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Twin Peaks: The Return, Part Six

Hawk finds a secret. Evil Kid makes roadkill of a ten-year-old. Albert meets Diane. Dale keeps impersonating a potato.

Most of this episode is devoted to Cooper. To say that Cooper's storyline is tortoise-like would be an insult to tortoises. His "wife" gets angry about a picture of him with the hooker from the third act and she chews out some criminals who blackmail them. Dale tries to spend some quality time with his "son" and solves some case files by scribbling unintelligible symbols on them which his boss nonetheless finds very insightful.

It took four episodes for someone to yell at Dale to "wake up", and it's not even a real person but rather a supernatural creature. Anyway Dale doesn't yet seem able to comply.

Evil Kid (his name is Richard) meets an even more Evil Man (his name is Red) who scares the shit out of him through Mystical Unexplained Mojo. Apparently they're both in the drug business, but I didn't quite get if the town they're targeting is Twin Peaks. I would suppose so. We still don't know if Richard's the son of Ben, Jerry, Aubrey or none of them. Blowing off steam he decides to race past a car queue and smash through Little Kid on the way. I may be cynical about that but the kid had no backstory so his death left me rather emotionally unmoved, through no fault of acting on the show. Old Man (his name is Carl) sees the life leaving the kid's body and unsuccessfully tries to console the crying mother.

Albert finds Diane at a bar. That's remarkable, since I spent the entire original run convinced that "Diane" was Cooper's name for his voice recorder. Of course, their conversation could've actually propelled the show forward, so we don't get to hear it at all in this episode.

Weird Small Person (I don't know what his name is) goes and murders two people, one of which is the girl who ordered the unsuccessful hit on Dougie Jones. I don't know why. Does anyone know why?

Finally, Hawk finds a stash of paper hidden in the linings of a door in the police station's toilet. It's a rather clever way of doing it; losing his Indian-stamped coin, noticing the Indian sign on the door then tearing it up. We don't get to know what's in those papers either.

The One Armed Man is starting to emerge as an ally of sorts to Cooper. Bob, for now, is the chief enemy, though he isn't in this episode. In fact there's very little in the way of the supernatural about this installment. Cooper's clearly at least somehow trying to return back to life, grasping at the sheriff's badge, unable to make sense of it. We'll see how long his rehabilitation will really take. My money's on six more episodes.

Kyle really is a good actor, and it's easy to see why Lynch is so fond of him. He does the best he can given impossible restraints. I came to think about it while watching this episode — in the season finale of Gotham, I noted that it ought to be impossible to portray a brainwashed zombie with nuance and emotional depth. It's not impossible for Mr. McLachlan.

I will conclude my review now. Less is more.

3 comments:

  1. I'm happy I didn't have to review this one, Thomas, and I'm not sure I have much to add to what you wrote here. I understand that waiting for Coop to "wake up" is part of the point, but I'm sick of waiting. I miss Coop.

    Old Man (his name is Carl) sees the life leaving the kid's body and unsuccessfully tries to console the crying mother.

    The old man is a character from Fire Walk With Me: he owned the trailer park where Theresa Banks lived. It's where Chris Isaak went missing.

    According to The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Carl was abducted by what might be aliens, might be extradimensional beings, when he was a child. He was with Margaret Lanterman, the Log Lady (pre Log) at the time, and she was also abducted.

    Also according to The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Lucy's favorite book is Stephen King's The Stand. Cooper's is the Warren Commission report.

    Cooper trying to hide his arm in his jacket sleeve made me think of "The Arm" from the Red Room, as well as the One-Armed Man.

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  2. I had a weird feeling that we would meet Diane soon. = Laura Dern! Maybe a Blue Velvet reunion will finally wake Cooper up.

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  3. McLachlan's acting with that bag of chips is masterful!

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