Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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mtwentz
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Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

Post by mtwentz »

I am at about episode 15, and Dougie is about twice or three times as funny as I remember. Maybe it's because I know when the 'real' Cooper is coming back that I can just settle into Dougie as his own story.

I am going back now on some of the comments on Dugpa and Twitter and one thing truly bothers me: the number of otherwise intelligent fans wondering why no one notices the near catatonic state Cooper/Dougie finds himself in.

'Do they not notice his state? This is so unrealistic'

Well folks, welcome to parody. That's exactly what it is. So no, it's not realistic that someone would walk around like a complete zombie and no one would notice.

But actually, they do kind of notice. The first people that run into him ask if he's ok. Jade postulates he might have had a stroke. The one who really doesn't seem to notice is his wife. It is also later explained he had a car accident. But that info is withheld from the viewer until much later in the series.

And that's where the humor is. That Janey-E is so self absorbed that she doesn't have a clue that the man sleeping next to her isn't her husband.

Edit: I should probably use 'satire' instead of parody. But you know what I meant!
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Jonah
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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Yeah, I think some of it is a commentary on how selfish and self-involved (or self-absorbed as you put it) people can (often or sometimes, depending on the people) be, so wrapped up in their own lives that they don't notice those around them that might be in distress or in need of help. Not all of it - but I do think some of it might be that.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

Post by Kilmoore »

Great, so it's satire. Nice. It still robbed us of having agent Cooper in a Twin Peaks series. It's still a waste.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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Yes, it is a parody, we just needed a few more parts (14 was not enough) to figure it out. I was thinking back then that if The Return had had 28 parts, that we would have had him in 24 parts overall). The only thing missing was Dougie taking part in the Wheel of Fortune, and solving a few puzzles (with a little help from his green-dotted friends).

That being said, Dougie worked off of intuition alone, and I had noticed some interesting parallels to what Mircea Eliade talks about in his book on shamanism, here is the original post viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3650&p=91708#p91708 It is just too bad that this arc (imo) never really delivered.
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mtwentz
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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boske wrote: Wed Jul 07, 2021 1:36 am Yes, it is a parody, we just needed a few more parts (14 was not enough) to figure it out. I was thinking back then that if The Return had had 28 parts, that we would have had him in 24 parts overall). The only thing missing was Dougie taking part in the Wheel of Fortune, and solving a few puzzles (with a little help from his green-dotted friends).

That being said, Dougie worked off of intuition alone, and I had noticed some interesting parallels to what Mircea Eliade talks about in his book on shamanism, here is the original post viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3650&p=91708#p91708 It is just too bad that this arc (imo) never really delivered.
To me it delivered. It gave a lot of very hard belly laughs. Starting with Dougie in the Casino!

But it wasn't what people were used to as 'Twin Peaks' and they ached for the old Coop. I think if it had been shorter, actually, some fans would have enjoyed it more.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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mtwentz wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:59 am To me it delivered. It gave a lot of very hard belly laughs. Starting with Dougie in the Casino!

But it wasn't what people were used to as 'Twin Peaks' and they ached for the old Coop. I think if it had been shorter, actually, some fans would have enjoyed it more.
The funniest thing that I recall about Dougie is actually what I read here on the board. It is about that scene when Janie-E takes him to their physician who then said that he saw nothing wrong with Dougie, and that he was in perfect shape, to which somebody replied "Gee, I am glad that's not my doctor!". But the scene where one of the Fusco brothers reads the report where Dougie is actually working for FBI, had an accident, and had apparently escaped from a federal prison a few days beforehand is pure gold. As much as I was ticked off at that time, I laughed like crazy. :lol:
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

Post by mtwentz »

boske wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 8:56 am
mtwentz wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:59 am To me it delivered. It gave a lot of very hard belly laughs. Starting with Dougie in the Casino!

But it wasn't what people were used to as 'Twin Peaks' and they ached for the old Coop. I think if it had been shorter, actually, some fans would have enjoyed it more.
The funniest thing that I recall about Dougie is actually what I read here on the board. It is about that scene when Janie-E takes him to their physician who then said that he saw nothing wrong with Dougie, and that he was in perfect shape, to which somebody replied "Gee, I am glad that's not my doctor!". But the scene where one of the Fusco brothers reads the report where Dougie is actually working for FBI, had an accident, and had apparently escaped from a federal prison a few days beforehand is pure gold. As much as I was ticked off at that time, I laughed like crazy. :lol:
Yeah that was funny but not half as funny as forcing that guy to drink a green tea latte for the first time in his life.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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I'm sure we've all seen Being There and Forrest Gump. I did not need the Lynch version of that story.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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4815162342 wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:01 am I'm sure we've all seen Being There and Forrest Gump. I did not need the Lynch version of that story.
To each his own. I thought it was hilarious.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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mtwentz wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:24 am
4815162342 wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:01 am I'm sure we've all seen Being There and Forrest Gump. I did not need the Lynch version of that story.
To each his own. I thought it was hilarious.
Whether it's hilarious or not, I'm pretty sure there's something more going on there than Being There or Forrest Gump. Commentary about this or that, filtered through a transcendental lens--transcendental in both the style sense and the meditation sense. So I guess "Lynch version" is actually an appropriate way to put it, but that also means it covers new ground.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

Post by Rainwater »

4815162342 wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:01 am I'm sure we've all seen Being There and Forrest Gump. I did not need the Lynch version of that story.
Personally, I did need it. I thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through, sometimes I especially enjoyed all the quiet and meandering moments. I almost can't believe so many people couldn't wait for it to be over on first viewing, couldn't wait to "get Coop back". It felt like Coop was there the whole time. To me, the Dougie storyline is the heart and soul of The Return, the thing that holds it all together.
Some of it is very funny, sure, but there's a lot more to it as LateReg and others have said and discussed before, and though there's elements of it, I really don't see it as a "parody storyline" in any significant way.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

Post by Jonah »

The Dougie thing was very broad and when something is that broad it will make a lot of people fall into love it or hate it camps. It also felt quite stretched out and the show itself wasn't subtle about commenting on that, all the false starts of him about to wake up, the commentary from the woman in the car outside the diner, the consciously slow scenes. That kind of commentary felt a bit too on the nose to me at times. I neither hated or loved the Dougie stuff. I fall somewhere in between, leaning more towards like as I found a lot of it rather funny and endearing, though I can appreciate why people felt so frustrated with it. Waiting to see which episode he would wake up in was almost the equivalent of waiting to see which episode the murderer of Laura Palmer would be revealed in, so I mostly enjoyed it, but also was frustrated by it a bit as I think you were meant to me.

One thing I do think that storyline made a mistake with is that, by having the series so focused mainly on Dougie and Bad Coop for 16 episodes, by the time we got "real" Coop back we only had him for like an episode and a half before he then transitioned into Richard. I understand these were all elements of the same character, and we got to explore him in four (at least) different versions of his psyche/soul, etc. But I don't think we got to spend enough time with the "real" part of him. Yes, I know all the others were part of the real part of him, especially Dougie, but I mean that particular fully-restored Coop. He ended up feeling almost shallowly-constructed, a thinly drawn character compared to what he had been (I know some of that is the point - but his actually character still could have explored more), and I think that's a real shame, we only sort of got to glimpse him for part of 16 and all of 17, a bit of 18, then he was lost to us yet again. Good storytelling in some respects, and certainly an interesting way to approach the character by showing us four different versions and aspects of him, but I feel we needed a bit more time with that version.

So I do like the Dougie stuff and the Bad Coop stuff, even the Richard stuff, but personally I would have preferred what seemed at least on the surface a more traditional approach of having Coop leave the lodge at the end of the first episode or two, slowly do the Dougie thing maybe for just a few episodes, then bring him back to himself sooner - BUT not like the character from the original series (who himself was also already fractured and, at times, also had a hard edge to him - he wasn't always a cheery boyscout type!). I would have liked to have seen a more fully-realised damaged version of Coop who had to come to terms with the lost years of his life and the full realisation that he had spent so long in the lodge and the town itself had changed so much, Harry was missing, Annie was nowhere to be seen, same with Audrey, etc. I didn't feel we got any of that especially in relation to him and the other characters and his reaction to them changing/going missing, etc. That was a shame, I thought. I also feel that version of Coop (had we got to see him) would have tied more into what I thought the show would be from early previews - a harder, darker version of the original series (it was but not in the way I had hoped it would be), focusing more on the themes of the past, ageing, loss, death, rebirth. It did explore all those themes, but I would have liked to have seen more of those themes confronted head on and in a more traditional narrative that would have felt more devastating than the more metaphorical and psychological approach it often took.

So, I liked Dougie, but felt we could have gotten less of him and transitioned to "real" Coop sooner, not to return to the feel of the original series, which would have been impossible as that version of the character was gone forever having been through so much, but rather to explore what he had been through and how it affected him in relation to the other characters. I feel the show just glanced around a lot of that and the themes I mentioned above. Certainly it explored them in an interesting, metaphysical and psychological way, but as a result a lot of it got lost in the narrative and can only be experienced more in analytical terms after the fact by discussing the themes on forums like this, rather than being felt in a more emotional and visceral way during the show itself. I'm not denying that the themes were explored and confronted, but I felt at times it really did glance around them and got too lost in its own goofiness and absurdity (e.g., one or two joke about impatience would have been enough and at times it was too self-referential about its own narrative, reducing it all to a kind of one-note/one-joke thing - at least where Dougie was concerned - and this comes from someone who writes and loves meta-fiction!).

Overall (and TL;DR) - I liked Dougie but felt we could have gotten less of him (maybe half the time) and transitioned to the "real" Cooper a bit sooner. The halfway mark or just after would have been nice and still long enough to test people's patience and make the points that storyline wanted to make. Of course, the halfway mark would probably have been seen as too traditional but Lynch doesn't always subvert tradition, sometimes he embraces it. For example, he felt the original was a soap opera, not a parody of one as fans (including me) often cite it as. Maybe in that respect the Dougie storyline also wasn't a parody, but a rather serious and heartfelt storyline told in an absurd way, but not meant to be viewed as a parody at all.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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mtwentz wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:59 am To me it delivered. It gave a lot of very hard belly laughs. Starting with Dougie in the Casino!
I rarely laugh when watching films or television, but that episode, the scenes at the casino, made me laugh out loud. "Call for help". Absolutely great :D

I also loved the Dougie storyline in general - the first time I have seen the series, and on every rewatch. I think it is at the same time both very funny and tragic. Just think of him standing lost and confused outside of the offices until dark, while Windswept by Johnny Jewel is playing... The memory of that scene alone makes me want to rewatch The Return all over again.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

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Stavrogyn wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 2:58 am I also loved the Dougie storyline in general - the first time I have seen the series, and on every rewatch. I think it is at the same time both very funny and tragic. Just think of him standing lost and confused outside of the offices until dark, while Windswept by Johnny Jewel is playing... The memory of that scene alone makes me want to rewatch The Return all over again.
Yes! Again, say what you will about the Dougie storyline, but there is genuine, profound pathos in moments like that. I also think of that moment a lot--and how it reflected my own feelings during my initial viewing of The Return: a bit lost and a bit confused. Such a wonderful moment, and I love how it carries directly into the sixth Part.
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Re: Did Fans Not Understand Dougie was a Parody storyline

Post by JackwithOneEye »

there is a lot of humor to the Dougie storyline, not sure if I'd call it a parody. for me, it does make me think of consciousness and sentience. the universe exists but we only have this very brief moment of life where we are aware/ can interact / have agency. 'we live inside a dream' could be read as referring to sentience, our lives are dreams in a sense, we go from non existence, have this moment of existing, and then go back into nothing/ non existence.

I do love the scene with the cop where he is attracted to the shiny badge. ties in nicely with The Alphabet, early childhood development, deciphering coded language, symbols. the windswept track by Johnny Jewel is perfect and is quite beautiful.
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