Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 12   First Watch 
July 30, 2017 7:13 PM - Season 3, Episode 12 - Subscribe

Let's rock. (description from Showtime)
posted by infinitewindow (78 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
OK, so everyone noticed that the meeting asking Tammy to join the Blue Rose Task Force took place in red-curtained room, yeah?
posted by minervous at 7:15 PM on July 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well, Sarah Palmer and Audrey were in this episode. That's all I got.
posted by Ruki at 7:15 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I sort of (SORT OF) appreciate the triple parallels of Bad Sheriff Truman and his wife; World's Worst Frenchwoman and suddenly horribly old-looking Gordon Cole; and Murderbait Accountant and his wife, Same Old Audrey Horne. by appreciate, I mean I appreciate Lynch making the second of three a gender-reversed set, so as not to make it the kind of gender-relations allegory I still think he thinks it is.

but I also would like the first party of each of these matched sets to take their silent self satisfaction to some other place where nobody requires a conversational partner or any sudden moves.

Grace Zabriskie was so wonderful and terrifying. at a couple of points I was scared they were going to CGI her face into something monstrous but it was just ACTING.

harry dean stanton continues to mean more to me than jesus, on a spiritual level
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:18 PM on July 30, 2017 [13 favorites]


I would watch a Hutch and Chantal spin-off show any time.

Between Audrey and Charlie's conversation, and the girls at the Roadhouse, there were so many new character's introduced and mentioned!

The camera tracking Hawk up the stairs gives a little wobble that was really disorienting.

Audrey is still Audrey, which is nice, considering that is not a given with this show.

I'm so happy that Miguel Ferrer gets so much screen time in this. Probably more than in the two original seasons, right?

Ben (and Jerry) often regress to memories of childhood.

Did we know that Diane has a photographic memory? That seems like something that has come up before. Or am I thinking of someone else?
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 7:21 PM on July 30, 2017


I did enjoy how the big Audrey reveal started with Audrey and ended on new character Charlie. I don't blame him for his silence—I wouldn't want to tell Audrey about her son either.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:21 PM on July 30, 2017


Ben (and Jerry) often regress to memories of childhood.

with Jerry it makes me fond. with Ben it underscores how often he remembers having a father and how never he remembers being one.

like he could muse on how perhaps the way to avert this disaster right at the roots and before it fully flowered might have been to give a good paternal example, not to Richard, but to Audrey. oh well, etc.

(Or to Johnny, because I still believe no matter how obvious it is they're drawing out the inevitable, and because there's more than one way to have never had a father. like I say.)
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:28 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I wouldn't want to tell Audrey about her son either.

It never occurred to me that that's what Tina told Charlie, because I'm more convinced now that Richard is Johnny's son. Ben said the boy never had a father, which, taken at face value, would imply that Audrey is Richard's mother. But Johnny is in no position to give his son a bike. He can't be a functional father. Then we find out that Audrey is in Twin Peaks. With everything that's gone with Richard, neither Ben nor Sylvia told Audrey about any of that? You'd think they would if Richard was her son.
posted by Ruki at 7:30 PM on July 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


Grace Zabriskie's face right before she said "It's a god damn bad story, isn't it, Hawk?" was utterly terrifying. Also WHAT IS IN THE HOUSE OMG

Nice to see Audrey, but that scene was slow in a bad way (not slow in a floor sweeping scene way which I was into), and that plus redoing pretty much the same exact Dr. Amp scene yet again slowed the second half down a loooot.

Tammy's story between this and The Secret History of Twin Peaks does not sync up at all and it's kinda frustrating. I feel like all those continuity errors in TSHOTP where Mark Frost was all "hmm but are they errors?" probably really are, because according to the book Tammy should have read the entire dossier and filed her report by now but in the show she's treated as brand new to all of this. Like I could see this scene where they brought her into Blue Rose being the response to her report, for sure, but then they're all "blah blah Project Blue Book" and Tammy definitely already knows about that according to the book.

Albert's seething anger waiting for that woman to leave the room was delightful.

The cashier teen's "...whaaat?" is the line read of the episode hands down.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:33 PM on July 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


WHAT IS IN THE HOUSE OMG

I love Hawk very much but sometimes he operates at near-Andy levels of comprehension. she didn't say "a couple of cans must have fallen over" or "that's the cat" she said it was the sound of "SOMETHING IN THE KITCHEN."

she did not even bother to lie a little and he just walked away. didn't ask what thing was in the kitchen. call for help, he says.

I am just glad he didn't arrive to find her engulfed in a vodka fire. fire where he's going, and all that. Sarah Palmer is never going to be very well but I don't want her to go like that.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:40 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


When Lynch put his hand on Miquel Ferrar's shoulder and said "Albert, sometimes I really worry about you" I could have cried a million tears.

There is so much bittersweetness in seeing this show 25 years later. That bittersweetness is written all over Grace Zabriski's face, and Sherilyn Fenn's, who seems to have aged the most. But knowing that both Ferrar and Catherine Coulson are gone is the worst. Albert was always my favorite character.
posted by Brittanie at 7:41 PM on July 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


I did appreciate that even though I found the Audrey scene interminably slow, David Lynch rolled around in that slow pacing like a pig in shit. Long pauses, a rotary phone being slowly dialed, a one sided phone conversation that was like an actual conversation and not a movie conversation so it just kept going, slooowwwly hanging the phone up. I mean I wasn't really into it but Lynch was totally having fun with it. Cut the Dr. Amp redux completely to fit a bit more other stuff after the Audrey scene and before we hit Bang Bang Bar time and it probably would have worked a lot better. It's just one of those late episode scenes where the Bang Bang Bar hangs over it like the Sword of Damocles making you anxious about the episode ending soon so the slow pace feels worse.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:44 PM on July 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


I love Hawk very much but sometimes he operates at near-Andy levels of comprehension.

Secret History Hawk is best Hawk and I really wish Show Hawk was like that, which is pretty much Show Hawk with a gossipy and sarcastic chaser. I love Show Hawk to pieces but sometimes he's like a character where Weird Shit Going Down is just 9-5, everyday work slog so he's all "cool, well give me a ring if that demon or whatever tries to eat your face, I'ma hit the RR".
posted by jason_steakums at 7:49 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


anybody else, I'd figure they knew exactly what was up and just chose to ignore it instead of going above and beyond, because who wants to go into a murder ghost creature fear death house at the end of the day after a long shift? but Hawk has a pure heart and great courage, so I guess I will suppose he was just preoccupied by composing a poem in his head at the same time.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:56 PM on July 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


The first scene of 12 is very much a mirror of the last scene in 11, making me think more and more that there's something Dougie-like about Agent Preston. In both scenes there's a toast and Preston, like Dougie, seems not exactly sure what to do, watching the people around her to see what's expected of her.
posted by escabeche at 8:09 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hawk definitely seemed to me like he knew what was up because he pointedly offered her "any kind" of help after that, like, idk, ghostbustin' help. I feel like if he suspected just a regular person was in there who was a threat to Sarah he'd have sorted that out right away. But it seemed like sort of an unstated "Sarah, you and I both know this is magic shit, you lived with a demon and you're an adult so whatevs if you feel like you've got this, but idk call me when you want to get serious about it" thing.

Maybe it was that big ol' white horse just clumsily stomping around wrecking up the joint.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:09 PM on July 30, 2017 [18 favorites]


Where is the room with red velvet curtains where the first scene takes place? Albert says it's a good thing "Gordon stocks the plane from his own wine cellar." Is that room somehow ... in the back of their plane??
posted by escabeche at 8:16 PM on July 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


So I guess the next six episodes are going to flesh out the characters of Tina, Chuck, Billy, Trick, Stacy, Larry, Pat, Gary, Pamela, Ned, Phylis, Jose, Francis, Bert, Sandra, and Louise.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:18 PM on July 30, 2017 [9 favorites]


this is dumb and I know it. but the part where Audrey tells husband she's fucking Billy Whosis and he sort of sits there, and then a million years later she says YEAH I'm violating our contract, how do you like that? and he gets very agitated because you don't do that to CONTRACTS -- is that just a regular old accountant joke about the kinds of things that do and don't upset very boring men? or are they both alluding to some contract we know nothing about, other than the marital one?

like I say this is dumb and not a "theory" but I got a feeling for a second there and then it went away. and I would like there to be something in that scene of greater interest than the simple show-and-tell part about how there are all kinds of terrible husbands in the world and here's a new one, check him out.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:24 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I totally read this as "there's some weird literal contract over and above the usual obligations of marriage."
posted by escabeche at 8:26 PM on July 30, 2017 [9 favorites]


Same here.
posted by Brittanie at 8:42 PM on July 30, 2017


Wow, that Audrey scene almost caused me real pain. It's like they made us wait twelve hours for the longest, most drawn-out, pointless thing they could come up with. And what a weird-ass scene besides. The timing between Audrey and her husband was so odd that it felt like the actors were filmed separately, and their footage spliced together. I'm pretty sure it felt that way because it's exactly what happened. I don't care if we never see those people again, and this is Audrey. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood for this, I dunno.

The stuff with Sarah at the grocery store was incredible. Grace Zabriskie. I think I've only ever seen her in Twin Peaks and Galaxy of Terror, which is kind of like if an ostensibly normal Alien knockoff were ghost-directed by David Lynch on a drunk weekend, so I honestly have no idea if she's just really, really intense and strange or if she's just a fantastic actress, but I love her.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:45 PM on July 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ooh somebody on Reddit mentioned that the banging in the house could have been the delivery boy and I think maybe it was a joking suggestion but now I really really hope Sarah hasn't taken a turn towards murder, oh man. But it's scarily plausible, there's something real bad in her head with her and she was super engrossed in that brutal nature documentary...

Fuck, the more I think about it, the more I hope it isn't but the more it seems like a possibility. If you think about it through that lens, Sarah even fits as the person pretending to be Jeffries on that call to Mr. C. "I will be with BOB again" fits for her if her life broke her and she went down a bad path. Because looking at it from a really messed up perspective, BOB is the only part of Leland, the only part of her family, that she could conceivably get back.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:51 PM on July 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


Tammy's story between this and The Secret History of Twin Peaks does not sync up at all and it's kinda frustrating.

I thought that was kind of a given, though? Like the book is Frost's thing, not Lynch's, right?
posted by kenko at 9:38 PM on July 30, 2017


there's something Dougie-like about Agent Preston. In both scenes there's a toast and Preston, like Dougie, seems not exactly sure what to do, watching the people around her to see what's expected of her.

Would a reincarnated Laura be old enough in 2017 to have graduated from Quantico?

And the guy Tim Roth killed -- weren't they at the house that belonged to the girl in the nuclear flashback? Could that dude possibly have been her husband (the boy who walked her home) or her son?

I love Hawk very much but sometimes he operates at near-Andy levels of comprehension.

Hawk doesn't press Sarah because he has no legal basis to, and because he seems in general to respect people's autonomy. Put another way, he knows when pressing will be fruitless and risks alienating someone who might otherwise reach out later. He seems to take a really Taoist approach -- to act only as necessary, and to watch and listen quietly and attentively to be prepared when those necessities present themselves. He lives up to his name in the keen-eyed (but not predatory) sense.

I think that's why the Log Lady calls him. She knows he will listen. She knows he knows how to listen, that he will honor what she has to tell him.

With that said, though, his side eye has always been one of my very favorite things about Twin Peaks.
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 11:50 PM on July 30, 2017 [6 favorites]


The guy Hutch killed was the warden. Not sure about the house.

Cole and crew are at the hotel in the Blue Rose scene. There is an establishing shot that is the same as later. They must have brought the wine from the plane.

"The Dakotas are still in the ice age."
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 4:05 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


Would a reincarnated Laura be old enough in 2017 to have graduated from Quantico?

I think they said that Agent Preston is about 30 (per Google, Chrysta Bell is almost 40), so this is probably not a thing.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:40 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


Where is the room with red velvet curtains where the first scene takes place? Albert says it's a good thing "Gordon stocks the plane from his own wine cellar." Is that room somehow ... in the back of their plane??

The establishing shot is the Mayfair Hotel, which is where I presume they're staying while in whatever city they're in
posted by Lucinda at 6:56 AM on July 31, 2017


"The stuff with Sarah at the grocery store was incredible. Grace Zabriskie. I think I've only ever seen her in Twin Peaks and Galaxy of Terror"

Provided polygamous compounds and the bad things that can transpire there won't trigger you: After Twin Peaks is done, I would strongly recommend Big Love. She has what I guess would be considered a supporting role in it (as do Harry Dean Stanton and Bruce Dern), but she has far more screen time than she got in Twin Peaks and her role is a very intense role that becomes more and more multi-faceted as more layers of the character are shown throughout the 5 seasons of the show.
posted by bootlegpop at 7:01 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


This is a tricky episode, in part because I have realized that not only is Lynch perfectly comfortable with irritating his audiences, he actually uses it for narrative purposes in a way that seems unique to me.

As an example, I can't imagine anything more irritating than the woman honking on the car horn in the previous episode. And it goes on and on, and then, when Bobby goes to quiet her down, the driver is screeching and hysterical, ratcheting the irritation up that much more.

And then the zombie child.

So this was, in a lot of ways, a very, very irritating episode, but I have a feeling it's building toward payoff. Both Audrey and Sarah Palmer had introductions (or, in Sarah's case, reintroductions), and they were consistent with how they have been throughout the series: Evocative but without a lot of actual information.

We will likely have to wait a couple of episodes to see them again, since that's how it's been going, but all of these threads will pay off in some way.

Lynch was really using irritation as comedy in this episode, and thank God he put Albert in a lot of the scenes, responding to it with stone-faced slow burns. Albert is so established a character at this point that he no longer really needs to say anything and we're delighted anyway by his subtle irritation.

The first part of the story is clearly over. The North Dakota stuff has all been resolved, as much as it can be, and is in the hands of the Blue Rose task force. Coop's stuff in Vegas is mostly settled, and the Blue Rose Task Force now knows they need to look to Vegas. Additionally, there is a date and a place in Twin Peaks it is all converging towards.

I'm increasingly convinced that Audrey is Richard's mother, with evil Coop as the father. It's a mirror to the sort of idyllic life that Coop has in Vegas, where he can just wander through his day, spreading joy and unconsciously solving crimes, and nobody can really hurt him, and he has a tough and doting wife and a genuinely sweet son.

No, he's headed back to Twin Peaks, and to awareness, where the is another son, another lover, and everything had gone to shit, and actually can hurt him.
posted by maxsparber at 7:10 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


"Lover" is probably the wrong word for Audrey, but I don't have a word for "love interest from first season whose romance was sabotaged by the fact that the star was dating another cast member."
posted by maxsparber at 7:19 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


Between Audrey and Charlie's conversation, and the girls at the Roadhouse, there were so many new character's introduced and mentioned!

If more than one or two of these characters are ever seen or brought up again, I'll be amazed. I think the intended effect of the whole back half of this episode was to remind the viewer of being caught uncomfortably in the middle of a dinner conversation where everyone at the table is talking about people you don't know and will likely never meet, and it's like they're speaking in gibberish and you really wish they'd change the topic but it's not happening. Lynch and Frost are really nailing this tone of mundane, everyday alienation in a way that I've never seen either of them do before.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:27 AM on July 31, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yeah, with very few exceptions, the characters we meet at the Roadhouse we never see again. It's just to give a sense of an entire community in decline.

If we're going to see anyone from last night again, it's the dude who complained about the car crash, since he seemed creepy.
posted by maxsparber at 7:34 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


I like the roadhouse conversation because every story we know and love from the original run would totally sound like that if we were just outsiders passively eavesdropping like we are here.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:48 AM on July 31, 2017


Had to pause the show to come here and say: I HAVE THE SAME COAT AS HARRY DEAN STANTON'S TRAILER PARK MANAGER!!!! (It's so comfortable I used to sleep in it)
posted by Golem XIV at 7:51 AM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


Harry Dean Stanton obviously still does.
posted by maxsparber at 7:52 AM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


I just mean for a bookhouse boy he looks a little rough.
posted by maxsparber at 7:52 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


So I guess the next six episodes are going to flesh out the characters of Tina, Chuck, Billy, Trick, Stacy, Larry, Pat, Gary, Pamela, Ned, Phylis, Jose, Francis, Bert, Sandra, and Louise.

Yeah, I have to admit I am completely confused about who any of these names are. A lot of that Audrey/Charlie conversation just totally lost me. The first few times I heard "Billy" I thought that was her son, because given the set up with the Richard Horne scene, it seemed like that's who Audrey would be upset about. But then no, "Billy" is someone else.

I seriously could use a diagram, with face pictures, of who all the new faces are and how they fit together, because I'm getting lost.
posted by dnash at 8:17 AM on July 31, 2017


I thought that was kind of a given, though? Like the book is Frost's thing, not Lynch's, right?

Well the show is also Frost's thing. It's just annoying that specific dates in both make it so that Tammy should absolutely know about things like Project Blue Book and Agent Cooper and Twin Peaks at this time. And pretty much Blue Rose too, except for the name.

I'm really leaning towards the idea that the date discrepancies are from the book copy being locked down for publishing while the show was still in flux, and the story discrepancies in the book are just mistakes. Unreliable narrator is a nice trick sometimes, but if that's what was going on in the book and the details in question were changed for some story purpose like Frost has hinted... well, it was all for some pretty mild changes. But as fun as the book was, it felt kind of slapdash in some ways (the whole framing device about identifying the Archivist makes no sense because the dossier itself tells you directly, no investigative skills necessary) so I can believe the mistakes are just mistakes.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:18 AM on July 31, 2017


As far as I can tell, Billy is the informant Andy tried to talk to, whose truck was taken by Richard and involved in the hit and run, and he's the one that Bing guy ran into the RR looking for a few episodes ago (the captions mixed up Bing/Billy there to add to confusion). I think.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:22 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty sure Billy is Billy Zane and they have just decided to call him by his real name.
posted by maxsparber at 8:35 AM on July 31, 2017 [15 favorites]


I'd forgotten about the guy looking for Billy at the RR.

My curiosity was piqued when Charlie brought up the missing truck WRT to Richard and the stolen/borrowed/? truck from a few episodes ago, but the details of the story made it sound like that might have been a red herring to keep us listening to an otherwise unconnected story. It is rather curious that Audrey and Charlie managed to have such a lengthy conversation without the subject of Richard ever coming up, which makes me question whether he's even Audrey's son at all.

My theory is that he's actually Donna's little hellspawn, and the show has been leading us down an erroneous path of supposition for the last half-dozen episodes.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:44 AM on July 31, 2017


"The stuff with Sarah at the grocery store was incredible. Grace Zabriskie. I think I've only ever seen her in Twin Peaks and Galaxy of Terror"

Additional fun fact: Zabriskie and Warren "Doc Hayward" Frost played George's fiancée's parents on Seinfeld.
posted by doctornecessiter at 8:54 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


This was the first episode where the pacing didn't work for me. And the specific place it didn't work for me was in the Audrey scene, which was a shame because we've been waiting for that one for the entire series.
posted by vibrotronica at 9:34 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


When Lynch put his hand on Miquel Ferrar's shoulder and said "Albert, sometimes I really worry about you" I could have cried a million tears.

this this a thousand times

and Ferrer poised right on the edge of corpsing, for an excruciating length of time that only Lynch could possibly get away with leaving in the final edit

I love this show so much
posted by flabdablet at 10:24 AM on July 31, 2017 [8 favorites]


I remember Grace Zabriskie saying - a very long time ago, I think during a call on a Joe Frank show - that most of the time casting directors had either seen her on Twin Peaks or Seinfeld and she just needed to work out which flavour of intensity to give them. Something like that.
posted by Grangousier at 12:37 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


On the topic of dates, I've seen some speculation that the show takes place in 2014/2015 which would be more precisely 25 years from the original series. That would mean that the Tammy's work on the dossier in Secret History, dated 2016, comes later.

I don't like to fiddle with dates that much, but it makes some sense.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 12:50 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


or if Tammy's not quite where everyone else is timestream-wise, that would make a lot of sense out of her weird and effortful facial expression work and awkward stances and very sparse dialogue! because it would give away the time vortex game if she said something she shouldn't know yet, so her game is to act like she knows only what she's supposed to know, without knowing exactly what that is.

about Grace Zabriskie, I get a little bit aggravated at the egregious waste of old women in a show that has such a tender gaze for the beauty of old men -- Audrey's mom, Donna's mom, nearly invisible next to their dads, in the original run but then here now as well. dads dads dads always dads! only imagine if Sylvia had as much screen time now as Ben did back then, and if they had an equally great actress for her! and for all I know, they might. she had the one great scene but I would like a few more. maybe ones not involving awful men beating her up? but whatever.

anyway Zabriskie is magical and it is something to see her and Harry Dean Stanton being so outright old, not ageless sprites like Gordon or physically powerful middle-aged men flexing their violence muscles like in other shows. just tired and very old people who have seen many terrible things and can open their faces up and show them to you.
posted by queenofbithynia at 1:01 PM on July 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


Grace Zabriskie saying - a very long time ago, I think during a call on a Joe Frank show

Wow, I want to hear this show.


The scene with Audrey dragged on a lot for me because … I dunno, the acting was bad? It seemed bad!
posted by kenko at 1:59 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think mostly that scene was about Audrey getting to use curse words like a sailor because the original show was on network television.
posted by hippybear at 2:01 PM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


SARAH PALMER WHY ARE YOU STILL LIVING IN MURDER HOUSE?
posted by duffell at 3:53 PM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


so outright old, not ageless sprites like Gordon

To me Gordon comes off as very physically old, especially in ep12.
posted by escabeche at 4:53 PM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]



To me Gordon comes off as very physically old, especially in ep12.


I thought he was old in body but light and bright and eternal of spirit, right up until ep 12. like an ancient pixie, but not like a realistically old man. but the hotel room scene gave him a very unpleasant old aspect. I don't know whether or not the effect was Lynch's own actual intention and I am afraid it might not have been, but draping a young woman over yourself highlights the brutal contrast of youth and age.

I feel disillusioned and repulsed by the business because the whole of twin peaks reddit seems to have decided the incredibly annoying woman was a prostitute, for no apparent reason. and I would say Gordon would never, but after seeing what became of Audrey who even knows who would never what, anymore. it was a little different when he was a middle-aged man bothering on the infant Shelly back in the day, because she was a married lady and a working woman, as well as being just a kid. but I didn't like that either. except for the part where it angried up Bobby's blood something awful, I did enjoy that.

but I digress. he is indeed old, but not end-of-days old. Sarah Palmer shouldn't be, either, just in numerical years, but she might as well be 90 like HDS after what she's seen.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:41 PM on July 31, 2017


Charlie says "Come on Audrey, you know I don't have a crystal ball."

But look on his desk: a crystal ball.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:41 PM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


I like the idea going around that the French woman was communicating something from Gordon to Albert like Lil, his "mother's sister's girl", in FWWM.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:46 PM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm interested that the scene in the supermarket is was one of the very few images released before the series started.
posted by armacy at 6:38 PM on July 31, 2017


I reacted the same way as you -- it's in that hotel scene where Gordon somehow looks older than he had previously, more ruined. They might have even done something to his teeth.

And I don't see that character as a prostitute at all. Then again, I also didn't see her as annoying. I just saw her as -- well, as the kind of person who lives in this universe, captive to her own gestures.
posted by escabeche at 7:27 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


I also didn't see her as annoying

I just...people who talk slowly and move slowly, when they don't have to, to fuck with other people who have to wait on them. it's a personal thing. I didn't hate the scene for being slow, just her. and I do think it's funny that I like David Lynch and particularly Twin Peaks and particularly this season of Twin Peaks so much, when I have that particular pet hatred. watching that woman was sort of a window into what it feels like to be a person who is frustrated and enraged by Lynch. like, oh, they think he's like her! smirking and standing in everyone's way, keeping them from getting on with their lives!

I also hated Charles Husband with an identical fervor. they are both living incarnations of the Person who Stands on the Wrong Side of the Escalator. I do my best to be a Silent Albert and not a Furious Audrey about it but it is difficult.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:06 PM on July 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


I presumed she was an escort. As lovable as Gordon is, I felt it was a bit unlikely that this young, model-y woman who didn't speak much or any English would otherwise come back to his room with him. Gordon asking her to "wait at the bar" to me implied that's where he'd found her. But I do prefer the idea that she was a coded message to Albert; it's clever, it's consistent with the world of the series, it's surprising. Still, while I feel some distaste about the notion of Gordon with a sex worker, I don't know if I really ought to. She's younger than Gordon, but hardly a child; she seems happy, and apparently is making good money, to judge from her clothes. Gordon is a positive figure on the show, but he's also a human being, and human beings get laid. If he's not exploiting anyone, is it really so bad? It seems...unseemly, but I don't know if that's a fair judgment.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:09 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


I felt like THAT sequence was an homage to the pinups that seemed to inspire so many of the looks in the original Twin Peaks. It was entirely about the male gaze, and the poses she struck during her time on screen from the moment she appears are all things that one might find in a calendar from the 1940s and 50s.

Lynch is taking his time with this 18 hour movie and is using long parts of it to experiment with various looks and possibilities for "moving photographs" which is basically what that whole thing with that woman was. She was a long moving photograph male fantasy of a pinup calendar, exactly how those women "are supposed to act" in the imagination of the viewer.
posted by hippybear at 8:16 PM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


Charles Husband

Best soap opera character name ever. "And starring Ian Buchanan as... Charles Husband." Yesss
posted by jason_steakums at 8:21 PM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Yes, Denise, I knew you only married me to get the Husband family diamond and run off with Chad Paramour... but you didn't count on Chad and I falling in love!"
posted by jason_steakums at 8:27 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


She's younger than Gordon, but hardly a child;

she's exactly my age and I'd marry Gordon Cole in a heartbeat. though preferably the 40-ish vintage, and probably just yell into his earpiece and drink his wine for an evening rather than stay for a lifetime. but regardless. what gets me is she's a decade younger than Shelly, who was less than half his age when she captivated him, and is right now as gorgeous as she's ever been. And now, she's too old to be his type. even though I am sure misty memories would make him as gallant and courtly to her as ever.

he is not committing any grand sins, that's not what I'm saying, he's just -- grown no better and no wiser than Audrey or Shelly, maturation-wise. and why should he have? but he didn't have to struggle against life like they did, what's his excuse.

like I thought the whole thing between him and Denise earlier in the season was just Denise being what they used to call kittenish. but nope, she was just observant.
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:36 PM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


What is it Gordon says about Mt. Rushmore? "Faces of stone"?

It seems foolish to say that there is a motif of people staring at each other stone-faced in this series, but I'm starting to consider whether that is something specific rather than just Lynch building tension through awkwardness.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 7:14 AM on August 1, 2017


I doubt it's true, but I desperately want to find out next week that Audrey is an actress in an Invitation to Love type soap opera which why that scene was entirely about characters we've never heard of and was deliberately bad with poor acting and bad dialog, what with the "As you know, Bob, we are married..." and the inconsistency of Audrey's verbal abuse where she goes back and forth, sometimes talking like she's finally telling him what she thinks other times giving the impression their marriage has been terrible for a long time and she always talks to him like this.
posted by straight at 9:12 AM on August 2, 2017 [8 favorites]


I love Hawk very much but sometimes he operates at near-Andy levels of comprehension.

Am I the only one who felt like the look Sarah was giving Hawk said, "What, help me like you helped Laura?"
posted by straight at 9:15 AM on August 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


Not sure how I feel about this episode. The extended intentionally-slow bits, like the phone call, seemed like epic, Lars von Trier levels of trolling the audience, and it seemed to be composed of about 90% reaction shots. At the same time, the scene where Sarah Palmer goes to the grocery store was terrifying.

I looked up that Joe Frank episode, by the way, it is called Home. (There is a little more info about it on the Joe Frank wiki, which is apparently a thing that exists.)
posted by whir at 7:25 PM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


Has anyone speculated on Diane's saying "Let's rock," which was The Man From Another Place's opening line way back in the original show? I don't have any particular theory myself, but that moment stuck out to me as odd and deliberate.
posted by dnash at 9:59 AM on August 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


The only speculation I've seen about that was a redditor hypothesis about Gordon and Albert manipulating her into saying that.
posted by christopherious at 5:50 PM on August 3, 2017


I've been rewatching the season so far, and in episode 6 while Albert is driving to meet Diane at the bar and talking to Cole on the phone, Cole says he's enjoying a fine Bordeaux and you can hear a woman in the room with him. So either Cole has a very specific type or she's been with him a while.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:33 PM on August 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


She was stocked on the plane with the wine? Like a sommelier?
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:33 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I desperately want to find out next week that Audrey is an actress in an Invitation to Love type soap opera

I would love that & would also somewhat like confirmation of the theory I saw somewhere that she's still in her post-bank-explosion coma & her entire comadream world is composed of awful men giving her convoluted reasons why she can't leave her home (wake up).

that would be depressing but differently depressing from her being actually married and reduced to impotent shouting for assistance in lieu of just going and doing as she likes.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:40 AM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


I was not thrilled with this episode. It is the first one where I skipped forward, specifically over Gordon's ladyfriend's exceedingly slow exit. It could have been reduced to Let's Rock, the Sarah scenes, the warden's assassination (which was heartbreaking), Diane's texts and the intercepts and maybe the brief Dougie scene. Too much of the slow stuff seemed really tangential, though of course who knows? But we only have six episodes left.

I, too, hope that Audrey is either stuck in a dream or acting on a terrible TV show, because that reality... ugh.

Was there anything materially different about this episode's shovel commercial and Jacoby rant vs. the previous one?

Jerry is pretty spry for an old dude.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:50 AM on August 4, 2017


It is the first one where I skipped forward, specifically over Gordon's ladyfriend's exceedingly slow exit.

Then Lynch has won, because one thing he's always loved doing is creating slow scenes which try to make you look away. The joy of Lynch is that there's often a payoff in some direction or another if you are willing to watch.
posted by hippybear at 8:46 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Just a heads up if anyone else is still watching in the US: tonight the schedule changes to 8pm EDT so Twin Peaks doesn't have to go head-to-head against Game O' Thrones.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:16 AM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


*pets DVR* You're my friend. You're my true friend.
posted by hippybear at 3:34 PM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


Just a heads up if anyone else is still watching in the US: tonight the schedule changes to 8pm EDT so Twin Peaks doesn't have to go head-to-head against Game O' Thrones.

grumble grumble Wish someone had told that to Hulu.
posted by duffell at 5:13 PM on August 6, 2017


I watched parts 11 & 12 back to back, and, while the former kept me hooked almost all the way through, the latter brought together a few of the things I like least about the series so far, and at times my attention wandered. The longeurs of the fantasy Frenchwoman's departure and the stilted conversation thereafter; another of Jacoby's broadcasts; the bland band at the bar.

Both Diane and Sarah Palmer are drinking to forget, and there was a nice contrast between the former sipping a cocktail at the hotel bar and the latter bulk-buying booze at the store before breaking down.

Charlie's anachronistic office/study was quite something, and it was great to finally meet up with Audrey again, but their scene together was another in this episode that failed to quite pull me in.
posted by misteraitch at 12:51 AM on November 4, 2019


I actually really enjoyed the whole interlude in Gordon's hotel room, but I suppose that's mostly because I was entirely focused on Albert's reactions to it.

There was definitely a moment when I wondered why Diane was suddenly in the Red Room but it turned out she was just joining Gordon, Albert and Tammy.
posted by ckape at 6:47 PM on December 15, 2019


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