I was thinking about the dieing husband scene just today wondering what that had to do with anything except maybe to show why Beverly was feeling vulnerable to make a pass at Ben Horne. But who knows if that Beverly character is gonna come back into play when Cooper returns searching for Laura and Mr.C.
I don't believe every scene has a logical, story-moving purpose. Sometimes the purpose is simply mood or aesthetic setting or character building.
In one regard you are wrong, Lynch has found his audience. That is why this site exists. Lynch stopped courting broad acceptance after his first failed attempts as a 'director-for-hire'. He makes his art, and you either want to look at it or you don't.
Director for hire is not the only alternative. Fargo is not a director for hire project and it certainly reached its audience (unless u want to tell me that Lynch's audience is the very few that are watching the show, half of which are waiting for Audrey's return, the other half making theories about the significance of the louboutin shoes. Maybe I am on denial and reject the idea of this being lynch's audience).
I think the matter I try to raise has to do mostly with who produces a film, how this film is produced and how it is marketed.
The return was promoted a lot based on the dynamic of the original series and the endless "what is the horse, who is the giant, who is the dwarf" it generated, instead of drawing a line and differentiating itself from this past (a past that Lynch had very little to do with afterall: he wrote and directed a tiny number of episodes, being completely distant from the project most of the time and having created a very different language outside of that original twin peaks).
This series is phenomenal, every scene of it is an auteur bomb of visual richness. I don't understand why The Young Pope generated an online conversation about the core ideas of its content (and had excellent ratings) and Twin Peaks remained in the cherry pie fetishism. Isn't that bad marketing/reaching to a wrong audience?
I don't believe every scene has a logical, story-moving purpose. Sometimes the purpose is simply mood or aesthetic setting or character building.
what makes u believe that.
see, the problem is what story means. Does it mean a plot, like a fairy-tale? or does it also mean a visual story (the camera's story) or a commentary substory. if you connect all these, there is no loose end or scenes with the purpose of creating a mood. not in the lynch universe at least.
You are describing something similar to fashion that creates moods with colors, textures etc to please the eye but has no significance under it. I ve never seen Lynch's work as a fashion photograph but I also have found more people appreciating him for these "moods" than what I always perceived as meaning.
I think it's important to take the piece as a whole. Sure, there is a clear mystery with clues, but you have to enjoy the ride. To be honest, I think I'd rather watch all the episodes without discussing anything and then go back. It's hard not to pick it apart though. There's so much that's so stimulating. The things people are calling red herrings, to me, many of them anyway, are part of the architecture. Part of the scenery and mood. I guess too, as someone who works with people who have severe mental health problems, hallucinations, violent impulses, delusions, etc.... when I'm working with someone who's not with me how I'm with them, I go with the general feeling and infer when I need to. I don't tend to get hung up on things outside of the big plot picture. But it's all fascinating to me.
There are various types of storytelling Twin Peaks adopts, some is not supposed to lead anywhere, except making a very big statement about reality in general. So they are random pieces that if seen together create a big picture.
For example: the 119 girl is probably an illegal resident of the empty-looking rancho rosa residential project. Along with the prostitute (who uses the premises for work purposes), they help Lynch in making a point about what Rancho Rosa is: the decadent and sad evolution of the American dream / American family. The 119 girl is a lost soul within this abandoned environment, in her own world, her story never evolves on the script (just like in real life it wouldn't, she doesn't have a future). She keeps yelling 119 cause she is on a mad trip. But on a symbolic/sociological level, this is a social class' or cast's scream for help that noone will ever listen to. Her small story is also one of the two extreme models of family, the other being janey-e who is over-protective to her son and superficial about the family life she desires. The 119 girl's son is completely unprotected. The comparison is cruel: both ways of being leads nowhere, people in both cases are lost in their own world. A nightmare and a plastic fantasy. One has no future (and no plot) and the other can only imagine a future that is unreal/ungrounded/material/soulless (and has a vividly colored dream-like plot). The extremes have taken over in describing what used to be called the "middle" class. Lynch shows that the middle class (the rancho rosa) has vanished. Its either an empty low or a fake high, somewhere else than where it was supposed to be.
Such scenes invite you to adopt them as possible plot-related and then drop them once u understand how they connect to the rest of the world Lynch has created. In most cases the way they are written and presented reflect the way their characters would be seen in the real world (a real janey-e would be observed by us - or would be invited in our lives - for longer periods while a 119 girl only briefly, or not at all) or how their characters would feel if they were real (janey-e's trip to life feels adventurous and long, 119 girl's trip to life is inactive and short) .
Political and social commentary have never been Lynch's aim, through his film, anyway. Until this one. I can make a case for seeing more allegory in this series than any other he's ever done. The suburban American dream hallucination example, as described above, is too huge to ignore--he's talking about a cultural American wasteland (I'm US, I can say that). Luckily, art comes first and foremost; he pretty much whispers his point.
One word: Ghostwood.
He shows his age and sensibility without lowering his artistic standard.
The scene with Bev and her husband made me super uncomfortable. She clearly has major unresolved emotional issues because her husband, when you examine the scene beyond impulse, shows that her Husband did absolutely nothing wrong and is quite clearly a victim of emotional abuse and neglect.
He has been cooped up inside his house all day, for god knows how many days in a row, with no company apart from a sweet old lady who cares for him. Now imagine this, your wife comes home from work very late. You ask "What were you doing?" - imagine this in all of its varieties "How was work?" - "How come your home late". All of these questions, in any circumstance, are completely innocent and can lead to an unwinding conversation after work. Instead of simply discussing work with her clearly dying husband, she starts off by being aggressive and defensive at the same time. She uses the clever tactic of saying "I know you're ill, but don't take this out on me"... when all he had done was ask why she was late and tell her that he's not hungry. This is a common method of mentally abusive partners who need to be in the "right" for their abuse to go under the rug unnoticed. As many people here have fallen for it, shows how effective it can be.
What IS the case, is that she is taking everything out on him. He is ill and so she has to work, so she takes this out on him. She feels guilty for wanting to fuck her boss, so she takes it out on him. Again, she clearly has a very unstable emotional state. (This may be why she is sensitive to the sound in the hotel).
So here are the events;
1. He was curious as to why she was hours late from work.
2. She's passive-aggressive and defensive.
3. He says he is not hungry.
4. She screams and shouts in his face.
5. He doesn't do anything in retaliation.
I suspect this behavior is not a unique or isolated incident. I also feel like everything I am saying, the Husband is aware of, but relies on Bev. so cannot really do anything about. She probably pays for his care, she obviously cares for him outside of work hours. He is entirely dependent on her. Of course this can cause stress in a marriage, but I can only ever view her being in the wrong during this interaction.
I think this scene was an attempt to establish her character as emotionally unstable, and generally not a very nice person. The only time we see her as being a nice person is when she is with Ben, who she obviously fancies and wants to have sex with. The only reason she hasn't already is because Ben has a new found "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" (which eventually falls away) and has not made any moves. So we have a character who stays at work for hours longer than she needs, just to potentially flirt and hook up with her boss (under the guise of a weird sound,I mean how many of us work jobs? There's a million and one weird sounds at work, no one would spend so long investigating).
I do not expect there will be anymore scenes with Beverly and her Husband, because as I said, I believe this scene was to establish her character more, not have some weird over-arching plot. Unless there is a quick one-scene resolution to the entire thing.
Does baffle me how many people actually take Beverly's side concerning the (one-sided) argument though. If anyone is sinister, it is Beverly.
Sometimes, all it takes is a single scene to resolve a part of the storyline. We have 3 episodes left, plenty of time to clear up loose ends.
The scene with Bev and her husband made me super uncomfortable. She clearly has major unresolved emotional issues because her husband, when you examine the scene beyond impulse, shows that her Husband did absolutely nothing wrong and is quite clearly a victim of emotional abuse and neglect.
He has been cooped up inside his house all day, for god knows how many days in a row, with no company apart from a sweet old lady who cares for him. Now imagine this, your wife comes home from work very late. You ask "What were you doing?" - imagine this in all of its varieties "How was work?" - "How come your home late". All of these questions, in any circumstance, are completely innocent and can lead to an unwinding conversation after work. Instead of simply discussing work with her clearly dying husband, she starts off by being aggressive and defensive at the same time. She uses the clever tactic of saying "I know you're ill, but don't take this out on me"... when all he had done was ask why she was late and tell her that he's not hungry. This is a common method of mentally abusive partners who need to be in the "right" for their abuse to go under the rug unnoticed. As many people here have fallen for it, shows how effective it can be.
What IS the case, is that she is taking everything out on him. He is ill and so she has to work, so she takes this out on him. She feels guilty for wanting to fuck her boss, so she takes it out on him. Again, she clearly has a very unstable emotional state. (This may be why she is sensitive to the sound in the hotel).So here are the events;
1. He was curious as to why she was hours late from work.
2. She's passive-aggressive and defensive.
3. He says he is not hungry.
4. She screams and shouts in his face.
5. He doesn't do anything in retaliation.I suspect this behavior is not a unique or isolated incident. I also feel like everything I am saying, the Husband is aware of, but relies on Bev. so cannot really do anything about. She probably pays for his care, she obviously cares for him outside of work hours. He is entirely dependent on her. Of course this can cause stress in a marriage, but I can only ever view her being in the wrong during this interaction.
I think this scene was an attempt to establish her character as emotionally unstable, and generally not a very nice person. The only time we see her as being a nice person is when she is with Ben, who she obviously fancies and wants to have sex with. The only reason she hasn't already is because Ben has a new found "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" (which eventually falls away) and has not made any moves. So we have a character who stays at work for hours longer than she needs, just to potentially flirt and hook up with her boss (under the guise of a weird sound,I mean how many of us work jobs? There's a million and one weird sounds at work, no one would spend so long investigating).
I do not expect there will be anymore scenes with Beverly and her Husband, because as I said, I believe this scene was to establish her character more, not have some weird over-arching plot. Unless there is a quick one-scene resolution to the entire thing.
Does baffle me how many people actually take Beverly's side concerning the (one-sided) argument though. If anyone is sinister, it is Beverly.
I agree with everything you said here.
However, just to also throw the idea out there that it's possible she is going through a bit of a vengeance. Maybe she is like that because the tables have turned - he used to be abusive and now he's immobile and she's looking after him. There may be animosity.
That's not how I saw the scene however. But you never know.
I like SomethingVague's take on it. If we'd just seem Beverly simpering at Ben we'd have got 1 impression of her. That snapshot perhaps gives another.
Or, for anyone who wants some questions answered - he has a wheelchair. We know someone who is looking for a wheelchair... 😉
In that scene between Beverly and her husband there was one line I thought could indicate some evil intent. It was when she told him "don't screw this up". Did she have some "plan" working or was she (probably) just afraid of losing her job.
Maybe insurance fraud?
Remember the agent who wanted to speak to Sherrif Truman? But of a stretch, but given his illness scenario, maybe?
Compared to the original TP run, it seems like way more 'fringe' characters were introduced in season 3. I can think of 2 reasons they'd do this: (1) to make us wonder who 'matters' to the central plot regarding the Coops and who doesn't and (2) to give them a TON of options as to where to pick up the story again if a season 4 is made.
Lynch has apparently said that resolving the Laura Palmer murder was 'killing the golden goose.' Perhaps (sub)consciously he and Frost are making sure that is nearly impossible by having a ton of loose strands.
Still, it's unavoidable for them that this season will be judged by how, or whether, Cooper's story resolves. He is the center of the show now.
Beverly Paige and her invalid husband, Tom, will be returned to before the story is completed. Lynch and Frost are much better storytellers than many of the contributors to this forum give them credit for. There was a reason for introducing Beverly's husband and home beyond merely enlarging her life within the larger story. (I don't know what that reason is but I know there is one!) They have roles to play in its outcome. Remember that Beverly was introduced in the very first part and she'll likely be there in one of the last two, if not both. There are three more hours yet, about the length of Barry Lyndon, another slow film that manages to tell a very complicated story with many characters (that was considered exceedingly long in its time.) One may rest assured that Jerry Horne's dilemma will also be addressed. Lynch doesn't spend time on plot threads he doesn't plan to bring to some sort of resolution or fruition. He makes films where the smallest details contribute to the whole. What he does not do, however, is explain everything to death, which is why some of his films continue to be studied some forty years after their making.
There's also the Final Dossier coming out that can be used to provide insight or context to some things, but almost certainly not all.
As others said above, some of these things could sort of wrap up with just a quick scene, and sometimes it's maybe just to provide slice of life stories to leave you with a holistic impression of the life in Twin Peaks and beyond.
Fire walk with