Subject: Re: The Owls still are what they seem! Dumb giant.
From: bskendig@roof.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Date: 1990-12-06, 14:34
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <67089348@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>>> >>>The giant said he would give the ring back after his three statements
>>> >>>were shown to be true.  What is there in this episode that satisfied
>>> >>>this condition?  I don't see how Cooper has any notion of why the owls
>>> >>>are not what they seem.
>> >>
>> >>Didn't you see the episode where Major Briggs showed Cooper the nifty
>> >>little printout with the words "/THE/OWLS/ARE/NOT/WHAT/THEY/SEEM/"
>> >>written on it?  This was the event to which the giant was referring.
> >
> >Absolutely right!  People seem to be misunderstanding the Giant's
> >prophecies.  The Giant was predicting things that Cooper might NOTICE in
> >the coming days, so that Cooper would believe in the Giant's ability to
> >foretell stuff.  He was not guaranteeing Cooper complete understanding
> >of all the issues.

No, the giant said something along the lines of "You will get your
ring back when you find these things to be true."

If I tell you that George Bush is actually Elvis, and tomorrow the
headlines of the National Enquirer read `George Bush is Really
Elvis!!!', does that mean that you've really truly found that George
Bush is Elvis?

If I tell you that the owls are not what they seem, and tomorrow some
dude shows you a computer printout that ways the same thing, does that
mean you've found out that the owls are not what they seem?

The whole business with owls wasn't developed nearly enough.  Cooper
didn't find out that it was true that the owls weren't what they
seemed; he just got the picture that they weren't fooling many people
at being whatever they were trying to be.

I think if Lynch had taken the time to close the plotlines off
correctly, the owls would have been revealed to be something -- maybe
the `owls' represented other spirits like MIKE and BOB, or the
Bookhouse Boys, or the women, or whoever -- but they _could_ have
meant SOMETHING.  But Lynch decided to get rid of that ambiguity as
quickly as possible, and decided that it was sufficient just to have
another person tell Cooper about the owls.

Let me just point out that back after that episode where Major Briggs
brought the printout to Cooper, everyone here was saying `Oh! Now
we'll get to see who the owls really are!' and everyone began posting
theories.  No one suspected that the printout was the end of that
plotline!

Oh, and how do you know that the message "/THE/OWLS/ARE/NOT/WHAT
/THEY/SEEM/" wasn't really coming from Mike Nelson (Bobby Briggs's
friend), sitting atop the radar dish with a small transmitter to foul
it up?  [1/2 ;) ]

Another point against a thoroughly scrappy episode, in my opinion.

     << Brian >>

| Brian S. Kendig      \ Macintosh |   Engineering,   | bskendig             |
| Computer Engineering |\ Thought  |  USS Enterprise  | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU
| Princeton University |_\ Police  | -= NCC-1701-D =- | @PUCC.BITNET         |
"It's not that I don't have the work to *do* -- I don't do the work I *have*."