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Twin Peaks Rewatch 47: The Return, Part 12

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Just got around watching Episode 12 last night.

 

Anyone else noticed the striking resemblance of the Jerry Horne scene with the intros of the first season of Monty Python's Flying Circus? One of the first shows had a bearded Michael Palin stumble out of the woods and running towards the camera falling half way. I almost expected Jerry to come up close to proclaim 'It's!'

 

 

Edited by Panic_Johnson
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Someone suggested Charlie was in the picture with Mr C and the box. That makes sense to me and freaks me out. Maybe there is something to the gas lighting read of the Audrey scene... I think her performance makes even less sense in that case, though it seems like a good fit with what he is doing.

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On 03/08/2017 at 2:19 PM, Mentalgongfu said:

 

Re: Audrey - Agitated? Sure. But, taking the scene at face value and ignoring the many theories about soap operas, comas/dream states, re-enactment therapy and the like, it would seem her agitation is quite reasonable and rational. Her friend and apparent lover has been missing for 2 days now, and she can't get her husband to help her go look for him. This is coming from someone whom we know was once abducted and nearly killed, in addition to the trauma of the bank explosion and resulting coma. He is not only disinterested, but seems to actively oppose her in this effort. We don't know why she can't go searching on her own, but she seems unable to do so (maybe she doesn't drive?). He then reveals relevant information about the theft of a truck that he has withheld until this point, and when he finally deigns to call this Tina as part of his stalling efforts, he refuses to share the apparently interesting information he gleaned in the phone call. And above all this behavior is some nebulous contract. You are certainly allowed to maintain your own interpretation, but to me, calling this an example of an unreasonable/irrational character is just reaching for something to criticize that fits this now well-established narrative about The Return and its female characters ( a narrative that I, frankly, just don't see). Given how little information we have to place the scene in any context, I think drawing that conclusion is both premature and undeserved.

 

Perhaps I worded that too strongly. To me it wasn't about if it worked in fiction. Whether it's true or not, I feel the series has had a fair number of female characters portrayed with similar motifs. The opening of the scene, after the staring contest, is basically Audrey insulting Charlie and Charlie being deflective. Charlie is an ass in the scene, but Audrey has definitively lost her cool. Before we can construct any understanding of what they're talking about. It reminded me of Frank's wife Doris venting her frustrations, and I was saddened by that association. I really like Audrey in the original run, and I suppose I just wanted her introduction to be kinder to the character.

 

Anyways, it was a minor quibble in a scene I ended up liking.

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Fair enough @unimural

 

I get the complaint about female characters in The Return; I just don't share the perspective. Everything has worked for me so far, and I haven't been interpreting the women as shrews (not that you said that, but others have). I actually think an argument could be made the female characters in this revival have more depth and variety than in the original run, despite having less screen time. As far as Audrey specifically - I loved her character in the first two seasons, but I didn't expect to see her back in the same way in The Return, at least not after we got a ways into it and she hadn't yet appeared. I believe that's a major theme running through this extended movie - aging, change, the inability to go back to the old days. Bobby Briggs seems to be one of the few characters who has changed for the better, while others like Norma and Shelly are basically the same they always have been, still making the same mistakes. Audrey appears to have changed dramatically, and by appearances not for the better, though we still don't really know what's going on with her even after Part 13.

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3 hours ago, Mentalgongfu said:

I actually think an argument could be made the female characters in this revival have more depth and variety than in the original run, despite having less screen time.

This is a bold claim! Are you interested in attempting to make that argument? (I don't think I agree off the top of my head but would love to hear your take on it.)

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Yeah I'm not sure about saying there is more depth and variety amongst women in season 3.

Janey-E and Diane are good examples, and there have been a few minor characters that I think were done well (Jade, Candy, the phone operator lady at Sherrif's Dept, the medical examiner in Buckhorn) I have enjoyed Amanda Seyfried's character, Becky, as well.

 

The returning characters... Sarah Palmer is great, but much the same level of intensity as before. Audrey so far seems much less interesting than she used to be. Shelley is doing fine, but I think she was probably a little more interesting before this season. Norma is less interesting without all the Big Ed storyline. Nadine is more boring now too. I don't think we've really heard her say anything.

 

Josie is gone, which is an improvement imo, especially the way her story went in later episodes. Catherine Martell is also gone, though, and I enjoyed her.

 

One observation that does stand out to me as a negative pattern is that characters who seem to exist in highly dramatic, weird ways and then disappear seem to be predominantly women. The lady in Ep 1+2 who is with the police in the Buckhorn apartment building, Truman's wife, "119 lady", and the screaming car driver in Part 11. I don't remember there being as much of this in the original run of the show.

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On 8/1/2017 at 5:04 PM, UnpopularTrousers said:

I think this expectation partially comes from us being told before the show started that it would primarily be about Cooper's return to Twin Peaks. Thinking about that now, I wonder if that means his personality will come back or if he will just physically wind up in the town of Twin Peaks? 

But I totally agree that suddenly having Cooper come back would likely be more unsatisfying than having him remain in his current state forever. It's not as though he is simply a man with amnesia who has forgotten who he is and simply needs to be reminded of his past identity...he hasn't even formed a coherent thought, yet.

 

A friend of my father's who had Alzheimer's died of a stroke last week, at age 68. He was no longer able to form new sentences and just would say "I went on a lot of bike trips" or point at random objects and say "these are my bike trips". He didn't even really know who his wife was anymore, but if my Dad walked in carrying a bike helmet he would light up with joy. They did, in fact, go on a lot of bike trips. Not much of his previous personality came through, but he still had these glimmers of recognition and happiness from things that linked him to his past.  

 

Cooper's current state reminds me more of my father's friend than an amnesiac character who only needs to find the right key to jog their memory. I think to get the old Cooper back we would require a larger event triggered by some lodge-related phenomenon, and not just another reminder of his past self. 

Philip Jefferies was gone for the same amount of time before he returned in FWWM. Twin Peaks isn't very internally consistent with this kind of stuff, but I wonder if his appearance could provide any clues to what Cooper would be like if it hadn't been for Bad Coop's Dougie-vessel meddling? 

 

Great, and sad, post.

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15 hours ago, LostInTheMovies said:

 

Great, and sad, post.

It is very sad, but I think it's also important to try not to put your own standards of what it means to have  a good life onto other people, as the changes that you see are at times only sad from your perspective. For example, near the end of my grandfather's life he was no longer able to recognize himself in the mirror. However, he really enjoyed seeing 'that nice man' in the bathroom mirror every morning. The stranger in the mirror was perhaps a net positive in his life, even if it was oftentimes hard for me to see it that way. Of course he would have preferred to be his old sharp-witted self and I'm not romanticizing things and saying that his life as a whole was better than it was before, because it certainly wasn't. However, that doesn't mean that the joy that he experienced as a result of his condition was entirely empty or meaningless, either.  These things only becomes tragic when overlaid with comparisons to a previous person who is sadly long gone. 
 

So, despite all the intense tragedy of who Cooper/Dougie is now...he does still seem to be experiencing plenty of joy. When we see him gulping back coffee and shoveling pie into his face, he does seem to be experiencing real and genuine joy. It's sad to remember that the old Coop is locked away in there somewhere, and Dougie is oftentimes overcome with a melancholy which he probably couldn't articulate. But, he still seems to be taking pleasure in a lot of the simple things in life, which old Coop did too. So, he still has that.

 

(Sorry if that was too much of sad elegy for a goofy Twin Peaks character who is both fictional and actually a lot of fun to watch bumble around. But these personal connections do at times pop up for me while watching the show)

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Since we've reached this place in the conversation, it's making me think that a theme of aging ties in with the narrative ideas of the past and present and future sort of jumbling together, our place on the timeline seemingly more arbitrary as things progress. Perhaps the series is shot with the psychological timeline of one for whom linear time is breaking apart. I'm also tempted to tie Audrey into this -- we know for sure she suffered severe bodily, and presumably psychological and neurological, trauma in the explosion. If she's not actually still in the coma, it's safe to assume she is permanently changed by it. With Laura Palmer (and possibly Leland) trauma seemed to open up a window into another world --one of intense horrors and incredible insights--and perhaps this is something like what Audrey is experiencing. ....or maybe not! 

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Reading through the thread now and lmao - I 100% knew the fellin dude was gonna pull a Pepe out of his ass at some point. Countdown till he says, "So much for the tolerant left"...

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On 8/9/2017 at 5:59 PM, UnpopularTrousers said:

It is very sad, but I think it's also important to try not to put your own standards of what it means to have  a good life onto other people, as the changes that you see are at times only sad from your perspective. For example, near the end of my grandfather's life he was no longer able to recognize himself in the mirror. However, he really enjoyed seeing 'that nice man' in the bathroom mirror every morning. The stranger in the mirror was perhaps a net positive in his life, even if it was oftentimes hard for me to see it that way. Of course he would have preferred to be his old sharp-witted self and I'm not romanticizing things and saying that his life as a whole was better than it was before, because it certainly wasn't. However, that doesn't mean that the joy that he experienced as a result of his condition was entirely empty or meaningless, either.  These things only becomes tragic when overlaid with comparisons to a previous person who is sadly long gone. 
 

So, despite all the intense tragedy of who Cooper/Dougie is now...he does still seem to be experiencing plenty of joy. When we see him gulping back coffee and shoveling pie into his face, he does seem to be experiencing real and genuine joy. It's sad to remember that the old Coop is locked away in there somewhere, and Dougie is oftentimes overcome with a melancholy which he probably couldn't articulate. But, he still seems to be taking pleasure in a lot of the simple things in life, which old Coop did too. So, he still has that.

 

(Sorry if that was too much of sad elegy for a goofy Twin Peaks character who is both fictional and actually a lot of fun to watch bumble around. But these personal connections do at times pop up for me while watching the show)

 

My mother was diagnosed with dementia last year, and it's been progressing at a faster than normal rate.  Like, she's still 70-80 percent "there" most of the times, but this entire season has had me thinking about the relationship between Dougie and dementia/Alzheimer's, the way people relate to him, etc.  

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