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

jed_ you're extraordinarily kind but i've been wrong at least 3/4 of the time! many more consistently otm posters all through these threads.

honestly i don't know what to do with gotta light now. as a standalone piece it's incredible, but in light of it (apparently) going absolutely nowhere i just couldn't recommend it. anticipation is at least half of what made it so enjoyable.

y'all didn't deserve this show come on

it's difficult to argue all the unrealised promises have been fulfilling, regardless of how good it's been as a work of art

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SBNoZjW1TWk/V1ruHDapjEI/AAAAAAABpvw/NQvgxfFx9P8RzhpvHToB_kET2BYrX7r5wCLcB/s1600/tumblr_m4bvlb3HRb1rtgfeuo1_500.gif

^ otm, jesus

sorry i woke up cranky, y'all certainly deserved this show

Nah you were right the first time. Retroactively revoking their Peaks Privileges

Psst

https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=jiao+dai🕸

Haha love it

it probably doesn't help that i'm coming across so negative. i've loved every episode, every scene, every character, every artistic decision. it's been an absolute joy from start to finish. it's just that (a) there are so many unaddressed clues and unresolved subplots that the show carries an astronomically high blue balls quotient (i don't need a neat bag of closure, but this really does feel like they ditched the original ending and made up part 18 on the spot), and (b) i haven't worked out the point of all this. in time i might watch the whole thing again, with a better sense of what to dig into and what to ignore, but for now i'll wait to see whether far more intelligent people can *cough* make sense of it.

Emily Stephens' review at the AV Club is a good first stab

her reviews have been consistently incredible. i really like that she focused on dale not actually being that good at heroically sorting things out, right down to asking the wrong questions in that last episode.

I just remembered how that car turns around in the middle of nowhere and follows them for a second and then pulls ahead again and speeds off.

There's a very visible "Pass With Care" sign either right before or right after this. In retrospect I think you can read this as "there's a structure in which this is a cop show and one car's following another car, but this isn't actually that structure, this is the structure where different cars on the road / human beings in time sometimes sync up but only temporarily and then the streams decouple from each other"

Cooper's car that goes from the motel to Odessa has Texas plates

"Remember Richard and Linda" -- I guess I think (following Autumn Almanac's "this is the real Cooper of which we've previously seen only fragments" take) that the reason Cooper is asked to "remember Richard and LInda" by the Fireman is because Richard is the "real person" whose dream Cooper kind of is? And who Cooper in some way has the capacity to remember being?

The question is, in the sex scene in the night, is that Richard then? Or is it only Richard in the morning? I think the former. I think he's Richard and Diane is Linda as soon as they "cross", whatever crossing means.

"Richard and Linda" seems like a reference to Richard and Linda Thompson after all.

In Stephens' review:

"That scream is deployed to dreadful effect here, as Laura slips from Dale Cooper’s grasp in the forest, again as she’s lifted from the Red Room, and finally as she hears Sarah calling “Laura?” at the end."

She does? I heard a kind of whimper from the house -- was it Sarah calling "Laura"? Really?

the reason Cooper is asked to "remember Richard and LInda" by the Fireman is because Richard is the "real person" whose dream Cooper kind of is? And who Cooper in some way has the capacity to remember being?

oh wow that is one hell of a revelation. so when the fireman said "remember 430, richard and linda, two birds with one stone", perhaps he meant the two birds were not richard and linda, but were (1) to remember 430 for the transfer, (2) to remember that he's richard and diane is linda.

could the fact that dale says "two birds with one stone" to gordon in part 17, and gordon's earlier dream commentary re monica bellucci, mean dale, gordon, diane and laura are sharing the same dream world?

Also: if the Roadhouse scenes, or some of them, are taking place inside Audrey's consciousness, then Ruby (Charlyne Yi) who screams at the end ep 15 must be Laura somehow, right? She is moved from one place to another, gently but essentially forcibly, as Laura is moved in 18 by Coop/Richard.

was it Sarah calling "Laura"? Really?

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 4 September 2017 21:39 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, apparently it's s1e1 audio from when sarah's calling laura downstairs having not yet learnt she had died.

The obvious theory is that the end is Laura waking up the morning she was found dead, right?

I'd recognise that Sarah Palmer audio anywhere, lynch reuses it constantly in show & film (usually pitched down or otherwise distorted)

just remember that life is a mystery, and that everyone must stand alone

Btw the woman who plays Alice Tremond at the end is apparently the irl owner of the house used for the Palmer house

xp lol otm

ha I was wondering if that was the home owner. she didn't seem like an actress.

i've not seen this mentioned anywhere: the platters song that starts playing when dale/richard and diane/linda get their shag on is also the song playing on the radio in 1956 (part 8), just before the woodsman walks into the studio and crushes skulls. maybe those kids were young richard and linda! they comment on liking the song, then she finds a penny (which imo is a callback to red, which in turn is a callback to the chalfont kid's creamed corn magic), so... maybe?

btw i know the kids don't look anything like dale and diane, but we don't really know what anyone but laura/carrie looks like in that alternative universe anyway.

whyyyyy am i trying to ~solve~ this, it's never got me anywhere before

you mean "my prayer"?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a0/0c/1f/a00c1f2636754bb694de2484a1651721.jpg

yeah

ohhhh shit

Am I crazy or did they change the sound of dale's reaction to the whisper from a horrified sharp intake of breath in part 2 to an almost comically exaggerated "huhhhh?" in the finale

definitely different, a "huhhh" of understanding in part 2 but a "huhhh?" Of surprise in part 18

The scene with the cowboys in Judy's gave me heavy Borges "El Sur"/"The South" vibes. And Borges being all about this idea we are living inside someone else's dream it gave me a slight chill.

Here's the synopsis for that story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_(short_story)

Also lol at head cowboy's "What the fuck just happened?".

I think I'm bothered less by the lack of resolution than I am by, as noted upthread, the seeming nihilism of the ending. It feels very antithetical for Lynch, who more often than not ultimately provides some degree of escape from the horror, rarely a happy ending but a mote of hope. This time it feels like there's no exit.

also there's still a page missing from laura's diary and i just fuck

― rove mcmanus island (Autumn Almanac), Monday, September 4, 2017 2:46 AM (five hours ago)

The missing page was Carrie Page!

The least I would've asked from Lynch would've been for Mr. Tremond to confirm that another Chalfont family preceded those that they bought the house from.

The missing page was Carrie Page!

…fuck

Per akm's fears above, there was definitely an element of "this is all David Lynch's dream" -- I'm not sure any major director has ever had a more meta scene than himself wandering through the dark with his most-frequent leading man and woman. But then it left Cole there behind and kept going into unresolvable mysteries. Meta, but not in any cheap or easy way. I don't think Lynch is messing with the audience, I think he is the audience, or is with the audience. Looking for answers like everyone else.

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.