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 before calling out all weirdness as evidence of illusion. Reality in Twin Peaks is amped up, intensified, saturated. The colors have always been more vibrant, the behaviors more eccentric, the events more exaggerated than our own world.
But we do know that fake people are in play in the Twin Peaks universe. The evidence overtly suggests that Dougie Jones was manufactured, presumably by Mr. C, in 1997. He had established a life, with a job and a family, but it was all founded on a falsehood – he was never a real person. And so his existence, which Cooper inadvertently slid into through an electrical socket, feels like a strange parody of modern life. But I don’t think that means the whole thing is a Truman Show-style illusion. I’m not saying I know for sure, just that explanation just doesn’t feel right to me.
It’s also worth recognizing that Las Vegas is, even in real life, an exaggerated, surreal, neon bauble of a place. It’s pretty easy to start wondering what’s real and what’s not just walking down the strip. It’s a city that trades on its fantasy and theatricality. You run that through the filter of Twin Peaks and what you get will immediately be intensely abnormal. I get that the Jones family’s house seems oddly 'show home'-ish. I know that Candie is profoundly, breathlessly, wonderfully weird. I realize that the ‘Midas effect’ of everyone around Dougie-Cooper suddenly hitting life’s jackpot seems too good to be true – but this has always been the way with Twin Peaks, right from the start. This is a weird, wild world where FBI agents come face to face with llamas, where fish find their way into percolators and where a woman’s soul can become trapped in a wooden drawer handle. You add that level of weird to a town like Vegas and you’ve got a heady cocktail, but it’s not necessarily a 'mocktail'.
That said, the fact that Dougie Jones was manufactured means that, in turn, Sonny Jim is the son of… Well, what exactly is he the son of? A doppelganger? A shell? A fake person? And what does that make Sonny Jim? To quote Kris Kristofferson: “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction”. I say he’s partly truth, because one of his parents, Janey-E, seems completely real to me. I realize that opinions in the fan community differ wildly on this. But when I see her, I see all of us. Janey-E is trying to make her way in the world, doing the best she can for herself and her family. She shares our frustration at being part of “the 99 percent” and “living in a dark, dark age”. She wants the best from her man and the best for her son. I think she’s too relatable to be fake.
But we know for sure Dougie Jones was a fugazi. And logic tells us that Sonny Jim must therefore be at least semi-fake. That’s about all we know for sure. So now let’s climb aboard the conjecture train. Sitting comfortably? Then off we go!
Audrey Horne. Oh, Audrey. The dreamy teen femme fatale I crushed on so hard in my adolescence, when the original series aired. Lynch and Frost made us wait 12 long hours before we caught a glimpse of her and then what did we get? We got a frankly baffling situation. Having had only two scenes with her and Charlie, it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions, but I’m thinking what we’re seeing is not really real. Whether it’s a roleplay therapy, a dissociative fugue state, a coma dream or something else is not yet clear. But what we’re seeing is almost certainly some sort of unreality. The setting is too contrived, the dialogue too unusual, even for Twin Peaks. Personally, I’ve been blown away by Sherilyn Fenn’s performance so far and I’m thrilled she was given such a perfectly Lynchian role for her return. So, while we all know Audrey Horne is not “fake” per-se, I don’t think we’re seeing the real Audrey in these scenes.
There’s also mounting proof that all is not as it seems in the town of Twin Peaks. Some have made fairly convincing arguments that the time-hops and glitches we’re seeing in the town could be evidence for parallel realities. And if that’s the case - if the entire town has split in two just as our beloved Cooper did 25 years ago - then how can we be sure what is real and what is fake? Will the next five hours give us any solid answers, or will there just be more questions, more possibilities? There’s a big part of me hoping it will be left wide open, because speculating and theorizing is just so much fun. I’m starting to feel like we shouldn’t even care what’s real. To quote Cyhper in The Matrix: “I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”
This article first appeared on the 25 Years Later blog as part of their 200th Post Q&A feature on August 13th, 2017. You can read it in its natural habitat here.
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 before calling out all weirdness as evidence of illusion. Reality in Twin Peaks is amped up, intensified, saturated. The colors have always been more vibrant, the behaviors more eccentric, the events more exaggerated than our own world.
But we do know that fake people are in play in the Twin Peaks universe. The evidence overtly suggests that Dougie Jones was manufactured, presumably by Mr. C, in 1997. He had established a life, with a job and a family, but it was all founded on a falsehood – he was never a real person. And so his existence, which Cooper inadvertently slid into through an electrical socket, feels like a strange parody of modern life. But I don’t think that means the whole thing is a Truman Show-style illusion. I’m not saying I know for sure, just that explanation just doesn’t feel right to me.
It’s also worth recognizing that Las Vegas is, even in real life, an exaggerated, surreal, neon bauble of a place. It’s pretty easy to start wondering what’s real and what’s not just walking down the strip. It’s a city that trades on its fantasy and theatricality. You run that through the filter of Twin Peaks and what you get will immediately be intensely abnormal. I get that the Jones family’s house seems oddly 'show home'-ish. I know that Candie is profoundly, breathlessly, wonderfully weird. I realize that the ‘Midas effect’ of everyone around Dougie-Cooper suddenly hitting life’s jackpot seems too good to be true – but this has always been the way with Twin Peaks, right from the start. This is a weird, wild world where FBI agents come face to face with llamas, where fish find their way into percolators and where a woman’s soul can become trapped in a wooden drawer handle. You add that level of weird to a town like Vegas and you’ve got a heady cocktail, but it’s not necessarily a 'mocktail'.
That said, the fact that Dougie Jones was manufactured means that, in turn, Sonny Jim is the son of… Well, what exactly is he the son of? A doppelganger? A shell? A fake person? And what does that make Sonny Jim? To quote Kris Kristofferson: “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction”. I say he’s partly truth, because one of his parents, Janey-E, seems completely real to me. I realize that opinions in the fan community differ wildly on this. But when I see her, I see all of us. Janey-E is trying to make her way in the world, doing the best she can for herself and her family. She shares our frustration at being part of “the 99 percent” and “living in a dark, dark age”. She wants the best from her man and the best for her son. I think she’s too relatable to be fake.
But we know for sure Dougie Jones was a fugazi. And logic tells us that Sonny Jim must therefore be at least semi-fake. That’s about all we know for sure. So now let’s climb aboard the conjecture train. Sitting comfortably? Then off we go!
Audrey Horne. Oh, Audrey. The dreamy teen femme fatale I crushed on so hard in my adolescence, when the original series aired. Lynch and Frost made us wait 12 long hours before we caught a glimpse of her and then what did we get? We got a frankly baffling situation. Having had only two scenes with her and Charlie, it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions, but I’m thinking what we’re seeing is not really real. Whether it’s a roleplay therapy, a dissociative fugue state, a coma dream or something else is not yet clear. But what we’re seeing is almost certainly some sort of unreality. The setting is too contrived, the dialogue too unusual, even for Twin Peaks. Personally, I’ve been blown away by Sherilyn Fenn’s performance so far and I’m thrilled she was given such a perfectly Lynchian role for her return. So, while we all know Audrey Horne is not “fake” per-se, I don’t think we’re seeing the real Audrey in these scenes.
There’s also mounting proof that all is not as it seems in the town of Twin Peaks. Some have made fairly convincing arguments that the time-hops and glitches we’re seeing in the town could be evidence for parallel realities. And if that’s the case - if the entire town has split in two just as our beloved Cooper did 25 years ago - then how can we be sure what is real and what is fake? Will the next five hours give us any solid answers, or will there just be more questions, more possibilities? There’s a big part of me hoping it will be left wide open, because speculating and theorizing is just so much fun. I’m starting to feel like we shouldn’t even care what’s real. To quote Cyhper in The Matrix: “I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”
This article first appeared on the 25 Years Later blog as part of their 200th Post Q&A feature on August 13th, 2017. You can read it in its natural habitat here.