Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by Jerry Horne »

^ Good stuff.

I'm watching the complete S3 for the first time since transmission at roughly the same time. 17/18 tonight.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

The confusion of the coordinates to me seems just another step in the general time whackiness that creeps in as, ironically, more plot pieces start cohering. Wasn't there the out of sequence Las Vegas? message in this episode too? Perhaps the area reception of the Convenience Store played a hand in that, aberrations of time and signal not limited to poor service. :)
Mr. Reindeer wrote:I know a few weeks ago there was some debate on one of the threads for an earlier Part about tulpa Diane's intentions and level of awareness. I think on a literal level, the doppel manufactured her as an entity he could control. On a metaphorical/psychological level, I think she is in thrall to him, the way many victims of rape and abuse feel their attacker has almost magical powers over them. I still view her as sincere in the Part 7 prison scene, asking who the doppel is and being scarred by the trauma of that night, even as she is also his accomplice. Notice how terrified/disturbed she is whenever she gets a text from him, behavior consistent with someone suffering trauma.
This is definitely how I take the metaphor. However, I still think there's room for Diane's fear to be stemming from memories of manufacturing. It's not that I think she's insincere in the prison scene, it's that her fear is stemming from a reality they're both private parties to, and that for those listening in on the conversation, the truth is not evident as it is for Diane, who perhaps recalls the process in her head, confused as the pieces might be.
Mr. Reindeer wrote:I know I've said it before, but that goodbye scene with Janey-E and Sonny Jim is one of the most poignant of either series for me, and I think one of the most important for Coop's character. Kyle sells his sincerity and sense of loss so well when he says, "We're a family," and reassures Sonny Jim that he is his dad. His face when he hugs them both says all we need to know about how badly he wants to stay, and everything he's given up for the Bureau, for public service, for his investigations into the supernatural, and his devotion to helping, benefiting, and advancing humanity. If Mark's theory of Part 17/18 is that Cooper's hubris leads him to overreach while trying to do good, perhaps one moral is that it's sometimes better to touch a few lives deeply than to try to save the world. Perhaps Cooper would have done more good by staying with the family that loves him.
I've also had an inkling that there's something of that in the grand scheme of what Twin Peaks is about. It seems at this point to have coalesced mainly into two factions: those who disappear down the rabbit hole and those still in the profane, mundane world of the Sheriff's office, Hotel office, Principal's office... it seems the clash of the hyper-regular and the hyper-weird turns out to be a championing of small human connections. I think this is brilliantly demonstrated in Hawk and Margaret's relationship, two very spiritual characters who seem to have reconciled reality with the occult, and seem to be sort of at the fireside of things, relaying from the deep but not leaving their worldly ties behind.
Mr. Reindeer wrote:The whole ending Audrey sequence, starting with "Severson" taking the stage, is so haunting. It's one of my favorites in all of TP. So many lyrics in that song have resonance to the themes of the show, and to Cooper and Audrey's situtations in particular. Not sure if I've made/noted this connections before, but "Offered the hand of a disembodied man" calls to mind Garland Briggs's attempts to help/hinder the various Coopers. I still get chills when the MC says, "Audrey's Dance," and the crowd shuffles to the side as if hypnotized. I think it's one the best dream/nightmare-like moments in Lynch's entire oeuvre. Another detail there I hadn't noticed before: the ominous cymbal roll is actually a diegetic sound! Watch the percussionist as the crowd moves to the side: he's doing a cymbal roll while staring directly into camera (presumably staring at Audrey). It's creepy as hell.
I'm also a big fan. I think it did justice to Audrey, a character I love, in a way that I never would have thought appropriate.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

Some more thoughts actually on the coordinates. What if what Ruth wrote on her arm weren't exactly coordinates, but the means in which to arrive at the coordinates? Diane's mouthing when she's inputting the GPS always seemed like pneumonic to me, but perhaps it's even cipher? Otherwise I can't make sense of the 0 Diane inserts.

On another tack, I've seen before that some people read the "+2" as Diane confirming she doesn't have all of the numbers to herself/the audience, because the arm numbers are a bit smudged. Perhaps we're supposed to assume she sent Mr. C the coordinates she inputs in the GPS, and that from these he could compare/contrast enough to say of 3 coordinates, 2 are fake (does anyone know if this is at all how coordinates could function?), and by ALL he means, did you crack the missing numbers? This could mean that he views the numbers he gets from her and assumes she somehow procured this final version through her FBI subterfuge and they're 100% trustworthy, though like Mr. Reindeer posits, it seems rather like it has to do with something the real Diane remembers. The fact we don't see all of Jeffries' or any of Ray's leaves this thing wide open, unfortunately.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:I really like that first scene, but there are a bunch of mystifying lines in it. The "twenty-five years your senior" thing, the weirdly non-Peaks "Goodbye my son" which seems like it came from a different movie/show, and of course the endlessly frustrating case of the three people who gave the doppelganger coordinates. (Coordinates!)

We know of:
Ray (we don't see what the numbers are)
Jeffries (we see the beginning of the sequence: 48 degrees
55’ 1.4)

And then of course Diane, but only AFTER this scene takes place. The numbers seen on Ruth's arm are 4855142117[smudged number]63956. The sequence Diane texts the doppelgänger later is almost the same as this (she puts a 1 where I have a smudged number). The only other difference is that she inserts a 0 which is not on Ruth's arm as the eighth number (between the 2 and the double 1s).

Based on the text message that links the doppel/Richard scene with the Diane scene, it doesn't seem likely that the Diane scene was moved in editing and was originally intended to precede the doppel scene. I wonder if it's possible that Lynch just lost track of the sequencing? This seems unlikely, since both he and Cori Glazer are very attentive to detail. Barring that, who are the possible people who may have given the doppel a third set of coordinates? I'm really blanking on possibilities.

Any thoughts on the meaning of " : - ) ALL." ? Is this the doppel's twisted way of telling Diane to kill the whole Blue Rose crew?

The text seems to activate a memory in Diane. It's strange: contrary to what you might expect, the text actually seems to turn her "good," at least momentarily. She invokes Cooper's name (even using the term of endearment "Coop"), and it seems to me her telling Coop she remembers ties directly in to Part 17, when Cooper asks the real Diane if she remembers everything. Is tulpa Diane remembering whatever plan we see them enact in Part 17/18? Further supporting this interpretation, she then seems to send the doppel false coordinates ("I hope this works...")...very likely the same coordinates that lead to him being trapped and ultimately killed in Part 17, per the Fireman's master plan. But then immediately afterwards, she gets this steely look and goes to shoot Gordon & co.! The whole sequence is kind of mystifying. Once she looks at the text again in the hotel room (notably, her reply with the coordinates is now gone!), she panics and says, "I'm in the sheriff's station. I gave him those coordinates. I'm in the sheriff's station because..." It seems like the text provides her a glimpse of the future, and a sense of the link between her sending the coordinates and the real Diane appearing where/when she does. She then keeps repeating "I'm not me," almost as if she's struggling against her programming to warn them. When she pulls the gun out, it's almost as if she's doing it automatically and wants to get an unavoidable task done as quickly as possible, or maybe she even wants to get killed. (Notice that Albert is reaching for his gun as soon as she says, “I’m not me.") She doesn't seem terribly fazed to be dead once she appears in the Red Room, almost as if she's resigned herself to nonexistence. Maybe she does actually become good, and purposely gets herself killed so the real Diane can return? But why would a text from the doppel have that result?
I went a little nuts trying to figure out the coordinates about a month ago. There is another possibility, which is that Mr. C already has a set of coordinates, possibly from Briggs himself during whatever went down. He doesn't "need" them, after all; he just wants them. With that in mind, he's looking for the coordinates to verify or contradict what he already knows and perhaps to figure out who he can trust. But he definitely doesn't have the Diane coordinates yet at that point.

The question for me regarding the ALL text is why was it so important for Lynch to show that it failed to send at first? That seems like such an odd detail to me. Why not just have it send right away? I understand that it arrives the next day during daytime, but is there a possibility that that EXACT text within that slippery reality never actually arrived? When did he send it again? You commented on Diane's phone lacking her reply with the coordinates in the hotel room, but there's also the fact that she checks her phone on three separate occasions during Part 16, twice in the bar, and once in the hotel, and each time there are three different timestamps attached to ALL text. Is this really just an error? Really something they forgot to fix in post (easily done on digital) despite having to be conscious that the time stamp was different while resending it to the phone just before shooting the scene THREE times? It's all so strange if it's just an error, but it unquestionably adds something either way. Could that be what we're supposed to take from the different timestamps coupled with the text's initial failure to send, that that specific text never actually did send, but rather that we are seeing realities shifting, playing out slightly differently within the time loop? I assume if that text was that important he would have sent it again, but it's still an odd little detail to me.

As far as what it triggers in her, it first stops her in her tracks, as though she's been activated for her main purpose. But then she somehow appears enlightened - the real Diane peaking through. Note that the sound that accompanies that sudden moment of clarity is the same clean white light whooshing sound that we hear elsewhere in the series. I'm trying to remember for sure, but I think it is when Laura removes her face in Part 2, and possibly also when the opening credits roll in and Laura's face appears. And then after that, Diane is taken back over by her task, which must be to kill them all. Perhaps her central purpose as a Tulpa was to get close enough to kill them?

And yes, I assume the coordinates she sends right then are the ones that are central to the plan that she and Cooper et al hatched, to get him to that entrance to the lodge, then redirect him to the Sheriff's station.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Your point about the time stamps is interesting. I’d just sort of accepted it as the sort of error you see in movies and TV shows all the time, but given all the surrounding oddities/inconsistencies, maybe there is something more to it. For me the strangest detail about the sending of the “ALL” text is that he goes out of his way to stand in the light of the headlights to type it, even though his screen is clearly illuminated. It would actually be easier to see it in the dark. :lol:
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

LateReg wrote:I assume if that text was that important he would have sent it again, but it's still an odd little detail to me.
I always took this as implying that the Convenience Store space, being somewhat outside of things, has poor coverage, and that he knows once he passes a cell tower it will send, albeit delayed.
LateReg wrote:Note that the sound that accompanies that sudden moment of clarity is the same clean white light whooshing sound that we hear elsewhere in the series. I'm trying to remember for sure, but I think it is when Laura removes her face in Part 2, and possibly also when the opening credits roll in and Laura's face appears.
Great ear!
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

AXX°N N. wrote:
LateReg wrote:I assume if that text was that important he would have sent it again, but it's still an odd little detail to me.
I always took this as implying that the Convenience Store space, being somewhat outside of things, has poor coverage, and that he knows once he passes a cell tower it will send, albeit delayed.
LateReg wrote:Note that the sound that accompanies that sudden moment of clarity is the same clean white light whooshing sound that we hear elsewhere in the series. I'm trying to remember for sure, but I think it is when Laura removes her face in Part 2, and possibly also when the opening credits roll in and Laura's face appears.
Great ear!
The text was sent outside the rock that Richard was fried on, not the convenience store, unless you're implying that that rock area is affected by Lodge activity, which it clearly is. Still, an odd detail.

And thanks! I picked up that great ear of mine in a field.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

LateReg wrote:The text was sent outside the rock that Richard was fried on, not the convenience store, unless you're implying that that rock area is affected by Lodge activity, which it clearly is. Still, an odd detail.
Oop, looking over my posts in this thread, it appears I have some signals crossed of my own. I'm confusing last part's 'Las Vegas?" text with the "ALL :-)" text. The former is sent outside the Convenience Store, and it does send, but Diane was previously shown to have received that message in a prior part, so the sequencing seems weird. The latter is sent outside the rock and doesn't send.

My confusion at least highlights that there's a consistency to weird text timeframes and proximity to lodge related spaces.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

AXX°N N. wrote:
LateReg wrote:The text was sent outside the rock that Richard was fried on, not the convenience store, unless you're implying that that rock area is affected by Lodge activity, which it clearly is. Still, an odd detail.
Oop, looking over my posts in this thread, it appears I have some signals crossed of my own. I'm confusing last part's 'Las Vegas?" text with the "ALL :-)" text. The former is sent outside the Convenience Store, and it does send, but Diane was previously shown to have received that message in a prior part, so the sequencing seems weird. The latter is sent outside the rock and doesn't send.

My confusion at least highlights that there's a consistency to weird text timeframes and proximity to lodge related spaces.
BTW, this might be too obvious to bother noting, but I love the fact that the doppel’s texts to tulpa Diane parallel the tapes Cooper sends Diane on the original show.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:We know of:
Ray (we don't see what the numbers are)
Jeffries (we see the beginning of the sequence: 48 degrees
55’ 1.4)

And then of course Diane, but only AFTER this scene takes place. The numbers seen on Ruth's arm are 4855142117[smudged number]63956. The sequence Diane texts the doppelgänger later is almost the same as this (she puts a 1 where I have a smudged number). The only other difference is that she inserts a 0 which is not on Ruth's arm as the eighth number (between the 2 and the double 1s).
For those of you who love getting into the weeds with the coordinates, I was watching the Jason S. behind the scenes film for Part 11 earlier and the shot of DKL writing (and smearing) the coordinates on Mary Stofle/Ruth’s arm got me thinking about this again. In particular, it can be clearly seen there that DKL writes a “5” for the infamous smeared number, whereas it is a “1” in Diane’s text. Is this meant to be Diane intentionally altering the coordinates to trick the double, or is it just a production discrepancy? I decided to look at the shooting order and try to track the evolution of the coordinates throughout production.

From a behind the scenes standpoint, the photo of Ruth’s arm would have been the first iteration of the coordinates, given the position of the Buckhorn PD scenes in the shooting order. This is where the number is too smeared to make out, although it sure looks more like a 5 than a 1 to my eye.

Production-wise, next would be the Mayfair bar sequence in Part 16. The insert shots of the phone appear to have been shot (or reshot) at a later date, possibly in post, with no discernible background visible behind the phone whatsoever. Putting those to the side, then, for the moment, the one time we see the phone screen at the principal photography location is at 33:19, as Diane is opening her purse to look at the gun. The texts are iMessage (blue) as opposed to SMS (green) as in the inserts, and the earlier “dinner table” text is seen (without reply), followed by “:-) ALL.” and the coordinates. This version of the coordinates is missing the added “0” seen in the inserts (more on that below), and the “smeared” number is typed as a 5, consistent with what DKL writes on Stofle/Ruth’s arm.....

...bringing us to Ruth’s body being found by Cole and Albert, which is the next piece production-wise. We don’t really get a look at the smeared number in the final edit, but as I said above, the number is clearly a 5 when DKL writes it (he is seen referencing the photo of Ruth’s arm from the police station as he tries to recreate it).

And, finally, we have the insert shots of the phone, which were likely done much later. First of all, I now do not believe the “0” Diane inserts is a difference; I think she is just using it to demarcate where the latitude numbers end and the longitude numbers begin. (I have no idea if that is common practice, but it definitely appears to be what is happening here.) So the only discrepancy is the smeared 5 or 1, and whether Diane intentionally altered it, as opposed to the prop person/hand double/whoever simply referencing the photo of Ruth’s arm and incorrectly guessing at what the smeared number is. While I am inclined to favor the idea that Diane altered the coordinates to trick the double, as I said above, that doesn’t appear to have been the intention during principal photography, as that one brief shot of the phone has the coordinates exactly match Ruth’s arm. But perhaps DKL realized that the number had to be altered to convey Diane’s betrayal of the double, and that was the reason the inserts were reshot?

Having refreshed myself a bit on latitude and longitude (of which I have an extremely cursory grade school knowledge), the silliest thing about all this is that no one ever specifies whether the coordinates are N/S and E/W. However, as audience members, we can pretty clearly assume that they are N and W, and with that assumption in place, both the coordinates from Ruth’s arm and the ones Diane texts do indeed lead to northeast Washington, right near the Canadian border (the Diane coordinates are further east).
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

I think there is an element to the beginning of the part that has been missed. What does Mr. C tell Richard? "Pay attention and you'll find out". So what was it? Jerry Horne shows up wandering around and wondering: "People?!" And he then uses his binoculars the wrong way round. The message is: we are looking at Mr. C and Richard the wrong way. They are not really/real people. Are they psychological processes or figments of somebody's imagination? Either way, what is going on with Audrey is totally creepy (creepiest of all of S3), particularly having that jazz band show up and keep playing during the credits. So, Audrey did not know if she was going to go to the Roadhouse, and when when she finally makes it, there is a band ready for her, on stage. Now that is creepy.

And what is all that FBI equipment for? In a hotel room? It does not add up.

Finally, another observation: the location where Mr. C and Richard went to is out of mobile network range, there is no signal in the area. There is more to it than a mundane explanation. Was the signal there before, and was it then taken out as a result of electrocution? Richard exploded, from I can tell, nothing remained of him, which is unlikely to happen to a human as a result of an electrical strike... I was trying to determine if the sounds we hear here are similar to the sounds Cooper heard when he initially approached the socket in part 3, maybe the same thing would have happened to him then.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

Post by AXX°N N. »

One small detail that I fixate on every time. This episode ends with arguably the biggest gesture towards nostalgia, with Audrey reclaiming the limelight if even for a moment. And then, during the credits where the band plays, the curtains frame the image in such a way that it almost makes me feel like I'm watching the discs with the older episodes, because it reduces the open space to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Probably not intentional, but it creates a bizarre impression on me, given the sense of unease involved in trying to return to the past.
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

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Yes on the aspect, it is somehow unsettling. So Audrey woke up and yet the music goes on. "Where we come from there is always music in the air"
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Re: Part 16 - No knock, no doorbell (SPOILERS)

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boske wrote:I think there is an element to the beginning of the part that has been missed. What does Mr. C tell Richard? "Pay attention and you'll find out". So what was it? Jerry Horne shows up wandering around and wondering: "People?!" And he then uses his binoculars the wrong way round. The message is: we are looking at Mr. C and Richard the wrong way. They are not really/real people. Are they psychological processes or figments of somebody's imagination? Either way, what is going on with Audrey is totally creepy (creepiest of all of S3), particularly having that jazz band show up and keep playing during the credits. So, Audrey did not know if she was going to go to the Roadhouse, and when when she finally makes it, there is a band ready for her, on stage. Now that is creepy.

And what is all that FBI equipment for? In a hotel room? It does not add up.

Finally, another observation: the location where Mr. C and Richard went to is out of mobile network range, there is no signal in the area. There is more to it than a mundane explanation. Was the signal there before, and was it then taken out as a result of electrocution? Richard exploded, from I can tell, nothing remained of him, which is unlikely to happen to a human as a result of an electrical strike... I was trying to determine if the sounds we hear here are similar to the sounds Cooper heard when he initially approached the socket in part 3, maybe the same thing would have happened to him then.
Re: the binoculars thing, that's a very interesting thought. There's definitely something to Jerry appearing that far out and staring those two down at that moment. (I also love the comedy of Jerry considering that his binoculars may have somehow shrunk or disintegrated the people, ha!) My contribution is less interesting, but when Part 16 first aired, the AV Club critic closed her review of a Part where almost everything finally came together by talking about that scene, essentially using it to admit that she and other viewers may have been looking at the series wrong. She said, "It’s easy to wish it could move faster, but it’s also as futile as Jerry Horne looking into the wrong end of the binoculars and cursing the lenses instead of his own blunder in perspective."

Also, that FBI equipment and the way Lynch looks at is pretty damn funny.

And that's a great question about the mobile signal that I hadn't considered. I will have to check out the sounds in Part 3 to check if they're similar. At one point I had thought that the flashing on and off of the light and the accompanying sounds in Part 3 as Cooper is first going towards the socket is meant to link up to some other event, but I can't remember what. I can't remember if I thought it just had to do with 2:53 ticking back and forth later on, or something else. I'd have to check my ongoing series of notes.
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