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

What year is it? Well, it’s 2024 - but not for long. It’s our last episode of the year! Director of this year’s I SAW THE TV GLOW Jane Schoenbrun joins us to talk about the conclusion of Twin Peaks: The Return, and, by default, the conclusion of our David Lynch series. In a show that intentionally defies the very concept of resolution, how do we put a bow on things? Well, we try! Shout out to Freddie and his glove. Oh, and Merry Christmas. Trauma is originary and unending. Stream I Saw The TV Glow on MAX https://www.max.com/movies/i-saw-the-tv-glow/54c4cadd-7d0b-4fb9-bb37-2c4a50cf3dee?utm_source=universal_search Check out The Search for the Zone site https://web.archive.org/web/20200127211247/http://thesearchforthezone.com/ Spotify playlist of music from the films of David Lynch https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1zrDGx42wquJsRZRKmq8sX?si=dcc59c8c2ae84193 The Box Office Game is Sponsored by Regal Cinemas: Sign up for Regal Unlimited today http://blankcheckpod.com/regal and get 20% off your 3 month subscription when using code BLANKCHECK Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

  Ranking Scorsese at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We did the definitive power ranking of Martin Scorsese things.

• 0:12David Sims?

  Uh, it was so fun. Uh, it was very silly.

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

  Ben and Marie were with us and they're with us right now.

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

  And thanks to our friends at Dynasty Typewriter. It was livestreamed for the first time ever, but also the replay is still up there, but only until October 30th.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  It's $20. We had a blast and the Spreadmaster really got to work.

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'd have seen you that happy.

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  You were thrilled. You were like a pick and share.

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

  Thank you. You were funny. You were also funny.

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

  And if you want to see like, you know, Griffin's shine box on camera, it's the only way to see it.

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're into that sort of content.

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  So once again, that's at dynasty.tv.

• 1:47Griffin Newman?

  What podcast is this?

• 1:49David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:49Griffin Newman?

  That's what you told me to do.

• 1:50David Sims?

  I think that's what you should do. It doesn't matter. We have to talk about the show.

• 1:53Griffin Newman?

  Never say it doesn't matter. Never say it doesn't matter.

• 1:56David Sims?

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

• 1:59Griffin Newman?

  I think it matters so much. Weird. I've never gotten that vibe from you that you think it doesn't matter.

• 2:05David Sims?

  It's just sometimes we spend 20 minutes, not 20 minutes.

• 2:07Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Do you want to take it again?

• 2:14Griffin Newman?

  No, absolutely not. Beginnings are important, right?

• 2:19David Sims?

  Sure. Well, it's actually all the beginning.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  An end.

• 2:22Griffin Newman?

  You hear that, David?

• 2:24David Sims?

  Those are the things people remember the most.

• 2:26Griffin Newman?

  The quotes in the end as always. That's the rule of storytelling.

• 2:30David Sims?

  Yeah. How does TV globe again? What's the first shot of TV glow?

• 2:34Speaker 04

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

• 2:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  You get the ice cream truck.

• 2:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  Good opening.

• 2:40David Sims?

  You need a good opening.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, the rest of it.

• 2:44David Sims?

  Who cares? People have already filed their Letterboxd review by that point. They just get their phone out and they're like, eh, four stars. Pretty good.

• 2:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, right. They've taken out their phones.

• 2:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:54Griffin Newman?

  They photographed the title card. They've logged it on Letterboxd. They've sang along.

• 2:58Speaker 04

  They sang along.

• 2:59Griffin Newman?

  And they've walked out after 30 minutes. The state of Muang, 2024.

• 3:04David Sims?

  Did you, did anyone go to a Wicked screening where people sang along? I did not experience that.

• 3:09Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I saw Wicked, of course, in 4DX where I think physically it'd be hard to sing.

• 3:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:17Griffin Newman?

  Have you seen Wicked, Jane?

• 3:18Speaker 04

  I have not seen Wicked yet, but I, I literally have asked all of my friends to see Wicked with me.

• 3:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  And no one wants to go. So I'm gonna see Wicked alone.

• 3:25Griffin Newman?

  I think the, uh, 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?

• 3:35David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 3:36Griffin Newman?

  I think there's an overstatement of how much this is like an epidemic.

• 3:40Speaker 04

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

• 3:45David Sims?

  You want roundiness.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:46David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 3:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I think the mistake was not simultaneously releasing and a sing-along cut, which I just saw there now from Christmas day on.

• 3:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:59Griffin Newman?

  That's what we'll be playing.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 4:01David Sims?

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

• 4:04Griffin Newman?

  I assume so.

• 4:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Griffin Newman?

  Or a, or a grim word. What's the grimery?

• 4:09David Sims?

  Grimery.

• 4:09Griffin Newman?

  A little grimery.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  This is stuff you don't know, Jane. You haven't opened a grimery. I know very little about the plot of Wicked and I'm so excited because, because I love lore, you know?

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  Oh, fuck.

• 4:19David Sims?

  Then you will like it.

• 4:20Griffin Newman?

  You're gonna.

• 4:21David Sims?

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

• 4:30Griffin Newman?

  You want shit explained?

• 4:31Speaker 04

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

• 4:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  I assume you guys have seen Return to Oz.

• 4:37Griffin Newman?

  Love Return to Oz.

• 4:38David Sims?

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

• 4:42Griffin Newman?

  Soul directing credit.

• 4:43David Sims?

  Soul directing credit, but obviously we could do an Oz series on our Patreon.

• 4:48Griffin Newman?

  Which we've pitched before, previously would have included Oz, the Great and Powerful, which now we've covered through Raimi, but we could include Wickedness now.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  That's right. That's Sam Raimi, huh?

• 4:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, unfortunately.

• 4:57David Sims?

  Have you seen Oz, the Great and Powerful?

• 4:59Speaker 04

  No, I can't say. I have. How's the lore?

• 5:01Griffin Newman?

  The lore's bad.

• 5:02David Sims?

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

• 5:06Griffin Newman?

  That's part of the huge failure of that movie.

• 5:08David Sims?

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

• 5:12Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 5:12David Sims?

  Coming from a completely different direction. Her tears hurt her face because she's allergic to water.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, just like Bruce Willis in Glass.

• 5:21Griffin Newman?

  Exactly like Bruce Willis in Glass.

• 5:22David Sims?

  Does Glass ever address that Bruce Willis could hurt himself by crying? Does that come up?

• 5:27Griffin Newman?

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

• 5:30David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Griffin Newman?

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

• 5:34Speaker 04

  But he can drink water, right?

• 5:36Griffin Newman?

  Well, they.

• 5:36David Sims?

  This is a good question.

• 5:37Griffin Newman?

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

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 5:41David Sims?

  Oh my God.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Which is true.

• 5:44David Sims?

  I mean, of anybody, I guess. I mean, how fast are we talking? Like a fire hose? Like, what do you mean?

• 5:50Griffin Newman?

  I think with it, we have to remember, spoilers, this man died in a puddle. I don't think, I think he could drink water pretty slowly and it'd still make him choke.

• 5:57David Sims?

  What's our podcast?

• 5:58Griffin Newman?

  This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 6:01David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 6:01Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmography, is 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.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:13Griffin Newman?

  We are concluding.

• 6:14David Sims?

  Yep.

• 6:14Griffin Newman?

  Resolving. We're answering all questions.

• 6:17David Sims?

  Sure.

• 6:18Griffin Newman?

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

• 6:26David Sims?

  Of course.

• 6:27Griffin Newman?

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

• 6:33Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes called Twin Peaks a limited series? Never called-

• 6:36David Sims?

  Twin Peaks season three?

• 6:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, no, this is the thing. It's never called that.

• 6:40David Sims?

  Okay.

• 6:40Griffin Newman?

  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 were 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.

• 7:02David Sims?

  An ABC show, sure.

• 7:03Griffin Newman?

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

• 7:08David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 7:08Griffin Newman?

  Somewhere, someone was calling out a lot of these like, the Gilmore Girls Netflix season.

• 7:13David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:14Griffin Newman?

  These things-

• 7:14David Sims?

  A year in the life.

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

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

• 7:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 7:22Griffin Newman?

  They get to be like, this is its own show. This is a show that is using the intellectual property, but this is-

• 7:28David Sims?

  But it's a brand new television show.

• 7:30Griffin Newman?

  Correct. And we decide who gets carried along.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  In this case, it kind of works.

• 7:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:34David Sims?

  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, really.

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  I'd say that's, I'm trying to think, butts, you do see butts, so maybe those are the two differences.

• 7:48David Sims?

  It would just be funny if Lynch gave me, he was like, there's tits. We get to have tits in Showtime.

• 7:54Speaker 04

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

• 8:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wow.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  She came in and sat down and watched Seventeen and Eighteen with us. And she was like, is this what the old one is like?

• 8:10David Sims?

  And what did you say?

• 8:12Speaker 04

  We were like, no, not really at all. Like, the old, the old one's like, like, like cozy.

• 8:18Griffin Newman?

  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 Schoenbrun to do a Twin Peaks episode.

• 8:34David Sims?

  Would be cool.

• 8:35Griffin Newman?

  Would be cool. And guess what? We fucking did it.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Right on, right under the wire.

• 8:39Griffin Newman?

  It's happening right under the wire. Incredible filmmaker. I think a filmmaker you and I are constantly very excited by and talk about as like-

• 8:46David Sims?

  Of course.

• 8:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 8:47David Sims?

  Yes. I'm a huge fan.

• 8:49Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 8:49David Sims?

  I think Jane knows.

• 8:50Griffin Newman?

  A very early booster.

• 8:52David Sims?

  Whatever.

• 8:53Griffin Newman?

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

• 8:56David Sims?

  Now I feel on the spot.

• 8:57Griffin Newman?

  They're like, they're like, they're like, hey, Jane, here's your, here's your blank check. And I'm like, it actually says $50 on this check.

• 9:06David Sims?

  You've written a number here.

• 9:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Griffin Newman?

  Jane Schoenbrun, filmmaker of, uh, I saw the TV glow, one of my favorite movies of the year. We're all going to the world's fair and, and Twin Peaks, the return mega fan. Is that fair to say?

• 9:19Speaker 04

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

• 9:26David Sims?

  I think when we last spoke, I, uh, we definitely discussed the return briefly. I, I know it's on your site and sound top 10 as well, right?

• 9:35Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 9:36David Sims?

  Yeah, pretty sure. Let me find it.

• 9:39David Sims?

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

• 9:40Speaker 04

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

• 9:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  It's not my 10, 10 favorite films on my site and sound, but you're trying to try to say like, hey, you guys check this out.

• 9:48David Sims?

  You had a really cool, it's a speed racer.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Is it TV or is it movie?

• 9:52Griffin Newman?

  Well, it's a provocative conversation. Yeah, well, give me the full 10.

• 9:57David Sims?

  Oh, oh, sure. Meshes of the afternoon, which rocks. Uh, if people have never seen that, um, you know, is it TV? Is it short film or is it feature film? Who cares?

• 10:06Speaker 04

  A lot of these are movies that I want to be released officially on Blu-ray.

• 10:12Griffin Newman?

  See, this is a swag. This is a chess move.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  This was a chess move.

• 10:15David Sims?

  Where, where's the friend's house? Charastomy movie that I love. The Quinstry Son, I've never seen.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  There you go, cause it's, it's not, not really available.

• 10:23David Sims?

  Is it a risé or a riche?

• 10:24Speaker 04

  I think it's a riche.

• 10:25David Sims?

  Yes, a riche movie.

• 10:28David Sims?

  Heinz, how do you say, how do you pronounce it? Hyenas?

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Hyenas, the animal.

• 10:33David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. Totally fucked up. The Gregor actor movie.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Which at the time was not, not really.

• 10:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, and now?

• 10:39David Sims?

  Now it is.

• 10:40Griffin Newman?

  At least by criterion, yeah.

• 10:41David Sims?

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

• 10:45Griffin Newman?

  Check it out.

• 10:46David Sims?

  You would love to check that out. Early Saffron Burrows. What happened to Saffron Burrows?

• 10:51Griffin Newman?

  Great question.

• 10:52David Sims?

  Great. Okay, well, you guys figure it out.

• 10:54Griffin Newman?

  Let's pin that for later.

• 10:55David Sims?

  A movie I am going to assume, oh, August in the water. I do not know that movie.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  That one you guys have to see. It's this like very quiet, Japanese, coming of age sci-fi movie.

• 11:09Griffin Newman?

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

• 11:13David Sims?

  Oh, and it's on YouTube.

• 11:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's very much not available in anything but terrible quality.

• 11:18David Sims?

  Wow, fantastic. And then, uh, Speed Racer, which we've covered on this show, one of my favorite movies. Uncle Boone Me, a wonderful movie. Yep.

• 11:26Griffin Newman?

  How could you not?

• 11:27David Sims?

  Come on. And then Twin Peaks The Return. Heard of it?

• 11:29Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 11:41David Sims?

  What was it?

• 11:41Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 11:47David Sims?

  So Jane, David Lynch, what is your relationship with this filmmaker beyond Twin Peaks The Return? Just in general.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Oh, I, 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.

• 12:05Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Not like, not, not in a like, don't watch it, but just in a like, you know, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• 12:10David Sims?

  Right, the most upsetting thing.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Blue Velvet is, you know, is another level. Like, so I think it held, from, from the earliest moment, it held sort of a mystique.

• 12:20Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:35Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 12:50David Sims?

  Uh, or maybe in content, more upsetting, but maybe not like, you know.

• 12:54Griffin Newman?

  Emotionally, psychologically, yeah.

• 12:55David Sims?

  Right, you know.

• 12:56Griffin Newman?

  But yes.

• 12:56David Sims?

  Lynch, Lynch will cut deeper.

• 12:57Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  So that that sort of loomed in the video store. Um, and then I started watching Twin Peaks in early middle school. It had, it had already aired, but on VHS. And also I couldn't find, I remember very clearly going to the Museum of Television in, in California, in LA.

• 13:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  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.

• 13:39Griffin Newman?

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

• 13:43Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 13:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 13:48David Sims?

  Everything, right?

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was, it was like, I remember thinking for like months about what TV shows.

• 13:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  I would spend my two hours on.

• 13:56David Sims?

  Was there a time limit, right? Like it's like.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  You had two hours.

• 13:58David Sims?

  In the booth?

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:59David Sims?

  But they would give you whatever you wanted.

• 14:01Griffin Newman?

  You'd go to like an ancient PC that looked like the War Games computer.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:05Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Literally.

• 14:16Griffin Newman?

  Before the DVD came out. Or like pull up like any random Johnny Carson.

• 14:21David Sims?

  Right, anyone, like I want Johnny Carson from 1983, January 2nd.

• 14:25Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 14:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Griffin Newman?

  But like Get a Life, I feel like I had to watch through multiple visits the Museum of Television and Radio.

• 14:31Speaker 04

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

• 14:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  And just like, leave me here, please.

• 14:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  But I remember watching Twin Peaks there. I bought a Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me t-shirt in sixth grade from Generation Records.

• 14:45Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Uh, on Thompson.

• 14:47David Sims?

  Yeah, great record.

• 14:48Griffin Newman?

  What was on the shirt?

• 14:48Speaker 04

  And got bullied for it. It kind of had like, like.

• 14:52David Sims?

  Because they were like, oh, come on, that movie was Buddha Cam. What are you doing?

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  We expected some resolution. That's what the bully Rob said. I think just for being idiosyncratic, you know?

• 15:05Griffin Newman?

  What, what was on the shirt?

• 15:07Speaker 04

  It was, it kind of had like, like Japanese bootleg tour poster energy.

• 15:11Griffin Newman?

  That's cool.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Uh, I remember, I think Cooper was on there. Yeah, it kind of had like a confused vibe to it.

• 15:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Um, 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 Mulholland Drive in theaters.

• 15:28Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wow.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  And I remember, like, there's this specific vibe, and sometimes I'll re-watch these movies now and be like, oh, 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.

• 15:51Griffin Newman?

  That you, sure.

• 15:52Speaker 04

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

• 15:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  What, why?

• 15:58Griffin Newman?

  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, 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

• 16:38Griffin Newman?

  where the, the main character, the Justice Smith character, re-watches 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, 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.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 04

  And then over and over again, and, and really did have, like, recurring dreams about it coming back.

• 17:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  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?

• 17:26Griffin Newman?

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

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Full triumph.

• 17:30Griffin Newman?

  You had full?

• 17:31Speaker 04

  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.

• 17:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Just like, when I, when I rewatched Mahal and Jai for the first time as an adult, I like rewatched it four more times in like a weekend.

• 17:47Griffin Newman?

  Um.

• 17:48David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  I watched.

• 17:49David Sims?

  Best movie ever made.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Oh, Lost Highway, I had this like incredible viewing of after my 30th birthday party, like 2am. And I was like, I want to watch Lost Highway right now.

• 17:58David Sims?

  You just toss it on. That is a good time to watch.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  Turn out all the lights.

• 18:01Griffin Newman?

  I, I think this is what I was trying to tee up is that like, uh, that in the fictional show with an eye saw the TV glow. I feel like there are some clear kind of like, uh, influences, you know, and I, 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.

• 18:22David Sims?

  And the font of Buffy, come on.

• 18:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  And the actors.

• 18:25Griffin Newman?

  Right. Yeah.

• 18:29Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we all like long for it. We long.

• 18:47Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  And I guess this is the thesis of the movie, right? Is that like, we long for the way it felt. We don't actually long for it.

• 18:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Which I think is like, uh, one of the very profound things you get at in the film. But, and I'm someone who's obsessively, regularly rewatching 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.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 19:20Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 19:34Speaker 04

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

• 19:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  Right, it's like, it's, it's, it's not season three, it's David Lynch in conversation with like, the memory of his filmography and of Twin Peaks.

• 19:54Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:05Griffin Newman?

  Right, based on love of the first thing, the previous thing, whatever.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:09Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 20:22David Sims?

  Talk about it.

• 20:23Griffin Newman?

  Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, where it's like, this is the kind of thing that I'm-

• 20:26David Sims?

  A moment that feels a little more like, okay, love, long line, long time fans of Twin Peaks, like, we will-

• 20:32Griffin Newman?

  Ten minutes-

• 20:33Speaker 04

  Then he cuts to a gas station flickering for like fifteen minutes.

• 20:36Griffin Newman?

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

• 20:41David Sims?

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

• 20:47Griffin Newman?

  Norma?

• 20:48David Sims?

  Norma, sorry.

• 20:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 20:50David Sims?

  And, those moments in this show are few and far between.

• 20:53Griffin Newman?

  Correct, and I feel like, basically from the beginning of the show, he's teaching you, this is not gonna be that, and yet, I, I'd never watched it before, doing it for the podcast has been my first watch.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  Oh wow.

• 21:04Griffin Newman?

  These last five episodes, there's a run there, I would say maybe, the two, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, where it feels like the show is starting to deliver what certain fans would have hoped for.

• 21:17David Sims?

  It gives, it gives you a version of what you might want.

• 21:19Griffin Newman?

  It's like, this is coming together.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  I am the FBI.

• 21:22David Sims?

  And imagine if it ended with episode seventeen, like, that's-

• 21:25Speaker 04

  That'd been terrible.

• 21:26David Sims?

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

• 21:30Griffin Newman?

  I think so, I was watching it-

• 21:32David Sims?

  Someone punch Bob, he's gone!

• 21:33Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 21:34David Sims?

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

• 21:40Griffin Newman?

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

• 21:44David Sims?

  The fireman's plan worked.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  But here, but, but 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 I, and maybe most overtly with Audrey there at the end, you know, it, 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.

• 22:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  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.

• 22:34David Sims?

  Well, and What year is it?

• 22:35Griffin Newman?

  I think he's, to your point.

• 22:37David Sims?

  I mean, the last line of the series is actually, ah, but apart from that.

• 22:42Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 22:51David Sims?

  Probably.

• 22:52Speaker 04

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

• 22:58Griffin Newman?

  Totally. Yes. Yes. No, you're right. You're right. But it's like, I, I do get a sense of just like, he kind of wants to see Big Ed and Norma get together unencumbered.

• 23:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 23:11Griffin Newman?

  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, um, 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.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  I don't

• 23:35Griffin Newman?

  Come on, David.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  There are the doorknobs in almost every scene.

• 23:39David Sims?

  Just had me wave.

• 23:40Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Well, and isn't there some story about, um, uh, Audrey Horne, the actor, Sherilyn Finn, like, asking for her shit to be rewritten and he rewrote it as, like, that whole plotline that ended up in there?

• 24:02Griffin Newman?

  I didn't know that. That makes a lot of sense. Cause I will say, that remains the element of this, uh, season of television that I am most perplexed by.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 24:11Griffin Newman?

  And I was looking for some sort of explanation to, as to how we got there. And even though, like, Audrey dancing, you know, to her theme.

• 24:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 24:20Griffin Newman?

  Felt like, okay, now we're getting somewhere where I'm gonna 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 her resolution.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  Well, she, she snaps into herself and then we see her in a pseudo-white void with a, with like, the same.

• 24:41Griffin Newman?

  That's true.

• 24:42Speaker 04

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

• 24:48David Sims?

  Uh, one of Lynch's most, like, enduring inspirations, um, is Sunset Boulevard.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  But also that guy, I love Audrey's husband. What's his name?

• 24:57David Sims?

  God, he drives me crazy.

• 24:59Griffin Newman?

  Who has now passed away.

• 25:00David Sims?

  He had, uh, Clark Middleton?

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right.

• 25:02David Sims?

  Charlie's the character.

• 25:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Taking off my coat, Audrey. All right, Audrey.

• 25:06David Sims?

  I, the, I love the Audrey plotline so much. I'm experiencing, 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, 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?"

• 25:35Griffin Newman?

  They spend like three-

• 25:36David Sims?

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

• 25:40Griffin Newman?

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

• 25:46David Sims?

  Yes.

• 25:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Oh, it's very Bakedian.

• 25:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and you're like, other things like days are progressing outside of this room.

• 25:57David Sims?

  There is plot in this show. There is, right, there is actual movement.

• 26:00Griffin Newman?

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

• 26:03David Sims?

  But, but yes, I mean, right, the implicated, 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. But, uh, this makes sense, is Lynch going like, well, okay, I'm gonna think of something else, and like, this, how contained it is, makes sense, is sort of like, well, if I'm gonna rewrite it, I'll give you this little sort of play, like that you do.

• 26:34Griffin Newman?

  She does not interact with-

• 26:36David Sims?

  No, she's in an institution.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  But the names that she is saying, in this long, extended, sort of meaningless conversation about people that we don't actually know.

• 26:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Those names are also used by a lot of the people at The Roadhouse.

• 26:51Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  It, like, who we also don't know.

• 26:53David Sims?

  Right, where we'll, we'll check in with their drama.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  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. It's, it's almost, it's like, there's like, the core of the show, which is like, what we remember, nostalgia, and then there's just these, like, doppelganger versions of it, like, on the fringes.

• 27:15Griffin Newman?

  The Roadhouse stuff is particularly interesting to me, not that I was expecting some kind of, um, traditional resolution, but like, all these little snippets of like, Charlene Yee and Jane Levy and like, uh, Sky Ferrera, and these like-

• 27:32Speaker 04

  I thought you said Jane Lynch.

• 27:33Griffin Newman?

  I wish, Jane Lynch would be good.

• 27:35David Sims?

  Jane Lynch is a sassy, like, Twin Peaks high school, would be fun.

• 27:39Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 27:50David Sims?

  I always just kept this sense that like- Twin Peaks is, is a very sad fraught place now and probably, and was then too. But like now, you know, we, we only catch glimpses of it. The sheriff's office, they're always discussing a lot of like tragic, terrible stuff.

• 28:05Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of drug running happening.

• 28:07David Sims?

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

• 28:19Griffin Newman?

  In a way that is, to some degree, like reflection of what has happened to a lot of small towns in America.

• 28:25David Sims?

  Sure, yes.

• 28:26Griffin Newman?

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

• 28:34Speaker 04

  People are under a lot of stress these days. Is that what?

• 28:36David Sims?

  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 decisions that Lynch and Mark Frost obviously made, where I'm like, there, there's no reason for them to, to tag along, but it's so great that they're there.

• 29:00Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 29:01David Sims?

  Yes.

• 29:04David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 29:06Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 29:07David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 29:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. She's reactivated because she's horny for chicken fingers.

• 29:13David Sims?

  Okay.

• 29:14Griffin Newman?

  And she's excited for the streaming debut of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 29:18David Sims?

  Wow.

• 29:19Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 29:21David Sims?

  Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up. Well, while you, while you tell the, the great listeners about the great stuff on movie.

• 29:28Griffin Newman?

  Well, movie is a global film company, bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what movie does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 29:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 29:40Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 29:41David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 29:42Griffin Newman?

  You can feel the rush now at home. There's a hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.

• 29:48David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 29:49Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schombro and past and future guest.

• 29:52David Sims?

  Past and future guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest.

• 29:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 29:56David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 29:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 29:58David Sims?

  This movie rocks. It's got, of course it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

• 30:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 30:03David Sims?

  Legends and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 30:05Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 30:07David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 30:08Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 30:09David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 30:10Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 30:11David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. One that queer Paul McCann, if you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on movie.

• 30:21Griffin Newman?

  Hannah Einbinder plays the filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to, to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.

• 30:36David Sims?

  Yes. And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 30:40Griffin Newman?

  What happens?

• 30:42Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's one of those Hollywood's out of ideas. No, it's very much a movie about Hollywood being out of ideas while being an example of there still being new stories to tell.

• 30:52David Sims?

  It's now streaming exclusively on movie and you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com slash blank check. That's M U B I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 31:04Griffin Newman?

  They got so many great movies on there to watch, but worth it for 30 days for Miasma.

• 31:09David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 31:14Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 31:15David Sims?

  Yes.

• 31:15Griffin Newman?

  He lurks in shadow. He slips into dreams. He casts no reflection. Audible presents Bram Stoker's Dracula, a new full cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey as Dracula, and an A-list cast, including Maggie Gyllenhaal as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood as Lucy, David Johnson as Dr. Seward, and many more. That is an all-star cast.

• 31:36David Sims?

  Yeah, this new full cast thriller locks Mina Harker in a battle of minds with the Count. When Mina's fiance Jonathan Harker, Louis Partridge, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her.

• 31:56Griffin Newman?

  Joined by the enigmatic Van Helsing, Mina and a small fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina may just hold the key to bring down the Count if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind.

• 32:12David Sims?

  Featuring a haunting original score by Elon Eschery and a spatial dolby Atmos sound design, Audible's Dracula invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted and the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss this year's best new audio thriller, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Audible's new full cast original adaptation, written by Robin Ahern, now on Audible. Listen to the darkness. Go to audible.com/listen to Dracula.

• 32:47Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 32:47David Sims?

  Yes?

• 32:48Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 32:49David Sims?

  Uh oh.

• 32:49Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 32:50David Sims?

  Ah!

• 32:52Griffin Newman?

  And you know what that means, the old stereotype about November.

• 32:55David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 32:55Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 32:57David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 32:59Griffin Newman?

  Packed schedule, questionable food choices, and somehow a social calendar that got way fuller than you planned. And I ain't talking about Sam Fuller, we're not covering him yet in the podcast.

• 33:07David Sims?

  No, though, maybe we should.

• 33:08Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 33:10David Sims?

  I can't remember. Big Red One. We call the Big Red Podcast.

• 33:13Griffin Newman?

  Listen, when things get complicated, not when life is easy and when you got time for a whole routine, right now, when everything is full and something has to give one scoop cold water every morning before anything else, as I like to say, scoop there it is.

• 33:26David Sims?

  You do like to say that every morning you text me, scoop there it is. And that means I now know that you had your AG1.

• 33:33Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 33:34David Sims?

  Uh, but yeah, you're, I know you're, you're a daily AG1 user and it's basically the, uh, the glue that holds your internal organs together at this point.

• 33:42Griffin Newman?

  It's not just marketing. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials, not weekend a study.

• 33:50David Sims?

  Thank you for that voice.

• 33:50Griffin Newman?

  Four independent studies with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. This is the thing I like about AG1. They're not resting on their laurels. They constantly work to better themselves.

• 34:02David Sims?

  Um, yes, AG1. They've got now AG1 Pro.

• 34:06Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 34:07David Sims?

  Same daily drink now with a performance and recovery layer built in. So you've got five grams of Cre vitalis, a premium German made creatine monohydrate, and one of the most studied compounds in sports science, plus CAHMB for muscle protection and zinc carnosine for gut support.

• 34:25Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 34:26David Sims?

  Next gen is the foundation pro adds what your body needs to recover.

• 34:30Griffin Newman?

  You might be having some big meals this November. AG1 is what you need to keep your gut in check. Keep things, as I like to put it, regular.

• 34:38David Sims?

  Yes. So for a limited time, visit drink AG1.com slash check and get a free immune support bundle, including omega three fish oil and vitamin D three plus K2 with your first subscription of AG1 next gen or AG1 Pro. That's drink AG1.com slash check. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Belank check sent you.

• 35:08David Sims?

  So, okay, but you Twin Peaks, the return is announced and then you watch it. How did you feel at the time?

• 35:12Griffin Newman?

  You were watching it week by week.

• 35:14David Sims?

  Jane.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  I was on set. Uh, I was producing a movie called Chained for Life.

• 35:19David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  In, um,

• 35:21Griffin Newman?

  Wonderful film.

• 35:22David Sims?

  Aaron Schimber.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Aaron's movie in, um, what is this? What is the capital of Pennsylvania?

• 35:28David Sims?

  Harrisburg.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  We were in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where beers were $2.

• 35:32David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  And karaoke was abundant.

• 35:36David Sims?

  That I wouldn't have predicted.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  And, um, and, uh, my friend Dan Carbone, who also shot, we're all going to the World's Fair and is 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 in off the highway and, um,

• 35:55Griffin Newman?

  Did they have showtime?

• 35:56Speaker 04

  They did not have showtime. And

• 35:58Griffin Newman?

  Sounds like an uncomfort.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  But we would eat dinner every night at this. And I was like literally calling local movie theaters being like, will you do a screening for us?

• 36:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wow.

• 36:08Speaker 04

  Of the of the first two episodes when they are 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 woman who ran it.

• 36:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  We were like putting her kid through fucking college, you know, and and and she she bought Showtime so that we could watch it.

• 36:24Griffin Newman?

  And you were like, if we come here on Sunday nights, you'll let us control the TV.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  But it 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.

• 36:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  And so we like sat in a hotel room and we, this was like a while ago. And so like cellphone data plans were not commonly unlimited. And so we all had these like limited cellphone plans and we like literally, we like mobile hot spotted.

• 36:48David Sims?

  You like chained your various cellphone plans.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, we all bled like we we drained our cellphone plans like and somebody like hooked it up to the hotel TV somehow. And and this was how we watched it. And everyone was just like, huh.

• 37:03David Sims?

  Right. It's like, I love the beginning of the show, but it is definitely not like anything you would have expected to happen.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  And then the ending, I'll never forget the last, the last two episodes I watched right near here at the at the draft house. They did like a secret screening of it.

• 37:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Forget who organized it, but I weaseled my way into it. And like, we literally like all sat in a theater at the draft house and they like simulcast those two episodes live as they air.

• 37:30David Sims?

  Back to back. Right.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  And there was still like waiter service.

• 37:33David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  And and it was, it was actually like the, I remember it looking, 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

• 37:44David Sims?

  Janky.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  And 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 their seats.

• 37:54Griffin Newman?

  Need it to process, yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  She was like, you guys seem upset. And that ended, yeah, I mean, that ending haunted me for months.

• 38:00David Sims?

  I don't, 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, I 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.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:24David Sims?

  Like very, very rattled.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Truly rattled, yeah.

• 38:26David Sims?

  And not unhappy because I had no expectations of this show. I wasn't watching it being like, fucking Cooper had better marry Audrey. Or I don't, I have no idea what I would be wanting from the end of this show. But the, the absolute ending freaks me out to this day and I think it's amazing and I, 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. Cause 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.

• 39:11Griffin Newman?

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

• 39:15David Sims?

  Experience as 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, 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 like check in and it would be the guy in the prison with the, the, you know, giant hole in his face going, this cannot be considered watchable television. I'm like, no, it's really, really good.

• 39:42Griffin Newman?

  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 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 the show is not delivering the obvious sort of Twin Peaks

• 40:25Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 40:38David Sims?

  Time travel, yes.

• 40:39Griffin Newman?

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

• 40:41David Sims?

  Cooper's getting the Infinity Stone.

• 40:42Griffin Newman?

  Right. Everyone's together. He and Diana 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 everyone.

• 40:53David Sims?

  People at the time being like, what?

• 40:54Griffin Newman?

  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 gonna fucking tie everything together. Maybe the unresolved stuff is that we never go back to fucking Sky Ferrera, 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.

• 41:19David Sims?

  There's something else that will happen here.

• 41:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 41:21David Sims?

  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.

• 41:32Griffin Newman?

  I mean, when it like cuts back to Jack Nance.

• 41:34David Sims?

  Hands off Renault, we need his evidence.

• 41:36Griffin Newman?

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

• 41:40David Sims?

  Sure.

• 41:41Griffin Newman?

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

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 41:46Griffin Newman?

  That he would avoid.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  You know, I think that's a big part of that second to last episode.

• 41:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  Is, is like, how artificial that kind of narrative resolution is.

• 41:57David Sims?

  Right, you're getting it, but Cooper's face is superposed over it.

• 42:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 42:01David Sims?

  We are, this is a dream that we are having, but we'll get to that.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Freddy uses his ring glove.

• 42:08David Sims?

  We're, well, we have to talk about Freddie.

• 42:10Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna talk about Freddie for half an hour. Listeners, it might surprise you to hear that I am all in on Freddie. That Freddie is so my kind of shit.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Freddie was, Freddie was also, also a fan favorite in my, in my, in my home.

• 42:22Griffin Newman?

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

• 42:28Griffin Newman?

  I'll just make my lil glove, eh, ain't it?

• 42:31David Sims?

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

• 42:33Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 42:39David Sims?

  The whole thing with Jake Wardle, 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 Eastern accent, right? Like, this can't be real. And you realize, you know, that's just what he sounds like. It must be what David Lynch loved about him.

• 42:54Griffin Newman?

  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, I'll pull up so I can read it verbatim. But David Lynch being like, I love these crazy voices he does.

• 43:12David Sims?

  That sounds like, that sounds like.

• 43:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. Cause there's a rugby player named Jake Wardle, which fucks with actor Jake Wardle's SEO. Um, but where's this?

• 43:21David Sims?

  I bet that rugby player wishes he could punch anyone.

• 43:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. 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 Freddie. 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.

• 43:46David Sims?

  Hey, sure. Highest praise imaginable. He's just like Harry Dean.

• 43:49Griffin Newman?

  He's just like Harry Dean.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  See a thousand people on the internet.

• 43:52Griffin Newman?

  I'm like, is, is David Lynch watching accent?

• 43:55Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 43:56David Sims?

  Surfing the internet super highway.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Sean Baker's on TikTok looking for like hot new sex workers for his next movie. And David Lynch is on there searching like hilarious Cockney.

• 44:07David Sims?

  1,000 impressions in one minute, guys. Yeah.

• 44:10Griffin Newman?

  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're like, 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.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  We should all be so lucky. Yes.

• 44:40David Sims?

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

• 44:42Griffin Newman?

  Also, he should make a fucking body cam movie.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  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 gonna 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.

• 45:16Griffin Newman?

  Where he like gives a monkey the business.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  I actually think the monkey is giving him the business.

• 45:22Griffin Newman?

  You're right. They're kind of, you know what? They're kind of antagonizing each other.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Tet, ah, tet.

• 45:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  It's surreal.

• 45:27David Sims?

  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.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  He did a bunch of weather reports.

• 45:38David Sims?

  Obviously.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  And he did, um, didn't he do a music video?

• 45:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, some of the music videos we watched, I feel like were post-return.

• 45:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 45:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 45:45David Sims?

  Yeah, the bug stuff 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.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  He just did that recent album with Christabel.

• 45:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 45:57David Sims?

  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.

• 46:02Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 46:03David Sims?

  Is the, I had a Monica Bellucci dream episode.

• 46:06Griffin Newman?

  Oh, my God.

• 46:07David Sims?

  Um, but is.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  David.

• 46:09David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  That was the quote I wanted to use. You just reminded me.

• 46:13David Sims?

  There you go.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  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.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  But I, I had another podcast about Monica Bellucci.

• 46:24Griffin Newman?

  That is, that is the funniest line in the entirety of Twin Peaks.

• 46:28David Sims?

  Sure.

• 46:29Griffin Newman?

  Mostly because it's delivered by him. It becomes funnier when you cut to the dream and you're like, oh, he got Bellucci?

• 46:35David Sims?

  Right, but also that the reaction from the other agents. And Monica Bellucci.

• 46:39Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. It feels like-

• 46:40David Sims?

  That Gordon is so horny and they're all so annoyed with Gordon for being horny, like as part of his crime process.

• 46:48Griffin Newman?

  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 booksomey star of European cinema.

• 47:00Speaker 04

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

• 47:05David Sims?

  Is that, is that for real? I believe that.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  I think that's right, because that's actually shot in Paris.

• 47:10David Sims?

  Right, oh no, it's absolutely there in some cafe.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Or maybe he just wanted to go hang out with Monica Bellucci. This is what I would do if I was in my seventies with Showtime money.

• 47:18David Sims?

  And he must have seen Monica Bellucci when she emerges as an actress, like, you know, like, and been like, ah, I never got to make a movie with this person. This is like the most David Lynchy actress who ever existed.

• 47:28Griffin Newman?

  That's the 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-

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:55Griffin Newman?

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

• 47:58Speaker 04

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

• 48:00Griffin Newman?

  Right, and, 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.

• 48:19David Sims?

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

• 48:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 48:26David Sims?

  You know, to the, you know, the other, the zone, the other world. Right? And discovers-

• 48:32Griffin Newman?

  Discovers the woman in the woods.

• 48:33David Sims?

  The woman, Naido, the woman, 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.

• 48:44David Sims?

  Freddy's lore, Freddy's backstory, Freddy's long monologue-

• 48:47Griffin Newman?

  It's also where-

• 48:48David Sims?

  About his magic glove.

• 48:49Speaker 04

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

• 48:52David Sims?

  Uh, it reveals that she-

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Takes her head off.

• 48:54David Sims?

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

• 48:57Griffin Newman?

  She diggy chins a man?

• 48:59David Sims?

  That scene rocks so fucking hard.

• 49:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think this whole episode's incredible. This is like top to bottom, exceptional shit.

• 49:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 49:06Griffin Newman?

  That's my, my very astute criticism.

• 49:09David Sims?

  Uh huh, that it's exceptional.

• 49:10Griffin Newman?

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

• 49:13David Sims?

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

• 49:18Speaker 04

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

• 49:25David Sims?

  Smashing the picture.

• 49:25Speaker 04

  Smashing the picture and sort of like crawling around her screen.

• 49:29Griffin Newman?

  But another thing that fucking tricked me is I'm just like, oh my God, he's gonna bring like new Laura Palmer to like a point of resolution with her mother. And then it, the ultimate rug pull of just like, I'm never giving you that.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 49:45David Sims?

  Yeah. What's your take on Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks, The Return?

• 49:50Speaker 04

  So.

• 49:50David Sims?

  That open question, but I was asking Jay.

• 49:53Griffin Newman?

  Very kind of you.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Thank you, David.

• 49:58Speaker 04

  I remember this like nerd message board conversation while it was airing after episode eight, right? Where it's like, is that, is that girl Sarah Palmer? And even if it's not, I feel like it's an association that is invited. And I think. Timeline wise, right?

• 50:16David Sims?

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

• 50:19Speaker 04

  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

• 50:41Speaker 04

  out of nowhere, never really extrapolated on relatively late in the game reveal that she's like a monster now.

• 50:51David Sims?

  As evil superpower.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  And the thing we see in her face beyond being like incredible David Lynch CGI, I love his CGI. Cause it looks terrible.

• 51:02Griffin Newman?

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

• 51:07David Sims?

  Some, sometimes immaculate, often terrible. I mean, but this look is unbeatably.

• 51:11Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:11David Sims?

  Right, both.

• 51:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  But I think he knows it's both.

• 51:14Griffin Newman?

  Oh, totally. It's just, it's what's fascinating about episode eight and our guess on that, Connor Rattliff throughout the theory that it's like, he's, he's giving you purposefully janky.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally.

• 51:25Griffin Newman?

  Incredibly artificial, unsettling, kind of like, this feels like a technical error.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  Even the cellphone screens.

• 51:31Griffin Newman?

  For most of it in a way that makes the stuff in episode eight feel more real. When in your mind, you don't question its reality because you're like, well, I know what CGI looks like in this show.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think like emotionally, just like Sarah Palmer as like demon.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  It like tracks emotionally, right? I think it's like an interesting, interesting space to leave that character in.

• 51:56David Sims?

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

• 52:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 52:02David Sims?

  Sarah Palmer's still alive? Yeah, she would be this like festering demon.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  I remember being like very excited to see what like Ray Wise was gonna do.

• 52:09Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  In Twin Peaks, The Return, before it aired, you know, because Leland is just like such a figure.

• 52:14David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  And he's like, not really in there.

• 52:16David Sims?

  Nope. I mean, we see him in the red room.

• 52:18Griffin Newman?

  Incredible seconds.

• 52:19David Sims?

  Yep. I mean, he's got a great face. I'd love to see his face always.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  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.

• 52:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  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.

• 52:43Griffin Newman?

  The rot is the big thing. I mean, I, I feel like as much as Twin Peaks as, 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 pain inflicted onto you? And there is this, I, 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,

• 53:27Griffin Newman?

  you know, these terrors happening within families.

• 53:29David Sims?

  Unspoken abuse within the home, right?

• 53:30Griffin Newman?

  I feel like so often the line of question goes straight to like, 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,

• 54:14Griffin Newman?

  so this is a woman who just like gets sort of hopped out 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, not a functional person in one way or another. Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 04

  But there is also, because I feel like even between Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me, there is like a reassessment of like, the, maybe not, maybe not like a rewriting, but like there, 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 Fire Walk 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.

• 55:22Griffin Newman?

  I think he's sort of trying to reckon with both sides of it.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:27Griffin Newman?

  Realistically.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:28Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 55:58David Sims?

  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 trying to reckon with that?

• 56:12Speaker 04

  I don't, yeah. I never quite.

• 56:13David Sims?

  I haven't really ever figured that out.

• 56:15Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I.

• 56:16David Sims?

  Not that I need to.

• 56:16Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 56:30David Sims?

  Laura, Laura's prom picture.

• 56:32Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  But the, um, I guess like, and 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.

• 56:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  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.

• 57:14David Sims?

  Right, this sort of.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  Which is like a Judy adjacent thing.

• 57:17David Sims?

  Jowdy Judy thing. It's like. Uh, the, again, the jokey, like, sort of Avengers-y idea of like, oh, yeah, yeah, we, we had Bob. Meet Judy. Judy makes Bob look like shit. Bob came out of Judy. Would Judy barf 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?

• 57:53Griffin Newman?

  He touched TVs a lot.

• 57:56David Sims?

  Sorry.

• 57:57Griffin Newman?

  No, I, I think you're right.

• 57:58David Sims?

  Yes, yes. It's some version of that demon.

• 58:00Griffin Newman?

  There's a feeling of wanting to like, she, 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. Um, but, but just to go back, like even the episode eight being this, we sort of assume Sarah Palmer backstory.

• 58:25David Sims?

  Yeah, the last part of episode eight.

• 58:26Griffin Newman?

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

• 58:50David Sims?

  A bug went in her mouth.

• 58:51Griffin Newman?

  Right. Where 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 for, by people for other ends and to other means.

• 59:07David Sims?

  It's also funny that the, right, the, uh, you know, Avengers of Wind Peaks, The Return is the fireman, older, right? Briggs's floating head, just sort of goes.

• 59:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  Bob in the bubble. Michael J. Anderson replaced by a tree.

• 59:21David Sims?

  A, a tree with a brain on it.

• 59:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. David Bowie as a tea kettle.

• 59:25David Sims?

  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.

• 59:37Griffin Newman?

  It's a David Bowie impressionist. Uh, do you imagine if this show ended Avengers Endgame style with the end credit curtain call of everybody to try and put music and then the signatures over the tea kettle?

• 59:49David Sims?

  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.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

  But we're happy he's there.

• 1:00:05David Sims?

  Exactly. It's sort of a sweet thing. I like James too. He looks great.

• 1:00:09Griffin Newman?

  Am I wrong in thinking that this is the, look, we've obviously watched the 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?

• 1:00:22David Sims?

  I think so.

• 1:00:23Griffin Newman?

  Cause I feel like all the other times you've seen him.

• 1:00:26David Sims?

  He's at the roadhouse.

• 1:00:27Griffin Newman?

  But he's usually wearing like a leather jacket. He's, he's performing. He's coming in in street clothes.

• 1:00:33David Sims?

  Looking sexy.

• 1:00:34Speaker 04

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

• 1:00:35David Sims?

  Well, okay. So my take is Jane is disagreeing with my take that, uh, short hair.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Bobby's looking sexy.

• 1:00:41Griffin Newman?

  Bobby looks incredible.

• 1:00:42David Sims?

  My favorite character of the

• 1:00:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:44David Sims?

  Sort of, you know, my, my favorite performance of the returning, I mean, apart from Tom 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?

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  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?

• 1:01:04David Sims?

  Poor James.

• 1:01:04Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:01:14Griffin Newman?

  And lost him work.

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:01:16Griffin Newman?

  And spent years and like David Lynch, like testified on his behalf and people, there is this degree. It's a lot less tragically kind of like sexy.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Griffin Newman?

  Than a motorcycle accident, that the James Dean kind of thing. But there was this feeling of like, this guy's

• 1:01:30David Sims?

  Accutane, he's, right, Accutane.

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. It seems like he, like, like James in the original series, right? Is like such a, such a James Dean.

• 1:01:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  Figure.

• 1:01:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  And here he's more like a townie.

• 1:01:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43David Sims?

  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?

• 1:01:56Griffin Newman?

  He Johnny Knoxville.

• 1:01:57David Sims?

  He went silver and it worked perfectly for him.

• 1:01:58Griffin Newman?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:02:02Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Yes?

• 1:02:03Griffin Newman?

  Uh, uh, who are you wearing?

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  Uh, who am I wearing?

• 1:02:06Griffin Newman?

  I'm doing like an impression of a red carpet correspondent, asking who you're wearing right now.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Well, I am wearing Quince.

• 1:02:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well, what a Quince, Quincy dense.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:02:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Uh, it's a sort of a brown. Would you agree?

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's like, maybe like a, uh, what would you, a chocolate?

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Sure. I have been seated next to people wearing this item of clothing and they have brushed against me, not to brag, and gone like, so soft.

• 1:02:35Griffin Newman?

  Oh, a soft boy.

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:37Griffin Newman?

  But listen, the best pieces in your closet are the ones that you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where I'm shopping for myself and everyone on my list.

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  Quince does rock. It's got high-quality staples, made with these, uh, premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere. 14 karat gold?

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  Italian leather?

• 1:03:03Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. These cashmere sweaters, like the one I'm wearing, start at just $60. Lineup doesn't stop there. You've got premium down jackets, wool outerwear, uh, cashmere accessories, everything your loved ones need to stay warm and look good together all season long.

• 1:03:23Griffin Newman?

  And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Um, so yeah, obviously I'm wearing Quince sweater right now. I've got Quince bedding at home. Ooh, they've got Christmas stockings.

• 1:03:43Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  They got tree skirts. Garlands, if you want to go Christmas mode.

• 1:03:48Griffin Newman?

  Your tree deserves to be dressed in Quince as well. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, the aforementioned hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. If you want to give the gift of quality this holiday season, download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, that's a year, now available in Canada and the UK too. Ding dong. And when Quint asks where you heard about them, let him know it was blank check is the best way to support the show.

• 1:04:34David Sims?

  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 fireman told him to put on a big glove and he's never been able to take it off.

• 1:04:42Griffin Newman?

  He's gotta go to 20 days.

• 1:04:43David Sims?

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

• 1:04:45Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:04:46David Sims?

  Any questions?

• 1:04:47Griffin Newman?

  No, perfect. No notes. I love it. I agree. It feels like a kind of wild baffling thing to devote this much time to this late, but I was fully locked in.

• 1:04:56David Sims?

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

• 1:05:01Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:05:01David Sims?

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

• 1:05:05Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:05:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:05:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09David Sims?

  What do you, yeah, what do you say about Freddie?

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  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 gonna 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?

• 1:05:34David Sims?

  There's an interview with Mark Frost where they asked 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 day's ex machina. Like it's clearly, they were just like, we wanted to resolve that, but we wanted to resolve it in this, this particular way.

• 1:05:52Speaker 04

  It's fun.

• 1:05:53Griffin Newman?

  I just.

• 1:05:53David Sims?

  It's very fun.

• 1:05:54Griffin Newman?

  I love introducing a character this late and having a character basically announced. I have been sent here to resolve this show.

• 1:06:01David Sims?

  Right, right. I've never really met any of you and have no relationship with any of you. I know James a little bit.

• 1:06:07Griffin Newman?

  If he was set up in episode two, maybe I would hate it because I'd just be like, oh God, he's going to end up punching the guy.

• 1:06:13David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:06:13Griffin Newman?

  The fact that he's introduced so late.

• 1:06:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Griffin Newman?

  Makes it work for me.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

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

• 1:06:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  They're both security guards there.

• 1:06:26Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:06:36David Sims?

  To like

• 1:06:37Griffin Newman?

  To cross over.

• 1:06:38David Sims?

  Right, like to fight Windham Earl or whoever.

• 1:06:40Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no, to, um, in, in episode 17.

• 1:06:43David Sims?

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 1:06:44Griffin Newman?

  It's like where he and, and it's like where he says goodbye to David Lynch.

• 1:06:49David Sims?

  Right, right, right, right. Um, so I guess.

• 1:06:52Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:07:01David Sims?

  Guy did not track that. I shouldn't. Well, I'm gonna have to re-watch Twin Peaks The Return again. I'm taking us to episode 15.

• 1:07:06Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:07:08David Sims?

  Which begins with the moment you already referenced, Nadine, tote and a shovel. You know, reprogrammed by podcasting.

• 1:07:16Griffin Newman?

  Happy as a clam.

• 1:07:17David Sims?

  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.

• 1:07:25Griffin Newman?

  We should have resolved this decades ago.

• 1:07:27David Sims?

  It would be funny if she said, she's a mega babe, like Norma's great, like I'm a, you know, I'm a lot.

• 1:07:32Griffin Newman?

  Saying that?

• 1:07:33David Sims?

  Yeah, she is basically saying that. And, uh, Ed, you know, goes over to, uh, the Double R Diner and, uh, you know, it's a 10, 15 minute chunk, 10 minute chunk.

• 1:07:46Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:47David Sims?

  Basically, right? Like, it's the only, is it the only, like, classic Twin Peaks story that really gets resolved?

• 1:07:53Griffin Newman?

  It kind of feels like it.

• 1:07:54David Sims?

  Are there any others?

• 1:07:56Griffin Newman?

  Log Lady, arguably.

• 1:07:58David Sims?

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

• 1:08:02Griffin Newman?

  But that feels like the only pure emotional resolution.

• 1:08:05David Sims?

  A dangling thread that we never got to pick up.

• 1:08:08Griffin Newman?

  This is, I, 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 plotlines. And that's the shit he's not largely concerned with. Returning to revisiting resolving, even commenting upon in this.

• 1:08:35David Sims?

  We dip in with new soapy storylines, like, uh, Caleb Landry Jones or Amanda Seyfried.

• 1:08:39Griffin Newman?

  But those are things that also don't resolve within this show.

• 1:08:42David Sims?

  No, no.

• 1:08:43Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:08:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Griffin Newman?

  It's wonderful.

• 1:08:54David Sims?

  It's wonderful and very satisfying and beautifully acted. I mean.

• 1:08:56Griffin Newman?

  And that song.

• 1:08:57David Sims?

  I, I, I love, you know, Everett McGill so much.

• 1:09:01Griffin Newman?

  And he was one of the many original Twin Peaks cast members who had basically retired.

• 1:09:07David Sims?

  Right. He wasn't really working anymore.

• 1:09:09Griffin Newman?

  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-laws parents' house that we never sold and I've never disconnected the phone line, but I only come here to check it like once every other month. And I happened to be here when you called.

• 1:09:44David Sims?

  Beautiful.

• 1:09:44Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:09:47David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:09:47Griffin Newman?

  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 Cheryl and Ben can yell at her husband.

• 1:10:03David Sims?

  Right. But, 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.

• 1:10:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:19David Sims?

  And Ashley Dudd's like, yeah, kind of. He's like, you know, he not saying out loud, but I feel like he's just sitting there being like, am I shitty? Was I like an evil villain?

• 1:10:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:29David Sims?

  Now I just stuck here? Like, I don't know.

• 1:10:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33David Sims?

  So that's nice. Do we, so do we think that Nadine was healed by the podcast, by Mr.?

• 1:10:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, seems like it. Look, we all know the podcasts are unilaterally a positive force.

• 1:10:43David Sims?

  She's like dug her shit out. Like she, the shovel worked.

• 1:10:45Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:10:51David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:10:51Griffin Newman?

  She was activated. Podcasts have never led to the wrong people being elected president. They're good.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  She was having a parasocial relationship.

• 1:10:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and those are positive.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  And they always lead to real relationships.

• 1:11:03Griffin Newman?

  Yep, absolutely.

• 1:11:06David Sims?

  The 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 Horn, right? Like, does that happen in this episode or the next? Maybe?

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  He meets him at the in this one and then Richard Horn very quickly

• 1:11:40Speaker 04

  gets axed in the next one.

• 1:11:42David Sims?

  Which is another, I, I, nothing about Twin Peaks, the return is, is bad. Everything is good. And I'm glad everything happened. But it is interesting that we're subjected to Richard Horn, a very, very just tough character to look at and like, interact with the behavior of.

• 1:12:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, a plus level pucks upon the world. Yes.

• 1:12:07David Sims?

  And you're like, what is this? You know, what's going, who is this? And then you realize like, okay, this is like, Mr. C basically like raped Audrey Horn, like when she was comatose, right? After the, the bomb went off at the end of Twin Peaks, season two.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:22David Sims?

  And created this monster.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  Right. I mean, this is like, one of the darkest things.

• 1:12:27David Sims?

  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.

• 1:12:41Speaker 04

  Decoy.

• 1:12:41David Sims?

  Right. Another sort of like, and that's all he does. And then he dies. It's sort of satisfying when Richard Horton is exploded.

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49David Sims?

  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?

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  It almost seems like, um, it's been 12 years since I've watched The Wire. But remember when there was like, uh, what was his name? The bad guy towards the end of The Wire?

• 1:13:08David Sims?

  Marlo Stanfield?

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09David Sims?

  Yeah, where it's basically like, what if there was Avon Barksdale with like, no charisma? It's just terrifying.

• 1:13:15Speaker 04

  I think, I think maybe, you know, like, especially when Richard Horn first appears, he's sort of like, his sociopathy is, is like, very reminiscent of a classic like Lynch sociopathy. But he's just this like, yeah, it's just like charmless.

• 1:13:30David Sims?

  Completely uncharismatic with this terrifying face.

• 1:13:34David Sims?

  Um, I mean, I love him.

• 1:13:36Griffin Newman?

  That almost feels like it, 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 nineties, 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.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  It's like Chad.

• 1:14:07Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. That this is like a, an evil predator in a way, you know, like, and it's not even disguised in anything.

• 1:14:17David Sims?

  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 with.

• 1:14:24Griffin Newman?

  And he doesn't feel supernatural.

• 1:14:26David Sims?

  No, he's just yelling cunt at people and running over children.

• 1:14:30Griffin Newman?

  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 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 unabated until like a greater evil explodes him.

• 1:14:54Speaker 04

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

• 1:15:00David Sims?

  Okay, go ahead, go ahead, you know.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  I don't really, I don't really like evil Cooper.

• 1:15:08David Sims?

  Oh, well, that's a major criticism, I would say. Like you don't like his vibe?

• 1:15:13Speaker 04

  Like, I don't think it really lands. Like I 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.

• 1:15:22David Sims?

  Do you like the arm wrestling?

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  I love, love the arm wrestling.

• 1:15:26David Sims?

  That's pretty fun.

• 1:15:27Speaker 04

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

• 1:15:31David Sims?

  Where he shoots the lady.

• 1:15:33Speaker 04

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

• 1:15:45David Sims?

  Gets punched.

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  And I know, I imagine that it's like David Lynch giving Kyle McLaughlin like a, 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.

• 1:16:03Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:16:08David Sims?

  Right. And obviously Dougie's very funny 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, uh, in the episode 17, I think, when he shows up to the sheriff's office and is kind of mimicking being normal.

• 1:16:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25David Sims?

  Is like Sheriff Truman, you know?

• 1:16:27Speaker 04

  It's interesting.

• 1:16:27David Sims?

  It's a little interesting to see.

• 1:16:29Griffin Newman?

  Coffee.

• 1:16:29David Sims?

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

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:16:53David Sims?

  Not there with Mr. C.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  There with Mr. C.

• 1:16:57David Sims?

  And I like.

• 1:16:57Griffin Newman?

  Just bad.

• 1:16:58Speaker 04

  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, in this like more mythical way than Richard Horn is bad, but not in a more like interesting way.

• 1:17:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So this leads to a question for me. There's the scene, I think it comes in the following episode, perhaps?

• 1:17:17David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 1:17:18Griffin Newman?

  15.

• 1:17:20Griffin Newman?

  Maybe episode 16, um, where Diane gives the whole explanation of being sexually, sexually assaulted by Mr. C.

• 1:17:28David Sims?

  Yes, that's in episode 16.

• 1:17:29Griffin Newman?

  But then that turns out to be a tulpa?

• 1:17:31David Sims?

  Yes, that is.

• 1:17:32Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:17:32David Sims?

  The Diane we've dealt with for the whole show is a tulpa.

• 1:17:35Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:17:35David Sims?

  Is a creation.

• 1:17:36Griffin Newman?

  But she is telling the 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, uh, 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.

• 1:18:18Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:18:28David Sims?

  She zaps into non-existence.

• 1:18:31Griffin Newman?

  Well, they shoot her, right?

• 1:18:32David Sims?

  Yeah. 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.

• 1:18:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but that coming very close to the kind of like very quiet passive reveal that, what's his name, Richard Horn?

• 1:18:51David Sims?

  Richard Horn is the son.

• 1:18:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:18:53Griffin Newman?

  Is also the result of Mr. C.

• 1:18:56David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:18:56Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 1:19:09David Sims?

  That seems like, yeah.

• 1:19:10Griffin Newman?

  Doing like cartoon supervillain shit.

• 1:19:13David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:19:13Griffin Newman?

  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 Peaks.

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  One of whom might be in a coma.

• 1:19:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:19:22Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:19:23David Sims?

  To this day.

• 1:19:23Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then 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-

• 1:19:37David Sims?

  Well, no, so he's just like creating Rube Goldberg machines so he can't be zapped by another zone or whatever.

• 1:19:42Griffin Newman?

  But then I think there's even the implication, right? Because all of this is sort of thrown into-

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  Some new equation by like Cooper in 18, right? Who seems to be this like fusion of all Coopers?

• 1:19:55David Sims?

  We'll talk about it. Absolutely.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  And, and there's this like, 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

• 1:20:19David Sims?

  Right, it's

• 1:20:19Speaker 04

  Like an antagonist?

• 1:20:20David Sims?

  I meant to, you know, it's the Joker, I, you know, I was always supposed to go to jail.

• 1:20:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:20:25David Sims?

  Right. That was part of the plan. Yes.

• 1:20:27Speaker 04

  And that like, I imagine there's something that's being said, right? About like the, the myth of Agent Cooper.

• 1:20:34David Sims?

  Right. Which I think is what the finale is about. Like

• 1:20:37Speaker 04

  But I still don't think it's a very interesting performance or character.

• 1:20:41David Sims?

  That's fair. I mean, so like, 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?

• 1:21:03Speaker 04

  He doesn't even seem like Bob.

• 1:21:05David Sims?

  Right. I mean, no, because Bob, you know.

• 1:21:09Speaker 04

  Bob's drooling everywhere.

• 1:21:10David Sims?

  And Bob is to, as the kids say now, serving cunt, right? Like, Bob is so showing.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Are the kids saying that now?

• 1:21:17David Sims?

  I don't know. Theatrical, right?

• 1:21:19Speaker 04

  Are your children saying that now?

• 1:21:22David Sims?

  Bob has crazy monologues, you know, talking about his death bag.

• 1:21:27Speaker 04

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

• 1:21:30David Sims?

  Where's Mr. C? He's like, hello? How are you?

• 1:21:35David Sims?

  Squishes someone's head and then like moves on.

• 1:21:37Speaker 04

  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 set on the record that it would have turned out that they were all aliens.

• 1:21:51Griffin Newman?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  And creamed corn is the food that they eat to survive.

• 1:21:55David Sims?

  There was definitely lots of plans for UFO stuff. 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, Garland Briggs has been like tracking UFOs from a weird station and there's a lot of stuff going on.

• 1:22:10Speaker 04

  That's cool.

• 1:22:11David Sims?

  They definitely had a evil Cooper plan, certainly. It was not gonna 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 gonna be an arc.

• 1:22:22Griffin Newman?

  I'm 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?

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  That seems like that's who it is more, where's, even where's Annie as a line? It's like, there's so much more color in it.

• 1:22:38Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 1:22:38David Sims?

  It's an amazing line.

• 1:22:39Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:22:49Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:23:33Griffin Newman?

  You know, like, here are these older people showing up, wearing the same costumes in the same spaces.

• 1:23:37David Sims?

  Same hairstyles.

• 1:23:38Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:24:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06David Sims?

  Yeah, he's boring and shitty.

• 1:24:08Griffin Newman?

  That it's like, we missed out on the period 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.

• 1:24:26David Sims?

  Other things that happened in part 15 that I wanted to mention. The insane sort of snippet scene between Caleb Jones and Alicia Witt.

• 1:24:36Griffin Newman?

  It's incredible.

• 1:24:37David Sims?

  Sort of resolving a story there, but also leaving a lot open to you. Have we seen Gersten, Alicia Witt's character in any other episode?

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  You see her briefly, like hiding on a staircase.

• 1:24:50David Sims?

  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 Dune. And she plays the piano and that scene is also kind of, anything you guys want to say about that?

• 1:25:06Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:25:19David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:25:19Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:25:23David Sims?

  Major crush from childhood.

• 1:25:25Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:25:28David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:25:29Griffin Newman?

  She's never shown this before in her career. And I'm seeing this, I'm like, oh, this is the one other time she's shown this.

• 1:25:34Speaker 04

  It's like, great writing.

• 1:25:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37David Sims?

  It is.

• 1:25:38Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:25:38Speaker 04

  What does he say about like bluebirds or something?

• 1:25:41David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, it's also that magic thing that this show can do where it's like, we're just going to give you, write this kind of little masterclass. Almost just sort of floating in space and you can watch it and experience it and then move on.

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  And there's sort of this implication of like, he has murdered Amanda Seyfried, right? And now is.

• 1:26:02David Sims?

  Going to kill himself, probably.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:26:16Griffin Newman?

  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 it'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.

• 1:26:31Speaker 04

  And the most like memorable moment of that whole plotline, I think, is like Amanda Seyfried's close up in the car. Right? Like after she does, like, just like that's David Lynch, just like, look at beauty.

• 1:26:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:26:44David Sims?

  And I feel, yeah, that is like an image people were, you know, like post all the time, like the recall so fondly.

• 1:26:51Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:27:08David Sims?

  Other things, the death of poor, um, poor Patrick Fishler in Vegas where.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't feel that bad for him.

• 1:27:15David Sims?

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

• 1:27:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19David Sims?

  Very cool. You have, uh, Cooper watching Sunset Boulevard and, uh, hearing the name Gordon Cole and, uh, you know, jamming a fork into a socket. The sort of the conclusion of whatever.

• 1:27:35Speaker 04

  He's doing it.

• 1:27:35David Sims?

  Dougie Cooper.

• 1:27:36Speaker 04

  It unlocked in him. He's ready to come back. Yeah.

• 1:27:39David Sims?

  Where I guess you feel like you're like, yay, like finally we're going to get some, yeah, he'll be back.

• 1:27:45Griffin Newman?

  Now the show can start 16 hours, I think to some people. Yeah.

• 1:27:49David Sims?

  Oh, and of course the farewell to the log, but to Margaret, to, uh, you know, like.

• 1:27:53Speaker 04

  This is incredible.

• 1:27:54David Sims?

  Unbelievable. Yeah. Like, kind of like, which I watch both times, like just hushed tone, kind of like, you know, it's, yeah, it's beautifully performed, but also just like.

• 1:28:07David Sims?

  You know, I don't know. It's, I love it when Twin Peaks is like purely emotional in that way.

• 1:28:11Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 1:28:30Speaker 04

  No, but that's awesome.

• 1:28:31Griffin Newman?

  And the first one they did was, um, uh, David, what's the name of the humorist who had the lawsuit for coming to America?

• 1:28:39David Sims?

  Art Buckwald.

• 1:28:40Griffin Newman?

  Art Buckwald.

• 1:28:41David Sims?

  The famous Washington Post political satirist and humorist.

• 1:28:44Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. So they posted this video on the New York Times site that was like, I'm Art Buckwald and I just died. And it, 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 and 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 have saved for, 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.

• 1:29:28Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:29:37Speaker 04

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

• 1:29:41Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 1:30:06David Sims?

  Yeah, no, it's it almost feels like I shouldn't watch it. Right? Like, then it's like, this is too sort of intimate and private.

• 1:30:13Griffin Newman?

  Right. Versus I'm Art Buckwald and I just died felt jokey.

• 1:30:17Speaker 04

  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've released it.

• 1:30:29Griffin Newman?

  Talking about this, it's it's very, there's something 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.

• 1:30:40David Sims?

  But it's also allegic for David Lynch.

• 1:30:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 1:30:44Speaker 04

  It's, um, 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, if it's separate from your life, your life is gonna have this weird hole in it.

• 1:31:04Griffin Newman?

  Well, this is like so much of the fucking David Lynch thing is his whole life being designed around creativity. 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.

• 1:31:22Speaker 04

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

• 1:31:28Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. And it doesn't seem like he has regrets about it, but you watch those sort of longer form interviews of 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.

• 1:32:01Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:32:12David Sims?

  It feels like a death ritual.

• 1:32:13Griffin Newman?

  It's also, I mean.

• 1:32:15David Sims?

  Which is, that's how I fuck.

• 1:32:17Speaker 04

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

• 1:32:23David Sims?

  We're summoning a portal right now and it ate us somewhere good.

• 1:32:26Griffin Newman?

  I call it Le Grand Mor, Le Pudding Mor.

• 1:32:29David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:32:30Griffin Newman?

  You're not giving it your all.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

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

• 1:32:36David Sims?

  And then vanish. Yeah.

• 1:32:42Speaker 05

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• 1:33:15Griffin Newman?

  When they go to the boiler room underneath the Bang 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 analogues are gone now.

• 1:34:00Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:34:10Speaker 04

  Where the same song plays, right? Isn't it the same song from the radio?

• 1:34:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  In episode eight?

• 1:34:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:16Speaker 04

  That's this like, you know, 1950s childhood hope.

• 1:34:21Griffin Newman?

  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 in exploitative way, but it's like very like a static 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.

• 1:34:51David Sims?

  Um, yeah, but I mean, it's well, let's talk about the sex scene in a second. First, in part 16, okay, Cooper comes back, Cooper, real Cooper, I am the FBI Coop. We also have the explosion of Richard Horn, which we talked about. Satisfying and yet also baffling, I would say, just as a sort of like, oh, okay.

• 1:35:08Griffin Newman?

  I'm happy to see him gone. Sure.

• 1:35:10Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:35:11Speaker 04

  Cherry Horn watching from the distance.

• 1:35:13David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, having, having, having a weird time. We finally have the disposal of poor Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Lee getting murdered by a random Polish guy.

• 1:35:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25Speaker 03

  Love this guy.

• 1:35:26Griffin Newman?

  Basically just in like a parking disagreement.

• 1:35:29David Sims?

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

• 1:35:33Griffin Newman?

  You also have the FBI watching being like, should we intervene? It feels like shitty people are just getting rid of each other. So what's the conflict here?

• 1:35:42Speaker 03

  This poor neighborhood too.

• 1:35:43David Sims?

  People are under a lot of stress. Yeah.

• 1:35:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:35:50Speaker 04

  Oh, so good.

• 1:35:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Speaker 04

  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 it was just kind of like.

• 1:35:59Griffin Newman?

  That neighborhood feels very Breaking Bad.

• 1:36:02David Sims?

  Right, like sort of post recession.

• 1:36:04Speaker 04

  The scene with the guy from Lost 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.

• 1:36:14David Sims?

  Maybe he thought it was awesome. Yeah.

• 1:36:15Speaker 04

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

• 1:36:23David Sims?

  Right. Um, 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 just say the people in another world talk backwards. Cause she's saying like 119. And I was like, I love, I love it that they just think about this stuff.

• 1:36:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:38David Sims?

  Um, people with a foot in another world. I think that's how he's putting it. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's where we get people under a lot of stress, right?

• 1:36:46Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:36:46David Sims?

  Yep. God, I love those guys. Um, but yeah, Ms. Cooper is back. Uh, Bids farewell to Janie E. and Sonny Jim.

• 1:36:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:36:56David Sims?

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

• 1:37:00Griffin Newman?

  They recognize that he is not their husband and father.

• 1:37:04David Sims?

  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.

• 1:37:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:19David Sims?

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

• 1:37:32Griffin Newman?

  But this is the last one.

• 1:37:33David Sims?

  Because I didn't want to spoil anything, but 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.

• 1:37:41Griffin Newman?

  Can you give us your read on the Audrey thing? Can you unpack it a little more?

• 1:37:44David Sims?

  She, she gets blown up in the finale of season two. Everyone forgets that plotline because it's bizarre.

• 1:37:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it's incredible though.

• 1:37:50David Sims?

  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.

• 1:38:04Griffin Newman?

  But all of this is in her mind.

• 1:38:06David Sims?

  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.

• 1:38:12Griffin Newman?

  It's unbelievably bleak.

• 1:38:14David Sims?

  Sure, it's a little bleak.

• 1:38:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, a little.

• 1:38:18Speaker 04

  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?

• 1:38:41David Sims?

  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 Jax or the bank or what, you know, like, where she's kind of doing her own thing.

• 1:38:58Griffin Newman?

  Girl bossing to make the lodge a better business.

• 1:39:01David Sims?

  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.

• 1:39:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11David Sims?

  I don't know. Love Audrey.

• 1:39:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:39:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:24Speaker 04

  And upsetting in a way.

• 1:39:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Speaker 04

  Like the way that she's like not Audrey.

• 1:39:31Griffin Newman?

  But also.

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  Anymore.

• 1:39:31Griffin Newman?

  I think, I think you said something that's affect earlier in the record, but that it's like her dancing to her own theme song is an acknowledgement of like, 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.

• 1:39:52David Sims?

  It would be funny if she danced a sharp dressed man instead. They were just like, because they danced a sharp dressed man. My, my constant crusade to get Ben to like ZZ Top. ZZ Top's in Twin Peaks The Return.

• 1:40:03Griffin Newman?

  They call it out, don't they? They go like, yeah.

• 1:40:05David Sims?

  And now, sharp dressed man.

• 1:40:07Griffin Newman?

  And people are like, this song rules. Ben should like this. Why doesn't Ben like them?

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  This also, this is, and it's right after Eddie Vedder plays.

• 1:40:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:14Speaker 04

  But under a fake name. He's playing a character, right? He's playing as his birth name.

• 1:40:19David Sims?

  Oh, what is his birth name?

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 1:40:21David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:21Speaker 04

  Richard Severus the third or something.

• 1:40:24David Sims?

  Yeah. Edward Louis Severson the third. Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:29Speaker 03

  That was a good name change.

• 1:40:31David Sims?

  Yeah. He figured it out. Um, part 17 is right. It's the satisfying conclusion in a, 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 Jody, Judy, whatever, uh, for the last 25 years.

• 1:40:48Speaker 04

  Okay, it's episode 17. We've got some stuff to tell.

• 1:40:50David Sims?

  Hey, Albert, I've been hiding something.

• 1:40:52Griffin Newman?

  I guess I owe you guys.

• 1:40:54David Sims?

  Jeffries was in league with me, uh, 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 going to 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?

• 1:41:21Speaker 04

  This is what's totally.

• 1:41:22David Sims?

  And the fireman kind of like pulls some levers and Garland Briggs's head wobbles a bit.

• 1:41:26Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:41:27David Sims?

  And he's like, no, you get sent to Twin Peaks instead.

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  But he, wasn't he kind of already in Twin Peaks?

• 1:41:31David Sims?

  That's what I don't, because like Richard is there.

• 1:41:33Speaker 04

  Enters a portal.

• 1:41:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:41:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:35David Sims?

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

• 1:41:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:41:40David Sims?

  But I think he's trying to go somewhere else, right? And he's gets sent to Twin Peaks.

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  That's right. He's a little like, what? When he gets to the sheriff's department.

• 1:41:48David Sims?

  And, uh, 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 woodsmen. But I guess Bob comes out, the orb comes out.

• 1:42:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07David Sims?

  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 gotta go somewhere else.

• 1:42:13Speaker 04

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

• 1:42:16David Sims?

  So I guess that's part of it. Right? Like Bob is no longer able to like heal in his body.

• 1:42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. I remember being sort of like, cause I was watching it this time to watch sort of like this, the, how they get from one space to another. And it is really strange that like Cooper, evil Cooper gets to Twin Peaks.

• 1:42:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:42:35Speaker 04

  Then has to go to an alternate dimension to get to the sheriff's 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.

• 1:42:56Griffin Newman?

  Well, the other key difference is that one punch man is in the room this time.

• 1:43:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Freddy.

• 1:43:01David Sims?

  Freddy is there and he, uh, I mean, I think again, the visual effects here are awesome.

• 1:43:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're so cool.

• 1:43:06David Sims?

  So cool.

• 1:43:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:07David Sims?

  Angry Bob sphere is awesome. He should be put in like a Marvel versus Capcom. He could just be him. Like, uh, the description of Bob is very good.

• 1:43:16Griffin Newman?

  Twin Peaks versus Capcom.

• 1:43:18David Sims?

  Yeah, that sounds great. Are you kidding me? You could someone like turned into a tulpa, right? You could have like a tulpa spell.

• 1:43:24Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:43:38Griffin Newman?

  Super Twin Peaks fighter.

• 1:43:41Speaker 04

  People would, people would be ecstatic.

• 1:43:43David Sims?

  Birdo.

• 1:43:43Speaker 04

  Twin Peaks Party Jamber.

• 1:43:45David Sims?

  Birdo and Shy Guy, these would be great. I mean, like, The Little Jumping Man basically isn't shy.

• 1:43:49Speaker 04

  Ike the Spike?

• 1:43:50David Sims?

  Ike the Spike. Oh, I miss Ike the Spike.

• 1:43:52Griffin Newman?

  There's that story we've heard about how, uh, I feel like this is like public, but, um, all the sort of licensing out of The Sopranos, the video game, the slot machines and all this shit where the cast was like, isn't this gonna diminish the show? And, uh, 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 side on, like, slot machines.

• 1:44:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:44:17Griffin Newman?

  I do kinda wish David Lynch would be like, you know what? Open game. Like, everyone do what you want with Twin Peaks now. I finished my statement.

• 1:44:25David Sims?

  The rights are now open.

• 1:44:26Speaker 04

  He made those Japanese coffee ads.

• 1:44:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:44:30David Sims?

  He's, yeah, he should do that.

• 1:44:31Speaker 04

  Twin Peaks emoji blitz.

• 1:44:32Speaker 03

  It would be a great pinball.

• 1:44:34Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:34Speaker 03

  Totally. The return.

• 1:44:35David Sims?

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

• 1:44:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 04

  At least that's my pinball.

• 1:44:42Speaker 03

  And then it ends up in a different pinball machine, like, two down.

• 1:44:46Griffin Newman?

  And the machine shoots coins in your eye.

• 1:44:48Speaker 04

  The little screen starts just showing, uh, an 8-bit broom sweeping for 14 minutes.

• 1:44:56David Sims?

  Or it opens its face and it, you know, just screams cunt at you.

• 1:45:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, you're, dare I say it, you're serving cunt in this episode.

• 1:45:05David Sims?

  Look, that's the Brit in me.

• 1:45:06Griffin Newman?

  David's from the UK. He can say it. I just felt uncomfortable saying it.

• 1:45:09David Sims?

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

• 1:45:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's a call someone a jerk.

• 1:45:19David Sims?

  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 call.

• 1:45:31Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:45:37David Sims?

  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 like.

• 1:45:54Speaker 04

  And then it dissolves to him and we stay with him, right? Like, like, eventually, he, superimposed Cooper.

• 1:46:02David Sims?

  We live inside a dream.

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  Becomes. Like the only Cooper.

• 1:46:06David Sims?

  Right. And that's when we go into the furnace room and then he goes to see Mike. Like, and they do the fire walk with me chant and, you know, they-

• 1:46:15Speaker 04

  It's very obviously not young Laura Palmer in certain shots.

• 1:46:18Griffin Newman?

  Right, right. I mean, because we're getting real footage.

• 1:46:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:22Griffin Newman?

  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 note 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.

• 1:46:48Speaker 04

  Of course not.

• 1:46:48Griffin Newman?

  There was the moment where I clock, oh, we've gone from vintage 1992 footage-

• 1:46:53Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:46:53Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:47:04Speaker 04

  And there genuinely is this moment in Fire Walk 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.

• 1:47:13David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:47:14Speaker 04

  I totally buy it.

• 1:47:15David Sims?

  Me too.

• 1:47:15Speaker 04

  I totally buy that that was the plan.

• 1:47:17Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:47:21David Sims?

  It is. It's very, very jarring.

• 1:47:22Griffin Newman?

  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 at his current age watching. It feels wrong.

• 1:47:34David Sims?

  And those shots of the woods and just her screaming, I mean, she's got the most, it takes me right to Blair Witch, that, which I always associate with like woods and screaming, right? Uh, the scariest shit in Blair Witch is just her screaming.

• 1:47:46Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:47:57David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:47:58Griffin Newman?

  Mr. Jackpots.

• 1:47:59David Sims?

  Yeah, well.

• 1:47:59Speaker 04

  We hear, 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.

• 1:48:09Griffin Newman?

  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 nineties has the sort of like, too much dead air. Uh, out of rhythm, response time shit.

• 1:48:27Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:48:31David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:48:32Griffin Newman?

  Frozen footage in that way.

• 1:48:33David Sims?

  It's a violation, which I think is the point.

• 1:48:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:48:36David Sims?

  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 he didn't before. Cause there's that moment where he kind of points at the curtain and it starts flapping when he's in the room. Where you're like, oh, he's like, he knows the rules of this place now. Cause in the finale 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 eight, 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.

• 1:49:21Griffin Newman?

  Well, so he makes Laura's body disappear.

• 1:49:23David Sims?

  Yes. Well, he, he plucks her out. He makes her not die.

• 1:49:26Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. Yeah. Jack Nance never discovers her. 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 does, it doesn't fucking work. He can't get resolution.

• 1:49:57David Sims?

  There's so much going on. We, there's, yes. I mean, I don't know what you think, Jane, but yes, right?

• 1:50:04Griffin Newman?

  Generally, yes. Yes.

• 1:50:05David Sims?

  Generally, it's sort of like, I mean, it's just so gutting. This feeling that like this poor woman is being tortured again.

• 1:50:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:16David Sims?

  This woman who's a new person.

• 1:50:17Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:50:18David Sims?

  Carrie, right? Is her name? Like, look, let's talk, I'm like, part 18, I just, right? I want to progress exactly through, right? We've got first, the, the, the one fan servicey lovely bit. The, the creation of the new Dougie Jones just walking in like greeted with open arms.

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:50:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:45Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it is, it is the thing I find-

• 1:50:47David Sims?

  Big slow thumbs up, yeah.

• 1:50:49Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:51:31Speaker 04

  A gym set.

• 1:51:33Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:51:47Speaker 04

  I remember while it 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, like, like memory being lost. And so like Dougie as that, like a character living in like this kind of eternal presence.

• 1:52:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:52:08Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  And just like, yeah, and just loving it, you know, just like, 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-

• 1:52:26Griffin Newman?

  Well, that's a consciousness is a prison shit. You're like, Dougie's got it fucking figured out.

• 1:52:31Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:52:31David Sims?

  And there's something like, so in, 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-

• 1:52:42Speaker 04

  After they cross the-

• 1:52:43David Sims?

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

• 1:52:55Griffin Newman?

  Let's also say the violence of the diner scene.

• 1:52:57David Sims?

  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.

• 1:53:03Griffin Newman?

  Right. He's, he's lost his like,

• 1:53:06David Sims?

  folksy charm.

• 1:53:07Griffin Newman?

  He's like a fusion. He's like a more realistic Mr. C.

• 1:53:10David Sims?

  Right. Like, right. Or it's like, right. Mr. C is still part of him.

• 1:53:14Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:53:24David Sims?

  The, the FBI.

• 1:53:26Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:53:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:53:41Griffin Newman?

  Which we haven't seen that much in this series. Like with that weird little like puddle thing in front of it, like the, 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. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:53:58David Sims?

  Yeah. And the tree, sorry, the, um, the arm.

• 1:54:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:03David Sims?

  Brain tree. It says like, is this the story of the little girl who lived down by the lane? Which feels kind of mocking to me, right? Of like,

• 1:54:10Griffin Newman?

  The episode eight stuff?

• 1:54:12David Sims?

  But also like, to me, it's like, well, this is just to me. Like, you know, it's 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?

• 1:54:38Griffin Newman?

  When he goes to this kind of cowboy diner, right?

• 1:54:41David Sims?

  The, uh, which is called, of course, Eat at Judy's.

• 1:54:43Griffin Newman?

  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,

• 1:55:04David Sims?

  Future.

• 1:55:05Griffin Newman?

  Can I get ahead of the it is happening again?

• 1:55:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:55:08Griffin Newman?

  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, uh, going. Uh, then you have, I think, kind of importantly, he does not seem to enjoy his coffee.

• 1:55:26David Sims?

  No.

• 1:55:26Griffin Newman?

  She serves him coffee, he takes a sip. He has no response.

• 1:55:29David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:30Griffin Newman?

  Then he sees this woman.

• 1:55:31David Sims?

  Maybe it's bad coffee.

• 1:55:32Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 1:55:32David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:55:32Griffin Newman?

  Fucked with. You're like, oh, I want to see Cooper take these guys down, but you want to see him take it down.

• 1:55:37David Sims?

  He'll be like, gentlemen, you know, what are we doing here?

• 1:55:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:55:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:40Griffin Newman?

  That's no way to treat a lacy. 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 fucking 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?

• 1:56:09Speaker 04

  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 re.

• 1:56:17David Sims?

  Why do we need more Twin Peaks?

• 1:56:18Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:56:18David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:19Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:56:21David Sims?

  Dead body. I mean, also, she's rattled, she's clearly in the midst of some insane personal drama. And he's like, yeah, yeah. Laura Palmer, Twin Peaks, Washington, want to come with me?

• 1:56:31Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:56:31David Sims?

  And she's coming with him because she's like, well, I have to escape whatever the fuck this is.

• 1:56:34Griffin Newman?

  She literally says like, I'm in a bit of a bind and it would be better for me to escape with.

• 1:56:39David Sims?

  Will I need a jacket? Like, it's like, yeah, you'll need a jacket colder.

• 1:56:43Griffin Newman?

  Planning on getting out of Dodge.

• 1:56:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:56:45Griffin Newman?

  Um, shit, neither of them addressed this body.

• 1:56:48David Sims?

  No. No. I mean, what, you don't have a dead body on one of your couches?

• 1:56:52Griffin Newman?

  Of course I do, but I'm just saying, that's not a mission of guilt.

• 1:56:55David Sims?

  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, uh, Alice Tremond, is the real owner of the house.

• 1:57:11Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 1:57:12David Sims?

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

• 1:57:14Griffin Newman?

  Wild.

• 1:57:14David Sims?

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

• 1:57:20Griffin Newman?

  She seems lovely.

• 1:57:21David Sims?

  So she seems great. Not like Twin Peaks tourists showing up.

• 1:57:24Griffin Newman?

  We were doing, uh, George Lucas Talk Show in Seattle. Earlier this year, uh, before David Lynch had won our March Madness, before I had seen any Twin Peaks and Connor and Patrick went to the house. They wanted to go to Tweety's. They wanted to do all the sort of landmark stuff.

• 1:57:42David Sims?

  Tourism, right?

• 1:57:42Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:57:45David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:57:46Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 1:57:54David Sims?

  Good for her.

• 1:57:55Griffin Newman?

  Now like kind of lives in Twin Peaks by design.

• 1:57:58Speaker 04

  She closes, closes the series out.

• 1:58:00David Sims?

  She does. What a way to go.

• 1:58:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:03David Sims?

  And.

• 1:58:03Griffin Newman?

  I didn't put together that.

• 1:58:04David Sims?

  I just remember watching, I really, I will never forget it. Like just watching this on my couch alone.

• 1:58:09Speaker 04

  And you're like checking the clock.

• 1:58:10David Sims?

  Right, exactly. Like.

• 1:58:12Griffin Newman?

  There's like five minutes left.

• 1:58:13David Sims?

  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?

• 1:58:21Griffin Newman?

  She's like talking to a husband who is hidden behind the door and she's like, let me ask him quickly.

• 1:58:25Speaker 04

  But she is dropping Twin Peaks lore.

• 1:58:28David Sims?

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

• 1:58:31Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:31David Sims?

  The creepy old lady from Twin Peaks. I don't know how else to describe, right? This lady.

• 1:58:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, and we all, we all know and love her.

• 1:58:37David Sims?

  We love her. So it's true. There's some like breadcrumb, I guess, for fans to think about there.

• 1:58:42Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:58:56David Sims?

  And screams as Cheryl Lee is, you know, the, the best in the world at doing.

• 1:59:00Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:59:01David Sims?

  What year is it? I mean, like, I've, I, there's this read that I've read, you know, I've sort of plumbed around, like Reddit 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 too much.

• 1:59:22Griffin Newman?

  Coping mechanisms.

• 1:59:23David Sims?

  Right. And like, that's one way. But like, I, yeah, 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.

• 1:59:34Speaker 04

  Well, and like the idea that Fire Walk 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.

• 1:59:55Speaker 04

  In, 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 um, origin story of like, deep trauma rot at the heart of this like 1950s uh, American dream that 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 Cheryl Lee in Fire Walk With Me and.

• 2:00:34Griffin Newman?

  And her performance in this episode is incredible as well.

• 2:00:36David Sims?

  It is.

• 2:00:37Speaker 04

  But she goes, she goes to heaven at the end of Fire Walk With Me.

• 2:00:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he gets a release.

• 2:00:41Speaker 04

  He like lets her ascend and then here's Cooper to like rip her back out.

• 2:00:45David Sims?

  Exactly. Right. Buffy vibes again. Buffy went to heaven.

• 2:00:48Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 2:00:50David Sims?

  Spoiler for season five of Buffy.

• 2:00:52Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's, where, where do you stand on Matrix Resurrections?

• 2:00:56Speaker 04

  Oh, I love Matrix.

• 2:00:57Griffin Newman?

  Okay, great. We're in a safe space here.

• 2:00:59David Sims?

  Smart and normal.

• 2:01:00Griffin Newman?

  So right, we, 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 at gunpoint.

• 2:01:13David Sims?

  Warner Brothers is making me do this.

• 2:01:14Griffin Newman?

  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 of like.

• 2:01:36Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 2:01:36Griffin Newman?

  You wanted resolution in Twin Peaks? Like Laura Palmer was in a good place.

• 2:01:41David Sims?

  Yeah. Why do you want more from her?

• 2:01:42Speaker 04

  And there's also this, 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?

• 2:01:55Speaker 04

  He's, he's like. The pursuit of resolution.

• 2:02:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:00Speaker 04

  The pursuit even of like unpacking something from your past creatively will ultimately just lead you back to originary trauma.

• 2:02:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:08Speaker 04

  You know?

• 2:02:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes. I think that's beautifully said.

• 2:02:11David Sims?

  I do too. It rattled me at the time. The mirror of Injun should be involved now that you're thinking that that should have happened.

• 2:02:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:02:18David Sims?

  Like, maybe Cooper's like, I need to cross to this other world. And the mirror of Injun is like, very well. Well, first you must eat my magic cake or whatever.

• 2:02:26Griffin Newman?

  But like, so upsetting that this show ends on credits playing over still image of Lore whispering into Cooper's ear when like, most of this season has ended over concert footage.

• 2:02:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Griffin Newman?

  Or Ed sadly eating 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 Lore. And it's like, now this is the new cursed image that has replaced it, that is frozen in time forever.

• 2:02:56Speaker 04

  By cursed?

• 2:02:57David Sims?

  Fun to revisit?

• 2:02:59Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Yeah, I had such a great time.

• 2:03:02David Sims?

  Griffin, you've watched Twin Peaks: The Return?

• 2:03:04Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm. Uh, liked it?

• 2:03:06David Sims?

  C plus.

• 2:03:09Griffin Newman?

  C minus cinema score, but um, no, I, no, I liked it tremendous amount. I don't know. It's been, uh, I, I've, I've said this, but it's just, uh, 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 blank check desk. Uh, 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.

• 2:03:55Speaker 04

  I think the thing that was so exciting about it at the time.

• 2:03:59Speaker 04

  Was like someone being given that canvas, you know? And like 18 hours on television to like break like I just look at it. I'm like, oh my God, like the, 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.

• 2:04:26David Sims?

  By design, it has to be. There's a status quo you have to obey.

• 2:04:30Speaker 04

  But even like, 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 notion, or not even exploded 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.

• 2:04:59David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 2:05:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:05:11Griffin Newman?

  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 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.

• 2:05:35Speaker 04

  And you're like. As a B level Marvel character.

• 2:05:38Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 2:05:55Griffin Newman?

  A 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, 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 fowl. You're just making something that is like trying to, I don't know.

• 2:06:30Speaker 04

  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 Twin Peaks Return like pushed it way farther. You know, like something like The Sopranos was like constantly about subverting.

• 2:06:43David Sims?

  The Sopranos is the Calvin and Hobbes of like, where it's like Calvin and Hobbes is like Bill Waterston eventually being like, I fucking hate that I have to do four panels. Like, yeah, 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 can't go all the way.

• 2:06:58Speaker 04

  But you know, if it does in some pretty adventurous way, he's, he's like, all right. So like, uh, Michael and Perdly 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.

• 2:07:12David Sims?

  Spoiler alert for The Sopranos.

• 2:07:13Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 2:07:14David Sims?

  And no, but 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.

• 2:07:24Speaker 04

  Here's a net.

• 2:07:25David Sims?

  Tony's going to talk to a net bending in his dream and say, are you a net bending? And she's going to go, yeah, I am. Or the Lauren Bacall episode. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in The Sopranos that feels very violently angry at its audience in the best way. I don't, the return doesn't feel that way, but it does feel, this feels sort of violently angry at resolutions a little.

• 2:07:45Speaker 04

  And confrontational about like form and narrative.

• 2:07:48David Sims?

  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.

• 2:08:02Speaker 04

  That's a really good point. The part of him fighting a gang.

• 2:08:04Griffin Newman?

  Against the expectations and structures is like, we did the show where we did what everyone asked us to do.

• 2:08:11David Sims?

  And you got mad.

• 2:08:12Griffin Newman?

  Everyone got furious. It made everyone unhappy simultaneously.

• 2:08:15David Sims?

  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.

• 2:08:24Griffin Newman?

  And maybe like dishonest. Is there something like inherently dishonest about like putting things all in a neat resolved space? Which is movies don't really do.

• 2:08:35Speaker 04

  I remember like thinking, cause 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.

• 2:09:19Speaker 04

  You just, you're like, okay, that was fun. What's the next TV show? Doesn't really leave you with.

• 2:09:27David Sims?

  Yes, no questions.

• 2:09:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, exactly. It's ending with questions rather than ending with answers.

• 2:09:32Speaker 04

  Which, which are, I think in this case, quite generative to like a lot of the things that he is preoccupied with.

• 2:09:38Griffin Newman?

  I, I agree with that.

• 2:09:40David Sims?

  God bless. Uh, do you want to play the ratings game, Griffin?

• 2:09:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:44David Sims?

  Uh, I just noticed, I noted, I looked up the, we usually do a box office game, which is harder to do with a TV that aired on Showtime. Uh, but the USA Today article about, uh, cable ratings in September 2017 notes rudely that Showtime's Twin Peaks The Return sputtered out with a typically low 240,000.

• 2:10:03Griffin Newman?

  It sucked.

• 2:10:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:06Griffin Newman?

  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 BLANKCHECK in the Regal app or the link included in the episode description.

• 2:10:35David Sims?

  The number one cable show, it seems. Well, all right, this is boring. This is the problem with TV ratings, Griffin.

• 2:10:43Griffin Newman?

  Well, look, here's the thing. For the fourth week in a row, playing the ratings game, I think, hands 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?

• 2:11:10David Sims?

  Sure, at least one a day.

• 2:11:11Griffin Newman?

  Up on the big screen, yeah.

• 2:11:12David Sims?

  I'm gonna remove from the ratings game all news, sports. This is cable ratings.

• 2:11:18Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I think this makes it more interesting.

• 2:11:19David Sims?

  All news, sports, and wrestling, which is sort of a sport.

• 2:11:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:27David Sims?

  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.

• 2:11:37Griffin Newman?

  Brown Sugar. No, what's the show called?

• 2:11:39David Sims?

  It ran for 196 episodes.

• 2:11:42Griffin Newman?

  Did he have a show called Brown Sugar? Am I misremembering?

• 2:11:44David Sims?

  That was a show on OWN. I'm not sure if it was a Tyler Perry show.

• 2:11:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:11:49Griffin Newman?

  What is this thing called? It's not called, like, The Haves and Have-nots, right? What's it?

• 2:11:54David Sims?

  It is called The Haves and the Have-nots.

• 2:11:57Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:11:57David Sims?

  You nailed it.

• 2:11:58Griffin Newman?

  I got it. It was somewhere there, deep in my subconscious.

• 2:12:01David Sims?

  Tika Sumter was the star of this, but a lot of big actors, like Danielle DeWiler, who's probably gonna get an Oscar nomination this year.

• 2:12:06Griffin Newman?

  Who's in my film. The most talented actor I've ever met in my life.

• 2:12:10David Sims?

  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.

• 2:12:28Griffin Newman?

  Number two is a rerun of a sitcom on cable as a Big Bang Theory.

• 2:12:31David Sims?

  It's the Big Bang Theory.

• 2:12:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. That was the 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.

• 2:12:44David Sims?

  And number three is a crime thriller TV series that I believe continues to be ongoing.

• 2:12:51Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:12:52David Sims?

  In new forms. They're always opening new chapters of this.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  I think I got it.

• 2:12:56David Sims?

  Please.

• 2:12:56Speaker 04

  Dexter?

• 2:12:57David Sims?

  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.

• 2:13:06Griffin Newman?

  But they're addressing the original sin now, finally.

• 2:13:11Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:13:12Griffin Newman?

  Okay, but it is something.

• 2:13:13David Sims?

  It's one of, again, one of those like long-running hit shows that people don't talk about too much.

• 2:13:17Griffin Newman?

  But it's not like Leverage. Am I, am I on the right?

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  I can't remember what Leverage is, so I can't.

• 2:13:23Griffin Newman?

  It's a Timothy Hutton one where they're like robbing shit.

• 2:13:25David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, they were robbing shit.

• 2:13:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I feel like that one had a.

• 2:13:28David Sims?

  It's on premium cable.

• 2:13:29Griffin Newman?

  It's on premium cable.

• 2:13:31David Sims?

  There's a new book recently.

• 2:13:32Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's Power.

• 2:13:33David Sims?

  Power.

• 2:13:34Speaker 04

  Power.

• 2:13:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there are many books. They got a whole shelf now. Power.

• 2:13:38David Sims?

  Uh, number four, I'm fucking, no, I'm, I'm out of scripted stuff. God, it's all.

• 2:13:45Griffin Newman?

  Jesus.

• 2:13:46David Sims?

  All right. So, you know, that's it. I mean, like, number, it's just lots more Big Bang Theories, a lot of Fox News, uh, some Red Sox games. All right. What's this? All right. This is, uh, maybe Ben's watched this.

• 2:14:00Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:14:02David Sims?

  It's a TV, it's a reality show.

• 2:14:04Griffin Newman?

  Is it about home restoration?

• 2:14:05David Sims?

  No, it's about people who live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, uh, that are taught, uh, basic wilderness survival skills. It's on the History Channel.

• 2:14:15Griffin Newman?

  Ben?

• 2:14:16Speaker 03

  No idea.

• 2:14:17David Sims?

  It's called Mountain Men. It's been running for 12 years.

• 2:14:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:14:20Speaker 03

  Not familiar.

• 2:14:21David Sims?

  He teaches you stuff.

• 2:14:23Griffin Newman?

  If you say so.

• 2:14:23David Sims?

  And then another one is about, um, fishing people. You must know that one.

• 2:14:28David Sims?

  Either of you, anyone, the reality show on Discovery Channel.

• 2:14:31Griffin Newman?

  Bassmasters?

• 2:14:32David Sims?

  No.

• 2:14:33Griffin Newman?

  No, don't say it like that.

• 2:14:34David Sims?

  No.

• 2:14:35Griffin Newman?

  That was a reasonable guess.

• 2:14:36David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:14:38Griffin Newman?

  I don't even know if that's a real show.

• 2:14:39David Sims?

  I think that was a video game.

• 2:14:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, you're probably right. Isn't that the thing that's at like the bar?

• 2:14:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:44Griffin Newman?

  Bars have it?

• 2:14:45David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay, uh, it's about fishing people. It's called.

• 2:14:47David Sims?

  Crab fishermen, I believe.

• 2:14:49Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 2:14:49David Sims?

  In Alaska.

• 2:14:50Griffin Newman?

  Okay, it's called Crab Fishermen in Alaska.

• 2:14:52David Sims?

  It's called Deadliest Catch. Y'all don't know Deadliest Catch?

• 2:14:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, of course.

• 2:14:57David Sims?

  Been running for 20 years.

• 2:14:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:15:00David Sims?

  There's 351 episodes of Deadliest Catch. Anyway, apparently one of the guys died.

• 2:15:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, everything's a bummer.

• 2:15:07David Sims?

  It's just crazy to think about this indelible, important piece of culture.

• 2:15:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:11David Sims?

  That was voted like the greatest cinema of the decade by Kaya Juscinor or whatever, right? Like, you know.

• 2:15:15Griffin Newman?

  Right, and then Twin Peaks The Return is airing at the same time. I assume you were talking about Deadliest Catch.

• 2:15:20David Sims?

  But then you look it up, right, and like the ratings news is like Showtime is like fart of a revival.

• 2:15:25Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely shit the bed.

• 2:15:27David Sims?

  Nobody cared about that.

• 2:15:28Griffin Newman?

  But them also saying like, like a leaky 240,000 viewers. But it's real. And you're like, isn't that bigger than most network shows now?

• 2:15:36Speaker 04

  I remember after Sundown's doing what is called the Water Bottle Tour.

• 2:15:43Griffin Newman?

  Hmm, yes.

• 2:15:43Speaker 04

  After my first film where you meet all of these people.

• 2:15:46Griffin Newman?

  General meetings, development shit.

• 2:15:47Speaker 04

  And at this time.

• 2:15:47David Sims?

  Oh, they're all giving you water bottles? Is that the idea?

• 2:15:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:49David Sims?

  Like take a Showtime branded.

• 2:15:51Speaker 04

  Although thankfully, it, this was, um, I was at home because it was the pandemic.

• 2:15:56David Sims?

  Oh, sure. So it's just a lot of water bottle Zoom meetings.

• 2:15:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:58Speaker 04

  Um.

• 2:15:59Griffin Newman?

  It's called the, the Brita Pitcher Tour.

• 2:16:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:04Speaker 04

  It's called the, uh, keeping good boundaries by not leaving the house tour.

• 2:16:09David Sims?

  Yeah, we're all in it together.

• 2:16:11Speaker 04

  And I remember, I, I think I still had like more optimism about the, uh, the taste of, of, of your average, you know, LA, uh, development executive. Just like talking about Twin Peaks, The Return is this like seismic moment.

• 2:16:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:16:25Speaker 04

  For like me and my cohort of like starry eyed artists and, and people just being like. Very much that.

• 2:16:33David Sims?

  Like, didn't that thing bomb?

• 2:16:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:16:36David Sims?

  I thought nobody watched that shit.

• 2:16:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:16:46David Sims?

  Yeah, wait, what is a good example?

• 2:16:48Griffin Newman?

  Two Dexter's ago?

• 2:16:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:51David Sims?

  Because there have been, obviously.

• 2:16:52Griffin Newman?

  Murphy Brown, that didn't really hit when they brought Murphy Brown back.

• 2:16:55David Sims?

  That's the thing, like.

• 2:16:56Speaker 04

  Like the X-Files.

• 2:16:57David Sims?

  Right, the X-Files, season 11. Where it's like, yeah, people lost interest and it's like, but Twin Peaks The Return is like reinventing forms and right, is like, you know, will be discussed for a generation in there. Anyway.

• 2:17:10Griffin Newman?

  Like, I.

• 2:17:10David Sims?

  And it will be.

• 2:17:11Griffin Newman?

  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 Cassavetes poster and is like, that guy's my fucking hero. Anyway, who am I rooting for in your script?

• 2:17:35David Sims?

  Griffin, do you have a Lynch list?

• 2:17:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:37David Sims?

  The only other thing.

• 2:17:38Griffin Newman?

  I just tabulated it.

• 2:17:39David Sims?

  Lynch. Jane, if you off the dome want to rank David Lynch.

• 2:17:42Speaker 04

  Happy to rank. Let me do a little work on my phone.

• 2:17:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I mean, this, this feels a little.

• 2:17:47David Sims?

  It's very hard to rank David Lynch because I'm, almost all of his work is meaningful to me.

• 2:17:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:52David Sims?

  So I feel a little silly saying that one is better than the other, but you know, such as.

• 2:17:56Speaker 04

  Did you guys watch the, I think unavailable except for DVD Industrial Symphony?

• 2:18:03Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:18:04David Sims?

  Yes, we covered that on Patreon as part of our David Lynch sort of, you know, shorts and ephemera.

• 2:18:10Speaker 04

  I love that. I'm not gonna put it on my list.

• 2:18:11Griffin Newman?

  I feel like I've seen almost everything now in the.

• 2:18:15David Sims?

  Like, there's just always more weird shit.

• 2:18:16Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 2:18:24Speaker 04

  Are you including Twin Peaks as one entity? Twin Peaks The Return.

• 2:18:28Griffin Newman?

  I am not.

• 2:18:29Speaker 04

  With me in the original series is separate?

• 2:18:32Griffin Newman?

  I am putting Twin Peaks purely as, uh.

• 2:18:37Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 2:18:46David Sims?

  You do what you want to do.

• 2:18:47Griffin Newman?

  David, you go first.

• 2:18:48David Sims?

  Okay. Number one, Mulholland Drive, basically my favorite movie ever made. Number two, Twin Peaks The Return, if we're.

• 2:18:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, so you're putting it in there. Okay.

• 2:18:55David Sims?

  Number three, Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me. I'm not gonna count the others, the other Twin Peaks's, because those are directed by lots of people and, you know, a little different.

• 2:19:05Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 2:19:06David Sims?

  Twin Peaks The Return, I debate away on, is it a movie, is it a TV show? At least he directed the entire thing and it's very much.

• 2:19:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:13David Sims?

  Number four, Lost Highway.

• 2:19:15Griffin Newman?

  Wow, you have it high.

• 2:19:16David Sims?

  To my slight surprise.

• 2:19:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:17David Sims?

  Number five, The Straight Story. Number six, Eraserhead. Number seven, Blue Velvet. Number eight, The Elephant Man, but no offense to any of these things.

• 2:19:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, we got a little bit of flipping going on.

• 2:19:26David Sims?

  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.

• 2:19:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:41David Sims?

  I guess.

• 2:19:42Griffin Newman?

  No, I agree with you. And I, I came out fairly positive on, on Dune, watching it this time. What's, what are you laughing at?

• 2:19:48David Sims?

  Ben sent us a, a website I forgot about, but I did, I do remember at the time, which is the sort of GeoCities Matthew Lillard, Search for the Zone website.

• 2:19:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20:00Speaker 04

  Oh, was this like as a promotional thing?

• 2:20:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:20:02Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 2:20:03Speaker 03

  It has some fun stuff. I'll include it in the episode description.

• 2:20:06David Sims?

  Yes. You know, like the blog that that character was creating in Search of the Others world.

• 2:20:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay, here's my list. It feels very fungible.

• 2:20:12David Sims?

  I will be vacationing in the zone in 2025, just to announce. I'll be going to the Purple Sea.

• 2:20:17Griffin Newman?

  You'll travel there?

• 2:20:19David Sims?

  Wanna hang out with Garland Briggs's floating head?

• 2:20:22Griffin Newman?

  Ben, write a note to check live show venues in the zone. See if we can get him to do one of those if he's already going there.

• 2:20:30David Sims?

  Okay, go ahead, Greg.

• 2:20:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay. It's a fungible list. I feel like I've changed it three times in the last 10 minutes and perhaps, right.

• 2:20:36David Sims?

  Whatever.

• 2:20:37Griffin Newman?

  I have number one, Elephant Man.

• 2:20:38David Sims?

  Yeah, that's your favorite.

• 2:20:39Griffin Newman?

  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 Fire Walk With Me. Number four, Eraserhead. 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.

• 2:21:17David Sims?

  Lost Highway Lower for you.

• 2:21:19Speaker 04

  I'm gonna count down.

• 2:21:20Griffin Newman?

  Do it.

• 2:21:21David Sims?

  Yeah, do it.

• 2:21:22Speaker 04

  Ten, Dune.

• 2:21:23Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:21:23Speaker 04

  With apologies, nine, The Elephant Man.

• 2:21:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay, no, that's fair.

• 2:21:27Speaker 04

  Never really, never really lit up for me.

• 2:21:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it just, it really lights up for me.

• 2:21:32Speaker 04

  Eight, Wild at Heart. Seven, Straight Story. Six, Eraserhead. Five, Inland Empire. Oh, wait. Hmm. I've got, I didn't actually write numbers here and I have five things left to list, so. Eleven through six, so far. Uh, Blue Velvet, number five.

• 2:21:50Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:51Speaker 04

  Uh, Lost Highway went number four. Twin Peaks The Return, number three. Mulholland Drive, number two. Fire Walk With Me, number one.

• 2:21:57David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:57Griffin Newman?

  I'll say this for Lost Highway.

• 2:21:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:59Griffin Newman?

  I verbalized my, uh, my, my problem with the trade-in value on, uh, Bill, 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.

• 2:22:16David Sims?

  Oh, that's a fair point.

• 2:22:17Griffin Newman?

  And I hadn't seen it before. I, it's the one I've been most eager to re-watch now at the end of this series, even if I'm maybe gonna take a little bit of a break.

• 2:22:24David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:25Speaker 04

  That one, see it, see it on film if you can. That is a great movie to sit and watch in a theater.

• 2:22:30Griffin Newman?

  It'd pop up as a screening. I will absolutely jump on that.

• 2:22:33Speaker 03

  I'd like to rank, out of all the episodes we did for our Lynch series, not from a quality standpoint, as far as the conversation, but from a production standpoint. Uh, Fire Walk With Me, number one worst episode.

• 2:22:48Griffin Newman?

  I would agree with that.

• 2:22:49David Sims?

  We, Jane, to be clear, uh, we had to, we had the filmmaker Akasha Stevenson on, who, uh, was great.

• 2:22:56Griffin Newman?

  Stevenson, yeah.

• 2:22:57Speaker 03

  Very patient.

• 2:22:58David Sims?

  Yeah, it was in New Orleans and was, uh, taken to some sort of like, uh. Ghouls lair of a rental studio. To zoom with us.

• 2:23:08Griffin Newman?

  We had a kind of catastrophic dual podcast studio collapse.

• 2:23:13David Sims?

  Yeah, it was bad. What a fucking nightmare.

• 2:23:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, we did it.

• 2:23:15David Sims?

  Sorry about that one.

• 2:23:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, anyway.

• 2:23:17David Sims?

  It still turned out great.

• 2:23:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Hey, and you know what? A lot of credit there. The AJ and the whole Blank Check team doing a lot of massaging.

• 2:23:24David Sims?

  This is, yeah, because this is our Christmas episode.

• 2:23:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26David Sims?

  Merry Christmas, everybody.

• 2:23:28Speaker 04

  Merry Christmas. Trauma is originary and unending.

• 2:23:31Griffin Newman?

  And hey. Perfectly said.

• 2:23:35David Sims?

  Jane, is there anything you want to plug or endorse?

• 2:23:38Speaker 04

  I watched The Polar Express last night for the first time.

• 2:23:41Griffin Newman?

  I talk about trauma as enduring and unending.

• 2:23:43David Sims?

  Please go on.

• 2:23:45Speaker 04

  Well, I didn't know it was animated, actually, when I started watching it.

• 2:23:48Griffin Newman?

  Jane, excuse me, it's not. It's a very original art form that Robert Zemeckis wants you to know is not animation.

• 2:23:53Speaker 04

  Motion captured, perhaps?

• 2:23:54David Sims?

  Hot, hot, we got it.

• 2:23:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:56Speaker 04

  I loved it. I mean, I love that. I'm going to watch that again, and I can't wait to watch his Christmas Carol next.

• 2:24:01David Sims?

  That one is putrid, but I.

• 2:24:03Griffin Newman?

  I think that might be the most boring movie ever made.

• 2:24:05David Sims?

  I will say, I will confess that I've been watching that movie a lot because my daughter found it.

• 2:24:10Griffin Newman?

  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 viewing habits. And your response was, I don't give a shit. I'm not David or Rick.

• 2:24:26David Sims?

  True.

• 2:24:27Speaker 04

  I would watch that movie 20 times happily.

• 2:24:30Griffin Newman?

  Is it growing on you?

• 2:24:31David Sims?

  It's growing on me a lot. It's so nightmarish and interesting.

• 2:24:35Speaker 04

  And there's no real plot. There's just like these set pieces, but kind of classical Zemeckis impressions of set pieces.

• 2:24:44Griffin Newman?

  Ben put it on at his holiday party last weekend.

• 2:24:49David Sims?

  Unmute.

• 2:24:49Griffin Newman?

  And I will admit, I was a little transfixed.

• 2:24:51David Sims?

  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.

• 2:25:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:04David Sims?

  And you're like, well, this is different. Like, this is, this is something unusual.

• 2:25:08Griffin Newman?

  Can you remind me, the rule about the hot chocolate, it's fine if you let it settle to room temperature?

• 2:25:13David Sims?

  Never, ever let it cool.

• 2:25:15Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:25:15David Sims?

  Hot, hot.

• 2:25:18David Sims?

  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. Hot! And then, 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 dancers.

• 2:25:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:32Speaker 04

  I loved it.

• 2:25:33David Sims?

  Fantastic.

• 2:25:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so you're plugging the Polar Express.

• 2:25:35David Sims?

  Love it.

• 2:25:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's my main thing right now.

• 2:25:38Griffin Newman?

  And hey, David, no, what were you gonna say?

• 2:25:41David Sims?

  I was gonna thank Jane for joining us.

• 2:25:42Griffin Newman?

  And I want to plug, I saw the TV.

• 2:25:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, check it out.

• 2:25:46David Sims?

  Is it on Max?

• 2:25:47Speaker 04

  It's on Max.

• 2:25:48David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:25:48Griffin Newman?

  It's on Max. You can take it to the Max. 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?

• 2:26:09David Sims?

  I know.

• 2:26:10Griffin Newman?

  A man named Steven Spielberg was born.

• 2:26:12David Sims?

  Oh, happy birthday, Steve. I didn't know it was your birthday.

• 2:26:15Griffin Newman?

  Why, today, the day we are recording our final David Lynch episode and our final episode of 2024.

• 2:26:21David Sims?

  Oh, he's 78. I don't see the correlation.

• 2:26:23Griffin Newman?

  Is the birth of a man who we will be covering right at the start of 2025.

• 2:26:28Speaker 04

  But a man who also cast David Lynch in what might end up being his final on-screen appearance.

• 2:26:33Griffin Newman?

  Very true, and 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 Duel through Schindler's List.

• 2:26:47David Sims?

  That's right. That's right.

• 2:26:49Speaker 04

  From Duel to Schindler's List.

• 2:26:50David Sims?

  From Duel to Schindler's List, Darryl Spielberg. On Patreon, we're gonna be doing a bunch of different, varied kinds of bonus episodes.

• 2:27:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, amazing stories, Twilight Zone segment, Night Gallery, Columbo, Murder by the Book.

• 2:27:05Speaker 04

  Poltergeist?

• 2:27:07Griffin Newman?

  We are not. We went back and forth on whether or not it felt rude.

• 2:27:12David Sims?

  To Toby Hooper.

• 2:27:13Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 2:27:27Speaker 04

  I do love, I mean, come on, of course I love Poltergeist.

• 2:27:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes, you know what?

• 2:27:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:27:31Speaker 03

  Got some good goo.

• 2:27:32Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say the original TV Glow movie in a lot of ways.

• 2:27:35Speaker 04

  The TV does glow.

• 2:27:36Griffin Newman?

  The TV does glow.

• 2:27:36Speaker 04

  When A24 sent us the first draft of the poster for TV Glow, I was like, oh, wait, isn't that Poltergeist, though?

• 2:27:42Speaker 03

  I mean, a little bit.

• 2:27:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:27:45Griffin Newman?

  So stay tuned for that.

• 2:27:46Speaker 03

  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 built out a Spotify playlist featuring songs from each soundtrack.

• 2:27:59Griffin Newman?

  Well, certainly a lot of options in the David Lynch filmography.

• 2:28:02Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 2:28:02Griffin Newman?

  A man who loves his use of music.

• 2:28:04Speaker 03

  Right, 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.

• 2:28:15Griffin Newman?

  And hey, speaking of great music, I know you plugged it in earlier episodes, but Slow Christmas, Volume Four is still out there on the interwebs.

• 2:28:23Speaker 03

  Check it out.

• 2:28:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:24Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:28:25Griffin Newman?

  Do you know about this, Jane?

• 2:28:26Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:28:27Speaker 03

  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 or covers of holiday songs, but it gotta be slow.

• 2:28:43Griffin Newman?

  Slow core?

• 2:28:44Speaker 03

  Slow, slow core.

• 2:28:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:28:48Speaker 03

  Some good stuff. Yeah, check that out. And I don't know if you had an app, and as always lined up.

• 2:28:55Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I do.

• 2:28:56Speaker 03

  All right.

• 2:28:57Griffin Newman?

  Is there something you want to say?

• 2:28:58Speaker 03

  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.

• 2:29:12Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:29:13Speaker 03

  So I thought that might be a nice thing that we could play at the end of the episode.

• 2:29:17Griffin Newman?

  Can we play it here? Do we have it?

• 2:29:19Speaker 03

  I sure do. Hey, guys, Eva Anderson here. So a couple of months ago, I was talking to my coworker Juliana about weird jobs we had.

• 2:29:28Speaker 06

  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.

• 2:29:40Speaker 06

  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 was a funny story. And I was like, who is, which impersonator was it? Cause there's a couple in LA. And we dug around and finally found his name and his IMDB page. His name's Robert Brodsky. He's an LA area Abraham Lincoln. Some of his credits include Peewee'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.

• 2:30:22Speaker 06

  But buried in the middle of his credits was Twin Peaks one episode, The Woodsman.

• 2:30:29David Sims?

  He's the gotta like guy.

• 2:30:29Speaker 06

  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, uh, the return record. Okay, bye.

• 2:30:49David Sims?

  Thank you, Eva.

• 2:30:50Griffin Newman?

  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.

• 2:31:00David Sims?

  Farewell to David Lynch.

• 2:31:01Griffin Newman?

  Remember when we did season one with Eva, that feels like 17 years ago?

• 2:31:06David Sims?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:31:07Griffin Newman?

  But thank you for the pie and the coffee, Eva, and, and the voicemail. Thank you, Jane, for being here.

• 2:31:13Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:31:14Griffin Newman?

  And as always. Before I came up, I was on the phone with Ben Hozley at Blank Check. He told me they are on to something from the podcast indicating two friends. And last night I had another Monica Bellucci dream.

• 2:31:30David Sims?

  Yeah, good job. That's what you wanted.

• 2:31:32Griffin Newman?

  That's what I wanted to do.