Part 12 - Let's rock (SPOILERS)

[chromereflectsimage]

Long shot, but I did notice a giant hourglass on Charlie's desk. Reference to the Eddie Vedder song?

[Dreamy Audrey]

Is the little man at the desk blocking access to the only exit doors? Will she only be able to leave the room when he gets through all that paperwork? Nobody puts their desk right up against the doors, or with the person at the desk not facing the doors.

There is the veiled door that leads to the stairs but maybe the veil means Audrey can't reach them. It's also very weird that she cannot leave the house on her own but needs Charlie to go with her.

[wAtChLaR]

33 pages of the same shortsighted whining. Will we ever get tired of making the same complaints endlessly?

Sounds like more whining!

[Voltaire]

I am going to preface this post with the fact that I love the new series. It is better than anything on TV. I look forward to every episode and I am so very happy that this season was made. Watching an episode of GOT, which is a great show, right after watching an episode of TP makes you really appreciate how TP is simply on a different level. I also love and appreciate most of Lynch's work. Other than Inland Empire I have watched most everything he has done multiple times. I am by most accounts a Lynch apologist. However, I am not delusional and do not feel that he is beyond criticism.

Other than the Blue Rose Gang history, a mention of Chet Desmond for the first time and the absolutely incredible and creepy Sarah Palmer scenes...this was a very weak episode. It did little to nothing to move the plot along. The Audrey return only had value in that it will stop Audrey fan boys from asking when she is showing up. I kept wondering who Billy is and why do I not remember who this guy is. Maybe coming on the heels of episode 11, which was fantastic, this episode has a lot to live up to so it feels like it fell short.

I am ultimately reserving my judgement on this until we get all 18 episodes. I am hopeful that when we can watch them in blocks all the dead time and Dougie nonsense will make more sense. Time is very short and there is only 6 hours precious hours left. Less really when you factor in the Roadhouse musical numbers even less. No Special Agent Dale Cooper and some slowish episodes 12 of 18 episodes in. I think this is why some people are impatient with episodes that seem to have a lot of irrelevant scenes and filler. Further we get a wonderful episode like 11 followed by this. The title also teased more Black Lodge stuff. The Sarah Palmer scenes did also. No payoff in the last half of the ep.

[TwoByFours]

I wonder if by using the Dr. Amp footage again, they were intentionally allowing your mind to shift into a place of comfort. "I know what this scene is about. I've seen this before. There is no new information worth digesting here."
And then BAM!!...Audrey is on the screen. That crash cut to her, standing unceremoniously in the frame, mid-pan as if we already missed the beginning of the scene because we weren't ready for it, was made all the more jarring because we were partly lulled into a narrative comfort zone.

"You have to watch out. Things can happen!"

[wAtChLaR]

speaking of whining, this made me chuckle a bit

Screenshot_20170728-110607.jpg (252.41 KiB) Viewed 8750 times

[Ragnell]

Y'know, this ep reminds me a lot of Part 10. Iconic quote as the title. Horne family drama, with advancement in the hit and run plot. The FBI remains in the hotel, bonding and sharing suspicions about Diane while one of them tries to get a little nookie. On the Dougie front a new threat to his life looms as he cements his bond with the Jones family.

And the episode is short. Like there is one scene missing short, as if that scene was determined to be a better opener for the next ep than a closer for this one. I'm interested to see how Part 13 starts.

[Dreamy Audrey]

btw: was Sarah shopping in a grocery store or a convenience store?

I'm not sure what's the difference between a grocery and convenience store but Sarah's words "Were you here when they first came?" and "Your room seems different" made me think she was talking about the convenience store. It also seemed like there were two people in her mind, she said things like "Sarah, stop doing this" and "Leave this place", it didn't sound like soliloquizing but as if someone was talking to her.

More about the Audrey scene:

- Charlie is keeping her in the room: he is blocking the door, refusing to leave with her, claiming he has work to do and that it's too dark outside, refusing to give her answers. By the way, the meaning of the name Charlie is "free man", which is a contrast to Audrey, who apparently isn't a free woman and bound to him by some "contract"
- There is a lot of talk about sleep: "Stay here and get a good sleep", "It's already late and I'm getting sleepy. I have so much more work to do before I go to sleep", "I saw Billy in a dream last night", "I'm so sleepy but I'll go", "I'm so tired, Audrey."
- Audrey and Charlie use archaic words: "Dreams sometimes hearken a truth", "You mean you'd go back on our contract? Renege our contract?"

Maybe Audrey really is in a coma (tired/sleep/dreams) and something (Charlie) is stopping her from waking up. Maybe she made him up in her mind ("I asked for your company, your protection") but now she wants to wake up (break the contract) but doesn't know how.

[Novalis]

This part was packed with details, much of which was buried in dialogue and in scenery. It will be a great pleasure to rewatch this when I'm firing on all cylinders and not half-asleep at 2am. As it stands, this episode blew me away with its unsettling, brooding creep. The Audrey-Charlie argument, in which both characters remain rooted as if in sleep paralysis, was particularly challenging and disquieting. I find it hard to understand how anyone could find that scene boring or trivial. It demands a lot of attention.

Grace Zabriskie's brief scene in the grocery/convenience store, confronted with the turkey jerky (gobble gobble), and sonically accompanied by the Fire Walk With Me string scrapes from Teresa Banks' autopsy connected deep in my Twin Peaks core. This was a massive 'connect' moment as far as I was concerned.

I hear people saying the dialogue was clunky and overwritten. I disagree. I think the dialogue was to the point, drawing attention to its own play, its excessiveness and elaborateness. Incidentally, I often used the word 'milquetoast', and also often remind people that Harry is their brother even when it goes without saying. Because discourse is not purely about imparting information. Language also does things that are completely at odds with the purposes of communication. It does things, it has performative value.

Blue Rose? Hmmm. I have to be honest I had hoped for more than the Frostian origin of the term (I chose the username Novalis, after all, for the author of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the original dreamer of the blue flower). But there's nothing in what was said about 'abstractions', that ties Blue Rose phenomena to flying saucers and all the TSHOTP misdirection. The way I choose to see it is that UFOlogy (and alternate dimensions for that matter) is just how the paranoid securitarian / military mind chooses to interpret things it can't comprehend (dixit counterpaul). Ultimately, I like the way the conversation was steered wide of Blue Book with this ambiguous word 'abstraction'. It's strange that this matters to me, but it does. The intrusion of dream realities into Twin Peaks feels correct; UFOs doesn't.

Also, I disagree with a lot of posters here about time wasting. No time was wasted in the making of this film. Only if you see time as a kind of currency or commodity, which I feel fairly confident in saying, Lynch doesn't. The temporality of the art of Twin Peaks is somehow post-capitalist; it can be expended indefinitely without diminishing its store. Fuck you, finitude; fuck you, death, deadlines and the stinking boss. This thing will take as long as it takes. If we happen to fall asleep or pass out or die mid journey, so much the better. I think the Audrey-Charlie scene is very much to the point here.

I suspect I'll find few who agree with me here, but this part felt very much like classic Twin Peaks to me. We're definitely homing in on a Return vibe. We've turned a corner in the slow winding approach, and the clues are all there in the writing and the sets.

As for all the comments on Lynch supposedly 'trolling' or messing with expectations. Hmmm. I see it differently. I see some sort of pedagogical aim in his story-telling. He's not out to thwart or play with us, there's a sort of didactic element to what he's doing, the way he is offering us things to think about. If that's trolling then I guess I've misunderstood the term. From my point of view he's showing things, letting them be seen, like all artists who work with visual elements do. The sounds though: the sounds really tell you everything. Listen to the sounds.

I think I'd rate this as a part with huge rewatch value -- nothing is what it seems.

[windh]

Just rewatched FWWM this morning. In it Laura refers to herself as a turkey when she's with James at the Twin Peaks High School. Sarah freaks out when she sees the Turkey Jerky. Now that the golden orb with Laura's face is in the world has Turkey Jerky been brought into the world of Twin Peaks???

But on a serious note are we seeing Audrey's coma dream or is she just living an incredibly weird life even for a Twin Peaks character?

Yep

All I was thinking about during the Jerky-part was the Gobble Gobble-scene in FWWM.

[CircleOfTrees]

Next stop Wendy's.

[ThumbsUp]

Wow, I love the idea of Audrey being in the Lodge. It'd explain why no one in the town acts like she exists, and is a great redemption to the seemingly originally planned story line of Audrey being taken to the Lodge instead of Annie.

Great observations re: wood panelling and so forth. And Audrey is wearing red/black. It's a stretch for sure, but cool to think about.

[freeek]

In the original TP series, the last scene we ever saw featuring Sarah Palmer was her escorted by Jacoby (I think) and entering the Double R. She was clearly possessed by *someting*. Remember that creepy voice ?

[wxray]

I'm not going to bow down and kiss Lynch's boots for everything I see. I have a right to be pissed. As a matter of fact, I want to be pissed and challenged.

Every part can't be my favorite. This is my least favorite. But who knows? My mind may change when I see the rest. Not giving up yet, but I am pissed about the nightmares I had last night. Maybe I'm in Audrey's coma...

[Jasper]

In the original TP series, the last scene we ever saw featuring Sarah Palmer was her escorted by Jacoby (I think) and entering the Double R. She was clearly possessed by *someting*. Remember that creepy voice ?

In that case it was Windom Earle attempting to lure Briggs into the lodge. There's certainly some kind of similarity to this phenomenon in part 12, with Sarah's strange-sounding voice. Of course this is not to say that it's Earle — it's not — but Sarah does seem to be picking up some otherworldly frequencies, which is further evidence of weird, bad stuff creeping into the fabric of everyday life in Twin Peaks.