Showtime’s Twin Peaks
Season 3: “The Return, Part 11”
Directed by David Lynch
Written by Lynch & Mark Frost

* For a recap & review of Part 10, click here.
* For a recap & review of Part 12, click here.
Over at the Fat Trout, a few kids play catch. When one of them runs to find a stray ball, they see a bleeding woman crawl from the trees. Presumably it’s the woman Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) beat brutally. At the diner, Shelly (Mädchen Amick) gets a call from Becky Burnett (Amanda Seyfried) saying she needs to borrow her car, there’s something wrong with Steven (Caleb Landry Jones). The girl takes off with the car, Shelly tries jumping on the hood but gets tossed into the dirt when Becky spins around. Carl (Harry Dean Stanton) sees it all go down, so he comes out to see if he can help. He calls her a ride with his tin flute. Fucking love this show.
They wind up getting in contact with Deputy Sheriff Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), to tell him that the young woman has a gun with her, too. At the same time we watch Becky rush into a house, up the stairs in a blind rage, gun in hand. She beats on the door of apartment 208. When nobody will open the door she fires a handful of shots inside. Through the halls we do see Steven with another woman, staring up toward the sounds of the gun. The sheriff’s department gets a boatload of calls about the gunshots, naturally.
Out in Buckhorn, William Hastings (Matthew Lillard) is walking Special Agent Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell) through his claim about seeing Major Garland Briggs. They’re out at an abandoned shack, along with Special Agent Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) and Deputy Director Gordon Cole (David Lynch). Then, a strange apparition out on the property, perhaps similar to the dark spirits we saw reviving bad Coop (Kyle MacLachlan) a while ago.
“Think there‘s one in there, Albert?” asks Gordon as he and his old pal head inside. Electricity buzzes in the air. Up in the sky a cyclone-like opening appears, drawing everything into it. Albert’s vision goes blurry, Gordon reaches up with his hands doing… something; interacting with the cyclone in the sky, or calling to it, or who knows what. He almost disappears. Only for the fact Albert hauls him back. So what exactly is the thing? Clearly they’ve known of it, they wondered if “one” would be there.
Then they also discover a body lying in the nearby field: the headless body of Ruth Davenport. Ah, the Briggs connection once again. It all comes together in a twisted weave of alternate dimension, as is usual for Twin Peaks. Worse still, the eerie man covered in burnt engine oil is lurking at the car near Hastings. Suddenly, his head basically explodes, the top half gone. The darkness has taken him.
Notice they’re on a street named Sycamore?
Becky, Shelly, and Deputy Sheriff Briggs sit around a table at the diner, trying to take care of things in at least a HALF discrete way. Admittedly, Bobby tells Becky if he wasn’t in his position with the department she’d be in cuffs. Luckily no one was hurt; this time. She’s clearly got a toxic relationship going, like a worse version of Bobby and Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).
Oh, and Becky’s mom and dad? It’s Bobby and Shelly. I sort of expected that. Just to hear it out loud is sort of stunning, all the same. No wonder the girl is who she is, she’s Bobby Briggs’ kid! Making things sketchier, Shelly’s boyfriend is Red (Balthazar Getty), the insane coke dealing madman who deals to her son-in-law. Christ, Twin Peaks is one hell of a town.
Suddenly a bullet flies through the window of the diner, another one. Deputy Sheriff Briggs goes out into the street to find a kid found a gun in his parents’ van and shot it off. The two parents freak out each other, and Bobby gets the gun out of their hands. He looks at the boy, who has a strange sort of air about him. A woman freaks out in the road beeping her horn, a sick girl in the passenger seat throwing up what looks like bile. Jesus. The whole thing swirls poor Bobby into an absurdist nightmare.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Hawk (Michael Horse) and Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster) look at an old map, a Native America piece of hide with symbols on it. One looks of a campfire, Hawk describes it as “modern day electricity” – tying into the Black Lodge’s inhabitants, the evil spirits, how they travel through electricity. They study it using information given to them through Mjr. Briggs. There’s also a symbol of “black fire” that’s meant to be important. There’s yet another symbol, the black orb with the two wing-like pieces on the top; Hawk says Truman doesn’t want to know about that one. Ominous. Hawk also gets another call from Margaret the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson), she knew they’d found more. She says “there‘s fire where you are going.”
Gordon, Albert, Tammy, and Diane (Laura Dern) are back with the detective chatting about Ruth’s body. There were also coordinates on her body. Plus, what the hell happened to Hastings in the backseat of the cruiser? They all saw that engine oil-covered lumberjack-like figure creeping around. Except the detective, and Tammy. Then Gordon says he’s seen them before – “dirty bearded men in a room“— is this the convenience store? Does Cole have previous experience with them just like Philip Jeffries?
Back in Las Vegas at the Lucky 7 offices, Dougie-Coop (MacLachlan) is led by a coffee in to his boss for a talk. Turns out he’s helped his boss root out corruption in their business, which the boss believes is why there’s been attempts on his life as of late. He mentions the Mitchum brothers aren’t part of it, apparently. Higher up, it seems. Now the Mitchums want to meet Dougie. The boss has a $30-million cheque to deliver. All sorts of insurance madness that Dougie-Coop goes along with, his true mind elsewhere, locked away.
Speaking of the Mitchums, Rodney (Robert Knepper) hears about a dream Bradley (Jim Belushi) had about killing that “Douglas Jones fuck” and openly anxious to get the murder finished. So much so, his 2:30 PM breakfast is ruined. At the Lucky 7 office, the Black Lodge appears to Dougie-Coop and pulls him toward a coffee shop; toward his old self. Then he’s carted off to meet the Mitchums, his boss telling him to “knock ‘em dead” giving him the one of the ole pretend knockout jabs to the chin. Wonder if our man’ll take that all too literally. Wonder if he’ll need to.
Dougie-Coop’s actually being brought out to a spot in the desert. Typical Vegas gangster move. When our man shows up holding his box from the coffee shop, Bradley freaks out, saying this was the dream he had. That they can’t kill him. “It means he‘s not our enemy,” he pleads with his brother. Long as what’s in the box is what he saw in the dream. And indeed it is: a cherry fuckin’ pie. Likewise they find their $30-million cheque in his pocket.
When Dougie-Coop goes for a meal with the Mitchums after, toasting to their day, he’s entranced by the music playing. He’s also greeted by the woman who he helped in the casino, the one who calls him Mr. Jackpots. Her life’s changed for the better, all due to him. Everyone sees him as this saint-like, Christ figure almost. Silent, dumb or more so sweet, innocent. He reminds partly of Sellers from Being There in his quiet sweetness.
Another Coopism comes out when Dougie-Coop quips that the pie is “damn good.” Such a perfect moment after the roundabout way in which the old Cooper’s life helped save his latest form’s life.
Fabulous episode, taking all the beautiful aspects of the series and intertwining them into one weird, fun, silly episode. Such a treat!