In S3 Part 10 this week we had an incredible journey into the world of Twin Peaks. There were some genuinely joyous, comical, whimsical, and downright disturbing moments projected onto our TV screens; I must admit I felt uneasy, and I still have a sense of foreboding I cannot shake.
I’ll take you on a trip with Gordon Cole, Albert Rosenfield and Tammy Preston, who are still trying to figure out precisely what happened to Ruth Davenport and how this all links to Major Briggs.
The first we see of our favourite FBI Investigators are Albert and Constance Talbot sharing a meal in the hotel restaurant. They are laughing and joking, Constance is wildly gesticulating, they are clearly really enjoying each other’s company. Well, this is nice. After the horror we have just witnessed happening to Johnny and Sylvia Horne at the hands of Richard Horne, this is a moment that brings a feeling of warmth, humour, and safety. I got butterflies; I won’t lie.
Albert is adored in the world of Twin Peaks. He is without a doubt a fan favourite; his killer quips, cutting remarks and snarky comments – but we know he is also the most righteous man, with a heart of gold, a warrior, an honourable friend and a brilliant lawman. After all these years, to see him perhaps find a perfect match, well, this is just beautiful. But without his bitterness, would Albert be the character we love so much? Will his demeanour change now?
And yet, I am nervous. Series 3, more than any other, has taught us to be prepared for a shock at any time. Just as we gazed adorably at the mom and boy playing in the park and Carl Rodd’s joy watching them, we know how quickly that pleasure can turn to excruciating pain. Would Lynch & Frost do this to Albert?
Sadly Miguel Ferrer passed away before ever getting to see his final act on television; I can only hope that he got to see as much of the whole thing as he could before he died. Of course, Lynch and Frost knew he was very unwell while he was filming. Did he get to choose his fate before his final curtain call? If he did, I would imagine that he would like to go down in a blaze of glory, which worries me. Whatever happens, I have a feeling I’ll be crying for days, whether it’s a happy ending or heroic and devastating finale for Albert.
Gordon Cole watches the pair on their ‘date’, and there is a genuine look of glee on his face. I can’t help but feel that Lynch wanted us to see this, how proud he was of his buddy, how much he loved him, to bring him a companion like this in his final days feels like a fitting tribute. He calls Tammy over to share his excitement, and she squeals too, “sweet!”
Next, we see Gordon in his hotel room, and he is doodling. Listen to the sounds. What he is drawing appears to be a dog-like creature with massive branch-like antlers, seven spots, and an arm-stretching from outside the frame as if to try to grab it. Is this just a random sketch, or is Gordon subconsciously linked to ‘another place’? The Arm, the branches, all could be linked to the Evolution of The Arm. The way the arm is stretching in reminds me of how Laura was pulled from the red room after telling The Good Dale her secret.
This may all be a red herring, but I wonder. There is a knock at the door. Gordon goes over to open it and has a vision of Laura Palmer, crying traumatically.
Fans will know that this footage of Laura is taken from Fire Walk With Me, just after she has been to her house and saw BOB in her bedroom looking for her hidden diary. She was tipped off by The Tremonds, who had met her in the parking lot outside the RR Diner, where she was about to start her meals on wheels deliveries. They gave her the picture of the doorway, told her it would look nice on her wall, and The Grandson said, “The man behind the mask is looking for the book with the pages torn out“.
After seeing BOB, she flees her home and hides on the grass underneath the bushes. She waits, and then out steps her father. Her world falls apart as the dreadful realisation hits her; it’s her father that has been abusing her all this time. Can you really put yourself in Laura’s shoes here? The pain she must have felt, the betrayal, the disgust, how could you live with something like that? The truth is, she couldn’t. She visits her best friend Donna, and this is the vision Gordon has of Donna opening the door to Laura. Laura asks her through weeping, “Donna, are you my best friend?”. Of course, Laura could never tell Donna, who comforts her, but never in her worst nightmares would she have guessed what Laura was going through.
How did Gordon see this? As far as we know, he never met Laura, he more than likely saw her prom picture and probably the picture of her body, but he never met her in waking life. It is quite probable that Gordon knows a lot more than we know about what happened to Laura. There’s a reason why he sends his agents on specific cases; he knows when a case is bluer than blue. What did he know about the death of Teresa Banks? She was a drifter, a prostitute, and no family came to collect her body. There was nothing so strange about her murder that it was supernatural, but Gordon did know something was up. He sent Lil The Dancer to give Agents Chet Desmond and Sam Stanley the clues.
So, where is he getting his information from? Are visions commonplace for him?
Or was this Laura herself calling to him for help? Is she trying to remind him of her, place in his psyche a memory of what happened to her, that it was her father that killed and raped her, that this is not the real Agent Cooper, but an imposter, and this is BOB’s work.
Who else had visions of Laura? The Good Dale did. Is this Coop’s subconscious, sending messages to his old friend and trusted colleague, forwarding messages on, sharing his dreams in the hope that Gordon will realise what he needs to do, what he needs to look for?
As he stands in the doorway, he realises Albert is there. Albert glances at the space which he is staring at briefly. They enter the room; Albert gestures for Gordon to turn his hearing aid down low, then tells him, “Diane received this text at 11.15 this morning – ‘Around the dinner table the conversation is lively’ – now that came in after Cooper escaped. It pinged off a cell tower in Philly so at first I thought it was one of her boyfriends, seems like she has a stable of male suitors, but Tammy traced this one back from there to a server in Mexico“.
Gordon asked if she responded, and Albert tells him that she sent the following heavily encrypted message:
“They have Hastings. He’s going to take them to the site”.
Oh Diane, Diane, Diane. What are you up to? Gordon tells Albert that he felt it when she hugged him but that this confirms it. So there we were, thinking that he was a little cold toward her when she hugged him, and he grimaced — not the response you’d imagine Gordon would give any beautiful woman, especially an old friend. No, he knew something was up. He’s not Deputy Director of the FBI for nothing.
If you read my last article, you’ll know I had my suspicions then, but who is Diane working with and why? My heart tells me that she’s double bluffing, that whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it to save the real Agent Cooper, that perhaps by working with Doppelcooper, she’ll get close enough to figure out how to save him. There’s also a small and unlikely chance that she didn’t get that message direct from Doppelcooper, that yes, it was the message he sent to someone, but it was forwarded on to her by someone else, someone on the inside, Jeffries maybe. My head tells a different story — Diane is one of the bad guys now. We don’t know why she left her job, but she doesn’t seem particularly impressed with the FBI in general. Whatever happened to her, I feel she blames them for her involvement.
Gordon and Albert are going to keep her close; keep an eye on her now. This feels like a wise decision, but I do wonder if this plan may have terrible consequences. How can they visit the site with Diane in tow without leading Doppelcooper to his target?
Now here comes Tammy, walking, swinging those hips with purpose, in slow motion as she comes round the corner. This is not purely to watch her elegant beauty in action; something is happening here. As she reaches the door, there is a glitch by the door handle, the same sort of glitch we saw when Doppelcooper shot Phyllis Hastings. It’s almost as if there is a tear in the seams of reality. Is Laura still there? Still watching, hoping someone will see her? Is this a ripple in time? Is something happening somewhere else that is affecting history as we know it? Does this happen every time a lodge spirit passes into our dimension?
Or is there something going on with Tammy? She is quite otherworldly. The way she moves and every facial expression is exaggerated, almost like an alien mimicking a human. Despite this, my personal view is she’s the real deal; in fact, she’s better than we assume. She may seem like a dolly bird on the outside, but this woman knows exactly what’s going on here. She had Diane sussed way back and I think and hope she’s going to do some major ass-kicking soon! Besides, Gordon knows exactly how great his Agents are and has put his trust in her. Don’t listen to the hater’s Tammy!
She bangs at the door, causing Gordon’s hearing aid to feedback. Once inside the room, she asks, “You remember the Penthouse murders in New York City? This was just found on one of the earliest cards”. She shows Gordon and Albert a photograph of Doppelcooper, who appears to be standing in front of the glass box, not in it, facing a bald man wearing glasses, who is either very tall (a giant???????) or could be levitating, or maybe perched on a stool. It’s not too easy to make out. He appears to be wearing a trench coat, very similar to those we see the FBI Agents wearing in Series 1 & 2, or it could be a lab coat. As the ‘mother’ we have seen in entering the glass box was credited as ‘experiment’, the latter may be more likely. I’d love to see what was pictured on cards 1 and 2!
Gordon exclaims that “this is something this is really something!” And indeed it is – proof that Dopplecooper is the billionaire behind the box? Quite possibly! And as the Good Dale would say, “when two things happen simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must pay special attention”.
If Doppelcooper’s intuition is as good, if not better than the Good Dales, then chances are he’s made a lot of money over the last 25 years, and not just gambling, of course, he can do pretty much what he wants, and take what he wants. So why did he build the box? To capture the Good Dale upon his release from the lodge? Knowing ‘mother’ would rip him to smithereens, and he would be rid of him forever?
What will happen if either Doppelcooper or The Good Dale die? I suppose that depends on your take: Are they one and the same person, split in two? Are the good and evil halves divided into two separate beings? Or is Doppelcooper a copy? Are there many alternate realities, all very similar with as many versions of everyone? Have they somehow started bleeding into each other through a crack in the dimension wall? If Dale dies in our reality, can Doppelcooper exist without him? It appears he wants him dead, so I’m guessing he’d do just fine without him.
There seem to be rules of the lodge. BOB/Dopplecooper was supposed to return 25 years later, but he doesn’t want to. Why not? Does he enjoy harvesting garmonbozia on earth so much he doesn’t want to give that up? He’s messing with the balance of what life on earth should be like. It’s not supposed to be full of joy and happiness for all of us all of the time. If it were, we’d never learn, or progress or adapt. We need to feel pain and suffering, but not so much that it takes over and destroys everything. BOB doesn’t care for the rules. He’s greedy, and he wants to cause chaos; he wants to rule our world and take away our stars until we’re in complete darkness.
So what now? Well, at least Gordon, Albert and Tammy know that Doppelcooper will follow them to the site where Hastings met Major Briggs. Will they go to the correct place now or trick them? They have seen what came out of the glass box, and if Doppelcooper has any means of using ‘mother’ against them, then they need some serious backup.
Where is ‘mother’ now? Surely she can’t be just roaming around. Someone would have noticed! So like we first saw her appear in the box, can she too take the form of a human? Where is she? Is she impersonating anyone we know?
At the end of the episode, we see our Log Lady, again talking on the phone to Hawk. When precisely this is happening, I don’t know. Does she speak with him regularly, or are these all one long conversation that we have seen in snippets?
She says, “Hawk, electricity is humming. You can hear it in the mountains and rivers. You see it dance among the seas and stars and glowing around the moon, but in these days the glow is dying. What will be in the darkness that remains? The Truman brothers are both True Men. They are your brothers. And the others, the good ones, who have been with you, now the circle is almost complete. Watch and listen to the dream of time, and space, it all comes out now, flowing like a river. That what it is and is not. Hawk, Laura is The One.”
Laura is the one, and her glow is fading from the world. Those that remembered and loved her, their lives are twisted and rotten, or they are dead.
We have not seen much of Sarah Palmer yet, but from the teaser trailer before the series began, we saw shots of her in the supermarket, buying a lot of alcohol. Who can blame her? How does a woman continue living when their only child was raped and murdered by her husband? Even knowing that he wasn’t responsible, how could you forgive yourself for not knowing, for letting this happen under your nose? she lost her love too when she lost Leland. It is beyond tragic and so lonely. I would turn to the bottle too. The love for her daughter will remain forever, but how long will Sarah last? And is she numb to all the pain now? How could anything be shocking or joyful or make you feel anything at all after living through that?
We don’t know what happened to Donna, Laura’s best friend. The last we knew, she had just found out her life was a lie; her father was Benjamin Horne, not her beloved Doc Haywood. Could she ever forgive them for the betrayal? Donna lost her best friend, her first love left town and cheated on her firstly with a friend and then an older woman. Quite a lot to deal with in just a few short weeks. That would have some lasting effect.
Then there’s Bobby. He didn’t really love her, but yet he did. His reaction to seeing her photograph was enough to know that. Yes, she brings back memories, not always good ones, I am sure — she mocked him after sex and laughed when he killed the crooked sheriff, but nevertheless, he did love her in his own way. Laura was happy that he had found Shelly. She knew he deserved happiness. We don’t know what their relationship is like now, but maybe that too is rotten. He lost his father, but perhaps the light of his father is what’s kept his life somewhat on track since Laura’s death.
Johnny Horne, whose life is about as traumatic as anyone could imagine, truly loved Laura. Her death had a profound effect on him. We saw him last week running as fast as he could, headfirst into a wall. He was wearing blue pyjamas, and this scene was symbolic of Cooper’s bathroom mirror smash when we first saw BOB’s reflection in him. What is Johnny trying to tell people? Is he having visions of what has happened and is acting them out? In the first series,’ we saw him banging his head against a toy house. He would wear his Native American headdress at all times, and it took Dr Jacoby some time to convince him to remove it for Laura’s funeral. That shot of his head from inside the doll’s house, he looked like a Giant, a white-skinned, Native American Giant. Has Johnny been acting out the secret history of Twin Peaks all this time?
He carried the book, Peter Pan, with him to Laura’s funeral. He is a boy who will never grow up. He’s not allowed to. As a mother of a child with special needs, I must admit these scenes of Johnny Horne in this episode are pretty harrowing. Of course, you imagine your own child in these situations, and it is heartbreaking, and I have desperate feelings of wanting to get in there, untie him and have him come live safely with me. He has a gift, Johnny has a message for someone, but no one has been able to work it out just yet. He cannot communicate in a typical way, so he acts out the message. Someone particularly cruel is keeping that message from being revealed.
Sylvia seems to care for him, she was upset when he hurt himself and comforted him after Richard had left, but she still doesn’t untie him. She allowed him to sit there; mouth wired shut, staring at his ‘teddy’ so grotesque, with human teeth stuck in it (possibly Johnny’s own), while it repeats, “hello Johnny, how are you today?”.
Twin Peaks is rotten. There is so much evil in the town — drugs, ultra-violence, prostitution. Some of the Cops are crooked and into organised crime. You could say it’s always been there, but now it’s at an unbalanced level. What’s happening now makes Ben Horne’s old behaviour look like Gandhi. It feels like Twin Peaks itself is the hub, the point where the darkness is pouring in, and it has a terrible effect on the townsfolk. I don’t think there is a single person in the town who is not affected by it. It’s like a disease. Yes, it’s been happening for a long time, but now it’s at epidemic levels. Even between the sweetest couple, Lucy and Andy, something is amiss — I have a feeling that at some point something traumatic happened to them, and they’ve never been the same again.
What kept the darkness from enveloping the town before was Laura. She was not perfect, but she brought joy to people’s lives. She fought her demons and made time to teach Johnny Horne and taught English to Josie. She befriended and inspired the reclusive Harold Smith, brought meals to the sick and elderly. She gave love in many ways, some not quite so innocent. She was pulled into the darkness all too often, but she did fight it off and did not let BOB in. She chose the light in the darkest of moments, and she was stronger than anyone before her.
Her story did not end when her life did. Her soul survives, and that golden glow she wields is needed to bring the light back to Twin Peaks, to put the stars back in the sky. Laura is The One.
All images courtesy of Showtime/CBS unless otherwise stated.
