The end of Twin Peaks’ second season had Laura Palmer tell us she’d see us again in 25 years, before leaving the Real Cooper trapped in the Black Lodge, and BOB wearing Cooper’s body. The film, Fire Walk With Me, provided more details about the background, including Laura Palmer’s last days, but left Cooper’s fate horrifyingly up in the air. We weren’t to get answers for another 25 years of real time. Twin Peaks: The Return serves as a farewell to the world of the series and its characters, as David Lynch’s (somewhat unintentional) final work, and a bit of a commentary on how the world (and television) has changed in the last quarter-century.
Probably the first of the elephants in the room for this series is that time has not been merciful to the cast. Many members of the cast, particularly the older members, had died. Probably the biggest blow of these was Victor Silva, who played BOB, and Don S. Davis (Maj. Garland Briggs) had died of cancer. However, numerous other members of the cast were in the process of dying of cancer. Catherine E. Coulson (The Log Lady) ended up only interacting with other cast members on the phone. David Bowie was also dying, but also hated his performance from Fire Walk With Me, so he didn’t want to appear, outside of (redubbed) archival footage. This gives the story a sense of having been reshuffled to fit the actors available.
What this means in practice is Kyle MacLachlan has to do some acting heavy lifting. Let’s start with the good: there’s Mr. C – BOB in Agent Cooper’s body – and MacLachlan’s performance is chilling. His movements, the way he talks, everything is calculated to provoke fear from everyone he meets, unless he explicitly doesn’t need to provoke fear from you, because as BOB, fear is what literally sustains him. It’s the opposite of Victor Silva’s more manic energy as BOB – but closer to Ray Wise’s performance as Leland Palmer whenever BOB was going to kill as him.
The problems on the bad side are strictly script and story problems, not anything with MacLachlan’s performance. The first is that we get very little Dale Cooper in the series. What we get is great, I wish we’d gotten more, and that we can’t get more is a bummer. The other part is who we do get instead – Dougie Jones. Dougie is an Insurance Claims officer in Las Vegas, and the entirety of our time we spend with him has him basically being cognitively disabled for a variety of in-story reasons. All of which, thematically, turn the character into a Magical R-Slur.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, the “Magical R-Slur” is a mentally disabled person in a story who is dramatically cognitively disabled compared to the neurotypical people around them, and who functionally appears to have no inner life. However, their simple and pure way of looking at the world allows them to give deep insights that allow the neurotypical people around them to live happier lives. Now, David Lynch tries to subvert this by having the audience see he’s having information funneled to him by Mike in the Red Room to try to keep him alive until Dale can be restored, but functionally, it doesn’t work. If you write what you think is a subversion of the Magical R-Slur, but which everyone in the story treats like a Magical R-Slur, it’s still a Magical R-Slur.
The rest of the world of Twin Peaks: The Return is darker and meaner than the original Twin Peaks. Some of this feels like a pastiche of the Prestige TV series, the same way that Twin Peaks was something of a pastiche of the soap opera. Some of it does, however, feel real to what could have happened to an “real” Twin Peaks – in the series it was clearly a logging town, torn between sticking with logging or shifting to tourism as its main industry, and also a town with endangered species in the woods (which came up in season 2, around the same time that the Spotted Owl was A Thing in the Oregon timber industry). Since then, many logging towns have dried up – there’s still logging, but not at the same levels, and indeed more sustainable levels, but this also means less jobs. And in response, a lot of those communities have been hit hard by drugs, particularly cheap meth and fentanyl. What has become of Twin Peaks seems reflective of that.
On the other hand, some of the goodness in the show’s heart is still there, and it’s encapsulated by some of the Twin Peaks regulars who do return. Lucy and Andy are still together and happily married, and their son has turned out to be a good man. A weird man, but a good man. Hawk serves as some of the core of the Twin Peaks side of the investigation, and frequently as the intermediary between The Log Lady and the rest of the police. Bobby Briggs has cleaned up his act. Big Ed, Norma, and Nadine all end up with happy endings, with Nadine finding someone she loves more than Big Ed (and also successfully making money on her silent runners).
The parts that do stumble some with the returning regulars are the Hornes. Audrey is barely in the series – her scenes are enjoyable, but there’s a sense with them of them spinning their wheels – several are just “Stay/Go” arguments. Benjamin Horne’s plot is interesting but doesn’t go anywhere, and near as I can tell, they only had one day on set with David Patrick Kelly with any of the other actors, and he spends the rest of the series wandering around the woods high off his ass with weed grown in the magically weird woods of Twin Peaks.
As far as the mysteries of the series go, honestly, Lynch answers a lot of questions in a fairly non-cryptic form. Characters just give clear exposition of some of the cosmic and supernatural elements of the setting in ways that don’t tapdance around anything. The mysteries that do remain (why is David Bowie’s character now a kettle?) are somewhat less important. The visuals are horrific, grotesque, but also with a sense of artifice to them which draw from all forms of Lynch’s other work both in terms of other films, but also music and art – and also some of the other artists he’s enjoyed (including a Nine Inch Nails musical performance, plus a bit where Lynch gets to whistle the intro to “Engel” by Rammstein).
The ending of Twin Peaks: The Return does leave some mysteries left unsolved – mysteries that now never will be solved – but in a way that created an opening for an additional season, had Lynch felt like he wanted to do that (and Showtime wanted to run it) – creating a sort of alternative timeline that allowed for Lynch to work around the actors who have been lost, to feel free to recast as needed without cheapening those other actors performances.
It’s a shame we won’t get that later season, though.
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