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That gum you like is going to come back in style -

Started by JOE SOAP, 15 May, 2014, 11:32:01 PM

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Link Prime


Muon

Awesome series finale. Not what I wanted to see, but then again I don't know shit.

I've seen theories making the rounds that Cooper successfully changed history, so all of the final episode is a bizarre dream the young, saved Laura (in 1989) has safely tucked inside her bed instead of going off and getting murdered. What do you reckon?

Link Prime


abelardsnazz

Oh wow. what a way to finish this off. It's going to take some processing but this could be my favourite TV series of all time, for the absolute purity and consistency of its vision.

Link Prime

Some genuine questions I've been pondering today:

- Is it now conclusive that Sarah Palmer is (or was possessed by) "Judy"?
- How is it possible that Tulpas's can sire human children?
- The dimension that Coop & Diane traveled to is an artificial construct right? Created by "Judy" (as a trap)?


Jimmy Baker's Assistant

A remarkable end to a remarkable show.

I'm not sure I liked all of it, but it was just so pure. Totally uncompromising in vision, and consistently brilliant in execution.

As to that last scene.... yeah, I can't even talk about it. Wow.


JOE SOAP

#96
Quote from: Link Prime on 05 September, 2017, 04:59:25 PM
- Is it now conclusive that Sarah Palmer is (or was possessed by) "Judy"?

I assume that was the gist of it and Doppel-Dale/Bob was trying to return to Mother/Judy.

Quote- How is it possible that Tulpas's can sire human children?

They seem physically capable of doing just about everything else a human can do so why not – but if Richard Horne is an example of Tulpa progeny, then they aren't exactly the full shilling.

Quote- The dimension that Coop & Diane traveled to is an artificial construct right? Created by "Judy" (as a trap)?

These are my own rough thoughts on the last instalment which I do think is The End – quite a few on the web-o-tron are thinking there's more to come, that it can't end here. I disagree. I think the answers are there.


The crossing worlds seems more an attempt at an escape from the forces that were preventing Laura's return to Twin Peaks (Sarah attacking Laura's picture as time is fracturing).

Cooper all ready understood to where and what they were going to when he drove into the different world with Diane to Look for Laura – he warns Diane things may not be the same. It alludes to the words of Mike's monologue: One chants out between two worlds which Mike repeats to Cooper as he enters The Convenience Store/The Dutchman's underneath The Great Northern.

On the other-side Dale and Diane are becoming different people – like Laura who vanished 25 years before and became Carrie after Cooper tried to save her in the forest, leaving retro-fitted Pete Martell to an unbothered fishing trip.

At the motel Diane realises she's becoming Linda and her memories of Cooper are going so leaves him while she still has the chance to say goodbye with the letter. Yet again there's a noticeable difference in how Kyle McLachlan plays Cooper as he's slowly becoming Richard in this new iteration – he's flatter, more serious, matter of fact, and many of the fantastical things of Twin Peaks are rendered as more mundane objects/places/people: Judy is a truck-stop diner, the white horse a mantelpiece ornament, Laura a working-class Southerner in, yet again, a bad relationship that leads to death.

The fantasy of vanquishing evil in Episode 17 – The Past Dictates The Future and the idea of Cooper erasing all the events of the entire series is a catharsis/wish-fullfillment for the viewer's long-held empathy toward Laura but it's ultimately unsatisfying and untruthful to the story and themes of Twin Peaks and not a true ending. Like Superman going back in time to save Lois Lane, Dale's rescue of Laura is a dramatic cheat but in Twin Peaks it's made to work because of the emotional truth/reality revealed at the end of Episode 18 – What is your name?

Dale's persistent wanting to remind Carrie of who she is, is another attempt at fixing the unrightable wrong of child-abuse and despite Cooper's endless dream and reality-bending during his heroic journey across time to save Laura – continuing the Twin Peaks tradition of subverting TV/film tropes i.e. dead characters returning or 'it was all a dream' – they can't escape the truth that in life there's no such thing as a do-over – you can't ever go home, back to the way it was. They don't get to remake/fix their past without losing or forgetting themselves, erasing their memories, which is what happened to Laura, now Carrie, and seems to be happening to Cooper, becoming Richard, in the different world.

Bewildered, Cooper stumbles forward on the road trying to figure out what went wrong and what year it is after finding Laura's parents aren't home and his efforts have again, failed. He's losing his old intuition/self, Carrie starts remembering who she is – all the pain and suffering comes back as a familiar voice cries 'Laura' to a background of electrical interference. Laura screams, Cooper is shocked, Mother/Judy/Bob has returned to haunt her dreams as the lights go out.

We're back in The Waiting Room and it's fitting that the last –recurring– image is Laura/Carrie whispering the terrible secret of what happened to her into the unknowing ear of Dale/Richard.





Keef Monkey

Wow. There was so much about those last 3 episodes that I'm sure I'll be mentally unpacking and working through for years. I can't even really pinpoint why but during the last episode I started thinking about The Dark Tower, something about it was really capturing how I felt reading the last book in that series. When the credits rolled my wife turned to me and said 'I was getting really strong Dark Tower vibes from that', then when I texted my brother to say I'd watched it he replied with 'didn't it remind you of The Dark Tower?'

Just found it really odd that we all had that same experience, and that it brought the same thing to mind. I guess it's because (I'll spoiler tag all of this, on the off-chance someone stumbles in here without seeing the finale) [spoiler]saving Laura felt like Coop's tower, an impossible quest that he'd cross between worlds to try and complete, losing himself in the process, and that it's something he's doomed to keep repeating (for now, I'll probably change my reading of the whole thing tomorrow!). I can't pretend to have a full (or even flimsy) understanding of a lot of the events in The Return, but the sense that the whole thing is cyclical and loops in some way feels right to me, and once I got thinking about that a lot about the earlier seasons seemed to fit. There's so much in those seasons that Cooper solves on instinct, and by clues appearing in his mind as visions and intuition almost as if he was remembering them from a dream or had been through it before, so I'm really liking the idea that in some way he's been trapped in a cycle.

Part of me is upset that I didn't get the positive feel-good ending that I was certain it was moving towards, and part of me knows that I did get that. It just happened an hour before the end, and the last hour served to undo that closure and break my heart in ways I probably don't really fully understand. Lynch is an absolute master at conjuring moods and emotions, and if this is how I feel after watching it then I've no doubt at all that this is exactly how he wanted me to feel.

Totally reeling from it. One of the biggest gasp moments for us was actually the end of the 3rd to last episode when Audrey Horne's storyline came to an end. Had been getting the sense for weeks that she was in some sort of purgatory (possibly after being killed in the explosion in season 2, or even maybe in a coma dream as a result of that, but not sure if that's too on the nose for Lynch) and that moment when she finally asks to leave and 'wakes up' just as the episode ended was startling. The fact that it wasn't revisited makes it all the more interesting. One of (maybe my only) disappointments with the show had been Horne's character, as she didn't get anything to do other than be fairly annoying and trapped in the same argument for episode after episode, but the climax of that thread was one of my favourite moments in the whole thing, and a great gutpunch of a pay-off.
[/spoiler]
Anyway, I could ramble on about Twin Peaks forever (and I do want to) but I'll shut up now!

Muon

Interesting takes here.

I've been thinking a bit more about the cosmology of the show. This is probably bollocks, but it was fun thinking about it today at work.

I've started to think that the entity "Judy" is not necessarily an evil, violent spirit but some kind of personification of death. When Gordon Cole talks about it, I noticed that he doesn't use the word "evil" or anything like that, but instead calls it "an extreme negative force" or something like that. That's a bit like death: there's no good or evil intent behind it - instead, it's just an absence.

A lot of commentary I've come across seems to gloss over Laura Palmer's role, but to me this had been about her just as much as Cooper. When the bomb is tested in New Mexico, that unleashes something and makes "mother" or "the experiment" give birth to BOB, a personification of man's evil. The thing that gives birth is probably not Judy but some kind of bad, lesser entity that is always on hand to pour pain and suffering into the world. The Fireman counters that by sending Laura into the world. Interesting here that BOB and Laura seem to be the same kind of spirit, sent into the world in a sphere.

It may be a bit cliched, but to me that makes Laura a bit of a Christ-like figure, or the nearest thing to Christ the TP universe could have. Maybe her function is to soak up some of the pain and suffering BOB can inflict on the world. It seems BOB is not aware of her real nature and neither is she while she is living. I guess all BOB can see is some kind of being that's stronger than anything else he's encountered, and that makes him angry and makes him obsessed with taking her over. When Laura dies in Fire Walk with Me, she seems to achieve some kind of grace and reslization as she watches the Angels float in front of her. Apparently the famous "faster and faster" scene where she talks about the Angels all having gone away was deliberately filmed from above to give the impression of angels watching over what is happening, contradicting what Laura thinks in her despaired state of mind.

Then maybe The Return is Cooper embarking on his quest to "kill two birds with one stone", which to me seems to mean the twin aims of defeating BOB and defeating the negative force of Judy (i.e. death) by cheating her of one of her victims (Laura). He manages to defeat BOB, but when he tries to cheat death, he manages to alter time but Laura is snatched away from him. This could be not only because death can't be defeated even by a hero like Cooper, but also because Laura's entire existence was predicated on her death at the hands of BOB (which in turn freed Leland of his influence and seemed to condemn BOB to life without a host for a while).

This disruption of the order of things sends Cooper spinning off into an alternate reality where he loses his identity and Laura becomes a woman without purpose. This still seems to be part of his plan, but Cooper seems out of his depth here, alternating between Mr C, good Coop and even Dougie. He seems to have a vague idea of something he needs to do but doesn't seem to have much awareness outside of that. He takes Laura's other self (who should never have existed) to the house, which jogs some vestigial memory in her and makes her realise what she is (as the Log Lady says, "she is the one". I think even James says that in the first season). Anyway, the realization prompts the blood-curdling scream that always happens when Laura is summoned back to where she belongs. This time everything shuts down and the screen turns blank because both her and Coop are whisked away.

Then the whole thing end with Laura whispering the truth into Cooper's ear in the waiting room or the Black Lodge or wherever that place is meant to be.

Apestrife

Anyone else thinking that [spoiler]the scene with Diane and Cooper sleeping together in the motel was something akin to the way he "set things right" with Laura? They made a stop at a gas station and then went to a motel. And if I remember things correctly Diane talked about being taken to one after getting sexually assaulted by Mr C, where her doppelganger was made. Perhaps this was Cooper either finding her before Mr C (similarly to Laura) or helping Diane to reenact what happened, but with him instead. The thing that made me think it was before was the old car they where going in. Part of the reason I think this is because Cooper/Jones was trying to help people through out the season, and perhaps this was a way to help Diane.[/spoiler]

Regardless. I really liked it. Worked on so many levels. Amazing television :)

Link Prime

Quote from: JOE SOAP on 06 September, 2017, 05:26:59 AM

Quote- How is it possible that Tulpas's can sire human children?

They seem physically capable of doing just about everything else a human can do so why not – but if Richard Horne is an example of Tulpa progeny, then they aren't exactly the full shilling.


It's Sonny Jim we'll have to worry about in 2042.

Apestrife

Love the design on the upcoming season 3 collection.



Really matches the Laura one for seasons 1-2 and fire walk with me.



Also, regarding the ending. I'm thinking [spoiler]that whatever went on (which I have some theories on)
I think ultimately for me it meant that Laura's trauma would still be there no matter what Cooper changed about the past.[/spoiler]

Can't wait to watch it all back to back.

Keef Monkey

There's a theory doing the rounds that watching the last two episodes together simultaneously reveals some spooky things to line up. For the most part it sounds like happy accidents, but there seems to be a pretty good case for the final scenes taking place alongside one another. Could be bunkum but will definitely be trying it out of curiosity sometime!

Colin YNWA

So I'm only 6 episodes in and therefore taking care not to read down this thread yet, so sorry if this is covered, but just wanted to comment while I'm absolutely loving season 3 Jez is it violent and grim. I mean its not as if there weren't moment of this in the first two seasons, some really terrifying, disturbing bits and 'Fire Walk with me' is almost unrelentingly brutal, but Season 3 is sooooo harsh.

In episode 6 we have [spoiler]the child being hit by the truck[/spoiler] which was just awful, I had to stop for a bit. Then you get [spoiler]the two women stabbed to death by the assassain.[/spoiler] Its absolutely terrifying. I'm left to wonder how different the early stuff would have been if this level of stuff had been permitted on network telly back in the day.

Its not a critisism, far from it, as it all absolutely has the necessary impact, its not done for thrills and is in turns soul destorying and terrifying and utterly effective in creating a tone that is gloriously diverse and in contrast, just like the zig zag black and white flooring. Its just not telly to watch before going to bed... which foolishy is what I'm doing!

abelardsnazz

No spoilers Colin, but just to say - you ain't seen nothing yet....