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

[Guts]

A season 4 would be awesome to see cooper and new Laura in a weird reflection version of twin peaks with a higher version of realism and where all the characters were dark versions of themselves. We could even see coop react to Trump as president.

[thenexus6]

Damn this show wrecked me... so many questions.. There has to be a fourth season surely??

I think this season had alot of ups and downs, one thing for sure though is my excitement of sitting down every Monday night to watch it knowing i had NO idea what I was about to see will be missed. Never experienced this with any show before.

I found Diane and Coop being together weird, and man Audrey? Hello? How's Annie?

[lethalenforcer]

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

[Lechimp]

25 minutes ago, lethalenforcer said:

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

 

I don't know what happened but I don't think it's wiped out. Maybe Coop goes into an alternate universe though? The Secret History of Twin Peaks book has inaccuracies and apparently people questioned Mark Frost about it and he said it wasn't a goof. So maybe the history was slightly altered but not in a huge way?

[Mentalgongfu]

6 hours ago, Don't Go There said:

I feel it is important to preface this with the statement that I really liked “The Return”, and I liked what we saw in Parts 17 and 18. It’s important, because I’m going to sound like I hated it. So, to be clear: I am an OG Peaks fan, I watched it when it first ran on ABC. I loved Fire Walk With Me from the very first time I saw it. And I have enjoyed The Return immensely.

 

That being said, nothing is perfect, and there are some problems I have with this series, and its conclusion. I’ve also been a Lynch fan from way back- I know that, in the battle between coherence of plot and surrealism, Lynch is going to pick surrealism every time. But there are some things that need to be addressed. Not “rules” really. But… well, here, let me just tell you:

 

1. Hawk was in the woods in episode 1. “Once again your log and I are on the same page.” Hawk gets to Glastonbury Grove, sees the red curtains… then nothing. We never find out where he got his information, we never find out what happened, or what was supposed to happen. It is never referred to again. Also, it seems to take place out of sequence, as the next scene with Hawk has him still mulling over the log’s initial message.

 

2. What happened to Becky? This we may already know, as Stephen is definitely hinting that he killed her. This would be a natural conclusion to where that story was headed. But we never see Bobby or Shelly react to this. Once Stephen pulls the trigger on himself-- and we see an ominous exterior shot of their trailer-- we never hear of it again.

 

3. Are we supposed to believe this “Jow-Day” entity is the Thing In the Glass Box? Because there is absolutely no reason to believe that. We are never told a thing about the thing in the box, about the thing in Part 8 that was spewing eggs, about the playing card with the silhouette, about the same design appearing on Hawk’s map. Are all these things even the same thing? Why is evil Coop seeking it out? What was his plan upon entering what I guess is the White Lodge?

 

4. “Jow-Day” is an ass-pull. I’m sorry, but it is. All “Judy” ever was, was a reference to a character in Fire Walk With Me that never ended up in the movie, but Lynch thought it sounded good enough to keep. The “Oh, hey, here’s a bunch of plot we shoe-horned in and decided to bring up 17 hours in” method of storytelling is something this show has done the whole season. Maybe we can call it the “Bill Hastings’s Web Site” method.

 

5. Where the hell is Audrey? And why should we care? The first question would seem to be answered at the end of Part 16- in some kind of hospital. Of course, we can only infer that from the tiny amount we see of it. She could be in the bathroom of Horne’s Department Store, for all we know. The second question- who cares?- is never answered. I mean, we care, because we like Audrey. But Audrey takes, what, four episodes to get out of that house, get to the Roadhouse, do her dance, and wake up (maybe) in a hospital (maybe), shouting at Charlie who is actually a mirror (maybe) and, as far as we know, she has no significance to the story beyond that. Well, then why show us anything about her at all?

 

6. We do remember Sarah Palmer taking her goddamn face off and eating a trucker’s throat, right? That all happened in your version of that episode, too? Oh good. Because it’s never referenced again. Maybe she’s possessed by Judy. Except that the ideas that, a) Judy is the Thing In the Glass Box,  the Thing In the Glass Box is the BOB-spewing entity in the Trinity atomic bomb whatsis, c) The Thing In the Glass Box is the symbol on the card/Hawk’s map… none of that is actually in the show. At all.

 

7. Look, we need to talk about Annie. I’m sorry, but we do. I don’t much like her either, but she’s important. She’s the whole reason Dale was lured into the Black Lodge. She’s the subject of the last line of the original show. And… I guess she doesn’t exist? Because Norma’s mom has now been dead since before the first season? Even though she was in the show? And she doesn’t have a sister? Remember when we noticed this discrepancy in the book, and Mark Frost said that it would all be explained? He lied. Look, I’m sorry, but he flat-out lied.

 

8. Why is “Red” in this show? At all?

 

9. Who the hell is Billy? Someone’s looking for him in the RR, Audrey is having a fling with him, and two girls in the Roadhouse talk about him. And, surprising no one, we are never told anything else. Why even talk about him at all? There’s this theory that many of the Roadhouse scenes are in Audrey’s head, but he is referenced in a non-Roadhouse scene, and it just brings us back to the Audrey story line going nowhere.

 

10. And the frogbug was what? And whose mouth did it crawl into? And why is the Woodsman putting everyone to sleep? What did any of that have to do with anything at all?

 

11. What is Hawk supposed to watch for, under the moon, on Blue Pine Mountain? Because- and I know this will shock you- this is never, ever mentioned again. So why mention it at all?

 

12. Why did the Fireman shit a golden globe of Laura Palmer out of his head? How did that impact the story, again? I’m sure I missed that somewhere in the 10 hours of Dougie Jones acting like a zombie. Surely this was addressed? That sequence looks like it was expensive. I would imagine it would be of no small import. Surely there would have been at least one reference to it again, somewhere in the 10 more hours they had left. I’m sure I missed it.

 

These aren’t red herrings. These are huge gaps in storytelling. I wonder if the answers to these questions were in the original script. It wouldn’t be the first time Lynch has decided, “Screw the script.”

 

Finally, while I liked the conclusion, did I miss any foreshadowing at all that would hint at what the hell that was all about? I am admittedly dense, and I may have missed all kinds of things.

 

Again, to reiterate: I really, really enjoyed the hell out of this 18 hour movie. But that list of eleven, up there… I think those are big weaknesses that need to be addressed.

 

ETA: So who hired Ray to kill Doppelcoop? Who called Doppelcoop in the hotel if it wasn't Jeffries? I mean, come on.

 

Pretty comprehensive list of loose threads, and I quoted in its entirety in case anyone missed it a few pages back. I wasn't bothere by the Judy thing, or the mystery of the Fireman and his orb, but otherwise I agree. It's kind of aggravating to me to see it all laid out. I never expected answers to everything. I didn't expect a clean ending and a nice wrap-up, but things like the Hawk/Blue Pine Mountain story just disappearing entirely, likewise Sarah Palmer's monster, is beyond frustrating to me considering we had 2 hours for Lynch to do something, anything, with all these pieces of the world he spent 16 hours constructing for us previously. 

[Aether]

Quick overview of my reaction to the finale:

 

I think wrapping up the Evil Coop story line the way he did, Lynch was clearly expressing a lack of interest in "resolution" and was openly making fun of the audience. I saw episode 17 as a sort of parody of a "series finale" and episode 18 as a more pure expression of what Lynch is about, which seems to be a pretty bleak and hopeless assessment of the state of the modern world. 

 

The fact that a lot was left unresolved (e.g. Audrey) and the resolutions that we did get were willfully absurd (guy with a magic gardening glove punching a Bob rock)...this struck me as being mean-spirited on Lynch's part...it didn't just feel like the normal sort of TP parody, where he is taking tropes from, say, soap operas to a more extreme level. The side-character with a magic glove stuff...it was just rushed and (by design) hard to take seriously. In a lot of ways, the 2-part finale reminded me of the films of Michael Haneke, where he often uses stories and characters to undermine expectations and scold the audience. His stuff is beautifully made and, like Lynch this season,  kind of dickish. 

 

Fuck getting scolded, I didn't really need that. There are plenty of ways to undermine tropes and expectations without talking down to the audience.

 

And 18 was just a straight up bummer. Cooper clearly had evolved into a Good/Evil hybrid... and he's continuing to struggle against forces he's not able to comprehend, grapple with. I didn't need anything easy or tidy...I assumed there would be zero resolution, this being a full blown Lynch experience. What I didn't expect was something this bitter. I couldn't help but feel like Lynch took all of his frustrations over narrative expectations and used them against the characters. Cooper's failure could have been a statement about how we navigate human existence..it could have been despairing and meaningful at the same time. Instead it just felt like Lynch's antagonistic swipe at the audience. 

 

In TP discussions, it is often mentioned that Lynch never wanted to reveal Laura's killer and chafed over the narrative rules of television. Season 3 felt like a reaction to that overall frustration. It felt like he got bogged down in engineering this cosmic Rube-Goldberg story that was designed to once again leave Cooper in a failed, lost state. As much as I enjoyed watching the return overall, the finale retroactively undid a lot of that enjoyment by making so many events from this season feel even more senseless and petty than they did upon first viewing.

 

I stopped being a TP fan last night. I get the feeling this is exactly what Lynch wanted. 

[pabosher]

2 minutes ago, anoldtoilet said:

At the end of episode 18, Laura is alive, knows who she is, and is back in Twin Peaks. Cooper succeeded in saving her. BOB is in the Lodge again, and will remain there. There are loose ends to tie up, but they're in a better position to do so than ever before. Chalfont/Tremond tried to trick Coop and Laura into walking away into the darkness, forgetting everything that happened, and living a life lost, empty, and filled with pain, but it didn't work. Laura still woke up from the dream.

 

But it isn't Twin Peaks. That's how I read it: this is an alternate world/reality, where nothing is the same: not even Cooper.

[pabosher]

Just now, anoldtoilet said:

Diane might not have been the same, but Cooper is. He reads the note addressed to Richard like he has no idea what Linda is talking about, and then later in the same episode introduces himself as Agent Dale Cooper.

 

He isn't the Dale Cooper from S1/2 or S3 E16/17 though. I agree with you that he *is* the same physical being, but I don't think he is the same person.

[EvaDK]

hi.

first, allow me to say thanx to jake and chris for some amazing discussions on each episode.

 

as for episode 17 and 18 of the return, allow me to offer some pointers, that might help you with interpreting what the hell lynch and frost were up to with this series.

sorry for my lack of caps, but my keyboard is busted.

i had to think for a while, after sheryl lee's final haunting scream transported us into a momentarily comatose state of despair.

now i'm almost angry at myself for not figuring it out sooner - figuring out what lynch and frost were really going for with twin peaks the return. but i think it essentially boils down to this: much of lynch's work center around duality.

while we have enjoyed many character moments of all sorts, nostalgia and tp mythology explored further in this season, there has been a constant underlying current of much greater ambition and horrific implications with us during the whole trip. we witnessed its birth in the now infamous episode 8 and it simply deals with a perverse interpretation of the episode 17 title 'the past dictates the future'.

for cooper, it dealt with the possibility of changing the past in order to rectify the future. for a brief emotional moment, we the viewers, were led to believe that he pulled it off. laura palmer took his hand.

but that narrative is crushed by the inevitability of what also happened in the past; humankind gave birth to the fury of evils own momentum and there is no stopping it. it doesn't matter what cooper does or doesn't do - from this moment on and until the end of our existence, we are forever trapped in the moment of laura's horrific echoing scream.

 

coopers arc echoes freds arc in lost highway. these created realities of their own making, will only present the exact same evils they are running away from. you can keep evil at bay, but never defeat it outright. cooper thinks he can by saving laura (which is a sign of human arrogance), but maybe laura was never meant to be saved. she was meant to die. and so it will be in every new iteration of reality that cooper and laura are doomed to repeat forever.

 

albert said back in season 2. bob is the evil that man does. how right he was.

 

these were my initial thoughts. hope they can guide some of you, if needed.

 

interesting note - the two episodes that went really deep with the inevitability of evil in our world, both has the number 8 in them - episodes 8 and 18. the infinity symbol that jeffries conjures from the owl symbol.

[WickedCestus]

The idea that David Lynch is in any way interested in creating a TV series simply to be antagonistic or say "screw you" to his audience is absurd to me. Why would anyone bother creating art, let alone such personal, creative, difficult-to-parse art if their only goal was to make others mad? Dude puts his life into this stuff, and it's clear when you listen to him speak that he holds within himself a deep love and respect for humanity, and some sort of desire to share something with all of us. These interpretations just read completely hollow to me. I understand being upset that the show didn't resolve properly (I was kinda bothered by Episode 18 at first), but I don't think there's any need to devalue the work like that.

 

The more I think about this finale, the more I appreciate it. A lot of that is thanks to the discussion on here, and giving myself some time to reflect. Even with my expectations set to "this is gonna be strange", I was still surprised by the ending. Distilling the story back to Cooper and Laura, and Coop's final attempt to save her. It's just incredible. That final scream is absolutely haunting. 

 

[Marius]

That tree plus the round light remind me of the arm.

[Schmoker]

Just responding to a sentiment that bugs me in general:

 

At no point did I think Lynch was trolling the audience.  If you take 17 as a trolling of a series finale, then you're ignoring that he spent 16 episodes laying the groundwork to make 17 work on a plot and an emotional level. It would make the entire season an experiment in trolling, which is perhaps the most troll-y response to this delicately beautiful show that I could possibly imagine.

 

If I had to take a meaning from Twin Peaks, I'd say that monsters can be defeated, but there is always another monster waiting around the corner. But that bleak reality doesn't relieve us of our responsibility to still try to defeat every single monster we come upon.

 

In a way, he tells the same story that Cervantes told way back when he invented the modern narrative. It's all about tilting at windmills, because otherwise what the fuck else are we going to do?

[Takeanotherlooksonny...]

Hi I'm a long time lurker, first time poster.. I've loved S3 for a number of reasons. It has been visually stunning, funny and has kept me thinking about it for days after each episode. The podcast has been great too!   I watched the original run as an 11/12 year old kid when it was originally aired. If you were to tell me then that Bob would leave evil Coop in a globe shaped piñata to be smashed by a character wearing a magic glove... I would have probably found it odds with the general ethos of the show.  I really enjoyed it none the less.  Like others, I found episode 18 challenging. I was very tired watching it and I might have to see it again.  The sex scene felt unpleasant, the identity of the alternative world was grimy and unwelcoming.  I felt unsettled, which beats the feeling of terror the last time I watched a TP season finale, do I want to know about the loose ends? Of course.  Do I want more right now? No,  I need to let that sink in first. Well done Lynch that was sensational stuff.

[Digger]

4 minutes ago, WickedCestus said:

The idea that David Lynch is in any way interested in creating a TV series simply to be antagonistic or say "screw you" to his audience is absurd to me. Why would anyone bother creating art, let alone such personal, creative, difficult-to-parse art if their only goal was to make others mad? Dude puts his life into this stuff, and it's clear when you listen to him speak that he holds within himself a deep love and respect for humanity, and some sort of desire to share something with all of us. These interpretations just read completely hollow to me. I understand being upset that the show didn't resolve properly (I was kinda bothered by Episode 18 at first), but I don't think there's any need to devalue the work like that.

 

The more I think about this finale, the more I appreciate it. A lot of that is thanks to the discussion on here, and giving myself some time to reflect. Even with my expectations set to "this is gonna be strange", I was still surprised by the ending. Distilling the story back to Cooper and Laura, and Coop's final attempt to save her. It's just incredible. That final scream is absolutely haunting. 

 

Yeah, I'm not so sure about this.  It's like playing a joke on an animal or a child, maybe you're not doing it to be mean, maybe you think it is funny.  Lynch and Frost antagonized their audience in almost every episode, the only time I thought it was funny was when Coop was in the coma and someone said something to the effect of "He may never come out of it." That was all the audience needed waiting for Dougie to wake up and then have him in a coma for the rest of the season.  He wakes up in the next scene.  You got me Lynch.  I mentioned a bunch of the other trolling in previous posts, so I won't rehash them, but ask yourself this did any of the Candie scenes or Jacoby scenes serve any purpose, move the story or reveal character or plot, and when plot was revealed was it often rushed and unsatisfying.  

 

Take Freddie, we are introduced to him in an exposition dump he gives to James.  Now imagine instead of that we get to see this happening on screen asshole Freddie in his sad life, gets a visit from the Fireman.  Revelation! We witness his attempt to buy the glove and tension! he can't seem to get it, then wham, the glove is real and has real power as we see him clock the teller.  Maybe he tries to go back to his old life; it sucks, he heads to Twin Peaks and now we see the town through his eyes, we see the inhabitants we missed through him, we see how they've changed,  and we have him set up in a heroic arc so when his showdown with BOB comes it means something.  Isn't that more interesting?   Take some time with any of the characters, Jerry Horne and his bizarre 500 mile journey, Ben Horne and his new mistress- was the a reason we had those scenes or met her husband one time?  Audrey is introduced near the end of the season, can't seem to leave a room, leaves the room, dances and wakes up somewhere?  Tammy Preston spends her time vamping, giving knowing looks, or confused looks (a shame because I loved her in the book) and the reason she's important is because one time Cole said she was top of her class and impressive- did we get to see her be impressive?   Episode 18- lots of driving and empty stares.  What does Coop know or not know?  What was Diane seeing when she was having sex?  Why were they having sex?  Is that why they were at the hotel?  Why does Diane not react to seeing herself?  Was she switched when Coop came back?  All of those are fun questions that won't be answered, but really don't need to be mysteries.  Would you rather have those questions answered or more dialogue at the roadhouse which may or may not be real and may or may not be about characters we've seen (but under different names)?  What was the greater or deeper meaning of any of that?  Is questioning it devaluing it, or placing the appropriate value upon it?

[lethalenforcer]

Now that the dust is settling, the weekly void that will be left from this show is starting to sink in. What an exciting four months.

 

Now, time to begin filling said void with things like...

 

 

 

[Aether]

To those who feel Lynch was in no way making fun of the audience: first, I get that these episodes are complex and people will arrive at very different conclusions, that's all good. I'm glad a lot of folks liked the way it wrapped up. But Lynch didn't even try to hide his contempt for viewer expectations. Which can be a legitimate thing to have contempt for...but there are interesting ways to subvert expectations and then there is last night's finale, which, for me at least, was just Lynch creating a set of mysteries and complex feelings and shrugging it all off so that he could spit in the audiences face. And if you disagree, that's fine...but you have to contend with Freddie and the magic gardening glove. Sorry. That character and his super powered glove, that happened. He punched a Bob rock. Lynch was openly laughing at the audience with that, it was intentionally absurd. By design, the end of the Evil Coop story line was rushed, abrupt and involved a magic gardening glove. I don't think I'm off base when I feel like the finale was in many ways Lynch's middle finger to the audience. He wasn't even subtle about it. Anyway, thanks for the discussion everyone.

[Frohike]

Time for a rewatch of season 3.

 

Also to the above poster, I think it's important to distinguish "contempt" from simply disregarding viewer expectation as a formal limitation.

[MabaseSlums]

45 minutes ago, lethalenforcer said:

Does RR To Go = Meals on Wheels? I don't have a strong enough recollection of those moments, but I think that's an interesting detail.

[Aether]

6 minutes ago, Frohike said:

Time for a rewatch of season 3.

 

Also to the above poster, I think it's important to distinguish "contempt" from simply disregarding viewer expectation as a formal limitation.

 

I agree. Cockney Freddie and the magic glove versus a Bob rock: that's not "simply disregarding viewer expectation". That's David Lynch laughing at you.

[Matulpa]

I keep coming back to this EW article from about a month ago about the insurance salesman from Part 1. While he obviously didn't turn out to be important in the way that article's author predicted, the "It's about insurance" line keeps sticking with me, and I'm wondering if it could be the key to the whole season. In the obvious sense that the Dougie storyline ended up centering around insurance fraud, and solving that ended up perfectly setting up Coop to get back to Twin Peaks once he woke up; but maybe it refers to the larger Lodge-related events as well? Could the world in Part 18 be Judy/Mother/Experiment's insurance policy against Laura being saved? She's alive, but at the cost of being taken away to an alternate, bleaker version of the world without the Cooper we used to know? Was the whole season really "about insurance"?

[Joewintergreen]

When Laura in the lodge was whispering in Coop's ear as the credits rolled, I was scared she'd turn out to have said "I'll see you again in 25 years"

[One Thing]

I don't want to engage in idle (geddit) theorising as there's far too much of that going on elsewhere on the internet – well done this forum for all the feelings, and for on the whole showing such charity and thoughtfulness to a work of art that so easily might not have been created. Wish I'd jumped in and taken part earlier.

That said, there's one thing that gnawed at me after viewing episodes 17 and 18 for a second time. I strongly dislike the implications of this theory for the original run and the ethical structure of Twin Peaks. But the sheer purpose of the direction and writing during the last hour-and-a-half makes me think there's something to this.

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

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

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

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

Subsequently, Coop intercepts Laura (I know it's uncredited but I could've sworn this was a different actress altogether..?) and leads her 'home'. Sarah attacks the photograph of Laura but can only break the glass – her daughter's image, the only permanent and unchanging part of Twin Peaks throughout its chronology, remains intact. Then Coop loses his grip on Laura – she disappears off-screen with a classic Sheryl Lee blood-curdler.

She delivers such screams so perfectly that it's difficult to tell, but this certainly sounds like the same scream that accompanies Laura flying off, stage-left, in the lodge sequence from episodes 18 and 2. The only other character to whom this happens – in much the same fashion – is tulpa-Diane after she is shot by Gordon and Albert. In the extended lodge scenes of episode 2, immediately after Laura is dragged into the air, MIKE asks Cooper, again, 'Is it future, or is it past?' In the shortened lodge sequence of episode 18, Cooper immediately passes Leland, and hears once again his instruction to 'Find Laura'. 

You see where I'm going with this... Rather than the 'real' Laura being whisked away from Coop's grasp in 1989 to Odessa in (what year is it?), are we supposed to infer that the origins of Carrie Page lie even further back? Are we supposed to draw a relation between Laura's capriciousness in her scenes with James, which were central to the raw and uncompromising depiction of trauma in FWWM, and tulpa-Diane's abrasiveness (and what would that mean for the show's representation of abuse victims)?

The narrative significance of 1989 Laura being another Tulpa would be to provide a rationale for her sudden disappearance and Coop's failure to save her. Approaching the show with the seriousness it merits, however, I don't think that Lynch and Frost would retrospectively shrink the cosmic, human dimensions of Laura's murder in the original run like this. Further, I think that stepping back from the task of untangling this gordian knot shows how the practically endless permutations of lore-driven plot that can be projected onto the last two hours of The Return suggests something more truthful to the creators' vision. Namely, that this is all part of a process of gradually unmooring the viewer, of prising their fingers away from the last few scraps of solid ground in the show's universe, in preparation for the final moments of episode 18. Of course Lynch would want to do this through the gradual dissolution of identities.

All that said, the retconning has made me nervous. Firmly in the camp of 'no more Twin Peaks'. The ending was just fine by me. The lights have gone out, but boy did they shine brightly.

[pdm]

5 hours ago, Frohike said:

I'm getting hints of the Orpheus & Eurydice myth, where Orpheus is granted passage to the underworld to bring Eurydice back on the condition that he not look back until they've passed the threshold into our world. Of course this rule is broken, he looks back, Eurydice is taken away and Orpheus eventually is torn apart by Maenads and his soul taken into the Underworld be be reunited with Eurydice.  This season's ending seems to be a blending of that concept and a re-imagining of what would have occurred if Orpheus had been at least partially successful and broken his own timeline before being banished into an infinite recess of possible worlds forever dictated by his muse, his Eurydice. The past dictating the future over and over again.

 

While I'm on the subject, I enjoyed the mystical concept of dictation in this series. There are so many instances of intra-diegetic note-taking, note retrieval, memorizing coordinates, dictaphones, gramophone recordings.  It's like the idea of dictation carries an obligation not only to transcribe what's being said, but to somehow transmute what's being dictated into significance at just the right places and just the right times. Take those dictations into other contexts, and they reverberate & fall apart. And as stated above, one of the core acts of dictation, recording, and eventual loss of self in that message is between Laura and Dale.  That final frame was an amazing way to end it.

Excellent synopsis. Plus the subject of physical note taking..at Judy's diner, Coop says "write down her address on a piece of paper." In the original series taking notes was a large part of the story for all characters. Add to that Lucy saying I understand cellphones now after shooting Evil Coop after 25 years of ignorance. So many deep connections. 

[DeepFriedRevolver]

Yes, thanks Chris and Jake for helping us parse out this season.  You have a piteous task ahead of you going forward.  Have you considered bumping this out to three podcasts?  17, 18, then a season recap?  We sure could use three hours to unpack everything!   I'm anxious to know if Chris, Jake or both think it was an ending or a cliffhanger. 

[Frohike]

1 hour ago, Aether said:

 

I agree. Cockney Freddie and the magic glove versus a Bob rock: that's not "simply disregarding viewer expectation". That's David Lynch laughing at you.

 

I'm having a hard time understanding your statement. Cockney Hulk Smash was... fully expected and glorious.  I mean, in my experience I guess.

 

It sounds like you didn't enjoy it so much, but I'm not sure that implies some trickster director who has some sort of contempt for your personal expectations.