Twin Peaks – The Return: Complete Hour by Hour Guide

NOTE TO READERS – These weekly posts are meant to recap what happened (SPOILERS AHEAD) and provide conversation starters for fans to comment and share theories. Do not read if you have not watched this week’s hour(s) yet.

HOUR SEVEN

“I Don’t Know Where I Am”

Jerry Horn (David Patrick Kelly) announces this, while lost in the middle of the woods, to his brother Ben (Richard Beymer) at the start of Hour Seven. But really, it’s an echo of the audience groupthink around the new series, and of perhaps the Good Agent Cooper…who, thanks to those recently discovered pages of Laura Palmer’s diary (alas, a fourth page is still missing!) mentioning that creepy dream from Fire Walk With Me where Annie Blackburn visited her and told her about Cooper, and Hawk’s keen detective work, we communally recognize and confirm (as theorized by many fans) is still perhaps trapped in the Lodge.

Meanwhile…Bad Cooper reveals his unique blackmailing techniques using severed dog’s legs to get Warden Murphy to allow him to escape from prison all easy-peasy at 1am with his henchman and a car…but not before Gordon and Albert talked a hard-drinking, “My attitude is none of your damn business!” Diane (Laura Dern – perfect) to come out to Sioux Falls to interview Coop for herself, leaving her to proclaim broken-heartedly to Gordon that something key was missing from that thing claiming to be Cooper (namely, a heart).

Over in Dougie-ville, Janey E. keeps sticking up for her man when the cops come around asking about his car (you know, the one that blew up and killed some idiot gang members). When the couple walks out, the ice-pick assassin (who broke his ice-pick killing that woman last hour) goes in for the kill with a gun, but Dougie leaps into hero mode, and takes him down (with Janey gamely helping by grabbing the assassin by the neck) and a little psychic aid from that tree/nerve-cell-with-a-head/evolution-of-the-arm cheering Dougie on to squeeze the guy’s hand off.

Lynch displayed an uncanny building of unease and tension yet again while playing with the audience’s expectations and teasing us with both the horrific and the hopeful. I mean, what the hell was that OTHER THING walking down the hallway at the Buckhorn morgue after Lt. Knox uncovered the headless body bore the fingerprints of Colonel Briggs (even though the body was about 25 years too young…and you know, the head is missing)? And we get our first mention of Audrey Horne, who an old-timey trout fishing Doc Haywood (played by the late great father or Mark Frost, Warren) confirmed survived the bank explosion at the end of the second season and was perhaps the last person visited by Agent Cooper before he left Twin Peaks 25 years ago. Subsequent scenes at the Great Northern where Ben and Beverly (Ashley Judd) search for the source of an odd hum (and discuss the key Jade dropped in the mailbox that just arrived) make one long for a glimpse of Audrey…only to leave us hanging and shaking our heads at just what the heck is going on with Beverly’s home life and poor, sickly Tom?

At the end of the hour, Lynch again plays with the audience like a cat stalking a mouse. We luxuriate in the odd, meditative act of watching a man sweep up the floor at an empty Roadhouse, that eventually reveals the Renaults are still up to their teen-girl sex trafficking. But our sweeper finds even joy amidst the muck, doing a neat little trick with the broom at the end – perhaps symbolically hinting at the return of someone to Twin Peaks to sweep out the spiritual trash?

We then close this hour at the Double RR late at night, a dreamy rendition of B. J. Cole’s classic “Sleepwalk” playing on the jukebox and some random guy blowing into the joint asking, “Has anyone seen Billy?” before blowing out just as easily after no one answers. Who is Billy? And where is he? Who knows? In Lynchland, just as in life, the record keeps spinning and some mysteries will never be solved…

Until next week…

Commentary by David H. Schleicher

What say you, fellow Peakers? What moments were most memorable and telling for you in Hour Seven?