There’s no way I could have done this ranking back in September of 2017. The eighteen parts of Twin Peaks: The Return are segments of a single cinematic canvass that take multiple viewings to get a clear handle on. I watched The Return for my third time this September, and, well, it’s finally time. Keep in mind that there are no “bad” episodes here, only those which are “less mighty” than the ones above it. The Roadhouse musical performances follow separately.
1. What is Your Name? (Part 18). Just when things seem to get resolved in Part 17, the narrative dives and drops us into this desolate finale. It freaked me out like nothing else Lynch has ever done, not even in Fire Walk With Me, and there’s still endless debate as to what happens here. At the end of Part 17, Cooper went back in time to save Laura Palmer from being killed; then she vanished into an Odessa-Texas alternate reality. But who sent her there? The demon-mother Judy, or by the benevolent Fireman in order to bait and trap Judy? (The former view is defended here; the latter here.) I believe most of the evidence favors the former, and that there is no victory over Judy at the end. The finale channels Lost Highway with its long night drives, and blurring of identities during the act of sex, and there is yet another History of Violence homage (the first being in Part 7) in the restaurant where Cooper shows down a trio of assholes single-handedly. But it’s the dread of watching “Carrie Page”, not knowing she’s Laura, yet knowing on some level that she is, that builds and builds to a crescendo, clamping our hearts in a vise, until that final terrible scream.
2. Gotta Light? (Part 8). This modern-TV masterpiece summons the unnerving dread of Eraserhead and the otherworldly awe of Malick’s Tree of Life and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here we get the genesis of Bob and birth of Laura, each the product of higher powers — the Evil Mother and Fireman, respectively — so Bob turns out to not be the Big Bad after all, or at least not the Biggest Bad. It’s his demonic mother, and in Part 15, she will be named: Jowday, or Judy. An important scene is that of the young Sarah Palmer hosting a moth-frog while the lumberjack’s mantra repeats over the air; presumably there are other moth-frog victims too. These seem to be a way of “tagging” potential hosts for a future day when Judy comes to earth, as she finally does at the end of Parts 1 and 2, emerging from the glass cage in New York, and then going out west to possess Sarah Palmer. Up until The Return, Sarah hasn’t been possessed, though she has been infected by a deep evil, which explains her schizo-problems in the classic series, and why she always had visions and nightmares of Bob. Frankly I’ve had my own nightmares since watching this episode, in which that undead lumberjack was outside pounding on my bedroom window, chanting: “This is the water, and this is the well; drink full, and descend; the horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within. This is the water, and this is the well…”
3. No Knock, No Doorbell (Part 16). Payoffs galore come in this embarrassment of riches, and plenty of the major players die. Hutch and Chantal, for one. Their storyline has been a constant Tarantino parody, and they go down in a bloodbath after provoking a psychopath by blocking his driveway. Richard Horne’s death is more biblical, like the Binding of Isaac; his father (Cooper’s doppelganger) pretty much sacrifices him by sending him in his place to climb the hill that has been booby-trapped with an electric explosion (the coordinates given by Ray in Part 13 and Jeffries in Part 15 each pointed here). Diane’s death offers the biggest revelation of all: she isn’t even Diane, but rather a tulpa created by Bob/Mr. C, whose purpose has been to keep tabs on Team Gordon and ultimately kill them all. Her confession about the night Cooper came to visit her holds some truth: a version of Cooper (Mr. C.) did rape the real Diane. She seems to have been pushed to this confession because she got a a one-word text message from Mr. C. (reading “all”), which triggered her and caused her to freak out and text him back the second half of the coordinates from Ruth Davenport’s arm (she had sent him the first half in Part 12), which lead to the White Lodge. She suddenly “feels herself in the Sheriff’s station” at Twin Peaks. (Which is where the real Diane is, in the form of Naido, being protected in a jail cell.) Most climactic is Dougie’s “death”; he wakes in his hospital bed, Dale Cooper once again, and I won’t deny I’m in tears when he assumes command like the hero we’ve missed this season, Laura’s theme starts playing, leading to his farewell to Janey-E and Sonny Jim. As if all this weren’t enough, Audrey Horne gives the best Roadhouse performance of the series, in her reprisal of “Audrey’s Dance”, a brilliant inversion of her sultry dance from season 1. But it turns out this dance is all in her mind: she’s sick and paranoid, and locked up in a psych ward — an upsetting but understandable fate for someone who was raped by the man she worshiped, and gave birth to a sadist like Richard.
3. Call for Help (Part 3). If you’re not hooked on The Return by this episode, you don’t have your priorities straight. The 20-minute opening sequence is a wet dream of Lynchian phantasmagoria, where Cooper, escaping from the Black Lodge, finds himself in the Realm of Nonexistence — almost a cross between the world of Eraserheard (ominous churning sounds, industrial hums) and Pan’s Labyrinth (eyeless humanoids). He’s protected from an unseen evil (who we will later know to be Judy) by two women, one of them being the eyeless Naido, the other being a Ronette Pulaski look-alike. The evil is referred to as “Ronette’s” mother. He exits the enclosure and finds himself floating in space, and he sees a huge face of Garland Briggs saying, “blue rose”, which is an FBI code word for either supernatural or extraterrestrial events. Naido falls off the capsule and plummets to Earth (this is October 1), where she will be found on the same day in Part 14. Eventually, Cooper gets “electrocuted” out of this Realm and into Las Vegas (nine days into the past, on September 22, as we later learn), taking the place of Dougie Jones, who vanishes in turn to the Black Lodge to be unmade. (Dougie is a copy of Cooper, who was made years ago by Bob/Mr. C as a ploy to confuse his adversaries.) David Lynch as Gordon Cole makes his first appearance in The Return, as he gets a call saying that Cooper is in prison in South Dakota. The actual Cooper takes over Dougie’s life in a retarded mental state, goes to the casino and starts winning jackpot after jackpot — one of my very favorite scenes in the series. His childlike “Hello!”‘s are precious.
5. Don’t Die (Part 6). I look so forward to this episode on my re-watches. The Dougie scenes are terrific. He’s driven home by a security guard, and has a touching moment in saying goodnight to Sonny Jim. Janey-E then finds out about his prostitute Jade, and tears him a new one, to which he replies with wonderful childlike innocence: “Jade give two rides”. Janey-E then arranges to meet with the thugs who are demanding his gambling debts, and her diatribe about the “99 percenters in a dark age” is hilarious. Then Dougie starts to unravel a network of corruption in the insurance case files, drawing cryptic images on the pages, which ends up scoring huge points with his boss. Cut to Richard Horne doing business with shady characters, while at the R&R Diner, Fat-Ass Miriam eats pies to the giggling fits of a waitress whose figure is also quite rotund. Shortly after, Richard Horne plows through an intersection, running over a little boy, and Fat-Ass Miriam is the only one who recognizes Richard behind the wheel of the truck. We see Ike the Spike carrying out a nasty (and messy) assassination of a woman who failed to kill Dougie; Dougie is of course next hit on Ike’s list. Finally, Hawk finds the lost pages of Laura’s diary in a bathroom stall door of the police station, apparently stashed there by Leland Palmer back in season 2 when he was brought in for questioning. It’s a hard-hitting episode all around.
6. There’s a Body All Right (Part 7). This is largely Diane’s episode, as she follows Gordon and his team back to the prison in South Dakota so she can question Cooper. After a harrowing interview (which makes rather clear that Bad Cooper raped Diane), she tells Gordon she knows the prisoner isn’t really Cooper. After they leave, the doppelganger blackmails the warden into letting him and Ray escape the prison. At Twin Peaks, Truman and Hawk read the missing pages from Laura’s diary, and conclude that “if the good Dale is in the Lodge”, and still there, then it must have been a bad version of Cooper that came out 25 years ago. Meanwhile in Vegas, Dougie is questioned by the police, when they find his car has been bombed, and of course Janey-E takes control of the conversation by scorning the police as incompetent fools. Then comes the most fucked up scene of the series: outside the insurance building, Dougie is attacked by Ike the Spike; his Cooper-FBI instincts take over immediately, and he grapples with Ike; suddenly the evolution of the arm (the brain on the tree) sprouts out of the sidewalk, hissing at him, “Squeeze his hand off! Squeeze his hand off!” Dougie/Cooper does just that, and is hailed a savior by the onlooking crowds. It’s a splendid homage to Cronenberg’s History of Violence. This is one of two episodes (besides Parts 1 and 18) that doesn’t contain a Roadhouse performance; it ends rather in the R&R Diner, to a mellow tune on the jukebox, which allows us to breathe better and process that crazy scene.
7. There’s Fire Where You Are Going (Part 11). This episode is packed with horrific events that end in a desert confrontation that almost goes the way of David Fincher’s Se7en. Bill Hastings’ head implodes as Team Gordon investigate the area in which Hastings and his librarian friend Ruth Davenport encountered an alternate reality called The Zone. Major Briggs had apparently been hibernating in the Zone, until he told Hastings and Davenport to find him a set of coordinates (to the White Lodge) in a military base. (When they did that for him, Briggs’ head disappeared and went to the White Lodge, while the rest of his body stayed behind.) Ghosts flit about this area, and Gordon finds the corpse of Ruth with the string of coordinates on her arm (which Diane later surreptitiously memorizes when Albert shows a photo of the arm). Over in Twin Peaks, Truman and Hawk are pouring over Hawk’s Indian map to locate the same place — Jackrabbit’s Palace, the grove mentioned in the metal tube left years ago by Major Briggs (which they opened in Part 9), which provides access to the White Lodge. On other fronts: Becky goes ballistic when she finds Steven is cheating on her, and almost kills her mother driving off to confront him with a gun. Bobby Briggs sees a strange zombie-like child figure crawling out of a stopped car. But it’s the final sequence that is alone worth the price of admission, as the Mitchum Brothers, on the brink of murdering Dougie in the desert, take him on as their friend. Like Part 7, this episode doesn’t end on a Roadhouse performance, but to the piano tunes of Angelo Badalamenti himself, in the casino restaurant, with Dougie and the Mitchums toasting each other — a new friendship that will play out wonderfully in the rest of the series.
8. What Story is That, Charlie? (Part 13). Here we see the two Coopers coming out on top in their respective worlds. Dougie and Janey-E are in Seventh Heaven, now that Dougie has cemented a friendship with the Mullins Brothers, who have lavished them with gifts, in particular a new car, and a play gym set for their son, which they set up in the backyard. Dougie even manages to avoid being poisoned by Anthony at the last minute, and turning his rival colleague to confession and contrition. And that’s not all: the gods are looking out for Dougie everywhere: the Las Vegas detectives finally get the fingerprint results for Dougie: he is a man who escaped from prison two days ago in South Dakota and is a former FBI agent. The truth is so ludicrous they laugh and trash the report as erroneous. As for Bad Cooper (Mr. C.), he gets the spotlight in this episode with the arm-wrestle match and his ascendance to boss-hood of this group of scumbags in western Montana that he has no use for. The brilliance of this scene is that it actually makes us root for Bad Cooper, for the first and only time in the series. He confronts Ray (an informant for the FBI), who confesses that somebody named Phillip Jeffries had ordered him to place the Owl Cave Ring on Mr. C.’s finger when he died. He tells Mr. C. that Jeffries is in hiding somewhere called “the Dutchman’s”, and gives Mr. C. the set of coordinates that will (supposedly) lead to the dark evil that Doppel-Coop is trying to find. Meanwhile, Sarah Palmer is watching violent video clips on repeat as she drinks and smokes; Norma refuses to dumb down her pie formula to increase profits; and Dr. Jacoby runs across his most loyal fan, Nadine, who is proudly displaying her gold shit-digging shovel.
9. The Past Dictates the Future (Part 17). Pardon my blasphemy for putting this right in the middle, but there’s something at once momentous and unsatisfying about the penultimate climax in Sheriff Truman’s office. It concerns of course the character of Freddie. The showdown between him and Bob is rather silly and plays like a sophomoric satire on the superhero franchise. (Honestly, I haven’t seen anything this hollow from Lynch since the Wizard of Oz imagery in Wild at Heart.) I can understand the logic of involving a character from a far-away place like England. The Black Lodge has been efficient at removing local threats (Briggs, Jeffries, Cooper, Diane, Desmond, Stanley, Hastings, etc.), and so the White Lodge needs to employ agents for this showdown that the Black Lodge either can’t see coming (innocent Andy, naive Lucy), or someone so far away that the Black Lodge can’t get to and corrupt in advance (like Freddie). But Freddie doesn’t work. He’s introduced too late in the series (Part 14) for us to be invested in, he’s not compelling anyway, and his gloved “magic fist” is rubbish. A villain like Bob deserved to go out better than this. Everything else about this episode is top notch. Cooper’s return to Twin Peaks is glorious, and I love that the Mitchum brothers (with their bimbos in tow: Candie, Mandie, and Sandie) are in attendance: a wonderful team up of the Vegas gangsters and the Twin Peaks cops. Cooper’s time-travel back into Laura’s Fire Walk With Me scenes, and his altering of the past, is sublime. Noteworthy is what happens before all of this, when Cooper’s doppelganger enters the White Lodge. That Mr. C. is easily trapped and diverted from Sarah Palmer’s house to the Sheriff’s Office (the coordinates he was given in Parts 12 and 16 by Diane, like those given in Parts 13 and 15 by Ray and Jeffries, led him into a trap both times) shows that he’s not as Bad as he thinks; it’s his mother Judy who is the real Bad.
10. Laura is the One (Part 10). After the plot infodumps of Part 9, this one gets back into story, without any real plot advancements, but with searing drama nonetheless. It shovels up the rot of everyday life, where women suffer unflinching violence at the hands of vain and vicious men. Richard Horne beats a school teacher to death (the one who saw him run over the boy in Part 6), and then robs his grandmother of all her money, choking her and swearing at her in a scene out of Clockwork Orange. Becky is terrorized by her boyfriend Steven (repeating the mistakes of her mother Shelly under Leo Johnson). Candie thinks the Mitchum Brothers will kill her after she hits one of them by accident swatting a fly. In contrast to this misogynistic dysfunction, Dougie and Janey-E share an act of sex that leaves them wonderfully fulfilled. Janey-E is falling in love with her husband all over again. The only real plot advancement is in the thread of the Mitchum Brothers, who, having spotted Dougie on TV (from Ike’s attempt on his life), now plan to kill this man who won all their casino jackpots and (per the lies of Dougie’s colleague) refused their 30 million-dollar insurance claim. Laura is the One shows Lynch channeling Blue Velvet with a vengeance. Laura is a prism showing the helplessness of abused women; the message is visceral and profound.
11. There’s Some Fear in Letting Go (Part 15). The shitstorm is imminent now, and the tension ratchets up. There are also emotional farewells. In the opening scene Nadine lets Ed go, giving him permission, after all these years, to be with Norma. And for the first time ever, I have actually enjoyed watching her, as she — inspired by the freedom-fighting ravings of Dr. Jacoby — marches down the road, armed with her shit-digging shovel, to give Ed his eternal pass to romantic freedom. (“See Ed? I’m shoveling my way out of the shit!”) Gersten and Steven’s affair ends on a rather different kind of farewell, as Steven blows his own brains out under the tree. And Dougie and Janey-E share a precious moment, as Janey-E finally thinks everything is coming together for a happy marriage — having no idea that she’s about to be bidding farewell to her precious Dougie, who puts his fork into an electrical socket, presaging his return to the identity of Dale Cooper in Part 16. The crucial scene is Mr. C’s. He comes to the teleporting Convenience Store in western Montana, gets access to “The Dutchman’s”, where we see that Philip Jeffries has turned into a Dalek/overgrown tea kettle. Judy is now discussed for the first time in The Return. Like Cooper and the Fireman, Mr. C. also has a plan to either capture or destroy this evil entity, and possibly harness her power so that he can become top dog. But Jeffries is dicking him around: Mr. C. asks why he sent Ray to kill him, but Jeffries deflects; Mr. C. guesses that it was not Jeffries but the demonic entity who had called him back in Part 2, the evil that wants him back in the Lodge, who is indeed probably the Judy whom Jeffries once mentioned back in 1989 (in the Fire Walk With Me sequence). He demands to know who Judy is, and Jeffries gives him some coordinates where he can find her; these coordinates point to the same location as the coordinates given by Ray in Part 13. The Roadhouse scenes are among the series best: a bar brawl to the tune of ZZ Top’s “Legs”, and the end performance of “Axolotl”, as a girl crawls on the floor between everyone’s feet, freezes suddenly, and let’s out a scream for who-knows-what-reason. Jesus, bring on the shitstorm already.
12. Brings Back Some Memories (Part 4). Cooper keeps scoring jackpots, and then he is chauffeured home to settle into his new life as Dougie. His interactions with Naomi Watts are instant classics, as he struggles to perform the simple tasks of dressing himself and drinking coffee. These scenes are some of the most precious in the series. The episode lands the surprise of Bobby Briggs, who has become a cop; and it’s an emotional moment when he breaks down at the sight of Laura’s photo in the police workroom. Hawk and Truman are trying to figure out what is “missing” (as the Log Lady told Hawk), as it pertains to Dale Cooper and Hawk’s Indian heritage. Bobby offers that Cooper was the last person to see his father (Major Briggs) alive, before he died in the fire at his station on March 28, 1989. A day before this, Cooper had come by the house to talk to Major Briggs about something. (Which we know must have been Cooper’s doppelganger, though Briggs had no idea.) Gordon, Albert, and Tammy arrive at the federal prison in South Dakota. Cooper tells Gordon that he’s been working undercover all these years with Phillip Jeffries, and that he needs to be debriefed by Gordon. Albert tells Gordon that years ago he had authorized Jeffries to give Cooper some needed information about their contact in Columbia New York. A week later that contact was dead. Gordon feels they are in over their head, and wants to get Diane to talk to Cooper.
13. Case Files (Part 5). In this episode we get the return of soap opera elements of the classic series: Norma and Shelly are still working at the R&R, but Shelly has a daughter in an abusive relationship (much like Shelly once was with Leo). There’s a bit too much of Sheriff Truman’s bitching wife. Dr. Jacoby, on the other hand, is put to hilarious use: now a freedom-fighting crank, he spews conspiracy theories on his own radio show, and peddles gold-plated shit-digging shovels (“Shovel your way out of the shit!”). Nadine seems to be his only fan. The best part of this episode, of course, is the Dougie storyline: Cooper’s day at work in an insurance meeting, where he calls out a colleague for lying about a claim, and is then tasked by his boss with reams of case files to work on as punishment, and then loiters outside on the plaza well into the evening, unable to get himself home. He befriends a statue to keep himself company, in a truly heartbreaking scene.
14. We Are Like the Dreamer (Part 14). By rights this episode should be a really strong one, as it contains the pivotal journey to Jackrabbit’s Palace on October 1, and Andy’s vision inside the White Lodge: the demonic Judy, the Convenience Store, the two Coopers, and the importance of Naido whom they find naked on the forest floor. But aside from that sequence — and the stunning scene in which Sarah Palmer opens up her face and and bites a man’s throat out — this is an episode weighed down by meandering exposition, and even almost half-ruined by the introduction of a silly character who becomes critical to the series’ end game. That character being Freddie of the Green Glove: a young man from Britain who was given a magic fist, and told by the Fireman to go to Twin Peaks where his “destiny would be fulfilled”. Seriously, did Lynch and Frost actually contrive something this half-baked? This episode finally connects Team Truman in Twin Peaks with Team Gordon in Buckhorn. The Sheriff calls Gordon to tell him about the missing pages from Laura’s diary that could imply there are two Dale Coopers. Gordon asks Diane if on the last night she saw Cooper he mentioned Major Briggs, and she says yes; Albert implies that Major Briggs, who died in a the fire 25 years ago, is out of place and time, since his body is young and only a few days dead, and found here in Buckhorn instead of Twin Peaks; and that inside his stomach was a ring dedication to a “Dougie” from a “Janey-E”. Diane looks alarmed, and tells them Janey-E is her half-sister living in Vegas, and Gordon calls the FBI to find this Dougie Jones.
15. Let’s Rock (Part 12). Some lists rank this as the worst episode, and it does admittedly try the patience of even the most die-hard Lynch fans, with scenes that move so glacially it’s obnoxious. But there are good sequences overlooked by the detractors, the best being the return of Audrey Horne. It took twelve episodes to get to her, and her prolonged, go-nowhere argument with her tiny bald husband becomes more suspenseful the less we can make sense of it. Then there is the other Horne, Benjamin (Audrey’s father), who we’ve seen in many episodes so far, but finally gets a strong scene, when Sheriff Truman pays him a visit. His reaction to the news of his grandson (Richard) being the one who ran over the boy makes me feel for Ben in a way I never have up to this point. Truman then gives Ben the old key to Cooper’s room at the Great Northern, that Dougie’s prostitute had put in the mail — cementing Truman’s conviction that Cooper is indeed active somewhere in some important way. Meanwhile Gordon brings Tammy onto the Blue Rose task force, and also deputizes Diane, though this latter is just to keep Diane close: He and Albert spy on her texts; she gets one from Mr. C. asking Diane if “they’ve asked about Vegas yet”; which Gordon knows nothing about. Diane figures the coordinates on Ruth Davenport’s arm point to Twin Peaks, and that must be where Major Briggs is now. She sends the first half of the coordinates to Mr. C. Finally, there are the scenes with Sarah Palmer who looks downright menacing; and there are strange noises inside her house. Oh, and I almost forgot: more of Dr. Jacoby’s hilarious shit-shoveling rants. Really, this episode isn’t quite as bad as it’s made out to be.
16a. My Log Has a Message for You (Part 1). I can understand why this was joined with Part 2 as a double bill, and I consider them as one, tied at the 16th slot. It’s a relatively sluggish re-introduction to the world of Twin Peaks. We learn that Buckhorn, South Dakota is a sort of “New Twin Peaks”, where Cooper’s doppelgänger (Mr. C.) has been operating since his escape from the Black Lodge in the season-two finale. It’s also here that local police have just found the decapitated head of a librarian placed on the headless body of an unidentified man (Major Briggs, we will later learn), and suspect the school’s principal, Bill Hastings. Meanwhile, in New York, the young pair Sam and Tracy are brutally savaged by a demonic force when they have sex; the force appears in a glass cage owned by Cooper’s doppelganger, who has been trying to trap this evil entity. Mr. C. himself is in South Dakota, hooking up with a shady couple named Ray and Darya. In Twin Peaks, meanwhile, the Log Lady tells Hawk that “something is missing”, having to do with Dale Cooper, and only Hawk can find it, on account of his heritage. The most critical scene, however, is the very first: Cooper is sitting in the White Lodge, and the Fireman tells him, “It is in our house now. Remember 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.” This scene takes place much later in the series, probably after Cooper electrocutes himself back into self-awareness at the end of Part 15. (Notice that in the above pic he doesn’t have his FBI pin, whereas he is wearing the pin in the Lodge scenes of Part 2; he reacquires the pin after the showdown with Bob in Truman’s office in Part 17. ) The meaning of the Fireman’s statement will unfold in the finale: the “it” refers to Judy, “our house” is the Palmer house, “430” is the number of miles that Cooper and Diane will have to drive to get to the alternate reality, “Richard and Linda” are Cooper and Diane’s alter egos, and “two birds with one stone” represents the overall plan of saving Laura and dealing with Judy at the same time. This plan is either (a) a backup plan, in case Judy foils Cooper’s attempt to save Laura in the past by sending Laura to an alternate world, or (b) part of the same plan to save Laura in the past, in which case the Fireman will send Laura to the alternate world in order to trap Judy.
16b. The Stars Turn and a Time Presents Itself (Part 2). There’s as much to pay attention to in this second half of Part 1. Laura Palmer appears to Cooper 25 years since she last saw him (27 years, actually, but who’s counting), just as she had promised, and, repeating the same gestures, bends over to whisper in his ear. Twenty-seven years ago she had whispered the name of her killer in his dream of the Black Lodge (something like “My father killed me”); now she whispers the name of a power even worse than Bob (something like “My mother is Judy”), and tells him that he can finally leave the Black Lodge. At this stage, we have no idea what she’s whispering, or know anything about Judy, but by the finale it will be clear that she gave Cooper a mission to save her from being killed by her father in the past, so that she can ultimately save her mother from Judy — and save other people from the growing powers of the Black Lodge. But again, we’re completely ignorant of the demon Judy at this point; we think Bob is the Big Bad, and so when we turn to the scenes of Mr. C, they carry the deepest dread. Ray has the information Mr. C needs, having gotten it from Bill Hastings’ secretary. But soon Ray is arrested and put in federal prison for (supposedly) carrying weapons over state line; Mr. C. kills Darya, realizing that she and Ray have been hired to kill him. Before killing her, he tells her that tomorrow he’s supposed to get pulled back into the Black Lodge, and shows her a spider symbol on an ace of spades, saying, “This is what I want.” It’s apparently some great demonic power he wants control over, and who we much later realize is Judy, who of course is the one who wants him dead and back in the Black Lodge. Mr. C. instead wants to find the White Lodge and harness its power to use against Judy, and that’s the information Ray has. Meanwhile inside the Lodge, Cooper looks out from the curtains and sees his doppelganger driving toward the South Dakota prison, but before he can step out, he is sabotaged by the doppelganger of the Evolution of the Arm, without question Lynch’s most brilliant creation in The Return. The doppelganger forces Cooper into the Realm of Nonexistence (which will pick up immediately in Part 3), while Judy emerges in New York, summoned by the sex act of Sam and Tracy, and then goes to take up residence in the Palmer’s house at west… and we see Sarah Palmer in her living room relishing scenes of gory violence on TV.
17. This is the Chair (Part 9). If there is a worst episode in The Return, I suppose it’s this one. It’s almost entirely an exposition dump, necessary for our understanding, but weighed down by the expected freight. As Gordon and his team fly away from South Dakota, he gets two phone calls, the first from the Pentagon, telling him about the fingerprint match with Major Briggs on the decapitated body in Buckhorn; the second from the prison they just left, informing him that Cooper (Mr. C.) just escaped. Mr. C. (who had put the hit on Dougie in Part 7) tells Hutch and Chantal that he will have a hit job for them in Vegas. Mr. C. is also sending secret texts to Diane, indicating that she can’t be entirely trusted. The Police, for their part, cannot find records on Dougie Jones prior to 1997, and so they swipe his fingerprints from a coffee mug. Meanwhile, in Twin Peaks, Mrs. Briggs tells the Sheriff’s team about the night before her husband died, when he he met with Agent Cooper (who must have been the Bad Cooper, based on what they read from Laura’s diary in Part 7). She gives them a vial left by her husband, containing directions, dates, times, and a location (Jackrabbit’s Palace) — which sounds a lot like the information for entering another dimension that Bill Hastings is describing to Gordon’s team at the same time in Buckhorn. The interrogation of Bill Hastings is the absolute worst scene of the series. Hastings (played by the thoroughly irritating Matthew Lillard) sobs pathetically as he relates the details of how he and Ruth Davenport located Major Briggs in an alternate dimension, how they helped the major find coordinates that would allow him to move the White Lodge to a new hiding place, and how Ruth was killed by “others” and that the major’s head vanished. His sobbing goes on and on, and it’s a tedious ordeal to sit through, but unfortunately necessary, unless you’ve seen the series enough times to know all the plot details.
And now, the music…
The musical sequences that finish each episode deserve to be ranked on their own. Most of them (except two of them, from Parts 7 and 11) are Roadhouse performances. One of them (the Nine Inch Nails, from Part 8) comes toward the beginning instead of the very end. Click on the links to see and hear the performances from The Return.
1. Audrey’s Dance, by Angelo Badalamenti (Part 16). The Return’s dreamiest and most nostalgic moment. Compare with the teenage Audrey, so full of promise, here, from Episode 2 of the classic series (“Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer”). Now she’s in a mental asylum. The stage performance is all in her head, and it crushes me every time on the reveal.
2. Axolotl, by The Veils (Part 15). The edgy Roadhouse pieces that finishes the episode where a shitstorm feels imminent. On the bar floor a girl crawls on the floor, weaving through the feet of dancers, until she freezes and lets out a scream for some unknown reason. Pure Lynchian psycho-horror.
3. No Stars, by Rebekah Del Rio and Moby (Part 10). The singer of “Llorando” in Mulholland Drive gives a stunning performance (and notice Moby playing guitar), with a voice that goes through you like an awl. A suitable aftermath to the horrible scenes of abuse inflicted on women throughout Part 10.
4. She’s Gone Away, by the Nine Inch Nails (Part 8). One wonders how the Roadhouse found the money to hire The Nine Inch Nails, but anyway… the band perfectly summons the specter of Bad Cooper, who is possessed by Bob. Part 8 is of course all about how Bob was created.
5. Saturday, by the Chromatics (Part 12). Like Julee Cruise in the classic years, Chromatics seems made for the world of Twin Peaks. This soothing instrumental piece caps off the slow-paced episode that is Part 12, and is a favorite of mine.
6. Wild West, by Lissie (Part 14). Lissie’s liveliness sets her apart from the other artists on this list, and it’s interesting that she is used for Part 14, which is dream-themed — almost serving as a wake-up call at the end. It’s a great song.
7. Heartbreaking, by Angelo Badalamenti (Part 11). It’s nice to have a couple episodes that break with the Roadhouse formula (the other is at #12). Badalamenti’s scoring plays over the casino restaurant scene, in which child-like Dougie receives blessings and favors of the mob.
8. The World Spins, by Julee Cruise (Part 17). The first time Cruise performed this was in the final scene of the critical Episode 14 of the classic series (“Lonely Souls”), when Leland Palmer was finally revealed as his daughter’s killer. (See here.) It’s fitting that Cruise reprises the song in Part 17, right after Cooper goes back in time to prevent that murder.
9. Tarifa, by Sharon Van Etten (Part 6). This deeply emotional piece really hits the spot after the roller coaster ride of Part 6, involving the hit-and-run of a young boy, a messy assassination of the woman who failed to kill Dougie Jones at the Rancho Rosa Estates, and Janey-E’s “We are the 99 percenters!” diatribe as she pays off Dougie’s gambling debts.
10. Shadow, by Chromatics (Part 2). This band is so atmospheric they play twice (the other at #5), and they make a perfect first act in the series.
11. Snake Eyes, by Trouble (Part 5). A suitable piece to the upsetting booth scene in which the sadistic Richard Horne is introduced for the first time.
12. Sleep Walk, by Santo and Johnny Farina (Part 7). Nothing beyond these mellow notes are necessary after the batshit crazy scene of the brain-tree in the sidewalk.
13. Mississippi, by Cactus Blossoms (Part 3). Slow-burning country harmonies aren’t usually my thing, but this piece carries enough eeriness to go with the weird confusion of Part 3.
14. Lark, by Au Revoir Simone (Part 4). Lynch has always liked this band for the dreamy voices and haunting harmonies, but they don’t do much for me.
15. A Violent Yet Flammable World, by Au Revoir Simone (Part 9). See #14.
16. Just You, by James Hurley (Part 13). The otherwise excellent Part 13 is capped off by the worst performance. This song has been derided by even hard-core Lynch fans, ever since James first sang it with Maddy and Donna (see here) in Episode 9 of the classic series (“Coma”), and I’m not sure what Lynch was thinking by resurrecting it. Unlike Julee Cruise (see #8), the nostalgia power is very limited here. It’s just a cheesy song about a tortured romance.