Agent Dale Cooper's Horrific Version Of The Odyssey: How David Lynch Thrilled And Disappointed Twin Peaks Fans!

The Good: Most of the acting, A lot of good direction, Moments of engaging plot, Basic concept
The Bad: The end (seriously, way to piss on your legacy, David Lynch!), Drifts and tangents that go nowhere, More information undermines the strong concept . . .
The Basics: Twin Peaks returns for a long-awaited third season to bore, confuse, delight and ultimately infuriate the fans of the beloved, surreal series.


I admire an ambitious concept. I truly do. And it is hard to argue anything other than the idea that David Lynch is one of the reigning masters of ambitious concepts. David Lynch has a long history of making television shows and movies that demand attentive, engaged viewers. So, when David Lynch publicly confirmed that Twin Peaks would be returning to television for a third season - after being off the air for more than twenty-five years, the reactions of the die-hard fans was more of an indifferent, "we know; you told us it would be back around this time in the last episode!" than the enthusiasm some might have anticipated.

The third season of Twin Peaks, somewhat commonly known as Twin Peaks: The Return because all of the episodes were called "The Return Part X," was an ambitious concept and David Lynch met a number of serious challenges in executing the season that he had more than twenty years to conceive and tinker with. At its core, Lynch described the new season of Twin Peaks as The Odyssey for Agent Dale Cooper and it was widely reported before even the first episode aired that Lynch wrote the entire series as one massive script and then broke the story up into the episodes. That is an ambitious idea . . . and it shows in the execution of Twin Peaks Season Three. In fact, the episodes themselves often hold up much poorer as individual episodes than the season holds up; the sheer volume of detail and callbacks throughout the eighteen-episode third season of Twin Peaks virtually begs for a single binge viewing by an audience that is alert, engaged, and able to handle a lot of screaming.

Conceptually, David Lynch had a Herculean task in creating a third season of Twin Peaks. Since the very end of the original Twin Peaks (reviewed here!), viewers who invested in the concept of the show had plenty of time to accept the sad reality of the show's protagonist. Agent Dale Cooper was trapped within the ethereal abode of evil known as The Black Lodge, while a doppelganger of him - possessed by the ultimate evil entity Bob - was free on Earth. Within (what used to be) the series finale, Agent Dale Cooper was told that he would be trapped in the Black Lodge for twenty-five years. The thing is, for all of its faults, the second season of Twin Peaks was constructed pretty solidly in terms of its lore about the Black Lodge and some of the concepts pertaining to it. The Black Lodge was not, in the original Twin Peaks simply a place; it was a place that existed in physical reality only in specific times. So, right off the bat, David Lynch was somewhat hamstrung by his own concept; given all of the established information of the original Twin Peaks, saving F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper should have been a matter of his doppelganger being returned to the right place and time to push him back into the Black Lodge and Agent Cooper escaping at that time.

There is, alas, not much of a television show in that. So, David Lynch threw out his own book; in the new rendition of Twin Peaks portals are all over the fucking place. In fact, from the moment Agent Dale Cooper manages to escape the Black Lodge through one of the many, many other exits that manifest, the attentive viewer has to ask, "Why the hell did Dale Cooper wait twenty-five years to leave through one of these other exits?!"

Twin Peaks Season Three picks up with Agent Dale Cooper right where Season Two left off. Dale Cooper is in the Black Lodge and the twenty-five years have passed and he has aged. He encounters Phillip Gerard (the one armed man) and The Arm, who encourage him to take an alternate route out of the Black Lodge, noting that Dale Cooper's doppelganger did not return to the Black Lodge. Bob, still in Cooper, has become a crime lord who is doing everything he can to avoid returning to the Black Lodge and he has managed to avoid his old friends from the F.B.I. by using a laptop from a long-missing agent. When Agent Cooper manages to make it to our plane of existence, Cooper is in a car accident and incarcerated, which puts him on the radar of F.B.I. Deputy Director Gordon Cole, Agent Albert Rosenfield and their protege, Agent Tammy Preston.

Dale Cooper, however, has not managed to simply return to our plane of existence. He is insensate in the body of Dougie Jones, who has a wife, son, prostitute and gambling problem. In Jones's body, Cooper is deposited at a casino in Las Vegas where he wins a lot of money by following stimuli from the Black Lodge. While Dougie's wife, Jane, strong-arms Doug's debtors, Dougie is sent back to work at an insurance company where Dale Cooper manages to point out insurance irregularities to his boss and get on surprisingly good terms with the mobsters who run the casino. While Dougie is hunted by assassins hired by Cooper, Cooper manages to get released from prison, survive one of his compatriots attempting to assassinate him and avoid other attempts to get dragged back into the Black Lodge using technology from that place and ethereal beings who heal him whenever he is mortally wounded.

While Agent Cooper slowly asserts himself and Cooper cuts a swath of carnage across the U.S., Rosenfield and Cole enlist Diane to help them figure out just who Cooper is. And in Twin Peaks, Margaret (the Log Lady) sets Deputy Chief Hawk on a search that clues him into the idea that there are two Coopers and that the case of the long-missing F.B.I. agent is soon to be resolved!

The third season of Twin Peaks has its highs and lows, but for the most part it does tell one long, somewhat absurd, story with a bunch of nostalgia-driven tangents thrown in. One of the greatest limitations of the third season of Twin Peaks was that David Lynch had to tailor the story around the actors who were still alive, still acting, and still interested in participating. To his credit, Lynch got actor Everett McGill to come out of retirement to play Big Ed Hurley again. It's nice, it's very Twin Peaks and, sadly, it is entirely unnecessary.

Unfortunately, Michael Ontkean could not be persuaded to return to Twin Peaks for the revival. Within the narrative of the third season of Twin Peaks, Ontkean's absence as Sheriff Harry Truman is explained and not prohibitively conspicuous (there is a lot going on in the season!), but for fans of Twin Peaks, Lynch pushing the project along without his participation becomes a tonal unforgivable sin. One need not rewatch much of the original Twin Peaks at all to see that the lifeblood relationship of the series was the one between Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman. They had a relationship built on mutual respect, professionalism and a shared desire for the truth that made them bond quickly. Twin Peaks had tons of relationships that were, essentially, soap operatic connections between the characters, but Truman and Cooper had a bromance long before the term was ever coined!

Within the third season of Twin Peaks Sheriff Harry S. Truman's absence is glossed over with medical excuses delivered by his brother, Sheriff Frank Truman, who has taken over the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department. Frank Truman is played quite well by Robert Forster, who manages to be the least-obtrusive new addition to the Twin Peaks cast (for those keeping score, Chrysta Bell breaks out in Twin Peaks Season 3 as Agent Tammy Preston, but David Lynch uses her frequently for window dressing and there are several scenes where Bell seems to be trying desperately not to look like she is a supermodel playing an F.B.I. Agent . . .).

The third season of Twin Peaks is fundamentally two narrative streams - the story of Agent Dale Cooper, Cooper (Bob) and the law enforcement officers that are figuring out the long-cold case of the missing F.B.I. agent (Chief Hawk and Agent Cooper's former F.B.I. colleagues) and a series of nostalgia-driven scenes that pertain to Twin Peaks. Indeed, most of Cooper and Agent Cooper's narrative occurs well outside the Washington state town of Twin Peaks . . . and much of the drama within Twin Peaks has absolutely nothing to do with the dual-Coopers' narrative.

The second narrative track includes scenes with Norma Jennings (who is franchising the RR Diner), Shelly (who is still working at the RR Diner and has a troubled daughter), (former) Dr. Jacoby doing a podcast, Nadine Hurley listening to that podcast, and (eventually) Audrey Horne popping up to indicate that she suffered a psychotic break. There is a high nostalgia aspect to the Twin Peaks scenes involving the cast from the original - Norma Jennings has an opportunity, she changes her mind, she and Big Ed get a delightful happy ending, it's cute to see and it offers some minor catharsis for two characters who did not spend a lot of time at the narrative forefront of the original Twin Peaks. Similarly cute is the lone appearance of Andy and Lucy's son, who was named after the bird who witnessed Laura Palmer's murder and provided the sheriff's clues. The scene with Wally is dull as hell, but hardcore fans will find it cute that Lucy and Andy named their kid after the bird. Ironically, Jerry Horne being lost in the woods plays into the main narrative more directly than almost all of the other tangent storylines.

And the nostalgia storylines are not all thrilling or happy. Shelly and Bobby had a relationship, it burnt out, and they now have a cocaine-abusing daughter who shoots up a door. Shelly and Bobby's daughter is a distant tangent storyline that gets dropped mid-season as it appears part of Cooper's agenda is keeping drugs flowing into Twin Peaks High School, but that fizzles out after Cooper is captured in South Dakota. Those who love Audrey Horne will be excited when she eventually pops up in the narrative . . . until they follow the clues back and realize that after leaving the Black Lodge, Cooper raped Audrey while she was in a coma following the bank explosion and the ass hole hellion who has been running around killing people and beating up others, Richard Horne, is her son and she likely went crazy as a result of that abuse.

To the credit of David Lynch, Twin Peaks Season Three contains some explanations for the evil in the woods in the form of nightmarish, surreal divergent scenes that show how the entities from another place interacted with the Earth, seeding both Bob and Laura Palmer into the mix. Also to Lynch's credit, if he was going to break his own wheel, his cheats were pretty clever. Phillip Gerard prepared for the battle between Dale Cooper and Cooper, seeding manufactured people like Doug Jones (and another, far more spoilerific one) onto Earth to be a part of Agent Cooper's escape hatch. The second doppelganger gets explained, but the Doug Jones storyline is initially irritating, especially given that Jane Jones does not seem to stop to notice what the audience immediately observes; that Doug is simply repeating the last thing said to him. Lynch even insinuates that there is another person attempting to leave one of the alternate realities the same way that Agent Cooper is (i.e. by using a back door from The Other Place and replacing a manufactured doppelganger already on Earth), in the form of a prisoner at the Twin Peaks jail who exhibits the same repeating trait as Doug Jones. But, like so very many plots in the third season of Twin Peaks, that is not actually resolved and is unceremoniously dropped before the end of the series.

The third season of Twin Peaks is an investment for fans of Twin Peaks. So little of the third season occurs within Twin Peaks that viewers have to watch a lot of the season and take on faith that the show is going somewhere. Twin Peaks Season Three meanders, but it does return to Agent Cooper and his struggle to return to Earth after twenty-five years sitting on his ass in another dimension. The faith viewers place in David Lynch is justified in the seventeenth episode of the season . . .

. . . and then utterly shat upon in the season finale. Without any spoilers, Twin Peaks Season Three climaxes an episode before its end. The final episode of the series proves in the first few moments what most viewers will easily suspect coming out of the prior episode and then it turns the entire series upside down. And not in a good way. David Lynch had an audacious storyline for the third season of Twin Peaks, but its resolution is one of the most insanely conceived, poorly-executed finales that one immediately suspects will be one of the episodes fans of Twin Peaks watch the least. Seriously, watch up to the end of the seventeenth episode and you'll be happy. If you have a hankering to watch the final episode, go back and watch the second season episode of Twin Peaks with the "Miss Twin Peaks" Pageant. You might say, geh! This is terrible; whatever is in the eighteenth episode of the third season of Twin Peaks cannot possibly be this bad. You would be wrong. It's like David Lynch said to himself, "I hate every one of my fans and I want to not just undermine my classic Twin Peaks, I want people to think of how I end this season and make it hard for them to ever want to watch any part of the series again." Yeah, the end of the third season of Twin Peaks was enough to drag the entire season rating down by at least a point. Why? Because a season review is about how the whole story holds together and what it does and says. With one episode, David Lynch makes the viewer forget about the annoying, surreal tangents, the mysticism, the pointless added characters, the beloved classic characters, the essential struggle between good and evil, the delightful quirks of Twin Peaks and just get a sour taste in the mouth and a headache that cannot be cured by coffee and cherry pie.

All that said, Kyle MacLachlan is amazing in the third season of Twin Peaks. Straddling three roles with an effortless quality, MacLachlan makes viewers care about Agent Cooper once again and feel genuine emotions for him. When MacLachlan plays Dougie needing to go to the bathroom (having forgotten such basic things), it is painful to watch - expertly performed by the actor. Similarly, MacLachlan manages to make Cooper a stone-cold villain that raises the level of tension every time he appears on screen.

The supporting cast of Twin Peaks Season Three is good, but the highest praise should be reserved for the late Miguel Ferrer. Ferrer plays Albert Rosenfield and the magic of his performance is that Albert has mellowed considerably over the twenty-five years, but Ferrer plays him in a way that the viewer never once doubts they are watching Albert at work. Given that an acerbic quality and angry deliveries were the hallmark of Albert in the original Twin Peaks, it is no small feat to reinvent the portrayal of the character and make him feel like the same old guy!

Fans of Twin Peaks who were waiting for the event to be complete and for a final analysis before watching will want the bottom line. It is this: Binge watch the third season of Twin Peaks. Find one day you can devote to it, watch episodes one through seventeen and stop there. The event is worth it . . . up to a point and David Lynch rather politely gave a clear point where the season stops being worth watching.

For a better idea of exactly what this season entails, please check out my reviews of the specific episodes at:
"The Return Part 1"
"The Return Part 2"
"The Return Part 3"
"The Return Part 4"
"The Return Part 5"
"The Return Part 6"
"The Return Part 7"
"The Return Part 8"
"The Return Part 9"
"The Return Part 10"
"The Return Part 11"
"The Return Part 12"
"The Return Part 13"
"The Return Part 14"
"The Return Part 15"
"The Return Part 16"
"The Return Part 17"
"The Return Part 18"

6/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Twin Peaks At The End: "The Return Part 18" Lopes To A Conclusion (?)

The Good: The acting is okay, Early on the plot works
The Bad: Conclusion is terrible, Light on character development, Boring, Boring direction (usual David Lynch night driving shots).
The Basics: "The Return Part 18" mortgages the proper end of Twin Peaks for a boring, obscure, terrible conclusion.


The end of Twin Peaks arrives with "The Return Part 18" and the final episode has a lot to wrap up. Perhaps the most daunting aspect of "The Return Part 18" entering the finale is that the show has a burden of wrapping the storyline up with a sense of permanence that the original Twin Peaks was never bound by. By the time "The Return Part 18" aired, a significant number of actors who were integral to the original Twin Peaks - and the revival - were now dead, making a fourth season somewhat conceptually difficult to execute (even harder than a reboot twenty-five years after the original series). So, to make a truly satisfying end to the third season of Twin Peaks, writer and director David Lynch could not make another great cliffhanger (whether he knew that when he wrote the episode or not, well before it aired at least one critical actor still in play had died, which would have required a rewrite/reshoot before the finale ended if the series was going to continue). "The Return Part 18" opens with a particular burden as the prior episode ended at a point that seemed to entirely re-imagine the set-up to Twin Peaks!

And it fails.

Flat out, "The Return Part 18" is a conceptual failure that neglects the bulk of Twin Peaks to put Agent Dale Cooper on the most unsatisfying journey possible that is likely to frustrate, more than thrill, fans of the show.

Following the events of "The Return Part 17" (reviewed here!), "The Return Part 18" has Agent Dale Cooper having returned to Twin Peaks, defeated Bob in the mortal world with Freddy's help, and then disappearing into a nether realm. In the other place, Dale Cooper was able to see some of Laura Palmer's final moments and then - apparently - participate in them. "The Return Part 18" opens after the prior episode worked to tie together past elements and had Agent Dale Cooper, apparently time traveling, attempting to remove Laura Palmer from the timeline before she could be murdered!

Cooper, in the Black Lodge, is in flames, while Philip Gerard makes a new Dougie and returns him to Las Vegas for Janey and Sonny Jim. Agent Dale Cooper attempts to save Laura Palmer, but she disappears before he can get her to safety. He returns to the Black Lodge where he encounters The Arm, Laura Palmer and Leland Palmer. Agent Cooper is finally able to leave the Black Lodge properly, where he is reunited with Diane and together they drive off. When the tripometer on their car hits 430 miles, Dale pulls the car over and Diane implores him to consider his actions. After a kiss, Dale and Diane drive across a threshold, time traveling, finding themselves on the road at night. They stop at a motel, where Agent Cooper goes to get a room and Diane appears to see her own doppelganger.

Dale Cooper awakens the next morning in the motel room, alone. Dale finds a note to Richard from Linda and leaves the motel (in Odessa) and drives to Judy's, a diner. After rescuing the waitress at the diner from three thugs, Dale gets the address for the diner's other waitress. Dale Cooper arrives at the other waitress's home, where he finds Laura Palmer, though she claims not to be. Despite that, Laura leaves Odessa with Dale and they drive back to Twin Peaks for a terrible conclusion.

"The Return Part 18" is deliberately dense. The episode features time travel without a big flash or obvious portal and more doppelgangers and surreal aspects. The story's first half remains remarkably focused on Dale Cooper and Diane. The purpose of their time travel is not immediately evident and that is likely to be frustrating to some viewers, especially after how literal and concrete (if weird) much of the prior episode was. Dale and Diane seem to have an idea of what they are doing in the early parts of the episode, though their plan is not made immediately clear to the audience, up through and including, their prolonged sex scene.

Dale Cooper's journey in "The Return Part 18" is initially tough to grasp. There are anachronisms - like the old telephone in the motel and the signage in the diner - that seem to support the idea that Dale Cooper is now in the past. But, he continues to drive a modern car and the Valero is clearly one from the 2010s, so there is a whole "what the hell is going on" feeling through the bulk of the episode. Once Laura Palmer comes into "The Return Part 18," the episode is so mired in surrealism and intentional obfuscation that even fans of Twin Peaks will be wondering how this can possibly be the end of Twin Peaks.

Director David Lynch's obsession with night driving shots continues through the bulk of "The Return Part 18" and in this episode they quickly become tedious. By the time Dale and Laura arrive back in Twin Peaks at night, it is hard not to be so confused and bored that one actually wants Twin Peaks to just be done.

The final line of the episode and possibly the series seems entirely stupid given where the episode began (Dale Cooper seemed to know he was time traveling when he was with Diane). Given how vast the cast of Twin Peaks is, the tight focus on Dale Cooper seems like it would be incredible, but in the reworked world of Twin Peaks, Cooper is aimless and unsatisfyingly journeying to an unclear conclusion.

Is the world safe from Bob? Is Audrey Horne's horrific coma undone by completely rewriting history? What the fuck was the point of Twin Peaks?!

The tragedy of "The Return Part 18" is that there is no satisfying way to return to Twin Peaks from this point. For a man obsessed with bringing his beloved series back to television, David Lynch created a tremendous "Fuck you!" to the fans with his final episode of the revival of Twin Peaks.

For other major finales, please visit my reviews of:
"The Doctor Falls" - Doctor Who
"Come To Jesus" - American Gods
"World's End" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

2/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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SO. FUCKIN'. GOOD! Twin Peaks "The Return Part 17" Ramps Up The Series!

The Good: Amazing tension, Great acting, Good character moments, Wonderful plot development
The Bad: Nothing!
The Basics: "The Return Part 17" is the episode of Twin Peaks every fan has waited twenty-five years for!


Twin Peaks is a series that requires - and always has - some serious investment of attention on the part of the audience. David Lynch requires viewers to pay attention to details and remember strange, minute aspects of the plot and characters to put together the puzzle-like stories that he weaves. As a season, the third season of Twin Peaks had a demanding concept with an execution that was problematic for its concept; David Lynch wrote the season of Twin Peaks (supposedly) as one long script before cutting it up into the eventual eighteen episodes that aired. The problematic aspect of that is that small details in the earliest episodes make an appearance in the final episodes and unless one rewatches the entire series before the two-part season finale, odds are, they will go into the final episodes woefully unprepared (three months is far too long to go without reinforcing some of the weird details in play in "The Return Part 17").

"The Return Part 17" is a direct follow-up to "The Return Part 16" (reviewed here!) and it is impossible to discuss the first part of the season finale without making specific references to where the prior episode left off. After all, "The Return Part 16" started cutting some of the superfluous plot threads with Richard Horne and the pair of assassins getting killed and Agent Dale Cooper finally returning to Earth with his memories intact (albeit in the constructed body of Doug Jones). "The Return Part 16" also revealed explicitly that Audrey Horne is not in the place and time she initially appeared to be (suggesting incredibly heavily that she has suffered a psychotic break). "The Return Part 17" is responsible for further whittling down of the sprawling plotlines and characters that have characterized the third season Twin Peaks event.

Opening with Albert and Gordon Cole regrouping after Diane disappeared in their hotel room, Cole reveals that there was an entity colloquially called "Judy" that was revealed to him by Major Briggs. Cole reveals that Ray was working for him and that Cooper was looking for coordinates. Bud gives Cole Agent Cooper's message, which gets the team headed to Twin Peaks. At the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, the woman from another place awakens, agitating the other prisoners. Benjamin Horne gets a call from Wyoming, where his brother has ended up in police custody. The next morning finds Cooper at the coordinates he has sought, when a portal opens allowing him to safely return to an alternate reality.

But the attempt to escape is only a teleportation for Cooper. Cooper is teleported to the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Station where he confronts Andy and in her cell, the woman from the other place becomes severely agitated. Chad, the corrupt cop who is in prison there, uses the opportunity to escape. Andy steps into a dangerous situation and in the process, Freddy steps up to heroic levels. And when Dale Cooper finally makes it back to Twin Peaks, his return puts him in direct conflict with Bob and Cooper!

"The Return Part 17" has some truly amazing line, not the least of which is Gordon Cole telling Albert that he is sorry, despite Albert understanding his reasons. The pacing for the episode is fairly unrelenting after the initial conversation in which Gordon Cole delivers exposition needed to explicitly tie together - for characters within the narrative - what the viewers are likely to have figured out already.

The surreal aspects of "The Return Part 17" are far less distracting and weird than in many other episodes of Twin Peaks. The first major alternate dimension is a room where Major Garland Briggs's disembodied head (a necessity considering actor Don S. Davis has been dead for years), where The Giant is seen and appears to activate the teleportation device.

The sense of tension in "The Return Part 17" has an amazing sense of tension to it. Throughout the episode there is a sense of movement and the constant development of a threat unseen in explicit terms. Kyle MacLachlan is amazing for insinuating that tension into every scene he is in as Cooper. His tightened body language connotes that Cooper is ready at any moment to leap into action and what action he is going to take a mystery. When it comes, the payoff is incredible.

Freddy, with his green-gloved fist does more in "The Return Part 17" than Danny Rand did as the Iron Fist in the entire season of that show!

Ultimately, "The Return Part 17" is the episode fans of Twin Peaks have been waiting for and it perfectly moves the story of Agent Dale Cooper in his epic struggle with Bob toward its logical conclusion. The beauty of the episode is that it is the right combination of dense and satisfying - the proper Diane is returned to Earth, Experiment is revealed to be a template, there is an epic fight with Bob and David Lynch's use of a faded head over one of the critical scenes is no doubt to be the subject of much scholarly interpretation. But, at its core, "The Return Part 17" pays off almost all of the critical elements of Twin Peaks, leaving the final episode as a denouement.

For other penultimate episodes of note, please visit my reviews of:
"Love Is To Die" - True Blood
"The Sound Of Her Voice" - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
"Absolution" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

10/10

For other television and movie reviews, please visit my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Return FINALLY Happens As Twin Peaks Delivers "The Return Part 16!"

The Good: Good performances, Wonderful balance of tension and humor, Great direction, Winnowing of superfluous characters and plotlines
The Bad: Unclear mechanic in Agent Cooper's/Doug Jones's memories.
The Basics: "The Return Part 16" finally returns Agent Dale Cooper to Twin Peaks, even as Cooper uses his own son as a tool to test another's trap.


In the last week, I went back and watched the prior fifteen episodes of the third (the reboot) season of Twin Peaks. The purpose, as I prepared for "The Return Part 16," was to catch connections I had missed with episodes spread out so far as well as basic things like names and (potentially) important details - like time not, apparently, moving in Audrey's subplot, the boiler at the Great Northern being the one The Fireman is listening to in another dimension, and Experiment getting thrown from near the escaping Dale Cooper into the woods near Jack Rabbit's Palace in our world many, many, episodes later. The new season of Twin Peaks is very dense and the odds are quite good that the show will ultimately hold up far better as a season than its individual episodes do. Regardless of that, I went into "The Return Part 16" with a renewed sense of preparation and eagerness.

"The Return Part 16" continues the important Twin Peaks story arcs from "The Return Part 15" (reviewed here!) and has Dale Cooper in Dougie Jones's body moving closer to consciousness, while the Bob-infested Cooper works to avoid being sucked back into the Black Lodge, apparently as part of Phillip Jeffries's machinations. The current season of Twin Peaks features a lot of elements that make sense, as well as a lot of confusing surrealism, but at the core of the season is Dale Cooper's attempt to return to our world and thwart his nemesis, Bob.

Cooper and Richard Horne drive to one of the two locations Cooper has been told about, the coordinates for one of the access points to the other planes of existence. While there, Jerry Horne, having been lost in the woods, sees them. Cooper gives Richard a device meant to register the correct place and the young man does his bidding, which leads Richard Horne to his death. While Cooper's assassins stake out Doug Jones's house, the Las Vegas F.B.I. agents stop by. Doug Jones, in the meantime, is in the hospital with Jane and Sonny Jim at his side, in a coma having electrocuted himself. The Mitchum Brothers arrive and get a key from Jane to stock the Jones house with food.

Hutch and Chantel run afoul of the man in front of whose house they have parked, leading to a gunfight in Jones's neighborhood that takes out the two assassins. Agent Cooper awakens in the hospital, coherent and having all of Doug's memories. He also is given one of the rings needed to pull Cooper back into the Black Lodge and asks a favor of the one-armed man in the Lodge. Cooper asks Bud for help and he calls upon the Mitchum brothers to get his family protected and out to Washington. Diane, having received a text from Cooper, visits Director Cole's room where she steels herself to kill Cole, Preston, and Rosenfeld. Instead, she tells the trio about Cooper's visit twenty-two years ago (three years after Agent Cooper disappeared). Diane tells the agents that Cooper grilled her about F.B.I. investigations, raped her, and took her to an old gas station (the one where Bob lived) before she confesses to sending Cooper the coordinates. When she tries to draw a gun on the agents, Preston and Rosenfeld shoot at her, but she moves with superhuman speed and disappears. Diane, the manufactured version, returns to the Black Lodge where she self-destructs in front of Phillip Gerard. Agent Cooper leaves the Jones family at the casino and tells them that Dougie will return.

The dual nature of Dale Cooper and Doug Jones is not satisfactorily explained in "The Return Part 16." Philip Gerard has a "seed" needed to make another artificial Dale Cooper (the seed is shown in "The Return Part 16" and it was the result of Dougie, having been teleported to the Black Lodge, blowing up there). But why Dale Cooper, now fully mentally restored in Doug Jones's body (the shock last episode apparently worked) has all of Dougie's memories is a bit of a mystery and is somewhat unsatisfying to watch. The fact that Agent Cooper has all of Doug's memories make it convenient and easy for him to leave the hospital and get on a plane, but it is frustrating to invest in the belief that it is fully Agent Cooper who is now back. The inclusion of Diane as a manufactured individual makes Agent Cooper's request to Phillip Gerard make sense even within "The Return Part 16" and one almost has to wonder if David Lynch had figured out by this point in filming (or even the writing process) that viewers would not remember the finer details of Dougie's destruction about a dozen episodes prior.

"The Return Part 16" adds a dark undertone to Twin Peaks. When Richard Horne is killed, Cooper says "good-bye, my son." The implication here is that when Bob, in Cooper's body, escaped the Black Lodge twenty-five years prior and visited the hospital where he was last seen in Twin Peaks, he raped Audrey Horne and impregnated her. This is a sad twist as the chemistry in the original between Dale and Audrey was the stuff of fanfick and Kyle MacLachlan did a great job playing off the much younger Sherilyn Fenn to play realistic desire and heroic restraint.

Twin Peaks is a series that has always had a pretty decent body count to it. Both prior seasons of the show had no problem killing off main characters, even if the climactic first season did not net any real casualties. The moment Diane heads toward the de facto office of the Blue Rose agents, there is the sense that "The Return Part 16" might turn into a bloodbath of characters who are beloved from the prior seasons. It is a weird thing to have a catharsis by having multiple characters shoot at another one, but the fact that all three F.B.I. agents survive Diane is actually emotionally uplifting.

Despite Richard's surprisingly horrific origins, "The Return Part 16" has a lot of humor in it. The Mitchum Brothers being in the wrong place at the right time to see the Hutch's get killed and the F.B.I. watching Jones's house is capped by Robert Knepper delivering a hilarious line. In fact, Knepper's deliveries throughout "The Return Part 16" are funny and incredibly well-executed.

The performances in "The Return Part 16" are impressive and arguably the most refreshing aspect of the episode is seeing Kyle MacLachlan return to playing Agent Dale Cooper. MacLachlan has played villainous and mind-wipe stiffed, but "The Return Part 16" is the first time in the new Twin Peaks when he has fully played Agent Cooper.

Between that and seeing Audrey outside her foyer finally, "The Return Part 16" is a truly delightful episode of Twin Peaks!

For other works with Sherilyn Fenn, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Gilmore Girls - Season Seven
Gilmore Girls - Season Six
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Twin Peaks

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

9/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Dense, "The Return Part 15" Takes Twin Peaks From Delight To Misery

The Good: Performances are fine, Direction, Moments of character
The Bad: Plot meanders entirely, Nothing remotely close to a coherent story
The Basics: "The Return Part 15" starts out as a weird, but coherent Twin Peaks episode and degenerates into visual and storytelling nonsense.


After a week with virtually no Cooper or Dougie, the instant pressure on "The Return Part 15" is to remind the viewer of where the primary protagonist and antagonists are in Twin Peaks. While "The Return Part 15" does not begin with either of Kyle MacLachlan's characters, it does not take long to return to them . . . after taking care of some entirely tangential Twin Peaks business first.

"The Return Part 15" continues on the momentum of "The Return Part 14" (reviewed here!), which put a number of supernatural elements in play - around supporting characters in Twin Peaks who had not previously experienced exceptional and unreal elements. The supernatural elements of the third season of Twin Peaks are confronted with more of a straightforward quality than ever before as Cooper finds himself at the convenience store/gas station seen in the flashbacks and in the alternate dimensions.

Nadine walks all the way out to Big Ed's gas station, with her golden shovel. Once there, Nadine tells Ed that he should go be with Norma, knowing that Ed truly loves her. Ed rushes over to the Double R where Norma is involved with her new business manager. Norma tells her business manager to buy her out of the franchises and she turns back to Ed to begin a relationship with him in earnest. Cooper arrives at a convenience store where he and his ethereal guides enter another place (like the Black Lodge) and he asks for Philip Jeffries. Jeffries, in the form of a boiler, tells Cooper about Judy, whom Cooper does not believe he knows, but Jeffries says he has met.

Richard Horne pulls a gun on Cooper when Cooper leaves the surreal place, but Cooper easily incapacitates him. As soon as Cooper and Horne leave, the gas station disappears from our plane of existence. Out in the woods near the trailer park, a young man kills himself and that night, James goes to the bar where he sees Rene. His coworker ends the ensuing fight with his magic, gloved, hand. In Las Vegas, Doug and Jane Jones arrive at the F.B.I. for interrogation, but they are the wrong Jones's. James and Freddie are locked up at the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, amid the growing menagerie of weirdos there. Dougie, meanwhile, stops eating cake to turn on the television and when he becomes upset by what he sees, he puts a fork in an electric socket. Hawk receives a final call from the Log Lady.

"The Return Part 15" is a treat to fans of the original Twin Peaks in addition to a necessary component of the third season. Norma and Big Ed and Nadine have had virtually no presence in the main storyline of the third season of Twin Peaks, but Norma and Ed's relationship was one of the last big "fuck you's!" of the second season of Twin Peaks. Just as they were about to find happiness, Nadine got her memory back and the relationship was crushed. "The Return Part 15" allows that whole relationship to get a happy ending and it allows that door to be closed if Lynch decides not to include them in further episodes.

The "appearance" of Philip Jeffries in "The Return Part 15" is a bit of a letdown compared to the appearance of David Bowie as Jeffries in the prior episode. Having to use a surreal image in the place of David Bowie reprising his role acts as a cautionary tale for those who want to revisit their universes. Bowie is one of four major performers who died before or early in the filming of the third season of Twin Peaks and it is a shame that his only participation could be through archival footage (his voice was not used for the portrayal of the symbol of Jeffries in "The Return Part 15").

"The Return Part 15" is another episode of Twin Peaks that feels like exactly what it is - a small component of a much larger story. The episode does not stand particularly well on its own, but it resonates in big ways for fans of Twin Peaks (especially the past version of it). Actress Catherine E. Coulson died almost two years ago, but David Lynch managed to film all of her parts before the rest of the season shot. So, including the death of the Log Lady in "The Return Part 15" manages to be both sad within the story and to those who know the reality of the filming of the third season of Twin Peaks.

The weakness of breaking up the long story into individual episodes is revealed well in "The Return Part 15" is that some hours are going to pack in a lot of little things without any truly big and well-developed moments. So, while Cooper and Horne are now together and Dougie electrocuted himself, not much else happens that is instantly recognizable as important in the larger arcs in "The Return Part 15."

For other works with Wendy Robie, please visit my reviews of:
"Destiny" - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Twin Peaks

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Minimal MacLachlan, But Bowie Returns! Twin Peaks "The Return Part 14"

The Good: Good performances, Wonderful special effects, Awesome blending of reality and surrealism
The Bad: Virtually plotless, Some of the character leaps require real suspension of disbelief
The Basics: "The Return Part 14" meanders, but it does it so well most viewers will just recall how they fell in love with Twin Peaks instead of being bothered by the ambling!


As Twin Peaks rushes towards its conclusion for the new season, the show has exhausted the pleasant shock factor of revealing the return of characters from the original Twin Peaks (reviewed here!) and now it is in something of a "put up or shut up" place. The new season has to deliver on the promise of the disconnected threads seeded throughout the earlier episodes and move toward some sense of closure in the storylines of Dale Cooper and Cooper (Bob). As "The Return Part 14" begins, that burden seems like it is being lifted as the episode starts making concrete connections between the two main investigative bodies of the show - the F.B.I. and the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department. Between that and the vintage footage in the episode, "The Return Part 14" puts more characters in touch with the fantastic elements of Twin Peaks than ever before.

"The Return Part 14" follows on "The Return Part 13" (reviewed here!), which managed to focus most of the plot's events on Twin Peaks and elevate the menace of the Bob-infested Cooper. "The Return Part 14" is cool in that is starts to link Doug Jones and Agent Cooper in new and interesting ways . . . through Diane. The sense that the episode is getting more concrete takes a weird turn when Director Cole discusses his Monica Bellucci-related dream.

FBI Director Cole calls Lucy Moran at the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department. Truman informs Cole that they have found diary pages that might indicate there are two Coopers. Agent Rosenfield fills Agent Preston in on the Blue Rose investigations starting with the first case that Cole investigated with Philip Jeffries and involved a doppelganger. Diane arrives and claims that Cooper mentioned Briggs to her the last time they met. Diane reveals that her half-sister is Jane, married to Doug, living in Las Vegas. While describing his current dream, Cole and Rosenfeld recall a time Agent Cooper told them about one of his dreams. In Twin Peaks, Chad (the corrupt cop) is arrested and the Sheriffs make a trip out to Major Briggs' listening station, but they find the Jack Rabbit's Palace to be nothing more than a stump now.

Making the trek according to Garland's directions, the four encounter a woman from the surreal dimension and when a vortex opens above them, Andy is taken. There, he encounters The Giant and comes to understand that the woman on the ground is important. Andy comes out of the experience much stronger and articulate. Returning to the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, the mysterious woman is put in protective custody and she is mocked by the other two residents of the jail. Working security at the Great Northern, James learns from his co-worker, Freddy, that the younger man's hand is now gloved because The Fireman (The Giant) told him to after an experience with a vortex of his own. And at a bar, Sarah Palmer's dark side comes out when she is accosted by a drunken asshole.

It's hard not to get excited for anything these days that includes a surprise cameo by David Bowie and "The Return Part 14" is no exception. The archive footage that Lynch used to return younger versions of himself, Kyle MacLachlan and David Bowie to the screen makes for a delightful interlude in the middle of a weird dream sequence analysis.

"The Return Part 14" once again raises the level of surrealism in Twin Peaks as more people in the town encounter the extraordinary. The woman from the other place speaks in static and has no eyes, which is freaky. Andy disappearing when the vortex opens and seeing generally random images that he does not understand is deliberately unsettling. Andy makes for an interesting character to be teleported into the other dimension because he is a character who has, historically, had difficulty articulating thoughts and being taken seriously.

On the literal front, "The Return Part 14" suffers some because it pushes the boundaries of suspension of disbelief. Viewers are expected to believe that the two young ruffians from the original Twin Peaks both grew up to be in law enforcement?! Seriously?! Both Bobby and James became law abiding citizens - Briggs as a deputy sheriff and James working in private security. While James has only been seen in the new season of Twin Peaks before as a lurker and a singer, his sudden appearance in private security seems strange. Similarly, Bobby Briggs was a pretty literal, pragmatic, kid - how he came to accept the surrealism of his father's work makes much less sense than James completely buying Freddy's story. James was always characterized in the original as a dreamer, so his character arc for the twenty-five year leap makes less sense for his occupation, more sense for his acceptance of the fantastic.

Part of the magic of "The Return Part 14" is that the episode is almost over before it occurs to the viewer that Kyle MacLachlan has only appeared momentarily as part of Andy's out-of-world experience (as a visual implication of the two Coopers) and very briefly in the vintage footage that Bowie completely upstaged him in. It is fairly impressive that the show manages to go that long and be that engaging without its protagonist or antagonist.

On the acting front, Harry Goaz and Grace Zabriskie steal the show. "The Return Part 14" actually allows Goaz to play Andy as something more than a fool and that is refreshing to see. Zabriski manages to expertly transition with the most subtle of face movements. Zabriski plays Sarah Palmer and the moment Palmer is approached in a bar, all the viewer can think is "this is the woman who lived in the presence of the ultimate evil longer than anyone else" and Zabriski makes that idea pay off. The scene she is in includes a pretty wild special effects sequence, but it is the acting whereby Zabriski turns on a dime from horrifying to horrified to threatening with a change of her expression, mobility and voice is the true special effect of the episode.

"The Return Part 14" is an episode that feels smartly dense, but it starts to open cracks in the Twin Peaks universe. The Black Lodge was a mysterious alternate dimension with near-impossible entrance and exit points before. Cooper's escape from the Black Lodge earlier in the season is minimized some by Andy's easy transition to and from an alternate dimension and Freddy's story that indicates the same. The burden as "The Return Part 14" concludes is on David Lynch to explain why the Black Lodge was so difficult to escape from when the vortexes appear to be much more common than anyone knew before.

"The Return Part 14" gives viewers hope that Lynch might be able to pull it off.

For other works with Monica Belucci, please visit my reviews of:
SPECTRE
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Brothers Grimm
The Passion Of The Christ
The Matrix Revolutions
The Matrix Reloaded

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

8/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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"The Return Part 13" Solidifies The Focus On Twin Peaks!

The Good: Good acting, Moments of character, Good ending, Most of the episode's mood
The Bad: Somewhat aimless plot for the latter half
The Basics: "The Return Part 13" mixes wonderfully concrete elements in Cooper and Dougie's stories with somewhat pointless Twin Peaks scenes.


As the new season of Twin Peaks enters its final third, the story is well-beyond the novelty of the prior cast members appearing and the show is committed to actually resolving the massive plot threads it began many episodes prior. "The Return Part 13" does a lot of things that are necessary to achieve that goal, most notably, returning Cooper to the narrative. As well, Richard Horne becomes relevant as he ends up in the same time and place as Cooper.

"The Return Part 13" picks up after "The Return Part 12" (reviewed here!), which was delightful in that it included the return on-screen of Audrey Horne, played by Sherilyn Fenn. Given the delight that fans had at her return, "The Return Part 13" had a lot to live up to. "The Return Part 13" does a good job of blending surreal and weird elements with concrete ties of elements and characters in the Twin Peaks universe. Unfortunately, it feels like David Lynch had half an episode and had to fill out the back half, so he threw in a ton of homages to the original Twin Peaks, including Big Ed's return to the narrative and James Hurley performing the song he sang back in the day with Donna.

At Lucky 7 Insurance, the Mitchum Brothers bring Dougie back, where they present Bud Mullins with a lot of expensive gifts for paying out his their claim. Cooper's agent at the firm, Anthony, is given a day to take care of Dougie. Dougie returns home to find that the Mitchum brothers have bought a gym set for his son and Janie is quite amorous to him. In Western Montana, Cooper arrives to confront Ray, who attempted to kill him. Cooper is given the opportunity to arm wrestle to take over Ray's territory and insists on Ray's life instead. When Cooper wins the match and kills the boss, he interrogates Ray about the scheme to murder him. Cooper asks Ray for the coordinates that Ray was given.

In South Dakota, the police discover that Dougie Jones is supposed to be both an escaped convict and a missing F.B.I. agent. The insurance agent approaches a police officer on the take for a poison to kill Dougie. When the time comes for the agent to attempt to kill Dougie, though, he breaks down and is unable to go through with it. At the RR Diner in Twin Peaks, Shelly gets a call from her daughter before Norma is visited by the man she is seeing, who has franchised her diner. Audrey confronts her husband with an identity crisis that he is unhelpful in resolving.

Kyle MacLachlan is amazing in "The Return Part 13." MacLachlan's arm wrestling scene is an impressive feat. MacLachlan embodies Bob with a vicious streak and a power that is impressive. His physical restraint in the scene is contrasted brilliantly by the very active physical performance of the man who plays Ray's boss. MacLachlan's role as Dougie is minimal in "The Return Part 13," but he continues to play him as appropriately stiff and out-of-touch as Dale Cooper slowly becomes conscious within Dougie's body. MacLachlan commits to a face-plant into a glass door as Dougie that is unsettling for its realism.

While the performances and moments of character - when they exist - are quite good, the plot goes from being delightfully focused and possessing a sense that the show is working to tie together important plot elements, "The Return Part 13" becomes aimless in its second half. Sure, it's nice to see Big Ed (though Everett McGill looks like "David Lynch pulled me out of retirement to eat a fucking cup of soup?!" over the closing credits) again and the reunion of Dr. Jacoby and Nadine is delightful for the sheer volume of crazy in the scene's subtext. While James may be stuck in his past, the viewer is not and we need something more than just to be trapped in Twin Peaks.

David Lynch starts "The Return Part 13" strong, but seems unable or unwilling to keep the focus and intensity of the first half of the episode in the second half.

For other works with Everett McGill, please visit my reviews of:
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Twin Peaks
Licence To Kill
Dune

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

7/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Audrey Horne Returns!!!!!!!! "The Return Part 12" Brings Back A Twin Peaks Favorite!

The Good: Audrey Horne returns, Character development, Good performances, Plot threads are decent, Surprisingly funny, Ties together a number of previously incongruent moments
The Bad: One or two bits that still feel pointless and disconnected.
The Basics: "The Return Part 12" has most of the past Twin Peaks being smart in an episode that has almost no Kyle MacLachlan!


Twin Peaks returning to television has been a truly mixed blessing. The idea that the show might wrap up the twenty-five year old mystery of "what the hell happened after Agent Cooper was lost in the Black Lodge and Bob, with Cooper's face, made it out into out world" was a compelling one. But the concept has had an execution that is much more crowded than it is direct. Unlike the original Twin Peaks featuring disparate plotlines that did not have anything to do with Laura Palmer's murder, the incongruent elements of the new Twin Peaks seem widely unattached to the main plot. Viewers are further isolated from the original Twin Peaks by the fact that much of the action in the new season of Twin Peaks does not occur within the town of Twin Peaks.

"The Return Part 12" picks up after "The Return Part 11" (reviewed here!) and it continues the story with greater focus on answering the questions about the alternate planes of existence that Dale Cooper disappeared into. "The Return Part 12" takes a long time to get back to Cooper, but there is the sense in many of the scenes leading up to his appearance that people are working toward finding him or understanding what truly happened to him.

At the Mayfair, Gordon, Albert, and Tammy have wine and Albert informs Preston about Project Blue Book's end. Tammy is offered a position on Gordon and Albert's U.F.O.-related task force before Diane heads to the meeting. Diane is deputized by Gordon with the potential that she might learn the truth of what happened to Agent Cooper. In Twin Peaks, Sarah Palmer freaks out at the grocery store, claiming people are coming and in the trailer park, Carl exhibits compassion on one of his residents by releasing him from next month's rent.

Sheriff Truman visits Ben Horne and tells him about his grandson's hit and run. Horne takes financial responsibility for Miriam's treatment and laments his loss of his childhood bicycle. Albert meets with Gordon again and the two try to figure out what Diane is involved in. Cooper's assassins take out the warden. And Audrey takes to task the man who is supposed to find Billy.

"The Return Part 12" has a strong science fiction beginning. Dale Cooper, it turns out, was part of a top secret FBI task force pertaining to the Blue Rose Task Force, an investigatory body looking into U.F.O. cases that were unsatisfactorily investigated during Project Blue Book. Twin Peaks has had a pretty strong fantasy undertone to it when it was not a literal forensics drama or melodramatic soap opera, so the turn into explicit science fiction is an intriguing twist.

The inclusion of Diane into the Blue Rose Task Force seems like a thematic nod back to the Bookhouse Boys in the original Twin Peaks (when Agent Cooper was able to accompany the secret society). Gordon including Diane in the task force seems like a case of "keep your enemies closer," though and Gordon and Albert play it cool with Diane in a way likely to excite fans. It is refreshing when the follow-up scene comes up to see that Gordon and Albert are actually on top of things - especially given how Gordon usually appears like a bumbling moron.

Equally exciting to fans is how Benjamin Horne evolves in "The Return Part 12." Benjamin Horne spent the original Twin Peaks as a schemer, then a man suffering from a nervous breakdown before getting his skull cracked in. Apparently, all that horribleness left Benjamin a better person because in "The Return Part 12," he is contemplative, responsible, and he recognizes the horrible nature of his grandson immediately.

David Lynch takes his time with drawing out his scenes in "The Return Part 12." Gordon's date taking her time to leave is distractingly long. "The Return Part 12" is particularly melancholy for its moment with David Lynch looking sadly at Miguel Ferrer and it would be completely unsurprising if an eventual commentary track reveals that Ferrer told Lynch on the day of shooting this scene that he was ill (Ferrer died only a few months ago, before the first episode of the new Twin Peaks aired). The moment is especially poignant now and it is tough not to watch that portion of the episode and choke up.

But then "The Return Part 12" takes a right turn as Sherilyn Fenn pops back up as Audrey Horne! Fenn is part of a scene that answers a number of questions about previously incongruent elements in the new Twin Peaks season and fills in huge gaps in Horne's story. Fenn leaps upon playing the adult Audrey in a compelling way that still has the sarcasm and anger of the young woman she once played and the odd balance of dramatically advancing and maintaining the character is expertly handled by Fenn.

"The Return Part 12" finds just the right balance between answering questions and raising new one, progressing the story and continuing the mysterious feel. While there are still elements of the new Twin Peaks that feel forced for their weirdness - the exit of Gordon's mistress standing right out - most of the episode works incredibly well and fleshes out the story magnificently.

For other works with Grace Zabriskie, please visit my reviews of:
Santa Clarita Diet - Season 1
The Judge
The Grudge
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
FernGully: The Last Rainforest
Twin Peaks

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

9.5/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Twin Peaks Evolves From Weird To Concrete In "The Return Part 11"

The Good: Good performances, Decent plot development, Special effects
The Bad: Light on character development
The Basics: "The Return Part 11" satisfyingly progresses the growing mystery in the new season of Twin Peaks.


For a show that utilizes surrealism and very oddly connected elements, Twin Peaks, at least its new season, has been developing in a remarkably traditional overall arc. In the classic dramatic/heroic arc, the hero is established, gets surrounded by adversaries, then has to rise to the occasion to overcome those obstacles and/or sacrifice themselves for the common good. As "The Return Part 11" begins, Agent Dale Cooper - in Doug Jones's body - is beset on all sides by enemies and faces threats from many real people (including people working for his Bob-possessed doppelganger, Cooper), as well as the potential supernatural threats from the Black Lodge.

"The Return Part 11" continues the story where "The Return Part 10" (reviewed here!) and it plays up the supernatural threats as Gordon experiences some of the otherworldly elements that Agent Cooper was lost to twenty-five years prior. Perhaps the most instantly compelling aspect of "The Return Part 11" is the implicit concept that there is more than one Black Lodge or there are widely disparate entrances/exits to the one.

Opening on the outskirts of the trailer park, Miriam crawls, barely alive to some nearby children playing catch. Becky is called by Stephen and she calls Shelly to, essentially, steal her car. Back in Buckhorn, South Dakota, Hastings is brought to the place where he claims he saw Major Briggs. Agent Preston is interrogating Hastings when Albert and Gordon see a shadow person appear and vanish. After Albert rescues Gordon from a cosmic opening into a horror dimension, Hastings is murdered by one of the shadow people.

Back at the Double R Diner, Bobby and Shelly come to Becky's aid. While they are there, a shot comes through the Double R's window. While he is investigating it, Bobby encounters a woman who appears to have a zombie in her car. At the Twin Peaks Sheriff's department, Deputy Hawk interprets a map for Truman. In Buck Horn, the FBI team tries to figure out what happened to Ruth Davenport's headless body and they corroborate their visions of the mysterious bearded figures at the place Hastings was murdered. At Lucky 7 Insurance, Doug's boss reasons that someone other than the Mitchum brothers is calling the shots in the conspiracy that Doug apparently exposed. Bud sends Dougie to meet with the brothers, with a $30 million check.

"The Return Part 11" finally clarifies the relationship of Becky to the narrative. Becky is Shelly and Bobby's daughter and the idea that Bobby and Shelly's relationship continued after the original Twin Peaks, but then ran its course is fairly well-presented in the new episode. Dana Ashbrook does an excellent job of emoting Bobby's sense of loss in his brief scene where Bobby watches Shelly run off with another man. Ashbrook acts the hell out of the moment with just his facial expressions and eye movements.

Twin Peaks is well-known for its surreal moments, but "The Return Part 11" is one of the most effective episodes of the new season to actually utilize surrealism without getting overwhelmed by them. For sure, there are some truly incoherent moments - the zombie boy rising up in the passenger seat is just terrifying and not yet connected to anything else - but after Gordon's encounter with the conduit to (potentially) the Black Lodge - the episode takes a turn for the starkly realistic. Becky is in a real-world bad situation and Dougie is moved toward a very palpable dangerous situation. Despite one of the Mitchum brothers being motivated by his own dreams, the rising tension in "The Return Part 11" is based on more practical threats than those represented by the forces of the Black Lodge.

Kyle MacLachlan continues to perform incredibly as Dougie Jones. Dougie is basically a vegetable and MacLachlan plays him with slow repeated lines and wide-eyed stares and he is magnetic to watch. Robert Knepper once again plays an incredibly good villain as Rob Mitchum, but for a change, Jim Belushi rises to match his gravitas as Bradley Mitchum. Belushi has to play a character who is remembering a nearly-forgotten dream and he pulls it off such that it seems like a legitimate process of remembering, as opposed to a matter of plot convenience.

Ultimately, "The Return Part 11" is weird, but it is the good weird that made Twin Peaks wonderful and makes fans believe that David Lynch could still make something good with all the elements he has in play in the new season.

For other works with Harry Dean Stanton, please visit my reviews of:
"The Return Part 6" - Twin Peaks
The Avengers
Rango
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The Last Temptation Of Christ
Alien
The Godfather, Part II

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Twin Peaks - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the temporally displaced season of the surreal show here!
Thanks!]

8/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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