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Twin Peaks

CS2x

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Sprite Machine

Sprite Machine

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Posted
9 hours ago, scottcr said:

I'm convinced of this now.. during the '2' phase... everything is in twos. Headlights, passengers, cars passing the station, traffic lights. All pairs.

 

and of course, passing by the double R.

Confirmation bias. There'll be a lot of this sort of thing in the coming weeks.

 

Don't look for patterns, look for meaning.

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V3zna

V3zna

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19 hours ago, Grobbelboy said:

A beautiful post stolen from the Something Awful forums:

 

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Theory and analysis, long and meandering so feel free to skip:

In Part 2, the Arm-tree discusses the number 253 with Cooper, along with the phrase "time and time again." In Sheriff Truman's office, time begins to get wonky and the clock moves back and forth. Time is stuck at exactly 2:53. This is where the Arm is going to call Cooper back for the next phase of their plan: to save Laura Palmer, because to quote the Log Lady in both Season 3 and the Bravo introduction to the pilot: "Laura is the One." What this means is ambiguous, but she seems to be the antithesis to Judy.

From there the Lodge pulls away those with knowledge of just what the hell is going on: Coop and Diane who had been trapped living inside the White Lodge as Naido, and Cooper calls for Gordon at the last moment taking him, too. For those in the Sheriff station, time is frozen at 2:53. Cooper is taken to yet another back entrance to the Lodges - the Great Northern basement - and uses his own room key to open it (obviously this makes no sense - perhaps the key was attuned to the Lodges since he took it with him inside? Lodge logic is illogical). From there things are pretty plain: the plan of Cooper and Mike is to time-travel via Jeffries, the only human who has time-travelled in the series thus far, using the non-linearity of the Lodges, and save Laura Palmer from her fate.

Cooper succeeds in saving Laura's life. When she is whisked away at the end of Part 17, she is taken by the White Lodge (which is obviously the "home" where the Cooper in the FWWM timeline is taking her to, not the Palmer household) to a new, safer life - as Carrie Page in Odessa, TX. The White Lodge entrance is at Jack Rabbit's Palace and Odessa, TX is home to the world's largest jackrabbit. Laura's memories are perhaps Dougie'd and she lives her new life there.

Twin Peaks the Series is not entirely undone. There is still a Missing Persons case for Cooper to investigate in the town. BOB is still there for them to battle. Coop would still follow Annie into Glastonbury Grove. Nothing major is undone except Laura's murder. We can assume FWWM ends with Leland going to the Cabin, finding only Ronette, and becoming increasingly hostile. It's possible he even kills Ronette there, but the disappearance of the troubled prom queen is just as likely to set off the town just as much as her murder.

From Laura's disappearance Coop is pulled into his own past, but things in the Red Room are different. The Arm-tree echoes Audrey's lines in her dreamreality ("Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane? Is it?"), hinting that Audrey might have been deposited there - perhaps the nurse who took Annie's owl ring transferred it to Audrey somehow? Coop's reaction to Dead-Laura's whispering is different, too: In episode 2 it was a pained grunt but now it's a "huh" of confusion. The Red Room Cooper we see in Part 18 is learning all of this for the first time, but now knows what he has to do. This is solidified by Leland's urging him to "find Laura," which is the key to everything. Note: This is not the Doppelganger Leland but the real one without BOB corruption - Doppelgangers have grey eyes in the Lodge, as seen in the Season 2 finale and with DoppelCoop in the beginning of Part 18.

Part 2's version of all of this is different. After meeting with the Arm-Tree Cooper emerges into a Red Room hallway with some weird shifting effects. He then heads for a curtain but is blocked and has to turn back. In Part 2 Cooper finds Leland as well but enters FROM THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROOM. Instead of being blocked he uses whatever Lodge power/knowledge he has and opens the entrance to Glastonbury, the same way he came in. There Diane is waiting for him, but it is 25 years later in the Laura-dead timeline. Cooper has to awaken Laura, but she's not alive here.

Here Cooper and Diane retain the knowledge, despite the fact that they're now probably somewhere around Part 1 of Season 3 time-wise, hence why they question their identities (having been replaced by Doppelgangers and Tulpas respectively). Thanks to Cooper's intuitive understanding of the Fireman's cryptic clues, he knows how to get to the reality where he saved Laura - driving to the point where he and Diane cross realities, though there is danger they may lose themselves. Cooper can feel the electricity there and even sees another symbol of Judy - the electric tower. He looks at his watch (is it 2:53?) and steadies himself. I'm not sure exactly where they are geographically at this point - 430 miles away from Twin Peaks, it would seem. They drive through the gate and come out in darkness, changed.

Their new selves are Richard and Linda, new lives not unlike Dougie for Coop before. They are both in danger here of losing their true personalities in this world where Laura survived. They pull up to a motel (the same one where Jeffries stays?) and Diane sees her true self reaching out. The true Diane disappears. They sleep together in the hotel room, Cooper obviously different as well. During their lovemaking, Diane covers Cooper's face as she is subsumed by her new self - she no longer recognizes Richard, because he's still mostly Cooper. Horrified, Linda leaves in the middle of the night.

Cooper awakens, confused, but recalls the Fireman's message vaguely when he reads the note. He emerges from the room into a different parking lot, now in Odessa, and in fact with a different car (Richard's?), though he pauses - he's a bit confused by the situation, but resigns himself to the mission: Find Laura. 

He wanders to Judy's, assuming he's been put in the right place and right time just like the Fireman put DoppelCoop in the right place and right time to get taken out by Lucy and Freddie. Coop expects to find Laura here but does not and goes on a hunch that Alive-Laura is still connected to Judy's. His temperament is changed by becoming Richard - he is more harsh, but still has an unchecked sense of what is good. Dale Cooper is a cowboy hero and he saves a random waitress on the way to finding Laura.

At Alive-Laura's house he sees the pole and hears electricity, a sign that he's on the right track. Here he meets Carrie Page, the Dougie Jones to her Laura Palmer - notable, however, is that Kyle MacLachlan is never credited as Dougie Jones, but Sheryl Lee receives a credit for both Laura AND Carrie. At the front door Carrie has no knowledge of Laura but does seem to bristle at the mention of Sarah Palmer (most certainly Judy/the Jumping Man and I would also assume most certainly the girl who ate the Frogroach). Coop wants to bring Laura to Sarah for unexplained reasons - possibly to destroy Judy.

In Carrie's house, Coop finds a few odd things: a corpse with what looks to be a BOB orb emerging from its stomach, a white horse in front of a blue plate, and white paint next to an assault rifle. It would appear that Carrie is still being attacked by agents of Judy even in this reality, though she can kill them. She is attempting to hide her self-defense murder by painting over the scene of the crime, though it's been awhile as the corpse is attracting flies. The horse is decor, but looks like a pupil: the horse is the white of the eyes.

Carrie and Cooper travel to Twin Peaks where Carrie falls asleep and Laura peeks through ("In those days I was too young to know any better"). They arrive at their destination but are met by Lodge Spirits (now Tremond, before Chalfont) at the door to the Palmer Household. It's unclear whether Cooper knows the Chalfont/Tremond/lodge connection, but he definitely recalls the name Chalfont from Carl Rodd's explanation of the trailer in FWWM. The fact that Alice Tremond and her husband seem to be awake when it's obviously early morning (the RR Diner is closed) should be hint that they're a front. 

Dejectedly Cooper leaves with Carrie, but he reconsiders. He hears a bit of radio static, stumbles a bit, and asks "What year is this?" It's the "future", not the "past," though Cooper isn't so sure. Carrie, meanwhile, is also affected by this and hears Sarah/Judy's call. Here Laura awakens "100%" inside Carrie, now with her memories of the horrors she suffered in her previous life - all of which, save for her final murder, still occurred. She screams and, recognizing this, the Palmer house - controlled by Judy and the Black Lodge - shuts off. We're left with the final mystery of just what Dead-Laura whispered to Coop.

tl;dr: Cooper created a new timeline, but everything that happened happened. The past, however, dictates the future and Cooper exists now separate from himself (two Coopers) in the "future" of Season 3. This is definitely left open for a Season 4, where Cooper/Laura must confront Judy.

 

 

That absolutely nails it for me. There's nothing much left to decipher as whoever wrote that has summed everything up brilliantly.

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scottcr

scottcr

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Worth going back to episode 1.  After a reminder of the end of the original series, we see Coop sitting with the Fireman. 

 

He tells Coop to listen to the sounds, it's the same scratching sounds the coop hears when Laura is 'returned?' at the end of episode 17. The Fireman then says that it 'is home' now... he then tells Coop to remember 430, Richard and Laura and 2 birds with one stone... tells Coop that he's 'far away' and Coop vanishes with an electric crackle noise.

 

I reckon this is Big Dream Face Coop that we see at 2:53 in the Sherrifs office after the BOrB has been punched to the fiery pits. When coop 'teleports' to the great northern basement, it's the one that was with the fireman... a new quest to save Laura again begins.

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Ravern

Ravern

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Reading various (negative) comments around the web I've been struck by how much of a difference it makes for me having not watched the original series. I have watched nearly every David Lynch feature and my expectations came very from that instead. With this, the Dougie stuff which seems to have rankled some became enjoyable and endearing rather than frustrating. It does mean, however, that much of the deliberate "return" aspects were lost on me, and moments such as Ed/Norma or the return to old scenes that happened in Ep 18 lacked the weight that presumably they had for the rest of you.

 

Fuck me though the end of Episode 18 was terrifying. I can barely watch it again.

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Klatrymadon

Klatrymadon

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I was initially dreading that series 3 would be a conservative nostalgia exercise, so I've been thrilled with every moment of it, and relieved to find it antagonistic to that expectation. I've appreciated how far it has gone to unmoor itself from the Twin Peaks that people remember and love (myself included), to puncture nostalgia almost at every opportunity (not least by transforming so many familiar returning characters into grotesque monstrosities), and instead march forward as a continuation of Lynch's wider career, and a genuinely groundbreaking realisation of what is possible with television as art.

 

 

I thought the ending was perfect, too. Part 17 was a a fun piece of 'prestige' TV, but it would have been a mistake to end on such tidy narrative closure, IMO - and the show itself seems to mock the very notion of doing so, with Freddie's hilariously goofy fistfight against BOB. I liked that it got that kind of ending out of its/our system and pressed on with its own bleak, horrifying agenda, in what ended up being a kind of epilogue to FWWM. I loved the double gut-punches of the disorienting reshuffling of reality (pointing toward the supernatural elements in Twin Peaks being far more unsettling than just BOB and the other Lodge-dwellers sourcing garmonbozia), and the realisation of Coop's abject failure to really help Laura Palmer or undo the trauma that hangs like a miasma over the Palmer house.


At least, that was my initial reading. The following is a good "explanation" of the final scenes, in the sense that it enriches the things explained rather than diminishes them (unlike most labyrinthine fan theorising, imo). 


http://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/

 

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Rsdio

Rsdio

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41 minutes ago, Klatrymadon said:

I was initially dreading that series 3 would be a conservative nostalgia exercise, so I've been thrilled with every moment of it, and relieved to find it antagonistic to that expectation. I've appreciated how far it has gone to unmoor itself from the Twin Peaks that people remember and love (myself included), to puncture nostalgia almost at every opportunity (not least by transforming so many familiar returning characters into grotesque monstrosities), and instead march forward as a continuation of Lynch's wider career, and a genuinely groundbreaking realisation of what is possible with television as art.

 

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I thought the ending was perfect, too. Part 17 was a a fun piece of 'prestige' TV, but it would have been a mistake to end on such tidy narrative closure, IMO - and the show itself seems to mock the very notion of doing so, with Freddie's hilariously goofy fistfight against BOB. I liked that it got that kind of ending out of its/our system and pressed on with its own bleak, horrifying agenda, in what ended up being a kind of epilogue to FWWM. I loved the double gut-punches of the disorienting reshuffling of reality (pointing toward the supernatural elements in Twin Peaks being far more unsettling than just BOB and the other Lodge-dwellers sourcing garmonbozia), and the realisation of Coop's abject failure to really help Laura Palmer or undo the trauma that hangs like a miasma over the Palmer house.


At least, that was my initial reading. The following is a good "explanation" of the final scenes, in the sense that it enriches the things explained rather than diminishes them (unlike most labyrinthine fan theorising, imo). 


http://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/

 

 

Ha, I'd been meaning to post that in here too. I think I'm largely on board with it, though there are a few bits that don't feel quite right to me somehow.

 

 

Like the ending, it intuitively feels so terrifying and full of dread that it's hard to think of it as a victory. As obtuse as he can be narratively I think Lynch is very honest emotionally and if something feels terrible, it usually is. It could still kind of fit considering the content of the 'bomb', but I'm not 100% sold on it. Maybe it just has to sit for a while yet.

I don't think there's any way the episode 17 ending isn't at least partially meant as a cheeky pisstake of the desire for things to be all wrapped up, all mysteries solved, the band back together. No-one knows better than Lynch that although people say they want this, it kills the magic. Everyone's stood around in pure soap opera fashion (the worst kind, not the old school refracted Twin Peaks kind) while a comical deus ex machina takes place through a recently-introduced character who seems to have been designed from the ground up to be ridiculous and unsatisfying. There's even sandwiches on hand for everyone afterwards :lol:. Meanwhile a superimposed Cooper looks on, apparently concerned, as if to say  'No, this isn't right'.

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Anne Summers

Anne Summers

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Posted

Questions - 

 

 


Based on what I saw and then a little bit of reading of fan theories and stuff...

 

What is the deal with Sarah Palmer? Is she Judy? Has she always been Judy? Judging by her final scene in the Roadhouse a few episodes back, she is literally a monster with supernatural powers. With the talk of "mother" as someone to be scared of throughout this series - is Sarah the ultimate evil behind it all, as that seems to be what is suggested?

 

So we know there are multiple universes/ timelines at work here (Chapter 18 seems to confirm this) - does this explain the discrepancies between what we've seen happening, and the events described in the Secret History book? (I've read the book but can't remember what the discrepancies were - but I read early in this series that people spotted them as series 3 unfolded, and theorised that it meant Secret History is set in a parallel universe/ timeline).

 

How exactly did Cooper "save" Laura in the final episode? Like always with TP, I seem to watch it in a bit of a trance which means I miss some of the plot details. 

 

What was the deal with the "woodsmen" - where did they come from, what do they want? Also the Chalfont/Tremayne guys - I was blown away when I realised they were straight out of FWWM but I still don't quite get how they fit into the story. 

 
 

 

 

Edit: And the bomb/cage theory mentioned in a link above is very clever - but it doesn't take into account any of the "dream" stuff - and as the fact that we are in a dream is heavily signposted through every series, I think it needs to be accounted for by anyone trying the (probably futile) task of neatly summarising everything into one theory. 

 

Personally I think we're looking at an Invisibles situation (the Grant Morrison comic book) where there's actually a number of possible "solutions" to what's been going on - it could be a dream, it could be an epic struggle between cosmic forces of good and evil, it could be something else entirely - and it's down to the audience to decide which solution fits, with no particular correct answer, as far as the creator is concerned. 

 

From what I have read Morrison and Lynch have quite a bit in common in terms of how they view stories, the world, reality etc. 

 

Personally I like the dream idea - and the idea that we (the audience) are the dreamers. It's been sewn into the series from the start with little elements like the log lady, and Nadine's super-human strength, and all the stuff in this newest series about golden shovels - things that don't make sense but would be perfectly normal in a dream (at least normal enough that no one would think them particularly out of place, or give too much thought to them at all). 

 

 

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Anne Summers

Anne Summers

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Oh and one more question regarding Ep 18



Who was the body in Laura's house in Odessa ?

 

Was Twin Peaks the first show to use the mystery format - that is, it has an overarching mystery as the key plot device to keep viewers following a lengthy TV series (and ultimately, watching a lot of adverts)?

I am sure it can't have been but can't think of any good examples that came before it, right now... except ... I just remembered The Prisoner!

Anyway, from Twin Peaks I think you can draw a clear line of influence to The X-Files and then Lost, which were probably the biggest TV shows of this type. After Lost, the waters get muddied with probably hundreds of shows trying to do something similar - off the top of my head I can think of Heroes, The Returned, The 100, The Dome (or whatever it was called, the Stephen King one about the town trapped in a dome). Lots of these were probably great shows but their main trick was just trying to replicate the mystery format, and the market was diluted, so none of them achieved the same level of mainstream reverence. And lots of them were just bad. 

Anyway rambling a bit there, just general thoughts on what's come on TV between season 2 and 3 of Twin Peaks. Did I miss anything glaringly obvious? (Probably). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Rsdio

Rsdio

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Anne Summers:

 

 

Sarah isn't Judy any more than Leland was Bob. They are spirits that have taken up residence in their bodies, at some times they lie dormant and other times they overtake the host. But Judy is more powerful than Bob (having created him) and seems more able to leave at will or be in multiple places at once, since she was presumably also the thing that emerged from the glass box in New York.


I've got to say I wasn't really a fan of the bug girl in episode 8 being Sarah since on a superficial level it wasn't a good likeness of her (though finding someone who could convince as a young Grace Zabriskie probably isn't that easy, as distinctive-looking as she is) and the event seems to take place way down near New Mexico or somewhere which contradicts her and Leland as childhood sweethearts. But more importantly because it seemed like such a major retcon, especially in combination with the White Lodge sending Laura to Earth and the A-bomb enabling the Black Lodge spirits. I thought there was a real danger of things being over-explained, made mundane and the human element diminished but I'm getting more used to the idea now. Probably more by accident than design, there's enough in the original run to just about make it work - Sarah's psychic powers are shown (perhaps most pertinently in her visions of the white horse) as well as commented on by others (Donna says that Laura always said there was something 'spooky' about her mother) and some degree of complicity in Leland's abuse of Laura always seemed obvious to me. On some level she knew, it's there in her reactions to Laura and Leland in Fire Walk With Me. And if Sarah now comes from outside Twin Peaks it's logical enough that she would end up there with Leland since Judy and Bob would be naturally be drawn to each other.

That theory posted above does take into account the dream business. It suggests that the entire second half of episode 18 takes place in a dream world forged by the White Lodge to trap Judy, which has then been largely shaped by its once lone, dreaming inhabitant - Laura. There's plenty of evidence that it's easily malleable by the new dreamers it contains: Diane seeing her doppelganger as it becomes obvious she's going to have to relive the trauma of her rape by a man sharing Cooper's face, the changing motel/cars/names etc. The original dreamer can also still manipulate it since she manages to blow out the Palmer house via her emotional reaction.

That said, I don't think there's only one dreamer. There are many - from Gordon's Monica Belucci dream to us, the viewers. Audrey's might be the second most prominent on screen and I've got a hunch that some of the more 'random' bits dotted around the series, as well as almost everything that occurred at The Roadhouse, were parts of her dream. Like the guy who stuck his head in the RR and shouted about Billy, before the diner changed completely in the next shot (to the 'real' version?) - that was David Lynch's son, who also just happened to play in one of the bands at The Roadhouse. I've been trying to think whether Billy was ever mentioned anywhere else that wasn't The Roadhouse or Audrey's 'home' and have come up short, but if there's something I've forgotten it might easily prove I'm over-reaching there!

And I'm guessing the body in Carrie's house (isn't that name also suggestive of an explosion of psychic power due to adolescent pain?) is a Black Lodge hitman of some kind since there seems to be an orb coming out of his stomach. It seems like Cooper's timing might have been bang on if she's got to the point of fending off Judy's agents.

 

 

It's true that there likely won't ever be a 'true' interpretation though and that's definitely how Lynch would want it. He's pretty far from a prescriptive artist, he values the dialogue between the work and the viewer more than most.

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Anne Summers

Anne Summers

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I think it's clear that with Twin Peaks Lynch's thinking was simply to create a slice of the American Dream and then show how there are parallels between the dark side of that life and the supernatural horror we lap up as popular entertainment. "I won't rub their faces in it" he thought, "Just hint at the darkness underlying everything in a cinematic and creepy way". 

FWWM was basically - "Okay, subtle doesn't go down well with some people. So I'll spell it out - this is what the dark side of life in modern America looks like - children being horrifically abused by their parents. This is what's at the root of it all."

The Return is "You waited 25 years for this show to come back, you still want everything spelled out to you? Here's something even more incomprehensible and dark. Because it's what you deserve, you craven voyeurs of human filth". 

 

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Calashnikov

Calashnikov

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Posted

I mostly go along with the theory posted above, but...

 

 

I read the climax as being a failure to defeat Judy, rather than a victory.

 

I too see Laura as being the dreamer of the events happening inside "the cage", and I think this can be confirmed by the distorted "Laura!" that you hear Sarah's voice call out, effectively waking her up from the dream.

 

It's the same audio from when Sarah calls to wake Laura in the pilot episode on the morning she's found dead. Now that Coop has saved her from her murder, Sarah's call will now in fact wake her up, and return her to the Palmer residence, where her suffering will continue, further allowing Judy to consume her garmonbozia.

 

Or something. Fuck, I dunno.

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Rsdio

Rsdio

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18 minutes ago, Calashnikov said:

 

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It's the same audio from when Sarah calls to wake Laura in the pilot episode on the morning she's found dead. Now that Coop has saved her from her murder, Sarah's call will now in fact wake her up, and return her to the Palmer residence, where her suffering will continue, further allowing Judy to consume her garmonbozia.

 

 

Wow, I think it is the same audio too. You're definitely on to something with that.

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Klatrymadon

Klatrymadon

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Posted

I agree with you guys, by the way - I didn't mean to present the article as anything definitive, of course. Those final scenes create an atmosphere of things being profoundly, unbearably wrong. It seems unlikely that the utterly thwarted, baffled Coop had - aha! - Actually Won. But it definitely illuminates a lot of interesting stuff...

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