I am hardly the most intelligent viewer and things fly over my head all the time, but my wife and I basically saw it this way:
**Bob, the name of the evil force active in Twin Peaks, was released from his bonds by the nuclear explosion in 1947. The Giant and the heavy lady in black-and-white released a golden orb, containing the spirit of what would be Laura Palmer, into the Earth. Bob cracked out of a shell as a half-insect and half-reptile in 1956.
Some kind of other agents-of-evil spread out and one put everyone to sleep via the radio. Bob climbed into the teenage girls mouth, his first victim and possessed person.**
The egg definitely came from the same puking figure as the BOB face in the explosion. In fact, there were a LOT of them. Laura Palmer’s face was in the big amber marble. So the bug is evil, and looks to be one of many. That part was in the middle of the explosion sequence, so I can see why people might have missed it.
Not sure what to think yet. It was beautiful, though. It’s getting clearer and clearer to me that Lynch is moving more and more towards approaching film as sound design. I very much appreciate him taking his time, not rushing things - even if I end up watching noise for fifteen minutes.
Could the girl that deep-throated the bug creature be Leland’s mother? So later, her baby could be born with the essence of BOB. His being born in 1956ish would make him around 35 when TP came out, a little young to have a girl in high school but still plausible.
Now is BOB still with evil Cooper? Or did the woodsmen keep him alive so that BOB could still use him as his host? And what affect does this have on Dougie Cooper?
Now the significance of Laura appears to be elevated. No longer just a drug using promiscuous teen, she seems to be an entity of goodness to counteract the evil essence of BOB. The giant’s female companion seemed pleased to release her orb into the earth.
Who is the giant? And that woman? Are they deities? The giant seems bound by rules (in the original TP, he could tell Cooper only what was “permitted”). Or are the limitations based on the human’s ability to receive them?
I used to think the original TP was about a 7 on a scale of 1-10 for surrealism, FWWM was probably about 10, this seems to be totally off the charts. It was a bit tedious, just as the sweeping scene in an early part, but I’ll happily ride Lynch’s magic carpet wherever he takes me.
The BOB face was in the puke stream with the eggs, but wasn’t in an egg itself. Does that mean each egg is another BOB-like creature who was created in the Trinity test? Are all the blackface hobos Bob’s brothers? Or are they more like his minions?
The blackface hobos saved evil Coop, and one was creeping around the Principal’s jail and nearby morgue in current times, in addition to the 1956 blackface hobos who harassed drivers and took over the radio station. Did the hobos also hatch from the eggs, or are they just the Black Lodge’s time police?
Also, was the black and white room with the giant and sequined lady the White Lodge? Do the Lodges predate the Trinity test, or were they (or one of them) created by it, along with Bob?
In the bomb video, there are streaks of smoke like incoming missiles, to the right of the main explosion. Any idea what that might be? I assume that it’s an artifact of the footage that Lynch used, rather than something which he added.
You’ll see those in all (most?) atomic bomb tests. As DPRK said they’re smoke trails from rockets set off right before the a-bomb was set off. They use them to make the shock wave easier to see.
Here’s a random video with the same thing, but if you’ll find them in most a-bomb tests (and maybe even other bomb tests).
I think this is a key point: the explosion, going on and on and on as it did, would have had a very different effect on audiences in a movie theater with surround-sound, than it did on little televisions in little rooms in which people could pick up a magazine to leaf through when boredom set in.
I’m a member of the “Lynch is a great artist” camp myself, but this was self-indulgent of him (as was the endless song by Nine Inch Nails). The lengthy scenes containing little content were, no doubt, intended to Evoke Mood and thereby emotion, but I do think it’s a miscalculation to apply the story-telling logic that works in movie theaters to the small screen.
And I feel this even bearing in mind the very plausible theory mentioned by Small Hen (that Lynch is concerned with the phenomenon of audience frustration and seeks to explore it), as well as the insightful remark from Plumpudding about Lynch moving toward approaching film as sound design.
Even given these things, for many, the ordeal Lynch put us through in Episode 8 is probably something we’ll forgive in the face of his great achievement with TP: The Return, rather than something we’ll come to esteem.
I will say that the woman-thing spitting the floating column of egg-laying jello was a really good effect. The homeless men being switched around in front of the gas station was also pretty decent. Otherwise, I’ve never been a huge fan of the whole 2001: A Space Odyssey screen rubbish technique of directorial show-off. Even in 2001, I felt that it detracted from what was going on, rather than adding anything to it.
Still, I liked it better than The Nine Inch Nails song. Fortunately, I had the magic of the Fast Forward Button.
This series, to me, doesn’t feel like Twin Peaks. It’s a different show with some cast members in common. If the vast majority of the action doesn’t happen in or around Twin Peaks, that’s bad. Another thing that really bothers me is that the Good Cooper is still a zombie. I understand the reason for this within the plot of the show. But, Twin Peaks without Cooper just isn’t Twin Peaks.
Cooper As A Zombie was good for a few laughs at the start, but, the humor is long gone now. It’s just been done to death.
The musical elements of the first series were so strong that I had high hopes for this series. But, again, I am underwhelmed. It seems like an imitation, a tribute, rather than a continuation of a strong vision.
There is SO much padding that I wonder if they just didn’t have any ideas. Every episode has had pacing problems. Too many characters, too little plot spread among them, too much padding.
But, I’m still going to watch as many episodes as they make.
