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

[Nordelnob]

3 minutes ago, LostInTheMovies said:

 

Don't forget the second version of Dougie (who seems pretty different from the first) who returns to Janey-E and Sonny Jim at the beginning of pt18!

Happy Coop! Or as I like to call him Dougie 2.0

He seems to be the part of Cooper that is his wonder and almost childlike curiosity about everything around him. The side of Cooper who asked Truman about the trees in the first episode.

[lethalenforcer]

 

12 hours ago, Jake said:

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?

 

This is where I think I've landed, although still ambiguous and full of questions. I haven't had the benefit of rewatching 17/18 yet, but were all of the alt-TP scenes that showed Pete/Josie/Catherine in a reality where there was no Laura body on shore only present while Cooper had Laura's hand in the forest? Meaning, this reality was only going to occur if he never lost her grip? I also just realized that those flashbacks were fully saturated, perhaps symbolizing the "light" of that potential timeline if the darkness never ascended upon TP via Laura's death (although you can say it was still in fact there, a la Leyland, Sarah, etc).

 

 

12 hours 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.

 

It sounds like she was miffed that they only showed a portion of her performance... sour grapes. Granted we don't know the full story, and perhaps Lynch did indeed treat her poorly, but I think I'm ok with Julee Cruise being "done with TP".

 

 

12 hours ago, Mentalgongfu said:

I'm still not sure where I'll land in my final evaluation, but Game of Thrones pissed me off a lot more this summer than Twin Peaks did, and I had a lot more enjoyment with the latter than the former. 

 

This struck a chord with me, as I just had a discussion with my wife the day before the TP finale about how I've felt disappointed in the direction/culmination of Game of Thrones. My feelings were that the convergence of threads in Thrones has been fairly predictable, void of many risks, not challenging, etc, which are things that pulled me into that story in the first place. I'm aware that when a story reaches its conclusion those things typically occur, but I just yearn(ed) for something a bit more difficult and rough around the edges.

 

The first half of The Return, episode 17 felt a bit like that. The neatly-wrapped season conclusion where all pieces fit so snugly together in a puzzle, even to the point where everyone in the room packed tightly into a shot just to make the moment even more artificially perfect. "And you were there, and you were there, and you were there!" If this had been the ending of the entire two-hour finale I imagine it would have left a pretty sour taste in my mouth after the dust settled.

 

 

5 hours ago, MechaTofuPirate said:

I assumed that Coop went to save Laura because the show mentioned at some point that she's the key to all of this and if the Fireman mentions Richard and Linda to Coop, then he knew that was going to happen and is part of the plan? 

 

But i I have no idea and I'm just guessing.

 

I'm glad I rewatched episodes 1 & 2 before the finale, as they reminded me of the importance of Laura. The "two birds with one stone" quote has had me thinking quite a bit (along with everything else). Are Richard and Linda the two birds, or are they grouped together as one of the birds (the other being... Laura?)?

 

 

4 hours ago, Aether said:

The problem is that we had to wait through 16 hours of events that we now know to be largely pointless...and that intentionally set up expectations Lynch ultimately laughed off (Freddie/Bob) or simply discarded (Audrey).

 

I still don't buy any of this notion of Lynch trolling or "laughing off" expectations just because it didn't deliver something satisfying to you. In that case, you could say that Lynch (and whichever writers were responsible) laughed off every Twin Peaks fan's expectations during the numerous Season Two plot threads that were absolutely ridiculous. Freddie's fist is no more silly than Nadine's strength, Andy having thought-bubble revelations of a misbehaved kid, Dick getting his nose bit by a pine weasel, etc. Are you just taking this one to heart because it tied in directly to Bob and the typically dark/serious lore? As in, Bob deserved a better demise?

 

 

3 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

  I'm also gagging for the Final Dossier audiobook, although I think it will mainly concentrate on Twin Peaks characters between 1990 and 2015.

 

I'd imagine/hope this will also clarify the notion of the timeline(s) and if anything was truly altered by the events of the finale (I'm leaning *no* on that one). I wish the book was out this week!
 

 

1 hour ago, prangman said:

When you put it like that, it seems ridiculous to suggest it could have happened any other way. Whether Dale Cooper literally spent 25 years out of time and existence, or just came out of the black lodge and became a murderous criminal and rapist, what else could he be as he approaches his 60s other than empty, damaged and alone, and on a quixotic quest to right a wrong (laura's murder) which is irreversible and from which, like many trauma victims, he can never move on. It's the most psychologically true outcome.

 
Agreed - absolutely love this post.
 
After spending 25 years where he did, I think Dale emerging, extinguishing BadCoop and then attempting to return to normal and live a happy life would have been a bit forced, especially considering the things that Coop experienced in the lodge and "Find Laura" being reiterated to him as a mission. It's his life's main drive since stepping foot into TP, especially now, and I love that Cooper never stopped.
 
I had many great discussions with friends that were displeased with the direction that S3 took, mainly because they wanted chipper old Dale Cooper back and a show loaded with fan service that tried to recapture the feeling of old TP. Obviously these "friends" of mine weren't familiar enough with David Lynch and also failed to realize that anything attempting to recapture that magic (for longer than several scenes) could have very well missed the mark and felt forced. A new "Dale on the case" season may have still turned out okay, but I'm just really glad we got this version of TP. I mean, look at these great discussions! We're forever doomed to be in our own little lodge of analysis.

[SkullKid]

My absolute biggest question through this entire thing is, why did the season open with a strobed shot of the screaming girl at Twin Peaks High, and why did Andy see that girl in his vision in the white lodge? 

 

It feels hugely important. 

[utilityfrog]

I think the Coop we see in ep 18 in definitely an amalgam of all the previous versions of Cooper we've seen. Interestingly, I think the change occurs not after Coop and Diane drive into the alternate dimension, but when Coop initially exits the red room to meet Diane in Glastonbury Grove. He seems subtly changed from that point on, to the extent that I thought that he might be Mr C at first.

 

When he's walking down the last stretch of corridor before exiting the red room, Coop makes that weird hand gesture, that seems to cause the curtains to undulate and allow him to exit. His walk during that scene was very strange and even seemed Dougie-esque to me.

[lethalenforcer]

2 minutes ago, SkullKid said:

My absolute biggest question through this entire thing is, why did the season open with a strobed shot of the screaming girl at Twin Peaks High, and why did Andy see that girl in his vision in the white lodge? 

 

It feels hugely important. 

 

To me, that shot symbolizes the dark cloud that Laura's death hung over the town. A moment of pure terror, and everyone else seemed to share a similar reaction (even if they didn't literally scream and run as she did). Perhaps there's something specific about it that's important, but those were my initial thoughts since the first episode of s3.

[lethalenforcer]

3 minutes ago, utilityfrog said:

I think the Coop we see in ep 18 in definitely an amalgam of all the previous versions of Cooper we've seen. Interestingly, I think the change occurs not after Coop and Diane drive into the alternate dimension, but when Coop initially exits the red room to meet Diane in Glastonbury Grove. He seems subtly changed from that point on, to the extent that I thought that he might be Mr C at first.

 

When he's walking down the last stretch of corridor before exiting the red room, Coop makes that weird hand gesture, that seems to cause the curtains to undulate and allow him to exit. His walk during that scene was very strange and even seemed Dougie-esque to me.

 

The way he acted outside of the lodge seemed to be similar to the way he acted in it. Quiet, only speaking when absolutely necessary, a bit blank-faced but also looking determined to push forward.

[utilityfrog]

I've just finished listening to the latest episode of A Twin Peaks Podcast, on these last two episodes, and I wholly recommend it. They go into quite a bit of detail looking at these episodes, and I found their interpretations and theories to be fascinating.

 

https://art19.com/shows/twin-peaks-podcast/episodes/b945b7f0-a864-47c4-a44d-67627dcdc8c4

[SkullKid]

I feel pretty confident that "the story of the little girl who lived down the lane" is a timeline. Specifically, the timeline in which the bug crawls into the girl's mouth--the little girl who lived down the lane. I think that girl is Judy, and that insane event of the Woodsmen traveling there, wreaking havoc and finding a host for that creature, created this world outside of time. So when the Arm Tree asks, "Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane? Is it?" he's asking Cooper which timeline he's in, similar to the "is it future or is it past?" question. Plus, the song on the radio that played in E8 is the same song that played during the love scene in E18. 

[prangman]

22 minutes ago, lethalenforcer said:

Agreed - absolutely love this post.
 

Thank you! Just to take it a bit further, what really satisfied me about this ending was that it restored ambiguity to the supernatural/black lodge elements of the show, especially with regards to personal culpability, which I was worried were becoming overly literal in the sometimes lore-heavy plotting of TP:TR (which i have mostly enjoyed). Just as FWWM and to some extent the finale of S2 were a clear challenge to the easy, dualistic 'Leland is not responsible, it was all BOB', which I think is effectively Cooper's achilles heel, his totally inability to believe that a man could really rape and murder his own daughter, S3 led us to believe that there really was 'a good Dale' and 'a bad Dale' and that the good Dale was completely innocent of all the crimes committed by the bad Dale- and then in the last episode we suddenly have a Dale who is neither.

 

I guess it's worth recalling that, presumably, between S2E22 and FWWM, it was impossible to tell if the mirror-smashing Dale was the same Dale we saw enter the red curtains, only possessed by BOB, or the doppelganger imposter with BOB 'riding' him. The latter theory is more or less confirmed by Annie telling Laura that 'the good Dale is in the lodge and he can't leave'. But what if the biggest denouement of what we've just seen is that there is no doppelganger, only Dale Cooper, who, BOB or no BOB, was a  forever changed man the moment he left Twin Peaks.

[Woodfella]

Wow, holy shit. I absolutely loved it. My heart is so full. I cried at the end of episode 17 and took a break, thought okay no more crying now... 5 minutes in to ep 18 "Home"

 

"Gosh darn it!"

 

I felt really weird when it was finished, sad that it was all over, delighted at how brilliant this series has been, shocked by the utterly crushing ending. I just sat for a while thinking about all of it, felt on the verge of tears. I don't have anything interesting to add to the discussion of what it means or anything I just want to thank Chris and Jake for a really enjoyable podcast. The discussion her every week has been great to read. 

 

One of my favourite moments was Evil Coop running in to Andy in the car park. The representation of true evil and the darkness in TP bumping up against the goofiest comic relief character. So tense so frightning. Perfect. 

[tomance]

Does the new seed created Dougie alter the real world cooper in anyway? I was wondering if that’s why coop shifted his personality? The only other “Cooper moment” seemed to be when he asked if the coffee was on. He then started seeming like a hybrid of good coop in his mission with some bad coop tendencies (as evident in the diner) but non of the cooper attitude. If Janey-e and Sunny Jim get that aspect of coop in their Dougie that’s almost the happiest ending we could ask for. 

 

 

Also, will you guys be doing some stuff when The Final Dossier comes out?

[Mentalgongfu]

33 minutes ago, SkullKid said:

I feel pretty confident that "the story of the little girl who lived down the lane" is a timeline. Specifically, the timeline in which the bug crawls into the girl's mouth--the little girl who lived down the lane. I think that girl is Judy, and that insane event of the Woodsmen traveling there, wreaking havoc and finding a host for that creature, created this world outside of time. So when the Arm Tree asks, "Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane? Is it?" he's asking Cooper which timeline he's in, similar to the "is it future or is it past?" question. Plus, the song on the radio that played in E8 is the same song that played during the love scene in E18. 

 

Interesting observation.

 

You are aware, aren't you, that that is also the title of a novel and a movie staring Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen? Considering the character name "Gordon Cole" is directly lifted from Sunset Boulevard, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a deliberate reference to the film. I haven't seen The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, but from the wikipedia description it does seem to relate thematically in that it has uncomfortable sexuality, death, murder, a magician, conspiracy, suicide, potassium cyanide, a body in the cellar and a coma. It is going on my watch list, as is Sunset Boulevard (which I have seen, but I was around 12 years old).

 

 

[plasticflesh]

I guess "two birds with one stone" means Mr C's Dougie decoy and Cooper's Dougie consolation prize for the Joneses? Its the only thing that I can think makes sense for that part of the first riddle from The Fireman.

 

I just heard the Gnostic theory of the Leland family being various Gnostic demigods, good stuff. Idk a good source to quote currently.

[Woodfella]

7 minutes ago, tomance said:

Does the new seed created Dougie alter the real world cooper in anyway? I was wondering if that’s why coop shifted his personality? The only other “Cooper moment” seemed to be when he asked if the coffee was on. He then started seeming like a hybrid of good coop in his mission with some bad coop tendencies (as evident in the diner) but non of the cooper attitude. If Janey-e and Sunny Jim get that aspect of coop in their Dougie that’s almost the happiest ending we could ask for. 

I had this same thought at the time but now I'm not sure.  that the creation of the tulpa diminishes Dale in some way. .oh there is another 'Coop' moment though, the way he greets Gordon is total Coop. I 

[Don't Go There]

Okay, it’s been a day. Let me try again. I am prefacing this by saying, first, that I am incredibly dense at times, and I may have missed a lot of things. I’ve been looking online, and the only theories regarding my complaints (that I have seen, anyway) have no grounding in the show itself. But, like I said, I’m dense. Also, I’ve tried to perform a sarcasmdectomy on what I originally wrote for this comment, but I may not have been entirely successful. Just know that I’m not directing this sarcasm at anyone, I’m just drawn that way.

 

I think there is a difference between ambiguity, and bad storytelling, and I think Parts 17 & 18 have plenty of examples of both.

 

I’m no longer especially bothered by the situation with Becky, Stephen, and Red. I think that was mostly about repeating destructive patterns, both in your own life (Shelly + Leo, then Shelly + Red) and visiting those sins on your children (Becky + Stephen). This was done in the “kid shooting up the RR” scene, and I think it was done beautifully. I would have preferred emotional closure… not so much a resolution of the Bobby/Shelly story, because the only resolution in that situation is that the cycle just continues. No, I mean I would have like to have seen Shelly and Bobby discovering Becky’s fate. I would have liked to have seen the emotional impact of the end of that aspect of the self-destructive cycle. But I can also live without that.

 

But:

 

You have forty-five minutes of an episode leading up to one event: a mutated insect-like amphibian crawling into the mouth of a teen-aged girl. And then you never refer to it again. You have Sarah Palmer take her own damn face off and eating the throat of a scumbag in a bar. Never referred to again. Audrey is somewhere where there is a lot of white and a mirror. That is literally all we know. We think the creature in the glass box was the same thing we saw spewing eggs in Part 8, and we could reasonably speculate that the silhouette on the playing card, and the map, is the same thing, because the shape of the head is similar. And, while I like the idea of the thing possessing Sarah, we have no clue that it is. Not really even a hint. It just never shows up again. We never find out what it is, or why Evil Coop was looking for it. And there is nothing to indicate that this thing is “Judy” either. That’s not ambiguity, that’s poor storytelling.

 

Do you remember the time Andy told some redneck guy that he knew it was his truck, and he set up a time to meet? Do you remember Andy standing at the roadside, waiting for the guy? Do you remember the camera slowly zooming to the doorway of the guy’s house, patented David Lynch Drone of Ominousness playing? Do you remember how that all turned out? No, because we never saw anything about it again.

 

In the 17^th hour of an 18 hour long movie, Cole tells Team Blue Rose, essentially, “Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you. Judy is an evil entity never referred to in either the original series, the movie, or 16 previous hours of this series, outside of references to Philip Jeffries’s incoherent rant in Fire Walk With Me (that we revealed we couldn’t remember). Cooper, Briggs, and I, at some point before he was lured into the Black Lodge by the kidnapping of a character that no longer exists (even though she told Laura to write it in her diary), came up with a plan to trap this thing that is actually a reference to a character that was originally intended to be someone else entirely. Also I have no intention of ever mentioning the entity again, or what it has to do with anything. But there’s a diner in a maybe alternate universe that’s called ‘Judy’s’.” This isn’t the only time The Return has done this. That’s why I referred to it as the “Bill Hastings Website” method of storytelling.

 

What information did Hawk have that something was going to happen in the woods that night? Where did he get this information? What was supposed to happen? (Not the return of Coop. It wasn’t time for him, then) Did he see the red curtains? None of this, not one little bit of it, is ever talked about again. That’s not ambiguity.

 

Goddamn it, how’s Annie? Annie is Norma’s sister. Norma and Annie’s mother is a restaurant critic. We saw both of them on the show. Except in the book, Norma’s mom died before the pilot episode, and Annie doesn’t exist. So, if Annie doesn’t exist, who, exactly, did Wyndom Earle kidnap? Seems like a big plot hole, so people hit Mark Frost up on Twitter. Frost assures us that it’s all by design. And we are never told anything about it again. We can speculate about timelines and other universes, but we have been given no indication in the show that anything like that is going on with Annie.

 

Someone is trying to kill Bad Coop. He gets a phone call from someone who claims to be Jeffries. Ray claims to be working for a guy named Jeffries. Jeffries is currently a cosmic tea kettle, and professes ignorance of this plot. This is never discussed again. Also, suddenly Ray was an FBI informant.

 

Audrey, wherever the hell she is, talks about Billy. Two girls at the Roadhouse talk about Billy. Someone runs into the RR Diner, looking for Billy. We never find out a single thing about Billy.

 

These things aren’t ambiguities. These are examples of bad storytelling. These aren’t mysteries meant for us to solve, because mysteries require clues. These are abandoned plotlines. The main story- of Cooper and Diane and Laura- that is, I think, a mystery. I like it, because it works as a conclusion to Peaks as a whole, and it works as a possible hook for another season, and it has just enough to it for us to grab on to and speculate and theorize forever.

 

I don’t know if they set these plots up knowing full well that they would be abandoned. Perhaps there was more in the script, but Lynch didn’t shoot it. Maybe it was shot, but Lynch cut it in favor of Dougie having to go pee for several minutes. Lynch has done this in the past- the final episode of season 2 is an example of that. (On a similar note, I don’t think the out-of-sequence scenes are anything more than Lynch in the editing room just deciding that scene Y works better before scene X. Strangely, that doesn’t really bother me too much.)

 

Ambiguity is fine, and it’s more or less Twin Peaks’s whole thing. But ambiguity is no defense for poor story telling choices. We can’t just use it as a shield and say that people are just complaining because we want all the answers spoon-fed. (there has been very little of that on this forum, for which I am grateful) If that were true in my case, I wouldn’t like the ultimate conclusion to the Cooper-Diane-Laura story as much as I do. Whatever the rationale for the choices I’m referring to, the result is sloppy and, ultimately for me, a disappointment.

 

That is kind of heated, and I am not trying to piss anyone off. I think that’s going to be my last comment on this for quite a while.

[huskeryu]

You know, one of the bigger disappointments of the new series was the confirmation that Chester Desmond did indeed exist.

I'd heard and really taken on with the theories that the Chet Desmond sequence in FWWM was Cooper re-living his own failed investigation into Teresa Banks' death with an idealized version of himself (cool and aloof where Cooper was warm and kind).  It made sense in relation to Cooper's imperfect courage, as Hawk warned; he had his own set of insecurities which manifested themselves in the alternate Chet Desmond persona.  Seeing someone note that Chester Desmond and Dale Cooper's initials were opposites of each other sort of cemented that for me.

 

I bring it up because, though our time with that final version of Cooper was brief, the Judy's Diner scene really felt more Chet Desmond than Cooper.  He still immediately acted when a wrong presented itself, but there was a touch of cruelty in him.  

 

Also, a deep fryer will apparently indeed set off a bullet.

 

https://mythresults.com/bullet-baloney

[Guts]

I think the idea of being fooled or laughed at is understandable, but is off the mark. I think the show is intentionally subverting the emotions and expectations of the viewers to force them out of their comfort zones and put them in a different head space. This is what most modern art aims at, not what televised drama does. A good story is one you get lost in, this show is intently trying to make you aware of its unreality, it wants to pull you in and push you back out until you realize it's not reality, it is a constructed dream we are all sharing.

 

 Though I can understand feeling upset, if i was invited to watch a baseball game and it turned out to be cricket I would feel fooled as well. Though everything Lynch has done in the last 20 years could have warned you that you weren't getting that old warm toned twin peaks. If Peyton and Engles made season 3, i am sure we would have gotten more of the same old show, but would it have felt right? I think we would have been left full of empty nostalgia and left feeling hollow.

 

I admit my own expectations were twisted and it felt a bit uncomfortable, but movies and shows like that are the kind I search for so I can't help but love it all. The last moment felt right, the emotional weight of 25 years of horror crashing down.

[ThatThomas]

On Becky's fate, I never thought there was much ambiguity to it at all. I get why people thought Stephen's ramblings were alluding to having killed her, but that honestly never occurred to me when I first watched that scene. I just assumed he was talking about how he'd been abusive and unfaithful towards her. The way I see it, the emotional and narrative resolution to Becky's story comes from that lovely moment when she and Shelly agrees to hang out and be there for each other.

 

Yes, I would have loved to have seen more of her (and Shelly), but that's mostly because I like Amanda Seyfried and would have loved her story to take up more time, not because I feel it was needed in a purely narrative sense.

[The Great Went]

2 hours ago, utilityfrog said:

I think the Coop we see in ep 18 in definitely an amalgam of all the previous versions of Cooper we've seen. Interestingly, I think the change occurs not after Coop and Diane drive into the alternate dimension, but when Coop initially exits the red room to meet Diane in Glastonbury Grove. He seems subtly changed from that point on, to the extent that I thought that he might be Mr C at first.

 

When he's walking down the last stretch of corridor before exiting the red room, Coop makes that weird hand gesture, that seems to cause the curtains to undulate and allow him to exit. His walk during that scene was very strange and even seemed Dougie-esque to me.

 

I haven't re-watched but yes, I got the sense that once he exits the lodge in Glastonbury Grove for the "curtain call" he's changed and from that moment forward there is something off about him. I had a theory when I woke up yesterday that since Diane's experience with Coop post-curtain-call may be analogous to the experience Naido has with him in the, what are we calling it, Purple Room? Naido is available to Coop and helps him find the right portal to another world (the 430 mile mark for Diane), but in the process she loses herself (falling into deep space after pulling the lever for Naido, disappearing into the alternate dimension and becoming Linda for Diane). 

 

There was someone who mentioned that the way the conclusive scenes were filmed were very corny and mocking of the audience. I think they were intentionally cheesy (I thought Coop's encounter with Naido in Truman's office was lit and shot in such a way that it was weirdly laughable to me) but not that it was really mocking the audience. It had the air of some kind of Scooby Doo ending, where everyone gets together and it's all supposed to be okay, so the chipper lighting, staging, costumes contribute to that, but overlaid with Coop's face and the knowledge that it can't possibly be that simple, considering the magnitude of themes involved: rape, incest, murder, good and evil in essence. If Coop hadn't acknowledged as much by saying "the past dictates the future" or some such, if his head, speaking of living in a dream, wasn't super imposed over so much of the scene of resolution, I'd be inclined to think this was all more cynical then I do. I think Lynch (whether intentionally or not) has a knack for heightening artifice when it can be contrasted against some dark or upsetting idea. He walked the line between realistic/naturalism and theatrical stage-set artifice in the murder scene in Lost Souls and I think the same thing is at play in the Episode 17 resolution. 

 

I don't think this was a perfect season. I do think there were some weak points. I think it probably would have been a stronger show if maybe the Audrey stuff just wasn't there in general, and considering how there's no mention of Annie or Donna despite how hugely important the lodge and the legacy of Laura is to this season, I don't see how that clunky Audrey stuff needed to be there either, but that's really nitpicking. In the end, opening things up to yet more conflict, and the idea that Dale is never going to be the same, all speak to a fundamental respect for the material, and putting a premium on the "truth" of the world of TP as opposed to the demands of the audience.   Last night I was talking about how some people felt betrayed by the ending to my wife, and she reminded me how we felt betrayed by the ending of LOST, which tied things up so neatly that it shrank the scale and muted the resonance of the original world the show created. What Lynch and Frost have done with Twin Peaks is the opposite and that alone is amazing. There are things I would have liked to have been paid off, but I'm basically satisfied and, in a way, heartened by the conclusion we got, and I will be fine if this is the end of it. 

[SkullKid]

1 minute ago, The Great Went said:

 

I haven't re-watched but yes, I got the sense that once he exits the lodge in Glastonbury Grove for the "curtain call" he's changed and from that moment forward there is something off about him. I had a theory when I woke up yesterday that since Diane's experience with Coop post-curtain-call may be analogous to the experience Naido has with him in the, what are we calling it, Purple Room? Naido is available to Coop and helps him find the right portal to another world (the 430 mile mark for Diane), but in the process she loses herself (falling into deep space after pulling the lever for Naido, disappearing into the alternate dimension and becoming Linda for Diane). 

 

There was someone who mentioned that the way the conclusive scenes were filmed were very corny and mocking of the audience. I think they were intentionally cheesy (I thought Coop's encounter with Naido in Truman's office was lit and shot in such a way that it was weirdly laughable to me) but not that it was really mocking the audience. It had the air of some kind of Scooby Doo ending, where everyone gets together and it's all supposed to be okay, so the chipper lighting, staging, costumes contribute to that, but overlaid with Coop's face and the knowledge that it can't possibly be that simple, considering the magnitude of themes involved: rape, incest, murder, good and evil in essence. If Coop hadn't acknowledged as much by saying "the past dictates the future" or some such, if his head, speaking of living in a dream, wasn't super imposed over so much of the scene of resolution, I'd be inclined to think this was all more cynical then I do. I think Lynch (whether intentionally or not) has a knack for heightening artifice when it can be contrasted against some dark or upsetting idea. He walked the line between realistic/naturalism and theatrical stage-set artifice in the murder scene in Lost Souls and I think the same thing is at play in the Episode 17 resolution. 

 

I don't think this was a perfect season. I do think there were some weak points. I think it probably would have been a stronger show if maybe the Audrey stuff just wasn't there in general, and considering how there's no mention of Annie or Donna despite how hugely important the lodge and the legacy of Laura is to this season, I don't see how that clunky Audrey stuff needed to be there either, but that's really nitpicking. In the end, opening things up to yet more conflict, and the idea that Dale is never going to be the same, all speak to a fundamental respect for the material, and putting a premium on the "truth" of the world of TP as opposed to the demands of the audience.   Last night I was talking about how some people felt betrayed by the ending to my wife, and she reminded me how we felt betrayed by the ending of LOST, which tied things up so neatly that it shrank the scale and muted the resonance of the original world the show created. What Lynch and Frost have done with Twin Peaks is the opposite and that alone is amazing. There are things I would have liked to have been paid off, but I'm basically satisfied and, in a way, heartened by the conclusion we got, and I will be fine if this is the end of it. 

I think the Audrey stuff will present its importance on rewatch. But to me, the final moment of E18 suddenly made the Audrey scenes click. My interpretation may be wrong, but it seemed like when Cooper asked "What year is it?" and started to wobble, he was realizing the artificiality of the world he was in. Laura realized it too, and screamed. When she screamed the entire artifice of the world fell apart--windows shattered and the electricity went out. 

 

This suddenly made me think the Audrey scenes make a lot of sense. Whenever we saw her, we saw her in the alt-world that Richard/Coop and Alt-Laura occupy. It's why Audrey says she feels like she's someone else, somewhere else. Charlie threatens to "end her story," and Audrey references the story of the little girl who lived down the lane. Finally when she was in the road house and all that insanity happened, she woke up. The artifice of that alt-world fell apart, and she woke up somewhere in actual Twin Peaks. 

[WickedCestus]

@Don't Go There This is a really good post. I'm also disappointed by the dropping of several threads, and especially Annie. I don't think she was executed very well in Season 2 (almost nothing was), but I think she could've fit perfectly into this season, which is much more focused on the character of Cooper and his various flaws and traumas. However, I think I read in the Oral History that Lynch didn't like how Season 2 tried to introduce a tragic backstory to Cooper, and so it seems like Lynch has spent this whole season, especially the final episode, digging deeper into Cooper's humanity in his own way, without the need of goofy Wyndam Earle nonsense. That's just a deliberate retcon, and I think it's silly for Frost to try to explain it as anything other than that. 

 

I agree with everything else you said. I really wish we could've seen more Audrey. I think the reason I disliked 18 so much on first viewing was because I really expected us to get some sort of conclusion or extension of Audrey's story, and as the whole thing dragged on and on, I kept thinking "Stop wasting time and get to Audrey (and everything else) already!", and when it became clear that there absolutely wasn't enough time for that, I was pretty disappointed. I love the finale as an ending to Cooper's story (Laura's ending came in FWWM, I feel), and looking back, I'm happy with the season, and willing to accept all the scenes and character plots as just their own thing. That doesn't make them good storytelling, however. That's just me trying to come to terms with it. I'm glad I read your post, because it really helped me put into terms all of my conflicting feelings about this show. Twin Peaks has always been a show I loved, mashed together with several shows I don't love, and a good heap of weird nonsense on the top. Somehow, that still equals love in the end, but it's a strange, confused form of love. Maybe that just makes it all the more powerful. 

[Mentalgongfu]

@Don't Go There

I agree with some of your observations on lack of conclusion to these stories and abandoned plotlines, but not all of them. I even quoted your original list in an earlier post. I would say that all of them are ambiguities. Whether or not they are all abandoned plots or "bad storytelling" is more debatable.

 

These are my thoughts on the things with which I disagree:

 

Andy and the redneck guy is just a mystery as far as I'm concerned, and one to which we can surmise a conclusion without many assumptions. Richard took his truck. Richard killed someone with his truck. The guy tells Andy he can't talk where they are and agrees to meet Andy later on a deserted road. He never shows. Ominous shot of the trailer. Plenty of clues. I conclude Richard killed redneck truck guy off screen to keep him from talking to the police. Just as he tried to kill Miriam on screen for the same reason.

 

"How's Annie?" was never as big a deal as it has been made out to be. We see her come out of the lodge with Bad Coop at the end of Season 2. Before the infamous mirror scene, Bad Coop asks original Truman and the Doc "How's Annie?" for the first time, and Truman says "She's going to be just fine. She's over at the hospital." The infamous scene with Cooper repeating the question after smashing his head on the mirror is just Bob/Bad Coop getting a laugh at his ability to fake compassion. We already know how Annie is, at least physically. She's just fine. I agree her absence in The Return is conspicuous and unfortunate. Doc Hayward mentions Audrey but not Annie. Norma never mentions her. Frost apparently disavowed her existence in one of his books. But her physical condition after the last 2 episodes of Season 2 was never in question based on what is shown on screen; it just took on mythical proportions over the years since it was the last scene in the show. Donna's absence is, to me, more noticeable.

 

Ray's mysterious phone calls are explained by him being an FBI informant, talking to Cole. This requires a few more assumptions than with redneck guy, but it is perfectly plausible based on the info we have.

 

I could quibble that we do learn a little about Billy, though it's true we never meet him, as far as we know. And what we do learn is all in Audrey scenes or Roadhouse scenes, and the reality of those scenes is being rightfully questioned.

 

I do find some of the lack of resolution frustrating, and I wonder how much was intended originally versus what might have been cut in favor of other scenes or just abandoned for some unknown reason.

[UnpopularTrousers]

I'm surprised that everyone sees Dougie's return as being a purely happy ending to that storyline.

 

It's shot like a cheesy over-the-top triumph, but Dougie still seems like an artificial and mostly empty vessel. When Janey-E and Sonny Jim run up to hug his he says just says "Home...". He's not mirroring the last word of a sentence and he looks happy, but he also still sounds vacant and lost and likely incapable of composing complete sentences.  His life has no substance to it. Without Mike guiding him along anymore, I feel like Janey-E will have to babysit and do everything for him once again.

 

They have all the boxes checked to have a happy suburban American family, but deep down their lives look sad and meaningless. 

[lethalenforcer]

15 minutes ago, UnpopularTrousers said:

I'm surprised that everyone sees Dougie's return as being a purely happy ending to that storyline.

 

It's shot like a cheesy over-the-top triumph, but Dougie still seems like an artificial and mostly empty vessel. When Janey-E and Sonny Jim run up to hug his he says just says "Home...". He's not mirroring the last word of a sentence and he looks happy, but he also still sounds vacant and lost and likely incapable of composing complete sentences.  His life has no substance to it. Without Mike guiding him along anymore, I feel like Janey-E will have to babysit and do everything for him once again.

 

They have all the boxes checked to have a happy suburban American family, but deep down their lives look sad and meaningless. 

 

I didn't even consider the notion that he'd forever be vegetable-like, but maybe you're right. I thought he was just waking up still, and a bit disoriented (like his confused "Where am I?" when he entered the lodge). I also feel like his previous impulses (spawned from BadCoop) of cheating and gambling will be wiped now that he's a GoodCoop seed.

 

Wait til he sees the new gym set...

[Crunchnoisy]

39 minutes ago, UnpopularTrousers said:

I'm surprised that everyone sees Dougie's return as being a purely happy ending to that storyline.

 

It's shot like a cheesy over-the-top triumph, but Dougie still seems like an artificial and mostly empty vessel. When Janey-E and Sonny Jim run up to hug his he says just says "Home...". He's not mirroring the last word of a sentence and he looks happy, but he also still sounds vacant and lost and likely incapable of composing complete sentences.  His life has no substance to it. Without Mike guiding him along anymore, I feel like Janey-E will have to babysit and do everything for him once again.

 

They have all the boxes checked to have a happy suburban American family, but deep down their lives look sad and meaningless. 

 

But what gives life meaning?  I think it is a happy ending.  There lives aren't that sad.  Nice house, nice cars, high-up connections in the community.  They have a child who probably goes to an OK public school who will grow up and make Janey-E proud.  Plus, their neighbors are well armed.