#to the extent that her TEENAGED DAUGHTER very seriously instructs him not to break her heart again

[alexanderwrites]

Thoughts Roundup - Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 11

“There’s Fire Where You’re Going”

Here is an episode that i’ve heard a lot of people describing as the point where this season “hits its stride”. What i’d say is that, while each episode has been nothing less than great (for me), there has been a certain scattershot style to the season which has displeased some. This scattershot style is not detrimental, but certainly is different to what we expect from narrative, serialised television. So far, the season has been like a closeup of a patchwork made of smaller segments, and with this episode, we’re starting to get a clearer idea of what the patchwork will look like when viewed as a whole. Will we really see the big picture by season’s end? Maybe not. But by “hits its stride”, what I believe people mean is it is satisfying to see the threads pulled tighter and the picture look a bit clearer, as it does in tonight’s episode. There is a narrative flow in Part 11, as well as what feels like quite a bit of progress. Adding to this is the episode’s crafty blending of all the elements that make Twin Peaks Twin Peaks. The show’s deadpan humour, jarring violence, abstract nightmare segments and small-town drama were all present tonight in an episode that felt cohesive, tight and covered a lot of bases that people wanted covered. 

. Miriam ISN’T DEAD!!! If last week’s episode punished by presenting women without agency, this one gave them a bit more to do. Miriam, thank the lord (or lords David and Mark) is alive, and her crawling out the bushes is a relieving but nightmarish image, and really reminded me of Ronette Pulaski. This Miriam’s a fighter and a good person, and I hope she helps to put an end to Richard’s reign of terror.

. Becky is Laura, right? I mean, not literally Laura. But she is sort of Laura? The shots of her looking skyward while riding in her boyfriend’s car a while back visually recalled Laura, and her scream tonight was Laura all over. Pained and furious. Even if her actions differ from Laura’s, I think she is supposed to remind us of her. Violence is cyclical, people don’t change, and what has been will always be. That’s what the show is about for better or worse, so echoes from the past reverberate as Laura’s ghost looms heavily on the town, and on Becky. I liked seeing Becky intent on revenge, and part of me really hoped she’d kill her sleazebag boyfriend. But then again, I’m glad she didn’t, because I wouldn’t want to see her locked away so soon. I found her super interesting tonight and can’t wait to see where her character goes, and what a lovely surprise it was that she’s Bobby’s daughter.

. Seeing Bobby and Shelley together was surreal. I kept remembering how they looked when partying around Leo’s comatose body, and thinking “shit, that’s actually them”. It’s a shame they never made it work, but it’s an even bigger shame that Shelley has found an even bigger sleazeball (sleazebag? There are too many Sleazes in this show. I’m not sure what comes after Sleazebag and Ball. Sleazecar? Sleazehouse?) in Balthazar Getty, who’s name i’ve forgotten and won’t look up because I prefer writing the name Balthazar Getty. Shelley hasn’t made a good choice in hooking up with this guy who we know is a drug importer, and it seems that Becky is following a similar path. I love Shelley, and will always sympathise with her. She brings out the protectiveness of the audience, and Becky does the same. I really, deeply hope to god that history doesn’t repeat itself, and that Shelley and Becky won’t get hurt. 

. Did anyone else think of the little kid with the gun as a lodge spirit? You could say that about anyone on the fucking show (James Hurley is a lodge spirit! The pie they serve at the Double R is a lodge spirit!), but he reminded me of little Lynch Jr as little Tremond (who turned out to be a lodge spirit in Fire, Walk With Me). Maybe it’s because of his creepily defiant stance, his silence, and that he’s dressed exactly like his dad, but it felt like a surreal moment and that something more sinister is happening there. Then something even MORE surreal happens, and it’s the hardest i’ve laughed at something that’s scared me in the show yet. Yes, i’m talking about the slime puking teenager and the screaming woman. The scream was so repetitive and strange sounding, and the longer it went on, the more funny yet disturbing it sounded. I put my hands to my cheeks Kevin Macallister style and could only offer up a big, loud “WHAT THE FUCK”. I love that Bobby simply watches like we do. Utterly bizarre - and what do we think of the Woman’s dialogue? Did it remind anyone else of “Around the dinner table, the conversation is lively”? It did for me, but it might mean nothing which is totally fine with me. I’m here for individual moments, and if by episode 18 i’m saying “Wait - what the fuck happened to the slime puking teen?”, that’ll be fine with me. 

. Elsewhere in town, Hawk and Frank are planning their field trip to the black lodge. I hadn’t thought before of electricity being the modern version of fire because i’m a dumb asshole, but when Hawk says so it makes a lot of sense. Fire and Electricity seems to be the Uber of the spirit world. They use it to travel, as well as way that they harness their power. The thing we really want to know is the thing that Hawk tells Frank he doesn’t ever want to know about: that weird symbol that was on Doppelcoop’s playing card, and is on the top of Hawk’s map. Why does nobody ever say ‘actually, I really DO please’ when told ‘you don’t want to know’? I want to know!! And we get another touching call from Margaret, who tells us her log is afraid of fire (i’m still keen on the theory that her log contains the spirit of her husband - a logger who died in a fire) and that there is a fire where they’re going (hey! that’s the name of the show!). Her warnings are to be taken very seriously, and with how bleak this season can and has been, we should start preparing ourselves now for something bad to happen out in those woods to Hawk, Bobby and to a lesser extent, Frank. I am so excited about this storyline because I just want any excuse to see more of the woods and more of the black lodge.

. Let’s raise a toast to Matthew Fucking Lillard. Matthew Fucking Lillard. The longer I think about it, the more certain I am that he’s been my favourite performer this year so far, and I was saddened to see his head...uh...smashed off(?) tonight - in a manner that recalls how the heads of those lovers were smashed off by the box monster all those weeks ago. In an ensemble of hundreds, he truly stood out and made every moment he was on screen utterly riveting. And this scene is the most memorable of the night for me, while Cole’s deadpan of “He’s Dead” is the funniest line of the night. 

There’s so much to unpack, but the image of Cole staring into a portal to another place is absolutely a standout moment. This place in South Dakota is another Glastonbury Grove (if we weren’t sure enough, it’s on Sycamore Street), and seeing Gordon begin to fade as he stands in the path of the portal really reminded me of Cooper descending into the Black Lodge at the end of Season 2. Also at the scene, we get a couple of woodsmen spirits standing on some stairs (which reminded me of the stairs in the Palmer household) inside the portal, as well as one very real woodsman who gives Bill Hastings’ head a cheeky little burst. It’s such a simple effect, but the fading in and out of the woodsmen deeply scares me. It’s so uncomfortable and dreamlike, and a neat way of hammering home that these things are not from our world. I don’t like how they sneak! And then they find Ruth Davenport’s corpse (Ruth, we hardly knew ye) with coordinates on her arm which will doubtlessly lead right back to Twin Peaks. It’s beginning to become clearer how the FBI will end up back in our favourite town, and Diane loses the trust of both us and Albert even more when she clearly mouths and memorises the co-ordinates written on Ruth’s arm. It’s hard to figure out at this stage just what is going on with her, but whatever the answer is, we’re likely to find out that she is in cahoots with some really bad eggs. This might lead her and the FBI on the path back to town, but it’s still vague as to how Coop will find himself back there. Speaking of Coop....

. I was really, really pleased with how his story developed tonight. He seemed a lot more lucid in this part, and seemed affected by his gentle knock-on-the-chin by his boss. And his final scene is monumental, but before I get to that let’s tackle...

. Those darn Mitchum brothers (a spinoff sitcom produced by Chuck Lorre?). Last week, I wrote that they weren’t my favourites and that i’d like their story to move at a pace quicker than Dougie eating pie. Tonight, perhaps because of the makeup of the episode, I enjoyed every moment with them and, yes, the story moves swiftly along. They make a really fun unit to watch bounce of each other, even if it is hard to reconcile that i’m praising the work of Jim Belushi and T-Bag from Prison Break (for the record, Robert Knepper is a great actor. Prison Break is not a great anything). Their scenes tonight developed their chemistry and personalities, and I liked seeing Brother Jim talking about his dreams (the work of someone in the black lodge?) - and the fact that he doesn’t want to kill Dougie if he “isn’t our enemy” was a nice touch. It highlights that there is an intelligence and even a tiny bit of humanity in him, and that he’s not as simple as a ruthless thug who’ll kill anyone he feels like. They may be a couple of bastards, but tonight I found them interesting and of a different breed to the typical tough-guy gangsters. Coop has brought them a cherry pie, as instructed by Mike via the Black Lodge. Brother Jim had a dream about a box with a cherry pie in it, and if its in there, ‘Dougie’ is not their enemy and they can’t kill him, he insists. And so Black Lodge spirits save Coop again! Again the question arises of why they want him alive, and why they need him to wake up. I’m still betting that it’s because they need Doppelcoop back in the black lodge, and that Coop waking up has something to do with Doppelcoop being sent back. We’re edging closer and closer, and it’s getting pretty damn exciting.

. And then the Mitchum brothers and Coop go for cherry pie! There are plentiful allusions to the past, and who Coop used to be, but he can’t get back. And in a sense, the show Twin Peaks cannot get back to what it used to be - and why should it need to? People have aged, actors have died, times have changed and the world is different now. The 1950′s aesthetics of chrome diners and cherry pies and colourful fashion were always a veneer that the show hid under. It was never about that, but instead about how a surface of gloss is wrapped over the ugliest crimes of humanity to make them more palatable. It is entirely possible to enjoy the aesthetics of the show (and honestly, everyone who loves Twin Peaks, me included, enjoys it), but it is important to remember that that’s not what the show is about. If anything it’s a pretty vicious critique of how false this aesthetic is, and about the damage done by ugliness being wrapped in a pretty package. And now, that pretty image isn’t as strong as it used to be. It’s not there because it never really was. Coop can (loudly) eat his cherry pie, he can even call it “Damn good”, but he’s been through too much now. He’s seen too much, and we have too. We can’t get back to the idealised version of Twin Peaks because Lynch and Frost have shown us that it isn’t real. Nostalgia might call us back to it, and we can fawn over images of the past and try to get that feeling back - the feeling Coop gets when he hears a pretty song, or sees a pair of red shoes - but it isn’t there for us anymore, and I think that’s what The Return has all been about. It’s not about going back and finding that everything is beautiful and exactly how you left it, but about the fruitless struggle of trying to recreate the past. Who knows - maybe by season’s end we’ll have a beautiful moment of Coop waking up, of order being restored and him enjoying a meal at the Double R. And if we get that, it will doubtlessly be stunning, and moving and haunting - because we will have the knowledge of what has happened. The pull between an idealised past and a cold, stark present is a powerful one, and the final scene of tonight’s episode conveys this masterfully. The song the pianist plays - which sounds quite a bit like Laura Palmer’s theme - is the past calling out to Coop, and he responds, as does the viewer on hearing it. Where it goes from here is impossible to predict, but this is a moment of real beauty that summarises the entire run thus far. 

“If you put these two symbols together, you get this”

“Black Fire”

“Correct”