Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

[ThumbsUp]

I'm curious why James Marshall was happy with the role he was given. Didn't he mention something about being important and having a great character arc? I feel his role was disjointed and cut short. Ditto Audrey - but Sherilyn Fenn said she was happy with what she'd been given too, though at least her arc was more intriguing.

Shelley/Madchen Amick's arc literally went nowhere too. (Not to mention Becky's.) So many others too.

But I think the most disappointing use of a returning character overall was Ray Wise's Leland. He returned to say two words "Find Laura" twice. And that - unbelievably - was it. Sarah's role was very disappointing too. It had so much potential and then it just sort of....ended. (And somehow she returned to the Palmer house and wasn't arrested after that incident at the bar.)

Speaking of Ray Wise.... Does anyone else feel that the Palmer "scene" Lynch scripted and filmed for the Blu-Ray was a lot more satisfying than this season overall? At least for the Palmer characters?

It's almost as if arcs weren't the point. The good thing is if we want that we can watch literally any other show that's ever been on television.

Yeah, this is what it boils down to. It's not a fawning thing to say that there has never been anything like this on television, because there actually hasn't. Neatly presented character arcs and satisfying storylines go out the window. This isn't "entertainment" in the traditional sense, it's art and is supposed to make you feel and process many different things.

[TimeLife]

Don't know if this has already been mentioned, but my theory is that everything after Cooper yelling "Gordon? GORDON?!" in the Sheriff's station in Part 17 is a dream (maybe of Cooper's? Of Audrey's). Obviously as the lights dimmed as Coop was yelling, something -- maybe The Woodsmen, based on Sarah's prediction of "Men are coming" in Part 12 in the grocery store -- overtook the people of the sheriff's station (and possibly all of Twin Peaks).

Everything -- including Coop going to the Great Northern and opening the door with the hum, meeting the One-Armed Man and talking to Phillip Jeffries's tea kettle, going back in time and stopping Laura's murder and then seeing the after effects of that -- is not in the same "reality" (of the previous 17 parts).

Whatever. I fucking loved The Return no matter how frustrated I was at times (including tonight).

[Candie]

I'm curious why James Marshall was happy with the role he was given. Didn't he mention something about being important and having a great character arc? I feel his role was disjointed and cut short. Ditto Audrey - but Sherilyn Fenn said she was happy with what she'd been given too, though at least her arc was more intriguing.

Shelley/Madchen Amick's arc literally went nowhere too. (Not to mention Becky's.) So many others too.

But I think the most disappointing use of a returning character overall was Ray Wise's Leland. He returned to say two words "Find Laura" twice. And that - unbelievably - was it. Sarah's role was very disappointing too. It had so much potential and then it just sort of....ended. (And somehow she returned to the Palmer house and wasn't arrested after that incident at the bar.)

Speaking of Ray Wise.... Does anyone else feel that the Palmer "scene" Lynch scripted and filmed for the Blu-Ray was a lot more satisfying than this season overall? At least for the Palmer characters?

It's almost as if arcs weren't the point. The good thing is if we want that we can watch literally any other show that's ever been on television.

Yeah, this is what it boils down to. It's not a fawning thing to say that there has never been anything like this on television, because there actually hasn't. Neatly presented character arcs and satisfying storylines go out the window. This isn't "entertainment" in the traditional sense, it's art and is supposed to make you feel and process many different things.

Much of it reminded me greatly of The Room, actually... Great art, truly.

[Shloogorgh]

I enjoyed episode 18 more than most of the series. Loved the atmosphere and mystery. But like others have said, it feels like a beginning, not an ending. I would have much preferred a truncated version of the return that reaches part 18 early on, so we can go from there. Especially because so many plotlines ended up feeling pointless. I thought Mr C coming to Twin Peaks would at least give us a glimpse into his master plan, but instead we got that frankly embarrassing result of seeing Freddy punching out a BOB orb. Some stuff I don't mind existing as unresolved vignettes, like Red and the various sick people, but others make me question what the point of it all was, like Becky and Steven. It would have been stronger if it just focused on the story lines directly related to Cooper and Mr C, with only the occasional non-sequitor.

I really wish we had gotten more Audrey, but at least I enjoyed the mysterious way her storyline ended. Part 17 made me come to terms with how much of the return I didn't enjoy, even though there was a lot of stuff sprinkled throughout I was crazy about.

[Cipher]

Boy oh boy. Not sure what to make of this yet, but I certainly felt a lot, from the sweeping emotions of Cooper saving Laura in episode 17 (that drew tears), to the creeping dread of Cooper's superimposed face and the increasingly bleak disorientation of the finale.

The final episode may contain the single most uncomfortable sex scene I've ever witnessed, and that's saying something.

Judy as a mundane name for the idea of all cosmic evil (a la Bob before her/begat by her for all personal evil; one and the same) tracks both with the show thematically and with the allusions in Fire Walk With Me. In a really satisfying way, actually, even if it's a retroactive application.

So ... what happened? Obviously on one level the supernatural events of Twin Peaks always have the propensity to be literal; world-hopping, time-traveling, time-altering, etc. are all shades of that. I think everything that happened, happened.

We get Cooper and Laura driving together at night, which feels inevitable, in retrospect.

But unlike the similar ending we got with the two characters at the end of Fire Walk With Me, full of both catharsis and comfort, here there was none to be found. As ever, Cooper is puzzling over a mystery too big for his worldview; Laura is screaming because something's intuitively wrong.

And of course, there are hints both that the world Cooper arrives in is "real" and not. Cooper's personality is less exaggerated than either his good or bad selves, showing shades of both the one we knew and the doppelganger (caring, but cold; good-hearted but aloof and demanding). The owner of the house, as revealed on reddit, owns the property in real life. Real brands, a la the gas station Cooper and Laura stop at, begin showing up.

And yet there's Judy's diner, the white horse statue, allusions to Tremond and Chalfront. And this world is the one whose synapses snap out upon revelation.

Is Laura the dreamer? Is that what she whispers to Cooper? Judy as the symbol for evil, the white horse, etc., are these all reality creeping into a dream? Did a character from her visions (Cooper) manifest only to remind her of a long-forgotten nightmare?

That would answer some things, but I don't know how well it tracks, either emotionally or logically. Has Cooper once again simply bit off more than he can chew, assumed he could stop evils that were simply the nature of things?

And Audrey ... Audrey's a dreamer too, right? What Twin Peaks does she imagine herself in, and which does she awake in? My initial thought was that her role was still an unanswered mystery by the end, but I think ... maybe at the expense of her character (not sure on that) ... she figures well enough into the ending to offer a signpost in reading the real story -- Laura's and Cooper's, as it's always been. There's something to be made of the fact that The Arm shares her line at the end, though I haven't parsed this yet (and this seems like a rare, very genuine instance of Lynch inviting the viewers to breadcrumb for clues).

All season long, the themes of duality from the original run had been replaced with themes of tripling or more, and in the end we're left with the idea of substantially more than two worlds too.

I'm not sure what to make of this yet, and not sure whether this is a better ending for its two central characters than Fire Walk With Me. Does it privilege horror over honesty, as I've occasionally accused The Return of doing, even as it succeeds in other ways? I'm not sure if it's best read as a finale to the work that began with season 1, or as a self-contained response. But there's a lot to think about, and feel.

EDIT -- Either way, I'm far more moved by this than Mulholland Drive, which I've always felt was one of Lynch's weaker works. Though not as much as by Inland Empire, Eraserhead, or Fire Walk With Me on its own. At least as a first reaction.

[ThumbsUp]

I'm speechless and it's going to take me a while to unpack that.

Gotta hand it to Lynch, he intentionally leaked the end of the whole thing and still made it completely unexpected and confounding.

It wasn't intentional but yeah, you can't spoil something that is literally indecipherable to begin with.

I don't know enough about the situation to know if it were intentional or not, but quite honestly wouldn't surprise me if it were intentional. I've gotten the sense of Lynch wanting to play with expectations throughout, and the lax security around filming what they clearly knew was the end of the season if not the show just seems fitting as a particularly subversive extension of that.

I knew the scene was coming as well. Yet it still subverted my expectations (the easy out was a Laura/Sarah confrontation). I can't stop thinking about it, and we'll probably still be on here for another 25 years talking about it and dissecting it. This show was bold.

[claaa7]

I think what we've witnessed is, Cooper visiting these realities to try and save Laura. When he was intervening, something somewhere went wrong. What I take from this; no matter how hard you try to change the future, you can't change the past.

Also a pretty big Wizard of Oz reference going on when Cooper left and went through the door.

thanks, i like this

[yaxomoxay]

One question. Shouldn't the fact that the Double R has no To Go sign and that Tremond is young indicate that they are in the past?


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dead on! the missing double r to go painting was a huge red flag to me. They clearly frame it so that you notice. They also did not show the twin peaks sign either when they drive in. Almost makes me wonder if this is not tp anymore?

Also, why Cooper shows the badge but not the credentials?
Not sure but nowadays they have the credentials and the badge embedded.


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[Candie]

One question. Shouldn't the fact that the Double R has no To Go sign and that Tremond is young indicate that they are in the past?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

dead on! the missing double r to go painting was a huge red flag to me. They clearly frame it so that you notice. They also did not show the twin peaks sign either when they drive in. Almost makes me wonder if this is not tp anymore?

Also, why Cooper shows the badge but not the credentials?
Not sure but nowadays they have the credentials and the badge embedded.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

More than that why did Cooper have a badge after apparently not having it all season as Dougie?

[Aerozhul]

One question. Shouldn't the fact that the Double R has no To Go sign and that Tremond is young indicate that they are in the past?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

dead on! the missing double r to go painting was a huge red flag to me. They clearly frame it so that you notice. They also did not show the twin peaks sign either when they drive in. Almost makes me wonder if this is not tp anymore?

Also, why Cooper shows the badge but not the credentials?
Not sure but nowadays they have the credentials and the badge embedded.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Probably because his badge is the same as what he had in 1989? He hasn't really had time to check in with the FBI and get the most recently-issued. Assuming, of course, that this is the same Coop that recently came out of his Dougie-coma. That's debateable, I suppose....maybe he's just an FBI agent named Richard.

[Candie]

dead on! the missing double r to go painting was a huge red flag to me. They clearly frame it so that you notice. They also did not show the twin peaks sign either when they drive in. Almost makes me wonder if this is not tp anymore?

Also, why Cooper shows the badge but not the credentials?
Not sure but nowadays they have the credentials and the badge embedded.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Probably because his badge is the same as what he had in 1989? He hasn't really had time to check in with the FBI and get the most recently-issued. Assuming, of course, that this is the same Coop that recently came out of his Dougie-coma. That's debateable, I suppose....maybe he's just an FBI agent named Richard.

Dougie coop didn't seem to have a badge, given his obsession with other people's badges.

[claaa7]

Thank you for taking the time to spell out in more detail why Part 18 was so disappointing.

For the record, I absolutely loved Part 17.

I'm headed to the bar.

Fuck this shit ending.

for me, episode 17 was the one that had my heart sinking into the ground.. loved the first part of it but the battle of Nitnendo Boss BOB and Green Glove fuck was saddening and gave me trouble in continuing watching without hating the rest of it.

luckily i was able to let go and just let the series take me wherever it wanted, letting go of any expectations, and i found myself enarmroed with the strange dream logic and visual weirdness that continued into 18.. at the end i just burst out in a big smile, laughing to myself while shaking my head in disbelief. t's certainly not the end i had hoped for though, that's for sure.

[ThumbsUp]

dead on! the missing double r to go painting was a huge red flag to me. They clearly frame it so that you notice. They also did not show the twin peaks sign either when they drive in. Almost makes me wonder if this is not tp anymore?

Also, why Cooper shows the badge but not the credentials?
Not sure but nowadays they have the credentials and the badge embedded.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Probably because his badge is the same as what he had in 1989? He hasn't really had time to check in with the FBI and get the most recently-issued. Assuming, of course, that this is the same Coop that recently came out of his Dougie-coma. That's debateable, I suppose....maybe he's just an FBI agent named Richard.

Coop's body language in the very last scene reminded me of Dougie's. The slight leaning forward, fiddling with something in the air that only he could see, it looked like. I think we saw the same gesturing from him earlier in the episode.

And speaking of the Coop/Dougie/Mr. C Venn diagram, Coop's cadence and behaviour in the Judy's diner totally reminded me of Mr. C.

[Rex]

On the Infinity Symbol being mentioned, as above, so below. Remember the rearranged symbols on Major Briggs (RIP DD) and The Log Lady. Three diamonds top to bottom between twin peaks.

Two different timelines/realities? Three?


F'ing auto-correct.

[pixletwin]

Also, why Cooper shows the badge but not the credentials?
Not sure but nowadays they have the credentials and the badge embedded.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Probably because his badge is the same as what he had in 1989? He hasn't really had time to check in with the FBI and get the most recently-issued. Assuming, of course, that this is the same Coop that recently came out of his Dougie-coma. That's debateable, I suppose....maybe he's just an FBI agent named Richard.

Coop's body language in the very last scene reminded me of Dougie's. The slight leaning forward, fiddling with something in the air that only he could see, it looked like. I think we saw the same gesturing from him earlier in the episode.

And speaking of the Coop/Dougie/Mr. C Venn diagram, Coop's cadence and behaviour in the Judy's diner totally reminded me of Mr. C.

Same. He rarely seemed to act like Coop in this episode. This was DougieCoop and Mr C.