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Twin Peaks
"What is Your Name?"
Season Three, Part 18
Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch
Directed by David Lynch
Original air date: September 3, 2017 |
It's not nice to mess with Father Time.
Read the episode summary at the Twin Peaks wiki
Didja Know?
This was the final episode of Showtime's limited event series of
Twin Peaks or, as I like to call it, "season three".
Characters appearing or mentioned in this episode
Mr. C (body consumed by flame in this episode; presumably destroyed)
Mike
Cooper tulpa (created in this episode, becomes the new Dougie Jones)
Janey-E Jones
Sonny-Jim Jones
Agent Cooper
Laura Palmer
the Arm
Leland Palmer
Diane Evans
Richard (possibly an alternate world identity of Cooper)
Linda (possibly an alternate world identity of Diane)
Kristi (waitress at Judy's)
cowboys (men who harass Kristi and threaten Cooper at Judy's)
cook at Judy's
Carrie Page
Sarah Palmer (mentioned only)
corpse on couch (unnamed, deceased)
Mrs. Chalfont (mentioned only)
Alice Tremond
Didja Notice?
The evolution of the Arm asks Cooper the
exact same question here that Audrey asked Charlie in
Part 13:
"What Story is That, Charlie?",
which is "Is it the story of the little girl who lived
down the lane? Is it?" What is the significance of this
conjunction? Is it possible that Audrey and the Arm are
somehow one-and-the-same? In
Part 13:
"What Story is That, Charlie?",
I speculated that Audrey's question may be a reference to the 1974 novel and 1976 film The
Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, about a teenage
girl who lives alone in a house and who manipulates, and is
manipulated by, adult males. That story could apply to
Audrey's past to a certain degree. Why would the Arm ask the same
question, considering it seems to be the farthest thing from
a young, pretty girl?
The voice of the evolution of the Arm is not
provided by original actor Michael J. Anderson (who did not
appear in season three). The voice actor here is uncredited.
So who was it? When executive producer Sabrina S. Sutherland
was asked who voiced it on a Reddit ask-and-answer session,
she responded, "Unfortunately, I think this question should
remain a mystery and not be answered." I played with
the sound file of the Arm's voice in an audio editor, hoping
some minor tweaking would have it sounding like Audrey, but
did not find that to be the case. Pitching it down to 24 and
setting tempo up to 30, it sounds sort of like David Lynch.
Listen:
Original - the little girl who lived down the lane.mp3
Pitch and Tempo change -
the little girl who lived down the lane.mp3
The scene of Cooper and Laura in the Red Room at 6:56 on the
Blu-ray when she whispers in his ear is essentially a replay
of the scene that appeared in
Part 2:
"The Stars Turn and a Time Presents Itself".
This may suggest that we are now back at the time of that
episode, but after Cooper has altered the timeline by
preventing the murder of Laura Palmer in
Part 17:
"The Past Dictates the Future",
as we shortly see Cooper exit the Black Lodge into
Glastonbury Grove where he originally entered (way back in
Episode 29:
"Beyond Life and Death"), rather than
the circuitous route he took due to the machinations of Mr.
C it the original timeline.
At 7:49 on the Blu-ray, Cooper
sees Leland in the Red Room. Leland appears to be wearing
the same dress shirt he was wearing when he died in
Episode 16:
"Arbitrary Law" and when he appeared in the Red
Room in
Episode 29:
"Beyond Life and Death", but is wearing a darker
a coat and completely different tie.
At 8:19 on the Blu-ray, Cooper lifts his right arm and
twists his hand in a repeating clockwise-counterclockwise
motion as he walks down the red curtain hallway. As he does
so, the
curtains at the end of the hallway begin to rustle and wave,
allowing him to exit the Black Lodge into Glastonbury Grove
near Twin Peaks. We have not seen this hand motion before;
it seems that Coop has learned a few things about how the
Lodge operates during his 25-year captivity there.
Why is Diane waiting for Cooper in Glastonbury Grove when he
emerges from the red curtain gateway from the Black Lodge?
Where did she come from? Did she just step out there as
well? How did she know he was coming?
The car Cooper drives 430 miles in with Diane is a 1963
Ford
300. Why is he driving such an old (but in good condition)
vehicle? Where did he get it?
At the 430 mile mark, Cooper and Diane drive into what seems
to be an alternate reality; when it was previously broad
daylight, they suddenly find themselves on the road at
night.
The motel Cooper and Diane check into appears to be the
Pearblossom Motel. This is a real world motel that
closed around 2011 and is now available for television and
movie productions, located at 13250 Pearblossom Highway,
Pearblossom, California.
At 18:25 on the Blu-ray, the motel room
Cooper and Diane check into (room 7) has the opposite
orientation inside from what is seen outside! The window
next to the door has switched places! This remains true even
when Cooper emerges from a completely different motel the
next morning. Do the doors of each room at this motel lead
to yet another reality?
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is
another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of
sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of
both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you've just
crossed over into the Twilight Zone." |
 |
 |
| Pearblossom Motel, Room 7 exterior |
Room 7 interior |
 |
| Motel the next morning |
The song that plays on the soundtrack as Cooper and Diane
make love in the motel room is "My Prayer" (1956) by The
Platters. The same song was playing at KPJK radio in New
Mexico on the night of August 5, 1956, when a woodsman
killed the employees there and recited a poem over the air
in Part
8: "Gotta Light?".
Diane covers Cooper's face with her hands while she seems to
climax during lovemaking. Is she trying to block out the
memory of Mr. C raping her 20 years ago?
At 23:35 on the Blu-ray, a
Sharp
picture-tube television set is seen in Cooper's motel room
when he awakes in the morning. In 2016, it's much more
likely that the TV would be a flatscreen. The room also has
a rotary phone. Did Cooper and Diane travel back in time
when they drove through the gateway at the 430 mile mark or
when they stepped through the motel room door?
Diane is gone when Cooper awakes. He finds a note on the end
table addressed to Richard, from Linda, explaining that she
doesn't recognize him anymore and she has left. Cooper seems
perplexed at the names; he is still Dale Cooper and she is
still Diane as far he is concerned. Does she now remember
differently? Are they now Richard and Linda? It's possible
the sex Cooper and Diane engaged in the night before was a
type of sex magic like that practiced by Jack Parsons in
The Secret
History of Twin Peaks. David Lynch has used the
concept of mysteriously altered identities in his characters
in some of his other works, most notably the films Lost
Highway and Mulholland Drive. In
Part 1:
"My Log Has a Message for
You", the
Fireman told Cooper to "Remember Richard and Linda."
When Cooper emerges from his motel room
to leave, it is a different motel than the one he and Diane
pulled into the night before. The new motel was shot at the Knights' Inn, 130
E Palmdale Blvd, Palmdale, California. As stated previously,
the room Cooper
emerges from has a completely different orientation on the
outside than what we saw inside; the window is on the wrong
side of the door (and the door style is different too).
Cooper only seems to vaguely recognize that something is
different when about to get into his car, which is now a
2003
Lincoln Town Car (the same model driven by Mr. C in
early episodes!) instead of the Ford 300. Did sex magic
transport Cooper and Diane to yet another reality, changing
their names in the process?
The Lincoln has Texas license plate VS2 168R and
Cooper picks up Laura's look-alike Carrie Page in Odessa,
Texas, so it seems he has been transported to that state. Or is this
even the same Cooper? Are we now watching a different Cooper
(or Richard)?
At 26:02 on the Blu-ray, the city limits sign of
Odessa,
Texas states a population of 99,940. This was the
official population of the city before the 2010 census (when
it became 118,918). Does this indicate Cooper is in 2010 or
earlier? Or has the sign simply never been updated? In fact,
this was shot on location in Odessa itself on Andrews
Highway and this is the actual city limits sign found there
today, with an outdated population estimate.
Also at 26:02 on the Blu-ray,
Red
Star Foam and
Carrier
Air Conditioner stores are seen along the roadway. These
are actual businesses in Odessa.
At 26:26 on the Blu-ray,
Maersk
shipping containers are seen stacked behind a building.
| Cooper stops at Judy's Coffee Shop in
Odessa. The filming location was actually Rudy's Coffee Shop
in Los Angeles! It's at 521 E Anaheim St. |
 |
 |
At 27:11 on the Blu-ray, a patron at Judy's is reading the
Odessa Daily News. This is a fictitious newspaper.
Bottles of
Tabasco
sauce are seen in Judy's.
The Cooper who enters Judy's Coffee Shop almost seems to
have a different, colder, stiffer personality from the
Cooper with which we are familiar. Again, is it our
Cooper?
The first cowboy at Judy's pulls a
Beretta
8000 Cougar pistol on Cooper. Cooper disarms him and pulls a
Glock 17
on him in return.
The third cowboy at Judy's is armed with a Glock 26, but is
disarmed by Cooper.
An advertising sign for
Coca-Cola is seen in Judy's at 30:10
on the Blu-ray. At 30:40, a can of
Heinz tomato sauce and box of
C&H
sugar are seen on shelves behind the counter.
The address of Carrie Page's house in Odessa is 1516, but we
don't see the street name.
The same telephone pole and number are seen in front of
Carrie Page's house as was found at Fat Trout Trailer Park
in Deer Meadow in Fire
Walk With Me and at the intersection where Richard
Horne ran over a young boy in
Part 6:
"Don't Die". Again,
what is the significance of this telephone pole and the numbers
on it?
We see the telephone pole carries electricity through
transformers.
Carrie Page tells Cooper that she needs to "get out of
Dodge". This phrase seemingly originated from the 1952-1975
western TV series Gunsmoke, where the sheriff (and
sometimes others) exhorted the bad guys to get out of Dodge
City if they wanted to avoid negative consequences.
At 37:29 on the Blu-ray, notice that the left hand of the
corpse on the couch is an inch or so above his leg,
not resting on it. It's a bit odd. Is it due to rigor
mortis setting in and causing the muscles in the arm to
tighten and raise the hand up a bit from where it had been
resting? There also appears to be vomit or something dried
onto the man's shirt.
Several empty or partially-eaten microwave meal containers
are seen sitting around in Carrie's living room. Are they
all her recent meals or those of her and the dead man? Or did she
have some guests over earlier? A semi-automatic rifle is
seen laying on the floor. Is this the gun that killed the
man on the couch?
Just as Cooper and Carrie are ready to leave her house a
phone starts to ring, sounding muffled or in another room.
Neither Carrie nor Cooper react to the sound. Is it someone
trying to warn them not to leave? Or a sound meant to wake
Cooper up from a dream??
At 44:12 on the Blu-ray, Cooper and Carrie stop at a
Valero
gas station. The shooting location is the Valero station at
9661 Sierra Hwy, Santa Clarita, CA, but it is probably meant
to stand in for a station in Texas or New Mexico or
Colorado, somewhere along the most likely route from Odessa,
TX to Twin Peaks, WA (northeast corner of the state). One
reason the site may have been chosen is because it has a
couple of prickly pear cacti growing in front, giving a
night time impression of being in a desert environment
(though Santa Clarita is not in a desert).
When Cooper and Carrie drive past the RR Diner at 46:57 on
the Blu-ray, notice that the "RR2GO" logo is missing from
the top part of the wall, another indication that this is an
alternate timeline.
Carrie wears a necklace with a horseshoe pendant on it.
The woman that Cooper and Carrie find living in the Palmer
house tells them she is named Alice Tremond and that she and
(presumably) her husband bought it from a Mrs. Chalfont. The
names Tremond and Chalfont appeared previously in the
original series and Fire
Walk With Me as the names of mysterious people
associated with residences near surreal happenings.
The woman playing Alice Tremond is Mary Reber, the actual
current owner of the home used as the Palmer residence
during filming. It's
unknown why Lynch approached her about playing the role, but
it may be because she bears some resemblance to Laura Palmer
herself!
As Cooper and Carrie stand outside the Tremond house
wondering what has happened at 54:25 on the Blu-ray, a voice
seemingly coming from the house, distantly calls for Laura.
It sounds like it may be a slightly distorted version of
Sarah Palmer calling for her daughter from the opening
minutes of
Episode 0A:
"Wrapped in Plastic".
When Carrie screams at the end of the episode, all of the
lights of the Palmer house go out, possibly suggesting the
electricity to the house has been cut off. After the end
credits roll, the usual electric crackle of the Lynch/Frost
Productions logo is also absent.
The season ends with Cooper seemingly in an alternate
universe wth someone besides the Palmers living in the
Palmer house and he himself left wondering what year it is
even.
In the book Conversations With Mark Frost by David
Bushman, Frost says "...by going back in time and having
the hubris to think he could undo something, Cooper was
following in the footsteps of Phillip Jeffries. He crossed a
forbidden barrier, risked his existential existence to do
it, and ended up hurling both he and Laura into a sideways,
alternate reality."
Unanswered Questions
Why does the evolution of the Arm ask the same question
Audrey asked?
Why is Cooper driving such an old car when he and Diane
leave Twin Peaks?
Why does Diane see an image of herself outside the motel? Is
she saying goodbye to herself because she is soon to become
Linda in this alternate reality?
Who was the dead man on Carrie's couch? Why does Cooper not
ask her about the body?
Is this the end of Twin Peaks?
When asked about getting back to Carrie Page during the
release celebration of his memoir Room to Dream in July
2018, David Lynch answered, "...it’s calling…but the signal
has a lot of disturbances." This response is vague, at best,
but suggests he may have an interest in doing more Twin
Peaks. The "disturbances" could be referring to many
things: ironing out a storyline, Mark Frost's interest in
continuing; Showtime's (or another network's) interest in
continuing the story.
Personally, I think Frost and Lynch did have
the idea of potentially continuing the story after season
three in some fashion. As I recall, there was an issue of
the Twin Peaks fanzine Wrapped in Plastic
in which Harley Peyton, a script writer for the original
series, stated that if the series had been renewed for a
third season back in 1991, they would have spent a few weeks
resolving the Cooper doppelganger cliffhanger, then the
story would have jumped ahead several years with all our
familiar characters having assumed completely different roles
(such as Cooper as a pharmacist). In the season three we
finally got on Showtime in 2017, the basic plot is the
resolution of the Cooper doppelganger storyline in parts
1-17. Then, Part 18:
"What is Your Name?" (this episode), has Cooper seemingly
journeying to an alternate timeline where he and Diane
assume different roles (Richard and Linda) and Laura has
become Carrie Page (not to mention the differences seen in
the town of Twin Peaks such as the RR Diner exterior and the
ownership of the Palmer house). This sounds like Frost and
Lynch picking up their storyline from where they left off in
1991, simply adjusted for the 25-year gap. So, I think they
want to tell at least one more story of Twin Peaks...if the
powers that be allow it.
Memorable Dialog
is it future or is it past?.mp3
the little girl who lived down the lane.mp3
Laura
who?.mp3
the name Laura Palmer.mp3
what's going on?.mp3
Twin Peaks, WA.mp3
what year is this?.mp3
scream.mp3
Bonus material from the Blu-ray set
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