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 TWELVE

“This week on Invitation to Love – The Return…”

Some of the most delightful meta-moments in the first incarnation of Twin Peaks were the tremendously ridiculous snippets from the soap opera show-within-a-show, Invitation to Love. Each week a Twin Peaks character would take a pause during their own overly complicated day to try to catch up with the soapy theatrics, and we the viewers were treated to over-the-top dialogue about who was sleeping with who and who was plotting to kill who, a whirlwind of melodramatic trash where over-acting actors rambled on about people we had never seen or cared about – all, kinda ironic, in the context of the actual soap opera, Twin Peaks, we had become addicted to.

Not surprisingly, one of the major complaints about Twin Peaks – The Return has been the absence of those juicy (and often hilarious) soap opera plot-lines…but here in Hour Twelve, Frost and Lynch redefine meta by delivering the long-awaited return of Audrey Horne…

…who defies all fan theories and does not appear to be the billionaire behind the Glass Box, nor is in a wheelchair or maimed from the bank explosion at the end of season two, nor appears to give one lick about what’s going on with Richard Horne, and is instead (delight of all delights!) married to an exasperated midget named Charlie whose drowned in paperwork and positively doing everything in his power not to accompany Audrey to the Roadhouse in an attempt to find Billy: her lover…and perhaps the same Billy that random person at Double RR was looking for at the end of Hour Seven? Sherilyn Fenn acts the heck out of the scene, which Lynch plays long and close, all back-and-forth melodramatic nonsense between an aggressive-aggressive Audrey and a hilariously passive-aggressive Charlie, with each new tidbit of information and name mentioned creating a pile-up of soap opera nonsense that makes it appear as if a-whole-nother show, The Audrey Horne Show, has been running in parallel to the metaphysical nightmare and comedy of manners that has been Twin Peaks this season. What did Tina say to Charlie? Where the hell is Billy? Why didn’t he report Chuck stealing his truck? And what (and who) the hell were those women in the booth babbling about during that sweet, sweet Chromatics song?

Oh yeah…and Tammy and Diane were invited to join the Blue Rose brigade, Gordon expressed concern for Albert’s well-being, Jerry Horne finally got out of the woods, Sarah Palmer was having some dangerous visions again, Ben Horne gave Frank Truman Cooper’s room key to give to Harry Truman after being told about Richard being responsible for the little boy’s death, and Diane traced the coordinates on Ruth’s arm to…DUN DUN DUN…

Twin Peaks.

Until next week, on Invitation to Love – The Return…

Commentary by David H. Schleicher

What say you, fellow Peakers? What did you think of the return of the soap opera style in Hour Twelve?