Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

General discussion on Twin Peaks not related to the series, film, books, music, photos, or collectors merchandise.

Moderators: Brad D, Annie, Jonah, BookhouseBoyBob, Ross, Jerry Horne

1derpalm
New Member
Posts: 23
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 8:39 pm

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by 1derpalm »

I think that most people are looking at in in too black and white of a situation. There has always been an "evil" Cooper. In his book it is implied that he killed someone for fun during a blackout. Bob has been after him since he was a child and his mom knew him. He had a friend who loved him and died. Caroline love him and died. Josie tried to kill him and died. Wyndam tried to kill him and died. He was already Bob's. "I have a hing fro knives, just like what happened to you in Pittsburgh" and "does Leland know what you've done?" are left ambiguous enough that unless you are really really looking critically, you'll miss it. That's my call. And i think we''ll get both aspects of Cooper.
User avatar
Gabriel
Great Northern Member
Posts: 787
Joined: Thu May 03, 2007 12:53 pm

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by Gabriel »

I just hope they get a move on and return Cooper to his normal state in good time. Had the show gone on to a third season, there's no way the chortling ninny seen at in the end-of-season cliffhanger would have lasted more than a few episodes before Major Briggs brought the 'real' Cooper back.

Twin Peaks is Cooper and his 'damn fine coffee and cherry pie' no matter how much some people want it to be some kind of depressing horror show and thus sneer at the beloved lighter aspects of the old series. Twin Peaks was never a purely David Lynch series and the new show is a collaboration that has Mark Frost in there front and centre too. If anything, look to the episodes of the show that Messrs Frost and Lynch wrote and directed (and throw editor/director Duwayne Dunham in there too as he was a significant behind-the-camera force) and look towards this as a course correction from the weird excesses of part of season two to the often razor-sharp wit and focus of the Lynch/Frost/Dunham episodes. The episodes these guys made plumbed plenty of levels of darkness, but there was still light and humour in there. Indeed, the darkness had far more impact because of the sweeter scenes.

David Lynch might well be director of the whole season, but I don't think 18 episodes of unrelenting bleakness, c-words, f-words, rape, torture, drug and sexual abuse at the hands of a possessed, mass-murdering, psychotic Dale Cooper are something anyone would manage to sit through. As far as I'm concerned, Cooper is the lead character and hero of Twin Peaks until I know otherwise. Hopefully they'll get bring him back out of the darkness by the end of episode two at the latest and pick up on whatever the rest of the show is about.

I'd rather have a show where something happens that necessitates Dale being brought back to being his old self, then having an 18-hour adventure, than a story consisting of 18 hours of trying to bring back Dale.
dronerstone
RR Diner Member
Posts: 494
Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:31 pm

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by dronerstone »

I assume we'll see BOTH Coops, along with a lot of mix-up "jokes" and similar mischief, at least that's what'd probably float my boat the most.

Just imagine the horror of starting out the first couple (or four of them?) episodes with what you'd believe to be "good" Dale, only to end in a MAJOR cliffhanger that has him rearing his head with an evil smirk...
User avatar
laughingpinecone
Great Northern Member
Posts: 725
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2016 6:45 am
Location: D'ni
Contact:

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by laughingpinecone »

dronerstone wrote:I assume we'll see BOTH Coops, along with a lot of mix-up "jokes" and similar mischief, at least that's what'd probably float my boat the most.

Just imagine the horror of starting out the first couple (or four of them?) episodes with what you'd believe to be "good" Dale, only to end in a MAJOR cliffhanger that has him rearing his head with an evil smirk...
That's kind of my wish too... uncertainty about which Coop it is would, imho, serve the double function of sustaining narrative tension and reminding us that they are all aspects of Dale Cooper in the end.
But I wonder about the, ah, logistics involved? And the kind of audience they would be writing for, in order to present that as a twist? TSHOTP readers know that 'Coop' went AWOL 25+ years ago and is not an agent presently. How would you go about creating a situation that would be ambiguous both for this crowd and for the general public who doesn't even know the book exists?
All I can think of is a Deer Meadow-like open, with |Coop| meeting all-new characters who don't know him and therefore can't bring up his past?
] The gathered are known by their faces of stone.
User avatar
ProjectBlueBook
New Member
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2017 8:07 am

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by ProjectBlueBook »

1derpalm wrote:I think that most people are looking at in in too black and white of a situation. There has always been an "evil" Cooper. In his book it is implied that he killed someone for fun during a blackout. Bob has been after him since he was a child and his mom knew him. He had a friend who loved him and died. Caroline love him and died. Josie tried to kill him and died. Wyndam tried to kill him and died. He was already Bob's. "I have a hing fro knives, just like what happened to you in Pittsburgh" and "does Leland know what you've done?" are left ambiguous enough that unless you are really really looking critically, you'll miss it. That's my call. And i think we''ll get both aspects of Cooper.
How does this is implied in the "Autobiography"? What are the circumstances? I didn't read it yet, but I'm curious about this.

I think that at least in the start, we will see "Evil Cooper". However, I'm not certain if they're going to follow his actions most of the time or if they're going to focus on another plot firstly - maybe some agent entering Peaks to investigate another murder? Anyway, I guess that ambiguity over Cooper's "internal state" should be hinted. That can be an excellent plot device: most of the time you see him, he acts as the "Good Coop", and then in a private and brief moment you see him smiling like Leland did at mirrors or even alone. In fact, this can be achieved by just making him more serious sometimes or with lightning tricks.
Agent327
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:12 pm

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by Agent327 »

laughingpinecone wrote: That's kind of my wish too... uncertainty about which Coop it is would, imho, serve the double function of sustaining narrative tension and reminding us that they are all aspects of Dale Cooper in the end.
But I wonder about the, ah, logistics involved? And the kind of audience they would be writing for, in order to present that as a twist? TSHOTP readers know that 'Coop' went AWOL 25+ years ago and is not an agent presently. How would you go about creating a situation that would be ambiguous both for this crowd and for the general public who doesn't even know the book exists?
All I can think of is a Deer Meadow-like open, with |Coop| meeting all-new characters who don't know him and therefore can't bring up his past?
Funny you mention it, I keep thinking along these lines.
A big problem for sequels in general is that the world is not as clearly laid out as the first movie, not as well defined;
It is harder for an audience to empathize with characters and the world itself. Think, without laughing too much about the differences of genre or lack of quality at display, of the first Independence Day vs. the one that came out last year. For the first, you're along for the ride and the world is clearly understood, which engages the audience. For the second, too much consequential strangeness has happened, and the rules of the game in the sequel are hard to identify with, resulting in lack of interest.
That illustrates the fundamental problem pretty well, despite both genre and expectations being different.

And Twin Peaks will actually be facing this phenomenon to a uniquely large extend.
In the first season, as a viewer, you were basically a visitor to Twin Peaks, experiencing things pretty much like Cooper did.
The new season has the difficult task of dealing with abstract circumstances of the main character, Cooper, that even fans to this day seem somewhat confused about or have difficulty fully grasping....

When that is the case, the offset.....then how do you drag in a new audience and invoke the empathy required to capture their imagination?
That is going to be extremely tricky, and aside from the aging cast, probably the most likely reason that the new season, regardless of external circumstances, is bound to be be a much, much smaller show in terms of reach, than the first.
User avatar
mtwentz
Lodge Member
Posts: 2185
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2015 10:02 am

Re: Cooper in season 3: good Coop or evil Coop?

Post by mtwentz »

Mr. Reindeer wrote: Sat Oct 10, 2015 7:39 am Hey, guys. Second-time poster on these boards (first time posting on the Peaks forum). I've been lurking and following all the developments of the new season avidly. This board is definitely the place to be right now.

The "Evil Coop" story is going to be such a difficult line for the new season to walk. From a storytelling standpoint, it would be cheating to not have the "possessed Coop" storyline be a key aspect of the new season (I hate cliffhangers that get resolved in the first two minutes of the next episode. This isn't 'Perils of Pauline' or the old 'Batman' serials). Furthermore, if Evil Coop were out in the world for the past 25 years, it would be absurd for him not to have done a LOT of terrible things. On top of this, there's the "Leland" of it all: how accountable are Bob's hosts, exactly? I align myself with the crowd that believes Laura's story, and the entirety of FWWM, are cheapened to the point of near-worthlessness if Leland was "only following orders." The mythology is great and creepy and fun. But Bob's hosts need to be accountable if I'm to care about these characters. It can't be "Bob made him do it," or "That was just a double who looked like our Coop." There's nothing narratively interesting about. (Contrast the blandness of the "evil lookalike John Locke" in the last season of 'Lost' - which gave Terry O'Quinn some great material to play, but had no connection to the prior version of the character - with Lynch's brilliant use of doubles in 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Inland Empire,' &c., where the doubles provided depth and insight to the "real" characters' inner lives).

But where does that leave us? All of the above implies that what I want - nay, NEED - from the new series is an Agent Cooper who has been committing terrible crimes (probably several murders) for the past two and a half decades. And he has to be cognizant of and accountable for his misdeeds.

But...ick. That's not what I want, at all. Coop is one of the warmest, most charming, likable characters in TV history. While I'm all for exploring his darker side and humanizing him a bit, I don't want the memory of his character tarnished by his committing atrocities. Undoubtedly, Lynch will come up with a way of dealing with all of this in way that none of us can even begin to conceptualize. This seems particularly certain in light of his aforementioned brilliant use of duality in his recent films. But it is a bit of a Catch-22 - Coop isn't Diane Selwyn or Nikki Grace; he's a character with whom we all have a multi-decade history that we don't want ruined.

I think the key to all of this might be the "symbiotic" relationship between Bob and his hosts that some fans have theorized. Bob feeds on the misery of his hosts and their victims, and in return he enables the hosts to act on their most repulsive impulses. Leland's crimes involved having sex with and murdering his daughter (and, before that, other young girls as surrogates), because Leland WAS sexually attracted to Laura, and resented both himself and her for it. He would have had those impulses buried away inside of him with or without Bob. However, he might not have ever acted on them (or, based on 'Between Two Worlds,' might have only had sex with the other girls as proxies for Laura, but not committed incest) without Bob giving him the "push." Therefore, Coop's crimes under Bob's possession will likely be very very different from Leland's. We've seen brief hints of darkness in Coop, largely manifested as inwardly-directed resentment at himself for not protecting Caroline/Annie/Audrey - but certainly, there is something more complicated underlying that. The Scott Frost book (which Lynch probably hasn't read) hints at a complicated (albeit generally played for laughs) relationship with sex, and a strong aversion to physical violence. How does all of this come into play when Bob releases Cooper's id? We'll have to see....but I think his (potentially 25-year) rampage will be very, very different from what Leland was doing. Perhaps equally horrifying, but in a way true to the Dale Cooper we all (think we) know and love.

One thing is for certain: It should give MacLachlan the opportunity to show some great range. He recently appeared on 'Agents of SHIELD' as a sinister, insane character (with some very Lynchian hair). While I gave up on that show after a few episodes, I made it a point to watch a few of Kyle's appearances, and he clearly had a lot of fun playing a more "evil" role than I've ever seen him in before. As much as I'm excited to see MacLachlan re-inhabiting the "real" Coop, and to bask in the warm glow of that winning grin (with a few extra crow's feet around the eyes), I'm equally eager to see him really cut loose as the "Where's Annie" version of Coop we've all been dying to see more of for far, far too long.

EDIT: Given how much of a cipher for Lynch Cooper was ("He says the same things I do"), this could be a really fascinating opportunity for Lynch to explore the duality between his own Eagle Scout/Jimmy Stewart public persona and the darkness and anger that he does his best to hide away beneath the surface (or to kill through meditation). Hmmm. There is potential here for this to be his most personal work since 'Eraserhead.'
looks like you were pretty close....only you did not predict Dougie!
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
Post Reply