Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 5 First Watch

June 4, 2017 6:09 PM - Season 3, Episode 5

Case files. (description from Showtime)
posted by infinitewindow (95 comments total)

no piece of art has ever been so brutal as this one was when it showed mostly dead Kyle MacLachlan wanting the coffee. that scene was to a person of feeling what I suppose Old Yeller is to people who love dogs.

also with the Vegas wastelands, if David Lynch wanted to direct the Vegas adolescent parts of The Goldfinch, that would be ok with me. he would do a job of it.

some of this is so tim powersy I can't take it
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:02 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

if David Lynch wanted to direct the Vegas adolescent parts of The Goldfinch,

So I'm not the only one who thought of that!
posted by dnash at 7:08 PM on June 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

I suppose nobody will believe me about this any more than they did when I said the child wasn't really a child, but the insurance man who was begrudgingly satisfied with his substitute green tea latte after his coffee got taken isn't a real insurance man either. or isn't a real something. nobody is happy with a green tea latte. not even people who order them.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:09 PM on June 4, 2017 [15 favorites]

THE CIGARETTE PACK IN THE BAR SCENE WAS MORLEY, WHICH IS THE BRAND THAT THE CANCER MAN SMOKES IN X-FILES AND I WILL NEVER STOP SCREAMING ABOUT THIS FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT 72 HOURS. AAAHHHHH.

The rest of the episode was fantastic but also AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
posted by sparkletone at 7:12 PM on June 4, 2017 [15 favorites]

Man, I love Doppelcoop hacking the planet. I guess it makes sense that either the FBI knows the emergency code for all federal prisons or Bob/Coop, as a spirit that lives in electricity, would know that.

The scene in the mirror makes it seem as though this is Coop's doppelganger, and Bob is just along for the ride (and free Garmonbozia), which sort of answers that question.
posted by codacorolla at 7:15 PM on June 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

some of this is so tim powersy I can't take it

Can we just like, send Noah Hawley a ton of copies of the Fault Lines books until he gets the hint? I could really go for that as a tv series. Or Declare, but my ideal version of that would be such a slow atmospheric burn between all the horror bits that it would probably tank in the ratings.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:19 PM on June 4, 2017

MORLEY

Morley is on a bunch of shows. I think it's key to linking a lot of parts of the Tommy Westphall universe.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:24 PM on June 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

That's true but given the links between Twin Peaks and X-Files both as an inspiration for the latter and literally with Duchovny... Lynch could've put anything there and he chose that and there's not a single thing about any of this that isn't deliberate.

So I read more into it than the others.
posted by sparkletone at 7:27 PM on June 4, 2017

Morley Cigarettes.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:30 PM on June 4, 2017 [5 favorites]

As I said in the last thread, reality as we know it was already destroyed when John Munch crossed over into real world programming. We're all in Tommy Westphall's snow globe now.

The band featured none other than Riley Lynch. He has his daddy's hair.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:34 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Out of all the horrific stuff so far, the most horrifying is Cooper lost inside a shell. I know Lynch doesn't ascribe that much meaning to his images, but it feels like a horror based on aging, and the fear that we have of slowly losing our minds and personalities - or having that happen to your loved ones. Coop really was a great heroic figure, and it's sad to see him blankly wandering around a sunblasted concrete hellscape.
posted by codacorolla at 7:41 PM on June 4, 2017 [17 favorites]

Out of all the horrific stuff so far, the most horrifying is Cooper lost inside a shell.

For all that it's a frankly astoundingly funny riff on Mr. Magoo, this feels like the biggest commentary so far on aging in a work that's rife with it.

I will be incredibly sad if Dale never gets his faculties back, and I'm willing to go for whatever the ride is to get there (or not)... But there's a part of me that's already lost a bit of hope for him.
posted by sparkletone at 7:45 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also Colonel Davis (awww). Played by Ernie Hudson. Amaaaaazing.

Jacob's crazy web series. Norma. Nadine. Shelly's daughter Becky Burnett. Her drugged out husband Steven. Mike Nelson. Richard Horne. What.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:48 PM on June 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

I thought he wasn't so much lost as not all there, most of him wasn't there, because a lot of him is in the other body. a sort of thing where maybe a quarter or less of him is in the Vegas body, and half of him and half of Bob is in the jail body, and the last quarter is just permanently eroded away and he'll have to learn to route around his missing parts once he's put back together, the way you do after a stroke.

or then again, I shouldn't be allowed to speculate until I can learn to pay better attention, but do we know, really know, that the bad one is a/the doppelganger?

although I don't care what anybody says, I will think it is funny for days and not dumb at all if it turns out Vegas Cooper is both fine and real and all there, he just hasn't had enough coffee yet. it takes a lot more than a few cups to wake you up when you've been extradimensionally asleep for 25 years. he's already sharpening up a bit, just still moving extraordinarily slowly. give him a few more pots and see what happens.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:53 PM on June 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

Sorry, too excited to form full sentences. The guy accepting the pack of cigarettes from the creep at the bar was Mike Nelson.

The creep was Richard Horne. I'll assume due to his stature and relative attractiveness, and also the whole Richard Beyer thing, that his daddy is Ben Horne. I wonder who his mommy is...
posted by elsietheeel at 7:55 PM on June 4, 2017

I'd like to get high with Dr. Jacoby, but man, I just don't think I'd be able to keep up.
posted by duffell at 7:55 PM on June 4, 2017 [6 favorites]

Whoa, somehow I totally missed that Becky is supposed to be Shelly's daughter. The actresses are only fifteen years apart. Is this (I'm sorry) typical Hollywood bullshit, where any woman over 40 looks "old enough" to have an adult offspring, or is Becky meant to be a child Shelly had before the beginning of the original series? I'm kind of intrigued by that idea.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:55 PM on June 4, 2017

I think the idea is that Amanda Seyfried is playing much younger. I'd guess Becky is supposed to be about 21.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:58 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

I mean, I suppose she still looks young enough. But she was playing high school students ten years ago, so it seems odd.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:00 PM on June 4, 2017

The sequence where Becky caught her Coke rush was the most Lynchian thing in this episode to me: a song with ominous nostalgia, an actor giving a fearless performance, and an uncomfortably intimate staging.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:03 PM on June 4, 2017 [11 favorites]

From episode two:

Shelly: No, you guys. My daughter is with the wrong guy.

Friend: Are you kidding me? Everybody loves Steven.

Shelly: You don't know Becky, I can see it on her face. There is something really wrong.

Friend 2: It's her life.

I wonder if Becky's life will parallel Laura's in some sort of way. Seems unlikely. But I dunno.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:04 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah I really wanted to brush away that hair that was caught in her eyelashes. Any other director would have fixed it, but David Lynch likely did it on purpose.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:06 PM on June 4, 2017

I was so afraid something was going to happen to her, to the child, but then it was the peril in the Roadhouse that I wasn't expecting...
posted by armacy at 8:08 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

amanda seyfried will always look like a fifteen-year-old to me, she has teenagerface. a blessing and a curse.

And I was so unhappy that the dick in the bar was a dick. of course he was, when there's blonde girls in Twin Peaks, man violence is never far away, and there was a whole table of them. but it's sad he's bad, because there's nothing cooler than smoking in front of a NO SMOKING SIGN. guess it's good to be reminded that being cool isn't everything.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:12 PM on June 4, 2017

The guy accepting the pack of cigarettes from the creep at the bar was Mike Nelson.

I believe that was Chad, the cop who was previously mean to Andy. Mike was the guy with strong opinions about resumes.
posted by painquale at 8:15 PM on June 4, 2017 [6 favorites]

Oh snap, you're right.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:19 PM on June 4, 2017

The sequence where Becky caught her Coke rush was the most Lynchian thing in this episode to me:

I immediately started wondering if she's this series' Laura Palmer. So far all the signs are there.
posted by dnash at 8:19 PM on June 4, 2017

So now instead of being the man, Mike is The Man.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:21 PM on June 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

Geez, the roadhouse scene was upsetting, partly because previous episodes set up the roadhouse as this nostalgic, friendly place of safety. And yet when something awful starts to go down there, no one does anything. Urg. So far the series has been really amazing at frustrating expectations I didn't even know I had.
posted by speicus at 8:22 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Why is Jacoby calling himself Dr. Amp?

Why was Dougie's wedding ring in Major Briggs' stomach?

Who is Richard Horne and why is he such a sado sex pest?

Also why is he paying off members of the sheriff's department?

Who is Becky's father?

What's going to happen when that room key arrives at The Great Northern?
posted by elsietheeel at 9:00 PM on June 4, 2017

So, do we all think that it's Richard Horne and Deputy Chad who are funneling those Chinese designer drugs into town?

I know I do.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:01 PM on June 4, 2017

Most Frostian moment of this episode: Dr. Jacoby talks about "our air, our water, our earth" on his Dr. Amp show. What's missing? The fire.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:11 PM on June 4, 2017 [5 favorites]

When DC is looking in the mirror, right before he says "You're still with me, that's good." his face morphs a bit, I assume to combine with Frank Silva's since the previous cut was clips from the finale of them laughing. It was a creepy effect that was kinda subtle the first time I watched.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:14 PM on June 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

When Amanda Seyfried snorted the coke, Kid and I immediately called her out as Laura Palmer 2.0. (3.0, maybe, because Maddie?)

Coop is going to come back. He's stronger than DoppelCoop (Boop!) even though the damn cow jumped over the moon. Damn fine joe, agent, he'll get there, I BELIEVE.

I was really worried for the Rancho Rosa kid. I'm glad he didn't get blown up. Between him and Sonny Jim, I think there's a Little Prince adults can't see the truth theme going on. And I think that bodes well for DougieCoop.

The "You're still with me" scene was fascinating. That definitely means something.
posted by Ruki at 9:15 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

As a reluctant fan of Brett Gelman, I was sad to see him beaten and then told to leave town by Jim Belushi.

That whole scene seemed kind of odd to me...if Dougie only owes $50k and AC now has nearly half a million dollars AND he only ended up at the casino by accident, why would he go back there? Unless the scene was to set ANOTHER manhunt in place, this time by casino staff to try and track AC down for...something? Or perhaps DC shows up at the casino and gets mistaken for AC?

For as long and painful as some of Lynch's scenes seem to be, they're almost never pointless. I mean that bit with Jacoby and his Rube Goldberg shovel painting contraption paid off this week.

Also why was DC's voice modulated in the scene with Gordon and Albert, but has been normal every other time we've seen him?
posted by elsietheeel at 9:41 PM on June 4, 2017

why would he go back there?

Indeed, but why would Jim Belushi know that? It's possible that there's actually no further significance (no, wait, hear me out) to that, other than that they think that it was an inside job.
posted by kenko at 10:04 PM on June 4, 2017

Also that mirror scene totally vindicates "Boop".
posted by kenko at 10:05 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, the people who're supposed to kill Dougie—they're on the horn with that one woman who then agitatedly dials at a Blackberry (that's a Blackberry, right?), and seems to trigger, to some extent, the very thing, later revealed to be in Argentina, that does a weird transformation after Boop makes his call. What's up with that?
posted by kenko at 10:06 PM on June 4, 2017

ALSO, I ♥ the standup-doing sheriff's dept lady.
posted by kenko at 10:07 PM on June 4, 2017 [8 favorites]

that one woman who then agitatedly dials at a Blackberry

JUDY?
posted by elsietheeel at 10:11 PM on June 4, 2017

Was that guy who grabbed the girl the new Leo? The way that scene played out reminded me of that scene where Leo threatens Shelly about the brand of cigarettes she smoked and "snapping her neck like a twig."
posted by cazoo at 10:21 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Was the insurance guy from the first episode who went to see Sheriff Truman at that insurance meeting? I need to go back and check the first episode but I think he was there.
posted by guiseroom at 11:26 PM on June 4, 2017

Just a reminder, Agent Phillip Jeffries was in Argentina. At least, that's where he reappeared after disappearing in Fire Walk With Me - according to the BluRay's Missing Pieces. I thought - HOLY SHIT THEY GOT BOWIE. But not yet.
posted by crossoverman at 4:35 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm thinking that the guys out to kill Dougie don't have anything to do with the money he owes. They were probably just hired by Mr. C to assassinate Cooper once he escaped the lodge. (Apologies if this is super obvious.)
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:15 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

JUDY?

We're not gonna talk about Judy. We're gonna leave her right out of it.
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:50 AM on June 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Cooper is still there hours after work is over, and Janey-E still has not picked him up.

I read Cooper's sadness looking at Sunny Jim as his knowing, trapped inside the Dougie shell, that he is currently incapable of calling the people to whom Dougie owes the $50,000, and that Sunny Jim is in danger he will not be able to save him from.
posted by otherchaz at 7:01 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

This is probably nothing: When the female FBI agent is reviewing photographs and fingerprints of agent Cooper, it looks very much like she has a picture of him taken inside the Black Lodge.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:31 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

PC, I was thinking the same thing about the photo!
posted by armacy at 7:36 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

Agent Tamara "Tammy" Preston. She's not a female, she's a woman.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:05 AM on June 5, 2017 [4 favorites]

I read Cooper's sadness looking at Sunny Jim as his knowing, trapped inside the Dougie shell, that he is currently incapable of calling the people to whom Dougie owes the $50,000, and that Sunny Jim is in danger he will not be able to save him from.

I read it as Cooper, in there somewhere, realizing the life he might have had but didn't because he was locked away for 25 years.
posted by maxsparber at 8:52 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

Was anyone else disturbed that the green tea latte had a teabag coming out of it? Don't green tea lattes get their green tea from matcha powder made from crushed green tea leaves?
posted by Schmucko at 9:36 AM on June 5, 2017 [6 favorites]

so is Richard Horne part of the "Richard and Linda" Black Lodge Coop was told to remember?

Count me in with those who are so sad to see Doop (DougieCoop) wandering around. When he repeated "Agent..." like it ran a bell, I was muttering "c'mon....'cmon....c'mon....PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER!" at the screen.
posted by Lucinda at 10:14 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

> Was anyone else disturbed that the green tea latte had a teabag coming out of it? Don't green tea lattes get their green tea from matcha powder made from crushed green tea leaves?

Yes. It bugged me.

And, I'm just going to come out and say this...am I the only person having a hard time staying engaged with this show? Look, I am a person who happily swims in ambiguity and looooooong slow buildups and existential absurdism, and Lynch in general, and yes yes I liked "Fire Walk With Me." But even still, I'm finding things like the Dougie business infuriatingly dull to watch.
posted by desuetude at 10:23 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm finding things like the Dougie business infuriatingly dull to watch.

I'm not really having that issue. I'm a little annoyed at how the hell everyone around Dougie is acting like he's normal, instead of calling an ambulance for someone who appears to have had a stroke. So yeah, I'm hoping that part moves along to it's next development soon. But overall I'm still enjoying this a lot.
posted by dnash at 10:55 AM on June 5, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm ok with the Dougie subplot. Like the Dougie character, it's simple. It has a simple theme: utterly naive yet charmed person wandering through the world. He's a kind of unconscious prophet.

Like Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses who passes a newspaper to someone saying, "I was just going to throw it away!" which the recipient concludes was a tip on a horse called Throwaway (which wins in spite of long odds).

But I find this subplot with its simplicity gives some relief from the more tangled subplots.
posted by Schmucko at 11:05 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

I get the impression that Dougie has repeatedly shown up at other points in his life hungover and listless, or otherwise dazed.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:10 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

I wonder if the whole deal with everybody failing to take Dougie's issues seriously is a component of how he was manufactured: even when people should be furious with him, they keep giving him more chances (like his boss, and Janey-E), and people just don't notice things about him very well outside of Sonny Jim (it's ​ridiculous just how long it took Janey to notice his tie on his head at breakfast, she was basically looking at anything but Dougie). Maybe he's got this protective luck that keeps people from looking too deeply at him, letting him just coast through life safely until it was time for his purpose to be fulfilled. Kind of like that perception filter concept that disguises the TARDIS and the entrance to Torchwood in Doctor Who. Like Dougie has always been this weird empty doofus who just failed upward through life because BOB/Lodge magic manipulated his luck.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:29 AM on June 5, 2017 [10 favorites]

Vanity Fair is suggesting that Richard Horne may be Audrey's son by DC.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:38 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

She's not a female, she's a woman.

She is not "a female", but she is "the female FBI agent". Is "the woman FBI agent" really better?
posted by kenko at 11:50 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Why not just 'the FBI agent'? There was only one person looking at pictures of Cooper, so why was it necessary to point out her gender? Or again, she has a name. Agent Preston. She's the one who assembled the dossier.

Anyway, this is a derail. There's room in this Federal Bureau of Investigation for more than one beautiful woman.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:56 AM on June 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Vanity Fair is suggesting that Richard Horne may be Audrey's son by DC.

I think you mean JJW, he of the magnificent knit sweater.
posted by maxsparber at 11:58 AM on June 5, 2017

Vanity Fair is suggesting that Richard Horne may be Audrey's son by DC.

I think you mean JJW, he of the magnificent knit sweater.

It's certainly possible, although I'm more unsettled by the idea of Dark Cooper acting on his evil id and seducing an on-the-rebound Audrey before skipping town.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:02 PM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Twist: Richard is Johnny Horne's son.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:05 PM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

Twist: Richard is an especially dank spliff rolled by Jerry.
posted by maxsparber at 12:08 PM on June 5, 2017 [13 favorites]

I think you mean JJW, he of the magnificent knit sweater.

Keep reading, VF mentions him, but is more interested in the idea that Cooper's dopperganger may have impregnated Audrey before leaving town. And I agree with Strange Interlude, that's far more unsettling to me, and it explains Richard Horne's behavior a bit better. I couldn't really reconcile Richard being Ben or Jerry's, since Jerry seems to be an innocuous pothead now, and Ben mended his ways after his Civil War breakdown and he's all about the R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

+1 for Johnny Horne's son though. I'd pay to see that.
posted by elsietheeel at 12:09 PM on June 5, 2017

I wonder if Cooper is going back to Twin Peaks on an insurance claim. Truman has a broken pipe, and Dougie will probably be sent there to check the claim after he mentions "twin peeeeeks" and "truuuuman" a few times too many.

Also, Bob Stephenson (Frank) could pass as another Jacques Renault.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:33 PM on June 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Twist: Richard is an especially dank spliff rolled by Jerry.

A smoked cheese-pig, if you will?
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:35 PM on June 5, 2017 [6 favorites]

Oh, the bittersweet heartbreak as Norma goes up and holds Shelly as they watch her daughter make bad choice after bad choice. I love seeing the two of them together and closer than ever, even as I wish it could be under happier circumstances for them. (Could Shelly do anything to change Becky's stubborn young mind? Probably not. But where - and who - is Becky's father in all this?)

315. The key is heading back to The Great Northern. And depending on who gets it, it'll either be shrugged off and dropped in the trash (or set aside for a narrative pause), or it might be the link that ends up connecting Twin Peaks and Las Vegas. If Audrey is still at the hotel, and she sees it - there is no way she could miss its significance. But would she choose to let anyone know about it, or would she give in to her girlhood detective fantasies...?

I am absolutely loving this, and I'm glad we get plenty of time to digest events between episodes, but I also need the next episode right now.
posted by harujion at 12:48 PM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

I feel like a professional recapper should be able to avoid mistakes like this: "From Constance’s autopsy in this episode, we learn that the headless corpse from Ruth Davenport’s apartment had Dougie’s wedding ring inside its stomach—the ring we saw slide off Dougie’s hand when he turned into an otherworldly BB in the Red Room."

:(
posted by kenko at 3:02 PM on June 5, 2017 [6 favorites]

Dang. And I was feeling silly about mistaking Chad for Mike Nelson.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:04 PM on June 5, 2017

She's not a female, she's a woman.

Was that just an upbraiding or was it a quote? Because it's the sort of thing Gordon Cole would say. Or, y'know, bellow.

I kind of want Richard and Linda to be the Thompsons, playing The Great Valerio at the Roadhouse. Although there are approximately a billion reasons why not.
posted by Grangousier at 4:08 PM on June 5, 2017 [4 favorites]

Upbraiding, but you can pretend I'm Gordon Cole if you'd like. (I like the concept so much I might just do it myself.)

Also I'm down with the Richard and Linda Thompson idea, but only if they play 1952 Vincent Black Lightning and then James Hurley dies. Gersten Hayward can be Red Molly.

Finally: Twin Peaks episode 5: Showtime’s miniseries is the ultimate defeat of recap culture
posted by elsietheeel at 4:32 PM on June 5, 2017

I'm sure the key returning to The Great Northern will be significant but will anyone remember Room 315 as significant after 25 years? Or will it be significant only because the Great Northern no longer uses keys?
posted by crossoverman at 8:06 PM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

I gotta say, while Jim Belushi has always taken crap as an actor and I'd previously never really seen him in anything that would dispute that, he plays a real good heavy in this for the short time we see him. Maybe he just needs good directing? I'd watch him in a crime drama after this if it were done by the right creative team, he's got a good mob guy scowl and growl these days.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:39 PM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

And after a quick google search, yeah, probably something to the notion that a good director can get good work out of him: “I had to adjust my rhythm, and it started out with a cup of coffee,” Belushi said. “I poured a cup of coffee and started my line and [Lynch] went, ‘No. Nooooo. The coffee is very important.’ I spent 20 seconds pouring and sipping on a cup of coffee before I even started the scene. So, it’s so beautiful to have that freedom to relax. There’s no rush, the scenes take their own shape, and you become this organic creature in this world that David creates.”

Damn fine cup of coffee, indeed.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:44 PM on June 5, 2017 [10 favorites]

Although I can't name any examples right now, sometimes it felt Belushi sucked on a lot of roles because they thought were writing for his brother, not him. I wonder how much his reputation was harmed over projects that were canned after John passed away, and brought back because Jim, John, same difference.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:09 AM on June 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

> I'm a little annoyed at how the hell everyone around Dougie is acting like he's normal, instead of calling an ambulance for someone who appears to have had a stroke.

Yeah, this is what's killin' me. I did a lot of heavy sighing. There's a history of being dazed/hungover...and then there's not understanding how to open the bathroom door and standing like a toddler in the hallway. What? The guy is clearly incapable of making a sentence happen, call a damn ambulance.
posted by desuetude at 6:54 AM on June 6, 2017

Y'all are sort of new to David Lynch, aren't you?
posted by maxsparber at 7:54 AM on June 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

Let me rephrase that: Lynch's storytelling often follows its own logic, unconnected from the logic of the real world.

When artists do this, I find it useful to ask if it is deliberate, and, if so, why?

Lynch is not one for explaining himself, but there is a lot that can be read into the while Dougy story. For me, it reads as a startling satire of how much the world props up mediocre white men. It's not just that he is surrounded by women who do so much emotional labor for him that they even help him go to the bathroom, it's that everyone does everything for him, just vaguely acknowledging that he's acting a little weird, rather than totally incapacitated.

I know this doesn't seem very true to life, but, if I can just offer a counterpoint: Donald Trump.
posted by maxsparber at 8:06 AM on June 6, 2017 [22 favorites]

As much as I don't like to guess about Lynch, I realized today that it is very possible that Richard Horne is Cooper's son. The show has always been about intergenerational trauma, with Leland having been abused and then having gone on to abuse Laura.

Cooper has one son as a result of one doppelganger, Sonny Jim, and Cooper, even in his dazed state, has had a connection and profound emotional reaction to the boy. I think it is credible that he also has a second son as the result of his other doppelganger, the really evil one.
posted by maxsparber at 8:18 AM on June 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

I dunno, Eamon Farren kinda looks like young David Patrick Kelly. But that alone might be Lynch playing with us all.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:38 AM on June 6, 2017

I'm fairly eager to move on from Dougie, especially now that Twin Peaks has retaken its rightful place as the most interesting locale on Twin Peaks. Whether it be commentary on aging, a satire of Mad Men, a deceptively goofy plotline that will blossom into soul-destroying horror, Lynch just fucking with us, or all of the above, watching Cooper be Forrest Gump in a bad suit is about two hours away from being Super Strength Nadine to me. I don't hate it yet, but I can see how I will hate it if it's still going on by July.

On a totally unrelated note: Phillip Jeffries disappearing in PA was him (or his doppelganger) getting sucked back into the Black Lodge, right? Apologies if I'm literally the last person to put that together.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:07 PM on June 6, 2017

> Y'all are sort of new to David Lynch, aren't you?

Let me rephrase that: Lynch's storytelling often follows its own logic, unconnected from the logic of the real world.

I am not new to David Lynch. I noted this in my comment. I can certainly speculate on Mr. Lynch's artistic intent, while also finding the amount of time we spend with Dougie to be tiresome to the point of distraction from the suspension of disbelief that one must employ to enjoy spending time in Lynchland.

(Also, to me, there's nothing startling about this level of satire about entitled white men. It would have to go much further to be actually absurd. At this level, it's merely irritating. Which was my exact point.)
posted by desuetude at 1:52 PM on June 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

On a totally unrelated note: Phillip Jeffries disappearing in PA was him (or his doppelganger) getting sucked back into the Black Lodge, right? Apologies if I'm literally the last person to put that together.

No, he went to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:51 PM on June 6, 2017

the entitled white man angle is certainly there on a surface level, but I'm surprised that it could feel, watching it, like it's about that. The beginning of the sequence a couple episodes back, when he says, "Call for help?" but not even as a plea, he says it so firmly: "Call for help." and he keeps trying, he latched on so firmly to the thing he heard that's the thing he needs, he keeps asking, so clearly, and nobody helps. or hears. it's a picture of agony.

the comic relief parts, which are the parts you can read as social satire if you want, are to make it bearable. and no matter how cliched they may get, or how obvious the jokes, they remain shocking, because for David Lynch to show mercy to his audience that way is shocking. because I don't expect it from him and because that goes a long way to showing how much pathos there is in the rest of it. you need a little mercy after watching that.

"call for help."
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:56 PM on June 6, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think there's something in there about being a straight white male boomer who ran his life on autopilot once he hit his thirties, and one day he realizes that autopilot has taken him nowhere. There's also something about being a straight white male boomer who takes and takes and gives nothing but pain and violence back to society simply because he can. Of course they're the same person.

Hopefully future parts will prove me wrong about such a simplistic reading.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:58 PM on June 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's also something about being a straight white male boomer who takes and takes and gives nothing but pain and violence back to society simply because he can. Of course they're the same person.

Hopefully future parts will prove me wrong about such a simplistic reading.

oh, about this -- My reading is equally simplistic if not more so, but I don't get the feeling that much Lynchian pain and violence is done just because the perpetrator can, or just because social power corrupts. there's a craving and a deep need to do it -- you're watching a sin and a sickness, not just an injustice. and I don't mean just because wicked Cooper is perhaps not human or not entirely human; I got that feeling from early Leo scenes too, and Leo never has any Bob excuses that I recall.

I always find it fascinating even when I don't like to watch it, because Lynch can (and loves to!) depict male violence against women while showing the extreme pleasure the men get from doing it, but without making the viewer share the pleasure. I think this must be hard to do as a filmmaker because hardly anybody does it -- either they don't let you see the pleasure, to deny the audience voyeuristic gratification, or they do, specifically to share that voyeuristic gratification with the audience. Lynch is good at horror without forced complicity, although I have no idea if that's what he means to be doing.

anyhow I agree that what happens with both of the Cooper shells is able to happen because they are late-middle-aged-man shells, so the one gets to do unspeakable acts while the other gets to stumble around mutely begging for help and being ignored but also not getting shot or committed. so I don't discount the importance of that. but I think the focus is on the blind spot, where you see what looks like a human and expect human behavior from them even as they act incomprehensibly, because nobody can see these scary things happening if it's not in their scope of expectation, KM's demographic is used in service of that point without being the point in itself. "white men get away with shit" is a fact but not an interesting one by itself, true. but the Dougie thing is essentially the same thing that happens in real life to homeless people who try to speak to pretty much anyone, even if they are entirely coherent and mentally present. it's frightening and only a little heightened from reality.

(One time when I was 14 and on vacation I got heatstroke and felt strange, started staggering, my vision went black and I fell down on the sidewalk. took me a few minutes to get up and wobble-crawl a few more blocks to the hotel. but in the meantime, nobody took any notice at all, except to step over instead of on me. they thought I was an early morning drunk, I suppose. but like Dougie/Cooper, I wasn't literally invisible, I was just assigned to a preset category in people's minds, a category of people you don't have to pay attention to or worry about. and once you're in there, you can't get out, without being persistent and articulate in a way that you can't do until you don't need help anymore.)
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:22 AM on June 7, 2017 [13 favorites]

>I'm a little annoyed at how the hell everyone around Dougie is acting like he's normal, instead of calling an ambulance for someone who appears to have had a stroke.

Maybe he suffers from Bozeman's simplex?
posted by Catblack at 6:35 PM on June 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Rewatched today and noticed that Lynch/Frost used an old trick from the Hitchcock playbook: put a character into jeopardy or power in a scene and then leave with no resolution. Hitch used this most notably in obvious first-season allusion Vertigo, in which the first scene features Scotty Ferguson falling from a roof and hanging on for dear life, eyes squeezed shut. The audience never sees him rescued until the end of the film, where he confronts a fatal drop into the void on his own terms.

So it is with Richard Horne and Charlotte. The Roadhouse scene cuts away from Horne grinning and Charlotte scared stiff. I'd feel a lot less anxious if Charlotte had been given a last name in the credits like Becky.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:23 PM on June 9, 2017

utterly naive yet charmed person wandering through the world. He's a kind of unconscious prophet.

When the sleeper has awakened, will his own name be a killing word?
posted by otherchaz at 5:44 AM on June 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

When the sleeper has awakened, will his own name be a killing word?

No, it will be

HELLOOOooooo^oooooooooo
posted by lmfsilva at 10:37 AM on June 10, 2017 [7 favorites]

Coming to think of it, I bet not even Jodo would think of a weapon that would make the chests of the enemies rip apart, coins flowing from the wound.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:27 AM on June 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Coming to think of it, I bet not even Jodo would think of a weapon that would make the chests of the enemies rip apart, coins flowing from the wound.

By sheer coincidence, video game designer Suda51 did imagine such a thing: In his Wii title No More Heroes, the protagonist wields an ungainly-looking homemade lightsaber that causes enemies to explode into a shower of coins (see also Pilgrim, Scott) and multiple successful attacks trigger a slot-machinelike bonus mode.

I won't argue that there's any real cross-pollination between Suda and Lynch, other than the clear creative influence that Suda takes from surrealist cinema, but it is an interesting exercise.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:07 AM on June 13, 2017

Oooh, don't know how I forgot the usual "kill enemy - get money" mechanic of old games (particularly River City Ransom, a big inspiration for Bryan Lee O'Malley).

I blame modern realistic shooters.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:07 PM on June 13, 2017

I'm fairly eager to move on from Dougie, especially now that Twin Peaks has retaken its rightful place as the most interesting locale on Twin Peaks. Whether it be commentary on aging, a satire of Mad Men, a deceptively goofy plotline that will blossom into soul-destroying horror, Lynch just fucking with us, or all of the above, watching Cooper be Forrest Gump in a bad suit is about two hours away from being Super Strength Nadine to me. I don't hate it yet, but I can see how I will hate it if it's still going on by July.

I'm finally catching up on the new series after stalling out earlier in the spring. This is pretty much exactly how I'm feeling after watching episode 5; we're nearly a third of the way through the series and Cooper is still a shell of his former self. It's heartbreaking and tough to watch; the elevator scene where he proclaims "Damn good joe" killed me. He seems fully present in that tiny moment.

As far as nobody taking Dougie to a hospital, I can definitely buy it as commentary on how mediocre white men really do get to bumble through life on autopilot. Or as commentary about how isolated people can be even among their families and coworkers. Mostly, though, it does have the feel of arbitrary internal story world logic. It's a tough thing to pull off, and reminds me a little bit of the stilted dialog and performances Hal Hartley likes to use in his films (at least his older ones; I haven't kept up with his output in recent years) When it's done with enough confidence it somehow works.
posted by Funeral march of an old jawbone at 12:02 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]