Twin Peaks Rewatch 51: The Return, Part 16

[SuoTempore]

10 minutes ago, pabosher said:

I feel not enough theories are taking into account the backwards-playing band in the purple room at the very end of the episode, under the credits.

 

Do you think that means Audrey is perhaps stuck in the lodge? Just to run with that idea, then maybe Diane was a tulpa of Audrey (I'm unfamiliar but must a tulpa take the same exact physical form?). The rape she refers to in the interview with the FBI is actually the one Bad Coop inflicted on Audrey that resulted in Richard's birth?

 

Or if she was in the lodge, maybe Audrey is Naido? I can't remember when Naido appeared in the woods but was it around the same time that we started getting getting Audrey scenes? She would have certainly done as much as possible to help Cooper escape the lodge that she could, even in a fragile state of mind.

 

Can't wait for the episodes to arrive to find out how wrong all my theories are!

 

[Mentalgongfu]

52 minutes ago, SuoTempore said:

 

Do you think that means Audrey is perhaps stuck in the lodge? Just to run with that idea, then maybe Diane was a tulpa of Audrey (I'm unfamiliar but must a tulpa take the same exact physical form?). The rape she refers to in the interview with the FBI is actually the one Bad Coop inflicted on Audrey that resulted in Richard's birth?

 

Or if she was in the lodge, maybe Audrey is Naido? I can't remember when Naido appeared in the woods but was it around the same time that we started getting getting Audrey scenes? She would have certainly done as much as possible to help Cooper escape the lodge that she could, even in a fragile state of mind.

 

Can't wait for the episodes to arrive to find out how wrong all my theories are!

 

 A tulpa of Audrey would look like Audrey. If it looked like Diane and seemed to have all of Diane's memories, it couldn't be based on someone else, as far as I understand the mythology of the show.

 

Dopplegangers, however, might be interchangeable with the term tulpa based on what we've seen. When Albert tells Tammy about the first Blue Rose case, he talks about two women who look exactly the same, only one of them disappears (presumably into the lodge) when she dies. It is Tammy who uses the term tulpa, but that is effectively what we have seen with Mr. C and Cooper - a look alike who commits evil acts under the guise of being the original.

 

It does get murky, though, since we don't know how Dougie would fit into the pantheon beyond the fact that he was "manufactured for a purpose," like the fake Diane. I won't hurt my brain thinking about it too much; but I do sense the introduction of the word "tulpa," as poorly-defined as it is, has caused sections of the internet to run wild with theories that allow any character we have met to be imaginary/and or someone else. Most of the theories based around tulpa themes strike me as complete nonsense in that there are zero indications in the actual things shown on screen to lend creedence to them. It is Twin Peaks and Lynch, so nothing is impossible, but I feel like the word being used without a clear definition in the TP world has made it a lot more difficult to talk about the things we can infer from what is on screen in favor of innumerable what-if scenarios.

 

I guess we'll know in a few hours all we're going to know, but I doubt any desire for clarity will be satisifed.

 

 

[Demimonde]

Random thoughts before the end:

1) When Richard is incinerated, something drops down the rock and lands on the ground, something that sounds hard and pingy--gold ball?

2) I love that Chantal tosses one dead bag of Cheezypoofs away and grabs another off the floor, and it's already open. Between being probably on the rag and eating all that sodium how is she not bloated all to hell?

3) I think that when Janey-E dismisses Sonny Jim's question as to whether electricity had anything to do with Dougie's coma, she's just trying to keep darkness and ugliness away from her son. She knows that sticking a fork in a light socket is a Bad Idea, but she's trying to protect Sonny Jim from the horror of Dougie's shock. Interesting that no one calls Sonny Jim by anything but Sonny Jim. Except a Mitchum Brother, I forget which one. That is, like, his official name. The only other time I've heard that is in the Kirsty MacColl (RIP) song "Don't Come the Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim." It seems to be a breezy Britishism.

4) When Diane receives the smiles All text and collapses emotionally, Laura Dern's face absolutely transforms and she becomes her mother, Diane Ladd. It's uncanny. Her ability to control and calibrate her beauty is astonishing. All the Emmys!!

5) Interesting but perhaps not relevant that we think Cole is alone in that room of unfathomable tech, until Diane enters and it's revealed that Tammy and Albert were there the whole time. I found the reveal a bit creepy. Also, it's so hot that we see Albert go for his gun and aim it, and Tammy already has hers out and is firing. Dang, girl. She's slow as a high-school close dance until it's time for action. I also loved her facial expressions as Diane told her story. The mixture of sympathy, horror and cool information-gathering was really great. I've come around on Chrysta Bell for realsies.

6) Wondering whether the All text not only activated Diane's memories but compelled her to reveal all. She glanced at it during her monologue and it seemed to steel her a bit to tell the next part, the worst part.

 

In general, I've been thinking about evil since the beginning of this season. As a writer and voracious reader, I've always thought that a villain who is evil, know's he's evil and wants to do evil is uninteresting. After all, people we see as evil in our lives, micro or macro scale, think they are doing good. No villain is interesting who's like, "I want to take over the world and make everyone suffer and be real bad hahahaha!" But in this season, and over the course of the series, I suppose, Lynch is showing us the face of true evil that knows it's bad, strives to be as vile and destructive as possible, and thrives on the effects--pain and suffering. He's succeeded in making that idea compelling, although it is without the shades of gray or contradictions of the soul that fuel good fiction.That is a stunning and monumental feat. Whatever happens tonight, we will always have Lynch raising the bar for television, for narrative and for active engagement with his audience that gives not one inch of ground of his artistic vision.

[LostInTheMovies]

On 8/29/2017 at 10:56 AM, Jake said:

 

To say season 3 is "about" those things on anything but a plot level is disingenuous. I'd argue, at least up through the episodes we've seen which is all anyone can argue about, that the story and feeling and character motivations of the season would be unchanged if the rape pieces of plot-fill were removed. That's absolutely not true for the Laura Palmer story (seasons 1.5 and FWWM). Those stories and those parts of Twin Peaks are truly "about" what you say, while I think in Season 3 Bad Cooper is written as a rapist as a device to add more notches to his "he's a bad character" belt, and it's otherwise disposable. 

 

To me, thematic injections of that type into Bad Coop are fanon, are wishing there was more there than there is. We still have two more chapters so I guess we'll see, but so far the show hasn't seemed concerned with more than lip service to the themes and concepts you're describing, when Bad Coop is concerned. 

 

Granted, this may be partially informed by 17/18 but I think I felt this way immediately after 16 too: I think Diane's rape is pretty crucial to the story and handled in a thoughtful, if troubling, way whereas Audrey's was not. Indeed, everything about that storyline - including Richard - feels like it didn't quite add up to much (I wonder if this is partly due to rewrites of Audrey's character?).

[Jake]

11 hours ago, LostInTheMovies said:

Granted, this may be partially informed by 17/18 but I think I felt this way immediately after 16 too: I think Diane's rape is pretty crucial to the story and handled in a thoughtful, if troubling, way whereas Audrey's was not. Indeed, everything about that storyline - including Richard - feels like it didn't quite add up to much (I wonder if this is partly due to rewrites of Audrey's character?).

I feel differently from my original post after seeing 17 and 18. Those episodes were way more about this than I was expecting and made a lot of things I was anxious about fall into place. 

[sclpls]

Hey LostInTheMovies, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your appearance and discussion on the Beyond the Filter podcast about Twin Peaks.

[LostInTheMovies]

4 hours ago, sclpls said:

Hey LostInTheMovies, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your appearance and discussion on the Beyond the Filter podcast about Twin Peaks.

 

Thanks - it was a great show.

[LostInTheMovies]

On 8/30/2017 at 6:58 PM, Jake said:

It's my hope/assumption that since the "new" Dougie is going to be built from the seed (glass bead) of old Dougie but the hair of good Coop, they'll end up with their old Dougie back, with whatever memories and feelings he has (from the seed) but without the parts bad Coop was injecting (because the hair source is switched).

 

Sorry if we play fast and loose with who Dougie is and who Cooper is. When it counts we try to be clear that it was actually two bodies changing locations, and not "Cooper taking over Dougie's body." Cooper took over Dougie's LIFE but their bodies are their own.*

 

* Dougie's of course, while his own, was created by Bad Coop. 

 

Oh man, I *just* realized that the strand of hair isn't just a shorthand "DNA from the subject" thing but actually kinda corresponds to the look of the tulpa. Granted, Dougie's "long hair" was differently formed than Mr. C's but both were quite distinct from the usual well-kept Coop hair we knew for 2 seasons. (And I seem to recall hearing that Lynch was quite concerned with keeping Coop's hair in form back in s2, as MacLachlan was growing it out for a part - hence why it seems "bigger" in the s2 premiere, if still contained in the G-man style. Plus there's a theory out there of Coop's hairstyle in FWWM being subtly different and therefore implying a dreaming pre-TP Coop in some scenes and a Lodge-trapped post-TP Coop in others.)

 

Funny how the little details always offer more to dig into.

[LostInTheMovies]

Way late reply (I'm slooowly making my way through these threads - finally almost to the finale one!) and this is more a general riff on the theme of Leland/Bob than a specific response to Nordelnob's points, but as I've been thinking about this a lot, especially in the wake of where the Return ultimately takes Bob, here goes...

 

Quote

 

If Leland would have raped Laura anyways without being possessed by BOB, then I just don't see the point of BOB in the first place.

 

Well, you're *kind of* onto something. I think the character initially did have a point, to draw attention to the uncanny, almost unknowable/unmentionable phenomenon of abuse in the Palmer household in a way that only heightened its charge. Think how (spoilers for Mulholland Dr) the blue box and key in amplify the mundane object of the blue-colored key that Diane gets, so that it's psychological importance becomes manifest externally. That's what a visual artist, especially one as open to surreal, abstract approaches as Lynch, does: gives us startling, visceral images representing emotions that are very real but hard to articulate (especially through straightforward representation).

 

However, as soon as Leland was revealed as the killer Bob became a bit thematically superfluous - even distracting. So why stick with/double down on Bob after the reveal? Well, the idea of him as an evil spirit, already seeded early in s2, becomes useful for a couple reasons: to give the story somewhere to go after "the killer" is revealed, as ABC demanded, but also to soften the shocking blow of beloved, respectable Leland being an incestuous rapist and serial killer...not just for the audience but also possibly for Ray Wise himself, who was devastated by this twist (he didn't find out until just before the episode was shot). Arguably then, an aspect of the mythology - when taken too literally - grew out of some compromises which ultimately undermine the original point. In a way, what we see in the next episode (are we still avoiding spoilers in this thread?) - a giant Bob ball punched out by a green-gloved Englishman ex machina - recognizes and mocks what Bob became.

 

Anyway, let's look at the reverse of what you said, which I think is equally if not even more true:

 

If Leland would NOT have raped Laura anyways without being possessed by BOB, then I just don't see the point of making a sexually abusive father the killer in the first place.

 

I've compared this before to a hypothetical: what if Schindler's List revealed at the end of the film that the Nazis who massacred 6 million Jews were actually werewolves in human suits, and the innocent Germans had been taken over by the full moon or something. Obviously that's a much more extreme and ridiculous example, but despite Laura being a fictional character, her situation - especially as depicted in FWWM - is all too real and the pain of that is as real for the individuals who experience it. Why give expression to the troubling, very real phenomenon only to brush it under the rug as supernatural hocus-pocus?

 

Now, that said, a supernatural spiritual entity BOB from the Black Lodge *did* become a part of Twin Peaks; likewise, in FWWM Lynch gave us signs that Leland was responsible for and aware of his actions (probably to the point of not even knowing there was a Bob). In the train car, Leland says, on one side of Laura, "I always thought you knew it was me," and Bob says, on the other side of her, "I never knew you knew it was me!" The suggestion is that it was, in some sense, both. Maybe that's Lynch wanting to have his cake and eat it too but I think it's also speaking to a larger truth, getting back in a way to what the ephemeral, hard-to-in-down, yet terrifyingly present entity of Bob was originally supposed to indicate. We are embedded in forces larger than us, which often feel overpowering, but we still have agency and especially consciousness within that. This is, really, the message of all Lynch's works, I'd argue.

 

Quote

But BOB is a part of the story, and it has to mean something. Yes the real Leland would sometimes push his way to the surface, but he wasn't the purpotrator, Bob was. Or at least, the real Leland would not have done those things.

 

I think there is no "real Leland" if we try to distance him from all the bad things done in his body. His character becomes a meaningless cipher, whom we only meet once or twice; in trying to protect the Leland character, we end up destroying him. I really do think the entire power and weight and resonance of Twin Peaks disintegrates into dust if we dissociate "the good Leland" from "the bad Bob." Worst of all, it ends up dovetailing perfectly with a real-world situation where powerful men repeatedly refuse to take any responsibility for their actions and people refuse to believe it's even possible that they would do this. Middle-class lawyers rape and terrorize their daughters all the time, the fact that it seems improbable is at the very heart of the mystery Lynch and Frost created, and the fact that at times they toy with it actually being improbable is probably this mystery's greatest weakness, one that fortunately the best parts of Twin Peaks overcome.

 

As for Coop & the doppelganger, and how *that* plays (or doesn't play) into s3 and the show as a whole, that's a post for another day...