Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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

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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

LateReg wrote:Yes, for sure. I always seem to think her smashing the photo is more the result of Laura being saved in the first place. She is mourning her life, whereas in the original pilot she was mourning her death. How exactly the picture smashing is tied to the next scene's disappearance is a bit more ambiguous for me.

Thanks for the interesting observation on the behind the scenes, too. I've only seen that clip once.
I don’t want to oversell it, and the editing is a little disorienting...but give it a look if you get a chance. It’s around the 15-odd minute mark in the first Disc 8 documentary, “The Man with the Grey Elevated Hair.” It’s almost as creepy as anything actually shot for the series proper, IMO. I’d love to see an unedited version of that conversation.

I view Sarah’s arc as paralleling all the complex emotions a mother in her position would be feeling: guilt at her complicity in abuse, jealousy at her husband feeling attracted to their daughter (something Jennifer wonderfully hinted at in TSDoLP and which I think the P17 scene horrifyingly realizes), frustration at her inability to move past the events of 1989, loneliness, feeling trapped. Her whole life has in retrospect been defined by Laura, and she wishes she could erase Laura from existence and reclaim her own identity. Insofar as TP is a story about incest, I think TR is important for telling Sarah’s perspective just as FWWM was important for telling Leland’s.
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Jonah
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the brief behind the scenes clip of him and Grace on the night of that shoot.
Do you know approximately when this appears?
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Jonah wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the brief behind the scenes clip of him and Grace on the night of that shoot.
Do you know approximately when this appears?
It’s around the 15-odd minute mark in the first Disc 8 documentary, “The Man with the Grey Elevated Hair.“
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Jonah
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Jonah wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the brief behind the scenes clip of him and Grace on the night of that shoot.
Do you know approximately when this appears?
It’s around the 15-odd minute mark in the first Disc 8 documentary, “The Man with the Grey Elevated Hair.“
Thanks!
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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boske
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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boske wrote:
LateReg wrote:
boske wrote: Yes, indeed. And with a hypertrophied ring finger. Some people have identified the mysterious smile to be the one from the famous Laura's photo. FWWM showed Laura to be a rather complex figure.
Interesting. I mean, I knew this theory about the smile but had missed the hand, which definitely looks like Laura's. But as I'm sure you know, there is the Judy "horn" visible for a split second on the top of the head inside of Sarah. Very unique commingling of elements that compose Sarah's fractured state.
What we see at that moment is some kind of actualisation of what that trash-talking trucker (T3 :lol:) told Sarah in the Elk bar in part 14, about fondling and the rest of it. And the parallel is here: Diane is almost impressing something onto Cooper's face with her palms, a cast or mold of something (her mask/persona?), and remember that Sarah/mother/experiment removes her mask before slaying the poor trucker, so this could represent Cooper's failure, submersion, or even death on another level, most likely spiritual, mimicking the poor trucker's demise. About the writhing backs, there is something reptilian about those scenes, as if it is alluding to a snake-lie movement involving the spine.
I like this as well. Perhaps Diane is attempting to not only block out her own trauma by covering Cooper's face, but also trying to keep him from removing his face to reveal the blackness within?
Who knows, maybe down the road we catch some fish, as Lynch would have it, and figure out more. There is something tantric about that scene, and it does seem to tie into TSHoTP. There are also some hints here involving polarity: first with Naido (a precursor to Diane) flipping the switch and changing polarity, and then we see something similar in the car when Cooper and Diane cross that 430 mile threshold, some sort of a permutation at work.
Back to this part for a moment. On the subject of Richard and Linda, particularly pertaining to their relation in this part, maybe we could try this time to interpret their meaning using the "nomen set omen" approach, and see if anything could be deduced.

Let us start with Linda, where one of its meanings in German is "snake". Remember the awkward scene in this part, where Lynch focuses on snake-like movements in Linda's back (where he could be alluding to Kundalini Yoga). What about Richard? While there may not be something obvious in the name right away, one of the first associations would be that of Richard the Lionheart, the heart of lion, and both lion and heart allude to emotional aspect of man's soul, with heart as the seat of man's emotional life. These are hints to a tantric nature of Richard and Linda's relationship, and it all ties into TSHoTP, in particular page 261.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by pinballmars »

Just finished my first Season 3 rewatch in at least a year, maybe two. It's still brilliant, still one of my favorite things ever and Episode 18 is still mesmerizing and still, I think, THE END of "Twin Peaks".

What Episode 18 (and 17) does is take the main things that defined "Twin Peaks" and gets rid of them. It takes them off the table. It makes more "Twin Peaks" not possible really. Here's what it removes:

THE DEATH OF LAURA PALMER
As we all know, the original series was never supposed to get over Laura's murder. It was essential and when the show lost it, Lynch checked out. In Season 3, she's still there as a haunting presence (her prom photo is one of the first things you see in each episode, at the start of the opening credits) and then her murder is erased. One of the building blocks of "Twin Peaks" is gone. Reality is reshuffled and what we have now is this living woman who's in trouble. I think the point is that nothing, not even altering history, changes Laura's tragedy. It's unfixable. And as a fictional character, her tragedy can be "beautiful". It can stand for a lot of things. It can mean a lot. For Lynch, it does mean a lot. And now it's simultaneously gone and it remains, but in a different form. And there's no resolution to it. There can't be.

DALE COOPER
By the end of Episode 18, Dale Cooper doesn't really exist anymore ("at least not in the normal sense"). In "Twin Peaks", doppelgangers and tulpas aren't just a copy of a person; they ARE the person, a part of them that splits off. When Cooper gave Janey-E and Sonny Jim a new "Dougie", he created Dougie out of his warmth and capacity to love. That's why Cooper is so cold in Episode 18. All of that charm and charisma that made us love Cooper in the original series are gone from this Cooper. What's mostly left is a single-minded sense of duty to save Laura and stop Judy. (Meanwhile, Laura can't be saved.)

(On a related note, the original Dougie, the one with the shaggy hair whom we see briefly in the empty house in Vegas in Episode 3, was created by Mr. C out of vices. Gambling, sex addiction, whatever indulgences gave him that potbelly. That's why Mc. C has no normal vices. He doesn't even seem interested in sex. His sexual relationships with Chantal and Darya come off more as power flexes than satisfaction of desire.)

(On another note, like Episode 29 of the original series, Season 3 ends with Cooper split in two, only this time it's on his own terms and for the cause of good.)

TWIN PEAKS, THE TOWN
Carrie Page has NO attachment to the town of Twin Peaks. That said, she does have "phantom memories" of Laura's life, little things that resonate that she can't explain. "Laura Palmer" means nothing to her. "Leland Palmer" means nothing to her. Entering the town means nothing to her. The old house means nothing to her at first. The mention of "Sarah Palmer" does mean something though, as demonstrated when she pauses after Cooper mentions the name at her door in Odessa. Yet another memory is triggered by the stillness and confusion outside of the house in the final scene and it's so horrific that she screams.

For me, the ending was a little apocalypse. I think that everything literally went black and ceased to exist. There is no next scene, just "Dark Space Low".

In a theoretical follow-up moment though, Carrie has no reason to stay in Twin Peaks, particularly if it frightens her.

Yes, these "lost things" could be restored easily in writing, but this seems like the place to leave it, with acknowledgement of unfixable tragedy, part of a "happy ending" (Dougie and his family) and a powerful "you can't go home again" message.

For that, it's an amazing and bold episode. I kind of don't want it spoiled by a follow-up.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Excellent post. I agree with almost all of that. I think that Mark has said the ending was inspired by The Sopranos ending (or at the very least, he has expressed admiration for that ending). Although it functions similarly, The Sopranos is all about life going on, and stopping the show at an almost arbitrary point because there are no endings in life. TR is almost the exact opposite. It’s almost as if all Laura’s pain that was repressed, that was ignored by the town (as Bobby articulates way back in Season 1 Episode 3 at the funeral), all comes pouring out of her in that scream and it’s too much for the world to take. It overwhelms everything into non-exist-ence.

That said, I was also always happy with E29 as an ending as well. If Lynch feels he has more to say in this world, I’m always here for it.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by eyeboogers »

I agree with almost your entire analysis pinballmars, except that for me the ending scream confirms Twin Peaks and the characters and events we know to be real, rather than collapse them. I also do think that the writers had planned a way out of this particular corner (notice the log lady's dialogue about what comes after the darkness, Cooper telling the townspeople that in some way they might meet again). Frost made it clear that this way not in his view the end to the story (although he was okay with this being the final chapter if they didn't get to make more).

The Frost interview Mr.Renindeer mentions, with "The Sopranos" quote in it, is this one:
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a842 ... interview/

Mark has previously expressed admiration for "The Sopranos", it is however the interviewer brining up that finale, and not Frost saying directly that it inspired the writing.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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eyeboogers wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 8:49 am I agree with almost your entire analysis pinballmars, except that for me the ending scream confirms Twin Peaks and the characters and events we know to be real, rather than collapse them. I also do think that the writers had planned a way out of this particular corner (notice the log lady's dialogue about what comes after the darkness, Cooper telling the townspeople that in some way they might meet again). Frost made it clear that this way not in his view the end to the story (although he was okay with this being the final chapter if they didn't get to make more).

The Frost interview Mr.Renindeer mentions, with "The Sopranos" quote in it, is this one:
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a842 ... interview/

Mark has previously expressed admiration for "The Sopranos", it is however the interviewer brining up that finale, and not Frost saying directly that it inspired the writing.
Actually, Mark brings it up. The interviewer asks him about fan reaction to the ending of TR, and Mark mentions The Sopranos as a divisive ending. He doesn’t specifically call it an inspiration, but he says he thinks people will come to view the ending of TR similarly to that one.

Thanks for finding the article!
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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What exactly did Mark Frost say about it not being an ending?
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Jonah wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 9:12 am What exactly did Mark Frost say about it not being an ending?
"I happened to love that ending – I thought it was perfect and beautifully constructed. What it said to me was Tony might be dead or if he doesn't die in that moment he might as well be, because he's going to live the rest of his life consumed by that feeling of impending doom that David Chase created so beautifully in those last few minutes.

"His life was going to be purgatorial, whether he was going to survive or not. It was only a matter of time before something like that befell him. For me that felt like a perfect way to end the series, and I think with time people will look at this and maybe they'll come to a similar conclusion."
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Jonah »

Oh that's cool and really interesting - but I meant about Part 18 of The Return not being an ending (should have been clearer). Or in that last sentence, is that him relating it to TP?
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by eyeboogers »

Jonah, it is somewhere in this video interview. I recommend setting aside time to watch the whole thing, since it is a good one, and might finally convince you to read the books :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q7Rgys ... lmFestival
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Thanks for the link!

I still have the books in a box near my bed, but just no interest in dipping in. They look beautiful but something's stopping me. They just seem almost like a form of elevated fan fiction to me. That sounds like an insult but I don't mean it as such. I've enjoyed gleaning little bits of info from fan sites and forum posts about what's in the book and think "oh, that's interesting" but I never find the info all that compelling. Maybe it's because it's not Lynch, or maybe I'm just not into reading TP. I can't explain it. The interest just isn't there. Which is weird because, I always dreamed Frost would write a Twin Peaks novel during the many years when there was no new TP content. Maybe it's the epistolary format that puts me off, or the fact that The Return came along, or the things I've heard about the inconsistencies. I'm also not reading much in general. Maybe if I go back to a reading stage I might pick them up along with a long list of other things. Lately, I've been in a movie-watching phase. And trying to go back to my own writing rather than spending time watching/reading things by others. But we'll see. Right now, I have little to no interest in the books, but it could change. I do hope I go back to my own writing, though. That's my main priority but I've been putting that off too and resubmitting old novels that no publishers seem to want (and probably expelling more energy in the process rather than just sitting in front of the dreaded blank page).
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Pinky »

just rewatched 18. At the end of the Sheriff Station scene, it almost fully fades in to the Cooper head for a few seconds and we hear the wind sounds. It feels like a callback to the Red Room scene where the curtains drop out and we see infinite lodge space. Does it feel like the realization Dreamer Coop is having is taking place at a particular repeat of that moment? Can't remember how often the wind motif came in or where.
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