I just saw this movie for the first time and I know I’m asking for punishment, but…I’m going to ask anyway.
Exactly what was going on with Yellow Suit man(Gordon) in the apartment? Was he alive? dead? And what was he doing with Don(I believe that’s who it was)
The ending with the robins just seemed a little Surrel. Was there something I missed that puts the entire movie in an entirely different light?
Some people think the grandmother is eating a bug, like the robin.
Some people don’t “think” so, that’s what happens. While the grandmother is commenting on how she could never eat a bug (after seeing the robin eating one) there is, in fact, a bug on the piece of food she’s eating. Bugs, in fact, feature throughout the entire movie: there is, for instance, a fly on Isabella Rosselini’s thigh when she’s breaking down in her appartment, which was definitely not there by accident.
I don’t know if you’ve missed it (it was a pretty memorable scene, but then again, they all are, so…) but there’s a scene somewhere in the middle when Kyle McLachlan and Laura Dern are having a conversation in the car: Dern has this amazingly naive monologue which ends with the sentence: “There’s trouble till the robins come”. The robins are possibly Lynch’s idea of an “upbeat” ending, ironically juxtaposed with the “bug” theme that was prevalent in the entire film. As usual with Lynch, though, the question “what does it mean?” is a pretty futile one, and there are bound to be as many interpretations as there were people viewing it.
No, I didn’t miss it I just forgot about it. 
I have looked at the bug with the grandmother scene a few times and could never determine exactly what it is. It could be bug, but I can’t tell.
This is from memory so forgive me if I get the details a bit off. Gordon was IIRC Jeffrey’s girlfriend’s father’s partner (is that enough possessives in one sentence?) and was also mixed up with Frank in the drug ring. Presumably Frank shot him at the same time he shot Don (which all happened “off stage”). Gordon was either dead or in some sort of Sunny Von Bulow vegetative state.
There are two things to keep in mind when watching Blue Velvet:
It’s a comedy.
None of it really happens. It’s an adolescent-male sexual fantasy. Clue: near the beginning, the camera goes into an ear; near the end, it comes out of one. It all happens in Kyle McLachlan’s head.
For some reason, the first time I watched it I got the impression that Dorothy was the one who killed (or nearly killed) Gordon by hitting him over the head with the TV; you can see the shattered TV on the floor, and his head wound seemed consistent with a severe blow to the head rather than a gunshot wound. I figured she killed him after he killed her husband, then she escaped and ended up in front of Jeffrey’s house. I never understood what, if anything, Frank had to do with that part, or why the hell he wore the “well-dressed man disguise” in the first place.
And before you laugh at my wild and possibly idiotic interpretation, keep in mind that David Lynch obviously didn’t know what happened either! One of the disappointing things about the movie, to me, was the lack of a clear resolution to the events of the story. In most Lynch movies you would never expect this anyway, because the story isn’t the point in the first place. But Blue Velvet is almost (gasp!) conventional in its plot progression up until the end, and leads you to expect at least some explanation. Keeping things intentionally vague can work if the characters themselves are just as much in the dark as the viewer, but that wasn’t the case here; obviously something happened to resolve it all, because Jeffrey and the others appear to understand it – but the audience is left scratching their heads.
Or at least I was. 