Twin Peaks

[Z Buck McFate]

Posting other thoughts about episode 16 before tonight's episode.

That woman who was with Steven (Shelly's daughter Becky's husband) - both when Becky went off looking for him with a gun, and when they were curled up next to that big tree (she ran to the other side when that guy walking his dog saw them, and then she screamed when she heard the gunshot)- her last name is Hayward. So, she's possibly Donna's daughter?

Audrey

When she walked into the Roadhouse, I thought that killed the "trapped in some psyche space" theory too - but then when she started dancing, that kind of confirmed it. Even before she suddenly saw herself in the little mirror in the white room. (And wow - even better than coma). So yeah, good call MDP. I mean, there was something horrible and circular about scenes with her, but I hadn't guessed 'not really there' before reading MDP's post.

My first thought about the white room w/ tiny mirror was that she'd gone insane (and was being kept in a mental health facility). It flashed so quickly, it was hard to see it. But the second time I watched, that doesn't seem quite right either. Because what kind of padded cell keeps a mirror in it? At this point, I'm wondering Evil Cooper did something to drive her insane - after hearing about what he did to Dianne, and possibly having it confirmed Bad Coop is Richard's father, it's maybe plausible. I look forward to see what's going on there.

I'm just a bit stumped about how she'd have a recent enough memory of the Roadhouse for a distorted memory to include that elderly black announcer - he shows up in other scenes, so he's not the product of her imagination. Maybe she hasn't been trapped - wherever she is - for a long time.

Richard Horne

The whole "Do you know about a place?" scene was creepy.

I'm not entirely convinced "Goodbye, my son" was hard confirmation that Bad Coop is Richard's father, but it's certainly likely, so another good call (anticlimatic).

Diane

For some reason I'd be surprised if she's Naido. I'm not sure why. Maybe she is.

I think that drunk guy in the jail is simply listed as "drunk" (instead of "Billy"), so Diane maybe?

Really though, I get this sense she's something right in front of us that we're not seeing. At the sheriff's station.

 

[burningranger]

Okay so i've just finished watching ep 17 and 18. Does anyone here feel Lynch really has an explanation for everything he threw at us this season?
I skimmed through most season past episode 7 or so....to see if any major plot points could be gleamed to connect the whole big picture together of all 3 season....

I felt like I was being trolled the whole season. Are the writers just throwing us red herrings left and right or what? Does Lynch want me to get something out of this viewing experience? Any emotional payoff?
Is Twin Peaks just one of those paintings I sometimes see in galleries...that really doesn't mean or point to anything at all? Like me expecting to go read a book and open the pages and seeing gibberish and random letters that were just thrown in?

Or is there a real point to me as a spectator expecting scenes to really tell me something? Bottom line....are we as viewers supposed to be constructing and inferring basically the same meaning behind all these events?

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

So Cooper re-wrote the past and saved Laura Palmer from BOB, but in doing so lost her to Judy. If one evil force doesn't get you another will!

I think when Sarah is stabbing the picture of Laura it's the past - when she realizes she has been foiled. Oh, yeah. I'm going to say that Sarah was the host body of Judy. I think she is more powerful and pulling the strings. The origin of evil. It almost seems as though JUDY is all encompassing evil where BOB was a part of it. Maybe a demon to the devil relation.

Teapot Jeffries told Mr C "you've already met JUDY" and when Good Cooper went to Teapot Jeffries, he told him "where to find JUDY"....and it led to the Palmer house where in this new narrative (timeline) where Laura hasn't been killed, that house was owned by Chalfort/Tremond. Is Lynch being very on the nose? Sometimes he is literal. I also think, since MIKE spoke the Fire Walk With Me poem right before meeting Teapot Jeffries, I took it to mean anything that Cooper was shown would be tainted with some evil aspect. JUDY was very present in everything that happened after that. Like, an omniscient entity who knows what's going on but can't control *everything* but has a hand in what it can.

Oh. I googled "Jiāo Dài" (JUDY) and it's Chinese for "to explain".....as in explains the plot....something we can't talk about as per Gordon Cole and Jeffries stated..wink, wink.


When Cooper is with Carrie Page, it's the future. It's after Cooper saved her in the woods but before they went back in time to visit the Palmer house together. An argument could be made that this is THE present or at least a parallel present and the starting point of another looping - as there is a scream heard down the street (JUDY controlling what she can) and the question, "what year is this?". Cooper/Laura being time traveling entities. Cooper may have saved his counterpart, thus ensuring balance persists all to do it over again and again.

There is a white horse and a dead body in Carrie Page's house. White horse also appeared in the Palmer living room to Sarah. That could just be another time looping marker. Like 258. Simultaneous occurrences happening throughout space/time.

Coopers face was superimposed just like Laura's was in opening credits. I saw that as paralleling the two good forces in this show. Cooper/Laura figures for good battling BOB/JUDY figures of evil (male/female balance with good/evil, btw).

It seems Lynch is still leaving room for adding more to this story although I doubt it. It would just be more looping, more years with small changes. Laura was saved and BOB was defeated but we don't know if these things ever go away. Good remains just as evil does it just manifests in slightly different ways throughout time.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

I just finished. I'm going to need some time to process this.

Like a year maybe.

This is the only thing I think I have an immediate response for:

I think when Sarah is stabbing the picture of Laura it's the past - when she realizes she has been foiled. Oh, yeah. I'm going to say that Sarah was the host body of Judy. I think she is more powerful and pulling the strings. The origin of evil. It almost seems as though JUDY is all encompassing evil where BOB was a part of it. Maybe a demon to the devil relation.

For some reason, when Cole explained the concept behind what eventually came to be called "Judy", I immediately thought about Sarah. It seemed likely to me that Judy was inside Sarah. And just like Bob inside of Leland created a kind of duplicity (Leland/Bob), there maybe existed a similar duplicity inside Sarah - Sarah never really knowing it was inside her. Then when we see Sarah stabbing the picture, I wondered if it was because Judy was angry that Laura got rescued. I assume Judy is that 'mother' that spit out Bob, like she's more a primordial form of evil than he is.

Overall, about the ending, the thing that stood out to me is that whole past/future shtick - with the whole sinister spinning fan thing in mind - it *feels* like the point of the ending is that if we look ahead and focus on desired results instead of discerning and looking at the existing repeating pattern, then we're bound to end up at some form of where we started (instead of something actually closer to what we desire).

Also, I was totally wrong about Diane/Naido. For some reason, it felt too easy.

Plus, no clear Audrey closure.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Does anyone here feel Lynch really has an explanation for everything he threw at us this season?

[...]

Is Twin Peaks just one of those paintings I sometimes see in galleries...that really doesn't mean or point to anything at all?

I'm inclined to say yes to the second statement, except I wouldn't say "doesn't mean or point to anything at all" because it does have meaning and/or points to something for some people. It seems to me like Lynch puts forth something like archetypes with his characters, and 'the game' (the purpose, for me, what I get out of it) is to look at what thoughts or emotions it triggers in me and then compare it to what others say.

I think if you watch Lynch wanting a clear, coherent storyline then you're probably going to have a bad time.

Like that creepy-ass moment (can't remember which episode) with the histrionic woman who wouldn't stop honking her horn, and the girl in the seat next to her who was getting sick: I feel like it was a perfectly executed little microcosm of the damage that thoughtless histrionics can cause. I kinda feel like Twin Peaks (the series, not the town in the series) is really just a big folder of such symbols.

 

[burningranger]

I'm inclined to say yes to the second statement, except I wouldn't say "doesn't mean or point to anything at all" because it does have meaning and/or points to something for some people. It seems to me like Lynch puts forth something like archetypes with his characters, and 'the game' (the purpose, for me, what I get out of it) is to look at what thoughts or emotions it triggers in me and then compare it to what others say.

I think if you watch Lynch wanting a clear, coherent storyline then you're probably going to have a bad time.

Like that creepy-ass moment (can't remember which episode) with the histrionic woman who wouldn't stop honking her horn, and the girl in the seat next to her who was getting sick: I feel like it was a perfectly executed little microcosm of the damage that thoughtless histrionics can cause. I kinda feel like Twin Peaks (the series, not the town in the series) is really just a big folder of such symbols.

Can't say it's the first time I heard it explained like that, but I guess I tend to forget that angle. It does relax my body/mind when I think about it...and it make simpler to understand. No longer feels like mindfuck because we are entering a realm where you don't expect things to make sense in the same way you are used to. Much of the friction I feel is due to that I think.

I always wondered if people who claim to love his work (the weird stuff, not the movie with the old guy on a lawnmower or the elephant man or dune kind of deal) are just posers....potheads....fans of horror (who usually like things for the shock factor) or whatever.....cause a lot of his stuff is mentally oppresive. I mean, non-linear I understand and like...something like Christopher Nolan's work....but when so much work is put into something, the person is not insane, you feel attracted to it...but feel you can't chew what youhave put in your mouth....it frustates me to no end.

But as I put my symbolic glasses on....mentally going through some of what I've seen...it does make sense. I can even sense how it becomes much more enjoyable to watch it from that angle. I'll have to adjust my mindframe in subsquent viewings. I guess maybe for some people that just lends by default in a less deliberate manner. Is this what pure Ni storytelling is?

Still season 1 and 2 were probably my favourite TV experience ever...and it was much easier to follow...and immensely enjoyable so there's that too. The contrast that season 3 represents...is a bit unnerving. As I thought about it today...I realized how having Coop be in his normal state though immediatelly made everything ten times more enjoyable to me. He was the connective tissue of all that weirdness in the past...and I felt this season...that was severely lacking.

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

I just finished. I'm going to need some time to process this.

Like a year maybe.

This is the only thing I think I have an immediate response for:



For some reason, when Cole explained the concept behind what eventually came to be called "Judy", I immediately thought about Sarah. It seemed likely to me that Judy was inside Sarah. And just like Bob inside of Leland created a kind of duplicity (Leland/Bob), there maybe existed a similar duplicity inside Sarah - Sarah never really knowing it was inside her. Then when we see Sarah stabbing the picture, I wondered if it was because Judy was angry that Laura got rescued. I assume Judy is that 'mother' that spit out Bob, like she's more a primordial form of evil than he is.

Overall, about the ending, the thing that stood out to me is that whole past/future shtick - with the whole sinister spinning fan thing in mind - it *feels* like the point of the ending is that if we look ahead and focus on desired results instead of discerning and looking at the existing repeating pattern, then we're bound to end up at some form of where we started (instead of something actually closer to what we desire).

Also, I was totally wrong about Diane/Naido. For some reason, it felt too easy.

Plus, no clear Audrey closure.

Yeah. Audrey, Billy, Charlie seemed to be a red herring. Unless she is "the dreamer" (?) but we'll never know that.

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

I'm inclined to say yes to the second statement, except I wouldn't say "doesn't mean or point to anything at all" because it does have meaning and/or points to something for some people. It seems to me like Lynch puts forth something like archetypes with his characters, and 'the game' (the purpose, for me, what I get out of it) is to look at what thoughts or emotions it triggers in me and then compare it to what others say.

I think if you watch Lynch wanting a clear, coherent storyline then you're probably going to have a bad time.

Like that creepy-ass moment (can't remember which episode) with the histrionic woman who wouldn't stop honking her horn, and the girl in the seat next to her who was getting sick: I feel like it was a perfectly executed little microcosm of the damage that thoughtless histrionics can cause. I kinda feel like Twin Peaks (the series, not the town in the series) is really just a big folder of such symbols.

Lynch is also heavily into Hinduism/Transcendental Meditation. He has a whole foundation set up. It's my opinion but I'm sure that's where a lot of his inspiration and symbolism comes from and why the same themes repeat throughout most of his work. (apparently you can "see" visions / meet entities-guides in deep state TM sessions).

 

[anticlimatic]

@MDP2535 [MENTION=7842]Z Buck McFate[/MENTION]
Im still digesting the finale (probably going to take a lonnnnnnnnnng while), but there's a couple things I'd like to comment on and a couple specific questions I'd like to posit.

1) if Judy has been in Sarah Palmer since that bugfrog crawled into her mouth how did it show up in that glass box after Cooper? I always assumed that it followed cooper from the black lodge into the white lodge (with Dianne), and then from there into the real world, where it crept off, off screen, to inhabit Sarah palmer in that episode where she freaked out at the supermarket. Dark Coop had something to do with that glass box- was it all part of his elaborate scheme to dodge the 25 year switch, and the Judy showing up thing was an unintended side effect/consequence?

2) Why were cooper and Diane driving an old piece of shit car to that motel in the alternate dimension and why did they shack up for sex? At first I thought maybe it was to help Diane cope with being raped since reliving traumatic experiences in a more controlled environment is a therapy technique to overlap bad memories with good ones, but I have another ridiculous theory on that to air- what if they briefly traveled back in time to inhabit the young couple we saw in the bob origin episode (or a different couple named Richard and Linda) the way bob and mike inhabited people in our world, for the sake of getting them to stop at a hotel and fuck for the sake of reproducing. Two (love) birds, one (child) stone. When Diane sees a doppelgänger of herself standing at the motel, maybe it's suggesting that Diane is separate from what we are seeing her as in the car. Maybe her and cooper look like each other to each other, but maybe they are different people altogether.

3) the last scene of the series reminded me so much of the last Audrey scene. Both felt to me like that moment you realize you're in a dream or nightmare and wake up from it. Laura hears her mother call her name and everything blacks out and collapses- I can't tell you how many times as a kid I had dreams end the exact same way because my own mother was calling my name to wake me up and I could hear it from within the dream. With Audrey it was the sudden unexpected interruption of violence and the surge of emotion on its heels- get me out of here! (Wake me up!) and up she came.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Yeah. Audrey, Billy, Charlie seemed to be a red herring. Unless she is "the dreamer" (?) but we'll never know that.

I don't feel like they were red herrings so much as they were abstract brush strokes intended to add something to the whole. I'm leaning towards thinking Audrey simply went insane at some point (which does run in the family, she mentioned this in the original series when explaining her brother Johnny's condition to Cooper).

Lynch is also heavily into Hinduism/Transcendental Meditation. He has a whole foundation set up. It's my opinion but I'm sure that's where a lot of his inspiration and symbolism comes from and why the same themes repeat throughout most of his work. (apparently you can "see" visions / meet entities-guides in deep state TM sessions).

I don't know much about Hinduism or TM, but something that kept occurring to me while watching this season was the Lojong Slogan (as per Buddhism - which I think he is influenced by as well): Regard all dharmas as dreams. Basically it means: regard your own perception as mostly your own confabulated narrative, because a tremendous amount of what we perceive as 'reality' is actually a fallible construct of learned or self-confabulated information.

1) if Judy has been in Sarah Palmer since that bugfrog crawled into her mouth how did it show up in that glass box after Cooper? I always assumed that it followed cooper from the black lodge into the white lodge (with Dianne), and then from there into the real world, where it crept off, off screen, to inhabit Sarah palmer in that episode where she freaked out at the supermarket. Dark Coop had something to do with that glass box- was it all part of his elaborate scheme to dodge the 25 year switch, and the Judy showing up thing was an unintended side effect/consequence?

My own vague impressions: it's more like Sarah was simply touched/infected by Judy, rather than being directly possessed by her? Judy seems more like a primordial force than a distinct entity.

When the bugfrog crawled into the adolescent girl's mouth - I'm kind of wondering if that was meant to be an 'every girl' thing, or even 'every adolescent' thing, rather than it being one of the single characters. As if the onset of nuclear weapons either created or fed "Judy" and fundamentally corrupted human nature in some way. That girl was something practically right out of Norman Rockwell painting, and the adolescents in Twin Peaks have been portrayed as reckless and growing up way too fast.

I can't remember all the people who fell asleep while the woodsman repeated, "This is the water and this is the well. Drink full, and descend." But I see them (the ones who fell asleep) more as representatives of some group than as actual individuals.

2) Why were cooper and Diane driving an old piece of shit car to that motel in the alternate dimension and why did they shack up for sex? At first I thought maybe it was to help Diane cope with being raped since reliving traumatic experiences in a more controlled environment is a therapy technique to overlap bad memories with good ones, but I have another ridiculous theory on that to air- what if they briefly traveled back in time to inhabit the young couple we saw in the bob origin episode (or a different couple named Richard and Linda) the way bob and mike inhabited people in our world, for the sake of getting them to stop at a hotel and fuck for the sake of reproducing. Two (love) birds, one (child) stone. When Diane sees a doppelgänger of herself standing at the motel, maybe it's suggesting that Diane is separate from what we are seeing her as in the car. Maybe her and cooper look like each other to each other, but maybe they are different people altogether.

Cooper's demeanor seemed changed a little bit the moment it showed them in that car, at the beginning of the episode. It's almost like both Coopers had merged together. Especially when it became clear that Cooper stopped at the motel to shack up - that's just not like Good Cooper, but it was too toned down to be Bad Cooper. Throughout the episode, he spoke and behaved exactly like something right in the middle between the two. At the "Judy's" restaurant, there were distinct traces of Bad Cooper in the way he behaved and how flat the affect was in his voice. That, and Diane seeing herself at the motel, gave me the impression that both of them were somewhere exactly in the middle, like both their good and bad versions were present. It wasn't clear which 'Diane' was the good one or the bad one; it was a place where every version was something in the middle.

And my impression of the "Linda and Richard" note is that it was meant to indicate how completely milquetoast and cheap their 'in the middle' tryst had been - remove the extraordinary qualities of Good Cooper's character and a relationship with him becomes generic.

3) the last scene of the series reminded me so much of the last Audrey scene. Both felt to me like that moment you realize you're in a dream or nightmare and wake up from it. Laura hears her mother call her name and everything blacks out and collapses- I can't tell you how many times as a kid I had dreams end the exact same way because my own mother was calling my name to wake me up and I could hear it from within the dream. With Audrey it was the sudden unexpected interruption of violence and the surge of emotion on its heels- get me out of here! (Wake me up!) and up she came.

I have also experienced this literally - having the sound of alarm clock (or some noise coming in from an open window, etc) play some role in the dream, until I finally realize it's actually a noise in the waking world - but I have also experienced a waking version of this in which I realize I was trapped in a thought pattern because I couldn't see outside of it and mistook it for 'everything there is to see about this situation'. If that makes sense. The ability to see outside the pattern feels like 'waking up'.

I can't be bothered to search for studies to cite (I can only recall that there were several), but I can remember reading something like the amygdala releases *something* that makes us feel this or that emotion, and our mind fills in the blanks about the reason for that emotion before we're even consciously aware we're feeling something.

And so, my own first impression (and I have no idea if it's remotely what Lynch intended) of those two alarming moments (Audrey and the ending) is that moment in run-of-the-mill consciousness when something causes a sudden spike in strong negative emotion and the mind scrambles to make sense of it. Like I wrote above, the Lojong "Regard all dharmas as dreams" kept occurring to me. It's like several characters were trapped in their own bad dream, and it's difficult to tell whether they're actually trapped there or if they're simply trapped in 'the dream' (their own perception).

It's ambiguous with Audrey, because of that super fast clip of her in the white room. Was she actually in the Roadhouse and flashing back to when she was in a mental health facility? Or was it the other way around (which the slow dance would suggest)? Or was that brief clip just to indicate how very chaotic things felt to her in that moment? Right now I'm personally leaning towards thinking all of the images/scenes with Audrey were intended to depict something like Audrey's current experience. When we meet people, or even people we've known for years - what we see is external. We can glean what's going on with Theory of Mind and all that, but it's still external. We're accustomed to doing this even with characters in movies and books and whatnot where we are not directly given an internal dialogue (usually comprised completely of words) - and I'm wondering if Lynch is giving us internal dialogue through images/extraordinary actions (like her dance) instead of words. Maybe people didn't actually move aside to watch her dance - maybe she's just remembering what it was like when they did.

****

I'm kind of disappointed in the ending because I wanted Cooper to end up back in the calm of Woke-sville. It's kind of Agent Cooper's whole shtick: his character in the original series was serene awareness incarnate. He seemed to perceive absolutely everything with a sense of wonder. It was practically impossible to offend him or trigger him - with the exception that something about his past with Windom Earle triggered some kind of fear. But for the most part, he embodied an extraordinary degree of calm detachment - the likes of which is actually rare to effectively convey so well in a fictional character. And I can't help but feel kind of sad that Lynch ended the series with a sort of panicked "Wait. What year is this?" Cooper.

 

[burningranger]

OMG just saw episode 16 (yeah I watched TP very non-linearly for this season). Why couldn't they have brought Cooper back sooner?! It was fucking amazing. His personality really is the heart of the show. I wish we had a full season with different writing to have him from the beggining somehow. And the old recurrnent musical themes during the show...they just add SOO much.