The return of Eraserhead
Garmonbozia is a nonsense word on this side of the TV screen.
But inTwin Peaksthe term has weight and meaning.
For the predatory demons of the Black Lodge, pain and sorrow is foodstuff.
They convert the paired feelings into creamed corn literal creamed corn and slurp it up from their cupped hands.
Didnt their mother teach them anything?
The Return is chunky with Garmonbozia.
Brings back some memories, he said as the strains of Lauras theme swelled on the soundtrack.
The thingsMad Mentaught me…
The varied hues of creamed corn were everywhere in Parts 3 and 4.
By the end of Part 4, the yellow king was in prison himself.
It resolved the question of Coopers return not with a straight story but a personalized reincarnation myth.
(More, later.)
These two hours did much to invest us in the 18-hour journey of the newTwin Peaks.
I also liked the moment when she waved off a hot flash after Cole left.
Was it the hormones, or does Gordon do something for her?
Speaking of clown acts, damn, these episodes were funny!
The irony of high concept Dougie going, Thats weird!
Ditto the wink of Cole Lynch himself!
Parts 3 and 4 continued to defy our expectations ofTwin Peakshere at the start.
But Im liking it and I find meaning in the challenge.
And yet, hes also a hero without a self.
His enchanted man-child evoked the protagonists ofBeing There,Rain Man, andRegarding Henry.
There was some Boo Radley in his story, too, plus a touch of Forrest Gump.
MacLachlan is just terrific.
It was a symbolic compass, pointing him toward home, and it was a lucky charm.
It dropped from his hands just as he was passing into the crosshairs of an assassins scope.
Bending over to pick it up rendered him invisible, saving his life.
Super-Cooper immediately began ministering to the dry souls of Vegas with his god-blessed fortune.
The way he called out the change with a shout (HELLLOOO!)
But Im weird that way.
Coopers desert messiah act extended to a practice of substitutional atonement.
He gave Janey-E the casino windfall, buying her much-needed liberation from enslaving debts, details TBD.
Jesus Christ, Cooper!Surely you are the Kwisatz Haderach!
From this POV, Cooper fixing Dougies wayward life is his next-life duty.
Note again how the newTwin Peaksis fixated with the theme of adultery.
The stakes in the newTwin Peaksare spiritual.
The moral, to paraphrase Lynchs proxy: Fix your hearts or die, America!
Everything was new again for Cooper.
How badly did you want to him to issue an involuntary, Damn good coffee!
Dammit, LynchFrost, quit playing games with my fanboy heart and get N Sync!
(Or was that Backstreet Boys?
Like Coopers doubles, all those boy bands look the same to me.)
(See: season 4 ofFringe; season 6 ofLost.)
Will Cooper develop a new identity, new relational attachments, and new worldly concerns?
If Cooper gets his Cooperness back, whither his new identity?
What life does he choose?
Im sure fans want to see Classic Cooper restored and sent back to Twin Peaks.
His spiritual transmigration could end in past-life regression, his story,The Pilgrims Regress.
Cooper contains the questions, ambitions and restlessness of its creators.
What shouldTwin Peaksbe in 2017?
How to satisfy themselves and the audience?
By mimicking the original?
By being radically different?
These two hours were Lynchian to the max and they were self-consciously about Lynch, too.
Ill elaborate in the final section of this recap.)
How to get away with artistic murder and make everyone happy at the same time?)
As Cooper chased those flickers of Red Room curtains, as he won with every HELLOOO!
Cooper: Call for help.
Jackie: Thats what Im here for!
(If only Hollywood really worked that way for all high art filmmakers!)
Cooper brought the winnings home to Janey-E, who rejoiced in the freedom the money would buy them.
The mother-son sufferings ofThe Elephant ManandBlue Velvet.
The Yellow Man ofBlue Velvet.
The death row escapee/fugitive nihilist (and his amnesiac double) ofLost Highway.
the evolution of the arm, a.k.a.
The Man From Another Place.
More than anything, I saw him as a fantastic riff on their interest in interrogating nostalgia.
Ceras performance was a deft blend of sincerity and cheekiness that suggested several possibilities.
Is Wally genuinely eccentric?
Is he a big phony thats just putting us on?
(By the way, people have been asking that same question of Lynch his entire career.)
The scene spoke to Lynchs love for both old Hollywood and new Hollywood.
Note how the Sheriffs Department has grown over the years and how Truman manages it.
Its doubled in size, and it has a divided personality.
He, too, is a Fix your heart or die kind of guy.
(Those anxieties are also encoded on the Cooper-Dirty Cooper-Dougie Jones relationship, which well be unpacking soon.)
(Recap continues on page 4)
So.
How to wrap our heads around Agent Coopers mind-bending metempsychosis?
How do we make sense of his agency-challenged, Cooper-desaturated nature?
Is he animal, human or spirit?
Does he have a self?
What is the self, anyway?
And what makes any of us human?
Were you baffled by the abundance of inexplicable and cryptic details?
Heres how Im currently making sense of the story andTwin Peakssupernaturalism in general:
+Dirty Cooper is a paradox.
Hes Coopers doppelganger, a perverse product of the psycho-mystical pocket universe known as the Black Lodge.
(I assume he was.)
Does everyone have a doppelganger hiding in the crimson curtains of the Black Lodge?
The only way primes can escape is if the doppelganger returns.
This week, that plan was activated.
(The originalTwin Peakstook place in early 1989.
So are we in 2014?)
+Dirty Coopers scheme for cheating the system?
His plan was to dupe the Black Lodge into taking his life model decoy instead of him.
+Dirty Cooper must have performed his death-dodging Horcrux chicanery many years ago.
(Unless Sonny Jim isnt his kid?)
Was Dirty Cooper puppeteering or controlling Dougie through psychic or material means or both?
They might even be able to move between terrestrial locations through wires.
The voided lighter socket in his car an electrical outlet began to glow.
Dirty Cooper became nauseated.
He seemed determined to keep from upchucking his Garmonbozia.
That could have been a character idea, an expression of BOBs greed.
+Because Dougie was an extension of Dirty Cooper, he got sick, too.
Its possible that the Black Lodge locked onto him because Dougie tossed up first.
The ring probably made a difference, too.
Dougie got taken sucked into an electrical outlet inside a Rancho Rosa home instead of Dirty Cooper.
+With one-armed MIKE playing judgy examiner, the Black Lodge broke Dougie down.
It popped off his head.
Blacks fumes came from his neck like oily smoke from scorched engine oil.
that purple cloud erupted, exploding from a larger purple haze.
(Yes, the lyrics of Purple Haze do speak meaningfully to Coopers experience;look them up.)
One beautifully produced idea suffused with deep feeling will stick with me for quite a while.
As Cooper approached the blind woman and sat next to her, reality became disjointed.
The film stuttered forward and stuttered back, like a spastic stop-motion animated movie.
Now lets ruin it with analysis.
His mother had the same nightmare.
Once of them killed herself.
The other had major mother issues; her mom had a tendency to seduce her boyfriends.
We might understand this sequence as a representation of Coopers guilt, haunt, and Freudian drives/issues.
It is the matriarchal opposite to the patriarchal Red Room.
Im sure Dirty Cooper would have wanted such a duel.
+Who was the entity or mother pounding on the structure throughout the scene?
I suspect its the monster that seemed to follow Cooper out of the Black Lodge last week.
Im guessing its either Evil Brain Tree or the vengeful spirit of Laura Palmer.
Was she representing the values patience, faithfulness, sacrifice of his character?
Was she modeling those traits, maybe imprinting them upon him?
(Dirty Cooper was, in fact, the last person to see Major Briggs alive.)
His job was to monitor and investigate the supernatural phenomena of Twin Peaks.
+Major Briggs uttered the words Blue Rose.
It was introduced inFire Walk With Me.
After Naido pulled the lever, the room was reset.
There was a blue rose near the electrical panel, which was now labeled with the number 3.
Agent Coopers room number at the Great Northern Hotel is 315.
A song called The Wild One.
Their job was to kill Cooper.
+Dirty Coopers scheme worked, except for the hit on Cooper.
Consequently, he, too, isnt quite himself right now.
Hes slurring his words, running sluggish.
He and Cooper are clients of the same life server, and theyre suffering lag.
+Now in jail thanks to a trunk filled with guns, drugs, and a severed dogs leg (!
+Note the psycho-spiritual-mythical geography of Twin Peaks USA that the new series is mapping.
Moreover:
+The Rancho Rosa complex mirrored/doubled aspects and elements of Black Lodge mythology.
Its an enclave of lodges, of course, with a name evoking the Red Room.
Every door was black, except Dougies house, which had a red door.
(Inside the house: a ceramic owl cookie jar.)
Janey-E and Sonny Jim are another suffering mother-child pair, another pair of lookouts.
Perhaps theyll all go bad in the weeks to come.
The lyrics tell of a woman trapped inside a house on a rainy day.
The song corresponds to Naido, trapped in her home, and Cooper ministering to her.
But theres nothing uplifting about the scene; the mood is one of pure dread.
I remember feeling a real sense of horror.
I saw the movie again many years later and I could hardly stand to watch it.
Which brings us to Tom Petty.
American Girl was released as a single in February 1977 one month before the release ofEraserhead.
The B-side of American Girl was The Wild One.
keeps chasing the feeling of that first time.
Why would he do that?
Well, maybe hes just a big Tom Petty fan.
His piece is part fan letter, part lovers complaint.
He needed Lynch among us in the main, challenging the culture with a bold new vision.
Or Lynch could conjure something new.
Just make a movie, dammit!
Gibron was stumped as to why Lynch couldnt or wouldnt satisfy this desire.
Was it simply about financing?
That didnt make any sense of him.
Who wouldnt want to throw bags of cash at someone as talented as Lynch?
Gibron had another theory: Lynch was ghosting us.
Lets cut to the chase are you breaking up with me?
Are you simply going to sit back on your limited oeuvre laurels and wait for me to give up?
Do you honestly think that will work?
Until then, I will simply have to wait.
I need you to make more movies.
If not just for me, but as a favor to the rest of the art form.
Cinema is stale without you and I know my life is as well.
Lynchians, consider the newTwin Peaksa song, dedicated to you, for your long-distance dedication.
