Twin Peaks: The Return (Episodes 14-18) with Jane Schoenbrun

Blank check with Griffin and David

Blank check with Griffin and David

Don't know what to say or to expect

All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack

What podcast is this?

Sure.

That's what you told me.

I think that's what you should do.

It doesn't matter.

We have to talk about the story.

Never say it doesn't matter.

Never say it doesn't matter.

Sometimes I think the opening quote we pick doesn't totally matter.

I think it matters so much.

Weird.

I've never gotten that vibe from you that you think it doesn't matter.

Just sometimes we spend 20 minutes, not 20 minutes.

We've never spent 20 minutes.

We've never spent 20 minutes.

I think it matters.

Beginnings are important.

We're here with a storyteller.

Do you want to take it again?

No.

No, absolutely not.

Beginnings are important, right?

Sure.

Well, it's actually all the beginning and end.

You hear that, David?

Those are the things people remember the most.

The quotes and the end as always.

That's the rule of storytelling.

Yeah.

How does TV Glow begin?

What's the first shot of TV Glow?

First shot of TV Glow is slow pan down that street.

You get the ice cream truck.

Good opening.

Good opening.

You need a good opening.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the rest of it.

Who cares?

People have already filed their letterboxed letterbox review by that point.

They just get their phone out and they're like, eh, four stars.

Pretty good.

Yeah, right.

They've taken out their phones.

They photographed the title card.

They've logged it on Letterboxd.

They've sang along.

They sang along.

And they've walked out after 30 minutes.

The state of Moogung 2024.

Did anyone go to a Wicked screening where people sang along?

I did not experience that.

I saw Wicked, of course, in 40X, where I think physically it was.

Right.

Have you seen Wicked J?

I have not seen Wicked James.

I literally have asked all of my friends to see Wicked with me, and no one wants to go.

So I'm going to see Wicked alone.

I think the people won't stop singing during wicked shit is a little bit of like, there are murders happening every two steps in New York City story.

You know, go ahead.

I think there's an overstatement of how

this is like an epidemic.

There's also like movies where you want the audience to be shouting at roundiness.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think the mistake was not simultaneously releasing and a single long cut, which I just saw there now

from this day on.

Right, that's what we'll be playing.

100%.

Will there be a little broomstick that like touches all the letters, all the words?

I assume so, yeah, or a

grim word.

What's the grimery?

Grimery, a little grimmery.

This is stuff you don't know, Jane.

You haven't, I know very little about the plot of Wicked, and I'm so excited because I love lore, lore.

Fuck.

Then you will like

it.

Because Wicked, the book especially, but the musical too, is basically like, I feel like there's more opportunity to plumb this lore, guys, and make up our own lore and kind of put it on top.

You want shit explained?

And I am also a big fan of Return to Oz.

Yes.

Oh, of course.

I love Return to Oz.

I think a movie we'd love to cover somehow.

Soul Directing Credit.

Soul Directing Credit, but obviously we could do an Oz series in

which we pitched before.

Previously would have included Oz the Great and Powerful, which now we've covered through Raimi, but we could include wickedness.

That's right.

That's Sam Raimi, huh?

Yeah, unfortunately.

Have you seen Oz the Great and Powerful?

No, I can't say I have.

As the lore, the lore's bad.

The lore is awful and unfortunate because it should be all lore.

That's part of the huge.

That's another attempt to be like, let's explain why the Wicked Witch is the way she is.

Right.

Coming from a completely different direction.

Her tears hurt her face because she's allergic to water.

Yeah, I mean, just like Bruce Willis and uh,

exactly like Bruce Willis and does glass ever address that Bruce Willis could hurt himself by crying?

Does that come up?

No, and he's an emotional guy, David Dunn.

Yeah, I feel like you never see him sob, but he's often kind of like right there.

But he can drink water, right?

Wolf, that's a good question.

They call out in the movie, you drink it too fast, you choke.

Oh, oh my God,

which is true.

I mean, of anybody, I guess.

I mean, how fast are we talking?

Like a fire hose?

Like,

I think with him, we have to remember: spoilers, this man died in a puddle.

I don't think, I think he could drink water pretty slowly and still make him choke.

What's our podcast?

This is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.

Baby,

we are concluding.

Yep.

Resolving.

We're answering all questions.

Sure.

No mysteries unsolved at the end of this mini-series about the films and TV of David Lynch called Twin Pods Fire Cast with me.

Of course.

Today we are covering the last five episodes of Twin Peaks the Return.

Sometimes called Twin Peaks a limited series.

Never called.

Season three.

Well, no, this is the thing.

It's never called that.

Okay.

And I saw people on the Reddit asking why.

And even like they, they announced they're doing a reissue of the Blu-ray and the wording on the box is very weird.

People are like, why is it like this?

Almost definitely contractual things about making it exist as its own piece of television rather than a direct continuation of the first two seasons.

An ABC show, sure.

In a way that probably has to do with not carrying over certain people.

I don't know.

Someone was calling out a lot of these, like.

the Gilmore Girls Netflix season, these things.

A year in the life.

These many years later, produced for a different platform or network revivals that have a different subtitle.

Right.

They get to be like, this is its own show.

This is a show that is using the intellectual property.

But it's a brand new television show.

And we decide who gets carried along.

In this case, kind of works.

I mean, this is the most, this is the case of like, yeah, it's Twin Peaks season three, but unlike seasons one and two, you know, there's boobs, which is the only difference.

I'd say that's, I'm trying to think, butts.

You do see butts, so maybe those are the two differences.

It would just be funny if Lynch came in here and was like, there's tits.

We get to have tits in showtime.

I was watching these episodes with friends and my roommate, who had never seen Twin Peaks, but actually that day had been like, I think I might start watching Twin Peaks.

Oh, yeah.

She came in and sat down and watched 17 and 18 with us.

And she was like,

is this what the old one is like?

And what did you say?

We were like, no, not really at all.

Like the old, the old one's like, like, like, cozy let's say our guest today

very excited and and talking about things our listeners ask about online it wasn't even a like suggestion demand thing i've started to see people be like man it'd be cool if they got jane schoenbrunn to do a twin peaks episode would be cool would be cool and guess what we fucking did right on right under the wire happening right under the wire incredible filmmaker i think a filmmaker you and i are constantly very excited by and talk about as like worse yeah Yes.

I'm a huge fan.

Yes.

Jane knows.

A very early booster.

Whatever.

No, but I feel like you, you were talking up.

No, I feel on the spot.

They're like, hey, Jane, here's your blank check.

And I'm like, actually, it says $50 on this check.

You've written a number here.

Yeah.

Jane Schoenbrunton, filmmaker of...

I Saw the TV Glow, one of my favorite movies of the year, Raw going the World's Fair.

And Twin Peaks, the Return mega fan?

Is that fair to say?

I often describe Twin Peaks the Return as the highlight of my adult life pre-transition.

I think when we last spoke,

we definitely discussed The Return briefly.

And I know it's on your sight and sound top 10 as well, right?

I think so.

Yeah.

Pretty sure.

Let me find it.

So, you know, I knew you were a fan.

I'm trying to be in discourse, you know?

It's not my 10 favorite

on my sight and sound, but you try to say like, hey, guys, check this out.

You had a really cool

speed racer

or is it movie?

Well, it's a provocative conversation.

Well, give me the full 10.

Oh, sure.

Messages of the afternoon, which rocks, if people have never seen that,

you know, is it TV?

Is it short film or is it featured?

A lot of cares.

A lot of these are movies that I want to be released.

officially on Blu-ray.

So

this is a chess move.

This was a chess move.

There's the Friends House.

It's a Karistami movie that I love.

The Quince Treeson, I've never seen.

There you go, because it's

not really available.

Is it a Rise or Riche?

I think it's a Riche.

Yes, a Riche movie.

Heinz.

How do you pronounce it?

Hyenas?

Heinz?

Hyenas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally fucked up, the Gregoraki movie.

Which at the time was not really.

Oh, and now it is.

At least by criterion.

Welcome to the terror drone, which I've never seen.

Check it out.

You would love to check that out.

Early Saffron Burroughs.

What happened to Saffron Burroughs?

Great question.

Great.

Okay.

Well, you guys figure it out.

Let's pin that for later.

A movie I am going to assume.

Oh, August in the Water.

I do not know that movie.

That one you guys have to see.

It's this like very quiet Japanese coming of age sci-fi movie.

Oh, she's like,

with the greatest, like, weird synth soundtrack from the 90s.

Oh, and it's on YouTube.

Yeah, it's very much not available in anything but terrible quality wow fantastic and then uh speed racer which we've covered on this show one of my favorite movies uncle boon me a wonderful movie yep how could you not come on and then twin peaks the return wow heard of it yeah yeah yeah we've been covering on this show i'm i'm just i'm like i'm scrubbing through the last episode because there was something as i was finishing the series where i was like that would be a good opening quote and i like drafted it in my head and i forgot it what was it i don't know we're gonna find out or we won't it'll be unresolved like certain plot threads at the end of twin peaks the return So, Jane, David Lynch, what is your relationship with this filmmaker beyond Twin Peaks the Return, just in general?

Oh, I

let me let me see.

I mean, Twin Peaks, I think, kicked it off.

I remember my parents would always talk about Blue Velvet as like the worst kind of movie you could see.

Okay, not like, not in a like, don't watch it, but just in a like, you know, like Texas Chainsaw Masquerade, right?

The most upsetting thing.

Blue Velvet is, you know, is another level.

Like, so I think it held

from the earliest moment it held sort of a mystique which let's just say I'm sure we said this to some degree in the episode that movie is upsetting and intense it is wild to read the statements from the time it came out when people were just like this is a new low yeah this never should have happened this should be illegal there should be cops standing by the fucking ticket booth And you watch it now and you're like, I don't know if just like our culture's degraded so much, but I find like most episodes of SVU more upsetting than Blue Velvet.

Or maybe in content, more upsetting, but maybe not like, you know, emotionally, psychologically, yeah.

Right.

You know, but yes, Lynch will cut that.

That's a great snapshot of that.

Of like your parents who probably saw it in theaters at the time and were just like, I can't believe that happened.

This will ruin people.

So that sort of loomed in the video store.

And then I started watching Twin Peaks in early middle school.

It had it had already aired on VHS.

And also, I couldn't find, I remember very clearly going to the Museum of Television in California, in LA,

where

pre-TiVO,

pre-DVD, really, you could sit at a console and they had an archive and you could request episodes and you got two hours.

We've ever talked about the Museum of Television and Radio, which is now the Paley Center.

That's right.

But was so big in my childhood as well as like this compulsive.

They had like everything.

Yeah.

It was, it was like, I remember thinking for like months about what TV shows I would

write two hours lists.

Was there a time limit?

Right.

Like, is it two hours in the booth?

Yeah.

But they would give you whatever you want.

You'd go to like an ancient PC that looked like the War Games computer that had this like terrible interface and you'd search through their archives and it was like, oh, now I can finally catch like the three episodes of Freaks and Geeks I missed when they aired

before the DVD came out, or like pull up like any random Johnny Carson.

Right, anyone.

Like, I want Johnny Carson from 1983, January 2nd.

Yeah.

But, like, get a life.

I feel like I had to watch through multiple visits to the Museum of Television and Radio.

See, I grew up on the East Coast, so this was really, it was like family vacation.

Yeah.

I'm just like, leave me here, please.

Yes.

But I remember watching Twin Peaks there.

I bought a Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me t-shirt in sixth grade from Generation Records

on Thompson.

Yeah, great records.

What was on the shirt?

And I got, got bullied for it.

It kind of had like, like, because they were like, oh, come on, that movie was Budican.

What are you doing?

Exactly.

We expected some resolution.

That's what the bully Rob said.

I think just for being idiosyncratic, you know,

what was on the shirt?

It was, it kind of had like

Japanese bootleg tour poster energy.

That's cool.

I remember.

I think Cooper was on there.

Yeah, it kind of had like a confused vibe to it.

Yeah.

And then the other childhood David Lynch thing for me was my friend Ari's parents took me and him when we were 12 to see Mohal and Drive in Theaters.

Oh, wow.

And I remember like, there's this specific vibe.

And sometimes I'll rewatch these movies now and be like, oh,

like, I like, I remember watching that movie, just kind of being like, there's something that I'm not understanding.

And it makes me like feel bad.

And when I go back and watch it, I'm always like, oh, it was sex

that you, sure.

It's like, there's something here that's just like not really, like, I don't understand

what, why.

I mean, not to like, just blow you up, but I think part of what has like, I saw the TV glow, I think is like a masterpiece and has really stuck with me all year.

And I think part of what reverberates so strongly, and I know David had a similar reaction to it, but it's like, we're both people who also grew up like like obsessively with our sense of self tied to this stuff that we watched obsessively, needed to read into, speculate on, socialize around.

And that feeling of like, why does stuff stick with you?

What is it saying in you that sometimes takes like years to resolve?

And without spoiling it for people who haven't seen it, there is a moment at the end of your film where the main character, the Justice Smith character, rewatches this thing that was so big in their childhood

that I was like blown away by, where I just went like, this is such like an intense,

I think fairly universal phenomenon in some form or another that I had never seen

really acknowledged, let alone captured and depicted.

But it's interesting to me that Twin Peaks was something that you watched in that sort of age.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And then over and over again.

And really did have like recurring dreams about it coming back.

Yeah.

And I remember like when they announced the day they announced the reboot being just like, I was working, I was like 24, 25, probably and working at this nonprofit.

I remember just like falling to my knees, you know?

Was it full triumph or was there any part of you that was concerned about triumph?

You had full

because it had been

Inland Empire came out when I was in college, you know, and I, and at that, and by around then, I sort of like found David Lynch as an adult.

And just like, when I, when I rewatched Mahalan Drive for the first time as an adult, I like rewatched it four more times in like a weekend.

Oh, yeah.

I watched

Lost Highway, I had this like incredible viewing of after my 30th birthday party, like 2 a.m.

And I was like, I want to watch Lost Highway right now.

So you just tossed it on.

That is a good time to watch it.

Turn out all the lights.

I think this is what I was trying to tee up is that like

in the fictional show within I Saw the TV Glow, I feel like there are some clear kind of like

influences, you know, and I feel like people have talked about like, oh, it has elements of like, Are You Afraid of the Dark and the Goosebumps TV show, but maybe some of like the fan culture around something like Buffy and things like that.

And the font of Buffy.

Come on.

Yes.

And the actors, right?

Yeah.

There's this, yes, this soup of stuff

and stuff that has its own integrity, but stuff that like, if you catch it at the right age and it activates something in your brain, lives in a very large way.

But if you were to revisit as an adult, perhaps some of it plays differently, you know?

Yeah, but we all like long for it.

We long totally.

And I guess this is the thesis of the movie, right?

Is that like we long for the way it felt.

We don't absolutely long for it.

Yes, which I think is like one of the very profound things you get at in the film.

But, and I'm someone who's obsessively regularly re-watching things that like stuck in my craw as a child to be like, what was it?

What was the thing?

Why did this like stick with me?

And it's always an interesting thing to watch it through different prisms, especially if you're like

resigned to not getting the same feeling out of it and you're almost watching it like as an archaeological expedition.

Sure.

You know, to sort of dig through yourself.

But this is that rare kind of thing of like, you can watch this at a young age.

It can impact you in that way.

And then you can revisit as an adult and be like, oh my God, it's better than I thought it was.

I understand it more now.

I'm more invested in it.

And it feels to me like one of, if not the like fundamental sort of starting point for the return is like engaging with this idea.

Yes.

Right.

It's like, it's, it's, it's not season season three.

It's David Lynch in conversation with like the memory of his filmography and of Twin Peaks.

Yeah.

We, we were talking right before recording about like sequels that seem to hate the audience or at least seem to be in conflict with what people are expecting it will be.

Yes.

Right.

Based on love of the first thing, the previous thing, whatever.

Right.

And this isn't quite that, but there is that sense of like,

he's not doing the thing, right?

Like even when you get like a stretch like within these episodes, the sort of like resolution of Big Ed.

Talked about it.

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right?

Where it's like, this is the kind of thing.

A moment that feels a little more like, okay, love long line, longtime fans of Twin Peaks.

Like,

10 minutes.

Then he cuts to a gas station slickering.

Right, like 15 minutes.

You get like 10 minutes that feel like probably what a lot of Twin Peaks fans wanted to see.

I've been waiting 30 years to know if Big Ed is going to figure it out with, you know, Peggy Lipton.

Norma?

Norma.

Sorry.

Yes.

And

those moments in this show are few and far between.

Correct.

And I feel like basically from the beginning of the show, he's teaching you this is not going to be that.

And yet, I'd never watched it before.

Doing it for the podcast has been my first watch.

Oh, wow.

These last five episodes, there's a run there, I would say maybe the two

17, 16, 15, where it feels like the show is starting to deliver what certain fans would have hoped for.

It gives you a version of what you might want to do.

It's like this is coming together.

The FBI.

But imagine if it ended with episode 17.

Like, that's terrible.

Would have been bad, but would be, that's probably what some people thought was going to happen.

I think so.

I was watching.

Someone punched Bob.

He's gone.

Right.

And Cooper's like, you know, big thumbs up and everyone gets together.

And it's like, yay.

It's fascinating because it does feel like he's doing it and he's doing it well.

The fireman's plan worked.

But I I think what's like fascinating, like watching it, watching these five episodes again

and just thinking about like the relationship to like spaces, you know, he's there, we're jumping between all of these different spaces and they almost exist in like literal different universes.

Like you have to like sort of travel through portals to get from Rancho Rosa to the sheriff's office.

It's like, and maybe most overtly with Audrey there at the end, you know, it's it to me, it feels less like he's less interested in like, should I subvert your expectations or, or should I, like, give you what you want?

And he's more interested in like

this.

We all have this shared memory of like 25 years ago watching this thing.

Right.

Let's explore like what that, like down to the last line of the series, right?

It's like, like, let's explore that phenomenon.

Right.

Well, and what year is it?

I think he's.

To your point.

I mean, the last line of the series is actually.

But apart from that.

I think to your point, he is not strategically gaming out like, what should I give them and what should I withhold?

I think the show is just driven by, what do I feel like doing?

Right.

Probably.

At the same time, Dougie is hard to like throw in there without like kind of a little bit of a troll energy.

Totally.

Yes.

Yes.

No, you're right.

You're right.

But it's like, I do get a sense of just like

he kind of wants to see Big Ed and Norma get together unencumbered.

Right.

He's putting that in there not out of some sense of like, I owe them this.

I owe it to the actors or to the audience.

There are other things that it just feels like he just doesn't really care about.

You know, when you hear these stories about certain cast members,

Joan Chan in particular, who's like, I really wanted to come back.

And he just told me he couldn't find a way to fit me into the story.

And I'm like, he fit anything into the story that he wanted to.

I don't want to have it doorknobs in almost every scene.

Just have me wave.

Just have her wave in one of them.

But I, you know, whether that was, you know, based on past relationship shit, whatever, it's like, he's putting in what he wants to put in.

Well, and isn't there some story about

Audrey Horne, the actor, Sherilyn Finn, like

asking for her shit to be rewritten and he rewrote it as like that whole plot line that ended up in there?

I didn't know that.

That makes a lot of sense because I will say that remains the element of this season of television that I am most perplexed by.

I love it.

And I was looking for some sort of explanation as to how we got there.

And even though, like, Audrey dancing, you know, to her theme

felt like, okay, now we're getting somewhere where I'm going to understand why he's using her in this show in this way.

Here's this like weird emotional her like literally dancing with her own legacy as a character on the show.

And then she's just fucking gone.

That's a resolution.

She snaps into herself and then we see her in a pseudo-white void with a with like the same it's true.

And that shot is framed, I think, very similarly to a famous shot from Sunset Boulevard.

One of Lynch's most enduring inspirations is Sunset Boulevard.

But also that guy.

I love Audrey's husband.

What's his name?

He's incredible.

He drives me crazy.

Who has now passed away?

Clark Middleton?

That's right.

Charlie's the character name.

Yes.

Taken off my coat.

All right, Audrey.

I love the Audrey plotline so much.

So my whole experience of the return is so rooted, right?

And just like week to week, you know, cracking my knuckles, sitting down, like, what's it gonna be?

And experiencing things like that, where I've already been thrown for so many loops, and then two-thirds of the way in, he's like, Let's check in with Audrey, and you're like, Oh, Audrey, sure, sure.

And it's just like they're arguing about characters we never meet.

They say so many names where you're like, Am I supposed to know who that is?

They spend like three

cadence is so magnificent, like who, you know, wherever he was found.

But also, it feels like they spend three episodes, maybe sustained, like frozen in time, right?

Where we keep talking to them in the same conversation, being like, I swear I'm going to walk out this door.

That's very biketti.

Yes.

And you're like, other things like days are progressing outside.

There is plot in this show.

There is right.

There is actually

back to them and they're stuck here being like, don't pick up that phone.

But, but, yes, I mean, right.

The implication, I, I, the question, I think what you're saying is correct that there was another Audrey plot initially intended and the Sherilyn Fenn objected, but no one knows what the original plot was, right?

I don't, I think that's never really been figured out.

Um, but uh,

this makes sense as Lynch going like, well, okay, I can think of something else.

And like, this

contain how contained it is makes sense.

It's sort of like, well, if I'm going to rewrite it, I'll give you this little sort of play that you do.

Does not interact with her.

No, she's, but

the names that she is saying

in this long, extended, sort of meaningless conversation about people that we don't actually know.

Yes.

Those names are also used by a lot of the people at the roadhouse sure it like who we also don't know right where we'll we'll check in with their drama and i think this kind of mirrors like the myriad like fbi agents who we meet throughout the series who like don't actually end it's it's almost it's like there's like the core of the show yeah which is like what we remember nostalgia and then there's just these like doppelganger versions of it like on the fringes the roadhouse stuff is particularly interesting to me Not that I was expecting some kind of

traditional resolution, but like all these little snippets of like Charlene Yee and Jane Levy and like

Sky Ferreira and these like she said, Jane Lynch.

I wish Jane Lynch would have to say that.

Jane Lynch is a sassy like Twin Peaks High School, which would be fine.

Yeah.

But these like very upsetting sort of like fragments devoid of context of just like people in very odd situations that are never revisited.

I always just get this sense that, like, Twin Peaks is a very sad, fraught place now, and probably, and was then too.

But, like, now, you know, we only catch glimpses of it.

The sheriff's office, they're always discussing a lot of like tragic, terrible stuff.

There's a lot of drug running happening, right?

You know, Frank Truman seems real, I love him to death.

I would vote him for president, although, I mean, maybe I don't want to know all of his views, but like, I love him, but he seems very like weary and beaten down and kind of like, you know, in a way that is to some degree a like reflection of what has happened to a lot of small towns in America.

Sure, yes.

You know, a thing that I think Lynch has like a lot of fondness for and has had to watch sort of like erode culturally over decades.

People are under a lot of stress these days.

Is that what?

People are under a lot of stress, Bradley.

It's my favorite line in the series.

It's delivered so beautifully.

The fact that they are around for the finale, like, it's just one of the many, many, many, many decisions that Lynch and Mark Frost obviously made, where I'm like, there's no reason for them to tag along, but it's so great that they're there.

David, yes.

This episode is brought to you, the listener.

by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

With Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere.

And here's a hand selection.

Here's a spotlight.

Nothing more to discuss here.

Everything's

turned the spotlight on.

I've put my glove on to select by hand

through the creak of the door.

We have three different visuals going on.

What?

The glove to hand pick.

Oh,

of course.

David Mussolini, Colin, son of the century.

It is, it is, look,

it's an exciting project, but it's really funny to be like, guys, Mussolini!

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

We get like messages that are like, hey, you guys good with this ad?

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

And as shorthand, it was texted to us as, you guys good with the Mussolini ad?

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

To be clear, we decry Ild Duce Mussolini, Benito Mussolini, the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

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an eight-episode series about Mussolini's rise to power.

And I will say, not to sound like a, you know, a little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider Mussolini's rise to power in these times.

You know, he was sort of the original fascist, and the way that he sees power in Italy is,

unfortunately, something we should probably have on our minds right now.

I'm not trying to be a loser right now.

You seem like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

It's a very interesting part of history, and I feel like because, you know, other World War II things became whatever, the history channel's favorite thing, you don't hear quite as much about Mussolini's family.

Yes, no, you're right, unfortunately, sadly, tragically, frighteningly.

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checking notes here.

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That's cool.

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We've batted him already.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

He's very interesting.

And he's made some great movies and he's made some big swings that didn't totally connect.

Totally.

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He actually is a blank check filmmaker, unlike a lot of some people that get suggested.

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So, okay, but Twin Peaks the Return is announced, and then you watch it.

How did you feel at the time?

You were watching it week by week.

Jane.

I was on set.

I was producing a movie called chained for life a movie yeah in uh wonderful film

parents movie in um

what is this what is the capital of pennsylvania harrisburg we were in harrisburg pennsylvania where beers were two dollars oh yeah and karaoke was abundant

that i wouldn't have predicted and um

and it and uh my friend Dan Carbone, who also shot We're All Going to the World's Fair and this wonderful filmmaker, he had made this movie called Hide Your Smiling Faces.

We were both twin peaks heads this was a very important thing we were staying at like a comfort inn off the highway and um did they have showtime they did not have showtime

and sounds like an uncomfort but we would eat dinner every night at this um and i was like literally calling local movie theaters being like will you do a screening for us oh wow of the of the first two episodes when they are and no one no one said yes and there's this indian place that we hosted a lot of crew dinners at and i like talked to the the woman who ran it yeah we were like putting her kid through college you know and uh and and she she bought showtime so that we could watch it and you were like if we come here on sunday nights you'll let us control the tv but but like for whatever and maybe she was just lying to me the cable package like didn't kick in until the next month so that didn't work either okay and so we like sat in a hotel room and we this was like a while ago and so like cell phone data plans were not commonly unlimited.

And so we all had these like limited cell phone plans and we like literally, we like mobile hotspotted.

you like chained your various to like yeah we all bled like we we we drained our cell phone plans like uh and somebody like hooked it up to the hotel tv somehow and and this was how we watched it and everyone was just like yeah

right it's like immediately i love the beginning of the show but it is definitely not like anything you would have expected to happen and then the ending i'll never forget the last the last two episodes i watched right near here at the um at the draft house they did like a a secret screening of it.

Okay.

I forget who organized it, but I weaseled my way into it.

And we literally all sat in a theater at the draft house and they simulcast those two episodes live as they were.

They aired back to back.

And there was still like waiter service.

Hell yeah.

And it was actually like the, the, I remember it looking kind of, you know, like when you, when you blow something up that isn't the best resolution to a screen like that, it like looked a little off and janky.

And

I just remember like when it ended, the waitress was like hanging out, waiting for everyone to leave, and everyone was just kind of like sitting in the

process.

Yeah, she was like, You guys seem, seem upset, and that ended.

Yeah, I mean, that ending haunted me for months.

I know, I think the Sopranos is the only other TV show where I had that experience, where the ending was both immediately shocking to me and then like months of rumination for me.

But this is very different, obviously.

Whereas The Sopranos had the reaction that literally everyone had, which is, is my TV broken?

It's such a, It's such a boring reaction, but literally everyone had the same reaction.

Whereas this, I was rattled.

Yeah.

Like very, very rattled.

And

not unhappy because I had no expectations of this show.

I wasn't watching it being like, fucking Cooper had better marry Audrey.

I have no idea what I would be wanting from the end of this show.

But

the absolute ending freaks me out to this day.

And I think it's amazing.

And I think lots of things about it.

But the shots of the forest at night with Laura's just screaming over it, that is the thing that freaked me out the most watching at home in my dark room with no one else because my wife was like, I have no, every time she would check in with it, she would just be like, what the fuck is this?

And I'd be like, well, it's Twin Peaks, but it's also very different.

And she'd be like, okay, I'm going.

You know, like, you know, those.

They retitled it technically can't be season three because they don't want the CBS executives.

Experiences a teenager where maybe your parents check in with something you really love

at a moment that it's quite unwatchable and they're like, ugh.

And you're like, no, no, no, just come back.

Come back.

I'm going to explain the X-Files to you in a way that makes sense.

Like that, like, that would be my wife would check in, and it would be the guy in the prison with the, you know, giant whole witness face going,

and just be like, this cannot be considered watchable television.

I'm like, no, it's really, really good.

See, what's interesting to me as someone who

had not watched any of Twin Peaks, but has so many friends who are so obsessive and spends is way too online, the amount of stuff I got through cultural osmosis before finally watching all of this show and the things where I was like, Yeah, this I'd gotten, and the amount of stuff that I felt like wasn't represented to me that it was surprising.

And I think part of going into the return was just knowing, like, well, this whole thing's legacy is that like it upended all expectations and it sort of rewrites the rules of television.

So, I, the only thing I know to expect is to not expect anything and to not go in with any assumptions.

So I'm less rattled by how much this show is not delivering the obvious sort of Twin Peaks legacy season because I'm going in knowing that.

And then even still, I got kind of tricked in this final run of episodes of like, holy shit, like Cooper's doing fucking Avengers game.

He's going back and he's doing it.

Cooper's getting the Infinity Stone.

Everyone's together.

He and Diane are in love.

Like I was just like, oh my God, Lynch is doing it.

And I was like, part of me was suppressing this memory of just remembering everything.

It was very time being like, what?

Not only did he not answer most of the unresolved questions from the first two seasons in the movie, but he actually created new questions that he also hasn't answered.

And I'm watching it and I'm like, he's actually going to fucking tie everything together.

Maybe the unresolved stuff is that we never go back to fucking Sky Ferreira, but like I can live with that.

And then somewhere across episode 18, basically from the start, where I'm just like, oh, right, he's there's something else that will happen here.

Yeah.

Now I'm trying to think of the Avengers thing, where he like stops, you know, Ray Wise from killing Jacques Renault.

Like, like, he's like hopping through the whole show.

Like, he's being awkwardly CGI'd into like every single.

He puts back to Jack Nance.

Hands off Renault.

We need his evidence.

When he starts reusing the original series footage in that way,

I was just kind of like, I can't believe he's doing this.

That this feels like the kind of thing

that he would avoid.

No, I think that's a big part of that second to last episode.

Yes.

Is like

how artificial that kind of narrative resolution is.

Right.

You're getting it.

Cooper's face is superimposed over it.

Right.

We are.

This is a dream that we are having.

We'll get to that.

Freddie uses his green glove.

Well, we have to talk about Freddy.

We're going to talk about Freddy for half an hour.

Listeners, it might surprise you to hear that I am all in on Freddy.

That Freddy is so my kind of shit.

Freddy was also a fan favorite

in my home.

What if the artful Dodger had a green glove that could punch so good?

I'm just me in my little glove, yeah, in it.

I mean, you're, you're doing the voice.

That's what I'm saying.

I was like, what does he sound like?

And I'm like, oh, it sounds like he's singing consider yourself.

The whole thing with Jake Wordle, that actor, who I don't really know,

is that when he's in the show, you're like, oh, this is someone doing like the most exaggerated kind of cockney East End accent, right?

Like, this can't be real.

And you're realizing, no, that's just what he sounds like.

It must be what.

Yeah, but the other thing is, he has like 20-minute YouTube videos that are like all UK accents where he shows off that he knows all the regional accents.

And then I went to his website and it has this endorsement.

I'll pull it up so I can read it verbatim.

But David Lynch being like, I love these crazy voices, he does.

That sounds like, that sounds right.

Because there's a rugby player named Jake Wardle, which fucks with actor Jake Wardle's SEO.

But where's this?

Dude, that rugby player wishes he could punch anyone.

The David Lynch quote is,

having seen his internet video of him doing many incredible accents, his talent and naturalness really impressed me.

Jake was perfect for Freddy.

You see a thousand people on the internet, but I knew Jake could do this.

He's super smart and he's like Harry Dean.

He's just a natural.

Hey, sure.

Highest praise imaginable.

He's just like Harry Dean.

He's just like Harry Dean.

A thousand people on the internet.

I'm like, is David Lynch watching After Personas?

Surfing the International Super Highway?

Sean Baker's on TikTok looking for like hot new sex workers for his next movie.

And David Lynch is on there searching like just hilarious.

1,000 impressions in one minute, guys.

Yeah.

Hopefully, this is not a betrayal of trusted information, but someone who knows someone who works with David Lynch told me recently, like, I was like, have you heard anything about his health and everything?

And they were like, they said, you know, he's like bummed that he, you know, he feels like he has to stay at home, but he's like fairly happy and he just watches body cam footage on YouTube all day.

And I was like, that's the least surprising thing I've ever heard.

And he was like, when people come over, he's like, you won't believe this video I saw.

We should all be so lucky.

Yeah.

I mean, he can do whatever he wants, obviously.

Also, he should make a fucking body cam movie.

Well, it's also like, I remember, I think part of the gravitas of Twin Peaks beyond the return, beyond like, oh, I have 25 years of sort of like subconscious emotional attachment to this as an idea.

Also, like, oh, this is like probably the filmmaker of my life.

And this maybe is the last thing he's ever going to do.

And he probably understood that while he was making it.

But then it's lovely to remember that like after this, he made a Netflix short film where he talks to a monkey for 20 minutes.

Where he like gives a monkey the business like a third degree i actually think the monkey is giving him the business

they're kind of you know what they're kind of antagonizing tete a tet yes it's for real and he's done like a right hasn't he done a bunch of little short films on the internet that i've never watched you know about like bugs and bees and stuff like i he did he did a bunch of weather reports obviously and he did um didn't he do a music video yeah some of the music videos we watched i feel like were post return possibly yeah the bug stuff i i now i'm remembering it's on YouTube you can watch it it's just like him standing by a tree where there's like a bug and he's like talking about what the bug is doing just did that recent album with Christabel yeah that's yes yeah so I'm gonna take us through these episodes a little bit so part 14 if you guys can cast your memory back all the way there sure is the I had a Monica Bellucci dream episode oh my god um but David go ahead that was the quote I wanted to use you just reminded me there you go when I was watching that episode it was longer ago so I was like why can't I pull this it wasn't a last episode thing

um but i i had another podcast about monica ballucci um that is that is the funniest line in the entirety of twin peaks sure mostly because it's delivered by him it becomes funnier when you cut

even you're like oh he got ballusci right but also that the reaction from the other agents

that's the thing it feels that gordon is so horny and they're all so annoyed with gordon for being horny like as part of his crime process

But I'm like, that is somehow, in a certain way, it feels like the most vulnerable thing David Lynch has put in any of his work.

The admission that it's like another dream about a booksum-y star of European cinema.

Well, I think also they had some like French money and needed to shoot something in Paris.

Is that for real?

I believe that.

I think that's right.

Because that's actually shot in Paris.

Right.

Oh, no, it's absolutely.

Or maybe he just wanted to go hang out with Monica Belushi.

This is what I would do if I was in my 70s with Showtime.

on.

And he must have seen Monica Bellusci when she emerges as an actress, like, you know, like, and been like, wow, I never got to make a movie with this person.

This is like the most David Lynchy actress who ever existed.

Bigger thing to me, and it's part of what's so interesting about his sort of public negotiations with Showtime and being like, maybe I won't make it.

Maybe I'm not going to do it unless they give me enough money, is even if he didn't know this would be his last major project.

I think he knew this is the last time the industry is going to let me do something on this scale.

Like, if not for health and aging, it's like I basically have the Twin Peaks chip I can play one time

to get this level of creative freedom and this many hours.

That's basically all that's going on here, I think.

Right.

And the Monica Bellucci thing is so, it's so funny to me his choice in a series where we have so many hyper-famous people show up as like surprise new characters to introduce her as herself in a dream.

Because this is the episode, I guess, where

this is the episode where Andy gets summoned to the fireman's house, right?

Yes.

You know, to the, the, the, you know, the other, the zone, the other world.

Right?

And just, and discovers

the woman in the woods.

The woman, Naido, the woman, uh, the eyeless woman in the woods, right?

That's the main stuff that happens, but I get, what else?

Well, this is also the episode that introduces Freddy, uh, Freddie's lore, Freddie's backstory, Freddie's long monologue.

It's also where About his magic glove.

Go ahead.

Sarah Palmer, right, at the end of the episode.

It reveals that.

She takes her hat off.

Yeah, has a face behind her face and kills someone at a bar.

She de-chins a man.

That scene rocks so fucking hard.

Yeah, I think this whole episode's incredible.

This is like top-to-bottom, exceptional shit.

Yes.

That's my very astute criticism.

Uh-huh, that it's exceptional.

My intellectual analysis is this top-to-bottom, really good shit.

That's kind of the last major thing that Sarah Palmer does, right?

I was thinking, because when I was watching these episodes through, I was like, oh, is this the last time we see this person?

But we see her

smashing the picture and sort of like crawling around her disturbing.

But another thing that fucking tricked me is I'm just like, oh my God, he's going to bring like new Laura Palmer to like a point of resolution with her mother.

And then

the ultimate rug pull of just like, I'm never giving you that.

Yeah.

Sort of the, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your take on Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks the Return?

So open question, but I was asking, Jay.

Very kind of you.

Thank you, David.

I remember this like nerd message board conversation while it was airing after episode eight, right?

Where it's like, she's the girl.

Is that girl Sarah Palmer?

And even if it's not, I feel like it's an association that is invited

timeline-wise, right?

Like Mark Frost has sort of nodded to like, yeah, that's what we're going for.

And just this, this, like, if this, if the show is this, like, post-nuclear origin story of like American innocence or something, like that bug crawling into her mouth is, um, is like equivalent to the rot of her, you know, life that she builds herself and her ceiling fan, et cetera.

Um,

and so, like, the, the, like,

out of nowhere,

never really extrapolated on

relatively late in the game reveal that she's like a monster now as

evil superpower.

And the thing we see in her face, beyond being like incredible David Lynch CGI, I love his CGI

because it looks terrible.

And then as we talked about in episode eight, you're like, this is some of the best CGI I've ever

sometimes immaculate, often terrible.

I mean, but this look is unbeatably

right.

Both.

Yes.

But I think he knows it's both.

Totally.

It's just, it's what's fascinating about episode eight, and our guess on that kind of ratliff throughout the theory, that it's like he's

giving you purposefully janky, yeah, totally incredibly artificial, unsettling kind of like, this feels like a technical error for even the cell phone screen for most of it in a way that makes the stuff in episode eight feel more real, where in your mind, you don't question its reality because you're like, well, I know what CGI looks like in this show.

Yeah, I think like emotionally,

just like Sarah Palmer as like

demon

tracks emotionally, right?

I think it's like an interesting,

interesting space to leave that character in.

Especially, right?

If you're going to do a thing that's like, okay, what's everyone doing almost 30 years later?

Yeah.

Sarah Palmer's still alive.

Yeah, she would be this like festering demon.

I remember being like very excited to see what like Ray Wise was going to do in Twin Peaks the Return before it aired, you know, because Leland is just like such a figure.

Absolutely.

And he's like not really in there.

Nope.

I mean, we see him in the red room.

He's got incredible seconds.

Yep.

I mean, he's got a great face.

I'd love to see his face always.

And he's sort of like, when we do see him, you know, he's like, fine Laura.

He's like this, like, he's like the tragic version of him.

Right.

Whereas like Sarah Palmer, as this like person who like lived through it and is still there freaking out in the supermarket is like

got more of the Bob style rot inside of her now.

But the rot is the big thing.

I mean, I feel like as much as Twin Peaks as a project at large, is about anything, it feels to me like it is about the way those things fester, right?

The way darkness and pain

lives inside of people and how it gets there and what it does to us psychologically and physically and all of that.

Whether it is the kind of darkness that causes you to inflict pain onto other people or is the byproduct of pain inflicted onto you.

And there is this, I feel like, how would I put this?

Situations like

the

Palmer family, right?

In real life, when these stories blow up in the news and there are these horrible tragedies,

you know, these terrors happening

in the home, right?

I feel like so often the line of questioning goes straight to like, what, and the wife was just there, she was in the house, this was going on for years.

How did she not notice this was happening under her nose?

How did she not stop it?

There's sort of this,

there almost becomes, I don't want to say a shifting of blame, but this like extension of culpability to like, how is this possible?

This, the mother failed her, you know, like the father was the one inflicting the damage, but the mother is the one who in a certain way is harder to get your head around.

And

I don't think that Sarah Palmer is like unsympathetically portrayed in the original series.

But in the plottiness of the original series, it's a lot easier to just be like, so this is a woman who just like gets sort of hopped out of of her mind and then imagines a horse and then stuff happens and she's oblivious to it.

And there's something about settling in the reality of, as you said, like, who would this woman be 30 years later?

She would be a fucking mess.

Like, once things came to the surface and she was no longer able to deny what had happened and just had to live with that for decades and outlive the rest of her family, she would just be like, uh, not a functional person in one way or another.

Yeah.

But there is also,

because I feel like even between Twin Peaks and Firewalk With Me, there's like a reassessment of like

the

maybe not maybe not like a rewriting, but like there's, it feels like Lynch is pulling back some of the like genre

metaphor.

You know,

I think we see, right?

Don't we kind of like see her aware of it in Firewalk with me?

Like Leland is like, is basically drugging her and she's like willingly taking the drugs and i think there's like an implication that she knows what's going on in the home i think he's sort of trying to reckon with both sides of it yeah realistically yeah right and then there is the expressionistic side of it of her turning into a monster who can rip people's chins off but it is like there is a degree of complicity that eats at her and there's a degree of like genuine victimization that eats at her and both of these things have created someone who is just like incapable of existing with other people or existing with like a framed photo in her house like it is all just this sort of like negative energy festering inside of her that's looking for any release what do you make of her smashing up the picture in the later episode in part 17 because that's when we're

that's when has laura been sort of plucked out at that point and we're sort of yeah trying to wreck that i don't yeah i never quite uh i haven't really ever figured that out i i mean i not that i need to look i've lived with this for like fucking 12 hours, right?

But my read on it in the moment is it's like her attacking the representation of like her life collapsing.

Laura, Laura's prom picture.

Yeah.

Like not Laura as a person, but like Laura's prom picture, which is this image that has been like.

constantly repeated throughout the show as this sort of like tragic beauty.

It is a perfect snapshot of that moment.

But the, um i guess like and i i haven't really thought about this either but like smashing up that picture right before like history is about to get rewritten to like remove her from that home right with the i think there is like an implication right because when she takes off her mask the thing we see inside of her head is the monster from the um from that like machine in new york city at the beginning of the series that comes through right the sort of which is like a judy adjacent thing juddy Judy thing.

It's like

the, again,

the jokey, like, sort of Avengers-y idea of like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we had Bob meet Judy.

Judy makes Bob look like shit.

Bob came out of Judy.

Judy barfed Bob one time when there was a nuclear explosion, but Judy's been around since fucking ancient.

It's like, it's like X-Men Apocalypse, where they're like, oh, Magneto, he's, oh, he's like a radical mutant.

Well, what about the mutant from the pyramids?

Did you ever consider there was a mutant there?

What would he be like?

I don't know, five, six, blue.

He'd touch TV.

He's a lot.

Sorry.

No, I think you're right that there's

some version of that demon.

There's a feeling of wanting to, like, she wants to remove it from the timeline, you know?

Like, that's part of the guilt of like, I brought someone into the world and then allowed pain to be inflicted upon her.

But just to go back, like, even the

episode eight being this,

we sort of assume Sarah Palmer backstory.

Yeah, the last part of episode eight, sure.

Right.

That is represented in this very odd way, but does start to like fill in this notion that it's not like Sarah Palmer was this like oblivious woman who married a monster and then her life went to hell.

And all this horrible thing, you know, this, this damage stemmed out of it.

There's shit that's been going on at Sarah Palmer since she was a small child, whether you literally interpret it as like...

A bugwin in her mouth.

Right.

Weird people in the sky decided that she would be the vessel for pure good to fight pure evil or whatever.

There is this degree of like now cosmic level of you are being used by people for other ends and to other means.

It's also funny that the, right, the,

you know, Avengers of Gwynpeak's The Return is the fireman, older, right?

Briggs' floating head.

Just sort of goes.

Yeah.

Bobbin the Bulba.

Michael J.

Anderson replaced by a tree.

A tree with a brain on it.

Yeah.

David Bowie as a tea kettle.

Right.

A talking tea kettle that is David Bowie.

Like, there's a pivotal scene in one of these episodes that's like Jeffrey's being like, of course I've always been allied with you.

I am a tea kettle.

Go to this electrocution zone I've marked.

It's a David Bowie impressionist.

Could you imagine if this show ended Avengers endgame style with the end credit curtain call of everybody to triumph

and the signatures over the tea

Anyway, Freddy, the other thing I want to discuss from episode 14, do you guys have Freddy thoughts?

I remember watching the scene in relative bafflement at the time.

And James is a character that doesn't have much to do in the return.

We're happy he's there.

Exactly.

It's sort of a squeak thing.

I like James too.

He looks great.

Am I wrong in thinking that this is the look, we've obviously watched this show fairly spread out due to record scheduling and such.

Am I wrong in thinking that this is the first scene where you identify that he's a security guard?

I think so.

Because I feel like you understand what their job is.

He's at the roadhouse.

But he's usually wearing like a leather jacket.

He's performing.

He's coming in in street clothes.

Looking sexy.

I don't know that he's looking so sexy.

Okay, so my take is: Jane is disagreeing with my take that

Bobby's looking sexy.

Wow.

Bobby looks incredible.

My favorite character of the

sort of, you know, my favorite performance of the returning, I mean, apart from Kyle McLaughlin's, you know, unbelievable multi-character work, I guess, but like, yes, Bobby's super sexy.

You don't think so?

You don't think James is working?

I feel like there's a line early on, right, where isn't somebody like James had a motorcycle accident and he hasn't been quite right since then?

Poor James.

We talked about this in other episodes, but do you know, Jane, that like he was part of a huge lawsuit against an acne medication that he said fucked up his face

and lost him work

and spent years and like David Lynch like testified on his behalf and people there is this degree it's a lot less uh tragically kind of like sexy yeah than a motorcycle accident than the James Dean kind of thing but there was this feeling of like this guy he's right

dude James yeah it seems like he like like James in the original series right is like such a such a James Dean yes figure yes and here he's more like a townie yeah

yeah whereas Bobby's arc is more surprising, I guess.

Like that this is where Bobby ended up, but then just really tracks.

And he, he is very, he looks great with it.

He'd be Johnny Knoxville, you know.

He went silver and it worked perfectly for him.

100%.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin, David, a podcast about filmmaker's is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

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Yeah.

From vacation rentals to hotels across the U.S., booking.com, booking dot yeah, has the ideal stay for anyone, even those who might seem impossible to please.

God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of demands?

Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

There's one other person in the room.

My biggest is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

No,

That's an example of a fussy person.

But people have different demands.

And you know what?

If you're traveling, that's your time to start making demands.

You know, you've got

a partner who's sleep light, rise early, or maybe, you know, like you just want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or I don't know.

Any kind of demand.

You're traveling and I need a room with some good soundproofing because I'm going to be doing some remote pod record.

Sure.

Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

Well, think of one person in particular, although it's really both of you.

You got to have air conditioning.

I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

Look, if I can find my perfect stay on Booking.com, anyone can.

Booking.com is definitely the easiest way to find exactly what you're looking for.

Like for me, a non-negotiable is I need a gorgeous bathroom for selfies.

You do.

You love selfies.

As long as I got a good bathroom here for selfies i'm happy with everything else uh look they're again they they're specifying like oh maybe you want a sauna or a hot top and i'm like sounds good to me yeah please can i check that but you want one of those in the recordings too that'd be great you want to start you want to be i'll be in the sauna when we record i was gonna say you're you want to be the dalton trumbo a podcast you want to be splish splash you look good if i had a sauna and a cold plunge and and while recording i'm on mic but you just we're going back like ah

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David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy, Hazzy boy is

getting some

multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

He's sleeping on one of the new beds we got from Wayfair for the studio for our podcast naps.

But this is a big opportunity for us.

We get to do the first ad read for Wayfair on this podcast.

No, no, Griffin, you're clearly not listening to past recordings.

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently.

You listen to past recordings?

Yeah, sometimes.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping?

Look, apparently we need to talk about how when you hear the word game day,

you might not think Wayfair, but you should.

Because Wayfair is the best kept secret for incredible and affordable game day funds.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Absolutely.

And just try to, David, just, if you could please maintain that slightly quiet, we don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haz is sleeping.

I mostly just think of Wayfair as some a website where you can get basically anything yeah of course but wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials bigger selection created collections options for every budget slash price point you want to make like a sort of man cake

okay fine okay all right sorry you know wayfair uh stuff gets delivered really fast hassle free the delivery is free

if you for game day specifically griffin you can think about things like recliners and tv stands sure.

Or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters.

Like that's, you know,

all the winter months.

David, you have like basically a football team worth of family at home.

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds?

I have cribs, yeah.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a few.

That's the kind of thing that would make your home team cheer.

Look, I'm just going to say that Wayfair is your trusted destination for all things game day, from coolers and grills to recliners and slow cookers.

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today at Wayfair.com.

That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.

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David, there's only one shame to this ad read.

Don't wake Hazy.

There's only one shame to this ad read.

That I didn't find out about this in time before I already purchased coolers, grills, folding chairs, patio heaters, recliners, barware, slow cookers, sports-themed decor, merch for my favorite teams, and more.

If only I could

Cleveland Browns, of course.

Devontae Mac, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the Abraham.

But yeah, Freddie.

Freddie, yeah, he's a boy from the east end of London who had an epiphany in an alley and met the fireman, aka the giant, and the the fireman told him to put on a big glove and he's never been able to take it off.

If anyone tries, they essentially die because he's super strong.

Right.

Any questions?

No, perfect.

No notes.

I love it.

I agree.

It feels like a kind of a wild, baffling thing to devote this much time to this late, but I was fully locked in.

It was a concept that I believe Lynch had had for Jack Nance at some point.

Interesting.

Like he's, he's had the concept of the magic arm.

It feels like a real like Ronnie Rocket kind of thing.

Right.

Yeah.

What do you

think?

Yeah, what do you say about Freddy?

Just tension, right?

But like, it's like the Mark Frost, David Lynch, eternal tension that is playing out in funny ways and the return where

I just always imagine Mark Frost being like, right, and like the green glove, maybe like the fireman summoned it and it's going to like knock Bob out at the right moment.

David Lynch is like, sure, sure, sure.

Like, can we get this,

you know, this, this Irish guy?

There's an interview with Mark Frost where they ask him about like, some people were confused that Bob is defeated by a random character we basically meet for the first time by punching and Mark Frost is like yeah it's called a Deus X Machinery like it's clearly that they were just like we wanted to resolve that but we wanted to resolve it in this this particular way it's fun I just very fun I love introducing a character this late and having a character basically announced I have been sent here to resolve this show right right i've never really met any of you and have no relationship with any of you i know james a little bit if he was set up in episode two maybe i would hate it because because I'd just be like, oh, God, he's going to end up punching the guy.

The fact that he's introduced so late

makes it work for me.

The other thing that I noticed for the first time this watch through is that they're working at the Great Northern.

Yes, they're both security guards.

And James goes down at the end of that whole sequence to like check the boiler room, which is the same space that Cooper

goes to

cross over

to fight Winda Merle or or whoever no no no to um in in episode 17.

oh right right it's like where he and and it's like where he says goodbye to david lynch um right right right right um

so i guess and like even when james

when james goes down there it like the the show slows down a little bit to like give the space some power

i did not track that i shouldn't well i'm gonna have to rewatch twin peaks the return again i'm taking us to episode 15 okay um which begins with the moment you already referenced Nadine tote in the shovel,

you know, reprogrammed by podcasting.

Happy as a car, right?

Yeah, just walking up to Ed and being like, I have been a huge pain in your ass, and you really should, you know, marry Norma.

We should have resolved this decade.

She's a, it would be funny if she was, she's a mega babe, like, Norma's great.

Like, I'm a, you know, I'm a liar.

Yeah, she is basically saying that.

And uh, Ed, you know, goes over to uh the Double R Diner.

And,

you know, it's a 10, 15 minute chunk, 10 minute chunk, basically, right?

Like, it's the only.

Is it the only classic Twin Peak story that really gets resolved?

It kind of feels like it.

Are there any others?

Log Lady, arguably.

Sure.

I mean, we see like codas for characters like that.

Yeah.

But that feels like the only pure emotional resolution a dangling thread that we never got to pick up.

This is, one of the things I was surprised by watching the show for the first time, watching the first season in particular, is how much of it is kind of just traditional primetime soap opera, that it is truly caught up in like purely emotional, interpersonal, dramatic, interweaving plot lines.

And that's the shit he's not largely concerned with returning to.

revisiting, resolving, even commenting upon in this.

We dip in with new soapy storylines like Caleb Landry Jones or Amanda Savory.

But But those are things that also don't resolve within

the show.

No, no.

I think you're right that that's the only classical original Twin Peaks thing that gets that kind of like emotional bow tying.

Yeah.

It's wonderful.

It's wonderful.

It's very satisfying and beautifully acted.

I mean, and that song.

I love, you know, Everett McGill so much.

And he was one of the many original.

Twin Peaks cast members who had basically retired.

Right.

He wasn't really working anymore.

I think the story is that he,

he hadn't worked in a long time.

No one even knew how to reach him.

He didn't have representation.

Lynch sort of like sent out like the shot up the flare gun to try to find him.

Someone passed along a number.

He called a landline.

Everett McGill picked up

and he was like, I can't believe I found you.

And he was like, this was my like in-law's parents' house that we never sold.

And I've never disconnected the phone line, but I only come here to check check it like once every other month.

And I happen to be here when you called.

Beautiful.

And it was like, and of course, by the way, I'll come back for Twin Peaks.

But that feels like this weird sense of some warmth and fondness for Everett McGill as a guy translating to like, you know what?

I want to see him get his happy ending versus like, Joan Chen doesn't need to be here and Sheryl Lynn Fenn can yell at her husband.

Right.

Or right.

Or Everett can have a plotline that's just like him yelling in a convenience store one time.

And they're like, anyway, so, or, I mean, I love Ben Horn in the return, but Ben Horn's plotline being like him sitting sadly behind a desk, being like, I feel like I hear a noise.

And Ashley Dudd's like, yeah, kind of.

He's like,

you know, he's not saying out loud, but I feel like he's just sitting there being like, am I shitty?

Was I like an evil villain?

And now I just stuck here?

Like, I don't know.

Yeah.

So that's nice.

Do we, so do we think that Nadine was healed by the podcast, by Mr.

Yeah.

Seems like it.

Look, we all know that podcasts are unilaterally a positive form.

She's like, dug her shit out.

Like, she, the shovel worked.

She dug her shit out, but also, she's like, you know, she was engaging in the marketplace of ideas.

Sure.

She was activated.

Podcasts have never led to the wrong people being elected president.

They're good.

She was having a parasocial relationship.

Yes.

And those are positive.

And they always lead to real relationships.

Absolutely.

In episode 15, as well, after this, we have Cooper, Mr.

C, you know, evil Cooper,

going to the convenience store.

And as you say, like, following this lovely plotline with

the more deep surrealism of, like, I'm going to meet the jumping man and talk to a tea kettle that is David Bowie's character.

And

that sets up the sort of end of Richard Horne, right?

Like, does that happen in this episode or the next?

Maybe he meets him in this one, and then Richard Horne very quickly

gets axed in the next one.

Which

is another

I nothing about Twin Peaks the Return is bad.

Everything is good, and I'm glad everything happened.

But it is interesting that we're subjected to Richard Horne, a very, very

tough character to look at and like interact with the behavior of.

Yeah, a puss level pox upon the world.

Yes.

And you're like, what is this?

You know, what's going on?

Who is this?

And then you realize, like, okay, this is like Mr.

C basically like raped Audrey Horne like when she was comatose, right?

After the bomb went off at the end of Twin Peaks Season 2.

Right.

And created this monster.

Right.

I mean, this is like

one of the darkest things.

Yeah, it's awful.

And then it's like, well, what's, well, then why is he in the show?

Apart from to like run kids over and be evil.

It's like, he's just another Dougie.

He's another thing the doppelganger can use to avoid death.

Decoy.

Right.

Another sort of like, and that's all he does.

And then he dies.

It's sort of satisfying when Richard Horn is exploded.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

I mean,

is there anything about Richard Horn I'm not grasping?

Or like, what do you think Lynch wanted to achieve with that character?

Apart from freaking me out?

It almost seems like

it's been 12 years since I've watched The Wire, but remember when there was like, what was his name, The Bad Guy towards the End of The Wire?

Marlo Stanfield?

Yeah, where it's It's basically like, what if there was

Avon Barksdale with like no charisma?

It was just terrifying.

I think, yes.

I think maybe, you know, like, especially when Richard Horne first appears, he's sort of like, his sociopathy is, is, like, very reminiscent of a classic, like, Lynch sociopathy.

But he's just like, yeah, it's just like charmless.

Completely uncharismatic with this terrifying face.

I mean, I love him.

That almost feels like,

it almost feels like a no country for old men, kind of like, in the same way that he's commenting on what would happen to a town like Twin Peaks over time, that even if in the 90s it felt a little Mayberry, the like small town he was presenting and out of time, these are the exact kind of towns that have, that have

come upon hard times, right?

And are under a lot of stress.

And like the version of evil that exists now isn't even charismatic.

Like Chad.

Right.

Right.

That this is like an evil predator in a way you know like and it's not even disguised in anything right like it's the evil is completely naked in richard where it's like there's lots of evil in twin peaks lots of characters that are suffused and he doesn't feel supernatural no he's just yelling he's hunt at people and running

like he's neither bob nor leland palmer right like there are people who feel like they exist purely as supernatural forces and there are people who have like deep darkness within them and are like putting putting on a show on top of it.

And here's just this awful kid who just walks through the world, runs through the world, drives through the world, doing horrible things and continuing basically unabetted until like a greater evil explodes him.

I was going to say something that I hesitate to say out loud because it is a criticism of Twin Peaks the Return.

Okay,

but go ahead, go ahead.

You know,

I don't really,

I don't really like Evil Cooper.

Oh, well, that's a major criticism, I would say.

Like, you don't like his vibe?

Like, I don't think it really lands.

Like, I like a lot of his scenes.

I especially like him in the prison when they come to interview him and his voice is weird.

Do you like the arm wrestling?

I love the arm wrestling.

That's pretty fun.

But I remember that scene in the hotel room early on, right?

Where he shoots the lady.

Like, brutalizing that woman, you know, and it's like classic Lynch stuff.

And

I mean, he kind of resolves, like, he just gets shot.

And then that's, that's it for, you know, Bob comes out of his belly.

And it's like, gets punched.

And I know, I imagine that it's like David Lynch giving Kyle McLaughlin like a very clear direction to like be a little bit like vacant in the performance, right?

Like the performance is very like, it's like both pastiche, but also kind of just like blank.

Dougie and Mr.

C are both kind of like hollow performances in an interesting way.

Right.

And obviously Dougie's very funny and and like the way the world works around Dougie is very funny.

The most interesting he is as Mr.

C is the prison definitely is just spooky.

But in the episode 17, I think, when he shows up to the sheriff's office and is kind of mimicking being normal, it's like

it's interesting.

It's a little interesting to see.

Right.

To see him make a little bit of effort to pretend not to be a scary psychopath.

I just think like

Cooper in the mirror, and maybe I'm like expecting something which is a bad thing to do with this right but Cooper in the mirror at the end of season two Bob laughing there's like a psychosis that's like entered the equation that is just sort of like not there with not there with Mr.

C

and I'm just bad.

Well, Mr.

C's just bad, but he's like not even bad in a way that like

he's he's bad in in this like more mythical way than Richard Horne is bad, but not in a more like interesting way.

Okay, so this leads to a question for me.

There's the scene, I think it comes in the following episode, perhaps 15.

Maybe episode 16.

Where Diane gives the whole explanation of being

sexually assaulted by Mr.

See.

Yes, that's in episode 16.

But then that turns out to be a very important thing.

Yes, that is the Diane we've dealt with for the whole show is a Tolta, right?

Is a creation.

But she is telling this story because so much of our time with this, Diane is like, what was the falling out between her and Cooper?

Why is she so hostile to Cooper?

And there is a part of me as a viewer that is still, as much as I'm trying to

disabuse myself of this, processing some of these things like traditional television storytelling and going, like, what's the backstory reveal going to be?

And you're ready for it to be some kind of like TV drama betrayal and not Laura Dern giving a very sobering five-minute monologue recounting a sexual assault by a beloved character, right?

I know it's Mr.

C and it's not Dale Cooper, but even just in her playing that scene is deeply, deeply upsetting.

And you're like, oh, this is like a more harrowing thing than you're even kind of led to expect from this reality.

And then almost immediately she's dissolved.

She zaps into non-existence.

Well,

they shoot her.

And then she goes to the red room and she says, I know, fuck you, when she's told she's manufactured.

And she turns into a, you know, seed.

Yes.

But that coming very close to the kind of like very quiet, passive reveal that,

what's his name?

Richard Horne?

Richard Horne is the son.

Yes.

Yes.

Is also the result of Mr.

C

sexually assaulting Audrey does make it feel like, oh, in the immediate aftermath of that moment in the mirror at the end of season two, does he go on like a maniacal spree of evil?

That's

doing like the criminal supervillains.

Right.

And not just like kind of fun evil, like arm wrestling, but like raping the most beloved women in the, in the world of Twin Peace.

One of whom might be in a coma.

Right.

Right.

To this day.

Right.

And that what we're getting now by jumping this many years ahead, just from the nature of when the show actually started filming, is this guy almost like running on fumes.

Like there is something kind of like bored and checked out by this guy who is like well, and also he's just like creating Rube Goldberg machines so he can't get zapped by another zone or whatever.

I don't think there's even the implication, right?

Because all of this is sort of thrown into

some new equation by like Cooper in 18, right?

Who seems to be this like fusion of all Coopers.

We will talk about it, absolutely.

And there's this like imp

watching it this time and thinking about like, okay, we get this like kind of convoluted story about how Cooper and David Bowie and Gordon Cole launched this plan, like, you know, 25 years ago, and it was all leading towards capturing Judy.

That, like, there's almost this feeling that, like, Mr.

C is part of the plan.

Like, Mr.

C isn't even a

antagonist.

I meant to, you know, it's the Joker.

I, you know, I was always supposed to go to jail.

Right.

That was part of the plan.

Yes.

And that, like,

I imagine there's something that's being said, right, about like the, the,

the myth of Agent Cooper.

Right, which I think is what the finale is about.

Like, but I still don't think it's a very interesting performance or character.

That's fair.

I mean, so I feel like what you're saying also is like when Bob is in Leland, right?

Like Leland, classic Leland from Twin Peaks, like that's such a fascinating like wrestling between,

you know, this, this horrible darkness and this real person.

And Ray Wise is so good.

And the mania is so interesting.

And right, like Mr.

C is just like, yeah, what if Bob was in like a golem body, basically?

He doesn't even seem like Bob.

Right.

I mean, no, because Bob, you know, Bob's drooling everywhere.

And Bob is to,

as the kids say now, serving cunt, right?

Like, but Bob is so

saying that now?

I don't know.

Theatrical.

Are children saying that now?

Bob has crazy monologues, you know, he's talking about his deathbed.

But I'm like, if David Lynch and Mark Frost...

Where's Mr.

C is like, hello?

How are you?

squishes someone's head and then like moves on.

If David Lynch and Mark Frost had made season three in 1991 or whatever is that what we would have gotten you know i believe that they've said on the record that it would have turned out that they were all aliens

hell yeah and creamed corn is the food that they eat to survive there was definitely lots of plans for ufo stuff yeah like it was gonna be x-files before x-files um because that's all the implications at the end of season two of like yeah carlin briggs has been like tracking ufos from a weird station and there's a lot of stuff going on on.

That's cool.

They definitely had an Evil Cooper plan, certainly.

Sure.

It was not going to like open with whatever season three of Twin Peaks in 1992 of like, Evil Cooper is gone and we're back to regular Twin Peaks.

Like there was going to be an arc for saying if that had happened at the time, do we think they would have given us the version of, oh, this is really Bob in Cooper's body?

That seems like that's...

who it is more when where's an even where's annie as a line is like there's so much more color in it totally i i think

but there's something that like is carried holistically across the show, which is this kind of like sad hollowing out of everything and everyone.

Sure.

And even the warmest scenes on the show,

the scenes that are kind of satisfying as like, oh, look, it's our old friends having a conversation again in a location we remember.

The way that Lynch is playing with time in the show.

that he is like leaving these odd pauses in and stretching scenes out beyond their natural or kind of expected rhythms does make everything just feel kind of odd and off in a way where to a certain degree, like we have these new characters and these new environments that are being established that are inexplicable.

And every time we go back to sort of legacy stuff, it feels like they're almost stuck in like a historical reenactment mode.

You know, like here are these older people showing up wearing the same costumes in the same spaces, same hairstyles, kind of doing a version of what they were doing before, but yet he's not trying to get them to fully,

I don't know, hit the same target.

There's something to me, I mean, I'm still processing all of this.

This is all very new for me, and I understand where you're coming from, but there's something I find kind of more profound and upsetting in the fact that like Mr.

C is just kind of boring and shitty.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's boring and shitty.

That it's like we missed out on the period of of him being a fun supervillain.

And now he's just an awful guy, like a kind of awful, boring guy.

He's lived so long as like a supernatural force possessing a body of good that now he's just settled into some routine.

Other things happened in part 15 that I want us to mention.

The insane

sort of snippet scene between Caleb Land Jones and Alicia Witt, right?

It's incredible.

Sort of resolving a story there, but also leaving a a lot open to you.

Have we seen Gersten, Alicia Witt's character, in any other episode?

We did see her briefly like hiding on a staircase.

Yeah, that's right.

Like a few episodes prior.

But like, obviously, she's in Twin Peaks as a young actor

because she knows David Lynch from Doom and she plays the piano, and that scene is also kind of

anything you guys want to say about that.

I mean, perhaps a dumb podcast statement, but watching this, I was like, oh, this must have been the thing that made Oz Perkins hire her for Long Legs, which I think is an extraordinary performance.

Sure.

You and I like Alicia a lot and talk about her a lot.

Major crushed crush for you.

Long legs, I was like, I genuinely had no idea she had this in her.

Sure.

She has never shown this before.

Oh, and then you're seeing this.

And I'm seeing this.

I'm like, oh, this is the one other time she's shown this.

It's like great writing.

Yeah.

It is.

It is.

What does he say about like bluebirds or something?

Yeah, it's also that magic

thing that this show can do where it's like, we're just going to give you this kind of little masterclass

almost just sort of floating in space and you can watch it and experience it and then move on.

And there's sort of this implication of like, he has murdered Amanda Siefried, right?

And now is

probably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just like that, that all kind of wraps up as this, another one of these like half-satisfying, if that much echoes of like another dead blonde girl, you know, is right.

I mean, that's a very good point.

And one that is not even shown on screen is never sort of like referenced again.

That's an implication that like the cycle is starring again.

There is another death in this town that is probably going to shake people to their core.

And the most like memorable.

moment of that whole plotline, I think, is like Amanda Seifreed's close-up in the car, right?

Like after she does those drugs, like just like that's David Lynch, just like, look at beauty.

Yes, and I feel, yeah, that is like an image

people,

you know, like post all the time, like, the recall so fondly.

It's also like beauty engaging with beauty, like, it's like a beautiful face looking at the wonder of the sky, listening to a perfect pop song.

Like, it is this moment of purity in the life of someone who already is like trapped in cycles of hell.

Other things, the death of of poor

poor Patrick Fischler in Vegas where I don't feel that bad for him.

Shot and explode.

Like there's a dummy of him that just like explodes.

It's very cool.

You have

Cooper watching Sunset Boulevard and

hearing the name Gordon Cole and

jamming a fork into a socket.

The sort of the conclusion of

whatever.

He's doing it.

Dougie Cooper.

It unlocked in him.

He's ready to come back.

Yeah.

Where I guess you feel like you're like, yay, like, finally, we're going to get some.

Yeah.

He'll be back.

Now the show can start 16 hours,

I think, to some people.

Yeah.

Oh, and of course, the farewell to the logo to Margaret.

You know, like, this is incredible.

Unbelievable.

Yeah.

Like, kind of, like, which I watch both times, like just hushed toned, kind of like, you know, it's.

Yeah, it's beautifully performed, but also just like, you know, I don't know.

I love it when Twin Peaks is like purely emotional in that way.

Do you remember this thing that the New York Times tried to push that did not take, where they would record like prominent elderly figures delivering their own kind of eulogy that they would then post as video after they died?

No, but that's awesome.

And the first one they did was

David, what's the name of the humorist who had the lawsuit for coming to America?

Art Buchwald.

Art Buchwald.

The famous Washington Post political satirist and humorist.

Thank you.

So they posted this video on the New York Times site that was like, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died.

And I saw it on the local news and they interviewed one of the New York Times editors and he's like, I mean, that immediately goes down in history as one of the greatest leads in the history of newspapers.

And I was like, you're calling your own shot to a major degree, right?

And they only did a couple of them.

It felt like it didn't stick with the public and they abandoned it.

But he was stating it as like, this is a thing we're doing, and we're going to stockpile them.

And that way, rather than just running some obituary we've had saved for years, filed away, we get to let people speak in their own voice.

And I think part of the notion was the profundity of someone recording something that they know will only be heard after they are gone.

And I feel like the log lady scenes have that feeling to them where it's like, I mean, he's presumably doing one day of stockpiling five or six scenes.

I think she was like a day or two away from passing away.

Totally.

It's like her final days of life.

She's on like oxygen and she's delivering like scenes that will be distributed across 18 episodes, but almost definitely will outlive her.

And I think that's what you're saying, the weird effect of how sacred this final goodbye feels is that you know it is being delivered by someone who knows that this message will outlive them.

Yeah.

No, it's it almost feels like I shouldn't watch it.

right?

Like that, it's like this is too sort of intimate and private, right?

Versus I'm Art Buckwald and I just died, felt jokey, but it's it's also like um the show, right?

Like

so many of these episodes ends with end with an in memoriam.

So much of the cast passed away like right after they released it.

Keep talking about this, it's it's very there's something uh very haunted about it, and a lot of it is look, he had an older cast for a network show to begin with, and he waited many decades to return.

But it's also elegant for David Lynch.

No, isn't it?

Absolutely.

I think there is this feeling that even after two films, I'm like, making films is fucking tiring.

When I'm 70, or like you, you have to find ways to like make it your life.

If it's just set, if it's separate from your life.

your life is going to have this weird hole in it.

Well, this is like so much of the fucking David Lynch thing is his whole life being designed around creativity and and him basically being like, I am monastic in like designing the entire structure of every day of my life around developing work, creating work at the expense of perhaps all other areas of my life.

But it feels so, I mean, he seems well loved by at least some of the people he collaborates with.

Absolutely.

And it doesn't seem like he has regrets about it, but you watch those sort of longer form interviews or the documentaries about him, and he is just sort of like, these are the decisions I've made.

This is how I have to.

It is monastic in a way where it's like, I feel a higher calling to a thing.

These are the sacrifices I have to make.

I'm happy with them.

But I do think when you're staring down the barrel of like, is this one of the final things I get to make of this size?

And your whole life has been devoted to making things like this,

it is a very bittersweet experience.

Yeah, I mean, in that, the sex scene in episode 18 is just like,

it's so,

I mean, talk about sort of a funereal or, you know, like it feels like a death ritual.

It's also, I mean, which is that's how I fuck.

Always.

If you're not fucking like a death ritual, you're not fucking.

We're summoning a portal right now, and it ain't to somewhere good.

I call it Le Grand Moore.

Exactly.

You're not giving it your all.

I'm going to make you call me a different name in a different reality in a letter in the morning.

And then vanish.

Yes.

Yeah.

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag.

It's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes when sponsors buy ad space on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love that they get a little bonus

on the ad read, but technically, that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That's true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the coveted ben hosley endorsement what this is laser targeted the product we have copy that asks is the product a porch movie it certainly is and what is today's episode sponsored by the toxic adventure the new toxic adventure movie is coming to theaters august 29th macon blairs remake of reimagining reimagining whatever reboot of the toxic avenger now david and I have not gotten to see it yet, but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

Let me read you the cast list here in billing order, as they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinkledge, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's talking.

He plays it with so much heart.

Yeah.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like

David sizzling.

Yep.

And then Elijah Wood plays like a dang-ass freak.

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

I just got to say the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader drips.

And so when I heard that they were doing this new installment, I was really emotionally invested.

It was in limbo for a while before our friends at Ciniverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just, it's something that means a lot to me.

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured.

that sensibility, that sense of humor, even just that like lo-fi, scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original Toxie movies.

And they have like like updated and in this way that it was just i was so pleased with it it's gooey sufficiently gooey tons of blood tons of goo

uh great action it's really funny it just it it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want in an updated version cinniverse last year released terrifier 3 unrated yeah big risk for them there i feel like it's a very very intense movie and one of the huge hit more interesting yeah theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years Want to make that happen again here?

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And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says, summon the nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band

who are also mercenaries

and drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

And they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass freaks.

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And your endorsement, I think, carries more weight than anyone else's in the world on this one.

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When they go to the boiler room

underneath the Bing Bang,

and you have this sort of like three shot of now real Diane, Cooper back in his body, and Agent Cole, It does feel like, as much as there are many, many pivotal collaborators Lynch has had, even just the on-screen collaborators, there does feel, it feels like there's something about like, at the end of the day, it kind of comes down to these three.

You know, like Lynch putting himself on screen with two of his greatest like leads he ever found and these people who felt like avatars for him to a certain degree and also were the younger stars that he developed because a lot of his older analogs are gone now.

It does feel like he's looking back on everything, and having the two of them have this like incredibly tender, sad, sensitive love scene feels like part of that as well.

Where the same song plays, right?

Isn't it the same song from the radio?

Yeah, in episode eight.

Yes.

That's this, like, you know, 1950s

childhood hope.

But like, compare it to the way that, like, Laura Dern has sex in Wild at Heart.

You know?

And it's like a wildly different thing.

Like, that is like playing under like guitar riffs and it's like hallucinatory, like camera lingering on her body stuff.

Not an exploitative way, but it's like very like ecstatic shit.

And here is just like the thing you actually rarely see in movies, I find, is like two people having sex in the dark.

Um, yeah, but I mean, it's well, let's talk about the sex scene in a second.

First, in part 16, okay, uh, Cooper comes back, Cooper, real Cooper.

I am the FBI Cooper.

We also have the explosion of Richard Horne, which we talked about.

Satisfying and yet also baffling, I would say, just as a sort of like, oh, okay.

I'm happy to see him gone.

Sure.

Sure.

Jerry Horne watching from the distance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Having a weird time.

We finally have the disposal of poor Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Lee getting murdered by a random Polish guy.

Yeah.

Who loves this guy.

Fuck you.

Basically just in like a parking disagreement.

I guess so.

I mean, I don't know what I'm supposed to think if there's anything deeper going on.

You also have the FBI watching people.

Like, should we interact with you?

Like, what?

It feels like shitty people are just getting rid of each other.

So what's the conflict here?

There's poor neighborhood to the ultimate badge.

Yeah.

That's another character we never go back to is the Haley Gates with the small child.

Oh, so good.

Yeah.

There's some moment, like some scenes in this show.

reminded me of Breaking Bad to the point where I was like, was David Lynch watching Breaking Bad and was just kind of like...

That neighborhood feels very right because it's right there like sort of post-recession.

The scene with the guy from Bost Highway where he like does the coin in the air and it stays in the air.

Like that scene always felt very like breaking bad coded to me.

I'm like, I wonder if David Lynch was just like.

Maybe he thought it would was awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like the way that scene is like just this extended like mishap feels very like post-Cohen brothers, you know, like.

Right.

Yeah, we never see Haley Gates again.

I remember I read an interview with Mark Frost where someone was like, what was going on with that?

And he was like, I'd just say the people in another world talk backwards.

Cause she's saying like 119.

And I was like, I love that.

I love it that they just think about this stuff.

Yeah.

People with a foot in another world.

I think that's how he's putting it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's where we get people under a lot of stress, right?

Yep.

Yep.

God, I love those guys.

But yeah, Ms.

Cooper is back.

bids farewell to Janie, E and Sonny Jim.

Yeah.

Says, don't worry, you're going to get a great Dougie Jones sent to you essentially in the mail.

They recognize that he is not their husband and father.

Right.

Diane Tulpa is destroyed after the monologue we discussed and then is turned into a seed.

Great stuff.

And I guess we've talked about a lot of this stuff already.

Audrey does her dance.

Yeah.

And, you know, we sort of understand what has happened to Audrey, I guess.

Like that, that I think that Audrey has just been comatose.

People have complained that I've been like, I don't want to talk about like theories in the prior episodes.

And I did a lot because I didn't want to spoil anything.

And also because I think you can do whatever you want with Twin Peaks the Return.

And it isn't a thing where I'm like, I've solved the show.

Can you give us your read on the Audrey thing?

Can you unpack it a little bit?

She gets blown up in the finale of season two.

Everyone forgets that plotline because it's bizarre.

Yes.

It's incredible, though.

It's awesome, but a safe deposit box blows her up, I guess.

And so I guess the right, the implication is she's never recovered and that she was assaulted and had a baby in hospital i guess in like you know but like that and that's richard horn but all of this is deed of evil mind yeah it's a representation of what's happened to her i guess right i mean that's the simplest way to think about it but i think there's probably more unbelievably bleak sure it's a little bleak yeah a little

does the but the scene in the roadhouse touches other characters who we see elsewhere right like it it

it feels to me like this like layered

you know like each space is its own like memory you know its own dream of another space and and i think she's like she touches the rest of the show just enough for it not to quite work that it's this like own separate unreality right and it speaks to how audrey in twin peaks is in the high school but not really friends with any of those characters and quickly moves beyond that storyline and is often in her own weird storyline like with one-eyed jacks or the bank or whatever you know like where she's kind of doing her own thing girl bossing to make the lodge a better business business.

Like, where you're like, what, you know, which is partly, I guess, them just not knowing what to do with Audrey, right?

When they're like, oh, I guess she can't hook up with Cooper.

What do we do?

She just does other stuff.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Love Audrey.

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's just like something in David Lynch's gaze on her here in general, but especially during that dance that I find like

affecting

the setting in a way.

Yeah.

Like the way that she's like not Audrey.

but also more i think i think you said something to this effect earlier in the record but that it's like her dancing to her own theme song is an acknowledgement of like we we can't go back this wrestling with the sort of nostalgia and the legacy of the show where it's like it's this character almost tortured by the fact that she can't be original audrey anymore it would be funny if she danced a sharp dressed man instead they were just like because they've danced a sharp dressed man in my my constant crusade to get ben to to like ZZ Top.

ZZ Top's in Twin Feeks the Richard.

They call it out, don't they?

They go, Yeah.

Yeah.

And now, Sharp Dressed Man.

People are like, this song rolls.

Ben should like this.

Why doesn't Ben like this?

Is this also the this is and it's right after Eddie Vedder plays.

Yeah, but under a fake name, he's playing a character, he's playing as his birth name.

Oh,

what is his birthday?

I think so.

Yeah, yeah, Richard Severus III or something.

Yeah.

And Edward Lewis Severson III.

Oh, yeah.

That was a good name change.

Yeah.

Yeah, he figured it out.

Part 17 is, right, is the satisfying conclusion in a way to Twin Peaks the Return.

Gordon lays out to everybody, like, so I've been on the tail of a mythological evil force named Jodi, Judy, whatever, for the last 25 years.

Okay, it's episode 17.

I've got some stuff to tell you.

Hey, Albert, I've been hiding something.

I guess I owe you guys.

Jeffries was in league with me.

Possibly, you know, Cooper was sort of involved too.

uh and so that's really what we've been working on and now cooper is back and we're gonna go to twin peaks sheriff department like where he's going to like finally have this big showdown and they have a big showdown

because

the

um i guess it's like mr c the the doppelganger he's he's trying to use the portal to go somewhere else right this is what's totally and the fireman kind of like pulls some levers and garland briggs head wobbles a bit and he's like no you get sent to twin peaks instead but he wasn't he kind of already in twin Twin Peaks.

That's what I don't think.

Because, like, Richard is there.

He enters a portal.

Yes.

Yeah.

He goes, I think he goes to the portal that we saw earlier up in the mountains.

Yes.

But I think he's trying to go somewhere else, right?

And he gets sent to Twin Peaks.

That's right.

He's a little like, what?

When he gets to the sheriff's department.

And, you know, that he is shot triumphantly by Lucy, who figures out how cell phones work and that there are two Coopers.

And the Woodsmen come to do their little.

I'm doing the Woodsman, but I guess Bob comes out.

The Orb comes out.

Yeah.

I don't know what's supposed to be different at this point.

Maybe it's just time for no more Mr.

C.

Like Bob's just got to go somewhere else.

Well, the other thing that's different is that real Cooper is there.

So I guess that's part of it.

Right.

Like Bob is no longer able to like

body.

Yeah.

I remember being sort of like, because I was watching it this time to watch sort of like this,

how they get from one space to another.

And it is really strange that like cooper evil cooper gets to twin peaks right then has to go to an alternate dimension to get to the sheriff station but it almost feels like that

it's like the whole series you know they've been trying to get to twin peaks they've been trying to return

and now like finally we've reached the point in the narrative where like both of them can combine in some sense well the other key difference is that one punch man is in the room this time yeah ready ready is there and he uh i mean i think again the visual effects here are awesome yes like

so cool yeah angry bob's fear is awesome he should be put in like a marvel versus capcom it could just be him

like

uh

twin peaks versus capcom yeah that sounds great you kidding me you could someone like turned into a tolpa right you could have like a tolpa spell honestly like twin peaks continue like if you reboot if i rebooted twin peaks the internet would be very mad at me but if twin peaks was rebooted by nintendo as a series of tennis cart

fighting

super twin peaks fighting golf

people would people would be ecstatic birdo twin peaks party jamber birdo and shy guy these would be great i mean like the little jumping man basically is a shy guy ike the spike ike the spike oh i miss ike the spike there's that story we've heard about how uh

I feel like this is like public, but all the sort of licensing out of the Sopranos, Sopranos, the video game, the slot machines, and all this shit where the cast was like, isn't this going to diminish the show?

And David Chase was like, none of this touches the show.

The show is the show.

If the show stays good, I don't care if we're fucking making money off the site on like slot machines.

Right.

100%.

I do kind of wish David Lynch would be like, you know what?

Open game.

Like everyone do what you want with Twin Peaks now.

I finish my story.

The rights are now open.

He made those Japanese coffee ads.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, he should do that.

Twin Pinks emoji ads.

It would be a great pinball

to return.

Is there definitely the return, especially where your ball just sort of disappears?

Yeah.

The least satisfying pinball.

It ends up in a different pinball machine, like two down.

The machine shoots coins in your eye.

The little screen starts just showing an eight-bit broom sweeping for 14 minutes.

Or it opens its face and

it just screams cunt at you.

Yeah.

Dare I say it?

You're serving cunt in this episode.

Look, that's the Britanni.

David's from the UK.

He can say it.

I just felt uncomfortable saying it.

It is, I do reflect on the fact that that's a word I would say in front of like my friend's parents in high school because it's such an innocuous word.

Yeah, it's like calling someone a jerk.

Anyway, insane.

We then get what I think is just, it's so awesome, the explosion of Bob, but then like, right, the almost parody of like, bring in the girls from the Vegas casino, bring in everyone, everyone.

Let's do a curtain.

I'm just gonna say, it's like a Wizard of Oz, like saying goodbye to all the friends you've made along the way.

Yeah.

But superimposed over this, like, lovely farewell is Cooper's face.

And he is, we like, just, we're just this impression of like, we're in a dream, right?

Or he, and he is the dream.

Like, this is one way it could work out, maybe, for, you know, for Cooper to perceive it this way.

I, I don't know.

And then it dissolves to him, and we stay with him, right?

Like, like, eventually,

he

superimposed Cooper

becomes like the only Cooper.

Right.

And that's when we go into the furnace room and then he goes to see Mike,

like, and they do the firewalk with me chant.

And, you know, they it's very obviously not young Laura Palmer in certain shots.

Right.

Well, right.

I mean, because we're getting real footage.

Yeah.

And then once she breaks out of the conversation, then it's, but this is the shit I love.

Like,

the constant ongoing conversation about like the proper technology for de-aging and are we on the cusp of it and whatever.

And people trying to crack this nut of like, how do you successfully digitally de-age actors and keep them at the perfect age in their perfect projects?

And I'm like, I accept this.

I don't bump on this at all.

There is the moment where I clock, oh, we've gone from vintage 1992 footage to new footage, but he's keeping her far enough away from the camera.

He's putting a lot of makeup on her.

He's putting a wig on her.

I get what this means.

Like, I'm not fucking struggling.

And there genuinely is this moment in Firewalk with me where she kind of like looks off screen and just kind of like gasps.

And it's taken advantage of here to be like, she saw Cooper.

Yes.

I totally buy it.

Me too.

I totally buy that.

That was the plan.

It feels upsetting to have the eras in conversation with each other.

It's the very, very jar.

It cuts from that footage now in black and white, put in a sort of a language that's more of the return.

And then we cut to the reverse of it.

And it's just Cooper Cooper at his current age watching.

It feels wrong.

And those shots of the woods and just her screaming, I mean, she's got the most,

it takes me right to Blair Witch, which I always associate with like woods and screaming, right?

The scariest shit in Blair Witch is just her screaming.

Well, and she hears, we hear that sound, which plays throughout the series.

And it's like David Lynch was fascinated by a slowed down slot machine sound.

Right.

Mr.

Jack Potts.

Yeah, well, we hear it.

Yeah, we hear it a lot in the casino, and like we hear, like, he hears that sound, and he turns around, and she's getting whisked away, and it's sort of like, oh,

sorry.

But the other thing is, it feels like he's re-edited this footage to match the weird, unnatural tempo of the return.

Like, now this old footage from the 90s has the sort of like too much dead air,

out-of-rhythm response time shit.

That feels weird that he's able to like fuck with old

frozen footage and it's a violation, which I think is the point.

Yes, is that what Cooper does in his supreme arrogance in a way is he's like, Great, I defeated Bob.

Now I will also save Laura Palmer.

I can do anything.

I, he has, it seems, some sort of mastery of the red room and like the crossing between worlds that he didn't before.

Because there's that moment where he kind of points at the curtain and it starts flapping when he's in the where you're like, oh, he like, he knows the rules of this place now.

Because in the finale of of season two when he's running around the red room he's just like running through curtains and looks confused and now it's like yeah no he's like evolved into and so he can fix everything and obviously like that's what part part 18 is is like he has obviously fixed nothing or he has created a new reality or a new dream or i mean let's talk about it like let's so he makes laura's body disappear yes well he he plucks her out he makes her not die exactly yeah jack nance never discovers her uh Leland ends up in the red room much earlier, basically, like protecting everyone else from his damage.

And then rather than just accept that, he's like, I have to find this universe's version of

Sarah Palmer and Laura Palmer, both of them, and like reunite them

to heal the wounds.

And it doesn't fucking work.

He can't get resolution.

There's so much going on.

yes.

I mean, I don't know what you think, Jane, but yes, right?

Generally, yes, yes.

Generally, it's sort of like,

I mean, it's just so gutting

this feeling that like this poor woman is being tortured again.

Yes.

This woman who's a new person.

Right.

Carrie, right?

That's her name.

Like.

Look, let's talk.

I'm like, part 18, I just write, I want to progress exactly through it, right?

We've got first

the one fan certainty lovely bit, the creation of the new Dougie Jones just walking in, like greeted with open arms.

But it is like, I think it's important that we see Dougie in that episode, right?

Because like, I feel like Dougie is very transparently like meditation, David Lynch being like, this is the only sane way to live.

Yes.

I mean, it is, it is the thing I think.

It's like big slow thumbs up.

Yeah.

So fascinating about David Lynch in a larger way is like, here's this man who is like intensely spiritual and like spends his time trying to reckon with like the primal forces of the universe and existence and like the sort of perversion of the world and all of this.

And then simultaneously, he's like, you know what makes me happy?

A poster of a cat,

soda pop, you know, like these like very artificial commercial creations and this sort of like packaged idea of like domestic bliss are things that he approaches with zero cynicism.

Like he's like, this is genuinely what makes life worth living.

A bag of Cheetos.

A gym set.

Right.

Like, he's he's simultaneously in conversation with like the absolute like darkness and the absolute light and also all of the like man-made distractions away from both of those things.

I remember while I was airing a friend's read on Twin Peaks.

And I think she was dealing with this in her real life, but she was like, to me, this is a show about Alzheimer's.

This is a show about like

memory being lost.

And so like Dougie

as

that, like a character living in like this kind of eternal

presence.

Right.

And having a loved one who kind of isn't themselves anymore.

And just like, yeah.

And just loving it, you know, just like

doing great.

Like putting that against end of episode, what year is this hunched over, sort of like seemingly addled by time, confused Cooper is.

Well, that's like the consciousness is a prison shit.

You're like, Dougie's got it fucking figured figured out.

Totally.

And there's something like, so in the last two episodes, Cooper is kind of the Cooper we know, I guess.

He's got this swagger to him.

But in this episode, he's off, especially after

they cross, after the sex, the really, really hot normal sex that they have.

But yeah, after they cross, like when he goes to see Carrie and she's just got a dead body in her house, he's just like,

you know, like,

the violence of the diner scene.

When he confronts the guys in the diner, right?

He's like this kind of sick cowboy all of a sudden.

He's not like Cooper at all.

Right.

He's lost his like

folksy term.

He's like a fusion.

He's like a more realistic Mr.

C.

Right.

Right.

Or it's like, right, Mr.

C is still part of him.

Right.

It's like Dougie, Cooper, and Mr.

C all in him as this sort of like, while he's like basically cosplaying as vintage Halloween costume Agent Cooper.

The FBI.

The other

one thing I noticed this time that I hadn't noticed before is when he first comes out of the red room at the beginning of this episode, he is like arriving at, I believe, right, like this, the place that he entered it at the end of season two.

Right.

Which we haven't seen that much in this series.

Like with that weird little like puddle thing in front of it, like the tree that kind of has a puddle in it.

You know what I'm talking about?

Or like the little campfire thing

with the stones around it.

Got it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the tree, sorry, the um, the arm, yeah, brain tree says, like, is this the story of the little girl who went down by the lane?

Which feels kind of mocking to me, right?

Of like the episode eight stuff, but also, like, to me, it's like, well, this is just to me, like, you know, like, you can't fucking drop this storyline, Cooper.

Like, you still have to save Laura Palmer.

You just exploded Bob with, you know, like, you, you've defeated evil.

You live, the evil is defeated.

Like, the, you know, right?

Like, we did it.

And he's like, yeah, but what about laura palmer and it's like why can't you shake this like innocent that you never got to rescue even though she was dead before you even arrived well he goes to this kind of cowboy diner right the uh which is called of course edith judy's right and he is minus folksy charm uh very kind of like bizarrely and intensely interrogating this waitress about where's the other waitress in a way that is unnerving everybody in the room I was like, oh, is the thing now that he's getting some transmission of another crime that is going to happen?

He is trying to prevent in this sort of like,

can I get ahead of the it is happening again?

Right.

Am I now like committed to this infinite loop of being like, well, I live in darkness and my whole life is trying to prevent these tragedies right before they happen?

I couldn't figure out where it was

going.

Then you have, I think kind of importantly, he does not seem to enjoy his coffee.

No.

She serves him coffee.

He takes a coffee.

He has no response.

Then he sees this woman

right yep with you're like oh i want to see cooper take these guys down but you want to see him take it down you'll be like gentlemen you know what are we doing here yes yeah that's no way to treat a lady

and instead it's like upsetting and he's putting guns in the fryer and he's like step away the bullets might explode and i'm like you're gonna like like burn this diner to the ground Then he's driving there with all this purpose.

And then when he goes to the door, it is so upsetting because you're like, why are you poking this?

Right.

There's this feeling of like, shouldn't the happy ending here be just knowing that you prevented the crime from happening?

What more do you need to meddle with?

Sort of in its way, right?

Like the meta, the meta extrapolation is that it's like a, like a disavowal of the entire idea of the rest of the

war Twin Peaks, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But then, as you said, when he walks in, there's a dead body.

There's a dead body.

I mean, also that she's rattled.

She's clearly in the midst of some insane personal drama.

And he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Laura Palmer, Twin Peaks, Washington.

Want to come with me right and she's coming with him because she's like well i have to escape whatever the fuck this is she literally says like i'm in a bit of a bind and it would be better for me to escape with

a jacket like it's like yeah you'll need a jacket

planning on getting out of dodge right um

neither of them address this body no no i mean what you don't have a dead body on one of your couches no of course i do but i'm just saying that's not an admission of guilt And they go to the Palmer home, which is this, like, at this point, it's like the fucking Amityville horror house, right?

Like the very sight of it is kind of like for a Twin Peaks fan, I think a little freaky.

The woman who plays the woman, Miss

Alice Tremond, is the real owner of the house.

I don't know if you like look that up.

Wild.

Okay.

Who probably, I guess, has to deal with people being like, hey, did Laura Palmer get molested?

She seems lovely.

So she seems great.

Not getting like Twin Peaks tourists showing up.

We were doing George Lucas talk show in Seattle earlier this year, before David Lynch had won our March Madness, before I had seen any Twin Peaks.

And uh, Connor and Patrick went to the house.

They wanted to go to Tweedies, they wanted to do all the sort of landmarks tourism, right?

And they were saying this woman bought the house, had never seen Twin Peaks,

then had to start dealing with people coming to the house, and now has turned her home into like 50% Twin Peaks Museum.

Now is obsessed with Twin Peaks.

Good for her.

Now like kind of lives in Twin Peaks by design.

She closes the series out.

She does.

What a way to go.

Yeah.

And I didn't put together that one.

I just remember watching, I really, I will never forget it.

Like just watching this on my couch alone.

And you're like checking the clock.

Right, exactly.

Like, there's like five minutes left.

Yeah.

Like, and, and it's truly right.

What's happening is just Cooper being like, eh, Laura?

Like, is this sparking anything?

Like, do you know Sarah, by the way?

Like, you know, she's like talking to a husband who is hidden behind the door.

And she's like, let me ask him quickly.

She is dropping Twin Peaks lore.

She mentions that she bought it from Miss Chalfont, the old lady, the creepy old lady from Twin Peaks.

I don't know how I also describe it, right?

This lady.

Yeah, and we all, we all know and love her.

We love her.

So it's true.

There's some like breadcrumb, I guess, for fans to think about there.

Well, and then she hears, right, like there is some implication of like

this world as like a sinister mirage or something because Laura hears her name whispered and screams as Cheryl Lee is, you know, the best in the world at doing.

What year is it?

I mean, like, I've, there's this read that I've read, you know, I've sort of plumbed around, like, read it and, you know, things like that and my darker days, you know.

And like, this read that, like, it's like, we're in Laura's dream now, right?

And she's created this sort of cover in the dream and he's like waking her up, right?

And that's why she's screaming.

Like, he's, he's messing with it.

It's about coping mechanisms.

Right.

And

like, that's one rate.

But like, yeah, the, the, the, the sort of indictment of Cooper as the white knight strikes me as sort of a crucial thing for the finale of the return.

Well, and like the idea that

Firewalk With Me is one, you know, maybe my favorite film.

Um,

and that film is like, is all Cheryl Lee.

Like her performance in that film is incredible and devastating.

And it almost, it feels like there is this like ugliness

in a, you know, like in why my parents didn't want me watching Blue Velvet, because there is this like very deep ugliness that, you know, David Lynch talks about as this like seeing that naked woman on the street and, you know, the bugs under the ground and like, right, there's this sort of

origin story of like deep trauma rot at the heart of this like 1950s

American dream that seems to be like very crucial to the filmography.

But like, nowhere is this like rendered in more just like ugly, devastating, and like empathetic, just close, close terms than with cheryli and firewalk with me and and her performance in this episode is incredible as well it is but she goes she goes to heaven at the end of firewalk with me yeah she gets a release he like lets her ascend and then hears cooper to like rip her back out exactly right buffy vibes again buffy went to heaven it's true um

spoiler alert for season five of buffy um

it's where where do you stand on matrix resurrections oh i love matrix okay

we're in a safe space here

so right We love that movie.

But that's a movie that has, I think, when a lot of people still I see to this day go like, that is this like incredibly cynical movie about someone acknowledging I'm basically being forced

to make a movie defensively to hold on to the rights.

And I'm like, that is such a passionate, personal, empathetic movie, but that is also about like.

examining the cultural weirdness of us wanting these actors to stay in these characters, in these places, retelling the same stories.

Like, what are we looking for here?

And there's some of that in, I think, this ending:

you wanted Resolution at Twin Peaks, like Laura Palmer was in a good place.

Yeah, why do you want more from her?

And there's

this, yeah, that like

perhaps if this is David Lynch making a final, like, he's like, okay, how do I, what, how do I close it out besides the monkey?

Um,

he's, he's like,

the pursuit of resolution, yeah, the pursuit even of like unpacking something from your past creatively will ultimately just lead you back to originary trauma.

Yeah.

You know?

Yes.

Yes.

I think that's beautifully said.

I do too.

It rattled me at the time.

The Merovingian should be involved now that you're thinking that that should have happened.

Yes.

Like maybe

Cooper's like, I need to cross to this other world.

And the Merovingian is like, very well.

Well, first you must eat my magic cake or whatever.

But like so upsetting that this show ends on credits playing over still image of laura whispering into cooper's ear when like most of this season has ended over concert footage yeah or ed sadly eating a an instant lunch right at his desk but this is closer to the language of the original series where it's like credits playing over prom photo of laura and it's like now this is the new cursed image that has replaced it that is frozen in time forever quite cursed fun to revisit oh my god yeah i had such a great time.

Griffin, you've watched Twin Peaks the Return.

Liked it.

C

minus Cinema score, but

no, I know, I liked it a tremendous amount.

I don't know.

It's been,

I've said this, but it's just

the Lynch headspace living in it for months.

Not the only thing I'm watching, but like it being the overriding world I'm living in because of this being my career now, my job, chained to the old blink check desk,

I'm like a little relieved,

especially because this is so challenging, the return in particular, and is like really kind of litigating his whole body of works, themes and ideas and images and everything in a way that can like sometimes feel very punishing by design.

I think the thing that was so exciting about it at the time

was like

someone being given that canvas, you know, and like 18 hours on television to like break.

Like,

I just look at it and I'm like, oh my God, like the

way that this is subverting structure, you know, narrative structure.

But on such a grand scale that we usually only see, like, it's TV is just so conservative, right?

It's like.

By design, it has to be.

There's a status quo you have to obey.

Like, but even like knowing what people are going to be wanting week to week and knowing, you know, knowing like that the episode before the end is like some kind of emotional resolution.

And then the last one does a different thing.

Like just seeing David Lynch like explode these notions or not even explode it because it just feels like he like took it and ripped it apart until like each of the threads were like their own island that like kind of saw the other one, but didn't quite.

It's just like, I don't know, it's like a ball that I

and I think many other filmmakers are just like, that would be a fun ball to run with further down court.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's a thing that you and I complain about a lot, you even more than me,

about how frustrated we are with this notion that like streaming and the legitimacy, the legitimizing of television as an art form and as a storytelling form has created some like golden age where now we're no longer shackled to the structures and expectations of broadcast television, and people can really branch out and do other shit.

And you're like,

level Marvel character.

This is the fucking thing.

You're just like,

you watch this and you're like, it's been almost 10 years since this aired, and everything still feels conservative.

It just feels conservative in like different clothing.

There is as much of a like notion, a very kind of like

limited notion of how TV can function.

We've just changed what that is, but most TV shows still fit into like one of three boxes at most.

And when you're, you know, watching something like this, where you really are, I think to your point, Jane, like exploding the notion of storytelling and structure and episodic narratives and all of this.

And then you're like, and what do we like get on the other end of this?

Like other filmmakers take a lot of money from big streaming companies and make like a 10-hour movie.

And I'm like, this is neither fish nor foul.

You're just making something that is like trying to,

I don't know.

Well, Well, in a funny way, like a lot of those, a lot of the best shows like have a lot, I think, in common with this.

It's just when Peaks Return like pushed it way farther, you know, like something like the Sopranos was like constantly about subverting.

The Sopranos is the Calvin and Hobbes of, like, where it's like Calvin and Hobbes is like Bill Watterson eventually being like, I fucking hate that I have to do four panels.

Like, can I do something else?

And it's like, not really, man.

It goes in the newspaper.

And David Chase is kind of doing that in the Sopranos, but it can't go all the way.

But does it, you know, if it does in such a pretty adventurous way, he's like, all right, so like, uh,

Michael and Perley is going to die in 10 minutes in, and then, like, Tony's going to go do drugs in Vegas.

Like, that's like a radical departure from

spoiling earlier for the Sopranos.

Sorry, sorry.

And also, things like the test dream, where that feels like David Chase being like

to all the fans of the show who are like, who's whacking who?

He's just like, fuck you.

Here's Annette Benny.

Tony's going to talk to Annette Benning in his dream and say, are you Annette Benning?

And she's going to go, yeah, I am.

Or the Lauren Bacall episode.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in Evans in front of us that feels very violently angry at its audience in the best way.

And I don't, the return doesn't feel that way, but it does feel this feels sort of violently angry at resolutions a little bit.

It's confrontational about like form and narrative.

Yes.

And like, obviously, Twin Peaks is a show that had a resolution foisted on it a little bit by its network, right?

Like, you have to tell us who killed Laura Palmer.

Like, what are you talking about?

And he's like, you didn't want that and you don't want this either.

Cooper thinks he wants it, but you don't want this.

That's a really good point.

The part of him fighting against the expectations and structures is like, we did the show where we did what everyone asked us to do.

Everyone got furious.

It made everyone unhappy simultaneously.

I hate to do those big meta reads because I'm like, it's not just him grousing about network notes, but like, you know, resolutions are unsatisfying.

is a thing you can think about.

And maybe like dishonest.

Is there something like inherently dishonest about like putting things all in a neat resolve space which is movies don't really and i do i remember like thinking because when this aired in the aftermath of like unpacking the ending for myself i was very much like working on world's fair

and i remember really thinking just a lot of less about like the the ending contextually and more like the how the end like what the ending left me with right like like the ending left me on a hook that I was basically like having dreams about for two months, trying to like wrestle and come to my own sort of peace with.

And it's like a wonderful way to, I've ended two movies this way, you know, it's a wonderful way to end the movie because when the TV show ends with like all of the plot lines getting satisfyingly like settled,

you just you're like, okay, that was fun.

What's the next TV show?

It doesn't really leave you with

yes, no questions, right?

Exactly.

It's ending with questions rather than ending with answers.

And which

are, I think, in this case, quite generative to like a lot of the things that he is preoccupied with.

I agree with that.

God bless.

Do you want to play the ratings game, Griffin?

Yeah.

I just noticed it.

I noted, I looked up the, we usually do a box office game, which is harder to do with TV that aired on Showtime.

But the USA Today article about cable ratings in September 2017 notes rudely that Showtime's Twin Peaks the Return sputtered out with a typically low 240,000.

It sucked.

Yeah.

Now, because we're covering TV, of course, we're doing the ratings game this week, but I should mention that it is brought to us by our friends at Regal.

Regal Unlimited, of course, is the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits.

And for this month only, an unprecedented 20%

off your first three months use code blank check check in the Regal app or the link included in the episode description.

The number one cable show, it seems.

Well, all right, this is boring.

This is the problem with TV ratings, Griffin.

Well, look, here's the thing.

For the fourth week in a row playing the ratings game, I think has us longing for the box office game, which, of course, would be brought to you by our friends at Regal.

In Absentia, they are presenting to you the ratings game, but the point here is, God, isn't it great to go out to movie theaters to say sign up for Regal Unlimited, use promo code check

and see

arguably an unlimited number of movies?

Sure, at least one of the big screen.

Yeah.

I'm going to remove from the ratings game all news, sports.

This is cable ratings.

Oh, I think this makes it more interesting.

All news, sports, and

like wrestling, which is sort of a sport.

Yeah.

To be clear, no offense to wrestling.

So the number one cable broadcast that week, Griffin, was a soap opera on Oprah's network, OWN,

that is created by Tyler Perry.

No, what's the show called?

It ran for 196 episodes.

Did he have a show called Brown Sugar?

Am I misremembering?

That was a show on own.

I'm not sure if it was a Tyler Perry show.

Yeah.

Okay.

What is this thing called?

It's not called like the haves and haves nots, right?

What's it?

It is called the haves and the have-nots.

Okay.

You nailed it.

I got it.

It was somewhere there deep in my subconscious.

The Tika Sumter was the star of this, but a lot of big actors, like Danielle Dedweiler, who's probably going to get an Oscar nomination.

This is in my film.

The most talented actor I've ever met in my life.

One of those, like, you know, sort of like, nobody writes about this stuff in like whatever, mainstream TV criticism that much because partly because it's just like a torrent of soap opera episodes, right?

It's like five a week or whatever.

But that is the highest rated scripted thing that I can find.

Number two is a rerun of a sitcom, Griffin.

Number two is a rerun of a sitcom on cable.

It's a Big Bang theory.

It's the Big Bang Theory.

Right.

That was a thing I remember getting a lot of ink at that time was that Big Bang re-airing on Primetime on TBS would get bigger ratings than most things airing on network television.

Number three is a crime thriller TV series that I believe.

continues to be ongoing

in new forms.

They're always opening new chapters of this.

I think I got it.

Please.

Dexter?

Not Dexter, although that is another one.

That one is messing with things so much where they're doing a new Dexter where they're like, ignore the finale of the last Dexter thing we did.

We know you didn't like it.

They're addressing the original sin now.

Finally.

I don't know.

Okay, but it is something.

Again, one of those long-running hit shows that people don't talk about too much.

But it's not like leverage.

Am I on the right?

I can't remember what leverage is.

It's a Timothy Hutton one where they're like robbing shit.

Oh, yeah, they were robbing.

Yeah, but I feel like that's on premium cable.

It's on premium cable.

There's a new book recently.

Oh, it's power.

Power.

Power.

Yeah.

There are many books.

They got a whole shelf now.

Power.

Number four.

I'm fucking.

No, I'm out of scripted stuff.

God, it's all.

Jesus.

All right.

So, you know, that's it.

I mean, like,

it's just lots more Big Bang theories.

A lot of Fox News.

Some Red Sox games.

All right.

What's this?

All right.

This is, maybe Ben's watched this.

Okay.

It's a reality show.

Is it about home restoration?

No, it's about people who live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina that are taught basic wilderness survival skills.

It's on the history channel.

Ben?

No idea.

It's called Mountain Men.

It's been running for 12 years.

Okay.

Not familiar.

He teaches you stuff.

If you say so.

And then another one is about fishing people.

You must know that one.

Either of you.

Anyone.

A reality show on Discovery Discovery Channel.

Bassmasters?

No.

No, don't say it like that.

No.

That was a reasonable guess.

Sure.

It's about fishing.

I don't even know if that's a real show.

I think that was a video game.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Isn't that the thing that's at like the bar?

Yeah.

Bars have it.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's about fishing people.

It's called Crab Fishermen, I believe.

Oh.

Alaska.

Okay.

It's called Crab Fishermen in Alaska.

It's called Deadliest Catch.

Y'all don't know Deadliest Catch?

Yeah, no, of course.

Been running for 20 years.

Yeah, of course.

There's 351 episodes of Deadliest Catch.

Anyway, apparently one of the guys died.

Yeah, everything's a bummer.

It's just crazy to think about this indelible, important piece of culture that was voted like the greatest cinema of the decade by Caillou DeCinema or whatever, right?

Like, you know,

and then Twin Peaks the Return is airing at the same time.

I assume you were talking about Deadliest Catch.

But then you look it up, right?

And like the ratings news is like Showtime's like fart of a revival.

Holy shit.

Nobody cared about that.

But them also saying like a leaky 240,000 viewers.

But it's like, isn't that bigger than most network shows now?

I remember after Sundown's doing what is called the water bottle tour after my first film, where you meet all of these people developed.

And at this time of year, oh, they're all giving you water bottles?

Is that the idea?

Like, take a short time branded.

Although, thankfully,

this was

I was at home because it was the pandemic.

Oh, sure.

So it's just a lot of water bottle Zoom meetings.

Yeah.

It's called the Brita Pitcher tour.

Yeah.

It's called the

keeping good boundaries by not leaving the house tour.

We're all in it together.

And I remember I think I still had more optimism about the taste of your average LA development executive just like talking about Twin Peaks, the return as this like seismic moment for like me and my cohort of like starry-eyed artists and people just being like

very much that like didn't that thing bomb like totally i thought nobody watched that shit very much just like seen as this like minor failure in the same way that like some other forgotten reboot that was like unsatisfying was a failure yeah wait with what is it going to be two dexters ago yeah

because there have been obviously murphy brown that didn't really hit when they brought murphy brown right that's the thing there's like the x-files uh right the x-files season 11 right it's like yeah people lost interest.

And it's like, but Twin Peaks the Return is like reinventing forms.

And right, it is like, you know, will be discussed for a generation.

And anyway.

Like, it will be.

What I find even more aggravating than what you're describing are the people in those same positions who are like, oh my God, I love Twin Peaks the Return.

It reinvented the form.

Obviously, I can't make anything like that.

Like my dad used to always invoke the like young development exec who has a framed Cassavettes poster and is like, that guy's my fucking hero.

Anyway, who I rooting for in your script?

Griffin, do you have a Lynch list?

Yeah, that's the other thing.

I just rank David Lynch.

Jane, if you off the dome, want to rank David Lynch.

Happy to rank.

Happy to rank.

Let me do a little work on my phone.

Yeah.

I mean, this feels a little very hard to rank David Lynch because almost all of his work is meaningful to me.

Yeah.

So I feel a little silly saying that one is better than the other, but you know, such a sound.

Did you guys watch DSM?

It's, I think, unavailable except for DVD Industrial Symphony.

Oh, yes,

yes.

Uh, we covered that on Patreon as part of our David Lynch sort of you know, shorts and ephemera.

I love that.

I think I put it on my list.

I feel like I've seen almost everything now in the

there's just always more weird shit.

Yes, um, I mean, this feels like a very fungible list.

Like, even as I'm looking at it right now, I'm questioning it, but I'm just going to

Are you including Twin Peaks as one entity?

Twin Peaks the Return

with me in the original series is separate i am putting twin peaks purely as uh

the movie i am solely ranking the movies but i guess you could also say in that spot i put twin peaks as a whole a total project maybe i don't know you do what you want david you go first okay number one mohawan drive basically my favorite movie ever made number two twin peaks the return if we're

putting it in there okay number three twin peaks firewalk with me

i'm not gonna count the others the other Twin Peaks.

Because those are directed by lots of people and

a little different.

Twin Peaks of the Return, debate away on is it a movie, is it a TV show?

At least he directed the entire thing and it's very much.

Number four, Lost Highway.

Wow, you have a time.

My slight surprise.

Number five, The Straight Story.

Number six, Eraser Head.

Number seven, Blue Velvet.

Number eight, The Elephant Man.

But no offense to any of these things.

Yeah, we got a little bit of flipping going.

Yeah, which is good.

Number nine, Inland Empire.

Number 10, Wild at Heart, which is probably the first thing where I'm just kind of like, I love Wild at Heart, but it doesn't speak to me maybe in quite the same way.

And number 11, Dune, which I adore.

And that's the worst thing he ever directed.

Yeah.

I guess.

No, I agree with you.

And I came out fairly positive on Dune watching it this time.

What are you doing?

Ben sent us a

website I forgot about, but I do remember at the time, which is...

The sort of GeoCities Matthew Lillard Search for the Zone website.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, was this like as a promotional thing?

Right.

That's cool.

It has some fun stuff.

I'll include it in the episode description.

Yes.

You know, like the blog that that character was creating in Search of the Others World.

Okay, here's my list.

It feels very good.

I will be vacationing in the zone in 2025, just to announce.

I'll be going to that purple city.

You'll travel there?

I want to hang out with Carlin Briggs' floating head.

Ben, write a note to check live show venues in the zone to see if we can get him to do one of those if he's already going there.

Okay, go ahead

okay is it a fungible list i feel like i've changed it three times in the last 10 minutes and perhaps right whatever i have number one elephant man yeah that's your favorite it's my favorite i also feel like even though to certain degrees it's like the lynch movie that other people could have directed the things that he did that no other filmmaker would have done and the fact that it is kind of like simultaneously a more conventional narrative for him while also being more experimental than anyone else would make that movie.

It's also just a movie that devastates me emotionally.

Number two, Mulholland Drive.

Number three, Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me.

Number four, Eraser Head.

Number five, The Straight Story.

Number six, Blue Velvet.

Number seven, Wild at Heart, eight, Inland Empire, nine, Lost Highway, Ten Dune.

That's where I landed.

Sure.

Lost Highway Lower for you.

I'm going to count down.

Do it.

Yeah, do it.

10 Dune.

Wow.

With apologies, not in The Elephant Man.

Okay, no, that's fair.

Never really, never really lit up for me.

Yeah, it just, it really lights up for me.

Eight, Wild at Heart, seven Straight Story, six, Eraser Head, five Inland Empire.

Oh, wait.

I've got, I didn't actually write numbers here, and I have five things left to list.

So

11 through 6 said so far.

Blue Velvet, number five.

Lost Highway went number four.

Twin Peaks of the Return, number three.

Mahalan Drive, number two.

Firewalk with me, number one.

Yeah.

I'll say this for Lost Highway.

Yeah.

I verbalized my

problem with the trade-in value on the Bill Pullman for Balthazar Getty in the second half of that movie.

We also recorded that one like months ahead because of Lowry's availability.

So that was the one I watched before I was fully

emerged and I hadn't seen it before.

It's the one I've been most eager to re-watch now at the end of this series, even if I'm maybe going to be a fan of the film.

It's very fun to re-watch that.

That one.

See it on film if you can.

That's a movie to sit and watch in a theater.

If If it pops up as a screening, I will absolutely jump on that.

I would like to rank

out of all the episodes we did for our Lynch series, not from a quality standpoint, as far as the conversation, from a production standpoint.

Firewalk with me, number one worst episode.

I would agree with that.

Jane, to be clear,

we had the filmmaker Akasha Stevenson on, who was

very patient.

Yeah, was in New Orleans and was taken to some sort of like

ghoul's slair of a rental studio to Zoom with us.

We had a kind of a catastrophic dual podcast studio collapse.

Yeah, it was a fucking nightmare.

Yeah, we did.

Sorry about that one.

Yeah, anyway.

It still turned out great.

Yeah.

Hey, and you know what?

A lot of credit there to AJ and the whole blank check team doing a lot of massaging.

This is, yeah, because this is our Christmas episode.

Yeah.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Merry Christmas.

Trauma is originary and unending.

And hey,

perfectly said.

Jane, is there anything you want to plug into our supermarket?

I watched the Polar Express last night for the first time.

Talk about trauma as enduring and unending.

Please go on.

Well, I didn't know it was animated, actually, when I started watching it.

Jane, excuse me, it's not.

It's a very original art form that Robert Zemekis wants you to know.

It's sort of not animated.

It's captured, perhaps.

Hot, hot, we got it.

Yeah.

I loved it.

I mean, I loved that.

I'm going to watch that again, and I can't wait to watch his his Christmas Carol next.

That one is putrid, but I think that might be the most boring movie ever made.

I will say, I will confess that I've been watching that movie a lot because my daughter found it.

You sent us a video on Thanksgiving morning of your daughter watching it.

And I said, I can't believe you would do this to yourself.

You're ready to like have to watch Polar Express 17 times, knowing your daughter's view and watching it over and over.

And your response was, I don't give a shit.

I'm not David or Mark.

True.

I would watch that movie 20 times happily.

Is it growing on you?

It's growing on me a lot.

It's so nightmarish.

Yeah.

And there's no real plot.

There's just like

these

set pieces, but kind of classical Zemekis impressions of set pieces.

Ben put it on at his holiday party

last weekend.

On mute.

And I will admit I was a little transfixed.

It's transfixing.

And then there's choices like the kids will now interact with a bunch of weird puppets that yell at them, puppeteered by

Tom Hanks playing the hobo who hates Christmas and lives on top of the train.

And you're like, well, this is different.

Like, this is something unusual.

Can you remind me, the rule about the hot chocolate, it's fine if you let it settle to room temperature?

Never, ever let it cool.

No.

Hot, hot.

It's just so weird that the conductor spends the whole movie being like, you kids better fucking stay in line and not mess around.

But then there's one moment where he's like, hey, you kids want a drink or anything?

And they're like, yeah.

And he's like, great, bring in the hot chocolate chocolate dancers.

Yeah.

I loved it.

Fantastic.

Okay, so you're plugging.

The Polar Express.

Love it.

Yeah.

That's my main thing right now.

And hey, David, what were you going to say?

I was going to thank Jane for joining us.

And I want to plug, I saw the TV long.

One of my favorite things of 2024.

Check it out.

Is it on Mac?

It's on Mac.

Yes, it's on Macs.

You can take it to the Macs.

Here's the thing I want to say.

We're recording this pretty close to release because of your availability, Jane.

And a pleasant, unexpected surprise gift in that regard is we are recording this on Wednesday, December 18th.

And David, do you know what else happened on December 18th in history?

I know.

A man named Steven Spielberg was born.

Oh, happy birthday, Steve.

I didn't know it was your birthday.

Why, today,

the day we are recording our final David Lynch episode and our final episode of 2024.

I don't see the

is the birth of a man who we will be covering right at the start

of 2025.

But a man who also cast David Lynch in what might end up being his final on-screen appearance.

Very true.

Maybe the greatest movie performance in history.

Steven Spielberg.

We are finally settling the balance of the first half of his career.

Starting January 2025, we are covering dual through Schindler's List.

That's right.

That's right.

The full spectrum.

From Duel to Schindler's List.

Darby Spielberg.

On Patreon, we're going to be doing a bunch of different varied kinds of bonus episodes.

Yeah.

around amazing stories twilight zone segment night gallery are you gonna columbo murder by the book poltergeist

we are not we went back and forth on whether or not it felt rude toby hooper to toby hooper and also there was enough sort of like pure spielberg ephemera especially since it's taken us so long to do the early career we were like let's cover the early non-movie stuff You seem disappointed that we're not covering poltergeist.

Do you love poltergeist?

I do love, I mean, come on, of course.

I have poltergeist.

You know what yeah got some good goo i was gonna say the original tv glow movie in a lot of ways the tv does glow the tv does

the first draft of the pulse poster for tv glow i was like oh wait isn't that poltergeist though i mean a little bit poltergeist yeah yep uh so stay tuned for that yeah i want to shout out here at the end of the episode something i'm going to try start doing for each mini series is build out a Spotify playlist featuring songs from each soundtrack.

Well, certainly a a lot of options in the David Lynch filmography.

A man who loves his

music.

He has so many incredible pop songs that he uses in his movies as well as great scores.

So there'll be a link to that in the

description.

And hey, speaking of great music, I know you plugged in earlier episodes, but Slow Christmas Volume 4 is still out there on the interwebs.

Check it out.

Yeah.

Yep.

Do you know about this stream?

No.

I have now for five years in a row it's become an annual tradition i put out a holiday compilation album where i get various different artists to do either original covers of holiday songs but it got to be slow slow core slow slow core yeah yeah okay some good stuff yeah check that out and uh

I don't know if you had an at and as always lined up.

Oh, I do.

All right.

Is there something you want to say?

Not necessarily.

It's just more we had a guest.

Eva Anderson was a previous guest.

She had promised that she would provide a voice message that was related to the return.

Okay.

So I thought that might be a nice thing that we could play at the end of the episode.

Can we play it here?

Do we have it?

I sure do.

Hey guys, Eva Anderson here.

So a couple months ago, I was talking to my coworker, Juliana, about weird jobs we had.

And she was talking about working on a like a history channel documentary as a PA.

And she said they had a really bad Abraham Lincoln impersonator,

bad in that he he looked great, but he did not know the Gettysburg address.

And she had to make cue cards of it and hold them up for him.

It's a funny story.

And I

was like, who is, which impersonator was it?

Because there's a couple in LA.

And we dug around and finally found his name and his IMDb page.

His name's Robert Borosky, he's in LA area,

Abraham Lincoln.

Um, some of his credits include uh Pee Wee's Big Holiday, the movie written by Paul Rust.

He played Abraham Lincoln, something called Abe and Trump Being Frank, in which he played Abraham Lincoln, and the upcoming Infinitely Dense and Trip to the Moon, where he's playing Abraham Lincoln.

But buried in the middle of his credits was

Twin Peaks one episode, The Woodsman.

He's the god of life.

So now

none of you will ever be able to unsee the woodsman's Abraham Lincoln beard that he didn't change at all.

He just painted it black.

It's delightful.

It makes me so happy.

And I hope you guys are having a spooky Twin Peaks

the return record.

Okay, bye.

Thank you, Eva.

And we forgot to mention that there are cobwebs and bats flying all around this record.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much for that, Eva, for sending that in.

Farewell to David Lynch.

Remember when we did season one with Eva That Fails like 17 years ago?

Right, right, right.

But thank you for the pie and the coffee, Eva.

And the voicemail.

Thank you, Jane, for being here.

Thanks for having me.

And as always, before I came up, I was on the phone with Ben Hosley at Blank Check.

He told me they are onto something from the podcast indicating two friends.

And last night I had another Monica Bellucci dream.

Good job.

That's what you wanted to do.

That's what I wanted to do.