he has almost no connection to... anything. Remove all of his scenes, and the first ten hours of this movie change not-at-all. 

 

I know everyone is pinning "trust Lynch" on that, but part of my aversion to this isolated shitty violent sub-story is... I don't trust him.  He's not infallible, and he's not immune to self-indulgence.  TP3 will definitely be a great net-positive TV experience, but I think we'll be looking back at the "Richard" thread as one of the weakest parts.  Calling it now.

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12 hours ago, Ford said:

It seems destined that we're not going to get Cooper back (or Audrey) until the very end of the season. Worse, we may not get them "back" at all. If that happens, will everyone just give Lynch a pass? I'm having a big issue with it as a fan of the original series. If TP is going to be something different, at least bring closure to those elements, otherwise it's just intentional audience manipulation IMO.  

 

For Janey E's sake I hope Cooper comes "back" at least an episode before the end of the season. I used to want that just so I could see Cooper again, but now I feel like Janey E will be robbed of closure if Cooper comes back (and Dougie goes away for good) with only minutes to spare before the credits. I care enoug about the Jones family at this point that I'd be happy to marinate in them having to deal with the fallout of a fully awakened Dale Cooper. 

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On 7/17/2017 at 1:41 AM, TurboPubx-16 said:

I think going into all the details of Richard Horne is good for the show. He's a young man who has quickly gone from petty drug dealer to having an all-out crime spree. As a total Audrey devotee it creates a conflict with how I view her as well. I just hope the "explanation" isn't that Richard is literally the offspring of an evil spirit/doppelganger. 

 

My biggest concern is that at the end of the series we do learn that, and also that bad Coop is simply just a bad guy who looks like Coop rampaging around, and Maj. Briggs traveled through some vague dimensions to deliver these messages, etc. In other words, I'm worried we end up with an ep. 16 - a rather pat tying-of-the-bow in which the plot content is too distanced from the supposed psychological resonance - just this time directed by Lynch himself.

 

I'll be glad the series exists, because it provides the opportunity for so many brilliant Lynch sequences (pt8 itself is a standalone audiovisual masterpiece) but as a piece of Twin Peaks it will seem wanting, redundant, and unnecessary.

 

Thanks to the intervention of the finale and FWWM I think the original Twin Peaks, for all its ups-and-downs, ends up being BOTH a collection of brilliant moments, sequences, and episodes AND a narrative journey that takes us somewhere profound. The Return is already the former; the latter remains to be seen.

 

But it definitely *could* be: a lot rides on those last 2 or 3 hours. If there's any filmmaker I can trust to deliver a powerful conclusion that deepens the pre-existing material in unexpected, even unforeseeable ways, it's Lynch.

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On 7/17/2017 at 4:01 AM, Kolzig said:

There's still no Audrey or Big Ed in the show after ten episodes! That is just crazy that they are still the main cast members not reintroduced in S3.

 

And the only thing we know about James is that he is cool and has always been cool.

 

The Big Ed thing actually frustrates me more. The longer Audrey is absent, especially as Richard goes on the rampage, the more positive I am that her reveal is going to be really pivotal. There's a reason we haven't seen her. But Ed? What purpose can delaying his appearance possibly serve? If anything, it undermines the power of waiting for Audrey (although the fact that he's in the trailer mitigates that somewhat). But we'll see.

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5 hours ago, LostInTheMovies said:

and also that bad Coop is simply just a bad guy who looks like Coop rampaging around

 

It seems clear (to me anyway) at this point that that's exactly what DoppelCoop is and what doppelgangers in general are. That is, a doppelganger is not the result of a splitting of a persons soul into good and evil halves a la Captain Kirk in that episode of Star Trek. A doppelganger is a mirror reflection of the original person and a complete entity in it's own right. So both Coop and DoppelCoop are complete entities, neither is "missing" anything, and it would be nonsensical for them to "merge" at some point (as I've seen some viewers speculate will happen).

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6 hours ago, utilityfrog said:

 

It seems clear (to me anyway) at this point that that's exactly what DoppelCoop is and what doppelgangers in general are. That is, a doppelganger is not the result of a splitting of a persons soul into good and evil halves a la Captain Kirk in that episode of Star Trek. A doppelganger is a mirror reflection of the original person and a complete entity in it's own right. So both Coop and DoppelCoop are complete entities, neither is "missing" anything, and it would be nonsensical for them to "merge" at some point (as I've seen some viewers speculate will happen).

 ^^^ Yes. The Black Lodge is the "shadow self" of the White Lodge, and the doppleganger is the "shadow self" of the person. 

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On 7/17/2017 at 1:36 PM, scrub lover said:

Everyone's criticism to this episode is almost exactly the way I felt about episode 9, but I actually liked this one quite a bit. It does sadden me that Coop has now been catatonic for over half the season. I was cool with it for longer than a lot of people but it's just a bummer at this point.

 

Awesome avatar. lynchdeer.thumb.gif.b9c5e03d934cdd069efd3983a233708a.gif

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18 hours ago, Crunchnoisy said:

I know everyone is pinning "trust Lynch" on that, but part of my aversion to this isolated shitty violent sub-story is... I don't trust him.  He's not infallible, and he's not immune to self-indulgence. 

 

As a fan of Inland Empire I'm pretty much immune to any potential self-indulgence from him and I don't think the violent substory is shitty at all.  

 

Did you guys have this much trouble with Maddie's death scene? In a vacuum it's much 'worse' IMO. Are people able to handle it better because its plot ties are more firm? Because it's more aesthetically expressive? Because there's a supernatural being to directly pin it on?

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19 minutes ago, marblize said:

Did you guys have this much trouble with Maddie's death scene? In a vacuum it's much 'worse' IMO. Are people able to handle it better because its plot ties are more firm? Because it's more aesthetically expressive? Because there's a supernatural being to directly pin it on?

It was the opposite of in a vacuum though. Maddie's death was a huge piece of the culmination to the Laura Palmer storyline in the main run of the series.  I don't see the point of making an "in a vacuum" comparison when so much of the conversation is about the context in which we're seeing these scenes. 

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19 hours ago, Crunchnoisy said:

I know everyone is pinning "trust Lynch" on that, but part of my aversion to this isolated shitty violent sub-story is... I don't trust him.  He's not infallible, and he's not immune to self-indulgence.  TP3 will definitely be a great net-positive TV experience, but I think we'll be looking back at the "Richard" thread as one of the weakest parts.  Calling it now.

 

I do have some concerns that Lynch won't be able/willing to pull everything together into an emotionally/psychologically resonant big picture like he did with FWWM, Mulholland Drive and (arguably, I guess) Inland Empire due to process as much as anything else: each of those other works was created on the fly (MD and IE overtly so, FWWM as part of larger Twin Peaks but also in the process of its own individual creation to a lesser extent). Whereas The Return was constructed almost entirely ahead of time, which may not be his strongest mode? We'll see, I still have a lot of hope for a transcendent, tying-it-all-together-but-in-a-Lynchian-way final 2 or 3 hours but I'm not banking on it.

 

Now that said, I don't think we have to worry about the Richard thread being a non sequitur. We're already 90+% positive he's Audrey's son and I'd say, given where everything is heading and how Frost has been tipping his hand throughout, 50+% positive he's evil Cooper's kid too. I don't love that development by any means, but it does ensure relevance.

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10 hours ago, utilityfrog said:

 

It seems clear (to me anyway) at this point that that's exactly what DoppelCoop is and what doppelgangers in general are. That is, a doppelganger is not the result of a splitting of a persons soul into good and evil halves a la Captain Kirk in that episode of Star Trek. A doppelganger is a mirror reflection of the original person and a complete entity in it's own right. So both Coop and DoppelCoop are complete entities, neither is "missing" anything, and it would be nonsensical for them to "merge" at some point (as I've seen some viewers speculate will happen).

 

Which is bitterly uninteresting and dreary imo but I fear you're probably right.

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3 hours ago, Mentalgongfu said:

 ^^^ Yes. The Black Lodge is the "shadow self" of the White Lodge, and the doppleganger is the "shadow self" of the person. 

 

What value does the concept of a shadow self have if it exists entirely separate from the dominant self? If Lynch/Frost are going this route, it feels like dime-store Jungianism, employed for dry sci-fi/fantasy adventure. Some of the worst aspects of how the series initially handled the Leland/Bob stuff, totally psychologically and dramatically flat.

 

My big question going in was, "how can they possibly made the good/bad Coop situation dramatically resonant?" and I fear the answer may be, "They're not even going to try." Except in an abstract, intellectualized, thirty-steps-from-visceral fashion which is honesty worse than not even bothering.

 

Still hoping we get more, but I'm prepared for Twin Peaks to be excellent Lynch audiovisual art and rather subpar narrative. Sadly, this will also make me respect Frost a lot less.

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56 minutes ago, Jake said:

It was the opposite of in a vacuum though. Maddie's death was a huge piece of the culmination to the Laura Palmer storyline in the main run of the series.  I don't see the point of making an "in a vacuum" comparison when so much of the conversation is about the context in which we're seeing these scenes. 

 

I said 'in a vacuum' precisely to look at the scenes as individual scenes, the context ties are part of my point. Knocking the new scenes for their apparently tenuous (at the moment of the episode) plot ties and rawness implies that horrific violence 'works' as long as it has better plot ties and better aesthetics, which seems iffy to me. I think both can have their place depending on what the work is doing. I realize I'm strawmanning a bit since I brought up the Maddie stuff. But I think the violence here being less lyrically stylish, sensical, and narratively 'pleasing' than in the original run might be interesting in and of itself. Maybe my calling it 'interesting' is fucked up, idk. I keep going back to Sarah Palmer being fascinated/horrified by the lion eating the water buffalo.

 

 

edit: I'm not trying to lay a gotcha trap or call anyone bad for having any of their opinions, just kind of working out why I don't find it to be a shitty violent subplot.

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I just watched Episode 28 over ...... There is a scene near the end where that high pitched noise is heard at the Great Northern and Ben Horne turns around and looks very very startled and BAM it's over and nothing comes of it ?????  It is the same noise we have been hearing !  Check it out .....

 

 

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On 20/07/2017 at 11:01 PM, Jake said:

 

The idea that the first two seasons of Mad Men aren't very good is astounding to me. I think that show is great from start to end.

One might even say it's worthy of a Rewatch podcast... ;) 

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I dont't know how oftern you check Youtube comments, but this one relates to discussion above, and the link is worth reading:

 

Quote
In an interview, the actress who played Candie said that she improvised her monologue to Tony on the security camera, and she was indeed talking about air conditioning. At least based on that interview, there is nothing more to that character than her being kind of spacey. http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/twin-peaks-amy-shiels-on-her-tragic-backstory-for-candie.html

 

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11 hours ago, Paul Smith said:

I dont't know how oftern you check Youtube comments, but this one relates to discussion above, and the link is worth reading:

 

 

If you've ever been around someone who is on a lot of Xanax or Ambien, her behavior isn't that unusual at all

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On 7/17/2017 at 6:18 AM, Tirranek said:

Richard Horne is basically Joffrey in the 21st century with a cocaine habit.

This essentially made my entire day lol ^ so accurate!

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Hey Chris and Jake, I don’t know if you guys are still following these forums at all, but I’m a real fan of your podcast on TP and you both said something in this episode that inspired me to find this old thread and comment.  So Chris I think mentioned having a music degree and Jake was talking about having played a bunch of the already existent music in the show as a young piano student. I’m a musician, a symphony conductor, so it’s always fascinating to encounter folks in relatively unrelated career fields, (I gather you guys create games???) who have a serious music background and are kinda simpatico.  So i just wanted to invite you to share something about those music backgrounds if you feel so inclined...since I subscribe to the belief that a music background informs many things about how one sees the world, and I sure felt that in your Twin Peaks Rewatch show. I’m not a gamer, so that’s not a level upon which I can connect to the majority of your content, but I’m hopeful you’ll do another show watch of something I dig on.  All the best, Kevin 

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