**If you’re afraid of spoilers, turn back now**
Can TV be riveting if very little is happening? It can in the capable hands of David Lynch, who gave us one of the best episodes of the “Twin Peaks” revival thus far, an hour that started with a surging rush of adrenaline and ended feeling as though we’d been given a welcome sedative, something calm and reassuring underscored with a somber tune from longtime Lynch composer Angelo Badalementi. If most shows are photographs, easy-to-understand images where you see exactly what you’re supposed to, then “Twin Peaks” is a painting, abstract and artful where the colors mix to suggest something, letting us decide what we’re observing and what the intention is. So, with that, let’s try and unpack last night’s offering, shall we?
In the town of Twin Peaks, we learn that Miriam is still alive after the brutal beating that Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) gave her last week. She crawls out of the woods like an animal, bleeding and searching for help, found by three young boys playing catch. Becky (Amanda Seyfriend) is still very much dealing with her marital woes, on the hunt for her husband Steven (Caleb Landry Jones) who she believes is cheating on her. She’s right, of course, and in a fit of rage, fires shots through an apartment door intended for Steven and his mistress. This domestic spat calls for a family meeting at the Double R Diner and we soon get confirmation that Becky is Shelly (Mädchen Amick) and Bobby’s (Dana Ashbrook) daughter, and it’s also clear that they’re at least separated. It’s great to see Shelly and Bobby together again, but also bittersweet watching them try and talk some sense into Becky who is in many ways making the same mistakes they made and hopefully learned from over two decades ago. But the Briggs reunion doesn’t last for long thanks to the arrival of Red (Balthazar Getty), Shelley’s new boyfriend who we know is involved with drug dealing around town.
Then, in one of the strangest (and that’s saying something) scenes to date, gunshots ring out, and Bobby races outside to find that a young boy has gotten a hold of his father’s gun. The oddly unreactive child stares back blankly at Bobby until Bobby’s attention turns to a belligerent woman stuck in traffic, screaming about being late for dinner and having miles to go. There’s a sick girl in the passenger side vomiting strange substances. Bobby doesn’t quite know what’s happening. And neither do we.
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Elsewhere in Twin Peaks, Hawk (Michael Horse) shows Sheriff Truman (Robert Forster) a map filled with symbols, warning him explicitly about the danger of the symbol with the black horns. Hawk also takes another call from the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson), who tells Hawk that her log hates fire (this would track), but that, more importantly, “there is fire where you are going.”
In Buckhorn, Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and his FBI cohorts touch down on the coordinates that Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard) previously gave them. We see the Woodsmen hanging around, fading in and out. Then Gordon sees a vortex in the sky and has a vision of the dirty bearded men standing on a stairwell. Meanwhile, one of the Woodsman sneaks up on the detective car that Hastings is in and takes off half his head. “He’s dead,” Gordon points out helpfully. Everyone seems shocked by the turn of events except Diane (Laura Dern), who saw the Woodsman attack coming but claims later only to have seen him leaving the car after.
Back in Las Vegas, in a sequence that’s very reminiscent of David Fincher’s “Seven,” Dougie’s (the real Dale Cooper, Kyle MacLachlan) boss sends him to meet the Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper). Dougie has a check in hand for $30 million dollars to give the duo, but they have different plans. Thinking that he completely screwed them over, they plan on killing him. But their plans are thwarted by a dream Bradley had the night before in which Dougie arrives at their meeting with a box containing a very specific item. What’s in the box? Cherry pie, of course, and if that comes true (it does!), Bradley tells Rodney that they can’t kill Dougie. The Mitchums find their $30 million dollar check, as well as the cherry pie, and all parties involved win.
The three go out to dinner where Dougie runs into the lady he helped at the slot machines. She thanks him for all that he did for her and tells him that he changed her life. Then Dougie has some cherry pie with the Mitchum Brothers. “Damn good,” Dougie says! And this, combined with the brief vision he has earlier of the Black Lodge, foolishly gives us hope that the real and true Dale Cooper could be coming back to us. But the piano music, previously mentioned, signals the credits and the end of a freaky, funny, damn good hour that flew by.
So has Twin Peaks gone even crazier? Is Lynch slowly giving us what we want even if we don’t know this is how we need it? And what’s next for Dougie now that the Mitchum brothers are off his back? See you next week.