I think I understand the reason for the superlong car ride in episode 18 (besides causing tension and setting the mood and/or evoking other scenes from Lynch's work).
I think that it was a reality check for us. There is no portal hopping or messing around with time here. We're seeing a real car ride in real time, like long road trips we have all taken. It's a long way from Texas to Washington state.
Lynch wants us to feel that shift back to the ordinary machinations of time viscerally.
To me, it also seemed like the purpose of this car ride was to create the sense of a world that had narrowed down to just two people, "strangers in a strange land", alone in a world from which they had become unteathered.
At the end, there is just Dale and Laura.
To me, it also seemed like the purpose of this car ride was to create the sense of a world that had narrowed down to just two people, "strangers in a strange land", alone in a world from which they had become unteathered.
At the end, there is just Dale and Laura.
Dale and Laura, not Dale and Diane. Dale and Laura are probably the two "realest" characters on the show. Even the FBI is more of a construct than they are.
To me, it also seemed like the purpose of this car ride was to create the sense of a world that had narrowed down to just two people, "strangers in a strange land", alone in a world from which they had become unteathered.
At the end, there is just Dale and Laura.
And to make you check your clock, knowing they're running out of time.
Fire walk with