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March 28, 2024, 10:28:39 AM

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Twin Peaks season 3!

Started by Mister Six, July 27, 2017, 12:57:24 PM

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Mister Six

Since the other thread has pushed over 100 pages, it seemed like a good idea to start a new one, in the grand CaB tradition.

Only got around to episode 11 last night, after finding my interest waning a bit with episode nine, which was full of exposition and not much else, and episode ten, which moved the story on a bit but didn't really have many memorable scenes beyond the one with Johnny. But by god, 11 was storming, wasn't it? Zombified/ODing kids, Shelly being unaccountably awful (I assume Red is weaving some dastardly magic on her) and that ridiculous scene out in the desert. I'd happily watch a spin-off of Bobby staring in bafflement at horrible scenes for a full hour.

One thing that I haven't seen discussed on here is Bad Coop's plans. While he's had a shit time of trying to kill Good Coop, his machinations in respect to the law have worked out, pretty much.

He was downloading plans to the prison before he was arrested, deliberately made Cole and chums suspicious of him, planted Diane among their ranks and waltzed out of prison with ease. So what's he up to and why? Why the need to get himself arrested? Does he need the Feds to figure out the coordinates for him?

One thing I'm not sure of is his involvement in Briggs' death. Up until now I assumed he staged that - what with Matthew Lillard's wife recognising him - but if he did so, why didn't he also not down the coordinates on the librarian's arm?

Also that area is infested with Woodsmen, who I assume are the ones that interrupted Lillard and the librarian's meeting with Briggs, and they've struck me as being allied with the Experiment/Mother, not Bad Cooper.

(The Experiment/Mother is the antennaed white thing that puked up BOB in episode 8 and ate the couple's heads in episode 1, and also appears to be the ant thing seen on Hawk's map and Bad Cooper's playing card.)


mothman

My assumption was that EvilCoop wanted the plans to the prison to spring the other guy. Though he knew GoodCoop would be leaving the Lodge at some point he may not have known when (unless he knew about 2:53) so was literally caught on the hop and ended up in prison himself. Which he was then able to turn to his advantage.

NoSleep

Quote from: Mister Six on July 27, 2017, 12:57:24 PM
Shelly being unaccountably awful (I assume Red is weaving some dastardly magic on her)

You mean being her type (badboy)?

Mister Six

Oh, she has terrible taste in men, but to run out while bonding with your wayward daughter so you can make out with him in front of your ex-husband is a bit much.

Quote from: mothman on July 27, 2017, 05:22:06 PM
My assumption was that EvilCoop wanted the plans to the prison to spring the other guy.

But Ray wasn't in prison at that point was he? Didn't Bad Coop download the plans after overhearing whatserface calling Ray about killing him?

mothman

If so, then why was he in prison at all? He didn't do anything in there except get himself released. There's a much easier way to not be in prison - don't go there on the first place.

newbridge

As an aside, I'm really loving the studio version of that Rebekah Del Rio song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHc-GXuubwQ (without the autotune effects)

newbridge

Quote from: Mister Six on July 27, 2017, 07:06:31 PM
But Ray wasn't in prison at that point was he? Didn't Bad Coop download the plans after overhearing whatserface calling Ray about killing him?

Yes he was. Bad Cooper even plays a recording of their call in which Ray states that he is in federal prison.

Actually, this discussion just prompted me to realize a key plot point that I had missed. When Bad Cooper is asking Darya about the coordinates he shows her that playing card with the black owl-thing symbol on it and says "This is what I want." Presumably he wants the coordinates to whatever location is shown on Hawk's map in the last episode (the same symbol, which he refuses to explain to Sheriff Truman II in dialogue that mirrors the "Blue Rose" discussion from FWWM). I suspect Bad Cooper wants the coordinates to some heretofore unexplained portal that is different from the portal Hawk/Truman/Bobby are headed towards.

Presumably Philip Jeffries is the one who hired Ray/Darya to kill Bad Cooper and Jeffries is also racing toward the location of that black owl-thing or whatever the hell it is.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Mister Six on July 27, 2017, 07:06:31 PM
Oh, she has terrible taste in men, but to run out while bonding with your wayward daughter so you can make out with him in front of your ex-husband is a bit much.

There were some moments before that happened where Shelley made a few faces as if to indicate she was weary but also, slightly disinterested by the whole thing. Bobby and Shelley were both looking across at each other as though one or the other was going to take ownership and from there I think we were offered a glimmer into how their child has turned out this way.

Bobby spent most of the scene, even after the gunshot behaving very distracted. I suppose the thing with his Dad is playing on his mind? This was all meant to run across a very short space of time.




Dr Syntax Head

Sakes man! Doppelgängers scare me a great deal. This thread is freaking me out

Ja'moke

Quote from: Dr Syntax Head on July 27, 2017, 10:30:03 PM
Sakes man! Doppelgängers scare me a great deal. This thread is freaking me out

This thread was manufactured for a purpose.

Sin Agog

To read every post in this thread- "Shelly totally abandoned her former drug dealer cop ex-husband and her despondent tearaway coke addict daughter to make out with her crime kingpin beau outside the diner!  How could she?"- the soapy nature of Twin Peaks still seems as prominent as ever.

Mister Six

It's a bit weird in context though.

Quote from: mothman on July 27, 2017, 08:09:25 PM
If so, then why was he in prison at all? He didn't do anything in there except get himself released. There's a much easier way to not be in prison - don't go there on the first place.

Well yes, that's what I was wondering. But as point out, Ray had been arrested and i was wrong.

Mister Six

This is the Experiment, AKA BOB's Mother, from episode eight. Note the antennae.



I'm pretty sure that's what the symbol on Bad Coop's playing card and Hawk's map is supposed to represent.




BlodwynPig

I think its a great beast crawling up the dark side of the moon.

newbridge

I presume the connection between an evil ur-demon named "The Experiment" and the first atomic test in Episode 8 is no coincidence. Although on the other hand, whatever the creature is, it has apparently been known for a long time to the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest.

Twed

Quote from: Dr Syntax Head on July 27, 2017, 10:30:03 PM
Sakes man! Doppelgängers scare me a great deal. This thread is freaking me out
Wouldn't it be delightful if your partner turned to you one morning, simply said "Doppelganger." and then danced backwards out of the room?

Rev

Quote from: Mister Six on July 27, 2017, 12:57:24 PM
One thing I'm not sure of is his involvement in Briggs' death. Up until now I assumed he staged that - what with Matthew Lillard's wife recognising him - but if he did so, why didn't he also not down the coordinates on the librarian's arm?

There's one oddity - that the librarian's eye was shot out, similar to how Matthew Lillard's wife was killed, but at this point I don't think EvilCoop was involved in their deaths at all.  He probably did kill the Major's doppelganger many years ago, though, thinking he'd got the proper one.

It sounds like the woodsmen killed the librarian in 'the zone', and it was presumably them who set up the scene in her flat with the left-over bit of Briggsy as a warning to Scream Blokey.  That presentation just doesn't seem like the kind of thing EvilCoop would do, you know?

Golden E. Pump

Quote from: Rev on July 27, 2017, 11:50:33 PM
There's one oddity - that the librarian's eye was shot out, similar to how Matthew Lillard's wife was killed, but at this point I don't think EvilCoop was involved in their deaths at all.  He probably did kill the Major's doppelganger many years ago, though, thinking he'd got the proper one.

Ooooh, what if the weird Major Briggs that came back from the Lodge in the aviator outfit in season 2 was a doppelganger himself, and he's actually leading them to their demise with these co-ordinates?

NoSleep

Quote from: Mister Six on July 27, 2017, 10:57:59 PM
This is the Experiment, AKA BOB's Mother, from episode eight. Note the antennae.

Mothers do not puke their young. I'm not convinced that BOB is even part of that clutch. As I've pointed out before, the BOB orb is not even on the same trajectory as the speckled flying frog eggs, so BOB may have been going his own sweet way and got puked on.

As for the symbol, it's the same as the owl cave ring symbol and can be viewed either way up. The Experiment looks like it has little bumps rather than tufts or ears (like an owl) as in the symbol.

NoSleep

...but then Lynch likes "coincidences" - i.e. several possible explanations/conclusions based on the same thing.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

There are far more characters in this series who play only incidental or plot fulfilling roles.

In the original series it was so tightly written around the same characters and invested a deal of time, right down to Big Ed and Norma you felt connected to what each one did in a stronger way. There was so much character information to draw upon and invest in. This approach seems to be abandoned in the news series, characters are there to be strange or to just linger and be opaque, or their motivations are occluded, something which rarely used to happen - if it did the motivations would become clear in a reasonable time frame and naturally develop.

Obviously there's a degree to which this is deliberate, but the end effect is a lack of focus and I think less stake for the audience in proceedings, outside of Coop and the existing characters from the original series.

NoSleep

That investment would only make sense if you were trying to make a soap opera again. This is more of a sequel to FWWM (and The Missing Pieces) than the TV series. There isn't a lot of precedent on how to handle character development in 18-hour movies.

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on July 28, 2017, 07:28:27 AM
There are far more characters in this series who play only incidental or plot fulfilling roles.

In the original series it was so tightly written around the same characters and invested a deal of time, right down to Big Ed and Norma you felt connected to what each one did in a stronger way. There was so much character information to draw upon and invest in. This approach seems to be abandoned in the news series, characters are there to be strange or to just linger and be opaque, or their motivations are occluded, something which rarely used to happen - if it did the motivations would become clear in a reasonable time frame and naturally develop.

Obviously there's a degree to which this is deliberate, but the end effect is a lack of focus and I think less stake for the audience myself in proceedings, outside of Coop and the existing characters from the original series.

Fixed. And yes, the original was a soap opera, designed to hook the audience to be invested in these characters indefinitely. I think this is building to a definitive end.

popcorn

Quote from: NoSleep on July 28, 2017, 07:38:49 AM
That investment would only make sense if you were trying to make a soap opera again. This is more of a sequel to FWWM (and The Missing Pieces) than the TV series. There isn't a lot of precedent on how to handle character development in 18-hour movies.

Yes there is, they're called TV series.

I don't know why everyone is going "oh this isn't a TV series it's an 18-hour movie". The episodes are... episodic. They're episodes.

Blumf

Has anybody been watching this without seeing the original stuff? (not you guys, I think everybody here has seen it all)

Wondering how it works for people who don't know the old characters. Does it even work without that background?

NoSleep

Quote from: popcorn on July 28, 2017, 11:24:55 AM
Yes there is, they're called TV series.

I don't know why everyone is going "oh this isn't a TV series it's an 18-hour movie". The episodes are... episodic. They're episodes.

Everyone is going "this is an 18 hour movie" because that what Lynch and Frost forewarned, and it's unlike the usual episodic TV shows.

It was written as an 18 hour movie, with the plot developments and momentum developing from that, which is not the same as programming for the requisite contents of each "complete episode" (and some have even criticised it for that). Most TV shows do not just cut an 18 hour script up into 18 one-hour segments.

And in this instance, they're correctly titled "Part 1, 2, etc", not "Episode 1, 2, etc".

popcorn

Yep, I know that, but whatever their methods and intentions, the end result is an episodic TV series. The very act of separating them into episodes changes the fabric of the story they're telling - and the way the audience interprets them.

I've really enjoyed the new show so far, but it bothers me how any criticism someone like Shoulders makes is quickly deflected with versions of "your expectations are wrong", "that's not what Lynch intended", "this is not a TV show but in fact a profound stuffed moose", etc.

I think Twin Peaks is being protected by an extraordinary degree of goodwill from viewers. The show isn't finished yet so who knows I guess, but I think Shoulders is on the money when he says the focus is confused, particularly about characters. I said in the last thread it was nice to finally see Shelly used, for example; will the same be true of James in future episodes? If not, why is he in the show? It being an 18-hour-movie isn't much of a justification for redundant elements.

TheManOne

I don't think it's goodwill - I think it just shows how multi-layered the first series was. I'm lucky because it's headed down a more FWWM route than the original show.
I genuinely can't wait to get to the next episode with this.
On rewatches of the original I genuinely can't wait for some episodes to end.
That's a reflection on me, not the shows.
But goodwill it's not. It's raw enjoyment.

Captain Z

Quote from: Mister Six on July 27, 2017, 10:57:59 PM


May be nothing, but I am drawn to the scratches on the card which suggest it has been pinned up many times. Toward the end of Series 2 Windom Earle has a series of playing cards (replaced with the faces of Shelley, Audrey and Donna as Queens, Coop as a King, himself as the Joker) pinned above the fireplace in his hideout.

Another random thought - "119" could be a date - just over a month after 10/1, 10/2.