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Twin Peaks Rewatch 52/53: The Return, Parts 17 and 18

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10 minutes ago, MabaseSlums said:

I would be really disappointed if this wasn't the end of the show, personally.

 

I think I want no more of the show, but I want some really satisfying Frost-type explanations. Here's hoping The Final Dossier is good.

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Per usual (this season), I thought I had the show slightly pegged. Episode 17 essentially said, "alright, here that is, but let's be quick about it." I have no idea what to think at the moment. If that really is the conclusion of Twin Peaks, I suppose I'm happy it ended with a horrific scream in front of that terrifying house at night. The entire drive to TP and "are we being followed?" was unnerving. As was the Sarah Palmer scene in 17 where it lingered for so damn long before she appeared.

 

My mind is still wrapping itself around the (alt) flashback scenes from old TP. I can't figure out if I disliked it or loved it.

 

Seeing Pete again and then a Jack Nance dedication was wonderful.

 

6 minutes ago, anderbubble said:

 

I think I want no more of the show, but I want some really satisfying Frost-type explanations. Here's hoping The Final Dossier is good.

 

I think I'm just a little bummed that the "I am the FBI" group of scenes from 16 really wound up being the only Twin Peaks-y Coop scenes all season. Everything with him in 17 was so fast, and also consumed by his huge composited head.

 

Really wish The Final Dossier was coming out sooner. Curious about how the hell that's going to take shape considering what we just saw.

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The eerie sex scene between Diane and Dale, played to the lyrics of My Prayer by The Platters, resonates with the episode 1 sex scene in front of the glass box that invokes the Mother. Both sex acts were invocations, or sacrifice rituals. 

 

I feel like season 3 is Lynch's love letter to Kyle Maclachlan, saying, "Okay, let's not type cast you as Dale Cooper. Let's give you 5 different mutations on the same character"

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A few thoughts --- the (doo wop?) song when Diane and Coop/Richard are doin' it is a call back to the Ed and Norma scene only this time it's evil. Also reminded me of the scene of Naomi Watts getting onanistic in Mulholland Drive. Once Coop gets out of the red room for the "curtain call" with Diane he acts more like Mr. C but he also has generally good intentions. So he disarms the yokels assaulting the waitress with cold automaton efficiency and scares everyone enough to get the address he needs.   ... But he also just leaves all those guys there, so he's not really out to help the woman, it would seem, in a sense that the old Coop would be. Also, obviously in the motel room scene he apparently has no feelings. Interesting and telling in 2017 that Coop has destroyed but also synthesized his doppelganger with himself, effectively dimming if not extinguishing the light of virtue while on the hunt for an extreme evil. Reminds me of that old "look into the abyss and the abyss looks back into you" chestnut or however it goes. I'm grateful for another ride on this Crazy Train. Pretty much ended with exactly as many loose ends as Season 2 it would seem.

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One more thing: I was watching the show on my iMac with headphones on and my dog started barking when Sarah stabbed the photo of Laura and it scared the hell out of me. I paused it, calmed him down, gave him a snack, figured it was something outside that bothered him, put my phones on and started the scene again. He immediately started barking again! One One Nine!

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2 minutes ago, The Great Went said:

Once Coop gets out of the red room for the "curtain call" with Diane he acts more like Mr. C but he also has generally good intentions. 

 

He seemed like Lodge(Good)Coop to me, in that he has good intentions but is just incredibly quiet. That was a really long drive.

 

The TP nuggets that'll consume my mind for days/weeks to come...

 

- Lack of Audrey in 17/18 (this potentially surprised me most)

- Disappearing Diane doppleganger

- Dead body in Carrie's house

- Hidden person Alice Tremond was asking questions (probably no significance but I thought was interesting)

- "What year is it?"

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5 minutes ago, The Great Went said:

I was watching the show on my iMac with headphones on

 

I completely endorse this - if anyone rewatches The Return eventually, do it with headphones. I know Lynch has recommended this and with good reason.

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I certainly didn't expect everything to wrap up in a neat little bow, but I wasn't quite prepared for what I got. When I saw the sheriff's department scene wrapping up still early on in part 17, I knew the story had to takes us somewhere else. And that it surely did. It will take me some time to digest and figure out what the hell I just saw, let alone whether or not I liked it.

 

My only other comment right now is childish, but I feel compelled to say it, as if I have been taken over by some evil spirit that has inhabited my body. To everyone who said I was crazy when I claimed Bob was still inside Mr. C, I must borrow a phrase from my buddy Ricky over at the Sunnyvale Trailer Park:

I'm not the kind of person to say atodaso, but you know what, atodaso. I fucking atodaso.

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Oh, to make a Dark Souls analogy.

 

BOB is like Manus, father of the Abyss. The darkness of humanity that rots kingdoms. In Dark Souls 1 DLC, Manus is potentially destroyed. In Dark Souls 2, the shards of Manus are distributed through out the kingdoms, rotting them everywhere.

 

Perhaps that's what Freddy's magic garden glove does. Not destroy BOB, but distribute his essence into the ether to be mixed into everyone's spirits.

 

Also in the Judy's scene, the three men at the bar are wearing white hats. There is a single black hat hanging on a hook off to the right that is almost always in frame. Cooper was performing very black hat in that scene. Well, everyone was.  

 

 

 

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Cooper looked very much like Mr. C during the sex scene with Diane. I think this was intentional, as I have seen I'm not the only one in the audience who made the connection. No idea what it means yet, but kind of goes along with the black hat idea.

What was with the other Diane (or Linda?) at the hotel?

 

It was great to see Freddy kick some ass with the green glove and meet his destiny; but everything in the sheriff's office after Mr. C got shot seemed like a kind of paint-by-numbers, "let's get this over quickly" kind of thing just so we could have whatever else we had after Dale entering the room at the Great Northern.

 

The whole of part 18 felt like the first time I watched Lost Highway, when I had no idea what was going on. I imagine further watches will feel a lot like my last viewing of Lost Highway, when I still had no idea what was going on, but saw a lot more connections.

 

I do wish we had gotten 5-10 minutes to confirm what happened with Becky, to add something to Audrey's story and to re-visit Red the drug dealer and Shelly.

We did at least get the reference to the story of the little girl who lived down the lane, which seemingly ties in somehow to Audrey and the rest of the story and is perhaps a key of sorts. I haven't checked if the dialogue is an exact match, but the evolution of the arm asking about this definitely mirrors one of the Audrey scenes. 

 

Eh - enough. Time to sleep on it and see what dreams may come.

 

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2 hours ago, plasticflesh said:

Perhaps that's what Freddy's magic garden glove does. Not destroy BOB, but distribute his essence into the ether to be mixed into everyone's spirits.

This is in line with my reaction. The over-the-top battle between a gloved superhero and a giant evil orb was such an on-the-nose showdown between good and evil that I think it felt more like the destruction of the stark and binary distinctions between good and evil rather than the destruction of evil itself.

 

3 hours ago, plasticflesh said:

The eerie sex scene between Diane and Dale, played to the lyrics of My Prayer by The Platters, resonates with the episode 1 sex scene in front of the glass box that invokes the Mother. Both sex acts were invocations, or sacrifice rituals. 

And with episode 8 where that song was played on the radio before the DJ's head got crushed to bits. And with the overhead shot of Becky's face in the car when she gets high with her abusive husband and I Love How You Love Me plays. And with Diane's story about Cooper in episode 16. And it takes place in a motel that brought to mind where Leland went in FWWM. Oh, and the way the song faded in and out was odd and not unlike the Otis Redding song when Norma and Ed got together. Gosh, this is all a lot to deal with here.

 

I also noticed that this took place in room 7 shortly after the importance of the number 8 shown.

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5 hours ago, richardco said:

For anyone who hasn't watched the early parts of the season recently, I'll share something from a recent rewatch of episode 3:

 

It seems that the events of Episode 18 were Cooper's original "mission." Before he leaves the Lodge in episode 3, Mike tells him to remember the numbers 430 (the number of miles he'll drive before...whatever happens) and Richard and Linda 2 birds with 1 stone. Cooper says he understands. Leland similarly tasks him with "Find Laura." As he's walking down the familiar Black Lodge hallway, something prevents him from entering the part in the curtain. Seemingly, it's the fact that Bad Coop has found a way to not have to come back into the Lodge. After Bad Coop has been returned to the Lodge, this section of curtain in episode 18 is shaking uncontrollably and Cooper is reaching toward it while he's about halfway down the hall.

This is a great interpretation. If I'm not mistaken, during that segment in Episode 1/2, Cooper opens a curtain to find a long stretch of highway. It's the same one Bad Coop is driving down in Episode 3, but it's also the one Coop and Diane drive down in Episode 18. 

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A potentially important thing I noticed: in Episode 2, the one armed man says "Is it future or is it past?" to Coop in the red room. Then he says "Someone's here," and disappears. That's when Laura walks in and sits down. In Episode 18, they use the exact same start of the scene--is it future or is it past?--but then the one armed man disappears. He doesn't introduce Laura, and the camera zooms in toward the empty chair where she sat in Episode 2. 

 

Not sure what to make of that. 

 

What's stranger is that instead of Laura walking in, we see what appears to be another mirror of E2 of Cooper being lead by the one armed man to The Arm. After introducing itself, in E2, the arm says "Nonexistence." In E18, he says "Have you heard the story of the little girl who lived down the lane?" Both appear to be related, as in Alt-World, the characters seem to be in a state of nonexistence. Audrey, in that alt-world, says "What story is that, Charley? The story of the little girl who lived down the lane?" 

 

Heck if I know what it all means, but the connections are neat. 

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I was one of the few people who watched the first two seasons of Twin Peaks when they originally aired up to the very end, long after a lot of other people abandoned the show. I remember immediately after the credits rolled on the season two finale feeling drained, empty, slightly depressed, and not sure if I wanted to watch anything Twin Peaks related ever again.

 

Who would have thought that 25-plus years later I would feel almost exactly the same way after the end of Episode Eighteen.

 

I came to appreciate that season two finale for what it was, and today would not want a single thing changed from it. Maybe one day I will feel that way about the end of season three. Certainly, all summer I have been praising The Return for not being a safe, easy nostalgia piece, so maybe I'm a bit of a hypocrite for wanting something a little different from what we got. I never expected it to wrap everything up in a nice bow, but the three-way hit of having an ending that was a cliffhanger, utterly confusing, and deeply depressing, all at the same time, has completely drained me. Maybe I will feel better after a few days of discussion and theories.

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5 hours ago, The Great Went said:

Dudes I watched 17 hours of this show before remembering it was a David Lynch joint. Whoops.

 

It was also a Mark Frost joint, which often seems to be forgotten. But I think for Episode 18 Frost was told he was not really needed...

 

5 hours ago, lethalenforcer said:

Really wish The Final Dossier was coming out sooner. Curious about how the hell that's going to take shape considering what we just saw.

 

I really doubt that will answer many questions, or any at all. Like The Secret History, I think The Final Dossier will deal with characters and events peripheral to the main story line. Could be wrong, but I doubt it.

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I don't normally go in on this kind of specific interpretation of the lore but is it possible that the Cooper we see at the end (Richard) is the "complete" Cooper? If you take the differences between Dale Cooper and Mr. C to be the literal embodiment of good vs evil, perhaps the Cooper that arrived at the beginning of the original show was already acting as one half of a whole person. Part of what draws us to that character in the original show is his eccentric warmth and overwhelming capacity for kindness. As I was trying to sleep after the finale last night I was thinking of all the times Phillip Jeffries encounters Coop and the doubts he has about whether he's speaking to the real Cooper, as far as back as FWWM when Cooper hasn't yet arrived in Twin Peaks.

 

I'm probably way off but it's something that my mind was mulling over as I was trying to take in everything that finale gave us. 

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21 minutes ago, Emily said:

I don't normally go in on this kind of specific interpretation of the lore but it is possible that the Cooper we see at the end (Richard) is the "complete" Cooper? If you take the differences between Dale Cooper and Mr. C to be the literal embodiment of good vs evil, perhaps the Cooper that arrived at the beginning of the original show was already acting as one half of a whole person. Part of what draws us to that character in the original show is his eccentric warmth and overwhelming capacity for kindness. As I was trying to sleep after the finale last night I was thinking of all the times Phillip Jeffries encounters Coop and the doubts he has about whether he's speaking to the real Cooper, as far as back as FWWM when Cooper hasn't yet arrived in Twin Peaks.

 

I'm probably way off but it's something that my mind was mulling over as I was trying to take in everything that finale gave us. 

 

If that's true, then Kyle MacLachlan played no less that six versions of Cooper this season!

 

1. Passive Cooper trapped in the red room

2. Mr. C

3. The "real" Dougie Jones

4. Cooper trapped in Dougie's body

5. The returned Dale Cooper

6. The Cooper/Mr. C amalgam you mentioned

 

If nothing else, MacLachlan has done a fantastic job this season differentiating between these characters.

 

(Personally, I hate the idea that the good Cooper, the boy scout Cooper from the first two seasons , was not the real one, and is replaced with the somewhat morose and confused Cooper we saw in Episode Eighteen. But the finale certainly implies that's what happened, at least in whatever alternate reality has ended up in.)

 

 

EDIT: Maybe there are actually seven versions of Cooper! The second tulpa greeted by Janey-E, created by "good" Cooper from his hair, may be different from the tulpa created from Dark Cooper.

 

 

 

Edited by Hansel Bosch
stuff added

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10 minutes ago, Emily said:

I don't normally go in on this kind of specific interpretation of the lore but it is possible that the Cooper we see at the end (Richard) is the "complete" Cooper? If you take the differences between Dale Cooper and Mr. C to be the literal embodiment of good vs evil, perhaps the Cooper that arrived at the beginning of the original show was already acting as one half of a whole person. Part of what draws us to that character in the original show is his eccentric warmth and overwhelming capacity for kindness. As I was trying to sleep after the finale last night I was thinking of all the times Phillip Jeffries encounters Coop and the doubts he has about whether he's speaking to the real Cooper, as far as back as FWWM when Cooper hasn't yet arrived in Twin Peaks.

 

I'm probably way off but it's something that my mind was mulling over as I was trying to take in everything that finale gave us. 

 

I don't think you're far off at all. The Cooper who emerged from the cocoon of Dougie Jones seemed to be the purest incarnation of the goodness inside Cooper. I wasn't sure that guy was going to stick around when we first got him because he seemed a little too chipper, a little too unburdened by his life and history and time. The Richard incarnation of Cooper seems like the combination of all his experiences and proclivities into one human. That version seems very world-weary and much more willing to solve problems with his fists than the old Cooper. 

 

I feel really worn down by the fate of Dale Cooper's soul. Assuming this is it, beyond the upcoming Mark Frost book which I now have to read I guess, this impression of Dale as being eternally unable to find happiness or fulfillment, even as he does everything the world needs of him, is so depressing. It also reignites my old opinions of the spirits that inhabit realms like the Black Lodge, Red Room, room above the convenience store, etc. Their machinations really take on the old feeling of amorality and disinterest in human outcomes they had in the original series. 

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So here's my attempt at a coherent thought about the finale.

One reason I think all those plotlines dropped is because it highlights what Dale did. He cut apart the fabric of the story, and tried to rewrite it from the beginning. Like Charlie threatening to end Audrey’s story… Dale broke the narrative. Everything that was supposed to be just stopped.

The story was mutilated. A botched surgery. Dale ripped it apart from within, trying to heal its wounds. He killed his patient. Dale’s staggering horror as he asks what year it is… he’s hunched over a little, in shock. He really thought he could fix everything. He thought he knew what he was doing. And he’s just lost, lost in a place that might not even be earth, for all he knows.

What a sickening, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking ending. The Double R closed, just black windows. Everyone gone. It’ll haunt my dreams.

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The shift from Cooper to Richard was the hardest and most distressing thing to process of all of this. A dream where the world is not what we know can be hard enough; a dream where we are not ourselves cuts (beautifully,  by design) down to a deeper marrow-level dread.

 

Strangely, those last few seconds brought a glimmer of hope to me. A hollow, give-it-a-few-years-to-process, End-of-Evangellion-style hope, but hope nonetheless. Laura is in there; Cooper is in there. Sheryl Lee's scream gives form to something awful and slow-building, but something that can at last be grasped and understood. I would almost go as far as finding it touching that as of that scream, they're in this nightmare together, sharing whatever strange melancholy highway adventure follows. But I'm not sure I'm capable right now of seeing this as history overwritten or undone, which is too big and dreadful to comprehend. Just a fracturing; a sideways step. One reality/Cooper/Laura of many. I Want To Believe. I Need To.

 

If you need help giving a shape to the shapeless - as we all surely do right now, I mean, you're shaking too right now, right? - this Vox write-up by Todd VanDerWerff goes into some absolutely beautiful introspective territory. If you're trying to find fulfilment from a feeling of emptiness, this is a wonderful start. <3

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10 hours ago, Emily said:

You know, I think I'm okay with that being the last of Twin Peaks. If they decide to make more, I'm here for it, but as far as Lynch's work goes I think that was an incredible ending. Maybe not the one I wanted but certainly one that I'll never forget. 

I absolutely concur.  To me, that was as profound an ending for this journey as any Lynch could have manufactured.  To end with a clearly stated question (What year is this?) keeps you searching the content and context for the possible answer.  That is the foundation of Twin Peaks.  Loved this season, and those final 2 episodes were spectacular!!!  

And remember, there were 2 Chalfonts.  "What was the name of the people who rented this trailor?  Chalfont.  As a matter of fact Chalfont was the name of the people that rented this space before.  Two Chalfonts."  Is it future or is it past?  The past dictates the future.  Indeed it does Mr. Lynch.

screenshot_02.thumb.jpg.045e989e8714285c6a1c3593f0796def.jpg
 

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