Drink full: The TWIN PEAKS 2017 spoiler thread, part 2

Enjoying processing this. Two things that fell very flat for me (and yes I'm sure there's some time logic theory that explains why they both make total sense but still):

1. Turning Cooper and Diane into a great love story when Cooper had been in the lodge to rescue Annie. We saw his final months before the lodge. An epic romance with the woman he dictated his notes to was not part of them.

2. Sarah Palmer RIPPED HER FUCKING FACE OFF AND KILLED A GUY and it had absolutely no narrative consequences.

Also, Dale's in the lodge for 25 years, then in Dougie for 15 episodes, and within literally minutes of getting back to Twin Peaks, he's like peace I'm going back in the lodge again

I'd long predicted that the actual return of Coop was going to be brief and unsatisfying. So that much went pretty much exactly as I expected.

i just think the sarah face removal thing was just a way to show that, more than just being drunk or whatever, the pain of laura's death at her husband's hands has remained with her, so much that judy/the experiment/whatever is with her, feeding off her pain and suffering? Maybe that's a literal reading but it makes sense to me.

so much of the show is about good and evil, but not really about "oh evil is over here, good is over there", its about the good and evil within humankind, our ability to unleash that evil, our desire to replace it/reunite it with good. Despite Laura coming from an orb, she was never all good, she always struggled. And dale wants to reunite her with Sarah, to return the balance within Sarah? To ease her suffering. But he never can.

xpost (Which is to say that the OG Coop was gone again by the time he and Diane drove through their electricity portal.)

that feels basically otm dan

Some thoughts:

"The past dictates the future" ≈ What happened to Laura is going to happen no matter what. Even if we can try to reverse time and almost change the outcome, it's not possible.

"We are all dreamers" ≈ Rather than "it's all someone's dream world", I'm suspecting it's the view that we all dream in the sense of having the dream/aspiration to figure everything out or to be able to explain everything (≈ to find Judy).

With these two things together, our dreams are doomed to fail. For example, we're going to end up like Jeffries or Cooper if we try to work everything out.

I don't think this is necessarily nihilistic, given Lynch's overall tone & outlook. Given that we are all dreamers, it's just part of our nature to seek meaning/explanation and to find that process enjoyable (e.g., the first 17 parts). But we're never going to get full resolution or satisfaction, even if we can keep trying more & more (e.g., part 18). But one message of part 18 might be somewhat Buddhist: we must renounce our natural desires for explanation and meaning to end suffering. Cooper failed to do this, so that's where he ends up.

So I guess what I'm saying is: Lynch just wants everyone to join him in (and give him money for) Transcendental Meditation.

Cooper was unable to satisfactorily solve Laura's murder (was it BOB? was it Leland?) so he attempted to resolve her murder, with equally frustrating results. He wants to fix what cannot be fixed.

This was an interesting observation in the AV Club's comments: "When entering twin peaks in ep 18 they don’t pass any sign stating you are now entering twin peaks. This at odds with every other time a character enters a town during the series. Also the RR is now a cafe."

Why wouldn't Cooper notice that?

xposts: (aside from my facetious last sentence above) my thoughts are along the same lines as dan selzer & Old Lunch.

unthinkable that Coop would not take a glance at a newspaper or see a calendar on his many gas ups. or, if he was equipped with an interstellar credit card, that he would not examine a single receipt

good show!

Cooper always seemed like the G-Man par excellence in this series. Nothing got by him. So maybe now, at last, his vision was cloudy.

That was not our Cooper.

Our Cooper failed to catch the killer before he struck again, had several suspects die in custody, consistently had his ass handed to him by a chump in a horse costume, and got himself stuck in the black lodge; I'd say a lot got by him.

Haven't dug too deep into theories yet, because I'm enjoying letting my mind wander, but this is one of the most sensible explanations I've read:

last scene was a dream

laura in 1989 is the dreamer

cooper asks what year is it

laura's mother calls out to her from the waking world

laura recognizes her mother's voice and realize she's dreaming

she screams and wakes up back in 1989 the morning they would have found her body had cooper not had changed the past

As with everything Lynch it's not so clear cut as just a dream but... well dreams have a lot to do with it. Also fits in with the many, many, many times Laura talked about dreams or living in a dream

But yeah different realities seem to be dissolving into each other, if he's occupying two minds at once he might not register a difference in architecture. All part of the dream confusion innit

Goddamnit we never found out whose voice Evil Cooper was talking to in episode 2

xxp I quite like that at first glance, my gut feeling is that there are many compelling non-bleak ways to read this and I suspect I'll tend to gravitate toward those, but there's always that killer ambiguity

Yeah... most of Lynch's major work ends on with a "happy" ending if you interpret it the right way. Mulholland Drive's final ending is tragic but also happy---the character gets relief, and ends in a dream world.

Crazy how much the general MD interpretation ("tragic, troubled woman dreams of a better world that explains her pain" applies to this. Though I think it's logical to interpret a good chunk of this series/finale as Cooper's dream, too (dreaming of his rescue/escape from the lodge, for instance?) Dude was there 25 years... he needs to think about something to pass that time.

Our Cooper failed to catch the killer before he struck again, had several suspects die in custody, consistently had his ass handed to him by a chump in a horse costume, and got himself stuck in the black lodge; I'd say a lot got by him.

― streeps of range (wins), Monday, September 4, 2017 10:00 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah yeah lol. I retract my statement!

nonexistent

^i guess the Arm's doppledanger won after all

the finale was definitely a disappointment while watching. just sitting and watching characters sit silently in a car. then watching a random lady ask her off-screen husband who owned they bought their house from. like most episodes i feel blindsided and am only starting to process what i just witnessed.

Laura's death and the fight vs Bob anchors the whole series. it is the atomic core of Twin Peaks. after Bob is killed, after Laura is saved, there is nothing left. good has won, Laura gets to live her life and actually grow up. yes evil has been defeated but it robs the thing of its essence. the dead guy and her meth head ways suck but this is still a more hopeful ending than what she originally had. it makes sense that our Cooper would "disappear" at that point too. Laura's death is what brings him to Twin Peaks in the first place.

yet there is some stuff hinting that this Richard guy is a fully (or at least partially) aware Cooper and there is some unfinished business with the house. so even taken at its bleakest ("Cooper is trapped in an alternate dimension") it seems like he is at least somewhat cognizant of this, leaving the door open for possibilities.

i really loved the shot of Sarah Palmer stabbing the photo. a callback to Ike the Spike? it was very cathartic. and yay we got to see the Major's head!

lots of twisting emotions. the mysteries never end.

is the ending of twin peaks cooper...running out of sand

When Cooper is leading Laura, there's a sound (iirc) before he turns around - it reminded me of the evolution-of-the-arms 'I sound like this' noise. But I haven't checked.

It's the phonograph sound from the opening scene that the Fireman specifically tells Cooper to pay attention to.

yeah lol i was waiting 17 hours for that damn sound

Ah, right! I thought it sounded more biological than that at the time - a bit like Hannibal Lector's slurping noise.

Was also looking for an Orpheus/Lot reference, but he looked back all the time!

I need to watch Inland Empire again, it's been far too long. But part 18 was so much of what I loved about Mulholland Dr but less doggedly schematic, and the same for IE but concise and with total tonal control. Just incredible. I don't think I'm going to be able to let it go for some time, and all of the loose ends from a world that felt chaotic and open and often incomprehensible enhance the emotional wallop rather than detract from it, for me. It feels unfinished in a way that's evocative and generous and trusting.

beautifully put

I'm fine with loose ends not being tied up and conventional story structure being flipped the bird when it comes to what's (possibly) just a dream.

sciatica otmfm and furthermore

pic.twitter.com/pZWbuMYYPQ

— Darren Franich (@DarrenFranich) September 4, 2017

sciatica otm

the ending is also literally vertigo imo

The art thing this all felt most similar to me is "The Testament of Orpheus" -- surreal exploration of the creative process, the relationship between art/artist/audience, death and resurrection, etc. And starred its director, too.

Looking for a glimmer of hope in that insanely nihilistic ending. Struggling

i was looking forward to canceling showtime but now i've gotta watch the whole thing through at least five more times

A version of dale (dougie) gets to live happily ever after with a version of Diane (her sister). That's ok.

i was looking forward to canceling showtime but now i've gotta watch the whole thing through at least five more times

I want to do this but the quality of the stream on my TV isn't that good. What's the estimate on the blu ray box set - a year/ year and a half?

A version of dale (dougie) gets to live happily ever after with a version of Diane (her sister). That's ok.

Yes. Yes. This is the glimmer, at the very beginning of the episode. I noted it last night, but that was Cooper's true sacrifice. He not only saved Dougie's life, he improved his life and the lives of those around him.

there is hope at the end, the fact that he remembers the other timeline, his other self. they retcon the Twin Peaks pilot by having him stop her murder. potentially this stops Cooper from even coming to Twin Peaks in the first place. the original series could be wiped out entirely.

but it's not! that original trauma is too strong. you can erase the karma. the scream at the end is simultaneously terrifying and hopeful. the original series does still exist, it is real, even if just in the heads of these two lost souls standing in the middle of the street.

Cooper's journey reminds me a lot of the concept of the Bodhisattva. someone who is so full of compassion that even though they reach the spiritual level where they can leave the cycle of birth/death, they choose to remain in that endless hell to help others.

you can't erase the karma

What was going on with Diane seeing a doppelganger of herself (Linda?) in the motel parking lot while Dale/Richard checked in?

And then her purposefully obscuring his face with her hands when they had sex?

Also speaking of sex scenes, I believe there were 3 sex scenes in TP:TR, and all of them involved exclusively the cowgirl position. Is this a Lynch thing?

I definitely thought this was a callback to the Dougie sex scene.

And the scene from ep1 in the video room with the box?

Love
Don't go away
Come back this way
Come back and stay
Forever and ever

The world spins

xp plus Dougie and Jade

That Julee Cruise song was put to great effect. It's been haunting me today.

That's my favorite JC song, she's correct above in her way, it would've been better with a full performance