Jake

Twin Peaks Rewatch 47: The Return, Part 12

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Just saw this mentioned elsewhere, and realised I forgot to bring it up.

 

I loved this dialogue between Gordon & Albert:

 

Gordon: We'll figure it out, but now I'd really like to get back to this fine Bordeaux.

Albert: What kind is it?

Gordon: 11:05.

As I took it to be Albert being a smartarse about the fact that what Gordon wanted to get back to only peripherally involved the wine (to the degree where he probably couldn't name what he was drinking), and Gordon in turn pretending to mishear him.

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1 hour ago, BonusWavePilot said:

As I took it to be Albert being a smartarse about the fact that what Gordon wanted to get back to only peripherally involved the wine (to the degree where he probably couldn't name what he was drinking), and Gordon in turn pretending to mishear him.

I found this and the whole scene amazing. To me it felt like Gordon was a teenager with butterflies in his stomach. I expected him to switch to stern FBI mode after the woman left the room, but he still had this stupid grin on his face. He really did manage to loosen up and take a break from work.
His reaction to Alberts and Constances date two episodes earlier is even more wonderful now.

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I thought this episode had some great stuff. "General momentum" is not something we can count on with David Lynch but I suppose people really got excited once some sense narrative normalcy showed its face for a couple episodes. I am myself a bit surprised that we got episodes that had any typical momentum at all.

 

The scenes with Sarah Palmer were choice. So creepy, so erratic.

 

Audrey's introduction into season 3 was sooooo good. So funny, so weird. Expectations seem to apparently get in the way of some viewers. And talk about "damned if you do...", we finally get at _pure_ soap opera scene with Audrey and husband Charlie, complete with inscrutable motivations, obvious deep character history that a glancing viewer would never know, stilted acting and complex (as in, soapy "who the fuck are they talking about again" complex) character connections, and people still poo poo it.

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I doubt it's true, but I really want to find out next episode that Audrey is an actress on a soap opera and that was an Invitation To Love type scene from it.

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15 hours ago, Frohike said:

I'd be more annoyed by it if the direction weren't clearly fucking with viewer anticipation.  I mean come on, the cherry pie scene was totally dangling Cooper in front of viewers and it was fantastic.  The follow up to it in this latest episode was equally well played.  That's some skilled Cooper-edging.

I read scenes like the cherry pie scene or the flag scene more as cooper getting glimpses at his old self but I think other scenes like him watching sonny jim sitting in the car and crying are indications that he will never get back to the person we once knew. Twin Peaks Cooper was such an immensely positive person and I just don't see him getting back to that considering what he went through. I know a lot of people will disagree with me,but returning to the old Cooper would seem like a disservice to his story line if Lynch and Frost were just to reboot him. (Not to mention at this point it would probably just feel like fanservice to me than anything.) Then again I could be totally wrong, this is twin peaks we're talking about, Im willing to go where ever this show takes me.

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38 minutes ago, TheArm said:

I read scenes like the cherry pie scene or the flag scene more as cooper getting glimpses at his old self but I think other scenes like him watching sonny jim sitting in the car and crying are indications that he will never get back to the person we once knew. Twin Peaks Cooper was such an immensely positive person and I just don't see him getting back to that considering what he went through. I know a lot of people will disagree with me,but returning to the old Cooper would seem like a disservice to his story line if Lynch and Frost were just to reboot him. (Not to mention at this point it would probably just feel like fanservice to me than anything.) Then again I could be totally wrong, this is twin peaks we're talking about, Im willing to go where ever this show takes me.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. The first version of Twin Peaks ended on such an unusual and dark note, and even with FWWM Cooper is left in a literal limbo. That was basically his end.. until we got season 3. If they just gave us chipper, happy-go-lucky Dale, in a world where most of his old comrades have been betrayed or wronged by him, or are dead or dying, where would his character go from there? I don't know if the old Dale fits anymore. Weird, silent Dale in the Red Room fits, and Dale-as-Dougie does too. The current "innocent as a lamb" Dale is perhaps our version of what was earlier the 90's boyscout.

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9 hours ago, Jake said:

 

Maybe the secret history book takes place after the show?

 

I'd have to flip back through it, but I don't think Tammy is actually aware of the Blue Rose investigation when she starts going through the dossier or when she finishes. The way I remember, she knows that a bunch of Cole's direct reports have vanished under mysterious circumstances and has some familiarity with the details of the Twin Peaks case, but doesn't know about any of the supernatural components. By the end, I think she knows that there is more than meets the eye to all of this, but she still doesn't know that Cole has actually been putting a team together to figure it out.

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6 hours ago, Urthman said:

I doubt it's true, but I really want to find out next episode that Audrey is an actress on a soap opera and that was an Invitation To Love type scene from it.

 

Oh man, that would be choice. Especially if Audrey's weird soap opera just happens to mirror her real world. It's too blatantly Mulholland Drive to be likely, but it would be fun. 

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Yes this episode brings back a character we were all happy and excited to see again, the ceiling fan.

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don't forget the opening scene with the giant. i feel like one of his hints has to trigger something in cooper, either snapping him into lucidity or at least into mr magooing something important.

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Am I the only one who felt like the look Sarah was giving Hawk said, "What, help me like you helped Laura?"

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The Secret History of Twin Peaks talks about the death of the Log Lady, so Tammy at the very least hasn't finished annotating it at the time of the show.

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1 hour ago, ThatThomas said:

The Secret History of Twin Peaks talks about the death of the Log Lady, so Tammy at the very least hasn't finished annotating it at the time of the show.

 

Wait, really? Where was this? I just read the book but can't remember this.

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Hi everyone.

 

I wonder if this episode would have made people as mad if it wasn't sequenced the way it was. The Sarah Palmer stuff, the Horne Truman scene, Gordon's French lady, "Let's Rock" - all crowd pleasing stuff, I would have thought. But then it ends with 20 minutes of people we haven't seen yet talking about people we have never heard of... 

 

I liked the episode more the second time I watched it. Audrey's scene was actually kind of delightful when I wasn't trying to figure out if I should know who Billy, Chuck, and Tina were. Is it possible some of it is improvised? I think it is clear that it is supposed to feel disorienting and maybe aimless, but it feels a little like they are improvising a scene with very little information in which they are not allowed to make anything important up. Whatever the process was, it does seem like Fenn was struggling a little to do whatever it was she was supposed to be doing, but I thought the guy playing Charlie really brought it.

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Possibly inconsequential, possibly not. In another thread I had remarked on the use of Morley cigarettes, which someone pointed out was a standard fake brand, rather than an X-Files reference ... But Sarah Palmer was buying a carton of perfectly ordinary Salems in the market.

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Hi All. It's my first post here. so...

 

I wasn't really a fan of this episode, but having made it through a recent rewatch of the entire series, nothing here can compete with the sublime badness of Deep Season 2. My thought about the Audrey scene, which I didn't think worked, was that I was reminded of something that Matthew Lillard said in a ComicCon interview-- that his sobbing/snorkeling scene was done in two takes and he just had to prepare so that it was hopefully as good as it could be and then did it twice and that was it and he was terrified. I wonder if that's the case with most of the scenes in Season 3 -- it would certainly track with this Audrey scene. I got the sense, not that it was improvised, but actually that Fenn got a boatload of awkward dialogue and maybe not a lot of helpful direction and some fairly uncharitable editing/blocking. Completely possible all that stiltedness is intentional but I still maintain it didn't really "work" -- the intentionality didn't transmit, at least for Audrey, as much as it seemed on the bad side of amateurish. But it can't all be "Gotta Light?" and vomit kids, I guess. Looking forward to Fenn hopefully involved in some scenes that play to her strengths in the back half of the season. Fingers crossed!

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29 minutes ago, JPL said:

 

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Haha, at 0:43 I was sure he would flip the bird to the audience!

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40 minutes ago, The Great Went said:

Completely possible all that stiltedness is intentional but I still maintain it didn't really "work" -- the intentionality didn't transmit, at least for Audrey, as much as it seemed on the bad side of amateurish. But it can't all be "Gotta Light?" and vomit kids, I guess.

Her performance definitely scanned more as "bad performance" rather than just as exagerated, Lynchy peformance, but I think most of what makes that scene comically opaque is in the dialogue itself. It almost seems like they are both faking that they know what the other person is talking about, and I think it would work (or not "work") pretty similarly even if she had done a better job. I would guess the limited context we are given was intentional, at the very least. I thought the husband really leaned into that: the jacket part, "i'm not sure about those papers," "unbelievable what you're telling me," the blank stare... I really enjoyed him.

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11 hours ago, Urthman said:

I doubt it's true, but I really want to find out next episode that Audrey is an actress on a soap opera and that was an Invitation To Love type scene from it.

I would buy that way before I would buy the still in a coma bit.

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3 hours ago, JPL said:

 

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Hahaha, well, that was something. 

 

3 hours ago, LadyHawke said:

Possibly inconsequential, possibly not. In another thread I had remarked on the use of Morley cigarettes, which someone pointed out was a standard fake brand, rather than an X-Files reference ... But Sarah Palmer was buying a carton of perfectly ordinary Salems in the market.

 

I noticed that as well, the show bounces around between using generic brands and real brands, and it's hard to tell if there's any rhyme or reason to it.  I saw on reddit as well in the grocery store scene that there's a Big Red sign that's blocked in such a way that it looks like Big Ed.

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10 hours ago, Gamebeast23456 said:

 

Oh man, that would be choice. Especially if Audrey's weird soap opera just happens to mirror her real world. It's too blatantly Mulholland Drive to be likely, but it would be fun. 

 

That scene being part of a soap opera would actually fit perfectly with its tone, but they did mention the road house.

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