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

[Mr. Reindeer]

I honestly shared that viewpoint for awhile and found Mr. C a trifle disappointing initially, so again, I get it. What I think can’t be ignored is what Mr. C does to Audrey and Diane, and the repercussions of the way that plays out across the series (although it’s subtext to a large extent, it really is a driving force for much of what occurs, up to and including the entirety of the Coop/Diane material in Part 18). In terms of the actual onscreen portrayal of the doppel, I see a lot of “our” Dale’s inquisitive/investigative nature, but inverted into darker motivations. I also think, if you go back and watch the Pilot in particular, Dale comes off as a little darker and more detached, more Holmesian if you will, in a way that we tend to forget. I think that’s an important link to Mr. C and “Richard” (Lynch has always said “the Pilot is the thing” for him). I think TR is also Lynch’s most complex deconstruction of identity to date. It’s not a simple good/evil breakdown. We have the “good Dale” and the doppel. But then the doppel splinters off to form “Dougie Jones” (arguably giving up the joyful/indulgent aspects of his persona). Then we get “blank slate” Cooper. Then the doppel is destroyed and maybe reintegrated into Original Dale, but he immediately gives up a part of himself to form the New Dougie to be with his family (again arguably giving up the joyful aspects of himself). The whole show is really a breakdown of Cooper, fracturing him into various aspects of himself.

Again, I’m not saying you have to like it, or feel that it was done well. But I do think it’s more complex than a Star Trek-style evil clone story.

[JackwithOneEye]

I read your 2015 post. I think the Return handled it really well. Good Cooper maybe didnt rape Diane/ Audrey - but he did go into the lodge a bit unprepared and with imperfect courage, his fault to a degree, he let this inner id shadow self out into the world to ruin people's lives and such. ( If you go back further, he did have the affair with Windom's wife etc, which started Windom coming to town et all)

I see Bad Cooper as connected/ part of him. The whole 'are you a pervert or a detective thing' from BV, I see Cooper as an older Jeffrey. He has insatiable curiosity (just like us maniacs analyzing clues endlessly) which can get you in trouble if you're overturning stones that should be just best left alone. and it is an interesting question, a voyeur seeks self satisfaction by attaining knowledge, so there is an element of perversion in getting obsessed with anything you don't have the answer to.

Bad Cooper isnt content to just be bad, he's like dark Jeffrey with the ear, he is still trying to figure out things still, tracking down Jeffries at the Dutchman's, obsessed with piecing together these mysteries of existence even from a dark place, who is Judy, etc. plus - The want vs. need callback dialogue when Audrey tried to seduce him, comes back again in Return.

Good Cooper also , in my view, does err, there is naivety. I think he thinks the ring is intrinsically evil in FWWM when it's laid out on the table, he made a mistake telling Laura not to take the ring in FWWM, even when Maclachlan performs that scene, he seems confused and uncertain, but the ring seemed to protect her from her soul being snatched / possessed etc. it's an interesting dynamic there where the victim is more wise/certain than the detective.

[Mr. Reindeer]

I read your 2015 post. I think the Return handled it really well. Good Cooper maybe didnt rape Diane/ Audrey - but he did go into the lodge a bit unprepared and with imperfect courage, his fault to a degree, he let this inner id shadow self out into the world to ruin people's lives and such. ( If you go back further, he did have the affair with Windom's wife etc, which started Windom coming to town et all)

I see Bad Cooper as connected/ part of him. The whole 'are you a pervert or a detective thing' from BV, I see Cooper as an older Jeffrey. He has insatiable curiosity (just like us maniacs analyzing clues endlessly) which can get you in trouble if you're overturning stones that should be just best left alone. and it is an interesting question, a voyeur seeks self satisfaction by attaining knowledge, so there is an element of perversion in getting obsessed with anything you don't have the answer to.

Bad Cooper isnt content to jut be bad, he's like dark Jeffrey with the ear, he is still trying to figure out things still, tracking down Jeffries at the Dutchman's, obsessed with piecing together these mysteries of existence even from a dark place, who is Judy, etc. plus - The want vs. need callback dialogue when Audrey tried to seduce him, comes back again in Return.

Good Cooper also , in my view, does err, there is naivety. I think he thinks the ring is intrinsically evil in FWWM when it's laid out on the table, he made a mistake telling Laura not to take the ring in FWWM, even when Maclachlan performs that scene, he seems confused and uncertain, but the ring seemed to protect her from her soul being snatched / possessed etc. it's an interesting dynamic there where the victim is more wise/certain than the detective.

Wonderfully stated. I agree with all of this. The “want vs. need” dialogue is so key, and clearly intentional (I’m betting that was a Frost touch).

[JackwithOneEye]

I do like some of the evil doppelganger Star Trek episodes. having Shatner play two parts sometimes, like The Enemy WIthin, was a clever cost saver and it let him chew scenery.

DS9 and Enterprise mined that Mirror, Mirror ep for some follow ups I quite liked.

[Mr. Reindeer]

I do like some of the evil doppelganger Star Trek episodes. having Shatner play two parts sometimes, like The Enemy WIthin, was a clever cost saver and it let him chew scenery.

DS9 and Enterprise mined that Mirror, Mirror ep for some follow ups I quite liked.

I didn’t mean to shit on that stuff. It’s real fun from a pop culture standpoint, and I love it too as entertainment. But I expect more from a Lynch production. TP always had genre trappings, but at its best, it transcended being a “genre” show.

[LateReg]

I get it. P18 feels like a very Lynchian ending to me, but I think people have trouble with it because this isn’t Eraserhead or Lost Highway—it’s Dale Cooper, a character we all have deep decades-long personal feelings toward. We don’t like being asked to reimagine the way we think about him. And I think that’s honestly a big part of what Lynch was going for, whether or not you feel like he was successful. He was interested in challenging those notions of long-form storytelling and the relationships we build with these characters.

This is the second thing I ever posted to these boards, and the first that was TP-related: http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 845#p42845

I was grappling with these very issues—how can Lynch possibly deal with the ramifications of E29 in a truthful way while still honoring the character we know and love? I think the way he navigated it was pretty great, but I can certainly see why it would be frustrating to you.

Ummm...absolutely remarkable and prescient thoughts presented in that link. One might think you actually wrote The Return...right down to your exact articulation of the key "need and want" dynamic that is literally stated in the series.

In purely surface-level narrative terms, of course Mr. C and Dougie might seem disappointing, given the sense of stasis that accompanies their arcs. But, the entire Return is about Cooper's fragmented identity and embrace of his darkness/whole self, as you already said in a later post. Mr. C's desires (and he's all about desire, id) are clearly Cooper's, and however dissatisfying on a plot-level, there's a rich irony that mirrors Cooper's own journey as Mr. C's endless pursuit of coordinates end up leading directly to his doom. It's actually quite funny! For my money it's all a brilliantly layered deconstruction, with Mr. C and Dougie et al fragments of Cooper's psyche in desperate need of reintegration (I certainly don't see Mr. C as Cooper's evil twin) amidst the lost time (hence the duration of the arcs) and impossibility of fully returning to one's idealized self. That's the story we're seeing, reflecting theories that it may be taking place in the mind or some other subjective plane of existence. It's mostly subtext up until Jeffries spells it out in Part 15 when he says to Mr. C, "You ARE Cooper."

[Mordeen]

I specifically recall Kimmy Robertson coming out and saying she doesn't know anything about any new David Lynch production a while ago - I think it was during the initial post-HHM's famous tweet flurry of on-line speculation and guessing (in late 2019, just before Covid turned the world upside down). That could have changed in the meantime, of course, but somehow I doubt it.

The thing is, can we really trust anything Kimmy says? No, we can't. Not at all! Not one bit.

That's not very nice. But I would assume you may not know how important she was to the Return even happening, so whatever.

Snake tails are delicious.

- Mordeen

[krishnanspace]

Sabrina had posted a photo of her having coloured her hair purple. So I commented saying , it’s a Wisteria coloured hair and she had liked my comment. Doesn’t prove anything though as she had liked every comment in the photo. But I feel that she is trying to hype something up. She has been posting bts photos from season 3 almost every other day

[Jonah]

Wonderfully stated. I agree with all of this. The “want vs. need” dialogue is so key, and clearly intentional (I’m betting that was a Frost touch).

Was thinking last night that that quote sums up how many of us feel about Season 4. We don't need it, but we want it!

[Jonah]

I just quickly glanced through the post. I'll read it (and the others you linked) tomorrow when I can focus better as it's very very late here, but just a few quick thoughts - Bad Coop was always Cooper's doppleganger and I never saw them as connected at all, even in the dark mirror way, so I never felt he should have paid for his or Bob's crimes.

We’ll have to fundamentally disagree here. This comes back to the discussion we were having about Leland/Bob a few days ago. For me, if you’re going to do a story about incest and statutory rape, there are no half measures. Leland doesn’t get to blame Bob—if you take that approach (as the show admittedly did at times, but FWWM largely rectified this), it cheapens and demeans the whole thing and just makes it an exercise in exploitation and sensationalism. By extrapolation, then, if Bob then “inhabits” Cooper—or his doppel—there have to be consequences. It’s a little different from the Leland situation, granted, because it’s his doppel and not himself. But it’s not a clone or something. Hawk’s monologue sets up that the “dweller on the threshold” is a shadow-self of the person. The doppel represents all of our own worst tendencies, the ones we try to suppress (as demonstrated by Mr. C raping the two women Cooper is most attracted to). I just don’t find anything interesting in the standard genre “evil clone”/mistaken identity storyline. If you’re going to do a story about doubles, there should be real stakes and a personal reckoning. Otherwise it’s just cheap. And almost all of Lynch’s works since TP have dealt with duality, often through doubling. I think if the ending of E29 was ever going to be dealt with in a meaningful way, it inevitably HAD to be an exploration of Cooper’s dark side, and that’s what I was getting at in that post way before TR ever even aired.

This is interesting. I particularly like the idea of Cooper fracturing himself. I have to say, though, I don't think the narrative ever dived that deeply into it, at least not in what we were shown. Perhaps those intentions are there for us to analysis and discuss, but for the most part I still feel the show took an evil twin / bad doppleganger approach, and was more interested in Dougie waking up. The shift to Richard felt rushed and not entirely planned or thought out, and I'm not sure even Frost was fully on board with it. But is Bad Coop a part of Good Coop? I mean, yes, I guess so. But I don't think he was meant to be a deep shadow of him, but maybe I'm reading it wrong. Leland's doppelganger claimed he never killed anyone but both versions we saw of him were fairly evil, or complicit, moreso than Cooper ever was. Coop was a flawed character but I don't think his flaws ever approached what Bad Coop did, or necessarily exposed that Good Coop had a desire, even at base level, to do those things. The series always presented them as fairly separate for the most part. Cooper's flaws are evident in that he had an affair with Earle's wife, was maybe too prone to being a boyscot and trying to save everyone, was certainly tempted by Audrey (but never gave in to those desires). and possibly made some other foolish errors of judgement and he was harsher as you said in the pilot. However, I still don't think Bad Coop equates all that much with Good Coop. I can enjoy the analysis that that may be the case, and I'm not so in love with the character that I'm opposed to it, I just don't feel the show was interested in going that deep, and essentially for all the praise of The Return, I think we sort of did get an evil twin type plotline in the end that wasn't much deeper for waiting 25 years than what we might have seen in 1991, only that he had more time in the outside to do despicable things, and the original series on a network probably would have shied away from him raping Audrey and fathering a child with her.

[Mr. Reindeer]

As I said, I felt similarly disappointed with the doppel at first (I was hoping for a more Mulholland Drive-style exploration of Dale’s duality), but conversations with LateReg and others over the years have tuned me in to what I think Lynch was going for. I’ll just point you again to JackwithOneEye’s post from last night, which nicely encapsulates my own feelings/interpretation. Also, your own post where you noted that the show seemed more interested in Dougie than in the doppel. I think all of this is part and parcel of the way TR toys with identity and deconstructing Cooper. Mr. C is best viewed in the context of the whole show and what it’s saying about identity, and I think what Lynch was going for is much clearer than if you just view the Mr. C storyline in isolation. Finally, I’ll note that when it comes to the mythology and what it symbolizes, TP has always been more interested in thoughts than deeds. You’re right—Cooper would never act on his desire for Audrey, just as Leland likely never would have acted on his desire for Laura were it not for Bob’s “push.” But when Hawk talks about the Black Lodge, he describes “imperfect courage.” Mike describes the Lodge spirits feeding on appetite and satisfaction. Traditionally, the TP mythology has always been more interested in internal struggles than external sins, and I think that’s a lot of what TR is getting at with Dale. It’s not about punishing him for something he did, but rather him working through his internal demons, depicted cinematically as multiple personalities he has to come to terms with.

[Jonah]

I think Leland acting on his desire for Laura and Cooper potentially acting on his desire for Audrey are quite different, though. Leland's was rape, abuse, incest, illegal, violent. If Cooper had had sex with Audrey, it might have been a bit ick but it would have been consensual and legal, as she was 18. Also, I think FWWM showcased that Leland was complicit and an abuser. I think they're just very very different things, not to mention again that they were different entities - Bob wasn't in Leland's doppleganger but in Leland himself, and only in Coop's doppleganger. I just see a much wider - huge - gulf between the characters. So I guess I just can't get on board with Bad Coop being Coop apart from in a more esoteric or analytical sense. Sure, there's a lot of subtext there, the dark shadow, the dweller on the threshold etc., but I still see them as separate entities and with much much less - practically zero, in fact - culpability on Cooper's part than on Leland's, especially as presented in FWWM. And again, Leland's doppleganger was safely in the lodge, grinning evilly - it was Bob in the actual Leland (who was likely complicit to some degree) doing all the bad work, Bob never got into the good Coop, just into his doppleganger. I think there's a huge difference, so we'll probably have to just disagree on this one, though I do find the discussion and viewpoints interesting and of merit. I do think Cooper has his demons and his imperfect courage, like all humans, but I don't think he was ever nearly as dark - or tempted to be that dark - as Bad Coop. At most, there was infidelity, over-enthusiasm, and some attraction for Sherilyn Fenn, who was of legal age. I think that's a far cry from rape, murder, etc. that Bad Cooper engages in - and I'd go further and say had Bob possessed good Cooper, he probably would have fought him off more than Leland did, which is maybe why he possessed his doppleganger to begin with and not the actual Coop. And I say all this not as some super Cooper fan (I like him but I'm not), just by reading the characters I feel we were presented with.

[mojo1976]

Let's not forget that Mr. C isn't just a doppelgänger, like Diane. He's a doppelgänger with BOB inside of him. Maybe the real Dougie Jones is a better representation of Cooper's genuine tulpa--a compulsive gambler, cheater, womanizer, bad father, etc.--but not necessarily evil. I think Richard is just Cooper, but with some of the Dougie-Coop removed for Janey-E & Sonny Jim's tulpa (not a reintegration of Mr. C).

[mojo1976]

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.

[Mr. Reindeer]

For me, it’s less about any objective moral scale and more about the characters confronting their own demons. Sure, the Coop/Audrey flirtation is way less morally reprehensible than raping your underage daughter. But I think Cooper felt a TON of guilt about those feelings, as we saw repeatedly on the original show. He’s an FBI agent and he should not be lusting after a high school student. I don’t think it makes him a bad person at all, but HE was very self-recriminating about it. And so, when forced by the Lodge to confront his own demons, that’s what manifests. Again, it’s not about the universe judging him or punishing him...it’s more about him judging himself, and confronting the parts of himself that make him uncomfortable. Going back to my 2015 post, the MLMT book reveals that Cooper has some VERY complicated and fucked-up feelings about both sex and violence. He’s a little puritanical (technically, he was raised as a Quaker). Mark has said he referenced that book when writing TR, and I think it provides a bit of a prism into who Dale is and the stuff he is working through in TR.