Chapter 7: Second Hour "The Stars Turn And A Time Presents Itself"
007 - A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
Acronyms & Common Terms
TP = Twin Peaks (1989-1991)
TPTR = Twin Peaks The Return (2017)
FWWM = Fire Walk With Me (1992)
RRL = The Red Room Dream Layer
TVL = The Version Layer
MPL = Missing Page Layer
TFM = The Fireman’s Mansion
Twin Peaks = The entire franchise
INTRO2
Part 2: Scene 1
(0:00–0:01:37) Local (1:00:35-1:02:12) Global Time
1m37s
PN: Intro Credits
E4
Part 2: Scene 2: The Version Layer: Buckhorn, SD
(0:01:37--0:06:15) Local (1:02:12--1:06:50) Global Time
4m38s
PN: Blue Rose Investigation
SN: Black Lodge Plan
The scene starts with Bill Hastings in jail. His wife Phyllis comes in, and they stare each other down as he confesses that he had a dream that he was in Ruth Davenport’s apartment. Phyllis tells Bill he was there, but it wasn’t a dream. She’s known about his affair all along. Bill considers this and snaps to say he knew about her affairs also with George, his friend and lawyer, and someone else. Phyllis tells Bill he’s going to spend his life in prison. When she says goodbye to Bill, she leaves, revealing that he understands he’s alone now. This revelation breaks him. Bill repeatedly repeats his breakdown, “Oh, my God…”.
Cut to the lobby of the Police Station, where Phyllis tells her lover (and Bill’s lawyer), George, that Bill knows they have been having an affair and not to walk her out; she’ll see him later at her house. George seems puzzled, and his smirk possibly reveals joy. Detective Macklay confirms that Bill Hastings is not holding up well, and they agree that Phyllis has had a hard day.
Cut back to Bill Hastings worrying about his hair in the jail cell. He seems lost in the depths of a spreading madness and misery. The camera pans across cells, and we see a Woodsman looking catatonic, almost ecstatic, his skin like black oil. There is the faintest little percussion drum roll, and the Woodsman’s body disappears after his face floats upwards to the right of the screen. It looks as if he’s muttering something before he evaporates.
Cut to the Hastings’ house, where Mr. C is waiting in the dark for Phyllis to return. She greets him with a warm and flirtatious recognition, which rapidly transitions to fear when he tells her she behaves precisely like human nature dictates. Mr. C pulls a gun, shows it to Phyllis, and tells her it’s George’s gun. He shoots her, and she curiously splits when she’s shot.
Poor Bill Hastings is one of the most tortured characters in The Return. In this scene, we witness a man broken down to dust. All that remains at the end of this scene is the oppressive weight of horror and failure. Hastings realizes he lacks power, friends, options, or defense. Bill Hastings has confirmed that this world contains monsters that will eat everything and everyone. And his wife just told him to fuck off and die. There is profound misery dealt to most of these characters in Cooper’s dream, but poor Bill Hastings may have it the worst of them all.
We will discover that the Woodsmen are BOB’s loyal, dark henchmen. They corrupt characters in the dream, which we will witness first in Part 8. The Woodsmen are drawn towards suffering in this corrupted dreamscape. The Woodsmen consume suffering when near characters in great pain here, like poor Bill Hastings in this scene. The Woodsmen are unlike any other nefarious agency in Twin Peaks, and we have to give these oily fellows both our fear and respect.
Cooper has lost his rational agency within the dream, which is the ability to understand that this is a dream and that it will have an exit with an ending. BOB understands this. Mr. C understands this. They are desperately searching for a way to exit this dream while assuming a radical overthrow of the natural order of Dale Cooper’s dreaming mind. Suffering is the rocket fuel they need to break the gravity barrier of all these dream layers. On the other hand, Cooper will need a different fuel to break out of this dream. He will have to play a game named “Call For Help” and hope someone or something will come to his aid.
C3
Part 2: Scene 3: The Version Layer: Las Vegas, Nevada | Twin Peaks, WA
(0:06:15--0:12:06) Local (1:06:50--1:12:41) Global Time
5m51s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
SN: Blue Rose Investigation
We see a high-rise office building at night. Inside, a man named Mr. Todd sits at a desk among other desks. He calls a young man named Roger over, hands him a stack of money, and says, “Tell her she has the job.” Roger asks Mr. Todd why “He” makes him do these things. Mr. Todd responds, “Roger, you better hope you never get involved with someone like him. Never have someone like him in your life.” Mr. Todd is visibly disturbed as Roger leaves the office.
Cut to a railroad crossing, and a train is coming. The gates come down. The train passes. Cut to the inside of a motor lodge diner. Mr. C, Ray, Darya, and Jack are eating. Ray teases Jack about the amount of food he’s eaten. Ray says that Darya told him Mr. C was worried about tomorrow. Mr. C looks at Darya and grows annoyed at thinking he would be worried about anything. Mr. C tells Ray that he doesn’t need anything, that he WANTS, and he wants a set of coordinates to which Bill Hastings’s secretary has access. Ray is smarmy and coy in his confirmation that he will get those coordinates for Mr. C.
The “He,” referred to here by Mr. Todd, is Mr. C, who has contracted with Todd to do terrible things in this dream. We can assume these things helped Mr. C amass power and gerrymander influence over the character behavior unfolding in this narrative world. These measures are the first three of the ten deadly trials that were placed to destroy Cooper. The money Mr. Todd just handed Roger will pay assassins to murder a man in an abandoned Las Vegas tract home.
During this diner scene, Mr. C reveals a weakness, like all good villains, is rooted in deep hubris and a malevolent worldview. Our shadow selves are not nice. They are capable of great cruelty and malice. But when they are egged on and encouraged to allow the corruption of self-perceptions, that’s how monsters are born. Despite the threat of his domination in its affairs, Mr. C does not have complete authoritarian control here.
Uncorrupted characters and elements of Cooper’s dream remain pure—Gordon Cole, Major Briggs, Hawk, Lucy, Andy, Ed, Norma, etc. There are also sacred elements like coffee and cherry pie. Each of these memories contains strong positive emotional attachments that Mr. C and BOB cannot drain warm emotions away from nor change the sentimental reference of their meanings.
Yet other memories have been manipulated and damaged in this dream: Bobby, Shelley, Sheriff Harry Truman, Audrey Horne, and Diane. These characters suffer here, and some of them break. But the uncorrupted memories magnify Cooper’s golden seed of morality and bleed out into the dream to change the behavior of even the most corrupted characters. Understanding the metaphysical relationship between Dale Cooper and the things and people he loves is critical to gaining the most profound meaning possible from repeated viewings of The Return.
So what are these coordinates, and what do they represent? I believe they are the exit to this dream, and I have learned not to demand much more from the metaphor. As shown in the analysis of the sound playing from The Fireman’s phonograph, the town of Twin Peaks is the location of these coordinates. Can we assume they take the sojourner to the Palmer House, where another character's memory has been corrupted into a monster that lives inside a sad and lonely old lady who lost everything for many reasons, each painful?
Because some aspects of this dream operate beyond his capacity to corrupt, Mr. C (aligned with BOB) must use Ray’s charms to get the coordinates from Betty (Bill Hastings’s secretary). Unfortunately, we later learn that Betty’s car gets blown up (we assume after Ray has extracted the coordinates from her). At this point in the narrative, we don’t understand why Bill Hastings is involved with these coordinates or their ultimate purpose. But if Mr. C. wants them, we can assume that he will not employ these coordinates for kindness but rather towards the event horizon of his inexhaustible malevolence towards self and society.
F3
Part 2: Scene 4: The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:12:06-0:15:09) Local (1:12:41-1:15:44) Global Time
3m3s
PN: Hawk’s Investigation
SN: Mystery | Something Is Wrong In Twin Peaks
The treetops creak, and the wind blows strong. We follow a flashlight beam as it ambles through dark woods. We see Margaret Lanterman in her cabin with her Log, on the phone again, calling Hawk. Hawk answers from his cell phone, and we understand he is the one ambling through the dark. He seems to have an intensity of purpose, looking for anything. Margaret asks him where he’s walking tonight, and Hawk responds that he is on the same page with her Log. She tells him, “The stars turn and the time presents itself. Hawk, watch carefully.” He says he will. Margaret says, “I’m too weak to go with you. But stop by. I have coffee and pie for you.” Hawk says it will need to be after, that he’s almost there now. Margaret’s last words of this call are, “Please, let me know what happens.” Hawk tells her, “Good night, Margaret,” as he approaches Glastonbury Grove. Energy sounds whistle while the music turns moody and dark.
We can assume Hawk is following Margaret’s direction that something is wrong in Twin Peaks, and it has to do with Agent Cooper’s disappearance. Hawk is now scouring through Cooper’s final days in Twin Peaks. He likely understands that this area of the woods was the site of some metaphysical battle. He will come to learn that Cooper lost that battle. This insight is the purpose of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department’s investigation into this dream.
The Log, which has always been an agent of supernatural wisdom in Twin Peaks, now brings together a coalition of the willing and the good inside Dale Cooper’s dream. The Log spoke to Margaret. Margaret listens to the Log and conveys its instructions to Hawk, who initiates the new investigation on Cooper, which will reveal (to the dreamer) that he did not come out of Glastonbury Grove the same person HE went into that strange place. Because this is Cooper’s dream, Hawk, like all other characters here, is a manifestation projected through Cooper’s memory. Through these images of Cooper’s relationships, he applies his innate analytical skills by observing his mind in kinetic motion. This is as much meditation as a dream. This passive observation of the natural motions of the mind is also the core of thriving personal meditation practice, and its implications should not go lost on the viewer and reader.
A3
Part 2: Scene 5: Red Room Layer
(0:15:09-0:25:17) Local (1:15:44-1:25:52) Global Time
10m8s
PN: White Lodge Plan
SN: Mystery
We are in the Red Room, and the familiar chairs are here with the white statue looking left, one arm covering the right breast and the other the genitals. No one sits in the chairs. There is an astrolabe on the table. Cooper is sitting in one of the chairs with his black suit and a circle pin on his lapel. Phillip Gerard sits next to him and asks, “Is it future or is it past?” Cooper doesn’t answer. Phillip says, “Someone is here…” and then disappears suddenly. Laura Palmer walks into the room, making a strange backward energy sound with every step. She sits in the chair next to Phillip. Laura is wearing a black dress with an ornate brooch. She says and then blinks strangely, “Hello Agent Cooper. You can go out now.” Cooper doesn’t respond. She asks, “Do you recognize me?” Cooper asks her, “Are you Laura Palmer?” She says, “I feel like I know her…but sometimes my arms bend back.” Cooper asks, “Who are you?” She says, “I am Laura Palmer.” Cooper says, “But Laura Palmer is dead.” She says, “I am dead...yet I live.” Laura then puts her hand up and opens her face to reveal a strobing white light beneath the skin. Cooper reacts as if a secret was revealed. He asks, “When can I go?” Laura rises, touches the side of her face, walks to Agent Cooper, bends down, kisses him full on the lips, and then smiles. She whispers something in his ear. He groans softly. She stands back, looks up, and suffers a kind of seizure. Cooper is looking up in shock as well. The Red Room curtains are agitating upwards. Laura screams and rises upwards, flying up and away off-screen. Her scream abruptly ends. Cooper is in shock. There is a loud rustling, and the curtains of the Red Room blow and rise. A white horse is off in the distance, and the camera travels past the horse into the black.
Philip Gerard is back now, sitting next to Cooper. He asks again, “Is it future or is it past?” Now Philip is across the room, motioning for Cooper to come to the curtain and go beyond. They walk down a carpeted hallway. They are now in a room with what looks like a tree with a pulsing globe in the upper middle of its bare branches. Philip points at it and says, “The Evolution Of The Arm.” The tree says, “I am The Arm and I sound like this.” There is an electronic sputtering (“whooo-hooo-hooo”). The Evolution Of The Arm asks Cooper, “Do you remember your Doppelganger?” The camera zooms in on Cooper, and we see Cooper under the spell of Killer BOB, both laughing maniacally in the Red Room, and we see the chase scene again. The Evolution of The Arm says, “He must come back in before you can go out.”
This scene above is one of the most critical scenes in The Return, designed as subterfuge, built to be misinterpreted on first viewing. There are so many points of debate in this scene that I will offer my views with an extra dosage of humility, reminding the reader that this is only my opinion, and I respect yours, whatever it may be.
We begin this scene at the starting position of what I have come to refer to as The Cooper Loop. Dale Cooper is caught up in the Red Room dream cycle, where he applies his investigative skills and instinctual insights to the murder of Laura Palmer, a case that has already been solved. Cooper’s purpose is not to disprove what he already knows to be accurate, that Leland Palmer molested and murdered his daughter, but to an end that can only lead to madness. This end is, “How to save a girl who is already dead?” Cooper’s dilemma in this dream is to bring justice to a solved crime so immoral it has upset his moral order, allowing a corrupting influence into his psyche, wreaking havoc on his memories and perception of reality within his dream. Moral crimes of murder are also spiritual crimes, and there is no justice for spiritual crimes except for relying on supplication, superstition, madness, or radically accepting a fact. Cooper is well down the path of madness here. Can he come back to the center? That’s a question we explored together in The Return.
If BOB were not a corrupting presence in this dream, Cooper would be allowed to leave this Red Room undeterred. However, by the nature of the Red Room’s metaphysical mechanics, Mr. C would automatically be pulled back into the Red Room when Cooper stepped one foot outside the red curtains. Indeed, in Part 3, we will see this process start. BOB is a devilishly creative presence in Cooper’s mind now. BOB and Mr. C have aligned resources and efforts to create a trap out of an entire layer of dreams (I call this “The Version Layer” of Cooper’s dream for reasons that will become apparent). But how do we get Cooper out of the Red Room of this dream and into their trap? There is an old saying about not getting in your enemy’s way when making a mistake. Mr. C. understands Cooper’s tendency to act irrationally when protecting or serving a beautiful woman. It’s a flaw in Cooper’s character that his logic never catches him in these situations. And his Double is going to use that flaw against him perfectly here.
Laura’s scream is important in The Return. We will revisit this topic a few times in the future (or is it past?). After the scream, memetic malware is uploaded into the dream, breaking the Cooper Loop. We can identify this shift after Philip Gerard asks his eternal question (“is It future...”), then is on the other side of the room, now gesturing for Cooper to come with him. The scene is playing differently now, outside the previous operating system of this dream. Cooper walked blindly walking into the trap.
The Evolution Of The Arm here resembles a cell body with branching dendrites. Nerve cells deliver electricity to fuel proper cellular function. In a mind operating under normal and safe conditions, uncorrupted energy would be distributed equally to the Frontal Cortex and the Amygdala. As we will discover, the memory function Cooper’s isn’t the only area of biological corruption. The Doppelgänger of the Evolution of The Arm will corrupt the energy being delivered to the Dreamer, infecting the energy flowing into Cooper’s Frontal Cortex with darkness and malice, damaging the Dreamer’s perception of reality and self.
C4
Part 2: Scene 6: The Version Layer: Buckhorn, SD
(0:25:17-0:40:32) Local (1:25:52-1:41:07) Global Time
15m15s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
Mr. C is storing a Mercedes, and Jack lowers the storage garage door.. As he’s preparing to leave, Mr. C calls Jack over, grabs his face, and awkwardly massages his jaw while Jack looks down like he’s being milked of suffering. This scene prompts the uncomfortable question: What remains in someone milked of all their suffering when suffering is likely all they’ve ever known? Later, Mr. C arrives in a different car at a motel, and Darya is on the phone in her underwear. She hangs up as Mr. C enters. He asked her who was on the phone. She says, “Jack,” who told her it was all good to go. Ray was supposed to meet Mr. C this afternoon but never showed. Mr. C. asks Darya where her .45 is, and she says it’s by the bed. He checks outside the room and then grabs her gun, getting on the bed and pulling her close while calmly setting the gun down on the bed. He tells her Jack is dead, that he killed him two hours ago, after he wired the car, catching her in the lie. Darya tries to get away, but Mr. C is more powerful and is not gentle with restraint. He plays something for her on his tape recorder, a recording of Darya talking to Ray, who got arrested in South Dakota for carrying weapons over the state line. On the recording, Ray tells Darya that he got a call from Jeffries, who told him that Darya has to hit Cooper if he is still around tomorrow night. She says she will but has to go because Mr. C’s car just pulled up. We are listening to a recording that happened just minutes ago. Darya tries to get away, and Mr. C slams her hard three times into the hardwood of the bed. She stops struggling. Darya asks if he will kill her, and he says he is. She tries to escape again, and he punches her hard. She is bleeding now and crying. Mr. C asks Darya, who hired her and Ray to kill him. She says she doesn’t know that Ray never told her. Pensive about this betrayal, Mr. C says, “This is quite an interesting thing to think about. The game begins.” He asks her why they want him dead and how much they want him dead. Half a million split two ways. Darya said they wouldn’t have done it, but Mr. C is fresh out of mercy. Darya reminds him tomorrow, he’s supposed to go away. He says, “Tomorrow, I’m supposed to get pulled back into what they call the Black Lodge. But I’m not going back there. I’ve got a plan for that one. But this prison thing with that fucker Ray...” He asks her if Ray got that information from Hastings’ secretary and if he ever mentioned coordinates to Darya. He reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a playing card, then asks Darya if anyone has ever shown this to her. It’s an ace of spades with a circle with ears (or horns) in the middle. There are scratches above the circle. He tells Darya that he wants this while smiling with cruelty and malice. Darya asks again if he will kill her, and he tells her, “Yes, Darya.” She screams and struggles, but he punches her unconscious, puts a pillow over her head, and shoots her dead. He lifts the pillow, and we see the dreadful results of the futility of Darya’s resistance.
Mr. C walks to the bathroom, washes his hands, then picks up a suitcase from the bathroom floor and brings it back into the room. Mr. C activates a device from the suitcase. There is static, and he asks if it is Phillip. The voice responds, “I missed you in New York, but I see you’re still in Buckhorn.” The voice says that Mr. C met with Major Garland Briggs. Mr. C asks how he knew that. The voice says, “Actually I just called to say goodbye.” Mr. C asks if this is Phillip Jeffries. The voice responds, “You are going back in, and I will be with Bob again.” Mr. C asks who this is, and the line goes dead. He looks more intrigued than unnerved. He opens and starts typing into his FBI laptop, entering an agent ID of “kdhgw….” The screen shows a blinking red light in Buckhorn with a pin on Yankton Federal Prison. He searches for “sdl04pcseprot,” and the search results yield “Yankton Federal Prison, South Dakota - Level 4 Security System.” He then enters Yankton Federal Prison credentials: “Organization: mkeuoucq / Name: eeuoubp3x / ID Number: 398715015787412.” He downloads many scrolling schematics and then shuts off the devices.
Mr. C. walks outside, knocks on the room door next to the one he just left, and says, “It’s me,” to the voice behind it. Chantal opens the door in a high-cut kimono, drinking a Fresca through a bendy straw. She greets him warmly, running fast to hot. Mr. C enters and tells her she must clean up the mess in 6. She says, “Darya? Good. I was getting so jealous of that bitch.” Mr. C tells her, “Then go get your husband. I will need you and Hutch in a few days. I’ll get word to you.” She says, “Okay, boss.” He says, “Chantal, come here.” She walks over, and he runs a hand up her thigh, then says, “Oh, you’re nice and wet.” She chuckles, knowing what comes next.
Mr. C seems to be milking Jack’s suffering here, perhaps creating the same Garmonbozia he is about to vomit up all over his car in Part 3. In this scene, Mr. C reveals almost magical technology in TVL.
Darya’s murder is a brutal scene of misogynistic violence, entirely in line with what we will discover Mr. C is capable of inside Cooper’s dreaming, damaged mind.
Shooting victims through the eye in this dream is Mr. C’s calling card. We’ve seen three women murdered this way, two we know of by his hand, which allows us to infer the third.
Who is impersonating Phillip Jeffries in this conversation? We know Jeffries as a character/memory corrupted inside Cooper’s mind, which happened back in Fire Walk With Me. Let’s consider Jeffries as a metaphor for Cooper’s memory function. The Fire Walk With Me scene becomes very interesting like a warning bell going off to alert the dreamer of a corrupting influence that threatens the life of the entire organism.
This scene occurs between The Cooper Loop’s reboot and the trap about to be sprung on an unsuspecting dreamer.
A4
Part 2: Scene 7: Red Room Layer | The Version Layer: New York City | The Void
(0:40:32-0:47:56) Local (1:41:07-1:48:31) Global Time
7m24s
PN: White Lodge Plan
SN: Black Lodge Plan | Mystery
In the Red Room, Cooper still looks at The Evolution Of The Arm, who says, “253 Time and time again. Bob...Bob...Bob...Go now! Go now!” We are in a moment of unexplained crisis. Philip Gerard and Cooper run from the Evolution Of The Arm’s room, but Cooper starts walking down the hallway and cannot walk through the Red Room curtains. He looks perplexed and instead walks back down the hallway, entering what seems to be the room where he last spoke to Laura. Cooper looks around the room and walks to the far side, exiting into another hallway that appears to mirror the previous hallway. Now, he can walk through the curtains. Cooper is now in a room with Leland Palmer, sitting in a chair, looking forlorn. Leland is in a nice suit and tie. He pleads with Cooper, “Find Laura.” Leland looks down and away in sadness. Cooper walks across the room towards an ominous scratching noise with a strobing light. In this next room, the Red Room floor starts shifting and stretching. Phillip is back with The Evolution of The Arm, and we see another white statue without a right arm looking downwards. Philip says, “Something’s wrong.” The Evolution of The Arm says, “My doppelganger!”
Cooper exits the room into another hallway, where we see the armless statue. He walks towards the white marble display and opens the curtain that the statue is looking at.
The scene is a desert highway, and a car is rapidly approaching.
It’s Mr. C, and he is driving very fast. The statue changes into what looks like the doppelganger of The Evolution Of The Arm. It seems to be threatening Cooper, roaring at him.
The Red Room floor is shifting, erupting up and down. The doppelganger of the Evolution Of The Arm screams, “Non-exist-ent!” at Cooper, and he falls into what seems to be outer space because it is dark and filled with stars. Cooper lands with a thud against the glass box from Part 1. He dissolves into the glass box and then floats into the box’s interior through the hole. Finally, he hovers in stasis inside the glass box.
No one sits on the couch in the glass box room because Sam and Tracey are in the lobby, wondering about the security guard) The locked door is open, and no guard is sitting at the desk outside. Sam comes out of the bathroom, and the scene unfolds as we remember. We are moments away from the creature appearing in the same box and murdering Sam and Tracey.
Cooper is rumbling in the box, and there are creaks and groans. Then, the box replicates within itself (frames within frames), and it sounds like metallic lock tumblers fall into place. The box fades into darkness, and Cooper drifts outwards again. Then, finally, the screen flashes white, and the box is empty. Cooper is floating through space, and the camera is jostling and shuddering.
In this scene, we see a subversion of the recycling of psychic energy in Cooper’s dream. Mr. C is supposed to have 25 years of dream time to wreak his havoc and harvest his sorrow, but only in the dream, where the passing of time is a variable. Mr. C is not meant to leave the dream. That would be dangerous, and so it is dangerous. What we witness here is an act of supernatural psycho-terrorism. A new layer of dreams, with different controls and alternative tectonic plates of influence, forces themselves upon the narrative perspective of the dreamer.
Poor Leland reveals Laura’s absence from this dream and provides Cooper with another clue to getting out of the dream altogether when he begs him to “Find Laura.” The unspoken part of this might be “...and take her home.”
Cooper is ejected into the dream trap Mr. C (aligned with BOB) has set before him. At this point, we can confirm that The Return is not a linear narrative. Indeed, this is the third time in two episodes that we’ve witnessed this same scene with Sam and Tracey play out from different angles and under what seems to be variable circumstances. In less than two hours, the entire landscape of Fire Walk With Me has come undone, and we have a new story unfolding in The Return.
D2
Part 2: Scene 8: The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:47:56-0:52:52) Local (1:48:31-1:53:27) Global Time
4m56s
PN: Something Is Wrong In Twin Peaks
SN: Road House Band Onstage
At the Palmer residence, Sarah Palmer is drinking, smoking, and watching television in the dark. She’s watching a nature program, and a pack of hungry lions murders and devours a large-hoofed mammal. The light of life goes out in the animal’s eyes, and Sarah Palmer reacts similarly to the Woodsman at the beginning of this episode.
Cut to The Roadhouse, where The Chromatics play “Shadow” on stage. Shelly and her friends are at a table laughing, talking and drinking. James walks in with his friend Freddy, wearing a strange green glove. Shelly tells her friends that her daughter Becky is with the wrong guy (Steven). James seems taken aback when he sees Shelly (though we later learn he’s looking at her friend, with who he’s in love). Her friends notice James looking over at their table, and one makes a derisive comment about his mental ability. Shelly immediately defends him, saying that James was in a motorcycle accident and “Is just quiet now. James is still cool. He’s always been cool.” A man who looks like Jacques Renault is tending the bar. A man in a leather jacket (Red) catches Shelly’s eye, and they share a moment. Then, he raises a finger gun and fires at her, and she acknowledges him and quickly looks away. The scene ends more melancholy, with Shelly laughing with her friends and James looking at them and smiling.
“Shadow, take me down with you.” The musical performances in The Return are dangerous but also offer emotional comfort in a long film primarily devoid of that feeling. When you come to these emotional codas at the end of most parts of The Return, check in with your emotions. How do you feel? One constant has stayed true throughout Twin Peaks: the music never lies to you. Not once.
Note Red (the finger gun guy) and his influence over Shelley, whose character in this dream is already becoming corrupted. Watching Red manipulate Shelley in this scene is a window into understanding how images of known characters, based in memory, have become corrupted in Cooper’s dream. Here, old friends are not who they once seemed.
Sarah Palmer reacts like a hungry beast when she views the suffering and bloody murder of a colossal beast being ripped apart and consumed by lions. Many viewers struggled with Sarah’s character evolution, but if we continue to view The Return through the lens of Dale Cooper’s nightmare, this all starts to make more sense (including understanding where Mark Frost’s books fit). In this dream trap, Sarah Palmer is a dangerous character, barely holding back an unyielding force of pure malice.
As we close the first two hours of The Return, Dale Cooper is in serious trouble. He barely passed the first trial of the glass box, missing being ripped apart by seconds. I wonder what happened to that security guard.
CREDITS2
Part 2: Scene 9
(0:52:52-0:54:34) Local (1:53:27-1:55:09) Global Time
1m42s
PN: Exit Credits
Music
1. “Shadow,” performed by Chromatics.
In Memory Of... Frank Silva
Extra Credit (Paid Subs Only)
Listen to the In Our House Now Podcast on Phillip Jeffries's character in FWWM and TPTR. John Thorne and I go super deep in this one.
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