MatCult

If The Return has taught us one thing, it is that viewers' expectations and predictions are little more than play-dough to Lynch and Frost - material to be warped, inverted, exaggerated, mutated and flat-out ignored. I'm not complaining. The effect this has on the series is alchemical - giving us the solid gold television event we needed rather than the leaden fan service we thought we wanted. But as I wait for the last double-bill finale of this dazzling season, I will venture a prediction - despite knowing that I will likely be wildly wrong on almost every detail. My prophetic theory is based on an idea that has been germinating as I watched The Return and pondered the original seasons of Twin Peaks. I'm certain it's not an original observation. Now that it has occurred to me, it seems entirely obvious. What I’ve realised is this: many of the supernatural intrusions in the show are manifestations or surrealist expressions of the characters’ internal psychological

“Man is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.” ― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death There was a great beauty in the original title sequence for Twin Peaks . The soaring majesty of mighty pine trees and roaring waterfalls was juxtaposed with the mesmerising vision of the sawmill, its blades pouring forth showers of fiery sparks as they were sharpened. It seems David Lynch finds beauty in both nature and industry. This dualit

Was Diane telling the truth about her relationship with Janey-E? I’m starting to think Diane can’t be trusted. As much as I want to believe the hard-drinkin’, hard-swearin’, reluctant Blue Rose Deputy is on the side of the angels, I can’t help feeling a creeping suspicion that she’s working to banjax the investigation. Let’s get Scooby-Doo and review the evidence. Our first clue was the text messages she has been exchanging with Mr. C. Initially, I was keen to believe she was playing him, or working with a hidden third party, but the longer it goes on and the longer she hides it from Cole and the Gang, the more it feels like she’s working with Cooper’s depraved shadow-self and against the feds. The first messages they shared were cryptic missives about “conversation around the dinner table”. Later, dropping any pretense of a coded language, Diane tipped her accomplice off to the latest events in the FBI investigation – telling him about William Hastings and their planned trip t

“I thought when I started meditation that I was going to get real calm and peaceful and it's going to be over. It's not that way; it's so energetic. That's where all the energy and creativity is.”  - David Lynch David Lynch makes no secret of the fact that he is a deeply spiritual man. He’s a long-time practitioner of, and vocal advocate for, transcendental meditation. He believes the technique can bring enlightenment, inspiration, happiness and peace. Threads of this spirituality have always been woven into Twin Peaks , especially Cooper’s ideas about Tibet and his belief in intuitive investigation. Part 14 of The Return put spiritual ideas firmly back in the spotlight, with a quotation from a philosophical Sanskrit text, part of which formed the episode title. As Cole related “another Monica Bellucci dream” (I love the idea that these are a recurring thing for him), he reported the Italian model and actress spoke a memorable phrase: “We are like the drea

For 25 years, Lynch and Frost left their audience with a chilling image etched into its mind’s eye. The hero of the Twin Peaks saga, Special Agent Dale Cooper, was shown with his head bleeding, grinning eerily into a cracked mirror, where the face of demon BOB was leering right back at him. But this final, unforgettable image of the series wasn’t the first time we’d seen BOB’s presence revealed in this way. On several occasions Leland’s inhabiting spirit was shown staring back from a looking glass – in the hallway of the Palmer house or the rear-view mirror of his car. And in the terrifying train-car scene, at the climax of Fire Walk With Me, Lynch briefly showed BOB appearing to invade Laura’s reflection. It’s a startling vision, and one that has already been revisited in The Return when Mr C looked into a small mirror on the wall of his prison cell. Watching his reflection morph subtly and strangely into BOB’s creepy visage was a brilliant, unsettling and memorable moment. Thi

Question by Linda D: How many other people may be "manufactured" or illusory other than the original Dougie? Janey-E and the kid, maybe the whole insurance company, the casino, all of Las Vegas.  No one acts normal, not even close to normal there, reminds me of the Truman Show.  Fake families, fake friends, fake home, etc. This is a good one. A lot of The Return definitely feels unreal. Things are happening out of sequence. The Lucky Seven insurance apparently works 24/7. Dougie-Cooper drifts through life accidentally avoiding sniper fire. It’s all a bit too dreamy, but let’s not forget that Twin Peaks has never presented a naturalistic world. Consider the amazing electro-boogie student at the high school, the table of 200 donuts for a sheriff station with a staff of six or Ben Horne’s lengthy Civil War therapy sessions. These are strange, overblown moments, but they definitely take place in the real world (of Twin Peaks). So I feel like we should proceed with caution befor

This morning on the train, I was indulging my passions for techno music and Twin Peaks simultaneously - reading a blog review of Part 13 while listening to a DJ mix on headphones. In the back of my mind I was thinking about the transition between tracks the DJ was making, seamlessly blending elements from two perfectly synced records to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Simultaneously I was reading Joel Bocko's beautifully expressed thoughts on timelines and plotting in The Return. That’s when a thought struck. A new connection was made. As Dale Cooper so rightly observed: "When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention." What if Hudson Mohawk’s appearance behind the decks at the Roadhouse wasn’t as random as it first appeared? What if it holds the key to understanding the time-disturbances in The Return? By way of explaining what we're about to do, I am first goin

I’ll be honest, this is going to be a bit of a ramble. It’s a meandering trail rather than a coherent essay. But hopefully it takes in some interesting sights on the way, so if you’re in the mood, let’s wander together. We can start in Twin Peaks. A couple of weeks ago, when Deputy Hawk came knocking on her door, Sarah Palmer delivered a line that made me sit up and take notice. Referring to the murder of her daughter by her husband and all the subsequent years of pain and anguish she has endured, she said: “It's a goddamn bad story, isn't it, Hawk?” And it is. It’s a terrible, heart-breaking story. It is the story of Twin Peaks, the TV show that we love. What’s odd is that, in that moment, it was almost as though Sarah Palmer knew she was a character in that story. The line gave a hint of ‘ medium awareness ’. The idea that a character might know they are in a story, and the implications of that awareness are fascinating to me. I know, I know! It’s quite

I feel like what I’m about to share might not be a terribly popular opinion, so I want to get a couple of disclaimers in up top: 1. I’m a huge fan of David Lynch. I love his work. All of it. What follows below is not a criticism of his methods, merely some observations and conjecture. 2. I am loving every minute of The Return. It has blown me away week after week. I can’t stop thinking, writing or tweeting about the show. Okay. That’s done. NOW LET'S CALM DOWN AND GET ALL OF THIS INTERESTING STORY ON PAPER. Over the past couple of months, hardcore Twin Peaks fans on forums, podcasts and social media have revelled in picking apart every detail of each scene in The Return, looking for clues. A few theories have emerged about time-slips and skips, parallel realities, forthcoming plot twists and other unusual goings-on. This has been happening since early episodes and I’ll give a couple of prominent examples below. Before that though, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I t