Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

To be fair, the “real” Dale’s approach to policework in the original series would be considered grossly incompetent and possibly unethical in reality. He ignores hard evidence in favor of bottle-throwing and intuition, only finally solves the crime because the Giant and Laura literally tell him the answer (after he was already handed the answer once and forgot because he decided “it can wait until morning”), sends Lana alone into a room with a shotgun-wielding Dwanye Milford, and never once does a dragnet for Windom Earle even after Earle commits multiple homicides in the Twin Peaks area, preferring instead to keep engaging in a cockamamie chess game. I don’t think we can judge the world of TP, and particularly Dale’s character, by realistic standards of competence. The series has always functioned on a different plane of reality.

Anyway, while Duncan Todd may be a reluctant accomplice, Me. C clearly has his hooks in him somehow (I imagine Todd has his own “Mr. Strawberry” that Mr. C would reveal if Todd were ever disloyal), and we get the sense that Todd is extremely competent and has vast resources (is it absurd that the hitmen sit at Rancho Rosa for days instead of checking out Dougie’s home address? Sure — but see above regarding the show’s different rules). We also get the sense that Hutch and Chantal are great at what they do — they also happen to be hotheads, which leads to their undoing. Ike, too, seems highly efficient and is apprehended only through supernatural intervention (“Squeeze his hand off!”), not through any flaw in his work ethic. What I find interesting about Mr. C is that he apparently has a vast white collar criminal empire, shell corporations and international businesses presumably run by Duncan Todd types. He could be ordering hits and carrying out his goals remotely from a penthouse, yet he seems to prefer slumming it with rednecks and yokels like Otis and Chantal. I think that says something interesting about his character (perhaps a dark parallel to “good” Dale’s love of rustic townies, as well as his thirst for adventure?).
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by David Locke »

The 5-6 hours of BTS stuff on the blu-ray set is fascinating.

One of the most interesting and relevant bits to the discussion here is in the last part, when Lynch is told something about having 2 days to shoot all of Judd's scenes (and by extension many of Ben and Jerry's scenes too). At least I think this is the case.

Anyway, I'm paraphrasing slightly here, but this is how a very irritated Lynch responds to the news:

"Why do we have to do it in two days? [...] We own the stages, you know - it just drives me nuts [...] Someobody arbitrarily says, 'you gotta do it in two days.' That fuckin' really pisses me off... we're always up against the fuckin'..... I'm not working this way again - ever! This is absolutely horrible! We never get any extra shots. We never get any time to experiment. We never go all dreamy. I could've spent a week in the Fireman's. You know, it's sick [filming like this]. You don't get a chance to sink into anything. I'ts like BANG BANG BANG, it's like a fucking machine!"

Thought it was very interesting and it contrasts a lot with how much Lynch seems to be enjoying the process elsewhere. I wonder how big of a problem this kind of thing was and how much it impacted the final product? Surely Lynch could shoot stuff on a short schedule - see FWWM - but there's a big difference between one's own creative whims coinciding to create a quick production schedule, and having that brief timeline foisted on you externally. Also of course this 18-hour behemoth is a far bigger undertaking than any 2-3 hour feature Lynch has done before.

Regardless, I am eager to revisit the entire season - only have re-watched up to Part 11 or so since it all ended. I still have a lot of problems with the thing but this BTS stuff does mostly make me appreciate what was attempted more rather than less.

Random thought 1: It's been oft-noted how Lynch has a charming, if odd, penchant for referring to actors he works with by their character names during filming - and the same apparently for other characters he likes but didn't direct, like the cast of Mad Men. But I find this habit actually very understandable, at least when shooting a scene. That kind of immersion is what Lynch's all about and besides the mental gymnastics of remembering to slip in and out of character/actor/character/actor, I feel like always staying 'in-world' to some extent could have a very positive affect on the end product.

Random thought 2: Scott Cameron seems like a bang-up 1st AD, and ditto Ime Etuk as a 2nd. I liked Ime's appearence in Red's scene as a bodyguard, all grinning with his machine-gun in hand; apparently Scott had a turn in Part 16 as "Throwing Man," I can't recall that.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

Hi David, it is great to see you post after a while too.

I happened to see a few of these BTS commentaries online, and yes, Lynch is really good at motivating actors to the point that it is almost more interesting to watch him do that here than the actual end result. We obviously do not know what motivates him, and neither can these actors get any grip on what is going on as they only got their lines to read. Even Kyle, who read the original script, would still not really know what it was all about. The director does leave some clues around though.

Phoebe Augustine and Ray Wise were great, I saw their scenes in one of those commentaries, it is simply amazing how well Phoebe acted her lines in reverse, that was not easy, quite the contrary. It is such a wasted opportunity not to have seen more of them. Both of them made those 60 minutes or so of the Return that I truly liked.

The show is indeed grotesque. I find it overall a rather nasty piece of work. A nightmare that I truly do not want to revisit. It is however not shallow, it is very deep in quite a few places. It truly goes out of its way to try, in a sly and clever way, to blur the line between, or perhaps more accurately, to make parallel or conjunct, the imaginary and the real world, and I do not think it an accident that the show starts with an experiment in a box that tries to get out and eat somebody's brains out. If people really try to bing-watch this and try to make sense of it all (another one of these clues, this time uttered through Dougie), there is no way to not end up disoriented as if their brains melted. "Make sense of it all." Make sense of what? Of random Dougie doodles on paper? The show is the experiment, period, and in more ways than one. It was right in our faces all along. There we were all watching the mysterious box, and how Cooper showed up for a second and then got shipped to non-existence, both within and without.

Yet another subtle hint was the "Albert, Albert, Albert" scene. What does Cole say? "It does not get any bluer that this", and yet at the same time Lynch turns the Blue filter on so much that it cannot literary get any bluer without distorting the scene. Likewise with the original Dougie when he gets shipped to the lodge ("I feel funny"). Phillip Gerard tells him that "he was manufactured for a reason", well yes, again both within and without the show: he was there to block Coop's return both for Cooper and the "coffee and cherry pie" audience too. How about Audrey? "Do you want me to end your story too?" Some people noticed right away that it was very ambiguous. Monica Belucci was the icing on the cake, too easy not to miss with Cole having a dream with an actual Lynch exposition in the background, that was an easy give, a slam dunk.

There are other clues, but they always entail working simultaneously in both of these worlds: imaginary and real: one chants between two worlds, indeed. The fact that it demolishes the legacy and spirit of what TP was about, is a mere collateral damage.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by NormoftheAndes »

In reply to Boske, this season 'demolishes the legacy and spirit of what Twin Peaks was about?' That's a very grand judgement to make. I think you're wrong to say that as this season is very much about traumatic events and fear - which were always part of the show. Its one season and it doesn't mean this is the end of it all. There are still scenes which are more innocent or charming in a different way. It's not all grotesque.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

I think what they did to both Laura and Sarah is grotesque knowing where they were at the end of FWWM and S2: Laura had found her peace and consolation in some sort of a limbo, while Sarah had slowly started picking up pieces of her horrifically broken life. TR turned that onto its head by incarnating Laura's golden orb into a remorseless murderous waitress, living with a fresh corpse, while Sarah is found to have been possessed by an unclean spirit since her teenage years, and had just slayed a trash-talking trucker and maybe even some poor kid that delivered her groceries. One can find that a compelling story, but it sure has nothing to do with the old show, and will simply not give the dead any rest, it is a nightmare.

When Diane's tulpa entered the lodge she told us all that we needed to know. Myself, I took a break from posting when the show ended, but came back after three months or so feeling it was interesting to recapitulate the matter. I think I might give it up for good now, it is time for TR to be laid to rest as far as I am concerned, there is almost nothing left to say.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I think the original show did Sarah a greater dishonor by shuffling her off-stage with an abrupt and artificial ending that failed to address the reality of her grief and pain. Sarah’s rage in TP:TR feels appropriate and more realistic (from a metaphorical/allegorical standpoint) to where Episode 17 left her. And don’t forget, the storyline has its genesis in Episode 29, where Sarah appears to be inhabited, or at least being used as a conduit for something supernatural.

As far as Sarah being inhabited since childhood, the show left that deliberately ambiguous (some people in this thread even said people who subscribed to the “Sarah = 1956 girl” theory were inventing theories out of whole cloth without any textual support!). The fact that the books have flatly stated the connection is easy for me to ignore as pseudo-canon, since the series is “pure TP” for me, and whereas the show could easily have made this plot point overt, it chose not to.

I still have mixed feelings on the Laura stuff (particularly the orb), but Sarah was a highlight (possibly THE highlight) of the season for me.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

I agree with you that Sarah should have had some role to play past episode 17, and kudos to Lynch for bringing her back for episode 29 and correcting that. However, sometimes a retcon is just a retcon. ;-) But even assuming she is not the girl (which is definitely better as far as the legacy of the original is concerned), she is still a homicidal maniac, the whole face-lifting (pun intended) thing is bizarre and grotesque. One can say she was simply possessed in the meantime, but that is not the vibe that I am getting, I think they truly meant for her to be the 1950's girl. I have the Final Dossier and still can't get myself to read it, but I know people said that she was explicitly named as the girl, right? If she indeed were, how does that explain that she had to be drugged by Leland and had visions of Denim Bob (as opposed to the VolleyBob :lol:). The whole thing is a mess, it was to an extent to begin with, but now it's total.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Boske, I get what you’re saying. As with Leland, I don’t think it’s as simple as Sarah being either a murderer or being “possessed.” I think the thing inside her feeds off her rage, anguish and guilt, just as Bob fed on Leland’s lust and darker impulses and in turn enabled him to indulge them. I’ve always believed that Sarah was to some degree willfully blind to what was happening in the house, as mothers in such situations so often sadly are (TSDoLP has a couple of hints at this, as do moments on the show like Sarah telling Leland “Don’t ruin this too”...her reaction to Leland’s creepy outburst in FWWM also indicates that she knows something is happening and doesn’t want to address it or think about it). I think she was both victim and enabler/participant to Leland’s abuse, and I’m sure these complicated feelings are a feast for Judy or watever Lodge spirit is inside her. In turn, Sarah gets to manifest her inner turmoil, like a pressure release valve. Note that Sarah actively tries to avoid killing the trucker, repeatedly begging him to leave. She’s not a murderous sociopath; she’s a deeply damaged woman.

Don’t get me wrong; on a literal level, taking metaphor out of the equation, her acts are sickening (I actually did feel physically sick the first time I watched Part 14, seeing a character I thought I knew so changed). It is a very disturbing, upsetting place to take the character...but that’s exactly why I love it. I actually expected a lot more of that from DKL — taking existing characters to dark places, redefining them after the passage of 25 years. I think that overall, his storytelling choices for the existing characters were — while sometimes unconventional — informed by compassion and love for them, and a hesitancy to expose them to too much danger or pain.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

I agree that Sarah may have chosen not to notice certain things way back then, but I would not go that far to assume she knew what kind of monstrosity was really going on (I am not saying you actually imply that categorically). As far as the "Do not ruin it again" scene from FWWM, I always thought it alluded to Sarah seeing Leland as an unnecessarily harsh, and perhaps sometimes a brutal father, whose attitude ended up causing more problems than it attempted to solve, if there were such real problems in the first place. So I can agree with most of what you are saying but it simply cannot work in my opinion if we assume that unclean spirit was with Sarah from before she even met Leland, it simply turns the original story onto its head. And if there was some truth to it, she may have shown something when Maddy came to town, and nothing of that nature was seen, Leland simply drugged her. So, in my opinion Sarah from TR and Sarah from the original show are simply two different characters. And you chose to ignore the 1950s Girl implication from the book, so it makes your categorisation more workable in my opinion, it does not then ruin the original I would say, or not nearly as much.

Moving along, assuming Sarah is the girl though, when we see Laura's orb sent down to Earth soon after the events in the desert, let us remember that was well before Laura was physically conceived, so what was that all about? It cannot even be an incarnation into Carrie Page since that timeline seems to be rather parallel to Laura's: Carrie presumably is the age Laura would have been had she survived. So these things do not really add up at all unless one resorts to "it does not really matter because the time there works differently:, or "it is all a dream" cliché. We have to assume that Laura incarnated some 15 years later.

It would have worked for me had Sarah not have been the 1950s girl, and I could then see, as hard it may be to conceive, that her grief, and perhaps guilt, overflowed, causing her to snap and become what she has become. Or perhaps that the actual house was haunted. I thought that the scene with Sarah and Hawk was absolutely haunting, and, as much as that word is hated around here, it was an expectation of mine going into the season that we may see such scenes in the town that may well have lost its soul 25 years after. I originally remarked that the scene employed a play on words, and that instead of "It is a bad story, isn't it Hawk", she really inferred "It is a bad storey, isn't it Hawk", as to announce that what was above the convenience store, on the upper storey/floor, has actually descended and started wreaking havoc, which would also explain the smirk on her face. And what do we see later on when Cooper goes with Phillip Gerard to see the teapot? We see the Jumping Man with Sarah face superimposed running down the stairs. So it all connects in a rather weird way provided one tries to connect relevant bits. I have not seen the show since it ended, so it is slowly being erased from my memory, but a few of these scenes are still there at this moment.

Furthermore, the initial scene with Sarah watching the black jaguars or panthers on T.V. was very creepy, and interestingly Sarah slays the trucker the same way a panther would, by going straight after his neck with her jaws. These are all subtle hints, and the sinister smile she showed after her face mask was lifted showed what to me looked like the grin of the Cheshire cat, and a black panther is after all a big black cat. Some people said it reminded them of Laura's creepy smile from FWWM, but it can simply still point to the same source.

So there is some logic to Sarah Palmer in TR, but I do not see it working across the board if we assume Sarah is the 1950s girl, and it simply looks like she indeed is. That to me simply twists and deforms the original story beyond recognition. She nay have ignored certain signs or clues way back then, but I just cannot see that Sarah harbouring that entity without it all wrecking the original.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

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I do think, when it comes to the sexual abuse of a family member, there is a grey area between knowledge and ignorance. I’m not condoning anyone’s behavior, real or fictional, but it is a well-documented psychological phenomenon that, particularly in instances of parental abuse, the other parent often convinces himself/herself that nothing is wrong despite many obvious signs to the contrary. I personally have trouble understanding how one could stand idly by for such abhorrent behavior, but I have a metaphor/comparison that helps give me some context:

Sometimes, in both my personal and professional lives, I have to deal with a task that I know will be unpleasant. Often, I will avoid this task for weeks and even months on end. Despite knowing that the issue is unavoidable and will never go away, and indeed will only get worse over time, my subconscious somehow seems to convince me that by ignoring the issue for long enough, I can render it “non-ex-is-tent!” I imagine that a similar mentality prevails in instances of familial abuse that is too difficult to confront. And I do believe that Sarah was at least subconsciously aware of the abuse (how could she not be, even if Leland was drugging her? — at a certain point, you question the missing time), and buried the knowledge, perhaps without consciously realizing that she was doing so until everything came to light. From this perspective, I don’t mind the idea that Judy-as-abuse-metaphor was latent inside her for her entire life, and came to the surface afer Laura’s murder. But still, I like the flexibility of not having that version of the backstory forced upon me.

BTW, have you seen Between Two Worlds? It is a more grounded and realistic approach to Sarah’s broken nature than the horror-oriented approach in TP:TR, and IMO might be the best ever use of Sarah’s character, as well as Zabriskie’s best work of her career — pretty incredible for a DVD extra that was scripted on set. It’s a real tragedy that Criterion clipped it from their recent FWWM release.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by eyeboogers »

FWWM is quite overt in suggesting that Sarah Palmer had at the very least a strong suspicion of what was happening in the Palmer household.
Remember the scene in which she considers drinking the warm milk (=sleeping drug) at bedtime. She knows what it will lead to and hesitates, but Leland almost forces her to drink it, and she does not have the power to resist. This coupled with other moments such as the whole "Wash your hands! debacle, suggest Sarah being someone who has allowed herself to become complicit in her daughter's abuse, so as to not acknowledge the nightmare that her life has become.

25 years later and she still cannot make peace with it or herself, but something inside her is starting to give and she starts seeing herself as a monster. She dulls her guilt with booze and shifts her anger towards others and especially her daughters memory. I also don't think it is as simple as Sarah being possessed since the 1950's. Remember her terror at seeing the Judy symbol at the store? it seems that it is after this that she loses all control. I think that Hawks intuition is correct when he visits the Palmer household, it is a new thing that Sarah is in trouble this acute.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

Sarah may have been subconsciously aware of something, but what? Here we would go hypothetical: what did she know and when? To what extent? If we go along with the 1950s girl theory though, she was then simply inhabited by a rather ominous evil spirit, not a figment of her imagination, making her co-equal to Leland/Bob combination, which I simply do not see in the originals. It is important here to revisit the Leland's death scene that is still bone-chilling after all these years and nothing of that nature can be really seen in TR. It is that remarkable scene with Bob speaking of the hole where Leland's conscience used to be (and remember Harry's great "maybe Leland is simply crazy" line). I fail to see something identical in the original Sarah, I mean, did she really know? Even Laura may not have been certain until the "it is your father" scene with Phillip Gerard in FWWM.

I can definitely see how Sarah could have totally lost her sanity, that was a woman whose husband abused and killed their daughter and then her niece. She simply may have then started drowning her conscience with alcohol (also known as spirits, which is a fitting parallel here). But portraying her as a lifelong vessel for this supernatural entity is in my opinion simply contrary to what we have seen in the originals.

I did not see "Between Two Worlds", as a matter of fact, I had preordered the new FWWM DVD release and then cancelled it. As somebody said a few pages back, I guess some of us in this thread were really rubbed the wrong way by TR. I know that there are these long wanted missing/extended scenes but having felt sour after the TR experience, I have simply decided to let it all rest as far as the new season is concerned but really hope the revisit the originals I already have somewhere down the road.
Mr. Reindeer wrote: Sometimes, in both my personal and professional lives, I have to deal with a task that I know will be unpleasant. Often, I will avoid this task for weeks and even months on end. Despite knowing that the issue is unavoidable and will never go away, and indeed will only get worse over time, my subconscious somehow seems to convince me that by ignoring the issue for long enough, I can render it “non-ex-is-tent!”
Let us brighten up the discussion a bit, this is very fitting here: :)
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Ha — I appreciate the levity!

I do highly recommend finding Between Two Worlds — it’s online, you don’t have to dig too much. I think you might enjoy it, particularly Sarah’s portion. It’s really a remarkable performance by Zabriskie, heartbreaking and creepy, with none of the macabre elements of TP:TR.

BTW, there is a deleted scene in The Missing Pieces where Sarah is looking for a sweater — which Laura points out that Sarah is wearing. Sarah, worried, says it’s “happening again” (a very significant phrase in TP mythology, as we all know). The script for the film has a different line: “My God, I am going to have another breakdown. God, god. No, no...this can’t be happening.” I think both the filmed scene and the script indicate that DKL fully intended for Sarah to have severe mental health issues well before Laura’s death which likely stemmed from her inability to cope with/acknowledge the reality of her family situation, and I think this is both realistic and consistent with the character we see throughout the original series, but YMMV. (In contrast, while I appreciate the attempt to make Will’s character more complex, I just can’t reconcile the Missing Pieces scene where he seems to have some idea about the troubled Palmer household with his characterization on the original show.)
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

Twin Peaks lore has radically changed throughout its run. Think of the contrast between the original Pilot and Ep. 29- even within the original run we went from slight hints of the mystical to accepting the fact that Red Curtains can appear in the woods and a human being can pull back those curtains and walk quite literally into another world. This is the function of Twin Peaks being a continuing story. New ideas pop up and Lynch and Frost explore them. (I particularly love the idea of Laura Palmer as a spiritual figure as expressed by the Golden Orb, which built upon a lot of ideas hinted at in the original series and Fire Walk With Me).

I will admit that the Sarah pulling her face off then biting the trucker took a while for even me to get used to. But used to it I am; it is now full canon for me and has been that way for months. And now I can look back on Sarah's behavior during the series and it does seem there are hints of a greater darkness inside her.

As far as when Sarah is possessed, or when her possession is fully manifested, I believe that is still open to interpretation. Even if she is the girl from New Mexico and even if the frog moth represents evil first inhabiting Sarah, it's quite possible that the evil inside her is largely suppressed/dormant in the original series. Or if not suppressed/dormant, at least fully hidden from even Leland's view. There are literally dozens of individual interpretations one could come up with- it's pretty much left open to the viewer to decide.
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Re: Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

Thanks Mr. Reindeer, I will add Between Two Worlds to my reading/watching list. When I again feel like watching the originals I may then take a look at it too, for now TR is still too fresh in my mind to go back to that world. Anyway, I agree with what you just wrote, while I just simply cannot reconcile frog moth with it all. Could it be merely latent within her and not played any role? Maybe, but then why bring it up at all (in the script), as if it were a merely a minor thing? It was pretty much a centre piece of part 8 which now gets a special place in the TP universe. It does not add up. Frog moth was identified with the jumping man, who in turn identified with Sarah which completed the circle. Why we got that is still a mystery to me, but one that does not really flow with the original show.

What I have an issue with is with her stabbing the photo of Laura, that too does not work with the original, and may be more of a "meta" message to the viewer than anything else, as that photo is the most iconic image of the original show, and TP in general. While in this area, red balloons can be considered as meta hints too. How? Well, a ballon is something rather elastic that is subsequently filled with air to get it inflated as much as possible without leaving it permanently deformed. In my opinion, seeing balloons in certain scenes could point to select parts where the original script was heavily inflated, filled with hot air, so to speak. The original script may have included just the opening and final acts, delimited by parts 1 and 17 with part 18 as the epilogue or the story proper. Whatever else was inserted between 1 and 17, and especially material following parts 3 and 4, could be deflated out of the script with the rest of the story pretty much intact. So one can almost take all these sub-plots out and still end up with the original skeletal construction. Would adding ten more parts of Dougie cause the bubble to burst or deform it for good? Who knows. From a certain viewpoint, having Dougie stick a fork in the socket/show could be akin to popping that very bubble with the same fork.

Imagine that Cooper leaves the lodge and instead of ending in Las Vegas goes instead to TP to find the subterranean entry and Phillip Gerard and talk to Jeffries to send him back to save Laura? There is a 3-hour movie there with no Dougie, no green glove, and so on and on. Now that would have been something, maybe that is the key to watching this thing.
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