Jake

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

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@Don't Go There The Judy/Mother/Experiment face hidden under the Sarah Palmer mask is one of the most unsettling images of this whole season. A lot of its impact is because of the "harshness" of the effect; it feels so bizarre and just plain WRONG.

 

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To those talking about plot threads that don't matter, I would argue that's true about the entirety of Twin Peaks. When I first watched the show a few years ago I had the same thought that I had watching S3, which was, "So all those side stories were just pointless? Totally tossed aside for this insane, triply ending?" But when I rewatched the show I realized they weren't pointless--they were incredibly entertaining in their own right. Shelly and Leo, Ed and Norma, the Packhard Mill crap, the Audrey storyline--none of it went anywhere, but it added a lot of character to the show, a lot of mood, and they were entertaining vignettes despite having no resolution. In this season it's the same, really. The Detectives Fusco, the Bobby/Shelly stuff, the Becky/Whatshisname stuff, the Carl Rod stuff...none of it mattered in a plot sense, but it added a lot or character to the season. The only thing I feel truly was mishandled was the Richard Horne stuff. Him hitting a kid with his car, abusing his grandmother, abusing those women in the bar, almost killing that school teacher...we endured all that only for him to get zapped away on a lightening rock. Instead of being some profound meditation on the natures of evil or abuse, it felt like a cheap way to generate an emotional response. We shouldn't need to see a character kill a child and call his grandmother a c-word in order to understand that they're evil. 

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This has been a few weeks coming, but at this point I would love an internet wide moratorium on any TP theory involving someone being a tulpa...

 

 

Just me thinking out loud :P

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There are lots of ways you can interpret the last hour of the show, I haven't seen anyone (and maybe they have because i haven't read every single post) defend the possibility that Dale Cooper was just the dream of an FBI agent named Richard who, on waking from a long and strange dream starts experiencing a fugue state where he still thinks he is the character from his dream. He had a traumatic night with his lover/possible work associate that helped to initiate his break. His dream of Laura in based on a case he is working on involving a woman in danger by a creepy guy named bob. He goes to her work gets her address, at her house she has already killed the man named bob, dead guys looks a lot like Frank Silva. He convinces her to go to a town he remembers from a different case he worked on then somehow his waking dream drags her into it. 

 

I don't really subscribe to this as a conclusion in general, but its still worth exploring.

 

-- last minute thought what if cooper is now an inhabiting spirit that takes over an FBI agent named Richard.

 

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1 hour ago, Guts said:

There are lots of ways you can interpret the last hour of the show, I haven't seen anyone (and maybe they have because i haven't read every single post) defend the possibility that Dale Cooper was just the dream of an FBI agent named Richard who, on waking from a long and strange dream starts experiencing a fugue state where he still thinks he is the character from his dream. He had a traumatic night with his lover/possible work associate that helped to initiate his break. His dream of Laura in based on a case he is working on involving a woman in danger by a creepy guy named bob. He goes to her work gets her address, at her house she has already killed the man named bob, dead guys looks a lot like Frank Silva. He convinces her to go to a town he remembers from a different case he worked on then somehow his waking dream drags her into it. 

 

I don't really subscribe to this as a conclusion in general, but its still worth exploring.

 

 

I actually thought the dead guy looked a bit like Leo. And Carrie's situation seemed generally similar to Shelly's circa season 1.

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4 hours ago, axis1500 said:

I'm starting to think the ending may have been good. The Palmers' lives have been corrupted by the evil forces that lie in electricity. (Insert ominous ceiling fan shot here.) At the end the power in the Palmer household went dead. The electricity will control them no more. That fan will never spin again.

 

Well it certainly could explain why the Lynch/Frost logo at the very end appeared without the electricity sound.

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@SkullKid you are right but the big difference is in the season 2 finale Lynch, after an absence of 14 episodes (I think) chooses to brutally and effectively finish off most of the loose threads- with the bank explosion, Bobby and Shelly's romance blossoming, Nadine's harsh awakening, Andy and Lucy's consumption of their relationship, etc etc, as well as the whole Windom Earle saga, all in 45 minutes, while also setting up a third season based around Major Briggs as the protagonist. The Black Lodge Scenes are so mesmerising and unforgettable that we forget how many other ways this episode is totally definitive.

 

In that sense it's very different indeed from TR!

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1 hour ago, utilityfrog said:

 

I actually thought the dead guy looked a bit like Leo. And Carrie's situation seemed generally similar to Shelly's circa season 1.

 

Yeah, she tells Coop/Richard in the car "I tried to keep a clean house... I was too young..." Very similar to Shelly's relationship with Leo. Leo would say things like "A man needs a clean house" (I think he said this to Bobby in Episode 2) and is showing her how to scrub the floor in FWWM. 

 

Did anyone else notice the weird thing sticking out of the dead guy's stomach? Evil Bob Orb? 

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2 hours ago, Guts said:

There are lots of ways you can interpret the last hour of the show, I haven't seen anyone (and maybe they have because i haven't read every single post) defend the possibility that Dale Cooper was just the dream of an FBI agent named Richard who, on waking from a long and strange dream starts experiencing a fugue state where he still thinks he is the character from his dream.

 

It certainly crossed my mind, but I just don't want to accept an answer that turns the entire show into a dream.

 

These episodes are gnawing at me more than I thought they would...

 

"The stars turn and a time presents itself" almost sounds like what happens with Cooper in the final episode.

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I had a thought about the significance of the Cooper face overlay. My theory is that the face we see is Cooper in the Giant's house in the opening moments of S3. The clock stops, everything goes black, and for awhile we just see Cooper's face, almost in black and white. In this moment, when all goes black--THIS is when the Giant scene happens. Note that all of the clues the Giant gives have to do with everything that follows:

 

-"Listen to the sounds." the clicking sounds that he hears in the forest with Laura, right before she's whisked away.

Note that the sounds are the sounds of the bug from E8 who inhabits the girl. I think it's safe to say that this bug is Judy. This would make sense because of what the Giant says next: 

 

-"It is in our house now." The Giant plays Cooper that sound and THEN says "it's in our house now." The first clue informs the second--he's telling Cooper that the creature that's synonymous with that sound is in the white lodge. Cooper then says, "It is?" He's surprised. He knows what this means. The Giant responds,

 

-"Not all can be said aloud now." My interpretation of this is, 'I have to be cryptic because Judy is here and might hear us.' Which is why he played a sound of Judy instead of just telling Cooper aloud. 

 

-He then says, "Remember 430." The amount of miles to the entry point of the alt-world. 

 

-"Richard and Linda." These are the names that Cooper Diane adopt in the alt-world. 

 

-"Two birds with one stone." I think Cooper is trying to have AltLaura meet up with Sarah Palmer to save Laura (who was supposed to be some kind of savior), and stop the mother/Judy, who's inhabiting Sarah. It could also refer to the fact that him saying "What year is this?" makes both Cooper AND Laura aware of the artifice of their surroundings.

 

-"You are far away." Cooper is in a different world, far away from reality. 

 

 

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While I'm not saying that I'm explicitly disappointed at the lack of screen time to Audrey's situation, I am left wondering about a few things. If she's trapped in some state, when did this blank-white, possibly ethereal, place let her have a baby that roams the "real" world? Where did Richard get his name from? Was BadCoop there long enough to name the child in this now-Cooper-centric way? The Horne family seems intimately familiar with his actions, too, which just points out even more to me (to me to me) that we have no idea where Audrey is. The family seems comfortable in their knowledge of it, though.

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1 hour ago, MabaseSlums said:

While I'm not saying that I'm explicitly disappointed at the lack of screen time to Audrey's situation, I am left wondering about a few things. If she's trapped in some state, when did this blank-white, possibly ethereal, place let her have a baby that roams the "real" world? Where did Richard get his name from? Was BadCoop there long enough to name the child in this now-Cooper-centric way? The Horne family seems intimately familiar with his actions, too, which just points out even more to me (to me to me) that we have no idea where Audrey is. The family seems comfortable in their knowledge of it, though.

I think Audrey was in the alt-world the entire time we saw her, but when she screamed to Charlie to get her out of there,  she woke up in ACTUAL Twin Peaks somewhere. 

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12 minutes ago, SkullKid said:

I think Audrey was in the alt-world the entire time we saw her, but when she screamed to Charlie to get her out of there,  she woke up in ACTUAL Twin Peaks somewhere. 

Time to see if there’s Mrs Tremond in any of the roadhouse scenes... (not me tho, can I lazyweb that?)

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8 minutes ago, SkullKid said:

I think Audrey was in the alt-world the entire time we saw her, but when she screamed to Charlie to get her out of there,  she woke up in ACTUAL Twin Peaks somewhere. 

 

I don't understand why Audrey would have the same name in alt-world while everyone else was different, though.

 

But I do like the idea of Roadhouse-related scenes being in the alt-world, somehow. This theory has holes in it (James, Freddie, Shelly, Red, were all spotted there, among others), but it'd potentially explain the other episode-capping scenes that featured characters we've never met discussing other characters we never met or barely knew.

 

After seeing the mash-up video that draws parallels between Jodi crawling on the Roadhouse floor and DougieCoop crawing for the electrical outlet, I wonder if there are more parallels with those scenes that I never noticed. Like the girl that kept scratching. And scratching. And scratching.

 

Fun interview with Johnny Jewel of Chromatics about his experience filming and recording music for The Return:

https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/09/the-world-spins-johnny-jewel-talks-twin-peaks-david-lynch-and-whats-next-for-chromatics/

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6 hours ago, lethalenforcer said:

, I wonder if there are more parallels with those scenes that I never noticed.

 

One thing I noticed is the police in episode one in south dakota descending on to the principal's house with the warrant resembles the woodsman assembling around the convenience store in episode 8.

 

So this tells me the woodsmen are a sort of police force for the black lodge. This implied the woodsmen need equivalents of warrants to perform their actions.

 

Then, the house Carrie lives in certainly is the house where principal man is head exploded in the back seat of the police car.

 

 

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53 minutes ago, plasticflesh said:

 

So this tells me the woodsmen are a sort of police force for the black lodge. This implied the woodsmen need equivalents of warrants to perform their actions.

 

 

Love this idea! 

 

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32 minutes ago, The Great Went said:

 

Love this idea! 

 

 

PJG videos have mentioned the woodsmen being maintenance crew for the convenience store and associated areas so I'm riffing off of that. Ruff-ruff

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Regarding the scene of Coop speaking to the fireman from Part 1.. I'd be interested to know where you guys imagine it falls in the overall timeline? We see Cooper travel from the Black Lodge, to new york,  to the purple room, to vegas, to coma, to the mystery door etc. I'm inclined to think when he stuck the fork in the socket he visited the fireman in the white lodge, received his download and then woke up %100, essentially an agent of both lodges. Thoughts?

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Here's a quick theory on the end of episodes 17-18. In episode 17 when Cooper's face superimposes against the screen it represents a split in time. We are allowed to see one of these splits play out with Cooper going back to the lodge with the purpose of fulfilling his plan to save Laura and find Judy (two birds-one stone). Going into the lodge he remembers the Fireman's clues (430, Richard and Linda, Two birds one stone). He eventually travels (as Cooper) the 430 miles to some rip in time. When he enters the rip in time, he and Diane split. This is evidenced by Diane seeing another image of herself and the fact that at the hotel Cooper says things could change. In the hotel, we no longer are seeing Cooper - it is Richard. Richard doesn't remember the things the Giant told him, this is why he is so baffled by the note left in the morning. He only has a vague memory of himself, and some conditioned objective to find "Laura Palmer". We see Richard's personality change in the hotel, because he is a different person. Eventually they wind up at Laura's house and the ending. What we don't see, is that "Richard", conditioned to find Judy, and having already found Laura, will continue to lose his identity as Cooper and end up being Mr. C who will go back into the lodge and become Mr. C. Mr. C who has a conditioned need to find Judy for some unknown reason, which is a remnant of Cooper's original plan.

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Posted with love: An interesting discussion on the controversial ending of The Return that includes some well thought-out criticism of the dropped storylines and the surprising turn in Part 18. I haven't gotten through it all yet, but it immediately resonates with some of the critiques expressed by many fans.

 

 

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12 hours ago, HARRISONCOOPER said:

Regarding the scene of Coop speaking to the fireman from Part 1.. I'd be interested to know where you guys imagine it falls in the overall timeline? We see Cooper travel from the Black Lodge, to new york,  to the purple room, to vegas, to coma, to the mystery door etc. I'm inclined to think when he stuck the fork in the socket he visited the fireman in the white lodge, received his download and then woke up %100, essentially an agent of both lodges. Thoughts?

I laid out my theory above, but basically I feel the opening scene with the Giant takes place in the moment where time stops and the Cooper face overlay happens. All of the Giant's clues deal with the events that directly follow that moment. 

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24 minutes ago, purps said:

This was in Mark Frost's likes on twitter...

 

 

That is sort of what it felt like, the brunt of episode 18 not having much in relation to the previous parts and threads aside from the opening scene with the Fireman, which we don't even know when takes place in relation to the other events. Probably doesn't even matter when and where, seemed out of space and time when we first saw it, being so visually different from all previous Twin Peaks up to that point.

 

Even if there's not another full series that continues from there, it would be nice to get a follow up movie that goes deeper into and perhaps out of that nightmare alongside New Coop / Richard and Cassie / Laura. Although I have to imagine Lynch and Frost would be mostly content leaving Twin Peaks on that moment forever.

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Here's a neat scene where Mrs. Tremond appears to Donna and Coop as someone completely different, as in episode 18, and then hands them the missing page from Laura's diary.

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