Twin Peaks

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Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1026 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:55 pm

mpavilion wrote:
swo17 wrote:It was perhaps a little disappointing because that outcome was telegraphed from the moment Freddie was introduced, and the execution of having these key characters all find themselves waiting in jail for several episodes until being shuffled to their marks upstairs was a little wanting, even if that was supposed to be the point.
Well, we knew being there was Freddie's "destiny," but we didn't know exactly why, or how it would play out... (I mean, until the moment the Bob-ball went on the attack, I don't think anyone could have predicted that exact scene!)
Someone on Reddit actually did predict Freddie would punch the Bob ball.

I saw Freddie as a comment on the contrivances of plot we accept in the service of a tidy resolution. He's a character whose only purpose is to punch things really hard, who's only present because the guy who puts ideas into the movie screen told him to be there. Frost and Lynch do everything they can to draw attention to how utterly arbitrary he is.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1027 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:57 pm

But yeah, if the idea is that this is supposed to feel like an empty resolution, the actual finale totally makes up for that.

mpavilion
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1028 Post by mpavilion » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:00 pm

swo17 wrote:EDIT: Ha, I see you edited your post to make the same final point!
SYN-CHRON-ICITY!

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1029 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:02 pm

Beyond the satire/meta-commentary, I think Freddie is there to further the theme of the absurdity of fate. Sometimes fate means you get raped and murdered, sometimes it means you lose your child, sometimes it means you win at every poker machine, sometimes it means you'll punch a flying evil orb in the face. It makes no sense and you can't reason with it. All we can do is go with the flow.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1030 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:03 pm

Can we somehow fold that Chrysta Bell/Matthew Lillard interrogation scene into the "it's supposed to be terrible" explanation?

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Re: Twin Peaks

#1031 Post by mpavilion » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:04 pm

Cde. wrote:Someone on Reddit actually did predict Freddie would punch the Bob ball.
There's always "someone on Reddit"... :P
Cde. wrote:I saw Freddie as a comment on the contrivances of plot we accept in the service of a tidy resolution. He's a character whose only purpose is to punch things really hard, who's only present because the guy who puts ideas into the movie screen told him to be there. Frost and Lynch do everything they can to draw attention to how utterly arbitrary he is.
I buy this -- and in fact I have a (half-developed) theory in the metatextual vein, that the Fireman represents a kind of "author figure." Though he's also a "consumer" of media -- listens to a phonograph, has a nice projection room and big TVs on the ceiling, etc. There's definitely an intersection btw. the Fireman and self-aware "textuality," for those who are interested in thinking about that. (EDIT -- I guess you basically already said what I said, after you and with more unnecessary words, when you called the Fireman "the guy who puts ideas into the movie screen.")

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Re: Twin Peaks

#1032 Post by mpavilion » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:09 pm

swo17 wrote:Can we somehow fold that Chrysta Bell/Matthew Lillard interrogation scene into the "it's supposed to be terrible" explanation?
Why did you find this scene terrible -- was it something about the performances, or the details of Hastings' story?

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1033 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:11 pm

Both of the performances (though I guess Bell is always like that). It seemed like a bad first take to me.

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dda1996a
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1034 Post by dda1996a » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:12 pm

I know Lynch will never offer simple answers, and as someone who loved Lost Highway, FWWM and Mulholland, I did find it rather bewildering that we got so many irrelevant characters. I'm not talking about any returning characters (and I can live with that Audrey part), or the deaths of new characters like Richard, but I still don't get the point of so many lengthy scenes focusing on new characters only to never ever return to them. I know Lynch likes to do whatever he wants, but at least in all the randomness there was usually a point (even the multitude of scenes, like the monster behind the cafe etc. felt like they were serving a point). I hope there's another series, mostly because I don't feel as fine with the series ending like this, unlike how I felt after season 2 and FWWM.
I like Lillard, Bell always felt off

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1035 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:14 pm

swo17 wrote:Can we somehow fold that Chrysta Bell/Matthew Lillard interrogation scene into the "it's supposed to be terrible" explanation?
I wish.
Although Lillard was generally great.

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Re: Twin Peaks

#1036 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:15 pm

It was only really that scene where I thought his performance was off.
dda1996a wrote:I did find it rather bewildering that we got so many irrelevant characters.
If you're referring to Seyfried's character, I feel like that kind of morphed into the story between the boyfriend and Alicia Witt, which...had a really interesting conclusion even if I don't know what it means.

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dda1996a
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1037 Post by dda1996a » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:17 pm

At least that went... Somewhere. I was talking more about all those empty conversations in the Bang Bang Bar. Almost every episode from 10 until 16 had at least one scene there with new characters that served no point, except for those scenes with James.

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1038 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:20 pm

dda1996a wrote:I know Lynch will never offer simple answers, and as someone who loved Lost Highway, FWWM and Mulholland, I did find it rather bewildering that we got so many irrelevant characters. I'm not talking about any returning characters (and I can live with that Audrey part), or the deaths of new characters like Richard, but I still don't get the point of so many lengthy scenes focusing on new characters only to never ever return to them. I know Lynch likes to do whatever he wants, but at least in all the randomness there was usually a point (even the multitude of scenes, like the monster behind the cafe etc. felt like they were serving a point). I hope there's another series, mostly because I don't feel as fine with the series ending like this, unlike how I felt after season 2 and FWWM.
I like Lillard, Bell always felt off
I think with eg. the roadhouse vignettes Lynch is trying to give us the limited series version of a long running soap opera. We drop in on characters and hear their stories for the sake of hearing them, even though the authors don't have any real plan for taking those stories anywhere.
They're also there to add details to the picture Lynch is painting of the state of this world now, e.g. to show how drugs are taking over in Twin Peaks, how 'people are very stressed lately', or to build a general sense of unease.
I agree it's a jarring approach, especially given what we're used to. I think it will take a while of sitting with this show to reach a point of being satisfied to take it as it is, although personally I feel very satisfied by this as an ending in a way that I didn't feel after the season 2 finale. FWWM I could accept as an ending, and it's incredibly beautiful, but I think this season did as good a job as anyone could at closing the book on this universe.
Last edited by Cde. on Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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dda1996a
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1039 Post by dda1996a » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:23 pm

I know it's also having way more questions left open that we didn't have back after season 2. I don't know, I didn't mind them in the moment, but they were always random and pointless, and now that they finally served no point they feel more egregious just stuck there

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1040 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:39 pm

Do all those characters tie into the Audrey storyline, and therefore in some way reside in "our world"?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1041 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:41 pm

We saw the glove kid come into the Roadhouse with James, and we also saw Shelly hanging out there - so I don't think there's any sort of crazy alternate dimension stuff going on there - which makes the timing of Audrey's scene all the more vexing.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1042 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:48 pm

But all of those people are also actors that live in our world :P

mpavilion
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1043 Post by mpavilion » Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:57 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:We saw the glove kid come into the Roadhouse with James, and we also saw Shelly hanging out there - so I don't think there's any sort of crazy alternate dimension stuff going on there - which makes the timing of Audrey's scene all the more vexing.
I took the Roadhouse scenes with James, Shelly, etc. to be "real," and all the other Roadhouse convos (and unlikely band performances) to be part of Audrey's "fantasy," or whatever it was. Though this is complicated by the fact that we see "Chuck" in the last Roadhouse scene with James & Freddie; and that end-credits scene where Bing runs into the Double R and asks, "Has anyone seen Billy?!" So it appears "Chuck" and "Billy" may be "real people" (assuming these are the same Chuck & Billy). Heck, all the other folks in the random Roadhouse convos may be "real ppl" too; but I think the line of delineation is there.

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dda1996a
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1044 Post by dda1996a » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:01 pm

But we had conversations there since the start, Richard Horne was there too. It doesn't make sense that they are all in Audrey's head

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1045 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:03 pm

dda1996a wrote:But we had conversations there since the start, Richard Horne was there too. It doesn't make sense that they are all in Audrey's head
The whole thing is a collective dream. Audrey woke up and therefore left the dream, like Cooper does when he walks through the door in the basement of the Great Northern.

It's not all in any one person's head.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1046 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:10 pm

Maybe so, but then we're back to how these dream characters could have had more compelling throughlines within the plot of the dream. Lynch could have fit more in if he'd wanted to--he wasn't exactly wanting for time.

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1047 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:19 pm

swo17 wrote:Maybe so, but then we're back to how these dream characters could have had more compelling throughlines within the plot of the dream. Lynch could have fit more in if he'd wanted to--he wasn't exactly wanting for time.
I think he wanted it to have lose ends that don't go anywhere, like a dream. Dreams are fluid, literally made up as they go along. They often have a narrative through line but they aren't crafted in the way that a movie script typically is.
I don't find this entirely artistically satisfying, but it is what it is - as you say, Lynch had the freedom to do things differently and this is how he chose to do it.

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Re: Twin Peaks

#1048 Post by connor » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:21 pm

I think people are being a bit too literal about the whole "live inside a dream" thing. I think what is meant is: reality is mutable. When Cooper goes to the "pocket world" of the White Lodge and becomes "Richard," the world he left behind is now just "a dream," a memory. A "dream" that he has "awaken" from.

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dda1996a
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1049 Post by dda1996a » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:25 pm

I don't buy into that

Cde.
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1050 Post by Cde. » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:34 pm

connor wrote:I think people are being a bit too literal about the whole "live inside a dream" thing. I think what is meant is: reality is mutable. When Cooper goes to the "pocket world" of the White Lodge and becomes "Richard," the world he left behind is now just "a dream," a memory. A "dream" that he has "awaken" from.
To add to that, dreams can be seen as a way of talking about the veil before our eyes when we choose, consciously or unconsciously, to view the world in a certain way. So multiple people can enter into a shared dream.
I think Lynch is trying to make people more conscious with this series.

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