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

I feel like the recurring trauma (the Scream, etc) is part of Laura's (the bigger Laura "spirit" that the Fireman sent to earth) "job"--the way that she works against evil is to be a kind of ritual sacrifice, an archetypal victim (and I know people have deployed this idea w/r/t Laura even before S3)

The Scream is not a defeat, the Scream is what Laura does

I guess her not getting murdered by being magically led away by Cooper through the woods doesn't make sense to me because it leaves all the other factors that led up to her murder in place. Does Leland just decide to ... not kill her? I mean wtf

xp

i think he prevented her from going to the train car that night with ronette

I guess I would feel more confident in that interpretation if the shots of Pete fishing/body disappearing etc. came *after* she disappears out of his hands rather than before

When I agreed that it was a weird interpretation I wasn't disputing that the disappearing body signified a change in the story, I was questioning Adam's idea that "you still get raped constantly from ages 12-17, but I'm going to remove the most significant choice you make in this story" as yet another example of a whole season of frictionless winning for Dale. Plus yeah all the stuff that happens after

i think he can have saved her that night and still not have "saved her". he succeeded in stopping her murder that one night but he failed in defeating evil and death forever.

I enjoy reading all of your thoughts but I literally (thankfully) have no more thoughts on this, just unable to parse or process it. My only take away is this season gave us a deeper understanding of the Twin Peaks mythology, which I loved

another way dale can be seen fucking up... laura chose death that night.. it's what she wanted

http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Mrs._Tremond/Chalfont

fyi, in case it hadn't been linked before

same two last names mentioned by the woman who opens the door at the not-Palmer house

I wonder if Coop knew that the Fireman made her, and that's why he wanted to save her

Dang what happens to Ronette then?

http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Mrs._Tremond/Chalfont

fyi, in case it hadn't been linked before

same two last names mentioned by the woman who opens the door at the not-Palmer house

yes, this is why I didn't get what chaki was talking about about the "real" owner of the house

another way dale can be seen fucking up... laura chose death that night.. it's what she wanted

Yeah, the changed timeline (which obviously doesn't take, cmon guys stuff happens after that you need to keep watching) is only a victory for dale's ego. If you've seen the end of fire walk with me and your takeaway is "it would be much better if instead of this she didn't die in the train car but the rest of her shitty life was exactly the same" then...

xpost That lady is apparently the real owner of that real house in real life. Our real life.

right but she is playing a character with a name that has significance in TP - she is not using her real name or presented as the "real" owner in any meaningful way.

and there's no way to know that piece of information strictly by viewing the show so I would err on the side of saying that's not significant

I was reeeeally hoping for about ten seconds that Cooper stashed Laura in the lodge and then made a duplicate that actually got killed. But that's the same sort of wishful thinking that led him to try such a misguided venture

Dang what happens to Ronette then?

oh, Ronette's fine. she's an assistant logistics manager down at the sante fe office of home depot now

Xxxp

Right, and it's hard for me to buy Cooper's ego outweighing his understanding of Laura's life, so I feel like the primary motivation has to be the Fireman's direction from the beginning. I don't want a cut-and-dry, logical explanation, I just wish there was a little more dream-logic to go on to justify an obviously crazy decision.

But in any case props to Lynch for replicating and intensely magnifying the reaction I had to the S2 finale, which was the hardest an episode of TV had ever hit me up until now.

I feel like whatever Laura whispered to Coop in the lodge was significant

but we'll never know

another way to view laura's death/non-death: maybe coop prevented her from dying in that particular way (which is why we see pete go out fishing with no body wrapped in plastic) but she ends up dying anyway, soon thereafter. her destiny was to die, she wanted to die and maybe needed to die in some ways. there are multiple planes with different versions of laura: she's the homecoming queen, she's the wise being whispering things to cooper in the lodge, she's the redeemed soul seeing angels with coop at her side, she's possessed, she's evil, her name is carrie page, etc. coop is able to save her from death, but it's not like the next time we see her in the episode is the day after that, or whatever. it's jumping around all over the place.

xxxxxp thanks for the cicada credit all - or :-) ALL - and at the risk of sounding peevish it was me who first raised the Dougie as Alzheimer's metaphor too.
A couple of random observations, apologies if they have already been made but it's tough to read it all!
- the development of the atomic weapon was the Manhattan Project and of course the glass box was the Project in Manhattan - both evoked the creator / mother figure
- in the Palmer house the main signifiers of evil were electrically powered and repeating in cycles - the fan revolves, Leland's record player skips, Sarah's television plays out the same 20 seconds of the boxing match in a loop. And of course "listen to the sounds" is a scratching record skipping the same loop.

It kinda got lost amidst everything else that went down, but upon reflection Lynch has somehow managed over the course of The Return to make the Palmer house an EVEN MORE TERRIFYING SPACE. That is no mean feat.

when Sarah thrown down the picture of Laura the sound goes into this cool loop of crashing glass

xxxp that seems like it makes sense

As much sense as anything can in Twin Peaks...

Yeah the house definitely scares me more than it did before.

Sarah is the standout for me. i don't even care if she's Judy or not. also i went back to FWWM and she's creepy there too ie when she slams down on the piano keys.

However, while I'm not picketing for a 4th season, it's hard to say I wouldn't love to see it now. With Cooper and the gang traversing an infinite loop, why would this story ever need to end?

― Dominique, Tuesday, 5 September 2017 20:40 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

similarly, why would it ever need to begin again

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 5 September 2017 20:41

Who knows? Many people are trying to make sense of this finale as a definitive ending, but all these theories could be missing important pieces that haven't happened yet.

I'm also still quite sad. I woke up this morning like "....oh fuck" when I remembered the finale.

Hoping to find something else I can get this lost in. I really can't think of much else on screen that hits me like this.

Yeah, the changed timeline (which obviously doesn't take, cmon guys stuff happens after that you need to keep watching) is only a victory for dale's ego. If you've seen the end of fire walk with me and your takeaway is "it would be much better if instead of this she didn't die in the train car but the rest of her shitty life was exactly the same" then...

― streeps of range (wins), Tuesday, September 5, 2017 5:39 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it better to live until middle age or get killed by your father when you are a teenager? what if you become a murderer? Bobby was one and he turned out okay...

true he saved her life the pilot night but it doesn't erase the other stuff she went through. that stuff remains across all of these dreams, even the seemingly impenetrable Richard dream (who knows give it 2 more episodes and we'll be cracking wise about frying guns and stalking a Twin Peaks where nobody knows him) Laura's suffering was real. this is why Laura's moment at the very end is so important. across all this mumbo jumbo dream nonsense, the realness haunted her, across space and time. just as it haunts us now. it is the centering event of all this stuff. the nuclear core around which everything spins.

this is true in real life for the audience just as it is for the characters. the past dictates the future. imo this is acknowledging the centrality of her og murder and abuse in the canon amidst dreams and alternate realities. the purpose of seeing Cooper try to save her superficially is because what kind of detective would Cooper be if he had access to time travel and didn't use it to save someone's life? "I am the FBI" implies that he is sworn to serve and protect and to not do everything in his power to save this abused girl would be a fundamental dereliction of duty. of course the first thing he does is try is this.

that he fails in stopping anything bad from ever happening to her is not really relevant. Cooper is more or less immortal at this point, he can try to stop all suffering in the universe. is that what Judy is, ultimately? but suffering is part of life. this is an impossible task. nevertheless. he may be trying to do that, starting with Laura, using that infinity map. in a way he is living multiple Reincarnations, the doubles all seem to share memories of their past lives. Cooper's ego is certainly a huge part of this, he is playing multiple characters and the entire series is about people looking for him, but it all has made him transcend personhood. travelling through electricity will make you do that. imo he may be trying to become a Bodhisattva:

In Mahāyāna, life in this world is compared to people living in a house that is on fire. People take this world as reality pursuing worldly projects and pleasures without realizing that the house is ablaze and will soon burn down (due to the inevitability of death). A bodhisattva is one who has a determination to free sentient beings from samsara and its cycle of death, rebirth and suffering. This type of mind is known as the mind of awakening (bodhicitta). Bodhisattvas take bodhisattva vows in order to progress on the spiritual path towards buddhahood.

There are a variety of different conceptions of the nature of a bodhisattva in Mahāyāna. According to some sources a bodhisattva is someone on the path to full Buddhahood. Others speak of bodhisattvas renouncing Buddhahood. According to the Kun-bzang bla-ma'i zhal-lung, a bodhisattva can choose any of three paths in their aspiration to help sentient beings in the process of achieving buddhahood. They are:

king-like bodhisattva - aspires to become buddha as soon as possible and then help sentient beings in full fledge;
boatman-like bodhisattva - to achieve buddhahood along with other sentient beings;
shepherd-like bodhisattva - to delay buddhahood until all other sentient beings achieve buddhahood. Bodhisattvas like Avalokiteśvara and Śāntideva are believed to fall in this category.

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

It's motivated me to get back to work on my own endless project. Nothing can fill the hole this show has left other than something I'm making myself.

Xpost to RAG

yes! this is perhaps the only TV show that has played like motivation for my own creative work

The sound when Laura vanished in the woods was the 78 skipping in the beginning

It is the same sound we hear at the beginning and in ep 8, but I thought it was actually the sound of a Geiger counter.

It's nice to hear season 3 compelled a bunch of people (here and elsewhere) to prioritise and be more discerning.

In 1989-90 I was 15, had just seen Blue Velvet, and was blown away by Twin Peaks. I "got" it inasmuch as a dopey teenager like me could have- I thought it was arty and cool, but still satisfied a sense of heroics formed by comic books- perhaps my inability to be critical about it and the communal nature of watching it with friends inured me from ever thinking ill of S2. But still, I feel like I got it and it stayed with me all those years.

I feel like 15 year old me today would not get S3, but 44 year old me gets it very well. This is maybe the best TV show, or film in 18 parts, I've seen. I'll be haunted by this for a while.

I had more thoughts about misguided notions of heroism but fuck if I can articulate a thing right now

I'm grateful for this show and thread and all of you.
Just asked my downstairs neighbour if he watched it, and turns out he's a total peaks nerd. First time I've really talked to him in 7 years, so it brings pekoe together. Twin peaks has been a huge influence on my music and art, along with Jacobs ladder.

It's raining ash in Washington and the sky is turning red.

yeah it's hazy AF in Vancouver and the sun is red

The sound when Laura vanished in the woods was the 78 skipping in the beginning

there is a theory the sound is Laura unlocking her diary. it sorta sounds like it around 0:15 here like maybe it was pitch bent and de-rezzed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMuzMU2u04o

I just came here to post about the sound! I've had it open in an audio editor, and I'm almost certain that it's not a slot machine, and it's not the sound of the diary unlocking. It's a man's voice saying something. He repeats a word at the beginning and end of the phrase, and I can make out "...I need a..." in the middle, but I don't know what the unintelligible word is.

"I need a package"?

sorry, I've gone strings-and-photos with this, but I do think it can be made comprehensible with the right audio processing. De-noising as the first step helps a lot, then boosting at 1.5khz and putting a hard filter on the bottom and top ends

In any case, it's definitely a man's voice

Dang what happens to Ronette then?

She seems to become an American Girl