Twin Peaks: The Return (Episodes 1-7)

It is happening again - we’re covering TV! Or is it an 18-part movie? Much to ponder. We’re heading back to the Pacific Northwest (and Vegas…and New York…and the Red Room…and outer space?) in our first of four episodes covering Showtime’s 2017 series “Twin Peaks: The Return.” So far, we’ve got tulpas, Caleb Laundry Bag, three distinct versions of Dale Cooper, Dr. Jacobi’s gold shovels, Michael Cera doing a bad Marlon Brando impression, creamed corn barf, Matthew Lillard, a cryptic final message from the Log Lady, and a whole slew of David Lynch’s favorite contemporary indie bands. Suffice it to say - we’re hooked! The Box Office Game is Sponsored by Regal Cinemas: Sign up for Regal Unlimited today http://blankcheckpod.com/regal and get 10% 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.

• 1:46Griffin Newman?

  Highways and byways of my days on the road. My shadow is always with me, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, except on cloudy days. Or at the podcast.

• 2:03Griffin Newman?

  I fucked up. I said the word podcast too early and then I decided I didn't want to not finish the monologue.

• 2:07David Sims?

  Well, you could just do it twice.

• 2:08Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:09David Sims?

  I mean, there's no rules.

• 2:11Griffin Newman?

  I did do one retake in the middle of it. Get ready, I'm doing it again.

• 2:14David Sims?

  Nah, let's just keep, here, I want to get right into this.

• 2:17Griffin Newman?

  My family, my two friends.

• 2:20David Sims?

  What's your voice here? Cause it's not quite Sarah as Wally Brando, right?

• 2:25Griffin Newman?

  I'd love to hear your Sarah as Wally Brando.

• 2:27David Sims?

  No, I'm not doing it. I'm not, I'm, but like, it reminds me of another impression you do and I can't think of which one it is.

• 2:33Griffin Newman?

  Is it my old Bruce Willis impression?

• 2:34David Sims?

  Maybe that, maybe that.

• 2:36Griffin Newman?

  I think so, right?

• 2:37David Sims?

  Sure, sure, kinda like, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, like soft spoken actor, right?

• 2:41Griffin Newman?

  Doing an ad read, yeah.

• 2:42David Sims?

  Maybe that's what I'm thinking of.

• 2:43Griffin Newman?

  I think that's what it is.

• 2:44David Sims?

  Alright, alright, thank you, that cleared that up. The whole time you were doing it, I was like, I know he's doing Wally Brando, but who does this sound like?

• 2:49Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so now that we've cleared it up, I can do the quote from the beginning.

• 2:51David Sims?

  No, absolutely not.

• 2:52Griffin Newman?

  My family, my two friends. I have crisscrossed this great audio landscape of ours several times. I hold the map of it here in my heart, next to the joyful memories of the carefree days I spent as a young boy here in your beautiful town of Blank Check. From Sean Millan to Cameron to Begalow. I think about David and his friend Griffin, the first friends to ever host a podcast. How about that?

• 3:21David Sims?

  Yeah, that's beautiful.

• 3:23Griffin Newman?

  And then I don't have to finish it, thank you.

• 3:24David Sims?

  Yeah, lovely.

• 3:25Griffin Newman?

  The Caucasians line is so funny in the context of the show.

• 3:28David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 3:29Griffin Newman?

  And then once I said it, I was like, the implications are wrong.

• 3:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:33Griffin Newman?

  We all know the first Caucasian ever host a podcast was Conan O'Brien. It's just a fact. He invented it.

• 3:41David Sims?

  He invented it.

• 3:41Griffin Newman?

  He did.

• 3:42David Sims?

  He invented needing a friend.

• 3:45Griffin Newman?

  He did. And then we showed up and said, what if we're already friends?

• 3:48David Sims?

  What if we've been doing podcasts for years and we're already friends?

• 3:51Griffin Newman?

  That was our big innovation, is we said, what if we've actually been doing it for longer and we've been friends the whole time? I really, I worry about Conan sometimes.

• 4:01David Sims?

  Why? What's up with him?

• 4:02Griffin Newman?

  This many years he still hasn't found a single friend?

• 4:04David Sims?

  What a loser.

• 4:05Griffin Newman?

  This fucking, this project is a failure. How old do I think Conan is?

• 4:08David Sims?

  Yes.

• 4:09Griffin Newman?

  Fifty-eight.

• 4:11David Sims?

  Sixty-one.

• 4:11Griffin Newman?

  Wow, okay, close.

• 4:13David Sims?

  Sometimes I just think he's even older than that, just because he's such a lifelong presence for me, but he started, uh, being famous very young.

• 4:21Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing, is that like, by the time he gets late night, he has a legendary comedy career. But that's because he started getting hired onto the biggest things right out of college.

• 4:32David Sims?

  Right out of college.

• 4:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. He's 27 when he gets the show, maybe?

• 4:36David Sims?

  Uh, yeah. I mean, he was a young man.

• 4:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 4:38David Sims?

  And everyone was like, who is this young? And no one's ever talked about this, but he kinda like almost got canceled.

• 4:44Griffin Newman?

  That's not true. I would have heard about this.

• 4:45David Sims?

  The show was really skating on thin ice for a while.

• 4:48Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 4:48David Sims?

  And the press were not on his side.

• 4:50Griffin Newman?

  David, if that had happened, I would have heard about it from someone, most of all him.

• 4:54David Sims?

  I love Conan O'Brien so much.

• 4:56Griffin Newman?

  I'm tuning into his show every week. He never talks about this.

• 4:57David Sims?

  The man is a totemic figure in my like comedy history.

• 5:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 5:00David Sims?

  But I swear to God, sometimes I just wanna be on his podcast and be like, Conan, you're doing good. It worked out. I'm sorry about 1993 or whatever.

• 5:09Griffin Newman?

  Here's what's crazy to me. And I'll say, I actually am always kind of interested to hear his stories about how bad he felt at that time.

• 5:16David Sims?

  Me too. It's, he's being handed, it's not uninteresting, like, and it was crazy that he got that job and that he

• 5:23Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 5:23David Sims?

  made the show he made and blah, blah, blah.

• 5:25Griffin Newman?

  What is astonishing to me is how often his guests are like, wait, really?

• 5:29David Sims?

  What? Are you kidding me?

• 5:30Griffin Newman?

  And they're not doing the bit. They're like, cause I'm watching, I'm thinking you're a big success. And he was like, no, it was bad for eight years.

• 5:39David Sims?

  It wasn't eight years. Like, Late Night was hot by the time I was a kid.

• 5:43Griffin Newman?

  Do you remember the Conan 15th anniversary primetime special?

• 5:47David Sims?

  A pretty big one.

• 5:47Griffin Newman?

  And Mr. T comes out with a big gold chain of a seven on it and goes like, Conan, I'm here to give you this as a prize. And he's like, uh, Mr. T, thank you very much, but we've actually been on the air for 15 years. And he goes, yeah, but only seven of them were funny.

• 6:01David Sims?

  That's a good, good joke.

• 6:02Griffin Newman?

  Incredible joke. Has stuck with me forever.

• 6:05David Sims?

  That's good stuff.

• 6:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 6:06David Sims?

  That's sort of a different era when like Mr. T would just get a pop, right? Where it's just like, look, it's Mr. T. This is so funny.

• 6:14Griffin Newman?

  I mean, he did that with Shatner, Vogoda, Mr. T.

• 6:16David Sims?

  Chuck Norris.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Is a perfect example of a celebrity that should have like a haunted house devoted to him.

• 6:23Griffin Newman?

  Great call. Great call.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  And I just went to the Fallon.

• 6:26Griffin Newman?

  We went to Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. Which is kinda like the Twin Peaks, the return of Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show.

• 6:33David Sims?

  Oh, is it?

• 6:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's sort of just like.

• 6:38Griffin Newman?

  All of the loose, unstructured thoughts. Sometimes it's tying into the past mythology that tonight show, sometimes it seems totally unrelated.

• 6:47David Sims?

  Do you like do a lip sync?

• 6:48Griffin Newman?

  Hopefully it's the final statement from an artist.

• 6:51David Sims?

  At any point?

• 6:52Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 6:52David Sims?

  Oh, no.

• 6:53Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 6:54David Sims?

  How long is it?

• 6:55Griffin Newman?

  10 minutes, a robust 10 minutes.

• 6:57David Sims?

  How much for 10 minutes?

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  Forty-three dollars?

• 7:01Griffin Newman?

  I think all in.

• 7:04David Sims?

  Okay.

• 7:05Griffin Newman?

  Per person.

• 7:05David Sims?

  Sure.

• 7:07Griffin Newman?

  Um, and this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 7:11David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 7:11Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. I know I say things like this a lot. But this is a mini-series on the films of David Lynch and his TV shows.

• 7:29David Sims?

  Sure.

• 7:30Griffin Newman?

  It's called, or at least one of them, it's called Twin Pods Firecast with me. Today we are kickstarting a four-episode run on Twin Peaks The Return, which is one of the greatest blank checks in history.

• 7:40David Sims?

  A hundred percent, almost by like mistake, it feels like.

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 7:45David Sims?

  Like someone was like, oh, sure. You want to make a new Twin Peaks? I'll let you do that. And it's like, and it's going to cost how much?

• 7:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:51David Sims?

  And you need how much more?

• 7:53Griffin Newman?

  And we'll-

• 7:53David Sims?

  Wait, you're here again?

• 7:54Griffin Newman?

  We'll talk about it. The most fascinating thing to me is this thing slowly coming together after years, over a decade of like Twin Peaks will never return. Then there's excitement and then suddenly the announcement is it's not happening.

• 8:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 8:06Griffin Newman?

  David Lynch and Showtime couldn't agree.

• 8:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 8:09Griffin Newman?

  The budget arguments, it's not happening.

• 8:12David Sims?

  Right.

• 8:12Griffin Newman?

  And then suddenly it's back on happening twice as long, twice as expensive and twice as weird as anyone expected. The fact that it so, came so close to getting pulled from reality and then ended up this insane.

• 8:28David Sims?

  Yes, it is a miracle.

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  Is a miracle.

• 8:30David Sims?

  It is a miraculous piece of- Content, I would call it, a piece of content.

• 8:36Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the best pitched tents I've ever seen. Today, we are talking about Twin Peaks The Return, episodes one through seven.

• 8:44David Sims?

  Episodes one through seven, parts one through seven.

• 8:49Griffin Newman?

  Now, we are loathe to cover TV on the show.

• 8:52David Sims?

  Yes.

• 8:52Griffin Newman?

  Because primarily, this is a show about filmographies. Early on, we did it, we did it twice in our first proper year. Then we said, like, enough of this. And then we bent a couple of times in the last couple of years when it felt really essential.

• 9:07David Sims?

  This is obviously essential.

• 9:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 9:11David Sims?

  And it is possibly the last thing David Lynch will ever make.

• 9:16Griffin Newman?

  Quite possibly.

• 9:16David Sims?

  I'm not saying it definitely, but you know, because he's been kind of, you know, like.

• 9:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Griffin Newman?

  But here's, here's the bigger point I wanted to make.

• 9:24David Sims?

  Yes.

• 9:25Griffin Newman?

  The relief of, this is the first time we are not attempting to cover an entire season of television in one episode.

• 9:36David Sims?

  And we're doing it by splitting it up, which we've never done before.

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 9:40David Sims?

  But it felt essential because Twin Peaks The Return is very long.

• 9:43Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:44David Sims?

  And does have sort of somewhat distinct movements to it, especially one particular episode, episode eight, which we are giving its own episode next week. Um, apart from that, I think the way it was made, it is just this sort of giant document that got cut up. Uh, it's not like he was sitting down being like, I'm gonna write a Sawyer episode.

• 10:05Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 10:05David Sims?

  I'm gonna write a Hurley episode.

• 10:07Griffin Newman?

  You should have tried.

• 10:08David Sims?

  I, he could have put Sawyer in this.

• 10:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 10:10David Sims?

  Sawyer just shows up.

• 10:12Griffin Newman?

  I don't even need Sawyer to be in it. I just want to have the feel of a Sawyer episode.

• 10:15David Sims?

  So like, Kim Dickens is there and someone's sad.

• 10:17Griffin Newman?

  Tattoos.

• 10:19David Sims?

  No, that's Jack. Fuck. The whole thing with Sawyer was always that it was like.

• 10:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, the Sawyer ones were always the con.

• 10:25David Sims?

  Sawyer episode where he's like, me thinks I'll run a con. And I'm like, yeah, I know. That's what you did, Sawyer.

• 10:30Griffin Newman?

  And he brings Kim Dickens and he's like, but this time, trust me.

• 10:32David Sims?

  This time, I'm good. And then at the end, he's like, fuck, I'm upset about this again.

• 10:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 10:37David Sims?

  I'm not a good con man.

• 10:38Griffin Newman?

  Morally conflicted.

• 10:42David Sims?

  Twin Peaks The Return, uh, aired on Showtime, um, in 2017.

• 10:47Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm. Before Showtime was Showtime Plus. Paramount Plus.

• 10:52Griffin Newman?

  A great name for a channel.

• 10:54David Sims?

  Yes, uh.

• 10:57David Sims?

  I watched it live. I watched every episode as it aired. Now, you guys had never seen it.

• 11:01Griffin Newman?

  No, watching for the first time.

• 11:02David Sims?

  Ben and Griffin are watching it for the first time.

• 11:05Griffin Newman?

  I have only watched up to seven, eight being such a huge thing in its own episode. I was like, I, I, I dare not watch one ahead yet. I want to be able to talk about up until this exact point in this episode without future knowledge.

• 11:19David Sims?

  That's fine. Uh, so here we are.

• 11:23David Sims?

  What do you guys think of Twin Peaks The Return so far? I'm fucking blown away.

• 11:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I think it's good.

• 11:29David Sims?

  Holy shit. It's so, so good.

• 11:32Griffin Newman?

  It is. I, I mean, I've heard such a breathless praise.

• 11:37David Sims?

  It's gotten more breathless praise than almost anything in recent memory.

• 11:40Griffin Newman?

  Truly almost anything. I mean, I'd forgotten that Kaede de Cinema declared this the best movie of the decade.

• 11:46David Sims?

  They did. And, and everyone was normal about that declaration.

• 11:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 11:51David Sims?

  Yes.

• 11:51Griffin Newman?

  Cause I don't think it's totally fair to count something that is over 1,000 minutes long.

• 11:59David Sims?

  And was aired in episodes on television.

• 12:01Griffin Newman?

  This is what I was gonna say.

• 12:03David Sims?

  This is just this big fight that people keep having.

• 12:04Griffin Newman?

  We'll talk about this more, the, the nature of how it was made versus how it was distributed and all of this. But like David Lynch goes into this knowing it's going to be broadcasted television episodes, even if he did not like write it and shoot it as such.

• 12:17David Sims?

  And Mark Ross, to be clear.

• 12:18Griffin Newman?

  Me, yes. What surprised me is, I'm, I'm focusing on Lynch just because he was the director.

• 12:24David Sims?

  He directed every episode.

• 12:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. What surprised me is how much it does feel like the episodes have their own thing. And I'm sure episode eight and some of the other episodes are going to be even more so, that feeling.

• 12:38Griffin Newman?

  As much as this does, in a lot of ways, this feels very similar to Paranoid Agent to me.

• 12:46David Sims?

  Sure.

• 12:47Griffin Newman?

  In an interesting way where it's like, here's kind of this drafts folder. Where there's like a big unifying idea. There's sort of a collective mythology. There's a narrative running across it. But then you'll also just get these fragments of pieces and stories that may or may not feed into other things. And like stylistic experiments and like playfulness with tone.

• 13:07David Sims?

  But Paranoid Agent has like. You know, it's sort of a focus on a single character every time.

• 13:12Griffin Newman?

  It's a little more anthology.

• 13:13David Sims?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:15Griffin Newman?

  But I mean, part of what's fun for me, watching this for the first time, and I don't know if you have this feeling as well, Ben, you'll just like, the first time in the first episode, it cuts to drone shot of New York City, titled "New York City", you're like, "What the fuck? I didn't know Twin Peaks could leave Twin Peaks."

• 13:31David Sims?

  That's a good point.

• 13:32Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 13:32David Sims?

  Yes, it's a, it's a pretty drastic thing right away, uh, to, to be doing that.

• 13:38Griffin Newman?

  It's immediately, like, it took me a moment to figure out why I felt so, um, jumbled by that.

• 13:45David Sims?

  Guys, I gotta pee. I'm sorry. I'm realizing this immediately. I can't hold it.

• 13:49Griffin Newman?

  This episode's going great.

• 13:51David Sims?

  That's fine.

• 13:51Griffin Newman?

  Should I take the Wally Brando monologue a third time?

• 13:54David Sims?

  Hmm, no, we'll just pause.

• 13:55Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 14:12David Sims?

  Okay, Griffin, I'm sorry I interrupted us.

• 14:14Griffin Newman?

  And we're back.

• 14:15David Sims?

  Um.

• 14:16Griffin Newman?

  I have to say, I followed your lead, I also went to the bathroom.

• 14:19David Sims?

  Cool.

• 14:19Griffin Newman?

  Here's my first thing to say. That was no pee.

• 14:22David Sims?

  No, it was no pee.

• 14:23Griffin Newman?

  I have to, I have to.

• 14:24David Sims?

  I mean, I appreciate you putting that on the air.

• 14:26Griffin Newman?

  Radical honesty, here's why. Cause it ties into the point I was about to make.

• 14:30David Sims?

  Which is what?

• 14:31Griffin Newman?

  Before you interrupted with your not pee. The disorienting thing about watching this show, and knowing it's also 18 hours, which so few modern shows are.

• 14:40David Sims?

  That's true.

• 14:41Griffin Newman?

  Network procedurals and sitcoms are. Most shows, outside of that, do not go more than 12 episodes.

• 14:47David Sims?

  And they're not, you know, especially shows where the episodes are an hour long and all that.

• 14:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and especially anything that's prestige-y or cable-y or whatever it is, you know? I guess Walking Dead still was doing long seasons for all, but whatever.

• 14:57David Sims?

  Even Walking Dead has ads.

• 14:59Griffin Newman?

  Now does mini-series, yes. Um.

• 15:03Griffin Newman?

  You watch this show, or I do, and like something happens, like cut to New York and I'm like, "What the fuck?" And now we're introduced to three characters I've never seen before. And I'm like, "Are they important?" Anytime it cuts to a character from classic Twin Peaks, I'm almost surprised that they're in it. And I'm like, "How much are they gonna show up?"

• 15:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 15:22Griffin Newman?

  Suddenly a big movie star enters, and you're like, "So are they major, or is that the only scene they're in?" You have these like notions, these like plotlines that like cut out abruptly, that are insert, insert episodes, don't come back in that episode. And you're like, "I don't know if that was just a complete, one-off, self-contained idea."

• 15:42David Sims?

  Sometimes.

• 15:42Griffin Newman?

  Or if that will return in three episodes.

• 15:44David Sims?

  Sometimes.

• 15:44Griffin Newman?

  I'm guessing it's a balance of both, which is...

• 15:46David Sims?

  It's a bit of a balance of both, but you're, I mean, and also, imagine the experience of fans.

• 15:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:51David Sims?

  Twin Peaks.

• 15:52Griffin Newman?

  I keep trying to put myself in this headspace.

• 15:55David Sims?

  Their show is back.

• 15:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:56David Sims?

  And getting this, which I think most Twin Peaks fans have heartily embraced, but it took them a minute.

• 16:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:05David Sims?

  And watching it week by week was really kind of a struggle where you like, it slowly dawns on you like, "Right, this show is never, this season is never going to be, everyone's in the town and there's mysteries and soaps and romances." It's like, "That's just not it."

• 16:19Griffin Newman?

  It's almost most surprising that everyone did adjust to it, rather than having a "fire walk with me" type response and people coming around to it later.

• 16:28David Sims?

  I think the show is so interesting.

• 16:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:30David Sims?

  That, and, and is so dense with kind of like, uh, sort of theories and symbols that you can pick out and overanalyze, that it worked out okay, but I'm on the Twin Peaks Reddit.

• 16:43Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:44David Sims?

  And you'll always see new fans posting, or people watching currently posting.

• 16:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:49David Sims?

  Like, "Hey, I just finished my first watch-through of seasons one and two, and I started season three. Is it a way, is, is this what it is?"

• 16:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 16:56David Sims?

  "Where's Dale?"

• 16:57Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 16:57David Sims?

  "Where's, where's?" You know, like, you know, and you're like, and you see the fans being like... Yeah, you know, you get used to it. Yeah.

• 17:03Griffin Newman?

  But Twin Peaks is so plotty. It was the thing I was not prepared for, watching the first two seasons for the first time, vases versus the like-

• 17:10David Sims?

  Vases?

• 17:11Griffin Newman?

  Vases. There's not a lot of vases in it. If I have to ding it for anything-

• 17:15David Sims?

  I can't remember. There might be a few.

• 17:16Griffin Newman?

  Versus the sort of like cultural memification of Twin Peaks, the amount of like soap opera, small town intrigue of just like, oh, this thing is like 25 primary characters and they're all tied up in naughty drama and you're cutting between all of them. And anytime in the, the ABC, the original run Twin Peaks-

• 17:37David Sims?

  Yes.

• 17:37Griffin Newman?

  They're cutting from one thing to another. It's like important in some way, right? Even if it's like one of the goofier plotlines, you're like, this is an arc they're building.

• 17:46David Sims?

  Right.

• 17:46Griffin Newman?

  This will just have like a character, for example, stand up and go, I'm sorry, I need to pee. And then it turns out it's a poop. And then you're like, what was the meaning of that?

• 17:54David Sims?

  Um, I was doing the Laura Palmer-

• 17:58Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're doing the Laura Palmer-

• 17:59David Sims?

  Let me open the dossier, because JJ did make one, just one.

• 18:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 18:03David Sims?

  Lazy.

• 18:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:04David Sims?

  Probably told him that that's what he should do.

• 18:06Griffin Newman?

  David Lynch made 18 hours of Twin Peaks: The Return and you made one dossier?

• 18:10David Sims?

  Um, just more to give a sense of the lead up to this show's existence.

• 18:15Griffin Newman?

  Am I correct in my memory that the marketing basically gave up nothing?

• 18:20David Sims?

  Marketing gave up nothing.

• 18:21Griffin Newman?

  That at David Lynch's insistence-

• 18:22David Sims?

  Kyle McLaughlin's in it.

• 18:23Griffin Newman?

  Right. There was the-

• 18:24David Sims?

  That's about it.

• 18:24Griffin Newman?

  There was the poster, the it's happening again poster, I remember, but that there were like no images, no like trailers or commercials that use actual footage, that like tuning in for the first time, people had no idea what it was gonna be.

• 18:37David Sims?

  I think fans on the internet have been delving into like who was clearly involved because I guess that was easy enough to figure out.

• 18:45Griffin Newman?

  From the original.

• 18:46David Sims?

  And there had been like a giant press release of like a huge list of names, some from the show, some like Naomi Watts or whatever.

• 18:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:53David Sims?

  Um, but the poster was just like Dale Cooper now, right? Over the trees.

• 18:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 18:58David Sims?

  And then the other one was just the classic Laura Palmer picture.

• 19:01Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 19:01David Sims?

  I remember watching. The first two episodes were broadcast back to back.

• 19:04Griffin Newman?

  And we're three and four-

• 19:06David Sims?

  That believes-

• 19:06Griffin Newman?

  The same?

• 19:07David Sims?

  Yes. And I think it premiered at Cannes?

• 19:09Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 19:10David Sims?

  Right? Is that right? Or I feel I've-

• 19:13Griffin Newman?

  You tell me. You got the dossier in front of you, my friend?

• 19:16David Sims?

  I will tell you.

• 19:17Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 19:18David Sims?

  Soon.

• 19:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:19David Sims?

  Maybe not. Two episodes were screened at the Cannes Film Festival, maybe not premiere.

• 19:23Griffin Newman?

  And when does the actual- Premiere happen?

• 19:25David Sims?

  May 21st, 2017, which does line up again.

• 19:28Griffin Newman?

  Okay, yeah.

• 19:29David Sims?

  And I remember Karen Hahn and Emma Stefanski came over. And my brother Joey, and we all watched it together.

• 19:36Griffin Newman?

  Past and future.

• 19:37David Sims?

  Kind of shrieking, but it's also kind of like not the show to watch in the way of like, I can't wait to see all my buddies again. You know, like, we were kind of like, what the fuck?

• 19:47Griffin Newman?

  It does start immediately, like in a statement way of like, this is not just picking up Twin Peaks again.

• 19:54David Sims?

  Right. We're not just like, doo, doo, doo.

• 19:56Griffin Newman?

  Even when it starts with legacy characters and the theme and whatever, it's like immediately different.

• 20:02David Sims?

  But, okay, let me open the dossier.

• 20:04Griffin Newman?

  Please, Craig.

• 20:05David Sims?

  So Inland Empire comes out, 2006.

• 20:08Griffin Newman?

  Made like 250 million domestic?

• 20:10David Sims?

  Yeah, right. Got 40 Oscar nominations. And post that, Lynch is not like doggedly pursuing making another movie. But in 2010, supposedly, he did find an idea for a new film and had a script called Antelope Don't Run No More.

• 20:27Griffin Newman?

  I was really hoping it was gonna be an idea for a new film. It was called.

• 20:30David Sims?

  Ronnie Rocket. It's about electricity. He goes back once again. He's got like a mustache and Groucho glasses. And the guy's like, I know about the fucking electric. We're not doing that one.

• 20:41Griffin Newman?

  He puts the old script in the microwave and is like, this is hot off the printer. I just finished writing it.

• 20:49David Sims?

  He shopped it around a little bit.

• 20:51Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 20:51David Sims?

  It's apparently set mostly in Los Angeles. It braids some threads from Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire into a narrative fantasia that incorporates space aliens, talking animals and a beleaguered musician named Pinky.

• 21:02Griffin Newman?

  Sounds pretty Lynchian.

• 21:04David Sims?

  Yes, a lot of people say the script is very good, but he has not been able to attract any financing. And he's not really upset about it because he's kind of like, if it's meant to be, it'll happen.

• 21:13Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 21:15David Sims?

  Even in 2024, in an interview with Sight and Sound, Lynch said, maybe one day. But then that was sort of the same time that he was like, but I have emphysema and I don't know if I'm gonna do anything anymore. And everyone was like, David Lynch retires. And he was like, I don't retire.

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 21:29David Sims?

  I love cigarettes. Lighten them up. Puff, puff, puff, motherfucker.

• 21:34Griffin Newman?

  We've talked about that statement, but him explaining. His regret over smoking his entire life.

• 21:38David Sims?

  And then describing the experience of smoking as an orgasmic experience.

• 21:42Griffin Newman?

  Sounding like the radish shit in human history.

• 21:45David Sims?

  Um, so instead, what does he do? He writes the book Catching the Big Fish, which I feel like a lot of our guests have referenced. A lot of people have enjoyed sort of about his creative process.

• 21:56Griffin Newman?

  He serves to do a lot of that kind of stuff. I mean, he did like a masterclass. He does a lot of like.

• 21:59David Sims?

  He did some art exhibitions.

• 22:02Griffin Newman?

  He lets that David Lynch, the art life documentary.

• 22:05David Sims?

  He released Crazy Clown Time.

• 22:09Griffin Newman?

  But I feel like he's sort of opening up the process of like, here are all my philosophies on creativity. It did feel like he was starting to like pivot into old master. Let me share.

• 22:20David Sims?

  Right. Like he appears on the Cleveland Show, for example.

• 22:23Griffin Newman?

  Right. The kind of things. Do you know that Ben, he was a regular cast member on every episode of the Cleveland Show?

• 22:29David Sims?

  He's the bartender.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Well, of course I do, because I watch the Cleveland Show every week.

• 22:32David Sims?

  Religiously.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. One of my favorite shows in television.

• 22:34David Sims?

  He is also on Louis in, he's incredible.

• 22:37Griffin Newman?

  An incredible performance.

• 22:39David Sims?

  Very, very interesting.

• 22:40Griffin Newman?

  But yeah, he's starting to do a little more acting stuff, weirdly popping up in other areas.

• 22:44David Sims?

  I think it's one of those things where it's like, if you think of it and you can reach him, maybe you can talk him into it.

• 22:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:50David Sims?

  Um, uh, he also, uh, worked on a Duran Duran concert documentary. I don't think I knew that.

• 22:59Griffin Newman?

  I think I knew that. Yeah.

• 23:00David Sims?

  He did an ice bucket challenge where he challenges Vladimir Putin at the end of it.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Great. A lot of our fans were saying, we should have mentioned or covered the Duran Duran thing on our music and shorts episode.

• 23:12David Sims?

  Okay, don't you cover it and I'll eat your shorts.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 23:17Griffin Newman?

  Insane. Post poop Sam's is wild.

• 23:19David Sims?

  But.

• 23:22David Sims?

  Tom McLaughlin.

• 23:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:24David Sims?

  Many years after Twin Peaks, would check in with Lynch, kind of be like, what do you think?

• 23:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:30David Sims?

  At one point, there's talk of making a comic book. Back when it was hot to do like a sequel comic books.

• 23:36Griffin Newman?

  Gonna say.

• 23:36David Sims?

  Bumpy did that.

• 23:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes, the season eight.

• 23:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. That was, it was sort of kickstarted by, do you have the name of the writer there?

• 23:43David Sims?

  Uh, Matt Haley.

• 23:45Griffin Newman?

  Right. They were gonna finally put out the like, complete box set. Cause season two had been out of circulation for so long and it was gonna include the missing pieces.

• 23:54David Sims?

  It was gonna be part of the box set.

• 23:55Griffin Newman?

  And he made this pitch. Right. Cause I think Frost and some of the people were on board and then Lynch nixed it. Lynch nixing it feels like the first instance of maybe him thinking he has something more to say. Cause if you look at the quotes.

• 24:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Griffin Newman?

  Up until that point and from after.

• 24:13David Sims?

  It's done, I'm not doing it.

• 24:14Griffin Newman?

  Dead is a doornail, will never come back. And like the second someone else, and the pitch on the comic book was, I want to get all the notes on what you think season three would have been and try to recreate it. I'm not looking to make my own thing.

• 24:30David Sims?

  Yeah, Haley, I mean, he talks about some of his ideas, but I honestly don't even wanna get into them because they're not that important. Because David Lynch was just like, no. Well, not rude, really.

• 24:39Griffin Newman?

  Rude on your point.

• 24:40David Sims?

  And then apparently, uh, around 2012. Right after Christmas, David had lunch with Mark Frost at Musso and Frank's.

• 24:48Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 24:49David Sims?

  LA institution. Bob's big boy probably closed for the night or something.

• 24:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 24:55David Sims?

  And.

• 24:56Griffin Newman?

  Well, he'd already eaten there five times that day.

• 24:58David Sims?

  They start chatting peaks. And they keep it under their hats, but Mark starts coming for lunch to Lynch's painting studio and they would sort of write together.

• 25:11David Sims?

  And Frost, you know, basically was like, Laura's saying, I'll see you again in 25 years. That's where we start, right? Exactly.

• 25:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. If we're gonna do it, now's the time to do it.

• 25:22David Sims?

  Right. And we have this dilemma of, you know, good Cooper trapped, bad Cooper out in the world that we never had resolved. And why don't we pick up that thread? And yeah, I mean, Lynch's big thing is like, I have to be involved in writing and directing every single one. I don't want to have it be like it was when it was broadcast TV. And so they start to co-write the screenplay over Skype.

• 25:49Griffin Newman?

  Wild.

• 25:50David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Griffin Newman?

  Which Skype is part of the show.

• 25:52David Sims?

  That's true, it is.

• 25:53Griffin Newman?

  It's one of these things where I feel like-

• 25:55David Sims?

  Like Warren Frost's performance, or Mark Frost's father, obviously, is entirely over Skype?

• 25:59Griffin Newman?

  Entirely.

• 25:59David Sims?

  Yes.

• 26:00Griffin Newman?

  Wait, at a, at a time where that was not as much of a thing, now we're sort of used to it?

• 26:04David Sims?

  Very blurry. Like, hello?

• 26:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? Now we're like, oh, they'll write in like, a character only exists over Zoom because it's an easy fix, or whatever. I feel like that was a little novel at this point. One of the wet hot summer seasons has this, but other than that?

• 26:20David Sims?

  Supposedly, they did write it as a gigantic document, one big document. One source says 335 pages, another says 500 pages.

• 26:28Griffin Newman?

  Is there any sense of whether they were sort of writing stuff in any chronology, like narratively? Or if it was just like, as stuff came to them and here are all the pieces?

• 26:40David Sims?

  I think it's more the latter.

• 26:41Griffin Newman?

  Okay, yeah. I just wonder if there's a version of this that is like, each plot thread as like 20 continuous pages.

• 26:48David Sims?

  Like Untangling it all?

• 26:50Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 26:50David Sims?

  Lynch does say, he sees it as a film.

• 26:53Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 26:54David Sims?

  Which, you know, is part of the reason people are like, it's a film!

• 26:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 26:58David Sims?

  Mark Frost, I think cares less about that distinction. He says, one thing that really, Frost, interested him was to explore what happened to a town over 25 years and the people in it, how they changed. Yeah, okay, duh.

• 27:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It does feel a little secondary, if not tertiary, to where this ended up.

• 27:17David Sims?

  But one thing that they were very interested in, which is very clear in the film, is this sort of post-recession-

• 27:24Griffin Newman?

  You're calling it a film, you're doing it.

• 27:25David Sims?

  Whatever the fuck, Twin Peaks. Is the post-recession kind of meltdown that left behind these kind of like ghost towns.

• 27:33Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 27:34David Sims?

  Right, like, because that's so much of this movie, of, Jesus, of Twin Peaks: The Return, whatever you want to call it.

• 27:40David Sims?

  It's set in those weird like, Phoenix and Vegas like subdivisions, right? Where it's just like these empty abandoned houses.

• 27:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:48David Sims?

  You know, the sort of post-Great Recession stuff.

• 27:51Griffin Newman?

  Does that become more- Even more textual as it goes on?

• 27:57David Sims?

  It's just, I guess, yeah, I guess I'm now, I'm trying to put myself in where you guys are. It's just a big part of the show.

• 28:02Griffin Newman?

  Been picking up on that.

• 28:04David Sims?

  Um, yeah. Anyway, we can talk about it.

• 28:05Griffin Newman?

  In the same way.

• 28:06David Sims?

  Uh, David Nevins.

• 28:08Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 28:09David Sims?

  Who runs Showtime at the time.

• 28:10Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:11David Sims?

  Here's wind of this.

• 28:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 28:13David Sims?

  And basically sits down and like begs them.

• 28:16Griffin Newman?

  Twin Peaks, the original is of course owned by CBS Television.

• 28:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 28:19Griffin Newman?

  Who also is the parent company of Showtime.

• 28:21David Sims?

  Right. Um, and obviously on Showtime, you can do what you want.

• 28:26Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:26David Sims?

  You know, there's no content restrictions, really.

• 28:30Griffin Newman?

  They love Boobz on Showtime.

• 28:32David Sims?

  Yes.

• 28:32Griffin Newman?

  It's one of their favorite things.

• 28:34David Sims?

  And Frost was very interested in avoiding like a binge model. He didn't want to go to Netflix because he wanted to roll it out week to week.

• 28:42Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:42David Sims?

  Uh, sort of like the original show had been. And so in 2014, it is announced Showtime will be producing a nine-episode revival of Twin Peaks.

• 28:51Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:51David Sims?

  In 2015, Lynch starts saying like, the show's in jeopardy and tweets like, "I wasn't offered enough money to do this in the way I wanted it to be done, uh, but it's pretty much dead."

• 29:04Griffin Newman?

  Kind of canny, public negotiation.

• 29:06David Sims?

  Right. Showtime's like, "Oh, we're very saddened to read this, but, uh, we love the world of Twin Peaks and we hope we can bring it back."

• 29:13David Sims?

  I think the big clash, it seems, was Showtime being like, can this please be episodic television? And David Lynch being like, no, uh, I want to make a basically 18-hour feature film, so you're gonna have to pay for like a feature film crew every single day.

• 29:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 29:28David Sims?

  Of this gigantic shoot, uh, including like lighting machines, standby painters, special effects technicians, like, basically like not going by the way television is produced.

• 29:38Griffin Newman?

  No, and it even manifests in ways like on the absolute like backend of the thing. I mean, I feel like you talked about this in another episode, but actors on TV shows get paid per episode. So if he's shooting something like this and someone shoots three days, but those three days end up being split, that footage across nine episodes, that's, you're paying them like, there's a lot of weird accounting at two points of like how much you're paying them weekly to film? And then how much you have to pay them later based on how it edits out?

• 30:09David Sims?

  And just because he's considering it to be a film.

• 30:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 30:13David Sims?

  It is technically to the accountants.

• 30:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 30:17David Sims?

  Episodic.

• 30:17Griffin Newman?

  Right. And I think, by the way, that extends into like most positions.

• 30:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Griffin Newman?

  I mean, I've had versions of this before where you like shoot two scenes and then they end up putting one in another episode and they have to pay you twice. And it's like a nice bonus. He's basically designed a production where all of it's going to be like that. Where he's asking to have like open like field to do a really long shoot his way with his people and then construct it however he wants later. Which is also going to cause all sorts of complications. This was my second question for you. When they, because the original announcement's nine.

• 30:53David Sims?

  Yes.

• 30:54Griffin Newman?

  Then.

• 30:54David Sims?

  Then they have this falling out and then the renegotiation is Nevin's basically comes to him and is like, what can we do? And Lynch is like, I don't know. It might be more episodes. I, you know, and the encounters are like, it can't be more episodes. That's even more expensive. And finally, apparently Nevin's was just like, I can give you this much money.

• 31:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:11David Sims?

  Tell me if that's enough. And Lynch was like, okay. And Nevin said like, the money we gave him, he worked it out. He.

• 31:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 31:17David Sims?

  He, he made it conservatively like, or whatever, you know, it's not like he like went crazy.

• 31:21Griffin Newman?

  But they didn't announce 18 at that point.

• 31:23David Sims?

  No.

• 31:23Griffin Newman?

  Right? So this is my question is almost, and maybe there is no answer for this. Is it like, I've written a bunch of shit. You're giving me the sum of money. I'm going to figure out how to shoot it. And then afterwards I will figure out how many episodes.

• 31:33David Sims?

  I think that's exactly what happened.

• 31:34Griffin Newman?

  Because you could totally see based on certain scenes playing out at different lengths than they do. And how much the show experiments with time and rhythm. That there are many different ways you could construct this into various different episode orders.

• 31:49David Sims?

  I, I, yes. I do not, there's nothing about this show that suggests it had to be the way it is.

• 31:54Griffin Newman?

  There also.

• 31:55David Sims?

  I love how it is.

• 31:55Griffin Newman?

  Might be a point where all the extra costs from him making it this weird way ends up evening out if it starts to be divided across a long enough number of episodes.

• 32:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 32:06Griffin Newman?

  You know, that like, oh, we're getting like almost four months of Twin Peaks. And so much of this show also, it's weird thing was this is like a different time in both cable television and streaming. Where it felt like the future was more individual channels having their own streaming services. And Showtime wanting to get people to sign up for whatever it was called at the time. Showtime Anytime, I think.

• 32:32David Sims?

  I'm just, no, I'm gonna have to poop again.

• 32:34Griffin Newman?

  You know you're gonna have to-

• 32:35David Sims?

  I just know it's gonna happen.

• 32:37Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying, though. You think certain plot threads are resolved and then they come back and you're like, Ashley Judd is still in this. That wasn't a one-off.

• 32:43David Sims?

  And I love how you-

• 32:43Griffin Newman?

  But Jennifer Jason-Leigh might be gone?

• 32:45David Sims?

  It's like, I'm gonna go again.

• 32:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 32:47David Sims?

  And then you can come back out and you're gonna be like, and what was Showtime branded as at this era? Like, um, yes, I think it was called Showtime Anytime. They're like, on demand.

• 32:54Griffin Newman?

  No, what happened when you pooped last time was very Twin Peaks The Return. There was just two minutes of silence.

• 33:01Griffin Newman?

  It was like we were just quietly sweeping up the Bang Bang Bar floor. And you're like, is this the end of the episode? No, there's like two more scenes after this?

• 33:08David Sims?

  The production lasted 140 days.

• 33:10Griffin Newman?

  What I was gonna say.

• 33:11David Sims?

  Oh, what were you gonna say?

• 33:13Griffin Newman?

  When this premiered, and people were like, oh, ratings aren't great. Showtime very quickly was like, we know this is the kind of thing that has obsessives who will sign up for our streaming service solely for this. And they did.

• 33:26David Sims?

  They're right.

• 33:26Griffin Newman?

  And they were like, oh, like 400,000 people or 500,000 people watched it. And then within a week, Showtime was like, hey, the like seven day was a million per episode. And also, by the way, the number of subscribers we got solely off of this was worth it to us.

• 33:42David Sims?

  I, I don't, yeah, and I don't care. I never care about people like telling me premium television ratings. So it's right. I'm like, it doesn't matter. Like, they don't sell ads against this stuff.

• 33:51Griffin Newman?

  This is the experimentation of like them being like, we're getting four months of Twin Peaks coming out weekly. Like, we're both trying to get people to sign up for the channel and sign up for the streaming service and whatever. Like, this was a time where the business was in such flux that they were open to this kind of experimentation.

• 34:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Griffin Newman?

  In a certain way.

• 34:12David Sims?

  Also, it just, but it was funny, because this show came out in the midst of like the sort of Game of Thrones era of TV.

• 34:19Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:20David Sims?

  And so there was this whole kind of machinery online geared towards like episodic analysis. Weekly podcasting.

• 34:27Griffin Newman?

  The kind of industry that-

• 34:28David Sims?

  Theory, you know, sort of unspooling.

• 34:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:31David Sims?

  Yes.

• 34:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 34:32David Sims?

  And I saw it try to write, like, and people were like, Twin Peaks is back. We need to like, get ready for this. And then this show was so resistant to that kind of immediate scrutiny.

• 34:45Griffin Newman?

  You wanna watch three minutes of Russ Tamblin panting shovels?

• 34:48David Sims?

  Yes. So, anyway.

• 34:51Griffin Newman?

  That will give you no answers until two episodes later and the answer is just, oh, it's a grift?

• 35:00Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 35:01David Sims?

  Yes.

• 35:02Griffin Newman?

  Moooo.

• 35:05David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 35:06Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 35:07David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 35:08Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:14David Sims?

  Okay.

• 35:14Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:19David Sims?

  Wow.

• 35:19Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 35:21David Sims?

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

• 35:28Griffin Newman?

  Well, MUBI 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 MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 35:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 35:40Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 35:41David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 35:42Griffin Newman?

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

• 35:48David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 35:49Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schomburn, Past and Future Guest.

• 35:52David Sims?

  Past and Future Guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest.

• 35:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 35:56David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 35:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 35:57David Sims?

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

• 36:03Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 36:03David Sims?

  You know, legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 36:06Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 36:07David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 36:09Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 36:09David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 36:10Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 36:11David Sims?

  Such a cool movie, won the Queer Pal 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, uh, this summer and now it's on MUBI.

• 36:22Griffin Newman?

  Hannah Einbinder plays a 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.

• 36:36David Sims?

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

• 36:40Griffin Newman?

  What happens? 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, uh, an example of there still being new stories to tell.

• 36:52David Sims?

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

• 37:04Griffin Newman?

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

• 37:10David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 37:15Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 37:15David Sims?

  Yes?

• 37:16Griffin 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.

• 37:36David 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.

• 37:56Griffin 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.

• 38:12David 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/listen2dracula.

• 38:47Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 38:47David Sims?

  Yes?

• 38:48Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 38:49David Sims?

  Uh-oh.

• 38:50Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 38:51David Sims?

  Ah!

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  And you know what that means. The old stereotype about November.

• 38:55David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 38:56Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 38:57David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 38:59Griffin 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.

• 39:07David Sims?

  No, though, maybe we should.

• 39:08Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 39:10David Sims?

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

• 39:13Griffin 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.

• 39:27David 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.

• 39:33Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 39:34David 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.

• 39:42Griffin Newman?

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

• 39:50David Sims?

  Thank you for that.

• 39:50Griffin 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.

• 40:02David Sims?

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

• 40:06Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 40:07David 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 CAH MB for muscle production and zinc carnosine for gut support.

• 40:26Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 40:26David Sims?

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

• 40:30Griffin 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.

• 40:38David 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 K two 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.

• 41:10David Sims?

  140 days of shooting. Lynch obviously did it all himself. He said it was exciting, but extremely difficult.

• 41:15Griffin Newman?

  So that's about a six. Shoot.

• 41:17David Sims?

  Like five. Yeah, I don't know. That's a lot.

• 41:19Griffin Newman?

  With weekends.

• 41:20David Sims?

  This is exhausting. It's exhausting and grueling, I think. And there's lots of day shoots and night shoots. He only had one day off a week, yada, yada, yada. But at the same time, you know, he loved doing it, I think. And it's kind of his opus in a way.

• 41:32Griffin Newman?

  And yeah, and it does feel like, uh, let, let me like, empty the tanks completely of everything I have in me right now. Right? It doesn't feel like this is made with the intentionality of here is my final work.

• 41:45David Sims?

  No, but he's, you know, I, Peter Demming, the DP.

• 41:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes, a legend.

• 41:49David Sims?

  DP, a legend himself.

• 41:51Griffin Newman?

  A guy we've covered with a very diverse filmography on this show, who shot like the Evil Dead movies, the Austin Powers movies.

• 42:00David Sims?

  Wow, that's right. And we've never done Scream, which is.

• 42:02Griffin Newman?

  And Mulholland Drive, yeah. But like wildly different looking films is like quietly a legend.

• 42:08David Sims?

  He is. He's a fucking incredible DP. He says they shot like a feature film, like you would go to a location and shoot all the action that took place at that location over the course of 18 episodes, right? Like, that's not how you make TV, obviously. But actors didn't really know what was going on. They didn't have access to the entire script or anything like that. McLaughlin's really the only one who's sort of in on the big story. Everyone is basically, everyone else just being given their pages.

• 42:36Griffin Newman?

  He is basically the big story.

• 42:38David Sims?

  He is, he is. But obviously, he's not in every scene. Like, he's all over the place. But it must have been very strange to be, say,

• 42:47David Sims?

  Russ Hamblin, no, not Russ Hamblin, um, Richard Bamer.

• 42:50Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 42:51David Sims?

  Right? And, you know, it's like, hey, what should I do? And it's like, yeah, yeah, show up. Um, you and Ashley Judd are gonna like hear a weird noise.

• 42:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 42:58David Sims?

  And he's like, oh, and how does this feed into anything? It's like, well, we'll see you later, you know, anyway.

• 43:01Griffin Newman?

  Have a long conversation with your brother about weed over the phone?

• 43:06David Sims?

  So, yeah, exactly.

• 43:09David Sims?

  It's interesting. Carol Struckin, Struckin, the, the giant, the fireman. Lurch. In this, Lurch.

• 43:18David Sims?

  Said that, um, he, uh, back in the day, wait, um, he, he says like, that the pace of Lynch's action was slower and Lynch was telling him to do everything slower.

• 43:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:31David Sims?

  But McLaughlin's like, but he was very efficient. We would do things in like one or two takes.

• 43:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's pace of production. Production versus pace of scenes.

• 43:40David Sims?

  Yeah, I guess that's it. Right.

• 43:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:41David Sims?

  Jim Belushi at one point ad libbed something. And I think this is either, you can either watch a clip of this or I've just read this before.

• 43:48Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 43:48David Sims?

  Where Lynch, there's a pause, they call cut and Lynch goes, Mr. Belushi, do I need to report you to the principal's office? Cause he had like gone off script.

• 43:56Griffin Newman?

  Funny.

• 43:57David Sims?

  Very funny to think about it. Uh, Lynch is very uninterested in like improv. Like he's like, no, no, do what you're, you know, do what you're told.

• 44:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:06David Sims?

  They shot on digital, obviously.

• 44:07Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:09David Sims?

  Lynch wanted Fisk to be the production designer, Jack Fisk.

• 44:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:12David Sims?

  Great Jack Fisk, but he was working on, um, The Revenant. Uh, so he gave, uh, him Lynch, uh, his protege Ruth De Jong, who later worked in Oppenheimer.

• 44:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 44:23David Sims?

  Very cool.

• 44:24Griffin Newman?

  Uh, a digital thing, it's wild to see this be the first major work he had done since inland. Which looks, you know, bad on purpose.

• 44:35David Sims?

  Sure.

• 44:35Griffin Newman?

  That is Lynch wanting the kind of roughest.

• 44:38David Sims?

  Whereas this is like 4K cameras that are really, you know, top of the line.

• 44:42Griffin Newman?

  It's like he's using digital photography to make things like unsettlingly clear.

• 44:49David Sims?

  Yes.

• 44:50Griffin Newman?

  I watched this and I'm like, this is like uncomfortably focused. You know, it feels like he's leaning into the digital of it in a way where it's like, oh, it's become easy enough to have like a very quick production where images are this incredibly clean.

• 45:05David Sims?

  Okay. Kyle McLaughlin. They get him on board. Phew.

• 45:09Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 45:11David Sims?

  And, uh, essentially very much immediately Lynch is like, you'll be playing essentially three characters. Uh, Dale, who we don't see too much of so far. Bad Cooper.

• 45:25David Sims?

  Is that, I don't know how, you know, doppelganger, I don't know what you want to call him.

• 45:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 45:28David Sims?

  And, uh, uh, you know. Yeah, Dougie, Mr. Jackpot's, uh, sort of the, the finest creation of Twin Peaks.

• 45:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm, I'm late to the party. I'm just gonna say what everyone's been telling me for years. An astonishing performance.

• 45:42David Sims?

  It's an incredible performance by Kyle McLaughlin.

• 45:44Griffin Newman?

  I was ready for this character to be funny and compelling.

• 45:48David Sims?

  Yes.

• 45:48Griffin Newman?

  You know, I'd seen a lot of images and heard people talk about it and even so I was not prepared. And I think the actual like technical craft of what McLaughlin's doing here.

• 45:58David Sims?

  There's so much stillness.

• 45:59Griffin Newman?

  Extraordinary.

• 46:00David Sims?

  Yes.

• 46:01Griffin Newman?

  But also it's like, you know. Craft.

• 46:04David Sims?

  Cheese. I just like how he says, just the last. Last thing anyone says. And it's but it's. Oh, right. Like, I say something to you and you're like, something.

• 46:13Griffin Newman?

  But that's my point. It's like, he's, yeah. He's, he's basically playing head empty, no thoughts, right?

• 46:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Griffin Newman?

  And part of the big joke, so far at least, from what I've seen, is that it's like, if you look like him and you have the right haircut and the right suit, people will inevitably start to project meaning onto it.

• 46:31David Sims?

  This is the brilliant gag of.

• 46:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. There's a Sean C. Gardner-esque thing.

• 46:35David Sims?

  He said being there is something he looked at. He looked at Jeff Bridges in Starman, you know, like.

• 46:39Griffin Newman?

  All of these performances we love.

• 46:39David Sims?

  Guys who are head empty. Right. Yes.

• 46:42Griffin Newman?

  This is the most empty I have seen of anyone trying to play this sort of thing.

• 46:46David Sims?

  Right.

• 46:46Griffin Newman?

  And you keep watching these scenes where he like, doesn't know how to walk and is holding cups weirdly and whatever.

• 46:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 46:52Griffin Newman?

  And every one of these scenes, I'm like, how is this scene not going to end with people having him institutionalized? How will he make it to the end of the scene without someone having a complete mental breakdown and snapping at him? And he just slowly brings everyone around to him, despite genuinely seeming hollow.

• 47:09David Sims?

  And sometimes causing real trouble.

• 47:11Griffin Newman?

  Truly. Yeah.

• 47:12David Sims?

  Um, we'll talk about it. Anyway, comic clock and involved, obviously, some guys, uh, who are in the show, I think, were just like, yeah, of course I'll come back. People like Everett McGill, big ad. Uh, he had basically retired from acting, but.

• 47:24Griffin Newman?

  Haven't gotten to him yet. That's a spoiler?

• 47:26David Sims?

  Yes, he's in the show. I mean.

• 47:28Griffin Newman?

  God damn it.

• 47:28David Sims?

  Uh, Lynch just had to call him. Probably the biggest missing name is Michael Anke as Harry Truman.

• 47:34Griffin Newman?

  Was fully retired, had not acted in a while.

• 47:36David Sims?

  Correct.

• 47:37Griffin Newman?

  And then did say he was gonna come out and do the show.

• 47:40David Sims?

  There was, I think, some suggestion of that, but didn't happen.

• 47:42Griffin Newman?

  It's never been clear what happened.

• 47:43David Sims?

  Uh, Robert Forrester, who was the original pick to play Sheriff Truman way back in the day, comes in. I mean, just a performance that I adore. Him and Twin Peaks, he's just so fucking funny and good.

• 47:54Griffin Newman?

  This is perhaps a dumb thing to say. Maybe not dumb, but I, I was just taken watching this by, I think, part of its time dilation of the pandemic, right? That I feel like this show came out only three years ago and have felt that way for the last five years, even though it's now eight years since it aired, right?

• 48:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Griffin Newman?

  And so this is eight years, shit happens, whatever. And the nature of using a lot of older actors, it is astonishing how many people, this is like their last project or one of their last projects.

• 48:24David Sims?

  Mike Miguel Ferrer.

• 48:25Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 48:25David Sims?

  Uh, Harry Dean Stanton died, uh, after doing this.

• 48:28Griffin Newman?

  The people who are legacy from original Twin Peaks and some of the new actors in this. This feels like this weird curtain call for so many. People. And a lot of them had died in between it being shot and it airing.

• 48:42David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Griffin Newman?

  Like you have end credits in in honor of dedicated to for Coulson for Ferrer.

• 48:51David Sims?

  Yeah. Right.

• 48:53David Sims?

  Then you have plenty of new faces. Matthew Lillard, you guys have already met.

• 48:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 48:58David Sims?

  Michael Sarah is in these first seven episodes. You might have referenced him before.

• 49:03Griffin Newman?

  Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ashley Judd, Amanda Seyfried, Caleb Laundrie Bag.

• 49:07David Sims?

  There's a lot of people who make sense.

• 49:09Griffin Newman?

  Jimbo, Lucy.

• 49:11David Sims?

  Belushi, Robert Nepper is gonna show up. I'm not sure if you've seen him yet. Tom Sizemore. Have you seen him?

• 49:17Griffin Newman?

  I've seen Sizemore, Gelman, Dulsmatchian. Gelman.

• 49:24David Sims?

  Yeah. Anyway, let's get into Twin Peaks. I am just gonna.

• 49:28Griffin Newman?

  But the list is pretty crazy for how many of these I feel like I knew were on it. While watching it, you cannot keep all those names in your head.

• 49:35David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Griffin Newman?

  So someone will pop up and you'll be like, oh, holy shit. And then you're like, oh, Naomi Watts is one of the main characters.

• 49:40David Sims?

  She's kind of one of the main characters and then others, right, are just kind of popping in.

• 49:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 49:44David Sims?

  Including some, you know, legacy characters.

• 49:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 49:48David Sims?

  So we're starting off with Twin Peaks. Cooper in the red room. I'll see you in 25 years. 25 years later.

• 49:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 49:57David Sims?

  The giant comes and is basically like, off you go. Gives him some cryptic clues. Here we go. Richard and Linda. These are things that fans obsess over. The number 430.

• 50:09Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 50:09David Sims?

  And then Cooper disappears.

• 50:11Griffin Newman?

  The things in this scene, particular people obsess over?

• 50:14David Sims?

  Anything in Twin Peaks, the return that is in the other world, in the red room, or any other such, you know, all the language is metaphorical and like symbolic and stuff. And so people try to understand like, what does it mean? Because I think Mark Frost especially loves that kind of stuff.

• 50:29Griffin Newman?

  So what do you make of? Of that opening.

• 50:31David Sims?

  You, we can't talk about.

• 50:32Griffin Newman?

  We can't.

• 50:33David Sims?

  Because it'll spoil the future episodes for me? I think, I think it's mostly setting up the sort of finale.

• 50:37Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 50:37David Sims?

  Of the show.

• 50:38Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 50:38David Sims?

  Um, and, uh, but yeah, so, you know, but just think about like, again, everyone's on their couch being like, okay.

• 50:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 50:47David Sims?

  And then the next scene, I think is, uh, uh, Dr. Jacoby, we love Dr. Jacoby, gets some shovels.

• 50:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 50:54David Sims?

  Moving on, you know, and then you're just, you're so you're like, okay.

• 50:57Griffin Newman?

  But this like really slow.

• 50:59David Sims?

  Remember who's in Twin Peaks, uh?

• 51:01Griffin Newman?

  Distant shot.

• 51:02David Sims?

  Right, right, yes. The, the car coming in.

• 51:04Griffin Newman?

  It's this immediate, like, this is not the, the tone, the rhythm.

• 51:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 51:11Griffin Newman?

  The flow I was expecting for this show. And then is New York the third thing you see basically?

• 51:15David Sims?

  And then we're in New York.

• 51:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:16David Sims?

  And one of the set pieces of Twin Peaks, The Return, that I love so much, uh, there's a high rise.

• 51:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 51:22David Sims?

  There's a weird glass box sticking out of the high rise.

• 51:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Ben Rosenfeld is in it?

• 51:27David Sims?

  Ben Rosenfeld is there.

• 51:28Griffin Newman?

  Who just sits on a couch all day and stares at it. And then every once in a while takes out the SD card from the camera.

• 51:34David Sims?

  Swaps in a new one.

• 51:35Griffin Newman?

  Puts it in a case, swaps in a new one. Madeline, or it's not, uh.

• 51:38David Sims?

  Isn't that Madeline Zima?

• 51:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 51:40David Sims?

  Uh, famous.

• 51:42Griffin Newman?

  From the nanny.

• 51:43David Sims?

  Child actor, right? From the nanny who is in California. She's around.

• 51:46Griffin Newman?

  Comes to visit him, or at least to drop off coffee and clearly is constantly making a play to figure out what's going on in that room. Also maybe has a crush on this guy. The rules are very clear. No one else is allowed in. You're like, what the fuck is this? As I said, just immediately, being in New York City, all new characters, things that feel totally unrelated is very jarring.

• 52:10David Sims?

  And then we cut over to, uh, the hotel. I'm just going through the episode.

• 52:14Griffin Newman?

  But also like.

• 52:15David Sims?

  It's pretty easy, right?

• 52:16Griffin Newman?

  The multiple scenes you've talked about maybe take up 30 minutes.

• 52:19David Sims?

  They're long. They're, they're lingering.

• 52:21Griffin Newman?

  Long, slow cinema, basically, yes.

• 52:25David Sims?

  So, right, what do we have? We have Ben Horn. Kind of just rotting away at the, at the Great Northern, right? You know, having like this sort of aimless conversation with Ashley Judd, who's playing his sort of, you know, assistant.

• 52:39Griffin Newman?

  Left hand woman.

• 52:39David Sims?

  Secretary, whatever, yes. About, uh, you know, a refund. And you got, you got Jerry Horn now with like a crazy white beard, like stomping around.

• 52:50Griffin Newman?

  Basically talking about like legalization of pot, how he's basically made a business off of this, is that right?

• 52:55David Sims?

  I guess so. Jerry is one of the characters where I'm just like, I'm so exhausted by this.

• 53:00Griffin Newman?

  Sure, but also I'm like, in these first seven episodes, way more Jerry.

• 53:03David Sims?

  Lot of Jerry.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  It's nice to be back in the hotel. It's the first time we're back in a location that's familiar.

• 53:09David Sims?

  It's a little bit more relaxing, certainly.

• 53:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:14David Sims?

  You got, then we got Lucy. Here's Lucy. Thank God Lucy's still behind the desk at the sheriff's department. We're being introduced to Truman. There's a different Truman. She still can't keep the Truemen's apart.

• 53:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I mean, unsurprisingly, maybe my favorite bit, I think it comes in episode two or three. But her being so confused by cell phones still.

• 53:36David Sims?

  Yes.

• 53:37Griffin Newman?

  That it makes her literally like rocket out of her chair.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  It seems like the way-

• 53:42David Sims?

  That people can move around on the phone.

• 53:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  It seems the way they've run the sheriff department is there's like the original-

• 53:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Part and then there's like where they actually are doing real police work in the background.

• 53:52Griffin Newman?

  And those people are like so dismissive or like, who are these legacy characters?

• 53:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 53:58Griffin Newman?

  But, but the, like, all the stuff in the police station feels the closest to the original show.

• 54:05David Sims?

  It does, but it's the, the change in energy from Aunt Keen as kind of like do good or Harry Truman.

• 54:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 54:12David Sims?

  To Forrester who's so good as like this kind of weary like, alright, you know, like it's sort of like how he's being given like crazy news and he just kind of reacts very, very evenly.

• 54:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 54:25David Sims?

  Uh, it does kind of feel, there is this sense that like Twin Peaks has gotten pretty nasty in a modern way.

• 54:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 54:32David Sims?

  Like are a little depressing or something, right? Like that there's still a lot of like-

• 54:35Griffin Newman?

  And all our kind of original characters feel sort of like wistful dinosaurs.

• 54:40David Sims?

  Kind of tired, right? You know, obviously they're older, you know?

• 54:43Griffin Newman?

  But like, I think part of this is just that like, uh, Andy and Lucy are never gonna change.

• 54:48David Sims?

  And even though they're-

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  Their energy is so consistent.

• 54:50David Sims?

  Right, even though they've physically changed a little bit or whatever.

• 54:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 54:53David Sims?

  Uh, Hawk is still, Hawk is amazing in The Return. He looks so good. He's got so much gravitas.

• 54:58Griffin Newman?

  Point I'm at feels like the second lead of the show.

• 55:01David Sims?

  He has a lot of like action.

• 55:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes, it feels like he's-

• 55:04David Sims?

  On screen.

• 55:04Griffin Newman?

  He's the other character that is like driving quote unquote story. And certainly just has like a lot of screen time, feels like he's now the primary character within the police station now. Yeah. And looks fucking unbelievable.

• 55:20David Sims?

  He looks really cool.

• 55:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:21David Sims?

  And then we have Mr. C.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  We cut to a driving scene with slowed down music. And I'm like, wait.

• 55:32Griffin Newman?

  Is it Christmas already?

• 55:33Speaker 03

  The fuck is happening? This is incredible.

• 55:37David Sims?

  Yeah, I think that's how we should refer to the doppelganger, right? They call him Mr. C, right?

• 55:42Griffin Newman?

  He looks like Bob and Dale mashed up.

• 55:45David Sims?

  Yeah, that's the idea.

• 55:46Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 55:46David Sims?

  It's like, it's kind, it's a, I think it's a brilliant job on him. Cause the wig is sort of Bob-esque, right? He's got like the black eyes.

• 55:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 55:54David Sims?

  So he's really like automatically unsettling looking. And then he talks in that kind of stilted way.

• 56:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 56:02David Sims?

  That's, you know.

• 56:03Griffin Newman?

  I know there's the later scene where they start to like truly superimpose Bob's face over him.

• 56:08David Sims?

  They do that a couple of times. Yeah.

• 56:10Griffin Newman?

  But I also feel like they're doing something like prosthetically, I don't want to say prosthetically, but I feel like they're like

• 56:16David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 56:17Griffin Newman?

  pulling McLaughlin's face back a little bit. They're giving him a little tautness to make him have a little more of the grimace of Bob. Or it's something that he's just doing himself physically.

• 56:25David Sims?

  He might be clenching his jaw. I don't know.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Just the way he's dressed too. He looks like a bad man.

• 56:32Griffin Newman?

  He looks like a real piece of shit.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Slick back hair, sloppy states.

• 56:37David Sims?

  And if he's hanging out with people, they're.

• 56:40Griffin Newman?

  He does. That's, I mean.

• 56:41David Sims?

  He's a sloppy state guy.

• 56:43Griffin Newman?

  He's a sloppy, he likes to slop.

• 56:44David Sims?

  He slops him up?

• 56:44Griffin Newman?

  He slops him up.

• 56:46David Sims?

  He's always like going to some.

• 56:48Griffin Newman?

  You can change. It's never too late to change.

• 56:49David Sims?

  Going to some shack where there's like four, like guys in wife beaters and stuff like in rocking chairs. Who are like, howdy. Like he like knows every bizarre criminal in the world.

• 57:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I do just love this kind of thing. I, I mean, Bing Jao Malkovich has a version of this. But like someone so badly wanting to take over another person's body. And then they get in there and they cannot help but morph that body into their own look.

• 57:16David Sims?

  Right.

• 57:17Griffin Newman?

  Right? That it's like, oh my God, I'm now like in the body of Dale Cooper. I like, I'm able to walk amongst the living. I can like take advantage of this. And then like Bob basically just turns Cooper into himself.

• 57:29David Sims?

  Then we're back to the, um, the New York office. And we, um, the two characters, Tracy and Sam, uh, they, uh, look, let's be honest, they have sex with each other.

• 57:43Griffin Newman?

  She shows up at the coffees, the guards are gone. He's like, this is an opportunity.

• 57:48David Sims?

  All right.

• 57:48Griffin Newman?

  She makes the entree.

• 57:50David Sims?

  Uh, and then, uh, nothing weird happens to them. They have sex and it's lovely.

• 57:54Griffin Newman?

  He starts to explain, like, what he's doing here. I don't even know who I'm working for. I don't know what this is.

• 57:59David Sims?

  To watch this box, right.

• 58:01Griffin Newman?

  Right. Apparently sometimes something happens. The last guy saw something happen, but he's not around anymore. Um, like the weirdness of this job. Um, I, I will say, this for me is the most unsettled I have been with any Lynch scene.

• 58:18David Sims?

  It's pretty nasty. To be clear, they get slashed to pieces by a monster that, uh, like emerges in the box.

• 58:24Griffin Newman?

  And I don't know if it's just because I had no, uh, sense of this coming, or even this plotline being anything in this show. But some of the other things that I feel like you and some of our guests have talked about as like imagery that has like primally haunted you forever.

• 58:40David Sims?

  Right.

• 58:40Griffin Newman?

  Like the lady behind the diner in Mulholland and some of those things, where I like watch them and I'm like, yeah, that is upsetting. This like actually kind of physically shook me.

• 58:50David Sims?

  Uh, it's nasty.

• 58:51Griffin Newman?

  The actual projection itself and the length at which it stays and the eeriness of it, like really kind of freaked me the fuck out. And then obviously the attack itself is so upsetting.

• 59:01David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it did immediately like recalibrate me to like, oh, this show has me on edge.

• 59:08David Sims?

  Yeah, but it's also, uh, it is kind of a welcome to premium cable bitch moment where you're like, uh, right, this is like gory. And like sexual in a way that couldn't be.

• 59:18Griffin Newman?

  I think the show is great. I do, not to question Lynch's intent, but I do think it was a little bit weird to have a. Chyron pop up of Freddy Krueger saying, welcome to premium cable bitch. I just think that's mashing in a whole different mythology.

• 59:31David Sims?

  I don't know. I really appreciated Robert Englund's work on the show.

• 59:38Griffin Newman?

  Welcome to premium cable.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  The effect of the monster.

• 59:42David Sims?

  Is kind of like a humanoid, faceless thing.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, but there's something about it too, that it feels like really crisp, like just like how the whole series looks.

• 59:53Griffin Newman?

  The whole thing is just too.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  I don't know why. There's just something about it. There's something about the, the special effects throughout this.

• 1:00:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Can we talk about the special effects?

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  I can't really put my finger on it, but it feels like he's really capturing his dream worlds.

• 1:00:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  In a way that he never really has had the access to the technology, maybe in the past.

• 1:00:14Griffin Newman?

  I feel like when this came out, I remember people kind of clowning on the use of computer effects.

• 1:00:21David Sims?

  Sure, because of course it's his own particular style.

• 1:00:25Griffin Newman?

  And a lot of it was in the framework of like, you know, so baller that David Lynch will just like reuse like a basic 101 assets. And doesn't even give a shit, right? With this massive budget, he doesn't care about the effects looking realistic. And then other people were like, almost framing it as a Michael Mann watermark. Is he that checked out? Is he this lazy to this sort of stuff? I just like find, we, we have this conversation. I feel like it's come up several times now. In our group texts with the doughboys.

• 1:00:58David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:00:59Griffin Newman?

  Where we'll just kick this question of like, is there any instance of scary CGI? Is there any horror movie where CGI is scary?

• 1:01:09David Sims?

  When these modern horror movies have to deploy their CGI monster.

• 1:01:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:01:13David Sims?

  It's usually a little underwhelming.

• 1:01:15Griffin Newman?

  Or even CGI augmentation of a monster. There, there is, I think, evocative imagery that has been created, but like, has anything ever like truly scared us in that way? And I'm like, all the CGI in this actually scares me.

• 1:01:29David Sims?

  I agree.

• 1:01:30Griffin Newman?

  And it's, there's something weird about, it feels like by not trying to go for like, the modern version of like, really render it in that physical space and light it like this and whatever. It's like he's doing a digital version of like old optically printed effects. Where part of what's interesting is that it's like. Truly a layer on top of the image.

• 1:01:52David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Griffin Newman?

  And it's surreal and you're trying to position it, whatever. But like, it also just feels like the, the imagery is so much more uncanny. Cause you're like, it's just weirder for there to just be this like, green ghostwriter thing. Moving across the screen or this like blur you can't make sense of.

• 1:02:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:11Griffin Newman?

  Or just these images like morphing at this odd pace or any of that. Like anytime, even when it's just like red block on Patrick Fishler's screen. I'm like, that's fucking creepy. That scares me more than like Pennywise having 8,000 teeth. You know? Even if those teeth look perfect. I'm like, if that happened in real life, I'd be freaked out. Cause it's that kind of weird inexplicable thing of like, what?

• 1:02:37David Sims?

  Pennywise is a good example where you're like, the scariest that character is, is when Bill Skarsgård is giving a performance in makeup. Cause his performance is effective.

• 1:02:47Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:02:47David Sims?

  I am less scared when he then goes like, ah, and opens his mouth and like.

• 1:02:52Griffin Newman?

  It is the perfect example because you're like, the two things that are scariest in his performance where you're like, that's good CGI. Are him like, uh, wall eyeing.

• 1:03:02David Sims?

  Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

• 1:03:03Griffin Newman?

  Weird shaped smile and both of those are things he just does himself. That look uncanny.

• 1:03:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:03:09Griffin Newman?

  That he can just do with his face.

• 1:03:11David Sims?

  Good for him.

• 1:03:12Griffin Newman?

  But anytime he like stretches into something more, I'm like, who gives a shit?

• 1:03:15David Sims?

  Look, if I was younger, I think it would freak me out. It's nightmarish imagery.

• 1:03:19Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't scare me though.

• 1:03:21David Sims?

  No, not so much.

• 1:03:22Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:03:23David Sims?

  Are you scared by a creepy motel room where there's like a dead body that's headless?

• 1:03:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, by this point, I'm basically scared by everything that happens. I feel perpetually just kind of ill at ease.

• 1:03:35David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:03:35Griffin Newman?

  And part of it is just the like, I don't know why we're seeing this now. You know, and, and we talked about this in the fire walk with me episode. But like this style that I feel like Lynch has been like evolving further and further across his career. And this is the ultimate heightening of it. Of like going against the basic principles of narrative editing of get in late, get out early. Where every scene. You're like, why is this scene starting now? Why is this shot starting now? Even sometimes camera movements or like rack focuses or things like that. He's like weaponizing the way we're used to processing images and like putting importance on them. Where sometimes a shot will start of like 30 seconds of something where you're like, why am I seeing this?

• 1:04:19Griffin Newman?

  What is this gonna pay off into? And then the camera just pans over and you're like, that was nothing. Now the scene is starting.

• 1:04:25David Sims?

  It's beginning. I, I'm also right. I'm really like, I'm thinking about the first two episodes and remembering how unsettling they were.

• 1:04:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33David Sims?

  As this ain't your daddy's Twin Peaks. Cause it's like, right, there is a lot of brutal violence. The thing we just mentioned, the corpse and then later on, Mr. C killing.

• 1:04:42Griffin Newman?

  A lot of casual nudity.

• 1:04:44David Sims?

  Yeah, there's a lot of sex.

• 1:04:45Griffin Newman?

  Like things that do just feel.

• 1:04:46David Sims?

  Current Lynch, right?

• 1:04:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48David Sims?

  Um, but then there's right, there's also just this kind of like, there's no center to it.

• 1:04:53Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:04:53David Sims?

  When we check in with the town, you're kind of like, okay, are we sticking with the town? And then we're immediately like, no, we're going off to another location now.

• 1:05:00Griffin Newman?

  And the townspeople feel like, any of the stuff shot in the town feels weirdly kind of elusive and distant. I was saying outside of Andy and Lucy, who still have their basic comedy energy. You, you're like, the show doesn't have the constant swelling Angelo score. It doesn't have the sort of like, um, overly emotional, like monologuing, spilling out intrigue.

• 1:05:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:05:24Griffin Newman?

  Like these people just all feel kind of like slowed down.

• 1:05:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:05:27Griffin Newman?

  You know?

• 1:05:28David Sims?

  And it's also not that all of this weird stuff is happening in one place anymore.

• 1:05:32Griffin Newman?

  No, and I don't.

• 1:05:33David Sims?

  He's, he's, he's expanded it. And it really is such a great distillation of his, like, there's weird things happening right now somewhere in the world.

• 1:05:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:05:44David Sims?

  There's these unsettling people here. There's this weird mysterious box here. There's this crime happening here and you don't know how it's all connected. It's so, I'm, I got so locked in. Basically as soon as episode one ended.

• 1:06:00David Sims?

  Um, certain other things I want to touch on. The log lady call, which I remember like the hush in the room when we all watched that because it was so clear that Catherine Coulson was, you know, basically making this call from like a hospice. She certainly had, but like you're clear that like

• 1:06:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:06:16David Sims?

  That she shot this in sort of her final weeks.

• 1:06:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:06:20David Sims?

  Uh, where she's basically telling Hawk like something's missing. You have to find it. It's to do with your heritage. Okay. It's the closest thing these early episodes have to like, uh, a plot line for fans to grab on to. Cause everything else is, it's like, what's going on with the weird box? What, what's the headless corpse?

• 1:06:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38David Sims?

  And

• 1:06:39Griffin Newman?

  How does any of this relate to?

• 1:06:40David Sims?

  Right. Where's Cooper?

• 1:06:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. Even the, the sort of subplots you can follow as their own thing. It's unclear how it ties into anything else.

• 1:06:48David Sims?

  Right. And then, uh,

• 1:06:49Griffin Newman?

  It takes six episodes to identify that the body is Briggs, I think.

• 1:06:53David Sims?

  Yeah, it takes a while. So moving, right. Moving on to episode two. You have, uh, Matthew Lillard as Bill Hastings. A, a pretty incredible performance.

• 1:07:05Griffin Newman?

  I agree. I mean, I

• 1:07:07David Sims?

  Uh, of a very agitated person and like Lillard is good casting.

• 1:07:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11David Sims?

  But left field casting.

• 1:07:13Griffin Newman?

  I feel like he's been talking a lot recently about what a like lifeblood infusion, um, fucking five nights at Freddy's was to his career. And being like, I've never been this back. Like, you know, I've been sort of on the outskirts of the industry for a while.

• 1:07:29David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:07:29Griffin Newman?

  I mean, like he, you know, notably he was directing stuff for a little bit. He also, after Casey Kasem died, has taken over voicing Shaggy in all media.

• 1:07:37David Sims?

  He's become the Shaggy.

• 1:07:37Griffin Newman?

  Which he's talked about is like, just the ultimate gift of like a stable job in an unstable industry. Where there's always going to be Scooby Doo stuff done. But like every couple of years, he will pop up in a live action thing now as like an older character actor and fucking destroy. He is so good in The Descendants, a movie I don't really like, but he's incredible in.

• 1:07:57David Sims?

  But that's a lot, that's

• 1:07:59Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying.

• 1:08:00David Sims?

  More than 10 years ago. Yeah.

• 1:08:01Griffin Newman?

  He'll pop up in that. I'll be like, okay, so Lillard's back, right? Everyone's going to

• 1:08:04David Sims?

  And this was similar.

• 1:08:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06David Sims?

  Like, great, perfect use of Lillard.

• 1:08:07Griffin Newman?

  And by his account, like now people are hiring him again, a bunch for a movie that no one likes.

• 1:08:12David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:13Griffin Newman?

  But was obviously successful. This guy has just kind of been an untapped resource for a It now.

• 1:08:19David Sims?

  Um, so he's accused of this like murder of this corpse, but he doesn't know what's going on.

• 1:08:26Griffin Newman?

  Right. The murdered woman is a woman he was having an affair with, which is why he's kind of edgy when they're interrogating him.

• 1:08:31David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:31Griffin Newman?

  Right? Or on edge at least. You can't tell like, I mean, it's, it's part of what's unsettling is like, this guy is clearly hiding some secret. Is he lying about being a murderer? Or does he not understand what he's being accused of?

• 1:08:45David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:08:45Griffin Newman?

  And the like, watching him process all of that and like break down in real time. And the reveal of the body is so upsetting. Where it's like, you know, this sort of, it almost feels like the straight story scene of like so much wind up to getting through the door. You know, with the next door neighbor and the complaints and the keys and whatever.

• 1:09:04David Sims?

  What's it gonna be?

• 1:09:05Griffin Newman?

  What's it gonna be? And then you see this like rotting head of a woman in a bed. Oh, she's been there for a while. It's upsetting already.

• 1:09:10David Sims?

  Eye missing.

• 1:09:11Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then you pull down the covers and you're like, why is this head disembodied, lying on top of a clearly different body?

• 1:09:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:09:19Griffin Newman?

  That is also like sliced open.

• 1:09:21David Sims?

  Cool.

• 1:09:23Griffin Newman?

  I wouldn't say cool.

• 1:09:24David Sims?

  I think it's good. I think it's sad. That's, uh, that's what hotels should have. No, it's very, very weird.

• 1:09:29Griffin Newman?

  I don't know when you've been watching this show, Ben, but I've often been watching it at night right before I go to bed. It certainly puts me in a headspace.

• 1:09:35David Sims?

  Yeah. No, I've been watching it late at night.

• 1:09:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38David Sims?

  Yeah, it's terrifying. It's affected my dreams. It's made me feel very uneasy.

• 1:09:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:44David Sims?

  I think of the time there came a point where I would actually wait to watch this show, not at night. Right. Even though it was airing at 10 o'clock or whatever.

• 1:09:50Griffin Newman?

  It feels right to watch it at night. As much as it fucks with me, I'm like, yeah.

• 1:09:55David Sims?

  Um, so, uh, we've got that going on. We've got Mr. C with this sort of coterie of, uh, weirdos that he's, uh, gathered on some weird mission. We do have Patrick Fishler in a Las Vegas office. Who's like vaguely talking about like money changing hands. We don't really know what that is.

• 1:10:16David Sims?

  We, uh, see, um, the red room again.

• 1:10:21Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:21David Sims?

  Uh, Mike is there. Older Laura is there.

• 1:10:25Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm. Is this the introduction of the evolution of the arm?

• 1:10:29David Sims?

  Uh, correct. Uh, it's where, it's where Laura reveals, opens her face up and there's kind of light inside of it.

• 1:10:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Another very creepy effect that is done at a level that could be done by like a 12 year old on their computer, you know? But you're like, it's more upsetting for that.

• 1:10:46David Sims?

  We are indeed introduced to the arm, Michael J. Anderson's character, the man from another place, uh, who is now a tree with like a brain blob on top of it that sort of goes like

• 1:11:00David Sims?

  like that.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  It reminds me of his first piece of art.

• 1:11:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Six guys getting getting sick or whatever.

• 1:11:07David Sims?

  Michael J. Anderson, uh, was posting on Facebook at this time, like he was really had gone, it seemed a little loony.

• 1:11:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18David Sims?

  Uh, and he said that Lynch.

• 1:11:20Griffin Newman?

  As many people, uh, his age, uh, were on Facebook at this time.

• 1:11:25David Sims?

  Uh, right. He said that Lynch screwed him over or whatever, who, you know, money wise or whatever. I don't know.

• 1:11:32Griffin Newman?

  And apparently demanded more money than anyone else on the show.

• 1:11:36David Sims?

  And Lynch, right, probably Michael J. Anderson was probably thinking like,

• 1:11:39Griffin Newman?

  He can't do it without.

• 1:11:40David Sims?

  I'm such an iconic

• 1:11:41Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:11:41David Sims?

  image. My person is like, you can't do without me. And Lynch, of course, is like, what do you mean? You can just be a tree.

• 1:11:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:49David Sims?

  I'll just have you be a tree now. Who cares?

• 1:11:53David Sims?

  Um, and so, yeah, so he's there. Uh, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:11:59Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if there's any way to, uh,

• 1:12:02David Sims?

  Parse that.

• 1:12:03Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no, no. I was gonna say, support this, but I do feel like what they do with the arm is fascinating and is also very effective, right? I have to imagine a lot of the dialogue that would have gone to Michael J. Anderson had he agreed to do this is what they end up doing with Mike now.

• 1:12:19David Sims?

  Mike is there.

• 1:12:20Griffin Newman?

  Where they're sort of like,

• 1:12:21David Sims?

  Explaining stuff.

• 1:12:21Griffin Newman?

  If you have the evolution of the arm in this form, saying all the dialogue, it will be too much.

• 1:12:26David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:12:26Griffin Newman?

  You maybe need someone who's a little more grounded and then you cut to the, the weird tree arm for maximum impact.

• 1:12:32David Sims?

  And then we kind of basically have like the exit of Cooper.

• 1:12:37Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:38David Sims?

  Right? Like, uh, there's a lot of sort of mysterious red room stuff that.

• 1:12:45David Sims?

  You know, you can sort of parse as you will. I don't know how to describe all this stuff. Um, but it's like.

• 1:12:51Griffin Newman?

  But you do have like strong theories and all this stuff.

• 1:12:55David Sims?

  Yeah, there's, yes, you'll, you'll watch the show and you'll see there's a logic to what happens.

• 1:12:59Griffin Newman?

  I'm just, I'm, I'm want to call ahead, but I'm going to ask you at the end of us covering this show.

• 1:13:04David Sims?

  Sure. I mean.

• 1:13:06Griffin Newman?

  Cause I feel like you've very often throughout me watching the show for the first time alluded to, there are answers to all of this. You can get down to like.

• 1:13:13David Sims?

  You can. I mean, look, the simple fact of the matter is.

• 1:13:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17David Sims?

  Cooper got stuck in the red room. The doppelganger took his place.

• 1:13:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20David Sims?

  So what we see now essentially, and we're moving into episode three as well as like, you know, it's like Cooper gets ejected out of the red room, but the doppelganger had anticipated this. And so he's redirected into this fake Cooper that got made, Dougie Jones.

• 1:13:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:13:34David Sims?

  A tulpa, uh, to quote the empty man, they, they use that word here too. Like a sort of.

• 1:13:38Griffin Newman?

  An artificial being created to basically have a vessel for good coop to go back into.

• 1:13:44David Sims?

  Right. And so Cooper kind of gets stuck there.

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46David Sims?

  For much of this show, like he is now Dougie, who is not a real person to begin with, but is this perfect way for Lynch and Frost to make fun of, right? Like the modern American salaryman in a way where he like, he exists, he, he has some sort of useless insurance job exists. Lives in this like subdivision and.

• 1:14:05Griffin Newman?

  It has a gambling addiction.

• 1:14:07David Sims?

  Has a gambling addiction and like a wife who's like, I hate you. You suck.

• 1:14:11Griffin Newman?

  Cheats on her with sex workers.

• 1:14:12David Sims?

  Right. And then he suddenly shows up and is like, hello, coffee. And she's like, you're my dream man. You rock.

• 1:14:20Griffin Newman?

  David, you're doing way too much.

• 1:14:22David Sims?

  I know. Exactly. It's like, it's hard to do him on.

• 1:14:24Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:14:25David Sims?

  Radio.

• 1:14:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, we, we should, we should reclaim this as a radio.

• 1:14:31David Sims?

  This is, should be on radio?

• 1:14:33Griffin Newman?

  I think 2025, let's stop calling this a podcast. Let's reach out to Z100, get a syndication deal and exclusively refer to this.

• 1:14:42David Sims?

  AM, no, AM.

• 1:14:43Griffin Newman?

  AM.

• 1:14:44David Sims?

  I put my foot down on AM.

• 1:14:49Griffin Newman?

  This is a radio show about filmographies. They, they love to hand out like three hour slots on radio.

• 1:14:55David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly. They like, they like variable running times and all that stuff.

• 1:15:09Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:15:10David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:15:10Griffin Newman?

  Uh, uh, who are you wearing?

• 1:15:12David Sims?

  Uh, who am I wearing?

• 1:15:13Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:15:17David Sims?

  Well, I am wearing Quince.

• 1:15:20Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:15:25David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:15:29Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:15:29David Sims?

  It's a sort of a brown. Would you agree?

• 1:15:32Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:15:35David Sims?

  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.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, a soft boy. 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.

• 1:15:59David Sims?

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

• 1:16:10Griffin Newman?

  Mama mia.

• 1:16:11David Sims?

  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, cashmere accessories, everything your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long.

• 1:16:30Griffin 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.

• 1:16:43David Sims?

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

• 1:16:50Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well.

• 1:16:51David Sims?

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

• 1:16:55Griffin 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 asked where you heard about them, let him know it was blank check is the best way to support the show.

• 1:17:41Griffin Newman?

  No, what I was going to say is, I know, as you're saying, there are sort of like in-universe explanations of this. Yeah. Our Lost Highway episode, as people I think can tell, was recorded way, way early. That was the first one we recorded chronologically. Yes. So like even just that episode coming out, I'm like, oh, I would have talked about this movie differently having. Sure. Had we gone through. No shade on that episode. No, good episode. It turned out great. But just digging in more on Lynch career stuff that I wasn't digging in on at the time we recorded that episode. How much of Lost Highway came out of Lynch being like completely confused by, and this is so much of his whole filmography,

• 1:18:24Griffin Newman?

  the sort of like, how can people be capable of this level of evil? How can that be contained within like a human psyche, a person, the ability to commit this kind of harm to other people? Sure. But that he was also, by all accounts, particularly fascinated by like OJ Simpson during the peak of the trial. Right, Lost Highway, right, yeah, yeah, for sure. Right, just being like out with his kids and being like, hey, I'm OJ, I'm innocent. And being like, how can you like murder your wife and then just kind of allegedly go forth and just be like, I'm dropping my kids off at school. Hey. It's very disturbing. It's the juice, right? And I do think in the way I talked about maybe in the Twin Peaks season two episode, the sort of manhuntery thing of like, if you live in this world,

• 1:19:08Griffin Newman?

  if you're investigating crimes, at what point does it start to break you? Have you just like let too much evil into your psyche, even if you are quote unquote, the one doing good? Beyond the like inner narrative mythology, I do think there's something he's getting at here with the like splitting of the Coop psyche. Of like, what happens to you if you're just like looking at dead bodies all the fucking time, right? Like, do you start to split into like, do you curdle? Do you go dead inside? Like, do you just compartmentalize? There was an allegorical level to this.

• 1:19:43David Sims?

  I see what you're saying. I think there is also just this thing of like, to Lynch and Frost, like, the world's only gotten worse.

• 1:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49David Sims?

  It feels like, you know, kinda Boy Scouts like Cooper, who had their flaws, have been replaced by these kind of like amoral figures.

• 1:19:58Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:19:58David Sims?

  For the last 25 years. Like, that's, you know, like, you watch Twin Peaks in 92 and you're like, yeah, this is about a seedy town. There's like coke and there's sex work. And now it just feels like it's like, it's not just fucking drugs and, you know, prostitution or whatever. Now it's just like, yeah, empty houses being sold to nobody by like faceless gangsters and like-

• 1:20:18Griffin Newman?

  But also, yes, the sort of feeling of like, here's this town that looks quaint, but underneath it has like all this weird darkness and drama.

• 1:20:26David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:20:26Griffin Newman?

  And here's a guy who like looks like a fucking Dick Tracy drawing.

• 1:20:30David Sims?

  Right, yeah, showing up, eh, coffee, pie.

• 1:20:32Griffin Newman?

  Like beer creever, right.

• 1:20:34David Sims?

  And like, that's all people, so many people clearly just wanted this show to be like him drinking the coffee, which happens, and it is important to it, but not in the way they want it.

• 1:20:43Griffin Newman?

  But, right, the deconstruction of this kind of like, one pure, simple lawman, who is unwavering and unaffected by the darkness, you know? And can always cut through it with like humanity and grace.

• 1:20:58David Sims?

  To, I, I like everything you're saying.

• 1:21:00Griffin Newman?

  All of his performances are incredible. Tom McLaughlin rules.

• 1:21:03David Sims?

  He rules. This is his masterwork.

• 1:21:05Griffin Newman?

  I was going to say.

• 1:21:06David Sims?

  He's like dividing this character into two extremes with like the middle gone, like-

• 1:21:11Griffin Newman?

  I'm a fan of his work in general, in particular, his work with David Lynch. It is wild that there's such a long gap. And a lot of it is, of course, like the bad fallout of Twin Peaks. This is the kind of thing I had no idea he was aware of doing.

• 1:21:24David Sims?

  Same, well, that's because he's now become this- Guy you call in for a specific kind of thing, right? Like the way he's used in Fallout.

• 1:21:32Griffin Newman?

  Variations on it. There is him as like smarmy politician sort of guy. There's him as like, sort of like goofy dad. There's him as like cartoon villain. But all of them do feel like a certain broad weird bent on his square jawed like all American thing.

• 1:21:50David Sims?

  Exactly. How can we fuck with that a little bit?

• 1:21:52Griffin Newman?

  We should call out that of course, Kyle McLaughlin has reinvented himself in 2024 as Mr. Blockbuster, the king of the box office.

• 1:22:00David Sims?

  Uh, cause he's in Inside Out 2.

• 1:22:01Griffin Newman?

  As Riley's dad, he's the star of the biggest film.

• 1:22:06David Sims?

  So Cooper is going, we see this kind of series of dreamless, uh, dreamy things, right? You've got the weird kind of, uh, Purple Sea, which we see a few times, like this kind of odd void place. Uh, he goes to this weird room, this kind of like this dimly lit mansion room. There's this eyeless woman who's stuck by a fireplace. She'll come back. At one point you see Garland Briggs, Don Davis has died, the actor who plays Garland Briggs at this point. And again, David Lynch is like, no problem, just have his fucking face float by and go blue rose. Like, there you go. So Garland Briggs still in the show, um, which is will be important.

• 1:22:47David Sims?

  And then, uh, we see him basically sort of try to enter the world again. We see Mr. C like barf corn everywhere, right? Like while driving the car.

• 1:22:59Griffin Newman?

  Well, he's trying his hardest to hold it in.

• 1:23:01David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:23:02Griffin Newman?

  As like, he's getting like engulfed in this sort of fade out of the red curtains.

• 1:23:07David Sims?

  Right. Uh, and he survives that. And so we see Cooper essentially get redirected over to the box. Right? That's how, yeah, you know, like that's, that's how it ends up being.

• 1:23:17Griffin Newman?

  But we've already seen Dougie.

• 1:23:20David Sims?

  We see Dougie with, uh, Jade, who's a sex worker who he's like in one of these empty houses with, right?

• 1:23:27Griffin Newman?

  Across the street from Halli Gates as like an addict mother.

• 1:23:30David Sims?

  Right. And, uh, he, he also barfs up corn, garment blows.

• 1:23:34Griffin Newman?

  He barfs up a different thing. Dougie barfs up, it almost looks like a, like a fucking rump roast or something.

• 1:23:40David Sims?

  Right. And then he goes to the red room and gets turned into, uh, an orb.

• 1:23:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:23:45David Sims?

  Which I love, where they're like, enough of you, boink.

• 1:23:48Griffin Newman?

  But there's a difference to like when, when Mr. C finally breaks down and pukes. It's like this endless stream of like this creamed corn type thing.

• 1:23:56David Sims?

  It's corn, yeah.

• 1:23:57Griffin Newman?

  And then when the cops come to get him, they're like, this is the worst smelling thing of all time. The one cop who gets-

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  Cause it's like evil, it's despair. That's what the corn is, right?

• 1:24:06Griffin Newman?

  Two steps closer is then like, almost like comatose. They mention that like, a few of the guys are now laid up in the hospital. They had to call him back up with gas masks. Whereas like Jade comes out from the bathroom and is like, when'd you get a haircut? Why are you wearing this suit? Were you wearing a wig the whole time? And then it's like, ooh, are you sick? It seems like what he puked up is a little bit foul, but it's not like-

• 1:24:31David Sims?

  No, it's not, it's not the milk of human evil or whatever that, yes. No, yeah, yeah. He comes out of the electrical socket, right? And right, so now we have him in Mr., in Dougie Cooper's life. But now instead of being the douchebag that Dougie Cooper, we assume was.

• 1:24:48Griffin Newman?

  And like a doofy douchebag.

• 1:24:51David Sims?

  He's this sort of trim, silent, black-suited zombie kind of guy, you know? Who just repeats what is said to him.

• 1:25:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:25:02David Sims?

  And has really no reaction to anything until he drinks some sweet, sweet coffee.

• 1:25:06Griffin Newman?

  He has the literal look of authority. It's like Lynch tapping into why he was so drawn to this guy in the first place.

• 1:25:13David Sims?

  That's the big, yeah, exactly.

• 1:25:14Griffin Newman?

  Right, just the look. And there's something about like, Colin Glucklin is so fascinating physically. And the other times we've talked about him were decades earlier, when he was much younger, right? And there was something about him, like, looking like a Ken doll, looking like a Chester Gold drawing. Where it's like, well, he is literally like an illustration of what we think of as a manly man. But yet also is like so pretty and delicate.

• 1:25:38David Sims?

  He is very pretty, even today.

• 1:25:41Griffin Newman?

  And it is odd to see him at an advanced age where you're just like, he looks like an aged boy in a way. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, he doesn't look rugged now. He's not like grown into some like Sean Connery has passed over into like his silver fox age. And I, obviously they're like dying his hair in this. And making him look as sort of like natty as Cooper. But there is something about like, he's aged incredibly well. And it, there's something uncanny about just that face drooping only a little bit. You know, he does- Doesn't have these deep lines.

• 1:26:17David Sims?

  No, he looks good, but he looks old.

• 1:26:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20David Sims?

  He's not, he's never gonna be pretty like he was as a young man.

• 1:26:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:26:26David Sims?

  He's now become this like hot silver fox.

• 1:26:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29David Sims?

  But that's sort of post this.

• 1:26:30Griffin Newman?

  What I'm saying, this is trying to go for a different look.

• 1:26:33David Sims?

  It is, no, it is.

• 1:26:33Griffin Newman?

  For the uncanniness of like, yeah.

• 1:26:38David Sims?

  This is then when we have, we do have some interludes such as Dr. Jacoby spray painting his, uh, spray painting his shovels.

• 1:26:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47David Sims?

  Uh, we have the, uh, crazy, uh, drug addicted woman screaming one nine, one one nine. Uh, randomly in a room, you know, where you're kind of like, what?

• 1:26:56Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't that happen in response to, does that start before the car explodes?

• 1:27:02David Sims?

  Isn't it right after?

• 1:27:03Griffin Newman?

  That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

• 1:27:04Speaker 03

  It's where they sleep together, Dougie and the sex worker.

• 1:27:07Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:27:07Speaker 03

  He lives across the street and it's where Dougie's car is left parked.

• 1:27:11Griffin Newman?

  Um, yes. So then, right.

• 1:27:13David Sims?

  Right. And then he-

• 1:27:14Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't take his car because she drives him home because she can tell that he's-

• 1:27:17David Sims?

  No, Jade takes him to the casino.

• 1:27:18Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes. Thank you. Sorry.

• 1:27:20David Sims?

  Call for help, give him the five dollars, call for help.

• 1:27:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:27:23David Sims?

  Uh, and he, uh, starts just, he becomes Mr. Jackpots.

• 1:27:27Griffin Newman?

  He starts seeing-

• 1:27:28David Sims?

  It's one of the funniest fucking things that's ever been on TV.

• 1:27:31Griffin Newman?

  He starts seeing glimpses of basically the red room above machines.

• 1:27:35David Sims?

  Right. Will pop off next and then he gets all the money and he starts going, hello.

• 1:27:41Griffin Newman?

  So not to get too ahead of shit that I imagine is even gonna come more to the forefront across this. But it really feels like at least in these first seven episodes and like the-

• 1:27:54Griffin Newman?

  Hawk being front and center.

• 1:27:55David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:27:56Griffin Newman?

  The casino, the stuff that's already happening at the end of season two, that like a lot of the big, uh, uh, sort of point of Twin Peaks as a grand media experiment is the like, we are a country built upon-

• 1:28:13David Sims?

  I think-

• 1:28:13Griffin Newman?

  An Indian burial.

• 1:28:14David Sims?

  Yeah, I think that, I think that is a thing running through Twin Peaks. It's never like loudly screamed or anything. Although you do, right, you do have things like the log lady being like, it's to do with your heritage.

• 1:28:25Griffin Newman?

  Right. And that's all of Hawk's stuff is him trying to like Andy being like, is it about coins? Like, is it, what's the connection here? But also that you have like the end of season two, the last handful of episodes where they're starting to like lay things out more directly.

• 1:28:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:28:41Griffin Newman?

  Is coming back to Hawk being able to filter through like, in my culture, there's this notion of, you know, that suddenly these things in the show that have seemed really abstract are being reframed as like spiritual beliefs within like Native American traditions.

• 1:28:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:28:57Griffin Newman?

  And then I, I just feel like it's not coincidental that he is going to a casino, a thing that is largely owned by like Native American groups at this point in time in the country, especially if you're outside of like Nevada, right? And that he's being given like directed glimpses from the red room to direct him towards the money.

• 1:29:20David Sims?

  I, again, right. It's not like someone screams this out loud.

• 1:29:24Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:29:25David Sims?

  But.

• 1:29:25Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't even, it doesn't.

• 1:29:26David Sims?

  But no, but I mean, it's like fundamentally, the elemental stuff in Twin Peaks is that Bob is something you can just think of in any way you want to think of it.

• 1:29:35Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:29:36David Sims?

  And that's what's happening in Twin Peaks The Return is Bob is running rampant and there's sort of a battle against Bob. It's an abstract battle for a lot of the time, right? Cause it's all these threads coming together, but Mr. C is the villain and he is Bob.

• 1:29:48Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:29:49David Sims?

  And he is the thing we need to stop. And then Agent Cooper slash Dougie is sort of our hero, but he is kind of a zombie.

• 1:29:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:58David Sims?

  Who slowly is absorbing the world around him and the world is reacting to this like mirror he puts up, right? This kind of just like friendly reflective thing.

• 1:30:08David Sims?

  Mr. Jackpots, you know, as we're moving into episode four, like,

• 1:30:13David Sims?

  you know, the casino is freaking out about him because he's making all this money. Uh, and so they take him home and then here comes Naomi Watts, just in full Mohan drive mode, just like dialed all the way up.

• 1:30:24Griffin Newman?

  I feel like we've talked a lot about.

• 1:30:25Griffin Newman?

  How the last 10 years of Naomi Watts has been a disaster in a way that feels like very unfair to her.

• 1:30:32David Sims?

  She's just gotten pretty lame roles.

• 1:30:34Griffin Newman?

  Why can't she catch a break?

• 1:30:35David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:36Griffin Newman?

  And this is the only outlier?

• 1:30:38David Sims?

  Yeah, this she's so good in this.

• 1:30:39Griffin Newman?

  Goodness, unsurprisingly, like Lynch knows how to use her.

• 1:30:43David Sims?

  That's the thing, right?

• 1:30:44Griffin Newman?

  But she's in this so much and like watching it now, years later, I'm just like, why is everyone else failing her?

• 1:30:52David Sims?

  I think she's just, I've said it before, like, she's the fourth choice, you know, for a lot of these plum roles. And she doesn't get them. And instead she gets these kind of like, okay, roles, leading roles.

• 1:31:04Griffin Newman?

  She's had a handful of abject disasters as well, though. Not just like Book of Henry and stuff, but it's like,

• 1:31:10David Sims?

  Oh, God.

• 1:31:11Griffin Newman?

  Oh, like, here's like a career lifeline. She's going to be the lead on the Game of Thrones spinoff. And then they're like, never mind, this one isn't happening. Pilot buried new show happening. There've been like a couple of things like that where you're like, this almost feels cursed now. Although, married Billy Crudup, hot couple.

• 1:31:27David Sims?

  Sure, but didn't she, uh, you know, have her relationship with Leif Shriver for a long time and that fell apart?

• 1:31:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and I'm saying on the rebound, she married Billy Crudup.

• 1:31:37David Sims?

  Sure, yeah. He's definitely never cheated on his wife with a fucking nanny or whatever he did. I forget what he did.

• 1:31:43Griffin Newman?

  Claire Danes.

• 1:31:44David Sims?

  Allegedly. Oh, yeah, right. It was Claire Danes. Right, yeah. Whatever. I can't care.

• 1:31:50Griffin Newman?

  This is almost like,

• 1:31:51David Sims?

  All the celebrities, they're always cheating on each other. You know, who can get excited anymore?

• 1:31:55Griffin Newman?

  Plotlines from Twin Peaks. Who's been fucking who?

• 1:32:00David Sims?

  At this point, I think it starts in late, late in episode three.

• 1:32:02Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:32:03David Sims?

  We're bringing in Gordon Cole,

• 1:32:05Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:05David Sims?

  Played by David Lynch, who is one of the biggest characters in this show.

• 1:32:11Griffin Newman?

  Watching this, I just, I thought, why is he the funniest actor alive? Why is he funnier on screen than anybody? I know we've made,

• 1:32:21David Sims?

  He's very funny.

• 1:32:22Griffin Newman?

  A lot. Of how he out of.

• 1:32:25David Sims?

  His voice.

• 1:32:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Doing the impressions. Almost anything is funny in a David Lynch voice. But somehow his performance is funnier than David Lynch as a person is. The idea of him, there is such an odd presence to how he performs as an actor beyond just the voice and everything. But especially at this age where he has that like gravitas that everyone gets to in the later decades of their life.

• 1:32:47David Sims?

  The weirdest thing to me about Cole in this series and like a lot, a lot of this storyline is always just gonna be Cole. And, um, you know, Miguel Ferrer.

• 1:32:56Griffin Newman?

  Another actor who was, had passed away by the time the show aired.

• 1:33:00David Sims?

  Uh, Albert, obviously. And then Tamara Preston, who's this new character played by Christa Bell. Uh, who is this kind of stand-in character. She, she's, you know, whatever, the newbie. I feel like she's also Lynch being made fun of for like casting these gorgeous women and then like, you know, like having a crush on them or whatever. Right. Cause like, that's what Gordon Cole is basically being criticized for with her presence.

• 1:33:24Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:33:24David Sims?

  Everyone's like Gordon.

• 1:33:25Griffin Newman?

  She's just a good agent.

• 1:33:27David Sims?

  Um, but Gordon especially throughout the show is kind of the exposition guy.

• 1:33:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:34David Sims?

  Uh, the FBI agents are the ones who out loud the most will be like, here's what's going on. Like we're on a hunt for Bob. Like we're, we're, you know, we're trying to figure out what Judy is like. They're the ones that are sort of like talking about the mission.

• 1:33:47Griffin Newman?

  Also with Cooper like pulled apart into like these weird abstracted forms, he becomes the moral center of the show.

• 1:33:54David Sims?

  He is, and that is very apparent early in season, episode four, where he goes to see Denise, David Duchovny's character from Twin Peaks, season two. Uh.

• 1:34:04Griffin Newman?

  That kind of character you might expect they'd go like, whoo.

• 1:34:06David Sims?

  We don't need to check in with everybody. Exactly.

• 1:34:09Griffin Newman?

  Maybe it's risky to try to revisit.

• 1:34:10David Sims?

  Yeah. This like Lynch looking down the camera, basically, and like lecturing his audience, not in a bad way. Like, like, you know, just sort of incredibly moving, direct moment of him saying, fix your hearts or die.

• 1:34:21Griffin Newman?

  It took eight years for me to watch this show. I remember seeing someone post the night this episode aired with just the screen grab with the caption on of, and I told them, fix your hearts or die. And just being like, wow, that is the best fucking way to put it. It is a line that has stuck with me just off of seeing a fucking screen grab.

• 1:34:39David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:34:39Griffin Newman?

  For a decade of like, yeah, that's how I just think about all of this fucking shit now.

• 1:34:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:45Griffin Newman?

  Of people who refuse to change in a way that is tolerant of other people.

• 1:34:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:34:50Griffin Newman?

  Who like insist on being fucking prejudiced out of habit.

• 1:34:54David Sims?

  Um, yeah, it's just, it's a fascinating scene.

• 1:34:59Griffin Newman?

  And there's something to just the simplicity of Lynch as a performer for how bizarre and overstated he is. It is like, it's him and Louis and it's him in the fucking Fablemans where it's like, is anyone more effective just ha- like basically staring down the barrel of the lens and saying the thing?

• 1:35:16David Sims?

  Absolutely. Um, uh, yeah, just kind of, I mean, the, the ostensible point of that scene right again is like, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is figure this out.

• 1:35:27Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:35:27David Sims?

  Mr. C, like who's this? But it's really right, this scene of Lynch being like, your character was a part of season two that I am not forgetting about and like, I want to address that like you, like, you know, your identity is paramount, like, right?

• 1:35:43Griffin Newman?

  I, I mean, I think the Covney's performance is very good.

• 1:35:46David Sims?

  I'd love to.

• 1:35:47Griffin Newman?

  In this scene in particular, but also like you watch season two, comes on screen, you're like, is this gonna be a problem for someone watching like me for the first time decades later? And like, unlike a lot of performances of trans people until let's say the late 2010s, when those roles start to be played by actual trans people, there was a lot of like, they are being played as if they are drag performers.

• 1:36:11David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:36:12Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 1:36:12David Sims?

  There's not a real understanding of the actual what's going on.

• 1:36:16Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And I do feel like DeCovney to his like best abilities tries to play it like a real person. This is like a woman. I'm not like overstating it, you know, I'm not sort of like doing, yeah, the broad strokes, yeah.

• 1:36:34David Sims?

  Lucy Truman, I'm trying to think what else. Um, is this where Wally Brando shows up? Yes.

• 1:36:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. They set it up early that they named. Their son, Wally Brando, cause he, what is it? He was born right after Brando died.

• 1:36:49David Sims?

  Born the same day as Marlon Brando, uh, is what we know.

• 1:36:54Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:36:56David Sims?

  Just another scene that's just so fucking memorable.

• 1:37:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, here's the thing I want to talk about.

• 1:37:02David Sims?

  This is Michael Cera's only appearance on Twin Peaks: The Return. Not to spoil anything.

• 1:37:07Griffin Newman?

  That was my assumption.

• 1:37:07David Sims?

  He's coming in and out.

• 1:37:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, um, he has said that the way he got this part was that he went to one of David Lynch's transcendental meditation.

• 1:37:15David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:37:16Griffin Newman?

  Classes and that afterwards, he was like, I might have a part for you. I feel like a lot of directors in this age group, when they are casting things and in interviews, people are like, so what made you want to work with this actor? You often get the sense of like, oh, they don't really watch stuff at this point. You will get the thing of like Paul Schrader being like, my financiers gave me a list of like 10 people who I can get the movie made if I get one of them. And I watched their reels and I said, like, this guy feels like he could work. But he's not like watching every episode of Euphoria and going like, oh, I should write a part.

• 1:37:53David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:37:53Griffin Newman?

  You know?

• 1:37:54David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:37:55Griffin Newman?

  What's his name? Why am I forgetting tall guy's name?

• 1:37:57David Sims?

  Jelordi.

• 1:37:58Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. Similarly, I, I know like, uh, uh, Vinyl, uh, when Ray Romano went into audition, casting was like, hey, just so you know, he doesn't know who you are. And he was like, oh, he's never watched the show. And he's like, no, he's never heard of you existing. And he was like, how could I just like, without taking this personally, the show was big enough, long enough, wouldn't he at least have heard the name? And he's like, he has no awareness. But I feel like with these kinds of guys, oftentimes it's either the casting directors are just like, we have picked actors we think you would like, and we'll put them in front of you. And the first time they're ever seen Epperson perform is in that audition. Or it is like they've been told that this name is bankable.

• 1:38:42Griffin Newman?

  Or you'll hear that they saw one weird, I cast them because I saw them on The Tonight Show and I thought their interview was funny.

• 1:38:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:38:48Griffin Newman?

  So when any of these like more current day actors show up who Lynch hasn't worked with before, in the Sarah case, I know it was that, right?

• 1:38:56David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:57Griffin Newman?

  Uh, some of them, I'm like, has he seen Amanda Seyfried in anything?

• 1:39:01David Sims?

  Might have.

• 1:39:02Griffin Newman?

  Did Amanda Seyfried like reach out to her reps?

• 1:39:03David Sims?

  It's hard to imagine him watching TV or going to the movies. I'm sure he does it sometimes.

• 1:39:08Griffin Newman?

  Did she like reach out to her reps and go like anything to be in Twin Peaks The Return?

• 1:39:10David Sims?

  I love mom mia.

• 1:39:12Griffin Newman?

  I'll audition for anything. Or was he like, I've seen Red Riding Hood 10 times.

• 1:39:17David Sims?

  Ben, did you have something to say?

• 1:39:19Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I was gonna say also at the police station, we see Bobby.

• 1:39:25David Sims?

  Oh, that's, that's right. That's when that scene is.

• 1:39:27Griffin Newman?

  An incredible scene.

• 1:39:28David Sims?

  I mean, my favorite scene.

• 1:39:28Speaker 03

  And it's the first time that we hear the theme song again.

• 1:39:30David Sims?

  Which is just such a hammer blow.

• 1:39:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:32David Sims?

  And like, it's what people have been talking about, my love of Dana Ashbrook.

• 1:39:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:39:37David Sims?

  And I've noticed on like the Reddit and stuff and it's like, yes, he has a particularly broad thing.

• 1:39:44Griffin Newman?

  But I-

• 1:39:45David Sims?

  It's not like Dana Ashbrook, I look at him and I'm like, wow, Hollywood like gave up on a big movie star here. I understand that his acting style as Bobby is very big and like it's very well geared to this show.

• 1:39:56Griffin Newman?

  By the way, he has had like a very good career and has kept working consistently.

• 1:40:01David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:01Griffin Newman?

  He's one of those guys where it's like, it's not like he disappeared. He works steadily, you know?

• 1:40:06David Sims?

  Does lots of TV.

• 1:40:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he does feel like a perfect fit for this and it does feel like he is one of these guys who is able to like have a foot in multiple spheres simultaneously. He knows how to play to like the bigness of Twin Peaks and the like emotional realism of Twin Peaks simultaneously. That scene is, I mean, it's not just that the score comes back in, but him sort of being surprised by how much he can still be emotionally-

• 1:40:31David Sims?

  It still, it still affects him.

• 1:40:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35David Sims?

  And like-

• 1:40:36Griffin Newman?

  And then trying to kind of cover it and be like, wow, it's just a blast from the past. Like, he's embarrassed that it- He broke that quickly.

• 1:40:44David Sims?

  But it also feels like the show, like this like bolt of light coming through a crack. Where it's like, yeah, everyone sort of agreed to forget about that. As we talked about with Connor on about season two. If you think about how Twin Peaks actually moves quite slowly, like day by day.

• 1:40:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59David Sims?

  Like, the whole Cooper, Laura thing is just a few months in their lives.

• 1:41:03Griffin Newman?

  Less.

• 1:41:03David Sims?

  Exactly. And it's just like, and then that was that and Cooper disappeared.

• 1:41:08Griffin Newman?

  And also like season two, once it solves Laura's mystery, stops invoking her a lot. Like if I were to throw out a major ding on season two. It's, I think, the most powerful thing about season peaks from the onset is there is something about her death that has shaken this entire town to its core.

• 1:41:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:41:24Griffin Newman?

  It feels representative of like a cultural rot that they've all been ignoring. And everyone is so haunted by it. And then once they solve her murder, it does feel like it's like, well, and on to other weird things in Twin Peaks. So like him being this affected seeing the photo again does feel like there's this reminder of like, this is where this all came together, you know? This is what it was all about at its core.

• 1:41:47David Sims?

  It's magnificent.

• 1:41:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:49David Sims?

  Um, some of the other things I want to mention, uh, yeah, you sort of have, yeah, Preston and Rosenfeld and Cole going on their mission, but you also have, uh, Dougie drinking coffee.

• 1:42:00Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:01David Sims?

  Doing the sort of like laughing where he has like the tie over his head.

• 1:42:04Griffin Newman?

  His connection with his son.

• 1:42:05David Sims?

  His connection with Sonny Jim.

• 1:42:06Griffin Newman?

  Sonny Jim.

• 1:42:07David Sims?

  His son. Uh, his inability to know how to pee. So he has to be like shown how that works.

• 1:42:13Griffin Newman?

  But you've also set up this thing where he is.

• 1:42:14David Sims?

  Naomi Watts making scenes that make no sense make sense.

• 1:42:17Griffin Newman?

  Incredible.

• 1:42:18David Sims?

  Oh, I mean, fine. I'll just take your penis out for you, basically. Like, like she's just this put upon housewife, like I love Lucy, having to be like, ah, Rich, you know, Desi, don't you know how to pee?

• 1:42:27Griffin Newman?

  But also he's come home in a limo with this inexplicable bag full of money. A burlap sack full of money that Brett Gelman was loathe to give him is like, I'm gonna fucking, I'm dead. Right? Belushi and his guy come in and beat the shit out of him and fire him immediately. And she's like, oh my God, amazing. We can get ourselves out of this jam.

• 1:42:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:42:48Griffin Newman?

  This immediate setup of like, he was in some financial hole. Everyone's been closing in on them. He now has this like windfall of money. Everything can be corrected.

• 1:42:58David Sims?

  The only problem is he doesn't know how to speak English.

• 1:43:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. Or go places.

• 1:43:02David Sims?

  Or open a car door.

• 1:43:03Griffin Newman?

  Do anything. Let's say it. Do basically anything.

• 1:43:07David Sims?

  But he drinks coffee and that does something.

• 1:43:09Griffin Newman?

  He loves the coffee. It's a reminder, much as when they, someone acknowledges that he is an insurance agent. The word agent rings in his head.

• 1:43:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:43:19Griffin Newman?

  It's like the Cooper psyche is in there deep down, waiting to be activated.

• 1:43:22David Sims?

  In episode five, which I'm moving to now, like, there's that point where the, um, his boss is like, here are some case files. And he's like, case file. So again, it's like, right. Like, yeah, that's something in FBI.

• 1:43:30Griffin Newman?

  When he stops the assassin and suddenly it's like, he has the muscle memory of how to like, right. Stop a shooting from happening.

• 1:43:37David Sims?

  And that assassin, by the way, is really normal and not lynching at all.

• 1:43:40Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:43:41David Sims?

  Like to have like a weird little Wolverine of a man who's just like, ah!

• 1:43:45Griffin Newman?

  Did someone else guest direct this scene?

• 1:43:48David Sims?

  Um, episode five also has a scene that like, so like, I, I watched this show live and I had not really seen it since, apart from in clips. Because this show doesn't kind of pervasively exist in that form. Completely forgot about the scene with Candy Clark as Doris, uh, Sheriff Truman's wife.

• 1:44:05Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 1:44:05David Sims?

  Who just comes and fucking harangues him about a leaky pipe in this like, black box theater monologue. And like Forster just completely impassive.

• 1:44:14Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:44:15David Sims?

  And then she leaves.

• 1:44:16Griffin Newman?

  This thing I've talked about a lot, that like Lynch can pull off like no one else, which is have a scene with actors in wildly different performance styles. In a master shot, somehow feeling intentional.

• 1:44:27David Sims?

  It feels so intentional.

• 1:44:28Griffin Newman?

  They are in opposite universes.

• 1:44:30David Sims?

  It's like Truman seems just like burdened with sadness.

• 1:44:33Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:44:34David Sims?

  His brother, we keep.

• 1:44:35Griffin Newman?

  Forster is just all on his presence. Like, that's his whole fucking thing.

• 1:44:38David Sims?

  The way they've written off Harry Truman is that he's clearly sick with something and Truman, you know, Sheriff Truman will just occasionally be like, yeah, he's, you know, he's still fighting, you know, but like, we don't know what.

• 1:44:51Griffin Newman?

  Phone call scene where you only hear his side of it and he says like, just promise me you're gonna beat this thing.

• 1:44:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:44:55Griffin Newman?

  Which coming out of Forster is like very emotional.

• 1:44:57David Sims?

  Very moving. But so like, he's obviously like sad about that, but then he's just also, it just feels like burdened by all the sadness of the town.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:05David Sims?

  And everyone, all these old characters like Ben Horn, when we see them, it's like, yeah, they just never got over it. The time passed.

• 1:45:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:13David Sims?

  But he's just still stuck there, like, kinda, and it's not like fun anymore.

• 1:45:18Griffin Newman?

  Much like.

• 1:45:18David Sims?

  Or you're Jacoby and you just went nuts and you just got gold shovels and you're doing your podcast.

• 1:45:23Griffin Newman?

  Figured it out.

• 1:45:24David Sims?

  You're right, right, right. The fucks are at it again. He's right.

• 1:45:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. That's incredible. Sales pitch. Um, no, I was just gonna say, much like the, the new agent, it does help to have someone in the precinct who is on the side of the old people, but wasn't on the case in the original show. Not as like an entry point for new viewers, but just to sort of reestablish things where characters can explain things to him. You know? That he has a little bit of a like one foot in, one foot out awareness of the history. And then that second Candy Clark scene is so devastating where she comes in even hotter, but my dad's car isn't working and this and that. That guy is such a fucking good actor who was also incredible on Barry, who plays like the asshole new cop. Who also is the one.

• 1:46:09David Sims?

  Awful.

• 1:46:10Griffin Newman?

  Takes the cash buyout from the smoking guy, which we need to talk about in a second. My new most evil character in the world of Twin Peaks.

• 1:46:17David Sims?

  Yeah. So the character you're talking about is, um, Richard.

• 1:46:21Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Pinned in that for one second, but that scene of her chewing him out. And then him just being like, what a fucking hag, what a ball and chain, whatever. And just the immediate, like this thing that Lynch is so good at is just like making these like desperate pleas for empathy.

• 1:46:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:39Griffin Newman?

  In a weird way, in a non corny way of just like, they are people, they are going through things. Everyone has their pains and their like sufferings, like their child killed himself. This will haunt them forever. They're never gonna get over.

• 1:46:53David Sims?

  That's exactly it.

• 1:46:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. No one just like turns out some weird way.

• 1:46:57David Sims?

  So Richard, the character you're referring to, played by Eamonn Farren, not an actor, he's an Australian actor, but I don't really know him at all. He'd worked, he was in Jennifer Lynch's movie Chained. Which I haven't seen.

• 1:47:07Griffin Newman?

  He's got.

• 1:47:08David Sims?

  David Lynch's daughter.

• 1:47:08Griffin Newman?

  Play the look.

• 1:47:09David Sims?

  The craziest face.

• 1:47:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11David Sims?

  So obviously, basically, he is like a.

• 1:47:12Griffin Newman?

  Bully face.

• 1:47:13David Sims?

  He is the most evil character.

• 1:47:16Griffin Newman?

  It is astonishing.

• 1:47:17David Sims?

  In Twin Peaks.

• 1:47:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:47:19David Sims?

  Bob is obviously evil as well, but with Bob, you're like, this is a spirit, like.

• 1:47:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:24David Sims?

  It's a little bit different. It's not like Bob's someone who right, like can go to a grocery store and be mean to someone. I mean, it's like, Richard.

• 1:47:31Griffin Newman?

  Like even Jacques Brunot.

• 1:47:33David Sims?

  Right. That's an evil businessman. I get it, but right.

• 1:47:37Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't feel spiritual. He just feels like a. Terrible person, you know, and even like, um, uh, uh, uh, Papa Horn, Richard Horn, not Ben Horn.

• 1:47:50David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 1:47:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Ben Horn, um, has the thing that is so terrifying of like, he is able to put this veneer of like, gentle sophistication, you know?

• 1:48:02David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:48:03Griffin Newman?

  And class on top of like horrible behavior.

• 1:48:04David Sims?

  Yes, 100%, right. And then Richard, it's like, right, it's like pure, like no, uh, the mask or facade or whatever. It's just like, what if there was the most evil piece of shit on earth, just kind of walking around?

• 1:48:15Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:48:15David Sims?

  And like-

• 1:48:16Griffin Newman?

  And everything about him's awful. That, that first like bar cigarette scene.

• 1:48:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:48:20Griffin Newman?

  Which starts with just like-

• 1:48:21David Sims?

  He's under a smoke, no smoking sign, smoking.

• 1:48:23Griffin Newman?

  Right. This guy's such a dick and the staff is so pissed off at him. He pays off a cop. Then you see the girls at the booth next to him be kind of turned on by his bad boy attitude. And he immediately pivots to just the most upsetting behavior.

• 1:48:35David Sims?

  Like, I will rape you. Like, it's just not, it's again, it's just, there's like a blunt, naked, like evil, like to how he's talking.

• 1:48:40Griffin Newman?

  And this thing we've talked about that Lynch is so good at capturing of like these moments in life where reality just suddenly changed. Where you are seeing behavior that is so bizarre that you almost don't know how to process it.

• 1:48:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:48:52Griffin Newman?

  And like her friends sitting at the booth next to it who like kind of don't know how to react because they're like, wait, did this guy truly in 15 seconds-

• 1:49:00David Sims?

  Did he say that?

• 1:49:01Griffin Newman?

  Pivot to choking her?

• 1:49:02David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:49:03Griffin Newman?

  He's got, and then you cut out of that scene.

• 1:49:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:49:06Griffin Newman?

  And it's so much more disturbing to not have resolution on that.

• 1:49:11David Sims?

  Um, you'll sort of get it, but-

• 1:49:14Griffin Newman?

  But certainly I'm watching for several episodes after that point, they're not cutting back. The next time we see him, he's just in a truck and then he does something-

• 1:49:20David Sims?

  Terrible. He runs over a boy.

• 1:49:22Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:49:22David Sims?

  And with impunity and no remorse.

• 1:49:25Griffin Newman?

  I, I guess, and yells, I told him to move when he's like five blocks away.

• 1:49:29David Sims?

  This is the only, so like, again, when this show premieres, I see some people being like, cut, there's a lot of like sexual violence. There's like nastiness in this show that's like kind of too much. I know Twin Peaks was about dark things, but like-

• 1:49:41Griffin Newman?

  Also basically the entire- David Lynch project.

• 1:49:44David Sims?

  Right, but like this is so explicit and intense and someone like Richard, I think especially it's like, do I want to watch this every week like, and I remember having that feeling a little bit with like, Richard especially where you're just like, I kind of want to go to bed like having watched, you know, Nellie bake a really good cake on Bake Off like, you know, and make a couple, you know, funny jokes with Noel Fielding. Like, I'm not sure I want to watch like a slab faced evil boy like running people over.

• 1:50:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben's fiance is on Bake Off?

• 1:50:14David Sims?

  Yeah, I can't believe this hasn't come up sooner.

• 1:50:17Griffin Newman?

  I'm actually a little offended.

• 1:50:18David Sims?

  Season of Bake Off.

• 1:50:20Griffin Newman?

  Who is delightful.

• 1:50:21David Sims?

  Nellie, who is incredibly delightful.

• 1:50:22Griffin Newman?

  Who plays the character? Who did they get in the cast?

• 1:50:26Griffin Newman?

  She's a, she's a human being, David, a real.

• 1:50:29David Sims?

  A wonderful person.

• 1:50:30Griffin Newman?

  Flesh and blood. No, I, I think we've talked about a little bit the flip of how you felt by the end of our.

• 1:50:36David Sims?

  Park Chan Wook.

• 1:50:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:37David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:37Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I have, I have greatly enjoyed this Lynch experience and watching all of these things, both the rewatches and the things for the first time. I, I will be pretty happy to move on from this. It has been an oppressive headspace to stay in.

• 1:50:52David Sims?

  Yeah, you're right. And I think the next couple of things we're doing are going to be lighter.

• 1:50:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:56David Sims?

  Not that there won't be intense stuff in them.

• 1:50:58Griffin Newman?

  There is.

• 1:50:58David Sims?

  But it's, it's more commercial fare as well.

• 1:51:01Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Which was, by the way, conscious on our.

• 1:51:04David Sims?

  It's a little conscious.

• 1:51:04Griffin Newman?

  Strategic.

• 1:51:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, but this is definitely, I mean, yeah, I don't know. David Lynch's work makes me think about the worst parts of humanity a lot in a way that I don't think feels, um,

• 1:51:18Griffin Newman?

  exploitative or like punishing for like a fact. It's really him trying to reckon with these.

• 1:51:24David Sims?

  Right, but it's, it's nursedy.

• 1:51:25Griffin Newman?

  It's nursedy. I can't think of any better way to put it. It is nursedy. And that's what Kaya De Sinema said when they called this the best film of the 2020s.

• 1:51:32David Sims?

  So to give you some other things from episode five, I want to mention.

• 1:51:35Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:35David Sims?

  Uh, more on Dr. Jacoby's podcast where he is Dr. Amp. Feels like his two listeners are Jerry Horn out in the woods getting high and Nadine, who basically is just like in love with him.

• 1:51:45Griffin Newman?

  Silently loves it. We don't know how strong she still is or isn't.

• 1:51:48David Sims?

  Right. Or what year she thinks it is.

• 1:51:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:54David Sims?

  We have these cuts to the Pentagon where Ernie Hudson plays like a Colonel who's like, you know, Major Briggs's fingerprints have just popped up and we have to figure it out.

• 1:52:06Griffin Newman?

  I need to pull the brakes for a second. I have this thought. Every time they cut to Ernie Hudson sitting behind this desk, just fucking, just, just like serving me dialogue on like a silver platter, right?

• 1:52:19David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:52:19Griffin Newman?

  And I feel this every time he shows up for fucking four steady moments in a new Ghostbusters movie. Why is no one writing like the incredible late career part for Ernie Hudson?

• 1:52:29David Sims?

  Someone do it. He's here. He looks amazing.

• 1:52:32Griffin Newman?

  He looks unbelievable. He is like a classically trained like Titan of an actor who is like beloved. Anytime he shows up, people are like, oh yeah, Ernie Hudson. We love him and, and like speaks without a lot of bitterness about the fact that he's basically never been utilized to his full ability throughout his career. And you're like, anyone writes like a media dramatic supporting part for Ernie Hudson in a TV show or a film is gonna look like a fucking genius. Like he has like a Robert Forster, Jackie Brown-esque. You could frame him in a way that would feel...

• 1:53:08David Sims?

  So you're saying that Frozen Empire didn't do this for you?

• 1:53:10Griffin Newman?

  It tried. It got close. I will say the one scene, you, you saw Frozen Empire.

• 1:53:15David Sims?

  I did, yeah.

• 1:53:16Griffin Newman?

  There's the one scene with him and Ackroyd arguing about the running of the business that I'm like, just by the nature of Ernie Hudson being such a pro and Ackroyd so deeply believing this shit.

• 1:53:28David Sims?

  Of course.

• 1:53:28Griffin Newman?

  For like three minutes, you're like, this movie feels like it's about something, even though it's nonsense. And it's just these two guys. Ackroyd thinks he's not acting.

• 1:53:37David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:53:38Griffin Newman?

  He is in a real conversation with his good friend Winston Zedmore, who he willed into existence. And Ernie Hudson can just sell shit. And I'm looking at Ernie Hudson in this, who basically has to sit behind a desk and go like, good reporting. Thank you. Report back with more. And I'm like, this guy is so captivating.

• 1:53:56David Sims?

  He is. It's my favorite shit.

• 1:53:58Griffin Newman?

  He just speaks with such gentle authority.

• 1:53:59David Sims?

  It's the kind of stuff that...

• 1:54:00Griffin Newman?

  And he looks like 10 zillion dollars.

• 1:54:03David Sims?

  He certainly looks...

• 1:54:04Griffin Newman?

  Do you know how old Ernie Hudson is now?

• 1:54:06David Sims?

  He's like 70 or something.

• 1:54:07Griffin Newman?

  He's like 75 and jacked.

• 1:54:09David Sims?

  Wow. Really?

• 1:54:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And not like weird old man jacked. Like just, he looks...

• 1:54:14David Sims?

  He's just in great shape.

• 1:54:14Griffin Newman?

  He's incredible.

• 1:54:17David Sims?

  Um, yeah, I mean, again, right. If Showtime was just like, hey, this has to be 10 episodes, stuff like Jane Addams and Ernie Hudson, like this sort of random cuts to these sort of procedural workers being like, there's a weird thing with these fingerprints.

• 1:54:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:31David Sims?

  Would probably go.

• 1:54:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:32David Sims?

  Like, the assortment of cops in very, in like Arizona and Vegas and, you know, where it's just like, these great David Lynch character actors being like, I don't know what's going on. You know, like, that'd probably all go. But I love it. I love sitting in all that.

• 1:54:46Griffin Newman?

  No, and I do, I'm repeating myself here, but I do love the thing of like, when a new element or a new world or a new thread is introduced, you have no idea what kind of follow-up or continuation you're gonna get and when.

• 1:54:58David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:54:59Griffin Newman?

  So something like Jane Addams, you're like, I could see this being a character who's in this one episode a lot, until they get the conclusive, like, findings they need from this autopsy. And instead, that's like doled out across episodes.

• 1:55:10David Sims?

  Yeah, she's kind of in it a fair amount, but just in little bits. Right. Okay, so some things that happened in, the biggest thing that happened in seasons, in episode six, is we meet Diane, played by Laura Dern, the person that Dale Cooper talked to on the, on the recording, you know, on his tape, this, you know, he's always addressing Diane. Here is Diane. This is the one card they play in that kind of legacy sequel way.

• 1:55:36Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:55:36David Sims?

  If them, you know, where you're like, not only are we showing you Diane, but she's played by like David Lynch's muse Laura Dern.

• 1:55:43Griffin Newman?

  A real, like, how could you ever cast someone who is satisfying in the role of Diane?

• 1:55:48David Sims?

  It's like, that's the perfect way to do it.

• 1:55:49Griffin Newman?

  It's the perfect one.

• 1:55:50David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:55:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:52David Sims?

  And she is, um, she's got a chip on her shoulder.

• 1:55:56Griffin Newman?

  She does.

• 1:55:57David Sims?

  Griffin just sent us a picture of her.

• 1:55:58Griffin Newman?

  Ben needs to see this. This is Ernie Hudson at the Frozen Empire premiere this spring. He is 78 years old.

• 1:56:08David Sims?

  Wow. Holy shit.

• 1:56:10Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 1:56:11David Sims?

  That's crazy.

• 1:56:11Griffin Newman?

  And that looks natural. That's not like Stallone muscles.

• 1:56:15David Sims?

  No, he's just in great, great, great shit.

• 1:56:17Griffin Newman?

  It doesn't look like he's had work done. If he has, it's been very subtle and delicate.

• 1:56:20David Sims?

  I don't think he has. I think he just looks good.

• 1:56:24Griffin Newman?

  I wanna see like an Ernie Hudson, like, one man, like, fucking Broadway show with him melting down the house.

• 1:56:32David Sims?

  Well, I don't know. This is my age inspiration right now, guys. I don't know.

• 1:56:36Griffin Newman?

  You just sent one to us?

• 1:56:37David Sims?

  I'm gonna send one now. This is the guy I wanna be when I'm older.

• 1:56:43Griffin Newman?

  Also, Ben, just the confidence of going to the premiere just wearing jeans and a black t-shirt.

• 1:56:47David Sims?

  Yep.

• 1:56:48Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, I gotta show off the guy. David, who are we looking at? What is this photo you just sent us?

• 1:56:53David Sims?

  Are you not aware of this?

• 1:56:54Griffin Newman?

  No, I don't know what this is.

• 1:56:55David Sims?

  So that's Frankie Valli.

• 1:56:55Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

• 1:56:57David Sims?

  And they've been big, because he's still on tour. He's 90.

• 1:57:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:00David Sims?

  Right? And there are these videos of whatever, you know, where it's basically like these four young men doing the Four Seasons stuff. Where they're, you know, they're all in sync and they're singing and they're singing the old hits. And then he will come out looking, this honestly, this picture looks pretty good.

• 1:57:14Griffin Newman?

  Moving like Dougie?

• 1:57:15David Sims?

  He looks like a broken Chuck E. Cheese Adam Metronich.

• 1:57:19Griffin Newman?

  David, I-

• 1:57:21David Sims?

  It's like, remember when there was those, like, Prince Philip, like, the last 10 years of his life when he was alive? But you would be like, what's that, like, dead body doing, sitting next to the queen?

• 1:57:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. Who's, where are the puppeteers hiding?

• 1:57:33David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:57:34Griffin Newman?

  Are they just out of frame?

• 1:57:35David Sims?

  And he's kind of like lip syncing. It's kind of unclear what he's doing. His mouth is moving to the Frankie Valli parts.

• 1:57:41Griffin Newman?

  David, what you just sent me is an upsetting image. The only thing that could make it more upsetting is to imagine the Frankie Valli voice coming out of it. That face with like, "Baby!"

• 1:57:51David Sims?

  That's basically what's going on.

• 1:57:53Griffin Newman?

  "Sherry, baby!"

• 1:57:54David Sims?

  I, I'll show you a video at some point. It's so weird. No, you should. It's really funny.

• 1:58:00Griffin Newman?

  This is a thing that happens. I just want people to know. If we talk about an image on an episode that we feel like the other ones need to see, we send it to the Blank Check group text, which Marie is in. And then Marie will just respond with something like, "I can't wait to find out the context of it."

• 1:58:14David Sims?

  What's this now?

• 1:58:15Griffin Newman?

  Because she's not hearing the conversation. She'll hear it like a month from now, then she listens to the edit. And we send the things so that she knows to post them when the episode comes out, but we don't tee them up at all for her. So she just got jacked, Ernie Hudson, and Frankie Valli face.

• 1:58:31David Sims?

  But the whole thing was like, these videos started going around, people were like, this is elder abuse. So he had to then be like, put out a statement being like, "No one's making me do this. I like doing it." Doesn't look like you like doing it, but okay.

• 1:58:43Griffin Newman?

  When I hear about something like this that I've somehow missed, it makes me feel really proud that I'm in a good place with my control of the internet.

• 1:58:50David Sims?

  You're doing really well if this hadn't popped up on a feed.

• 1:58:52Griffin Newman?

  A lot of bad shit.

• 1:58:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:53Griffin Newman?

  There's been a lot of like, you know this fucking thing? And I'm like, I don't know how, but I've actually maybe got my- Shit under control.

• 1:59:00David Sims?

  Griffin, that's a great sign.

• 1:59:01Griffin Newman?

  Thank you. Been a long process.

• 1:59:03David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:03Griffin Newman?

  But I'm just like, I don't want to be engaging with most of this.

• 1:59:07David Sims?

  Sherry. Um, so. Sherry, bye, bye. Yeah, so there's right, there's this in part six is, I would say, one of the darkest episodes where Richard runs over the kid with impunity.

• 1:59:19Griffin Newman?

  You say run over, he runs through the kid.

• 1:59:22David Sims?

  Kills this child, his mother screaming, you know, it's, I don't even really want to talk about it. But there's also, what's his name is there?

• 1:59:29Griffin Newman?

  Harry Dean.

• 1:59:30David Sims?

  Harry Dean. Yes. Um.

• 1:59:32Griffin Newman?

  Which is like them tying in a, a fire walk with me only character for the first time.

• 1:59:38David Sims?

  Yeah, that's true. Uh, I'm trying to think if there's more.

• 1:59:42Griffin Newman?

  But another person who's no longer with us, like.

• 1:59:45David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, he died the year this came out, for sure, 2017.

• 1:59:48Griffin Newman?

  It is crazy how much this show ends up being, not to repeat myself.

• 1:59:53David Sims?

  Well, don't repeat yourself.

• 1:59:54Griffin Newman?

  Final bow for so many people.

• 1:59:57David Sims?

  But yeah, and other upsetting stuff, the, the, you know, uh, Truman's wife. Uh, yeah, like this is just kind of a dark episode. Diane's just like this sort of like clearly kind of fucked up person who's really mad at them. So there's not like that, like immediate satisfaction.

• 2:00:14Griffin Newman?

  Which is the episode that introduces, uh, uh, Seyfried and Laundry Bag.

• 2:00:21Griffin Newman?

  You have Laundry Bag, uh, ending the worst job interview of all time where a guy's like, your resume sucks.

• 2:00:27David Sims?

  Karen, Caleb, Laundry Jones, of course, is who you're talking about.

• 2:00:30Griffin Newman?

  Piece of shit. You dress poorly, you seem crazy.

• 2:00:34David Sims?

  Five, I want to say.

• 2:00:34Griffin Newman?

  The baseline from Tush sucks. It feels like the, anyway, that's a reference to five people.

• 2:00:39David Sims?

  Do you know who Becky is?

• 2:00:41Griffin Newman?

  Who Becky is?

• 2:00:42David Sims?

  That's, uh, Seyfried's character.

• 2:00:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes, she is, uh, Mad Shenam chick's daughter.

• 2:00:47David Sims?

  Right, she is Bobby and Shelley's daughter.

• 2:00:49Griffin Newman?

  I've gotten to the end of that, yeah.

• 2:00:50David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, because that's what I'm trying, I, in my sort of rewatch, I forget like when that information appears or whatever.

• 2:00:56Griffin Newman?

  Right, you're in, she works at the diner. Laundry Bag, then you see Amanda Seyfried coming into the diner, asking her mom for money.

• 2:01:02David Sims?

  She's stuck with this like, you know, even worse version of the sort of toxic relationships we saw on the original show, right?

• 2:01:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. Are they going to? Continue to be a part of the.

• 2:01:13David Sims?

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're popping in and out.

• 2:01:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I just feel like the, the shot I knew was the tilting her head back to know him is to love him.

• 2:01:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:01:23Griffin Newman?

  Kind of glow staring at the sky coked up thing.

• 2:01:26David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:01:26Griffin Newman?

  So when that came so quickly, I was like, is that the end of her stuff? I don't want you to spoil these things.

• 2:01:31David Sims?

  No, not spoiling, yeah, but she's, she's around.

• 2:01:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:34David Sims?

  She's absolutely around. Episode seven, I want to think, uh, just take a look at here. Right. So at this point, like Hawk finds Laura's diary. That's in the bathroom stall. There's this sort of reference to Annie Blackburn, things like that.

• 2:01:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:51David Sims?

  I guess the point is that these points, parts of the diary, which implicate Leland were hidden by Leland in like.

• 2:01:57Griffin Newman?

  One of his interrogations.

• 2:01:58David Sims?

  Old seasons of Twin Peaks, right?

• 2:02:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. But yeah, Hawk finds it through a series of like, uh, uh, Native American reappropriation symbolism.

• 2:02:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:02:09Griffin Newman?

  Logos and coins and like these things that are like the cultural sort of commodification of his people. Leads him straight to this, uh, yeah, these hidden pages.

• 2:02:22David Sims?

  Albert and Gordon work on Diane and basically convince her like, can you go talk to Cooper? We found Cooper, he's in prison. Like, we need you to identify that this is Cooper.

• 2:02:33Griffin Newman?

  There's something off about him.

• 2:02:35David Sims?

  Diane's like mega reluctant, but they make her do it, they go on the plane.

• 2:02:38Griffin Newman?

  Well, she's very hostile to, um.

• 2:02:40David Sims?

  Albert especially.

• 2:02:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And then, yeah, he's like, I have to go back with Cole. They really implore her and then that scene is so upsetting where you just see immediately her clock that something's wrong. She's got this test in her mind of like, when was the last time we saw each other? And even when he seemingly kind of answers correctly, uh.

• 2:03:02David Sims?

  She knows it's not him and she's very, very upset.

• 2:03:04Griffin Newman?

  Dern is the best.

• 2:03:05David Sims?

  She is the best. Uh, and then we have Cooper, just the way Cooper talks in his like creepy kind of like. Hello, it's good to see you again, you know, like it's so cool.

• 2:03:15Griffin Newman?

  Pitch down, it sounds like, and post, especially when he's behind the glass. But you also, you already have the thing of him asking for his phone call and calling the number that makes the security system short circuit. And then saying the Mr. Strawberry thing that clearly like terrifies the warden. You have this sense of like, he has a plan. Land for how to get out of here.

• 2:03:36David Sims?

  Yeah, of course. Something about a strawberry.

• 2:03:38Griffin Newman?

  Mr. Strawberry.

• 2:03:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:41David Sims?

  And so that's going along.

• 2:03:45Griffin Newman?

  Very shortly after the Diane conversation where she says like, there's something missing here.

• 2:03:51David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:03:51Griffin Newman?

  That's not the same person. Then Bad Coop, Mr. C, makes his like very quiet escape.

• 2:03:58David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:03:59Griffin Newman?

  Which is basically tells the guard to tell the warden, he wants to talk about strawberry, goes in and says like, I'm not gonna talk about it, but I'm gonna tell you what I'm not talking about.

• 2:04:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:04:09Griffin Newman?

  And if you don't want me to talk about it more, that's the other part, the fucking dog leg thing. When they arrest him, they find the one dog leg in the car and they're like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, that dog leg wasn't coincidental. There's three other legs.

• 2:04:22David Sims?

  Sent to other people who know about you or whatever.

• 2:04:25Griffin Newman?

  They will be sent if you don't release me. And then he just drives away with his buddy.

• 2:04:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:04:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:29David Sims?

  Pretty weird. In my opinion.

• 2:04:32Griffin Newman?

  No good.

• 2:04:35David Sims?

  And what else do we have going on? This, this is right. This is where Ike the Spike, the um, strange little assassin.

• 2:04:44Griffin Newman?

  Very normal assassin.

• 2:04:45David Sims?

  Tries to kill.

• 2:04:49Griffin Newman?

  Well, does kill the other woman.

• 2:04:51David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:04:51Griffin Newman?

  Given the two photos.

• 2:04:53David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:04:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:53David Sims?

  Uh, and Dougie stops him by like going into like muscle memory.

• 2:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:59David Sims?

  At one point, the tree pops out and is like, squeeze his hand off.

• 2:05:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:05:03David Sims?

  Kinda cool.

• 2:05:04Griffin Newman?

  But you also have the thing when he's uh, assessing the first woman and going through all the other people in the office who are witnesses.

• 2:05:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:05:11Griffin Newman?

  Where he like bends his assassin spike.

• 2:05:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:05:14Griffin Newman?

  He's got his like, what, like, what is it? Is it like a letter opener or like an ice pick?

• 2:05:20David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, it's like an ice pick. Exactly. That's just like tool of.

• 2:05:23Griffin Newman?

  Innate wooden carved handle.

• 2:05:26David Sims?

  Yeah. Right. Right. Um, yeah, uh, we haven't talked about, I guess that's all the big stuff, right? We haven't talked about like that most episodes end with a musical performance at the Roadhouse.

• 2:05:39Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of disconnected.

• 2:05:40Speaker 03

  Right. And does feel a little like David Lynch playlist, like here are some artists I like.

• 2:05:45David Sims?

  I think that kind of is it, but there is also just this thing of like, we're seeing the townspeople. Like we're seeing characters we know, or also seeing characters we don't know who turn out to not matter. Like sometimes we're just sort of like in on a conversation for a minute between some girlfriends. And we're like, who are these people? And it's like, don't worry about it. It's such like Twin Peaks kind of like chunders on even though like.

• 2:06:07Griffin Newman?

  But it's all part of, I think the deliberate disorientation of it's like training you out of trying to make this show conform to normal television narrative expectations, right? Like you need to stop looking at every single thing as a clue. There, there's a certain part of me that thinks, I mean, part of it is just him evolving as an artist and, and being interested in different things. Right? But there's the thing at the beginning of Fire Walk with me where Lynch is literally like creating this like woman who does like a pantomime of clues that are meant to be like deciphered as to what the case is, the thing with his.

• 2:06:47David Sims?

  Yeah. The interpretive dance woman. I love her.

• 2:06:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. That felt like him mocking people wanting to like solve Twin Peaks.

• 2:06:55David Sims?

  Yes. And needing to overanalyze every piece. Look at the clues. Right. It's all there.

• 2:06:58Griffin Newman?

  Rather than this doing the mocking, it's like, there are scenes in this that are in this just because I think they're interesting. Not all of this is like building to a codex.

• 2:07:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:09Griffin Newman?

  That you need to use to decipher it.

• 2:07:11David Sims?

  No, it's not. Um.

• 2:07:13Speaker 03

  I'm realizing something that we haven't touched upon and we don't have to spend that much time, but just, uh, the money that Dougie owes. That whole little subplot where they're the two hitmen.

• 2:07:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:07:25Speaker 03

  Who put a bomb under his car.

• 2:07:27David Sims?

  Right. The kid explores it and you're like, the kid's gonna blow up and then he doesn't.

• 2:07:31Speaker 03

  Instead it's like carjackers get exploded. And then. Who's that?

• 2:07:39Griffin Newman?

  Jeremy Davies, one of our twitchiest actors, was Faraday on Lost and was in Saving Private Ryan. And he's the one with the crazy hair who goes to meet her at the playground to get the money.

• 2:07:50Speaker 03

  Oh, this guy. Yeah, nice.

• 2:07:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:53David Sims?

  Just popping in.

• 2:07:54Griffin Newman?

  The Naomi Watts performance was just so good, but her fucking monologue where she convinces these guys to accept her terms.

• 2:08:02David Sims?

  Right. Again, just force of nature kind of stuff.

• 2:08:05Griffin Newman?

  And the same thing happens with the investigators who come to check in on the exploded car at Dougie's office, where she's able to just talk these people down, but she's also able to like weirdly contextualize Dougie. You know?

• 2:08:20David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:21Griffin Newman?

  He can say his two elusive things. People are like, what the fuck? And then she comes in, she's like, you don't understand what our life is like.

• 2:08:29Griffin Newman?

  The other scene that is unbelievable, I mean, I shouldn't say the other scene. A scene we have not talked about that is unbelievable is Dougie coming into his boss with all the folders where he's done the doodles. And his boss is like, how am I supposed to make sense of this? And Dougie just repeats, make sense of this. And then he looks at it and this guy gives this fucking unbelievable performance, checking the notes back. And it dawning on him like, oh my God, it all makes sense. And it's a great linchpin where he-

• 2:08:55David Sims?

  Just what happens over and over again, right?

• 2:08:56Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't explain what has now become clear to him.

• 2:08:59David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:59Griffin Newman?

  But he's like, this is a stunt.

• 2:09:01David Sims?

  He's just someone who makes you sit down and think about things.

• 2:09:04Griffin Newman?

  Right. He drew a staircase moving from one line down to the other.

• 2:09:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:09:08Griffin Newman?

  And now I see these things so clearly.

• 2:09:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12David Sims?

  So, yeah, I feel like I, so now that I've, now that I've gone through these episodes, before episode eight, we really are just completely grasping in the darkness.

• 2:09:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:09:24David Sims?

  Like if you're, if you're watching this show, you understand that evil Cooper is out there and you understand that good Cooper is kind of trapped in this body. You also are beginning to understand that the show is definitely not just going to be about sheriffs and deputies and Twin Peaks solving mysteries.

• 2:09:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:09:41David Sims?

  But you don't really know anything else about what the fuck is going on

• 2:09:45Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:09:45David Sims?

  long term in this show.

• 2:09:47Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:09:47David Sims?

  You, I guess it's just like, it's a lot of plot lines. But even some of them, you're like, I don't see where they're, how they're tying into other stuff, right? You're just kind of like, I guess we're just checking in.

• 2:09:57Speaker 03

  The fucking Las Vegas.

• 2:09:59David Sims?

  Right. Like, what's this gonna be?

• 2:10:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:01David Sims?

  And then that's-

• 2:10:04David Sims?

  Probably just by design, obviously, but it does mean that episode eight, which is not like an episode that explains what's been happening, but why it hits in this kind of crystal way where you're like, suddenly it's like a mission statement episode about this season and this show.

• 2:10:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  And like Bob and like what's at the core of Twin Peaks? And it feels like Lynch and Frost doing that more than they do. Like, it's kind of what you're talking about, but it's not really about like Native American, you know, sort of heritage or anything like that. It's a little bit of that, you'll see. You haven't seen it.

• 2:10:38Griffin Newman?

  No, I haven't seen it.

• 2:10:38David Sims?

  Do you know anything about it?

• 2:10:40Griffin Newman?

  I know it's the atomic bomb episode.

• 2:10:41David Sims?

  Right, so you know that.

• 2:10:43Griffin Newman?

  Look, I was, I was unlike now, when I am healthy and good and in control, I was way too online at the time that this show was airing. And so I just remember reading so many fucking tweets of like live watching and immediate responses. I was very fascinated by just watching people talk about the show.

• 2:11:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:11:02Griffin Newman?

  Not in like a spoiler sense, I wasn't reading like full people floundering, trying to recap it.

• 2:11:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:08Griffin Newman?

  But just the sort of like holy shit of like Wally Brando or whatever.

• 2:11:13David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:11:13Griffin Newman?

  I remember that episode, seeing the wave of people being like, David Lynch just like rewrote the rules of television. This episode changes everything.

• 2:11:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:11:22Griffin Newman?

  Not just within Twin Peaks, but like this medium.

• 2:11:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:26Griffin Newman?

  And I feel like you've talked about this, but that this was a point in time where it felt like TV is in some transitional stage. Is it about to evolve into something much more interesting? And it feels like we've gotten stuck in an absolute dead end of television.

• 2:11:43David Sims?

  And it's partly because nobody actually gets to make TV like David Lynch got to make this.

• 2:11:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:47David Sims?

  Like, most people aren't being given a true blank check by a network of like, yeah, it can be as long as you want with as many people as you want.

• 2:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, here's another thing. I was talking to my brother, James Newman. Past and future guest about a prestige TV show he is watching that is similarly directed by one auteur filmmaker. And was complaining that he's like, this really just feels like he couldn't figure out how to edit the script down to a movie. Like, one episode ends because an hour is up and the next episode starts immediately where the last episode ended. And there are just credits tacked on to the beginning and end of every hour. Like, what are we even doing here? And as much as he did not design these as like, separate episodes in the scripting stage or the shooting stage, it sounds like. And as much as it's not like each episode resolves its own thematic concerns.

• 2:12:38Griffin Newman?

  Each episode does, in these first seven at least, I know eight's gonna be very much its own thing. Each episode does feel like a piece.

• 2:12:47David Sims?

  It's really well done in that way of.

• 2:12:49Griffin Newman?

  This doesn't just feel like a fucking.

• 2:12:51David Sims?

  It doesn't end abruptly. I think that's one, the musical performances really help with that as well and sort of like decompressing you.

• 2:12:56Griffin Newman?

  But there's like an intentionality of. Editing and construction and, and sort of rhythm and flow and mood and tone of these things. Where I'm like, what I like about it is that it doesn't feel like he's trying to do a movie, as much as he maybe talks about it that way. You know, and I'm sure if you watch all 18 hours straight through and you cut the credits out, maybe it plays differently. But I'm like, I think these things have inherent value as one hour chunks.

• 2:13:22Griffin Newman?

  I know the first four were aired as two, two hour chunks, but like all of this, yeah. It works in whatever form.

• 2:13:28David Sims?

  Sure. I find something like the ratings. I know that's kind of not that helpful.

• 2:13:33Griffin Newman?

  I did see on the Wikipedia, there was the, uh, hyperlink to the deadline piece of the first.

• 2:13:38David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:13:39Griffin Newman?

  Episode, not living up to expectations.

• 2:13:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:13:43Griffin Newman?

  I mean, it's like a funny article to read where they're like, much higher expectations for the return of a cult legacy show.

• 2:13:48David Sims?

  Debut for Twin Peaks.

• 2:13:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:53David Sims?

  Okay, I have found that article.

• 2:13:54Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Can you just find?

• 2:13:56David Sims?

  Got a point two in the demo.

• 2:13:58Griffin Newman?

  Any ratings list from that?

• 2:14:00David Sims?

  Yeah, that's what I'm trying to look for here. Deadline's not exactly the most useful on this front. There's just not anyone that keeps like a clean database of this stuff.

• 2:14:12Griffin Newman?

  That's weird because in every other sense, the Nielsen ratings make perfect sense. Are flawless.

• 2:14:19David Sims?

  It's another thing Conan talked about recently on an episode where he would be like, we realize like that the demo fluctuating for us would be like six people with Nielsen boxes at one in the morning, like just not turning their TV on that day. Like it was such, the sample was so small.

• 2:14:35Griffin Newman?

  It is insane that for decades, the way television success was measured was they would just randomly write to certain people and be like, congratulations, you've been selected to choose to receive a new box. And by the way, you have to keep a detailed diary of what you're watching and when and which member of your family is watching it. And then they'd get the reporting back from those people on honor system that they were reporting things accurately and they would extrapolate from that. Well, if 30% of the families we sent boxes to are doing this, it probably means 30% of America is watching the same thing.

• 2:15:12David Sims?

  That's, that's how they did it.

• 2:15:15Griffin Newman?

  It's insane.

• 2:15:17Speaker 03

  Makes no sense.

• 2:15:17Griffin Newman?

  And now we have all of our television in a way that is very easy to track. Like you can get hard ass data and all the companies are like, we're not really, I mean, seconds watched over years.

• 2:15:36David Sims?

  Uh, all right, maybe this is something.

• 2:15:39Griffin Newman?

  Just give me something. All I ask for is some.

• 2:15:41David Sims?

  Broken websites, Jesus Christ. Uh, interactive TV ratings database, help me out here.

• 2:15:50Griffin Newman?

  Please, please help the man out.

• 2:15:52David Sims?

  You know what? We're just doing the top 10 shows of 2017 right now.

• 2:15:54Griffin Newman?

  Great, okay.

• 2:15:55David Sims?

  I'll think of other things, maybe if I can find them later, but, uh, Twin Peaks didn't crack this sadly. Um, and I'm, you know, it's kind of annoying what the number one show of 2017 was.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of annoying?

• 2:16:06David Sims?

  Well, cause it's just Sunday night football. It's always annoying when it's just that.

• 2:16:10Griffin Newman?

  That's very annoying.

• 2:16:11David Sims?

  But, all right, but what's number two?

• 2:16:12Griffin Newman?

  Number two, is it the Big Bang Theory?

• 2:16:14David Sims?

  The Big Bang Theory.

• 2:16:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:15David Sims?

  Okay, what's number three? Newer procedural drama, I think just recently ended its run.

• 2:16:20Griffin Newman?

  Blue Bloods?

• 2:16:21David Sims?

  No. That is not on the top 10.

• 2:16:24Griffin Newman?

  Is it an end? CIS?

• 2:16:25David Sims?

  No.

• 2:16:25Griffin Newman?

  Is it a Chicago?

• 2:16:26David Sims?

  No, it's not part of a series.

• 2:16:29Griffin Newman?

  It's it's a total standalone?

• 2:16:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:31Griffin Newman?

  And it just ended?

• 2:16:33David Sims?

  Yeah, it just ended. It's happened. This is its first season.

• 2:16:37Griffin Newman?

  Weird. It's not The Good Doctor?

• 2:16:38David Sims?

  It is The Good Doctor.

• 2:16:39Griffin Newman?

  The Good Doctor.

• 2:16:39David Sims?

  That was the number three show on TV.

• 2:16:41Griffin Newman?

  It was huge.

• 2:16:42David Sims?

  Uh, he was a good doctor.

• 2:16:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. This is another fascinating thing. That show was huge. It obviously like, you know, its peak was early, but it stayed big. The financials of television are so fucked that the show ended season seven, basically because they were like, it is impossible for this show to stay profitable.

• 2:16:58David Sims?

  Uh, right.

• 2:16:58Griffin Newman?

  Like, the old system's in place of how much actors get raises, the longer shows go on, and when they have to renegotiate contracts. They're now at like a perfect, like, sort of bottleneck of the show is so successful that they can't argue that there isn't room to give them raises. But also, if they give them raises, the show no longer makes money because the value of a show is so dispersed now.

• 2:17:23David Sims?

  Speaking of.

• 2:17:24Griffin Newman?

  And like every year, just fucking ad sales money goes down. Anyway, go on.

• 2:17:27David Sims?

  Number four, spinoff of a sitcom.

• 2:17:29Griffin Newman?

  Young Sheldon?

• 2:17:30David Sims?

  Young Sheldon.

• 2:17:31Griffin Newman?

  Sheldon Burnham.

• 2:17:32David Sims?

  Also recently ended, correct?

• 2:17:33Griffin Newman?

  Uh, yeah, finally did. Now there's a spinoff that people think is problematic.

• 2:17:37David Sims?

  Zygote Sheldon?

• 2:17:39Griffin Newman?

  No, it's Sheldon's brother-in-law. I'm not kidding. It's it's Sheldon's sister's first marriage.

• 2:17:47David Sims?

  Georgie and Mandy's first marriage.

• 2:17:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:17:49David Sims?

  Jesus. Okay. Uh, number five.

• 2:17:53Griffin Newman?

  Give me something.

• 2:17:53David Sims?

  Big running show procedural. You've already mentioned it.

• 2:17:56Griffin Newman?

  I have. Is it Blue Bloods?

• 2:17:57David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:17:58Griffin Newman?

  Is it? Is it in law, N Law and Order?

• 2:18:01David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:18:01Griffin Newman?

  Is it mothership NCIS?

• 2:18:03David Sims?

  It is mothership, original brand, NCIS.

• 2:18:06Griffin Newman?

  Mark.

• 2:18:06David Sims?

  Naval, criminal investigative service.

• 2:18:10Griffin Newman?

  Which now they're doing a prequel show about young Mark Harmon?

• 2:18:13David Sims?

  Good.

• 2:18:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, great.

• 2:18:14David Sims?

  Is it just NCIS Origins? You're right.

• 2:18:16Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:18:17David Sims?

  Uh, starring Austin Stow.

• 2:18:20Griffin Newman?

  It's naval.

• 2:18:22David Sims?

  They do naval crimes. It's a Jag spinoff. People forget that NCAS is a spinoff of the show Jag.

• 2:18:28Griffin Newman?

  I never forget.

• 2:18:29David Sims?

  I know you don't. I know you don't.

• 2:18:31Griffin Newman?

  Jag.

• 2:18:32David Sims?

  Um, Jag, which was one of those shows when I was a kid where I was like, this is just like for, for grownups.

• 2:18:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:38David Sims?

  Like, like who are boring. Like, that's what that show is.

• 2:18:40Griffin Newman?

  There was like a run of like two or three years on SNL where sketches kept making references to Catherine Bell from Jag as like the hottest woman in the world. Like they used her as like placeholder hot woman.

• 2:18:51David Sims?

  She was hot.

• 2:18:52Griffin Newman?

  Where I was a clearly one writer at SNL has a huge thing. This keeps coming up.

• 2:18:58David Sims?

  Number six, uh, big, uh, drama that was a big hit, big buzzy drama, network drama.

• 2:19:04Griffin Newman?

  Are you being facetious?

• 2:19:05David Sims?

  No.

• 2:19:06Griffin Newman?

  Is it, uh, The Good Wife?

• 2:19:07David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:19:08Griffin Newman?

  Bigger than that?

• 2:19:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:10Griffin Newman?

  Way bigger.

• 2:19:10David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:11Griffin Newman?

  Buzzy. And it's ended since?

• 2:19:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:13Griffin Newman?

  Where was it in its life at this point?

• 2:19:14David Sims?

  Uh, it would have been.

• 2:19:16Griffin Newman?

  I don't need hard numbers. Just give me kind of like.

• 2:19:18David Sims?

  This is the end of its first season, I think.

• 2:19:20Griffin Newman?

  Oh, wow. So this was the start.

• 2:19:21David Sims?

  It ran for six seasons.

• 2:19:23Griffin Newman?

  Is it How to Get Away with Murder?

• 2:19:24David Sims?

  No.

• 2:19:25Griffin Newman?

  Is it Ashonda?

• 2:19:26David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:19:27Griffin Newman?

  It's not, it doesn't take, it's not within Shondaland?

• 2:19:29David Sims?

  No.

• 2:19:30Griffin Newman?

  Well, don't get angry at me. I think that's a fair question. Is that my fault you need to poop again?

• 2:19:34David Sims?

  I don't actually. It went away.

• 2:19:36Griffin Newman?

  What a twist, much like Twin Peaks of Return. Sometimes you are, feel guaranteed that a thread.

• 2:19:43David Sims?

  All right.

• 2:19:43Griffin Newman?

  Will come back.

• 2:19:44David Sims?

  I don't even know why we're doing number six. We don't usually do that.

• 2:19:47Griffin Newman?

  We're going to eight this time. Number six, it just ended. It was buzzy. This was season one.

• 2:19:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:53Griffin Newman?

  Was it an Emmy player as well?

• 2:19:55David Sims?

  Yeah, it won Emmys.

• 2:19:55Griffin Newman?

  What network was it on?

• 2:19:56David Sims?

  NBC.

• 2:19:58Griffin Newman?

  This is us?

• 2:19:59David Sims?

  Yes, yes. The rare network drama that actually was like an awards player. Bad show, I think, but lots of good acting and crying and stuff.

• 2:20:05Griffin Newman?

  Anytime I would just read a headline about like shocking twist in this week's This Is Us and I'd click the deadline for the explanation, I'm like, I swear to you, every twist on this show is you're introduced to a character and at the end of the episode, they reveal that character is related to something else.

• 2:20:18David Sims?

  I think what the show kept doing.

• 2:20:19Griffin Newman?

  Or was a different character at a different age.

• 2:20:21David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:20:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:22David Sims?

  Um.

• 2:20:23Griffin Newman?

  That, that man just loves the like, oh, well, of course you're a bunch of, uh, disconnected characters that have nothing to do with each other. Twist. They're married. That's not a tweet. You're just telling us stuff in the wrong order.

• 2:20:35David Sims?

  Number seven, uh, is a reality competition program.

• 2:20:39Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's not American Idol.

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  The Voice. No.

• 2:20:43Griffin Newman?

  No. Is it? Hmm. Dancing with the Stars?

• 2:20:46David Sims?

  Nope.

• 2:20:48Griffin Newman?

  Survivor?

• 2:20:48David Sims?

  No.

• 2:20:48Speaker 03

  America's Got Talent.

• 2:20:49David Sims?

  America's Got Talent.

• 2:20:50Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:20:51David Sims?

  Kind of the one people forget about, but was obviously a big deal.

• 2:20:54Griffin Newman?

  It still is.

• 2:20:54David Sims?

  And number eight is the only cable show on the top 10.

• 2:20:58Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Walking Dead.

• 2:20:59David Sims?

  Correct, which was a phenomenon unlike any other, uh, in terms of, right? It was a basic cable show that did network hit numbers.

• 2:21:06Griffin Newman?

  Yup.

• 2:21:06David Sims?

  It was crazy.

• 2:21:07Speaker 03

  They still have like new off spin.

• 2:21:09David Sims?

  Yeah, now it's like Walking Dead, the one time they went down this road at that point. These three characters are there. What do they do? I don't, they fucking fight zombies, bro. It's always the same shit. What do you think they do?

• 2:21:21Griffin Newman?

  They're like five.

• 2:21:22David Sims?

  They're dirty.

• 2:21:23Griffin Newman?

  They're five.

• 2:21:23David Sims?

  It's Atlanta.

• 2:21:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes. I think there's one that is Walking Dead, colon, Daryl, colon, Paris.

• 2:21:29David Sims?

  Yes, that's what I'm saying. Like, it's literally becoming just kind of like, these two characters.

• 2:21:35Griffin Newman?

  But wasn't Fear the Walking Dead created as like?

• 2:21:37David Sims?

  They waited for eight seasons.

• 2:21:38Griffin Newman?

  I know.

• 2:21:38David Sims?

  Yeah. And I watched at least two of them. I was kind of into that show.

• 2:21:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I mean, had an incredible cast.

• 2:21:44David Sims?

  Yeah, fucking Kim Dickens and.

• 2:21:46Griffin Newman?

  Coleman Domingo?

• 2:21:47David Sims?

  Ruben Blattis.

• 2:21:48Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, Cliff Curtis? Uh, that show was like day one, right? It was like, this is like boots on the ground, the start.

• 2:21:57David Sims?

  Um, that was taking you back to the start with new people, yes.

• 2:22:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then they did a show that was like latchkey kids in the middle?

• 2:22:04David Sims?

  Yeah, is that World Beyond?

• 2:22:05Griffin Newman?

  I think. And then now there's like, yeah.

• 2:22:09David Sims?

  I don't know, man. There's one that was like a Negan spinoff, right? With, uh, Lauren Cohen and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

• 2:22:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:16David Sims?

  There was one that was Daryl. That one's still going, I think. And then there's the one that's, um, you know, Rick and Michonne.

• 2:22:23Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:22:24David Sims?

  Uh, doing their own kind of thing where they just like, fuck.

• 2:22:27Griffin Newman?

  But they're all like now filling in different timeline, guys, right?

• 2:22:30David Sims?

  I don't, I don't, I don't know. Like, that's the simple fact of the matter.

• 2:22:33Griffin Newman?

  Maybe dossier.

• 2:22:34David Sims?

  I have no idea.

• 2:22:35Griffin Newman?

  Maybe dossier for next episode, maybe JJ.

• 2:22:37David Sims?

  Just to fill us in on the chronology of The Walking Dead and its seven spinoffs. Um, yeah, the other shows in the top 10 are Another Day of America's Got Talent.

• 2:22:47Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:22:47David Sims?

  And, uh, Bull.

• 2:22:48Griffin Newman?

  Bull.

• 2:22:48David Sims?

  Remember Bull?

• 2:22:49Griffin Newman?

  Bull.

• 2:22:50David Sims?

  Is that still on?

• 2:22:50Griffin Newman?

  No, I think, ended.

• 2:22:53David Sims?

  Just ended.

• 2:22:55Griffin Newman?

  Just ended. It had a lot of lawsuits around it that it survived, but it finally ended.

• 2:22:59David Sims?

  Yeah, it was certainly surrounded. No, not just. It ended in 2022.

• 2:23:02Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:23:02David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, there you go.

• 2:23:05Griffin Newman?

  There you go.

• 2:23:07David Sims?

  Um, but yeah, just crazy to think about The Good Doctor. We will be talking about-

• 2:23:12Griffin Newman?

  Look, the number one takeaway from this, our episode on the first seven chapters of Twin Peaks The Return, is that it's crazy to think about The Good Doctor.

• 2:23:22David Sims?

  Um-

• 2:23:23Griffin Newman?

  What if a doctor was good?

• 2:23:24David Sims?

  And Conan, you know, give it a rest, man. You've had a great career. No, I'm joking. We love you, Conan. Come on the show, Conan.

• 2:23:28Griffin Newman?

  So make some friends. Maybe the podcast format's not how you're gonna make friends. Maybe go to a bar, bring a book with you, wait for someone to strike up a conversation.

• 2:23:38David Sims?

  No, and so he's gotta talk to Jack White.

• 2:23:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I bet that one's gonna bear fruit.

• 2:23:43Griffin Newman?

  Look, Conan?

• 2:23:45David Sims?

  Yeah, Conan, how much is he old? He doesn't have space in his life for you to be his friend.

• 2:23:50Griffin Newman?

  You've known Jack White for like 20 years. If you were gonna become friends, it would've happened by now. You've done a bunch of projects together and you're not friends?

• 2:23:57David Sims?

  It's so funny how it was initially him, like, "I'm talking to interesting people." And now it's like, "So I hear you have a TV show." I mean, which is like, obviously it's how you book these shows.

• 2:24:04Griffin Newman?

  The premise originally was, "Do I have friends who aren't in show business and are show business friends real? I'm gonna have people on who I have a history with-

• 2:24:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:24:12Griffin Newman?

  And interrogate, "Are we actually friends?"

• 2:24:14David Sims?

  And then after 20 episodes, it just became WTF, right? Two. WTF two.

• 2:24:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. To be clear, we both enjoy this.

• 2:24:20David Sims?

  I love it. I listen to it every weekend. It's really well done.

• 2:24:23Griffin Newman?

  Although, can I, can I throw out a complaint? It's a sloppy feed.

• 2:24:28David Sims?

  Uh, sure.

• 2:24:29Griffin Newman?

  It's one of those things where like-

• 2:24:30David Sims?

  There's too much.

• 2:24:30Griffin Newman?

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is basically now composed of four different shows of rotation, Walking Dead style.

• 2:24:35David Sims?

  But did you listen to the one where it's him and Jordan Schlansky at each other's throats for an hour? It's really funny.

• 2:24:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's great, but I'm also like, having a hard time keeping track of like, yeah. Cause there's Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan, then the Campfire ones.

• 2:24:51David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The Carvey ones, which then I guess basically kind of indirectly turn into Fly in the Wall.

• 2:24:56David Sims?

  Right. That, that, that.

• 2:24:58Griffin Newman?

  Walking Dead. It's like The Walking Dead.

• 2:25:01David Sims?

  Join us next week for episode eight of Twin Peaks The Return.

• 2:25:06Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for helping to produce the show, A.J. McKeon for editing and being our production coordinator, J.J. Birch for our research, Lea Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon Blank Check special features where we are finishing up our series on Andrew Lloyd Webber, leading up to a big end of year cats bash a Jellicle ball, if you will. So, check that out. And as always, Ernie Hudson, 78, still looking hot as hell.