Jake

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

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Oh sure, I'm not claiming that Lynch did any of this by accident. 

 

Cockney Freddie and the magic gardening glove is no more ridiculous than super-strong teenage-minded Nadine, or Ben Horne's civil war obsession, to my mind.  It is true that the wackier stuff existed more in pockets than as a vein throughout this season though.

 

All of which said, I'm not exactly arguing that I found the finale entirely satisfying myself, but I didn't find it retroactively changed my enjoyment of the earlier episodes.  I think I prefer something unsatisfyingly strange over a pat everything-comes-together sort of ending though, if I had to go one extreme or the other.

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23 hours ago, UnpopularTrousers said:

Dose that mean that part of the show exists purely in TV land, and another part exists in place that combines TV land with reality? Like how Jim Belushi is an actor, but Monica Bellucci is just Monica Bellucci? I mean, probably not.

Well, and where Audrey thinks she slept with Billy (Zane), not 'John Justice Wheeler'.

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Lynch frequently describes ideas as though they are entities that are alive, and flit into and out of his presence. He must catch them and hold onto them, or he loses them. Then he can use those ideas as bait to attract other ideas.

 

Lynch also tends to avoid explaining his interpretation of his work; and, when presented with someone else's explanation, often says that it is not what it means to him; but if it's what it means to the viewer, that's great.

 

My wife and I are quickly settling on the interpretation that Judy is jiāo dài (交代, "to explain"); that the ultimate evil is to explain the idea. That BOB, the offspring of Judy, is literally the explanation ("who killed Laura Palmer") who killed the idea, Laura.

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2 hours ago, One Thing said:

I assumed on first viewing that the footage of Laura and James talking in the woods from FWWM served the purpose of 1) firmly setting the viewer back in the space of 1989 and the night of Laura's death, and 2) the retcon of Laura's scream as a response to Coop watching through the trees. I personally thought the latter clever but a tad diminishing, since that moment in FWWM is played perfectly by Sheryl Lee as the traumatic response of a victim who now sees malevolence in every shadow.

Then on second viewing I was more attentive to the dialogue and noted the following:

Laura: 'Open your eyes, James. You don't know me. Even Donna doesn't know me. Your Laura disappeared... it's just me now'.

In FWWM this in uncomplicated – a reflection of Laura's double life and the darkness that is about to utterly consume her. Given the overt retconning of this very same scene in The Return, however, this put me on alert.

 

I had this thought too. It really sounded like tulpa talk, in this new context. And the scream and vanishing act felt like a Tulpa thing, too.

 

Also, incidentally, throughout this scene I couldn't stop looking at how dilated Laura and James's eyes were - was it so originally? I also noticed that in the scene where badCoop shows up at the sheriff's his eyes look black.

 

As to the Linda/Richard/Coop scene, I'm still not sure what to make of it. My initial take though was that Cooper and Diane have driven into an alternate world. They pull up to the motel, and Diane sees a dopple, possibly Linda? Point being, it made me think that this alternate world might be one that contains alternate versions of people as well. So my first thought is that the alternate world already contained a 'Richard' Coop and a 'Linda' Diane, and that during the sex scene (or even when he walked in the motel door) goodCoop swapped places with Richard, while Diane remained in the motel. Since during the sex scene 'coop' suddenly looks exactly like BadCoop, hair and expression and everything, and when Coop wakes up he seems himself again, sees the note and is confused by it, and then walks out of a different hotel and takes a different car. He might have had an entirely separate sex scene, but with 'Linda' while Diane was with 'Richard'. But there are holes in this idea, I am aware, but that's what I thought at first. That or that badCoop was literally badCoop, since we see him on fire in the lodge but not disintegrated.

 

At least, I feel like they both knew what was going on even though we don't. Diane doesn't seem surprised to see her other self, and she doesn't mention it. And the 'what next/now you walk to me' bit felt weirdly ritualistic.

 

That said, the goodCoop + badCoop amalgam idea does make some sense to me, though I dislike it and don't want it to. But, considering the fire walk with me poem that we are reminded of via Mike talking forwards for once (which was AWESOME):

 

Through the darkness of future past

The magician longs to see.

One chants out between two worlds

Fire walk with me.

 

We have in that poem a lot that resonates with this situation. 'Future past' darkness, a magician (both fake-Dougie Coop and bad-Coop have felt like magicians this season to me), and two worlds (I originally thought this referred to the lodge, but now we seem to have a full alternate world). We also see badCoop on fire with black smoke (electricity symbol), but not really looking dead otherwise. We have seen badCoop survive should-be-fatal wounds before. Granted, that was when he had Bob, but I'm still leaning toward thinking badCoop's not dead.

 

I originally thought that 'Chants' was 'chance' in that poem (though apparently Frost has said otherwise in a tweet referring to it in the original seasons), in which case that would sound a bit like the 'one chance out between two worlds' (the second world being the alt world rather than the lodges as I originally assumed) required Coop to walk with fire, aka badCoop who we just saw on fire. So he combines somehow with badCoop (maybe via the weird sex scene) in order to find Linda, defeat Judy, and... escape from both worlds? Are both worlds dreams? Who is the dreamer? Or maybe the 'two worlds' refers to the alt-world and the lodge, and the real-seeming world is real?

 

Or... Cooper altered the timeline and now the world is just completely different. But then why the crossing over scene?

 

TL;DR: I am very confused and tired and don't know what I'm talking about and may not be making sense. Damn. I'm gonna abandon this messy post here and just hope that there is some nugget of something in it. Kudos to the show for leaving me this confused while still feeling like there is sense to be made somehow.

 

Anyway, the most originalCoop-like person in these last episodes was the new Dougie. He was so cheery, and more coherent than our previous fake-Dougie.

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19 minutes ago, Owl said:

I also noticed that in the scene where badCoop shows up at the sheriff's his eyes look black.

I think Badcoop has had black irises for the whole run...

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1 hour ago, Urthman said:

 

I wonder if that was meant to be Diane's perspective?  No matter how glad Diane was to be with the real Cooper, it seems hard to believe she could kiss him or have sex with him without having traumatic thoughts about Bad Coop. Cooper could have been grinning like Dougie when they were having sex, and she might still see Bad Coop's face.  It was frightening the way she was completely covering his face with her hands.

This seems likely. Diane is traumatized for life. As much as she completely LOVES Cooper with all of her heart, having sex with someone who looks identical to your rapist is probably not the best thing to do.

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1 minute ago, Nordelnob said:

This seems likely. Diane is traumatized for life. As much as she completely LOVES Cooper with all of her heart, having sex with someone who looks identical to your rapist is probably not the best thing to do.

 

This was a disturbing scene.  The way I took it was that Diane recognised the change in Cooper since they had 'crossed over', and this is what was disturbing her - hence her attempts to cover RichardCoop's face.  (Or alternatively, if she was looking at it from the other side, she was alarmed by the change in Richard)

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14 minutes ago, Aether said:

 

Believe me, I want to agree with you, I just poured 18 hours of my life into the season and many more thinking about it. I want to agree with you. And yet: Cockney Freddie and the magic gardening glove. That scene is not the problem, it's just an example of the problem. But there was just too much that Lynch threw under the bus in overtly ridiculous ways (or ignored all together). Having Cooper spring back last week "100%" only to very quickly turn into a different, Evil Cooper influenced self...that was intentional. The build up to Cooper's return was intentional...it was done knowing we would never really see that character again, in any meaningful way. Which is fine...that's Twin Peaks. You can mine rich stories out of expectation and altered selves. Lynch does it in his other work all the time.  This season was just structured in such a way that the build up never really meant anything. It's hard for me to see that as anything other than contempt for the audience. I'm glad so many others disagree and enjoyed the season. I just wish it had hit me the same way. I'll leave it at that, I'm being overly repetitive at this point. Thanks for the discussion forum people.

I understand why people would hate the Bob hulk smash. It's cartoonish, anti-climactic, and somewhat flippant with aspects of the series. I think you're absolutely right that it doesn't take certain aspects of the lore all that seriously. It took all the most superficial elements of good versus evil and neat resolutions and ratcheted it all up to an extreme. The plot resolution it provided was deliberately shallow.

 

While I did get some satisfaction out of seeing all the pieces fall into place, I would have been pretty unhappy if the series ended right there. But it didn't. Instead, by pushing that stuff past the breaking point, it felt to me like it shed itself of the plot machinations and asked the viewer to look back on the series not in terms of how the plot got us to where we are but in terms of the ambiguities and flaws in characters that would have otherwise gone unexamined. I liked how it left me feeling scattered and how even the most blatant comic book fight doesn't truly extinguish evil, because evil exists in shades of grey in everyone. The dualistic nature of Lynch's work is about how people are made of contradictory internal elements and not how opposing external sides are at war. It was a pull the rug out from under you approach, but I think it was with a point and a purpose.

 

So I don't think it's that Lynch didn't care, I think its that he cared about different things than you. Which is totally fine. You cared about the plot and the lore, and I think he wanted to show that he considers those elements to be disposable and metaphorical and pushed them aside to focus on the signified rather than the signifiers. 

Did it work? Is that a strong enough reason to flippantly toss aside the importance of lore and plot you have invested significant energy in dissecting? Well, you seem to think not and honestly I think you could make a pretty strong case. But I don't think it was a fuck you. It was merely a shift in focus.

 

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The sex scene was especially weird because there was no context for it.  Diane had said they had only kissed once before, and the kiss in the car didn't seem overly sexual or romantic, Coop told her to do it and she did.  Them having sex in the motel seemed weird because they were on the trail of something or heading into another world.  Why would you stop at a hotel to have sex (for the first time).  Neither of them seemed very excited about the prospect or during the act.  I don't think it is them.  I guess Diane could be covering his face because it reminded her of the rape, but why would she continue, surely Coop would stop and comfort her.

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20 minutes ago, BonusWavePilot said:

 

This was a disturbing scene.  The way I took it was that Diane recognised the change in Cooper since they had 'crossed over', and this is what was disturbing her - hence her attempts to cover RichardCoop's face.  (Or alternatively, if she was looking at it from the other side, she was alarmed by the change in Richard)

Equally likely.

I find myself a bit frustrated in general with this finale, and I'm sure in some way that's part of the point.. I'm just kind of a little bit.. bummed. I enjoyed the hell out of this season, including the finale. But the way it ended feels so empty, and devoid of any meaning. I'm sure that's 100% by design. I'm just not sure I understand why. I realize Twin Peaks isn't always a feel good romp. But in the past it did tackle MEANINGFUL issues/themes/moods, and could often be very hopeful.

Things like Harry and Cooper's friendship, and Cooper's unstoppable drive to do good. Redemption of characters like Bobby Briggs. And just about everything Major Briggs ever said was uplifting or enlightening in some way.

We haven't had much of that this season. I was really expecting the finale to drive some of that stuff home. But instead we are left with a sense of dread and despair. And the world is now just an ugly, grey place.  I'm trying to figure out why I am surprised by this, given the way the original was left. But I always attributed that to the show being cancelled before it could resolve the cliffhanger. Not a deliberate attempt to leave a sour taste.


 

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5 minutes ago, UnpopularTrousers said:

I understand why people would hate the Bob hulk smash. It's cartoonish, anti-climactic, and somewhat flippant with aspects of the series. I think you're absolutely right that it doesn't take certain aspects of the lore all that seriously. It took all the most superficial elements of good versus evil and neat resolutions and ratcheted it all up to an extreme. The plot resolution it provided was deliberately shallow.

 

While I did get some satisfaction out of seeing all the pieces fall into place, I would have been pretty unhappy if the series ended right there. But it didn't. Instead, by pushing that stuff past the breaking point, it felt to me like it shed itself of the plot machinations and asked the viewer to look back on the series not in terms of how the plot got us to where we are but in terms of the ambiguities and flaws in characters that would have otherwise gone unexamined. I liked how it left me feeling scattered and how even the most blatant comic book fight doesn't truly extinguish evil, because evil exists in shades of grey in everyone. The dualistic nature of Lynch's work is about how people are made of contradictory internal elements and not how opposing external sides are at war. It was a pull the rug out from under you approach, but I think it was with a point and a purpose.

 

So I don't think it's that Lynch didn't care, I think its that he cared about different things than you. Which is totally fine. You cared about the plot and the lore, and I think he wanted to show that he considers those elements to be disposable and metaphorical and pushed them aside to focus on the signified rather than the signifiers. 

Did it work? Is that a strong enough reason to flippantly toss aside the importance of lore and plot you have invested significant energy in dissecting? Well, you seem to think not and honestly I think you could make a pretty strong case. But I don't think it was a fuck you. It was merely a shift in focus.

 

I have trouble with this reading too.  What was Lynch then focusing on?  It seemed mostly mood and tone, and usually the same mood and tone (uncomfortable, strange, withheld) is that 18 hours worth of compelling?. It wasn't really character he was focused on, because we didn't spend enough time with most of them to know them any better or much at all.  The new characters appeared for brief scenes sometimes 5 or 6 episodes apart. Their storylines were disjointed or dropped.  I also don't think it accounts for Lynch often in the character of Gordon Cole winking at the audience and basically saying I know what you want to see but instead here's a french woman.  I know what you want to know, instead Hawke tells us we don't want to know about it.  One might just roll with it, but the disrespectful interpretation whether intentional on Lynch's part or not is still obviously valid.

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I guess part of what makes me want to argue this is the idea of Lynch being 'disrespectful' or similar, as it raises the question, what are we owed?

 

I don't actually have an answer just at the moment, but I think the idea of viewing this as a contract between Lynch and his audience is an interesting one.  What do we owe, for that matter?

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10 minutes ago, Digger said:

The sex scene was especially weird because there was no context for it.  Diane had said they had only kissed once before, and the kiss in the car didn't seem overly sexual or romantic, Coop told her to do it and she did.  Them having sex in the motel seemed weird because they were on the trail of something or heading into another world.  Why would you stop at a hotel to have sex (for the first time).  Neither of them seemed very excited about the prospect or during the act.  I don't think it is them.  I guess Diane could be covering his face because it reminded her of the rape, but why would she continue, surely Coop would stop and comfort her.

Rather than the motel scene being an event which took place after the rape, I thought it was an alternate version of the rape. In both stories Diane had kissed Cooper once before and then they met and then they had sex/he raped her. While there were no punches or direct violence, Cooper's words felt like they were orders and that Diane felt like she had no choice. I have no interest in getting into a discussion of what level of persuasion constitutes rape (because that's besides the point) but at the very least Cooper seemed to be using his power in an immoral and shitty way.

 

This goes into my view of the finale being about how there isn't merely good and evil and how the real Cooper is a mixture of Good Coop and Bad Coop. I think the series was about extremes and the finale was about asking you to look to see the truth that exists in the unsaid middle.

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The Judy stuff is absolutely the sort of stream-of-consciousness asspull that Lynch loves.  Remember how Bob came into existence because Frank Silva was accidentally in a mirror shot?  There's a phrase used for a lot of Power by the Apocalypse tabletop games like Dungeon World, "play to find out what happens," meaning set the stage, and let the act of creation dictate the direction of the story, and that's how Lynch loves to work.

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7 hours ago, lethalenforcer said:

Is everything we saw leading up to 17/18 now essentially wiped/meaningless? Of course those things had to happen to get Coop back in position to (attempt to) alter Laura's path. Or is the reality with Pete finding no body, and the existence of Carrie Page, an alternate reality? Or are those things completely independent of one another? And why was the girl at the Roadhouse scratching herself so much? This is my mind today.

I think Cooper thought that's what would happen, somehow, because he goes to visit someone he thinks will be Laura Palmer, and he has the person right... but it's not actually Laura. It's not the person he expected, or the past he expected. It seems like he has somehow shifted over into an entirely separate reality. I don't know how or why, but it doesn't seem like he actually changed the past, but found himself in a wholly separate timeline? Presumably the Twin Peaks we know still exists somewhere but Cooper is, once again, not in it?

 

The line "One chants out between two worlds" in the fire walk with me poem now seems to mean something different than it did before? We have seen what seem like (at least) two totally different realities this season, with the red room/lodge(s?) serving as the transitory space between them(?). 

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4 minutes ago, BonusWavePilot said:

I guess part of what makes me want to argue this is the idea of Lynch being 'disrespectful' or similar, as it raises the question, what are we owed?

 

I don't actually have an answer just at the moment, but I think the idea of viewing this as a contract between Lynch and his audience is an interesting one.  What do we owe, for that matter?

It seems many believe we owe unwavering allegiance and lack of judgement.   I don't think owed is right word.  Any artistic offering is open to reading and critique.   Why is Twin peaks any different.  I don't think one could argue artists can not offend or disrespect their audience, or that work can miss the mark, or be bogged down or too dilute.  These are characters and a world that has been pored over, examined and loved for over 25 years.  The characters, place and feel have been internalized.  I believe an audience can have expectations and opinions.  The audience who have followed this work for so long are, in my opinion, part or the creative team as well.   

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This is perhaps a little off topic, but of the all the people who are feeling jaded at the finale, Julee Cruise is with you. Apparently she was none too happy about the ending and/or the limited role of her song in the finale and her general treatment by Lynch and Co. She was posting about it last night on Facebook, and the Obnoxious and Anonymous guys were reading some of it on their live stream. There are some quotes in a short article over at alternative nation. 

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1 minute ago, Digger said:

The audience who have followed this work for so long are, in my opinion, part or the creative team as well.   

 

I strongly disagree with this! The actual creators, Frost and Lynch, can choose to include what they think the audience wants, or not, but the audience themselves are absolutely not part of the creative team. They are literally not part of it - we were not consulted on the script or asked for feedback - and we also aren't in any figurative sense that I believe holds water. 

 

You said the audience wasn't "owed," but then declared that the audience was in fact part of the creative team, which is worse(!) because the implication is that the audience is entitled to its wishes being made manifest by the people actually creating or financing the show, on equal terms with those people who are actually taking huge risks and exerting huge effort to make this series real! Give me a break. 

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5 minutes ago, Jake said:

The line "One chants out between two worlds" in the fire walk with me poem now seems to mean something different than it did before? We have seen what seem like (at least) two totally different realities this season, with the red room/lodge(s?) serving as the transitory space between them(?). 

 

I didn't have captioning on, but I heard this is how it was captioned. I always imagined it as "One chance out..." and have seen it in print that way in the past. 

 

Is there any way to confirm which line it is supposed to be, or whether it was changed at some point in the evolution of Twin Peaks?

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2 minutes ago, Jake said:

I think Cooper thought that's what would happen, somehow, because he goes to visit someone he thinks will be Laura Palmer, and he has the person right... but it's not actually Laura. It's not the person he expected, or the past he expected. It seems like he has somehow shifted over into an entirely separate reality. I don't know how or why, but it doesn't seem like he actually changed the past, but found himself in a wholly separate timeline? Presumably the Twin Peaks we know still exists somewhere but Cooper is, once again, not in it?

 

The line "One chants out between two worlds" in the fire walk with me poem now seems to mean something different than it did before? We have seen what seem like (at least) two totally different realities this season, with the red room/lodge(s?) serving as the transitory space between them(?). 

Maybe we should also be thinking about the person who is doing the chanting. The chanter is in neither world. The chanter is between them.


I think we live in that fuzzy transitory middle of the Worlds Venn diagram. Good Coop sitting on one shoulder, Bad Coop sitting on the other.

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1 minute ago, Mentalgongfu said:

 

I didn't have captioning on, but I heard this is how it was captioned. I always imagined it as "One chance out..." and have seen it in print that way in the past. 

 

Is there any way to confirm which line it is supposed to be, or whether it was changed at some point in the evolution of Twin Peaks?

Oops I don't actually know. I probably pulled it from a bad source?

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@Digger
Well, if owed is not the concept to use, then by what measure can the choices in the series be disrespectful?  Otherwise it can be contrary to expectation, but the notion of respect doesn't come into it.

 

Of course Twin Peaks is as open to reading and critique as anything else, and of course artists can offend or their work can miss the mark.  My point is that if you and a creator have different ideas of where that mark is, do you think you have a right to demand that they move to meet your definition?

 

"These are characters and a world that has been pored over, examined and loved for over 25 years.  The characters, place and feel have been internalized.  I believe an audience can have expectations and opinions."

 

Sure - there are a lot of us who really like this thing.  I don't agree that this means we ought to have any say over how it is made.

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16 minutes ago, Mentalgongfu said:

This is perhaps a little off topic, but of the all the people who are feeling jaded at the finale, Julee Cruise is with you. Apparently she was none too happy about the ending and/or the limited role of her song in the finale and her general treatment by Lynch and Co. She was posting about it last night on Facebook, and the Obnoxious and Anonymous guys were reading some of it on their live stream. There are some quotes in a short article over at alternative nation. 

I wouldn't exactly consider myself one of jaded or disappointed people really. This empty feeling that I'm left with is 100% the intent of the finale. And I knew it could likely end with another cliffhanger or at least a lot of unanswered questions. But I am curious as to why Lynch left it on such a sour, hopeless, and almost nihilistic (and in some ways solipsistic) note. Especially considering it would likely be the last episode ever.

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