Twin Peaks Part 15 begins with a happy ending, takes a drive down Sunset Boulevard, and visits the darkness of future past.
By Stewart Gardiner // I happened to watch Sunset Boulevard a week before Twin Peaks: The Return part 15 aired. Timely, I know. I’m not claiming this as pure chance, with nothing at all to do with Twin Peaks, though. Billy Wilder’s Hollywood noir is one of my all time favorite pictures, but I hadn’t seen it in an age. Re-reading Chris Rodley’s Lynch on Lynch earlier this year reminded me not only how much Lynch admires Sunset Boulevard, but how long overdue I was in viewing it. I had already upgraded to a Blu-ray copy and a week ago on Sunday just seemed like the right time to return to that place so close to Mulholland Drive. I never would have dreamed that there would be such a literal connection made on the show. Literal, yet absolutely ingenious.
Sunset Boulevard begins with a dead man floating in a pool outside a dilapidated Hollywood mansion. The dead man is Joe Gillis, yet he’s narrating his own story, and that of Norma Desmond. Twin Peaks also begins with a dead body and water; it is the story of Laura Palmer more than Sunset Boulevard is the story of Joe Gillis of course. But it isn’t until Fire Walk With Me that Laura gets to tell her own story, rather than it being told through the rest of the community.
But here I am going on about Sunset Boulevard when there’s so much more to talk about! Part 15 is a truly astonishing hour of television. Dark, strange, mysterious, and heart breaking. All of that cranked up to 11. However, part 15 begins in the most joyous and exhilarating way.
Break Cute
“Ed, I’ve come to tell you I’ve changed,” says Nadine. She’s walked all the way to Big Ed’s Gas Farm with golden shovel over her shoulder, like Huck Finn lighting out for the territory. The new frontier for her is letting Ed go, discarding jealousy, and allowing him to love.
“Jeez, you big lug. How beautiful is this?”
Ed is sceptical to say the least. He’s been stung before. Namely when Nadine awoke from her delusion as a high school student with superhuman strength. “Honey, tomorrow you’re going to wish you never said these things,” he cautions. But, Nadine tells him, she walked all the way there, had plenty of time to think and enough opportunities to turn back. But she didn’t. It seems utterly genuine and the beautiful thing is that Nadine seems happy in herself. Dr Amp has worked for her where Dr Jacoby never could. Nadine has reached a point of self realization and chooses to act unselfishly. She is freeing herself as well as Ed.
Your Love is Getting Cold
Cut to the exterior of the Double R and a classic needle drop. It’s Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Ed climbs out of his truck and strolls into the diner like a man possessed (by love rather than a parasitical Lodge denizen or accidental amphibian). He rolls right on up to Norma and tells her that Nadine has given him his freedom back. By the gods, Ed is really doing it! A man of few words, and of almost crippling honor, this is finally his time and he’s not going to let it slip away. Seize the day indeed. Hopes are high and then, in a matter of seconds, dashed.
“Ed, I’m so sorry,” says Norma. “Walter’s here.”
Ed looks like he’s had all the wind taken out of him. He goes through the motions and sits at the counter, orders a cup of coffee. And some cyanide, he quips.
Walter was previously introduced as the company man behind the Norma’s Double R franchise chain and maybe lover of Norma. Poor Ed.
Norma sits down with Walter and tells him that she’s exercising her option for him to buy her out. She wants the Double R and nothing else to do with the franchises. Walter tells her she’s making a mistake she’ll regret. Why wouldn’t she want to be a part of a business success story? “Family reasons,” she tells him.
Kiss Me, Stupid
“Your love is getting cold,” sings Otis. Ed sits at the counter, eyes closed; meditating. Walter walks out, passes behind him. The subtlest of smiles lights up that Mount Rushmore face of Ed’s. Lynch’s camera holds on him. Ed’s eyes remain close. Otis plays. Norma’s hand comes into frame, onto Ed’s shoulder. He opens his eyes, turns. “Marry me,” says the man of few words. They kiss. “Of course I will.”
What a moment. The air must be punched! The camera pans up to the blue sky and white clouds, Otis still playing. Ten minutes into part 15 and all is right with the world.
At Your Convenience
A journey from light to dark, moving down electricity lines in black and white. The crackle of electricity in stark contrast to the seductive sounds of Otis Redding. Lynch cuts to a dark highway. Mr C is driving at night. His journey is analogous to that of the electricity, as part 15 strengthens the notion that electrical current is a means or symptom of transportation to other places. Electrical smoke is certainly a by-product.
Penderecki plays as Mr C pulls up at the convenience store. It’s disconcerting seeing the convenience store out in the real world. Although since this part of the real world is on the edge of some woods, and this being Twin Peaks, then all bets are off.
Scorched
There’s a Woodsman standing outside the convenience store. He seems less filthy than the others. Perhaps he’s better equipped to interact with this level of reality. Was he once a man and has yet to complete his transformation to Woodsman? Or is it the case that he descended from pure air, but hasn’t been sullied fully yet? How about forgetting the blackening of souls and instead hypothesizing that otherworldly travel blackens an individual literally? The very words fire walk with me suggest as much; a fire like modern electricity. When Phillip Jeffries returned to the Buenos Aires hotel there was a burned mark on the wall behind him. Naido was found lying in electrical smoke. Scorched engine oil is associated with traveling over the threshold to the Lodge.
Mike and Bob lived above a convenience store. Phillip Jeffries attended one of the meetings there. But there is no upstairs. David Lynch shows how that works in part 15. It’s the perfect sort of reveal where the mystery is increased rather than explained away. Mr C and the Woodsman walk up the steps on the side of the store. They reach the top of the steps and drift in and out of existence until they vanish.
Railroad Switch
The camera pushes through night woods until Mr C steps into frame and into the room from Laura’s picture. The one with the roses on the wall and a door that led Laura to the Red Room. However part 15 reveals that the doorway is not a fixed portal.
There’s a Woodsman sitting in the corner. Mr C says he’s looking for Phillip Jeffries. The Woodsman pulls a lever behind him which generates an abundance of brilliant electricity. The state of the room shifts and the Jumping Man appears, a parasitical entity on the scene. It’s like the Man in the Planet in Eraserhead. Except in Twin Peaks: The Return part 15 the lever acts more like a between worlds railroad switch; the door is a gateway to a multiplicity of places.
What also springs to mind is the back room of Hap’s Diner in Fire Walk With Me. Agents Chet Desmond and Sam Stanley speak to a man called Jack. There’s an electrician to Jack’s left working on a lamp – with plenty a Lynchian crackle of light and sound. To his right is what looks eerily like a Woodsman. There’s a doorway which is located in roughly the same position as the door in the wall of roses room. Now, I never connected the room in Laura’s picture with the back room of Hap’s Diner before now. However, add a Woodsman and a healthy dash of electricity and suddenly the staging screams striking similarities. There’s a parasitic relationship between the two worlds, with the real echoing the otherworldly and vice versa.
The Kafka Motel
Mr C and the other Woodsman (that is, not the one who pulled the lever) go through the door and into a darkened space, as vast as it is closed-in. As they walk, the room becomes one with the woods, another parasitical occurrence, this time between inside and outside. At the end of the space is a hall and a staircase, which looks like the one Gordon saw when looking into the vortex.
They walk up the stairs, through another door, and out into the courtyard of a rundown motel (the otherworldly version of the one where Teresa Banks had a room). It feels all wrong. There is outdoors where there should be indoors. Having climbed up they find themselves on ground one feels should be below sea level. Passageways that lead to not only unexpected places, but the wrong places in terms of location and the time it takes to get there, recalls Franz Kafka’s The Trial, particularly Orson Welles’s adaptation of it. A door in one part of the city may inexplicably open onto another part. Other doors might be shut, which is what Mr C discovers.
Mr C goes to room 8 and tries to get in; he can’t. A sharp-nosed, white-faced woman in a dressing gown approaches him and offers to help. She talks in reverse speech:
“I’ll unlock the door for you.”
She does and Mr C steps into the motel room. The light is of course flickering. There’s a wall with a radiator against it and there’s a similar feeling to when Henry looks for the Lady in the Radiator. Another room appears behind the wall.
Inside is a bulbous machine emitting smoke into a ball. Meet the long-lost Phillip Jeffries!
I Sing the Body Electric!
Jeffries resembles nothing less that the bulbous machine in the Purple Room and indeed the salt and pepper shakers Dougie is drawn to later in part 15. “Oh, it’s you,” says Jeffries as he notices Mr C. But who does he think Mr C is?
Mr C just wants to know why Jeffries sent Ray to kill him. Jeffries claims ignorance, but admits to at least calling Ray.
“Did you call me 5 days ago?” asks Mr C.
“I don’t have your number,” says Jeffries.
“So it was someone else who called me.”
“We used to talk.”
“Yes. We did.”
There’s a flashback to Jeffries’s reappearance in Fire Walk With Me.
“Well now. I’m not going to talk about Judy. In fact we’re not going to talk about Judy at all.”
They’re going to talk about Judy. Could be that that conversation back then is actually taking place now.
“1989,” says Mr C. “You showed up at FBI headquarters in Philadelphia and said you’d met Judy.
“So, you are Cooper.”
It would appear that Mr C has Cooper’s memories, up until Cooper walked into the Lodge and met his doppelganger. That would seem to confirm that Cooper’s doppelganger only existed as a part of himself before then.
Talking About Judy
“Phillip, why didn’t you want to talk about Judy? Who is Judy? Does Judy want something from me?”
Part 15 vocalizes questions that every Fire Walk With Me fan has asked multiple times.
“Why don’t you ask Judy yourself? Let me write it down for you.”
Jeffries proceeds to puff out a sequence of numbers from the smoke, as if he were some machine age reinterpretation of Gandalf. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. Just kidding, not those numbers. (Although it did start with a 4 and an 8, so I can be forgiven for quoting from LOST.) Mr C jots down the sequence, just as I was jotting down that Mr C was jotting something down.
“Who is Judy?” Mr C/the audience asks.
“You’ve already met Judy,” says the super cryptic bulbous machine formerly known as David Bowie.
“What do you mean I’ve met Judy?”
A phone rings.
“Who is Judy? Who is Judy?”
But Phillip Jeffries and his room at the Dutchman’s fades away. Mr C picks up the phone and is transported back to the outside of the convenience store.
So who is Judy? Fire Walk With Me co-writer Bob Engels has stated that Judy was originally intended to be Josie’s sister. However, I would suggest that is no longer the case. I don’t think that’s the direction part 15 is pointing at. It’s probably not the woman in the dressing gown either, although I think she’s probably still waiting in that motel courtyard for Mr C to at least ask her.
Only Woods
Richard Horne is standing outside the convenience store, after presumably following Mr C there. He’s pointing a gun at Mr C, which he soon learns is a bad idea. He recognized Mr C at the Farm as being an FBI agent. His mom had a picture of him.
“Who’s your mom?”
“Audrey Horne.”
Confirmed. Mr C takes the gun from him, kicks him around a bit, then says they’ll talk in the truck. Richard, meet daddy.
Mr C texts “Las Vegas?” to unknown, who the audience knows is Diane. Which is something I didn’t want to believe, although I think there’s something more going on with Judy – sorry, Diane.
He drives away. The convenience store lights up inside with smoke and pure electricity. Smoke issues out and it fades in and out of existence until there is only woods.
Dark Mood Woods
Mark Frost is wandering about the woods with a Dug(pa) in part 15. Or rather Cyril Pons (the reporter Frost played briefly in Twin Peaks past) is out walking his dog.
Gersten and Steven have their backs against a great tree. He is completely out of it, holding a gun, rubbing his left leg, and mumbling that he did it. Gersten tries to comfort him. She won’t go with him however and she doesn’t want him to go either. It is day but the soundtrack is filled to the brim with ominous rumblings and the sense of unease is terrifying. The primal power of those old woods can be felt, which recalls, like in part 14, Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The man walking the dog who is also Mark Frost appears to Gersten and Steven. They panic, she runs around to the other side of the tree and finds a moment of calm. It doesn’t last. There is a gunshot. Steven has presumably killed himself. What did he do that led him to that? Is Becky all right?
Roadhouse Playlist
“I Just Want to Say Hello” by James Hurley
“The Beat Up” by Mister Renee
“Green Cosmic Hits” by An Englishman in Washington State
“The Wrong Joneses” by FYI FBI
“Goodbye Mr Todd” (One Down, One to Go)” by the Chantals
“Gathering in the Cells” by Something Significant
Dark Windows
Dougie is eating a piece of chocolate cake at home. “Oh Dougie,” Janey-E says to him, “it’s like all our dreams are coming true.” Dangerous words to speak in the Lynchian universe. They’re tinged with foreboding for Janey-E, yet could almost be the anticipatory words of the audience.
Dougie moves one of the salt and pepper shakers. They are bulbous-shaped, like the device in the Purple Room or indeed Phillip Jeffries. There is a remote in front of him. He keeps pressing at it until the television comes on. Sunset Boulevard is playing. It’s the scene where Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself) bids Norma Desmond, faded star of yesteryear, farewell after she has visited him on set.
Norma has written an awful, bloated script with the help of down at heel screenwriter Joe Gillis. He’s become a kept man at the expense of his art. She wants to return to the top of the movie industry and believes that De Mille has asked her to the studio as a precursor to producing her screenplay. One of DeMille’s assistants had repeatedly called her at home, she believed, but pride prevented her from picking up the phone; she would only speak with DeMille himself. DeMille is obviously fond of her and doesn’t wish to cause her pain, but neither does he wish to make the picture. He uncovers a misunderstanding: Paramount’s Gordon Cole has been calling Norma because he wants to use her old fashioned car for a movie. A misunderstanding of shattered dreams.
This is where Dougie comes in, the television roaring to life like some vision from the Lodge.
“Get Gordon Cole,” says DeMille.
Get Gordon Cole.
Reverse the Polarity
And that’s what it takes, this moment in part 15. A trace of memory communicated like an electrical current. Something has, at last, gotten through to Cooper. There’s something else going on behind his eyes now. He listens carefully, hears the sound of electricity. Dougie gets down on his hands and knees, and crawls towards the socket, fork in hand. There’s a seriousness of purpose about his face as he tries to get the prongs into the socket. He turns the fork around and pushes the back of it in. The electricity starts flowing. Janey-E screams. Dougie is blasted back from the wall. The lights go out.
Not an End
The Log Lady speaks for the last time on Twin Peaks and it is unbelievably moving. She calls Hawk one more time. “Hawk, I’m dying,” she tells him. “You know about death. That it’s just a change, not an end.”
Margaret Coulson’s performance is brave, truthful, and heart breaking. It’s painful to watch her say goodbye, yet perhaps there is a small comfort in the fact that she got the chance to say her farewells in such a profound manner.
There is time for another cryptic, vital message:
“Watch for that one. The one I told you about. The one under the moon on Blue Pine mountain.”
This will surely figure heavily in the endgame.
Later, Hawk calls a gathering in the conference room. The shadows in the room are strong.
“Margaret Lanterman passed away tonight.”
It’s a sombre moment, with everyone paying their respects. The lights go off in Margaret’s house in the woods.
Parts 1 and 2 had “In memory of Catherine E. Coulson” in the end credits. Part 15 adds “In memory of Margaret Lanterman.” That speaks not only of the importance of the character she crafted with long-term friend and collaborator David Lynch, but the history and the humanity she breathed into the role.
Accidental Amphibian
Audrey and Charlie still haven’t left the house. “It’s already late and [Charlie is] so sleepy.” They are, in Charlie’s words, on the “threshold,” which seems entirely appropriate in an episode concerned with traveling through gateways to other places, including death.
Charlie’s language feels coded, his repeated phrases like triggers. “Who are you, Charlie?” asks Audrey, obviously in some distress. The answer is not forthcoming in part 15, neither is the door opening, which could lead to an answer.
They might not get to the Roadhouse, but the audience does. Two biker types lift a young woman called Ruby (as in the slippers from The Wizard of Oz; sounds a bit like Judy) out of that booth everyone likes to sit in. They place her on the floor. All perfectly normal in Twin Peaks terms. Then it gets less normal. The Veils are on stage, singing about an “accidental amphibian,” and Ruby starts to crawl through the crowd on the dance floor. Her movements are akin to the mutated amphibian creature in 1956. Ruby crawls and she crawls and she screams and she SCREAMS.
Smash to… black? Nope. The credits roll over the courtyard of the Dutchman’s motel. Eerily quiet. A night between worlds. Lynch cuts to another angle to show the dressing gown woman in the background. Just standing there, under the shadow of the motel, waiting for what’s to come. Thank you for the nightmares, David Lynch.