Season 4? Or is it over after this? Wisteria/Unrecorded Night? Something else? (Speculation thread.)

[Jonah]

Right, Jonah! I think BOB is a parasite that just sort of amplifies the evil already within. Leland already had it in him to do what he did, but Bob made it easier for him to do it.

Yes, agreed - and as there was already evil in Coop's doppel, it was easy to amplify, so much so that Bob seemed to disappear inside the doppel, which seemed to take him over rather than the other way around (likely due to Frank SIlva not being available but that's still how it turned out for The Return - Bob seemed to almost fade away inside the doppel, whereas in Leland he came more to the surface). I'm not saying there wasn't badness in Good Coop and that he wouldn't have been able to amplify some of that (witness him clicking his fingers at the end of Episode 2, which as LostintheMovies pointed out in that thread, might have been showing how seductive evil can be) but I think he would have had a much harder fight and Good Cooper might have fought him and won in the end. The doppel might have tapped into Coop's desires for Audrey, etc., but not his desire to rape her, which I don't believe was ever there. And beyond that and mimicking him at the end of Part 4 with the thumbs-up (which he did poorly), Bad Coop reads like a completely different character to me, he doesn't seem interested in doing things a good Cooper suddenly turned bad would want to do. He just seemed like he was operating completely separately and with little thought for Coop, who was stranded in the lodge. He even seemed a bit one-note to be honest, like a typical bad guy character.

[Mr. Reindeer]

But note that DougieCoop (who is the true Cooper but stripped down) also does a poor job of imitating the thumbs-up. Again, I think this is all part and parcel of what L/F were doing in terms of deconstructing identity, the artifices we build up around ourselves to present an artificial/constructed self to the world, etc. Who is the “real” Cooper? Is such a thing even possible?

[Jonah]

That's a good point about Dougie also having trouble making the thumbs-up. Overall, it's an interesting theory for sure, but I just don't see it myself for the most part, apart from in a more analytical or theoretical sense. I don't even see Dougie as being Coop much either and he was actually in the same body, though that's closer. I don't know, if Lynch/Frost wanted to go that direction they should have just had Bob possess good Cooper, not his doppleganger. That distinction is there for a reason and I think it's overlooked and important, but again Bad Coop just doesn't feel like he's actually bad Coop - the nuances aren't there. There's the implication he may have raped Audrey and the thumbs-up, beyond that they operate like totally different characters with different goals and interests and little to no correlations. An exploration of Cooper's dark side would have been interesting, but I don't think that was it, and if it was meant to be it could and should have been done a lot better, than just having someone who looked like him and was a greased-up bad guy with "wants" operating in a nefarious criminal underworld. They should have given him more characterization, more dark underpinnings that contrasted directly to Cooper's homespun wisdom, had him stay in the town of Twin Peaks that he loved (yet doppel Coop couldn't wait to get out of) and caused havoc there in the place good Coop wanted to see as good and pure and magical, had him continually stalk Annie and Audrey or someone who reminded him of Caroline Earle, etc.

You know, the more I think of it, I think we actually did get the "Star Trek" Bad Twin thing everyone keeps mentioning. We just didn't get any continuous cheesy face-to-face battles because the characters were separated, one sent out into the criminal underworld, the other trapped in a lodge, not coming continually face-to-face in Twin Peaks. Otherwise, it's pretty much that storyline, a one-note evil twin wrecking havoc out in the world, while the other twin is trapped in a "Being There"-style story (which Frost mentioned being interested in). I just don't think it was much more than the Bad Twin storyline in the end, maybe even weaker for all its pretensions and no matter how much we try to read more into it, as the nuances just weren't there. A Bad Twin of Cooper should have had more detailed, counter characterization that was written to be the opposite of Coop in specific ways. In the end, he was just a pretty meh bad guy imo, well performed certainly by MacLachlan (especially in the eerie scene at the end of Part 4), but otherwise not very well characterized or explored imo. He's just a bad guy - and his criminal clothes and the underworld he was operating in was faintly ridiculous.

I sound probably harsher than what I actually feel about it, but I don't think it was all that well done.

I should have posted these thoughts in the thread you linked to last night about Bad Coop rather than putting them all here as they've taken the thread on a sharp tangent! Now back to regularly scheduled programming (IF Twin Peaks is ever scheduled again and let's hope it will be!).

[Mr. Reindeer]

I don't know, if Lynch/Frost wanted to go that direction they should have just had Bob possess good Cooper, not his doppleganger.

You’re not wrong that this distinction makes the scenario more convoluted, but to be fair to L/F, it wasn’t a choice they actively made in TR. The doppel/Bob thing was a weird choice made by Frost/Peyton/Engels back in 1991 for reasons we can only guess at—my assumption is that it was a good way to have a cliffhanger where the show’s hero becomes “evil” but it would still be easy to absolve him of guilt and return to the status quo quickly in a season 3. I think by the time of TR, L/F clearly wanted to deal with the repercussions in a more meaningful way, but they were stuck with the storytelling choice of it being the doppel as opposed to “Cooper prime.” I do think the way they dealt with that (with the multiple Cooper and Diane doppels, tulpas, fractured identities, etc.) was rather elegant, but YMMV. It’s worth noting that the idea of shadow selves, dream selves, etc. was set up by Hawk as early as Episode 3, and I think it’s always been clear from the mythology that all of those “other” selves are linked to and part of the “real” person. But again, I certainly don’t begrudge you feeling like it wasn’t conveyed in the actual execution.

[Jonah]

It's definitely interesting and there's a lot of really cool discussions to be had but overall I just don't think it's much different than the Bad Twin trope, it pretty much still is that trope, maybe even weaker as Bad Coop just feels like a separate bad character to me, not even an inverse of Cooper. Richard could potentially be a better, more nuanced and subtle exploration of that as you pointed out he feels a bit more like the harder Coop in the pilot.

[Mr. Reindeer]

As much as I love TR, it’s fun to imagine an alternate version where the doppel is more like the giddy Episode 29 version. That would have been really fun to watch Kyle play. I’ve said it before, but my interpretation is that he gave up the “joyous” aspects of his persona to form the Dougie Jones tulpa. A true inversion of Cooper would have a tremendous lust for life, but instead of taking his primary joy in wholesome things, he would rejoice in sex and gambling and drinking (all things we saw Coop enjoy in the original show, BTW, but in wholesome moderation). It would be fun to see an “evil Cooper” who was super passionate about being decadent. But I think that once he created Dougie as an escape valve, those traits went to the tulpa (as we hear from Janey-E), and Mr. C was left joyless and dead-eyed, driven only by survival.

[Jonah]

That's a good theory. It could also be that he's been out in the real world for so long that the gleeful side of him has gotten desensitized or toned down, sort of how many people get quieter or even jaded as they grow older. Maybe doppelgangers also get jaded by the world. He's played like the "it struck me as funny" / "but I didn't brush my teeth" deadpan monotone part of the performance from 29/The Missing Pieces, rather than the gleeful toothpaste-squeezing / grinning in a mirror and laughing about Annie part. It would have been fun to see both versions, and that's probably what we would have seen in a 1991 Season 3, set in Twin Peaks. Sure, it might have been more Star Trek-like, but it also might have been a lot of fun (though unfortunately might not have fully worked given Windom Earle had kind of already done that and it might have felt like a repeat of that villain).

In an attempt to bring the topic back on track a bit, do we think Kimmy and Sabrina are actually hinting at stuff or not? And has there been anything more in social media land? (I check reddit and fate colossal's twitter feed but that's about it.)

[JackwithOneEye]

I liked the scene where Bad Cooper shows the playing card to Darya with the black ink blotch and the ears, and says "this is what I'm looking for".. just so absurd and dreamlike. really sealed it for me there, we are getting pure heroin David Lynch.

in the star trek cases, there was stuff where the evil Kirk had to contain it to try and take command of the bridge at one point and ask for the real kirk to be apprehended, I think if you were gonna get into situations like that with Bad Cooper impersonating Cooper, then you're making Bad Cooper someone who contains multitudes and able to contain worst parts of him, and I think, maybe defeats the idea of the purity of the raw animal id that is unleashed. If you had him impersonating Cooper/ being intellectual, then he's not really free, he'd be a prisoner to societal norms.

the scene where he does try and impersonate Good Cooper in the questioning with Albert, Cole, and Tulpa Diane, saying he's been undercover, he's pretty hopeless at it.

[Mr. Reindeer]

Not to keep derailing this thread, but I do think that theme (or subtext) of giving up parts of yourself is important to what TR is saying about identity as well. What makes you you? How much of yourself can you give up before you become someone else entirely? Is “Dougie” Cooper more “real” than the doppel just because he’s in his original body? By Part 18, which is more truly Cooper: the cold obsessive “Richard” character or the warmer kinder “Dougie Mark 3”? I also think Cooper’s monologue from the “Dead Dog Farm” episode of the original show ended up being hugely significant to TR, the “Diane” tape where he considers settling down and starting a family someday—that question of the road not taken, lost opportunities, years gone by, etc. His time in the Red Room becomes a symbol for the years we’ve all lost since 1991. I think that’s enormously important to what TR has to say about Dale’s personality, the whole Dougie storyline and his sweet moments with Sonny Jim, etc. Far from just being a ripoff of Being There (although I adore that movie and love Mark referencing it as an influence), it really does flow from what we know of Coop’s character. It’s so tragic to me that he finally allows some version of himself to live out that dream of settling down, but the “real” version (?) just can’t let go of the obsessive desire for mystery, the savior complex, etc.

Anyway. Back on topic. I don’t think Kimmy knows anything, since I don’t believe it’s Peaks, but maybe Mordeen feels/knows differently. I’m not sure what she and Sabrina posted, I can’t keep track. Was it more wisteria photos?

[Jonah]

Google says there were two versions of a bad Kirk, an evil one and a mirror universe one.

Kimmy posted Wisteria, Sabrina liked it and another comment about wisteria.

[Mr. Reindeer]

Google says there was two versions of Kirk, an evil one and a mirror universe one.

What I really have to wonder is: Did Star Trek originate the cliché of evil doubles having goatees? Or did that exist beforehand?

[JackwithOneEye]

I agree on all the above Reindeer. I also feel like WIlliam Blake's The Songs of Innocence/ Songs of Experience poems and engravings were an influence in there. I get the disappointment of not having a more traditional drama with Kyle Maclachlan acting more tonally like Cooper throughout - and not being stuck in these two pantomime corners, but I think that's the way that best handles the existential crisis, feeling the lack.

Kimmy posted a purple plant of some kind. not sure it wisteria. The anecdote she started to tell at that convention was an actor telling their spouse there was a possibility of more seemed like. I listened to the Johanna Ray podcast yesterday, the 10 year NDA must cover some possibility of sequels that can't be talked about.

It is possible that actors are hoping wisteria/unrecorded is a sequel or spin off themselves. since they cant really say anything, they just post flowers and hope maybe. but then again, a lot of social media is pictures of flowers. and pictures of food.

[Jonah]

Google says there was two versions of bad Kirk, an evil one and a mirror universe one.

What I really have to wonder is: Did Star Trek originate the cliché of evil doubles having goatees? Or did that exist beforehand?

I never watched it, though I probably saw bits and pieces here and there when I was younger, but it seems like they did the Bad Twin trope twice early on. Once in the fourth episode of the first season, called "The Enemy Within", an evil version that occurred during a transporter malfunction - and then another version, from a mirror universe, in a season two episode called "Mirror Mirror". Did the trope appear again in the series or any of the other versions of Star Trek?

[Mr. Reindeer]

I could definitely see Blake as an influence on Frost...and Lynch, having not read it (he may have looked at the pictures), just intuitively getting the themes and running with it. That partnership between those two is so cool. I do hope they work together again on any potential new Peaks (my small attempt to bring us back on topic after continually derailing the thread).

[JackwithOneEye]

There are 5 bad/ alternate Kirks by my count -

The bad Kirk I usually refer to is the one from "The Enemy WIthin' which happens as result of a transporter accident. He is split in two.
"Mirror Mirror" is an alternate timeline where fascism reigns, and people are more savage/aggressive.
"What are Pretty Girls Made of" had an android Kirk I think.
"Turnabout Intruder" has a body swap, where this scientist lady takes over his body to achieve her own ends.
Iman (wife of David Bowie) is a shapeshifter in Star Trek VI and takes the form of Kirk at one point.

There is also a novel by James Blish called 'Spock Must Die' that has an alternate Spock who isn't necessarily evil, but wants to live, so he can be diabolical in order to find ways to survive, but real Spock has empathy for him, and understanding at his anguish.

There's also a scene in that novel where Scotty and McCoy wax poetic about how they are all clones or doppelgangers, because every time they beam up or beam down, the molecules are scattered and rearranged , and none of them are the original arrangement anymore.