Episodes 17 & 18
In May of 1990, ABC aired the “Twin Peaks” Season 1 finale,
and frustrated viewers who’d expected the show’s creators David Lynch
and Mark Frost to resolve the “Who killed Laura Palmer?” mystery. In
June of 1991, “Twin Peaks” Season 2 also ended
with more questions than answers, and stuck fans with a cruel twist,
revealing that heroic FBI Agent Dale Cooper had been replaced by an evil
twin. So if you were confounded by the way the third (and perhaps
last-ever) “Twin Peaks” season wrapped up last night ... well, call it
tradition. Whether by circumstance or intent, this has always been a TV
drama that eschews tidy resolutions.
What
makes Season 3’s sucker-punch especially powerful though is that it
comes as something of a surprise. For the better part of an hour, the
first half of the two-part finale seems poised to put a festive bow on
nearly everything that’s come before, pleasing everyone who cheered last
week when the ready-to-rock Agent Cooper emerged from a summer-long
fog. But everything sours quickly at the end of the episode, and in the
following one.
All
in all, these were two mesmerizing hours of television, but because
they follow Lynch’s usual dream-logic, they’re not always plain about
their meaning. Here’s a nutshell interpretation of what they literally
depict:
In
the first hour, Cooper’s dark doppelgänger Mr. C is finally forced back
to the Lodge that spawned him, thanks a combination of Lucy’s deadly
marksmanship and Freddie Sykes’s supercharged punching power. Cooper
then uses knowledge he’s apparently acquired during decades in limbo to
seek a more lasting justice, by jumping back in time to prevent Laura
Palmer from being killed. But while he does steer her away from the
scene of her murder, the effort ends with Laura disappearing into the
darkness, screaming in terror.
In
the second hour, Cooper takes off after Laura, journeying with his
former colleague Diane Evans (also now back to her real self) through
one of the nebulous portals that dot the American landscape. They stop
for the night at a motel, and in morning he wakes up to a goodbye note
written from “Linda” to “Richard” — suggesting that both he and Diane
slipped into new identities after passing through the wormhole. Cooper
eventually finds someone in Odessa, Texas who looks like Laura but goes
by the name Carrie Page. He tries to bring this woman “home,” but when
they get to Twin Peaks they discover the Palmers’ old house is occupied
by other people. Carrie becomes as panicked and soul-sick as Laura used
to be when she was at that address. She screams again. And so “The
Return” ends.
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I
can only guess at what this all means, based on clues dropped
throughout “Twin Peaks,” as well as in the prequel film “Fire Walk with
Me.” Bear with me while I repeat some of what I think we know.
Gordon
Cole explains that the mysterious “Judy” his old partner Phillip
Jeffries talked about is an ancient entity, whose name is pronounced
“joo-day.” This might be the same malevolence we’ve seen as “Bob,”
inhabiting Leland Palmer and Mr. C. If so, he/she/it would be one of an
array of otherworldly beings who’ve been exerting a crude influence over
humanity, largely via dreams, portents, and doppelgängers. Other
shadowy figures have included the Fireman, the Arm and the old lady
sometimes called “Mrs. Tremond” or “Mrs. Chalfont”
Which
brings us to the show’s final minutes, where we find out that the
Palmer home’s new owner (played by Mary Reber, who actually owns the
real property) is named Alice Tremond, and that she bought the house
from a Mrs. Chalfont. It’s possible the Palmer house itself is one of
these “soft places” around the world, where humans and immortals pass
back and forth, leaving scenes of violence and misery in their wake.
This would explain why both Laura and Sarah Palmer were frequently
plagued with terrifying visions while walking up and down their stairs.
When Cooper and Diane drove past the power line
tower, he said things could be different. He pulled into one hotel
with an older car, and...
It
would also maybe explain why Cooper can’t fix everything by changing
the past. We see a repeat of a few key scenes from the “Twin Peaks”
pilot, altered so that Laura’s body is no longer “wrapped in plastic” by
the lake. But despite these alterations, Laura’s old house still seems
possessed by evil spirits, and her parallel universe life as Carrie Page
isn’t much better than one she left behind. (In fact, when
Cooper/Richard drops by Laura/Carrie’s apartment, there’s a freshly
killed man on a chair in her living room.) “What year is it?” Cooper
asks at the end, as if that’s going to make a difference — as if some
miseries aren’t just threaded into the fabric of whatever universe he
lands in.
There’s
a lot more to deconstruct here, including multiple moments where
characters seem to be waking up to the possibility that they’re actually
fictional constructs. Cooper says goodbye to his FBI colleagues with a
resolute, “See you at the curtain call,” like they’re all actors,
preparing for their final scene. And at one point, he gets jarred out of
his gung-ho persona for a second and a still shot of his stunned face
remains faintly superimposed over the screen — as though Coop were
standing back and watching himself play out a made-up TV story.
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All
of this though raises a big question: Was this a satisfying way to end
three months of television, with a sprinkling of metafiction and a hefty
dollop of existential despair?
Personally,
I loved it. There are plenty of moments in these last two episodes
aimed at fans of the show: like Cooper calling the Twin Peaks police
station to ask if the coffee’s on, or Lucy shooting Mr. C (then saying,
adorably, “I understand cellular phones now!”), or the return of Julee
Cruise to the roadhouse stage or the reprise/reimagining of scenes from
the pilot and from “Fire Walk with Me.”
The
best moments throughout “Twin Peaks: The Return” though could be
enjoyed as pure televisual poetry, regardless of their larger meaning.
Watching these two hours felt at times like falling into a trance. Lynch
employs a lot of his best techniques and motifs: such as making his
actors’ movements look unnatural by running the film backward, and
“cracking” the image on the screen to reveal something beneath the
surface. The branching reality recalls Lynch’s films “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Dr.,” where characters’ personalities, circumstances, and even names change from scene to scene.
Mostly
though, this finale felt like a recalibration. In the recent
documentary “David Lynch: The Art Life,” the director tells the story of
how he started smoking, drinking and sneaking out at night after his
family moved to Virginia when he was a teenager, and admits, “It was
almost like I couldn’t control it.”
I
thought about that during these last two episodes of “Twin Peaks: The
Return,” and especially when the Arm repeated a question that Audrey
asked a few weeks back: “Is it the story of the little girl who lived
down the lane?” For Lynch, that’s never really been the story. He’s
spent much of his life and career preoccupied by the mysteries of
compulsion, and fascinated by how there’s only a few degrees of
difference between a good person and a bad one.
Like
so many longtime “Twin Peaks” fans, Agent Cooper approaches the end of
his adventure with the dogged belief that his mission has always been
about avenging Laura Palmer, and preventing young women like her from
being hurt in the future. But if “The Return” has made anything plain
about Lynch and Frost’s vision for “Twin Peaks,” it’s that they see
corruption and tragedy as inevitable, regardless of the time, place or
generation. They do see the glow within people too, and the bonds we
forge. But in a way that just makes the ends we all come to more
heartbreaking.
So
“satisfying” would be the wrong word to describe any “Twin Peaks”
ending. But it’s not all bleak, either. Anyone looking for comfort
should just know that at least there’ll always be another Cooper, in
another one of his guises, working to see if this time he can make
everything turn out all right. He just can’t help himself.
Extra Doughnuts:
•
The finale clarifies that the One-Armed Man recreated a version of
Dougie to reunite with Sonny Jim and Janey-E. We’re also reassured that
Ben Horne has been informed about the whereabouts of his brother Jerry.
But what was the deal with Audrey’s freakout at the roadhouse last week?
Did Steven Burnett actually shoot himself in the woods? Will Becky be
O.K.? We may never know the answers to any of these questions. For those
annoyed by the elliptical nature of the finale, I’ll say that while I
didn’t share your disgruntlement, I do think you’re probably justified
in wondering whether every scene of the past eighteen hours has been
“necessary,” per se.
•
“David Lynch: The Art Life” will be available on a Criterion Collection
Blu-ray on September 26th, and I highly recommended it. There’s a lot
there that’ll resonate with “Twin Peaks” fans — including scenes of
Lynch swilling wine just like Gordon Cole, and some home movie footage
of his mother carrying a log. I’d also suggest that Lynch devotees track
down the recent “Blue Velvet Revisted,” which compiles
behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from the set of his 1986 movie
masterpiece. Both docs are notable for how they reveal Lynch not as some
alien weirdo but as a hard-working craftsman, always at his happiest
when he’s making something.
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