[Twin Peaks] Chapter 25: Hour Sixteen "No Knock, No Doorbell"
A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
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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.
INTRO16
Part 16: Scene 1
(0:00:00-0:01:40) Local (14:17:42-14:19:22) Global Time
1m40s
C31
Part 16: Scene 2
The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:01:40-0:09:49) Local (14:19:22-14:27:31) Global Time
8m9s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
SN: Something Is Wrong In Twin Peaks
Ominous music powers low headlights as Mr. C and Richard Horne drive a paved rural road. They approach a fork in the road, and Mr. C stops the truck to check one of his cryptic devices. He looks up the hill to his right, turns on the floodlights, and directs them on a big rock up the small mountain. He gets out of the truck, and Richard follows.
Richard asks, “What now?” Mr. C tells him to pay attention, and he’ll find out.
“I’m looking for a place,” Mr. C says, then condescendingly adds, “Do you understand the place?” Richard does not understand.
Mr. C says, “Three people have given me coordinates to that place. Two of the coordinates match. What would you do, Richard?”
Richard says, “I’d check out the two that match.”
Mr. C tells him he’s a very bright young man, and they are very close to the two coordinates that match. “It’s right up there,” Mr. C says, and we see the giant stone again up the hill.
Richard asks if they are going there now, and Mr. C confirms.
Out of the darkness, way across the field, Jerry Horne comes high-step running up and stops when he hears voices and sees the truck. He says out loud, “People?” Jerry pulls out field binoculars and fumbles with them, eventually looking at the wrong end, making everything small; he surveys the situation and says, “Dear God!”
Ominous music strikes again as Mr. C and Richard climb up and approach the large stone.
Richard asks if this is it, and Mr. C says, “I bet it’s right up there on that rock.” He looks at his son and says, “I’m 25 years your senior. Take this and get on up there.” He hands him the device. He adds, “It’ll beep when you’re close and make a continuous tone when you’re on it. Let me know what you find.”
Richard ambles as odd reverberations start whistling through the air, and his shadow stretches across the stone, illuminated by the harsh bright truck searchlights. Mr. C looks backlit, a dark angel, while Jerry Horne watches this in miniature, undetected from across the field through the wrong end of his binoculars.
The beeping grows persistently towards a continuous tone as Richard approaches the rock. Then, finally, he calls back, “I’m there,” just as a lightning bolt strikes him dead, lighting up Mr. C’s face and torso; his eyes are small and dead black dusty balls that the light of electrification bounces off to the soundtrack of Richard Horne’s screams of agony.
Jerry watches in horror, deeply disturbed by this unexpected murder of a dream child by his dream father. Richard’s scream and shadow phase in and out. Smoke and light finally overwhelm him, and his body disappears to a popping sound.
Jerry collapses to the ground, wheezing and gasping.
Mr. C states without emotion, “Oh...goodbye, my son,” and then she walks back to the truck. Finally, he got the information he needed to know.
Jerry repeatedly smashes his binoculars on the ground, shouting, “Bad binoculars…”.
Mr. C pulls his phone out and sends the text “:-) ALL,” but the phone beeps in error, and we see it is 2:05 AM. Though he has three bars of service, the text cannot be delivered here and now. Deceived but not defeated, Mr. C puts the phone back in his pocket, gets into the truck, and leaves the scene of his bastard son’s death.
Richard is a very bright young man, especially at the moment he dies in the Version Layer.
Mr. C has three sets of coordinates. We know one came from Ray and the other from Phillip. But who sent the third? Diane may have sent them, but we didn’t see her do that. She only looked up the coordinates on her phone in the Buckhorn Hotel bar. So who sent the third? Is Mr. C lying to Richard to trick him?
Jerry Horne’s sojourn into the woods parallels Cooper’s journey into darkness. Jerry Horne is a set of eyes, ears, and fear. He emotes the fear of the Dreamer caught in the darkness, surrounded by danger. Jerry provides the Dreamer and the viewer with subjective testimony about what is happening emotionally in the dream. Note how Jerry views this situation through the big end of the binoculars, like Andy looking up into the ceiling of the Fireman’s Den, making the grandiose appear microcosmic in scale. And just because it’s all we see in the frame, that doesn’t mean this is all there is to the story.
We are left wondering if this force that eliminated Richard Horne from the Version Layer would have done so to any character unfortunate enough to stand there, or was it a weapon aimed at these dream characters powered by bad fire? Either way, it’s game over for Richard Horne. What I believe happens here is a character within a dream is eradicated from the narrative as if struck down by Zeus himself, a punishment meted out through dream physics that executes regardless of which character stands on the rock to die.
And yet again, Mr. C has technology that allows him to calibrate the effects of his evil impact in the Version Layer of Cooper’s dream. I suspect this technology senses good fire, allowing Mr. C to execute countermeasures within this layer.
Remember what Margaret told Hawk back in Part 12, “It all comes out now, flowing like a river. That which is and is not.” When Mr. C sends this text of “:-) All” to Diane, significant consequences and revelations ensue.
A28
Part 16: Scene 3
The Version Layer: Las Vegas, NV
(0:09:49-0:15:31) Local (14:27:31-14:33:13) Global Time
5m42s
PN: White Lodge Plan
SN: Black Lodge Plan
Chantal and Hutch pull up in front of the Jones home. They park, and Chantal leans back, her foot up on Hutch’s leg, eating her Cheetos. Hutch asks if she heard the birds this morning, and she says, “Sure as shit did.” Two FBI cars pull up, and Hutch asks what this is. Chantal sees the FBI and asks what they are doing here, knocking on the door. No one answers.
Wilson gets put on stakeout duty while his boss is headed to the Lucky 7 Insurance company. Chantal says, “Good riddance.”
Elsewhere in a Las Vegas hospital, he lies in a coma in bed with a tube in his mouth while a monitored breathing machine beeps. Bushnell Mullins enters the room and tells Janey-E and Sonny Jim, “I just heard what you told me. He’s in a coma, but his vital signs are strong.”
Janey-E says that when people go into a coma, they can stay there for years, but Bushnell doesn’t think Dougie will do that. Sonny Jim asks if comas have anything to do with electricity. Janey-E says, “No,” but Bushnell counters, “Well, in this case, it did.”
Bushnell consoles Janey-E. We hear the Mitchum Brothers coming from the hallway. They enter the room respectfully, carrying a big basket. The girls come in carrying “What you call finger sandwiches.” They just want to be as helpful as possible and pay their respects. Bradley leans in to look closer at Cooper and says, “All things considered, he looks good.”
Janey-E says yeah while she beams at Cooper, clearly in love yet still worried. They ask Janey-E for a key, so they can stock their house. Bradley leans in to look closer at Cooper and asks, “It was, like, what, electricity?” Janey-E nods.
There is very little subtext happening here, which is a sign that we are moving towards a conclusion of this act. The most important facet to note is that while Cooper’s enemies gather to strike him down at home, his allies are gathered around his bedside in an institution built to save lives.
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