Greetings, VDL readers! I am here to inaugurate a new series on Twin Peaks: The Return, the limited event series that aired on Showtime in 2017, and which ended up serving as the final cinematic effort of filmmaker David Lynch. Lynch died earlier this year, of course, right as wildfires tore across Los Angeles. That fact alone would make this moment an appropriate one for me to revisit this towering masterwork, this summation of his whole career.
Matters public and private also serve to make The Return feel especially relevant. The show first aired in the first year of Trump 1.0, and now here we are in this benighted sequel. It is happening again. And for myself, grief and loss cannot help but be on my mind. My brother Tyler passed away over the summer, and that grief walks beside me every day, still, and shall forever. The Return is a story suffused with loss and grief, too, and I think my own emotional state may make me more receptive to its mysteries. (Too receptive, perhaps—we’ll see.) I couldn’t ask for a better guide through my own personal shadowy valley than Special Agent Dale Cooper.
Format-wise, we’re gonna practice slow-watching here. Each week, I’ll watch each episode and write up an overview of it, covering the story beats, the themes, the performances, the resonances—whatever feels pertinent. This endeavor is very much one where I am letting the spirit move me. The first few entries will be public; the rest will appear behind the paywall. More and more readers have pledged their support for my work, and I am excited to use that support as a means to explore something that hopefully will feel distinctive and idiosyncratic.
In the eight years since The Return first aired, streaming platforms have appeared and vanished like so many generations of cicadas. So where to watch it now? It’s currently available on Mubi, Paramount Plus, and Prime Video. Myself, I own the series on DVD, a lovely physical release that also includes a wealth of behind the scenes footage. Highly recommended!
So grab a slice of cherry pie and listen to what the log says. We’re going home, just as soon as we figure out what year it is.
Episode 1: My Log Has a Message for You
The Return begins in familiar fashion, literally.1 The first images we see come from the original series, aired all the way back in 1990. Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer, both of them looking heartbreakingly youthful, sit in the Black Lodge, also known as the Red Room. Black and white zigzag patterns snake across the floor while red curtains brood in the background. Laura Palmer tells Agent Cooper, “I’ll see you again in 25 years.”
Then we see a few more familiar images. The empty hallway of Twin Peaks High School, the lone girl running, crying, across the quad. The same image from the pilot episode. The trophy case, and Laura Palmer’s prom photo there, front and center. The photo takes up the whole screen, then begins to fade, as we enter the opening credits over the famous theme song, the swelling synth arpeggios of Angelo Badalamenti. Laura Palmer, then, hovers over the entire proceedings of the story, present even when unseen.
The episode proper starts, and it is startlingly direct. The last we saw of our hero Dale Cooper, he was trapped in the Black Lodge, while his doppelgänger escaped and assumed his identity in the outside world. So where is he now?
Well, he is sitting across from the Giant and listening to freaky sounds on a gramophone, that’s where.
In stark black and white, Dale Cooper and a tall, bald figure sit across from each other. In the original Twin Peaks, this character was called the Giant, and he gave Agent Cooper several warnings, including when Laura’s cousin Maddie was murdered by Leland, possessed by Bob. (In the credits, however, he is only identified as ????????, his true identity unknown at this early point. He won’t be the only one, either.) Ole Giant plays a scratchy record that sounds like insects, then tells Agent Cooper, “It is in our house now.”
Cooper is worried. Meaning, unlike the viewer, he knows what ‘Giant’ is talking about. “It is?” he says. ‘Giant’ says various other inscrutable things. “Remember, 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.” Cooper, still ahead of the viewer, says, “I understand.” Then he gets zapped out of his seat, and is gone.
Now, there is a lot to be said about ‘Giant’s’ words here, and we’ll get to it, but the main thing to remember here is that Cooper has a plan, and now after 25 years, he is going to attempt to carry it out. And one more thing, which also becomes clear later on. At the very start here, in the black and white realm, Cooper is not in the Black Lodge. He is in ‘Giant’s’ realm, which will get better defined later on. And when he gets zapped at the end of their tete a tete, he gets returned to the Black Lodge.
Which raises a question that never really gets answered so you’ll have to live with it: how did ‘Giant’ transport Cooper to his realm? Some kind of back door? Or does he simply possess that particular ability, along with many others?
In this first episode of The Return, our first visit to the town of Twin Peaks in 25 years, we actually see surprisingly little of the town itself. And even more bizarrely, the very first Twin Peaks resident we see is Dr. Jacoby, Laura’s one-time pychiatrist. Dr. Jacoby! Why him? And what he is doing? Why, he’s living in a trailer on the mountain, one of the titular peaks, receiving a shipment of shovels. No clue as to why!
Another hard shift. We hover over a cityscape at night. New York City, as a title card indicates. To quote the incredulity of those old Pace salsa commercials, “New York City??” It is somehow even stranger for The Return to take us to the Big Apple than interdimensional realms of light and energy. It just feels out of place!
We see nothing of the city at large, though. Rather, we enter an upper floor in a skyscraper, where we find an expansive storage unit that has…a box. A large glass box, suggestive of a zoo or a laboratory. The box is completely empty, though. Lights and cameras surround it, recording. There is seemingly no door or entrance. A closer look, though, reveals that at the back of the box, against the exterior wall of the building, there is an opening. A kind of doggy door. Its purpose is completely unknown.
Even by the guy whose job it is to watch over it. A young man named Sam, who looks like he wandered over from the set of One Tree Hill, sits on a couch and watches the box. He changes out the camera cards on the cameras. He watches, and watches, and watches.
An intercom tells Sam there’s someone in the lobby area. A security guard sits out there, placed there by someone for some reason. A flirtatious young woman named Tracey has brought Sam coffee. She is very curious too, and would like to see the room where Sam. But, as the guard indicates, that is forbidden. Tracey leaves, and Sam gets back to work.
Back to Twin Peaks. We see Ben Horne and his brother, Jerry. Wait a minute—Ben & Jerry? Has that joke been there the whole time and I’m just now noticing it for the first time? David Lynch and Mark Frost, you magnificent bastards! Anyway, Ben still owns and operates the Great Northern hotel, while Jerry has embraced his destiny and become an old hippie, selling marijuana-infused banana bread. If you have ever spent even an hour the Pacific Northwest, you have met at least a dozen guys exactly like this.
We also drop by the Sheriff’s office, site of many a comic and dramatic scene back in the original run. Here, though, it’s just Lucy, the secretary, being her Lucy self, struggling to understand someone who’s asking where Sheriff Truman is. Some familiar coffee-and-pie.
Then, however, we get a SMASH CUT into a heart of darkness. Headlights crawl down a backroad while terrifying music plays. It’s “American Woman,” the Guess Who song, covered by a country duo called Muddy Magnolias, then remixed into terror by none other than Lynch himself.
This is intro music for the character we’ll call Mr. C.—Cooper’s doppelgänger, the one who escaped the Black Lodge and took Cooper’s place, while also possessed by the spirit of Bob, the killer who inhabited Leland when he killed Laura. Mr. C. has long black hair and dark black eyes that don’t reflect any light at all, a terrifying detail. And as I often forget, he is played by Kyle MacLachlan. Because, of course he is. He is Cooper’s doppelgänger. But MacLachlan transforms himself so completely as Mr C. that I often forget it’s him.
Mr. C. goes to a shabby house and collects two people, a man named Ray and a woman named Darya. They leave the house and get back on the road for some unknown reason.
Back to New York, to the glass box. The next night, Tracey returns to find the guard is gone. Sam sneaks her inside and they sit on the couch, watching the glass box. And since these are healthy young people, they begin canoodling. To remind viewers that this is Showtime, not network TV, Tracey removes her clothes and we sure do see it. She and Sam begin having sex.
And while they do, the glass box goes dark. A blurry figure appears—what looks like a woman, naked, her head blurry, looking like it’s all mouth. Sam and Tracey stop, terrified. The blurry woman taps the glass, then hurls herself against it. Sam and Tracey recoil. The blurry woman (also identified as ??????? in the credits) hurls herself against the glass once more, and breaks it. She flies out, shrieking. Flies toward Sam and Tracey. And in a blur of motion, proceeds to tear apart Sam and Tracery, their bodies flying apart like they’re made of wax.
It is in our house now.
And now, South Dakota! A town called Buckton. Another entirely new location in the Twin Peaks universe. A woman in an apartment complex (which looks more like a hotel, really) notices a terrible smell coming from the apartment next door. She calls the cops to investigate. A series of misunderstandings follow as the cops attempt to find a key that can open the door. Lynch loves these who’s-on-first comedy routines, which always last long, long past the point when they’re still funny. Eventually, the cops gain access to the apartment, which belongs to a woman named Ruth Davenport. Or belonged, since it turns out that Ruth is dead in her bed, the source of the smell. Or, part of her is dead. An examiner removes the blanket to discover something horrific: the head of Ruth Davenport has been severed and placed atop the body of an entirely different person, a male, whose own head is missing. A gruesome game of mix and match.
Back to Twin Peaks. The Log Lady, fan favorite, picks up the phone. She is bald, suffering from cancer, as the actress who played her, Catherine Coulson, was in real life. Her scenes in the show were shot just a few weeks before she died. A longtime Lynch collaborator, all the way back to Eraserhead, she wanted to be part of The Return, however she could.
She calls Hawk, the deputy, and tells him that her log has a message for him. Something about the Laura Palmer case is missing, and that finding it will involve Hawk’s heritage. Hawk is Native American, played by actor Michael Horse. Hawk thanks the Log Lady and tells her goodnight. He then tells Lucy and Harry, another officer, to get out the Laura Palmer files so they can go over them in the morning.
Back in South Dakota, the forensic tech makes a discovery. Ruth Davenport’s apartment is covered with the fingerprints of Bill Hastings, the high school principal. Hastings is picked up at his house, arrested just as he and his wife are about to sit down to dinner with guests. He is interrogated, where it becomes clear that he was having an affair with Ruth, and was trying to hide it. The police get a warrant, investigate the Hastings house, and make a disturbing discovery: inside the trunk of Bill’s car is a piece of flesh, laid there grimly.
The credits roll.
Closing observations
Matthew Lillard’s simpering cry-face is so off-putting. That’s what I call acting!
Giant’s set up is so chic! The chairs, the gramophones. Put the guy in House Beautiful!
Barney’s one-sided phone conversation, seemingly about drugs. Everyone has a secret in the world of Twin Peaks.
I’ll be back next week with Episode 2!
The DVD release has an option to watch Episodes 1 and 2 together, as a single feature-length presentation. I recommend doing this, if you can. The transition is much smoother and the overall 2 hour episode feels much more cohesive. Still, I am just going to write about Episode 1, so we’re not overloading here. Slow-watching, remember.
I’m now rewatching these because of you. About time I did. So thank you. (Also, it wasn’t clear to me in episode 1 that Bill and Ruth were having an affair. I am too innocent).
Buckthorn, not Buckton