"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Wild at Heart

tn_wildatheartSailor Ripley is the character who was born for Nicolas Cage to play. He’s the ultimate bad boy who you wouldn’t bring home to your parents, an old timey hoodlum ex-con, self-conscious about his rebellious image, and obsessed with Elvis, who he calls “E” for short. He talks like him, combs his hair kind of like him, sings his love songs only at important romantic milestones. He and his young girlfriend Lula (Laura Dern) love to dance together, and at one point they pull their Thunderbird convertible to the side of the highway, play heavy metal and dance, which to him mostly means jumping around doing karate kicks and punches. They don’t have to discuss that they’re going to do this, so you gotta assume it’s one of their regular activities.

Sailor wears a snakeskin jacket, which he proudly says on more than one occasion “represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.” He’s a self-professed “robber and a manslaughterer” and hasn’t “had any parental guidance.” He started smoking when he was “about four,” and cigarette brand loyalty seem to be one tradition he and Lula inherit from their parents. He knows many unsavory characters from his time as an underworld driver, including Lula’s mother Marietta Fortune (Dern’s real life mother Diane Ladd), who is so serious about keeping Sailor away from her daughter that she takes a hit out on him. She’s also so wicked that she frequently goes on cackling jags and is several times depicted as the WIZARD OF OZ witch, flying on a broom or watching them in a crystal ball.

Marietta is also a character who’s real good at making you uncomfortable. She seems to spend every second of her life either in emotional turmoil or faking it. She’s always crying, having fits and throwing herself into the arms of men, from the overly kind (Harry Dean Stanton as private eye Johnnie Farragut) to the evil (J.E. Freeman as the gangster Marcellus Santos). But even when she’s by herself she’s a mess. In one scene she paints her entire face red with slipstick, then pukes.

mp_wildatheartShe’s easy to hate, but I kinda felt sorry for her too because early in the movie Lula tells a story about being raped by her father’s business associate when she was a kid and how her mother didn’t care at all. But we see in a flashback that in fact Marietta discovered the abuse, beat on the guy and then had him killed. So it’s not fair to say she didn’t do anything.

WILD AT HEART is the fifth feature directed by David Lynch, based on a novel by Barry Gifford (who later wrote LOST HIGHWAY for Lynch). I think it’s best appreciated as a juvenile delinquent drive-in movie from another dimension. Sailor gets out of the joint and runs off with Lula, trying not to get killed. It’s a road movie without much of a goal. They drive, have sex, dance, drive, have more sex, drive some more. Along the way they encounter bizarre Lynchian characters, many of them elderly, standing in the background, saying odd things and quite possibly played by actual crazies.

The worst guy they meet is Willem Dafoe as Bobby Peru, a slimy redneck variation on his biker character from THE LOVELESS, sporting fake gums and teeth like Chop Top, looking legitimately terrifying with a panty on his head, talking about himself in the third person, pushing Sailor back into a life of crime. Meanwhile he pushes himself inappropriately into Lula’s hotel room to “use the head,” pisses with the door open and brags about the power of his stream. This is a funny kind of sleaze, but it’s leading into a scene where he nearly rapes her only for the further humiliation of proving a connection between her childhood abuse and current sexuality. And this arguably isn’t the most upsetting degradation of Dern in the movie – that might be the shots of her crying and bloody-mouthed as a 12 year old Lula after being raped. The movie has a weird mix of goofiness and the truly disturbing, but I guess that’s Lynch’s thing.

still_wildatheartI’m not sure I’ll ever be a full-fledged member of the David Lynch cult. But I definitely dug this more this time than when I saw it many years ago. Part of that of course is from a growing appreciation for Cage, who gets to do a little mega-acting within his weirdo James Dean routine. He flips out a little and finds many uses for his rock star posing. My favorite is when they’re grooving out int he car and for some reason one of his dance moves is to keep saluting over and over again. I noticed he also does it once in the roadside karate scene.

It’s easy to argue that Elvis is over-used as a generic icon of Americana, but I like how they do it here. After Sailor beats up a guy for rubbing against Lula on the dance floor (he’s so with it he throws his cigarette on the ground, then knocks the guy over so his hand lands right on it) he commandeers the heavy metal band Powermad so he can croon “Love Me” to Lula. Not only does the singer toss him the mic without hesitation, but the women at the show scream for him like it’s Beatlemania. This is not the real world, but it’s the perfect world for Lynch and Cage to explore together. And if it’s all an excuse just to have a movie end on Cage singing “Love Me Tender” then it’s okay, it’s worth it.

I’m less on board with all the WIZARD OF OZ references. I’m not sure why it’s such a major theme, and it seems a little too obvious a choice for random weirdness. I guess it gives Marietta an excuse to be a wicked witch, but does she need an excuse? Crispin G. Lover’s character didn’t need an excuse to put roaches in his butt (one of many little tangential anecdotes the characters tell).

Maybe the idea is that Lula feels comfort in clicking her heels together even though who is she fooling, the home there’s no place like is where some old slob raped her, and where her crazy mom is, and where she’s running the fuck away from. Her dad was burned alive at home. Home’s not that great. Though clearly hotels aren’t always better.

I don’t know. Because of elements like the Oz thing I used to think this movie was just self-conscious weirdness. I think one reason it works better for me now is that I’m far enough along my path of cinematic enlightenment that I don’t worry as much what other people think. I still believe Lynch fills most of his movies with surreal nonsense that his legions of worshippers read too much deep, intentional meaning into. Yeah, but so what? Shouldn’t matter to me when I watch it. I also suspect that some people respond to baldly passionate or “wild at heart” couples like these two, Mickey and Mallory, Romeo and Juliet etc. thinking that’s what love is about and not recognizing that they’re just young horny dummies who don’t know any better. But again, so what? If they want to find this romantic it’s a free country.

still_wildatheart2What I always have dug about Lynch is his sense of atmosphere, odd rhythms and tonal mixes that put you off balance and can really get under your skin. I would say this one has more jokes and silliness in it than LOST HIGHWAY or MULLHOLLAND DRIVE, and comically abrupt scene transitions and stuff like there’s at least a whiff of parody there. But at the same time it has so many senseless, nightmarish faces in it. Look at these motherfuckers! It’s genuinely creepy in a way that kind of inexplicably claws into your self-conscious instead of pushing the standard horror buttons.

It’s also the little things, like Lynch’s use of primarily 60+ year old supporting players in a movie for 20 year olds that make it feel one of a kind. He’s luring the college kids into a strange new, old world.

Cage has some really still_wildatheart3goofy lines (“Man, I had a boner with a capital ‘o’,”) and is funny and lovable like he was in RAISING ARIZONA, but right in the opening scene he gets attacked by a hitman for allegedly trying to fuck Lula’s mother in the bathroom and he savagely bashes the guy’s skull on the ground until it kills him, then does a dramatic Elvis point to Marietta. That and the sudden headbanging guitar riffs that accompany it are a pretty harsh way to kick of the festivities. And you never know when it’s gonna happen again. You know what, I don’ t think this one’s gonna be like HONEYMOON IN VEGAS.

Okay, you won me over this time, WILD AT HEART. You’re a keeper after all. Happy Valentine’s Day President’s Day Weekend everybody.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2015 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Crime, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

345 Responses to “Wild at Heart”

  1. There’s a great book that came out a few years ago, “Lynch on Lynch” which contains a bunch of interviews with Lynch (naturally). At one point, the interview asks Lynch to clarify a theme in “Mulholland Dr.” and Lynch says something really interesting. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes like, “I like to work with abstractions. When you put words to abstractions, they lose their power.” And that’s probably the best way to watch his movies, just soak it all in. Trying to explain what exactly “Mulholland Dr.” means is kinda pointless. Creating a whole timeline or philosophical thesis to explain every event won’t make you like it anymore than you already do. How the film makes you feel is more important I think.

    I say this a diehard Lynch cultist of course!

  2. Ryan- I´ve read that book as well. And his movies are abstract but when I watch for instance LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DRIVE they seem to make some kind of sense in the back of my head.

    Still, I have yet to see a Lynch film I didn´t enjoy. Even DUNE is fascinating as an experiment in art house sci fi schlock. And FIRE WALK WITH ME might be frustrating for some but it has some genuine creepy imagery and atmosphere.

  3. Hey look! I finally found me the perfect new Gravatar!

  4. Jesus Christ, Griff. Take that thing down. I still want to sleep tonight.

  5. Perdita Durango. Rosie Perez or Isabella Rossellini?

  6. And in two months time when you have switched back to an anime avatar your comment will make no sense.

  7. No brainer – Isabella. Sexy, sultry, dangerous.

  8. Poor Harry Dean Stanton. I think this movie actually does make a lot of sense, plot-wise, owing to the source material; though you can get lost in the abstract coloration, or abstractions. Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway are more like mobius strips. I’d heard that the author didn’t care for some of Lynch’s liberties with his novel; but, if he worked on Lost Highway, then it must have been OK in the end.

  9. Call me brainless, Darren, but I’m sort of leaning towards Rosie…

  10. Saw this when I was way to young. It really freaked me out. I thought it was just my age, then I saw Dune, Blue Velvet and others over the years and realised that Lynch’s films just creep me out. It’s good to be freaked out every now and then though, just not when you’re twelve.

  11. *too young* Shit.

  12. Nice Valentine’s Day pick. It might be my favorite thing about being a reader here that I get to revisit notable movies that I also originally watched carrying more cultural baggage than I do now. I watched this while working my way through the Lynch catalog, with too much mental space taken up at the time with what some people had said about them. Now, I enjoy his movies but don’t love them. They’re fun. I like the weirdness, without finding them cathartic.

  13. Rosie looks great in tight jeans, and sleeping with a tiger, but then she’s gotta go open her goddamn mouth and ruin everything.

  14. “And his movies are abstract but when I watch for instance LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DRIVE they seem to make some kind of sense in the back of my head.”

    Yeah, that’s what I really like about Lynch. His best films really are coherent but I’ll damned if I can explain why. You get to the end of “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Dr.” and you’re like, “Yes, this is how it should be.”

  15. I first saw this in college (of course), and… I didn’t DIS-like it, but it just came across as a blur of random dream-stuff going on, so I spent the whole watching feeling like I should like this movie while not actually being able to engage with it.

    I caught up with it years later, and enjoyed it much, much more on the second go-around. Though I had seen it before, nothing about the first watch landed hard enough to make an impression, so I could enjoy the turns and surprises for what they were.

    It is, at core, a very basic crime/love story, which acts as a narrative core so the weirdness is just dressing.

  16. But wasn’t Peter Loew the character born to have Nicolas Cage play him?

  17. I believe it was Castor Troy whom Cage finally adopted as a youngling. But I give credit to Sailor for planting the seed of Peach Eating into his fertile mind, allowing Troy to express his unending love for this most wonderful act between a man and a peach.

  18. Grace Zabriskie has been tremendous in everything I’ve seen her in, but never as utterly terrifying as she is in her few short minutes of this film (though she came close in INLAND EMPIRE). I even watched that crappy HBO show where Hicks is a Mormon for way longer than I should have because her performance was so compelling.

    And I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: AVENGERS would have been a tolerable film if it just depicted a day in the life of Harry Dean Stanton’s character. He gets up, goes to work, there are some rumbling noises in the sky, some naked nude falls on his ass, he finishes his shift, traffic is heavier on the way home.

    There are deleted scenes to WILD AT HEART on the “Lime Green” box set, one of which, set in a bar, is fascinating.

    PS Gifford and Lynch co-wrote LOST HIGHWAY;it wasn’t a solo Gifford gig.

  19. “And I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: AVENGERS would have been a tolerable film if it just depicted a day in the life of Harry Dean Stanton’s character. He gets up, goes to work, there are some rumbling noises in the sky, some naked nude falls on his ass, he finishes his shift, traffic is heavier on the way home.”

    Apparently, they left some of the Harry Dean Stanton Avengers material on the cutting room floor. I was reading the AV Club’s random roles with HDS a while ago, and he was really noncommittal on everything. When they mentioned a role, he would pretty much say, “Yep, that was a good one” or “I don’t really remember that too well.” But when they ask about his cameo in Avengers, HDS becomes genuinely about the fact that they edited out part of his role in Avengers. It was the only time he ever gave much of an opinion on any of his roles over the years.

  20. So glad you came around on this one. So many great lines. And that ending is just fantastically romantic.

  21. I just listened to Lynch’s solo album CRAZY CLOWN TIME, for the first time. It’s as abstract as you’d expect, lots of dreamy, experimental, monlogue-ish songs set to some bluesy riffs, with a lot of synth work. Lynch does the vocals on most songs, mainly through filters. He knows he’s not a great singer, but he wants to create music anyway, good for him. Can’t say I’d listen to it again. Unless I was high, to get the most out of it.

  22. In short, this film is a masterpiece! For all involved: director, cast all the way down to catering.

  23. It’s not my favorite Lynch film, but man he knows how to depict the intertwining of beauty and horror. In this case, it’s those voluptuous shots of fire; you can almost feel yourself unable to resist being drawn into the damage. There’s real emotional inertia in his images. TWIN PEAKS achieves a similar effect with the wind gently rocking that forlorn traffic light.

    RBatty: In the same interview, Stanton says that silence is a powerful tool. Based on hims performance in PARIS TEXAS, I’m inclined to agree with him. Based on his performance in the interview, not so much. But I like how he seems to favor the roles that allow him to sing.

    Darren: The video for the song “Crazy Clown Time” is one of the most hilarious/horrific things I’ve ever seen.

  24. Jareth – One of my favorite Harry Dean Stanton stories comes from the director’s commentary on Repo Man. If I remember correctly, Alex Cox and Stanton were arguing about how he should play a particular scene. This went back and forth for a time when Stanton finally said to Cox, “I’ve worked with some of the greatest directors of all time, and do you know why they’re great?” Cox asked him, why? To which Stanton replied, “Because they let me do what I want!”

  25. Wow, that video of Crazy Clown Time is something else. Thanks Jareth. That deserves a link for those interested in Lynch’s latest suburban nightmare.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caWXt9lCVrc

  26. We are one week away from new TWIN PEAKS and I fucking don´t know how to handle it. What can we even expect? Frank Silva is dead, a lot of people are dead, they are fucking dead how will it affect TP in the slihtest.

    This shit should not even be happenin. I am close to 38 years old and can´t handle new TWIN PEAKS as I thouht I would. I have severe TP anxiety

  27. Relax Shoot: “I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.”

    Lynch and Frost got bullied last time. There’s no way they’re giving us TWIN PEAKS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.

    My one worry is the weight of all those cameos, but still I fantasize that they filmed some footage with Bowie to spring on us.

  28. It’s finally here, and I’m so excited for tonight I can hardly stand it.

    26 fucking years, man! I was a kid when it started and now I’m a fucking old man!

    I sincerely hope it’s all we want it to be, and then some.

    Honestly, I’ve been more excited for pretty much anything ever. I truly hope you all love it.

  29. I fully expect the new TWIN PEAKS to be so pure, unfilitered and maybe a bit unintentional self parodistic modern day Lynch, that lots of people will hate it so much, that a huge backlash will appear and retroactively declare the original TWIN PEAKS overrated 80s cheese.

  30. “Unfiltered” seems to be a key word here, and after last night’s LA premiere of the first two episodes, it does seem like Non-Lynch fans/newbies may run to the hills.

    It’s going to be too much for some motherfuckers.

  31. Finished the first two episodes. I really liked it so far. It is Lynch unfiltered to a certain extent, but not excessively. It has a narrative form that is easy to follow and an apparent causality to the events, but enough weirdness, creepy imagery and a few giggles along the way and enough of mystery to it. I never got a sense of a filmmaker self aware to become mockery of himself. This is a master filmmaker at work not so much interested in “Oh, I know TWIN PEAKS. I used to watch it. NOSTALGIA-bomb” that fans may want out of it. But more interested in looking forward. It is too early to tell really. But I was relieved that

    Instead of using the soap opera format, taht was popular back then., it uses that now popular prestigous cable tv drama with the production values you´d expect. It feels familiar yet it seems not. Like the old show. It looks like a typical cabel tv drama but with the dreamy, surreal quality of what is very much David Lynch. There is some shit that is bonkers already and I can´t wait to continue to watch.

  32. Maybe one day I’ll see the appeal of non-DUNE and non-THE STRAIGHT STORY movies but ten-minutes into 2 TWINS 2 PEAKS told me that today was not that day. Please note I have a bit of a biased-attitude when comes to anyone who has and pushes an ‘Artiste’ persona. Also when said ‘Artiste’s art is always accompanied by a snide ‘It’s not for you’ and/or ‘It’s okay if you don’t like it, you’re tiny stupid brain is incapable of appreciating SUCH ART for thinking smart person peoples such as myself. Go back to your actual entertaining movies you naive!’ from his/her fans, I’m instantly turned off. So as you can probably figure, my problem isn’t so much with the artist and art as his shitty fan base, basically David Lynch is art house Joss Whedon.

    On the bright side, it is pretty fun watching a bunch of liberals who bitch whine and complain about every single celebrity who is not a liberal now clamoring and raving about a filmmaker who is extremely far right in his political leanings.

  33. It starts here on Thursday, so do you think I should rewatch the old episodes first or does it seem like Lynch doesn’t give a shit and tells a new story, that confuses the shit out of you, even if you followed the show (Like FIRE WALK WITH ME) and I could dive in without a refresh. I still remember the basics of the show.

  34. If you remember the basics you will be fine, at least for now. To a certain extent it follows what happened to Cooper and the black lodge shenanigans and most the other stuff is new.

  35. But you know what, maybe you should rewatch the whole damn thing. Because why not?

  36. Just got thru pts 1 & 2 and holy shit, just fantastic.

    At once different to the original yet utterly the same.

    (And damn, when The Log Lady said good night to Hawk, I teared up.)

  37. I love the opening shots on the floor of the Black Lodge , it gives you a sense of a spinning wheel. That pattern really fucks with your eyes and then you know you are on the path of greatness

  38. I really liked it and FYI you can stream episodes 3 and 4 on Showtime right now which I’m about to do. Just hate that I won’t see Catherine or Donna. Also been waiting for a resolution on Major Briggs since middle school and he won’t be in season 3 either? Bummer.

    Nevertheless unlike STAR WARS or ALIEN this is a franchise that truly deserved to return and bring some closure to us all. So I’m grateful it even exists at all.

  39. Guys! You aren’t ready for episode 3. My god what an opening!

  40. Apparently you can also stream the first 4 episodes if your country has SKY. Just saw the first one. Compared to the new TWIN PEAKS, the old episodes are soft and cuddly mainstream TV! I’m definitely on board until further notice, I just wish Lynch wouldn’t have told his cast to give intentionally bad performances (Like he coincidentally did in WILD AT HEART). It’s hard to watch everybody just stand there and say their dialogue as wooden as possible. (At least Matthew Lillard didn’t get the memo and is the big acting surprise of the first episode.)

    Is it bad that I rewinded a certain scene involving an actress who appeared as a young kid on THE NANNY, because she is a seriously damn hot adult? I feel a bit dirty.

  41. Ep 3 might be THE most Lynchian bit of Lynch I’ve ever seen.

  42. Episodes 3 and 4 feel more like that series we all know. Which isn’t a bad thing. We catch up with a lot of old favorites like Albert (still a ray of sunshine) and Cole (finally got some hearing aids). Even Denise shows up which is a trip cause I didn’t know Duchovny agreed to show up in this.

  43. So Lucy and Andy (and Dick’s) baby grew up to be Michael Cera lmao somehow it’s pretty appropriate casting.

  44. Started episode 3 and …..WOW! I have to quote Homer Simpsons accurate analysis of TWIN PEAKS. “This is thh greatest thing I have ever seen. I have no idea what´s going on!”

  45. The kneejerk butthurt reactions of how this is “not TWIN PEAKS” has started to flood in. What a bunch of snowflakes. You just can´t handle The Lynch!

  46. Those people really need to watch episodes 3 and 4. Very TWIN PEAKS like compared to the first 2 parts. Lot of humor mixed with surrealism. Still consistent with parts 1 and 2 tonally though if that makes sense. Between this, FARGO and BETTER CALL SAUL right now I’m in TV nirvana.

  47. Episode 4 is worth it for that one Bobby scene. Guess he did really love her all along.

  48. I just ejaculated in my sofa to the images.

  49. We also find out who Robert Forster plays and it’s very legit casting for that role.

  50. It was worth almost thirty years of waiting for that crazy third episode alone. That gum I used to love really came back in style.

  51. Broddie, it’s true, for a few weeks, we get new episodes of TWIN PEAKS, BETTER CALL SAUL, FARGO and AMERICAN GODS at more or less the same time! How can TV get any better?

  52. I was predicting that it was gonna be some crazy David Lynch shit and everyone would be disappointed, but it seems like I was only right about the first part. I only saw part of the show back in the day and don’t get Showtime so if I ever watch it it will be a while. But I’m glad people are happy.

    Geoffreyjar, I hope you don’t mind some unsolicited advice, but I think you would be happier if you could find a way to stop worrying about what you assume other people are thinking. Your post is full of bitterness toward David Lynch fans who you assume think you’re dumb, and liberals who you assume have certain purity tests for artists, which you seem to think are bad but still think they’re wrong for not holding Lynch to them? I think it’s very likely that whoever these people are they really aren’t even thinking these things that you worry they’re thinking. And if they are, why should you give a shit about those dummies?

    I have been (and still can be) chained to that kind of thinking, and I think it’s a relief when I can let it go and just focus on my own relationship to the movie or show or whatever. It’s perfectly legitimate for you not to be into David Lynch (I’m not very into him, personally) but I think you’d be happier basing that on yourself and not as a pre-emptive backlash to a reaction you expect from others.

    For example, if I ever watch MULLHOLLAND DR. again hopefully I can let go of my hangup about the deep meaning other people read into an ending that I, having initially seen the TV pilot version, saw as just some random ridiculous bullshit tagged on. I shouldn’t care so much about that.

  53. I would never read deeper meaning into Lynch´s work. He says himself that whatever he comes up with is just through impulses or instincts or something he dreamed about that would be an exciting idea to film. And as such you should approach his work the kind of dreamlike logic that you just have to allow yourself to bask in. It is pure unadultered cinematic indulgence, but is enjoyable as hell to enjoy . When something doesn´t make sense, nobody does it better than Lynch.

  54. Broddie- when you said heaRing aids, didn´t you really mean hearing AIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDSSSS?!

  55. NOOOOO I WAAAASSSNNT TAAAALKIIIING ABOOOOUUUT RIIIIING RAAAAIDDS!

    It’s funny as hell how Gordon still speaks extra loud. One of the best scenes in episode 4 involved that quirk and Albert. I laughed so hard at that. Gotta love Lynch.

  56. I won’t go on in case I end up inadvertently spoiling stuff, but as THAT little scene plays and the music swells there is no denying that this really is Twin Peaks.

    And having it back is impossible and amazing and beautiful.

  57. After four episodes I am ready to stand up and give my applause to this completly unapologetically awesome return of a series I thought I would never thought of seeing more of. And Lynch being given the full reigns is proof of the pudding that a lesser filmmaker would have tread a more safer ground. Lynch follows his muse and it leads us to strange and wonderful places. Jesus, this is pretty rad and and…amazing.

  58. Shoot just reading your post made me laugh again. Such a great scene. Driver’s reaction was priceless.

  59. And R.I.P. Miguel Ferrer so glad that something that is bubbling up to become an epic classic was the last thing he worked on. Great end to an awesome legacy.

  60. I’ve only seen the first episode so far, but I like what I’ve seen. This really is a show where Lynch is given full reign, and I love it. I especially like that the show is slow moving. The one major advantage television has over film is that it has space to breathe, so I always feel that if you’re going to give us a long arc that occurs over the course of ten to twenty-two episodes, then you should take your time. Lynch has always prioritized atmosphere over plot, and I’m happy that Showtime gave him the freedom to indulge himself. Paradoxically, when a show throws a bunch of twists and turns at the audience every episode, I actually start to lose interest because everything starts to lose its impact after a while.

  61. For curiousity´s sake: This show opened on my birthday. At the same time Sweden beat Canadas ass in the Hockey World Championships on penalties. All at once on my birthday!! I am quite a happy camper .

  62. Albert has a fairly stern and stoic quality to him in this series. I was maybe expecting him going back to his regular arrogant self, but none of that seems apparent. Maybe he did learn something.

    This also points to the details whan an original creator is behind new content by not completely betaying a character by haviung him acting as the audience remembers him.

    Aren´t we also glad not being part of a comment section like ALIEN:COVENANT in which new content from an original creator cause nothing but hatred and cynicism? Fuck that. Long live David Lynch!

  63. Albert did humble himself as the series went on. Became lovable asshole instead of insufferable jerk. Remember how he became best buds with Sherrif Truman? He came to be charmed by the town like everybody else. So I’m not too surprised but yeah long live David Lynch!

  64. Yeah, that was what I meant by maybe he learnt something. And how Lynch actually took that seriously when he got that character back and not just reversed Albert back into a silly asshole. We all know Miguel Ferrer shined in playing assholes, but there is something redeeming in him in his last role as Albert playing him more as a straight man going from an asshole and getting to a good place. God rest his soul.

  65. For those mad at Ridley Scott having to force things into his old but new genre series because of Fox or whatever be thankful that we still have guys like David Lynch & George Miller around. Dudes who are still happily and genuinely doing it their own way and getting better at it with age and experience instead of buying into their own hype and winging it.

  66. I hope the episodes to come grow a bit of heart on the way as I am not sure the visuals, the fucking craziness and weirdness will go all the way. I am re-watching the original series right now and find myself attached to the characters, and the new series leaves us mostly with style over substance at the moment.

  67. I don’t know if someone has answered this or not but do I need to have seen the 2nd season to enjoy this one?

  68. If you didn’t see season 2 (at least all The Black Lodge stuff not Ben Horne civil war reenactments, Nadine as a teenager or Windom Fucking Earle) or FIRE WALK WITH ME you’d be pretty lost yeah. Series 3 basically uses all that as the base.

  69. I watched the first two seasons and FIRE WALK WITH ME very recently, so I don’t have the kind of attachment a lot of other people do obviously, for having seen it way back when or since on home video and more recently platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime like I did. That said, even I was amazed (and at times really saddened) at how different everyone looks now, despite the basic knowledge of time. I was really enthralled and drawn in to the first two of S3, but a little more fidgety at episodes 3 and 4. This is a pretty deep ensemble of actors, some of whom took me a bit by surprise. Especially the kid from LOOPER, for some reason.

    Shoot: I would not be surprised that the plot really starts to roll on the 5th episode. It felt like the first four, all together, was a bit of a preamble or overture to use a musical term, to the events within.

  70. I was thinking that myself as I was watching the first four episodes. I don´t know where we are going, but I am sure it is somewhere strange and wonderful. I can´t wait for the next episode of TWIN PEAKS.

    “I can´t wait for the next episode of TWIN PEAKS.” Wow, I never thought that was a line I would ever use again.

  71. Well since I was called out by the man himself and others I respect raving about it I did decide to go back and do what I did with BUFFY earlier this year and put the annoying fanbase out of my mind while watching. First up, I’m surprised by how well I remember FIRE WALK WITH ME. I also had to remind myself that the ending to the pilot on the VHS I used to have is not canon. Along with that I decided it was best to approach it the same way I do now with Italian horror movies: It doesn’t have to make since, just go along for the drive.

    So thanks me, that ended up being decent advice because I did sit down and watch all four episodes (over a period of days) and more or less enjoyed the drive. Mr. M uses the term Lava Lamp Movies and since I’m not too into trying to figure out what’s going I think that’s a good explanation for how I took it in. So in that respect of just watching it and taking everything at face-value, I mostly enjoyed it. When it was pretending to be a serious drama or being a parody of a serious drama, I fount it a bit of a slog but once it got to the bizarre and weird and shit I have to admit that I was kinda digging it and made the ‘serious/parody’ parts worth sitting through. So basically I am watching in the guise that it is an Italian horror movie or Hong Kong action movie. So while I do not believe I’m getting nearly as much out of it as other’s are, I’d be lying if I’m not at least a little curious to see how it all pans out, or rather how it ends.

    SPOILER MAYBE I DUNNO: So far my favorite stuff is with OG Cooper just acting extremely odd and everyone just playing along. On one hand it’s not funny at all but on the other, it kinda is (I must admit I got a good laugh out his peeing scene). Runner up would be the goofy cheap CGI which I assume is an artistic choice. You’re watching this show with impeccable cinematography and then, boom!, Asylum/Syfy-level CGI.

    So let me concur with Broddie that in an age of ‘IP-mining’ (ugh!) at least when Lynch ‘sells out’ with this and DUNE, it’s still very much his and very anti-mainstream in it’s execution.

  72. Cooper at the slot machines completely slayed me. Classic Twin Peaks quirky humor.

    “Heeeeeeelllooooooooo!!!”

    The breakfast table scene was hilarious too. Something kinda sad about seeing one of the most competent feds in TV history. Essentially the American Sherlock Holmes; being reduced to a mindless child for now. But those scenes added some much needed levity.

  73. “Coffee!”

  74. *thumbs up*

  75. geoffreyjar – Sorry if I came across as “calling you out.” I truly didn’t mean it that way. I value your comments here and I was trying to give friendly advice that I thought could be helpful.

  76. Lynch received a standing ovation at it’s premiere at Cannes tonight.

  77. Funnily, when I saw you mention my name I was like ‘Hoo ray attention from our sovereign!’ Then I started reading it I was all like ‘aw shit I’m in trouble now!’ so I waited a bit and read it and was all like ‘oh I’m not in trouble, he was just giving good advice!’

    So no I don’t feel you were ‘calling me out’ that way but even if you were I would have deserved it by kinda-sorta passively aggressively dumping on Broddie and Shoot’s parade (I’ll apologize to Broddie but not Shoot).

  78. Your complete refusal to apologize is accepted

  79. No need for an apology geoffreyjar. You like what you like and I was never offended but thanks anyway. That type of classiness is always appreciated. You’re a true gent.

  80. Oh and I just watched this movie this week for the first time in about 10 years. The older I get the more WICKED GAME makes sense as it’s chosen theme song.

  81. And boy is Willem Dafoe great as Bobby Peru. What a fucked up evil weirdo!

    Broddie- are you having a David Lynch marathon as I have. I watched LOST HIGHWAY last night. That is a damn fine film as well adn fits well into teh new TWIN PEAKS world.

  82. I would have liked to see Bobby Peru and Frank Booth together in a David Lynch road movie.

  83. Re-watching these TWIN PEAKS episodes you´d think Denise actually would have gone through with some sophisticated genetic surgery to make himself look more of a women. Or maybe he just said Fuck It. And just went with the crossdressing look because that is what he wants. I can´t say I understand it, so I would be curious to know how anybody feels.

  84. Mastor Troy (ex-convict Poeface)

    May 27th, 2017 at 2:38 am

    I think Mr Eddy/Dick Laurent deserves to be in that road movie too, pegsman. Or is Robert Loggia in a class of his own? Too much Loggia even for Robert Loggia, you know what they say…

    LOST HIGHWAY is a great noir film. I hadn’t seen it in a decade till a few nights ago. Robert Blake’s Mystery Man still creeps me out. In this viewing I only just figured out that Baltazhar Getty was fucking Robert Blake in disguise as a hot as hell Patricia Arquette the whole time. Holy shit Lynch is one fucked up unit.

  85. AV Club just had a review of the Lost Highway soundtrack, and supposedly Lynch wanted to include a bunch of modern rock stars because he wanted the film to be a major hit. The fact that Lynch thought the weirdness of Lost Highway would translate into major motion picture success is the best evidence I’ve seen that the dude just exists on a different frequency than the rest of us.

  86. Well, it definitely helped Rammstein, who were already a household name among German metal fans, but still far away from being the mainstream phenomenom that they became after they appeared on the LH soundtrack. The movie wasn’t even that much of a hit over here, but it wasn’t a coincidence that ENGEL suddenly was played on MTV and Co and the mainstream radios, in the same year, they appeared on the soundtrack of an acclaimed Hollywood director. So who knows? Without David Lynch, faux-007 would’ve maybe been killed at some other band’s concert in the beginning of xXx.

  87. Shoot – I wasn’t planning it that way but it evolved in that direction since I have now also revisited FIRE WALK WITH ME and ERASERHEAD. Gonna rewatch LOST HIGHWAY for the first time in almost 2 decades tonight.

  88. Shoot – Remember what Denise told Cooper “I may be wearing a dress but I still put my panties on one leg a time. If you know what I mean”.

    Clearly Denise had no issues with keeping her original plumbing regardless of her personal epiphany. Gender reassignment surgery may not fit the character’s profile.

  89. Yeah, I’ve suspected for a while that Lynch can’t tell the difference between his more commercial and less commercial stuff. It’s just not a dividing line he views as relevant to his art.

  90. I need to watch INLAND EMPIRE. It is one of the few films of his I have not seen. I looks like a fine companion piece to MULHOLLAND DRIVE which I absolutely loved.

  91. BTW, I decided to rewatch the classic TWIN PEAKS episodes, before diving into the new stuff. It’s surprising how modern the show still feels, although not always in a good way. (Meaning: In some episodes absolutely nothing seems to happen, until the cliffhanger at the end, which kinda mirrors the way modern serialized Television loves to annoy its viewers.)

  92. At this point I’ve watched episode 4 of season 3 more times than I’d like to admit. That whole Mr. Jackpots! segment was genius. Kyle Maclachlan has already put in career best performances in this revival.

  93. He is in almost everything in this season, whether it is as Scary Cooper, Dale or Doug Jones. MacLachlanspoitation in full effect.

  94. Yet another reason to hate the fucking internet: people getting pissy over Michael Cera’s little scene. Humorless chumps.

    Also: holy shit, Meg Foster!

  95. I love the ending of episode 2 when that bikerdork James Hurley enters the bar and this wonderful Julee Cruise-inspired soothing synthpop music (or whatever it is) plays. Shelly says to her friends who belittle James that James has always been cool. There is something both wonderfully contradictory and sweet about it. Because James has alwaye been lame, but it felt genuine.

  96. I maybe mis-remembering some of this but remember when Kyle Maclachlan was trying for years to play George Reeves? Then when the eventual movie, HOLLYWOODLAND, finally became a reality Ben Affleck expressed interest and the role. Total Bruce Campbel as THE PHANTOM situation. Not entirely related but even though Affleck gave a good performance I couldn’t help but feel then and even more so now that we missed out on Maclachlan’s turn as Reeves. Maclachlan is one of those guys who always seemed to be the edge of becoming a ‘name’ star but never did and unlike almost all the guys who that happens to now, Maclachlan has a ton of talent and wide range that filmmakers could be capitalizing on.

    *Please fact check me if the above is completely untrue btw!

  97. He was good as Ray Manzarek in THE DOORS. Not just acting wise but musically as well. Apparently he’s a descendant of Beethoven so that probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise then. Hopefully his turn here will raise his stock in Hollywood considerably.

  98. karlos that scene works for me on so many levels the more I rewatch the episode.

    Initially of course him dressing like Brando in THE WILD ONE and aping speech from that movie and other Brando fare including THE GODFATHER in a horrible Brando accent was enough to make me laugh. Then you have the moment when you realize he expected Sheriff Truman II to just walk away after he said “Thank You” but instead the Sheriff checks his trolling by standing his ground there and forcing Wally into a struggling spot where he now has to ramble on that right there heightened the laughs for me even more. Then the actual quotes “I hold a map of it right here” *points at heart* that right there is comedy in itself.

    Then of course comes the moment when you look at it in the context of TWIN PEAKS and that shit just blows your mind. The biological child of the most pretentious muthafucka in TWIN PEAKS history (Dick Tremayne) ends up being the rightful inheritor to that throne. Despite being raised by the most innocently aloof and lovable couple in the entire town. Nature vs. Nurture indeed and I think that’s a theme that will speak on Coop’s story down the line too. Also it’s not just seemingly Lynch and Frost’s commentary on the modern hipster but it’s like meta commentary on the most shitty and inconsequential subplot in series history. Not Nadine back in school as Superwoman but James fucking Hurley traveling the country cause he rides man and encountering some of the most lamest characters of all time. Even for the standards of something that is meant to deconstruct soap opera tropes.

    It was so on the nose even with having the representation be a character in the modern world aping a classic and iconic pop culture biking icon like James did with James Dean. On that level you appreciate it even more.You can even take it as commentary from Lynch on how the series became “hey man look at these even weirder weirdos we introduce to the weird you show man you’ll love em for that” on a blender and that’s how we got the likes of Windom Earle around. I don’t know to me it was definitely one of the most genuinely Twin Peaks moments of the entire 3rd season so far. So I can’t really understand where the haters are coming from on that one.

  99. Shoot to James’ credit he was perfectly fine when the show still focused on Laura’s murder. It was when they decided to follow him as a drifter that he became pretty lame and him and Donna were borderline intolerable. Still seems kinda weird that they are hinting at shipping him with Shelly probably just cause Donna ain’t there. Her comment seemed mad random when you take the entire series as a whole. I can’t even remember one scene with them together in season 1 or 2 off top. I get that things didn’t probably work out with Bobby but still.

  100. Broddie, you’re right – the Wally Brando haters really don’t get it. At all.

    And making Bobby a REDACTED is another touch of genius.

    When’s episode 5 here, by the way? Feels like forever since I saw the first four.

  101. On Monday the 5 it hits HBO Nordic here in Scandinavia. yes, it ha sbeen like forever. I want more TWIN PEAKS.

    Broddie- excellent Wally theorizing there.

  102. Showtime airs it on Sunday the 4th. It should be on their On Demand service soon after the live airing.

  103. Wasn’t Shelly making some eyes at someone else in that scene?

  104. That was Balthazar Getty

  105. Episode 5: In which some parts became clearer but not really.

    Ahh.. TWIN PEAKS…where the fuck have you been fo the last twentyfive years…?

  106. Man there was some seriously creepy shit in this episode. From the BOB confirmation to that sleazy fucker’s antics in The Bang Bang Bar the evil was strong with this eppy. Of course that creepo HAD to be a Horne. Their debauchery seems generational.

    I also really dug seeing Robert Knepper and Tom Sizemore as well since it’s an encouraging sign that he has finally gotten his life together somewhat. The truest revelation was Jim fucking Belushi pulling an Albert Brooks in DRIVE though. I had no clue that he ever had it in him. Props to Lynch for recognizing that capability in him.

    Shelly’s daughter may just end up being Laura Palmer 2.0 but part of me feels it’s a red herring. Speaking of red herrings I laughed so hard after seeing people on the internet speculating about the doc’s golden shovels for weeks now to see Lynch and Frost give a blatant payoff.

    But of course not the payoff that was expected. Jacoby basically getting his Billy Mays on struck me as Lynch and Frost going “stop overthinking every minute detail and just enjoy the ride people.”

  107. I want my own golden shit shovel.

  108. The Jacoby payoff was perfect, and it made so much sense for his character. He always was a creep and a con artist. I also love how long they made the audience wait to see the payoff with those shovels from the first scene of the first episode. The only thing I’m worried about is that there’s already so much plot that I’m not sure if eighteen episodes is even enough.

  109. The thing that stuck with me the most from ep 5 was probably Doug/Coop just crying whilst looking at the Looper kid.

    Could mean anything of course. God knows every time I’m reminded of LOOPER I want to weep, as well.

    The Jacoby payoff was just awesome, too.

    (With Knepper and Belushi appearing, I’m guessing that the huuuuge cast list really is mostly people just going, it’s Peaks, fuck it, it’s worth being in it just for one line.)

    So, so much oddness/brilliance again.

  110. What a beautiful sadism there is in making people feverishly speculate about those shovels –which appear in the VERY FIRST FUCKING SCENE AFTER A GODDAMN QUARTER CENTURY– and then, five hours later…. haha, they’re just a goofy bait-and-switch gag. Oh David Lynch, never change.

    I’m still baffled by how much time we’re spending in Dougie’s life. What the fuck is up with him? He’s “manufactured” somehow, but… he seems like he has a totally full and real life, there’s no indication he appeared recently or even appeared mysteriously 25 years ago. And wait, the hitmen who are after Dougie are somehow mixed up with Evil Coop too? Their handler calls the same box in Buenos Aires that Evil Coop does. What in tarnation?

  111. I’m pretty sure DoppelCooper created Dougie Jones as a fail safe. A golem similar to Wonder Woman but a blanker vessel. So that the Black Lodge could reclaim a Cooper doppelganger when it’s time just not the one that they’re looking for (BOB’s Coop).

    Seems like Dougie ended up having a fully formed and complete life in the 25 years since his creation as a 30 something year old golem. It also seems that because he’s a golem he has moments where he reverts to being a blank shell. Which will explain the episodes Naomi Watts reffered to and why everyone is ambivalent to him being so aloof.

  112. I also could be 100% wrong. Who ever really knows with Lynch?

  113. I do love how little by little blank slate Coop is recovering his faculties. “He’s lying!” was both a shocker and an affirmation that he’s getting there. I do wonder if the gold ball Dougie devolved into would play a role. Like how a seashell is not a clam without pearls maybe this gold pear like object is what the empty Coop shell needs?

  114. Not too hard to believe that Belushi could pull off menace for me. He did have a few attempts in the 80s at being an action star. He told a funny story about Arnold basically fattening him up during the filming of RED HEAT, because he bulked up for THE PRINCIPAL.

    So glad to see Sizemore in something legit again, too. I think he has a part in the movie where Liam Neeson is playing Deep Throat too. I was glad to see his name on the list but he felt like a strange choice for a Lynch project for some reason. But he was good and I imagine there will be more with him as this goes on.

    Someone noticed that Dougie’s son was blinking backwards, which is why it might have gauged such an emotional reaction (well at least in Coop’s case).

  115. Yeah that stood out.

    I took it as the kid not being quite what he seemed (perhaps manufactured like Dougie or possessing a surreal quality since Dougie wasn’t ‘real’ and he is his child) and Coop subconsciously picking up on that.

  116. Am I allowed to call the kid Looper Cooper?

  117. Both Dougie and his kid are in fact owls living among us.

    karlos- I think we all have our own names fo the different Coops. I like to call Evil Cooper for Scary Cooper (as an almost-alliteration of Gary Cooper, and as he is just as not cleancut of a person.)

  118. I’m calling him Waingro because of the scene in the motel room reminded me most of Kevin Gage’s creep in HEAT.

  119. Speaking of Jim Belusih, I got a Tony Soprano vibe of his performance which I absolutely love. He has that physical presence now that he can pull off. I expected him to play an FBI agent of sorts, but Lynch manages yet to surprise me, unsurprisingly.

  120. When I first heard Jim Belushi was gonna be in this I thought he was gonna be some fish out of water comic relief drifter stuck in Twin Peaks. So glad that Lynch complete curved my assumption.

  121. JIm Belushi has been type casted in the comedy category for too long. I have always liked the guy, but always sensed a more dramatic stroke in him that I wanted to surface. The few times I´ve seen him in dramatic parts he has been really good.

  122. Dramatic Jim Belushi is one of my favourite actors! Haven’T seen him in TWIN PEAKS yet (I rewatch the old eps first before I continue the new ones), but I heard he is playing Robert Knepper’s brother, which is seriously cool.

  123. THE PRINCIPAL is no THE SUBSTITUTE but I always dug it. It has one of my all time favorite quotes which you alwats used to see used on the preview on local channel 11 before they aired it on a saturday afternoon.

    Goon: Who do you think you are?

    Belushi: I’M THE PRINCIPAL!

    Right on!

  124. Belushi had a good, darker than usual role in the Patrick Wilson/Ian McShane crime/western thingey HOLLOW POINT. The movie overall kinda sucks but I remember being surprised by how convincing Belushi was as a lowlife. I also just received my uk bluray of RETROACTIVE, which I’ll be watching over the weekend.

  125. RETROACTIVE is a fun, little B-movie. Unfortunately Belushi has lots of shitty on-the-nose “I’m SUCH an eeeeeeeeeeevil redneck!” dialogue to say.

  126. After 26 years we finally get to meet Diane and it’s pretty much perfect casting. Yeah it’s Lula :)

  127. Wow,Chad,Wow! You REALLY are an asshole!

  128. I would have been concerned about the prospect of revealing who Diane was. I believe not all mysteries need to be solved. But the casting of Laura Dern makes it worth it all. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

  129. Thanks for the spoiler, assholes! :)

  130. Well, techincally it was Broddie who is the real asshole here. Certainly not on a Chad-level kind of asshole. But an asshole nonetheless since he opened that Spoiler-can without any heads up. I just followed his lead, so I am just a second assistant asshole in this case.

  131. “Fuck Gene Kelly. You motherfucker!” was a hilarious little bit of Albert Rosenberg tantrum

  132. TomCruiseNeverPhonesItInAGame

    June 12th, 2017 at 12:56 am

    Dougie stuff is taking way too long and I thought the truck and ice pick scenes were too much. I miss the humor and tone of season one and two.

  133. My sincerest apologies to the artist formerly known as Poeface. I was just so excited by the confirmation of a definite reunion between BLUE VELVET’s Jeffrey and Sandy that I couldn’t contain myself.

    Shoot that is probably the best line of the season. Nobody delivers angry snark like the late and great Mr. Ferrer.

    To the fellow Cruiser fan (great name BTW) I do agree that the office breakbeat lady mutilation scene was pretty disturbing. However that trademark Peaks humor even pops up at the tail end of that segment. The little dude letting out a melancholy “oh” with that look of sad disappointment when he sees the bent pick really made me chortle. Hell every episode we get closer and closer to the old Peaks-isms in terms of the humor.

    Speaking of. That’s precisely why I am digging the whole Dougie angle. Everything from Coop not knowing how to take off the lime green blazer to his elevator shenanigans and sheer wonder at the function of the clapper had me grinning and laughing. So it’s even more effective when the old Dale pops his head out like last week’s “he’s lying” and this weeks “make it make sense”. To those feeling that it’s droning out it really seems like the resolution will come very soon like next 2 episodes soon and we will get a full blown Special Agent Dale Cooper back in action. Besides if it wasn’t for this subplot we wouldn’t have all these amazing Naomi Watts scenes. She put on a clinic last night. That park scene was especially top notch stuff.

  134. Baltazar Gettys wacky and twitchy performance is also worth a mentin. I never thought I´d see the guy in anything ever again and here he is chewing the scenery.

  135. Yeah Getty was brilliant. Like his LOST HIGHTWAY Pete character merged with Mr. Eddy and absorbed Frank Booth. Shout out to the guy playing that complete piece of filth Richard Horne though. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be Jerry or Ben’s kid but I got a lot of Jerry vibes off him last night. How he could go from sleazeball to fearful and insecure and back to complete slime again is pretty impressive. Can’t wait for that character to get his comeuppance already and it’s still early on.

  136. I do wonder why Lynch and Nic Cage haven’t collaborated again in so many years. He would’ve been perfect for this. Imagine him in a scene with Maclachlan or Ferrer?

  137. Maybe for the same reason, why he only worked once with the Coen Brothers.

  138. When Getty snapped his hands out, I thought of Sailor, for sure.

    Also, Getty is now a dead ringer for Charlie Sheen, which is disturbing in its own right.

  139. De Palma recommended Nic Cage to Scorsese for BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (after working with him on SNAKE EYES). So he can’t always be that difficult.

  140. The thing isn’t necessarily that he is difficult, but that he is too much of a weirdo actor (and I mean this in a respectful way), who has a million ideas about the character he plays. From what has been said, there is no bad blood between the Coens and Cage, but he was too much of “his own thing” for the Coens, who have a very strong vision of what they want and how they want it. (According to IMDb, he kept throwing a million ideas at them and they ignored them all.) I can imagine that someone like David Lynch isn’t really a “Let the actors do their own thing” director either.

  141. Broddie, Shoot, it happens to the best of us. My biggest take away from yours and others comments is the enthusiasm for the show. Can’t wait till it hits bluray.

  142. This episode was like a damn fine cup of coffee. It just keeps getting better and better. David Lynch! You brilliant son of a bitch!

  143. TomCruiseNeverPhonesItInAGame

    June 18th, 2017 at 8:10 pm

    Best episode of the season

  144. Episode 7 was probably the most action packed episode of the season so far. It kind of felt like Lynch going, “Okay, you’ve endured all of this Dougie stuff. Here’s a reward.” I love that Lynch is doing his own thing, but I was also really pleased to spend some time actually in Twin Peaks.

  145. Best episode so far. Probably the most heavy in terms of plot going forward so far. I somehow knew Dougie would be okay if the little guy came because Cooper’s FBI training would kick in. And it certainly did.

    I even loved the floor-sweeping scene. Any excuse to hear “Green Onions” un-interrupted is fine by me.

  146. The floor sweep was hilarious since he was using a house broom when clearly he needed a long broom. Especially with all the garbage that was in that place (this includes the Renault brother).

  147. Up until this episode I wondered what the hell Jaques Renault was doing in the Roadhouse. He used to be dead! Now, it turns out it is a relative of his. One itch that has been scratched.

  148. I love that Hawk completely solves the bizarre mystery of the hidden diary pages, where they came from, what they are, and what they mean, all in about 15 seconds. One of the pleasures of THE RETURN is its somnambulist pace, but Lynch is interested only in giving us new weirdness to ponder, not in boring us with characters struggling to figure out stuff the audience already knows. Also, they should probably put Hawk in charge of more cases. If he’d been leading the Laura Palmer investigation, the whole show would be three episodes long.

  149. No way would Andy have a Rolex.

  150. Jesus Harold Christ on platinum rollerskates.

  151. Well that was the best thing I’ve seen so far this year.

  152. He went full blown Lynch with no apologies or fucks to give. What a bold and visually thrilling hour of TV. So glad I saw it in a dark room while smoking a 20 sack.

    One question though. So that beautiful atom bomb explosion is what broke the barrier between our world and The Black Lodge. It allowed BOB and the evil hobo brigade to be able to invade our dimension or reality. Also seems like the thing in the box that killed the horn dogs back in episode 1 is pretty much the source of BOB and his ilk. Cool.

    However was the implication at The White Lodge that the beings there created Laura Palmer? Or did they ressurect her? I ask because we were shown that while still in 1945 but as we all know especially when it comes to the lodges on this show, time and space are not linear.

  153. karlos – It could be a gift from Wally effing Brando.

  154. Broddie – I wondered that, funnily enough, after posting. Maybe some kinda pay off from Dick, perhaps.

    Am about to watch/witness/experience episode 8.

    Wish me luck, guys.

  155. I need that White Lodge/Silent Film Era homage sequence music ASAP. People don’t credit the use of sound and music in THE RETURN enough. It’s been beyond exceptional.

  156. Broddie — so you agree that the movie theater with Mr. ????? and the Opera lady is indeed the White Lodge? I’m a bit confused because it seems to be in the same Purple World (Prince World?) that Coop visited on his way back to Earth, but that house with the eyeless lady did not seem like a very friendly place.

  157. Broddie: I believe that music is from Lynch’s album THE AIR IS ON FIRE

  158. Mr. S the way I saw it was that similar to how Tibetan beliefs were incorporated onto the show the white and black lodges are more yin yang than downright good and evil. Dual natures play a large role in the mythology of Twin Peaks. I do think purple ocean world is the white lodge. Again time and space don’t work linearly on the show. Look at how that orb of light that manifests into Laura many years later was sent back in 1945.

    What if the eyeless lady who fell into space ended up being the same being that floated in an empty void and broke into reality as the people in the Twin Peaks world know it via the trinity bomb test in 1945? since time is always one anyway. That could’ve been a corrupted version of her corrupted by all the darkness that took over her world before breaking into ours via the explosion itself. She then gave corporeal form to the extent of evil intent that mankind came up with by even conceptualizing the atom bomb with that matter she puked out. Another example of technology becoming our undoing in this world. We have seen this now with the woodsmen looking for the first form of tech (fire), electricity also plays a major attraction point for the more benevolent beings. It’s like Lynch is saying technology attracts harmful bullshit folks. Be careful.

    I think now that everything is out of whack both lodges are weaker for it. Hence even black lodge spirits helping out Cooper for the greater good. Since their power is being siphoned by the likes of BOB or Windham Earle? maybe even Phillip Jeffries? in the end that starts corrupting both places hence evil penetrating the white lodge. All full circle. Then again I could be 100% wrong. That’s the beauty of Lynch. This is why I love that this is not some netflix binge fest. Giving us a week or 2 to ponder this is what makes the ride so worthwhile. It’s pretty gripping stuff to consider.

    was brought to earth because of mankind’s own evil. The trinity atom bomb test signified such an escalation of the ill in man so potent that it created a breach between worlds.

    onthewall – Thanks a lot for the info. Will look into it immediately.

  159. “*BOB was brought to earth…”

    It’s such a simple but powerful concept. Makes you consider how much of the evil in man is actually something man desires and it leads to them playing with fire. Fire walk with me indeed.

  160. BOB as an excretion of bad mojo resulting from nuclear weaponry is much more potent dramatically than what I initially thought, and speaks much more deeply in these times of what evil man is capable of.

    More than anything else in this season so far, the whole sequence beginning with the explosion and aftermath show the capabilities of the beauty of modern digital storytelling in Lynch’s hands. I was kind of bummed that he didn’t return to shooting on film with this, but that single-handedly turned me around permanently on it. Now if he can only do something in the wider formats (something he hasn’t done since LOST HIGHWAY I believe) with digital, that would be something.

    Good performance by Nine Inch Nails by the way. Someone said Trent Reznor looked like Stallone in COBRA. I’m much more a fan of his soundtrack work as of late, but he can still bring the noise with his native project. I’m altogether not crazy about these roadhouse musical sequences, but I can see how they’re necessary sometimes especially if nothing else on the episode is actually set in TWIN PEAKS.

  161. Just finished listening to the Lynch album. While I recognized pieces used jn both Part 3 and Part 8 in there I did not find the track I was looking for. The piece that plays when the giant starts floating and sounds like something from an old Universal Monster movie. I guess that’s a new composition from Badalamenti.

  162. Someone linked me to the reddit for the show today and I read a point of interest on there. Earth is represented by blue (we see the blue sky a lot in twin peaks as well as flowing water, water is usually represented by blue) and The Black Lodge is represented by red so perhaps the purple world is the place in between?

  163. That scene with Diane and Gordon on the steps was oddly sweet. Looked like Dern and Lynch broke character for a moment there. Once again Albert walks away with all the best quotes in the episode. Oh and what do you know Albert may have finally found a kindred spirit.

  164. Chrysta Bell’s “acting” was a bit more distracting than usual during the interrogation scene. Matthew Lillard is just breaking your heart, and the movements she was making in her silence was a bit much for me. Otherwise, a good episode. Dougie looking at the flag and “America The Beautiful” faintly in the background was a nice moment.

  165. Yeah that was a cool moment with the flag. I swear that as soon as he saw the red shoes just like Audrey’s and the electrical socket that he would fully wake from Dougie land and become a full blown Special Agent Dale Cooper again. But we still have some waiting to do.

    The interrogation scene did seem disjointed from an acting stand point. It’s like Chrysta Bell really had no confidence in her acting ability and that insecurity made her performance even more awkward. I laughed so hard at Ike the Spike’s whimper of defeat. Only Lynch could make a mass murdering sociopath seem that plausibly vulnerable and sympathetic.

    What did you make of that scene with Diane receiving the text?

  166. Hard to say. Clearly she knew it was from him, but obviously how it speaks to their relationship is far from clear yet.

  167. Well, if THAT won’t snap Dougie out what will?

  168. I finally finished my rewatch of the first two TWIN PEAKS seasons. I forgot what a thrillride the last 25 minutes of the final episode were. Say what you want about David Lynch, but he can scare the shit out of you with simple images like a screaming woman in strobe light.

    Also I’m really not gonna argue with anybody who doesn’t like the post-Laura Palmer episodes, but I personally really enjoyed the cranked up silliness and soap opera factor of these episodes. The whole “Nadine thinks she’s a teenage girl and joins the wrestling team” subplot is pure gold IMO.

    Can’t wait to re-visit FIRE WALK WITH ME and then finally dive into the new episodes.

  169. The one thing I did like about the post-Palmer resolution episodes in season 2 was Windham Earle’s elaborate disguises. So cartoonishly comedic.

    As for the latest season 3 episode: all I know is that I need Dougie’s O-Face on a t-shirt. Stat!

    Kyle MacLachlan deserves ALL the emmy’s come next year.

  170. Oh and leave it to David Lynch to directly follow up quite possibly the most unnerving scene in series history with one of the most heartwarming. Brilliant!

  171. FIRE WALK WITH ME will be released by Criterion in October. It’s all but official (which will probably change by the end of the day), but the Amazon pre-order is up already.

  172. Earle’s disguises were actually pretty good (I’m glad that there wasn’t a scene where he fooled Cooper with it. That would’ve been crap.), but I think after Catherine Martell’s Chinese Businessmandisguise, the bar for silly costumes was set very low. The original TWIN PEAKS run was partly supposed to be a parody of soap operas, but I think they really crossed even by their own standards a line with that.

  173. I missread Broddie’s “did like” as “didn’t like”, so basically we agree on Windom Earle’s disguises.

  174. Holy jumping George!

    Guys episode 11 was some thoroughly goooood shit. Damn good!

  175. In terms of goodness, how does it compare to their coffee?

    -I’m actually 3 episodes behind right now

  176. I’ll try to be as vague as possible geoff but everything between Dougie and Belushi-Knepper bros in part 11 will make any fan of Special Agent Dale Cooper smile with abssolute glee. I was cheering in my room like a lunatic at points.

    The stuff with Bobby and Shelly at the double R is also great stuff for those of us who grew up watching PEAKS.

    Aside from that everything with Gordon and Albert was beyond incredible especially in light of episode 8. Which I know is the one you’re now up to so hang on to your butt and prepare for an exhilirating ride through surprem Lynchness. It also makes the meeting of the lodge spirits scene in FWWM make so much more sense.

    That section also serves as another reminder of how masterful Lynch is at organically bringing some levity to very heavy and intense scenarios. He delivered one phrase durinc a scene involving a police car so succinctly that it floored me. I laughed for about 3 minutes after it.

  177. I will also say that as much as I miss the guy especially because he was one of my spirit animals I am so glad that this was the last thing Miguel Ferrer did. So glad that it was this and not NCIS with Robin and Mr. Smith or whatever. Way better end to an awesome legacy in film and TV for a very (rightfully) well loved character actor than some CBS (irony being that CBS produces TP) procedural made to keep your grandma away from another bingo night at the old folks center.

    25 years later Albert has absolutely been my favorite part of THE RETURN. Which is no small potatoes since I pretty much have loved everything about this revival. Matter of fact my only complain is we are 11 episodes deep and still no sign of Audrey Horne. Maybe I’m biased because she was my second biggest media related crush back in the early 90s. Behind Vicki Vale from BATMAN and ahead of Lydia from BEETLEJUICE but I really want to see her already. I could only hope we get to see her properly once Cooper proper is back in Twin Peaks which is what would make most sense from a dramatic standpoint considering the nature of their interesting friendship and admiration of each other.

  178. Well, technically NCIS LA is the last thing Ferrer did, but Twin Peaks is the last thing we’ll see from him. (I guess. Wouldn’t be surprised if there are some movies still in post production.)

    Anyway, I rewatched FIRE WALK WITH ME yesterday. I appreciate parts of it more, but others still not as much. Specifically I made peace with the fact that the first half hour introduces just more questions without an answer, but at least it feels like classic TWIN PEAKS. The first five minutes are pure gold, with the introduction of Chris Isaak, arresting two hookers and a schoolbus driver at gun point, while you can hear the kids in the bus crying, or Gordon telling his agents everything about their new assignment through a performance dancer.

    Unfortunately the Laura Palmer part is less interesting. Lee and Wise give Oscar worthy performances (I even caught myself crying a bit at the end this time) and it’s a nice addendum for true fans of the show, that gives at least SOME answers to a few questions, but it’s too much of an average teenage drama. (Although with much darker subjects, much better filmatism and an interesting horror angle.)

    Anyway, I’m torn between (re-)starting the new episodes now and waiting until the season is done, to not have to wait a full week between episodes.

  179. I would honestly suggest just jumping straight into THE RETURN. Especially if seasons 1 and 2 and FWWM are all still fresh on your mind.

    Not only is it more than halfway done at this point; but it’s like the original in that a week between episodes actually helps the viewer come to grips with what they have seen. While also encouraging very engaging “water cooler” conversation. This show rehighlights why everything on TV should NOT be binge watched Netflix style.

    You get excited for every sunday night to come actually instead of aggravated wondering “what happens next?” simply because each episode will leave you with so much to process at times that the next few weeks (7 to be exact) will fly by without you even really noticing it.

  180. I’m a bad binge watcher anyway. I rarely watch more than 2 episodes of anything in a day. But yeah, I guess I’m gonna go with season 3 immediately, mostly because I really wanna know what happens in that 8th episode, that got everybody so excited.

  181. Episode 11 was so good I fear it may have spoiled TV for me for the rest of my days.

    Nobody – and I mean nobody – can pull off that many tonal shifts in an hour of television the way Lynch can.

    Jesus, how great were the last few scenes of Sunday’s episode?

    Amazing stuff.

  182. karlos the entire episode I had the same glee Belushi displayed when holding the envelope. So when we got to those last 10 minutes it was pure bliss. David Lynch really is the real Mr. Jackpots.

  183. 4 episodes into the new season and I can already see that the whole story could be told in half the runtime. (Achieved by cutting down every episode to a 30 minutes runtime.) Still, despite unbelievable long scenes of nothing happening, I’ve been very well entertained so far.

    Random observations from my side:

    – The biggest headscratcher so far ar the hipster popmusic performances at the end of each episode, but I guess either Lynch tries to be down with da kids again (like when he filled the LOST HIGHWAY soundtrack with a bunch of alternative artists because he thought the movie would be a hit) or he wants to give a the audience a safe space, where we can simply relax and cool down after whatever happened in the previous hour.

    – It’s scary how much Andy resembles Stan Laurel these days.

    – Talking about Andy: Was he always such a giant or did Lucy shrink? I don’t remember that they had such a big height difference! Maybe they were purposely hiding it in the old episodes.

    – It’s heartbreaking how the first 3 episodes are dedicated to 4 deceased actors

    – I love the ultra clean digital camera look but it’s weird to see some of the old sets in HD

    – Michael Cera was born to play this particular character

  184. Broddie, was the episode 8 music you were looking for Polish modernist composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima”?

    Penderecki: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

    -National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Antoni Wit, Conductor.

    CJ, isn’t the edgy club music thing a hallmark of Lynch? I remember True Detective Season 2 drawing flack for wearing its Lynchian influences too openly by featuring moody nightclub performances.

  185. No renfield. It’s a new piece of music by Angelo Badalamenti. I’ve since found out that it will be on the planned soundtrack album for THE RETURN.

  186. Yeah, but how the club performances are incorporated into the show is a bit too “And now, that this weeks’s episode is over, enjoy that hip new music act with their cool song, available on iTunes!” I’m not against it, it just feels a bit like a marketing decision. Maybe someone at Showtime said: “We are scared that the kids won’t care about your super trippy sequel to a show that most of them haven’t seen, because they aren’t into old stuff, so can you film a new, cool live performence every week? That’s all we ask for. Apart from that, just do what you want!”

  187. So you’re saying it’s old PHANTASM II method of making corporate-funded art “You can do absolutely anything you want as you cast James LeGros instead of A. Michael Baldwin?”

  188. Maybe. I mean, Lynch does have a pretty hip taste in music, so he most likely handpicked them all, but how every episode (at least the 5 that I’ve seen so far) has a different band performing a few minutes of one of their songs, most of the time completely unrelated to the the story, smells a bit like: “If nothing else, at least the soundtrack will be a hit”.

  189. But none of this music is even close to commercially popular except I suppose Reznor, but I don’t think anybody’s paid attention to his band since the 90s. I’m looking at the phenomenon without cynicism myself.

    Also, you’ll see that they start to do playful things with it. Ep 11’s musical performance was quite a treat.

  190. There was a nice piece in the Village Voice recently about Reznor, more about the new music he’s putting out this year than his involvement on the show.

    Trent Reznor’s Soundtrack to the Apocalypse | Village Voice

    With our political norms crumbling, our social fabric fraying, and our planet literally on fire, the Nine Inch Nails mastermind is back to make sense of it all

  191. Yeah, they aren’t exactly super popular hit bands so far (I think Moby has appeared/will appear at one point), but it’s the kind of alternative pop, that will be heavily talked about in the blogosphere and feuilletons and might appeal to a slightly more open minded teenage demographic.

    Again, not complaining, it just feels a bit odd how they are incorporated into the episodes. Even in the classic seasons there was actually a reason for a long Julee Cruise performance, because characters were sitting in the bar and talking about important things. This happened here (in the first five episodes) only twice.

  192. FWIW, Nine Inch Nails actually had more commercial success in the 00s than it did in the late-90s. I used to be a *huge* fan. Saw them live 6 times. Listened to Downward Spiral every day on the school bus for months on end. Considered them my all-time-favorite.

    And then one day… I just stopped. I didn’t even bother listening to their last two albums. They even came to town touring once or twice and I never bothered to check how much tickets cost.

    It’s not that I grew out of it. I still listen to all sorts of adolescent, rage-filled music. Hell, I’ve become a big fan of My Chemical Romance in the last couple of years.

    Donno what I’m trying to say, just realized that I totally forgot about NIN. Good thing they aren’t Dre.

  193. I like a lot of NIN stuff, but more and more lately I’ve been interested in Trent’s soundtrack work with Atticus Ross. I am a little disappointed that it appears they haven’t done anything on the show in that vein.

  194. I think the odds that the bands were foisted on Lynch for commercial reasons are close to zero. If anything, I bet Showtime execs were quite displeased that they were footing the bill for Lynch’s private Coachella. He just loves music and wanted to give some of his recent favs a showpiece, and the show is such a collection of his personal eccentricities anyway that it they fit right in there.

  195. Considering the show this time around is so wide-spread in terms of it’s geography, those scenes are handy considering they might be the only thing on any given episode (8 being the perfect example) that is actually set in the town of Twin Peaks.

  196. I’ve not been so eager to see a brain damaged man in a black suit and white shirt wake up to his true self since GOD OF GAMBLERS.

  197. karlos – what I love about it is that he’s awakening because there’s a story that requires him to awaken, not (just) because it’s what the audience wants to see. As his true self makes itself known piece by piece, he’s already deeply embroiled in god knows what. And as the slot lady realized, the world needs Coop.

    tawdry – I’m quite familiar with Trent’s post-millennial output and I’m pleased to hear he’s still making a buck on it. I believe he was one of the first big stars to *get* the bandcamp model and make his music digitally available for free with an optional donation. But do any of these records generate hits? Maybe his post-millennial success is more due to the fact that these days it actually pays to be a medium profile, hard working artist touring and selling merch, and it is no longer only the megastars that can earn a living.

  198. How do you link on this website anyway?

    Inside the Music of Twin Peaks: The Return with Dean Hurley

    Twin Peaks: The Return music supervisor, and member of the band Trouble, Dean Hurley joins DJ Morgan to go inside the first half of the new season. Discover interesting facts about the artists and mus

  199. So…I just saw episode 8.

    That’s all.

  200. Well, Broddie…what did you make of you-know-who’s return?

  201. It was a pretty bewildering scene but I’m glad their presence has finally been felt in THE RETURN. These next 6 episodes are bound to really get the show on the road now that all the pieces seem to be in place.

  202. i love how Albert, in the scene between him and Gordon in the hotel room, essentially acted as the audience surrogate for this episode/many other episodes of THE RETURN, with Gordon embodying the essence of Twin Peaks, veering off into tangents and non sequiturs and occasionally stopping dead in his tracks to drop a joke-bomb and then stand there grinning and surveying the wreckage for an uncomfortable amount of time while Albert just begrudgingly waits for this bullshit to be over so they can get back to the plot.

    then Gordon/Twin Peaks comforts/warns Albert/The Audience by saying “Hey, maybe lighten up a bit and try to enjoy the ride. Waiting around hoping we’ll get to some kind of a point is not going to end well i assure you. Here, let me prove it” — BOOM!! (SPOILERS) back-to-back scenes featuring you-know-who and a table of randies at The Bang Bang Bar talking endlessly about motherfuckers we’ve never met or heard of before without placing any of it into any sort of truly meaningful context and then the episode ends.

    in any other situation i would have found this episode, in particular, to be as unbearably obnoxious but not Twin Peaks. such is the unknowable alchemy of this fucking show.

    also, outside of the masterpiece that is Episode 8, i think Ep 11 has been my favourite “standard” episode of the season so far. too many instant-classic scenes and moments to mention (not sure i’ll laugh harder all year than i did at the interplay between the Mitchum Bros and Candie during that final scene with them and Dougie) but as standalone, vintage Lynch set-pieces go that whole sequence opening at the Double R and closing with the lady and the boy in the car is right up there for me as a legitimate David Lynch all-timer.

  203. FYI for those who watch the live broadcasts. Beginning this Sunday and going forward it will air an hour earlier.

  204. When it comes to this show, it would feel foolish to disregard something, because I can’t disregard the idea that it’s somehow paid off in a later episode. Honestly I’ll take a “bad” episode of this season over a good one from the 2nd. Or even FWWM.

    BTW I watched STRAIGHT TIME last night and noticed Harry Dean Stanton playing a guitar. I wonder if it’s the same one he’s used for THE RETURN.

  205. I finally caught up with all the episodes. Downside: I have to experience the last 4 in “real time”.

    Random notes:

    – I want a spin-off with Belushi & Knepper.
    – I love how far Cooperdougie comes in life, just by repeating the last few words everybody says to him.
    – Amanda Seyfried still hasn’t learned to show emotion with her mouth closed.
    – Just like the original run was partly supposed to be a parody of popular TV at the time (something that even its fans often forget), I have the feeling the new episodes are partly supposed to parody modern “Nothing happens most of the time” and “We just add more and more random shit to our mystery” prestige TV.

  206. Ha, apparently Showtime sent the wrong episode to Sky Germany and now many people over here already know what happens next week, but not what happened this week. (Not me, I wanted to watch it tonight and by then they had already removed it.)

  207. Time for me to avoid the internet for a week it seems…

  208. Like CJ I too want a Mitchum Bros. spin-off. The Knepper led conga line in episode 13 brought me so much joy combined with the wacky Badalamenti music that I want to see these guys together on TV forever.

    Oh and that roadhouse performance. I did not think Lynch would got there and then…he did. I laughed for like 2 minutes straight. I’m sure that would end up as one of Shoot McKay’s favorite season 3 moments.

  209. Yeah, that was one of the, if not the, best episodes so far.

  210. Well that roadhouse performance was corny as fuck…..

    But it was Tom Sizemores performance that stood out. Nobody gets untouched by Dougie. Not even a slimy rat fuck as him.

    Also, poor old Ed…He just can´t get a break. Norma dating a number crunching generic person with less personality than a hatrack. Shit aint right.

  211. The arm wrestling scene with bad Dale and the Predator was the shit!

  212. Cool as hell seeing Everett McGill back on screen. Didn’t realize until recently that THE STRAIGHT STORY was his last role until he signed up for the show. I didn’t truly appreciate his talent until watching him in the first two seasons, as Ed is a completely different guy from the villains I’ve seen him play.

    The official soundtracks will be released next month, but Dean Hurley just put out ANTHOLOGY RESOURCE VOL. 1: △△, which contains much of the ambient musical noise heard throughout this season.

  213. Did you guys peep that reflection on the window during Big Ed’s scene at the gas station? Bugged me the hell out. Between that and the Sarah Palmer scene something is differently afoot with time and space in Twin Peaks itself.

  214. Bushnell Mullins has proved to be a very genuinely warm character and that makes him pretty great.

  215. I love the little moments of genuine humanity and compassion in this.

    I mean, I’m sure plenty of people will have split their fucking sides at Tom Sizemore’s speech in ep 13 but those people are wrong. He is made to feel human again and it’s quite staggeringly moving.

    Thank Dougie.

  216. The roadhouse performances went 180 degrees this week. From last weeks cringeworthiness to what may be a new Stevie Knicks. Man that girl can sing!

  217. I was hoping for: “The roadhouse proudly presents for the second night in a row JAMES HURLEY!”

    The moment her song got into the first breakdown though and my arms actually caught goosebumps I was glad that Lynch had put me on to yet another artist via this show.

  218. I admit that James Hurley would have made a great heart throb pop star. In fact he should have been

  219. I saw Lissie at a festival here in my home town just 10 days ago. She put on one hell of a show.

  220. Of everything to discuss, I’m surprised that the song is first. Very surprised.

  221. I didn’t want to bring anything else up till others did. That bar scene was quite the nightmare and the way Lynch delivered “Coffee Time!” left me in stitches.

  222. Going back to what karlos brought up a couple of weeks back the moments of humane compassion really is what shines through the most. From the beginning of the season with stuff like “I told them to fix their hearts or die.” to the dinner scene at the end of a couple of episodes ago and Carl the trailer park landlord giving a tenant a month of free of charge because he knows they have money trouble it’s all been inspiring stuff that really transcends the weirdness and eccentricities that follow it. It’s all very supplemental to the material and adds balance. This week was no exception with Nadine’s scene with Ed at the beginning and it’s aftermath. I knew after something that beautiful Lynch was probably gonna drag us back down but then we get the log lady’s farewell handled with extreme grace and that scene in the conference room. Boy that scene defines human compassion and empathy on film. The greatest aspect of THE RETURN is that TWIN PEAKs’ earnest reminder of the best in all of us carried through intact 26 years later.

  223. Yeah, for someone, who has the reputation of being a weird who loves to throw all kinds of weird shit at the screen, the new TWIN PEAKS eps have a surprising amount of heart. (Although STRAIGHT STORY already showed that Lynch has a heart.)

    On a different topic: Can you imagine how badass a certain scene would’ve been if David Bowie would’ve been able to shoot it? But leave it to Lynch to replace a dead actor with a giant tin can. That definitely tops Terry Gilliam’s “Turning Ledger into Depp, Law and Ferrell”.

    Also:

    “HOW MANY TIMES DID I TELL YOU THAT THIS IS WHAT WE DO HERE AT THE FBI!!!”

  224. So Part 16 aired in the UK on demand channelsnand some people already saw it. I saw one leaked scene on youtube that I probably shouldn’t have seen but am really glad that I did. This looks to be the episode of the season and these next 9 hours can’t fly by quickly enough.

  225. I was sad about Tobe Hooper today only for the last 30 minutes bringing me absolute joy. Oh my god. This is Lynch’s masterpiece.

  226. Outstanding.

  227. Still want that spinoff starring our precious Mitchum Brothers.

  228. “Goodbye, my son.”

  229. Powerful stuff. The journey is almost at an end and it has been quite a ride. The Dougie stuff has been magical.

  230. Powerful stuff. The journey is almost at an end and it has been quite a ride. The Dougie stuff has been magical.

  231. “You’ve made my heart so full.”

    My exact sentiments about this entire season pretty much.

  232. Perhaps the greatest hour of tv I’ve ever witnessed.

  233. it’d been a long time since i’d inadvertently yelled out “Fuck yes!” due to something going down in a tv show or film. of course it’d be the new season of TWIN PEAKS to break that drought. this entire run so far has been nothing short of a fucking miracle. if it nails the landing, which i’m convinced it will, there is no doubt in my mind that it’ll be spoken of amongst the all-time greats. just incredible.

  234. I’m definitely not worried about getting a real ending anymore. This episode was 55 minutes full of pieces falling into place in the most awesome way possible!

  235. Broddie – for all of the amazing shit involving them in the show, i’d welcome a Mitchum Bros spinoff just to get a few more precious screen seconds with Candi – a fictional character who has made me laugh out loud more than any other in i don’t know how long.

  236. Broddie: just curious, which was the scene you saw on YouTube hours before?

  237. The “100%” scene with MIKE.

  238. MIXALOT Candie has definitely been a great source of joy for me too. Of course her presence is a must

  239. I finished DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE last night. Aside from finding out that Bushnell Mullins being named after his mentor and the first person to really encourage his painting (which was pretty damn cool), the major thing I took away is how important it is to fund the arts art. The absolute clarity in which a nearly 70-year old Lynch talks about the day when he was accepted into the AFI was stunning.

    After I saw three of his short films which were made before ERASERHEAD on Filmstruck’s The Criterion Channel. Of the three I finished (still need to get through THE GRANDMOTHER), I liked THE ALPHABET most. I’m planning on watching more Lynch stuff tonight including ERASERHEAD which I never have seen. BLUE VELVET and MULLHOLLAND DR. tonight as well, and FWWM tomorrow.

  240. The cool part about Bushnell Keeler was he was the one who always believed in Lynch’s artistic ability and convinced his parents to just let Lynch do him. He was always on his corner especially when others did not believe in him. Just like Bushnell Mullins with Dougie. Such a fitting tribute and a brilliant character. One of the many great parts of THE RETURN.

  241. *in his corner

  242. Guys! you are not ready! Wow that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen on TV and its just hour 1. God bless Lynch and Frost.

  243. Guys! you are not ready! Wow that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen on TV and its just hour 1. God bless Lynch and Frost.

  244. To quote Gordon Cole: “WHAT THE HELL?!” A very strange and disturbing finale. How could it possibly have ended any other way. Thank you David Lynch for this journey. And to all the haters; you need to open your heart and pour all that bitterness from your soul.

  245. However, I think I need to lie down a bit….

  246. After all the joy it ended like a horror movie.

    SPOILERS

    .
    Judy got em both in the end. Crazy. At least now we know where Laura really went back in episode 1.

  247. Shoot they need to fix their hearts or die.

    Or hope for a season 4. Bwahahahaha.

  248. I’m also glad we got to see the king and queen of the Lynchverse fall into their natural roles. Even if that meant the most awkward but also realistic sex scene I’ve seen in a while. Also yay for The Joneses. There resolution mattered so much to me and they got a new and improved Dougie!

  249. Is it just me, but I though Cooper went a bit strange after the sex scene. It´s almost like parts of Bad Coop came into fruition. The scene afterwards in the diner esepcially. He talked in that monochrone voice of Bad Coop.

  250. Actually it just dawned on me.

    SPOILERS

    Final shot is a traditional final girl defeats the great evil shot. Thats why the power went out in a flash when Laura “woke up” and screamed. The Palmer house represents Judy. Hence evil represented by the ceiling fan there. That symbolizes electrical currents running through those walls. The means of travel is electrical. Unfortunately though he is the hero it was at the costs of Cooper losing everyone he cares about in the process. He’s gonna inhabit that Richard role in the alternate reality forever and Diane couldn’t carry on next to him as Linda. Sad. Btw the waitress at “Judy’s” is played by Clint’s daughter.

  251. Shoot he switched to Richard characteristics. Without realizing what had really happened yet. “What year is this?” represents it beginning to dawn on him.

  252. Shoot he switched to Richard characteristics. Without realizing what had really happened yet. “What year is this?” represents it beginning to dawn on him.

  253. It´s a cruel ending. Especially after the excitement from getting Dale back a couple of episodes ago. I may need a drink. And it is only 11 A.M over here

  254. Now we know “430” and “Richard and Linda” from The Fireman were warnings about reaching a treshold. A vulnerable and easily manipulated portal that Judy rejiggered in her rage at the end of episode 17 (im sure shattering glass represented shattering time/space) while Coop and Diane thought they were going to the past. She locked them into an alternate present that slowly bleeded in around them instead. Crazy shit to explore if they ever did a season 4 but I’m ok with this being the end. It’s not another cliffhanger in the traditional sense.

  255. I wouldn’t say it’s so much cruel as it was bittersweet. Which could be seen as genius from Lynch and Frost since real life functions the same way.

  256. I wouldn’t say it’s so much cruel as it was bittersweet. Which could be seen as genius from Lynch and Frost since real life functions the same way.

  257. I dearly hope we get a Season 4.

  258. They’ll have to move fast though. I love everyone involved but they’re not spring chickens. It’s sad enough we’ll never get Albert or Log Lady ever again. Showtime prez says he’s down if Lynch is. Ball is in his court.

  259. I have yet to see the last 2 eps, but I know that I should not be expecting much in terms of resolution.

    So I guess this is it (would like to be proved wrong, though, and if there is a season 4 then great).

    If so, I’ve enjoyed every bewildering minute and the finale will have to be epically terrible to change that.

    I’ve also loved the comments on here from you guys. I’ll not soon forget your kindness.

    (BTW, I know Frost has a book out soon – “Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier” which may wrap some things up?)

  260. I somehow think it’s a little appropriate that three of Broddie’s comments were sent as damn duplicate posts that sometimes gets me here.

    The more I think about it and read more from you guys and on other film sites I trust, the more I’m okay with how this ended. There was enough gradual payoff throughout the season for many the secondary or tertiary characters both old and new up to 17, that if combined into one big payoff at the end it may have not felt right for this show.

  261. MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern and Miguel Ferrer are the standouts in the series. Great performances from all of them.

    In fact Lynch did right by all the guest stars (Belushi, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Knepper, Ashley Judd) giving meaty roles to all of them. Despite how frustrating how little answers we get, there’s so much to like in each episode.

    What’s your favorite Roadhouse Musical performance?

  262. Lissie is my favourite performance. But Chromatics “Shadow” evoked so much Julie Cruises sensibilities from the original show so that is a close second.

    James Hurley should come up with some new material. There, I said it.

  263. Just realized that what we saw last night was Miguel Ferrer’s last performance.

    Hope Albert marries that Coroner lady.

  264. If they marry, I hope they move to a place where rainfall is not a problem since that is something that highly aggrevates Albert

  265. I remember reading that Lynch was obsessed with the open ended nature of television, which is why he didn’t want to solve Laura’s murder in the first place. So I sort of figured this season/series finales wouldn’t end with everything nicely tied together. Like the soap operas that influenced Lynch, the world of Twin Peaks can never be brought to a final resting point. It will always be unsettled.

    As much as I trust Lynch’s vision, there were things that tested my patience this season. I alternately loved and got tired of the Dougie story line. I also thought there were way too many nagging wife characters. But damn if this wasn’t a singularly unique experience on television, a medium that I’ve become kind of bored with recently. I was genuinely excited to watch the latest episode of Twin Peaks every week in a way that’s unusual for me. If this is the end, then I am so glad that we got to venture back into this world one last time.

    One question, though. What the hell do people think happened with Audrey? I haven’t heard people mention her cliffhanger, which was also never resolved.

  266. Audrey was still in a coma from the explosion or stuck in some sort of limbo. But I think there is a reason why her segment felt like it was outside everything else. But how could she if she birthed that shitbird (whose name eludes me)?

  267. The thing that gives me a tiny, tiny glimmer of hope that we might a season 4 is that there seem to be *so* many little plotholes left unresolved.

    But then again, as you cats have said, this is Lynch we’re talking about.

  268. Behind The Music

    The Secrets Behind the Music of “Twin Peaks: The Return” | Pitchfork

    Composer Angelo Badalamenti, Chromatics’ Johnny Jewel, and many more talk about how the soundtrack to David Lynch’s mind-melting comeback came to be.

  269. I feel conflicted about another series. This was supposed to be an “event series” (as much as I hate that word). There was enough stuff to make it feel satisfying. The end can be seen as a kind of a TWILIGHT ZONE twist although an incredibly convoluted one.

    But to see Cooper return to just end in a nightmarish enigma is too much for my stomach to…ehh…stomach. We´ve lost a lot of good folks, good role models these last couple of years and I personally felt the end to be incredibly cruel and a smack in the face. So, yes, I would like to see Cooper come back.

  270. Cooper hooking up with Diane just felt…wrong. My impression that Diane and Cooper relationship were two co-workers that deeply respect each other.

    Also didn’t like Cooper creating another fake Dougie for Janey-E and Sonny Jim. That’s what you do for people who love you? Create an imaginary Doppleganger?

  271. opposite of RBatty here at least in one respect: The Dougie storyline was my favorite part and is what kept me coming back because for me nothing else held me as much as the weird Lynch-version of BEING THERE that was the Dougie storyline. Honestly if that wasn’t in the series I would have probably bowed out or at least tuned in much more infrequently but the one aspect of the series really hit my sweet spot and is one of the few times I think I was able to fully get onto Lynch’s wave-length. As a result, for me, this may as well have been the Kyle Maclachlan Show.

    As for the ending, I haven’t bothered to seek out anyone else’s opinion outside of this thread but I assume there are some who are bitchy about it. I really liked the ending, it was both expected but also still a bit shocking and creepy. Love the scream that ended it.

    So overall I’m pleased with the journey I took with I took with the show. Not sure it needs another season though but then again that’s easy for me to say since I really liked the ending and also the storyline I liked got finished off.

  272. I am still trying to digest the fact that TWIN PEAKS is really over. There are a lot of emotions at work here. I mean this is something I never thought would happen and on regular occasions I would imagine how a third series would actually end up as. i am glad to say that it became as surprising and inspiring as I could possibly hope for.

    A great mix of mystery, human drama, quirky humour, strange characters, creepiness, violence, a dark underpinning of dread throughout the series. So the ending itself feels kind of natural, but I wanted Cooper to end up in a good place at the end. That is why I feel a bit conflicted about the finale.

    One question: who funded the New York experiment? The New York segment got lost a little

  273. Pure perfection. There is no one better than Lynch at giving us what we need, rather than what we think we want. Fitting that in a season which is entirely about re-awakening, we find ourselves, at the end, in an even less familiar dream. I have some theories about what is actually going on in the finale, but one thing I know for sure: I haven’t been so viscerally affected by a work of art for quite some time. Obviously, the finale is quietly but deeply unnerving horror, and that final moment is just bone-chilling. But there’s also something achingly sad about it which is hard to quite put my finger on. Cooper just gradually seems so small and alone and helpless, and he can’t quite figure out why. He’s still trying to do the right thing, but the more he tries the more the evil recedes and becomes hopelessly huge and amorphous and unknowable, until finally at the end he’s simply exhausted and confused and lost, and maybe not even Cooper anymore. It’s a profoundly bleak ending for a world which increasingly feels the same way.

    But at least the Joneses got Dougie back. If he’s just a “manufactured person,” well, they’ll take what they can get. In a world capable of so utterly destroying one of the most moral protagonists in all of TV history, you need to hold on to every bit of goodness you can get your hands on.

  274. Julee Cruise at the end of 17 really moved me.

    That whole episode was an emotional powerhouse. When it was hulk hand vs BOB with Cooper as his cornerman I was cheering. When the body wrapped in plastic disappeared I got actual goosebumps and then Julee Cruise showed up and it was so hauntingly beautiful I felt my eyes glisten a bit. So to me they saved the best musical performance for last.

  275. Mr Subtlety- you hit it on the head. With this series we got something we never knew we wanted! Which is what we need. I am still coping with the ending. It is so emotionally traumatizing ans unexpected. At some level I really dug it, but it felt so sudden and grim but never unearned. But just a slice of a wakeup call perhaps.

  276. Felix – Since Diane was his most trusted confidant and it has been established he was always goofing off and flirting with her I could buy there being something deeper though. Would also explain why Diane went through with the motel scene. She still loved Cooper as much as he loved her even though she couldn’t bear looking him in the eyes anymore because of the trauma Mr. C inflicted upon her so she covers his face.

    Also Cooper is married to the FBI. He finally got something he only once dreamed about in the original series and that experience left him fulfilled but at the end of the day it still wasn’t his place in the grand scheme of things. The new Dougie seemed Cooper enough and better than the one made from Mr. C anyway that it was still a brilliant gift for them in the end. I choked up when he said “Home!”. Everything after that could’ve gone wherever which it did but to me that was the resolution I wanted to see most.

    I do kinda lament that we didn’t get one more Balthazar Getty scene though.

  277. Yeah, thar Balthazar Getty only played such a minute role was strange. I loved him in it. Goofball psycho performance. I liked that a lot.

  278. Shoot it was revealed that Mr. C was behind the penthouse glass box a few weeks back. Tammy came to Gordon with a pic of him in front of the box taken from one of the camera archives.

  279. I am glad you pay attention to this stuff more than I do. You´ve earned your TWIN PEAKS fan MVP this season. You have put through some really succinct ideas of possibilities which have been highly appreciated.

    Now that we have the entre mystery at hand I´ll try to bing watch the fuck out of it at some point to really get into it.

  280. Thanks Shoot. I appreciate it. I think the greatest takeaway from THE RETURN was that Lynch and Frost turned us all into blue rose agents in the end. The ride was as engrossing as the paths it took were unexpected and thus it will stick with us for a very long time. Much like a blue rose case.

  281. Wow, after that ending I stay by my theory, that just like the first two seasons were partly meant to be a parody of the TV conventions of its time, the new episodes were partly Lynch and Frost mocking modern days “Subplot over subplot and then just a cliffhanger instead of answers” golden age of television.

    That said, episode 17 was a great ending, that gave us a satisfying and unexpected conclusion and finally told us what this season was about: The Lodgers, Colonel Briggs and Agent Cooper tried to lead Bob into a super convoluted trap, that almost didn’t work out because Cooper became Dougie.

    Not that I didn’t like the episode that followed, but I really have to think about it for maybe a few more days.

  282. I think “troubled” with the ending is what I am after. Not ambivalent or conflicted. Ambivalence is a conflict of emotions. I never thought it was bittersweet as you Broddie. Just…troubling. I am working myself through what I have seen. And right now “troubling” is the closest thing to an accurate verbal description of the emotional state of mind I am in.

  283. Re: Mr. S & Shoot: As the guy who started out as the asshole anti-Lyncher here I agree with the whole it’s great to get something you need rather than wanted.

    That said, since so many are upset/disapointed about the ending (apparently (not anyone here of course!), I really hope Lynch and Frost do the right thing and sell the TWIN PEAKS rights to Disney so that they can provide us with an ending or version that is more pleasing and more ‘what we wanted.’

    If not then at least give us a sequel to that DARKWING DUCK TWIN PEAKS-parody episode they made back in the day.

  284. I think I pretty much hated the way it ended the more I think about it.

  285. I fucking hate how everyone is dealing with extremes. If you hated the ending you must be a Disney apologist. And if you loved it you are just a David Lynch apologist.

    Let me just mourn my expectations alone.Motherfuckers.

  286. Just-in-case: I wasn’t calling you out Shoot, didn’t even fully know your opinion of the ending when I posted that.

    Full-disclosure (I guess): I actually watched episode 17 AFTER 18. I didn’t know they were going to play two episodes last night so I just directly went to the last episode. Thought the beginning was weird even for that show and it was about half-way through or so I learned I accidentally skipped an episode. So my take on the end is possibly different from everyone else who watched the show properly.

  287. Don´t worry, geoff. I think I am just in the processs of disappointment and I have to acknowledge that I just can´t get behind the intellectual rationalities behind the end to rectify the fact that the end is really unsatisfactory.

    Twenty seven years. And I feel just empty.

  288. Ah okay, I was worried I offended you. You haven’t been posting here too much for a while and your last post before your drought was in the TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION review where you told me to ‘get fucked’ after I posted my thoughts on THE LAST KNIGHT and then you didn’t post for a while so I felt kinda bad that I pissed you off somehow so bad you stopped posting here (but your Twitter was still active) so I thought maybe my joke above where I apologized to Broddie and not you actually did touch a nerve. So yeah I’ve been trying to be extra sensitive as to try and not possibly offend you or anyone else here. You’re one of the posters I really like and look forward to your thoughts and I’d hate to be a reason to drive you or anyone else away.

    Back on topic: More I think of it, watching 17 after 18 probably did greatly color my opinion of the ending especially as stated several times, I pretty much thought everything with Kyle Maclachlan working the crappy desk job and dealing with his family was ‘solid gold.’

  289. Oh, by the way. I need to apologize to both of you and Sternshein for calling you names of all sorts. I was so shitfaced at the time that I for a time never bothered to come back because I was ashamed of what I did.

    I sincerely apologize for that fucking drunken idiotic rant.

  290. So, geoffreyjar you have nothing to apo9logize for. But I am glad you brought that up. Because I am still so embarrassed on my behaviour that time that I just started posting again pretending all wa sfine. of course it wasn´t. ANd I hope you can forgive me.

  291. I knew it was a joke when you apologized to Broddie but not me. Because first of all there was never something to apologize after all. Secondly, it seemed so petty-minded it was kind of funny. So I tried to make a joke in which I told you to go fuck yourself. And then it never stuck somehow.

    The time I called Sternshein a cocksucker sometime after that I can´t really recall why, but I deeply apologize to him if you read this. Because I know that was uncalled for. I never bothered to go back and see why I did that because I feel so ashamed for doing so.

  292. TomCruiseNeverPhonesItInAGame

    September 4th, 2017 at 4:49 pm

    The ending stunk and the season seems like filler, and I say that as someone who loves season one and two.

    I thought 18 was going to be Twin Peaks with Laura alive (I thought the Leo and Josie, Catherine, and Pete moments were the best of the season) but instead it was a long road trip…

    Also, I enjoy some Lynch stuff but I think he is in danger of being a one trick pony, he is repeating Mulholland Drive in all of his recent work

  293. So, now that you’ve had a day to think about, what is everyone’s theory about what is actually going on in the final episode? Where do they go, and why does Coop go there? Obviously he changes the timeline somehow by, somehow, preventing Laura’s death? But does he end up in, I guess, an alternate timeline? If so, why is nobody themselves. And who are they? And what does this have to do with Audrey, Billy, et all?

  294. I have no over-arching definitive theories, but one that is buzzing through my head is that the Twin Peaks we see at the very end is that of a world much, much closer to the one we live in. I have no real solid basis for this, but that is my interpretation. Maybe it’s because it was shot at night but the scenes of Cooper driving through it, it really felt more like a ghost town than previously shown.

  295. TomCruiseNPIIAG: I really don’t think that the season can be considered filler, since it was both a very heartfelt and surprisingly realistic (as in “Their lives just happened and none of them was in the end really connected to the main-plot”) catch-up on the lives of most characters from the original seasons and we witnessed an elaborate plan to get Bob back into the Lodge, that was set in motion a long time ago. Sure, the story took a million detours but the only episode, where I actually was a bit bored with what happened on screen, was the final one.

  296. Shoot: In your defense, I WAS saying TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT wasn’t a COMPLETE waste of time…

    Anyways, thanks for the apology but not needed. I didn’t take your ‘get fucked’ comment seriously then (it was actually your silence after the fact that made me think it was!) so I never held anything against you and hoped that I didn’t wrong you and/or everything was going alright in your life.

    So no hard feelings and try to stop being embarrassed over it. You’re a good man.

    Mr. S: My theory is that everything was caused by a wizard and the end/new timeline ‘was all a dream.’

  297. I really have no idea as to what the finale meant and, after reading myriad theories online, I’m no closer to understanding it.

    Or maybe I am.

    It’s Lynch, after all.

    I guess the main take away from the show overall for me was, life is pretty horrific, and the best way to get through is not to be an asshole, a neglectful parent, greedy landlord – whatever.

    Open your heart to kindness, return it, appreciate the little moments, take them in, and everyone is better off in this shitty world.

    Goodness can overcome “evil”, but it’s a long, long fight and we all gotta stick at it.

  298. I subscribe to they ended up in an alternate reality theory myself.

  299. possible SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

    Broddie — I’m wondering if it’s not an alternate reality, if it’s just reality. With all the talk about dreaming and waking up, I’m increasingly of the opinion that all of TWIN PEAKS was something like the poetic/prophetic dreams we see in the series, a kind of symbolic dream being experienced by a guy named Richard, a woman named Linda, (and possibly a woman who we thought was named Audrey?), to prepare them for their real fight against Judy (or I suppose we should say, JUDY). Meaning, there never was a literal Dale Cooper or a Laura Palmer, exactly, but the experience of watching them provides important information in a typically TWIN-PEAKS-y elliptical sort of way.

  300. An alternate reality makes more sense than an alternate timeline, but how did they end up there? What was Judy’s role in everything? Where did Diane go? Why do Diane and Cooper have different names? What’s the connection between Chalfont, Tremont, and the Black Lodge? Any overarching theory is going to generate a ton of unanswered or unanswerable questions.

    Funny enough, towards the end of the season, I thought to myself how shocking it was that they were wrapping up so many random things from the film that I accepted as not having an answer. And then, of course, they decided to just blow everything up again. I would love to get another season (if Frost and Lynch are up for it), and they have generated tons of potential for a fourth go around in Twin Peaks. But if this is the end, then they’ve created one of the most memorable series finales of all time. That’s a hell of a way to go out.

  301. To come back to my “The new episodes were a parody of today’s TV landscape” theory: Do you think all the uncynical acts of kindness throughout the new season, from the way how Dougie improved everybody’s life, to Harry Dean Stanton randomly giving one of his tenants money, the long overdue happy ends for some of the original characters or even “Fix your heart or die”, do you think that was Lynch’s and Frost’s counterdraft to the “We let good people eat all kinds of shit and randomly kill them off in the most sadistic ways, after we pushed them more and more into questionable anti-hero territory” of GAME OF THRONES and Co?

  302. Watch Tammy do “Falling”.

  303. I really enjoyed MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Seen it three times, and it’s gotten better each time. Perhaps there is a truly definitive interpretation to that or Lynch’s other output, but I view Lynch as somewhat like the later Malick in the sense that he is not even attempting to tell a story that has a satisfying ending, a clear narrative through line, or a single hidden allegorical meaning. He’s not telling parables either, he’s trying to induce a lucid nightmare. He operates on dream logic, which is to say the surface illusion of logic and coherence, but one that never fully adds up or holds together, and that’s by design. A conventional story with a beginning, middle, and end is not something he’s interested in at all. It’s an extremely ambiguous and open-ended quasi-narrative meditation, a set of musings, an ink blot, a mobius strip, and MC Escher carving, etc. Basically, an escalator down to a primal, subconscious state that stirs up all kinds of complex, affectively charge aesthetic mental states designed to leave you confused, uneasy, and seeking a closure that seems tantalizingly within reach yet forever elusive. That’s the key point: he deliberately withholds closure and deliberately serves up rich worlds that defy resolution. In the words of the great Buster Bluth: “It’s like he gets off on being withholding.” I don’t think it’s that Lynch is a one-trick pony who keeps re-creating MULHOLLAND DRIVE. It’s that he feels no interest or need to engage in conventional narrative storytelling. Like Malick, he’s operating in a sub-genre all his own that is very much on the fringe of film as we traditionally experience it.

    I have not yet mustered the energy to watch any of TWIN PEAKS. Keep telling myself I’ll get to it, but it’s such a commitment.

  304. Skani, if you like MULHOLLAND I think you should motivate yourself to delve into PEAKS with all due haste. You’re absolutely right that it’s a commitment, but in my opinion THE RETURN is the pinnacle of Lynch’s nightmare-logic period and his best work period.

    SPOILERS AHOY
    I don’t think the ending was cruel, it left us with an imperiled Cooper but one who has a badass arsenal of tools to overcome his plight.

    I haven’t had the courage to watch 17-18 again yet so there are likely blatantly incorrect assumptions at work in my thought process… I think there’s both alternate reality and alternate timeline at play here. We catch a glimpse of the alt timeline (no plastic-wrapped corpse) but it’s not a timeline we spend any time in really. Meanwhile Sarah is yanked (by JUDY?) into an alternate reality where she’s Carrie. I’m not sure why/how Cooper and Diane know to use the coordinates to go to this reality but they do. Diane becomes someone else but Cooper stays Cooper more or less with caveats.

    I sort of suspect that the last we see of Cooper is in the woods when he loses Laura’s hand. Mr. C reconstitutes in the Red Room free of BOB’s influence (and imbued with gold bead essence?) and he’s the one that greets Diane when he emerges. Hence Diane acting like THIS is the first time they’ve reunited and not before. I think MacLachlan’s performance is super precise throughout and it’s not *quite* any iteration of Cooper we saw before but it definitely has element’s of bad Coop. At any rate he crosses the threshold into this fucking horrible JUDY reality and doesn’t ask the right questions until it’s too late (what year is it).

    So we beat BOB once and for all and saved Laura in one timeline, or maybe left one timeline bereft of her. But there’s a more formidable foe who will keep pulling these cosmic strings on us and shunting Cooper into another nightmare world. I kind of suspect/fantasize that even while one of them was under control of BOB, the two Coopers were fundamentally Cooper and worked together in some twisted way and this was the best move forward they could manage. A blue rose case indeed, and I don’t want to be left with a TWIN PEAKS conclusion in which there are no great adventures left for them and I therefore by creating an even greater adventure ahead whether or not we get to see it, I feel like this was the best ending I could have wished for.

  305. Which new character is your favorite, renfield?

    Mine are the Mitchum Brothers, Candy and Janey-E.

  306. Mine might be Robert Briggs

  307. Diane and Janey-E are indisputable MVP’s this season, but I’d like to give a special shoutout to Matthew Lilliard for knocking it out of the park early on. Oh, and both the Mitchum brothers and Bushnell Mullins for unexpectedly making me love them. And man, thinking back on it, what a constant delight this whole season has been. For all the loose threads that didn’t literally pay off, I can’t think that I ever regretted spending time in this crazy world.

  308. I’ll make it happen, sooner or later. I’m more interested in the new season than the earlier ones, and yet I feel compelled to pay my dues to those first and get spun up. I think I can, I think I can…

  309. Audrey sure was terrible in most of her scenes. But perhaps that’s deliberate.

  310. Mr. S the only reason I can’t completely vibe with your interpretation is the very last scene. If it wasn’t for that I could definitely see why it was read that way. But that very last scene was very crucial IMO in establishing that everything we knew about seasons 1 – 3 did indeed happen leading up to that end. Although it could also be read with Laura as the actual dreamer after all who is finally waking up which is something I have seen floating around since Sunday. Only reason I can’t roll with that one is that Lynch loves TP and those characters too much. I can’t see him just “undoing” it all with a DALLAS style ending.

    Even though the dreamscape DOES play a major role in all his art. I just feel that the way he interprets dreams is more of a tibetian lucid way similar to your Richard theory where it ends in “awakening”. So in that sense yeah it is purposeful but I think there is more also because of the nature of the supernatural mythology in the show I can buy dreams in TP being yet another dimension. Which is why so many characters are able to share dreams and occupy them together (like when Laura first met Coop) on the show or even teleport into the future and back via dreams like Major Briggs did in the original and Bradley Mitchum did in THE RETURN.

    I really believe that what Laura whispered to Coop was about where she was going to end up (another alternate plane) and how to find her. The convo with The Fireman about “Richard and Linda” and “430” chronologically takes place after this once Dale has left the waiting room and it’s more clarification because the fireman already foresaw this outcome and tells Coop to remember so that he can be prepared for the task. When he meets with Diane and they drive 430 miles away from TP remember that he forewarns her and I paraphrase “after this it could all be different” he knew that he was about to enter a gateway into another reality which will host yet another counterpart of his in the form of Richard.

    The motel they reach once they have started traveling “through the currents” was a limbo or purgatory zone between the proper TP reality that we all knew and every other alternate out there. You even see one of those realities bleeding into the motel sequence when we see Diane see another Diane which I interpreted to be Linda. You even see Dale and Diane start adopting characteristics that are not fully them because Richard and Linda are subtly emerging within them there in limbo land since that other reality is bleeding over into the motel space. However in order to fully crossover from there and go forward into another plane a ritual must be performed. I never read THE SECRET HISTORY OF TWIN PEAKS by Mark Frost but I did hear that ritual sex magic plays a role in it’s narrative. As someone who knows people that dabble in the occult and all kinds of crazy shit as well as growing up on horror flicks I am fully aware as I’m sure you also are that sex rituals are an extremely real thing. So to me the scene between Cooper and Diane in the motel was indeed ritual sex to fully open the gateway to where JUDY really cast Laura off to after Cooper threw a brick threw her proverbial window by saving Laura from BOB.

    One thing that also leads me to believe this is because My Prayer by The Platters was playing and last we heard that song we saw Abe Lincoln Woodsman performing ritual killings via skull crushing out in the southwest. Right before reciting his hypnotizing water and well incantation through the airwaves. The problem was that after the ritual they both DID indeed crossover but they also ended up fully merging with their counterparts from that reality Richard and Linda. Diane ended up far gone and completely immersed in being Linda so she is out there somewhere without remembering she was ever Diane Evans. But Coop didn’t fully become Richard. There is a lot of Richard there even in but he still remembers fully being Dale Cooper subconsciously because he is a man so driven by his mission (“find Laura”) against JUDY that he can’t quite shake it all off. So she didn’t get to fully trick him and pull the wool over his eyes with her power over the new reality like she did Diane and later we find out Laura.

    When Laura finally realizes and remembers it all and goes into the iconic Laura Palmer shriek she basically punched JUDY in the gut (the electrical power going out in a flash). However the tragedy in it all is JUDY is so benevolent in her malice that she likely just moved them somewhere else afterward and has them dancing this same dance together for the rest of their lives. So we ended up with Dale saving Laura as he was destined to but with the consequence of the man who went to solve the homecoming queen’s murder now being stuck in a loop trying to save her over and over again much to his own futility.

  311. Felix I really loved Janey-E, Diane and The Mitchum Brothers. I actually lament that we didn’t get a Janey-E and Diane scene. Partly because a key reason Lynch had cast Watts and Dern in this (besides them both being great muses for him especially Dern) was because they both went to visit him at his home and talked to him about wanting to work with him on a project together since they’re real life best friends. I felt the sister reveal was a nod to that. With that said Bushnell Mullins was my absolute favorite new character in THE RETURN. A brilliant surrogate for Major Briggs my favorite character of seasons 1 and 2 who resonated with me just as much as Briggs in his fatherly displays of kindness.

    I do have to agree with onthewall about Deputy Robert Briggs. Just thinking about the fact that Bobby ended up exactly as his Dad told him he would brings a big smile to my face.

    As far as Audrey goes. Well I saw her behavior as just a reaction to her confusing situation. She was scattered brained and afraid because she couldn’t fully reconcile what was going on but we do get hints that she felt something was off “I finally see you how you really are”, “I don’t feel like myself”, “This is like Ghostwood [the forest were Glastonbury Grove can be found]” etc.

    I firmly believe that BOB ritually exiled her somewhere in the prime timeline when he implanted that nasty Richard seed in her. Similar to what JUDY did to Cooper and Laura. It’s possible she’s even stuck in a lodge herself which is why we had the sounds of electricity in her “wake up” scene followed by the backwards music being played in front of red curtains. Another possibility is she may be in a mental hospital as someone not named Audrey Horne in that same reality Coop and Laura are now in.

    In any case since her mission was always to help Cooper out of her love and admiration for him it’s very likely the lodge forces viewed her as an obstacle that needed to be removed. I’m sure a season 4 could go further with it cause enough threads were still left over that could easily be picked back up and helped flesh out that whole new mystery. As I said before in this thread though if it never happens I’d also be fine with it because this felt like a very appropriate end to the narrative despite it’s tragic elements anyway. Plus it kept the TWIN PEAKS tradition of ending every single season on a gut punching cliffhanger.

  312. But Broddie why do you think it’s a loop and not just a subsequent challenge?
    SPOILERS
    In my opinion the cards are stacked so impossibly against Cooper at the beginning of the season compared to how he ends up. He’s in his right mind, he’s not trapped in red room, there’s not a BOB controlled dopple doing god-knows-what for 25 years, and he has a possibly-rescued Laura by his side. As terrifying as the conclusion might be I feel confident Cooper will continue to strive for excellence.

  313. The figure 8 Jeffries presents to him may support the loop theory.

    Broddie: I do have to admit I was waiting for a moment when he’d snap and we’d get the old Bobby again. Or maybe something worse, as I think it could be implied that his daughter was killed by the junkie in episode 15. Interesting to me there isn’t any further fall-out from that, or perhaps it’s left well-enough alone, because it kind of echoes the discovery of Laura Palmer’s body at the beginning of the show.

  314. Yeah it became the infinity symbol. Clearly infinite loop. To me that’s pretty sad even if Cooper and Laura will always win every round. Nevertheless I never ever imagined I would ever be discussing TWIN PEAKS season 3. I’m so thankful for this shit. It was a work of art. Showtime had a lot of balls supporting the most idiosyncratic American auteur still kicking around. They’re brilliant for it. Give them all the Emmy’s.

  315. *Emmys

    That was actually a spell check error. AI is always flawed. Fucked Skynet and all that jazz.

  316. I could totally understand why Shoot and TomCruiseNeverPhonesItIn and many other people all over the net found it off putting. I think everybody did. NOBODY saw that coming but that is the brilliance of it as cliche as that may soundm

    It stays with you because it makes the viewer react on a visceral level. It’s like when you look at a painting and just read it; by the time you finish it has left a haunting impression on you. You’ll never forget it.

    Which makes sense because it was created by a man who is a painter by nature & has always used film as a moving canvas. It’s such a personal (for Lynch as it’s his baby) yet sensible (by the standards of the TP lore) ending that you can’t help but think it was indeed the perfect way to go about it.

    Unapologetic as fuck but completely rational within the context of everything that preceded it. Gives all 3 seasons a poetic flair STAR WARS trilogy style. Genius shit to me.

  317. Twin Peaks Finale: A Theory of Cooper, Laura, Diane, and Judy - Waggish

    An explanation of Episode 18 of Twin Peaks: The Return. Cooper and Gordon's plot to save Laura and deal with Judy, and the costs of that plot.

  318. Felix, I missed your question. Sign me up for the Mitchum brothers as well, the scene where they are eating matching breakfasts had me laughing so hard I was doubled over. Candie is also incredible. Shout out to Wally Brando of course. And pretty much ever minor character is quite special now that I think about it

  319. I don´t care much for Wally. I hope that he (offscreen) ends up in a pointless subplot featuring a femme fatale and in which he as hired mechanic is being framed for murder. And unlike James, he has nobody in place to help him out and he gets twentyfive to life.

  320. No, that was a bit harsh. I just don´t care for him. I shouldn´t wish for something like that.

  321. I really wish we would’ve seen more of Ike The Spike and the Koechner cops. The whole Las Vegas microcosmos should get its own spin-off.

  322. I do loved seeing Harry Dean Stanton return as The Godfather of Trailertrash.

  323. CJ – Yes. Starring the Las Vegas FBI office squad.

    “WIIIIIIILSSSOOOOON!!!”

  324. I do like Chad. He was fun. Boy, what an needless asshole. I particularly lauhged at when he bullied the memory of someone who killed himself because of war trauma. Just because he could. Could you possibly be more of a dickhead?

  325. Richard. What a loathsome prick. Good Riddance to him.

    That Matthew Lillard Jail Scene alone makes the entire series worthwhile.

  326. Charlie should be given a bronze star for being married to Audrey (if that even happened). Also, why did she marry a dwarf? Was it because of that “dreamy music” she used to dance to that also the dwarf (Michael ANderson) danced to? Hmmm?

  327. Dayumn!!

    Now I wonder what happens if you play DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in the background.

  328. Haven’t read it yet but I love how it’s almost a week and it’s still got people’s head gears turning. I went barhopping with my bud after we watched IT this afternoon. One of the girls I ended up rapping to brought up Peaks. So she laid out her theory to me and I was like “yooooooo!”. In her mind the reality accessible 430 miles from Twin Peaks was created by The Fireman but Judy ended up corrupting it after the ritual sex which is where everything went wonky and Diane lost herself in Linda. In her eyes The Fireman creates realities and JUDY as his counterpoint corrupts them and Laura functions as an antidote to thwart her. So TWIN PEAKS as we know and love it was one of those realities and the reason for all kinds of shit like zombie people in cars and jail cells and stuff is because of JUDY’s influence. That reality ended up too far gone because JUDY’s spawn BOB killed Laura before she could fight back against JUDY. Basically the last scene was Laura’s recent counterattack and the shattering of another one of those realities leading into another. All cyclical like. Said it before and I’ll say it again I love how the biggest takeaway from THE RETURN was how it converted all of us who watched it into Blue Rose agents one way or the other.

  329. They’ll probably take it down but here are 17 and 18 played side by side. I’m completely fucking convinced.

  330. Broddie: the soundtracks came out yesterday, and I believe the track you were looking for in episode 8 is entitled “The Fireman”. There are two of them, one focusing on the songs and the other the score, largely from Angelo Badalamenti.

  331. There’s way too much shit in sync with each other in those final 2 episodes so yeah, I’m convinced, too.

    Amazing.

    (Some are saying you can do it with eps 8 & 10, as well).

  332. One of the producers did a reddit AMA and shot down the theory they should be watched like that. Someone actually did a gif of the last minute or so of each, superimposed over each other. That and what I did see of the video has me kind of convinced it’s intentional too.

    I can’t speak too deeply into all these theories and what this or that means, but some of the deep emotional logic will stick with me for a long time. For all of the triumph surrounding Cooper’s awakening in ep. 16, there is a sadness in figuring out that from the moment he wakes up, in order to defeat whatever it is that is causing all this havoc, he essentially needs to embark on a suicide mission. The farewell to Janey-E and Sonny Jim in the casino is all the more heartbreaking because of this, and was for personal reasons I can’t even begin to get into, the most moving scene of possibly the entire series.

  333. onthewall I finally heard the soundtrack score. Amazing stuff all around.

    Lynch didn’t shut down the possibility of season 4. Just said that it would be a couple of years before it’s even a conversation since THE RETURN took about 5 years to prep.

    Lastly R.I.P. Harry Dean Stanton

  334. I never got around to seeing this one. I was planning to see it at the local cinema in April as they were doing a David Lynch season but that got postponed. Apparently they are re-opening next week and will be going ahead with the Lynch movies. As much as I want to see MULHOLLAND DRIVE on the big screen, I don’t think I will be going to a theater any time soon. I’m very curious to see what their set-up is though.

    Anyway, I watched this on Netflix and absolutely loved it. I wasn’t sure if Vern would have reviewed it and I was pleasantly surprised to see 350 comments…but it turns out they were all about Twin Peaks. I will get around to finally watching that series one day. I have watched the first 3-4 episodes several times and have it on DVD but all my DVDs are in another country right now.

    I read Ebert’s review of this…has to be one of his worst reviews ever. He really hates Lynch for some reason.

    After reading the comments here, I checked out the video for CRAZY CLOWN TIME. I was up in the bedroom watching it and my wife came in to get something. She did not say anything about it but I thought she might be a bit weirded out. But then later when I went down to the kitchen her laptop was open with an extreme close-up of a foot. I asked what she was doing and she said “Watching gross foot stuff on youtube.”

  335. Ryan + Shoot + Skani: FWIW finding an explanation online years ago for LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DRIVE did make me like them more than I already did. (I won’t say what it was in case anyone reading this wants to preserve the mystery for themselves, but AFAIK it’s still out there somewhere.) It’s equally possible to enjoy David Lynch’s surrealness in a more Zen way, without thinking about it. I like to think about the things I like so that’s why explanations and analyses add value for me. Sometimes there are no explanations and you just have to enjoy the aesthetics. That’s good too, especially if you can compartmentalise the parts you like.

    Shoot: The one Lynch film I didn’t enjoy was INLAND EMPIRE. It was the one that finally asked too much of me. It felt like it was six hours long, and was 90% noise, 10% signal. (Technically I also didn’t enjoy ERASERHEAD the first time I saw it, but it grew on me. Maybe INLAND EMPIRE will too.)

    Darren: Thanks for the link! I’m glad I saw that. Jareth: Hilarious/horrific sums it up perfectly.

    geoffreyjar: Wait what? David Lynch isn’t right-wing.

    karlos: Just the way the Log Lady says the word “Hawk” is moving.

    Broddie: Five years later you know by now that Major Briggs was in season three, sort of. Don Davis passed away, but we get brief glimpses of Major Briggs’s head and body, although in two different places.

    My two favourite characters didn’t get portrayed the way I would have liked. Jerry Horne became a hippie flake, and David Duchovny didn’t seem to be trying to play Denise Bryson as someone who had lived as a woman for the last 25+ years. Still, it was nice that they showed up again. And I still love them.

    Shoot: Yes, season three Albert is great. I hated Albert in his original appearance, possibly more than I hate any character in TWIN PEAKS. Giving him Gordon and Diane to interact with was the perfect solution. He can be sarcastic but he can’t really hurt them. Gordon is smarter than him, outranks him, and is oblivious, and Diane is twice as sarcastic as he is. So he becomes a sympathetic victim using sarcasm to cope, instead of an abuser who can’t be held accountable so you want him to die. And then when he and the coroner fell in love, that was beautiful. So it’s just as well he didn’t die. We’d have missed out on all the fun Albert content in season three.

    Shoot + Broddie: It’s entirely possible that Denise could be a non-op transwoman. And obviously, the character can’t have facial feminisation surgery because that’s not something they could do to the actor, unless with CGI. But it seemed as if neither Duchovny nor whoever was doing Denise’s makeup and costume were trying as much as they were back in the original series. They forgot how important the character is to some of us.

    Shoot: Warning: INLAND EMPIRE is not like MULHOLLAND DRIVE. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that David Lynch was sorry that people were able to understand MULHOLLAND DRIVE and decided to make the next one impossible to figure out.

    Broddie: Is Wally the son of Dick Tremayne? Did they ever settle that question? Anyway, I liked Dick Tremayne, as pretentious as he was, and I like Wally too.

    Mr. Subtlety + Broddie: Yeah, IIRC the three police brothers do figure out from records that Dougie didn’t exist before 25 years ago, but nothing more is explained about how he got the life he has when we encounter him. And you’re right; BOB-Cooper created Dougie to be the Cooper that goes back to the Lodge so BOB-Cooper doesn’t have to.

    Broddie: When I was noticing that sometimes the Man from Another Place seemed good and sometimes evil, my friend pointed out that with Lynch’s love of doppelgängers, there could be two of him, one from each Lodge. The good one seems to want to help Cooper. The bad one just wants his garmonbozia. MIKE supposedly cut off his arm to rid himself of evil, but he and TMFAP are sitting next to each other in the Lodge and demanding garmonbozia from BOB. One of them warns Cooper, “When you see me again, it won’t be me.”

    The “evolution of the arm” in season three also seems to have two natures (advising Cooper how to get out, but then screaming “NONEXISTENT!” and dropping him through the floor, plus wanting him to be more violent with the Spike), so maybe there’s two of it too. But I also like your theory. There could be one neutral MFAP that has its own agenda and/or is a trickster.

    Broddie + RBatty024 + Shoot McKay: By now you know Audrey Horne does appear, and she’s become a horrible person, and is possibly locked in an insane asylum. Maybe we should cut her the same slack as Sheriff Truman cuts his wife, knowing that we may not know about some trauma that is the reason why she’s behaving so abusively. Poor Charlie does the only thing anyone could do in his situation: stay calm, refuse to give her more fuel, and be prepared to walk away from her.

    CJ Holden: The closing segments of the bands at the bar felt like padding. OTOH at least it was usually during the credits, a time when most shows don’t have any new audio or visuals at all, so it’s not like they were wasting valuable episode-proper time.

    onthewall2983: Yes! Loved Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s WATCHMEN music.

    CJ Holden + Broddie + 1-900-MIXALOT + Felix + renfield: I seem to be the only person who didn’t like the Mitchum brothers. Not after the brutal way they punished the casino manager for something that wasn’t his fault. The Candie parts were tiresome too IMHO.

    pegsman + Felix: Mr. C is the best character of the new season! Every scene of his is riveting. He gets the plot moving again every time. And he’s super-hot, in spite of his personality. You wouldn’t advise getting into bed with him, but you can see why people do. He is beautiful and angular. If he were a gas, he would be inert.

    Broddie: “Fix their hearts or die” was an amazing moment that made me shake my fist with joy. Gordon earned a permanent place in my heart with that.

    Shoot McKay: BOB-Cooper must have had sex with Audrey while she was in a coma? I guess? Does the Horne family know about this?

    Felix: The new and improved Dougie clone is no less real than the original, who was also manufactured. Plus this time he’s been cloned from the good Cooper instead of the evil Cooper.

    onthewall2983 + Mr. Subtlety: The theory that “the Twin Peaks we see at the very end is that of a world much, much closer to the one we live in” would fit with and explain the fact that when they visit the Palmer house, it’s the actual house owned by the actual owner, in our world. Also why everything seems so flat and unglamourous, from the oddly-low-affect diner fight, to picking up Laura at the depressing murder scene, to driving through a generic landscape. If the universe of TWIN PEAKS became aware it was a fictional universe and collapsed, it might have driven the characters mad. Thus the screams of Laura, the institutionalisation of Audrey, and the random acts of cruelty of Richard Horne and the others.

    Felix + Broddie: Janey-E is a bit of a thankless role. She’s put up with the original Dougie’s cheating and gambling, she’s got to hold everything together while Cooper-Dougie is in a daze, and she manages to intimidate those gangsters and keep enough money to support her family. Someone had to do it and she should get credit for it. Nothing is her fault. And none of that makes her any more likeable or any less unpleasant to spend time with.

    renfield: Yes, the side-by-side video has been taken down. “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by CBS.” I should have gotten there five years ago. :-|

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