Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Discussion of each of the 18 parts of Twin Peaks the Return

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LateReg
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by LateReg »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:The cut from Dougie saying “home” to Dale leading Laura “home” is a nice contrast, and goes back to what I was saying in the Part 16 thread about how Cooper might have done more good by staying with the family that loved him and not trying to change the world (literally).

I continue to believe that Cooper acts weird in this Part because he gave up the joyful part of himself to stay with the Joneses as Dougie. I also wonder if perhaps overconfidence in his newfound “Magician” abilities (i.e., moving the Red Room curtain with a wave of his hand) leads to the attitude change/more domineering nature. Cooper seems pretty off the second he comes out of the Red Room, but then in the “430” scene with Diane in the car, he seems much more human. He doesn’t necessarily seem like himself, but when he says, “Once we cross, it could all be different,” he seems really sad. It’s after they “cross” that he seems to become almost soulless.

...

What do we make of the fact that when Dale comes out of the motel to find himself in Texas, he finds Mr. C’s Lincoln Town Car from Part 2/3 waiting for him in the parking lot? As far as talismans go, that certainly doesn’t bode well for “our” Cooper. I’ve encountered, and toyed with, the notion that when the Doppel is destroyed at the top of this hour, he is reintegrated into Cooper Prime, explaining why Cooper’s demeanor seems more dour, his delivery slower, and his behavior occasionally borderline-sinister. Maybe it’s a combination of all the things I’ve mentioned (giving up part of himself to make a Dougie tulpa, having the doppel reintegrated, and becoming overly prideful with his advanced connection to the spirit world) that lead to the perfect storm of a Cooper ill-suited to carry out this task. It definitely doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Lynch starts the hour with the doppel’s destruction and the tulpa’s creation, before settling in with the “real” Cooper for the rest of the Part. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
I also find the idea of Dale sacrificing a cheerful part of himself compelling, compelling enough that I think I came up with that idea on my own, before reading it anywhere else. I had never explicitly connected the opening scenes of Part 18, though. Great catch regarding the destruction and the creation. That said, I had implicitly felt that, as we have many times talked about how "Richard" is essentially all sides of Cooper reintegrated into the "real" version, as you say.

What do we make of the other Diane she sees lurking at the motel? I’m inclined to think it’s her doppelganger stalking her. On an abstract level, it feels to me like the trauma of her past following her. She’s trying to be there for Cooper and enact the plan they made together at some ambiguous point in the past (possibly involving sex magick), but the events that went down with Cooper’s doppelganger are never far away. Interesting that the DoppelDiane (or whatever it is) vanishes as soon as Cooper comes back out the door. Maybe this is “Linda,” waiting to take over once the trauma becomes too overwhelming?
I had some pretty strong revelations about Part 18 on my most recent viewing, and Diane's encounter with herself was one of them. It's a simple revelation, but one that makes sense: Perhaps Diane seeing her double signifies that they are indeed in a lodge realm at that point. Except for the Mr. C/Dougie tulpa loophole, we are specifically told that one cannot cohabit the real world with one's doppelganger. Therefore, this may signify that they do indeed cross over into a lodge realm since that is the only place one can cohabit with their doppel.

That is such a disturbing sex scene. This version of Cooper doesn’t seem to take joy out of anything. That scene is a nice study in contrasts with the Janey-E sex scene in Part 10. Diane and Janey-E are sisters (however literally you want to take that), and both scenes involve writhing female backs, but Cooper’s reactions are night and day. The Cooper we see in Part 18 seems almost as comatose as our beloved DougieCoop, but instead of arm-flopping joy, he just sits there stone-faced (it sort of makes me laugh in a dark way that he’s playing with her breast completely joylessly). I also think back on his warmth and tenderness in the love scene with Annie in Episode 28 as another contrast. The Cooper we get here is pretty chilling.
I'm glad you brought this up, because I would have forgotten again. What's with that nipple fondle anyway? That's another of the most fascinating mini-moments for me. Why does Lynch cut to that, a totally separate shot, for such a short amount of time? I'm not interested in an "Old man Lynch is a gratuitous pervert" take on the scene, obviously, and that's certainly not my view of it. I really want to know if there's something to the editing and film language because it really stands out.

It’s really unclear how many levels of unreality deep we go in this Part. It’s ambiguous what universe we’re in when Cooper emerges from the Red Room (original universe? Altered continuity “Laura disappeared” universe? Somewhere else entirely?). Cooper and Diane then cross over to somewhere else when they pass the 430 mark, and of course Cooper once again seems to end up somewhere else entirely after the sex scene.

I’m not sure what the deal is with Richard and Linda, although I’m in good company, since Mark Frost also isn’t sure! I’d do a lot of things I’m not proud of to see just the portion of the script relating to this Part, to see how much was changed/added. The Fireman references Richard and Linda in Part 1, yet Cooper seems confused here, despite him remembering 430.

The name Richard obviously evokes the spawn of the doppel’s other rape, again indicating the importance of Audrey in all this. The “will they or won’t they, but also, she’s in high school” nature of the Cooper/Audrey dynamic on the original series is one of the most fun, charming, controversial, confusing, polarizing, fascinating and gossipy elements of the series’ legacy. It feels appropriate that, in some abstract sense, Cooper’s guilt over his feelings for Audrey, and what they led to when the doppel got out, seems to play into things here, with him being given a name that links him to the doppel’s sin.
This is all great. As far as Cooper not remembering Richard, I always thought that was kind of the point. They cross into this realm and it seems that the slippery nature of it means that they run the risk of forgetting why they are even there, who they even are, perhaps even changing into someone else, etc. He remembers 430 because that takes place before they cross over.

Another thing I never noticed before: when Dale first sees Eat at Judy’s from his car, there is a white horse out front! It’s one of those children’s coin-activated riding horses you see at tacky rest stops (see 26:28). Damn!

A detail I don’t recall seeing mentioned (perhaps further demonstrating the breakdown of reality, or maybe just a continuity error): after Cooper’s confrontation with the cowboys, he only picks up two guns (the second cowboy appears to reach for a gun in his rear waistband right before Dale shoots him in the foot, but Cooper never takes that gun off him). Then, when he gets behind the counter, Dale magically has a third gun (not counting his own), a revolver he wasn’t carrying a second earlier.

Carrie’s first question when she opens the door is, “Did you find him?” I never made this connection before, but might she be referring to Billy?
I never specifically logged the white horse, or made the Billy connection, but I have mentioned the two guns thing, and have wondered the same thing regarding the breakdown of multiple realities. I could be wrong, but I thought we could trace where both the 2nd and 3rd cowboys' guns are on the floor. If that is the case, it would be very strange if it were a continuity error since the sequence would likely be shot chronologically. That said, it's strange because I looked for all this on my recent viewing and I didn't notice the two guns thing for the first time since I first noticed it, and I thought I might have somehow been wrong this whole time!

I still really don’t know what to make of Tommy the loan shark from Part 6 seemingly being dead on Carrie’s couch. For awhile I thought that was a Bob-orb popping out of his chest, but now I’m not entirely sure. He definitely has a really distinctive bulge going on there, but the coloring of the material sticking out of his shirt looks more like a mixture of creamed corn and motor oil, like when Mr. C vomited or when the Bob-orb got punched through the floor. Upon closer inspection, he also has creamed corn pouring out the back of his head from the gunshot wound! Assuming it is an orb, I guess the idea is that Bob is still pursuing Laura across time and space to obtain her as a host? I’d watch a spinoff of Carrie Page just blasting Bob-host after Bob-host, Ash/‘Evil Dead’-style.
It still looks like a Bob orb to me, hardened, frozen there.

I know much has been made of the presence of Mary Reber (or a Tremond who looks like her), and the idea that Dale and Carrie may have stumbled into our “reality.” However, Lynch deliberately shows that the diner still has the “RR” sign up, indicating that Twin Peaks is still Twin Peaks to at least some degree.
True, but isn't it also true that the "To Go" portion of the sign, newly invented for The Return, is not there? So, that certainly has to mean something as well.

Sarah is an interesting presence/non-presence in this Part. Carrie doesn’t have any reaction to her own real name or Leland’s, but when Dale says her mother’s name is Sarah, she seems disturbed. And it’s ultimately Sarah’s voice calling for her in the Pilot (which she never got to hear in real life) that seems to trigger her. Lynch has reused that scene/audio of Sarah calling Laura’s name multiple times throughout the series. It works so well on an intuitive level, but it’s tough to put into words what it means.

I still get goosebumps when all the lights surge and then suddenly go out in the house, even though I know it’s coming. It’s really an electric moment, pun intended.
I've seen Part 18 a total of thirteen times, and every single time I've gotten massive, full body shock chills at the end. They begin for me in the moments before she gears up to scream. There's something about that atmosphere that I believe Lynch lucked into on the perfect night, and simply went with it. The way the wind subtly shifts through Sheryl Lee's hair. The effect is unprecedented and uncanny.

Sarah's "Laura" is certainly a plausible reason to think either that the series is A. a loop that is now ready to begin again or B. that Laura is indeed alive, asleep in her bed, hearing her mother call to her. I'm not saying I would bet money on either of those interpretations being correct, just that both interpretations are at least valid in light of the soundbite.

Speaking of which, I have an interpretation, and it's one that I don't believe I've yet explicitly encountered anywhere else, and after it came to me it's been hard to shake. Many have pondered that the Odessa-verse is a possibly Judy-manipulated pocket of the Lodge; my basic interpretation of the two Dianes supports that, along with all the iconography littered throughout Part 18, and the general wrongness of it all. Others (me) have said that Dale crosses over into the real world, our reality, as evidenced by a mounting series of events in the series and culminating in the emergence of the "real" Cooper and the real owners of the Palmer house, lending disorientation to a final hour that somehow feels more dryly realistic than any previous; obviously, I've always subscribed to the real world theory, and I find it to be evident even in the matter-of-fact display of the gun-toting Texans. But what didn't strike me until this viewing is that it's actually both at once. It is both the hitherto unseen Black Lodge and the real world, the ultimate and extremely scary implication being that the Black Lodge IS the real world that we're currently inhabiting, that this real world of ours is so thoroughly upside down that it is no more or less than a shadow, a place of dark forces, a world of nightmares. This ties back to the idea of whether Bob is real or just a metaphoric stand-in for the evil that men do and which is more comforting and whether they're one and the same, it fits with Lynch's comments about the Iron Age/Golden Age, and it certainly fits with the general decay depicted in the "fictional" town of Twin Peaks in The Return. So, that's my revelation about the finale: it is indeed our real world, but the real world is in fact the Black Lodge. They cross over into the Black Lodge, but it just so happens to be our world. It's a very dark thought.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by dreamshake »

Mr. Reindeer wrote: The name Richard obviously evokes the spawn of the doppel’s other rape, again indicating the importance of Audrey in all this. The “will they or won’t they, but also, she’s in high school” nature of the Cooper/Audrey dynamic on the original series is one of the most fun, charming, controversial, confusing, polarizing, fascinating and gossipy elements of the series’ legacy. It feels appropriate that, in some abstract sense, Cooper’s guilt over his feelings for Audrey, and what they led to when the doppel got out, seems to play into things here, with him being given a name that links him to the doppel’s sin.
Obviously the allusion to Audrey's son is important, but I wonder if there's any significance in the common nickname for Richard being Dick, slang for a detective.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

dreamshake wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote: The name Richard obviously evokes the spawn of the doppel’s other rape, again indicating the importance of Audrey in all this. The “will they or won’t they, but also, she’s in high school” nature of the Cooper/Audrey dynamic on the original series is one of the most fun, charming, controversial, confusing, polarizing, fascinating and gossipy elements of the series’ legacy. It feels appropriate that, in some abstract sense, Cooper’s guilt over his feelings for Audrey, and what they led to when the doppel got out, seems to play into things here, with him being given a name that links him to the doppel’s sin.
Obviously the allusion to Audrey's son is important, but I wonder if there's any significance in the common nickname for Richard being Dick, slang for a detective.
Interesting point. I hadn’t thought about that. The idea of Audrey naming her son after the actor who plays her dad also goes along with LateReg’s pet theory of reality intruding.

But I think the true takeaway here is that Dick Tremayne is the dreamer and the reality of the whole show outside of the Season 2 Andy/Lucy material is all inside his head. ;)
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

LateReg wrote:I never specifically logged the white horse, or made the Billy connection, but I have mentioned the two guns thing, and have wondered the same thing regarding the breakdown of multiple realities. I could be wrong, but I thought we could trace where both the 2nd and 3rd cowboys' guns are on the floor. If that is the case, it would be very strange if it were a continuity error since the sequence would likely be shot chronologically. That said, it's strange because I looked for all this on my recent viewing and I didn't notice the two guns thing for the first time since I first noticed it, and I thought I might have somehow been wrong this whole time!
No, only one Cowboy's gun is on the floor.

Cowboy 1 draws his gun; Cooper kicks him in the groin and takes his gun, placing it on the table.
Cowboy 2 reaches toward his rear waistband, and Cooper shoots him in the foot. His gun is never seen until it magically appears in Cooper's hand behind the counter.
Cooper tells Cowboy 3 (Jagwar Cop!) to put his gun on the floor, and Cooper picks it up.

Mr. Reindeer wrote:I still really don’t know what to make of Tommy the loan shark from Part 6 seemingly being dead on Carrie’s couch. For awhile I thought that was a Bob-orb popping out of his chest, but now I’m not entirely sure. He definitely has a really distinctive bulge going on there, but the coloring of the material sticking out of his shirt looks more like a mixture of creamed corn and motor oil, like when Mr. C vomited or when the Bob-orb got punched through the floor. Upon closer inspection, he also has creamed corn pouring out the back of his head from the gunshot wound! Assuming it is an orb, I guess the idea is that Bob is still pursuing Laura across time and space to obtain her as a host? I’d watch a spinoff of Carrie Page just blasting Bob-host after Bob-host, Ash/‘Evil Dead’-style.
It still looks like a Bob orb to me, hardened, frozen there.
Yeah. I don't want to take undue credit, but I do believe I was the first to catch this, and I still agree with myself that it appears to be an orb, but the coloring is interesting. As opposed to the black/green coloring of the Bob-orb, it looks more like creamed corn and motor oil, but perhaps that's what the orb becomes as it decomposes. I really love the detail of the creamed corn spilling out from the head gunshot wound! I struggle to figure out why Tommy is in this role, but perhaps it's because, as a loan shark, he feeds off the suffering and pain of others?

I know much has been made of the presence of Mary Reber (or a Tremond who looks like her), and the idea that Dale and Carrie may have stumbled into our “reality.” However, Lynch deliberately shows that the diner still has the “RR” sign up, indicating that Twin Peaks is still Twin Peaks to at least some degree.
True, but isn't it also true that the "To Go" portion of the sign, newly invented for The Return, is not there? So, that certainly has to mean something as well.
Not to be a contrarian, but I wonder if this is possibly just a function of the filming order? Maybe the diner had just painted over that by the time they filmed this scene. I do remember back in 2015, people were disappointed at how quickly Twede's put back up all the Tweety Bird dolls and returned the establishment to its normal working order as soon as filming completed. I watched the Lauzirika documentary 'A Very Lovely Dream' the other day, and I noted that when he was there shooting, the "RR" sign was still up (or maybe was put up special for Lauzirikia to shoot), but the main sign said "Twede's" as opposed to "Mar." It got me thinking: Did they find the old "Mar" sign and re-mount it, or was that changed in post digitally? I'm trying to remember from the old 2015 set photos. In any event, it's also worth noting that the sign says "Mar-T" as opposed to "Twede's" here, again, countering the idea of it being our present-day reality. (Although it could certainly be our reality in the past: "What year is this?")
Sarah's "Laura" is certainly a plausible reason to think either that the series is A. a loop that is now ready to begin again or B. that Laura is indeed alive, asleep in her bed, hearing her mother call to her. I'm not saying I would bet money on either of those interpretations being correct, just that both interpretations are at least valid in light of the soundbite.
I love this, and if anyone in TP is the "dreamer," I would put my money on Laura, being awakened at the end of Part 18 from a really fucked-up dream, to find herself safe in bed on February 24, 1989.
Speaking of which, I have an interpretation, and it's one that I don't believe I've yet explicitly encountered anywhere else, and after it came to me it's been hard to shake. Many have pondered that the Odessa-verse is a possibly Judy-manipulated pocket of the Lodge; my basic interpretation of the two Dianes supports that, along with all the iconography littered throughout Part 18, and the general wrongness of it all. Others (me) have said that Dale crosses over into the real world, our reality, as evidenced by a mounting series of events in the series and culminating in the emergence of the "real" Cooper and the real owners of the Palmer house, lending disorientation to a final hour that somehow feels more dryly realistic than any previous; obviously, I've always subscribed to the real world theory, and I find it to be evident even in the matter-of-fact display of the gun-toting Texans. But what didn't strike me until this viewing is that it's actually both at once. It is both the hitherto unseen Black Lodge and the real world, the ultimate and extremely scary implication being that the Black Lodge IS the real world that we're currently inhabiting, that this real world of ours is so thoroughly upside down that it is no more or less than a shadow, a place of dark forces, a world of nightmares. This ties back to the idea of whether Bob is real or just a metaphoric stand-in for the evil that men do and which is more comforting and whether they're one and the same, it fits with Lynch's comments about the Iron Age/Golden Age, and it certainly fits with the general decay depicted in the "fictional" town of Twin Peaks in The Return. So, that's my revelation about the finale: it is indeed our real world, but the real world is in fact the Black Lodge. They cross over into the Black Lodge, but it just so happens to be our world. It's a very dark thought.
I love this. I'm not necessarily going to adopt it as my definitive interpretation (because I don't know that there can be one definitive interpretation of TR), but this fits so well with Mark's very first initial idea for a "way back in," which was Cooper emerging in a Las Vegas suburban ghost town that had been abandoned due to the 2008 recession. TP isn't a political show, but so much of what Mark was getting at (per the interviews he's given, his books, as well as material on the show like the Dr. Amp monologues) is focused on the imbalance and darkness in our present world. And as you note, this is also a major interest of Lynch's, even as he comes at it from a very different perspective. The idea you're expressing of the manufactured reality being "one and the same" with our world also fits with many of the observations I've made during my rewatch, of the Billy/Audrey-adjacent characters being mostly Lynch's family members (Riley, Emily Stofle) or crew members (Scott Cameron breaking the mood in Part 16).

Are all of us contained within a manufactured Lodge reality? In a way, this world might make more sense if that were the case.

And is even that reality all just a dream of Laura Palmer’s? The Log Lady once said, “To introduce this story, let me just say it encompasses the all. It is beyond the fire, though few would know that meaning. It is a story of many, but begins with one. And I knew her. The one leading to the many is Laura Palmer. Laura is the one.”

It feels strangely appropriate if the ultimate takeaway of the TP experiment is that Laura Palmer started out as the dead-girl MacGuffin who we obsessed over in TV Guide, but ends up as the “dreamer” who actually is dreaming all of our lives. It’s the perfect, ultimate Lynchian inversion, empowering the victimized Marilyn Monroe figure and bringing a perfect closure to the circle, fiction devouring reality. I love the idea that we’re all in Laura’s dream, after her spending all these years in our collective imaginations.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

LateReg wrote:
I'm glad you brought this up, because I would have forgotten again. What's with that nipple fondle anyway? That's another of the most fascinating mini-moments for me. Why does Lynch cut to that, a totally separate shot, for such a short amount of time? I'm not interested in an "Old man Lynch is a gratuitous pervert" take on the scene, obviously, and that's certainly not my view of it. I really want to know if there's something to the editing and film language because it really stands out.
I have no clue, but I was just watching “The Man with the Gray Elevated Hair” documentary, and when Lynch is describing the scene to the crew and Kyle and Laura, he very specifically mentions that shot, and I thought of you!
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

The behind the scenes film for Part 18 reveals this rather macabre wall hanging in Eat at Judy’s:
47200D1F-0D74-43FF-AA40-26A17494CAA8.jpeg
47200D1F-0D74-43FF-AA40-26A17494CAA8.jpeg (144 KiB) Viewed 10516 times
This calls to mind the logo on the jerky that so disturbs Sarah, as well as a similarly decayed horned beast seen in Audrey’s house: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3725&p=123448&hili ... ng#p114914

There definitely seems to be a pattern here, all with possible Judy connections. The Eat at Judy’s head was definitely placed by the production (the whole location was redressed for the shoot), but it’s too bad it didn’t make it into the edit.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

It also just occurred to me that that Carrie Page house scene must have been shot 3-4 months before the scene of Janey-E with the loan sharks. So Ronnie Gene Blevins was initially cast as the couch corpse, and presumably was brought back later to be one of the loan sharks.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by mtwentz »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:It also just occurred to me that that Carrie Page house scene must have been shot 3-4 months before the scene of Janey-E with the loan sharks. So Ronnie Gene Blevins was initially cast as the couch corpse, and presumably was brought back later to be one of the loan sharks.
Have we confirmed it's actually him in Carrie's house?
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

mtwentz wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:It also just occurred to me that that Carrie Page house scene must have been shot 3-4 months before the scene of Janey-E with the loan sharks. So Ronnie Gene Blevins was initially cast as the couch corpse, and presumably was brought back later to be one of the loan sharks.
Have we confirmed it's actually him in Carrie's house?
I don’t believe there has ever been any official word, but I think the consensus is that it really really looks like him. I personally have no doubt. I don’t think it’s really any help, but there is a shot of Lynch placing creamed corn behind his head in the Part 18 documentary, if anyone wants to look at him from a slightly different angle. It would be great if someone got the chance to interview him and ask how it all came about.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

After three years, I finally finish my first rewatch, and part 18 feels seemingly underwhelming, considering everything that went through, especially in the second half of part 17.

Some observations:
  • The opening scene of S3 is actually taking place at the start of part 18;
  • Cooper and Diane leave Twin Peaks in an older car, that model has an early 70's look;
  • They stop 430 miles away from Twin Peaks. What do those transmission towers there remind of? The giant and dwarf petroglyphs from the Owl Cave;
  • In front of the motel, Diane sees her doppelgänger, it is a hint that they are being watched/followed; She is in the car (embodied), and her doppelgänger/shadow is roaming around; She still has a shadow (and remember that in part 17, her face in the lodge was shown half lit, half in the shadow);
  • The scene of their motel room is filmed in such a way as to avoid showing a TV set that is apparently there. As soon as the camera pans left to what looks to be the edge of a TV, it quickly pans back. The idea is that the room looks like it belongs to the 70s era; You can see that TV later in the morning though;
  • Diane: scarlet woman; If that old car is a Buick, then it ties into TSHOTP, page 261, and that whole section/chapter lays it all out;
  • The motel "Richard" wakes up in is obviously not "the same" motel they fell asleep in; When you see it again, it won't be it; And Richard has a modern car too (it does not look like a Buick to me though);
  • The other waitress at Judy's (hint, hint) has now not worked for almost three days: Seasons 1, 2, and largely 3. Laura has not been there since FWWM; ;-) She has been dead for three seasons, yet her spirit endured; And Cooper/Richard snatches her away from Judy's, she is no longer working for Judy; This fits into that idea of Judy being a metaphor for not only mother but also matter; Laura has been dead for three seasons, not existing in matter but in spirit only;
  • Sarah cannot "harm" Laura's photo even though she destroyed the frame and the glass. What about it? The Frame and the glass would be her body, but her spirit survived, and Sarah/Judy/mother/matter cannot touch it; Spirit wins over matter;
  • I mentioned this a while back, and it is a weird idea, but who are Carrie Page's parents? Is it Leland and Sarah? Or perhaps Richard and Linda? Why? Fireman and Dido decided to incarnate Laura's soul ("I am dead, yet I live"), so they send Cooper and Diane back in time to conceive Laura. The year and the make of their car would fit in the picture. That would also explain Carrie's demeanour when Cooper asks if Leland and Sarah were her parents. Cooper did not ask Carrie who her parents were. What if he instead posed his question that way, and Carrie responded that she did not know her father and that her mother's name was Linda?
  • What happens later on in front of the Palmer home is that Carrie breaks through a barrier between different incarnations, and recognises that she is Laura after all. And perhaps something else as well, that TSHOTP mentions in that chapter;
  • In the final frame, what could Laura tell Cooper in the lodge this time around? Maybe that he is Carrie's biological father? That would explain his shocked state;
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

boske wrote:
And Richard has a modern car too (it does not look like a Buick to me though);
It’s the same Lincoln Town Car Mr. C drives when he crashes in Part 3.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by eyeboogers »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
It’s the same Lincoln Town Car Mr. C drives when he crashes in Part 3.
Reindeer, do you have any theories as why they might be driving that same car?
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Jasper »

eyeboogers wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:
It’s the same Lincoln Town Car Mr. C drives when he crashes in Part 3.
Reindeer, do you have any theories as why they might be driving that same car?
Well, we have Kyle's outright denial of Mr. C being a part of Cooper in part 18. So, either that's really the case, or Lynch just directed Kyle without mentioning it. I think the direction, according to Kyle, was that he was Cooper, but just a little harder.

He seems the most alien at Judy's, walking around with his gun pointed out for no reason and placing the seized guns in the fryolater. At Carrie's home, and especially at (what's supposed to be) the Palmer house, he seems a lot more like regular Cooper.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Jasper wrote:
eyeboogers wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:
It’s the same Lincoln Town Car Mr. C drives when he crashes in Part 3.
Reindeer, do you have any theories as why they might be driving that same car?
Well, we have Kyle's outright denial of Mr. C being a part of Cooper in part 18. So, either that's really the case, or Lynch just directed Kyle without mentioning it. I think the direction, according to Kyle, was that he was Cooper, but just a little harder.

He seems the most alien at Judy's, walking around with his gun pointed out for no reason and placing the seized guns in the fryolater. At Carrie's home, and especially at (what's supposed to be) the Palmer house, he seems a lot more like regular Cooper.
It’s pretty well established that Lynch and Kyle have an extreme short-hand and Lynch doesn’t overexplain much. Kyle may have just given what Lynch needed based on a few words, without Lynch having to say too much.

I do think the doppelganger is reincorporated into Cooper after it burns up in the Red Room. And I think that car is a bad omen that Cooper is on the wrong trail. Not that he’s evil, but that he is as misguided in his mission as the doppel was, albeit in a different way.
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boske
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by boske »

Since it is the same model (and maybe even the very same car) driven by Mr. C, it would tie in to what I raised earlier about the car as a metaphor for the body. Cooper, or now Richard, as a psychological part of Cooper, a persona, or more a possibly integrated Cooper (Self) is now in control of Cooper's body.

Clearly, the ending is on one (at least) level rather depressing. Cooper takes Laura home (albeit as Richard and Carrie), and what happens? That is no longer Laura's home. Tremonds own it. And Cooper has no home either. They end up back in the lodge as their real home. Remember LMFAP in FWWM hysterically laughing: "There is no place to go back but ...HOME". Is he implying the lodge is their home now forever? Dougie does have a home and he did get to go back to it, as a mini "happy end" of sorts. Dougie lives, Cooper is still trapped, maybe forever.

As far as Mr. C, while he had the ring on his finger, we do not see his corpse in the lodge like we saw in case of Ray Monroe, we only see the ring on the lodge floor in part 17, iirc. We see Mr. C burning a bit later, but we do not know if he is to keep burning for eternity, or if he as a shadow has somehow been integrated into Cooper. And that may be very, very important. Here is why.

If we are to look at part 17 as an ecranisation of the Jungian individuation process, we can identify:
  • Assimilation of the shadow, where Cooper is supposed to assimilate Mr. C, that is "merge" with his shadow; This did not really happen (that I can see), did it? Mr. C was dead before Cooper arrived, and we could therefore even question here if it was the Fireman that prevented this merger, as he instructed Andy to dispose of Mr. C. Did he really help Cooper or not?
  • Integration of the anima, where Diane is anima to Dale as animus, and something happened here, with Naido's transformation into Diane, and Diane and Dale holding their hands together, etc.;
  • Encounter with the archetype of the Wise Old Man. Who would have though that Gordon Cole is the Wise Old Man. Maybe because he did not go soft where it mattered, or that he found ways to get entertained in his hotel room? I'll stop here... ;-)
At the end of part 17, Cooper would have thus become integrated, the Self, and then set to incarnate as Richard in part 18. But was he really integrated? It does not look that way to me, as the first step was seemingly never completed, as his shadow keeps on burning in part 18, after his supposed unification. He never really faced his own doppelgänger. If he had tried to do so, would Bob have obliterated him? If so, then he was not ready for it, but if not, we are then to question Fireman's motives. Was he trying to help Cooper, knowing that he was not yet ready for it, or was it to keep him from successfully integrating for some other reasons?

While part 17 can be explained in Jungian terms, part 18 looks to be something else altogether, although there are some allusions in TSHOTP as to what is going on, and who knows what else; As I speculated earlier, with Laura orb set to land in Texas, my guess what that Richard and Linda were sent down there to help her incarnate. Yes, it sounds crazy, but it is such a show. :-) That being said, if Cooper did not achieve individualisation in part 17, then was he already doomed to fail in part 18, as something was simply not right between his animus and anima, in psychological terms, if we are to look at what happened from that angle. Maybe we shouldn't, who knows.

One more thing, it is best to view part 17 as having two half-parts: first the individualisation, then the attempt to save Laura from her doom. Had Cooper not attempted to save Laura, maybe we would not had had part 18 as is, but it would be something else altogether.

Edit: I found that file I originally posted, regarding the anima/animus diagram, as one possible way of looking at "Richard and Linda" and "two birds with one stone":
Birds.png
Birds.png (26.04 KiB) Viewed 9855 times
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