Showtime’s Twin Peaks
Season 3: “The Return, Part 15”
Directed by David Lynch
Written by Lynch & Mark Frost
* For a recap & review of Part 14, click here.
* For a recap & review of Part 16, click here.
Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie) goes to see Ed (Everett McGill) over at the gas station. Her golden shovel in tow. She says she’s “changed” and realises he’s been a “saint” over the years. She knows she kept him and Norma (Peggy Lipton) apart, all this time. Of course he denies it, insisting there’s nothing to it. He already knows, from the rhetoric, she’s been tuning in to the show crazy ole Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) broadcasts.
So Ed goes down to see Norma. Except her new guy Walter’s around. Life and love has passed Big Ed by, after so damn long. Heartbreaking to see. No matter how much coffee Shelly (Mädchen Amick) serves him. Or a “cyanide tablet,” as he mumbles to himself. But all he has to do is wait a few minutes, until Norma kicks that guy and his franchises and all that shit to the curb. She’s fine right there in Twin Peaks, the way it’s always been, the way it’s always been meant to be now with that final cherry on top for these two.
But as usual, there are darker things happening while all the sweetness runs its course.
Bad Coop (Kyle MacLachlan) drives down a desolate stretch of road. Similar to how The Return began. Then he pulls up to a place we all know well – the convenience store. Someone waits outside to take him in. Electricity flickers, they disappear.
“I‘m looking for Phillip Jeffries”
A dark room. One of the dirty, bearded lumberjack men pulls a switch. Electricity flares. Visions of the Jumping Man (seen previously in Fire Walk With Me). Through a familiar doorway, bad Coop goes into the darkness led by the lumberjack. They head out into a place like a trailer par. Where a woman talks in that backward talk of the Black Lodge. She lets him in through a locked door, into place with a number 8 on the outside. Inside, a light blinks rapidly. Bad Coop finds a strange kettle-like contraption, through which speaks the voice of Jeffries. He answers bad Coop’s questions, they speak of the ’80s, after Phillip showed up babbling about Judy. He says that Cooper’s already met her before. Hmm. A telephone starts ringing, endlessly. And the answer about Judy never comes, as bad Coop’s transported outside after he answers the phone.
Who exactly is Judy, after all? Since Fire Walk With Me, it’s been a lingering question.
Well, this doppelganger then stumbles onto Richard Horne (Eamon Farren), who believes him to be the regular Cooper, gun drawn. He wants to take out the FBI man. Instead, he gets the shit kicked out of him. But he ain’t dead. They’re taking a ride together, now that bad Coop knows this young man’s mother is Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn).
In the background, the convenience store zaps with electricity, pumping out smoke. Creating. Destroying. Manipulating. What all evil spirits do. Eventually, the place disappears, all that’s left is trees.
Out in the forest, Steven Burnett (Caleb Landry Jones) is with his mistress, gun in hand and tripping out. Things are not good right now, not for him. He’s a dangerous, unpredictable dude to be around. He’s in one hell of a bad way. Might not be walking back out of those woods.
And why? Did he do what I think he did? Has he hurt Becky (Amanda Seyfried)? Christ.
At the bar, James (James Marshall) says hello to Renee, but her husband isn’t impressed. So he beats the living shit out of him. Until Freddie (Jake Wardle) and his colossal glove step in to remedy the situation. Now we know he wasn’t joking about the Fireman (Carel Struycken). He really fucked those guys up, James and his buddy are headed for a cell tonight.
In Las Vegas, Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) and his assistant are assassinated by Chantal Hutchens (Jennifer Jason Leigh) with relative ease. She and Gary (Tim Roth) head for burgers after, as he rants about the “nation of killers” that America’s always been.
Elsewhere in the city Dougie-Coop (MacLachlan) is still eating, Janey-E (Naomi Watts) continually doting on her simple minded husband. ‘Cause now he’s got a rockin’ bod and the gambling issues are gone. Yet little bits of the true Cooper are there, hiding behind the veil. Just waiting to come back out again. He spies the electrical socket. Fork in hand – uh oh – he crawls towards it. Jamming the fork in, the electricity zaps, his wife screams.
Will it kill him? Or take him back?
Hawk (Michael Horse) gets a call from The Log Lady, Margaret (Catherine E. Coulson). She tells him she’s dying. She says: “You know about death. That it‘s just a change, not an end.” This is the last time they’ll speak. She pleads that he remembers what they spoke of in the past. She says to watch for the “one under the moon at Blue Pine Mountain.”
Hawk gets Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster), Andy (Harry Goaz), and Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) together to inform them about Margaret’s death. As it is in a small town, those who knew her many years mourn her sadly.
Audrey and Charlie (Clark Middleton) are going to the Roadhouse. Things are still… strange. What’s going on with them? Instead of going out, though, they get into a bit of an argument. Escalating until she nearly strangles him.
At the Roadhouse, The Veils play “Axolotl” as various people mingle, drink, the same ole same. A young girl’s moved by a couple tough bikers, evidently they sit there often. Instead of getting up, the girl kneels on the floor and weeps, crawling into the crowd on the dance floor. Moments later she starts screaming uncontrollably.
We end on a shot under the credits of that trailer-like courtyard where bad Coop was taken. I wonder if we’ll see more in the last few episodes.
A few slow spots, I still don’t understand Audrey’s whole situation. Still, I feel like the biggest, most important Lynchian/Frostian mythologies are filling out. Eerie and strange Jeffries moments, too. Love those. Only several episodes remaining. I wonder if we’ll be left with some kind of devastating, near cliffhanger moment like Season 2 did 25 years ago. I’m betting yes, and Lynch/Frost will soak it in.
Out in Buckhorn, Gordon Cole (David Lynch) calls Twin Peaks. He chats with Lucy (Kimmy Robertson), though between the two of them it’s painfully hilarious. She puts him in touch with Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster). They talk about the “strange” things Deputy Chief Hawk (Michael Horse) found. The stuff from Laura Palmer’s (Sheryl Lee) diary, about the “two Coopers.” Quite helpful, considering what’s been going on lately, what Gordon and Albert (Miguel Ferrer) have been investigating.
Back in Twin Peaks, Hawk and the boys get Deputy Sheriff Chad Broxford (John Pirruccello) in handcuffs, after finding him out for his criminal shit. However, I worry. Because the dark little places in their town, the drug dealers that frequent their bars, their streets, it might not like if their network is compromised. Either way, it’s good to have out of their way. Hawk, Truman, Deputy Sheriffs Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz) head to the woods.
We see a bit more of James (James Marshall), he works some kind of security job for transport, something like that. He doesn’t have much of a social life. It’s his birthday and even his co-worker Freddie (Jake Wardle) doesn’t know until he’s told. Poor James, always the lonely soul. Freddie wears one rubber glove, just one on his ring hand. He ends up telling a story about being sucked up into a cyclone in the sky, where he saw the Fireman, who gave him instructions to go find a specific rubber glove, in an open package at the store. This gave him a strange power, like an “enormous piledriver” for a hand.
Man, I loved this episode. One of my favourites of The Return. Impressive, in many ways. Storylines coming together, mythology expanding and connections to Fire Walk With Me fleshing out. Beautiful stuff. Always great fun when these episodes end with a nice musical performance, too.
At the Mayfair, Gordon (David Lynch), Albert (Miguel Ferrer), and Agent Preston (Chrysta Bell) have a drink together, doing a toast “to the bureau.” We hear about Project Blue Book, shut down in the 1970s. Stuff we’ve heard of before in Twin Peaks, involving what later became the Blue Rose cases, things the FBI and the military looked into together, top secret, that were left unresolved from the program. This is where their “alternate path” of investigation comes from, and FINALLY WE ARE CONNECTING to Fire Walk With Me even more.
In Twin Peaks, Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) is still running around like a madman in the woods. At the grocery store, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) picks up the essentials for her life 25 years on from the tragedy of her daughter Laura (Sheryl Lee), her husband Leland (Ray Wise) – and the essential is booze. She’s a haunted woman, it’s clear just by the look in her eyes. “The room seems different, and men are coming,” she begins raving, sounds of the Black Lodge swirling around her head: “Things can happen. Something happened to me!” She walks out having scared everyone near. But it’s clear Sarah hasn’t been able to get over her past. The spirits won’t allow it.
Diane gets a text, wondering about Las Vegas. She replies that they’ve not asked. Is this still bad Coop to whom she’s talking? Is it the doppelganger of Jeffries?
Dr. Jacoby: “It‘s seven o‘clock. Do you know where your freedom is?”
A solid episode because it doesn’t go into much of anything surreal, rather it stays on a plot, sticks to a few core bits. There’s plenty mystery, but Lynch and Frost keep things on an even keel. Interesting, though. A few real interesting moments that speak to large bits from Fire Walk With Me. I like how Frost and Lynch lay the groundwork as they go, coming back to things later on and tying it all together. One of the greatest parts of this revival is that they get to connect things to Fire Walk With Me, which really pull the mythology tighter into a larger, epic scale work of mystery, surrealism, and even drama as the regular lives of the Twin Peaks residents continues to interest all these years later.
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.
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) awhile ago.
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).
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 25 years ago?
This was a fabulous episode, it took all the beautiful aspects of the series and intertwined them into one weird, fun, silly episode. It’s honestly just such a treat!
Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) goes to see Miriam, who saw him during the hit and run. She wrote to Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster) to tell him about what she saw. This doesn’t stop Richard from breaking into her trailer, doing something terrible. I’ve got a feeling the FBI might be back in Twin Peaks sooner than later, not just for the ordeal involving Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan). ‘Cause Ricahrd, he’s one bad, bad dude.
Rodney and his brother Brad Mitchum (Jim Belushi) see a news report on Ike the Spike, glad to see him snatched up by the cops. Then, a report on Dougie Jones surviving Ike’s would-be assassination. The news footage is fucking hilarious, with Dougie-Coop trying to reach out and touch the cop’s badge, Janey-E swatting away his hand. But the Mitchum brothers, they’ve found their “Mr. Jackpots” and it’s not as if it was overly hard.
In Las Vegas, Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) – rival and a “bitter” enemy of the Mitchums – has Anthony Sinclair (Tom Sizemore) under his thumb. He tasks him with making sure the Mitchum brothers kill Dougie Jones, or else do it himself.
Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) gets a call from his wife Sylvia (Jan D’Arcy), she tells him about the attack by Richard, asking for more money. Seems grandma likes to stay far away from the rest of the family, or at least Ben and all his bullshit.
A fantastic episode, one that’s more linear and adds bits to the plot, strengthening things while also letting our minds relax; soon enough there’ll be more surrealism, count on that. Excited for the next part, this has been a journey of mythic proportions. I have no doubt in my mind Frost and Lynch are going to take us through another gamut of wild, weird, exciting, confusing, gorgeous moments in the back 8 episodes of The Return.
Bad Coop (Kyle MacLachlan), after being resurrected by the dark forces of the Black Lodge, wanders down a country road spattered in blood. At the same time, Gordon Cole (David Lynch), Special Agents Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) and Tamara Preston (Chrysta Bell), and Diane Evans (Laura Dern) are flying high in the sky over South Dakota. Gordon gets a call from Colonel Davis (Ernie Hudson) about a case over in Buckhorn concerning Major Briggs. Should be interesting to see how that old “Blue Rose case” gets wound into the rest of the story.
Down at the LVPD, Dougie Jones (MacLachlan) and his wife Janey-E (Naomi Watts) are dealing with the fallout of almost being murdered. An investigation being conducted into the whole ordeal, talking to Dougie’s boss, so on. His strange behaviour is one thing. The fact someone’s blown up his car, tried having him killed, it’s all getting more suspicious. The cops also find out there’s nothing about Dougie before 1997, no proof of his existence. Is it a Witness Protection thing? Or something stranger?
In Buckhorn, Gordon arrives to see the body at the morgue. More importantly? The message bad Coop sent earlier from a cellphone arrives on the phone of none other than Diane. Shit. I never anticipated there was possibly something shady about her.
Gordon wants to chat with Hastings, who’s in no fucking shape to do anything, crying and moaning in the interrogation room. Special Agent Preston goes in first, asking about the Zone, the other dimension. He talks of going with others to where the Major was “hibernating” in this place, asking them about “important numbers.” When they brought the numbers people came for Hastings, asking about his wife. After which she turned up dead. The Major also disappeared, saying “Cooper, Cooper” as he went. When Preston shows him a six-pack of faces, he correctly picks out Mjr. Garland Briggs. Although we get bits and pieces, connecting back with the original series, so much still is unknown. Love it.
At the Roadhouse, a couple women meet over beers. They both look and seem down on their luck. One has a nasty armpit rash that’ll make you cringe as she scratches. They talk in code about a “penguin” and a “zebra” amongst talking about their bummer lives. Meanwhile, Au Revoir Simone plays in the background, a sharp contrast from the two women and their drug ravaged teeth.
Bad Coop (Kyle MacLachlan) and Ray Monroe (George Griffith) are following a tracking device out into the woods on a desolate road. They have a little chit cat, the latter apologises for taking off on his buddy. Seems like ole Ray is trying to squeeze a bit of cash out of the doppelganger, a bit of important information he knows is worth a few bucks. So he thinks. Along the dark road they stop so Ray can piss. He pulls a trick on the bad Coop and pumps a couple shots in him.
Nine Inch Nails plays for us in this episode, which is sexy as fuck. Two of my great loves coming together at once. Great goddamn performance, too. It’s so wonderfully filmed and for me it fits like a glove.
We’re taken further, as well. Lynch brings us into a suspended atmosphere where we come to a huge structure, almost an obelisk in the darkness. Inside is similar to an old apartment building from the early 1900s. There’s a woman looking upset. The Giant (Carel Struycken) is there, a concerned look on his face. And there’s a large transformer of some sort, it keeps making noise and lighting up, over and over, until the Giant turns it off. There’s a similarity between this place and the place where Coop wound up going through on his way back from the Black Lodge. So, is this like a type of Limbo, a Purgatory? If so, is the electrical transformer a vessel, or does it transmit messages?
Jump ahead to ’56. In the desert. An egg hatches, a creature slithers out and crawls through the sand. later, we see it closer as a half frog, half fly-type of thing. Like two pieces of a Biblical plague mixed together.
A young couple walks home alone together at night. The boy kisses the girl and heads off. The Lumberjack is still looking for his light, too. He walks into a radio station, finds one woman and puts a hand to her head, crushing it, or melting it. But either way: BLOOD! He does the same to the DJ. Everywhere in town the radio goes mad. Until the Lumberjack decides to use the airwaves to send a message: “This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.” Through the electricity of the radios and the airwaves, the Lumberjack’s words infect people all over town.
What a fascinating chapter. This was so spooky, unnerving, surreal. One of the greatest television episodes, of anything, ever. Definitely at the top of the surrealist pile for Twin Peaks. And strange as it was, it’s putting together parts of its mythology. One episode at a time. And what will become of the poor girl who swallowed that frog-fly-thing? Yuck.
Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) is in the woods, a bewildered look on his face. More than just a good bake on from his killer bud. It’s like he knows there’s something bad in that forest. He calls his brother Ben (Richard Beymer). Seems as if he’s had his car stolen. Turns out he’s actually just high. Too high.
Out on the road Deputy Sheriff Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz) talks with a very nervous, paranoid man. They’re set to meet at 4:30. This guy seems like he’s up to no good, but I don’t see Andy as being the type to be up to anything shady. So what’s the deal?
On a lonely road, Andy waits for the paranoid man with whom he met earlier. At the guy’s house, we get the feeling of something ominous behind his open front door. Only Lynch could make a simple shot of a door like that feel creepy. One of the many reasons the man is a master filmmaker.
I love Lynch because he intrigues us, and he also gives us slices of anticipation where we see a long shot of the Bang Bang being swept, Jean-Michel Renault (Walter Olkewicz) at the bar working silently. And nothing happens, for so long. Because Lynch knows we’re paying attention. He doesn’t do this for shits, he does it to make sure we haven’t fallen off.
Another good episode, this one a bit less heavy on the surrealism and the absurd, more a classic episode of Twin Peaks we’ve come to know. I’m excited because with 18 episodes, Lynch and Frost have the opportunity to take their time a bit, which they do with relish. All the same it’s good, it isn’t frustrating for those of us Peakheads who love the mystery, the intrigue, the surreal. Can’t wait for the next episode already.
In Las Vegas, we start on two men waiting late outside a place, as a woman named Lorraine (Tammie Baird) talking to them on a phone seems worried sick. Afterwards, she makes another call, though at the other end is only an ominous black phone or tablet-like object blinking.
Meanwhile, regular ole ‘good’ Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) is still kicking about the Jones residence, his wife trying to make sense of his “weird as shit” attitude. She’s hidden the nearly $450K he won at the casino, now she offers to drive him to work. With all the people swirling around the REAL Dougie, it’s only a matter of time before Coop winds up in a load of trouble. There are a lot of eyes on Dougie.
At the casino where Coop won his jackpots, Supervisor Burns (Brett Gelman) is beaten severely for letting all that money slip away, by Rodney Mitchum (Robert Knepper) while Bradley Mitchum (Jim Belushi) warns him to leave town. They’re the, uh… controlling interests, in the business. I’m sure they’ll cross paths with Coop’s Dougie at some point. Time being, the pit boss Warrick (David Dastmalchian) is put in charge.
Out in the woods, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) powers up his own little radio show. He rambles about globalist conspiracy, his “cosmic flashlight” – and a bunch of other things. At least he’s passionate. A few of his listeners include perpetual hippy Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) and Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie). Jacoby uses one of those gold-plated shovels as a bell, he rings it with a hammer like tolling it for his listeners. He’s truly mental, The gold-plated shovels are a way to “dig yourself out of the shit” towards the truth: only $29.99. I mean, the absurdity is off the charts, and I love it. He’s not even mental, he’s an opportunist.
In jail, bad Coop gets his phone call. The one Gordon is hoping will give them something with which they can work. The doppelganger knows they’re listening in. So he says: “Who should I call? Should I call Mr. Strawberry? No, I don‘t think I‘ll call Mr. Strawberry. I don‘t think he‘s taking calls. I know, I know who to call.” He dials madly over the numbers, making no sense. Followed by all the systems going haywire, lights flashing and alarms going off.
What a great episode. So weird, so funny, and more intrigue; particularly in the Jeffries-related area, part of the plot I’m very interested in since long ago first having seen Fire Walk With Me. Part 6 will surely give us more, and I can’t fucking wait!
In Las Vegas we find Coop (Kyle MacLachlan) winning jackpots all over the casino, fresh off his transition back into the real world since spending all those years in the Black Lodge. He sees that strange little vision of the lodge’s curtains and patterned floor all over the place, each one indicating a jackpot. Like a second sight.
FBI Director Gordon Cole (David Lynch) is meeting with Bill Kennedy (Richard Chamberlain) and Denise Bryson (David Duchovny), who’s obviously in a much higher position than last we left her – Chief of Staff at the bureau. Seems that Cole is taking an agent named Tamara Preston (Chrysta Bell) with him on his latest excursion to find Coop. Absolutely love this exchange between these two. It’s funny, kind of heartwarming at moments.
Coop’s still stuck as Dougie, for now. He remembers bits of the Black Lodge, where the One Armed Man, Phillip Gerard (Al Strobel) searches for him. He sees that other world just barely below the real one, superimposed below everything he sees. “Now one of you must die,” Gerard explains. Pretty tall orders for a guy who can’t even properly take a piss yet.
They ask Coop where he’s been, it’s clear there’s something not right. He tells Gordon he’s been working with Phillip Jeffries. He continues repeating himself. His voice is low and unsettling unlike before. Gordon especially sees that this is not the same man who’s been his close friend all these years. Not a bit.
Another beautiful, dark, mysterious episode. So much going on, and so much to look forward to over the next 14 parts of this new Twin Peaks.
