TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN
Go to Twin Peaks Table of Contents for a note on the analysis.
PART SEVENTEEN
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LINKS TO SECTIONS OF THE ANALYSIS ON THIS PAGE:
I'M TRYING TO KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE
It's 2:53 in Las Vegas
NIGHT AT THE TWIN PEAKS SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
NIGHT AT BEN HORNE'S OFFICE
Jerry found
MR. C FINDS JACK RABBIT PALACE AND IS REDIRECTED TO THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT WHERE FREDDIE BATTLES BOB
Lucy comes to understand cell phones - Naido/Diane - 2:53 - We live within a dream - See you at the curtain call
THIS IS WHERE YOU'LL FIND JUDY
The owl cave ring symbol as 8 - I've seen you in a dream
NOTE: The structure of the analysis is simplified as we move into the last few chapters, blending commentary with description of the shots in a looser manner.
I'M TRYING TO KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE
IT IS 2:53 IN LAS VEGAS
The credits ending, we return to Buckhorn, South Dakota, the same scene as observed in Part One when we first introduced to it, several vehicles traveling down a road beyond which is a portion of town and a large hill.
Cut to Gordon in the hotel room holding a gun, just following Diane's tulpa having been shot and disappeared. In Part Sixteen, Gordon was never shown pulling out his gun.
ALBERT (bringing Gordon a drink): You okay, Gordon?
GORDON: I couldn't do it, Albert. I couldn't do it.
ALBERT: You've gone soft in your old age.
GORDON: What?
ALBERT (returning to his seat): I said, you've gone soft in your old age.
GORDON: Not where it counts, buddy.
Tammy pulls a demure look. Gordon's comment, and her reaction, suggest this is an off-color remark made by someone intent on declaring that he retains masculine potency and is too old to care or comprehend how the language might be inappropriate for work, but as Hutch and Chantal were killed by an accountant, and Audrey's peculiar "husband" was an accountant, I'm not too sure that something else isn't alluded to in Gordon's choice of words. "Not where it counts, buddy". Plus, Gordon is about to get a message from Battling Bud.
The fact that they toast the Bureau so quickly after the death of Diane's tulpa, rather than wondering at and mourning over what has happened to poor Diane, jerks the viewer's emotions around, especially as the revelation of the tulpa and Diane's rape has been so seemingly, callously followed by Gordon crowing about his virility.
GORDON (toasting): Here's to the Bureau.
ALBERT (toasting): To the Bureau.
TAMMY (toasting): To the Bureau.
GORDON: Now listen to me. For 25 years, I've kept something from you, Albert. Before he disappeared, Major Briggs shared with me and Cooper his discovery of an entity, an extreme negative force called in olden times "Jouday". Over time, it's become Judy. Major Briggs, Cooper, and I put together a plan that could lead us to Judy. And then something happened to Major Briggs, and something happened to Cooper. Phillip Jeffries, who doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in the normal sense, told me a long time ago he was onto this entity, and he disappeared. Now, the last thing Cooper told me was, "If I disappear like the others, do everything you can to find me. I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone." And now this thing of two Coopers. And recently, a paid informant named Ray Monroe sent a cryptic message indicating that the Cooper we met at prison is looking for coordinates, coordinates from a certain Major Briggs. This plan, Albert, I couldn't tell you about, and I'm sorry.
ALBERT: I understand.
Albert had kept a secret from Gordon, that Jeffries had called him and asked for some information that may have led to the death of their man in Columbia, and now we learn that Gordon has kept secret from Jeffries the endeavor to find Judy.
Coincidentally, now, the Las Vegas bureau calls from Cooper's hospital room to let them know they've found Dougie. The conversation goes back and forth between the hotel room and the hospital room.
GORDON: I know you understand, Albert, yet I'm still sorry. And I don't know at all if this plan is unfolding properly 'cause we should have heard by now from our dear Dale Cooper. (The phone serendipitously rings and he answers.) This is Cole.
HEADLEY (off screen then we observe him in Cooper's hospital room): Agent Headley here, sir. We found him. We found Douglas Jones. But we don't know where he is.
ALBERT (back in the FBI hotel room): Has my watch stopped, or is that one of the Marx Brothers?
GORDON: What the hell does that mean, Headley?
HEADLEY (back in the hospital room): The bed is empty. My team is sending everything to you as we speak. Director Cole, we got it all, the whole story.
BUSHNELL (enters): Is that Gordon Cole on the phone?
HEADLEY: Yes, it is.
BUSHNELL: I have a message for him. A message from Dougie.
GORDON: What's that? What's that?
HEADLEY: Uh, there's a man here he says he has a message for you from Douglas Jones.
GORDON: Well, give it to me.
BUSHNELL: Am I talking to Mr. Gordon Cole?
GORDON: Yes, you are.
BUSHNELL: Well, Dougie wanted me to read you this "I am headed for Sheriff Truman's. It is 2:53 in Las Vegas, and that adds up to a ten, the number of completion." That's all he wrote.
GORDON: And what is your name, sir?
BUSHNELL: Bushnell Mullins. Lucky 7 Insurance. I'm his boss.
GORDON: Thank you, Mr. Mullins. Thank you very much. And that makes two of us.
Headley reaches for his phone, and Bushnell holds it to his chest, away from him, as Gordon hangs up back at the hotel.
GORDON: Dougie is Cooper? How the hell is this?
TAMMY (reading information as it comes in from Las Vegas): They blew up Dougie Jones' car. Then a notorious hit man tried to shoot him outside his place of business.
ALBERT: He's been spotted in the company of two organized-crime figures.
TAMMY: He electrocuted himself by sticking a fork in a wall socket.
ALBERT: That's strange, even for Cooper.
GORDON: A Blue Rose case, most definitely.
TAMMY: He was hospitalized in a coma until earlier this afternoon.
GORDON: Pack it up! I know where he's going.
2:53 in Las Vegas means it's 2:53, Pacific Time, in Washington State, while it would be 3:53 in Buckhorn, which is in Mountain Time. However, we had already observed, from the time Diane received her text message and responded, at 16:31 and 16:42, that it should be after 4:30 p.m. But then just before she was shot and disappeared, the time of the message had changed to 15:50, or 3:50. So, just about the same time as in Las Vegas.
NIGHT AT THE TWIN PEAKS SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
It may be 2:53 p.m. in Las Vegas but it appears to be the night before in Twin Peaks, where we have an establishing shot of the sheriff's department. Cut to the jail cells and Naido sleeping, as well as the troubling man with the bloody face. Chad, in cell 10, is awake. As Chad attempts to discretely reach for something, he wakes the bloody man in the opposite cell.
CHAD: You fucker.
BLOODY MAN: Fucker.
CHAD: Fuck you.
BLOODY MAN: Fuck you.
We have a shot of Mr. C night driving, and electrical lines alongside the road, then we're returned to the jail cells where Naido's sleep appears to be disturbed, she making her ape-like sounds.
JAMES: What the hell is that?
FREDDIE: No clue, mate.
BLOODY MAN: No clue mate.
Naido, wakens, and raises herself on her bed, continuing to make her sounds, the bloody man mimicking her as he does everyone.
NIGHT AT BEN HORNE'S OFFICE
JERRY FOUND
Ben is already on the phone as the scene opens.
BEN: Wyoming!
WILLIAMS (off screen): Yes, sir. Is your name Ben?
BEN: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Got a guy here, no identification, won't give his name, says he's your brother. Says his binoculars killed somebody.
BEN: That's my brother, Jerry Horne. Is he charged with anything?
WILLIAMS: No.
BEN: I'll make arrangements to get him home. What's your name again?
WILLIAMS: Sergeant Williams, Jackson Hole Police. And you can send clothes. When we picked him up, he was completely naked. Have a good day, sir.
Exasperated, Ben hangs up the phone. And the screen cuts to, once again, the static of the electrical lines, Mr. C heading presumably for Twin Peaks. We know he must be as Cooper is heading for Twin Peaks, but if it is the night of 10/1, then it would be impossible for Mr. C to be led by Diane's coordinates, as she would have sent them the afternoon of 10/2, not too long before Gordon received notification that Dougie was Cooper and on his way to Twin Peaks from Las Vegas. But then multiple timelines are evidently at work.
We know it would have been impossible for Jerry to trek a walk of about 200 hours to Jackson Hole, yet there he is. Why Jackson Hole? Is it a simple word association with Jack Rabbit Palace, where we next find Mr. C?
Mr. C FINDS JACK RABBIT PALACE AND IS REDIRECTED TO THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT WHERE FREDDIE BATTLES BOB
LUCY COMES TO UNDERSTAND CELL PHONES - NAIDO/DIANE - 2:53 - SEE YOU AT THE CURTAIN CALL
Daylight. We see Mr. C's truck parked on a road in the woods. He walks through the woods to the proper co-ordinates that are 253 yards due east from Jack Rabbit Palace and finds there the denuded tree beside the golden well. There are flashes of light. His movement is no longer fluid in time. A portal opens, the same as that which had formed when Andy was translated into the Jupiterean palace, and he disappears.
Mr. C appears in the theater of the Jupiter relam before the movie screen. In the room, on the right, hangs suspended in the air the head of Major Briggs. Mr. C presents as a face in a cage on the left. On the movie screen we see the co-ordinates from which he was just taken. After we observe the Fireman in the theater, the image on the screen changes to Laura Palmer's house. The Fireman sweeps this aside and there appears in its stead an unknown place. We see, off the theater, a room filled with the transformer-like bells. Mr. C morphs into something like a tumbleweed and his cage moves over to the golden nozzle and up into it. He is delivered out the other side into what turns out to be the parking lot of the Sheriff's Department.
As Mr. C materializes, his back to us, the camera's focus brings our attention to a sparkly rhinestone barette in his hair, which we know nothing about but seems significant. Naido starts up in her jail cell, alarmed. Mr. C, in the parking lot, turns and sees the Sheriff's Department, His eyes are black.
MR. C: What is this? (He advances, realizing where he is.)
ANDY (taking a picnic basket from the back of a vehicle): Agent Cooper, is that you? Agent Cooper, it is you. We were just talking about you.
MR. C: Hello, Andy.
Cut to Naido chattering away in her jail cell.
JAMES (in his jail cell, observing Naido's distress): What's going on?
FREDDIE: I think she's trying to say something.
The bloodied man passes out, and Chad removes a key secreted in the heel of his boot.
We return to the parking lot with Andy and Mr. C.
ANDY: Everyone's gonna be so happy to see you.
MR. C: And I would like to see them, too.
ANDY: Come on in. I was just taking this picnic basket in. We'll make a fresh pot of coffee. (They enter the reception area.) Lucy. Lucy, look who's here.
LUCY: Agent Cooper!
MR. C: Hello, Lucy.
LUCY: We were just talking about you.
MR. C: So I understand.
ANDY (to Truman who has just entered): Sheriff Truman, this is Special Agent Dale Cooper. We haven't seen him since before Wally was born.
MR. C: Sheriff Truman?
FRANK: I'm Sheriff Frank Truman, Harry's brother.
MR. C (shaking his hand): Sheriff.
FRANK: Nice to meet you. Come into the office and sit down.
Andy grins, excited, then flashes back visions he'd received in the Jupiter realm of guiding Lucy to stand before Sheriff Truman's door, and also running down the hall. He looks troubled and Lucy realizes something is wrong. She queries, Andy?
Back in the lock-up, Chad works on unlocking his cell, 10, with his key, and succeeds, unnoticed. He exits through an adjoining room into a locker area.
In the Sheriff's office, Andy pulls out a seat for Mr. C and offers him a cup of coffee.
ANDY: Have a seat, Agent Cooper. Would you like a cup of coffee?
MR. C: No, thanks. I'm all right.
ANDY: Okay. I'm going to go tell Hawk you're here. (Andy picks up the picnic basket and exits quickly.)
In the lock-up, Naido's chattering rouses the bloody man. We see Chad getting bullets.
We return to Frank and Mr. C.
FRANK: Cooper. (When Mr. C says nothing, he repeats.) Cooper.
MR. C: In the flesh.
Back to the lock-up, Naido chatters as Freddie and James look on. The bloody man starts tearing the flesh from his face. Chad loads his gun with bullets.
Lucy rises from her receptionist seat as Andy runs down the hall, pausing briefly to point at her, exclaiming, Very important. Very important.
In the lock-up, the bloody man continues tearing at his flesh. Chad enters the jail cell area again as Andy does.
ANDY: Hawk are you down here?
CHAD (pointing his gun at Andy): Hey! If it isn't the great, good cop, Deputy Andy.
BLOODY MAN: Great, good cop, Deputy Andy.
CHAD: Come to save the day.
BLOODY MAN: Come to save the day.
CHAD: You are such a pussy, Andy!
BLOODY MAN: You're a pussy, Andy.
CHAD: See how you like this, right between...
Freddie pops opens his jail cell door with his green-gloved hand, the door slamming in Chad's face, disarming him and knocking him out. Andy cuffs Chad.
The reception telephone rings, looking as it did in Andy's vision. Lucy answers.
LUCY: Twin Peaks Sheriff's Station. This is Lucy speaking. (She stands, alarmed.) Who?
Frank continues his conversation with Mr. C in his office.
FRANK: What brings you back to Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper?
MR. C: Unfinished business.
LUCY (off screen, on the intercom): Sheriff Truman?
FRANK: Yes, Lucy?
LUCY: There's a phone call for you on line two, the blinking light.
FRANK: Take a message, please, Lucy.
LUCY: It's a very important phone call, Sheriff.
FRANK: All right, Lucy. Sorry, Agent Cooper. This is Truman.
COOPER: Harry, it's Coop. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent Dale Cooper.
FRANK: This is Frank Truman, Harry's brother. Where are you?
COOPER: We're just entering Twin Peaks city limits. Is the coffee on?
Mr. C, sensing Frank's suspicion, draws his gun just as Frank also pulls his, but Mr. C is faster. He fires his gun but misses, Frank's hat popping slightly up in the air and settling back on his head. There's another gunshot and we see Lucy standing in the doorway, she having shot Mr. C who falls to the floor.
COOPER: What was that?
FRANK: Lucy.
In lock-up, Andy hears the gunshots.
ANDY: I've got to get you all upstairs.
Back to Frank's office, as he stares at Mr. C's body.
FRANK: I think this one's dead, Agent Cooper.
COOPER: Don't touch him! Stay away from that body.
Andy enters through a side door, guiding in Naido, accompanied by Freddie and James. They see Mr. C's body.
LUCY: Andy, I understand cellular phones now.
HAWK (runs up): What the hell?
FRANK: Agent Cooper said don't touch that body.
HAWK: But that is Agent Cooper.
FRANK: No, it's not.
Andy moves James over next to Naido's care, then briefly checks on Lucy as he runs out of the room and down the hall. The room darkens. We hear the same music as when Mr. C had been shot by Ray and the shadow men appeared to minister over his body, a slow version of the Moonlight Sonata.
It has also darkened outside. The vehicle carrying Cooper and his Las Vegas party roars into the parking lot, and he leaps out and runs into the Sheriff's Department. As he enters the reception area, Andy is standing there waiting for him.
COOPER: Andy, where is he?
ANDY: In here!
In the sheriff's office, the shadow men still work on Mr. C's body. The sphere containing BOB rises out of Mr. C's body, and seeing Cooper attacks him. Freddie shouts.
FREDDIE: Oy!
COOPER: Are you Freddie?
FREDDIE: That's right. And this is me destiny.
Freddie and BOB battle. At one point, Freddie punches the sphere through the floor, and fire flames out. But the sphere re-emerges and attacks Freddie with renewed vigor, felling him.
COOPER: Freddie, get up!
BOB: Catch you with my death bag.
Freddie, having regained his feet, punches the sphere as it rushes him. The sphere shatters, the pieces rising up to the ceiling and disappearing.
FREDDIE (face covered in blood): Did I do it?
COOPER: You did it, Freddie.
The light returning to normal, Cooper approaches Mr. C's body and slips the jade ring on his hand. We see the clock reads about 2:45 or 2:46. Mr. C, white smoke pouring from his body, disappears.
RODNEY (amazed): One for the grandkids.
Cut to the Red Room where the jade ring tumbles to the floor, making a ringing sound as it strikes.
Back in Frank's office, Cooper approaches him.
COOPER: Frank, do you have the room key to the Great Northern Hotel, 315?
FRANK: What? How do you know about...
COOPER: Major Briggs told me Sheriff Truman would have it.
Frank takes the key from his pocket and hands it to him. In the parking lot, Gordon roars in with the FBI.
In Frank's office, Cooper looks over at Naido, taking note of her. She gazes back at him, as if she can see him. As he looks at her, then away, he splits into two Coopers at about 30:22, one face transparent and close-up, staring into the camera.
As if puzzled, he looks to the door, where Rodney and Bradley still stand with Andy and Lucy. Bobby comes ambling up.
BOBBY: What's going on around here?
BRADLEY: Took the fucking words right out of my mouth.
COOPER: Major Garland Briggs. Bobby, your father was well aware of what's going on here today.
BOBBY: What is going on?
COOPER: Many years ago, information your father gathered brought him together with Director Gordon Cole, who is here right on time. Gordon.
GORDON (he enters with Tammy and Albert): Coop.
COOPER: And that's what's brought us to where we are today. (More somber, looking at Hawk, who nods back.) Now, there are some things that will change. The past dictates the future.
Candie, Sandie, and Mandie enter with baskets of finger sandwiches, everyone parting to allow them into the office.
CANDIE (to Cooper): It's a good thing we made so many sandwiches.
COOPER: Frank, give my regards to Harry.
FRANK: Sure will.
Cooper now making his goodbyes, Naido rushes forward to catch Cooper's attention. She holds up her right hand and he presses his left hand against it. She drops her hand and begins her transformation into Diane. Her face blurs as a kind of black smoke envelopes it. Black smoke pours from her mouth. We see the Red Room appear in place of her face, then she is standing in the Red Room as her face splits open. She disappears suddenly as, it seems, a rough, bloody globe has emerged, with a black hole in it, that floats above the Red Room floor. Diane's face appears in the hole, half-eclipsed. She takes Naido's place in the sheriff's office and Cooper smiles. Cut back briefly to the empty Red Room with the transparent Cooper's face gazing ominously on, then return to the Sheriff's office, where Cooper happily approaches Diane, grinning.
COOPER: Diane!
They passionately kiss as all look on, bewildered.
DIANE: Cooper. The one and only.
COOPER: Do you remember everything?
DIANE: Yes.
She looks up at the clock that is stuck at 2:53. Cooper does as well. The transparent face speaks in a slowed, distorted voice. We live inside a dream.
Diane takes Cooper's arm and he faces everyone.
COOPER: I hope I see all of you again, every one of you.
The room goes dark. Cooper calls out, Gordon!, and Gordon returns his call, Coop!
The transparent face still looking on, all goes dark with an intense whooshing sound. Out of the dark walk Cooper, Diane and Gordon. We hear a soft ringing tone. They follow the sound through the basement of the Great Northern, past lockers, to a door. Cooper unlocks the door and turns to Diane and Gordon.
COOPER: Now, listen, I'm going through this door. Don't try to follow me, either of you.
GORDON: Be thinking of you, Coop.
COOPER: See you at the curtain call.
Cooper exits through the door.
Equal parts absurdity and mystery conspire to make this bizarre battle work. The audience has waited seventeen episodes for the meeting of Mr. C and Cooper, which we may have reasoned would result in some battle that Cooper was expected to win, for Mr. C had already been victorious for 25 years during which Cooper was confined to the Red Room. For 25 years, Cooper has been removed from a world to which we expected he must desire to return--to his friends in Twin Peaks and the FBI. Cooper shunning any prospect of a life with Janey and Sonny Jim, promising to return to them in a manner that the audience comprehends must be a tulpa, already suggested he had plans that meant an absolute separation from them as Cooper. And then we have the same with Twin Peaks. After a few minutes that abruptly clears away the problem of Mr. C (he and Cooper never even meet, Mr. C is dead by the time Cooper gets there) and BOB is polished off by Freddie, rather than there being any well-deserved R&R and "What have you been up to? How have things been?", Cooper is charging off to further adventures.
Mr. C makes it to the coordinates he'd so desired, and it's where Naido had appeared, a significant location for which Briggs had prepared procedure, as regards the sheriff's department, twenty-five years in advance. Mr. C is swept up and via the portal and the Jupiterean palace theater is redirected to the sheriff's department, however an intermediary place to which he's not redirected, but which we're shown, is Laura Palmer's house. What's up with that? Why do we see Laura Palmer's house? What would have happened if Cooper had made his way there? Cooper already well knows where he should be and it's at the sheriff's department.
Why is Chad an essential part of the story who must confront Andy and be defeated by Freddie?
Andy's initial vision of Lucy's future was that he would position her in front of Sheriff Truman's doorway then stand back as she gazed with an ambiguous expression on a scene we weren't permitted to see. This future is altered as she instead appears at Frank's door with a gun and kills Mr. C. If Andy's vision of the future had remained fixed, what would he have been positioning Lucy in the doorway to see?
Why do Lynch/Frost choose to not have Mr. C and Cooper ever directly confront one another? Was it impossible for them to confront one another directly? Could they not cohabit the same area?
I'll get to the oddity of Frank's hat briefly popping off the top of his head, when Mr. C shoots at him and supposedly misses, in Part 18.
By the time we get to Part 17 and Freddie and the Green Glove, we see how not only is boxing a consistent theme in The Return, but, as I've already noted earlier in the analysis, Freddie is prefigured in Part One already with Marjorie Green, and her dog Armstrong, sniffing out the death of Ruth, and the coroner, Constance, being approving of Dave for "behaving himself for a change" by wearing his gloves. In Las Vegas, Dougie-Cooper had Battling Bud for an understanding boss at Lucky 7 Insurance, and was confronted many times with the poster of Bushnell in his boxing days. In Part 14, Freddie relates the story of his receipt of the then green glove, and from there we go to Sarah caught up in watching an old boxing match on the television, which repeated and repeated, until there was a slight change and, out of alcohol, she got up, left the room, and went to a bar. The repetitious boxing match is given, after a fashion, a "body" in the bloody man at the jail cell who repeated everything that everyone says. He's an unreal character who goes unrecognized by everyone but Chad. Freddie and James seem not to realize he's there as they pay him no attention. The last we see of the bloody man is before Chad is knocked out by Freddie then proceeds upstairs to fulfill his destiny in his fight with BOB.
We can see the boxer in also Johnny, Audrey's brother, who is such pellmell energy it is self-destructive, and who looks every bit the image of a boxer, in his helmet and sweats, one of his hands encased in a large protective glove, when Richard visits and assaults Mrs. Horne. Had Johnny not been bound strapped to a chair and heavy table, he would certainly have laid Richard out, flat on the floor, that day.
Indeed, if we return to Fire Walk with Me we have the boxing match between Chris Isaak's Chester Desmond and Sheriff Cable. Desmond had won and bent rebar into an Omega shape. When he went back to the trailer park for the Blue Rose, he had found the jade ring under the Chalfont/Tremond trailer and had disappeared, never to be heard from again. So, I wonder if Lynch sensibility has Desmond reappearing in The Return in the form of Freddie--not that he is Freddie, but maybe Desmond, wherever he may be, is part of the fuel behind the prowess of the Green Glove.
Mr. C transported to the Red Room, Cooper receives the green key, then upon facing Naido is troubled and we have another kind of "split", in which a close-up of his face appears, layered over the scene, as if both surveilling the situation and remarking on it, as well as confronting the viewer, or this is another timeline of Cooper stuck at 2:52/2:53. We must wonder again at the origin of the doppel--was it that day, many years before, on 10/10, when Cooper said he was worried because he'd had a dream about that day, and had run back and forth between a hall and a hall monitor until he had finally seen himself doubled and remaining in the hall, which is when Jeffries had also appeared and questioned Cooper's authenticity, his identity, as if to suggest that he was aware of two Coopers. As this scene progresses, that layering of the second Cooper says, "We live inside a dream", which also takes us back to Gordon's dream in which Monica had told him, "We're like the dreamer, who dreams and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?" Gordon had then been returned to that day in Philadelphia when Cooper had worried about his dream and Jeffries had appeared. With his experiencing it in the dream, he realizes he had forgotten about that day. And though we accept that a memory has been returned to him via the dream, we need to consider as well that the dream itself may have formed the memory and realized it as event. We might be prompted to try to figure out if it is Gordon's dream in which all this actually takes place, or is it Cooper's? But there is no answer. The way the events refer to one another they are, in a sense, balanced, so that we can not discern the definitive origin. There is no chicken before the egg moment.
Audrey's "break" had also been a Monica moment, but in the form of Monique, a fight between two men beginning over her, one man attacking another for being with his wife. Desperate to escape the ensuing violence, Audrey had begged her accountant husband to get her out of there, at which point she had been booted into a new situation, a suspension in white light, with only her face to reflect upon. Monica derives from Mon or Amun, and may be related to the Greek, monos, "alone". In Latin it was a name derived from monere, to advise, as in a premonition, such as Cooper had in his 10/10 dream.
The way Cooper delivers his goodbyes to all, we realize there will be no true reunion. He will now disappear again, and already knows where he's going. But he doesn't know everything, as revealed with what happens with Naido, and then his being taken as if by surprise when his transition to the basement of the Great Northern begins so suddenly.
Naido. Naido is a problem. It seems, via the Red Room, that Diane has been hidden in her. We don't know what effects Diane's transition--perhaps it is simply Cooper--but Naido disappears and Diane is observed as a partly eclipsed face in a bloody stone-like figure. Then she fully takes Naido's place, decked out in bright red wig, her nails changed so they are colored black and white, her eyes swathed in dark black eyeliner, she and Cooper passionately kiss--and the viewer, like everyone else in the sheriff's office, stares on in amazement, wondering, "What in the hell is that about?."
If, as explored in Part Three, Naido means something like "Nonexistent Way of Life", this might fit in also with Diane's exclaiming, "I'm not me!"
The Arm had cried out, when Cooper fell through the floor of the Red Room into what had first seemed to be water but then became a star-studded sense of infinity, "Non-existent!" This fall had eventually led him to his first meeting with Naido.
This may seem like a small thing but Naido's PJ's and robe and fuzzy slippers, which are then worn by Diane, stand out so conspicuously that I am returned to August 1956 and the PJ contained in KPJK, the radio station from which the shadow "woodsman" sent out his repetitive message that caused some to fall into a deep sleep. Following the song, "My Prayer", he had intoned, "This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within." That night, too, an egg had cracked open and out had called a long-nosed creature, that demanded comparison to a story Lynch had recounted in his film about cooking quinoa. I have already given this in full in Part 8, and only will give a small portion here:
...Now we open this up, and took a look at the nice quinoa cooking in there, cooking away it is, and it goes better with the lid on it, and in goes the broccoli, but we don't put the bullion in until one minute before the end. So the end is 53. At 52...the thing is really close to getting done. So now we go back out. Back in time to 1965, in the summer, maybe early in August of 65, the train pulls out of Greece into Yugoslavia at night. And the train went through a barren landscape, but you couldn't see anything...and suddenly the train slows and stops and somehow the message went out that we could disembark...moths were flipping and flying, like frogs, frog moths were pulling themselves out of the earth and flying up in front of the stand, dust was blowing, it was like a mysterious, strange wind sound--and came the tiniest little copper coin that I got somewhere...
Lynch had purchased sugar water. The monetary transactions he had after this, with the initial exchange of that coin, and the purchase of the water, became to him something like magic, in that he had given paper back, then when he gave that paper to another, his hands were flooded with coins in return. He had started with one coin and that coin had turned into multitudes.
We can see in this story the seed of Cooper-Dougie at the casino. We can see in this story, as well, the creature that breaks out of its egg and climbs into the mouth of the young girl who, walked home by a boy, questioned him whether he was still seeing another girl, and when he had said no she had accepted this and permitted herself to fall in love with him. I have already explored these things before in the analysis. But with Naido we return again to KPJK, and other inspirations for Part Eight, because of the conspicuousness of those PJs.
When Diane looks up at the clock stuck between 2:52 and 2:53, drawing Cooper's attention to it, this is when the transparent, onlooking Cooper remarks, "We live inside a dream."
Then, Diane, on Cooper's arm, he faces everyone, says he hopes to see them all again one day, and his transition to the basement of the Great Northern begins, upon which he calls out to Gordon, who accompanies Cooper and Diane to room 315.
Before, when stuck at 2:52, the critical moment of exchange, Mr. C driving down the road, Cooper had been told it was all right for him to go out. In a moment, Jeffries will tell him it's all right to go in.
THIS IS WHERE YOU'LL FIND JUDY
THE OWL RING SYMBOL AS AN INFINITY 8 - LAURA LIVES AND IS LOST
Cooper advances through the black. Gerard approaches.
GERARD: Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds "Fire walk with me".
As Gerard finishes, there is a flash of electricity. Cut multiple times quickly between Gerard and Cooper. They walk out of the black down a hall, and up a stairway upon which we'd earlier seen the shadow men. An intense electric flash is followed by the Jumping Man running down the stairs.
We hear a door creak and Gerard and Cooper step into the parking lot of the motel where Mr. C had gone to see Jeffries. They enter the room which provides access to where Phillip resides in his seeming alchemical retort.
COOPER: Phillip?
JEFFRIES: Please, be specific.
GERARD: The date...
COOPER: February 23, 1989.
JEFFRIES: I'll find it for you. It's slippery in here. It's good to see you again, Cooper. Say hello to Gordon if you see him. He'll remember the unofficial version. This is where you'll find Judy. (After a pause.) There may be someone...did you ask me this?
Gerard shakes his head yes, then no.
A version of the owl cave/jade ring symbol rises out of the smoke in the bubble. The two top angles break off and reform into a rectangular that rests on the lower rectangle. The angles reform into the curves of the figure 8. A dark ball forms on the lower right.
The 8 rotates in space so the ball is on the lower left, then the ball slides down and to a little lower right than before.
JEFFRIES: There it is. You can go in now. Cooper, remember.
GERARD:
Electricity.
There's an electric flash. Cooper and Gerard's presence in the room stutters--they are there then not. Then Cooper, eyes shut, is alone in the black. He listens to a whooshing sound. He turns black-and-white. He disappears.
The ceiling fan in Laura Palmer's home. She runs down the walk, away from the house, and climbs on the back of James' motorcycle. Her father angrily looks out the window as they ride off together. They ride for a while, around a curve in the road, then pull over beside some woods. Cooper stutters into existence, unobserved. He watches from a distance as Laura climbs off James' bike.
JAMES: What is wrong with you?
LAURA: There's no place left to go, is there, James?
JAMES: Say whatever you want. I know you love me. (They embrace.) And I love you.
LAURA: I do love you, James. Let's get lost together. (They kiss then she draws away abruptly.) Shit.
JAMES: What?
LAURA: He might try to kill you.
Laura, looking over James' shoulder, sees Cooper in the distance and screams. He ducks down.
JAMES: What's wrong? What?
LAURA: If he finds out...
JAMES: Laura, what's the matter?
LAURA: Bobby killed a guy.
JAMES: What are you talking about? Bobby didn't kill anybody.
LAURA: Do you want to see?
JAMES: See what?
LAURA: Right. (Regrouping herself.) Open your eyes, James. (Askance.) You don't even know me. There are things about me...even Donna doesn't know me. Your Laura disappeared. It's just me now.
JAMES: Laura.
LAURA (she slaps his hand away, crying): What about this, James? (She throws him a bird.)
James pulls her to him and kisses her but stops as she is staring at him.
LAURA: I think you want to take me home now.
They ride to the stop light where Laura falls off.
JAMES: Laura!
LAURA: Don't!
JAMES: Come on.
LAURA: Don't! Just don't! Oh! (She desperately hugs him, crying.) I love you, James!
James drives off. Laura runs through the woods.
Cut to Leo and Ronette and Renault waiting for her. Back to Laura in the woods. She comes upon Cooper. Her theme plays.
LAURA: Who are you? Do I know you? Wait. I've seen you in a dream.
In a dream.
Cooper's hand extended, he saying nothing, Laura takes it.
Black-and-white of Laura, wrapped in plastic, on the beach. Her body disappears.
In the forest, Laura and Cooper change from black-and-white to color.
LAURA: Where are we going?
COOPER: We're going home.
Cooper leads Laura, she following.
Cut back to the first episode again, this time in color, Josie at her mirror, then Pete telling Catherine he is going fishing. He walks along the path by the river and doesn't see Laura as there is no Laura there. Josie glances back. Pete throws out his lure into the water.
Through distorted whooshing, we hear an anguished cry in Laura Palmer's house. Groaning. Wailing. Laura's mother enters the living room, grabs Laura's picture and puts it on the ground. She takes a knife and stabs it over and over again, but the shattered glass reforms after each stab, she crying and wailing.
Back in the woods, Cooper leads Laura along.
Then suddenly she is gone as the noises of the woods fall silent and we instead hear a weird scratching sound. He looks back, his hand is empty. We hear wind then Laura screaming, but don't see her. The wind and scream abruptly stop. The normal sounds of the woods resume.
Julee Cruise's "The World Spins" plays, and the forest, as she sings, gives way to the red curtains of the roadhouse, Julee on stage.
Halley's Comet's come and gone
The things I touch are made of stone
Falling through this night alone
Love, don't go away
Come back this way
Come back and stay
Forever and ever
The world spins
Somewhere along the way in Cooper's odyssey, we have already begun to get the feeling that Cooper's interest, like Orpheus, is in bringing Eurydice back from the dead. As she exists, the question of whether she is alive or dead has become confused as she feels "alive", and when Cooper at one point protests she's dead she responds that she is dead but she lives.
Multiple timelines appear to be present in the film, and sometimes we have a sense of what has happened having happened before, and other times we are instead given the feeling that what is happening is a new thing. Such as now. And yet Cooper seems, at the sheriff's office, to know exactly where he will be heading once BOB has been defeated and the key to Room 315 in his possession. Certainly, he knows what he is doing when he goes beyond the door of "Room 315", which is not his original room, instead this key also opens a door that is in an area that looks as though it has been long neglected and forgotten. The fact that Cooper tells Gordon and Diane not to follow him, suggests he knows, at least in part, where he is going and what will happen. His quest, at this point, turns out to be taken back in time to the night Laura was killed, to alter happenings so she is not murdered, but Jeffries defines it differently for us, instead saying it is where Cooper will find Judy.
The symbol on the jade ring is revealed to represent infinity. Jeffries, who has always been associated with time travel, delivers Cooper into the past, which means that he's unable to move back and forth in time himself, which would also be the case with Gerard.
This time, viewing the night Laura died, it is in black-and-white.
From Part Two of this analysis:
FIRST WOODSMAN (subtitled): We have descended from pure air.
MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): Going up and down. Intercourse between the two worlds.
BOB (subtitled): Light of new discoveries.
MRS. TREMOND (subtitled): Why not be composed of materials and combinations of atoms?
MRS. TREMOND'S GRANDSON (subtitled): This is no accident.
MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): This is a Formica table. Green is its color.
FIRST WOODSMAN (subtitled): Our world.
MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): With chrome. And everything will proceed cyclically.
SECOND WOODSMAN (subtitled): Boneless.
MIKE (subtitled): Yes, find the middle place.
BOB (subtitled): I have the fury of my momentum.Our world. With chrome. Why with chrome? Perhaps because "chrome" is from the Greek khroma "color". A black and white world that progresses into color. I write more about this later and only wanted to note that conversation here due the Chromatics, James' friend wearing a green glove on his right hand, and it being said that James is quiet now because he had an accident. Green, no accident, and chrome had been united in the above dialogue from Fire Walk With Me, and we also have, green, chrome, and an accident here. I've the feeling that the black/white world is something in the realm of Lynch's conception of the subatomic, of immaterial conceptions passing into materiality but I could be wrong.
Cooper is in a place of potential. Laura, appearing to trust him because she has formerly seen him in a dream, takes his hand and walks with him away from the future in which she is killed. Her body disappears off the beach, and as she walks with Cooper in the forest they enter a color world, another future materializing.
If Cooper has changed the past and future, we can argue via the self-consistency principle that there is no unnatural violation as we have a circular causation. Or, it could be that, rather than changing past and future, there is no real time travel, Cooper has instead initiated another world.
When Laura disappears, Cooper's expression appears to betray that this was something he hadn't anticipated. He is left empty-handed, unable to return Laura to her home.
While back at Laura's home, in the old future that is now changing, Sarah grabs Laura's photo, lays it on the floor, and attacks it with a knife, but is unable to destroy it. The portrait immediately returns to a whole state.
If we focus, for the moment, only on emotional/psychological content, Cooper, with his drive to take Laura home, obviously is not afraid of returning her to Sarah, her mother. But the episode ends with Sarah attacking Laura's portrait, as if determined to put an end to her daughter for once and for all. We feel her attacking Laura by means of the portrait, and we don't know if she is attacking Laura, or the misery that Laura's death has come to represent for her. We feel she may know that Laura has been returned to the land of the living, and rather than welcoming her daughter, Sarah demands Laura remain dead.
The viewers can not begin to divine what will happen next.
Approx 7500 words or 15 single-spaced pages. A 58 minute read at 130 wpm.
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