Twin Peaks

[Skummy]

Jesus, what an episode. Just when you think you're starting to get answers, it changes all the questions.

So...what the hell has happened, what have we learned?

Diane is Janey-E's half-sister; maybe that had some bearing on how Dougie ended up with her, or how Bad Coop was able to find/change/create/whatever the fuck he did to the real Dougie Jones in the first place. Janey-E. Diane Evans. Janey Evans. It was hiding in plain sight. That Dougie is now a priority for the FBI sets up what has to be one of the pivotal scenes of the series, and could be amazing, uplifting or utterly heartbreaking, and perhaps all three in equal measure - Dougie Jones will meet Gordon Cole.

The story about the origins of Blue Rose is fantastic, even if just for the thought of Jeffries and Cole as FBI agents in the '70s. Who wouldn't watch a series about David Lynch and David Bowie solving crimes together in the 70s?

Tammy referring to a "tulpa" was interesting, and didn't get as much focus as I was expecting - again, this ties into Lynch's spiritual beliefs, but the Tulpa is a concept in Tibetan Buddhism/mysticism - think way back to series one, it's not the first time Tibet has been relevant. A Tulpa is a thoughtform; a being created through the mental energy of another - in Tibetan mythology, they're created in order that your Tulpa can explore the spiritual plane while your physical self remains on the mortal plane. Makes sense for Black Lodge doppelgangers, except that in the case of Tulpas, it would require a conscious effort by the original to create the doppelganger, and thus far it's seemed like the doppelganger is created by the Black Lodge, not by the person being duplicated - though it could be that Evil Cooper is effectively a Tulpa created by BOB-possessed Cooper, and that Evil Coop then created Dougie to be sent back to the Black Lodge in his place so that he could remain in the world, and to thwart any attempt to send the real Dale Cooper back to us. Fuck, this is confusing. I think what this points to, though, is that I've always assumed that the Black Lodge uses its influence to shape our reality and to influence people, but this is perhaps the first suggestion that the Black Lodge is equally shaped by our reality - the doppelgangers and evil influences don't exist outside of people in the "real world", they exist because of people in our real world. The Black Lodge feeds on the Garmonbozia of the Laura Palmers and Dale Coopers and Phillip Jeffries of the world, and creates doppelgangers from it. The Woodsmen are out there harvesting the Garmonbozia that feeds the Lodge in its efforts.

 

Chad's in prison, hurray! Could the "drunk" in the other cell be affected by the same illness/drug/whatever that hit the vomiting "zombie" girl in the car? Or is it something more - all he does is repeat the last couple of words the person before him spoke. Who else do we know who does that?

The Giant now calls himself "The Fireman" - a good sign, if we consider that "Fire" is not a good thing at all in Black Lodge lore, so presumably that means the Fireman is very much on the side of good. Andy in the White Lodge just makes perfect sense, and Andy getting to be the hero warms my heart. Flashbacks as he holds the hand of Naido in the woods to his reaction on finding Laura Palmer - outward appearances aside, this is a much stronger, more mature Andy than he used to be, and that becomes abundantly clear when he saves Naido, takes the lead, and shouts down Chad in the cells. Andy, Truman and Hawk are the true heroes of this series.

Does Andy now know everything? He was given one hell of a recap. Interesting that they dwelled on the shot of a girl running and screaming outside the high school - that happened way back at the beginning, and doesn't seem to have had any significance to anything yet, but this implies it must do.

Naido...if anyone even remembers her from way back at the start of the series...ended up in Twin Peaks. Considering she more or less sacrificed herself to send Cooper back to the world, or so we thought, did something go wrong? Was she intending to send Cooper here, but the existence of whatever the "real" Dougie Jones is diverted him to Las Vegas? Or was it influenced by the black box in New York, was that was redirected him? Who wants Naido dead? Jeffries? Bad Cooper? BOB? 

The way the "ghosts" of the Sherriff's Department were moving around Jackrabbit's Palace as Andy rematerialised was akin to how the Woodsmen have been seen to move, and maybe the "Where's Billy?" guy in the diner too.

Interminably long scene with Freddie and James Hurley, though it gives us a bit of a catch-up on what James Hurley's up to these days, and tells us that the Lodges are active all over the world - yet actively working to bring people towards Twin Peaks. Why James wandering into a furnace room deserved full horror movie treatment, I don't know, but it was a tense scene that presumably will go somewhere. But it's Twin Peaks, so who the fuck knows? Seems tied to the weird sound that's been bothering Ben Horne.

What the fuck is going on with Sarah Palmer?! Was her panic after attacking the guy genuine? Is she aware that she has this thing inside her, whatever the fuck it is? Has she just become a walking vessel for the Black Lodge? She was always psychically perceptive, and has had enough grief and horror in her life that the Lodge isn't going to struggle to get a hold on her - and has done so before. Laura Palmer removed her own face back in episode two, but it was just white light behind it - there's something very different behind Sarah Palmer. What does this mean? Laura's reverted to being the angel of light and goodness and all that is pure - which is a bit rich, as her diary and Fire Walk With Me makes it very clear that, despite the insistence of just about every single character in Season One, Laura was never all that good and pure or angelic in the first place - while Sarah remains haunted and torn apart by something evil, dark and sinister. If Laura Palmer was given to the world as some kind of balance by the White Lodge, created by the Fireman to tame the fires of BOB, then she was almost a sacrifice to the greater good - a pretty cynical, tragic way to look at the loss of a teenage girl's life, but all that whiteness and purity suggests that maybe Laura, or her doppelganger, in the Red Room, has learned of her role and come to terms with it, but Sarah Palmer has been left of the true victim, completely hollowed out by the Black Lodge feeding on her grief. And who wouldn't grieve, who wouldn't go completely insane, after everything that happened to her family?

 

Other things in this episode....a prolonged shot of numbers. There's something underlying through this whole series to do with sets of numbers, and I cannot fathom for the life of me what the significance of any of it is.

More significance of dreams - via Cooper and Jeffries in Fire Walk With Me, but also Cole's own hilariously self-indulgent dream sequence. "Who is the dreamer?". It would tie up the whole thing as, as I've been interpreting it, something of an exploration of Lynch's whole work and creative process if somehow it's the dreams of Gordon Cole that are a key to everything happening in Twin Peaks, but it's far more likely that if anyone is the dreamer shaping other people's dreams, and shaping reality as we know it, it's got to be Cooper, Laura Palmer or - perhaps - Audrey. Considering, when asked "who is the dreamer?", Cole looked to see Cooper discussing his dream - it's got to be Dale Cooper. It's not the first time dreams have pointed Cooper in the right direction, but maybe his dreams are even more powerful than that. Is everyone in Dale Cooper's dream, or else being shaped and influenced by it? Perhaps it's a cue for Dale Cooper to "wake up" from the life of Dougie Jones.

Random girl conversation at the Roadhouse actually seems like it might be relevant for once, as they're talking about Billy - whoever Billy is. One of the girls is the daughter of Tina, who Audrey thinks Billy is having an affair with. Billy was bleeding from the nose, which Audrey dreamed about. So maybe Audrey isn't in a coma/dream/whatever, as her stories that seemed unrelated to anything now have an anchoring in some of the most mundane conversations in Twin Peaks. But. Who is the dreamer? We're still none the wiser. We were told before the season started that Audrey would have a significant role - it certainly doesn't seem that way yet...

"We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream" is a line Lynch used in the introduction to Inland Empire - another connection to his wider body of work.

The flashback was weird. Albert saying he was "starting to remember" implies, perhaps, that Jeffries - as someone with a connection to the Lodges - fucks with people's memories in much the same way that the Lodge in general does; Albert and Cole didn't remember that day, but a dream was able to bring it back to light, much like how only Andy could remember his experience at Jackrabbit's Palace, and all of the Blue Rose team struggled to remember what happened when they witnessed a vortex and the Woodsmen.

 

 

[Hobo]

Bloody hell that was something. Between some delightful Gordon Coleness (the Monica Bellucci thing was kinda dumb but completely on brand for Gordon Cole) and some stuff that made my jaw drop.

The connection with Diane seems to be 100% why Dougie ends up with Janey-E in the first place. Although there's no official record of Dougie prior to 1997 it's possible that, in the way that Albert and Cole could be able to forget Jefferies turning up in the office that day, the lodge spirits can make people who know Dougie think he's always been around when he hasn't. I was coincidentally watching the Missing Pieces version of that scene from Fire Walk With Me last night and after reading around learned the scenes with Jefferies were meant to take place 2 years prior to that. So it's possible, I suppose, for Lodge spirits to make people forget, remember, move around in time - if they want.

For the entire season, Carel Struycken has been credited as ?????. That is until this week when he revealed himself as The Fireman. I don't think The Fireman = The Giant. Hearing him refer to himself by that name gives me hope that we'll get a positive resolution to all of this.  Andy now seems to have all the info but he probably doesn't remember it. Or at least he won't until something happens to trigger it.

On Naido, I think she may be someone else from Fire Walk With Me.

I think she's the Judy that Jefferies was talking about in Fire Walk With Me. Judy was meant to be Josie's sister also she's sitting in the cell making monkey noises. The last time we heard mention of Judy was at the end of Fire Walk With Me when a Monkey says her name.

My inkling is that whatever is making those noises in The Great Northern is Josie Packard.

Billy is, quite probably, the guy in jail with Chuck and Naido.

The Sarah Palmer scene was... Wow. Is it actually her? Or is it a doppelganger? Is the real Sarah the one we saw sitting on the couch watching TV and held there by the Woodsmen? 

 

[tristy]

There's gotta be a Season 4, there's no way they can wrap everything up in 5 more hours (3 more one hour episodes, finale is 2 hours).

[Hobo]

On 8/14/2017 at 15:32, Skummy said:

"We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream" is a line Lynch used in the introduction to Inland Empire - another connection to his wider body of work.

The flashback was weird. Albert saying he was "starting to remember" implies, perhaps, that Jeffries - as someone with a connection to the Lodges - fucks with people's memories in much the same way that the Lodge in general does; Albert and Cole didn't remember that day, but a dream was able to bring it back to light, much like how only Andy could remember his experience at Jackrabbit's Palace, and all of the Blue Rose team struggled to remember what happened when they witnessed a vortex and the Woodsmen.

 

 

 

 

Jeffries also says, albeit in a deleted scene from Fire Walk With Me: "We are living inside a dream".
 

 

 

[Josh]

That was a hell of an episode. It may not be significant, but it stood out to me that this episode ended with a band actually playing an upbeat song.

[Skummy]

Probably nothing, but on the "out of sync timeline" front, James and Freddie showed up at the Roadhouse together back in one of the first episodes, this week they're talk about going to the Roadhouse. Obviously they could just go to the Roadhouse quite often and it's nothing, but I didn't get the impression from their conversation that they're people who really hang out together outside of work all that much. This one's massively clutching at straws, admittedly.

On ‎14‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 19:08, Hbob From Another Place said:

Bloody hell that was something. Between some delightful Gordon Coleness (the Monica Bellucci thing was kinda dumb but completely on brand for Gordon Cole) and some stuff that made my jaw drop.

The connection with Diane seems to be 100% why Dougie ends up with Janey-E in the first place. Although there's no official record of Dougie prior to 1997 it's possible that, in the way that Albert and Cole could be able to forget Jefferies turning up in the office that day, the lodge spirits can make people who know Dougie think he's always been around when he hasn't. I was coincidentally watching the Missing Pieces version of that scene from Fire Walk With Me last night and after reading around learned the scenes with Jefferies were meant to take place 2 years prior to that. So it's possible, I suppose, for Lodge spirits to make people forget, remember, move around in time - if they want.

For the entire season, Carel Struycken has been credited as ?????. That is until this week when he revealed himself as The Fireman. I don't think The Fireman = The Giant. Hearing him refer to himself by that name gives me hope that we'll get a positive resolution to all of this.  Andy now seems to have all the info but he probably doesn't remember it. Or at least he won't until something happens to trigger it.

On Naido, I think she may be someone else from Fire Walk With Me.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I think she's the Judy that Jefferies was talking about in Fire Walk With Me. Judy was meant to be Josie's sister also she's sitting in the cell making monkey noises. The last time we heard mention of Judy was at the end of Fire Walk With Me when a Monkey says her name.

 

My inkling is that whatever is making those noises in The Great Northern is Josie Packard.

Billy is, quite probably, the guy in jail with Chuck and Naido.

The Sarah Palmer scene was... Wow. Is it actually her? Or is it a doppelganger? Is the real Sarah the one we saw sitting on the couch watching TV and held there by the Woodsmen? 

 

I was thinking it could be Josie Packard, though how that plays into anything else going on is anyone's guess. It may just be that a lot of supernatural/Lodge stuff has laid dormant in Twin Peaks for the last 25 years and is starting to wake up again now? Unless the noises tie in to Audrey and wherever she is somehow?

Good shout on Billy, I hadn't thought about that - he was bleeding from the face, which fits the story we've heard about Billy from others. Still no idea who he is, though. It's just as likely that he was a one-shot character to an add an additional layer of Lynchian weirdness to that scene. His repetition of phrases, do we think there's any significance in that? Is it something brought on by his injury, or whatever happened to him? Chad called him a drunk, but could he be on Sparkle, a drug that sounded like it would be relevant but doesn't seem to have come up in 10+ episodes - and what I assume had caused the zombie-like symptoms in the girl in the car?

The Lodge spirits can definitely move people around in time, as well as causing them to forget and remember things, we've seen that already - Jeffries moved through time, Major Briggs' body appears to have done the same, and Laura Palmer's diary refers to people she hadn't met during her lifetime. Do people need to believe that Dougie existed before 1997, though? Nothing in Dougie's life needs people to "know" anything about his life before that - he just needs to show up in Las Vegas in 1997. Sonny Jim wouldn't have been born yet, and we don't know when he met Janey or started in his job - he could, as far as anyone he knows is concerned, have just moved to Vegas in '97, or later, and that be that. The questions I would ask are if there's anything significant about 1997 in particular, and who Dougie Jones was before he was replaced by Dale Cooper - we know that he was already a bit of an oddball, and had problems with drinking, gambling and womanising, but not much else.

20 hours ago, tristy said:

There's gotta be a Season 4, there's no way they can wrap everything up in 5 more hours (3 more one hour episodes, finale is 2 hours).

I'm hoping there'll be a Season 4, but I also don't think that it being a struggle to wrap everything up necessarily means there will be one. I expect a lot to be left unresolved regardless. Though if there is a Season 4, and this season ends with a fully restored Dale Cooper arriving in Twin Peaks, I'm going to simultaneously over the moon that we'll get that season, and furious that I'll have to wait for it.

[Hobo]

I read last week that Showtime would be open to the idea of another season if Lynch wants to do it.

Meanwhile, ages ago Rancho Rosa's official twitter account tweeted that Lynch had wrapped on 2 seasons of Twin Peaks. It was then quickly deleted. Who knows if that meant anything, really.

A fourth season would make me sad in one way because we wouldn't have any more Albert.

 

[Skummy]

9 minutes ago, Hbob From Another Place said:

A fourth season would make me sad in one way because we wouldn't have any more Albert.

I was thinking that too...Albert's been a real stand-out of this season. Not just him, though...Lynch and Frost have done such a good job this season of writing around the actors who have passed away, or were otherwise unable to be part of the series; off-screen Harry Truman has been a part of some really heartwarming moments, and the way he's kept Jeffries and BOB as part of the series without ever appearing has been expertly done. Even those who have been able to appear in a depleted capacity - the Log Lady and Doc Haywood - it has been so bittersweet seeing them, and their role has been dealt with so delicately, that it would be a struggle to keep that up into the next series. A Twin Peaks without the Log Lady doesn't seem right, even if this series has set us up to expect it.

[Hobo]

yeah, this season has a bit of lightning in a bottle about it in that regard. They had time to put this together and it's all felt reasonably organic. I don't know how long that could be kept up for.

[Hobo]

Okay so... I don't quite know where that episode took us but it was full of sadness.

YAY Norma and Big Ed can be together. That was a pretty lovely opening. I loved the way they used the music. But this seems to be the only really positive thing in the episode? I think this episode is the most I've ever enjoyed Nadine's character. Ever.

Straight after that, we get Mr. C going to what must be The Dutchmens (and is obviously the convenience store from episode 8 and FWWM). For a moment I thought potentially we were going to see David Bowie but... no. We got the Jumping Man for a split second and I also thought that the woman who opened the door looked a lot like  Mrs Tremond (but isn't because that actress is dead). Apparently, Jefferies is now a giant kettle? Ok. Other things I noticed are that the stairs that Mr. C walks up had the mushroom cloud marking on them like the one Cole saw. I'm guessing this convenience store moves around too. I also noticed that the number on the door that brings Mr. C to Jefferies is 8. The elevator he walked out of in Fire Walk With Me was number 7. And Judy was mentioned. I had expected this would come up and when Jefferies says to Mr. C "you've already met Judy" I think he thinks this is Dale Cooper he's talking to. I'm inclined to believe Jefferies doesn't know that BOB possessed Cooper. We now know for certain Audrey is Richard's mother. Richard also said he recognized Cooper from a photo his mother "had". He used the past tense. That's interesting. It's even more interesting to know that Cooper and Richard Horne are now together.

So Stephen has shot himself? I'd imagine Carl is now going to go into the woods and find the body? I can see Carl becoming important in the last couple of episodes.

I got really excited when the FBI guy said they found Dougie only for it to turn out to be the wrong one. There's something tremendously amusing about how incompetent at one FBI agent is and how intensely angry his supervisor is about it.

Speaking of Dougie, I think we've seen the end of him. That scene implies to me that Dale Cooper is on his way back very soon.  I'm not sure how but electricity, specifically using lines from Sunset Boulevard that mention "getting the team back together" and name dropping Gordon Cole, the electricity. I think we're seeing Dale shocked awake.

Did Freddie kill those guys or just paralyze them? We know they're intensive care anyway. Which means we have 3(?) characters now in intensive care?

So, the guy I think might be Billy, Naido (who I am pretty sure is Judy or was at some point Judy), James Hurley, Freddie and Chuck all in the jail. Naido is doing something. That's going to lead to a thing.

Then I cried. It's absolutely heartbreaking to see the death of The Log Lady. Even more touching when you see at the end of the credits that they dedicate the episode to Margret Lanterman.  Goodbye Margret.

The ending is interesting. Can the girl at the booth (I think credited as Ruby?) not walk? Nobody even bats an eyelid at this either. Did it actually happen? Unlike any of the scenes at the Roadhouse before something isn't right about that.

[tristy]

• I knew that gas station in episode 8 was the same one from Fire Walk With Me. I knew it! The "tea kettle" shaped thing that Jeffries was in has appeared 3 times this season already. Also of note - DoppleCoop said it's only been 5 days since they last talked on the phone. Either all of this is extremely out of order, or we've barely spent a week with all of these characters.
• Audrey being Richard's mom isn't surprising, but I'm glad we finally know.
• I think Stephen shot himself after he killed Becky off-screen, and that's what that entire conversation with that girl was about. Girl consoling him because he just killed someone, and then they get caught, and he shoots himself. That's my theory.
• This is most definitely the way we get rid of Dougie. All of these mentions of electricity and especially the way Cooper got to be Dougie in the first place.... yeah, if it's not, I think I might become royally pissed. Especially since DoppleCoop is on his way to Las Vegas, with Richard Horne in tow. It's all leading to a showdown, but I just don't know how they get everyone to Twin Peaks from there (if at all).
• I don't care about any of the people in the jail cells, except for Naido and maybe the guy that's excessively bleeding everywhere and aping words from other characters like Dougie does. Everyone else in there is just not interesting at all. One-Punch British Kid seems really out of place in this show, too.
• Yeah, I'm not going to talk about the Log Lady stuff because I legit had tears in my eyes during all of that and it was just sad.
• I thought that was Charlyne Yi at the Roadhouse but I wasn't sure, and sure enough it is! Yay! But another weird scene without context - damn you, David Lynch.
   

On a sidenote - man, I can't wait for the soundtrack for this show to come out in September. They've had some good bands on the show.

[Hobo]

I don't know if Mr. C is going to Vegas. I think he's headed to Twin Peaks to Maj. Briggs' coordinates. Hutch and Chantal being in Vegas means he's sent them to sort out Dougie.

Something else I noticed. The actor who plays Charlie, Clark Middleton, has some distortions in his body caused by rheumatoid arthritis which make him look very similar to Mr. Roque from Mullholland Drive. I don't know if that's anything but it struck me today because that was the first time we've seen him standing up. Something is going to happen with Audrey/Charlie now that she's apparently strangling him. Still hard to tell where exactly she is or when though.

[Skummy]

Good night, Margaret. 

[Hobo]

I've been browsing the Twin Peaks reddit just now and enjoying the fact that people are making Tin Machine jokes about Phillip Jefferies.

It's also been pointed out that when The Jumping Man briefly appears there are some frames where you can see the faces of Leland and Sarah Palmer.

Dougie also stuck his fork into the neutral pin on the socket so he shouldn't have gotten a shock.

Also pointing out that Audrey probably in some lodge-adjacent situation confronting her shadow self in Charlie. The Dweller on the Threshold.

[Skummy]

Yeah, even by David Lynch dialogue standards, there's something so not right about Charlie. It's curious, though, that in this episode it was Charlie effectively trying to talk Audrey into leaving, and her putting it off. If she's in the Lodge, and Billy is someone genuinely missing in Twin Peaks, how is she aware? Or are they two concurrent situations? Or, as I wondered last week, is she the "Dreamer"? If she's still in a coma, is it her dreams that are somehow influencing the world via the Lodges? Or maybe it's all a dream.

Internet rumour speculation: the woman who Lodge-talked to Cooper and unlocked the door for him was Lois Duffy, subject of the first Blue Rose investigation. Doesn't really seem to be based on anything beyond it being a female name to give to a new character, and I don't think there's enough to go on, but who knows?

 

Scattered thoughts on this episode;

Obviously happy for Ed and Norma, after a few moments feeling genuinely heartbroken for the big lug. But is it possible for a 25 year story of unrequited love to feel rushed? We only just caught back up with Big Ed!

Definitely the same convenience store as episode 8, but this raises a question - in episode 8, it was in New Mexico. Now, it's somewhere on the outskirts of Twin Peaks. We see it disappear in a crackle of electricity once Cooper's business there is done, and we see Cooper's drive there followed by electricity along the telephone lines - so can the store, like Black Lodge spirits, travel through electricity? I've assumed this whole time that the Woodsmen scavenge Garmonbozia, but their purpose within the store seems a little different - perhaps their frantic activity around the store during the nuclear testing was them harvesting the energy of the bomb, rather than Garmonbozia?

We still don't really know who or what the Woodsmen are, or how they relate to the Black Lodge - what is their relationship with Cooper? They harvested some aspect of BOB from him, but it's not made Cooper any less evil, and the act may have brought him back from the dead. What did they do to him? What do they do in general?

 

There was indeed a vision of the Jumping Man and, momentarily, Sarah Palmer and, I think, the wallpaper from Laura Palmer's bedroom. Which would tie it in to the visions of Woodsmen experienced by Gordon Cole (Cooper walked up the same stairway that Cole saw in his vision). We speculated if the noise in the Palmer house could relate to the Woodsmen - maybe it's worse than that, maybe there's a direct link from the convenience store, the apparent home of the Woodsmen, and the Palmer house itself? But then the corridor that Cooper walked through was also Ghostwood Forest, so who knows where we are, if "where" is even a valid question any more.

 

So is Phillip Jeffries a giant kettle, or is he the cloud/steam that resides within it? It's the same kind of pseudo-industrial imagery that puts me in mind of Eraserhead, and of the White Lodge (?) we saw in Episode 8, and where Cooper encountered Naido on his way from Red Room to Dougie Jones. Jeffries doesn't seem to want Cooper dead, or to be much of a villain at all, at this point. I don't know what Jeffries is at this point. More to the point, who or what is Judy, and why does Jeffries not want to talk about her? If Cooper has already met her, why doesn't he know who she is? Maybe Jeffries doesn't realise that the Cooper he's talking to is not the real, or at least not the whole Dale Cooper he once knew, and - being some kind of Lodge-adjacent entity himself - he's familiar with Cooper's journeys through the Lodges, and knows that he met with Naido, and Naido is Judy?

I don't think this is the case any longer, but in Fire Walk With Me, apparently Lynch had envisioned Judy as being Josie Packard's sister - so if Naido is Judy, Naido could be Josie's sister. Is Josie's soul still trapped in the hotel, making the weird noises? And is the noise coming from the boiler room - which we saw as somewhere quite sinister, though apparently with no ill effect for James - related to Josie, and the fact that it's coming from the boiler room connected to the pseudo-industrial White Lodge, or wherever Naido has been, or the giant kettle that is Philip Jeffries? I'm not too convinced on this theory, largely because the Secret History book goes into a lot of detail on Josie Packard's backstory, and I don't think a sister is ever mentioned, IIRC.

An internet theory, apparently, is that Judy is a codename  - a reference to Judy Garland, keeping up with Lynch's trend of naming characters with nods to his favourite movies and favourite era of Hollywood; Judy Garland, to Garland Briggs. "Judy" is the Lodge's name for the Major. Again, a bit of a stretch, but who knows?

 

Evil Cooper and Richard Horne together is an unsettling prospect. Confirmation, then, that Richard is Audrey's son - or at least believes himself to be - but that still leaves a few questions unanswered. Where is Audrey? Richard said that she "had" a photo of Cooper - in the past tense. Does mean the photo is gone, or that Audrey has? Maybe he believes his mother to be dead. If Audrey's been in a coma ever since season two, we're still none the wiser who Richard really is, or who his father is? I still don't think it's Cooper, but I don't think it's Charlie either. I'm still not 100% convinced Audrey is his mother, even now that he's said it.

 

I don't know what happened to Steven and, honestly, I don't think it matters. He's just the archetypal Troubled Youth - the specifics don't matter. If anything matters here, it's that the witness was Cyril, the TV reporter played by Mark Frost. While so much of this series seems a creative vision quest for David Lynch, Mark Frost has barely had a look-in. He, presumably, reports what he saw to Carl - Carl, who went missing in the woods around Twin Peaks as a child, who may not find himself drawn back there in his old age.

James doesn't grow up, and Freddie is an inane, ridiculous character. I agree that he seems completely out of place in this series, and I have no idea what to make of him.

 

Duncan Todd getting killed off with no real sense of significance was odd, but probably the trigger for something far worse to start happening. We'd assumed that Todd was working for Jeffries - or at least I had - but was he really taking instructions, phone calls and emails from a sentient kettle in another dimension? Todd was a facilitator of an awful lot of unpleasantness, certainly tied to what's going on in Las Vegas, but probably to New York (remember that?) and perhaps further afield too - with him gone, something's got to give, and it won't be fun.

There was something quite poignant about Bobby Briggs putting James Hurley in a cell, wordlessly. How far they have come from the last time they both shared that room. We know that Freddie has encountered The Fireman, and been directed to Twin Peaks for a reason - now that he's been brought together with Naido, in a sense, we'll find out what his purpose is.

 

Only one person left on Chantal and Hutch's hit list, and Chantal's hankering to torture. Surely it's Dougie Jones? We know that Dougie's Dale Cooper reflexes can hit in when physically threatened - or at least when Janey-E is - so even if his electric shock experience hasn't awoken the "real" Dale Cooper, Chantal and Hutch might be about to do something they'll regret. Or else they'll find Dougie and recognise their boss, and who knows what they'll make of that?

 

Dougie sat silently eating his cake, and even the way he repeated the word "delicious", felt genuinely sad. It was more melancholy than Dougie has seemed in a long time, perhaps all season; there was no sense of childish innocence and joyful naivety, he felt like a beaten man. Something has changed in him, even as Janey-E is over the moon. Janey is such a conflicted character for me - on one hand, she's so protective of Dougie, has done everything for him, and is a strong, powerful woman. On the other hand, is she only driven by material concerns? She's happy because Dougie's brought in a lot of money and material goods and, like the rest of the people around Dougie, seems to show only passing concern for the fact that he's a barely functioning human being, so long as he keeps delivering the goods. We all want to see Dougie Jones become Dale Cooper, but then what happens to Janey and Sonny Jim when Dougie is taken from them?

Dougie absent-mindedly hammers at the remote control until the TV plays Sunset Boulevard. Or did he? Were his actions driven by Red Room spirits, friendly guides, as so much of his Dougie life seems to have been so far, always making sure he's in the right place at the right time? Or - and here's a thought - were the numbers spouted by Philip Jeffries not coordinates at all, but the number of the channel Dougie needed to tune into at that precise time? Jeffries may not know that the Cooper he speaks to is not entirely the Dale Cooper he knew - but what if there is more connection between the two Coopers than we realise? That a message relayed to one unconsciously reaches the other, and prompts them to turn on the television.

Sunset Boulevard. Gordon Cole. One of Lynch's favourite movies. Clear inspiration on Mulholland Drive. It would be as delightfully self-indulgent as the rest of the series has been if the name "Gordon Cole" is the thing to awaken Dale Cooper after all this time, wouldn't it? Though I'm fully expecting that, next week, Dougie Jones will awaken, frazzled and a little shaken on his dining room floor, but still very much Dougie Jones, and not very much Dale Cooper. But he's edging towards a memory.

 

Goodnight Margaret. That whole scene...wow. Just utterly heartbreaking, even moreso than all of her scenes have been. I welled up at "Hawk, I'm dying", and it was all downhill from there. Hawk's complete, unquestioning trust in the Log Lady all season, and his role as seemingly her only confidant in the world, made it even more touching, just beautifully handled. Knowing how much she meant to David Lynch, as much as how important the Log Lady was to Twin Peaks itself, made it such a significant scene. Nothing can be the same after this. For all of the heartbreak in Lanterman's words, and then in Hawk's, there was something utterly crushing about Lucy's, "the Log Lady's dead?".

The one under the moon at Blue Mountain. No one knows what lurks in the woods of Twin Peaks more than Margaret Lanterman. She knows about spirits, she knows about Fire, and she knows about Woodsmen.

[Josh]

As soon as Dougie started crawling, I tensed up. And I only grew more and more tense as it bled into Margaret's goodbye scene. My body was still trying to relax well into the Audrey scene. It was so tough to watch what may happen to Dougie and/or Cooper, but infinitely tougher to watch a very real goodbye from a fine group of storytellers to their dear friend. What a gut-punch of an episode.

It strikes me that last week's ending on an upbeat note with the band led into the feel-good scene we began with this week. And it all seemed to be Lynch's way of saying, "You think all is well, but far, far from it," as it led into infinite sadness. We've ended on quite the sad and desperate note this week, so I wonder if this leads into notes of hope and resolve next week - especially as we may finally be seeing the awakening of Cooper.

[Skummy]

Here's a thing on Audrey, and the connection to the Road House;

[Josh]

To me, that suggests she's specifically controlling the Roadhouse, not necessarily all of Twin Peaks. But that would also mean her "dream world" is intersecting with the reality of Twin Peaks. Which, of course, is entirely possible in Lynch's world. I wonder if Audrey's influence over events depends upon getting certain people into the Roadhouse. Perhaps that's where much of this is leading?

[Hobo]

That could explain how James was able to perform his song EXACTLY as he did 25 years ago and how Jean Michel Renault can look exactly like Jacques.

The MC could be a lodge spirit. He's got an air of Jimmy Scott about him. Which I had always figured was intentional.

[Hobo]

I'm not able to on YouTube in work but the other day I stumbled across a YouTube channel that's comparing scenes in the new season of Twin Peaks. The videos just play two scenes side by side. There's an interesting similarity between Dougie and Ruby's scenes and the Got A Light radio station scene from Episode 8 syncs up with Sarah Palmer sitting watching the boxing match.

They also have a video showing the differences between the Phillip Jefferies pointing at Cooper scenes from FWWM and The Return. In Fire Walk With Me he says "who do you think that is there?" and in The Return he says "who do you think this is there?" (which is what he also says in The Missing Pieces scene).