MASSIVE, MASSIVE SPOILERS! AND A GLASS OF
WATER, SWEETHEART!
MY SOCKS ARE ON FIRE!
This video is a follow-up to my 4.5-hour Twin
Peaks explainer video, and contains spoilers
for all of Twin Peaks.
If you have not seen the explainer yet, I
invite you to enjoy that video before watching
this one.
Otherwise, you're not going to know what I'm
talking about here.
Links are provided.
Meanwhile.
You'd be surprised how much info I wasn't
able to fit into 4.5 hours.
The explainer was originally even longer,
but it was getting out of control and I ended
up having to cut it down to just the pieces
that were most essential to making my case.
Direct arguments against my thesis will be
answered in a separate video, but for this
one, I want to share some of the stuff I didn't
cover, as well as clarify some of the more
confusing points in my explainer and answer
some questions many of you had after watching.
In doing so, I'm hoping to provide even more
evidence to support the conclusion I have
drawn about David Lynch's goal with Twin Peaks.
Take another look, sonny!
It's gonna happen again!
The two topics I was asked about most were
Candie, one of the Mitchum brothers' ballerina
trio, and Senorita Dido, the woman that hangs
out with the Fireman in his castle, and that's
perfect because they give me an opportunity
to re-demonstrate methods that you can use
to figure things out for yourself just in
case you have questions about something I
don't cover in this video.
So, what's the #1 rule when decoding things
in Twin Peaks?
I mean it like it is, like it sounds.
Just like Desmond does, describe it as it
is.
Then look at the description in the context
of what we've been shown before.
Let's do this with Candie:
Who is Candie?
She's one of these three women in pink dresses
that follow the Mitchum brothers around.
In half the scenes they're in, they don't
do much except stand around acting as "eye
candy".
Perhaps this is why her name is Candie...?
It's no secret that Lynch appreciates beautiful
women, and he repeatedly associates them with
the beauty of everyday life that he wants
us to appreciate.
Another reason could be that candy is made
of sugar, and Lynch once famously described
sugar as, "Granulated happiness."
Yeah, I'm heavily into sugar.
I call it "granulated happiness".
Candie's sugary personality certainly fits
the bill.
... and the keys to your new car!
What are the candy girls doing in the other
half of their scenes?
They are making and providing food for people.
These are what you call "finger sandwiches".
Go ahead.
Coffee and cherry pie courtesy of Norma and
Shelly, coffee and doughnuts courtesy of Lucy
and Tammy, Meals-On-Wheels courtesy of Laura,
Donna and the lovely ladies at the RR...
Lynch is using homemade food delivered by
beautiful women to represent the love and
wholesomeness of a family dinner, as opposed
to the TV dinners and fast food that represent
the fear and violence we enjoy while watching
TV.
The candy girls provide coffee, cherry pie,
drinks, and homemade finger sandwiches for
comfort.
It's a good thing we made so many sandwiches.
So, Candie must be a source of love or happiness...
but she works for mobsters.
What would you say is the key feature of Candie's
character?
Would you say she's spacey?
Is she an airhead?
Let's describe things as we see them.
Candie, go get him.
It's less that she's a dummy and more that
they can't seem to get her attention.
Candie.
Candie!
And once they have it, they can't seem to
keep it!
Candie?
Candie, look at me.
Candie is not paying attention to the Mitchums.
We've already been able to conclude that if
Agent Cooper represents the audience's detective
minds engaging with Twin Peaks, then Mr. C
is purposeful and active to represent the
part of us that pays attention to evil and
closure, and Dougie is empty and unresponsive
to represent the part of us that isn't paying
attention to love.
In the same way, the candy girls are representatives
of love, and have no attention to pay to evil
mobsters with blood on their hands.
What kinds of things does Candie pay attention
to?
She pays attention when there is food to deliver,
or when there are gifts to distribute, and
they don't need to get her attention for her
to acknowledge their hearts of gold.
You both have hearts of gold.
They do.
They really do.
The things she's concerned with are the number
of TV shows that are available nowadays in
sin city...
There were cars everywhere!
... or the air-conditioning that's going to
protect her from the heat and smog of modern
TV.
It's gonna be hot and smoggy tomorrow.
We are so lucky to have air-conditioning cooling
our casino.
It's just like our dear Director Cole.
He needs technological assistance to hear
the darkness of his own investigation, but
he can hear the love no problem.
Good lord, I can hear you perfectly!
Let's describe what's happening in Candie's
famous fly swatting scene.
What's she doing?
She's trying to kill a bug.
Where is the bug?
It's in the air, and it's trying to crawl
into Rodney's mouth.
What does she use?
A TV remote.
Just like Twin Peaks, a source of love tries
to use TV to kill the bug in the air, and
ends up hurting someone she loves.
And she's inconsolable.
Closure is harmful.
Squeaky clean, crystal clear, easy to understand
transparency is harmful.
By the way, now that we understand that candy
and sugar represent love, we can see that
it is, indeed, about the bunny!
Is it about the bunny?
Something is missing, and Hawk has to find
it, right?
Remember, I said that what was missing was
the love and wholesomeness that comes from
knowing the darkness of Laura's mystery.
I ate that bunny!
You ate the evidence, Lucy?
I know!
Lucy tampered with the evidence in Laura's
case when she tried to cure her gas by eating
the chocolate bunny...
Is that true, Hawk?
Do you use chocolate as a remedy for gas?
She had "wind", and she tried to cure it by
consuming "love", which interrupted Laura's
investigation.
And now that Laura's gone, Twin Peaks is not
about the bunny anymore... or rather, It's
about how it's not about the bunny anymore.
It's not about the bunny!
Right before this scene, Hawk puts a "donut
disturb" sign on the door to hint that, just
like with Agent Desmond, most of David Lynch's
symbols come in the form of a pun.
Now, Senorita Dido...
She's a little more difficult.
For her, we'll do the same thing as before,
but I want to show you the kinds of additional
connections you can make with just a little
bit of research.
First, remember that the Fireman is the spirit
of balanced, cinematic storytelling.
He and his Señorita live in the black and
white realm of balance, in a castle that resembles
an old movie theater.
If the Twin Peaks TV series is a literal representation
of the medium of television, we should probably
think of the Fireman sequences as representing
the medium of cinema.
Second, Lynch often says that there are ideas
for every creative medium, and the creative
process is the translation of those ideas
to the medium:
I get ideas, and I fall in love with them,
like I say, because of the idea and the way
cinema can translate that idea.
Or painting could translate-- you get painting
ideas, you get chair ideas, you get, you know,
photography ideas, music ideas.
And then you just translate it.
In the Fireman's castle, we can see the many,
many idea generators that power different
creative mediums.
There are two other special generators shown
in the Fireman's castle: there's one in front
of the screen in his theater — this must
be a generator full of ideas that are fueling
the cinematic picture — and there's one
that sounds an alarm in front of a record
player playing music — this one must be
full of ideas to power music and sound.
The reason we would see these two special
generators in the castle is because we're
watching a film, and as David Lynch says:
Cinema, to me, is sound and picture moving
together in time.
Now, who is Señorita Dido?
She appears to be an assistant of some kind
for the Fireman.
The Fireman creates Laura Palmer... but it's
Senorita Dido that puts her into the machinery
and onto the big screen.
Perhaps it's Dido's role to translate the
Fireman's ideas to a medium?
If this is the case, then perhaps she's not
listening to music from the phonograph in
the sound room but instead translating the
musical ideas she hears to the phonograph
record?
This is, after all, how some early films were
shown, with a separate record playing on a
phonograph to accompany the picture...
But there's another detail here: when the
senorita walks into the theater, she's spotlit
from behind, almost as if the picture on the
screen is being projected through her.
Perhaps she represents the physical medium
of film itself...?
Perhaps.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but it's
incomplete and there's no proof — that's
where the research comes in.
Concepts and symbols take a literal form in
Twin Peaks, so let's assume Señorita Dido
represents the literal, physical medium of
film.
Old photographic film was made from a strip
of transparent celluloid coated with a light-sensitive
emulsion of silver halide crystals in gelatin.
Here's what silver halide crystals look like
under an electron microscope during the crystal
growing process...
Silver crystals on transparent celluloid,
very similar to the Señorita's dress made
of silver sequins on transparent material...
Could be a coincidence.
Let's keep going.
What about her name, Senorita Dido?
Is it a reference to the founder and first
queen of Carthage?
Could be.
I'm not so sure.
Lynch likes to play games with words and pronunciation,
like Judy and Jowday and jiaodai, so maybe
we could try pronouncing her name another
way: Señorita 'Ditto'.
"Ditto" is slang for copy, and it comes from
a brand name of old carbon copy machines,
often referred to as, "Ditto machines."
In a film's production, the actual film strip
goes through several copies, from the original
negative out of the camera to an interpositive,
where color, effects and sound are applied,
back to an internegative, from which final,
positive copies are created.
We could also think of shooting a film as
copying an image, or a moment in time...
The technical term for the Ditto machine is
a liquid, or spirit, duplicator.
If "spirit duplicator" isn't a poetic description
of the medium of film, I don't know what is.
The Fireman is the spirit of film, and Señorita
"Ditto" is his spirit medium duplicator.
He copies his ideas onto her, and she translates
them to the screen...
Hm?
Interesting to think about, but still not
as strong as it could be.
Let's keep going.
"Cinema is sound and picture moving together
in time."
Early silent films were shown with some form
of live music to accompany them.
As technology progressed, films would be accompanied
by sound from phonograph records, and then
eventually, "sound film" was invented, where
sound was printed directly onto a track on
the filmstrip right next to the picture.
My words that have been recorded on the soundtrack
appear like this as I am now speaking to you
from the screen.
Many of you, perhaps, never realized that
voice and sound can actually be seen!
This is called "optical sound", and it's recorded
to sound film and played back from sound film
through the use of light, just like the picture.
Since the photographic film is affected only
by light, it is necessary to convert the soundwaves
to corresponding changes in light.
The soundwaves produced by my voice are transmitted
through the air to the microphone, where these
soundwaves are converted to changes in an
electric current.
These variations in the electric current are
then amplified and used to control the light
falling on the photographic film.
The light that falls upon the photographic
film is in the form of a fine, bright line
extending transversely of the direction in
which the film moves.
The part of the film on which the line of
light falls is called the "soundtrack".
In the reproducing process, a variable density
sound record is run past a narrow line of
light from a fixed source.
The photographic sound record is used to produce
a varying beam of light.
This varying beam of light falling on the
photoelectric cell produces variations in
the electric current, and the varying electrical
current is then converted back into soundwaves.
"This is all very interesting and technical,
but what does it have to do with Señorita
Dido?"
Well, you need to know it, because it explains
a lot.
The song that plays in the soundtrack when
we're looking at Senorita Dido in the sound
room, called Slow 30s Room, was created by
David Lynch and Dean Hurley using an instrument
from the early 70s called an "Optigan", which
is a kind of combination organ and sampler.
All of the sound is produced through the use
of an optical record, which employed the exact
same optical sound technology used for film.
A light shines through the waveform printed
on a spinning, transparent record to reproduce
the sound.
Each disc has 57 concentric rings of film
soundtrack.
So that's what this is, except instead of
running vertically along a strip of film,
you've got film soundtrack laid out in concentric
loops.
That's kind of a big clue right there, but
let me show you the smoking gun: while she's
listening to this optical sound, there's a
light shining onto her through the stereo
waveforms of an optical track-looking screen.
She's not just listening to this music, she's
playing it back from her optical soundtrack!
She is silver halide-covered sound film, and
when the light shines through her in the theater,
it produces a movie partially covered by the
shadow of the picture idea generator to show
us that the waveforms in the soundtrack are
flat, because in this case we're watching
a silent film.
The Fireman prints Laura Palmer onto her,
and through her, Laura is projected onto the
big screen.
I rest my case.
So, hopefully these give you concentrated
examples of the method you can use to decode
things for yourself, and hopefully the hard
evidence of the film meta in the Fireman's
castle has strengthened my argument for the
TV meta that's happening in the show.
Now, I know that some people who are still
hesitant to accept the TV meta idea hold the
opinion that this conclusion isn't broad enough,
and I'm ignoring all of the other stuff that
Twin Peaks is dealing with.
I understand, and I acknowledge that there's
a lot more to the show than I was able to
cover.
However, what I did cover were what I think
are the core ideas that make Twin Peaks, and
all those other ideas you're picking up on,
while present and important and interesting
and valid, are secondary to the core ideas
and not necessarily necessary to communicate
the central message.
To prove that, all we need to do is look at
which ideas David Lynch treats as most important.
David must have complete control over a film
so that he can give us the experience he intends
for us to have.
He realized this for himself during the making
of 1984's cinematic failure Dune.
Whenever interviewed about Dune, he laments
that he "sold out" and wasn't able to properly
execute his vision.
Looking back on it, I realized I started selling
out on the project right from the very beginning.
Well, I never carried anything far enough
for it to really be my own.
I had the feeling that Dino and Rafaella wanted
something, and then there was Frank Herbert's
book, and trying to be true to it.
So you're already locked into a specific corral.
And it's hard to break out of that.
I didn't really feel I had permission to really
make it my own.
That was the downfall for me.
It was a problem.
Dune was like a kind of studio film.
I didn't have final cut.
And, little by little, I was subconsciously
making compromises — knowing I couldn't
go here and not wanting to go there.
I just fell, you know, into this middle world.
It was a sad place to be.
That's the big lesson — don't make a film
if it can't be the film you want to make.
It's a joke, and a sick joke, and it'll kill
you.
After this, Lynch determined that he would
never again allow other people to interfere
with his vision.
For example, the situation with Season 3 of
Twin Peaks, where he almost refused to direct
because Showtime would only give him enough
money to make 9 episodes instead of 18.
This determination not to have his vision
compromised did not mix well with TV.
In addition to numerous other directors and
writers shaping the show as they saw fit,
Lynch was making the show for an audience
that wasn't his usual audience.
David Lynch fans are ready for art, ready
for mystery, ready for his style, so he can
present his ideas to them any way he wants.
But, your average 1989 TV viewer was not ready
for any of what Lynch wanted to show them.
Stuck between an audience that didn't get
it and a studio and production staff that
had other ideas about it, Twin Peaks is unique
amongst Lynch works in the amount of compensating
he had to do for other people's lack of understanding
and trust in his vision.
What exactly did that mean?
I'll explain it to you.
From the very beginning, Lynch had to give
explanations that filled in the gaps to create
a complete picture whenever the show's longevity
was threatened.
Every time it looked like the mystery was
going to be taken from him, he had to crank
up the dial on the symbols and revelations
to reassert control over the production and
course-correct the audience so that Twin Peaks
would not become the self-fulfilling prophecy
that it became.
This over-compensation is where much of the
evidence for my thesis came from.
If you observe what Lynch does when he's backed
into a corner and forced to conclude things,
you can see exactly which symbols and concepts
take priority.
Case-in-point: the Red Room.
We were editing.
And it was about 6 o'clock on a very beautiful,
warm evening and we went out to the parking
lot.
And in the parking lot, there was a car there,
and I was leaning against the car roof and
I was feeling how nice and warm it was.
It was so toasty, and I was digging this warmth,
and 'fffwip', in comes the Red Room.
This is the famous story of how Lynch came
up with the idea for the Red Room.
And notice how it was the warmth on his arms
that gave him the idea for Mike's severed
arm controlling the fire of TV violence...
So, I have a sensation like my left arm is
immersed in a pot of boiling oil all the time.
But, the Red Room might never have been if
not for the studio's lack of confidence in
the show.
The studio, expecting the show to fail, was
already pressuring Lynch to come up with an
ending to the mystery so they could release
the pilot as a standalone film in Europe.
This is how we got what's now known as the
"International Version" of the pilot, which
has an extra twenty minutes of footage that
ends the pilot's story.
Because the European ending needed to be done.
I didn't have any ideas, and I didnt really--
wasn't really, you know, focused on that,
just finishing the pilot.
Right.
But then, this pressure came, you know, to...
you know, someone said, "You've got to fulfill
this obligation,"
Yeah.
"as part of this contract."
Yeah.
The Red Room and a couple other sequences
from Cooper's dream at the end of Episode
3 — in other words, the most important sequences
in the show — were originally created as
an ending of the pilot.
As such, they would have to contain many of
the clues necessary to intuitively communicate
the central message.
Just in case the show never made it to TV,
Lynch was making sure that the pilot, including
its ending, was a finished work — one complete
idea.
If that's true, everything that follows it
— Season 1, Season 2, the film, everything
in those, all that stuff that I've been told
I'm ignoring — can only follow and build
on the complete message from the pilot.
So, let's run through the episode and see
if the complete TV meta idea is there, and
along the way we can look at little bits of
evidence I left out of the main video.
Please keep in mind, a lot of the explanation
for the pilot's symbols didn't come until
later, but that doesn't mean these things
didn't mean what they would later be shown
to mean.
We open on images from The Sawmill, indicating
that we are about to start snoring as we begin
our TV dream.
The welcome to Twin Peaks sign has two mountain
peaks on it, resembling the sine wave of electricity
travelling down the power lines that lead
us into town.
Pete Martell finds Laura Palmer's body wrapped
in plastic like a TV dinner.
Harry S. Truman was the U.S. President who
dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, so Sheriff
Harry S. Truman begins the investigation of
the TV violence that grew out of those nukes.
Andy cries here and at the scene of the murder
to communicate the depth of emotion we should
feel in contrast to the shallowness of other
shows.
Sarah Palmer smokes in her kitchen, because
where there is smoke there is fire.
The ceiling fan blows the wind of the Zeitgeist
down from above as Sarah finds out Laura is
missing.
We can see a goose in Laura's room, because
Laura's mystery is the goose that lays golden
idea eggs into the show.
More geese can be seen in Major Briggs' kitchen
next to a pot of the coffee that fuels our
investigation of these goose eggs.
Also in his kitchen stands what I presume
is a small statue of a Transcendental Meditation
yogi.
Ben Horne presents his business plan to replace
the snoring sawmill with a soulless housing
development.
A roaring fireplace completes the analogy
of corporate interests replacing small-town,
wholesome mundanity with the destructive fire
of TV violence for empty, pre-packaged capital
gain.
This reflects Lynch's attitude towards TV
at the time.
He thought TV was the future of visual art,
but it was being sabotaged by advertising
and executives.
And by the way, this might be a reason why
Lynch returned to TV in 2017, because we can
get cinema-quality picture and sound at home
ad-free now.
Laura's father is helping with the Ghostwood
project, mirroring that the destruction of
beautiful mundanity is what gave birth to
Laura's mystery.
Later, the murder puts an end to the deal...
They found my friend, Laura.
She'd been murdered!
... just as the mystery tries to slow down
and end meaningless TV violence.
Norma Jennings serves a bitter/sweet balance
of coffee and pie at the meeting place of
love.
Shelly and Bobby are having a love affair,
and they tease Heidi for some lovely activities
of her own.
"I'll see you in my dreams," says Bobby.
"Not if I see you first," Miss Twin Peaks
responds.
Evil is defeated by seeing it for what it
is.
If Bobby is a badboy, then seeing his bad
self coming will keep him from getting into
Miss Twin Peaks' dream.
The Zeitgeist blows the mystery through the
telephone pole-trees.
Attention-loving Audrey replaces her balanced,
black and white shoes with a pair of fiery
red heels and puts her cigarette out in a
Smokey the Bear ashtray.
Let's see if Laura's mystery can't put the
forest fire of TV violence out.
In the radio wave-painted hallway, this rock
'n' roller (because rock 'n' roll is what
helped start the fire back in 1956) does the
wave just as the police arrive.
Elvis is in the airwaves, and the investigation
is starting.
"If you have a question, ask it!"
"THINK!"
David Lynch commands that we try to solve
this mystery for ourselves above a picture
of Abraham Lincoln, because Lincoln is on
the penny and the penny is made of copper
and copper is what the electrical fire travels
through.
As Laura and James hear of the murder, the
mystery wind blows in the next scene.
Bobby Briggs is our first suspect, so now's
the time to bring the audience in to start
investigating.
Mr. Wolchezk, why don't you go ahead and make
that announcement?
Now's the time.
And oh, how sad it will be, Lynch hopes.
Ronette Pulaski wanders across the state line
covered in cigarette burns, because where
there's smoke there's fire.
Bob's fire has done serious damage to her
mind, just as it damages the minds of TV viewers.
The owner of the golden goose egg gas station
that fuels TV, representing David Lynch, is
in love with Miss Twin Peaks, but is stuck
in a loveless marriage to Negative Nadine,
who has an eyepatch and therefore can only
see half of her situation; all the bad, none
of the good.
What's more, she lacks depth perception, like
the viewers of shallow TV.
She wants to hang drapes so she can shut out
the light and continue living in darkness.
Drapes?
Drapes.
Deputy Hawk finds the first big clue in Laura's
mystery and wiggles it around in an unnatural
way that causes it to reflect flashes of investigative
light onto our faces.
"As W.C.
Fields would say, 'I'd rather be here than
Philadelphia,'" Agent Cooper muses.
The exact opposite of Twin Peaks, Philadelphia
is the dark, chaotic, fear-filled city David
Lynch says is his biggest inspiration.
FBI Special Agent Cooper has just eaten a
tuna fish sandwich and a bitter/sweet balance
of coffee and cherry pie at the Lamp-Lighter
Inn.
Lamplighter Inn.
That's on highway 2 near Lewis Fork.
This is appropriate fuel to spark a light
into TV via the idea fish swimming in Lynch's
mind.
Cooper enjoys his investigation, like the
TV audience he's channeling.
The Fugitive's One-Armed Man stands in the
hospital elevator to hint at the TV meta.
While a broken fluorescent lamp flashes investigative
light onto our faces, Cooper uses a TV screen-esque,
lighted magnifier to find Bob's signature
on the pain and suffering in Laura's soul.
Cooper finds a key to a safe deposit box in
Laura's diary along with traces of cocaine,
which Sheriff Truman says is out of Laura's
character.
You didn't know Laura Palmer.
Bobby is questioned about Laura's secret boyfriend.
Shortly thereafter, we learn that Laura was
tutoring Audrey's mentally disabled brother,
all of which invites us to ponder her secretive,
dual nature.
The Log Lady flashes the lights in the town
hall to get our attention.
Cooper talks about the killer's previous victim,
the loner nobody Teresa Banks, who represents
the inconsequential victims of murder mysteries
prior to Twin Peaks.
No one came forward to claim her body.
It wasn't even news until today.
Secret meetings take place in the meeting
place of secrets while the Roadhouse biker
band plays love songs.
The reference to Marlon Brando in The Wild
One sits listening.
While enjoying the "policeman's dream", Cooper
tells Sheriff Truman he thinks he'll be in
Twin Peaks for a long time while he investigates
this mystery which is meant to be ongoing.
Because you know, I think I'm gonna be here
for some time.
Josie Packard tells Sheriff Truman she wanted
to see him, "Right over here."
Right over here.
... Because right over here is where the camera
can get a clear view of the owl-shaped porch
light, because the owls are what carry the
electrical fire and the plot of the show.
Sarah Palmer has a vision, then wakes up screaming.
Bob can be seen reflected in the Palmers'
living room mirrors, which resemble an owl's
face.
TV violence has worked its way into the signal
the owls are bringing to the mirror of life
that is our TV sets.
This is where the broadcast version of the
episode ends.
So, we can see that most of the symbols are
right there in that first episode, just in
case this was a one-off thing.
What's missing that would need to be covered
in an ending?
We still need a bit more about the goal of
the show, an identity for the killer, a method
of stopping him, a lesson on why ending the
mystery is bad, and some more explanation
of the mechanics of TV dreaming to fill out
the meta.
In the broadcast version, Sarah Palmer has
a vision of Jacoby digging up James' half
of Laura's necklace.
But in the International Version, Sarah remembers
that she saw Laura's killer in her room...
It's Bob.
Leland is never blamed.
If the show ends here, whatever tales of incest
and filicide come later are not as important
as Bob and what he represents.
Leland calls Lucy looking for the Sheriff,
and Lucy sends Truman and Hawk to the Palmer
house to make a police sketch of Bob.
Cooper gets a call from Mike, who has privileged
information about Teresa and Laura's murderer.
This is the end of the story, and the fear
in the air is winning, so Mike is waking Cooper
from his dream.
Agent Cooper.
Were you sleeping?
Yes.
There's something in the air.
Can you feel it?
You know about Teresa Banks, the pretty girl
they found last year?
Then, Cooper and Truman go to the hospital
to meet Mike.
Mike delivers the famous Twin Peaks poem about
the magician, David Lynch, longing to see
a chance out of the cycle of television evil
via the dark dream of Twin Peaks.
Mike says that he and Bob lived above a convenience
store, because Bob's victims are to be consumed
at our pleasure and convenience.
We lived above it.
Perhaps our TVs are the store where we get
our convenient victim meals, and they lived
above it because they live in the airwaves...?
Mike tells them he cut his arm off, because
he is TV severing its evil intent and trying
to stop it by creating the mystery of Twin
Peaks.
Mike positively identifies the killer from
Bob's police sketch and tells the investigators
where to find Bob.
That's Bob.
He's downstairs in the basement.
Bob lurks in the dark, dank, basement boiler
room of television.
Welcome to the killer's lair.
Is mike with you?
I so much wanted to sing with him again.
"I so much wanted to sing with him again,"
Bob says — and he does get to sing with
Mike.
As Mike approaches Bob, we hear an eerie,
magical sound in the air.
Mike?
Can you hear me?
This is the same sound we hear in Season 3
coming from the door in the basement of the
Great Northern.
What is this sound?
When you have a note, and another detuned
note buzzes against it, there's something
in between those two notes that's the magical
area.
It's a balance.
And I think since we live in a world of dualities
— hot and cold, high and low, the whole
thing — that any balancing point is very
special.
The sound represents "balance".
At the beginning of the Red Room sequence,
the Little Man from Another Place sits and
begins to rub his hands together.
This seems to produce the sound.
Cooper looks to Laura Palmer, who touches
her nose.
Why?
She wants us to look at our noses, because
when we look at our noses our eyes cross,
and when they are crossed we see our world
split into two and our nose is balanced between
them.
"That's completely ridiculous," I can already
hear you saying.
But wait!
If we look at the Little Man, the whole time
he's rubbing his hands together and producing
the sound, he's crossing his eyes.
When Windom Earle is leading Annie into the
Lodge, as they step into the threshold between
worlds, her eyes cross.
Laura is indicating that the Red Room is a
place "between" the real world and the TV
dream.
The magical sound represents balance, or the
place between a meeting of opposites.
It's heard in Season 3 when people on the
side of good draw near to the evil darkness
of closure that resides in the basement of
television.
And the same happens in the pilot's ending.
TV's goodness and TV's evil sing together
as they are brought near to each other.
Upon hearing the sound, Bob begins to recite
a poem about balance:
Heads up, tails up, running to you, scalawag
Night falls, morning calls, catch you with
my death bag
Bob lures us in and captures us with the promise
of a violently good time.
Bob tells Cooper and Truman about his signature
on his victims' suffering.
What were the letters gonna spell?
Robert.
He says that he'll kill again.
I will kill again.
Mike runs in and shoots him dead to stop him
from doing so.
Like hell!
Then Mike begins to die himself.
You got a nickel?
Bob, it hurts something terrible...
Why does Mike ask for a nickel?
Season 3 gives us the answer: Hawk's coin
is an early 20th century "Buffalo nickel",
on which is depicted a portrait of a Native
American chief.
James Earle Fraser, the artist who designed
the coin, stated that the portrait doesn't
depict anybody specific.
However, several people claimed that they
were the model for the portrait, including
two men by the name of "Big Tree".
Evidently, Mike is hoping that Laura's big
mystery tree will save him.
But that mystery was sacred, and it held the
other ones.
It was the tree, and the other ones were the
branches.
Yeah.
But it doesn't.
Mike's final words are, "Bob, wait 'til it's
your time..."
Bob, wait 'til it's your time...
... even though Bob is already dead.
In this, David Lynch's message is revealed:
Bob's evil cannot be defeated through violence,
only through light exposing it.
The irony of this scene is that in ending
Laura's mystery by revealing and then killing
her murderer, Bob's true nature has won.
The studio's forcing of the ending has caused
Mike TV to fail in his mission, and the show
is dead before it could even begin.
The firelight from the candles gives way to
darkness within our TV sets.
Then, the famous dream sequence.
25 years later, Cooper sits in the Red Room.
Why 25 years?
If this is an ending, it indicates that the
mystery could have gone on for that long,
and this might make us wonder what had happened
during that time that would lead up to this
scene had the show not been cut short.
The Little Man, Mike's severed Arm, says,
"Let's rock," to remind us that rock 'n' roll
on TV is part of what got us into this mess.
Red curtains and the radio wave pattern on
the floor indicate that this is the space
between the real world and the TV dream.
The shadow of the owl that carries the plot
flies between two light stands, tracing the
path the show might take as it travels along
the power lines between telephone poles.
The Little Man tells Cooper that Laura is
his cousin.
She's his parent's sibling's daughter.
She's my mother's sister's girl!
And just like Cousin Lil, Cousin Laura is
full of secrets that were just spoiled through
explanation.
Laura says that sometimes her arms bend back.
Now, later in the show, it's revealed that
this is because she likes to be tied up when
she's prostituting herself.
Lynch uses "backwards" as an indicator of
evil.
For example: Lynch depicts the Mother of All
Evil in Season 3 as having backwards arms,
evil Mr. C has a backwards soul fingerprint,
people stuck in the cycle of evil, like those
married to the Red Room or the woman yelling
9-1-1 in Season 3, all speak backwards.
Laura is telling us about her dual nature.
But, if the show had ended here, none of that
stuff would ever have been revealed, so what
proof would there be that backwards arms represent
Laura's duality?
Perhaps some knowledge of Roman mythology
can help?
On the table next to Cooper sits a Saturn
lamp.
Saturn is the Roman god of time, so it makes
sense that the lamp is the first thing we
see after the "25 years later" message.
Standing behind Laura and the Little Man is
a statue of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
Both of these, time and love, are very important
to the message of Twin Peaks...
And there's another, invisible Roman god present
in the Red Room: Janus, the god of duality,
depicted as having two faces, one looking
forward to the future and one looking backward
to the past.
Laura's arms bend both ways; forward when
she's doing good and backward when she's doing
evil.
To confirm this association, Laura's doppelganger
appears in the Season 2 finale sitting on
a chair with seats facing both forward and
back.
The good Laura strikes her famous "meanwhile"
pose, which becomes her doppelganger in the
seat that's facing forward.
Her doppelganger then must move to the seat
that's facing backward to match her dual nature
before she can step out.
Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty
song
In TV-world, electricity sounds like birds
chirping and the owl and golden goose are
two birds that bring the golden ideas down
the power lines.
and there's always music in the air.
There's always a soundtrack in a TV show.
The Little Man proves it by dancing to it,
delighting in the evil that now remains in
our TV sets, whilst Laura Palmer whispers
the secrets she's filled with into Cooper's
ear, re-establishing mystery as the top priority
even after this forced ending.
So we can see that, even before the show made
it to air, it was all right there — one
complete idea about the medium of TV itself
trying to fix its own shallow evil through
the use of Laura Palmer's ongoing mystery
and then failing to do so when the studio
forced closure.
This idea takes priority, and any other themes
that came later are important but incidental
and supportive of this central idea.
The pilot is the only thing I am particularly,
extremely proud of.
There were great moments along the way.
The second season sucked.
The reason he's only proud of the pilot is
because it's the only part of Twin Peaks that
he had complete control over, and thus contains
his complete message, untainted by the studio
and the viewers.
"For me," he explains, "the pilot — the
original pilot — is Twin Peaks, and The
Return is Twin Peaks."
Why not Season 2?
"Well, what happens in television, I think,
is, there are different directors, different
writers, and it's just the way things go.
It drifts away.
The Return hopefully brought it back into
a true world of Twin Peaks."
So, what David Lynch considers to be the "true
world" of Twin Peaks pre-Season 3... is the
pilot.
Just the pilot.
Other directors and other writers stepped
in afterward to add their ideas and take the
story in other directions, so even other Lynch-directed
episodes and the film were subject to the
story as it unfolded outside of Lynch's control.
If Mark and I had been working together, it
would have been different.
But we weren't, so it was the way it was.
I went to a couple of meetings with writers,
and things like that, but unless you're right
in there and you're hands on...
That's one of the frustrating things about
TV: there are other directors, other writers,
and other things that come in.
It may be fine, but it's not what you would
do.
It's frustrating.
Because the pilot was so successful, its ending
was cut down to its most essential symbols
(minus the more overt clues about the wrong
way to defeat evil) and repurposed to be a
dream sequence at the end of Episode 3.
Other themes then had a chance to grow as
the show continued.
But by the end of the first season, the audience
and studio were getting antsy for an answer,
to the point where some questioned whether
or not Lynch actually knew where it was all
going.
LYNCH: I was in an airport one time, going
through the baggage claim area, and a woman
was talking to her friends.
And I just heard as I went by, "I just hope
they solve that murder soon.
I'm getting sick of waiting."
And it was TWIN PEAKS.
I think a lot of people put pressure on ABC
to get it solved because they felt they were
being strung along...
Fearing that his message was getting lost,
David Lynch stepped back in to direct the
first two episodes of Season 2 in an attempt
to steer things back in the right direction
and show people the mistake they were making.
He really starts laying it on thick to make
sure we're getting it.
Instead of getting closure at the end of the
first season, the audience was left with a
cliffhanger: Who shot Agent Cooper?
This left the audience just as shocked and
injured as the character that represented
them.
Cooper lies on his hotel room floor bleeding
out when the Giant walks in.
But rather than assisting Cooper and bringing
some amount of closure to his and our predicament,
he hangs up Cooper's phone to keep him from
getting help and hold the audience in this
state of urgent suspense.
This is the way things should be in this show;
questions are more interesting than answers,
and tension is more interesting than closure.
The Giant has brought us some warm milk to
put us back to sleep to dream the dark, ongoing
dream of Twin Peaks for a new season.
I heard about you!
The old man gives Cooper a thumbs up.
With this, Lynch highlights the contrast between
the kooky, coffee and cherry pie memes of
the Twin Peaks craze with the show's dark,
suspenseful intentions.
"Who the H cares about a thumbs up?
There are more important things happening
here."
Later, Cooper muses about how interesting
it is to be shot.
All in all, a very interesting experience.
Then, the Giant tells us flat out exactly
how to decode David Lynch's clues.
Like Mike told us before, "I mean it like
it is, like it sounds."
"There's a man in a smiling bag."
"Without chemicals, he points."
"Leo locked inside hungry horse."
Leo Johnson was locked in a jail in Hungry
Horse, Montana.
Lynch shows us that things that seem to be
bizarre and mysterious actually have concrete
explanations.
Then, he warns us of the danger of getting
them.
The Giant takes Cooper's ring, which represents
the golden circle of appetite for evil and
satisfaction that leads to more.
As long as the mysteries remain mysteries,
we have a chance to break the cycle.
But, as soon as we get answers, we'll put
the ring back on and continue to be married
to evil.
What do these things mean?
Give me your ring.
I will return it to you when you find these
things to be true.
We'll get it back and become re-married to
TV's evil when we get answers.
At One-Eyed Jack's, Lynch proves to a doubtful
audience that he knows exactly where the mystery
is going.
Ben and Audrey play out a mirrored version
of Leland and Laura's relationship.
Where good Leland wore Bob's evil mask to
hide from Laura when he abused her, good Audrey
wears a prostitute's evil mask to hide from
her abusive father.
Meanwhile, Jerry taunts Blackie for being
a junkie in the main office.
Why's he holding out on me?
Who's holding out on who?
Season 1 beat around the bush with the happenings
at One-Eyed Jack's, but here, Jerry is literally
shining a light on his and Blackie's blackness
with a balanced Buddha lamp.
Mark Frost reports on the "mysterious circumstances"
that burned part of the Packard Sawmill to
the ground because, with the demand for closure,
the fire of consumable TV violence is threatening
to consume the place of sawing logs.
Over at the Palmer house, Leland Palmer sings
us another big clue:
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy
divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
It's another lesson in how to interpret David
Lynch's symbols.
If something doesn't make sense, describing
it in the right way may reveal the answer:
Now, if the words sound queer and funny to
your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and
little lambs eat ivy."
But this clue is coming from Leland, possessed
by Bob, so it's paired with a warning.
A character getting scared so badly that their
hair turns white is a popular storytelling
trope.
Leland's change of hair color coincides with
a newfound peace with his daughter's death.
Seeing it, I realized that I had turned a
corner somehow.
I physically felt as if a great weight had
been lifted from my heart.
This readiness to move on, this closure, is
what feeds the fear in the air.
Closure leads to fear, and fear brought on
by closure is driving Leland over the edge.
Leland goes back to Ben's office to show off
his transformation from his dark-haired depression
to light-haired lightheartedness.
With closure, he's ready to go back to work
trying to destroy the dream with the Ghostwood
project, and the three evildoers dance around
with evil delight.
While investigating the scene of Leo Johnson's
shooting, Andy slapsticks himself in the face,
revealing a key piece of evidence — the
light of wholesome mundanity reveals the darkness
under the surface.
Leo's boots are Circle Brand, because he is
part of the golden circle of evil.
BUT, the exposure of this evil is how we are
able to recognize and defeat it, and this
insulates us from Bob's evil electrical fire.
The Circle Brand logo is stamped into the
soles of the boots — rubber soles are a
common way that electrical linemen insulate
themselves from electric shock while they
work.
What?
Yes.
To cement in this seemingly stupid rubber
sole idea, Mike, the character who represents
TV trying to insulate us from evil, is a shoe
salesman...
He deals in SOLES, and he's trying to keep
the evil out of the audience's souls by selling
us insulation.
The revelation of evil insulates us from evil.
People who are seriously damaged by the evil
of TV are missing their insulation and wind
up shoeless...
SOLEless, like Leo in his catatonic state
looking for his new shoes.
New shoes.
Or Ronette wandering shoeless after encountering
Bob and going comatose.
And in Season 3, the good Dale Cooper is auto-insulated
from evil, so when he attempts to return to
the evil that Twin Peaks has become, his soul/his
SOLES don't make it back through.
Consequently, Dougie is soulless/SOLEless.
Dougie, did you forget something?
Your shoes?
The shoe thing is legit.
It checks out.
It's legit.
We have to honor the claim.
Back to Season 2.
Donna is starting to get too deep in her quest
for answers, and the darkness is rubbing off
on her.
Laura's sunglasses block out the light, and
where there's smoke, there is fire.
Then, the Log Lady gives us the answer to
the Little Man's riddle about gum coming back
in style.
While Cooper questions him, Jacoby tells us
pretty directly about Laura's purpose in the
show.
Well, she was living a double life.
I don't know, she seemed to have reached a
kind of... a peace with herself.
Maybe she allowed herself to be killed?
He hints that Leland is possessed by Bob to
prove once again that Lynch knew where things
were going.
Scorched engine oil.
Major Briggs tells his son about a hopeful
vision he had for Bobby's future.
This taste of wholesome mundanity is an example
of what Lynch wants for us, and it's described
like it took place in the Unified Field.
There seemed to emanate from it a... a light
from within this gleaming, radiant marble.
A reunion with the deepest wellsprings of
my being.
At the end of the episode, Harriet Hayward
reminds us what the show is supposed to be
about... over and over and over.
It was Laura.
It was Laura.
It was Laura.
It was Laura.
And the Giant returns to Cooper to give us
a closing message about slowing down and taking
in the mystery rather than stampeding toward
the answer.
Don't search for all the answers at once.
A path is formed by laying one stone at a
time.
He disappears with a golden flash back inside
our collective ocean of consciousness.
So, that first episode of Season 2 is pretty
dense with answers people didn't know they
were getting, and warnings about what might
happen if they did get the answers, and every
single bit of it has to do with the TV meta.
And it didn't stop there.
In the next episode, Lynch begins with a history
lesson about the beginnings of Tibetan Buddhism.
The first Tibetan king to be touched by the
dharma was King Hathatha Rignamputsan.
He and succeeding kings were collectively
known as the Happy Generations.
Buddhism is about "walking the middle path",
and it's a tradition that would continue from
the Happy Generations on through the centuries
until it reached David Lynch in the form of
the TM movement, leading him to create Twin
Peaks to teach TV audiences about balance.
Agent Cooper, I am thrilled to pieces that
the dharma came to King Ho Ho Ho, I really
am, but right now I'm trying hard to focus
on the more immediate problems of our own
century right here in Twin Peaks.
Albert, you'd be surprised at the connection
between the two.
Donna takes over Laura's Meals-on-Wheels route
dressed like Velma from Scooby-Doo to really
sell the amateur investigator angle.
She meets David Lynch and his grandmother,
who teach us the lesson about the director
directing our attention to the creamed corn
that represents our desire for the sickness
of pre-packaged murder mystery victims.
In the previous episode, Lynch made several
jokes about hospital food making people sick...
The food in these places will kill you quicker
than most diseases.
... and that food resembles the disgusting
slop that The Grandmother is now refusing
to eat.
They used to bring me hospital food.
Imagine that!
If we wanna beat the sickness, we gotta eat
the sickness.
(The sickness is Laura's mystery...)
Afterward, Lynch begins the Harold Smith storyline,
which ends up being the most overt and dire
warning against closure.
Harold is an agoraphobic; he's afraid of LIGHT.
What does he do all cooped up in his apartment?
He grows orchids...
That's why it's so warm in here.
They don't need a lot of light.
... and he literally collects the stories
of other people's lives.
People come to me and tell me their stories
about the world outside.
I take their stories and place them in a larger
context.
A sort of "living novel".
He's a TV watcher who shuts out real life,
trying to live vicariously through the lives
of those whose stories he collects from the
TV.
And why does he hang himself?
Because some amateur investigators try to
steal Laura Palmer's story from him.
Are you looking for SECRETS???
He's possessed by fear of the absence of Laura's
mystery and it kills him.
Unfortunately, the amateur investigators in
the audience didn't get the heavy messaging
Lynch was slathering all over these first
two episodes, so the fear in the airwaves
would soon kill them, too.
In the sixth episode of Season 2, Lynch appeared
as Gordon Cole to start criticizing the audience.
You remind me today of a small, Mexican chihuahua
Why does he make this comparison?
What the hell is this about a Mexican chihuahua?
Because a chihuahua is anxious and yippy,
and he wished the audience could have settled
down a little.
In Lynch's direction of Episode 7, he gave
everyone the closure they so desperately wanted.
He'd been as explicit as he could be while
maintaining the mystery, and none of it got
through.
Episode 7 was just a repeat of the would-be
and did-be closure of the international pilot.
David Lynch says his goodbyes and leaves.
Laura Palmer's identical twin cousin says
her goodbyes, because Laura's mystery is about
to be killed off.
Mike TV feels the effects of the darkness
creeping back in and becomes physically ill
in the hotel that represents a TV set.
"I am a lonely soul," reads Harold's sucide
note — he was no longer able to feel the
love that resulted from the townspeople coming
together as they grieved for Laura.
Wholesome, mundanely silly Lucy is absent
from the sheriff's station front desk.
Audrey gets closure from her father.
The Mr. Tojamura Mystery is brought to a close.
Shelly quits her job and says goodbye to Miss
Twin Peaks.
Love is leaving the meeting place of love.
The childish audience is exerting full control
over the gas station owner.
Nadine!
Viewers were destroying the source of the
show's sweetness, hurting themselves in the
process, and they didn't even know or care.
I'm so clumsy, lately.
I can hardly believe it.
At the Roadhouse, the amateur detective regrets
trying to take Laura's secrets by force.
He's dead.
He didn't deserve that.
The light of revelation shines on our faces,
and the mystery dies for good.
You're going back to Missoula, Montana!
The killing blow is dealt when Maddy's head
is smashed into a picture of an elk, with
antlers that resemble a TV antenna.
TV brought us Laura's mystery, and TV is taking
it away.
The Giant apologizes that the film had to
end this way.
I'm so sorry.
Everyone cries without quite knowing why,
and the Red Curtain closes on Laura's mystery.
The credits don't roll on Laura's prom photo
— Laura is gone.
Instead, they roll on a picture of Cooper
pondering this sadness.
In the wake of Lynch's departure, and with
the core mystery snuffed out, Season 2 would
continue utterly directionless and divorced
from its original purpose.
And that's understandable — without knowing
Lynch's intentions, how could anyone who was
left continue things in a similar direction?
But that sure didn't stop anyone from trying...
Diane Keaton...
It got very stupid and goofy in the second
season; it got ridiculous.
I stopped watching that show because it got
so bad.
[Confused Josie noises]
What's more, a few of the more important clues
ended up getting last-minute, hamfisted, oversimplified
explanations.
"The Little Man danced because Leland danced!"
What did the Little Man do in my dream?
He danced.
After Laura's death, Leland danced compulsively.
No!
"The Little Man mentioned gum because Leland
likes gum!"
That's my most favorite gum in the world.
NO.
Clearly upset about what had become of his
show in his absence, and probably knowing
it was about to be cancelled, Lynch returned
for the Season 2 finale to correct the record
one final time.
As an artist, he couldn't have his work misunderstood.
He needed people to know how far away from
the central message things had gotten!
The first thing we see in the last episode
is Lucy's fear of the lights going out.
I kept thinking, "The lights are going out!
The lights are going out!"
Agent Cooper is back to his old FBI self instead
of wearing flannel shirts and trying to buy
property (Lynch has complained about that
detail specifically).
Pete Martel is very upset that his truck was
stolen by who he thinks was the Log Lady,
but who was actually Windom Earle.
The Log Lady stole my truck!
This is to symbolize that where the audience
thought the spirit of Twin Peaks was in control
of the show, it was actually the evil they
had wrought behind the wheel.
Windom Earle stole your truck.
Lynch uses the rest of the episode to demolish
everything that Season 2 had built.
He rights every wrong by wronging every right.
Ed can't be with Miss Twin Peaks, he's stuck
with Nadine.
Ben Horne tells the truth, and it tears Donna
and her family apart no matter how well-intentioned
he was.
Audrey, no longer the audience's love interest,
gets blown the H up, along with two old guys
squabbling over a puzzle box key for whatever
reason... and good riddance to all of 'em.
Then we're back in the diner repeating one
of the scenes from the first episode to signify
that we've come full-golden circle.
Lynch connects a few dots and answers a few
questions in the Red Room.
He's hijacked Annie's storyline and turned
it into a repeat of Cooper's failure of character
with Windom Earle and Caroline.
Annie and Caroline are basically the same
concept.
This reflects the failure of character in
his audience.
Cooper never leaves the Room — our souls
belong to the TV, and our shadow selves have
triumphed.
As usual, we end on a reminder of what this
show was supposed to be about.
There she is, looking out at us from the oil
that powered her investigation.
Now, don't get the wrong idea.
None of what Lynch did here was out of any
sense of malice toward the audience or the
studio or any other writers or directors.
It's just a reflection of the reality of the
situation, and Lynch has described it as 'saddening'
more than anything else.
It's a huge sadness.
A huge sadness, and an absurdity that that
ever happened.
And this goes for the third season, as well.
It's a common misinterpretation that Lynch
was being spiteful with Season 3, but again,
it's just the sad reality of Twin Peaks.
It's just the truth of it.
It was in the space between the cancellation
of the show and the release of the film that
Lynch gave the Kristine McKenna interview
I highlighted in my explainer.
This is the interview where he's very specific
about the reason that balance is so important
to him.
David Lynch is famous for never explaining
his art, but in this interview, he's particularly
loose with his philosophy, much more than
any other interview I've come across, and
I think it's because it was right in the midst
of the audience's rejection of his message,
so he may have been feeling a little more
misunderstood than usual and trying to make
sure that at least somebody got the right
idea.
"Everyone thought I was wasting their time
and I didn't know what I was doing, they missed
the point, so I guess I'll have to tell somebody
the point.
Yes, and the reason for that is..."
David Lynch directly explaining his reasoning,
just this once and then never again.
The film was released in this same period
of misunderstanding and rejection, so like
the interview, Fire Walk with Me is another
outlet for unexpressed meaning.
Yes, the film was a chance to fight back against
the medium that had rejected his message and
the studio that had constrained it.
But more importantly, it was a chance to take
back control over his art.
The film is a prequel because he was trying
to stress the importance of Laura Palmer to
his message, BUT ALSO because it was a time
period in the Twin Peaks universe before the
pilot episode, before others had hijacked
the plot.
The Little Man's true identity as Mike's Arm,
the revelation that Bob serves The Arm, Mike's
participation in the murder of Laura Palmer,
a more direct demonstration of Cooper's (and
the FBI in general's) intuition connection
with the audience, more explicit instructions
on how to decode the symbolism, a better look
behind the scenes of the Lodge, a fuller understanding
of the white horse, the mechanics of how TV
dreaming physically works, and an emotional
exposition of the purpose of Laura's death.
All of this was needed for clarification and
was necessary for understanding, but was unexplored
as of the Season 2 finale.
Thus, by the end of the film, the total artistic
work of Twin Peaks is completed, and we have
all the clues we need to solve the mystery.
... Not that anyone at the time would have
realized that, because nobody saw it, and
the people that did hated it.
I can't imagine the heartbreak Lynch must
have felt at this extended and repeated rejection
of his message and art.
Nobody got it when the show was on, and nobody
was going to get the answers the film was
giving, despite all he had done to explain
himself without actually explaining himself.
Crap.
Now what?
Luckily, a year after the film flopped, the
first two seasons were rerun on the Bravo
network, and this gave Lynch one final chance.
If previous viewers weren't receptive to his
message, perhaps he could control the way
future viewers would see the show.
To accompany the reruns, Lynch was able to
shoot an introduction for each separate episode,
hosted by the one character he knew nobody
would ignore:
the CEO of Twin Peaks memes herself, Margaret
Lanterman.
These introductions were written to put the
viewer in the right headspace for optimal
enjoyment of a David Lynch mystery.
The Log Lady posed questions about deep concepts,
trying to keep people from focusing on surface-level
quirkiness...
In reality, she's just telling us the answers
point blank.
I think he was sick of misunderstandings and
ready to be done with it.
It's all about Laura Palmer:
It is a story of many, but it begins with
one.
Laura is the one.
You're not supposed to find out who killed
her because mystery is better than closure:
As a wise person said with a smile, the answer
is within the question.
There is a depression after an answer is given.
It was almost fun not knowing.
Ongoing mysteries unearth the depth of emotion
possible in a TV show:
How long it takes to grow a tree!
Will the sadness that makes me cry my heart
out, will it ever end?
A lot of things are clues, and they all have
explanations:
Behind all things are reasons.
Reasons can even explain the absurd.
Sometimes it is not anger, really — it may
appear as such, but could it be a clue?
What really is creamed corn?
Is it a symbol for something else?
The clues, although surrounding us, are somehow
mistaken for something else.
The whole point is to bring us closer to balance:
Balance is the key.
Balance is the key to many things.
I love pie with coffee.
But in between these exists a firm, slightly
crusted pitch with such a flavor.
Balance is found in the Unified Field:
Is there a bigger being walking with all the
stars within?
Lack of balance on TV creates a feedback loop
of evil shows that create a desire for more
evil shows:
A circle of pain, a circle of suffering.
Are our appetites, our desires undermining
us?
The shallowness of TV murder mysteries is
damaging our souls, our bodies and even our
society:
Sometimes when we see the eyes, eyes that...
that have no soul, then we know a darkness.
Negative emotions can cause severe problems
in our environment and to the health of our
body.
The meta is literal, and she knows she's a
TV character:
I play my part on life's stage.
Are we being introduced against our will?
Can you see through a wall?
Ideas from the Unified Field created this
television dream:
All that we see in this world is based on
someone's ideas.
Some ideas arrive in the form of a dream.
Dale Cooper represents the detectives in the
audience:
In a dream, are all the characters really
you?
Do we have the time to learn the reasons behind
human beings' varied behavior?
Some take the time.
Are they called detectives?
And then, after the killer's reveal, she starts
to talk about how the show became an imposter
wearing Lynch's dearly departed Twin Peaks
as a mask:
A death mask is almost an intrusion on a beautiful
memory.
And yet, who could throw away the casting
of a loved one?
Maybe she even comments on how Josie ending
up in the furniture is a nonsensical attempt
to keep things "Lynchian" in his absence:
Can a victim of power end, in any way, connected
to a drawer pull?
How can this be?
And then, she compares the show to her dead
dog:
I had a dog.
The dog was large.
I have a memory of this dog.
The memory is all that I have left of my dog.
He was black and white.
The show, the massive success of Twin Peaks,
was gone, the memory of it was all that was
left, and it was about balance — it was
black and white.
What does the Log Lady say killed her dog?
The answer actually explains a few more things
that I didn't cover in my explainer.
But before we get to those, we need to talk
about electricity again.
Let's say you have a TV connected to a wall
socket.
Electricity will travel from the power plant
into the TV through what's called the "hot"
wire.
The electricity will not flow unless the circuit
is completed through your TV and back out
to the plant through the "neutral" wire.
Fire comes from the source through the hot
wire, goes through your TV and returns to
the source through neutral.
The route that electricity takes from an electronic
device back to the power source is called
the "return path", which is commonly referred
to in engineering jargon as... "ground."
Electrical "ground" gets its name from the
days of telegraphs, when the actual ground,
the Earth, was used as the ground in the circuit,
and from the fact that electrical systems
nowadays are connected to the ground to protect
from lightning strikes and electrical wiring
failures, because the Earth is so large and
so "neutral" in electrical charge that it's
able to absorb a lot of current.
This is called "grounding" or "earthing".
Symbolically, ideas come from the Unified
Field and power Twin Peaks, which should then
ground us and give us a return path to the
Unified Field, the neutral source of the ideas,
in learning about balance.
And now, back to the dog.
What killed it?
The dog ate so much earth it died.
Its body went back to the Earth.
And what killed the show?
It ran on too long for its audience and they
demanded closure.
The electricity in the TV circuit was grounded
for too long!
"The dog ate so much earth, it died."
We got it cancelled and sent it back to non-existence.
"It's body went back to the [neutral] Earth."
Was that just pressure from...?
Pressure!
But you know, the pressure, really, if you
translate that pressure, is a need to know!
And that need to know is what draws, you know,
you in.
Anyway...
This goes even further!
Remember all those dirt mounds that Mike and
Bob create?
I said in the explainer that they were a symbol
of the Little Man because of the legends about
Spirit Mound, South Dakota, and that's still
true, but not completely...
The dirt mounds are ground!
They mark a return path to neutral!
Laura Palmer's murder trophy on one, the Owl
Ring on another...
Laura's mystery and the Owl Ring are grounded
paths we can use to return to the balanced
Unified Field.
Bob is upset about the dirt under Laura's
spirit fingernail because it means she's grounded,
both with the Unified Field and in the electrical
circuit of television.
Bob makes her wash her hands to cause her
pain, pushing her toward negativity to upset
the balance, and hopefully removing the ground,
removing her connection to neutral, thus removing
her from our TV sets, like closure did, and
depriving us of our grounded connection to
neutrality.
Remember the part in Season 3 where the boys
from the police department go out to Jack
Rabbit's Palace looking for the entrance to
the Unified Field?
Before leaving Jack Rabbit's Palace, put some
soil from that area in your pocket.
Before leaving Jack Rabbit's Palace, before
leaving the TV world to go to the Unified
Field, they put soil in their pockets.
They have to connect themselves to "ground".
They have to ground themselves to the return
path to the Unified Field, and also stay "grounded"
in the TV, and this creates for them a return
path back to the TV world!
Now, let's return to this idea of the black
and white dog representing the TV show.
You know this drawing of a drawing David Lynch
is drawing in Season 3?
It's this weird little hybrid deer-dog creature
with a hand reaching out to it.
I would like to suggest that this is the Log
Lady's dog.
It's black and white — it's white with black
spots, like a dalmatian.
Dalmatians are associated with firemen.
Twin Peaks was trying to fight the fire until
we killed the dog.
This dog has electric antlers, kind of like
antennae, and the creature looks a little
bit menacing.
The hand appears to be trying to pet this
menacing dog.
After Lynch is finished drawing it, he answers
the door and sees Laura Palmer crying in the
hallway.
This could be a metaphor for letting sleeping
dogs lie.
The Return brings the show, now possessed
by evil, back to the airwaves like Frankenstein's
monster.
Petting this particular dog and bringing it
back to life with electricity is dangerous
and may hurt Laura's spirit.
Thank you, Margaret Lanterman, for providing
so many direct answers, even though I'm sure
it killed David Lynch to write them.
The Log Lady intros were the last time Lynch
was able to communicate the untainted message
behind his art.
Even though he fought hard to maintain total
control of the production of Season 3, what
he was making wasn't really Twin Peaks, as
the audience's desire for evil had hijacked
the vehicle.
The irony of The Return was that he was in
complete creative control of something that
wasn't completely his anymore... and yet he
was still able to communicate his message
from the opposite perspective.
With our new understanding of electricity
requiring a return path, we can see that Twin
Peaks began from nothing, non-existent ideas
in the neutral Unified Field.
When it started, it moved us toward the positive,
but partway through we got too much of a good
thing, we reversed the show's trajectory,
and sent it back to neutrality, back to nothing
with Season 2's cancellation.
This was only the positive side of an electrical
cycle, and was therefore unbalanced.
Electricity won't flow from the positive or
negative side of a power source unless it
has an opposite to return to.
So for Season 3, we pulled it back out of
neutrality, back out of the Unified Field,
and allowed it to continue its swing into
negativity and show us how unlike the original
show it was — this was the darkness we needed
to see in order to appreciate the light of
the first two seasons.
As we were exposed to this message and came
to appreciate Dougie's story, we swung back
in the other direction until the electrical
cycle was complete at the time of completion,
when the show was erased for a second time
and returned to non-existent neutral.
"Twin Peaks: The Return!"
We've now seen the positive and the negative,
hopefully we are more balanced because of
it, Lynch has course-corrected the audience
once again and his artistic message from the
beginning is complete.
... So then, why does the ending seem so awful?
Well, this is a good opportunity to talk about
the Season 3 finale again, because there's
still a little bit of confusion about it,
and I think that's because people are getting
caught up in the particulars of the series
timeline and looking at it in too much of
a science fiction way.
The internet loves a timeline...
Before that, let me answer another relevant
question that keeps popping up.
What's going on with Ed's reflection in the
window when he's sitting in the gas station
eating soup?
It changes suddenly and doesn't match his
movements!
Is this evidence of a disturbance in the timeline?
Yes, but not the timeline you're thinking
of.
It's a disturbance in the editing timeline.
Before Ed's reflection changes, if you watch
this first car that goes by, you can see that
it disappears for a bit behind the door frame,
and the timing of its reappearance doesn't
quite match up.
The car in the main window is either a different
car from the one that passes the door, or
it's a different shot of the same car that's
being edited in for some reason.
When Ed's reflection change happens, it coincides
with the appearance of a second car.
In video editing, if you want to change what's
happening outside of a window in a shot, you
can use what's called a "mask" to cut the
window out and insert different footage behind
the hole that's created.
Masks can be moved around while your footage
is playing.
You can actually see such a mask sweeping
across Ed's window at the same speed as this
other car, and distortions across this whole
section of the window to match, not just over
Ed.
The mask is moving with the car.
Later, while the credits are rolling, we can
see four cars go by the window, but only two
make it past the door frame, while the other
two disappear.
So, those two are being added in the main
window later, just like that first one.
All of this tells me that this has nothing
to do with timeline shifts and everything
to do with the cars passing outside the window.
Maybe Lynch wanted to change the number of
cars that went by, maybe the timing of the
cars, maybe the speed, maybe the types of
cars, maybe there was a particular model of
car they weren't allowed to show.
But whatever it was, it's 1000% about the
cars passing by, and I'm 1000% sure they were
hoping you wouldn't notice Ed's position changing,
because the final shot is dark enough that
you wouldn't notice and probably didn't.
Okay?
Cool.
Let's get back to the timeline.
From the movie to the beginning of Season
1 to the end of Season 2, even though characters
are moving in and out of the Red Room and
sending messages back and forward through
time, things happen sequentially and are very
easy to understand.
It's when we get to Season 3 that things start
to get confusing.
It's gonna be a complete mess, so I'll do
my best.
Everything from the beginning of Fire Walk
with Me to Episode 2 of Season 3 is the real,
original Twin Peaks.
As of the beginning of The Return, the mystery
is still alive, and it begins with us still
trapped in the Red Room not realizing the
show is dead.
Mike asks us a rhetorical question: "Is it
future, or is it past?"
Mike isn't talking about the in-universe timeline
so much as he's talking about the difference
between 90's Twin Peaks and 2017 Twin Peaks.
The answer is that it's neither.
Twin Peaks died in the 90's, so this can't
be Twin Peaks' future.
Laura, representing what little of the original
show is left, gives us our last chance to
leave before we get closure.
If we turn the show off now, we have successfully
left the original show alone with the mystery
intact and everything is as it was.
If we keep watching, we're choosing to stay
married to the TV, so Cooper stays in the
Red Room to watch the show as it exists without
Laura, who gets sucked out as we look the
other way to enjoy Season 3.
BZZZT.
The scene appears to start over.
Mike asks his rhetorical question again, but
this time there's no Laura.
This is to illustrate that we have now left
what was left of the original show and begun
the tulpa show, the Laura-less, imitation
Twin Peaks we created from our rotten egg
minds.
We stay in the Red Room, married to TV, while
we dream the fake Twin Peaks that is Season
3.
The evidence for that is the shot of Cooper
still in the Red Room superimposed on the
climax.
He's still in there the whole season.
The confusing part of that is that it's all
still really happening...
In terms of the sequential recording and editing
and watching of the show, it's part of the
experience, and a dream within a dream is
still part of the dream...
Even though we're making it all up, the consequences
of it are real, and that makes it real.
I'll repeat that: events that happen after
Laura is sucked out aren't the real Twin Peaks,
but they appear in the TV show and their consequences
are real, and therefore the events are real.
The "timeline" continues through the dream
within a dream.
That's weird, but it's the only way I can
explain it.
At the beginning of the tulpa dream, we are
told the reason this season is happening:
if we want to stop being married to the TV,
evil Mr. C will have to come 'back in'.
What does that mean?
It means we have to face the darkness we created
head on.
We need to see it within ourselves and acknowledge
it instead of trying to ignore it so that
we can see the source of our problems, bring
the darkness under control, and refocus it
in the name of good, like the FBI uses violence
in the name of good.
This is an idea from Jungian psychology called
"integration of the shadow", and that's certainly
what Mark Frost was going for in the show's
writing.
From Lynch's point of view, it means we need
to let the darkness of Twin Peaks come back
into our TVs through this tulpa Twin Peaks
so that we can see it for what it is and compare
it to the light of the original, real show,
and this will return us to balance.
Both of these are pretty much the same thing.
So, to integrate our shadow, we must watch
our dream play out until we get closure.
To prove that this is our darkness coming
back into ourselves, the Cooper face superimposed
on our closure scene is from the scene where
Cooper is being told he must integrate his
shadow.
But, a return to balance is a return to the
Unified Field, to non-existence.
To zero.
The negative closure of Season 3 cancels out
the positive mystery of Seasons 1 and 2.
To illustrate this return to non-existence,
Laura's mystery is brought to the present
for closure, and this erases her past, just
as an answer erases a mystery.
So now, Laura's mystery never happened and
the closure never happened.
As of the end of Episode 17, 90s Twin Peaks
and Season 3 never happened.
Both are returned to non-existence in the
Unified Field — Twin Peaks: The Return.
So, where does that leave us?
BZZZT.
Our dream of closure is over and we go back
to the original Cooper from the real show
who was just sitting in the Red Room the whole
time.
Except now, he must face the real consequences
of dreaming Season 3 and wiping out the past.
All that's left is the present, and the show's
timeline up to this point remains a memory.
None of it exists anymore except in our memories.
A copy of the audience is left permanently
in the story of Season 3.
Remember, Cooper has to be in a dream to represent
us or else it's not part of the show.
We remember watching Season 3, so the self
that watched and enjoyed it stays there in
our memories with the rest of the show.
But, that was a version of us that was unbalanced.
Now, we've seen the darkness we needed to
see in order to recognize light, and now we
are balanced enough to leave the show and
the TV.
We're balanced enough to stop watching.
So now, Cooper gets to leave the Red Room
under his own power.
This is a balanced Cooper to reflect the newly
balanced audience.
That should be the end...
But closure does not satisfy us, mystery does,
and Lynch knows that we still haven't learned
that lesson!
"How can Twin Peaks — how can Laura — just
be gone?
That's not a good ending!
I want closure!"
So what do we do?
We do what we have always done, time and time
again: we go back to the television woods,
we get that memory of the Twin Peaks we know
and love, we pull it out of the past and bring
it to the power lines to put it back on the
air in the present to get the good closure.
We're trying to make the show exist in a time
where it no longer exists.
Lynch places Twin Peaks memes all over this
Twin Peaks-less world knowing that we will
try to make sense of them, we will try to
rationalize this into being Twin Peaks.
This is not Laura Palmer, but we don't care.
We grab the memory of Laura Palmer and drag
it back to the TV.
"Twin Peaks, get back in the TV and give us
the closure, please!"
And we don't get that it's not possible, and
we try to make sense of it with a timeline.
What year is this?
And that's where Season 3 actually ends.
It was already over, but this part of it that's
not really Twin Peaks is still part of the
show, which is a little paradoxical but you
just have to go with it.
It's like the fake dream Cooper was dreaming
— it wasn't really Twin Peaks, but the fact
that it takes place in Season 3 and that the
consequences are real makes it all real.
So, because the not-Twin Peaks thing of that
last episode is now realized, the memory of
Laura Palmer that isn't Laura Palmer feels
the real effects of our closure and lets out
a final scream of agony as the show dies completely
for the fifth or sixth time, depending on
how you're counting.
How many times does this thing have to die
of completion?
Evidently, it hasn't died enough yet, because
what are people doing now?
Proving Lynch's point once again!
"The Season 3 ending wasn't closure enough.
Give us Season 4, David!
We want closure, Daviiid!
But not this crappy downer closure, we want
the good kind!
Season 4 please, David!"
And we would consume that, and it wouldn't
satisfy, and we would just keep consuming.
Just keep consuming, no satisfaction, we consume,
and we are not satisfied.
And that's the answer to the last question
I want to address:
"Will there be a Season 4?"
No Laura's mystery, no Twin Peaks.
Lynch could not have proven that point any
further.
So, I don't think there will or can be a Season
4...
But as always, I would love to be proven wrong.
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