Blank Check with Griffin & David - Twin Peaks: The Return (Ep 8) with Connor Ratliff

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

This is the podcast. These are the (two) friends. Drink full, and descend. The famous “Atomic Bomb” episode of The Return stands as one of David Lynch’s most defining works, an “origin story�� for Twin Peaks, and one of the most experimental hours ever to air on narrative television. In a rare moment of “double dipping,” Twin Peaks S2 guest Connor Ratliff joins us again to discuss this landmark episode, offering a David Lynch impression that is superior to Griffin’s, which you probably thought could not be topped. We’re offering theories and explanations this episode, but we’re also talking about when Charlie died on Two and a Half Men and how to dodge LIRR fares because, of course. Gotta light? Listen to TinyDinos Check out Connor’s one-person show “The Acting Class”  The George Lucas Talk Show, Live and LIVESTREAMED! In NY  The George Lucas Talk Show at SF Sketchfest Try and find Connor’s cuts of Twin Peaks: The Return and Sully (Secret Videos) on the Blank Check Website, Sully knows the password. The Box Office Game is Sponsored by Regal Cinemas: Sign up for Regal Unlimited today and get 20% off your 3 month subscription when using code BLANKCHECK Sign up for Check Book, 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. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blank check with Griffin and David Blank check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Plague Check? Passionate, meow. This is the pod, and this is the cast. Listen full and descend. You want to go even lower?

Lower in the pitch? Yeah, you know. Lower in the pitch? Yeah, you know. The horse, the podcast is the white of the, the pod is the white of the cast. I gotta find my Jackson Maine. I gotta do my Jackson Maine. I just wanna get another look at you. This is the pod. That jean sock sucks.

Why are you singing about jeans? I just wanna get another look at you. I mean you should be singing about swimming pool, shallowness. Friendo, friendo. Is it more Anton Sugar? Friendo, friendo. Does he have a deep voice? I guess he has a deep voice. He has such a quiet voice, right?

Sugar, where it's like you're leaning in. I'm sorry, Kelly MacDonald. You have to die now. We love the Kahn brothers. It's ambiguous. The one sort of impediment to the idea of us ever doing it is that it's a long series, right? A long series and a lot of well-discussed films that we basically like.

But movies, yeah, I was gonna say movies we overall basically love. Can you imagine how much fun we'd have doing fucking Anton Sugar bits? I think we'd have a lot of fun doing Tommy Lee Jones as well. Like, you know, like no country would be, yeah, a heavy bit. It's not like that's the only one.

No, I think most of them have that kind of thing. Jesus, the amount of runway we get off of just Anton Sugar having other types of conversations. I mean the Coens are like Lynch not- I want the Baconator Jr. I got a Bacon King over here. No, I want the Jr. The Jr. King.

Can't finish it. It's too big. It's too big. You're not going to finish. Oh, yeah. David's not doing a bit. David does, in fact, have a bacon king here. Fucking huge. Sounds like you're more of a bacon prince. Yeah, geez.

You got a little too big for your britches. I didn't mean to. Hey, by the way, this is an episode about one of the most revered works of art we probably ever covered in the history of the show, right? At least, um... of recent time, right? Like, a sort of totemic moment in recent American art. ever covered in the history of the show, right? At least of recent time, right? Like a sort of totemic moment in recent American art.

And certainly like an absolutely unique one of one object. I think so. Yeah, much like your unfinished bacon king. Maybe I'll finish it. These are huge stakes to set up for this episode. We'll see. We'll see what I do. This is Blank Check with Griffin stakes to set up for this episode. We'll see. You might see what I do. This is blank check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmography's ostensibly directors who experience God. I'm somehow now for some success. I'm a little undercruised. Thank you. He's okay. Great day.

I don't know what's going on. I was like, what is the word I used to describe the success? Massive. Massive success early on in the Curse of the Tomb Raider. I've only been doing this for 10 years. Given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. Sometimes those checks continue on to television.

And then this is like a blank check within a blank check. Is that a fair categorization? 100% 100% Yep. Yep. This is a somewhat a standalone blank check within a large blank check project Which is like yes, there's like seven inception layers to how you get to this existing Yeah, two or three, but yeah, sure. I'm gonna say seven. I'm gonna say seven We are here today. We are in the middle of discussing I'm gonna say seven. We are here today. We are in the middle of discussing Twin Peaks The Return.

David Lynch, Twin Pods Firecast with me has been our series. We have now gotten to his most recent work to date, Twin Peaks The Return. He's in three of Twin Peaks. Which we have split into four episodes. And at David's insistence, episode two is only about one episode in our podcast. Yes, our part eight, also known as Got a Light, the iconic eighth episode of Twin Peaks, The Return, we're here to discuss it today and that's what we're doing. Now can I say our guest is being too respectful?

Way too, well he might also be, I don't know, doing his taxes on his phone right now. Is he queuing something up or is he doing the taxes? I'm doing a little research but I'm also very much being respectful. But you know what? Loosen that tie. Get messy. Stop showing us so much respect, Brendal. It's a totemic work that we're about to discuss.

Here's the rare thing that we don't do often. A kind of in-series double dip. Yeah, I don't know. We just wanted to. We wanted to. We had a guest for this episode possibly, and then life circumstances came up, and it was suddenly like a, we need to get this done. And it was just like, who's the right person to tackle something this big?

But also is perhaps around? Yeah. And who we just had a lovely time talking Twin Peaks with. And it was like, you know what, would be nice to do even more of that. And it's also as as people who have been behind the paywall, people who have ventured into the Patreon to experience the Twin Peaks season two episode, they've already heard me talk Twin Peaks. But what they will also know from that episode is that

when you, when this, when David Lynch won, you came to me and said, Connor, what do you want to take your pick? Anything. I give you first round draft pick of the entire career. I say Twin Peaks season two without hesitation. You say, well, that's actually gonna be off the main feed. I said, I don't care. I don't care.

I did have a twinge of regret thinking that, because this was my second. This was your second? This was the other one. Oh, well that's good to know then. We'll look at that. This was the one where I almost like, if I had bailed on that idea,

wanting to get into the main feed, it would be to talk about this. Because when I think of season two, the main thing I think of is how the season two finale remains probably the weirdest thing to ever air for any reason in prime time, the weirdest scripted thing to intentionally air on network television. I had been primed and hyped to understand that was the case before watching it last night, you know? It's been a lot of build up for me.

I mean, I'm talking about the season two finale. That was the most, the weirdest thing ever on network TV. Up until that point. Up until that. And still probably for network TV. I don't know that there's that much competition for Monday night on ABC for something with where it's almost all in the Black Lodge. Weird strobe lights, et cetera. The episode of Two and a Half Men where Charlie Sheen dies is up there.

Very, there are things like that that are odd because of what's happening outside of the episode. Yeah. Yes, yeah. And episode eight of The Return. He got exploded by a train? Yes. And at some point, Kathy Bates plays his ghost.

I can't remember if it's in that episode or a different episode. But that reaches sort of like Black Lodge levels of like... Yes. Yeah. But episode eight of The Return is sort of David Lynch then going like, well, I did one, I already like, I already have this one sort of unprecedented thing that's kind of almost never been topped.

Right. What is the premium cable equivalent of that? But I'd argue the first seven episodes feel like, holy shit, he's going weirder than he's gone before. Right, what's going on here? And then he's like, no, I need to make the thing that is weird in relation to the template of weirdness I have already set, much like the season two finale,

you're saying. And I'll tell you something that this is what I was looking to try to get information on within the archives of my social media. I believe that in June, June-ish of 2017, that was when this aired, right, 2017? This episode aired on exactly June 25th, 2017. I think like at some point, and I can't find the date,

Dana Ashbrook did monologues at UCB. Oh, cool. Oh, my favorite. While the return was airing, but before episode eight had aired. And I brought in one of my Twin Peaks trading cards, my Bobby Briggs, to get it signed. Was it a rookie card?

It's a Bobby Briggs rookie card. Yeah, first time. And this is after Bobby killed a guy, but before he became a cop. And I remember him in like one of the little, like the beer storage room that was off of the, and where people like kept their coats and bags and stuff. I remember him signing this and saying,

I was like, man, it's really, it's great. I'm loving watching this. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I hear the eighth episode is pretty crazy. So he had even seen it. He had this thing. But he was at least vaguely aware, like maybe they'd been informed,

like that's the doozy or that was sort of- And he's obviously not in it. Yeah. No, but I remember thinking, what a strange thing to say. How could the eighth episode... Like, I remember thinking, like, what is he talking about? Well, I'm like, yes. Because I couldn't... At that point, I was like, I think I know by this point, we're however many episodes in,

I think I know what Twin Peaks The Return is. He's not doing the obvious third season. He's breaking his own template. What could weird me out at this point? So I was like, what? What's gonna happen that's so weird? And then episode eight, I believe, aired over the weekend of the Delkos marathon.

Oh, wild. Okay. So you were probably also sleep deprived? Yeah, which is like this three-day marathon of not, like where I probably did like more than 20 shows in three days. We should say, our guest today is Conor Outlaw. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, of course. I'm glad you apologized, David. It was really rude what you were doing.

It's so rude of me to not introduce our guest. Yeah. Here I am. But for those who don't know, the Del Close Marathon was a thing that UCB used to do that was like 72 straight hours of shows basically happening all day, all night, all morning. All sorts of venues all over the city.

Across several venues, right, mostly around Chelsea. But especially at the old UCB theater, not the original, but the Chelsea one, you would have these shows that happen at like 5.30 in the morning that were 15 minutes long, there were chaos and someone like you who is, I have often maintained, perhaps the greatest improviser in the world. I certainly think at that point, you were sort of the greatest improviser in New York City, at the very least. You're getting asked to jump in on most of these things,

but then Twin Peaks is like this seismic important thing for you. You probably could not wait to watch the episode. You weren't going to be like, let me get a good night's sleep before I try episode eight. No, and also because I'd learned from previous years that one of my indulgences is that I would get a hotel room in Manhattan, sort of near the venues, so that I would have a place to go crash at weird times

and not have to take a train all the way back to Queens. Sure, if I know anything about you as well, there's nothing in the world you hate more than any form of commute. I would say that's your kryptonite. Yeah. And yet you live in Queens. You should live at like, whatever, yeah,

like 34th and Madison or something. You should just be like, I'm right dead center, baby. Yeah, I need to do substantially better. I know, I know it's not like you can't just like pick a place around there. I don't know, you should just make that your entire priority. But I also think it is part of your core essence that if we, if you somehow were able to book a show two blocks from where you live, let's even say one block away from your apartment, your response would be, but that's the worst block. You don't know how tough it is to walk. What subway are you on? Not to reveal your location. I don't want to dox myself. Okay. All

right. All right. That's smart. Do you have more than one subway to guess is my question. Oh, I'm near a hub. You'll never guess where I am. David's like waking up at this line of questioning. Have you noticed the influx of energy of David suddenly being able to talk train lines? People are always like, you know, looking for places in New York City, right? I have, you know, there's always someone who's looking. I say this, people are always looking for places

in New York City. And they're always like, oh, let me help, let me help. And I do like looking at like real estate listings, but what I really like doing is thinking about, right, the web of transit you will access from wherever you're looking. Can I ask for some key bleeps on what I'm like doing is thinking about the web of transit you will access from wherever you're looking. Can I ask for some key bleeps on what I'm about to say? Oh, of course.

Amazing. Okay. All right. And then we'll talk about Twin Peaks episode 8, which is a work of art. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it.

I live in Queens. Yes, great. It's right near the Long Island Railroad. Uh-huh. So that's a hack. I might as well live in Manhattan if I'm dealing with the long... No, you're near the LIRR stop. That's right. So not a ton of trains but enough enough train. Yeah. Yeah, okay a lot of trains going in every hour yeah, and and it's less than like when it when when

Ascot was at UCB Chelsea. I could leave my apartment at 645 and be in the green room at 701 I mean that is impressive. I mean, but it's you gotta deep. Do you just kind of sneak on like or that's the other thing you buy it bleep this Double bleep you buy it. This is illegal. You're admitting to crime you buy it Punch card tickets. Uh-huh, and then maybe they don't punch it because it's barely Here's the thing you almost always get caught unless it's super crowded going from Penn Station They almost always catch you then but it's worth it. You know, it's a cheap taxi ride. Do you know what I mean? Like you would never get a taxi ride

that get you from there to there in 10 minutes. This is fascinating because I've never heard you talk with such joy about any commute. Well, because this is a good part of the other thing is- You had it right one time. Penn Station, the staff on the train the conductors They are having to play a heavy-duty high intensity game of concentration Going up and down the train trying to figure out who's new already who's new who's new? Yeah, and they don't always get me you put your also you put your uh ear buds in yeah

Like you're asleep you is it worth their while is it worth their while you're not No, sir David go on so but you're not... No, sorry David, go on. But you're not probably that far from the... and we can bleep this... Not too far. A lot of options. But I'll say this, getting to the Blank Check Studio is hell. Yeah, yeah, we are not best suited to you. I apologize. No, but that's how much I want to be here to talk episode 8.

Which we're gonna talk about. So you watch it, do you watch it in this hotel room you book? I watch. I remember watching it in the hotel room. You name the hotel? Yeah, it was the four points. Chelsea. OK. And so it's one of those hotels that they've crammed a lot of little rooms in. It's not huge, but the bed's a nice size.

And I watched it late at night on a laptop, I'm guessing, a Showtime anytime kind of. I think I probably watched it on an iPad mini. Wow. Okay, but on the app, we're saying you were not watching this. Yeah. But this is also wired headphones. This is the day we could plug your headphones right into the iPad. I'm glad we're setting the scene.

So this is, you're watching it the night of, but you're not watching it live. Not watching it live. I'm watching it in, like, probably after two in the morning. Wow. And I'm tired. Yeah. And... And you got the Dana Ashbrook thing in the back of your head.

Which I was skeptical about, you know? When he said it to me, I'm like, this actor doesn't, we just, oh, episode eight's gonna be weird? I almost thought it was like a non sequiner, like, oh yeah, there's gonna be a real weird episode of Twin Peaks coming up. Oh yeah, they're all weird, you know? I really thought he was sort of joking

until the episode hit and there was, like, let's say the, here's the other thing, which I guess I'll say this before the setup of what happens in the episode. This is all true and I wish that I had documented it more specifically when it happened because it's going to sound like the type of thing that someone could easily just make up to say that, oh, this is what happened. I had a dream months before the return began because, and the dream was fixated on the fact that

how are they gonna have Bob in the new Twin Peaks when Frank Silvis long dead. In my dream, I was watching the new Twin Peaks or I was sort of inside the new Twin Peaks watching it. And what I saw in my dream was a dark room where I could barely see, and there were a bunch of doctors who are surrounding Agent Cooper's body

on an operating table, and they're opening up his stomach, and out of his stomach fly these orbs that have Frank Silva's head. They're like these comets that fly out into space. You had a dream that basically predicted? Right. Now, Lynch has used sort of orby imagery before. I could see where maybe you could be drawing from this, maybe.

Sure, there's like a racer head, things like that. But in the world of Twin Peaks, the idea of an animated sort of bob head on an orb flying around in space. And when the old man, when the woodsman ghosts come up out of the earth and start digging around in Mr. C's stomach and they pull out an orb that you,

it's kind of hard to see what it is. Yes. That it's Bob's face on the thing. Imagine watching that in the middle of the night when you're like sleep deprived and the music itself is just kind of, and you kind of, it's hard. I've watched on lots of different screens

with lots of different resolution. It's always a little bit of a struggle to make out exactly what's going on in that sequence. It kind of makes you feel like you're watching it with your glasses off or something. There's a very distorted dream-like feeling to it. Do you folks ever have the experience of watching something late at night?

Perhaps when you are intentionally trying to fall asleep putting something on to put yourself to sleep right and you start passing out And then you like kind of like snap back for a moment. You're like oh the last scene was something I dreamed I was watching something I know what you're talking about You fall asleep, and then you kind of have a dream about the thing You're like with the dialogue maybe that you're hearing even if it's branching and you're sort of like I'm now starting to like And then you're like, okay time to turn this off You know go to sleep, right?

This is the only thing I've ever watched that feels like this when you're awake Where you're like, this is my brain riffing on the thing I was watching right before I fell asleep. So the fact that you had a dream about it. Yeah. Yeah, trying to like solve a story problem, basically in your mind, a thing that knowing how you think, being your friend for a while now, that you spend a lot of time

internalizing these sorts of things. It makes sense that you would dream about it in anticipation. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. Because like when that... It was very... It was exciting and it also made it scarier to me. Yeah, it's awesome. Because it felt like he's pulling this from my subconscious. Right. But maybe your subconsciouses are just linked in some mystical way

through the art he's created over the years. And that's sort of a lovely thing to think about. It's really, well, because also, if it was anything else, like if I went and saw Red One and then realized, oh, I had it. If I went and saw Red One and then- He's pushing Red One on me so hard. If I went and saw, if I went and saw right one and then I'm sorry Are you implying that you're not gonna go through this sentence, please?

Okay, he's about to say for the fourth time and then I'm gonna circle If I went and saw red one and then there was something in it I'm like, oh, I think I had a dream about that right. I might have pulled it from the trailer. Yeah. Yeah Where's everything is ubiquitous? This was so locked down that there was really nothing, nothing that I dreamed could have been like, oh, well, you heard that it was gonna be like this. It was just, it was just based on my thought of how are they gonna do this.

The whole show was a mystery box. But that's my experience watching episode eight, which I did not watch late at night at the Four Points Chelsea, but I did watch with no preparation, except that I thought I knew what Twin Peaks The Return was at this point. And I was like, look, I could not have predicted it would be about, you know, Kyle McLaughlin is this kind of dual personality,

neither totally Mr. Cooper, but like, wow, I love that he's doing this. I'm into it. And then I start this episode and it starts, you know, Mr. C driving the other guy. What's the other guy's name? You know, the other guy, the heavy. Ray Monroe. Ray.

You know, and you're like, yeah, okay, here we go. We're continuing the story of Twin Peaks The Return, right? Like it doesn't start black and white atomic bomb. Like it doesn't immediately start with that. Yes. It starts like a normal episode of Twin Peaks The Return. Quote unquote normal episode, but still you're like, we're in this continuous story he's telling.

He's got trackers on the car, pull up close to another car, you press buttons on that thing, it removes the trackers, you throw the device out the window, this is how technology works. But it's the equivalent of normal, quote-unquote, plotty scenes for Twin Peaks The Return. We're in this story, which I think is so crucial to this episode, because then when it starts to get weird,

again, quote-unquote, weird, you have the thought of like, okay, well, this is gonna be five minutes. We've had surreal imagery in this show so far. We've gone to the sort of purple sea, and we've seen the fireman and these contraptions. You know, like, all right, it's a bit of that. And then after a few minutes, you're like,

are we not exiting this? And then after a few minutes, you're like, we're not exiting this and I need to be like dipping my whole body into this. Right? Like this is important. Like this isn't just fun Twin Peaks dream imagery that I can pour over like, no, no, no. This is a mantra for the show or whatever.

Do you remember if you watched this on broadcast or through the app on streaming? I watched it on my TV. I think I still had cable. I think I had a DVR. I mean, not to brag cable. I had, I think I had like a DVR. I mean, not to brag, but this is 2017. I think I had like a true like DVR box. And I had like recorded Twin Peaks, The Return that we,

you know what I mean? Like, and so I was watching it like, I remember in my living room, the living room you two spent a fair amount of time in. Big Nice, we used to call it. Big Nice, watching commentaries with me and so on and so forth. Brought me back.

And I was alone, but it could have even been the daytime. Yeah. And like, it was just, I was like, okay, because my forky didn't watch Twin Peaks The Return. Like, it meant nothing. But you were living together at that point, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It's hard for me to... Like, I'm sure I've watched this in the daytime

at some point over the past however many years, because this is the episode I've gone back to the most. But watching it in the deep, deep dark of night feels like... It almost feels like the type of... Remember when there was gonna be that Spielberg show on Quibi that you could only watch in the dark at night? That was the idea. Yeah. It just feels like the type of... Remember when there was gonna be that Spielberg show on Quibi that you could only watch in the dark at night? That was the idea.

Do I remember? Yeah. It almost feels like if any episode could only be accessed after the sun goes down, it would be this episode. Do you remember this, David, when you were in charge of Quibi, the deal you made with Steven Spielberg? Do you remember this announcement? Vaguely, yes. I do vaguely remember. That Spielberg was like, K-Fave aside,

my old buddy Jeffrey Katzenberg asked me to do something for Quibi, and I got intrigued by the opportunity of the technology, right? And Katzenberg's basically like, turnstile mode, look, it's like this. Spielberg was like, I don't give a shit. Could you do a thing where you could post something

on the app that could only be watched at certain hours? Right, kind of like how you would play Pokemon. Yes. And you'd have a clock on it. Uh-huh. It's like, yeah, you can only catch the owl Pokemon at night. And Katzenberg was like, I don't see why not. And he was like, I think it'd be fun to do a scary thing that you could only watch when

the sun has gone down in whatever time zone you are in. Which is kind of a cool idea. It's so cool. I love it. And then they announced that. And at no point did Spielberg do any work developing what that was. It was just this constant as part of like Quibi is putting a billion dollars in the content. They just kept being like, and at some point Steven Spielberg will start writing something that is spooky, which we promise you can only watch after sundown. And that will happen eventually.

Someone will make a thing that you can only watch at night. Yeah. It just is a matter of time. I, out of routine, often watch the stuff for this podcast in the morning pre-record. Not always, depends on scheduling, right? But I'm just like, I like to be really fresh on stuff as much as I can, because my brain is a sieve

and things fall out of it immediately. I was like very tired last night and I had a sieve and did things fall out of it immediately. I was like very tired last night and I had a busy day and a busy evening and I was like I know I need to watch this at night. I know if I wake up and try to watch this in the morning it will not be correct and I have felt that with a lot of Twin Peaks. Like a lot of it I come here I watch it on the screen we have here in the office which is a windowless, where even if it was during the day, it can sometimes feel like night.

But I still... Yeah, you turn off three lights and you got yourself a nighttime. I still wait for it to actually be the evening, and it feels like the right way to watch the show. In this episode, certainly. To your point, David, the fascinating thing about Twin Peaks The Return is very quickly it just breaks any sense of you being able to predict what the show is, right? Like this is not going to function like old Twin Peaks. It's not even going to function like David Lynch movies completely, right?

And then like we're just going to cut out of scenes, cut to new characters. You saying like I was expecting this to be a regular episode. The notion of a regular episode at this point is know that you can't try to game out what this is gonna be, right? Like, give in to the chaos of it. People maybe initially were sort of trying to do that of like, right, what are the theories we can think about? And it's like, eh, it's not really gonna work out. I think by episode seven, people have probably settled into this is what it is.

Yeah, exactly. I certainly had. Me too. I also had, by episode seven, I thought, I've outsmarted this. I know what this is. You can't surprise me. I remember being on Twitter, Cursed Health Site, in the year 2017, when this episode aired,

and seeing people just go like, holy shit, that's the greatest thing that's ever aired on television. This is seismic. And without wanting to, like, have it spoiled, and people were posting still images, I was just sort of like, I gather he did something pretty experimental and somewhat non-narrative within the format of television. And over the years, I've heard people talk about this and show more images and whatever. But I did feel largely unspoiled in a lot of ways

outside of knowing this is somehow about the atomic bomb like that was kind of the only thing I Really knew about it I want to say and then I put this on last night and I had the opposite thing of what you're saying Which is I was then unnerved and thrown off by it starting with Ten plus minutes of quote-unquote normal Twin Peaks the return. I was like, isn't this supposed to be the crazy episode? When does this get crazy? Right. What do you, this is just, this is Twin Peaks The Return so far.

Right. I was like, I'm ready for this to be a completely standalone, like weird installation piece. That was my feeling of this. So as people turned on, just went like, what, what did they do with Twin Peaks? And so then that transition is even more bizarre, but yet coming at it from the wrong direction in the wrong order, it had the same effect on me. It does feel like reality is ripping apart at the seams.

Yeah. Ben, when did you first see episode eight? I watched it for this show. Ben has been watching Return for the first time. So you're, okay. So what time of day were you watching when you got to eight? Did you, were you prepared for eight being weird? Yes, because of the way we were formatted.

Because of how I'd about curated these episodes. So I did watch it very late at night. I want to say it was like two in the morning because I knew this was so hyped up for me. Assassin's Creed hours. That by the time, yeah, for sure. That by the time it was like that, it was so late at night, but I was like,

I'm on eight, I gotta do this. Right, I'm intrigued. I wanna, like, it's like, there's a little sliver of light from behind the door and you're like, hey, I wanna hope for that. Just to unpack this, Connor, Ben has, like, within, like, bouts of insomnia, will have, like, things he watches

at two o'clock in the morning, when it's like, I've woken up and I can't fall asleep or I wasn't able to fall asleep and it's often a rotation of he will watch the same thing 30 times for a couple months before moving on to something else and they are usually it's just like some inexplicable he is connected to the tone or the imagery of this it feels perfect that you watch this for the first time in basically that time slot. You feel kind of like you're the only person who's awake at that time, you know, when you watch stuff. You know that feeling? Yeah. I'm the only little person here. Griffin. Oh wait, no, this is me. I'm just doing a solo ad read. Listen, this time of

year people are saying ho ho ho, Merry Christmas, or ha ha ha, Happy Hanukkah, or Happy Holidays, I guess it works for both. But what I want to encourage people to say is mo mo mo, Merry movies. Yeah, because this is Blank Check with Griff and David. We love movies, and we are so excited that our friends at Regal are continuing to support the show. Because if you sign up for Regal Unlimited, which of course is the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits, that's one Glickid, one no Sonic for Atu, one double feature you've paid for your visit. You see any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions and with Regal Unlimited you won't

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about you got anyone in your life who loves movies you looking for a gift regal unlimited subscription 20% off code blank check and I want to say this as well we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to evolve our strategy with advertising on this show to both hopefully make a more enjoyable listening experience for all of you and keep everyone happy and paid at Blank Check Productions and a big part of that is us being really excited about partnerships like our friends at Regal that feel very on topic of what we do on this podcast and feels like a great opportunity to encourage people to take up an offer to go see movies. A thing I imagine a lot of our listeners really want to do. So if you're looking for a way to say thanks and show support

for the podcast this would be a really helpful thing to do. Thank you very much and one last time, MoMoMo, Merry movies. Okay, now I'm gonna ask the dummy question. Okay. Can you guys explain to me what this is about? When did you watch it? Last night.

I've only had like 12 hours to stew on this and I didn't wanna fucking dig into like reading a bunch of fucking recaps and analysis. Well, let's well, we'll talk about what happens in the episode first I want to tie up two things you want to type tie up two things. Okay, take out your string One I forgot that Charlie Harper the character in two and a half men When he dies that was the most watched episode of that show in history like 25 million people or whatever the first Ashton Kutcher episode It's basically what it was. Yeah for comparison this episode was watched by 250,000 people right?

We got about time zing Melanie Linsky who is a mild friend of mine and of course is a famous well well now It's sort of crazy how Melanie Linsky. It's not crazy because she deserves All the but that she was like a regular on that show right that she had the years on that show and kind of just in It's sort of crazy how Melanie Linsky... It's not crazy, because she deserves all the... But that she was a regular on that show for eight years. Right, that she had the years on that show and kind of just in the mix of like, yeah, Melanie Linsky from Heavenly Creatures

is like on TV and in movies. I remember seeing her in the informant and being like, it's nice that finally someone's putting her to work again. And then I'm like, oh, she spent eight years on the most watched show in the world. But I think she was a character who'd come in in now cuz she was his stalker, right? You know, I think that was a regular. She was a regular. Oh, she was a regular for at least some seasons Yeah, I'm sure that was I think he was like a guest star that then was so popular that they kept right and she's funny

Yeah, I mean I've not seen a lot of two and a half men so Right the funeral I just remember right that it's implied that she shoved Charlie in front of a train and he a lot of two and a half men, so it was years. But that's one of the only episodes I've seen. The funeral. I just remember right, that it's implied that she shoved Charlie in front of a train and he exploded like a balloon, she says, because he had like cheated on her again or whatever. Yes. Anyway, I just forgot that Melanie Linsky killed Charlie in two and a half men. It's quietly the darkest TV show of all time.

Right, because Chuck Lorre had that strain to him. Yes, but it's the most extreme version of it. Also, in that episode, Dharma and Greg attend the funeral. Oh, really? Because it's sort of like the Lorre-verse? Right, or maybe they come to look at the house because John Cryer's trying to sell it. I don't know, whatever, go on, David.

I'm sorry, keep tying things up. The other thing I wanted to just, I just wanted to ask you this. So today or yesterday Or some read this week John Krasinski was named to people's sexiest man alive Okay, if we're talking about national nightmares Yeah, and everyone's up in arms about it cuz they're like John Krasinski like in this day and age like he's fairly bland like and it's Like what guys that means a lot of people turned it down like you have to remember. It's not like

This is a weird year to do it. It's that fair like. This is a weird year to do it. Is that fair to say? It's a weird year to do it because what's he got going on? Exactly. Well this was the year that we got our first work from the imagination of. So what's the sexiest organ in the human body?

Oh I forgot about that. That's the biggest organ. What's the sexiest organ in the human body? It's the brain. What are you talking about? If, his film, if. If, what if? And what's sexier than the possibility of something, if.

Now, he's 45. I missed if. Yeah, that's fine, you're doing great. Yeah, watch it at two o'clock in the morning. All right. You will feel like the only person on Earth. He is 45 years old, which makes him one of the older sexiest men alive.

That's also weird. That feels. That's a little surprising, right? Right. Now obviously, everyone knows the older sexiest men alive. That's also weird. That feels- That's a little surprising, right? Right. Now obviously everyone knows the oldest sexiest man alive, people's sexiest man. Sean Connery. Sean Connery was named that at 59 when he was fully in like Untouchables bald dude.

And looked like the oldest man alive at 50. But there was an argument of like, oh, he's been around forever and whatever. Yeah. But like Nolte was like 55. Nolte was 51. The others in their 50s were Paul Rudd, recently was 52.

I was going to say. Ageless. Harrison Ford was named it around six days, seven nights time. That's about 50. 56. And of course, quite bizarrely, Patrick Dempsey got it last year, I guess, in conjunction with Ferrari. And he was 57. Yes.

And I feel like he had some other thing. I mean, this is- And I was, I remember I worked at people when he turned it down one year and they named Matthew McConaughey instead. Or no, it was Damon. It was Damon that got it that year. Anyway. But to your point, there is a lot of like

press maneuvering around this title. Well, you need the person to, you can't just sort of like be like, oh, they're the sexiest man alive and they don't want to talk to People Magazine. People's like, well, we still think you're sexiestiest so we're putting you on the cover no matter what like you need them to agree Look right you can't you can't do that to someone without their consent I mean you can but you're not gonna get no much out of it. Yes people magazine

Just bestowing it on unwilling people Paul Rudd an incredibly handsome man ageless, right? As you said when he was dubbed people sexist man alive We're like that's a lot of people were like that's the title. We're giving him now I mean, and then the answer was you're like Ghostbusters after life is in theaters. Yeah, it's right. It just Krasinski you're like what is this even fucking tying into if came out if Go, but before we go on digital before we talk about them.ailable on digital. Okay. Before we talk about... Yeah, why are you bringing this up? I just wanted to ask you...

A sexy steelbook coming out soon, probably. It's already out. Is it? No, a sexy steelbook, because it'll be different. A second edition. The sexy edition. Who is the youngest, sexiest man alive people ever mention? Because I sorted by age just out of interest, and I was surprised by the answer.

Do you have the step in front of you? I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess Baby Herman. It's not Baby Herman. Okay. From who, you know, whatever. That's Most Sexist. Oh, Most Sexist, man, oh my.

It's not Michael B. Jordan? It's not Michael B. Jordan. But I imagine he's on the lower end. He was 33, he's on the lower end. David, tell me the age of the youngest. 27. 27 was the youngest. You're never gonna guess this.

I'm never gonna guess it. The only reason I bring it up. I'm gonna give you one more guess. Mark Herman. No, Mark Herman was 34. Okay, I just knew he got it, so I'm trying to think. The answer is Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise won People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1990

when he was 27 years old, the only time they've named him thus. So that is like Days of Thunder? Yeah, or yeah, sort of far and away. Yeah. Ah, you're a carcass, Shannon. I think Days of Thunder came out in 1990, so I guess that would have been the explicit tie-in.

Isn't that just weird though, that you're like, that he was the baby-est, sexiest man alive in People Magazine history? Can I tell you, I gain a little bit of respect. I've never really given a lot of thought to People Magazine's process. But 27, that's pretty, they've given a safe, that's a safe floor age-wise.

Go any lower and you're just close to boyhood. I would also bet the average is like 45. I think the average is in late 30s, early 40s. Yeah, I just feel like they usually go for real grownup men. Right, because that's their audience's, you know, older women are reading People magazine. I wish they would emphasize more that this is people's sexiest man

who agreed to be sexiest man alive. And there should be a little list, a little sidebar. It's like, here's said no. So in 2017 it was bad coop, right? Mr. C was the sexiest man alive. Thank, thank you for this title. He's like staring over your shoulder. I see my press people did good.

I would be excited if it was Dougie. Dougie Jones. Like Sexy Span Alive and it's like him, you know, with like a tie on his head. Yeah. Does Dougie do it more than Mr. C in The Return? Does Dougie do it? Does Dougie do it? Dougie does it.

I mean, he has sex. Yeah. Does he do it more? Well, Dougie has sex. Does, without spoiling what's to come in the episodes I have yet to see Does coop in Dougie's body do it? Oh, right because the transfer happens right after Dougie's done it He does right, but I'm like do we think that he's stopping Naomi Watts. I think he does

You think he does in the episodes we've seen doesn Doesn't he? He definitely has sex with her. Yes, he does. I just can't remember when it is. Yeah, he does. Okay, okay. So, Doug, you do it. Doug, you do it. Doug, you do it.

Anyway, episode eight of Twin Peaks Return... Twin Peaks Return... Twin Peaks The Return. ...does begin with Mr. C and Ray driving through the night, and it's kind of... First first there's the kind of hilarious tracker device. I love the technology that it all reminds me of those phones that used to get, that have the giant push buttons

that are like for older people. Right, right, right. It just looks like someone worked up some special effects in like Excel. It's like a big yellow box and a big black box. Every computer that's used in The Return feels like it's designed in that way, where it's just to look very clear, you type sentences in all caps. I genuinely mean this.

I love the shit that David Lynch just doesn't care about. You know, that it doesn't care about. You know? That it doesn't feel like, oh, he's just lazy, he's phoning this part in or whatever, where he's just like, this isn't important. Just come up with the simplest representational version of this. I'm not gonna make like a fucking meal out of this. If it translates enough for the audience to get it,

this is like means to an end. What do I really want this episode to focus on? You know? Yeah. So they drive. I think there's this kind of awesome, and I do feel like it's getting you in the mood, sort of couple of minutes of just like you're watching the road and it's dark, right?

Sort of lost highway vibes, right? You're just driving through this like total black, right? It's a mystery location. But there's like the trance like state these episodes maintain where you're like, at any moment you're like, is the whole episode gonna be set in this car, you know? Or are they gonna cut away from this in like 10 seconds

and never get back to this again for hours? There's not a sense of like temporal security while watching the show, in my experience. He also will, like, if you look at some of these scenes, he'll have two people driving the car, cut to that classic Lynchian just shot of the yellow line of the point of view of the car sort of at the road, and then cut back to them talking, and then cut to that again. of the point of view of the car sort of at the road

and then cut back to them talking and then cut to that again. And you're like most filmmakers would have one cut to that and not more unless they were having lots of time pass or something. But he'll sometimes just like, well, let's see this for a while now. Now let's cut back to them for some more.

Let's cut to it again. Like it's sort of, he doesn't have- It's a rhythmic thing. Yeah, it's the amount of patience that he has for like how long we look at certain things. Well to your point, there are two different uses that most filmmakers would like have for that kind of cutaway, right? One is like time jump, as you said.

And the second one is, oh, I had the scene play out for that kind of cutaway, right? One is like time jump, as you said. And the second one is, oh, I had the scene play out in a two-shot, and I didn't get coverage, and the scene's playing too long, so if we have a reverse of the road, that way I can cut to that and cut back and cut inner fat within the scene. Which is the opposite of what he's doing. He's letting you watch them in silence for minutes. Like he's actually using it to stretch time out more rather than to compress.

I also, you know, there's. There's we talked about this on the previous episode where I I we got into a little bit where I declared that the missing pieces counted as a standalone feature film. Yes. Right. You guys came to blows. And then the... Yeah, we don't need to revisit that. But if you look at, I just rewatched Blue Velvet and the deleted scenes for Blue Velvet, which are pretty significant length.

And it's a lot of, a lot of it is just establishing that Jeffrey is at school and dating Megan Mullally. And then he, his father has a health episode and he comes back to stay there. All stuff that's established just by him showing up at his first scene. Like, yeah, I'm here for cultural knowledge. Right, he just loves that stuff.

Yeah. And there's almost like a... I have seen the Megan Mullally, I think she's posted the clip or whatever. You know, she's got like kind of feathered hair. It does add an element of like, he's not just involved with two women, that he's also got the clip or whatever. Yeah. She's got like kind of feathered hair It does add an element of like he's not just involved with two women that he's also got a girlfriend at College it does add an element of that he's he's more of a

He's a three-woman man not a two-woman man sure in that movie. Yeah, but generally speaking like if you look at at most of Dave Lynch's movies there are a lot of Generally speaking, like if you look at most of David Lynch's movies, there are a lot of pretty significant deleted scenes that don't make their way. And Fire Walk with Me being the most, the biggest example where you have literally a feature film's worth of deleted scenes with other characters, other things going on. Inland has that to cut in a Fire Walk with Me way of like, a semi-side feature.

A Wake Up Ron Burgundy. Yeah. Lynch makes a lot of Wake Up Ron Burgundies. Lynch loves Wake Up Ron Burgundy. Yeah. And. The Alarm Clock Gang should have made the theatrical cut. I should have put Gethard in the main cut of part two.

Why are all other filmmakers afraid to put Gethard in the main cut of part two. Why are all other filmmakers afraid to put Gethard in the theatrical? All different jokes from different takes. It's a bizarro cut like Wanderlust. The same story beats, but new jokes in every scene. Every joke is an alt. Anyway. You know what's the kind of crazy,

fucked up shit Lynch would do? What's that? Make a movie that's only Gafford and cut everyone else out as a fuck you to the studios. Let's bring Gaff. Let's bring Gaff. I like the thing that he would have.

He would call him Gaff. He would call him Gaff the way he calls Kyle McLaughlin Kale. He'd be like, let's bring Gaff in for a Gaff take. What was your point? My point, no, no, my point was. And don't worry, we're gonna circle back to this later. One of the producers, I can't remember the name

of the producer who said this on The Return was asked, are there deleted scenes from The Return? Sabrina Southerland. Sabrina Southerland. Yeah, I saw this quote. She basically said, no. Yeah. And I do think that, and I don't say this as, this is gonna sound like a burn, I love the return.

I do think I've never seen something where I was more quickly convinced that everything that was shot had been used. Yeah, I mean, all this stuff that maybe would have been cut, I love that it exists. It's magic. This thing is magic. But yes, any studio in the right mind would be like, we're fucking cutting him, spray painting the shovel. Well, look, that's the first moment that came to mind.

Right. We're cutting Ashley Judd just walking around the room being like, I don't know if I hear something, you know, like shit like that. But like, of course, that has to be in it. But even the shovels thing, like any other filmmaker would be like, look, let's get two minutes of footage so we have options and then we'll pick the best 10 seconds to use. And David Lynch is like, no, the whole four continuous minutes. And then you're like, what about the other angle you shot?

And he's like, that's its own four minutes in another episode There is there's a thing that directors will say when they're filming. Gethard is holding the shovel There's a thing that a director will say when they're filming something that they may or may not use and like well It's just just so we have it. Yes, and I do feel like Twin Peaks the return Could have been called Twin Peaks just so we have it it. Just so we have it. And even beyond that, at times you watch it and you're like, where's the main footage? It feels like you're watching a Missing Pieces, you know? Well, and this is why-

I think there were a lot of fans who, that was their exact reaction to the show initially, was like, no, but where's the actual plot line of the show of Cooper reuniting with his buddies at the sheriff's office. Is Annie okay? Right, yeah, to maybe rescue Laura or Annie or to defeat Bob once and for all. I like that comment.

Yeah, right. And this is why I think The Missing Pieces is such a perfect bridge between Fire Walk with me- Call it a movie. To The Return. Because I do think that the 21st century Lynch is more, this is his rhythm of storytelling, which is sort of like a little bit less worried about,

like, does this move the story forward? And a little bit more like, let's put it all in there. That the missing pieces sort of all work together in the same sort of rhythm that I think they really prepare you for the rhythm of the return, which is like the thing you think you want, you may or may not get it, but you're gonna get a lot of stuff that another person,

if someone had given notes to the return, if Lynch came to someone and said, I gotta cut this down to 10 episodes, it would not be hard. You could easily do a 10 episode cut of this that would hit all the main beats you need to hit. And then you'd have like a missing pieces style thing that's like, oh, here's like Harry Truman's.

Frank Truman. Yeah. Jesus. Him on the phone with Dr. Russ Tamblyn. No, no. Oh, Warren Frost. Frost's dad. Yeah.

That is a great example of a scene that could have been if there was a Twin Peaks The Return, The Missing Pieces where it's like, we really want to, it's nice to see this character, but it doesn't move forward any, like, of the chess pieces of the plot. Or I think more realistically, a version of that scene that is cut down to 30 seconds

that is just like, we're just letting the audience know where he is and moving on. They just need to see his face for five seconds. Isn't it nice that we got him on a Skype window? In episode eight, after the part where the part where they pull Bob out of the stomach of, uh, let's just go through this because we're almost there. Yeah.

So they get to this hill, right? And, uh, you know, Ray shoots Coop. He goes to take a leak in the woods. Coop's got a gun. You think he's about to pull out on him then you see that He also has Ray has anticipated that he's in trouble. So he shoots Coop turns around Coop's gun is empty He left an unloaded golden gun in the glove compartment See, mr. C falls and you're like, okay big twist

We'll see what cause him a fucker too. Uh-huh. Pretty rude of him. That's kind of even ruder than the gunshots, I would almost argue. I'm not trying to, again, I'm not trying to sound like some naive fool who is like, I really had a handle on Twin Peaks, the return up to this point, and I was like completely grasping everything it was doing. But nonetheless, him like falling to the ground,

and then suddenly a bunch of sooty woodsmen emerging from the forest, like kind of fading in and then suddenly a bunch of sooty woodsmen emerging from the forest like kind of fading in and out of reality and then just kind of going like I Don't know how I'm just doing what they do. It's doing an incredible I don't know where he conjured the emotion to sold he pushed back from the desk and Started paddling his hands frantically in the air eyes closed. He really got into it But it was like he was conjuring something. Like David was like in touch with spirits

from another plane. I felt so helpless watching that sequence. When they come out of the earth and start dancing around and Ray falls to the ground, I felt like Ray. I felt like I, as a viewer, had like lost control of my point of view. Watch. You're just like, I have to pay attention because this is dark and mysterious.

What is happening? They seem to sort of like smear mud and blood all over him. Right. And then they, you know, like they, as you say, they, they all this crazy shit, you know, is happening, but it's my favorite thing about David Lynch where you're like, there's actual sort of like plotty import to what is going on. And yes, this, and yet this is also imagery that I could pour over and have thoughts about, have theories about or interpretations of for the rest of my life. And it'd be just fine too.

Well, I do want to hear you unpack both sides of that. Well, okay. Well, so basically they tear, you know, a ball as sort of Connor was basically setting up with Bob's face in it. Yeah. Out of Mr. C and they sort of show it to Ray. Right. Here's the evil. That's right here. It presumably is covered in some sort of viscous fluid. So it could be considered one saliva bob ball.

Well, Connor, well done. And you know, there's sort of a plainness to how Lynch thinks about this stuff or presents this stuff, right? And it was true in original Twin Peaks 2, right? Where it's like, you'll know that Leland is possessed by Bob because Leland will look at the mirror and then his face will just turn into Bob's face and back. And he's like, this isn't more complicated than you think it is.

Like that's what I want you to understand here. And so in the same way where it's like, do you know what's inside Mr. C kind of making him work? It's like Bob, his head in a globe kind of, and it's inside of his tummy. That's, I just want you guys to get that. You talk about the feeling of losing control, right? I feel like whereas his, like, use of time in this show,

in this series, season in particular, feels like up until this point, a lot of, like, forcing you to live in things and recalibrate away from the rhythms you're used to the way he uses the various effects for the rest of the episode at this point does feel like he is forcing you to stay in these things for an uncomfortable amount of time that creates its own tension if that makes sense and

it also is the thing that like, he I don't, it is kind of astonishing and inexplicable how much he is able to get so much visceral power out of using the most basic sort of like original like language of trickery in cinema, right? Where it's just like, he's like, if I basically do a digital version of a double exposure, a thing that has been done since the 19th. Since fucking Lumiere, exactly. Right, it's like one of the first building blocks of film language of like,

here's weird shit you can do with cameras. And he's just like, that's somehow more evocative, or at least I know how to make it more evocative than what a lot of other people I think would over-conceptualize as, like... As you're saying, like, what's the simplest version of this, and does that have some weird power to it? It's also interesting to me,

and we'll talk about this in other parts of the episode, because throughout The Return, you know, there's a little bit more of a, you know, a digital look to this series, and very often there are effects there's a little bit more of a digital look to this series. And very often there are effects that are very cheap looking. Simple.

But like digital looking cheap effects that are very much on purpose because you look at what a lot of the things in this episode that are essentially effects and they're not at all cheap looking. They are like some of the things in this episode that you would, that are essentially effects, and they are not at all cheap looking. They are like some of the best, most beautiful looking digital effects. I almost feel dirty using the word digital

to describe them. But then you also get shit like, when there's like the extended sequence of the people entering and exiting the general store, and it's basically like weaponizing the language that we're used to of what it feels like when you're watching something that starts glitching out. When your service is interrupted.

Yeah. You know, it's like so unnerving to like, I am watching this on a disc and my brain cannot stop going like, is the player malfunctioning? And I know from like second two, like this is clearly an intentional Lynch thing, but making us sit in that for like minutes

does something to your brain where you're just like, this is wrong. I'm used to panicking when this happens and then like checking my wifi or like checking the cables or like hitting a device. There's something unnerving about how much he simplifies it. And as much as yes, you're saying in this episode, he shows you that like,

I could make the effects look perfect if I wanted to. Sometimes there's something more disconcerting about like, why is it that simple? So whatever, this thing is revealed. Ray, as I would, runs away. They're smearing the blood all over. Yeah, but Ray's like, I'm getting the fuck out of here. He runs away, there's a scene. He calls.

This phone call is probably one of the funnier, unintentionally funnier things in the episode, which is his description of what happened. Let me, in fact, I can probably read the dialogue. You know, he calls, who he's calling is Jeffreys, right? But it's sort of, I mean, it doesn't really matter. But I mean, like that's for nerds, like you or I to think about the fact that

Philip Jeffreys, the David Bowie character, who is now a giant teapot, is like directing an agency against Mr. C. I mean, that's a spoiler in the weirdest way possible. It's not really important to the show in any way, but I guess if you wanna know it, you can. But he had passed away by this point already? But he had died.

He was supposed to be in it. Or maybe at least lend his voice to it. And he had died in 2016, and I think it just didn't happen. But everything we've described so far happens basically within 10 minutes, right? And then the phone call happens around minute 11. I think he's dead, but he's found some kind of help, so I'm not 100% and I saw something in Cooper,

it may be the key to what this is all about. And then, of course, we're like, oh my god, big revelations coming, cut to 9-ch Nails performance. The Nine Inch Nails. The Nine Inch Nails, presented by the MC character here. We basically have not seen in the previous musical performances. We're obviously getting like a Roadhouse musical number

in almost every episode, if not every episode. But I feel like this sort of like MC character speaking to the mic with the pine cone Yeah, sure sure. I don't remember seeing Just as you're saying like doing the sort of introduction ladies and gentlemen the nine-inch nails Yes, if they're the fucking SNL musical guest Feels like a new frame for these performance his first appearance, okay? He has several more though, so we will see him and And I will say, I'm not going to spoil. I'm not going to spoil this.

There will be a point where we see him again. I won't be around to discuss it with you. And I'll miss you dearly. But when it happens, I will I'll say to you, there is a contender for what I think is the most surprising moment in all of Twin Peaks The Return. At least purely just in terms of like, if you'd given me a thousand guesses, I never would have guessed this would be a thing that would happen.

Do you think you know what he's talking about, Dave? I'm not sure, I'd love to, I mean, there's so many things to think about, but the Nine Inch Nails performance, we should just say, that is the sort of demarcation point. We don't know it at the time, but it is unusual in the show right now for there to be a musical act in the middle.

I was gonna say, not all, but a lot of them, right. That's the end of the episode, yeah. And it's nine inch nails, right? It's not just like, yeah, exactly. And it's this incredibly, you know, vivid performance. Trent's got his sunglasses on. He's wailing. Go ahead. They're projecting sort of digital static over them. Uh-huh. Like as a, as like a, a live effect,

it's not like a video image manipulation of how they're filming it. It's like from the tech booth. Yeah, at the Roadhouse. Right. Yeah. Do you know this song, She's Gone Away? Are you a Nine Inch Nails guy, Connor? No, not really. I know very little about it.

I was looking at the lyrics to this before. It does feel- It's like a recent song. Like it was like from a recent EP. Ben, do you care for the song or? I'm not really that up on late career nine inch nails, but I like the song. I think he, it's just, it's crazy how much he doesn't seem

to age Trent Reznor. He's so hot still. The wild thing for me is just the like last like 10, 15 years turn of him becoming jacked as hell. I feel like he was always like this weird emo, wispy, like weirdo sensitive, you know, dark goth guy. And then at some point he like started looking like the bully in an 80s team company.

I think he got sober. Sure. And you know, there's a natural progression to eventually getting yoked. I just remember there, my first exposure to the idea of Trent Reznor was celebrity death match, where the puppet looked like he was like the fuck, like a scarecrow or some shit, you know? And it was like, oh, he's like this weird moody guy. And I believe they gave him literal nine inch nails.

I just looked it up. He was fighting Puff Daddy. Yeah, Puff Daddy. Cause it's rap versus rock. Yes, they made them represent the two sides. Celebrity deathmatch is one of those things that when that was on, when I was like 12, we were all like, this is like the pinnacle of art. Oh, it was.

And I'm sure if I watch it now, I'd be like, this is fucking so bad. I've tried to go back and watch them. It's not funny at all. I wouldn't say it's bad, but it is bizarre to watch now. I think there is good craft behind it, let me say. But you're just like, yes, exactly. When I was like 10 years old, I was like, I treated every episode of Celebrity Deathmatch as if it were part eight of Twin Peaks The Return, where I was like, the rules have been rewritten?

How can anyone make TV after this? Eric Fogel's done it again. We should also shout out Atticus. Atticus Ross. Atticus Ross, people- Is a member of Nine Inch Nails. I think he got added later. He's basically the only other permanent member now, right?

And he does his scores with him, obviously, and he's a lovely British man. I've talked about it on the show. People got angry we didn't give him enough credit when we've talked about Reznor Ross scores. Oh Lord, okay. Well, people get angry about everything. Anyway, I just love the performance.

It's cool anyway, but as a mood setter, and then Mr. C like pops up when it's over. Yeah, it's a real, especially once you know what the whole episode is, I look at that as like, this is the moment where Lynch decides we're breaking the form completely. We're gonna just have a full musical number, which is not something that scripted television traumas do.

Credit's not playing over it, not cutting to dialogue happening between Roadhouse patrons in between. Like, it's just fully right. Hi, TalkHouse Network listeners. This is Jason Stewart from How Long Gone. I want to tell you about a new show on TalkHouse Network from Atlas, Obscura, and TalkHouse called Sound Influence, the art and soul of Puerto

Rico. The show is a love letter to Puerto Rico and features incredible and accomplished artists like EGOT award winner Rita Moreno, Paci Man, director Miguel Arteta, award-winning author Jaquira Diaz, Los Rivera Destino, Jose Riviera, and Andrea Cruz, telling stories of how the island inspired and moved them as artists and people set against the field recordings from the islands and an amazing original score.

And it's hosted by none other than Luis Guzman. Listen to Sound Influence, the art and soul of Puerto Rico, wherever you listen to Talkhouse Network podcasts David yes, I got great news. What's up? And it's kind of it's kind of look sometimes you take great news for granted Like great news David you're alive Yeah, great news love to hear it. There's oxygen in your lungs The Sun is in the sky. Okay, and this episode is brought to you by movie Woo! The sun is in the sky.

Okay. And this episode is brought to you by MUBI. Ah, Curated Streaming Service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe. But it's important to step back and really appreciate how lucky we are. Okay. To have our episode sponsored by MUBI. We love MUBI. We love them.

It's a great service. Each and every film is hand-selected on there. You can stream the best of cinema anytime, anywhere. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there's always something new to discover. And sometimes you can walk out of your house, step, step, step, step, step, into a movie theater. Break.

That's a projector sound. Or if it's a digital projector. Popcorn. Grrr. At this movie theater, the popcorn is sold by like a guy from like a baseball, like a baseball popcorn like a baseball. Yeah, yeah, popcorn!

Guys are watching a movie, he's like, this is my thing! Peanuts! People come to this theater for me to do baseball popcorn sales, but in a movie theater. And all of that experience is brought to you by movie. No, it's not. But what is brought to you by movie is sometimes films that they put up on the big screens. Yes. Just what we like.

We like that movie is holistically involved in movie culture. And yeah, and they've been putting out a lot of interesting movies in recent times. And every year they've been stepping up their game. It's really exciting. Their new film, which is in theaters, US theaters on November 8th is Bird, the new film from Andrea Arnold. Now, they they phrase it here as the long awaitawaited return to fiction filmmaking in eight years and the last Film she made scripted feature-length film. Yeah, she made was your favorite film that year 2016

Blanky David Sims winner American Honey best picture for me. Yeah, a great movie She also made fish tank, which I feel like a lot of people seen she made Red Road. She made Wuthering Heights And her new movie is Bird. It's a tender and compelling and beautifully surprising coming-of-age fable about life in the fringes of contemporary society. Kind of her strong suit. That's absolutely right, yes.

She finds very interesting ways to explore right communities you might not see on film as often. You know what's another thing I love about Mubi? They, in their copy, for the first time have answered for me definitively how to pronounce the name of the star. Go ahead. This film with its buzzy cast features Barry Hewitt. That's right.

Don't say the G. We know from Saltburn or I mean. Franz Rogowski. Ben Spanche's of insurance. Oh, sure. Yes, yeah, anyway. But yes, and then you've got Arthouse favorite, Fringe Rogowski.

Yes. Fringe Rogowski from Passages and Transit. Andine. Great movies. One of my favorite movies of the last couple of years. And then plus a revelatory central performance from a newcomer, Nikaia Adams. Another thing Andrew Arnold has quite attracted.

Right, latest in a series of notable debut performances from Arnold. You got a canon of formidable female characters vying for freedom from oppressive systems. You know, in Red Road, of course, you had Kate Dickey. Oh, no, sorry. Well, yeah, Red Road was Kate Dickey. That wasn't a discovery. No, that wasn't, but in Fish Tank, you had Katie Jarvis, and in American Honey, you had- Sasha Laine.

And she's still crushing it, seeing Sasha Laine all over the place. Look, New York Times called it a beautifully shot, delicately moving coming-of-age story. Little White Lies said it's a magical, energetic marvel from one of the UK's finest filmmakers, and David wouldn't know anything about that. But she's the best and the movie is really, really worth seeing and it's really great

to have a new Andrea Arnold movie out there and it's in theaters on November 8th. Here's what you can do. You can go to mooby.com slash bird for showtimes and tickets, see if it's playing anywhere near you. And additionally, you want to stream some great films at home, you can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I.com slash blank check for a month of great cinema for free.

And Bird will eventually end up there. Bird. Bird. We're about 15 minutes into the show. It's a 45 minute. And looking at like the lyrics to that song, it does feel like a very, I mean, I'm sure this is true of a lot of, but I mean, you dig in places till your fingers bleed,

spread the infection where you spill your seed, does feel like a lyric that you could put over the images of the woodsman like digging through Mr. C's stomach. Now, who do you think the woodsman represent or what the woodsman are? I need you to start unpacking all of this. Such a big part of Twin Peaks The Return, but of course they're in Fire Walk with me

in this sort of kind of goofier way where they're like guys in flannel. They're in the missing pieces. Jurgen Prochner, I always like to shout out, is in like one shot with a giant fake beard as one of the woodsmen. I'll show you. He's also in one shot of the theatrical, is he not?

I believe so. Yeah. I would say like the first indication, when you have season one of Twin Peaks, the first sort of indications of the supernatural things that will immediately start happening in season two is them talking about there's something in the woods. Cooper's talking about how fascinated he is with these trees and all the shots of the woods and everything. But when Sheriff Truman and Big Ed start talking about how there's something in these woods,

I feel like the woodsmen are just the natural way of like, it's either that or you'd have the trees come to life. You know, like just a way of representing, I don't know what they want. I don't know what their goals are, what their aims are. I don't know whose side they're on. I tend to think they're bad. Well, they seem to mostly, I mean,

they're very malevolent in this episode They generally are in the convenience store and all these sorts of like liminal spaces that we see Over the course of the show which are you know, we see dark places a few cells away from Matthew Lillard in the Second episode and one sitting there and then he just floats away. There's a lot of stuff where I'm just like, I like this. I don't know what it means, but I like the feeling I get. I'm always excited when they show up. But what we're seeing, so Mark Frost has said that the sort of origin of so much of the whatever,

mythology of Twin Peaks comes from the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, right? That's what the episode eight is about. And I think it annoys some fans in a way to be so direct about it, right? Like to be like almost, it's not a basic observation that like some new unnatural kind of evil like was created that day.

But it is, you know, still feels profound to me. The woodsman and the black lodge and the white lodge and all this stuff feels older than that. They've been around in some form, right? Yeah, but Bob, this guy dressed in denim, long hair. Sure. Like he's new. But is some of this, I'm dressed in denim, long hair. Sure. Like, he's new.

But is some of this, I'm going to ask dumb questions because you guys have been thinking on these things for years, if not decades, and I'm new to all of this, right? The next shot, to be clear, after Mr. C wakes up, is the slow motion shot of the nuke going off, the Trinity test. Is the feeling that something like the nuclear bomb, right, this man-made evil, somehow collapsed this wall between, as you're saying, these sort of ancient spiritual forces and the tangible

reality. and the tangible reality that that's sort of like the thing that started to curse Twin Peaks is the demolishing of that barrier. Yeah. And we see we literally see this floating weird creature barf up a bunch of stuff and one of the bubbles has Bob in it. Yes, this sort of odd creature, which is maybe Judy, right? It's sort of like, right? This sort of, this entity that gets brought up a lot in Twin Peaks lore. I will say that like the, this stuff is all more fun to watch and experience than it is to talk about.

I agree. Some people got mad at me for saying that last week though. And I do want to acknowledge that yes, some people love to delve into this lore in a deeper way, and that's fine. It all sounds kind of stupid when talked about. And I think one of the things that's like, like Twin Peaks, you know,

it's this thing where they're great at setting up questions. And I think generally terrible at answering those questions. I think one of the things that's so great about episode eight is that it actually probably provides more tangible answers than any other episode of Twin Peaks. That's just kind of bewildering about episode eight. It's the weirdest version of an explainer episode

in its form. Yeah, because basically, if you wanted to give the TV Guide's spoiler summary of the thing, you'd say a nuclear bomb unleashes Bob into the world. Then the giant or the fireman or whatever he's called now, and I want to get her name right because it's such a great character name. Senorita Ditto or Dido? Senorita Dido?

Right. And the giant basically create the spirit of Laura Palmer as a, uh, a counterbalance to the evil of Bob. And, uh, and then young Sarah Palmer, uh, when the, when the woodsman knock everybody in her hometown out, uh, this winged frog creature climbs into her body. Grasshopper frog. Yeah. And so it's like this origin story of like,

Judy or Jaude and Bob and Laura and all these things are all created in this crazy. But I also like what I enjoy about the episode is not any of the things that, like I like that Sarah Palmer isn't identified as Sarah Palmer in the episode. Yeah, I did not get that. No, I'm getting this now It's something you kind of it's something a mark. I was confirms in one of the books That comes along with it and it's a thing that occurred to me when I watched it

But she's just called young girl and it's more fun to wonder than it is to have it. Yes, that's definitely her. And you know, the boy is Blue Beetle, right? The boy is Blue Beetle. You're saying it's the actor who plays Blue Beetle or this is David Lynch. Entering the DC cinematic extended universe. The boy is Blue Beetle. Bring Gaff in for a gaff take. You know, the girl. His uncle is George Lopez in a winning supporting term. Very fun.

No, no, you know. Big Lake. We, you know, we, not to jump ahead, but just to jump ahead, we see This girl in Los Alamos go on a date with a boy from her school Who is blue and that actor is okay is the kid who plays boy blue beetle anyway No first we see this right this imagery of the bomb

Minutes it's so cool. Yeah, there's like crazy visual show of fire and static That's just computer animation, right? I Mean, yeah, I look so good. It looks incredible. I don't know why why is it is it computer animation? Do we know that for a fact? I don't fucking know don't ask me David You mean like is it a bomb they set off like Why don't it like like Christopher Nolan made such a big deal of like I'm doing this all in camera, right? He did but I mean I certainly get to lie. He lied. He lied and people died Well, I'm not saying there's a connection

It's just that since Christopher Nolan told those lies saying there are human there are people who have died Christopher Nolan lied and people died. Yeah. Causality is not... You can look it up. There are people who died the day after Oppenheimer was released in theaters. It's just a fact.

It's just a fact. It's just a fact. It wasn't all practical. We're not drawing any connections. No, I'm just saying, especially some of these, like the ensuing shots where you're seeing just sort of like particle matter and things like that. I could imagine some of that being practical,

but I also could believe it's digital. I don't know. I don't, I, part of me doesn't ever want to know how they did it. I just, when I look at that shot, I can't believe what I'm looking at. It's so hypnotic. It's always more, no matter how many times

I watch that shot, it's always more impressive even than I remember it being. Each time I feel like I experience it anew, it is in a career full of a really, really powerful imagery. I feel like the part of David Lynch that's like, I'm a painter, but I wanna use cinema as my way of making these paintings.

I feel like that shot is one of his, it's just such an unprecedented masterpiece in his body of work. This whole episode is like a greatest, it is just like, if you had watched the first seven episodes and thought, some people were like, they watched them, like, it's not like the old Twin Peaks.

It is a CG. You can, I'm looking right now at the visual effects house. BUF has a big page on all the work they did on this episode. You're right that it does look incredible. Um, I also think- It's 11 minutes of full CG. They said, they said- That sound. That was visceral, Connor, whatever just happened to you. It's also funny to think of that shot and, and, uh, you haven't watched, I assume, any of the, there's a really long, like, behind the scenes, uh, uh, documentary about the making of The Return of Griffin. I got, I got the big box here. Right.

I will be watching it. I've been avoiding it because I don't want to get spoiled on things I haven't gotten to in the series. Well, there's a sequence where he gets really mad, and it has to do with his... There's a lot of times where something will have to be made out of, like, paper mache or something, and Lynch will be just personally, like,

stirring something in a bucket. And they have the wrong stuff for him, and he's like, God damn it! He's, like, so angry. But that's, like, the story of him being so frustrated that he wanted to do all the makeup for Elephant Man himself. And they were like, David, this is a Paramount movie. You can't be like in the makeup trailer applying shit to John Hurt for hours every day. And he's like, I can figure it out! Lots of imagery that is wonderful, like inside the bomb.

Sorry, I just want to unpack this for a moment. I love the Trinity Test Sequence in Oppenheimer, right? Yes, I mean, yes. And I love that it was done practically, just as like a sort of antidote to what we're used to of how these things look. A criticism I have heard about that sequence from people is like, what is happening when an atomic bomb goes off is so much

more complicated and terrifying than any usual explosion, right? That is the underlying enormity of what this weapon was and why it was so scary. And the triny test is a little bit more of just like, what's an incredible way to depict an explosion on screen? I feel like this granular digital thing that Lynch is getting at somehow evokes more of the like matter is being like pulled apart. A hundred percent. Kind of thing. I love the Trinity test sequence in Auburn-Hiver,

but not for the explosion itself, which is honestly just fine. And he only uses it sparsely. It's all about the buildup and the characters and how tense they are about it. And you know, that's what's so cool about it. And the way the flash is done is cool. I'm just saying, watching this thing.

The firewall itself kind of looks just okay because Nolan, I think was really trying. Great, but yeah. To, right, do it practically. But like Lynch, who you don't think of as a CGI heavy filmmaker, is able to capture some sort of thing of like the terror of this, which is like as much as it is

like sort of hypnotizing and to a certain degree, beautiful imagery, you're also like, there's something really scary about just like watching the particles for this long and thinking about what is producing them. The lighting of it, the flashing and the like, it gets dark and then there's like a flash color and it you're, you're feeling like you don't even know physically where the camera

is. It's like in this cloud, the storm. When you like read the accounts of the folks who were working at Los Alamos, they talk about it that way where they were just like, it was incomprehensible what we were witnessing, like colors you can't explain, like time slowing down, like, you know, it's what's horrifying about this existing as a technology. I wonder how aware Lynch was of, because I have to feel on some levels completely deliberate, that in the first seven episodes of this, some of the digital effects are so crude that they're just not even pretending they're anything other than computer effects.

It's just, there's no pretense of it. You're in the Black Lodge and it isn't, doesn't look like the Black Lodge from the ABC television version. It's a different, more digitally looking thing that in some ways it's setting you up that when this happens, you won't, your mind won't be able to process how good it looks. Because it's setting you up that when this happens, your mind won't be able to process how good it looks.

That's what happened to me. Yeah. Because I also like, look, I didn't think he set off an actual atomic bomb for the sake of filming episode eight of his television show. Right? He didn't do that. But I was watching it because he's established a language of when there are effects they purposefully look very unnatural.

That to see the realism of this, I was like, was he compositing practical elements together? Did he film some weird faked version of explosion, composite into a background? To hear that it's all CG, your brain does kind of, I think what you're saying, like, it doesn't know how to process it. What's the sound, too, that's being played? Oh, it's just me going... Is that what it is? There is a piece of music.'s the sound, too, that's being played? Oh, it's just me going... Is that what it is? There is a piece of music.

Wait a second, David, that's a conflict of interest. You didn't disclose that you worked on this episode going... There's a piece of music playing during the test that is the... I want to get this right, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, which is a piece of classical music that was composed in reflection on the bombing of Hiroshima years later. So that's obviously, you know, but then it's also,

you know, crazy Lynch sound effects are playing. And then we see the convenience store, which is this sort of Black Lodge-esque, maybe even sort of a scarier place than the Black Lodge, right? Like- I'd rather go to the Black Lodge than to that convenience store. I feel like there's this implication that that's where really bad shit goes down in the arm or characters like that sort of shuttle between, but you go to the convenience store for, for some sort

of nasty stuff. Cause when you see it in a fire walk with me, it's also where kind of bad transactions are happening. Black lodge is scary and unpredictable, but it's clean. It's clean, there's some art. It's fancy. Wait, so we've been to the convenience store in the past? In Fire Walk With Me Only. Is it future or is it past? Or sorry, it's appeared on the show.

But it looks like you would be forgiven for not realizing that what we've seen before is that, because we haven't seen the outside of the convenience store before. It was only inside. It was in color. It fire walked with me when it's like a room full of Bob and the man from another place. And there's like people dancing around.

And that guy with the weird, with the weird long nose. That's upstairs in the convenience store, which Mike, the one our man used to talk about, is upstairs. I believe it was convenience store. Okay. to talk about is upstairs. I believe it was convenience store. Okay. But when we see it here, it's the awesome David Lynchy, black and white, like stutter step, you know,

the woodsman going around like Beatles, but it's all like sort of, tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch Basically a period of this segment, I can't keep, I can never keep straight the order of some of these things. I've got the, I'm watching it here. Yes, you're watching it right now. I'm sort of going in sequence just to remember exactly this. There is a sequence where essentially you're like, oh, we're watching something that is 2001,

a space Odyssey for television. I think that's exactly right. You're watching an abstract depiction of the sort of like development of some new kind of malevolence. Right. Like, you know, that's what, you know, and these guys are these busy little evil worker bees around this kind of like post-war symbol, the convenience store, right? Like, you know,

it looks like an old gas station from the fifties kind of, and it's just like, right. It's like, that's, that's how I'm taking all of this. But let's also say like 2001, it's coming after two hours of more conventional narrative storytelling in a movie. More conventional, right? And then throughout that abstract expressionist sequence, you're cutting back to Cure Deleia. Like, they are re-centering you in, like,

this is what this character you have been through is experiencing. This has no grounding viewpoint in that way. Not particularly. He's making you the audience member. And no precedent in the series or world of Twin Peaks. Like, we've seen Twin Peaks in multiple forms, and this is the first time we've ever been

just sounds and shapes. Then we see, yes, this kind of figure, which the experiment is how it's referred to, but it's this kind of feminine blobby body floating in space and makes this kind of weird chain of vomit and Bob's head emerges from that. And it's another thing where if you, I remember back to both moments when I was watching it for the first time, tired in a hotel room with all the lights out, just watching the screen,

that when you're seeing Bob, you could easily miss what you're seeing. It's not like, it's subtle the way he does this. It is, you have to kind of focus on this brief image that kind of swishes by you. And then we see this sort of golden imagery and a golden blob, sort of a nicer vibe one might think. Again, this is why I'm kind of like,

it's so funny that Twin Peaks can be thought about so deeply, but then also David Lynch is like, yeah, there's the golden people. That's the nice people. That's the nice people. Good blob versus bad blob. The angels are coming. Spray gaff up with the gold hair, spray and paint and makeup for a golden gaff. I want a golden gaff.

You've got- Just so we have it. And then we're on the purple sea, which is is this we've seen this image before a little bit when have we seen this? Three yeah when when when Cooper was kind of moving his way through you know from the black lot I got a real hell out of the black lodge landed in that little box In New York City, so is it post the box post the box? You know he goes any tiny Cooper falls down a little thing and then he's in that little room where something's trying to get in And there's a Briggs is floating head and all that stuff. You know that all we've all seen a little bit of that

We're back there Question is I it's been a long time since I saw dune you guys saw more fresh are there purple sea parts is that dune? Yeah, it's dune. Okay Okay worm floats by and the planet dune I just wasn't sure you know Great question. Ready Jones is there a good answer for you cat in a box? And so there's this castle atop the purple sea and that's where the giant lives You're right. I don't know how else to describe this. There's a castle on the Purple Sea where the giant lives. And there's also this woman, Senorita Dido,

who we only see in this episode, played by Joy Nash, who's sitting there as well. She's sitting on the couch. They have a sofa in this castle. It looks comfy in there. It looks very cool. It's an awesome piece of design. It's so beautifully designed. Yes. It has a 50s

Kind of aesthetic would we say or maybe yeah older aesthetic? I don't this team II thing is going on to like there's a phonograph. There's the big kettle thing There's a lot of clanking And The fireman or the giant or whatever you want to call him is there. Played by Carol's face credited him credited as a series of question mark. Credited as like eight question marks. Even even David Lynch and Mark Frost were like, we don't know what the fuck this is.

You've got me seems weird. We couldn't figure out what he was. We know that they live in a castle on the purple sea. We don't know who this guy is. This fella. Wish he'd tell us. His face, it's so different from him in, you know, the TV show, in the ABC show. Like that he's so old and he's kind of drawn.

You're talking about Carol. He struck in. He and Mike, I think both have that thing that, you know, there was every, every few years there'd be one of those apps that shows up that everyone starts having fun with where it's like, oh, here's how I look from a whole. You type in your email and it shows you what you look like in a painting. Right. And type in your social security number right here. It usually happens for training AI.

It's fun for three days. Then someone's like, don't do this. They're scraping your account and number right here. By the way, it's training AI. It's fun for three days, then someone's like, don't do this, they're scraping your account and using all the, and I did one of those and I didn't post it, I tried like five different paintings, put me in a painting, they all have my face basically do what happened to Mike and the giant, which is that something sort of,

you get older and your face sort of like, it kind of deteriorates in a way that makes me a little sad and So none of mine were postable because they were all kind of like oh no and and it was consistent enough that I'm like they know something because Everyone else was having fun looking paintings and my face just like caved Yeah, but Connor that's unnecessary to use that program We all know if we want to see a picture of what you'll look like as an old man, we can just pull up the Weekends Dawn FM album cover

that inexplicably looks identical to Connor in 40 years. Now, it looks like me now. Look. I know. It looks like me sprayed up as George Lucas. It looks like if you continued spraying up until you hit George's real age. I don't think The Weekend looks like if you continued spraying up until you hit George's real age. I don't think the weekend looks like you under any other circumstances. I can see it.

That covers identical. Is it not? These two characters essentially watch what we just watch. Yes. They like literally play a movie. That is the other thing that I was like blown. I remember being blown away by at like 2.30 in the morning, whatever, then I'm like, they just showed something that I kind of can't believe got made it to television. And then we watched a scene where other characters

that watched. It looks like Bob's face. Can you freeze on that? And the giant is like, I'm supposed to recap this for AV Club, how do I fucking synopsize this? Uh, well, he synopsizes it by basically like kind of dreaming a golden cloud over his head. He sort of levitates and like a mist emerges from him. And uh, that uh, basically turns into Laura Palmer, Laura Palmer globe.

And it is like, it's some real Captain Planet shit. It's like, you know, okay, like go, go fight Bob. Yeah. Right? Which it's, you know, it doesn't really like, it's hard for me to think about these things and try to unpack the logic of it because it feels like in the fight versus, of like good versus evil, it seems like an unfair

fight that it's like, we're going to create an innocent who's so good, but she's going to have to like be the victim of all of this terrible abuse. And like, that's the fight that they're arranging. Like why not create a big bear that can fight Bob? That would be cool if they created a big bear. Just like, how about we create this child and we'll have them be abused. If you think about it that literally, it's very upsetting. And maybe we should have created a big bear.

Maybe we should think about it that literally. Or maybe it's kind of like, right, we'll imbue one of his victims with this compelling power or just, I don't know, I mean, how do you wanna think about it? It's just like there will be light in counter to the darkness. It's interesting because if you think back to what it felt like to watch the first episode of Twin Peaks when Laura Palmer's body

washes up on the shore and they're like, oh my God, Laura and the people of the town are so upset by it. The idea that there'd be any character in the universe of this story that's like, it's all part of our plan. We're gonna fight Bob this way. This is how we fight Bob. Well, it's also like the image of her in the globe

is literally her prom photo, right? The sort of iconic image of Twin Peaks is the, and like when you think about the pilot where it's like, Hey, Cheryl Lee, play this murder victim you're going to get wrapped in plastic. You'll do that. We'll take a prom photo. So we have this photo and then we're going to do like, you know, like five minutes to sort of video footage of you dancing around with Laura Flynn.

That's all we're hiring you to do. You have no dialogue. You're a day player. You're a day player. There's a world where they're like, okay, thanks. Like, that's all we need from you. Not only are you a day player, but like most of your job is doing an accompanying photo shoot

and basically being a piece of art design. And then obviously... Like production design. Instead the show, you know, becomes like, you know, immediately... Lynch is like, this actor is so interesting and like we're gonna use her all over the place. But for like the Twin Peaks The Return to be like, yes, Laura Palmer is the fucking Iron Man to Bob's Thanos.

I mean, that's not what the show is doing, to be clear. But there is something just crazy about them shooting her face in a golden tube towards a like image of planet Earth. It's kind of a big tuba. Yeah, like it does feel very childlike. Even if you think back to the giant at the beginning of season two, imagine that there was a scene that they shot just so we have it.

Gether was standing his little giant next to him and a scene where the giant says, I made Laura to fight Bob. And Cooper's just lying in bed like, what? What's going on? But also am I wrong in feeling like every single second of footage we have ever seen of Laura Palmer as a character is when she is already kind of like collapsing inside. Right. Right? Like we never see dramatized, you know,

this is like a character who's like been like the receptacle for all of like the darkness of the world. And I feel like more than it being like Laura, we're imbuing her with the power to fight Bob. There's something in the fact that when Laura dies, it feels like that was the last thing holding reality together. It's what makes everyone in the town spiral so fully out of control. Right? It's like it goes beyond this sort of like, oh my god, whoever thought this could happen in a

small town. The more conventional version of Twin Peaks, which is just a weird inexplicable murder happens and something that feels more spiritual and existential of like some barrier. Yeah. I mean, episode eight essentially finally pays off. We finally learn that Jean Reno was wrong when he attributed what went wrong to Asian Cooper. He come to town, pretty girl die, Asian Cooper come to town,

suddenly Twin Peaks is not so good a place. So like episode eight, finally it's like, we've tied up the Jean Reno plot line from season two. Thank God they- Turns out he was wrong. It wasn't Cooper's fault. Right, instead it was like a gramophone made Laura's face and shot it at a tube.

They probably did another take where it's like, let's not go with this one, let But shoot it just so we have it of genre now explaining a giant to probably Shoot her out of a tube pretty girl sure to do Wind up planet Earth seniorita data, maybe is involved. I don't know. Is it big bum? It's just a theory Maybe if this this episode has like four or five acts right so like five like five, for act one, the prologue is Mr. C. Mr. C. And then we have the atom bomb. No, no, sorry.

Nine of Snales. Then we have Nine of Snales, then we have the atom bomb sequence, and then we have what we just saw, this sort of, the two globes. Yeah, we have the origin of Bob, the origin of Laura. And then the final 15 minutes, the sort of final act of it is like,

okay, we're pulling out of total dream fantasy imagery. We're now in New Mexico in 1956 in the desert and a strange creature has hatched from a little egg and we're going to, it's still black and white. So we're still sort of in the aesthetic of this specific episode, but it's a girl and a boy, a teenage girl and a teenage boy like talking to each other and we're back to something a little more human. I mean, this creature.

He's telling her how he got this beetle that gives him powers, it's like a suit of armor, but it's intelligent. Heritage and all that stuff. It's a frogmoth. Spiritual and technology. It's a frogmoth. That's a great call. I read it as a grasshopper.

It looks like a big bug. Because it's got the the long kind of body. Yeah, but it's large. Yeah quite large But it has kind of a guy back. I'm saying a grasshopper frog rather than a frog ma. Oh sure sure sure okay? Yeah, that's fine right yep, and there is I believe in the Twin Peaks access guide book That came out back back around season two. Okay there is a section that someone found when this episode came out that was like Is this what this thing was and? Here it is. Did you see it? Yeah that it's there's some sort of legend like sort of Native American legend of a Mythological kind of frog creature. Yeah, you're looking at the same like reddit post whatever they have that screenshot

Frog moths. Yeah. Oh Well, well Ben how the frog mop has turned Or maybe these images just rattle around in their heads and they use them in new ways Maybe this this show is just so carefully plotted and tightly planned that we should not doubt them. They know what they're doing. After season two, Lynch was like, I'm done with that shit.

This isn't some Vince Gilligan thing where we paint ourselves into a corner and then try to figure out how to get Walt and Jesse out of it. I don't need to explain the teddy bear. Look at the episode titles. David. Let's be honest, can we please be honest?

Go ahead. Can we stop lying and talking past each other? Can you look me in the eyes for a second? No. Yes. Please. Okay, what's up? And really be here with me. Be in this moment, David. Mm-hmm.

Listen to what I'm saying and the way I am saying it. What are you saying? What most people really want for the holidays is to see their favorite people more often. I won't believe it. No, you keep telling me that people want V-Bucks. No. What? Or that they want socks.

Oh, socks are good. You keep telling me that people want V-Books. No. What? Or that they want socks. Well, socks are good. You keep listing material objects, and I'm telling you we need to cut past that and be honest that this year the best gift you can give, besides playing tickets, is an Aura digital picture frame. Yes. It's the number one digital photo frame as named by Wirecutter. Very smart and easy to use.

You can upload unlimited photos and videos right from your phone to the frame. You can order online and preload it. So when it gets, you know, if you give it to someone as a gift, right out of the box, it's gonna have whatever photos you wanna put on there. First day of school, holidays, vacations, silly photos, right? Anything you wanna do, old family photos,

you can tailor it to whoever you're giving the gift to, put kinda cool photos onto it, comes out of the box, can as you say see their favorite people. I know from picture frames you give your grandma a photo of you she goes oh this is nice day three she's walking by it she's hitting the side she's like this again rerun the same old picture or frames is kinetic it's a living text you know what I'm saying? Absolutely.

And I gotta tell you, I smell real bit potential. Oh my God, the bits you could do with these aura frames. You could preload a bunch of nice photos. Oh, gotcha with something sneaky. You know sometimes you're taking a family photo and people go, let's try one silly one. And you do it and people are like, well, we're never gonna use that one.

Aura frames, you can throw it into the Rector and do a bunch of pictures of worms you can do whatever you want. Wait a second David. That is Right just like ten pictures of work. That is the funniest idea Look so you can save on the perfect gift by visiting our frames to get thirty five dollars off or as best-selling Carver map frames by using promo code check at checkout. That's a ura frames calm promo code check This deal is exclusive to listeners. So get yours now in time for the holidays terms and conditions apply. Ben MGM is an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League and has your back all season long.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. There's after this brief interlude with the boy and the girl, there's this sequence I would describe as a little spooky where one of the woodsmen approaches a couple driving in a car and asks if they've got a light.

It is unnerving to like cut to a couple, quote unquote, normal dialogue scenes between young people. You're just like, wait a second. I thought this wasn't gonna go back to this kind of thing. It's Robert Broski. He looks like zombie Abraham Lincoln. He's an actor who, to be clear, almost every single credit in his IMDB is Abraham Lincoln.

Really? Like he is a well-known Abraham Lincoln impersonator. I think he looks great. Yeah, he looks cool. What do we think just from a fashion standpoint? Great. Sooty. Sooty. Flannel.

Good hat. I'm very like- Cigarette. I think I should, well, you know, except for that part. Should I start being sooty? Try it. Your fiance might object to you treading soot through the hall.

But- Dirty bang 2025? You won't know that until you try it. That's a good point. It you're your fiance might object to you treading through the hall Dirty bang 2025 you won't know that you won't know that until you try it This is that you know, yeah kind of has a great attitude about this try being city And if it turns out to be a mistake, you can always course correct be less city or not city at all Robert broski was in a 2014 short film called Ling Clone, in which he played Abraham Ling Clone, a clone of Abraham Lincoln, and he's got like Terminator eyes.

Oh, that sounds pretty good. It sounds good as hell. I'm down to watch it. Ling Clone. They clone Abe Lincoln's DNA and name the clone President for Life, except there's one problem, colon, the clone is evil. It's five minutes long. That's a lot of plot for five minutes.

How many people are there in history that there's- Yeah, but only one problem though. That's true. You can knock out one problem every five minutes. That there's like no footage of. We also, we know how to solve the problem of a Lincoln if you think that Abraham Lincoln is a problem. You have to clone Andrew.

No, there's like- What? We have been provided with a clear solution. You cloned John Wilkes Boothoth if you think Abraham Lincoln is the problem This is not a how do you solve a problem like Maria? Situation what is the solution Connor? You shoot him dead. I Think you have to clone John Wilkes Booth to shoot him dead though Yeah, but the solution is still shooting him dead sure if for some reason someone who's not a clone of John Wilkes Booth

Also shoot some death it shoots him dead, problem solved. We don't know that though. We don't have the data to prove that. That's true. It's too small a sample size. We've only got one Lincoln. Historically, only one guy has been able to kill Abraham Lincoln with a-

Thank you for calling me out on my bad science. You're welcome. The sample size is far too small. We don't know. Now, I don't have the stomach to carry out this experiment because I like Lincolns and I don't think they're problems. I'm just, how many people are there that there isn't like film footage of

that you could be like, you know who you look like is Abraham Lincoln? Like you can pursue a career looking like Abraham Lincoln. That's a great question. You know what I mean? If you commit to the beard, it's probably a lot more than we think. Yeah, well, Santa Claus.

I mean, people that look like Jesus Christ. That was the other one I was thinking of but these are I you're right that those are more like kind of agreed upon advertising depictions of these figures You know, there's like a constructed visual archetype Versus Lincoln where we're like we got a handful of photos of him We got the basics,

and if you got the bone structure and the height, you're set for life. Oh yeah. So, got a light, kind of scary. We never find out if they do. Nope, they drive away, they're not into it. Rude. Yeah, I guess they never do find out if they got to.

Because they have a light? We're back to the boy and the girl, he kisses her, it's all very like... It kind of reminds me... Chased and slow-backy, you know. In the same way that a lot of Twin Peaks Return, people have commented that it's not just a continuation of Twin Peaks, but in some ways it feels like it calls back to many things in Lynch's career.

I always feel like the scenes where they're walking and talking remind me of the scenes of Kyle McLaughlin and Laura Dern walking in blue velvet. That sort of innocent... Oh, sure. ...conversation. Yeah, she's got the kind of... She looks like in that Laura Dern looks like she's from another decade. She's dressed in this kind of old-fashioned way and all that.

It's also amazing that this episode, if it ended before this sequence, it would have been this crazy weird episode with all this weird stuff. This part is the part that makes it a truly amazingly impressive episode, because it's like, we have how many minutes left? How long is this last section? The last section's about 15 minutes long.

15 minutes, and it's like, we're gonna give you a fully self-contained narrative. Sort of love horror story. Introduce new characters. It's like, we're gonna give you this, right, this like budding, just hint of this budding teen romance and this like monster attack on the town, I guess is the best way to put it.

It's almost like Lynch, you could imagine if it ended before the Lynch, you could imagine if it ended before the segment, you could imagine some people, if they didn't like it, dismissing it as, well, this is a bunch of goofy garbage. It's a bunch of artsy weird shit. He's lost it as a filmmaker. This isn't cinema.

This is just a bunch of- Well, what a lot of people said about him in the 90s. Yeah. Yeah. And this last segment is just, it's not conventional filmmaking, but it is just like storytelling. I'm gonna make a black and white horror movie. It's gonna have, the pacing is perfect. It's creepy and hypnotic,

but you get invested in the characters. It's really just such, it's one of the best 15 minutes of his whole career. It is so cool and so scary. The woodsman like walks into the DJ, like into the radio booth and it's perfect David Lynch violence where it's like the only effect initially

is that he's putting his hand on the receptionist's head and pushing her down. And all she's doing clearly is kneeling down, right? Like there's nothing else happening. And then you cut to the second, like closeup of where the camera shaking like crazy and buckets of blood are pouring over her head. And like, that's all you need is like these two very, like one is just nothing at all really. And the second is the most simple over the top kind of like violent effect without any, you know, real embellishment just like lots of blood. It's not like we watch your head get crumpled.

It's in your head that that's happening. There's also a modern technique that I can only think of a few examples of it, but like black and white with CGI digital special effects somehow looks so impressive because I don't know if it's that my brain processes black and white as like, how did they do these? Like it processes black and white as old.

And so when I see something at CGI in color, I see it as like, oh, it's a computer effect. It's impressive, but I'm processing it as a computer effect sometimes. I've said this many times. I think the trend of like, actually I always wanted to film in black and white, so I'm doing a black and white cut for the Blu-ray

is largely kind of bullshit nonsense. The one I find entrancing is Fury Road for that reason. Because that movie is constructed more like a silent film and is so CGI heavy, but a weird combination of CGI and practical, when you're watching these long wordless stretches in black and white, it feels like, how did they make this in 1910?

It's also like, the mist is kind of like that, where you have these CGI bugs that look like perfectly professional CGI special effects. But in Black and White, you're like, how on earth did 1940s filmmaker Frank Darabont make? Well, yes, it makes The Mist feel like a Twilight Zone episode. Yeah. I do think the Godzilla like minus one minus color thing, while interesting, doesn't really work because you're just like, I know what a Godzilla movie looked like in black and white.

It was a guy in rubber. The woodsman kills the people in the radio station and then he says, this is the water, this is the well, drink full and descend, the horse is the white of the eyes and dark within. He says it a lot just in case you didn't get it. I do feel like again, not to overanalyze because I really think you can do whatever you want,

but the horse is the white of the eyes, right? The white of the eyes don't see. The horse is this image that's in all of Twin Peaks. Sarah's always seeing the horse. And to me, it symbolizes very plainly, like it's like just looking, not seeing what has happened. And that's what's like the Laura, you know, that's the story of Laura's.

Like everyone's just kind of looking away or looking around what's happening to her. And that's what the horse means. But why is it making everyone fall asleep? Like, why is it so hypnotic? Cause they need Sarah Palmer, young Sarah Palmer to fall asleep so that the frog moth can climb into her body.

So basically they have to do a chemical attack on the whole town to put everybody to sleep. Or not a chemical attack, but a hypnotic attack. On the town. This is really just a lullaby being broadcast over the radio waves. Yeah. Right.

And they get the job done, which is that they put this frogmoth into young Sarah Palmer. They imbue her with whatever sort of second sight or connection to this other world. And the woodsman is kind of in on it, but he's not playing a side, right? Yeah. I feel like he's on the, I feel like he's,

I feel like this benefits Bob. Well, isn't though the creature eventually gonna lead to Bob's demise? No, I think Sarah is, you know, is sort of, I mean, I struggle with all this. Oh yeah, Sarah is gonna give Berthelor a Palmer. Which sets up all of these. Are you right?

So maybe the woodsmen are neutral, well, let's just make this a fair fight. That's what I'm kind of saying, yeah. Maybe, I just like- They're like the referees. It's tough to think about sides, because it's right. This is not like a- The woodsmen are basically like, this is a jump ball.

I don't play favorites. What's your read on it, David? My read on it is what I said, like is the white of the eyes thing or whatever. Like, and is that Sarah is touched with this, like, awful darkness, and that's her character in Twin Peaks. It was Grace Zabriskie's, right? It's like, she's not well. She's not able to help her daughter. She is aware of things, like, right, like she has visions.

And so she has that connection to, and of course we'll see her more in Twin Beaks of Return. And she's, Grace Zabriskie's having a lot of fun, we'll all see. But like, she's not really an ally to Laura. Right. In any particular way. I mean, in a certain way,

she has a superpower to not clock what's going on. Like even just the conjuring of the images of the horse and whatever, it's like there are like complicated systems in place to keep her sort of distracted in a way that's how a lot of people cope with trauma, how they get through. Exactly, I think that's right.

If you just wanna take the metaphor again, right? It's like Sarah represents, right, the sin of omission or whatever, just like looking away and not uh not stopping the evil happening under her roof but it's a in a certain way it's a basic human survival impulse right it's not like oh she's like uh failing in her duty through some like shitty parenting in her core it's like it's hard to fucking look the horse in the eye. Yes. Yes. And she...

The human brain wants to reject it. The character we meet in Twin Peaks is a sort of, you know, a really sad kind of rotted out character. Like by the time we're meeting her, like, and then in Twin Peaks The Return, have we seen her yet? Maybe not, but we will see her. Is Sarah and then in Twin Peaks The Return, have we seen her yet? Maybe not. But we will see her. Yes. Sarah Palmer?

Did we saw her briefly? We've seen her watching animals, like, eating each other on TV. And we see her, her house is very depressing. Her house is very frightening. And we, but we'll see her later. We'll see her more. More. And like, I feel like it's only gotten sort of worse with her at this point. Counter theory. It could be that the frogmoss and the woodsman are not connected. It's just a coincidence of timing. And the woodsman's story could be as simple as that one of them wants to be on the radio.

Yeah, he just really wants to debut his plan. He tries it out and he learns very quickly that he doesn't get along with the staff at the radio station It's just not a good fit. It's kind of his airheads moments. Yeah Well, it's sort of this is where it ties in because you literally see on air Mm-hmm. So I'm like, oh, this is a call back to on the air the Lynch Frost sitcom, yeah Which which we're gonna cover in the And in the episodes

we will not release even on the Patreon, right? Just the secret. Secret episodes just for us. Fifth tier, yeah. That we pay into, just the four of us. It's sort of a blind trust. Yeah. Yeah. But on the air, he wants to be on the radio,

he tries it out, he finds out, oh, the people of this town, they find him boring as heck. And he got a really bad market share. That's the other thing. There's the scene that they cut out where the guy comes in and he's like, look, I gotta just rip the bandaid off. The ratings were not good.

And then he just, like, he walks out of the station and leaves dead air. There's no record playing and dead people. But the dead people would have been no problem if the ratings had been there. If the sponsors supported the show, the dead people could have, yeah, we could have jumped over that. It is creepy to think though of tuning into your local radio station and... This the water and hearing that, but even just hearing nothing.

Sure. That is creepy. Yeah. That's creepy. Because radio, I mean, and those days it had some kind of programming. It was so exciting when he started delivering that poem on the air. We're calling it a poem, right? I'm calling it a poem. Sure. Slam. It's a poll. Sure slam

Yeah, yeah guys. I'm gonna go read my poem on the radio Okay you guys want to Hang around other parts of town while I Wait for me if the zoo crew wants to stand by I'll let them know when the interjections are allowed. I'm gonna do my water well, boom, on the radio. Now, Mark Frost says the idea for this episode, and he says it very plainly, is like we'd never done anything close

to what you would call an origin story for Twin Peaks, showing where this pervasive sense of darkness and evil had come from. And so we just sort of wrote down a 15 page script, he said, eventually. And he knew as they wrote it, like, the atomic bomb on the page is like half a page. And he's like, I know that's 15 minutes.

Like, David will then just take that, do whatever he wants with it. And he said, you know, we wanted something that would stand apart and blow your mind. It's like, it's as simple as that. Because half of this episode has no dialogue at all. Yeah, more than half probably. And even the stuff that quote unquote has dialogue,

it's pretty spares. It's just like five pages of this is the water and this is the well. I was so excited when it got to the this is the water and this is the well part, particularly because it felt like Twin Peaks, but it also like, was not like anything that had ever been like Twin Peaks, but it also like, was not like anything that had ever been on Twin Peaks before.

You know, like that whole sequence is like, yes, this is like, it's not a callback. It's not like when you are in the Black Lodge again, like we've seen that, this is a completely new thing. And I can imagine a world in which a sequence like this, let's imagine a world in which Twin Peaks runs for eight seasons on ABC. It's very easy to imagine there'd be a point

where there'd be a sequence where a woodsman walks into the modern day 90s Twin Peaks radio station, then you cut to a sequence of big ad and the principal and all these people falling asleep. At this point, it would have been like three months after the death of Laura Palmer, or six months, I guess, with every episode being a day.

But it felt so exciting to see something like that after an episode with so many different strange things that had no precedent in any previous form of Twin Peaks to get this little horror movie at the end, and then to feel like, oh, and maybe this is Sarah Palmer, but it just says young girl, but I'm like, it lines up time-wise. Time-wise, exactly.

So it's like, it could be her, but it also could be that we don't know what this is about yet, you know? Yeah I just think you can really do whatever you want with it Like I I really support that and if someone Wants to send me a sort of wild out there take i'd be intrigued You know, but I do think mark frost and he talks about twin peaks all the time

And then david lynch whenever you get him to talk about it would probably, yeah, be upfront of like, yeah, no, but we kind of just wanted to do this kind of flashback origin thing. That's what we were going for. They wouldn't be like, yeah, it means what it means. Like, I don't know, you guys figure it out. They're like, no, no, no, we sat down and we're like,

what's the origin of the evil here? Right. So on the one hand, it's the most baffling, inexplicable, artsy, abstract episode. And in another sense, it's like... The most straightforward. Yeah, it's like it actually would be harder to synopsize some of the other episodes that look like conventional storytelling, but it's like Dougie Jones works for this office in

Las Vegas. And you're like, wait, how is this? Well, no, no, because Dougie Jones is the body that is a Tulpa that Mr. C created. You know, you're just like, that stuff is so much harder to summarize than- When they created nuclear weapons that generated unspeakable evil. And then- Like the sort of simplest idea.

And then there's like a, some place that's kind of like heaven or something where Positive forces created some light to balance it and then we go back and see Laura Palmer's mom as a little girl and how she got like infected by this monster at an early age So there you go, Griffin you you know completely Thank you for a perfect answer. No, I'm serious, truly serious. Like, I feel like you can watch it again.

I'm being serious. I don't even wanna goof around. I'm not goofing, I'm deadly serious. This is not Rift Racks. You know what it is though. You could watch it again. It is Rift Racks. And just, you know, the first time you watch the episode,

you're just sort of bewildered because, you know, it doesn't sequentially follow what happens and you're just sort of like, what's this now? What's this now? What's this now? But then the more times you watch it, I've watched this episode several times because it's fun to watch standalone. I also had to keep starting and stopping. That was the first time I watched it because not because I fell asleep because

I was sleepier board, but because I kept getting sort of like hypnotized by it And then I'd be like I have to I have to back up Yeah, I have to back up because I'm not sure what I just saw well So you'd been up all night the night before doing big sloppy naturals Of course was an improv that were run on whippets. Yeah. Yeah Seriously, I was my our good friend Murph Meyer. Oh That's kind of his heart. He right was big sloppy naturals. That was his ultimate David Don't say seriously when we're in the middle. We've just established we work so hard to establish how serious we were trying to be serious

You're don't question the very serious Using to me it's more confusing episode 8 for us to convey to Griff that we're being serious here. Let's say seriously with a period. And then say seriously. And not throw around our question marks, Willy Nils. Willy Wonka? Let's not Willy Wonka our question marks. Let's not make them edible.

Oh, of course. No, you don't wanna do that. Right. Oh, by the way, I wanna call it, we're gonna find out that Willy Wonka's middle name is Nilly in Wonka 2 Because nilly rhymes with a lot of stuff silly Billy But that really right but won't won't he but you want to put your chips down on

Nilly being the middle name as you just said there are a lot of other things it could be we're gonna learn a lot of things things. We're gonna figure out, does he learn to read? Are there other animals he can milk? Yeah. I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me? Right, does he milk Robert De Niro? Does he meet the Fokkers? And Wonka to Willy Nilly. Would it be funny if-

I hope Wonka meets the Fokkers. Yeah, there's the atom bomb and then the Fokkers come out of the atom bomb. Just all the Fokkers. My prediction is we'll find out his middle name is Nilly. You can take that to the bank. But my hope, my wish is that he meets those fuckers. He's gotta meet those fuckers.

Do you hope he meets the little fuckers? Because he's good with kids. Yeah, some little fuckers. I don't mind that. A wonka is good with kids. Most characters in this show are not good with kids. In Twin Peaks the Return? Also most characters in the fuckers universe are not good with kids. Wunk is good with kids. Most characters in this show are not good with kids. In Twin Peaks the Return? Yeah. Also most characters in the Fokker's universe are not good with kids.

No, they're sort of ill-equipped with pretty much everyone. Wait, are you referring to Little Nicky when you say people aren't good with kids? Okay, let's get all of our threads cleanly established here. Wunk2, colon, willy-nilly, we predict he will meet the Fokkers the little Fokkers and little Nikki That's what we're predicting. Okay good prediction the ratings game. Oh, sure So this is the point the podcast where we usually do the box office game. We are covering TV now our friends at regal Of course the folks behind regal unlimited the all you canwatch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits, are continuing to sponsor the ratings game,

even though this is a TV show. Now, some people say the Twin Peaks, the Returner is like an 18-hour movie. And with Regal Unlimited, you can see 18 hours worth of movies a month if you're smart, if you use it well. And right now, for the holidays, if you use code blank check at checkout

for your regal unlimited subscription, you can get 20% off. That's double the previous offer. This is unprecedented. Anyway, now we're gonna try to guess television ratings. I'm gonna give you the cable ratings. Okay. For June 25th, 2017.

So you're not gonna compare it to network broadcast. The network ratings are so irrelevant because I guess it's sort of after the TV season has ended. So it's four game shows and one America's Funniest Home Videos. Is AFV still in? AFV number one. But AFV was beating seasons one and two of Twin Peaks. It's crazy to be like AFV is still beating the return.

So crazy. Yeah, if you were to put me in a coma for all that time and not tell me that it was season three, I'd be like, wow, all these shows lasted the whole time. Okay, summer 2017 cable. Yes, the most watched cable show that Sunday night, got 3.8 million viewers, solid 1.5 in the demo It's a special event

On a cable channel. It's a special event an awards show one might say okay in the middle of the summer Yeah, not one of our better known award shows, but no words yes piece no am I close You're close in that it's an award show named for a network. Is it the BET? BET Awards? The BET Awards! Look at that. What were you gonna guess, Connor? MTV something. Right.

Yes, the BET Awards. The MTV something. Posted by Leslie Jones. Okay. Beyonce. The Stimps. Beyonce won five awards. The Gary the Rats.

Album of the Year, Video of the Year. The Boobarellas. You know, so on and so forth. Stripperella. Like, Chance the Rapper. Album of the year, video of the year. The Booperellas. You know, so on and so forth. Stripperella. Like Chance the Rapper was best new artist. That's how much time has passed. This is what's crazy.

Like it's like now I'm like Chance the Rapper, that guy is cooked, you know, cooked as hell, right? So, wait, is this, I don't know anything about what's happened with Chance the Rapper. I'm just saying like he's not like cool anymore or, you know, it's like. Hold on. Hold on, I'm catching up here. Let me just get my notebook out.

Not cool. Hold on, hold on. Any more. He had this, like, incredibly exciting shot out of a canon, like, prodigious career, and then he was like, I'm ready to make my first proper album, and it was quietly one of the greatest boondoggles of modern music. Is that fair to say? I'm not a huge expert, but I do know that right. Oh, yeah, the big day He made a concept album about a wedding going wrong. Yeah

And it got kind of bad reviews and yes, there was some controversy about him maybe leaning on Websites so like hey don't write bad reviews about me because then I won't like do interviews I don't know like there was a lot of that going and then a 24 dumped his movie It just felt like he had a couple projects in a row where people had no enthusiasm for what he was doing after there being So much enthusiasm because I want to I want to just have enough information that in polite society I can look like I really know what I'm talking about So chance the rapper everyone thought he won awards for best new rapper. And then within a few years,

he made an album about a wedding gone wrong. It was one of the great boondoggles. And he started leaning on websites saying, hey, don't write bad reviews about me. Look, first of all, amazing recall. I feel like that was almost verbatim. If I say that in a conversation, people will be like, wow,

this guy knows a lot about Chance the Rapper. Connor gets it. Best movie that year at the BET Awards was Hidden Figures. Oh, sure. So that's number one. Number two is a spin-off of one of the big cable hits. Mm-hmm. What is it?

It's a spin-off of one of- It's a Sunday night show. Is it Fear the Walking Dead? Fear the Walking Dead. Fear. Because people watch The Walking Dead, dead. People watch the walking dead and they would watch the show and zombies are eating people and they'd be like,

should I be afraid of these guys? They'd be laughing. I'm more scared of them. You guys didn't fucking. I'm watching the walking dead. I'm more scared of Neekin and his baseball bat. Well, that's true. You know what?

Sometimes humanity is the biggest nightmare of all. Wait a second. This is a show that has you. That's always been my secret take are the real monsters the living? Number. You should be scared of the zombies is the title that number three. That's what they do AMC's you should be scared of the zombies is Course correction is number three the box office. I mean the ratings cable office cable ratings office. Yes is a

On a long-running, comedy drama series, fantasy comedy drama, that was a spin off of a hit TV films. I'm sorry, wait a second. There was like a hit TV movie. Is it the Librarians? No, but you're kind of in the right. Okay, there was a hit TV movie.

Yeah, I think there were several. Which then turned into a comedy fantasy drama. What were the terms you? Fantasy comedy drama is the genre basically there was a bunch of TV movies. So there were a bunch of I think there was There's a TV movie franchise and then they ran serial seven seasons as a as a proper series a proper series I think interspersed with even more movies It's kind of one of the big sort of shows for this network. Is it like The Descendants? No.

But is it a young person's thing? No, I don't. It's not like Pretty Little Liars. No, what is it? The fuck? There were a series of- Critically revered? I'll tell you the, no, I don't think so.

I'll tell you the network. It's the Hallmark Channel. Oh Christmas in the marriage town Great call that they should do something called Christmas in the marriage town Connor. You've just sold a You just made a million dollars. There was a series of movies Turned into a series and the series ran for six or seven seasons on the Hallmark Channel. On the Hallmark Channel. And it's a fantasy.

Clifford the Big Red Dog. Clifford the Big Red Dog. Clifford the Big Red Christmas Fairy. It stars Catherine Bell, who of course in the 90s was the star of JAG. Esenal liked to make jokes about her bosom. Talked about that in a recent episode for a reason I don't remember.

JAG has come up a lot. It's for Catherine Bell. JAG. Catherine Bell. I talked about that in a recent episode for a reason I don't remember. Jag has come up a lot. It's for Catherine Bell. It came up because I think we're talking in CIS. Oh, in the ratings game? Oh, look, it all comes back together. Yeah, I'm just going to tell you. I'm out.

It's called Good Witch. Good Witch? Genuinely? Good Witch. Genuinely? News to me. News to you. Well, this was a- Number three.

Fucking multimedia franchise. It had 2.3 million viewers that night, my friend. More than Twin Peaks The Return episode eight, which is supposedly the apex of TV storytelling or whatever. 2.3 million, well, Twin Peaks episode eight is no good witch, ratings wise. Exactly, number four and five are both shows on the

esteemed network HGTV which I think Ben okay. Yeah, I was gonna say Ben might be able to guess better than the rest of us. I watch it Cuz it is it's just junk food. It's not good for you But I just find it deeply comforting Ben if you had to guess who was the top of the HGTV pile in 2017. I don't know. You'll never ever guess. You'll never guess. There's this show is so many shows like whatever that it doesn't have a Wikipedia

page like because HGV just punch punch out this stuff. But I'm going to guess it's called Making House. Is it a great flipper show? No, it's a show about people looking for things on the beach. Oh, one might say. Sand grabbers. No, beach front, no. Is it like metal detectors?

No, I don't, I think it's, I think, look, the title makes it sound like it's metal detectors, but I think it's actually just looking for- Like treasure finders? But I think it's just property on the beach. Dr. Beach and the Sand Squad. There you go, it's called Beach Hunters. I was so close. You were, very close. Sand grabbers? Well, it's like house hunters, but it's just Dr. Beach in the sand squad that there you go. It's called beach hunters. I was so close. You were very close. It's like house hunters, but it's an extension

of that people hunters. There's people looking for beach people getting beach sand marriage and Christmas desert. That's right. Yeah. And then number one, the hallmark version would be, I'm trying to get the million that Connor just got. I need to start pitching my own hallmark Christmas marriage movie. Number five is another HGV, HGTV show. So quickly he made a million. The check already over. I invested it. It's making money just sitting there in my account.

He's putting the money to work. You need money to make money. So true. You do need money to make money. I make my money make money. I make my money make money. I'm so sorry. This make my money, make money. This show Griffin is set in Mexico. It's another HGTV show about looking for properties

in Mexico. Okay. Hola Feliz Navidad wedding. You guys are just doing so much more work than you bums at HGTV. La casa. You guys are like trying to think of something. La Casita. The little house.

No, it's just gonna be called Mexico Life. It's called Mexico Life? That sounds like a spicy cereal. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that. It does. Right, it's like, is life cereal a little too uncomplicated for you?

It's tahini flavored life. Yeah, it's like the Hot Ones version of version of life some of the other shows you've got In the top ten here. You've also got an HGT How far out of the top ten do we have to know I did not in the top 15 top hundred I don't know. I only have 50. Oh my god. You also have something called lakefront bargain hunt How different is that from Beach life? I guess it's lakes not like oceans. Yeah, no, it's really different Okay, you're right. It No, it's really different. Okay, you're right.

It's one of the few shows, it's the only show so far that the title fucking rhymes. That's true. That's true. You gotta give him credit for that. Connor seems very upset. AMC's. I've been sitting through all this like

Bjork level non-rhyming title. You shit. Bjork level. Finally, Lakefront House Hunt. What's it called? Lakefront Bargain Hunt. Lakefront Bargain Hunt. Lakefront Bargain Hunt. You've got AMC's Preacher, House, what's it called? Lake front, Lake front, bargain hunt. Lake front, bargain hunt.

You've got AMC's preacher, which was, you know, kind of a thing back then. For a minute. Yeah, you've got a stars is power, which I feel like power is always, there's always more power. I mean, we're on like the eighth book of power. You keep opening new books to that sucker.

You have a food network show called Food Star, and you have the, I would say fairly well known reality show 90 Day Fiancé. Is that about people who get married within 90 days? Or they're married for 90 days? Oh, I see they, it's long distance couples have 90 days to decide whether or not to get married. Okay. And then finally you have, and I think it's really important to note, NESBN broadcasts of a game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates. I mean, we just have to say that that ate Twin Peaks episode eight's lunch. And yet, doesn't even have the dignity to rhyme.

So how many people watched Twin Peaks episode eight? Wikipedia's saying around 250,000. I think that was basically what the ratings were for Twin Peaks The Return general. About a quarter million of live viewers. We discussed this, that when the Deadline wrote about the premiere, the first episode of The Return, they were like, this is embarrassing, not a lot of views for this highly anticipated legacy, you know, revival series. And Showtime was like, we feel good about this. And the ratings were basically always that linear.

Yeah, I feel so. But they got a lot of fucking Showtime signups. Yeah, you get signups. And then they'd be like plus seven days with VOD and DVR. I'm still signed up to Showtime. This is the thing. They were basically like, it was, I think it was kinda like the,

the SiriusXM Howard Stern move, where they were like, this just gets people over to our channel who will sign up for anything if it's Twin Peaks. I also think it's a probably example, an example of the kind of long-term thinking that not enough of these companies do, which is like, we build a library,

we build a brand, we build a brand, we build a legacy, we build, we build stuff and we, you know, and it means something. And then like Showtime and CBS and Paramount all re-merged and now all of Twin Peaks is on Paramount Plus and that's the thing they get to put in the mountaintop. Laura Palmer's trekking up there with Cartman and Picard. I mean you gotta get the criteria and have you watch the Fire Walk with me and missing pieces though. Well, but that's in the box. I got it in the box right there. I know, but I'm just talking, you wanna stream it.

You gotta get two streams. You gotta get Paramount Stream, you gotta get Criterion Stream. Okay. So, I'm gonna say that we're done discussing Twin Peaks the return of season 2. We're done? We're not covering the last ten episodes at all? Oh yeah, we're done. We're actually, yeah, you know what? Check out the other ones. Uh, some stuff happens.

People are gonna hate this. No, I'm saying we're done discussing Twin Peaks The Return, episode eight. Is this episode of Blank Check ending? Soon. All right. Is there anything else we wanna talk about? Well, Connor, is there anything else you wanna talk about?

Is there anything else as your one appearance within Twin Peaks The Return without spoiling anything for Ben or I that we haven't seen yet. Or listeners. Well, yes, of course. I definitely had a feeling of, I mean, I love Twin Peaks The Return overall. I'm not gonna spoil anything past eight. But with all kind of revisiting of an old thing where you could ruin it, you know, you could like botch it in a way that you get a negative feeling

and it sort of retroactively has the, there's always like the risk that it'll taint what came before. I'm always looking for what will make it, well, this will be worth it. If we only got this out of it, then it'll be worth it. It's a little bit how I feel about some of the Netflix Arrested Development era,

which is there are aspects of it that I'm like, well, if we only got that part of it, I'm glad just for this part of that part. And there'd be stuff like Wally Brando, like moments like that where I'm like, even if it was just this scene, even if the rest of it was terrible, I'd want it to happen just so we have Wally Brando.

Episode eight, I liked everything of one through seven, but episode eight was the thing where it's like, if it ended now, I would be like, I'm so glad they came back, even though there wouldn't have been closure on anything at all. Yeah, I mean, I genuinely feel like I have no sense of what is going to happen in the rest of the season. To a certain extent, I'm like, everything I feel like I absorbed about this show through cultural osmosis,

and I've not been digging around reading fucking summaries and whatever, but just like seven, eight years of being online and out in the world and whatever, I feel like most of it's been crossed off the list of what I knew going in. I guarantee you that almost all of the parts that are my favorite of the remaining part, I don't think you will have been spoiled for by memeing or anything like that. I'm just surprised by how much of it has already happened of like, oh, the Amanda Seyfried shot, Wally Brando in episode eight, and Dougie with the tie on the head. I know there's one more thing that I wanted to talk about,

which I talked about a little bit with Griffin when we were on a boat ride last weekend. We took a nice boat ride. We took a nice little boat ride. To be clear, we took a ferry to New Jersey. Yeah. I've been working on a thing lately, which is, I've watched the return all the way through start to finish twice.

And it's not the kind of thing, there's a lot of parts of it all, we visit a lot of favorite scenes or moments in episode, but there's also scenes that I will fast forward through because I don't need to see them again. But one of the things that was most shocking to me when I saw it, because I said before it started, I had my dream of digital animated bobs

flying through space and flying out of stomachs. The other thing that I was really positive of is that, well, the fact that Angelo Badalamenti is back means that no matter what, we're gonna get wall to wall Angelo Badalamenti, Twin Peaks music, and he made even the lowest points of season two feel like Twin Peaks and feel watchable because his music was always there to say,

even a scene that wasn't funny would have that kind of like... Tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, tss, t There's so little of the Badalamenti music in this show compared to the first two seasons and the movies. I'd say two movies there, because there's two feature films, Firewall with Me and the Missing Pieces. David is crying blood tears. One of them was theatrical release, the other one's a streamer.

That's okay. You can count a streamer as a real movie now. David has smoke coming out of his ears. Yeah. Then I was shocked. Really in the first episode, the thing that was the most shocking was how many scenes play out to total silence. That's an interesting point. I'm going to think about it more too. Because there is lots of beautiful music that he made,

that you can listen to, the soundtracks out there and all that. I have started because I have, there's a thing called the Twin Peaks Archive that they released at one point, that's like hundreds of cues that didn't make it onto the soundtrack albums. All the raw material that Badlamenti. Everything that they were working with basically, including some, the Twin Peaks Archive is so full that it even includes music that was written for On The Air.

Is it really? Yeah, there's tracks at the end, they're never includes music that was written for On The Air. Is it really? Yeah, there's tracks at the end, they're like, oh, this is for On The Air. But also just like him coughing on microphone. Yeah. He's accidentally lov'd up and he takes a leak and they forgot to turn off the recording. And it's beautiful music, Angelo. I have started scoring Twin Peaks The Return using these tracks. I don't know if you know this, David,

but Connor has a touch of the tofer to him. You're messing with me. The man's been known to make- You're ripping out the guts, you're tinkering. Yeah. I got a touch of the tofer. He's got a touch of the tofer. He's been known to make a cutter too.

I consider it, it's a feeling of grace, to be honest. There is a certain grace to having a touch of the topper. And I have to say, it's really interesting because there's so many things where there's scenes that are so long that you actually can't score them without it feeling like, no, no, this is too much. So those, I'm being like discreet about it, but there are a lot of scenes where

if you add a little bit of discreet jazz in some of the comedic scenes, like for instance, the very first scene with Jacoby where the shovels arrive, putting a little bit of the... Tss, ptt, tss, ptt, tss. Yeah, just putting some of that under. It's amazing how it takes a, I think, four minute scene

and makes it feel like it's not four minutes of a truck arriving in a box. There's-minute scene and makes it feel like it's not four minutes of a truck arriving in a box. There's just like, it makes it feel like it's Twin Peaks when Job Kobe comes out of his motor home or whatever he steps out of. And episode eight, I'm up to episode eight in scoring these things. And episode eight by far needed the fewest music cues.

I think I had a little bit of scoring to the Mr. C stuff at the beginning, but then almost nothing because it's sort of like, and I know that there's the thing Griffin pointed out that there's the moment where they bring in the Laura Palmer. This is my counter. The scene where Bobby sees Laura's photo in whichever episode, five or six,

sort of out of the evidence box, and Laura's theme hits for the first time. It's such a kind of hammer blow because they've been holding that music back for most of the series. And I did not use the Laura, I haven't used that Laura Palmer theme, but I have used the first part of that theme,

which is used a lot for its own, the part that the synthesizer's going, do do do, you know, that sort of back and forth, because like a lot of the Matthew Lillard stuff, you add a little bit of that to it, sort of like the Packard Mills sort of like music to it. And it really makes it, it really amps up some of the, it just makes it feel like Twin Peaks in a way

that is exciting to me. I'd be interested to see it. Be like, truly listen, do you ever share these cuts with anybody? I feel like you've described a lot of cut editing projects to me. I think when I'm done with this, I'll probably have it sit in a drop box folder, and I'll give people the link to this drop box folder if they want to experience it. Because it is like if you've already watched it

all the way through and experienced it as Lynch intended, because it definitely was a choice. He had access to all these tracks too. And he wanted to do this. I do think it is an interesting thing just to see like, can you make it feel even more like Twin Peaks with this music? And my answer so far is like, it is a very good feeling.

It would be like if they made Star Wars movies without John Williams music all of a sudden and it was just sort of like quiet space battles. And you're like, well, they're really trying to make a point here that you can't hear this music in space and it's not the same as before. The vacuum of sound cut. Then you show them and you add some John Williams music

to it, probably it's like, oh, it feels like Star Wars. Yeah, right. I think what you're doing is probably a perversity of what, whatever. A perversity, yes. Of what Lynch was attempting with the return, but I'd still be interested to see it. I agree. What I'm doing is a perversity.

Right. Lynch wouldn't like that you did that. You want to hear about an ultimate perversity of director's intent. Connor, tell David about your fucking alternate cut of Sully. What'd you do to Sully? Just crash it. It's even worse than what Michael Malley did. It's the crash cut. I got it on my phone.

I cut out all the parts that weren't the crash. So it's just crash, crash, crash, crash, crash. I got it on my phone. It's a tight 40 minute feature. Sure. It's still go by the saludos amigos rules. It's still a feature film. It's still a feature film. But I would say.

I'm invoking the saludos amigos doctrine. The power of saludos, the precedent set. By the precedent set by saludos amigos. It is still a feature film. But you know the thing is, I started cutting it. I'm like, you know, I like the crash parts more than I like the parts where he's like, I include the dream crash.

So even if you, it's 41 minutes, 21 seconds. It's tight. You know what it sounds like to me? You railroaded Sully. Yeah, I would say you're not really delving into the beautiful kind of storytelling of that movie. Sounds like a railroading. Where withholding the full crash for a long time

because it's about Sully sitting in the trauma of what happening to him and not really facing it. No, no, you see the crash, then you see the crash, then you see the crash, then you see the crash. This sounds like Sully's nightmare. No, but then it has a great it has a great cut at the end because they finally it cuts to the part where they land the thing. And then Aaron and the simulator, the real, the real one.

OK, Aaron Eckhart looks to camera. He's looking at Sully. Camera moves to Aaron Eckhart's point of view. Sully looks to him, hard cut to black. And then we hear Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers learning to fly Well, I won't be watching that one but I love to see I'm gonna share the link with you So we'll just see if you don't watch it. Okay, fair enough. Thank you for doing this again Yes, having me on the main feed. Yeah, so glad to return on on main Yeah, and we'll have you back on in another nine years. Yeah

I'm just kidding. I'll see you again in nine years Tiny dinos tiny dinos your podcast with James the third My pocket another blank check favorite about two best friends who are scientists who bring back dinosaurs But they bring them at very small very they won't cause any problems like in Jurassic Park Uh, we got some george lucas talk shows coming up in uh, california in san francisco and los angeles in juneuary february find out about them Uh my connor atliff presents the acting class, uh is going to be Uh, it keeps performing monthly in new york, but we're also going to bring it to sketchfest We're doing live streams of those too for people who don't live in New York.

If you don't live in New York, you can see those. That's my one person show where I pretend to teach an acting class. It's fantastic. And Griffin, you're gonna be a part of that at SketchFest. So that's gonna be in. Yeah. You don't know about this? No, I said I am, period. I'm not throwing around willy nilly question marks. I didn't know. Seriously?

I didn't. Seriously? I'm being serious right now. Can we get serious? Ah satellite radio Yeah, what did you the bits are stacking on? Let's let's enough And I think that's all my plugs Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe tune in next week for Twin Peaks to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Twin Peaks colon the return colon parts 9 through 14. Is that correct?

Nine through 13. Well, the egg on my face. I'm a fool. Yeah, but those five episodes. And as always, on August 13th, 1998, MTV aired an episode of television titled The Missing Girl, in which fight one was Trent Reznor versus Puff Daddy. Fight two was David Hasselhoff versus John Tesh. Why? Because, I don't know, they're corny music guys.

I guess. They're guys who have moonlight. I hope Tesh won. Hasselhoff won. Puff Daddy versus Trent Reznor was a draw. They slice each other to bits, and then Mills Lane put them together as two composite creatures. And then the final fight was Bruce Willis and Demi Moore versus Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

I remember that one. This is a power couple fight. And what happens is the women win. Ah, thank God. Stone Cold gives them the assist. To feminism. They knock down those men. And that episode, the most seismic episode of television

I had seen up until that point in time, was episode eight. Wow. What a world.