Twin Peaks – Season 3: "The Return, Part 13"
Showtime's Twin Peaks
Season 3: "The Return, Part 13"
Directed by David Lynch
Written by Lynch & Mark Frost
* For a recap & review of Part 12, click here.
At the Lucky 7 offices, the Mitchum brothers – Bradley (Jim Belushi) and Rdoney (Robert Knepper) – are prancing around like they're kings of the world. Marching in to see the boss, along with Dougie-Coop (Kyle MacLachlan), after a nice celebration. Bearing gifts, too. The brothers are quite happy with their big haul.
At the same time, Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) chastises Anthony Sinclair (Tom Sizemore), who's only got one more day to do whatever it is he's supposed to get done. Sinister stuff, no doubt.
"A wrong has been made right and the sun is shining bright"
Over at the Jones place, Janey-E (Naomi Watts) receives a new jungle gym set from the Mitchums. Also noticing the beautiful car in the driveway, literally gift wrapped. Quite a change of pace from living with the old Dougie Jones. His wife is certainly thrilled.
Funny, how in parallel with the spirit of BOB, when Cooper came back out from the Black Lodge he became an agent of good, a positive spirit. Making lives better everywhere he goes.
Meanwhile, the bad Coop (MacLachlan) is meeting with a couple bad lookin' dudes, including old pay Ray Monroe (George Griffith); he of course thought the guy was dead. Seems bad Coop – or Bob Cooper, if you will – is up against a tough arm wrestling competitor named Renzo (Derek Mears). If he loses he's got to work for Renzo. If he wins, he'd be the boss of their whole organisation. He only wants Ray.
They sit to the table, rules are read out for all to hear. Then, the match begins. Renzo nearly puts bad Coop's arm flat. But he holds on, he doesn't let up, much as Renzo, the big brute tries. It's like the evil entity isn't even breaking a sweat. It actually becomes scary after a certain point. Especially considering Ray witnessed the weird voodoo shit which brought the guy back. It ends when bad Coop decides to lay the big man's arm flat to the table, snapping it. He punches Renzo in the face so hard it sends him back, nose and forehead crushed in. Blood spurts from the open hole.
Who's the boss now, bitch?
He and Ray get a bit of alone time, the latter taking a bullet first before they have a chat. Then he reveals who hired him to kill bad Coop: a man by the name of Phillip Jeffries. Or at least, that's who the guy says he is, anyways. So, is it the real Jeffries? Or a doppelganger from the Black Lodge? Moreover, Ray was given the owl ring to put on him after he did the deed. Now, he's made to put it on.
All the while people are watching on the camera in the other room. And who should walk in but Richard Horne (Eamon Farren). Oh, shit. This is a very, very interesting connection. Then before Ray gets a bullet in the eyes he mentions Jeffries, a place called The Dutchman's. And after he's dead, the ring disappears, flicking across the patterned floor of the Black Lodge.
The Dougie Jones plot thickens when the streams cross: he's not just Dougie, he's also a guy who escaped from a max security prison, as well as a missing FBI agent. Of course the Las Vegas cops laugh that off as total bullshit. Because, really, only in the Twin Peaks universe of David Lynch and Mark Frost would such a mad thing happen.
Sinclair's got friends around town, including Detective Clark (John Savage), who's clearly in dirty business with the insurance man. The Dougie plot lines are all going to come together in a spectacular whirlwind of shit by the end of this season. Sinclair has big troubles of his own, he wants to poison Dougie but Dt. Clark says. His cop friends work for his boss Mr. Todd, too. So he's on a tight leash.
Out for coffee together, Sinclair and Dougie-Coop sit quietly at a table. When cherry pie takes our man away for a moment, his fellow insurance salesman slips a vial of poison in his cup. Luckily some of Dougie-Coop's strangeness renders Sinclair into a blubbering mess, unable to finish the job. Back at Lucky 7, the boss hears Sinclair's confession about what he's done, working for Mr. Todd, so on. I love how Dougie-Coop has become this tabula rasa-type deity, without words – or at least with very few – he helps people get back to their better selves, he helps people get what they deserve, in many ways. This leads towards possibly testimony to take down Todd and his dirty operation.
In Twin Peaks at the Double R, Shelly (Mädchen Amick) gets a call from her daughter Becky (Amanda Seyfried). She hasn't heard from her husband Steven (Caleb Landry Jones). Who knows where he's gone. Mom cheers her daughter up with the suggestion of cherry pie and ice cream. Yum!
Other things back home are uneasy. Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) has to watch Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) move on romantically. Although she's doing well, Norma's Double R is a franchise now, turning profits. But neither Ed nor Norma it seems have totally moved on from what they had together 25 years ago. Through her situation with the Double R, we see the modern world creeping into Twin Peaks. Lynch is a guy who loved an age gone by, so it's fun to watch him and Frost contemplate how this little town's being sucked in by the rest of the world around them, an inevitability for most small places nowadays.
Elsewhere in town, Nadine (Wendy Robie) has surprised Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) with a display in a shop window on the main street. She's displayed one of the golden shovels, as well as her perfected silent runners for the drapes, after all these years! Bless both their hearts. Two fucking crazies.
At the Palmer place, Sarah (Grace Zabriskie) falls further into the drink, smoking more cigarettes than you can even imagine. Electricity snaps somewhere in the background now and then, boxing on the television. The place is like a dungeon. Creepy.
And then there's Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), her husband Charlie (Clark Middleton). She isn't well, screaming at him: "I don't even know who I am." She also can't remember where the Roadhouse is, which is very strange. There's something not quite right about her these days. Remember, we've not yet discovered how she fared after the explosion in the bank a couple decades ago, we don't know what this new situation, this contract of a marriage with Charlie is in truth. I suspect there's so much more to it than we understand yet. Audrey always was a complicated woman.
Over at the Roadhouse we get a callback performance by James Hurley (James Marshall) playing "Just You" with a couple backup singers onstage, crooning the singer in that saccharine voice of his, as a woman watches him closely, lovingly, tears in her eyes.
Loved this episode. We're getting bits and pieces that I want more of, specifically Audrey and Sarah Palmer. Some people can't handle the slow, long build. But for me, it's part of why Frost and Lynch are so powerful. They don't have to rush. They don't have to end each episode on a cliffhanger. They do things at a nice, steady pace, and if you can't hang on for the ride: don't.
Posted byC.H. Newell 08/06/2017 10/10/2018 Posted inDavid Lynch, Kyle MacLachlan, Mark Frost, Season 3, Surrealism, Twin PeaksTags:Arm Wrestling, Evil Spirit, Kyle MacLachlan, Lucky 7, Phillip Jeffries, The Black Lodge, The Dutchman's
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