Hello and welcome to my recaps of Season 3 of TWIN PEAKS! Wooed by a longtime love of Twin Peaks that I’m pretty sure has been passed on epigenetically from my parents (’91 babe here), I’ve decided to write painfully detailed recaps of the new season. My hope is that taking a magnifying glass to the season will give me more answers than Lynch raises questions, or at least more opportunities to spot the meta #stylespo of the entirely recycled fashion of that era in its contemporary iterations. Preparation for this included re-watching the first two seasons for the 6th or 7th time, discovering a whole lot of new things as I do on every rewatch, and contemplating coffee, cherry pie and saddle shoes deeply.
Painfully Detailed Recap Episode 1, Part I (with predictions from Part II peppered in):
Annnnnnd here we go! Two years of anticipation and some dicey contractual dealings later, we finally open on the new season of Twin Peaks! Hello young Dale! Hello young Laura! We open with a flashback from the first season, the dream sequence where Agent Dale Cooper encounters Laura in the Black Lodge and she tells him that they’ll meet again in 25 years. That unsettling finger snap of hers would make a great party trick. What does Laura’s iconic hand gesture mean? We still don’t know! Maybe this season will give us some answers.
Another scene from the original pilot plays next featuring the anonymous student running across the quad and screaming. Originally the scene set the foreboding tone before the students found out about Laura Palmer’s death, making me wonder whose death we’ll find about this time. The camera pans across the school hallway to the preserved picture of Laura as homecoming queen gazing mournfully at us before we roll to the opening credits.
And the opening credits have been jazzed up! A whole new set of panoramic shots of Twin Peaks’ rugged, beautiful natural landscape set to Antonio Badalamenti’s score, and a dizzying closing shot of the black-and-white chevron of the Black Lodge’s floor.
Cut to the Giant having a conversation in greyscale with Agent Cooper. “Listen to the sounds”, he instructs, while the creepy clicks and scratches of an old gramophone follow. “It is in our house now” says the Giant, and Cooper asks in a clearly perturbed voice “It is?”. (That’s about how I’d respond to that statement too. Neat party trick- walk up to the host and say that phrase deadpan. Watch hilarity ensue.) The giant instructs Cooper/the audience to remember the numbers “4 3 0”, which will perhaps gain meaning along with the “2 5 3” from Part II, but I’m getting ahead of myself. “Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.” continues the Giant, “You are far away”. Cooper seems to understand, even if we don’t quite yet.
You know who definitely is far away? So far away that he is living alone in a trailer in the woods, getting boxes of shovels delivered and ominously refusing help from the delivery man with lines like “I like to work alone”? Dr. Jacoby! Those red and blue lens glasses will be on all the store’s shelves by July, mark my words.
New York City? I like this Twin-Peaks-On-The-Road Adventure! Maybe this is what Donna meant by James going off on his bike and coming back with stories. The aerial shots of NYC manage an unnerving take on the stereotypical movie exposition shot of its skyscrapers. We arrive in the glass elevator/zero gravity chamber Cooper will get trapped in, while an average looking dude hangs around staring blankly watching a circle of cameras watch the glass box. Buzzcut Season’s look gives me serious nostalgia for the fresh faced original cast- they don’t make hunks like they used to. (Buzzcut Season, being played by Benjamin Rosenfield, is actually a character named Sam Colby, but I prefer my nomenclature. Shoutout to Lorde fans!). Or Lynch isn’t casting the same way, maybe in subtle commentary to the full degeneration of the once-wholesome and aesthetically thrilling world of the show.
“Camera three.”, instructs an intercom, prompting Buzzcut Season to remove and replace camera 3’s SD card, labeling and filing it. Is this his job??? This is why the boomers are calling millenials lazy and entitled. (We find out later that it is his job, and if it ain’t commentary on the gig economy Lynch is making here, I’ll be damned.) “Delivery” crackles a different intercom voice, and Buzzcut Season punches a long security code to open the door to a foyer with one surly-looking security guard who probably also suffers from job precarity and a camel coat clad model named ‘Tracey’. Tracey brought two coffees in to-go cups, like a good millenial, depriving us of the cute diner banter of yesteryear. (The large ‘Z’’s emblazoning the cups are probably the logo of a microroaster whose single-origin beans are fair trade. Hipster coffee purveyors, get me some ‘Z’ coffee! I’m here for all the product tie-ins.) She wants to hang out with Buzzcut but she’s not allowed. “You’re a bad girl Tracey”, Buzzcut tells her when he catches her trying to peep his security code to get back in to the room with the glass box. “Try me”, she replies. Tracey is definitely up to something. Completely unphased by the scowl on the security guard’s face, Tracey leaves in the industrial elevator.
We’re transported through time and space to Twin Peaks, and the scenic Great Northern Hotel. The Great Northern looks handsome as ever, although its proprietor Ben Horne looks a little worse for wear. Ashley Judd is Beverly the secretary, and Jerry Horne is here too! Although he’s shrunk into a shadow of his former boisterous self, now only a crunchy granola hipster with an unkempt beard. Probably what Santa Claus looks like on the other 364 days of the year. Jerry lewdly asks Ben if he’s already sexually harassed his employee, to which Ben spells out R-E-S-P-E-C-T and mumbles about her ‘beautiful soul’. Jerry is skeptical of Ben’s reformed act but then again it might be the edibles. Apparently no longer in the hotel business, Jerry now makes 30% of the Horne fortune from ‘legal’ pot!
Back at the Sheriff’s department, Lucy may be older but she still sounds like she’s about 8. After staring perplexed at a man who comes in looking for Sheriff Truman, she asks “Which Sheriff Truman? It might make a difference”, giving rise to intriguing possibilities since the actor playing the original Sheriff Truman declined to return for this season. “One is sick and the other one is fishing”, she explains, remaining the same lovable space cadet, wholly unhelpful unless she wants to be.
Suddenly, we’re out on the drive through the woods, a solitary set of headlights illuminating the winding road to a fascinatingly angry remix of ‘American Woman’. We’re introduced to Evil Dale/BOB, a leather jacketed bad boy with a horrible wig and black contacts (seriously make-up department- was that the only wig you could find?). After beating up some poor country boy, Evil Dale/BOB walks into a cabin and says hi to Otis, an inscrutable man sitting and drinking something that remarkably looks like piss out of a mason jar. After sitting in silence across from for some time and looking around ominously, Evil Dale/BOB greets the newly-appeared mistress of the house, Buella. He asks her to get Ray and Darya and to ”Put something better at your front door.“ “It’s a world of truck drivers.” Buella replies. Ain’t that the truth, sister.
Ray and Darya come out and obediently follow Evil Dale out the door. Just not before a ritual goodbye involving leaving unidentifiable paper cards with a previously unintroduced man sitting in a wheelchair in the corner and shaking hands with his companion.
Back in New York, Buzzcut Season is still switching out SD cards, when Tracey comes back. The security guard is conveniently gone, and she looks surprised by this fact but I’m betting she has something to do with it. ”Does this by any chance mean I could go in there with you?” she asks, and Buzzcut decides to let her in. “Let’s not overthink this opportunity” she tells him when he worries that the guard might come back. Once inside, Tracey immediately commences interrogating Buzzcut about the weird elevator/box. It turns out the glass box belongs to an ‘anonymous billionaire’ and Buzzcut Season doesn’t know much about it. “It’s just a job I got to help with school.”, he admits. ( #milleinalsidehustle ) It is his job to literally watch the box, seeing if anything appears inside. Tracey asks if it has and Buzzcut admits that although he hasn’t seen anything in there, his predecessor did. Perhaps Cooper — or something else from the Black Lodge- already tried to escape?
“We’re not supposed to say anything about this place or this glass box” Buzzcut states, undercutting the believability of an episode that includes a murderous alien monster. Any hard-up millenial knows to stick to the terms of the NDA, no matter how bad he wants to get laid. They sit on the couch, Buzzcut asking Tracey if she wants to ‘make out a little’ before the two proceed to have the most awkward sex scene known to man, or probably whatever Lynch thinks this hook up culture is all about. (Hey kids, use protection! I yelled at my TV.) In the middle of awkward couch sex, Buzzcut notices that the glass box has turned an opaque black, and a ghostly figure seems to be skip-walking through it in a loop. It notices them, turning its constantly melting Rorschach blot head to face their horrified expressions, before breaking through the glass box into our world and violently slicing up our protagonists. Tarantino-levels of blood splatter across the shot, making me think Dale Cooper’s presence in the box either precedes the monster or occurs after their corpses have been cleaned up by the aforementioned billionaire. If you have theories, comment below!
We’re jerked across the country again, to another Idyllic American TownTM called Buckhorn, no doubt this season’s foil to Twin Peaks a la the strange soap opera Invitation to Love of seasons past. A large woman with Chihuahua named Armstrong smells a terrible smell coming from her neighbor ‘Ruth’’s apartment, and calls the police. What follows is a frustratingly convoluted search for Ruth’s key, with police officers Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum proving almost painfully incompetent at their jobs, like funhouse mirrors of Deputy Andy but without any of the disarming charm. At one point, Ruth’s redheaded neighbor helpfully explains that the owner of the spare key, Barney, is “in the hospital, and not the regular hospital” *wink, nudge*, eliciting a healthy side-eye from me. Twin Peaks has had some incredibly ableist moments that I was hoping the new season would quietly let stay in another era. Here’s to hoping Barney’s ok, whatever kind of hospital he’s in.
It eventually turns out the neighbor had a key all along, so the police officers let themselves in; Ruth’s apartment looks like it’s been roughed up. Lynch uses deft camera angles to build suspense, a slow shot taken from the hallway closing in on Ruth’s corpse in the bedroom. Ruth’s been shot through the eye, a stylistic murder choice which seems to crop up throughout Parts I and II. Perhaps Evil Dale/BOB, who seems the most likely culprit for this murder, has a particular modus operandi in his killing of women, just like Evil Leland Palmer/BOB did.
Back in the woods, we see the Log Lady hooked up to a breathing tube, a sucker punch for fans of the original series who were devastated that actress Catherine E. Coulson passed away in 2015. It was speculated that she may have filmed some footage before her death, but the confirmation is bittersweet. She calls Deputy Chief Hawk (Why is he STILL Deputy? Especially if the original Sheriff Truman is gone? Shouldn’t he be running the place by now?) on ‘the line with the light that’s blinking’ [Thanks, Lucy!] of the Sheriff’s Station push-button phones. Technology hasn’t come to Twin Peaks just yet. The log has a message for Hawk, she says. “Something is missing and you have to find it. It has to do with Special Agent Dale Cooper. The way you will find it has something to do with your heritage. This is a message from the log.” Ermmmmmm, ok. The original show didn’t do a particularly good job of giving Hawk a rounded character, instead fleshing him out in offensive stereotypes. If I’m being charitable here, Lynch could be trying to make up for that. It’s a clunky piece of dialogue regardless.
Back at Buckhorn, the police discover that Ruth has also been decapitated, and the body found does not match her head and is that of a man. Prints found in the apartment belong to Bill Hastings, the detective’s kid’s principal. An archetype of wholesome Americana that Lynch will likely tear limb from limb to expose its rotten insides. Detective Dave Macklay arrests Bill at the Hastings household over the protestations of Phyllis Hastings. “But the Morgans are coming for dinner!”, she cries, more indignant at the disrupted suburbia plans than at her husband being mysteriously arrested.
Hawk is on the Log Lady’s mission, digging out what look like 25 year old evidence boxes. Deputy Andy Brennan and Lucy come in to give some background. Apparently, Agent Cooper has been missing since before their son Wally was born and Wally is 24 years old! Plus, Cooper never even sent a Christmas card or came to see Wally, admonish Andy and Lucy. Hawk waves them off with instructions about retrieving more files, assuring them that he’ll bring the coffee and donuts. Hopefully we’ll finally get some Double R Diner action!
Left to languish in an interrogation chamber, poor Bill Hastings looks awfully worried for someone who has supposedly done nothing wrong. Don Harrison, a rugged country type clearly meant to play cranky cop to Detective Macklay’s blundering cop, asks about the missing body and head. With no leads on it, Detective Macklay is sent to grill Hastings. Turns out that Ruth Davenport is the librarian at the school, and despite Hasting’s denial that he so much as breathed in her direction, his fingerprints were found at the crime scene. The monotony of Detective Macklay’s questioning of Bill feels like a punishing metaphor for the faceless and often unjust bureaucracy of the American Justice system. Charged with murder, Bill is locked up in a cell, asking only if he can speak to his wife. Meanwhile, Phyllis continues to focus on the wrong things, lamenting her disrupted dinner plans while getting served with a warrant to search her house and her husband’s car. Her entirely unphased approach should seem vaguely suspicious to the police in a normal show, but this is Twin Peaks. The detectives find a piece of human (what this piece is remains unclear) in the trunk of Bill Hasting’s car, and if they don’t wise up to Phyllis’ odd behavior soon, Bill’s goose is as good as cooked.
Female body count: 1
Male body count: 1
Total body count: 2
Stray thoughts:
-As always Lynch gets more out of the silences than most directors do out of spoken lines.
- Lynch including flashbacks/splicings of the original footage seems an almost odd choice. He doesn’t usually give viewers that much ‘help’ in following along with the action. Is the choice deliberate? Will it reveal something we don’t already know? Is it meaningless? Will the micro analyzing of every Lynchian stylistic choice drive us all mad? Stay tuned!
- When the Giant tells Cooper “You are far away”, is he referring to the Evil Dale/BOB? Or to Cooper, who crackles into ‘non-existence’ at the end of the scene? Maybe there’s a time limit to Cooper being able to get out from the Black Lodge/to get BOB back in. The giant has usually given Cooper good advice, although he did say “One and the same” while sitting next to the Dwarf, Lynch’s Black Lodge embodiment, in the Season 2 finale. We can’t know the Giant’s true loyalties yet.
- Why didn’t the police officers just kick down the door? Wondering why characters don’t do the obvious thing in Lynch productions is a reliable way to drive yourself mad. A large helping of suspension of disbelief is necessary to keep watching.
- Decapitated piece of human at the bottom of Bill’s trunk prompts Dave to say “woof’
- I just found out that Hawk’s full character name is ‘Deputy Chief Tommy ‘Hawk’ Hill’, a choice so grossly out of step with the current expectations for cultural sensitivity that TV audiences have for their shows that it seems to stem from a wholly different era of cinema and not the recent past. Giving you serious, angry side eye, Lynch. Perhaps the Log Lady’s clumsy advice to Hawk about using his tracking skills is Lynch realizing that 25 years on, it’s a different time and the internet is scarier than the Black Lodge. Do better!
- Who is Carel Struyken and why does she play a character named “???????”
