The key to understanding Season 3 is Inland Empire (Spoilers)

Moderators: Brad D, Annie, Jonah, BookhouseBoyBob, Ross, Jerry Horne

Post Reply
Low Entropy
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 43
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:58 am

The key to understanding Season 3 is Inland Empire (Spoilers)

Post by Low Entropy »

Inland Empire had The One Mind Theory. A woman, in a troubled relationship. She starts having affairs, gets pregnant. The relationship starts getting more abusive. In a fight she kills her husband, loses the foetus. She finally "snaps", and spends the rest of the time in her delusional dreamworld. She is trying to escape the trauma, but it always blends back in. This is what we see in Inland Empire then. The tale of infidelity, loss and violence all over again. What is interesting is that while these events get repeated, they have different forms. There is the monologue of the "Foul Mouthed Whore" who openly admits the affairs and puts all the blame on her husband. There is the actress that only "acts" having an affair. But it is always the core story.
I think Season 3 can be seen in the same way. There are some motifs at the core that are repeated over and over with different settings and characters. One of these motifs is being lost and returning. Jerry is lost in the woods. Cooper is lost in "Dougie". Audrey is lost in her dream. The other main motif is waking up (or at the same time failing to do so). Jerry gets eventually apprehended by the police and might or might not sober up. Audrey wakes up. Cooper too.
Yet also there is a lot of similarities in the scenes themselves, as the sync experiments show. Dougie gets out of his chair, crawls on the floor and gets shocked. Girl at the roadhouse gets up, crawls, and screams.
I think the point of this is the shared dream construct. All these little and large stories are linked up and connected with each other (a vast network of dreams).
Inland Empire ends on a positive note, with the dreamer becoming aware of the situation and maybe being able to break out of her loop. The same could be true for Twin Peaks Season 3.
Post Reply