![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"The Owls Are Not What They Seem" A Twin Peaks Rewatch with the Theory in Mind: Episode 18 "Masked Ball"
The theory: Twin Peaks is the dream of William "Billy" Hastings, a serial killer. The result of his mother's abuse, at the hands of her father, Billy was abused by her in turn, keeping the cycle going. Playing with fire, as abused/neglected/antisocial children are prone to, he accidentally burned down the motel where he lived with his mother and grandfather/father, killing them. He was sent to live with his grandmother/great-grandmother, until she died too. Billy then went to live with his strict, born again uncle. In high school, Billy became obsessed with a schoolmate, the American Girl. He murdered her, the first in a string of victims, all similar in the way that they reminded him of his mother. To deal with his past and what he'd become, he constructed the world of Twin Peaks, allowing him to also "protect" and honor his mother, the woman he both loved and feared. Inside of the dream, Billy's family was represented by both the Hornes and the Lodge Spirits, while Billy's main avatar was our hero Dale Cooper. Inside of his dream, Billy sought to project his tragedy and sins onto his victim's family instead, which worked for a while. However, if the OG is a representation of how Billy got away with murder, the Return is how he was eventually discovered by the mother of his first victim, an act precipitated by his involvement with Betty, his final victim.
A longer essay on the theory: https://armsholdair.dreamwidth.org/7192.html
WARNING: A knowledge of the whole Twin Peaks series is needed for this, fittingly from A to Z and Z back to A.
- The Log Lady asks if life is like a game of chess, where present moves are important for future success. We paint our future with every brush stroke.
Billy is now facing a time where every little thing he does will decide how things turn out for him, if he succeeds or fails, redeems himself or falls, stays free or gets caught.
Margaret relates it to painting, Colors. Shapes. Textures. Composition. Repetition of shapes, her last choice being contrast, "the state of being strikingly different from something in close association." She says nature should guide us for it is the great teacher.
Billy is neglecting nature, particularly his own, by trying to be too good. He is ignoring contrast, which is vital to any good picture, and a reference to including some of the less "positive" traits to become more balanced. Something like this would look perhaps like Richard/Coop in Part 18.
Margaret then asks, "Who is the principal?"
Actually, Hastings himself is presented as a principal in The Return.
She ends the intro with a joke, talking about a kid whom said about school, "I enjoyed school. It was just the principal of the thing."
The Return's first credits begin with images from Twin Peaks High School. The end of most episodes of Twin Peaks original series end with a shot of Laura's photograph in the display case at the school. It was at that school Audrey changed out of her black and white saddle shoes and into her pumps. It is also where she often smoked and kept an ashtray warning of forest fires hidden inside of her locker. We forgot to mention yesterday, how Audrey was not in school, stating how school number her buns.
Billy first met American Girl in High School, we theorize. It was then he became obsessed with her and it is when they were attending it he took her life too. This might have influenced his choice to become a teacher/principal.
- Question: Why is this episode called Masked Ball? Does this have anything to do with the mask the grandson wears?
- When discussing Major Briggs' disappearance with his wife Betty, Cooper doesn't mention the fact that the Major started calling out for him in alarm before he disappeared, which might have given indication that this wasn't a planned disappearance or work related.
- Betty states that the fact that they were in the woods, when Briggs disappeared, is important since he talks of the woods constantly. Cooper asks if Briggs had been attempting to contact something in the woods, as a part of his job. Betty can't answer the question because it is classified. After she's gone, Dale comments that it's a powerful force that exists in the woods. BOB and the Lodge and its spirits reside there. We have also repeatedly likened it to Ben Horne's desecration of his daughter, the real meaning behind the Ghostwood project, which intends to "rape" the woods.
- Gordon Cole calls, telling Dale he has his full support. At the same time, he wants to know if any of the accusations are true, betraying some level of doubt. Not exactly a good sign since Cole knows Dale Cooper.
- Cole says about the investigators, "These guys make a living looking through other people's drawers. We've all had our socks tossed around." Now we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Josie turns into a pull on a drawer of the Great Northern.
Was she, or her equivalent to Billy, looking into his business too?
Following this thread to another possibility, can we link her then more specifically to Betty/Naido, decades later learning about Billy and what he was? Is there any chance then that Josie and Betty/Naido are related, giving some insight to Bob Engels claim that Judy was Josie's sister? Betty, afterall, is one of Billy's "Judys". Is there any chance, to add to this, that Betty was investigating Billy Hastings on purpose to see what he had done to "Josie"? Lots of interesting possibilities.
- When Cooper faces the interrogation led by Hardy he refuses to even defend himself, leading Hardy to state, "There's a right way and a wrong way to do this. And the first thing we expect is a Bureau man to stand up for himself. A man who can't, who doesn't even try, well, he may be packing feathers where his spine is supposed to be."
This might sound harsh, but technically the man has a point, and with how Dale faced both the lead up to Maddie's murder and the Black Lodge at this season's end, they seem even more resonant. We reasoned that Dale betrayed that he would not be strong enough to face his darkness, the equivalent of Billy not being able to deny his evil urges or confess them, and now Hardy's words echo that.
- Cooper then makes a speech that seems to have been what the Log Lady was referencing in her intro as well:
"I know the moves I'm supposed to make. And I know the board...I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I've started to focus out beyond the edge of the board. At a bigger game....The sound wind makes
through the pines. The sentience of animals. What we fear in the dark and what lies beyond the darkness...I'm talking about seeing beyond fear, Roger. About looking at the world with love."
It's a noble speech. It would be even more effective if Cooper managed to back it up with actions however. For when he goes to the Red Room, he isn't able to see past his fear...of himself or what Leland and Laura's dopplegangers insinuate about it. Perhaps a stronger feeling comes clear, that Dale Cooper might have faced anything in the world with love and acceptance except for the one thing the Red Room forced him to look directly at and love: himself. And so we learn a fact about Billy, our dreamer: he hates himself and cannot reconcile himself to that hatred.
As the product of the abuse of the woman he loved, that self hatred isn't even something we can't understand, but we realize it was out of his control. To turn that self hatred onto others, whom do not deserve it, truly separates Billy from deserving to love himself.
- Hardy seems more compassionate now, citing how Dale just solved a big case. That will be mentioned again, but is ironic since we believe it is a case Cooper committed. He states he might recommend a full psychological workup, which is a good idea frankly, and may be what Billy was facing outside of the dream too, since schools sometimes recomend that when a classmate dies. Cooper thanks Hardy for his candor, but there is something that seems like he does infact take it as an insult. As Dale leaves, he looks at his gun and badge.
- The still teenage-delusioned-Nadine approaches Donna and asks if it's okay if she makes a play for Mike. She replies to Donna asking, what about Ed, by saying that sometimes he acts like he's old enough to be her father. We have an older woman, stuck in a juvenile state, and planning to be sexually aggressive to a boy young enough to be her son, all while comparing the man she is with to her father. Billy's mother echoes strongly throughout this situation. She also differentiates her home and school lives, just like Audrey's shoes portrayed in the Pilot.
- Donna's boyfriend, James, is also at the moment beginning his own relationship with an older, predatory woman, the situation between Billy and his mom reoccurring once more.
- Evelyn Marsh talks to the younger man at the bar, but her words are highly evocative of the situation of one William "Billy" Hastings, especially when we meet him in The Return: "Men are always all right. Right up until they pull the trigger. And then we watch the neighbors solemnly march out to the news cameras to tell us: 'He was such a nice, quiet guy.'"
- She looks a certain way when Twin Peaks is mentioned, but it's hard to tell why.
- James compliments her jacket, somewhat out of the blue. We have the theme of clothing again and what it might hide or reveal. We also have Audrey and Carrie needing to get coats before leaving their homes.
- The car theme comes into play again when Evelyn enlists James help in looking at her husband's jaguar, which was hurt when someone squeezed into her and she wound up in a ditch.
- Learning she's in no hurry, James plays a song on the jukebox. It's the same Bobby played for his own older woman, Norma, in the Pilot, when he said he'd see her in his dreams. Listening to it, James presses his head against the box, as if he is on fire again and it helps cool him. The last time he was on fire was after an incident with his mom.
- Dick drops by with Nicky, his ward from Happy Helping Hands. This is a big-time Billy avatar. And we've already pointed out how, when Cooper first saw Ben, he asked who the glad-handing dandy was. Nicky will prove to be a source of destruction and malevolence, and yet, when Will Hayward spins his tragic history, which started with his mother, a maid at the Great Northern, being raped and conceiving him, he suddenly becomes a tragic figure...however, honestly, that is just manipulation, which doesn't excuse Nicky's bad behavior. It's just the sort of thing the evil inside Billy might exploit to avoid culpability.
- Richard just bought Nicky a full new wardrobe at Hornes. And so we continue the implication of fashion and this time it's in connection to the Hornes and a Richard with a Billy stand-in.
- When Cooper says he's handling the accusations and repercussions like the Giant said, by forming a path by laying a stone at a time, it leads to him inquiring if Harry or Hawk have ever heard of the White Lodge. Both men are startled, but Hawk looks downright defensive, wondering where Dale heard of it. Dale mentions that the Major had referenced it to him.
- Hawk claims that while Dale might be fearless in this world, there are others. When wanting to hear more, Hawk states his people have a legend of the White Lodge, where the Spirits that rule man and nature reside. It's opposite however is a place referred to as the Black Lodge, the opposite to the White Lodge. Every soul must pass through here on its way to perfection. Once there, someone meets their shadow self. But if they confront it with imperfect courage, it annihilates their soul. So essentially the scariest thing about passing through this Lodge is meeting all of the negative qualities of one's self.
Easy equation for this: Billy has good and bad to himself, as mostly everyone does, represented by the two Lodges. If he reacts with fear, unacceptance and unacknowledgement of his darker urges, and what he has done, he weakens his good side by denying what also belongs to him and refusing to face himself, exactly what happens to him via his avatar Cooper in "Between Two Worlds".
- Dennis Bryson, the agent whom is to evaluate the drug charges against Cooper arrives, and she reveals that she is identifying as a woman, now known as Denise.
This can easily play two ways.
In one, you have the fact that Billy has been taking the form of several female characters already, including him having informed Laura Palmer himself. The male behind the female, occurs several times in The Return, as well, when Ruth's head is found on Major Briggs' naked body or the bosomy woman being portrayed by a man.
Another way this motivates Billy's dream is as a subtle push for him to be more accepting of himself to not harm others. As Cole would say "Fix your hearts or die". Denise is patient with others whom don't understand but always extends that tolerance to herself also, and we see her having survived great adversity to have made it to the top professionally, without compromise. This is the true test of character, by encountering obstacles wighout letting them negatively effect you. If Billy could have made similar peace with himself a life filled with enacting violence on others could have been avoided.
- Nadine makes a play for the much younger Mike.
- Harry tends to Josie, whom is asleep in her bed. She describes her life to him, having been on the streets at 16, and coming from a poor family and a place where they often sell their female children. A man named Thomas Eckhardt "helped" her. He was both her father and her lover. A clear parallel to Billy's mother's relationship with her father can be discerned.
Andrew, another older man/father figure, married her. She claims though that Eckhardt never stopped wanting her however, and viewed her as his property. Once again, the same thing can be said for Billy's mom/Audrey and her father/Ben. Josie says she'd rather die than go back to that monster, and she ends up killing him, before dying as well. Billy's mother needed her father for support, however, because she had given birth to his child.
- Ernie spins a story about killing a buck. Bucks are often shown in Twin Peaks and we argue they are a symbol for Billy, whom lives in BuckHORN. Bucks have horn(e)s.
- Norma tells her new father to basically imitate her mother and scram. Billy and his mother probably had similar inclinations with their parents.
- Nicky proves to be antisocial, to say the least, when he blows the top of his Whitetail milkshake right into Dick's face and spins Andy's chair so he falls off of it and painfully lands nearby. Hard to reason his behavior away as being misinterpreted when we just intentionally saw him cause pain...just like Billy. It's just more likely the cruel behavior stems from the pain and tragedy he initially suffered. He desires to spread it, instead of healing/preventing it.
- James examines Jeffrey Marsh's car and Evelyn virtually spins the same tale for him that Josie said about Eckhardt: they view their younger women as possessions/property. We won't repeat ourselves about the meaning of it, we repeat ourselves enough as it is. Evelyn invites James to stay and he accepts.
- An incredibly important moment for this theory occurs when we see Ben Horne watching an old family video of the groundbreaking for the Great Northern. Ben has apparently fallen back to his childhood for comfort. He begins to recite from Shakespeare again, as usual, but this time he quotes from the play Richard III.
"Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this sun of York; Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;"
In the play, it must be noted, Richard orders the death of a charater named William Hastings.
- Several things stand out from the old film. Ben Horne is dressed just like his father. It is to Ben that the father hands the shovel, that appears to shine as if golden, reminiscent of Dr. Amp's golden shovels made to dig yourself out of the shit. Dr. Amp himself focused often on the poisoning of children. Father Horne seems to pay the most attention to his elder son, despite the occasional attention paid to Jerry, whom doesn't imitate him as much. The mother seems more attentive to Jerry, whom will be seen wearing her hat in Part 1. Ben goes to the screen and kisses his mother's projected image, touching the rest of his family, including himself.
The film we are shown highly indicates that Ben was made to imitate his father, and that the shovel was passed on to him. We can infer from this that, yes, if the abuse truly happened within the Horne family that the father passed the cycle on to his eldest son, just as he did the shovel, the clothing and even the literal cycle (Schwinn).
- Interesting to notice that the hotel was set to open in October. The actors whom play BOB & MIKE were both born on October 31st and we theorize they represent, in part, the Horne brothers.
- Hank enters when the film has ended, sad that he missed what he labels a "stag" party. Stags are bucks, and as mentioned earlier, we theorize they symbolize Billy, whom we find living in Buckhorn(e) in Part 1.
- Ben describes his hellish week and does state that Leland turned out to be a homicidal maniac, which shows the town doesn't generally accept or know about BOB, and helps to further beg the question from yesterday's episode of why so many people attended his funeral. Still must be the food. Billy must generally believe that everyone, like himself, feeds on others' pain and sorrow.
- Ben asks something strange: "Do you think the furniture in this room is adequately arranged? I have been toying with the notion that if one could find the perfect arrangement of all objects in any particular space, it could create a resonance the benefits from which to the individual dwelling in that space could be, uh...could be extensive, could be far-reaching, far-reaching." Does that have anything to do with the ringing sound we believe signifies, somehow, Cooper/Billy's conception? A ringing that begins when the path to the Black Lodge has been discovered, Audrey has gone to make love to Jack, and Jupiter and Saturn will be in conjunction? But is it more a catastrophe than a benefit? All the talk of it and space, when the door to the Black Lodge opens with an alignment IN outer space seems momentous. Was the Red Room/Black Lodge, and the way to get to it, presented when Billy's darkness had made everything just right for his personal corruption? Perhaps represented by Miss Twin Peaks, Annie, Windom and Dale's visit to Glastonbury Grove and his accepted invitation to the darkness of the Black Lodge? Echoes which possibly all stemmed from Audrey's first sexual encounter, with a man named Jack?
- Hank informs Ben that One-Eyed Jack's is no longer under his control, which means Billy has successfully stripped his father of the mill (fire), Ghostwood and now Jack's too, all symbols of Ben's abuse of Audrey.
- Furthermore, Hanks states that he is no longer working for Ben. That also means that Ben has been deprived of all of his woodsmen: Hank, Leland, Leo and Emory.
- When Hank leaves, Ben starts using his hands to form shapes on the blank projector screen. Chillingly, given the earlier theorizing of Billy's connection to bucks, and the talk Hawk gave Dale about the Black Lodge, it is a SHADOW puppet of a buck he creates.
- Windom leaves Dale a taped message, where he paints him a picture, instantly recalling the Log Lady intro. He references their game of chess too, but thinks that Dale is too tidy, predictable, his patterns easily guessed.
All we can say is, "I need to brush my teeth."
By the end of this whole season, his darker side, who knows it all too well too, will blow that predictability apart.
- Windom states they both have wounds, recalling Leland's from FWWM that echoes the one Dale is shown having in the Red Room, after encountering Laura's dopple and when he sees himself lying with Caroline and Annie.
- Windom references being willing to sacrifice the Queen to kill the King. The queen will always hint at Audrey, whom this was meant to be, but was subverted when the Dale/Audrey romance was stopped. However, given how Billy seeks to protect his mother, knowing of this threat from a substitute father-figure he would willingly sacrifice a relationship with her to keep her safe anyway. This could also explain why he surrendered a relationship with Audrey so quickly, in fear for her life, but risked Annie's own so swiftly. No matter what the Eagles taught him, he'd always sacrifice the Queen of Hearts to save his far more precious Queen of Diamonds.
- Lana and Dougie get married: an older man and a woman old enough to be his daughter...granddaughter.
- This is probably pushing things, but to go with our whole Annie vs Audrey to Dale discussion previously, when Coop puts Windom's chess move on the table, it's seen resting next to a duck decoy. Actually it looks like the same one seen on Will Hayward's table as Eileen, Sarah and Audrey were talking. The use of a decoy is nice when we suggest here that Hastings creates substitutes, scapegoats and decoys inside of his fantasy world.
- Denise and Dale discuss the drug charges and Denise's new life. Once again, Billy would have benefited from being so accepting and acknowledging of himself.
- Lana mentions how Cooper is that FBI man who solved the Laura Palmer case. It is ironic that inside of Billy's dream, Cooper is getting fame and accolades for a crime he, in part, committed and whose "solution" was basically framing a man so he could get away with it.
- Next we have a scene which kind of sticks out as peculiar, given what we know happens, and the entirety of this episode. Though he basically gave her the send off, Cooper is now seen dancing with Audrey. Now the scene is short. Very short. We remember, at the time, near the series' end in 1991, that Kyle Maclachlan gave an interview to Soap Opera Digest, where he voiced his displeasure at his storylines for the end of season 2. He stated how he told the writers etc... not to pair Dale with Audrey, and they said they wouldn't but then kept having scenes with them, until he threatened to quit. He then voiced how pairing Cooper with Annie, he disliked just about as much. This scene between Coop/Aud now must be one of the scenes he is talking about. But it's just kind of weird because it's so short. It's Fenn's only scene, the whole episode, why did they even bother?
Was it necessary, we wonder?
Maybe it was.
Their exchange goes as follows:
Audrey:You're an excellent dancer.
Dale: The wonderful thing about dancing,
Audrey, is that you never know where the step could lead. You have to hang on and hope the music takes you there.
The whole fact that it involves dancing is what strikes us now as weird too, since we suggested that the dancing belonged to Audrey in a way it didn't to Leland, or that his was even connected/influenced mostly to hers. Now she's dancing with Dale, whom we say is really her son, Billy. And he's a good dancer too. And they are dancing in a somewhat circular motion. In front of a Great Northern fireplace.
What if this scene needed to be included, in this particular, episode because it is the one where Ben sits and watches old film of his father and the first steps taken in building the hotel? It's all part of the cycle and the truth about Billy's family at the Red Diamond/Dutchman's.
The belief that David Lynch had nothing to do with Twin Peaks second season has been discredited by the many accounts of his role backstage. It can even be seen visually by the appearances he made as an actor in it. He had finished Wild at Heart, infact, and was more free to pay attention to TP. He reportedly read over each script and dictated what they could and couldn't do. When one order was disobeyed by Harley Peyton, it even caused a rift between them. Lynch being so particular about his art, leads to the strong indication that he was going for one particular interpretation of his own. The author of the Twin Peaks access guide also stated that Lynch was far more rigid in his requests/instructions than Mark Frost was.
What if this dance between Audrey and Cooper was important to Lynch too?
Especially when we see the ending credits.
- Josie makes her appeal to Catherine, whom forces her to become a maid for her. Little Nicky's mother will also be referred to as being a maid up at the Great Northern, the same place Josie dies. Catherine threatens to send her back to Thomas Eckardt if she does one thing out of line. These could be indications of how Billy's mother felt under their father's control.
- After Josie leaves, Andrew Packard, Catherine's brother steps into the room, passing an outrageously large antler as he does. We've already discussed Billy's connection to bucks. Andrew and Catherine being brother and sister, we can connect to Billy and his mom having shared that relationship too.
- They insinuate that they are using Josie as romantic/sexual bait to get at Eckhardt, which is disturbing considering Josie is terrified of him and views him as her father surrogate. More shades of Billy's mother and their father.
- Okay and this, THIS end credits is why we think the inclusion of the Audrey and Cooper dance for this episode might have further been integral. This episode ends, not with Laura's photo in the high school display case, but with the footage of the groundbreaking of the Great Northern...particularly shown is when the father, Mr. JJ Horne, is seen making that first shovel into the dirt and then passes it on to his son, Ben, to take the next. This is a visual display of the father passing onto his son the cycle of abuse. The dirt can even be surprisingly linked to how BOB/Leland threatens Laura at the dinner table in FWWM that there is DIRT under the fingernail where the killer leaves the letters of his name.
Perhaps the building of the Great Northern, which desecrated the land by White tail Falls, represents Ben's father's abuse of him, just as we theorize Ghostwood represents Ben's abuse of his daughter. It goes with the talk of nature found in the intro to this episode, as well. Remember too, the clock shown as MIKE was looking for BOB at the Great Northern depicted a waterfall free from buildings or intrusion. Or how Johnny Horne ran into a photograph showing the White Tail Falls before the Great Northern had been built. The birth of BOB was shown as being brought about by a bomb, which similarly impacts nature in a destructive way.
We can follow than a clear thread and theme between the Hornes destruction of nature as an allegory for the abuse against their children as well.
Here is the perfect example of how we believe the incest/abuse in Twin Peaks becomes all the more powerful if it took place inside of the Horne family. The Palmers lack this kind of backstory and buildup, as well as their actual presence, after their exit from the narrative. But something like this clip becomes devastating when viewed through the lens of this theory.
Consider too how all of the alternate end credits were directed by Lynch. This is the only non-David directed episode that featured something that was different from Laura's famous photo being shown. That is because this is far more secretly important to EVERYTHING. It partly conveys how the nightmare began, what lead to Laura's murder, and to the unknowing eye it could look even innocent, sweet. Not many would know what it really means: a father passing the torch of abuse onto his eldest son.
The theory: Twin Peaks is the dream of William "Billy" Hastings, a serial killer. The result of his mother's abuse, at the hands of her father, Billy was abused by her in turn, keeping the cycle going. Playing with fire, as abused/neglected/antisocial children are prone to, he accidentally burned down the motel where he lived with his mother and grandfather/father, killing them. He was sent to live with his grandmother/great-grandmother, until she died too. Billy then went to live with his strict, born again uncle. In high school, Billy became obsessed with a schoolmate, the American Girl. He murdered her, the first in a string of victims, all similar in the way that they reminded him of his mother. To deal with his past and what he'd become, he constructed the world of Twin Peaks, allowing him to also "protect" and honor his mother, the woman he both loved and feared. Inside of the dream, Billy's family was represented by both the Hornes and the Lodge Spirits, while Billy's main avatar was our hero Dale Cooper. Inside of his dream, Billy sought to project his tragedy and sins onto his victim's family instead, which worked for a while. However, if the OG is a representation of how Billy got away with murder, the Return is how he was eventually discovered by the mother of his first victim, an act precipitated by his involvement with Betty, his final victim.
A longer essay on the theory: https://armsholdair.dreamwidth.org/7192.html
WARNING: A knowledge of the whole Twin Peaks series is needed for this, fittingly from A to Z and Z back to A.
- The Log Lady asks if life is like a game of chess, where present moves are important for future success. We paint our future with every brush stroke.
Billy is now facing a time where every little thing he does will decide how things turn out for him, if he succeeds or fails, redeems himself or falls, stays free or gets caught.
Margaret relates it to painting, Colors. Shapes. Textures. Composition. Repetition of shapes, her last choice being contrast, "the state of being strikingly different from something in close association." She says nature should guide us for it is the great teacher.
Billy is neglecting nature, particularly his own, by trying to be too good. He is ignoring contrast, which is vital to any good picture, and a reference to including some of the less "positive" traits to become more balanced. Something like this would look perhaps like Richard/Coop in Part 18.
Margaret then asks, "Who is the principal?"
Actually, Hastings himself is presented as a principal in The Return.
She ends the intro with a joke, talking about a kid whom said about school, "I enjoyed school. It was just the principal of the thing."
The Return's first credits begin with images from Twin Peaks High School. The end of most episodes of Twin Peaks original series end with a shot of Laura's photograph in the display case at the school. It was at that school Audrey changed out of her black and white saddle shoes and into her pumps. It is also where she often smoked and kept an ashtray warning of forest fires hidden inside of her locker. We forgot to mention yesterday, how Audrey was not in school, stating how school number her buns.
Billy first met American Girl in High School, we theorize. It was then he became obsessed with her and it is when they were attending it he took her life too. This might have influenced his choice to become a teacher/principal.
- Question: Why is this episode called Masked Ball? Does this have anything to do with the mask the grandson wears?
- When discussing Major Briggs' disappearance with his wife Betty, Cooper doesn't mention the fact that the Major started calling out for him in alarm before he disappeared, which might have given indication that this wasn't a planned disappearance or work related.
- Betty states that the fact that they were in the woods, when Briggs disappeared, is important since he talks of the woods constantly. Cooper asks if Briggs had been attempting to contact something in the woods, as a part of his job. Betty can't answer the question because it is classified. After she's gone, Dale comments that it's a powerful force that exists in the woods. BOB and the Lodge and its spirits reside there. We have also repeatedly likened it to Ben Horne's desecration of his daughter, the real meaning behind the Ghostwood project, which intends to "rape" the woods.
- Gordon Cole calls, telling Dale he has his full support. At the same time, he wants to know if any of the accusations are true, betraying some level of doubt. Not exactly a good sign since Cole knows Dale Cooper.
- Cole says about the investigators, "These guys make a living looking through other people's drawers. We've all had our socks tossed around." Now we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Josie turns into a pull on a drawer of the Great Northern.
Was she, or her equivalent to Billy, looking into his business too?
Following this thread to another possibility, can we link her then more specifically to Betty/Naido, decades later learning about Billy and what he was? Is there any chance then that Josie and Betty/Naido are related, giving some insight to Bob Engels claim that Judy was Josie's sister? Betty, afterall, is one of Billy's "Judys". Is there any chance, to add to this, that Betty was investigating Billy Hastings on purpose to see what he had done to "Josie"? Lots of interesting possibilities.
- When Cooper faces the interrogation led by Hardy he refuses to even defend himself, leading Hardy to state, "There's a right way and a wrong way to do this. And the first thing we expect is a Bureau man to stand up for himself. A man who can't, who doesn't even try, well, he may be packing feathers where his spine is supposed to be."
This might sound harsh, but technically the man has a point, and with how Dale faced both the lead up to Maddie's murder and the Black Lodge at this season's end, they seem even more resonant. We reasoned that Dale betrayed that he would not be strong enough to face his darkness, the equivalent of Billy not being able to deny his evil urges or confess them, and now Hardy's words echo that.
- Cooper then makes a speech that seems to have been what the Log Lady was referencing in her intro as well:
"I know the moves I'm supposed to make. And I know the board...I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I've started to focus out beyond the edge of the board. At a bigger game....The sound wind makes
through the pines. The sentience of animals. What we fear in the dark and what lies beyond the darkness...I'm talking about seeing beyond fear, Roger. About looking at the world with love."
It's a noble speech. It would be even more effective if Cooper managed to back it up with actions however. For when he goes to the Red Room, he isn't able to see past his fear...of himself or what Leland and Laura's dopplegangers insinuate about it. Perhaps a stronger feeling comes clear, that Dale Cooper might have faced anything in the world with love and acceptance except for the one thing the Red Room forced him to look directly at and love: himself. And so we learn a fact about Billy, our dreamer: he hates himself and cannot reconcile himself to that hatred.
As the product of the abuse of the woman he loved, that self hatred isn't even something we can't understand, but we realize it was out of his control. To turn that self hatred onto others, whom do not deserve it, truly separates Billy from deserving to love himself.
- Hardy seems more compassionate now, citing how Dale just solved a big case. That will be mentioned again, but is ironic since we believe it is a case Cooper committed. He states he might recommend a full psychological workup, which is a good idea frankly, and may be what Billy was facing outside of the dream too, since schools sometimes recomend that when a classmate dies. Cooper thanks Hardy for his candor, but there is something that seems like he does infact take it as an insult. As Dale leaves, he looks at his gun and badge.
- The still teenage-delusioned-Nadine approaches Donna and asks if it's okay if she makes a play for Mike. She replies to Donna asking, what about Ed, by saying that sometimes he acts like he's old enough to be her father. We have an older woman, stuck in a juvenile state, and planning to be sexually aggressive to a boy young enough to be her son, all while comparing the man she is with to her father. Billy's mother echoes strongly throughout this situation. She also differentiates her home and school lives, just like Audrey's shoes portrayed in the Pilot.
- Donna's boyfriend, James, is also at the moment beginning his own relationship with an older, predatory woman, the situation between Billy and his mom reoccurring once more.
- Evelyn Marsh talks to the younger man at the bar, but her words are highly evocative of the situation of one William "Billy" Hastings, especially when we meet him in The Return: "Men are always all right. Right up until they pull the trigger. And then we watch the neighbors solemnly march out to the news cameras to tell us: 'He was such a nice, quiet guy.'"
- She looks a certain way when Twin Peaks is mentioned, but it's hard to tell why.
- James compliments her jacket, somewhat out of the blue. We have the theme of clothing again and what it might hide or reveal. We also have Audrey and Carrie needing to get coats before leaving their homes.
- The car theme comes into play again when Evelyn enlists James help in looking at her husband's jaguar, which was hurt when someone squeezed into her and she wound up in a ditch.
- Learning she's in no hurry, James plays a song on the jukebox. It's the same Bobby played for his own older woman, Norma, in the Pilot, when he said he'd see her in his dreams. Listening to it, James presses his head against the box, as if he is on fire again and it helps cool him. The last time he was on fire was after an incident with his mom.
- Dick drops by with Nicky, his ward from Happy Helping Hands. This is a big-time Billy avatar. And we've already pointed out how, when Cooper first saw Ben, he asked who the glad-handing dandy was. Nicky will prove to be a source of destruction and malevolence, and yet, when Will Hayward spins his tragic history, which started with his mother, a maid at the Great Northern, being raped and conceiving him, he suddenly becomes a tragic figure...however, honestly, that is just manipulation, which doesn't excuse Nicky's bad behavior. It's just the sort of thing the evil inside Billy might exploit to avoid culpability.
- Richard just bought Nicky a full new wardrobe at Hornes. And so we continue the implication of fashion and this time it's in connection to the Hornes and a Richard with a Billy stand-in.
- When Cooper says he's handling the accusations and repercussions like the Giant said, by forming a path by laying a stone at a time, it leads to him inquiring if Harry or Hawk have ever heard of the White Lodge. Both men are startled, but Hawk looks downright defensive, wondering where Dale heard of it. Dale mentions that the Major had referenced it to him.
- Hawk claims that while Dale might be fearless in this world, there are others. When wanting to hear more, Hawk states his people have a legend of the White Lodge, where the Spirits that rule man and nature reside. It's opposite however is a place referred to as the Black Lodge, the opposite to the White Lodge. Every soul must pass through here on its way to perfection. Once there, someone meets their shadow self. But if they confront it with imperfect courage, it annihilates their soul. So essentially the scariest thing about passing through this Lodge is meeting all of the negative qualities of one's self.
Easy equation for this: Billy has good and bad to himself, as mostly everyone does, represented by the two Lodges. If he reacts with fear, unacceptance and unacknowledgement of his darker urges, and what he has done, he weakens his good side by denying what also belongs to him and refusing to face himself, exactly what happens to him via his avatar Cooper in "Between Two Worlds".
- Dennis Bryson, the agent whom is to evaluate the drug charges against Cooper arrives, and she reveals that she is identifying as a woman, now known as Denise.
This can easily play two ways.
In one, you have the fact that Billy has been taking the form of several female characters already, including him having informed Laura Palmer himself. The male behind the female, occurs several times in The Return, as well, when Ruth's head is found on Major Briggs' naked body or the bosomy woman being portrayed by a man.
Another way this motivates Billy's dream is as a subtle push for him to be more accepting of himself to not harm others. As Cole would say "Fix your hearts or die". Denise is patient with others whom don't understand but always extends that tolerance to herself also, and we see her having survived great adversity to have made it to the top professionally, without compromise. This is the true test of character, by encountering obstacles wighout letting them negatively effect you. If Billy could have made similar peace with himself a life filled with enacting violence on others could have been avoided.
- Nadine makes a play for the much younger Mike.
- Harry tends to Josie, whom is asleep in her bed. She describes her life to him, having been on the streets at 16, and coming from a poor family and a place where they often sell their female children. A man named Thomas Eckhardt "helped" her. He was both her father and her lover. A clear parallel to Billy's mother's relationship with her father can be discerned.
Andrew, another older man/father figure, married her. She claims though that Eckhardt never stopped wanting her however, and viewed her as his property. Once again, the same thing can be said for Billy's mom/Audrey and her father/Ben. Josie says she'd rather die than go back to that monster, and she ends up killing him, before dying as well. Billy's mother needed her father for support, however, because she had given birth to his child.
- Ernie spins a story about killing a buck. Bucks are often shown in Twin Peaks and we argue they are a symbol for Billy, whom lives in BuckHORN. Bucks have horn(e)s.
- Norma tells her new father to basically imitate her mother and scram. Billy and his mother probably had similar inclinations with their parents.
- Nicky proves to be antisocial, to say the least, when he blows the top of his Whitetail milkshake right into Dick's face and spins Andy's chair so he falls off of it and painfully lands nearby. Hard to reason his behavior away as being misinterpreted when we just intentionally saw him cause pain...just like Billy. It's just more likely the cruel behavior stems from the pain and tragedy he initially suffered. He desires to spread it, instead of healing/preventing it.
- James examines Jeffrey Marsh's car and Evelyn virtually spins the same tale for him that Josie said about Eckhardt: they view their younger women as possessions/property. We won't repeat ourselves about the meaning of it, we repeat ourselves enough as it is. Evelyn invites James to stay and he accepts.
- An incredibly important moment for this theory occurs when we see Ben Horne watching an old family video of the groundbreaking for the Great Northern. Ben has apparently fallen back to his childhood for comfort. He begins to recite from Shakespeare again, as usual, but this time he quotes from the play Richard III.
"Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this sun of York; Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;"
In the play, it must be noted, Richard orders the death of a charater named William Hastings.
- Several things stand out from the old film. Ben Horne is dressed just like his father. It is to Ben that the father hands the shovel, that appears to shine as if golden, reminiscent of Dr. Amp's golden shovels made to dig yourself out of the shit. Dr. Amp himself focused often on the poisoning of children. Father Horne seems to pay the most attention to his elder son, despite the occasional attention paid to Jerry, whom doesn't imitate him as much. The mother seems more attentive to Jerry, whom will be seen wearing her hat in Part 1. Ben goes to the screen and kisses his mother's projected image, touching the rest of his family, including himself.
The film we are shown highly indicates that Ben was made to imitate his father, and that the shovel was passed on to him. We can infer from this that, yes, if the abuse truly happened within the Horne family that the father passed the cycle on to his eldest son, just as he did the shovel, the clothing and even the literal cycle (Schwinn).
- Interesting to notice that the hotel was set to open in October. The actors whom play BOB & MIKE were both born on October 31st and we theorize they represent, in part, the Horne brothers.
- Hank enters when the film has ended, sad that he missed what he labels a "stag" party. Stags are bucks, and as mentioned earlier, we theorize they symbolize Billy, whom we find living in Buckhorn(e) in Part 1.
- Ben describes his hellish week and does state that Leland turned out to be a homicidal maniac, which shows the town doesn't generally accept or know about BOB, and helps to further beg the question from yesterday's episode of why so many people attended his funeral. Still must be the food. Billy must generally believe that everyone, like himself, feeds on others' pain and sorrow.
- Ben asks something strange: "Do you think the furniture in this room is adequately arranged? I have been toying with the notion that if one could find the perfect arrangement of all objects in any particular space, it could create a resonance the benefits from which to the individual dwelling in that space could be, uh...could be extensive, could be far-reaching, far-reaching." Does that have anything to do with the ringing sound we believe signifies, somehow, Cooper/Billy's conception? A ringing that begins when the path to the Black Lodge has been discovered, Audrey has gone to make love to Jack, and Jupiter and Saturn will be in conjunction? But is it more a catastrophe than a benefit? All the talk of it and space, when the door to the Black Lodge opens with an alignment IN outer space seems momentous. Was the Red Room/Black Lodge, and the way to get to it, presented when Billy's darkness had made everything just right for his personal corruption? Perhaps represented by Miss Twin Peaks, Annie, Windom and Dale's visit to Glastonbury Grove and his accepted invitation to the darkness of the Black Lodge? Echoes which possibly all stemmed from Audrey's first sexual encounter, with a man named Jack?
- Hank informs Ben that One-Eyed Jack's is no longer under his control, which means Billy has successfully stripped his father of the mill (fire), Ghostwood and now Jack's too, all symbols of Ben's abuse of Audrey.
- Furthermore, Hanks states that he is no longer working for Ben. That also means that Ben has been deprived of all of his woodsmen: Hank, Leland, Leo and Emory.
- When Hank leaves, Ben starts using his hands to form shapes on the blank projector screen. Chillingly, given the earlier theorizing of Billy's connection to bucks, and the talk Hawk gave Dale about the Black Lodge, it is a SHADOW puppet of a buck he creates.
- Windom leaves Dale a taped message, where he paints him a picture, instantly recalling the Log Lady intro. He references their game of chess too, but thinks that Dale is too tidy, predictable, his patterns easily guessed.
All we can say is, "I need to brush my teeth."
By the end of this whole season, his darker side, who knows it all too well too, will blow that predictability apart.
- Windom states they both have wounds, recalling Leland's from FWWM that echoes the one Dale is shown having in the Red Room, after encountering Laura's dopple and when he sees himself lying with Caroline and Annie.
- Windom references being willing to sacrifice the Queen to kill the King. The queen will always hint at Audrey, whom this was meant to be, but was subverted when the Dale/Audrey romance was stopped. However, given how Billy seeks to protect his mother, knowing of this threat from a substitute father-figure he would willingly sacrifice a relationship with her to keep her safe anyway. This could also explain why he surrendered a relationship with Audrey so quickly, in fear for her life, but risked Annie's own so swiftly. No matter what the Eagles taught him, he'd always sacrifice the Queen of Hearts to save his far more precious Queen of Diamonds.
- Lana and Dougie get married: an older man and a woman old enough to be his daughter...granddaughter.
- This is probably pushing things, but to go with our whole Annie vs Audrey to Dale discussion previously, when Coop puts Windom's chess move on the table, it's seen resting next to a duck decoy. Actually it looks like the same one seen on Will Hayward's table as Eileen, Sarah and Audrey were talking. The use of a decoy is nice when we suggest here that Hastings creates substitutes, scapegoats and decoys inside of his fantasy world.
- Denise and Dale discuss the drug charges and Denise's new life. Once again, Billy would have benefited from being so accepting and acknowledging of himself.
- Lana mentions how Cooper is that FBI man who solved the Laura Palmer case. It is ironic that inside of Billy's dream, Cooper is getting fame and accolades for a crime he, in part, committed and whose "solution" was basically framing a man so he could get away with it.
- Next we have a scene which kind of sticks out as peculiar, given what we know happens, and the entirety of this episode. Though he basically gave her the send off, Cooper is now seen dancing with Audrey. Now the scene is short. Very short. We remember, at the time, near the series' end in 1991, that Kyle Maclachlan gave an interview to Soap Opera Digest, where he voiced his displeasure at his storylines for the end of season 2. He stated how he told the writers etc... not to pair Dale with Audrey, and they said they wouldn't but then kept having scenes with them, until he threatened to quit. He then voiced how pairing Cooper with Annie, he disliked just about as much. This scene between Coop/Aud now must be one of the scenes he is talking about. But it's just kind of weird because it's so short. It's Fenn's only scene, the whole episode, why did they even bother?
Was it necessary, we wonder?
Maybe it was.
Their exchange goes as follows:
Audrey:You're an excellent dancer.
Dale: The wonderful thing about dancing,
Audrey, is that you never know where the step could lead. You have to hang on and hope the music takes you there.
The whole fact that it involves dancing is what strikes us now as weird too, since we suggested that the dancing belonged to Audrey in a way it didn't to Leland, or that his was even connected/influenced mostly to hers. Now she's dancing with Dale, whom we say is really her son, Billy. And he's a good dancer too. And they are dancing in a somewhat circular motion. In front of a Great Northern fireplace.
What if this scene needed to be included, in this particular, episode because it is the one where Ben sits and watches old film of his father and the first steps taken in building the hotel? It's all part of the cycle and the truth about Billy's family at the Red Diamond/Dutchman's.
The belief that David Lynch had nothing to do with Twin Peaks second season has been discredited by the many accounts of his role backstage. It can even be seen visually by the appearances he made as an actor in it. He had finished Wild at Heart, infact, and was more free to pay attention to TP. He reportedly read over each script and dictated what they could and couldn't do. When one order was disobeyed by Harley Peyton, it even caused a rift between them. Lynch being so particular about his art, leads to the strong indication that he was going for one particular interpretation of his own. The author of the Twin Peaks access guide also stated that Lynch was far more rigid in his requests/instructions than Mark Frost was.
What if this dance between Audrey and Cooper was important to Lynch too?
Especially when we see the ending credits.
- Josie makes her appeal to Catherine, whom forces her to become a maid for her. Little Nicky's mother will also be referred to as being a maid up at the Great Northern, the same place Josie dies. Catherine threatens to send her back to Thomas Eckardt if she does one thing out of line. These could be indications of how Billy's mother felt under their father's control.
- After Josie leaves, Andrew Packard, Catherine's brother steps into the room, passing an outrageously large antler as he does. We've already discussed Billy's connection to bucks. Andrew and Catherine being brother and sister, we can connect to Billy and his mom having shared that relationship too.
- They insinuate that they are using Josie as romantic/sexual bait to get at Eckhardt, which is disturbing considering Josie is terrified of him and views him as her father surrogate. More shades of Billy's mother and their father.
- Okay and this, THIS end credits is why we think the inclusion of the Audrey and Cooper dance for this episode might have further been integral. This episode ends, not with Laura's photo in the high school display case, but with the footage of the groundbreaking of the Great Northern...particularly shown is when the father, Mr. JJ Horne, is seen making that first shovel into the dirt and then passes it on to his son, Ben, to take the next. This is a visual display of the father passing onto his son the cycle of abuse. The dirt can even be surprisingly linked to how BOB/Leland threatens Laura at the dinner table in FWWM that there is DIRT under the fingernail where the killer leaves the letters of his name.
Perhaps the building of the Great Northern, which desecrated the land by White tail Falls, represents Ben's father's abuse of him, just as we theorize Ghostwood represents Ben's abuse of his daughter. It goes with the talk of nature found in the intro to this episode, as well. Remember too, the clock shown as MIKE was looking for BOB at the Great Northern depicted a waterfall free from buildings or intrusion. Or how Johnny Horne ran into a photograph showing the White Tail Falls before the Great Northern had been built. The birth of BOB was shown as being brought about by a bomb, which similarly impacts nature in a destructive way.
We can follow than a clear thread and theme between the Hornes destruction of nature as an allegory for the abuse against their children as well.
Here is the perfect example of how we believe the incest/abuse in Twin Peaks becomes all the more powerful if it took place inside of the Horne family. The Palmers lack this kind of backstory and buildup, as well as their actual presence, after their exit from the narrative. But something like this clip becomes devastating when viewed through the lens of this theory.
Consider too how all of the alternate end credits were directed by Lynch. This is the only non-David directed episode that featured something that was different from Laura's famous photo being shown. That is because this is far more secretly important to EVERYTHING. It partly conveys how the nightmare began, what lead to Laura's murder, and to the unknowing eye it could look even innocent, sweet. Not many would know what it really means: a father passing the torch of abuse onto his eldest son.
