World of Blue - Archived Forum 2007-2022

mtwentz wrote:I'll tell you why I love the Freddy fight scene; like Jimmy Scott singing Under The Sycamores, it's some weird creative shit that I'd never have thought of in a thousand years. Plus the visuals/sound is freaky.

Ditto. I thought it was totally thrilling when I first watched it last year. A big part of why I loved it was that it was so visually odd and jarring, plus the freaky sound effects. Not to mention that from a narrative perspective, having a random minor character "kill" BOB was part of what made it so exciting. I was admittedly a little worried that we would see some sort of cliched Star Trek-esque showdown where two identical Coopers would be standing in front of Andy, both yelling "he's the bad one, shoot him!" So the fact that it was wrapped up in such a jarring and unexpected manner was really cool.

And I guess from a sort of meta-textual viewpoint, the sequence can be viewed as not just the destruction of BOB as a character but the doing away with him as a plot device as well. I normally don't like reading things as being a meta self commentary, but watching episode 17 I find it hard not to think that Cooper has to get rid of BOB as a concept so he can address something deeper beneath BOB's symbolic representation of evil. In the original series, most of Laura's suffering (and death) were blamed solely on the concept of BOB, thereby obscuring Leland's guilt (and Sarah's complicity). And only when BOB is annihilated can Cooper begin to really investigate the Palmer family.

StealThisCorn wrote:Let me just say - if there had been no Season 3 of Twin Peaks and I had written a fan script for one depicting the exact same scenes of Freddie punching out a Bob Orb with his super-strength green glove, I'll bet everyone here would call it silly and dumb and make zero effort to do any mental gymnastics to find a more charitable reading on its deeper meaning.

I never had to do any. I loved it from the jump for what it was.

Cappy wrote:

mtwentz wrote:I'll tell you why I love the Freddy fight scene; like Jimmy Scott singing Under The Sycamores, it's some weird creative shit that I'd never have thought of in a thousand years. Plus the visuals/sound is freaky.

Ditto. I thought it was totally thrilling when I first watched it last year. A big part of why I loved it was that it was so visually odd and jarring, plus the freaky sound effects. Not to mention that from a narrative perspective, having a random minor character "kill" BOB was part of what made it so exciting. I was admittedly a little worried that we would see some sort of cliched Star Trek-esque showdown where two identical Coopers would be standing in front of Andy, both yelling "he's the bad one, shoot him!" So the fact that it was wrapped up in such a jarring and unexpected manner was really cool.

And I guess from a sort of meta-textual viewpoint, the sequence can be viewed as not just the destruction of BOB as a character but the doing away with him as a plot device as well. I normally don't like reading things as being a meta self commentary, but watching episode 17 I find it hard not to think that Cooper has to get rid of BOB as a concept so he can address something deeper beneath BOB's symbolic representation of evil. In the original series, most of Laura's suffering (and death) were blamed solely on the concept of BOB, thereby obscuring Leland's guilt (and Sarah's complicity). And only when BOB is annihilated can Cooper begin to really investigate the Palmer family.

I'm totally on board with all that, both the first paragraph and the second. Even if I would rather intellectualize it, I do think the scene is excitingly done, and I do think it very much stays true to the ideas throughout The Return in terms of both design (effects) and basic narrative (random, unpredictable). And I do remember finding it extremely intense on first viewing, purely and truly. I've always been a fan of its execution. Your second paragraph about meta-moving past Bob as a concept to address something deeper is perfectly put, and one of the many things I've always felt was happening there in this story that is on some level very much about both itself and storytelling itself.

Mr. Strawberry wrote:

N. Needleman wrote:Are we referring to some other BOB? Frank Silva never exactly played it subtle. BOB was brute force, primal id and generally turned it up to eleven any time he appeared. All those shots of BOB inside the orb was just old footage of Frank doing Frank. It was not that manipulated. I loved it, but YMMV.

Yes, Frank Silva's performance was definitely turned up to eleven, I'm more referring to the overall presentation. For example I will never forget how much fright he shot into us as we sat there and watched him climb over the couch. He was oozing menace but the shot itself was quiet and simple, completely unlike the loud, busy action that we see in the Sheriff's Station.

This is probably issue number one that I have. BOrB didn't feel menacing to me like original BOB did.

Second biggest issue is just who it was. I know this is more of a nitpick, but I would've preferred it be someone from town, I think James might've been the best option since he did so much traveling between seasons.

Mr. Reindeer wrote:

N. Needleman wrote:I think Freddie destroying BOB was the Fireman's plan, which Cooper agreed to and clearly knew something of. The problem was after. Cooper took his own initiative to attempt to kill 'two birds with one stone' - undo Laura's necessary death and try to rid the world of the larger 'extreme negative force' of Judy. As Frost says, this is hubris. Some evil can never be wholly conquered, it's a part of us. And life cannot be rewound and undone. If he'd stopped in the station - or at least looked for a different way to take on the problem of Judy/Sarah that did not involve expiating his own free-floating guilt over Laura/Caroline - everyone might have gone home happy.

Hmmm. We know Cooper told Cole about his “two birds” plan. However, the Fireman also says “Two birds with one stone” to Dale in the opening moments of TP:TR. Is your theory that in that moment the Fireman is warning Cooper against carrying out his plan? I’d assumed that the “two birds” thing was something Coop and the Fireman hatched together.

I had always figured that Briggs and Coop worked something out while out inbetween worlds and somehow passed this information along to Cole. Though I guess Briggs could've had a separate debrief conversation with Cooper after he returned from his disappearance and then Coop called Gordon.

Mr. Reindeer wrote:Something that just occurred to me: in Episode 8, the Giant tells Cooper, “A path is formed by laying ONE STONE at a time.” Hm.

I love how much of that scene seems significant from focus on a ring, to that, to the glowing orb the Giant sends in to Coop.

bowisneski wrote:I love how much of that scene seems significant from focus on a ring, to that, to the glowing orb the Giant sends in to Coop.

Cooper’s ring is an interesting element. The backstory in MLMT is so close to what Laura goes through in FWWM that I have to assume either Lynch gave Scott Frost the idea during their plotting session, or Engels cannibalized it from the book when they were scripting FWWM.

Personally I think that the fireman in MLMT has nothing to do with the Fireman in TPS3, but I could be wrong. Maybe the deeper meaning of Fire Walk With Me denotes a path that leads to Him? Hmm? Him? Or Home of course.

i find silly the enterily green glove thing. For this i made my own version, you never see the glove in the episodes, and it is cooper and the ring killing BOB, as i think is a better conclusion of the all the story....

I am seeing some comments saying it was "meant to be uninmpressive"... Come on

That's just blind Lynch worship, finding ways to justify *anything*.

missoulamt wrote:I am seeing some comments saying it was "meant to be uninmpressive"... Come on

That's just blind Lynch worship, finding ways to justify *anything*.

So first the artists did bad work - and afterwards they lied to us about what their intentions were?
Should we also just ignore that everything that comes after the scene in questions is about the same kind of character flaw in Cooper as they meant to convey with that scene. Come on!

missoulamt wrote:I am seeing some comments saying it was "meant to be uninmpressive"... Come on

That's just blind Lynch worship, finding ways to justify *anything*.

In my opinion the Freddy/Green Glove scene will stand the test of time. It was a radical concept, so some Peakies gave not been initially receptive to it. A few years ago, many who ridiculed the scene will be claiming they loved it from the first time they saw it.

First of all, this is a great thread. My conflicted feelings about the orb scene, my pros and cons, are pretty much exact to the back and forth between you guys. Cappy at the start of this page, especially, nails the thematic meaning of the scene, the reading that seems true to me. There is one thing I'd like to emphasize though;

N. Needleman wrote:Are we referring to some other BOB? Frank Silva never exactly played it subtle.

This is something I think has fallen prey to the numbness of familiarity; that is, we're so used to our idea of Twin Peaks as a kind of monolithic thing that we become blind to what it actually was; and I don't mean it in a sort of elitist, condescending or pretentious "you're just wearing rose-colored glasses!" way because I fall victim to it myself as well. And as part of rewatching the Return and the original, it's become part of the primary experience for me to sort it out. For just one example, I initially thought the Las Vegas subplot was somehow weirdly thematically removed, and it wasn't until rewatching the original that I was reminded of the half-series length motifs of One Eye'd Jacks.

Similarly with the orb scene, I was initially taken aback and found it like something out of a Hollywood horror movie or superhero flicks. However, like N. Needleman points out, BOB was always over the top. In fact, my initial repulsion to the orb scene finds a perfect mirror in the original series: the train-car scene in the Season 2 opener. When that happened, I felt the show had devolved into an X-Files, paranormal anything-goes place, which felt super cheap to me, and it didn't scare me at all; I just felt, in that moment, that it was going to become very easy to drop the plot threads and chalk it up to demons or aliens. And yet now it's one of my all-time favorite scenes in the series and freaks me out.

And, in general, I used to hate BOB; he'd show up and I'd be put off by what I thought was hammy acting. A lot of his appearances are literally staring into the camera and just laughing menacingly. But at some point over time, and I don't know when, it just crossed some threshold and became unnerving to me; how direct, unhinged and uninhibited the acting, like a real maniac coming at you, is near primeval an effect. Similarly, now when I watch the orb scene it's somehow, miraculously, only increased in its effectiveness. The disorienting editing, the stage design and lighting, the facial acting, the effects and especially the brutal sound design make me clench when I watch it and I feel almost exhausted afterward. The uncanny quality seems to lie in how little it regards its own aesthetic or narrative coherence. It feels hostile, almost demonic. So the orb scene fits snugly into a lineage, to me, of something that was always weirdly broad but despite that, was technically effective.

I didn't like it the first time, but I've loved in subsequent viewings.

It doesn't scare me the way that the best BOB scenes from the original did, but it does have a great intensity to it.

Something that I don't think has been mentioned is that perhaps Coop couldn't kill BOB because, after the doppelganger had been housing BOB for so long, Coop was now a part of him in some way.

missoulamt wrote:I am seeing some comments saying it was "meant to be uninmpressive"... Come on

That's just blind Lynch worship, finding ways to justify *anything*.

And if we found it impressive to begin with?

Is the orb scene the same thing as Freddie's fight scene?

One other thing about the latter. The stage set looks closer to an office the way you would picture it in an IKEA store, meant to sell furniture, than the real TP sheriff's station. The stage sets from the original always felt very warm to me. But a lot more care probably went into building those as well, with the setting up of a warehouse in Van Nuys etc.

Despite not having warmed to the fight scene because of its failure to be scary, one cool thing I noticed in the last part. "Is it the story of the girl in the lane?". Doesn't Zabriskie tell the same story when meeting Laura Dern for tea in Inland Empire? I could be wrong, but if yes, that's a cool connection with a level of subtlety that scares me a lot more than anything in Freddie's fight scene did.

missoulamt wrote:Despite not having warmed to the fight scene because of its failure to be scary, one cool thing I noticed in the last part. "Is it the story of the girl in the lane?". Doesn't Zabriskie tell the same story when meeting Laura Dern for tea in Inland Empire? I could be wrong, but if yes, that's a cool connection with a level of subtlety that scares me a lot more than anything in Freddie's fight scene did.

Definitely called that to mind for me as well, but that was a little girl who went out to play and found “the way to the Palace” through an alley behind the marketplace. On TP, it’s the little girl who lived down the lane (calling to mind the 1974 book and 1976 Jodie Foster-starting horror film of that title, about a murderous teenager).