[Twin Peaks] Chapter 17 Hour Nine "This Is The Chair"
17 - A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
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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
Chapters 1-9 are free to read.
INTRO9
Part 9: Scene 1
(0:00:00-0:01:40) Local (7:43:10-7:44:50) Global Time
1m40s
C18
Part 9: Scene 2 The Version Layer: Somewhere in South Dakota
(0:01:40-0:02:09) Local (7:44:50-7:45:19) Global Time
29s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
Mr. C walks down a country road. It is a sunny, beautiful morning. He looks like he just died and was resurrected.
He approaches a post with a red handkerchief tacked to it. He pulls off the cloth and keeps walking.
His eyes are a murderous black. His face, body, and clothes are a caked and bloody mess.
Mr. C survived with Killer BOB intact (revealed in Part 17) and is understandably angry.
This location, marked with a red handkerchief, is part of his plan. It announces a place of congregation and reassembly for the next phase of this dark plan.
This hour features a series of mitigating actions and revelations, passing mostly between the Blue Rose Investigation and the Black Lodge Plan.
Our Blue Rose crew will be drawn into Buckhorn to assume that line of investigation, and they will stall there like a large hurricane, gathering information but reaching no conclusion that doesn’t find them first.
E13
Part 9: Scene 3
The Version Layer: Above South Dakota
(0:02:09-0:03:37) Local (7:45:19-7:46:47) Global Time
1m28s
PN: Blue Rose Investigation
A jet aircraft soars across the sky. The tail numbers on the jet are backward.
Inside the aircraft, Gordon Cole looks out the window. Tammy Preston approaches him with a cup of coffee and her laptop. Gordon appreciates the coffee.
Tammy sits down and says, “Patch in through the office, it’s a Colonel Davis for you at the Pentagon. Urgent. Try to keep your voice down.”
Gordon takes the satellite phone and loudly asks, “WHAT?”
Tammy gestures to the sleeping Albert and Diane. Gordon puts the phone to his ear and says, “Hello? Colonel, what have you got?... I don’t appreciate your language one bit, Colonel….”
Tammy sits back to listen more intently.
Gordon’s mood shifts. He says, “Oh, a place. Buckhorn. Buckhorn, South Dakota. West South Dakota.”
He looks out the jet window, then says, “Well, by golly, we’re over east South Dakota right now.”
He motions to Tammy’s laptop and says, “Take this down.”
Gordon says, “Hold on. Capital K, small N, Small O, small X. Knox. Lieutenant Knox. Buckhorn Police Department. All right. Thank you, Colonel.”
He hangs up the phone.
The backward tail number on the jet may be an insignificant detail, but I do not choose to view it that way. There are a few places in The Return where images and writing appear backward. For example, some of the slot machines in Vegas appear this way.1
Established early on in the mythology of Twin Peaks, backward communication is a sign that the narrative reality we witness on screen takes place in the context of dreaming. This mythology holds in The Return.
The Buckhorn Police are investigating the deaths of Ruth Davenport, Phyllis Hastings, and Hastings’s secretary, all victims of the person identifying himself as Dale Cooper in TVL.
The Blue Rose Task Force is investigating Cooper’s actions and motives. They know now that he is an escaped criminal refugee. However, they do not understand the cruelty and damage he can inflict in this layer of narrative reality.
And the US Military is investigating the reappearance of Major Garland Briggs, and the only purpose of Cynthia Knox and her Commanding Officer is to direct the Blue Rose Task Force to Buckhorn, South Dakota.
In TPTR, there are characters in Cooper’s mind who only live within TVL. There are characters like Laura Palmer, Diane (as Naido), and Major Briggs who move between layers of this dream.2
The corpse of Major Briggs becomes a structural flaw in the logic of TVL, which is the definition of a Blue Rose Case. We’ll return to these converging investigations later in this part when we start to process what Bill Hastings reveals under interrogation.
C19
Part 9: Scene 4
The Version Layer: Somewhere in South Dakota
(0:03:37-0:04:42) Local (7:46:47-7:47:52) Global Time
1m5s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
Mr. C walks up a driveway and is approached by a man named Hutch (Chantal’s husband), who says, “Hey, Partner. We were expecting you last night.”
He looks Mr. C over, sees his wound, and says, “Looks like you’ve been spilling.”
Mr. C ignores him and asks, “Who owns this establishment?”
Hutch says, “Farmers.”
Mr. C asks, “Where are they?”
Hutch says, “Oh, they’re sleeping out back. What you need?”
Mr. C reaches into his pocket and says, “A couple of clean phones,” then hands him the revolver, “And something for this.”
Hutch looks at the pistol and says, “Well, fuck that. I’ll get you some real nice puppies and biscuits.”
Hutch calls out, “Hey, Chantal. Boss man’s here. Grab the kit.”
Chantal calls out from inside the barn, “Is he hurt?”
She comes stomping, sees Mr. C, and says, “Shit. We were waiting for you all night. Where’d they get you?”
Mr. C lifts his t-shirt and shows the large bullet holes in his abdomen. She looks him over, then looks up at his face and says, “Looks like you were lucky. I’ll get the kit. Go on inside.”
Chantal walks to the van and pulls a large duffel bag out.
Mr. C gathers and disposes of technology to perform tasks in TVL, but he possesses no technology; it’s all disposable. Later, we will see Gordon Cole in a makeshift hotel room technology command center, monitoring vital statistics within this dream layer. Mr. C must stay off these radars. Disposing of and replacing technology is the way he evades.
Mr. C doesn’t fumble with the machines he uses. He is adept at what he’s doing, but technology is purely functional for him. If he used a single master device, he could be identified, isolated, and mitigated.
E14
Part 9: Scene 5
The Version Layer: Above South Dakota
(0:04:42-0:06:42) Local (7:47:52-7:49:52) Global Time
2m
PN: Blue Rose Investigation
Gordon wakes Diane on the airplane. She’s grumpy.
Squeezing her shoulder in pulses, he asks her, “Rather than return directly to Philadelphia, would you mind if we made a short trip to Buckhorn, South Dakota? It’s quite important?”
Diane has had enough of this nonsense and says, “Fuck you, Gordon. I want to go home.”
Gordon says, “This is important and it could be of interest to you, Diane.”
She looks almost lovingly at him.
He says, “An old case involving a man Agent Cooper once knew.”
Diane confirms, “The Blue Rose case?”
Gordon affirms.
She frowns a consent and lifts up two empty liquor bottles. Gordon looks at them and says, “Coming up. Got to talk to the pilot first.”
Albert stirs to wake while Gordon walks into the cockpit and tells the pilot, “Been a change of plans. We’re going over to Buckhorn, South Dakota.”
Diane looks over at Albert, and he says, “I know. I know. Fuck you, Albert.” He turns over to face the jet window and closes his eyes.
She huffs and picks up her phone, but her signal is blocked. She throws her head back against the jet seat and sighs with a worried look.
Tammy Preston receives a satellite phone call. She answers, “Agent Preston.”
Gordon says, “Good,” to the pilot up front.
Tammy says, “Yes, I understand. I’ll get him.”
Gordon walks up the aisle with two full liquor bottles. He sees Tammy approaching with the satellite phone. She says, “It’s Warden Murphy.”
Cole takes the phone and says, “Warden Murphy?”
The Warden says, “Your man Cooper escaped.”
Gordon asks, “What? How the hell did that happen?” Gordon lowers the phone and tells his team, “Cooper flew the coop.”
This scene confirms that Diane is aware of the Blue Rose Investigation, at least at the subject matter level. We know that Cooper dictated intimate details of his investigations in his tapes to Diane, so we must assume that she knows what he knew. Additionally, over time she must have come to learn how his mind worked intimately. There are few windows of insight into how a human being works than the notes they take about the things that matter to them. It’s why Diane was the perfect memory to abduct and molest into becoming a terrorist working against the best interests of the Dreamer.
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