Jake

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

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1 minute ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

 

Just a quick aside, I always thought of that as a line imploring fire itself to walk with the speaker, not for somebody else to fire walk with them. It's curious to realise ambiguities like this that my brain wholly glossed over.

 

I assume the ambiguity must be part of why Lynch loves it. It can be read as "Fire, walk with me," and/or "Fire-walk, with me."

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It could even be

 

One chants out between two worlds, "Fire!" 

Walk with me.

 

(line breaks changed for emphasis; there are plenty of poems where the first word of a line is the last word of the previous sentence) 

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1 hour ago, Urthman said:

One chants out between two worlds, "Fire!" 

Walk with me.

 

Haha or, by Hawk's measure, that could be equivalent to someone chanting "electricity."

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1 hour ago, Urthman said:

 

It could even be

 

One chants out between two worlds, "Fire!" 

Walk with me.

 

(line breaks changed for emphasis; there are plenty of poems where the first word of a line is the last word of the previous sentence) 

 

This is always kind of how I heard it.

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I just wanted to pop in with a big thanks for @Jake and @Chris for being awesome and making what I consider the best accompaniment podcast for the show.

 

As well as share a couple passages from a re-read of the Autobiography of Dale Cooper that felt poignant to me at the end of this journey

 

 

DCDeath1.png

DCFailure.png

DCGoodEvil.png

DCFReturn.png

 

You can read the whole thing here http://leesmillard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/The-Autobiography-of-F.B.I.-Special-Agent-Dale-Cooper.pdf

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I feel like I have a decent handle on the ending now that I've thought about it for awhile. I'm like 70-80% of the way there. Here's my interpretation as of now:

Cooper asks Jefferies to send him back in time to the night Laura dies as that was the night that started all of this. He is successful (we see her body disappear) but then Judy angrily intervenes, through Sarah Palmer.

 

I 100% subscribe to the theory that Sarah is host to Judy through the frogmoth. Visually the scene where she opens her face both looks similar to the moth creature and the creature in the box (who I also believe is Judy). Also I rewatched a clip of episode 8 and noticed something I completely forgot about. After the frogmoth goes in the girl's mouth, the woodsman stops his broadcast and walks outside and disappears into the darkness. As he does that there is a faint sound effect of a horse neighing. The white horse is seen twice in the history of the show, both times by Sarah Palmer. The exact meaning of the horse I'm not completely decided on, but no doubt about it that it's linked heavily to Sarah. The other big clue to this is in the final episode after Bad Coop goes through the portal and gets caught in that cage in the White Lodge/Movie Theater/Whatever the Giant changes the destination from the Palmer house to the Sheriff's station. Bad Coop was looking for the Palmer house. In episode 1, Bad Coop shows the image of the black circle with antenna looking things (which we also see on Hawk's map) and says that is what he is looking for. As many people pointed out, the figure that vomits up BOB and the eggs has similar antenna to that image. All of these things are Judy. Bad Coop was looking for Judy at Sarah Palmer's house. Not totally sure on why, maybe to destroy her and take her place? Or just never have to go back to the Lodge? Not clear. 

 

Anyway, we see Cooper leading Laura away from her murder and the events starting to undo themselves, when suddenly she screams and disappears. We then cut to the scene of Sarah smashing the picture frame of Laura. Judy is seeing what Cooper is doing and sending her away to another world where she becomes Carrie Page. The Fireman gives Cooper the information to go find her (first scene of episode 1) and him and Diane drive the 430 miles and enter the other world. The other world is under Judy's control. We see the diner named Judy's. The people in it are horrible and evil (truckers harassing the waitress, Carrie Page's horrible life complete with a dead body in her living room). And the existence of the Chalfonts/Tremonds suggest this is part of or related to the lodge. I think it's some sort of hell or prison maybe? 

 

The biggest thing I am unclear on, is Diane's role in all of this, and specifically the sex scene. It's purpose and meaning eludes me completely. Most of the theory from waggish.org I don't buy much at all, but the idea of the sex scene being a way to summon Judy ala the black box sex scene is the closest thing to a plausible theory I've heard but I'm not totally sold on it.

 

Some other assorted thoughts: Audrey "waking up" in the Roadhouse, is that white room the same world Carrie, Richard, and Linda are in? We live inside a dream. Audrey woke up from the dream. Also, Jefferies saying "Say hi to Gordon for me, he will remember the unofficial version". This reads to me as seeding for a possible season 4 or movie. Cooper needs to find Gordon in the alt-world. He will remember Twin Peaks. If they were to continue the show, would the show be about Cooper, Laura, and Cole all trying to get back home? Maybe we would see alternate versions of all the Twin Peaks cast playing different characters? Although these might go against the alt-world being part of the lodge or created by Judy.

 

Feel free to poke any holes in this if you see any. Seems pretty solid to me. I think I'll have an even better handle once I rewatch the whole show from front to back.

 

 

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On 9/8/2017 at 10:40 PM, Jake said:

I just read this theory that DOES attempt to connect every single thing together. It doesn't ring emotionally true to me, to what I got out of the season, but it was still an interesting read: http://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/

 

I love stuff like this that happens after only Lynch films or a small selection of movies and TV shows, many of which seem at least partially inspired by Lynch.  Even though I never agree with everything being posited. (I'm sorry, the "last two episodes should be played in sync" theory holds no water for me. It feels way too close to stuff like The Dark Side of the Moon mixed with The Wizard of Oz or the theories espoused in Room 237, where it feels like coincidences and confirmation bias is making up for a lot.) Of course, no interpretation is ever going to be 100% satisfying, because there are always things that you have to "feel out". Lynch himself has admitted this in interviews.

 

I think that Waggish theory is really interesting and gives me more to think about - in particular, the idea that RR2GO does not exist in the "new" Twin Peaks because neither Dale nor Laura would know it should be there.

 

But I agree with Jake in that it doesn't "ring emotionally true". For all of Lynch's diversions and playing with expectations (can I just say I loved the scene where we all are forced to wait an agonizingly long time for the lady to leave the room before one sentence of information is exchanged?), he is nothing if not wholly sincere in how he presents things - and this has been true in everything he has created in the past. If something is supposed to be funny, happy or playful, he makes that clear. If something is meant to be dark and foreboding, he also makes that clear. That's why he couldn't even provide us with that final battle in Episode 17 without letting us know "something" was wrong about it. Nothing about the last few minutes of The Return gave off the impression we were supposed to feel Cooper succeeded in his mission.

 

Of course, maybe that means everything in that theory is correct except the absolute ending.

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I have a feeling that there is something to the fact that Laura tells Coop "I'll see you again in 25 years", and then Coop ends the series by asking "What year is it?" I don't know if this has been brought up before, since this is the only Twin Peaks-related forum I frequent, but the fact that it cuts to Laura whispering in Coop's ear at the end definitely evokes that line from the original series.

 

I don't really like to get too concrete, but I do think that this association gels with the idea that Coop was attempting to follow the directions/clues that have been provided to him in the Red Room/White Lodge throughout the series, and has failed, either because he has followed them incorrectly, or maybe conversely because he has adhered to them too strictly. This plays into the idea suggested in the pod about Cooper's intuitiveness being a double-edged sword. Often, he acts without regard for the feelings of other people, just because of his own visions and whims. It seems to me that his downfall at the end is strongly related to this flaw. 

 

I think it's interesting to look at his story in the show as an in-depth, yet abstract look into his character. We spend so little time with him acting as himself, but I think we actually learn more about Dale Cooper's psyche than we did in the original series. Dougie explores the positive, almost transcendent version of him, where he has internalized the world to such an extent that he acts effortlessly, seemingly unknowingly, in ways that produce positive results. Then, there's Mr. C, who uses his intuition and strength to forcefully enact change in the world purely out of self-interest. And then there is the Coop who appears at the very beginning and end, who seems to follow his intuition so closely and literally that it leads him to some sort of cosmic despair. I don't think the ending is necessarily an indictment of Coop as a whole; each version of Coop is just an example of the good or bad that can result from this one aspect of his character. It all fits together to me in a way that is so ethereal and abstract that it's hard for me to put it into words, but this is my best attempt. 

 

 

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An observation about Cooper. In the original series as well as FWWM when we see him in his black suit he's always wearing his FBI lapel pin. This isn't always so in the Return. In fact, the only time he wears his lapel pin are during the Lodge scenes prior to his exit through the #3 socket. So it wasn't just his shoes that didn't pass through to the other side. As an imperative of the narrative this makes good sense since Jade, then the casino operators and everyone else down the line would have noticed and reacted accordingly. Hookers and gambling operations would certainly take exception to a federal agent. So it goes to pass, through the remainder of the story Cooper no longer wears his lapel pin. Yet, watch part one again. When we see Cooper recieving the Giant/Fireman's clues, Cooper isn't wearing the pin. I think this pretty much establishes how much the story is being told out of sequence. The Cooper getting these clues is the Cooper from the 'end' of the story.

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1 hour ago, Persistence of 3 said:

An observation about Cooper. In the original series as well as FWWM when we see him in his black suit he's always wearing his FBI lapel pin. This isn't always so in the Return. In fact, the only time he wears his lapel pin are during the Lodge scenes prior to his exit through the #3 socket. So it wasn't just his shoes that didn't pass through to the other side. As an imperative of the narrative this makes good sense since Jade, then the casino operators and everyone else down the line would have noticed and reacted accordingly. Hookers and gambling operations would certainly take exception to a federal agent. So it goes to pass, through the remainder of the story Cooper no longer wears his lapel pin. Yet, watch part one again. When we see Cooper recieving the Giant/Fireman's clues, Cooper isn't wearing the pin. I think this pretty much establishes how much the story is being told out of sequence. The Cooper getting these clues is the Cooper from the 'end' of the story.

Woah, good catch!

 

It's funny how the search for clues in a show like this where small details might be relevant, and where the creators are unlikely to ever spell everything out makes the stakes of any continuity problems higher.  This FBI pin theory seems to me to be a good example of that: another might be the guy shouting for Billy at the diner, followed by a suddenly different crowd of extras in the diner.  In most other shows you would just assume a continuity glitch, but here it may actually be significant.  This is further complicated by Lynch's methods meaning that it might start as a mistake and then get adopted if he likes it.

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48 minutes ago, BonusWavePilot said:

It's funny how the search for clues in a show like this where small details might be relevant, and where the creators are unlikely to ever spell everything out makes the stakes of any continuity problems higher.  

Haha, I was literally thinking the same thing. And it's especially hard with someone like Lynch who loves using symbolism. Makes you wonder if theories of his past movies are based on "evidence" that actually was just a forgetful accident. Just another wrinkle in being left to interpret something that will always have gaps, and nobody to tell you which parts of your ideas are right and which are off-base. Not much difference from finding anything of significance in something the director planned as a pointless aside, I suppose. Although we're talking about a series where a lame bit about Lucy's confusion over cell phones led to the demise of an antagonist so it's hard to think that anything is meant to be a meaningless aside.

 

That said, I think the lapel pin thing works out. They even repeat a bit of the red room scene from Episode 1 in the end, and that combined with the "is it future or is it past" line suggests that maybe that's when that discussion took place.

 

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The theories related to Gordon Cole and Albert talking mostly in code throughout the season like the one detailed at the start of Fire Walk with Me, including all the mis-heard words and the excruciatingly long scene with the lady in red (and Monica Bellucci) have me super excited about watching over scenes again.

 

I think i'm still bummed out about the Bob fight scene, but the way the story has been reframed at least have me excited that more of stuff in the middle is important that it first appears. 

 

 

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It can be problematic presenting a case for the lapel pin given that we're talking about a franchise which capitalized on a production error to create Killer Bob. Mr Lynch has given us precident after all.

 

That said, I think this is different. At some point in their discussions Lynch and Frost had to have realized they couldn't tell the story they wished to tell unless Cooper's lapel pin disappears. So they dispensed with it at the most convenient time. I'd go so far as to suggest the business with his shoes left behind —despite the ubiquitous talk of shoes in the original run— was a big misdirect. Look there not here. Later, Dougie/Coop seems to understand perfectly well that his pin is missing and appears to be telling us that each time he reaches for a lawman's badge.

 

Once it was established that there would have to be scences establishing the pin and scenes without then it would fall to the costume department to monitor where they were in the story and how to depict Cooper. Yes, continuity errors happen. This seems like something intentional, like leaving the bat symbol off of Batman's cosutme. It's kinda conspicious when you think about it.

 

Of course one could wonder whether or not the opening black and white scene with Cooper and the Giant was scripted for the opening or whether it was something that was found later in the edititng room.

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The pin appears as bad Coop's hair tie, definitely near the end, but might be in throughout and we somehow missed it. The camera even lingers on it.

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23 hours ago, Persistence of 3 said:

An observation about Cooper. In the original series as well as FWWM when we see him in his black suit he's always wearing his FBI lapel pin. This isn't always so in the Return. In fact, the only time he wears his lapel pin are during the Lodge scenes prior to his exit through the #3 socket. So it wasn't just his shoes that didn't pass through to the other side. As an imperative of the narrative this makes good sense since Jade, then the casino operators and everyone else down the line would have noticed and reacted accordingly. Hookers and gambling operations would certainly take exception to a federal agent. So it goes to pass, through the remainder of the story Cooper no longer wears his lapel pin. Yet, watch part one again. When we see Cooper recieving the Giant/Fireman's clues, Cooper isn't wearing the pin. I think this pretty much establishes how much the story is being told out of sequence. The Cooper getting these clues is the Cooper from the 'end' of the story.

 

A pin appears again on Cooper's lapel right before he enters the door at The Great Northern in Part 17. And stays with him from then on through his meeting with Jeffries, back into the past with Laura, after that in the red room, still there after the curtain call in Glastonbury Grove, and even into his crossing over to wherever that is, all the way to the final scene of the series. So his meeting with the Fireman where it's not visible probably took place at some point in time before that and after his trip through the electrical outlet in Part 3.

 

It's worth pointing out his pin is back immediately after the scene in the Sheriff's station where BOB is defeated and Diane comes back. Cooper's face is overlaid on the screen and says we live inside a dream, Cooper says he hopes he sees everyone again, and then everything goes dark as Cooper calls out worriedly for Gordon and Gordon yells out COOP!  Then it cuts right to Cooper, Diane, and Gordon, all seemingly fine and together walking through the darkness and then approaching the door right after that. And from there on his pin is back, or a different one? I'm not sure what that all means, although I suppose you could at least take the pin's reappearance as evidence that the scene with the Fireman happens sometime before this and after he comes through the socket. Some have proposed that it's happening in the moments when Cooper's face is superimposed, which I could buy considering time seems to stop or break in that moment.

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20 hours ago, Dingobloo said:

The theories related to Gordon Cole and Albert talking mostly in code throughout the season like the one detailed at the start of Fire Walk with Me, including all the mis-heard words and the excruciatingly long scene with the lady in red (and Monica Bellucci) have me super excited about watching over scenes again.

 

Do you have any readily-available links to further reading on these theories? Sounds like something I'd be interested in digging through a bit.

 

Off to Reddit I go (only to never be heard from again)!

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I don't know if this has been suggested yet, so I apologize for any redundancy, but I'm curious to see people's opinions on this. 

 

I think that Laura's initial disappearance and scream in ep 17 is actually caused by her final awakening & scream in ep 18. We're dealing with two overlapping repercussions of Cooper's actions. 

 

Coop's hubris initially leads him to alter past events (erasing Laura's murder), only to be foiled by his future, more integrated (& sadder) self in the Richard/Lindaverse, where he tries to further rectify what he did and... successfully awakens & loops Laura back into the torment she was fated to undergo prior to season 1 episode 1.

 

Cooper fixes his fix, effectively resetting everything.

 

It's kind of a depressing figure 8 of a read, but it seems to mesh with the vibe of that static shot at the end that, at least to me, connotes something eternal and almost archetypal in Lynch's/Frost's mythology, the concept of the infinite, hermetically looped secret. 

 

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I'm now getting excited to rewatch all Twin Peaks content in a row. I wonder if Showtime will be picky with rights, or if something can be arranged for all Twin Peaks material to be part of one box set. If so, I wonder what they would call it since the current box set calls itself "The Complete Mystery".

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13 minutes ago, kuddles said:

I'm now getting excited to rewatch all Twin Peaks content in a row. I wonder if Showtime will be picky with rights, or if something can be arranged for all Twin Peaks material to be part of one box set. If so, I wonder what they would call it since the current box set calls itself "The Complete Mystery".

 

 

I'm in the midst of a rewatch of 3 right now. Day one I did six episodes, days two and three were 3 episodes in a sitting. I'm finding that it's pretty tight the second time around. One has a greater sense of what takes place in a story day (2-3 episodes seem to cover a story day compared to the original series which was strictly one story day per episode). Knowing what's going to happen and which characters are recurring and which are incidental can't help but effect the way one takes in the story. The overall effect is leaner and not as rambling than my initial impressions. I'd say a second veiwing is essential to appreciate what's going on. Already halfway through and really my only nagging question at this point is who exactly is claiming to be Phillip Jefferies when Bad Coop makes the call from the skanky hotel room? Was that ever explained? I don't think it was so in that case my suspicions lean heavily towards Albert.

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6 hours ago, lethalenforcer said:

 

Do you have any readily-available links to further reading on these theories? Sounds like something I'd be interested in digging through a bit.

 

Off to Reddit I go (only to never be heard from again)!

 

This is the one I got onto https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comments/6raen6/s3e12_reposting_this_glorious_post_with_a_clean/

 

Some of the translation is a stretch, but the seed of the idea is there. Throughout the season Gordon Cole is paranoid about being listened in to through electronics and so uses code to communicate with Albert (and if some people are to be believed, with someone from the white lodge via dreams) and that he is attempting to help execute the plan cooper and briggs had to deal with "judy" and kill "two birds with one stone." 

 

In my perfect version of this season all of the related but seemingly disconnected scenes all have some rosetta stone aspect, that once revealed make more sense in hindsight. Things like what is bad-coops motivation if he doesn't know about Judy and the way the names line up in the audrey/roadhouse/RR diner scenes. 

 

But maybe that's just wishful thinking that If I can reframe the season to not mostly be about defeating bad cooper it lessens the insane and rushed written way it resolves. 

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I think all these theories are great, the magic of a David Lynch project to to leave a dark space in the center for us, the viewer to engage our imaginations. We get so much more out of the process of engaging with a mystery than we would with a definite statement by the show. 

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1 hour ago, Guts said:

I think all these theories are great, the magic of a David Lynch project to to leave a dark space in the center for us, the viewer to engage our imaginations. We get so much more out of the process of engaging with a mystery than we would with a definite statement by the show. 

 

Lynch has said himself as much in interviews. I remember him comparing it to how you really want a magician to tell you how he did a trick you were fooled by, because it's not enough to have a theory, you desire someone to validate it. But if the magician tells you exactly how he did it, you usually end up disappointed because it seems so obvious now and you feel foolish for not figuring it out.

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Apologies if posted already, but here are some random tidbits from Sabrina Sutherland's AMA and David Lynch's Q&A from this week...

  • Lynch (and Sutherland) have never read Frost's Secret History book, and have zero idea what's going to be contained within The Final Dossier.
  • Frost and Lynch wrote the entire season together, and then Frost departed to write Secret History as Lynch filmed the season and had full creative control. Frost was shown any script changes by Lynch (who also made on-the-spot improvisational changes during filming) but Frost never vetoed or changed anything. No details on exactly how much is was on-the-spot Lynch.
  • Lynch didn't dismiss the idea of a new TP season (or movie) but stressed that it'd take a very long time to come together (reiterated that The Return took 4+ years to write and produce).
  • Simultaneously viewing episodes of the show "...definitely not the way to watch these parts."
  • Sutherland was coy when someone asked who voiced The Arm in The Return. People on Reddit speculate it's Lynch's voice (most popular theory) while some immediately guessed Audrey or Charlie (due to the Arm referencing the story of the little girl who lives down the lane).
  • Lynch said he wouldn't answer what happened to Audrey, saying that the viewer needs to decide that on their own. “What matters is what you believe happened. Many things in life just happen and we have to come to our own conclusions. You can, for example, read a book that raises a series of questions, and you want to talk to the author, but he died a hundred years ago. That’s why everything is up to you.”
  • FWIW,
    Q: "Would you say that your understanding of what we saw is greater than that of most viewers?"
    A: "Yes."
  • Bowie gave them permission to use his old scenes
  • Annie was never a part of The Return's story and Heather Graham was never approached for a role
  • Both Ontkean and Michael J. Anderson were approached to reprise their roles but declined

 

Some of Sutherland's responses detail what filming a scene was like with Lynch and dives into a few more process questions, pretty interesting.

 

 

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