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March 28, 2024, 04:27:38 PM

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Twin Peaks Season 3...

Started by Mister Six, June 06, 2018, 01:56:17 PM

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Retinend

Wikipedia says that Leyland is never mentioned in the pages of the book. So if you accept it as canon, then Laura would write in terms of "BOB", not in terms of her father - a coping mechanism.

THEREFORE Leyland says I always thought you knew it was me because he is surprised that Laura never realized that so-called "BOB" was him, Leyland's own all-to-human beastliness, all along. Perhaps Leyland used "BOB" as an explanation of his two-faced nature when trying to come to terms with it himself in Laura's presence?

This would cast doubt on the strict reality of BOB as an actual spirit - rather we are merely seeing fantastic representations of Laura's imagination of the banal evil she has to tolerate as a victim of incestual sexual sadism.

jamiefairlie

Perhaps though, because of Laura's 'unusual' origins, she physically sees Bob when Bob is in control of Leland? Just as bad Coop did when he looks in the mirror.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: jamiefairlie on March 05, 2021, 04:38:51 AM
Perhaps though, because of Laura's 'unusual' origins, she physically sees Bob when Bob is in control of Leland? Just as bad Coop did when he looks in the mirror.

FWWM confirms this with That scene.

colacentral

I've been rewatching season 3 for the last few days, and it's so obvious that the whole thing takes place inside Laura's head that I'm embarrassed to have not realised it sooner. Every episode literally opens with a slow zoom into her head.

Am I the last person to realise this? I know there were all sorts of theories about who "the dreamer" is when it first aired, but I resisted the idea of it being something so obvious.

The characters are all aspects of her psyche, and abstractions of real people, explaining why there's such a sense of repetition (families of 3's, children, character traits, heads exploding / being removed).

I'm up to episode 7, and it makes it pretty clear that Laura is actually a living mentally ill person. This was an episode that seemed the most uneventful one of the run on initial viewing, but it's fascinating to watch it through this lens.

It's the episode where the Bad Cooper (a symbol both of Bob and of "unreality") spends the majority of it in prison. Most of the episode feels fairly slow, like set up for something else, because it's mostly a series of benign conversations. Frank calls Harry and gives him good wishes to get better. Hawk lays out the diary pages for Frank (3 diary pages found, with 1 still missing). Beverly flirts with Ben.

The main exception to these, tonally, is a scene where Diane confronts the locked up Mr. C about her rape. In this same episode, Dougie fights off Ike the Spike and is told by The Arm to "squeeze his hand off." A minute later, a woman interviewed on the news says "he was no victim." That is, I think, an inversion of the "dirty fingernails" scene from FWWM: Dougie is Laura, Ike is Leland, Janey-E is Sarah.

The tone changes a few minutes from the end: Beverly leaves the comfort of Ben, and dreads entering her front door to see her sick husband, Tom. He presses her on where she's been, accusing her of having an affair. It's the same "dirty fingernails" scene echoed again, when Leland asks where Laura got her necklace ("do you have a lover?"). Beverly touches her necklace in the scene. She ends it by saying "don't fuck this up".

Meanwhile, Cooper blackmails the prison warden into releasing him, by talking about Mr. Strawberry. He has one of his four legs hidden in his car, like the one in four diary pages still missing. He has some weird dialogue equating the dog legs to information.

So, "don't fuck this up," followed by Cooper's release. The final scene is the scene in the diner, "has anyone seen Billy?", and the shift to another reality. When Mr. C was locked up, Laura's psyche was gently nudging her into accepting reality; now that Mr. C is out, we've shifted back towards the bizarre unreality (basically, where instead of being abused by her parents, there are magic demons).

It makes sense of the infamous sweeping scene too, which happens in this same episode: he's cleaning the floor (the mind), by sweeping the disparate parts (the various plot lines and characters, which are abstract versions of Laura's "real" story), into one (the real or "official" version).

Thinking ahead, the Eat at Judy's scene is presumably a mental reimagining of Laura rescuing Donna in the Pink Room (even the name of the diner being a reference to that scene).

chveik

Quote from: colacentral on March 07, 2021, 10:59:02 PM
I've been rewatching season 3 for the last few days, and it's so obvious that the whole thing takes place inside Laura's head that I'm embarrassed to have not realised it sooner. Every episode literally opens with a slow zoom into her head.

i seem to remember it takes place all over the US. i must have been watching the wrong series

colacentral

Quote from: chveik on March 07, 2021, 11:33:34 PM
i seem to remember it takes place all over the US. i must have been watching the wrong series

Yeah, until they're all swept into one location.

In the early episodes, the monster comes through the box in New York and kills Sam and Tracey. A scene or two later, Ben Horne talks about there being a skunk in Mrs Houseman's room. In another episode, Red flips a coin, and a few scenes later, Hawk drops a coin and finds one of the diary pages near where it lands. Another episode has Frank's wife complaining about a death trap car, and a few scenes later, Dougie's car explodes. They are presumably echoing because they represent fractures of a single thought process.

Mister Six

An interesting interpretation!

colacentral

Something else about the sweeping: episode 7 is all about the brain being cleaned up, with Mr. C in jail. At the end of the episode, he gets out, and reality shifts to a different course.

The next episode kicks off where episode 7 left. The floor of the Roadhouse has just been swept, and Mr. C has got out of prison. Later that night, NIN play the roadhouse, and the floor is filthy again.


mjwilson

Kyle now putting photos of wisteria on Instagram.

Custard


GoblinAhFuckScary


Mr Trumpet

Maybe he just likes flowers... or it's a reference to his turn in Desperate Housewives

Ja'moke

Quote from: Mr Trumpet on March 29, 2021, 01:23:24 PM
Maybe he just likes flowers... or it's a reference to his turn in Desperate Housewives

It turns out Desperate Housewives is an alternate reality within the Twin Peaks universe.

Inspector Norse

I see he also posted a gif of Cooper giving the thumbs up on Twitter on Friday.

I don't follow him on social media, so maybe he posts Cooper gifs regularly, but together with the wisteria thing it certainly suggests something is afoot.

Custard

#675
TBF he does post a lot of Peaks related pictures.

Buuuuuut, he's clearly teasing a bit by posting flowers with that name, and I definitely thinks he's part of this new show, whatever it may turn out to be

TLDR - I RECKON THERELL BE AN ANNOUNCEMENT IN MAY TO MARK 4 YEARS SINCE THE RETURN

GoblinAhFuckScary


Mister Six

Bear in mind that Lynch likes to reuse cast members a bunch. Kyle was in Blue Velvet and Dune as well as Twin Peaks. Laura Dern was in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Inland Empire and 'Peaks. Jack Nance was obviously in almost everything up until he went and got himself killed.

I'd be more excited if Nic Cage was involved. It sounds like Lynch really rates him as an actor, and Cage'll do any old shit for cash these days.

GoblinAhFuckScary

Oh Cage working with Lynch again would be a dreeeaam

garbed_attic

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on March 29, 2021, 03:18:01 PM
four years... fuck

Yeah... that feels weird. Lockdown has screwed my sense of time royally.

El Unicornio, mang

I watched Mulholland Dr. last night for the first time in years and realised it's 20 years old this year. It doesn't seem that old although at the same time it has quite a 90s feel to it (having been filmed mostly in '99 with TV production values probably contributing to this).

Custard

A new person has started at my work, and is called....wait for it..... LAURA LYNCH

The biggest teaser yet that a new series is afoot!

colacentral

I finished my rewatch last night. Sorry for another mammoth post, I reckon most people get irritated with these, but this will be the last.

The way I've settled on thinking of the story is as two narratives - a spiritual narrative, which links closely to Lynch's beliefs in TM and Hinduism, where Laura is essentially Vishnu and the Fireman is Brahma, ie Laura is the God of the world of the show, as she's the one dreaming it.

The other is a psychological narrative - Laura is a mentally ill person who has created an elaborate fantasy, including of her own murder, to explain and cope with her actual abuse. The final "missing page" is the memory of her mother discovering the abuse and choosing to ignore it.

There are a couple of interesting articles here on the "Laura is Vishnu" angle:

https://unwrappingtheplastic.com/2018/03/09/planet-goloka/

https://unwrappingtheplastic.com/2018/06/19/returns-to-troy/

Particularly interesting to me, is the part in the first article about the Kali Yuga, or age of filth, ultimately progressing to the age of truth. I don't know how accurate those translations and interpretations of Hindu mythology are, but the age of filth progressing to the age of truth corresponds nicely with season 3 of TP, the ending being some sort of recognition of the real truth of the abuse.

In the second link, I found this line interesting:

QuoteIt seems to me that season 3 is fundamentally concerned with the return of the soul to the One ("from multiplicity, to duality, to unity", to quote the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi).

As that corresponds to what I was trying to say a few posts back about the sweeping scene. The various characters are playing out a drama that's really about the mind of one person, and as the narrative gets increasingly bizarre, it contracts back until Laura is brave enough to confront the "real" event, rather than the event masked through layers of abstraction.

There's another scene that does the same thing as the sweeping scene later on, around episode 15 or 16, where Hutch and Chantal are waiting in their van. They look up at the night sky, and there's one star. In the same episode, there's a running theme of death, of locks and keys, and it's around this time that James, Freddie, Chad and Naido are locked up in the Sherriff's department. All being moved into one position to ultimately be erased.

I think there's one particular scene in Laura's memory that's played out over and over again - the first time Sarah walked in on her and Leland and found out what was going on. The Experiment killing the couple in episode 2 is a reenactment of this, and it happens continuously through the season, any time there are two characters, usually male and female, who are then unexpectedly joined by a third, leading to a violent reaction.

So, Richard storming in on Johnny and his grandmother (he calls her a whore, and Johnny's bear is arguably an allusion to the gold orb and / or The Experiment); the Polish accountant killing Hutch and Chantal (his baldness and his white car with a big black Z echo the experiment scene); Steven and Gerstin being discovered by the dog walker in the woods (Steven suggestively  hides his gun between his legs when he's seen, and his dialogue before that is loaded with innuendo, as he's playing the part of Leland); Bobby walking up to the fat woman and the vomiting child (which echoes the scene in FWWM with Laura and Leland being confronted by Philip Gerard); the Woodsman approaching the couple in the car in episode 8 (the cigarette of the Woodsman maybe being a reference to Sarah's smoking).

Diane and Audrey's stories are practice runs for what Laura has to do. Diane talks about Cooper, the male authority figure, raping her, then has a violent outburst and disappears. Audrey tries to find Billy, who stands in for a missing piece of information, like the missing diary page, and this also leads to a violent reaction and Audrey ultimately disappearing. Audrey's hesitation to leave the house and look for Billy is Laura's hesitation to accept the reality that her mother knew she was being abused (which she knows deep down from the repressed memory of Sarah walking in on it happening).

In light of that, I think Carrie's dialogue in the car in episode 18 is about that conflict she feels she caused between her parents (and her idea that her mother resented her / was jealous of her, as reflected in the behavior of characters like Chantal and Becky, who essentially play the Sarah role most of the time).

Carrie says something along the lines of "I tried to keep a clean house. I tried to keep everything organised. But in those days, I was too young to know any better." IE "I just went along with the abuse to keep from causing trouble with my parents."

So when she finally heard Sarah's voice at the end of the series and screams, I don't think it's necessarily Sarah literally waking Laura up from bed. My feeling is that it's Laura finally remembering the time that Sarah discovered her and Leland in bed, the way it actually happened, and that Sarah's cry of "Laura" may be the first thing she said as she walked in.

I think the mysterious uncle who comes up a couple of times in different stories is meant to represent Sarah, based on two scenes. First, when Bobby approaches the woman with the sick child in the car. She says they're going to see her uncle. The scene that this most closely echoes in FWWM is the scene with Leland and Laura in the car going to pick up Sarah. In a later Roadhouse scene, a girl (who gets high in her room and "lifted a sweater" off her mother, like Laura did), tells the story about being in the kitchen with her mother, when Billy appeared at the window with bleeding nose and mouth, and she can't remember if her uncle was there. I think her mother represents Leland; Billy represents Bob coming through the window; and she can't remember if her uncle was there because Laura has blocked the memory of Sarah's discovery.

Gold orb watch:

In the hand of the Experiment in the box for a few frames; in the eye of the dying buffalo; the head of Johnny's bear; a glint of light on the front of a van when the Polish accountant is arrested (it's clearly been digitally added, and your attention is drawn to it); a yellow ball in Carrie's front garden.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: colacentral on June 08, 2021, 06:46:47 PMI finished my rewatch last night. Sorry for another mammoth post, I reckon most people get irritated with these...

Not at all, they've been great.  Fascinating stuff.


Quote from: colacentral on June 08, 2021, 06:46:47 PM...but this will be the last.

Shame!

colacentral

Cheers.

One thing I forgot, something I came across that ties into the above:

https://youtu.be/dMuzMU2u04o

Mr Trumpet

Quote from: colacentral on June 08, 2021, 06:46:47 PMI think there's one particular scene in Laura's memory that's played out over and over again - the first time Sarah walked in on her and Leland and found out what was going on. The Experiment killing the couple in episode 2 is a reenactment of this, and it happens continuously through the season, any time there are two characters, usually male and female, who are then unexpectedly joined by a third, leading to a violent reaction.

So, Richard storming in on Johnny and his grandmother (he calls her a whore, and Johnny's bear is arguably an allusion to the gold orb and / or The Experiment); the Polish accountant killing Hutch and Chantal (his baldness and his white car with a big black Z echo the experiment scene); Steven and Gerstin being discovered by the dog walker in the woods (Steven suggestively  hides his gun between his legs when he's seen, and his dialogue before that is loaded with innuendo, as he's playing the part of Leland); Bobby walking up to the fat woman and the vomiting child (which echoes the scene in FWWM with Laura and Leland being confronted by Philip Gerard); the Woodsman approaching the couple in the car in episode 8 (the cigarette of the Woodsman maybe being a reference to Sarah's smoking).


Finally, a deep lore explanation for the Frenchwoman in the red dress irritating Albert at the hotel.

colacentral

Hadn't thought of that, but yeah. Baldy too.

Mister Six

Really interesting interpretation, and it's as compelling as any other I've read. I personally don't like "it was all a dream" stuff (Mulholland Dr being the exception) so am not going to take it as my personal interpretation, but I appreciate how well it works.

Thomas

Kyle MacLachlan marks 30 years since the series 2 finale:

QuoteIt's wild to think that it's been 30 years since this dark moment in #TwinPeaks. Yet we are all still wondering, "How's Annie?" Guess only time will tell.

Reckon he means anything by that last line?

colacentral

I can't see how anything would top that final episode, so I'm leaning towards no. I also think I'd rather see something new, but certainly wouldn't complain if Wisteria turned out to be Twin Peaks.

An interpretation of a scene I forgot to mention - Ike the Spike stabbing the woman to death, bending his spike and saying "oh no" - reckon that's Leland going flaccid and regretful after the act.

And the trees / the woods are symbols of the mind, with characters journeying deeper into them to get to the weird stuff. The electricity is the neurons firing.