Why does he smash his head into the mirror?

[Gabriel]

I just assumed it's picking from BOB's last act in Leland's body. In smashing his head and cutting it open, it shows the same guy now controls Cooper.

[Snailhead]

I just assumed it's picking from BOB's last act in Leland's body. In smashing his head and cutting it open, it shows the same guy now controls Cooper.

That could be it! Very clever.

[StrangerDanger]

You have to think of this scene as a metaphor and from where Cooper is emotionally. He slams his head into the mirror because part of him is struggling to regain composure from the fear/anger that he lost control of when he faced Earle. He squeezes the toothpaste wastefully (old Dale rolls from the bottom for sure) in a haphazard approximation of the circle from the grove (part of him wants to open a portal). Then he looks at the mirror seeing the reflection of wraith (he is now the killer, having murdered Earle not in self defense but by something primal slipping out) and struggles to control the anger but wishing to go back to the other side. Thus he slams against the mirror in an attempt to escape and (simultaneously) to destroy the means of escape (two opposite impulses aligning - to regain and annihilate the self). Good Dale loses - he sees his soul as cracked and fractured and winds up with a head wound (trademark David Lynch) indicating his existence as a damaged conduit for some (bad) collective thing. He ends mocking the absurdity of his own concern for the wellbeing of others.

I thought that guy was Evil Cooper / "COOPER" (in caps), i.e. Bob imitating Cooper, i.e. a doppelganger of Cooper. The good Cooper is stuck in the Black Lodge, and l think he leaves the Black Lodge only as implied in the end of Fire Walk With Me?

[Jerry Horne]

When I first saw the episode I just assumed it was Cooper's last ditch effort to shake free of BOB.

[tmurry]

I thought that guy was Evil Cooper / "COOPER" (in caps), i.e. Bob imitating Cooper, i.e. a doppelganger of Cooper. The good Cooper is stuck in the Black Lodge, and l think he leaves the Black Lodge only as implied in the end of Fire Walk With Me?

Too literal. I actually think the tack of trying to make Twin Peaks Frost-like (maybe I'm being unkind), saying that the doppelgängers and Bob and such are real as some kind of alien pantheon thing divorced from psychology, is the hardest approach to make work. There exists an explanation that makes the show make sense as purely events in a non-esoteric world understanding that there are metaphors presented as visuals and there is an explanation that is purely archetypal which is linked to events in a "world," and these two are in continuity - a matter of focus. Good Dale is in the lodge means Cooper's better nature has lost and those "angels of his nature" have ceased to fight the other elements of his psyche for now. Rigid thinking is the enemy of understanding when it comes to this stuff.

[StrangerDanger]

I thought that guy was Evil Cooper / "COOPER" (in caps), i.e. Bob imitating Cooper, i.e. a doppelganger of Cooper. The good Cooper is stuck in the Black Lodge, and l think he leaves the Black Lodge only as implied in the end of Fire Walk With Me?

Too literal. I actually think the tack of trying to make Twin Peaks Frost-like (maybe I'm being unkind), saying that the doppelgängers and Bob and such are real as some kind of alien pantheon thing divorced from psychology, is the hardest approach to make work. There exists an explanation that makes the show make sense as purely events in a non-esoteric world understanding that there are metaphors presented as visuals and there is an explanation that is purely archetypal which is linked to events in a "world," and these two are in continuity - a matter of focus. Good Dale is in the lodge means Cooper's better nature has lost and those "angels of his nature" have ceased to fight the other elements of his psyche for now. Rigid thinking is the enemy of understanding when it comes to this stuff.

Hmm, well, others have said Time itself may have been changed, such that:

Original Twin Peaks: Coop trapped in Lodge, COOP escapes.
Fire Walk With Me: (leading on from Original TP) Annie warns Laura that COOP is at large, and Coop is in the Lodge.
Altered Timeline TP: (leading on from FWWM) COOP drives into Twin Peaks, and messes everyone's lives up. Probably is more professional about policework than Coop though. Timeline merges with the same COOP at end of original TP.
Meanwhile: (leading on from FWWM) Coop and Laura live happily ever after.

[tmurry]

No longer sure what I'm answering. I'm of the mind that if there is a timeline change/quantum universe shift (a surprising number of deep Lynch thinkers seem to start talking about the many worlds solution to quantum mechanics as an analogue for Vedic philosophy) that it has to go back farther than < a week before Laura's death (Coop sees Caroline in the final episode, but I'm more going off of how Frost, who one would think is all in on a timeline thing, seems to have the altered history go back so far in his book). The hints of timeline change in the last episode of the series, and the across time communication in the movie, are only loosely suggestive of anything in that vein, but so much hinges on "how's Annie" that I think we have to wait to see how the new series plays out (Annie seems to not exist at all, as in was never born, in Frost's book).

I think there is a lot to play with in all these elements, but the real ground is the emotional or psychologic truth of the scenes. The man looking in the mirror is a man who compromised himself trying to get the job done - he has lost himself on the way. He experiences anger at what he sees himself having become but that anger is what he has become. A stab of violence, a mirror's shattered reflection, a wound of the mind. This is the truth of it.

[laughingpinecone]

I think there is a lot to play with in all these elements, but the real ground is the emotional or psychologic truth of the scenes. The man looking in the mirror is a man who compromised himself trying to get the job done - he has lost himself on the way. He experiences anger at what he sees himself having become but that anger is what he has become. A stab of violence, a mirror's shattered reflection, a wound of the mind. This is the truth of it.

This rings true to me. I would try to make any more literal explanation follow this compass of meaning.

And I'm looking forward to seeing what the new material is going to make of the concept of doppelganger. For now, I'm reading them as the most carefully repressed parts of one's personality, the core of each character's inner conflict. If I'm anywhere near the ballpark, the nastier sides of Coop are still allowed to be angry at carrying BOB in tow.

[Xavi]

The mirror-scene rather shows a man who completely lost his mind (crazy) than someone who is in anger, according to my interpretation that is. And, what kind of anger is expressed by spilling out all the toothpaste in the sink? It shows that Cooper is under the spell/in control/ of BOB, that's for sure.

[mtwentz]

The mirror-scene rather shows a man who completely lost his mind (crazy) than someone who is in anger, according to my interpretation that is. And, what kind of anger is expressed by spilling out all the toothpaste in the sink? It shows that Cooper is under the spell/in control/ of BOB, that's for sure.

I interpret the toothpaste as the 'evil doppelganger' testing the physics of the 'real world' (just as the 'good Dale' was testing out the physics of the Lodge with the coffee).

He seems fascinated and amused by the gel toothpaste.

[tmurry]

The mirror-scene rather shows a man who completely lost his mind (crazy) than someone who is in anger, according to my interpretation that is. And, what kind of anger is expressed by spilling out all the toothpaste in the sink? It shows that Cooper is under the spell/in control/ of BOB, that's for sure.

The toothpaste, like his laughing "How's Annie" is him mocking/defying/testing his earlier self's concerns. Old Coop would never have wasted toothpaste like that and rolled the tube from the bottom like a good boyscout.

I interpret the toothpaste as the 'evil doppelganger' testing the physics of the 'real world' (just as the 'good Dale' was testing out the physics of the Lodge with the coffee).

He seems fascinated and amused by the gel toothpaste.

This is a similar thing, in that he is testing what it would be like to live without those self imposed limits, playing with the world with new eyes. He also makes a crude, uncontrolled portal ring with the paste droppings (recapitulating the candles and Glastonbury grove) indicating a buried wish for an escape. He is angry when he looks in the mirror. He only laughs crazily after the mirror cracks. This is mid-life crisis nervous breakdown territory. All those things that were so important. All the lies that "just do this" and everything will be good. All the "I'm a good person so my actions are justified." All of it plowing hard into the reality of his own horrific responsibility for his own actions and their outcome. That's what it is to crack under the illusion of control when you see yourself as the hero of your own myth, as all well trained young men of a certain age did and do.

[StrangerDanger]

I like to think it's just BOB's fury working through COOP or just COOP's fury alone (l use capitals to mean evil spirit).

I saw on a YouTube clip of the Missing Pieces that BOB is known for the "momentum of his fury" or similar words.

Toothpaste squeezed into a circle could mean something though, as you say, like Glastonbury Grove - or maybe it argues for a cyclic timeline with people on Earth being "proven" as Good / Bad through its trials - those people themselves then graduating to the White Lodge / Black Lodge.

[Rudagger]

I thought that guy was Evil Cooper / "COOPER" (in caps), i.e. Bob imitating Cooper, i.e. a doppelganger of Cooper. The good Cooper is stuck in the Black Lodge, and l think he leaves the Black Lodge only as implied in the end of Fire Walk With Me?

Too literal. I actually think the tack of trying to make Twin Peaks Frost-like (maybe I'm being unkind), saying that the doppelgängers and Bob and such are real as some kind of alien pantheon thing divorced from psychology, is the hardest approach to make work. There exists an explanation that makes the show make sense as purely events in a non-esoteric world understanding that there are metaphors presented as visuals and there is an explanation that is purely archetypal which is linked to events in a "world," and these two are in continuity - a matter of focus. Good Dale is in the lodge means Cooper's better nature has lost and those "angels of his nature" have ceased to fight the other elements of his psyche for now. Rigid thinking is the enemy of understanding when it comes to this stuff.

I am very curious about how this all plays out in the new series.

I've always been on the mindset after seeing FWWM that there exists two literal Coops (one possessed, and the real one trapped in the Lodge .. possibly for 25 years). If I had just ended at the series finale, I would've thought that it was as you said, a duality within Coop. My reason for interpreting it this way after FWWM is just how much Lynch, not Frost, plays with the Lodge messing with the physical world in a way that sort of has to be taken literally; Jeffries teleports, Desmond disappears. So, when we see Coop in the Lodge, I just assume it is him there (especially when placed next to the Missing Pieces where you also see him smashing his head into the mirror). FWWM feels like it's events read more literally than some of Lynch's later stuff, personally.

Of course though, that's just initial gut on the whole thing. If time in the lodge is nonlinear, it could've been him witnessing all of these things while in the Lodge in the finale (but before actually fighting his shadow self and leaving). Or it could be just part of his soul is trapped in there and Doppelcoop could be made whole somehow by re-entering (rather than a second 'Good Coop' leaving).

I think the real issue with blaming it on rigid thinking is just that Twin Peaks has always had a bit of a .. contradictory nature. So much of it's mysticism is made real and explicit in Season 2 and in FWWM (aforementioned teleporting), that it makes it a bit harder to read those things as just metaphoric/subconscious expressions of the psyche when you have characters who are physically teleporting places. Sure, you can read that as subtext, but, it really always felt to me like there wasn't a whole lot of ambiguity in the original run of whether or not these supernatural forces exist (just obviously, what they mean can vary viewer to viewer), in a way that Mulholland Drive feels much more ambiguous (where you find yourself asking "what is real?" in a way that you don't really with Peaks as reality seems pretty clearly marked).

I guess what I'm saying is that while there are many interesting and fair psychological subtextual readings ('how do these mystical forces express Laura Palmers state of mind while being abused by her father') I think the actual text/world of story of Twin Peaks is 'there are mystical forces and they exist'.

[tmurry]

Yeah, totally endorsed. I should have reversed the last sentence - "The only way to understand it all is to stay flexible." I agree that you start with the "vibe story" of the scene and work forward to fit the framework you are using to get context, and I just find it hardest to do a pure sci-fi/paranormal approach to explaining everything (literal split, literal planet that they came from, etc) and my thing was to always posit an equivalence between elements of weird fiction where, in Twin Peaks, the overlap between the Venn diagrams for sci-fi/paranormal/psychological/mythopoetic/drug trip/religious/local legend/occult/deep trance/conspiracy theory is pretty big, if not a circle. I got bit by Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger the summer before the show started airing, so that may have influenced my outlook, but the above seem to serve a similar function with differing levels of cognitive and unconscious involvement. So saying "the signal's not coming from outer space... it's coming from in the woods" is just reinforcement to me that deep space, the mystery of the edge of town, and the subconscious are the same thing. So I never feel like I have to make those final distinctions between archetype, myth, miracle, and spooooky. My reaction in these situations (which I don't think is too defensive) is predominantly from being well-actuallied by people who use a different framework and say "no, good Coop is literally in a physical place called the lodge so you are wrong." We're all grasping towards a stronger understanding of this. Nobody's wrong. We can all learn from and inform each other's approaches.

[Mace]

This is the first time we see Bob's actual possession of a human host. We observe the thrill he gets while physically squeezing the toothpaste tube into the sink. He becomes ecstatic and giddy with laughter after he smashes his head into the mirror. He is truly excited to have returned to human form.

I am reminded of Bob's line in FWWM where Bob says to Laura, "I want to taste through your mouth." Bob is experiencing through Cooper what he failed to experience through Laura. Leland was an old worn out vessel to him and he wanted a new host.