I just watched it and thought it was incredible. It seemed like the broad strokes were pretty understandable to me -- Spoiler: the nuclear explosion was the birthplace/seeding ground of evil/BOB from the Lodge into the Earth, and as a response, the more benevolent spirits planted the soul of Laura Palmer so that it could help fight against BOB and the like. The bug corrupted/infected the woman and the drifter was spreading the infection/evil throughout. And really, what better place to represent the most unfeelingly cruel and destructive and inhuman aspects of humanity than in the plumes of an atom bomb?
Obviously I could be totally wrong and that's part of the fun with David Lynch but since he's such an intuition-driven artist I don't really particularly feel the need to dissect and demand answers out of something that isn't really focused on overtly giving them all of the time. It's incredible that after changing the landscape of TV and pushing its boundaries over two decades ago Lynch is now back and pushing at those boundaries yet again, diving deeper and deeper into the arthouse cinema style that he is so innately skilled at and challenging what an episode of TV can be. I haven't felt in a long time like I've been seeing something truly changing/challenging on TV and it's so refreshing to have this experience again -- as much as I've loved things like The Leftovers, they never felt like they were doing anything truly new or unheard of in the medium, and this continues to go into places that I've never seen on an hour-long drama.
How was that an actual episode on television? Unbelievable
By the way Spoiler: if I died and my spirit went and watched a Nine Inch Nails performance as good as that then I'd come back to life, too
Is it possible that the young girl is Leland's mother? We never heard anything about Leland or Sarah being in NM (that I know of; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
But if she was Leland's mother, it would make sense of the insect was Laura's spirit OR the spirit of BOB.
Also, is Ray connected to the FBI?
And finally, is anyone else still holding out a sliver of hope that we'll get a scene from Bowie?
Last edited by elevenism; 06-26-2017 at 06:18 PM.
The insect is BOB and there's no mistaking it. I mean, it looks like an airborne dick with locust wings and front legs, and rear frog legs. There's nothing at all pleasant about it. The shots of it crawling over the sand and into the girl's bedroom directly mirror BOB's mannerisms and actions from the past. Entering her mouth is also extremely visually suggestive of violation.
Leland was born in 1944. By 1956 he's already alive at the age of 12. He first encountered Bob as a boy "near his grandfather's vacation home near Pearl Lakes" (fictitious area near TP north of Ghostwood forest). Sarah was born in 1945 and is also a native of Twin Peaks. The time frame of that thing's appearance coincides with Leland being able to meet him for the first time if the girl relocates. I'm betting she's just BOB's first host...don't see Lynch going out of his way to completely retcon events.
After watching this episode again, everything seems to make a bit more sense. Bob is just a nasty mother fucker in and out isn't he.
He couldn't get that cigarette lit...damn.
Anyway, this episode was fantastic. I need to watch it again and let it digest a little more.
So I went through episode 8 again, thinking about that stream of puke coming out of whatever the hell that creature was... We saw a black orb with Bob's face on it along with many things shaped like eggs. My question, was this happening before or after the egg in the desert hatches the bug? I mean i get the bug being some kind of infant form of Bob but...
The reason I'm wondering about the puke happening after is because we also saw Bob in the exact same state when he was extracted from DoppelCoop. Perhaps this was the process he went through after he was taken, we saw him in transit somewhere. Back to the black lodge?
Yep ^
That's more or less what I'm getting at!
Maybe the stream of puke is like The Flash's speed force and there are two bobs, one from the future and one from the past.
What I gathered from that that is what was vomited up were body and soul separate. Laura's soul is sent down to earth like BOB's is, but she's a normal human being in every respect. BOB isn't and never was; the hatchling thing could serve as an anchor for his soul to latch onto and enable his transference into his host. The charred woodsmen digging him out of DoppelCoop's belly shows that there's some kind of physical aspect to his possession.
The fact that he goes in through her window is a direct callback to FWWM and is way too big of an indicator to ignore.
The episode was awesome!; period
Not only it tells the origin of Bob, we got some awesome visuals and a performance from Nine Inch F'N Nails!
It is my favorite episode so far i think it has lots of messages like "The nuclear bomb evils" and "Humanity's death of innocence".
So from my understanding:
- The "Black and white place" is the planet were the lodge spirits come from...
- The "Evil" that the bomb unleashed brought Bob into earth.
- The Gigant (??????) created Laura Palmer's soul as "good" entity.
- "Evil Coop" apparently can't die by "traditional" means, does it mean only "Good Cop" can kill him?
Wait, wait, wait...
So Twin Peaks is using the atomic bomb testing in New Mexico as an origin story to further the plot?
There's a certain other cancelled beloved series that uses the New Mexico atomic bomb as the beginning of evil taking over. What's the deal, Mr. Lynch? He watching Carnivále as well?
Secret History of Twin Peaks had a whole bunch of seemingly random stuff about the creator of the Manhattan project summoning demons. Makes esnes.
The woodsmen may actually have been foreshadowed in TSHOTP book as the victims of the 1902 burning river incident.
I was ready to buy Margaret Lanterman's dead hubby as being the jail cell/morgue guy/guy from the FWWM movie, but now that there's a bunch of them and they really do seem malevolent, I'm gonna go and unsubscribe from that theory now and just assume he resides in the Log Lady's log like a sane person
I love all of these readings and interpretations. It's just as fun being wrong about stuff as it is being right.
Side note: Amazon page for the score now mentions "Grady Groove" (Featuring Grady Tate) and "The Chair" - tagline for the next part - as song titles.
This is going to be one painful-ass week and a half.
The Woodsmen are the hardest to "interpret", they are kind of like ghouls or even zombies, i used the "death of innocence" phrase because of them; they literally destroy the naiveness and "feel-good spirit" of the old days (just like the bomb did...).
That convenience store echoes the one in "Fire Walk with Me", was the lumberjack a Woodsmen? something else?
The creature in Mulholland Drive is a Woodsmen, that's for sure...
The NIN cameo was ridiculous and amazing all at once.
This is a general question to fellow ETS Lynch fans: someone who was watching the new season with me dropped out, stating that Lynch has a problem with women and violence and two-dimensional roles. She also pointed to Lost Highway as an example. What do you make of the female characters in the new season (and the violence they receive)?
i'm a hardcore feminist and i'm pretty quick to call out bullshit when people pull it. personally, i think lynch has a problem with the way women are treated in the real world, and uses his art to express how fucked up that is. i have never found his characters to lack depth. i mean, the entire basis of the series is the exploration of the rape and murder of a young woman...i hardly think lynch is endorsing that kind of behavior.
Lynch just tells it like it is...
He is obsessed with violence and sex and the "dark side of human condition", because those are topics very present in today's society.
He sure is not for everyone and i can understand if someone doesn't like it, but feeling offended is dumb, the man is an artist and as such he has to treat the topics as they are.
There's plenty of male "victims" in his work too; but i'm sure he knows that the female violence has the bigger impact.
Could the old woman in the trailer in FWWM also be a woodsperson? Harry Dean Stanton and Agent Desmond both see her (both could be said to be either "gifted or damned" and therefore be able to see them, if they are some sort of Lodge spirits). I dunno, just an idea...
And if the "White Lodge" scene is the same set as Club Silencio, what does that say about what happens at the end of Mulholland Drive? Is this the Lynch Cinematic Universe taking shape, hahahaha?
Is it true there's no new episode this Sunday?
I've put most of my other subscriptions on hold for July because of financial issues. I wanted to keep Showtime, but now I think I'll just cancel it for July, and get it back in August. The 8th episode made that strong an impression on me, that I'd want to keep it that whole time so that when I get back to it 2-3 episodes will already be up and I can binge those. If that makes any sense.
The rollout for this season has been perplexing, to say the least. Is there any logical reason why they're taking two weeks between episodes 8 and 9? It's not even the halfway point of the season. Not to mention they released the first four episodes all on the same day, only to switch to a once-a-week release after that..