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Twin Peaks Rewatch 47: The Return, Part 12

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57 minutes ago, Demimonde said:

The ceiling fan gave me the screaming meemies. But otherwise, like most normal people, I had a hard time following this episode. Coupla things: Dian's nails were full-on Red Room/Black Lodge, red, black and white. Ben Horne's hilarious woodcut of BEN on his desk shot in reverse so we see the letters backwards.

 

Also, something that's been bothering me in all the Great Northern scenes is that no one seems to stay at the place. In seasons 1 and 2, the hotel was always populated and bustling, but all we've seen in The Return is Ben in his office (black, white and red Native glyph thingy on the wall behind him) taking calls and macking on Beverly. No sign of guests, no talk of guests, the need for supplies or food, staff issues or problem or VIP guests. Just Ben. Sometimes Beverly.  I'm starting to wonder whether Vegas is real and Twin Peaks is the dream. Bobby's dream? "The policeman's dream"?

 

The scenes at the Great Northern seem to mostly take place late at night, and I bet Ben has less hands-on administrative duties at the Great Northern than he used to, especially now that Beverley seems to be handling things. Also, with no important characters staying there, and the plot mostly taking place outside of Twin Peaks, it makes sense that there's no real reason for the Great Northern to be the sort of hub it was in the original series. 

 

However, it does seem like everything is steadily moving towards Twin Peaks, especially with Diane and the FBI having co-ordinates that point right there. I wouldn't be surprised if the later episodes of this season take place exclusively within the town itself. 

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2 minutes ago, Mike Danger said:

w/r/t people's reactions, I think a lot of people were expecting Cooper to "wake up" this week after the cherry pie scene last week.

 

I thought this for about half a second last week, but then I remembered the three or four other times I've thought that this season, and immediately tampered my expectations. I wouldn't enjoy this show at all if I went into every episode just hoping for the Return of Coop. 

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Just now, WickedCestus said:

 

I thought this for about half a second last week, but then I remembered the three or four other times I've thought that this season, and immediately tampered my expectations. I wouldn't enjoy this show at all if I went into every episode just hoping for the Return of Coop. 

 

yeah, agreed. I try to go into these with as few expectations as possible.

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I think a lot of viewers have romanticized what they want the original Twin Peaks to have been rather than what it was. Memory works that way. For me, this episode was as OG Twin Peaks as it gets; the only exception being the pacing, which is no longer dictated by the requirements of a prime-time slot on one of the 3 major networks and instead can take advantage of the luxuries afforded by Showtime and the era of streaming TV. Even back then, the show liked to take its time. Laura's murder wasn't solved until into the second season, and it wasn't yet fully solved at that point, since the mystery of Bob and the Lodges remained.

 

Immediately upon seeing Audrey, I realized that no matter what scene Lynch and Frost gave us, people would be disappointed. They want to see the Audrey of the past, the young Audrey, dancing to a Badalamenti jazz number back in the good old days. That past is gone, and time has taken its toll. I, for one, was intrigued by her scene, which raises innumerable questions about what happened to land her in this apparently loveless and contractual obligation of a marriage. Of course it was confusing, as it was meant to be. But it did a wonderful job creating tension and raising questions, expanding the mystery.

 

The Sarah Palmer scenes were disturbingly wonderful. The Truman/Horne scene was well done, and the transfer of the key will certainly advance the story when Hawk learns of it. Perhaps we'll see the Log Lady again. I am admittedly getting impatient for Truman, Hawk and Bobby to make their way to the coordinates, but I have to hope it will be worth the wait. And the FBI has officially brought Preston into the fold of Blue Rose and made it clear they are keeping Diane close in order to discover her secrets. Not my favorite episode of The Return, but I have nothing to complain about after my first viewing.

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The Audrey scene was so nerve-racking. They bring her in with no fanfare, and throw us straight into an dense, hard to follow conversation that felt like clumsily executed exposition from a completely different TV show. Just incredibly alienating and confusing. And I'm sure they knew what they were doing when they had that scene come soon after a scene where two other characters discussed something which would directly affect Audrey, and had Audrey not even mention it. Likewise, the Audrey scene ended with she and her husband agreeing to go the roadhouse, which led to a roadhouse scene where two completely new characters had a similarly alienating conversation. I feel like the theme of this episode was momentum refusing to be carried over. I know Frost and Lynch have a thing for stilted, artificial dialogue and awkward pacing, and I feel like this entire episode was a study in that, with the episode itself also feeling awkwardly placed in the series as a whole. In a way, it felt more formally experimental than anything from episode 8.

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i wonder who sent gordon the french fbi-code-charades woman, or if that was for Albert somehow (though he didn't seem that tuned in).  did anyone notice the bad rotoscoping (?) job in some of Tammy's shots opposite albert? you can see the red curtains behind her getting all fucked up and cut-out. i figure someone saw it but left it in for its digital creepiness, though i assume it's meaningless.

 

anyway, great episode, though it seems fairly dislikedexcited for the regular haters to spread more garmonbozia (pain and sorrow).

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So, surely someone else noticed the glitching around Gordon's visitor? At around roughly 27 minutes, right after she puts on her lipstick, she bends forward and goes into slow motion for a second. Then it cuts to Albert making a face like maybe he saw that happen, and then it cuts back to her and her finger glitches a bit on her wine glass. I was hating that scene, but after that I was pleasantly creeped out.

 

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this episode; I don't hate it like some, but I'm not a fan overall either. I loved Sarah's parts (also, that ceiling fan) and Ben Horn's scene, and the blue rose scene was pretty good.

 

But on the other hand, I didn't like Audrey's scene much; her husband's acting is pretty bad in my opinion, and I don't have any context to make the way she is behaving make sense with what we know of her. But I think later developments could still save it for me in retrospect, and I'm curious to see where it goes. And the roadhouse scene with whoever those people were was both mysteriously lacking Audrey and inscrutable.

 

Cole's scene was saved for me by the glitching and by Albert, but there have been so many token sexy ladies this season that I am put off by the introduction of yet another one pretty much instantly, even if the scene otherwise had some things going for it. And similarly related to the way this show treats women, I loved Sarah's scenes themselves, but I also feel like their impact is watered down by how many other hysterical or crazy women we've had this season, similarly to how none of this season's many murders can hold a candle to Laura Palmer's or Maddie's because there is just too many of them and they aren't explored in any depth. In the original seasons, Sarah's and Leland's exaggerated emotion stood out and was striking partly because it was such extreme distress in an otherwise seemingly peaceful town, and although the actress is amazing and these new scenes were very well done, I think it might have stood out better if there weren't already a bunch of similarly hysterical characters. There are good plot arguments to be made for why the increased death count and the increased hysterical character count makes sense in a post-season 2 + 25 years world, but still I think that something is lost there even if it is, best case, lost in exchange for something else gained.

 

Lastly, Dougie's scene was super disappointing to me. I got invested in it immediately; he didn't catch the ball, what's going to happen next.... Cut, and we never find out. I really want to know if Sonny Jim kept trying to play with him or gave up and continued to be frustrated (something we haven't seen yet) or what. And as soon as I saw Dougie I made the mistake of getting excited about getting to see more Good Coop, but alas, no.

 

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Okay, overall didn't really like this one, apart from certain scenes. The stiltedness in certain scenes (I'm thinking mainly of the scene with Cole's "friend", but all of them really) seemed almost like a parody of Lynch's usual style and not really the real thing. I did enjoy the scenes with Sarah Palmer and Ben Horne, and I found Audrey's scene hilarious, apart from the fact that it seemed to have nothing to do with anything.

 

I also think the "1 episode = 1 day" timeline of the series is completely out the window. Bobby opened the cylinder with the message from Maj. Briggs in episode 9. The message contained 2 consecutive dates, 10/1 and 10/2, the earlier of which was said by Truman to be "two days from now". They were supposed to go to Jack Rabbits Palace on (I assume) the earlier date. Being generous and letting "two days from now" mean "two full days after today and then the day after that" would place 10/1 in this episode, episode 12, which showed Truman and Hawk otherwise occupied and not heading up into the woods.

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Kinda surprised about all the disappoint from this episode. Quite enjoyed this one. I liked Tammy's initiation into the Blue Rose club. Tammy and the Blue Rose has me thinking that she'll meet a tragic end. Also, that this places Secret History of Twin Peaks at around this point in the chronology of the show, presumably. I also really liked how much the french lady ate up her exit, (I've absolutely resigned myself to the women of Twin Peaks playing too small a role in the story).

 

I did like how incomprehensible Audrey's scene was. It felt like a return to Invitation to Love that I had skipped out on for a few a seasons, with the addition of coarse language from our beloved Audrey.

 

3 hours ago, Mentalgongfu said:

They want to see the Audrey of the past, the young Audrey, dancing to a Badalamenti jazz number back in the good old days.

Which is why I find that to be an interesting take. Because I feel like Audrey's reintroduction to the show felt like she had never been gone, like literally, she felt exactly the same as she did in the original run. She had that same air of a young woman who pushed for what she want even she wasn't necessarily capable or experienced enough to do that. I'm not sure of Sherilyn Fenn's acting chops outside of Twin Peaks, but I really got the feel that not much has changed for her (she certainly isn't a lady agent). But to the actual episode, is she actually Richard's mother?!?! Why hasn't she been around? And Ben's musing over Richard not having a father, and then losing himself in a touching moment about his own father.

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6 hours ago, WickedCestus said:

However, it does seem like everything is steadily moving towards Twin Peaks, especially with Diane and the FBI having co-ordinates that point right there. I wouldn't be surprised if the later episodes of this season take place exclusively within the town itself.

 With all due respect, people have been saying this for weeks, especially after episodes nine and ten where it seemed like the plot threads were coming together. And this week we had essentially no movement on Dougie Jones, no appearance of Bad Coop, no sense of motion on things coming together. The Sarah Palmer scenes were great, but a lot of the rest of this episode was suddenly introducing or name-dropping a whole lot of new or marginal characters. Billy? Tina? Charlie? Natalie? Abbie? Angela? Clark? Mary? Trick?

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8 hours ago, UnpopularTrousers said:

-I liked how Ben Horn's conversation with Truman about Richard directly paralleled the conversation he had with his ex-wife after Richard attacked her. He acted very compassionately concerning Miriam and agreed to pay for all of her medical expenses, but showed no compassion for his family and refused to give them any money under similar circumstances. It made his actions this week seem shallow and ingenuine

Oh definitely, especially when he follows it up by being more swept up in his own bike story than anything else that's going on.  (I suppose a charitable read would be that he was reflecting on how he had failed to stand in as a father for Richard, and thus helped him go astray in some fashion, but I don't think so.)

The Audrey scene felt an awful lot like being trolled - to have such a barrage of unknown stuff to try to track, then have Audrey stand-in for us waiting to figure out what is going on at last through that drawn-out phone call to have her husband, and the scene, both stonewall...  (To be clear, I don't hate this, but I will admit to a spirited "oh fuck you!" which was half aimed at the character and half at uncle Dave himself.)
 

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4 hours ago, utilityfrog said:

I also think the "1 episode = 1 day" timeline of the series is completely out the window. Bobby opened the cylinder with the message from Maj. Briggs in episode 9. The message contained 2 consecutive dates, 10/1 and 10/2, the earlier of which was said by Truman to be "two days from now". They were supposed to go to Jack Rabbits Palace on (I assume) the earlier date. Being generous and letting "two days from now" mean "two full days after today and then the day after that" would place 10/1 in this episode, episode 12, which showed Truman and Hawk otherwise occupied and not heading up into the woods.

 

I was thinking about this during the FBI scenes. The scene where Diane gets deputized and the scene where she's in the bar have her in two different costumes, so maybe those are two different nights? Also, someone pointed out on Reddit that it's 11:05 when Albert and Gordon are talking and then 7:00 when Jacoby is doing his radio show, which makes no sense assuming all of this stuff is supposed to be happening in the sequence it's shown (unless there's ANOTHER day break in there). Part of me really wants to read more into this but I feel like Lynch/Frost just don't care/want to tie themselves to a specific timeline.

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38 minutes ago, BonusWavePilot said:


The Audrey scene felt an awful lot like being trolled - to have such a barrage of unknown stuff to try to track, then have Audrey stand-in for us waiting to figure out what is going on at last through that drawn-out phone call to have her husband, and the scene, both stonewall...  (To be clear, I don't hate this, but I will admit to a spirited "oh fuck you!" which was half aimed at the character and half at uncle Dave himself.)
 

 

Yes, this exactly.  Here's Audrey!  She's going to act in front of a fireplace!  And then... ooh, ooh, nope, you don't get to hear what was on the call.  It almost seemed like her husband actually promised the caller he wouldn't divulge any information.

 

Now, for fun, do what my brain did:  get it in your head that "BILLY" is a nickname for "RICHARD."   And "billy/Richard" has been missing for two days.  And you can't satisfy me, so I fuck billy/Richard... my SON!

 

It was only coming onto this forum this morning that it dawned on me that no... no... Billy is not a nickname for Richard.  But you know what, it sure did ground me in that scene... until she said she was fucking him... but then I thought, "Hey, Twin Peaks, sure!"

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About all of the Roadhouse Randos.

 

I think it is only:

"Hey, here's what life for young people is in Twin Peaks... these are just little one-acts for you to enjoy."
 

And then, maybe they are also cannon fodder. Since the whole story will converge on Twin Peaks by the end, do you suppose that Frost and Lynch are trying to put faces on a bunch of locals for a bloodbath finale?  I don't think they'll pay off in any other way.

 

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41 minutes ago, Crunchnoisy said:

Now, for fun, do what my brain did:  get it in your head that "BILLY" is a nickname for "RICHARD."   And "billy/Richard" has been missing for two days.  And you can't satisfy me, so I fuck billy/Richard... my SON!

That's what I was initially thinking, until I remembered Billy is usually short for William, not Richard (thank god).

 

As with the rest of this series, there is a strong sense of discontinuity from scene to scene, a relic of the fact that most of these stories were shot as separate chunks and then edited together to make episodes that don't always fit together perfectly. For example, with all the talk about the the Richard Horne manhunt earlier in the episode, it's bizarre that the first Audrey scene has no mention of any of that (presuming Richard is her son, or at least a close relation). Instead, she's talking about looking for a completely different character who has gone missing. Strange!

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I enjoyed the episode, although it didn't quite live up to last week for me. 

 

Question - is there a color thing going on that we are supposed to be decoding?  I thought I remembered something about that being mentioned a few weeks back. There is the occasional iconic shot of the stoplight (with red, yellow and green lights), signifying something about to happen.  There is the Red Room.  There is yellow creamed corn = garmonbozia.

 

Today I was of course struck by the red-curtained hotel room where the FBI meeting was.  I was struck by the Sarah Palmer store checkout scene - where there was a display of yellow (turkey jerkey) and red (beef jerkey).  Then later, there was Ben Horne taking about his green bike, with a green lamp on his desk.

 

What does it mean? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But it feels deliberate to me.

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2 hours ago, Hansel Bosch said:

Natalie? Abbie? Angela? Clark? Mary? Trick?

 

At this point it seems like the mini-hangouts at the roadhouse are mainly for texture and we're unlikely to see those women or Trick again. Though who knows. 

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22 minutes ago, marblize said:

 

At this point it seems like the mini-hangouts at the roadhouse are mainly for texture and we're unlikely to see those women or Trick again. Though who knows. 

These scenes are frustrating for me because I know the end is rapidly approaching. I can literally feel the show's overall runtime counting down to zero, and can't help but feel like they could be doing so much more with these latter-half episodes. There simply isn't enough time for "texture" at this point. That said, I loved elderly bellhop and old man banker from season 2... why did those scenes work, and Tedious French Lady feel so inane?

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One of the things that's insane to me is that these episodes are so dense and there's so many little things going on that you forget some of the incidents and miss why they're significant. 

 

For example everyone's talking about Audrey and Gordon/Cole/Tammy/FrenchLady and who were the girls in the bar at the end and Sarah Palmer's freakout at the liquor store and the ceiling fan, but until I read the Rolling Stone rundown of this week's episode I had completely forgotten that Chantal and Hutch (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth) straight up executed a man on his front steps in front of his son, and I didn't recognize/realize that the guy was the warden that let Cooper go free. 

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/recaps/twin-peaks-recap-prodigal-daughter-w494955

 

It's interesting to me how much of our watching of TV and movies is to sit there and let the plot explain itself to us and this show is just absolutely not that.

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5 minutes ago, marblize said:

there's always time for texture :angry:

 

I don't see how Roadhouse randos we don't know, talking about stuff we don't care about, could be considered anything but a waste of valuable time. Maybe it's just me

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4 minutes ago, scrub lover said:

 

I don't see how Roadhouse randos we don't know, talking about stuff we don't care about, could be considered anything but a waste of valuable time. Maybe it's just me

 

Meh, the chromatics didn't seem to play that long this week so I just view it as an extension of the episode closing songs. I like it.

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Not a satisfying episode per se, rather patience testing...on its own it sets up too much and progresses too little.

I can't believe that this late in the season the show isn't finished with setting up plotlines.

I loved the Audrey scene. Audrey as a middle-aged woman lost the cutesy charm of her younger self, but still talks in a similar manner. It's not nice seeing her like this, but it tracks. Yeah, I also was confused who they were talking about, but, putting aside some specifics of the conversation, I enjoyed the scene.

Sarah Palmer's moments were the standouts for me, definitely.

Overall, good as a part of a larger whole, but too unsatisfying on its own.

 

25 minutes ago, scrub lover said:

 

I don't see how Roadhouse randos we don't know, talking about stuff we don't care about, could be considered anything but a waste of valuable time. Maybe it's just me

The Roadhouse Randos don't replace anything. You cut them out, nothing would be there to replace them (I doubt there are any deleted scenes at all). Sure, the season might be less patience testing as a result. Maybe you speak of your valuable time, and I can't argue with that.

We'll probably won't see these women again. These scenes let us listen in on conversations from random residents of Twin Peaks, giving us a taste of mundane happenings in their words. I think that's what they're going for. Not sure what to think of it.

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This episode was a real dumping ground for portentous aerial shots of Washington forest. I'm not sure what else to make of it. 

 

My most unexpected moment of this episode was going from 'holy shit Audrey' to wanting to look at my phone in the space of Audrey's first scene. I like that Sherilyn Fenn is just kind of porting the character up two decades - what little we got of her was convincing and fun, but also tragic when you remember the ambition of the original character. I can really easily track OG Audrey to disheveled, angry and bored much older Audrey who ended up just living like her mom, as a trophy wife for some weird rich dude. It felt right. But also, what the fuck was anyone talking about? Why do I care? Classic Twin Peaks: The Return takeaways. 

 

Also, the whole setup to the Sonny Jim just throwing the ball at a blank Cooper was hilarious and subversive in context of the last, very locomotive, Cooper-centric episode. Just a goofy (literal) throwaway. 

 

The real standout this episode was definitely Sarah Palmer. Grace Zibrinski is an incredible actress, and always has been (at least in the context of what I've seen of her in the show). I really wish that one day Sarah Palmer could get some respite from the horrors of her past, but that day definitely isn't here yet. Who is in the house? 

 

 

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43 minutes ago, Ozzie said:

rather patience testing

 

i quite liked this reddit post

 

 

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