Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Discussion of each of the 18 parts of Twin Peaks the Return

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Trudy Chelgren
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Trudy Chelgren »

This is how I've seen The Return, all of it. I may have already said some of this, but there's too much to talk about.

The Return isn’t perfect, it has flaws in my eyes; it can be emotionally distant and stunted at the wrong times. It has a plot that is over-explanatory and superficial, disconnected from the feelings at heart, and sometimes detracting from the whole. It sometimes became a little too fixated on exploring extra-dimensional spaces and visual effects, seemingly without concerning itself of whether it’s necessary or worthwhile. It’s emotional repercussions and ideas can sometimes be buried so deep you wonder whether your reaction has any tangible connection to what you’re seeing, or if the show doesn’t know how to feel.

But somehow, in the end, none of that seemed to matter to me.

Laura's death, imbued with some higher truth. That she didn’t die for nothing. It’s either nihilistic or poignant. Maybe it’s both. The moment Laura disappeared, everything kind of made sense to me; it's about pain, going in circles. These things never really go away. You can't erase or re-write the kind of wound Laura left behind. The futility of trying to change history, to make things OK again. I had a Laura in my life, and these scenes hurt and I can't deny that. All the exposition, all the nonsense plotting, fell away. Just like Lynch did with Bob disposing of Windom Earle. Laura and Cooper. This is all Twin Peaks has ever been about, at least for me. When Cooper was listening to Laura's whispering in the Lodge, under the sad music in the credits, it hit me hard; Cooper the detective, the righter of wrongs. Laura the victim, the lost girl. Both not really knowing each other, and seemingly separated by time, but inextricably connected. Yet, neither of them could solve anything that happened. No-one could. It makes the coffee and pie and goofy lounge jazz look fucking stupid, and it's one of the most heartbreaking, staring-down-the-barrel, sincere ideas Twin Peaks has ever executed.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Cipher »

I like the ending more the more I think about it.

Which is usually the first sign that I'll wind up loving something.

(Though it's still not my very favorite Lynch.)

Although:
Trudy Chelgren wrote: Laura and Cooper. This is all Twin Peaks has ever been about, at least for me. When Cooper was listening to Laura's whispering in the Lodge, under the sad music in the credits, it hit me hard; Cooper the detective, the righter of wrongs. Laura the victim, the lost girl. Both not really knowing each other, and seemingly separated by time, but inextricably connected. Yet, neither of them could solve anything that happened. No-one could. It makes the coffee and pie and goofy lounge jazz look fucking stupid, and it's one of the most heartbreaking, staring-down-the-barrel, sincere ideas Twin Peaks has ever executed.
This is still where it falls just short of Fire Walk With Me, though it treads the same grounds. All the same ideas are elicited by their shared scene at the end of the film: the detective, the lost girl, the inability to overcome failure, but it was imbued with a sense of comfort and catharsis that mirrored Laura's self-acceptance and allowed Cooper's personal failure some dignity and purpose.

Their ending here is, comparatively, rather bleak, if not unfitting. Still haunting, but I wonder if they aren't somewhat competing for space, taken as exiting within the same narrative rather than as separate stories.

More to chew on. Lynch at least seems to think that this ending can be taken as addendum to, rather than replacement for, the film's, or he wouldn't have invoked it so explicitly in this season. So I'm willing to explore it further.

But yes, Laura and Cooper's story indeed. That's why whatever I expected out of an ending, I expected it to be a cap to the story beginning in Fire Walk With Me, rather than the story beginning in the pilot. All of the soap-operatic stuff is fluff obscuring the story of a young girl's trauma, spilling out endlessly into a surreal mystery exploring cosmic good and evil (or rather, as the series posits, love and fear).

EDIT--

Or does Laura's realization at the end and the flickering out of that world imply another new world yet to come? That could really be something.
Last edited by Cipher on Mon Sep 04, 2017 3:29 am, edited 6 times in total.
Cooperscoffeecup
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Cooperscoffeecup »

If we get series 4... it opens with Cooper back in a hospital. He wakes up and the last thing he remembers is being at the Sheriffs station and Candie arriving with sandwiches. Perfect scenario, as we get to see the Mitchums arc again too. :D
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by DeepBlueSeed »

Voided wrote:
DeepBlueSeed wrote:It'll take me a while to get through all the comments but my initial impressions were:

part 17 - wow! This is clearly the climax to the Mr C story. This is what I was expecting to come in part 18. Will part 18 be the fight with something even worse?

Part 18 - hey, where did the rug go?

All in all though, I loved it. I loved that characters we thought were dead might not be. I love that there was so much left unresolved that can allow for future episodes. And I love that the final question of the series seems to tie with the repeated motif "Is this the future, or is it past?" (although, arguably, it could just be 'now' in a different timeline).

So much to unpack. But in particular, has Cooper taken on the memories of Mr C - he seems to no longer be his chipper self? What was with the moody score and interrupts of sudden music during the scene in the motel room (and just generally why was that scene overwhelmed with a sense of wrongness between what should've been a warm and intimate scene)? And what was the whole Richard and Linda thing - did Cooper and Diane become them, or did Cooper awaken in an alternative world having replaced Richard somehow?

This is going to keep us going for a while.

And, yes, I can't see how they could've ended it that way without plans to carry on.
Hmm...I think the song in the sex scene was the one from episode 8, by the Platters. There is a disturbing focus on identity during that scene. Diane/Linda covers Dale/Richard's face with her hands, as if she's no longer sure who it is. We saw a doppelgänger of her outside the Motel entrance, too.
Interesting that she sees her too, but then she just seems to blink out again. I don't know if it's technically a doppelgänger, or just a hallucination, but I think it's fair to say that Diane is probably all messed up with her sense of her own identity, and of Cooper's identity.

Also interesting to note also that Cooper questions earlier whether Diane is really Diane when she questions whether he is the real Cooper. I'm not sure if he is ever aware of the Diane tuple existing, or whether nipping back into the Lodge gives him the opportunity to 'catch up' with more recent events that the one armed man has witnessed.

Given what both of them have been through how do they know to trust anyone? But particularly anyone they know has connections to the Black Lodge.
"The stories that I wanna tell you about... "
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Rhiannon »

Jasper wrote:
Rhiannon wrote:That final scene of the house would have been even better if Leland or Bobs image had appeared in the window, followed by her scream!
I half expected it, but I think that might have been a little too on the nose, and maybe too much like a horror trope, while this seemed to be more of a visceral reaction to an abstract psychic event. What I mean is that from Carrie's point of view, rather than "I saw a scary man in the window" or "I saw a scary man I recognized in the window", it's more like "I suddenly felt an inexplicable terror as we were standing in front of that house."
Brilliant, you are so right.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by crash_and_burn »

I can't sleep. I think I have come to a flash of insight.

The opening scene let's us know that Dale could stay in the White Lodge if he wanted to.

He has chosen not to.

Dale Cooper is a Bodhisattva.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by hopesfall »

I genuinely don't know if that was a complete sack of wank, or one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I really am that torn.

A friend and I joked that it would end up similar to this. I'm shocked by how accurate we were, actually.

I expect Mark's book to wipe up a couple of things, but that did seem a bit of a David Lynch 101 ending.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

Trudy Chelgren wrote:This is how I've seen The Return, all of it. I may have already said some of this, but there's too much to talk about.

The Return isn’t perfect, it has flaws in my eyes; it can be emotionally distant and stunted at the wrong times. It has a plot that is over-explanatory and superficial, disconnected from the feelings at heart, and sometimes detracting from the whole. It sometimes became a little too fixated on exploring extra-dimensional spaces and visual effects, seemingly without concerning itself of whether it’s necessary or worthwhile. It’s emotional repercussions and ideas can sometimes be buried so deep you wonder whether your reaction has any tangible connection to what you’re seeing, or if the show doesn’t know how to feel.

But somehow, in the end, none of that seemed to matter to me.

Laura's death, imbued with some higher truth. That she didn’t die for nothing. It’s either nihilistic or poignant. Maybe it’s both. The moment Laura disappeared, everything kind of made sense to me; it's about pain, going in circles. These things never really go away. You can't erase or re-write the kind of wound Laura left behind. The futility of trying to change history, to make things OK again. I had a Laura in my life, and these scenes hurt and I can't deny that. All the exposition, all the nonsense plotting, fell away. Just like Lynch did with Bob disposing of Windom Earle. Laura and Cooper. This is all Twin Peaks has ever been about, at least for me. When Cooper was listening to Laura's whispering in the Lodge, under the sad music in the credits, it hit me hard; Cooper the detective, the righter of wrongs. Laura the victim, the lost girl. Both not really knowing each other, and seemingly separated by time, but inextricably connected. Yet, neither of them could solve anything that happened. No-one could. It makes the coffee and pie and goofy lounge jazz look fucking stupid, and it's one of the most heartbreaking, staring-down-the-barrel, sincere ideas Twin Peaks has ever executed.
Wow that's great Trudy Chelgren, I never thought of it that way.
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

hopesfall wrote:I genuinely don't know if that was a complete sack of wank, or one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I really am that torn.

A friend and I joked that it would end up similar to this. I'm shocked by how accurate we were, actually.

I expect Mark's book to wipe up a couple of things, but that did seem a bit of a David Lynch 101 ending.
You're not alone. I honestly could not sleep well tonight. I think it's probably brilliant, but it's sure to whittle down the audience and I'm not sure what the ending will do for Blu-Ray sales...

I will buy Mark's book, but that's Mark's Twin Peaks. Not sure Mark and David have the same interpretation of events in the movie/series.
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Cipher »

Oh, so, little plot-level tidbit:

Laura being whisked out of the Lodge in episode 1: Do we now understand that to have happened because of Cooper's attempt to save her in the future? (We returned to this moment just after watching him fail to bring her to the pool of gold. He's attempted to stop her murder, which means he wouldn't have been there to stop her murder at all; everything starts going out of sync at that point, resulting in the world Laura winds up in at the end.)

That gives some added purpose to the scenes with Sarah as a possible host for Judy as well. Cooper is so deadset on saving Laura because he believes she can help knock off his "second bird" (stopping this source of cosmic evil) by being returned to her mother.

Of course that's naive.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by N. Needleman »

Cipher wrote:Oh, so, little plot-level tidbit:

Laura being whisked out of the Lodge in episode 1: Do we now understand that to have happened because of Cooper's attempt to save her in the future?
I think so.

I can't sleep either, BTW. Bone-tired but can't do it, not unlike after MD. Too shaken up. Gonna watch some silly horror shit to put my mind off that hell of a finale.
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Cipher »

N. Needleman wrote:I can't sleep either, BTW. Bone-tired but can't do it, not unlike after MD. Too shaken up. Gonna watch some silly horror shit to put my mind off that hell of a finale.
I'm on Japan time, so I got to watch this episode at ten in the morning, and yeah, it's been on my mind all day. Some of the prep work I was going to do got put aside. (I had today off, serendipitously.)
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by DeepBlueSeed »

Oneeyedwaldo wrote:Im assuming that we can agree that "that" piercing scream at the end brings Laura "back" as it were.
Has to be a season 4. No resolution to Audrey. Are we satisfied with the conclusion of the lodges? Episode 17 seemed to start to round everything off but 18 went a bit nuts. Just felt like Coop driving everywhere. We didn't really get much of Coop either in the last two episodes. I'm feeling a little meh but hopefull it's resolved in another season or a film.
There's also so little pay-off in regards to The Experiment/Mother and the nature of the thing inside Sarah Palmer. Given that the Experiment appeared in the first part and slaughtered two people I think there may well have been plans to do a fourth season all along. It's not something I imagine could be 'wrapped up' adequately in the Final Dossier. Audrey's scenes too - I'm less bothered about getting closure and more wondering whether it's anything other than a bubble of an idea floating alongside Twin Peaks: The Return. I enjoyed those scenes, but the story seems to have no real connection to anything else, unless it's just a symptom of the dream reality that appears somehow superimposed over the town (but particularly the Roadhouse).
"The stories that I wanna tell you about... "
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

At what point did everyone realize that nearly none of the subplots were going to be resolved? For me, I think it was about ten minutes into Part 18.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

Jonah wrote:Quick Thoughts on Part 18 -

Ugh. It was just awful. Single-handedly the worst episode of any TV show I've ever seen. The worst finale ever.

And I usually hate it when people say things like that and jump in to defend the writers/creators. But this was just awful. Even leaving aside the dashed/hopes expectations (of seeing Audrey again, of seeing a battle or a reunion between Laura and Sarah) it was dull. Even if it is somehow explained through a lot of creative apologist revisionist criticism and there's some deep metaphysical or metafictional explanation to Odessa and Carrie Page, it was just dull. I know it might all be a dream - or another level of reality - or Cooper somehow trying to save Laura and prevent/retcon her murder, screwed up reality - blah blah blah. No explanation - no matter how clever - can save the fact that it was just a dull, tedious hour of TV. This wasn't "Mulholland Drive" or even "Inland Empire". Even with the latter, when you didn't know what was going on, the visuals and the style was alluring or intriguing or shocking. This was just painfully boring. I've been mixed on this season - veering between disappointed and trying to make the best of it - and always admitted it was not the "Twin Peaks" revival I had dreamed/hoped/longed for, but tried to make the best of it and always respected the creators' choices to follow their own truth and vision, but this was just not great imo.

Ok so....

On a bigger note:

No resolution to Becky. Or Shelley. Or Red. Or Sarah. Or (and this is the hardest to swallow) Audrey. Let alone Annie, et al.

Oh well.

But again, even leaving aside expectations and dashed hopes for plot/character resolution, leaving ALL that aside, even viewing this as some sort of meta anti-narrative, this was just a tedious, boring episode. (That final scene - spoiled by TMZ - had a mildly intriguing Chalfont/Tremond connection, but was otherwise completely lacking in every department.)
It was either the most awful, or the most brilliant, depending on your perspective.

I'll be interested to see the final critical response. Could go either way frankly.
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
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