Twin Peaks

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terabin
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Re: Twin Peaks

#951 Post by terabin » Tue Sep 05, 2017 10:35 pm

Brilliant. Thank you, cdobbs .

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mfunk9786
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Re: Twin Peaks

#952 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:14 pm

Maybe the most intensely rapt I've ever been by a post on this forum. Bravo.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#953 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:16 pm

That was beautiful cdobbs how you just explained everything.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Twin Peaks

#954 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:18 pm

I'm glad none of us have to think about or discuss this fucking show again. Back to Game of Thrones - was that blue stuff extra hot fire, ice vapor, or just like super strong air conditioning?

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#955 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:26 pm

Yeah, incredibly insightful analysis cdobbs.

Zot!
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Re: Twin Peaks

#956 Post by Zot! » Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:11 am

I appreciate cdobbs' insightful look as well. That said, it troubles me for a couple of reasons.
1. Is "explain" really an appropriate translation of Jowday?, and why do we assume it's a Chinese word? The current alliteration (from CC) doesn't look Chinese. I've also seen people chime in that other translations are possible, including "scream".
2. An 18 hour riposte to ABC execs is not how I care to remember the lovely time we've had.
3. If the great evil is knowing too much, that makes the great evil pretty boring. Also equating spoiling a tv show to an atom bomb is in poor taste.

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#957 Post by Cde. » Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:10 am

swo17 wrote:That was beautiful cdobbs how you just explained everything.
There can thankfully never be a final answer, just different dreams. This one is great food for thought and worth spending a little time in.
Zot! wrote:Also equating spoiling a tv show to an atom bomb is in poor taste.
I don't think cdobbs did that - the point is that Lynch as the Giant, the man on the other side of the screen, responds to (is formed as an artist by) the atom bomb by creating a beautiful mystery. Later on, this mystery is destroyed, but not by the bomb.
Last edited by Cde. on Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

cdobbs
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Re: Twin Peaks

#958 Post by cdobbs » Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:15 am

Thank you all. To clarify, I don't speak Chinese and cannot confirm that translation of the phrase I've seen going around is correct, but Judy as the force that disrupts the carefully created dream world of Twin Peaks makes sense to me; others will arrive at their own interpretation. Lynch and Frost repeatedly asked fans to "keep the mystery alive" on social media during production, and that no doubt extends to The Return's afterlife as well. There's probably more here to analyze and debate here than there was in the two previous seasons combined.

I also don't think the entire 18 hours can be reduced to being about Lynch's grievances against TV executives and viewers. I didn't even get to Dougie Jones and Las Vegas, for instance. I think Lynch and Frost used the unprecedented amount of freedom granted them by Showtime to explore many of what they see as the troubles with the modern world. Frost and Lynch are two men in their 60s and early 70s, respectively, who both have young children. I had just seen The Art Life before episode 6 and thought of Lynch's toddler running around his studio in that documentary after the hit-and-run scene w/ Richard Horne, and what a frightening scenario it must have been to conceive. Twin Peaks the town is breaking down since we last saw it. More than one character is seen with strange fluid dripping from their mouth; drugs seem to be consuming the youth more than ever; time is out of joint and the light is dimming. There is still compassion at work though, in Dougie's effortless transformative power over his previously neglected family and the Las Vegas crime world, Carl Rodd attempting to look after his trailer park residents, and Bobby Briggs' improbable maturation, for instance.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Twin Peaks

#959 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:00 am

Here's a quote from an Oct. 8th, 2015 article in the Everett Washington Herald:

"The 'Twin Peaks' house was featured in The Herald in 2014 when it was for sale. Then-owner Marilyn Pettersen recalled in Andrea Brown’s article how 'Peaks freaks' would sometimes knock on the door or take pictures. Snohomish County property records show the house was sold in September 2014 for $500,000 to Timothy and Mary Reber".


Mary Reber is credited as playing "Alice Tremond" (the current owner of the "Palmer" house) in the final scene of Episode 18...which, to me, is a clear indication by Lynch that the final portion of the episode takes place in "reality".

While I absolutely believe that Lynch and Frost are commenting on the nature of creativity and on the history of the show itself...
SpoilerShow
...I now feel almost certain that, in the same way the final forty minutes of Mulholland Dr. presents the "reality" of Diane's circumstances, the Odessa, TX sequence to the end represents the "reality" of Cooper/Richard and Laura/Carrie.

Another theory I've read suggests that the "dreamer" is not Cooper/Richard but Carrie Page. Being absent from Judy's Diner for three days (three days equaling three seasons of the show?), Carrie has created a fantasy to mask the horror that her life has become. The horse statue, #6 power line pole and other incidental things lying around the house were filtered into her dream. The evil, represented in this third season by Mr. C, is the force trying to bring Carrie back to reality whereas Agent Cooper is the part of Carrie's mind trying to prop up the fantasy.

I'm thinking that Lynch and Frost add a new twist to the Lost Highway/Mulholland Dr. conceit by having Cooper (a manufactured entity from Carrie's fantasy) cross over into the real world. He is a true tulpa who takes on his own identity apart from Carrie's imagination and is now completely bewildered to be outside the fantasy for the first time.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Twin Peaks

#960 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:27 am

One more idea regarding Audrey's story line...
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If Twin Peaks is the fantasy world concocted by Carrie Page, then the "story of the little girl who lives down the lane" that Audrey mentions could be the story of Carrie. Audrey is closely associated with the Road House and all of the various customers there may be telling the same story (from different perspectives) of Billy, Tina and the uncle who "may or may not have been there". Could this be Carrie's story? Could Billy, the lover with blood coming out of his nose and mouth, be the dead man on Carrie's sofa? Perhaps Audrey is Carrie's surrogate in this fantasy now that her original surrogate (Laura) has been removed.

Many fans have expressed frustration that Audrey's circumstances are not fully explained, but I now think the key to understanding her role is the mirror she is surprised to be looking into. The mirror is a direct replacement for Charlie. Her argument with her "husband" is really an argument with herself, and that argument appears to be about crossing the "threshold" back to reality and ending the "story" (fantasy). Audrey waking up to the reality that she is not in Twin Peaks could be a signal that Carrie needs to wake up as well.

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JamesF
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Re: Twin Peaks

#961 Post by JamesF » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:11 am

I quite enjoyed this post comparing Episode 18's conclusion to that of the final book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. (Spoilers below for that book as well as Peaks.)
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I'd even go one further and compare the ridiculous contrivance of Freddie Sykes being in the right place and time to defeat BOB with his magic glove, rather than Cooper, to The Dark Tower's ultimate nemesis The Crimson King being anti-climactically erased from existence by Patrick Danville, a character we have not met prior to late in the last book in the series (unless you've also read Insomnia), rather than Roland.

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#962 Post by Cde. » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:29 am

Roger Ryan wrote:Here's a quote from an Oct. 8th, 2015 article in the Everett Washington Herald:

"The 'Twin Peaks' house was featured in The Herald in 2014 when it was for sale. Then-owner Marilyn Pettersen recalled in Andrea Brown’s article how 'Peaks freaks' would sometimes knock on the door or take pictures. Snohomish County property records show the house was sold in September 2014 for $500,000 to Timothy and Mary Reber".


Mary Reber is credited as playing "Alice Tremond" (the current owner of the "Palmer" house) in the final scene of Episode 18...which, to me, is a clear indication by Lynch that the final portion of the episode takes place in "reality".

It's not quite reality. She's playing Alice Tremond, a lodge spirit, not Mary Reber. We're in the nonexistent town of Twin Peaks, featuring the nonexistent RR diner.
Roger Ryan wrote: While I absolutely believe that Lynch and Frost are commenting on the nature of creativity and on the history of the show itself...
SpoilerShow
...I now feel almost certain that, in the same way the final forty minutes of Mulholland Dr. presents the "reality" of Diane's circumstances, the Odessa, TX sequence to the end represents the "reality" of Cooper/Richard and Laura/Carrie.

Another theory I've read suggests that the "dreamer" is not Cooper/Richard but Carrie Page. Being absent from Judy's Diner for three days (three days equaling three seasons of the show?), Carrie has created a fantasy to mask the horror that her life has become. The horse statue, #6 power line pole and other incidental things lying around the house were filtered into her dream. The evil, represented in this third season by Mr. C, is the force trying to bring Carrie back to reality whereas Agent Cooper is the part of Carrie's mind trying to prop up the fantasy.

I'm thinking that Lynch and Frost add a new twist to the Lost Highway/Mulholland Dr. conceit by having Cooper (a manufactured entity from Carrie's fantasy) cross over into the real world. He is a true tulpa who takes on his own identity apart from Carrie's imagination and is now completely bewildered to be outside the fantasy for the first time.
I don't think there is any one dreamer. There are many - Laura Palmer, Carrie Page, Agent Cooper, Audrey Horne, and probably many more, crossing over between each other's collective dreams as they try to repress the pain of shattering trauma within their lives. The utter refusal to accept reality has gradually negated reality from the lives of the dreamers. In not accepting reality, a dreamer also denies their identity, and one person becomes fragmented into many. And so there is no longer any true reality or any true identity of the dreamer in the worlds they live within, just an infinite spiral of delusions born from an inability to accept a painful truth.
The true dreamer is something we can never see, because it exists outside of the sphere of the Twin Peaks TV show we are witnessing, a world born entirely from dreams.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Twin Peaks

#963 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:52 am

Cde. wrote: It's not quite reality. She's playing Alice Tremond, a lodge spirit, not Mary Reber. We're in the nonexistent town of Twin Peaks, featuring the nonexistent RR diner.
Well, that's why I put the word reality in quotes. Obviously, everything in the final episode is part of the fantasy of the TV show Twin Peaks (I'm not suggesting the ending is a Holy Mountain reveal), but I suspect Lynch was inspired to cast the actual homeowner as the "homeowner Alice Tremond" as a clue to how we are to view this parallel world. Really, the clearest giveaway is in the performances of MacLachlan and Lee which are more natural and less stylistic than the performances in any of the episodes (or movie) that came before. One could also point out that the three locations we are shown in the final portion of the episode seem to represent real-world equivalents to iconic Twin Peaks locations: the bland hotel Cooper/Richard is staying at stands in contrast to the Great Northern as Judy's Diner does for the Double R and the Valero gas station does for Big Ed's Gas Farm. Still, I'm fully open to your idea of the multiple dreamers. True to so much of Lynch's work, the tension or dysfunction in Twin Peaks: The Return seems to be caused by the characters using dreams or fantasy to deny the truth instead of illuminating it.

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Yakushima
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Re: Twin Peaks

#964 Post by Yakushima » Wed Sep 06, 2017 1:06 pm

Thank you cdobbs, Roger Ryan, mfunk and other for your excellent analysis and some great insights into the series. I just want to add that it seems to me there is no such moment in the show when we see a "true reality", they are all "dreams within dreams", including the last segment - however close to reality it may seem.
SpoilerShow
The Carrie's terrifying scream in the end is probably the true moment of awakening, as well as a wake-up signal for the viewer - to switch the TV off and to pay closer attention to the very real horrors of our own 2017.

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jindianajonz
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Re: Twin Peaks

#965 Post by jindianajonz » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:07 pm

cdobbs wrote:As mentioned elsewhere jiao dai roughly means "to explain."
I hate to cast any doubt on an awesome theory, but I keep seeing this and am a bit skeptical. Perhaps somebody who actually speaks the language can chime in, but my Mandarin speaking friends say that the "Jow Day" (Jiao Dei) pronunciation in the show doesn't really mean anything. "Jow Dye" (Jiao Dai) means tape, while the "to explain" definition seems to stem from "Jow Dow" (Jiao Dao) which is "to teach".

Still, I think it's in keeping with Lynch's overall philosophy to not let little details like this distract from an otherwise wonderful interpretation.

EDIT: I may have been wrong. Apparently they are referring to "Jiāo Dài", which more or less means "explain" but my friends say is more accurately translated as "instruct", like when telling a friend the steps for taking care of your dog while you are out of town.

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kcota17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#966 Post by kcota17 » Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:03 pm

Now the question is: when should we expect to see this on Blu-Ray? Anyone familiar with Showtime's usual release practices?

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Finch
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Re: Twin Peaks

#967 Post by Finch » Thu Sep 07, 2017 9:11 am

Showtime are owned by CBS. Maybe six months from now?

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Lost Highway
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Re: Twin Peaks

#968 Post by Lost Highway » Thu Sep 07, 2017 9:27 am

Not sure what to add apart from that the entire run was tremendous and did not disappoint. The last two episodes were extraordinary. After I watched episode 17 I wondered whether I'd watched to last episode by mistake, it brings everything full circle by taking Twin Peaks back to the start. Then episode 18 throws everything into question and it ends with a moment as (if not more) chilling as the end of season 2.

I have to admit that I had problems keeping up with everything week by week and some of the characters and plots I lost track of. I've gotten too used to bingeing shows and my memory is not what it used to be. That sad, it was mostly a show of moments and individual scenes for me and the whole thing was a mixture of funny and haunting the way only Lynch manages to pull off. Though often deliberately slow, I thought it was hypnotic and I was never bored. Will watch the whole thing again when the Blu-ray comes out.

Was "the little girl who lives down the lane" really a reference to the Jodie Foster movie ? I wish it was, it's an underrated film I've always liked.

connor
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Re: Twin Peaks

#969 Post by connor » Thu Sep 07, 2017 11:52 am

Hands-down the best theory I've read on the finale. Also one of the few to take the entirety of the Fireman's warnings and interventions into account.

cdobbs
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Re: Twin Peaks

#970 Post by cdobbs » Thu Sep 07, 2017 11:54 am

If "the little girl who lived down the lane" is a literal character, I assume it was the girl in New Mexico in part 8, who actually did live down a lane. I'm not convinced that girl was Sarah Palmer (the boy was Latino, definitely not Leland). Maybe each of the eggs the Experiment spits out represents a different "story," or timeline. If Audrey is aware of this girl's story perhaps she was displaced there in some way by Mr. C.

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solaris72
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Re: Twin Peaks

#971 Post by solaris72 » Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:01 pm

cdobbs wrote:I'm not convinced that girl was Sarah Palmer (the boy was Latino, definitely not Leland).
The boy doesn't have to be Leland for the girl to be Sarah.
SpoilerShow
The frogbug swallowed by the girl has a needle proboscis. When this needle-nosed lodge spirit shows up in the return, Sarah's face briefly appears. And when Sarah removes her face, this briefly appears.

connor
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Re: Twin Peaks

#972 Post by connor » Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:09 pm

solaris72 wrote:
cdobbs wrote:I'm not convinced that girl was Sarah Palmer (the boy was Latino, definitely not Leland).
The boy doesn't have to be Leland for the girl to be Sarah.
SpoilerShow
The frogbug swallowed by the girl has a needle proboscis. When this needle-nosed lodge spirit shows up in the return, Sarah's face briefly appears. And when Sarah removes her face, this briefly appears.
Yeah, I don't understand this idea that the boy has to be Leland. Unless everyone thinks Leland and Sarah met and fell in love at age 13.

The date on the screen skipped ahead 11 years for the "Got a Light?" sequence -- from 1945 to 1956. Why? Seems to me they did it to make the approximate age for the 12-13 year-old girl-who-swallowed-a-bug line up with someone who gave birth to their first child in 1972 -- when Laura Palmer was likely born. That little girl would've been 28 or 29 in 1972. Seems about right. Grace Zabriskie herself was born in 1941 and would've been 15 in 1956.

cdobbs
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Re: Twin Peaks

#973 Post by cdobbs » Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:22 pm

I know the boy not being Leland doesn't mean the girl can't be Sarah, I'm saying it's inconclusive. The Experiment spewed multiple eggs that presumably all hatched bugs.

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John Cope
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Re: Twin Peaks

#974 Post by John Cope » Thu Sep 07, 2017 7:18 pm

From the critic and writer David Auerbach comes this interpretive theory and it's about the most thorough and best one I've seen. Should become the de facto one afaic.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#975 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 07, 2017 7:21 pm

That's the same link connor posted earlier today.

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