Spoiler alert: this blog is for Twin Peaks viewers who have seen episode 11 of The Return, showing on Showtime on the US and Sky Atlantic in the UK. Do not read on unless you have watched.
‘There’s something in that box. And if that something is what I saw in my dream, we can’t kill him.’
Damn fine pie! Would a little fist-pump be appropriate at this point? When Dougie/Cooper drove through Nevada holding a box of mysterious cargo, Twitter started to rumble with memes suggesting it was Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in there (David Fincher’s Seven, see). A bloody showdown with the gangsterly Mitchums looked inevitable (except for the fact there is little such thing in this show), but in the end there was nobody’s head in the box, just the cherry pie that Bradley saw in his dream last night. The gangster convinces his disappointed brother not to kill Dougie, and, with the presentation of a $30m insurance cheque, the discombobulated Dougie is in the brothers’ bosom.
Next, they’re making nice in a casino bar and Dougie is discovering a hitherto undiscovered love for cherry pie. When Rodney Mitchum exclaims how it is “so damn good!”, something is visibly stirred within him. Does this mean Cooper is to be awoken from his dream, realising his true identity and returning to the titular logging town where these disparate stories will all – presumably – converge? If that is where we’re going, he’s not there yet. His coffee has milk in it for a start.
It’s not just the teased glimpses of clarity that make this the most satisfying instalment yet. Probably more than any other episode, it brought together the conflicting qualities of this series: both its humour and the quirkily twisted small-town USA that it is very, very gruesome. Cooper may be limping towards a way out, but if you look elsewhere, he seems like the only one.
‘There’s fire where you are going.’
There are dark forces approaching, too. In Buckhorn, there is literally something in the air, as Gordon witnesses an unexplained/unexplainable black-hole vortex in the sky. The same vision we saw in the fever-dream that was Part 8, it lets through the nefarious ghostly people, nearly enveloping Gordon, and its emergents off half of Hastings’ head. This law enforcement duo remain my favourite characters, not least because of their insistence on buddy-movie copping, but also how this grim sequence is played for laughs.
Back in the Peaks itself, the continuity tie-ups bring us the stories that end up as the most moving. Becky is revealed as the daughter of Bobby Briggs and Shelley, and we explore a domestic abuse story. Becky’s clearly suffered more than infidelity at the hands of husband Steven Burnett, and when a gloriously wild-eyed Amanda Seyfried flings her mother from a car bonnet then fires rounds of bullets through her love rival’s door, it’s a joyous moment, as damaged as she obviously is. The downplayed diner scenes, in which her parents try to get through to their daughter about her husband, give this episode its necessary heartbreaking beats.
Peaks and troughs
• It’s an ominous sign to see children playing ball unsupervised on a quiet road. But the brief opening sequence informs us that Miriam survived her ordeal at the hands of Richard Horne last week, crawling blood-splattered through the undergrowth.
• That hokey version of Viva Las Vegas playing as Dougie drives through Nevada comes courtesy of South Dakota folk singer Shawn Colvin. And the sprightly mood seems to signal the change of tone ahead.
• Would there really be time for Maggie in the Sheriff’s department to dispatch someone to these callers so quickly in such quick succession? Is that the point?
• Steven’s mistress is of course an all-grown-up Alicia Witt in the latest cameo from the original series.
• Hawk’s map holds a wealth of easter eggs for those paying the closest attention. There’s black fire on the way, but as for that beetle …. “you don’t want to know what that is.”
• This article was amended on 25 July 2017 to clarify that the character of Becky is the daughter of Bobby Briggs and Shelley, and the wife of Stephen Burnett. And also to correct the reference to Robert where Richard Horne was meant.
