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

[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.

 

 

[Mentalgongfu]

1 minute ago, Crunchnoisy said:

 

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.

 

 

 

From what little we see, new Dougie seems about equal to sleeping Dougie Coop in his level of interaction, which seemed to be the happiest time in the life of Janey E and Sonny Jim. And I also assume he's an improvement over philandering Dougie prior to being replaced by Dougie Coop. So not as great as living with Dale himself, but still a nice ending.

[UnpopularTrousers]

1 minute ago, Mentalgongfu said:

 

From what little we see, new Dougie seems about equal to sleeping Dougie Coop in his level of interaction, which seemed to be the happiest time in the life of Janey E and Sonny Jim. And I also assume he's an improvement over philandering Dougie prior to being replaced by Dougie Coop. So not as great as living with Dale himself, but still a nice ending.

I feel like things going so well was somewhat contingent on Mike's helping hand, though. I don't think their lives will be universally bad and it's not like I think people without their full mental capacities can't be happy and experience love. But the scene did at least have a hint of sadness and melancholy to me. I felt an absence in Dougie's face that reminded me of when he cried looking at Sonny Jim. And I don't think  I can endorse the idea that a cheerfully lobotomized husband is better than a philandering one.

 

It left me with a mixture of emotions.

[Frohike]

As a continuation of my earlier thoughts on the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice as a mirror to Cooper & Laura, I'm also struck by the parallels of the overarching Peaks mythology (Judy, BOB, etc) with certain flavors of Gnostic myth.  Posted this on reddit earlier but I figured you all would enjoy picking it apart too.
 

Judy seems to be a Lynchian equivalent to the old Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, a malevolent force that created a physical reality that contains aspects of divinity but is in fact a trap, a trick... a dream from which to awaken.

One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφία, lit. "wisdom"), the Demiurge's mother a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or "Fullness," desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him to be within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and concluded that only he existed, ignorant of the superior levels of reality.

 

The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working however blindly, and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiourgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself.

 

Thus Sophia's power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

 

This Demiurge really does consider everything to be 'explained' but is in fact as deceived as it is deceiving.

 

I also find the Gnostic concept of the "divine spark" to be conspicuously perverted by Lynch's use of electricity, "black fire," and "gotta light":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Spark

[brownbathrobe]

1 hour ago, Mentalgongfu said:

 

From what little we see, new Dougie seems about equal to sleeping Dougie Coop in his level of interaction...

 

I'm thinking "new Dougie" is way more animated than "sleeping Dougie Coop" ever was from what little we see.  He looks around in amazement and asks "Where am I?" immediately upon being created by Mike.

[lethalenforcer]

7 hours ago, SkullKid said:

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. 

 

I've had similar thoughts, but would be way more onboard with the idea if Charlie had called Audrey by a different name (or not by name at all). Unless the opposite is true, and when she woke up in the white room she was suddenly in the same reality as Richard, Linda, and Carrie (and is not actually named Audrey).

 

But yeah, her little arc had such a horrifying cliffhanger that I'd love to believe some type of answer is buried among the numerous things we saw this season.

[BonusWavePilot]

4 hours ago, Frohike said:

Judy seems to be a Lynchian equivalent to the old Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, a malevolent force that created a physical reality that contains aspects of divinity but is in fact a trap, a trick... a dream from which to awaken.

One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφία, lit. "wisdom"), the Demiurge's mother a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or "Fullness," desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him to be within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and concluded that only he existed, ignorant of the superior levels of reality.

 

The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working however blindly, and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiourgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself.

 

Thus Sophia's power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

 

Interesting!  Particularly in light of the theories that 'Judy' is a transliteration of that Chinese phrase that relates to 'knowing' or explanation. 

[HARRISONCOOPER]

I can't stop thinking, what did that scene of Cooper in the Sheriffs station look like to everybody else gathered in the room? The long lost Cooper standing there amongst old friends, saying some cryptic remarks then yelling 'Gordon!' as he disappears. Maybe it was similar to when Philip Jeffries appeared in the Philadelphia offices? Will the observers have trouble remembering this moment too? 

 

[HARRISONCOOPER]

I must be in the minority in that I struggled with part 17 but thought 18 was amazing. Even if I was emotionally destroyed and disturbed by it.

[Clock]

18 hours ago, Captain Fram said:

Coop Actual relishes a final moment with his collected friends. In his heart, and with knowledge gained from 25 years of whatever the hell happened to him in the red room, Coop seizes the opportunity to destroy the malevolent evil Judy. To do this he needs (the One) Laura Palmer, and he needs her alive.

 

Back in 1989 now. After incorrectly deducing that James is not cool, Laura Palmer storms off into the forest to meet her untimely demise. This time though, she is intercepted by Cooper, who tells her he's taking her home. Given that Coop's on a mission to eliminate Judy, this to me says that even back then, Sarah Palmer had "Judy" within her. Perhaps it was latent back then, awakening fully only after a great trauma (like the murder of your daughter and the revelation that it was your husband, perhaps) This lends validity to the theory that Sarah Palmer is in fact the young girl who swallows the bug in Ep 8.

 

I digress. Coop leads Laura by hand through the night. As they approach the warp zone Laura is suddenly whisked away, leaving Coop alone. I believe this is the work of Judy, for she cannot kill Laura on her own - Sarah Palmer repeatedly smashes a glass bottle into the photograph of Laura, and there's not a scratch on it - but she can send her away, to another place and time, where she might forget herself completely, and Coop might not follow.

 

Good point about Judy latent in Sarah, and I agree that Coop is trying to find Laura (in any version) in order to stop Judy moreso than to rescue Laura for her own sake.

 

15 hours ago, SkullKid said:

The thing that's really stuck in my head is the image of Diane seeing herself at the motel after Cooper walked inside. Since this purgatorial place seems to take place outside of time, maybe multiple versions of oneself can exist. Maybe a Bad Cooper walked out of that motel and got in the car with that Diane, whereas a Good Cooper (though one still not entirely in control of his mental faculties) walked out and got in a different car with that *other* Diane. The sex scene we see features Bad Coop, whereas somewhere off screen, another Coop and Diane share a similar romantic moment. Basically, the Coop we see wake up in the morning and yell for Diane is not the same Coop that we saw in the sex scene. 

 

It's as if the same thing keeps happening in this same place over and over, in slightly different ways. 

 

But probably not. I feel like there's a simple answer to all this buried underneath Lynch's artistic flourishes. 

 

This was essentially my take too, though I perhaps articulated it badly earlier. Especially since I really don't think badCoop is dead.

 

That said, the 'Diane sees his face that way be because of her trauma and we see from her perspective' idea seems reasonable, and I am also liking the idea someone mentioned about how Jeffries' warned against slipperiness, such that maybe things just change in the alt-world, dreamlike. It did feel like a dream, to me, and I interpreted Coop's odd behavior as his knowing that he's in sonething of an unreality/dreamworld (fits also with the 'things might be different' line to Diane). So he ignores the corpse in Page's house maybe because he knows it's not real or at least distorted and in some sense it doesn't matter what happens in the dream world, and he is willing to be aggressive in the bar for the same reason - the people in there aren't real, or they can't really be hurt, or something. And his quietness I just took to be because he was in a damn scary situation. All that combined with this being still some of the first we get to see of him post lodge-trauma.

 

Also, frankly, I really dislike the idea that he is now an amalgam/Richard combo of the good and bad Coops. People are saying that he's more realistic when combined, but I don't buy that. People aren't all perfectly grey blends of good and bad. That's just a stereotype of realism, and imo a boring one. Good Coop was essentially good, but he wasn't a saint (griping about loud neighbors, happily engaging in vigilante-ism around One Eyed Jack's while an FBI agent, seeming tempted by Audrey, etc), and I think he was as if not more realistic than Coop in episode 18.

 

Anyway, on an unrelated note, that white horse in Page's house, iirc, had it's eyes grown over with lumps of skin, like Naido. I don't know what that could mean, if anything.

[MabaseSlums]

I'm really gaining this feeling that the actions Cooper performs in re: to Laura/C. Page are, at the very least, intrusive to the women of the Palmer household. When Cooper leads FWWMLaura through the forest, supposedly "home", he loses grasp of her and hears her bloodcurdling scream. Followed shortly thereafter is the scene with Sarah, at one of her lowest points, wailing and showing aggression towards her daughter's photo. I think the intensity of it is worth noting & examining in relation to what's happening around it. Maybe the fact that Laura has been "saved" (shown by the pilot callback) is making her, who is still traumatized, viciously jealous? Like, "Why do you get to be saved while I'm still here?" It could also be that Cooper's actions have reopened this wound, in a way. Speaking in the context of watching this show, she died again, and it's Cooper's actions that caused it. Thus, she is overwhelmed with the grief that has been marinating inside for 25 years. I can't say for certain, but the Sarah scene has stuck onto me so hard that I can't help but theorize.

 

I think a similar, albeit more obvious, thing could be placed upon Coop's whole Pt. 18 quest. His mission to "find Laura" leads him to bringing Carrie to the Palmer household, where it's implied that Laura "reawakens" after hearing her mom say her name. The more I think about it, the less I think there's anything "nice" to be grabbed. I know some were sharing the sentiment that this ending places them together, and that hey, Laura's alive! However, I can only see it now as Cooper's actions being so misguided that he went through timeline/dimensions/worlds just to have a dead girl remember the traumas she experienced. IF the series ends here, and you're only left to speculate, I have a hard time accepting a happy ending out of "What year is this?" > "Laura?" > *scream* > Palmer house shrouded in darkness.

 

Recalling my post from pages long past, THAT is why I want this to be the ending of the show. To watch more of what I think is Cooper's mistake causing Laura's unrest would be miserable, not just in terms of "plot", but from an experiential standpoint. It's worth noting that the person who gives Cooper the task of finding Laura is Leland, a man who I wouldn't trust anywhere near her. Perhaps his lodge-arrested request for his daughter's whereabouts is symbolic of Cooper's reasons of finding her. Not that he wants to abuse her like Leland, but that his desire to find her isn't completely sympathetic to her as a person. It is implied that the reason he wants to find her is to fight Judy/Mother, after all.

[dartmonkey]

I like the idea of Richard being Cooper's secret dream version of himself.  Still unimpeachable but a little earthier. Less boyscout goody-two-shoes, more lone gunman - more Eastwood than Stewart or Cooper (Gary). It tracks that we see echoes of BadCoop in RichDreamCoop and whereas GoodCoop's idol was the community sheriff with shining badge and Grace Kelly in a bonnet (the kind of person he thought he could be in Twin Peaks), the influence of the dream world and the BadCoop in his psyche pushes him more towards a High Plains Drifter/Pale Rider.

[huskerfan5b]

11 hours ago, brownbathrobe said:

 

I'm thinking "new Dougie" is way more animated than "sleeping Dougie Coop" ever was from what little we see.  He looks around in amazement and asks "Where am I?" immediately upon being created by Mike.

That was Dougie in the red room when saying "Where am I?" and then sleeping Dougie Coop at the door to house saying "Home". Not the same person.