Twin Peaks

[YnEoS]

All these theories about syncing episodes or scenes for some special revelation seem really to get off on the wrong foot to me. Doesn't Lynch always emphasize that he wants viewers to experience his work in as isolated a way as possible either on as big a screen as you can find, or as close to a screen as you can get preferably in a quiet place and in the dark and with headphones?

I'm sure there are echoes we're supposed to catch as we re-watch things, but I can't really see him designing the series to be watched in a way that diverges so strongly from the original form.

[Robin Davies]

All these theories about syncing episodes or scenes for some special revelation seem really to get off on the wrong foot to me.

I agree absolutely. I can't see any significant correspondence in that overlapped footage. The show is complicated enough without superimposing episodes!

[flyonthewall2983]

Someone synced the last two together and put it on YouTube. Watch it now before it's taken down

[Cde.]

People have realised something significant about the final two episodes; that the endings parallel each other in significant ways, but they've taken the wrong message from it. 18 echoes 17 because they are depicting a Sisyphean loop, not because they're meant to be watched simultaneously or overlapped.
As Lynch would say, "get real".

[Roger Ryan]

Have any scholars of Pt. 8 attempted a "reading" of the head's-up penny, and the fact that the "Gotta light?" Woodsman resembles Abraham Lincoln -- to the point of being portrayed by an actor who specializes in playing Lincoln and related characters?

All three coins seen in the show seem to have some kind of meaning. The Indian-head nickel is the sign that Hawk was instructed by the Log Lady to look for, and the gravity-defying dime that Red flips features President Harry S. Truman, of course, who was in the White House when the Trinity nuclear test was conducted and had the same name as the ailing Twin Peaks Sheriff Truman (brother of Frank).

I agree that trying to synchronize episodes might reveal some fun coincidences (like watching The Wizard of Oz while listening to "The Dark Side of the Moon"), but does not offer proof of intent. The only one of these synchronizations that was telling was the one that demonstrated that Cooper's appearance and disappearance from the glass box in New York was timed identically to the length of time Sam and Tracy were out of the room.

[mfunk9786]

People have realised something significant about the final two episodes; that the endings parallel each other in significant ways, but they've taken the wrong message from it. 18 echoes 17 because they are depicting a Sisyphean loop, not because they're meant to be watched simultaneously or overlapped.
As Lynch would say, "get real".

Having watched a good deal of what flyonthewall linked to here, I am inclined to agree that they (I'd bet consciously) do parallel one another, but are not meant to be watched layered over top of one another. That being said, I can definitely see why people saw fit to go down this road, as it does seem to be more than just a contrivance to have Coop superimposed over much of the activity in 17. Not a bad jumping off point for a theory, but I can agree that it doesn't totally work.

[mpavilion]

Have any scholars of Pt. 8 attempted a "reading" of the head's-up penny, and the fact that the "Gotta light?" Woodsman resembles Abraham Lincoln -- to the point of being portrayed by an actor who specializes in playing Lincoln and related characters?

All three coins seen in the show seem to have some kind of meaning. The Indian-head nickel is the sign that Hawk was instructed by the Log Lady to look for, and the gravity-defying dime that Red flips features President Harry S. Truman, of course, who was in the White House when the Trinity nuclear test was conducted and had the same name as the ailing Twin Peaks Sheriff Truman (brother of Frank).

I agree that trying to synchronize episodes might reveal some fun coincidences (like watching The Wizard of Oz while listening to "The Dark Side of the Moon"), but does not offer proof of intent. The only one of these synchronizations that was telling was the one that demonstrated that Cooper's appearance and disappearance from the glass box in New York was timed identically to the length of time Sam and Tracy were out of the room.

Nice call on the coins -- I had forgotten about those other two.

Besides the glass box, there were a few other instances of apparent synchrony found by fans over the course of the series, which I thought were interesting/reasonable -- e.g., in Pt. 15, Ruby crawling across the Roadhouse floor (and finally screaming) seemed to synch up w/Dougie crossing the living room and sticking the fork in the socket (in the same episode).

A case was also made that, in Pt. 13, the rhythm of the weirdly skipping television that Sarah was watching (boxing match) corresponded to the rhythm of the Woodsman's repeating incantations in Pt. 8 ("This is the water, this is the well..."). Watching the side-by-side clips posted online, it wasn't so certain to me that these precisely synched up -- but I think the idea of a continuously repeated phrase, spoken by a "broadcaster," at least suggested the Woodsman. (I say this even though it draws another parallel btw. Sarah and Pt. 8, and I really don't want to believe she is meant to have been the New Mexico girl!)

[Robin Davies]

The only one of these synchronizations that was telling was the one that demonstrated that Cooper's appearance and disappearance from the glass box in New York was timed identically to the length of time Sam and Tracy were out of the room.

Except that the sound of Cooper's disappearance overlaps slightly with Sam and Tracey entering the room.

[solaris72]

All three coins seen in the show seem to have some kind of meaning. The Indian-head nickel is the sign that Hawk was instructed by the Log Lady to look for, and the gravity-defying dime that Red flips features President Harry S. Truman, of course, who was in the White House when the Trinity nuclear test was conducted and had the same name as the ailing Twin Peaks Sheriff Truman (brother of Frank).

??? Near as I can tell, the dime is just a regular dime, with FDR's face on heads. Still linked to the Manhattan project I suppose, but not to the good Sheriff Emeritus.

[mpavilion]

All three coins seen in the show seem to have some kind of meaning. The Indian-head nickel is the sign that Hawk was instructed by the Log Lady to look for, and the gravity-defying dime that Red flips features President Harry S. Truman, of course, who was in the White House when the Trinity nuclear test was conducted and had the same name as the ailing Twin Peaks Sheriff Truman (brother of Frank).

??? Near as I can tell, the dime is just a regular dime, with FDR's face on heads. Still linked to the Manhattan project I suppose, but not to the good Sheriff Emeritus.

The dime, of course, is a painfully obvious reference to Ray (the FBI informant) "dropping a dime" on Mr. C.

(j/k)

[Roger Ryan]

All three coins seen in the show seem to have some kind of meaning. The Indian-head nickel is the sign that Hawk was instructed by the Log Lady to look for, and the gravity-defying dime that Red flips features President Harry S. Truman, of course, who was in the White House when the Trinity nuclear test was conducted and had the same name as the ailing Twin Peaks Sheriff Truman (brother of Frank).

??? Near as I can tell, the dime is just a regular dime, with FDR's face on heads. Still linked to the Manhattan project I suppose, but not to the good Sheriff Emeritus.

Yeah, I guess I've not been looking at my change too closely! I never thought the likeness to FDR was that good and, at one time, thought that the profile looked closer to Truman. Why that erroneous impression became a fact to me I can't say, but I think it has something to do with the idea that "we all live in a dream". I apologize for the bad info.

[Cde.]

a continuously repeated phrase, spoken by a "broadcaster"

Dig yourself, out, of the shit!

I say this even though it draws another parallel btw. Sarah and Pt. 8, and I really don't want to believe she is meant to have been the New Mexico girl!)

I honestly think that's the implication. She had the bug dormant within her, and the ensuing grief since Laura died was enough to awaken it and attract 'Judy' to her.
Some people think the spike briefly seen emerging from her face-hole in the bar murder scene was one of the bug's front two legs.
I think the Judy/mother monster that emerged from the box is what was in her house when Hawk came to visit.
There's a big parallel between that box creature and Sarah in the first two parts too. The creature emerges from the viewing box and decimates the two viewers in New York. Later in the Palmer house, Sarah watches lions ripping apart their prey on a television. Is this suggesting Sarah is the one behind the glass?

[cdobbs]

I thought maybe the reason the bug/Judy (if they are one and the same) was dormant in Sarah was because Leland/BOB was drugging her all those years, not to keep Sarah in the dark, but to keep Judy at bay so that he could freely pursue his own urges. Once Leland died the bug then gradually consumed her. The call that Mr. C receives in episode 2 is from someone who "wants to be with BOB again." If this isn't MIKE, then it could be Judy, speaking through a distorted Sarah Palmer (similar to her scene in the season 2 finale), who wants to be reunited with her "spawn." That also means if BOB & Judy were inhabiting a married couple it would add another incestuous level to the Palmer household.

This still does not necessarily mean that the New Mexico girl and Sarah are one and the same. The "story of the little girl who lived down the lane" could be a separate timeline/reality encroaching on Twin Peaks; the one where Audrey has somehow ended up.

[Cde.]

I thought maybe the reason the bug/Judy (if they are one and the same) was dormant in Sarah was because Leland/BOB was drugging her all those years, not to keep Sarah in the dark, but to keep Judy at bay so that he could freely pursue his own urges. Once Leland died the bug then gradually consumed her.

I don't like this, because it shifts the balance of the metaphor too much towards the supernatural and away from the real life domestic abuse angle, and it detracts from the honest depiction of the horror Leland perpetrated if Sarah was the real evil all along.

Lynch reminds us of the horror of Laura's abuse at the hands of Leland all along. Right at the end we can hear Sarah's pain at what has happened to Laura, echoing through from the first episode. It's not the pain of someone who wished to commit evil herself but was held at bay by drugs, but of someone who was drugged and rendered powerless by another person's incomprehensible evil.
The main message coming through from the Sarah Palmer material all through the season, even outside of the suggestion of supernatural forces, was of about how utterly destroyed you can be by grief.

[dda1996a]

Which is what I want to believe too, but how do you explain everything regarding Sarah in the back end of the season? How do you explain that bar scene? The more time passes the more I like the season finale, even though it's a very hard episode to like at first, especially coming after chapter 17

[mpavilion]

Dig yourself, out, of the shit!

I think the Judy/mother monster that emerged from the box is what was in her house when Hawk came to visit.

It's amusing to picture that thing clumsily knocking vodka bottles around in the kitchen...

* * *

I personally feel like "Jow-day"/"Judy" may be something of a red herring (or at least a pink-ish herring). I have no real idea what Judy "is" (other than what Gordon tells us, in a hasty-feeling last-minute reveal); I'm not sure how much significance to attach to it; etc.

Jeffries shows Cooper the figure-8 / infinity symbol with the little ball rolling around ("Here's where you'll find Judy") -- OK. That could signify "Part 8" (it wouldn't be the first time that the series' part numbers showed up within the narrative itself); it could mean that Cooper is destined to be stuck on a loop, going around and around a closed course, as long as he persists in his current obsession ("saving" Laura, "finding" Judy, two birds with one stone). I'm certainly not convinced we ever "see" Judy, or that Judy is actually a powerful antagonist or driving force in the story -- though I enjoy reading all the theories!

[Cde.]

Which is what I want to believe too, but how do you explain everything regarding Sarah in the back end of the season? How do you explain that bar scene?

Judy and Sarah becoming one and the same seems to have been a recent development - see Sarah hiding something in her house from Hawk, which I take to be the experiment/mother/Judy.
The potential for evil was always there, but it's now been awoken.

I personally feel like "Jow-day"/"Judy" may be something of a red herring (or at least a pink-ish herring). I have no real idea what Judy "is" (other than what Gordon tells us, in a hasty-feeling last-minute reveal); I'm not sure how much significance to attach to it; etc.

Jeffries shows Cooper the figure-8 / infinity symbol with the little ball rolling around ("Here's where you'll find Judy") -- OK. That could signify "Part 8" (it wouldn't be the first time that the series' part numbers showed up within the narrative itself); it could mean that Cooper is destined to be stuck on a loop, going around and around a closed course, as long as he persists in his current obsession ("saving" Laura, "finding" Judy, two birds with one stone). I'm certainly not convinced we ever "see" Judy, or that Judy is actually a powerful antagonist or driving force in the story -- though I enjoy reading all the theories!

I like this. Beyond any literal reading, I like to think Judy is the concept of evil, something that Cooper will be trapped in a loop as long as he tries to overcome it. You can do your bit to try to make life better for people - but there's some things you can never beat, like the presence of death, the inevitability of tragedy, and the persistence of evil in our universe.

[oh yeah]

The Return, while it closed out with an hour of Lynch at the top of his game, still frustrates me the more I think about it. I think I just have to accept Lynch isn't the artist he was from about 1986 to 2000, and move on. Otherwise I risk raising my blood pressure dangerously high by thinking about what kind of perverse, self-destructive impulse could lead anyone, let alone Lynch and Frost, to conceive of and film the whole BOB-ball/Green Glove garbage. Really a stain on the dignity of Lynch's original Peaks episodes and FWWM, if you ask me. To jokingly, sniggeringly, like a schoolboy playing jokes, dispatch the same force which, via Leland, molested Laura Palmer before killing her and Teresa Banks and Madeleine Ferguson... in a manner like that? A scene like that? What a fucking joke. I get it's the intentionally absurd pyrotechnics before the "real" Lynchian finish, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they're toying with very serious matters, with a character as gravely serious as BOB. The idea of, OK forget BOB, it's all about Judy now, despite precious little screen-time devoted to Judy anyway... just lazy, IMO.

And all the dropped threads and characters... to not give us more of Red is a real disappointment, similarly Becky's fate or even just Shelly or, well, Audrey (though I did like her scenes).

The new season loaded up on obscure mythology and exposition at the expense of emotion, pathos, humanity - it still had that but in an alarmingly small amount. And that's why I'll always prefer the Lynch of FWWM to the Lynch of today.

[Cde.]

Otherwise I risk raising my blood pressure dangerously high by thinking about what kind of perverse, self-destructive impulse could lead anyone, let alone Lynch and Frost, to conceive of and film the whole BOB-ball/Green Glove garbage. Really a stain on the dignity of Lynch's original Peaks episodes and FWWM, if you ask me. To jokingly, sniggeringly, like a schoolboy playing jokes, dispatch the same force which, via Leland, molested Laura Palmer before killing her and Teresa Banks and Madeleine Ferguson... in a manner like that? A scene like that? What a fucking joke. I get it's the intentionally absurd pyrotechnics before the "real" Lynchian finish, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they're toying with very serious matters, with a character as gravely serious as BOB.

I was okay with it because I thought the overlay of Cooper over the resolution of that scene seemed like a man reflecting on how absurdly unrealistic that kind of resolution to the question of evil was. It was the reflection of a man watching TV, laid over a parody of a TV finale, and finding it wanting. It played into the larger criticism at play of the desire to return to Twin Peaks and resolve all the mysteries.
I understand why it's frustrating for some.

[swo17]

At least the origin story of the glove was great. And it will make for a good lazy Halloween costume.

[jindianajonz]

Jeffries shows Cooper the figure-8 / infinity symbol with the little ball rolling around ("Here's where you'll find Judy") -- OK. That could signify "Part 8" (it wouldn't be the first time that the series' part numbers showed up within the narrative itself);

That's a really interesting thought. One thing that struck me about episode 8 was how unanticipated it was. Lynch could have fit the Manhatten project stuff anywhere else in the story, but for whatever reason chose episode 8 for it. The connection to infinity is as good a reason as any, and could very well have been on his mind during the Jeffries scene.

[mpavilion]

I risk raising my blood pressure dangerously high by thinking about what kind of perverse, self-destructive impulse could lead anyone, let alone Lynch and Frost, to conceive of and film the whole BOB-ball/Green Glove garbage. Really a stain on the dignity of Lynch's original Peaks episodes and FWWM, if you ask me. To jokingly, sniggeringly, like a schoolboy playing jokes, dispatch the same force which, via Leland, molested Laura Palmer before killing her and Teresa Banks and Madeleine Ferguson... in a manner like that? A scene like that? What a fucking joke. I get it's the intentionally absurd pyrotechnics before the "real" Lynchian finish, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they're toying with very serious matters, with a character as gravely serious as BOB.

I've seen other reactions like this -- criticizing the showdown as "cartoony," etc. I didn't mind it, and in fact thought it was a refreshingly "concrete" victory; especially in light of all the abstract weirdness that surrounded and followed it. I also didn't personally find it to be jokey, "sniggering," or absurd; it felt to me like a sincere, straightforward action scene, for whatever that's worth. Finally, I appreciate the resonance btw. the punch-out and Bushnell Mullins's boxing poster; maybe also the boxing match that Sarah was watching. (...That's another triplicate, like the three coins, "three Coopers"... wonder how many others instances there are of this!)

I might also ask -- not as a "challenge," just an honest question -- what do you feel would be a satisfying way to portray the defeat of BOB (especially given the sad fact that Frank Silva is deceased)?

[swo17]

It was perhaps a little disappointing because that outcome was telegraphed from the moment Freddie was introduced, and the execution of having these key characters all find themselves waiting in jail for several episodes until being shuffled to their marks upstairs was a little wanting, even if that was supposed to be the point.

[mpavilion]

It was perhaps a little disappointing because that outcome was telegraphed from the moment Freddie was introduced, and the execution of having these key characters all find themselves waiting in jail for several episodes until being shuffled to their marks upstairs was a little wanting, even if that was supposed to be the point.

Well, we knew being there was Freddie's "destiny," but we didn't know exactly why, or how it would play out... (I mean, until the moment the Bob-ball went on the attack, I don't think anyone could have predicted that exact scene!)

Freddie also played a role in protecting Andy from Chad, for what that's worth. (Actually, I'm more critical of the "Chad breaking of out his cell" moment, as it felt a bit contrived, and I'm not sure how James & Freddie didn't hear/notice him do it.)

[swo17]

I mean, I instantly envisioned him punching Mr. C in the face as the only thing that could take him down for good, which isn't quite the same but close enough. I also figured it would only take a single hit, which may have somehow been more impactful. I actually had a bigger problem though with Chad waiting until this climactic moment to leave his cell, if he was able to do that at any time.

EDIT: Ha, I see you edited your post to make the same final point!