David Lynch masterfully sustains moods, addresses old mysteries, and pulls story lines together in Twin Peaks: The Return. Stewart Gardiner assesses the pervading sense of ominousness.
By Stewart Gardiner // Twin Peaks: The Return part 7 is a masterpiece of mood and a triumph of mystery. Something always feels as if it is about to happen even while it is still happening. Nobody gets close to David Lynch in that regard and, make no mistake, this is Lynch operating at the absolute height of his powers.
What It Has Become
Part 7 is a transformative hour of television. The Return’s conception as an 18-hour movie already sets it apart from standard TV seasons. Its out there plotting, mind blowing visuals, deliberate pacing, fragmented multiple storylines and beautiful detours have been a joy to behold.
Nevertheless The Return seemed like one thing in parts 1 to 6 and with part 7 has become something else. As to what it was and what precisely it has become, well, that’s rather difficult to define. Definition is of course simpler when one has something to compare to.
Heavily serialized narratives are a staple of streaming platforms and episode to episode there can sometimes be little to tell them apart. They are instead only in service to the larger narrative; the episode as a singular entity made a little less distinct. One might consider them 8 or 10 hour movies. Maybe that’s the case, but they sure as heck aren’t David Lynch movies.
As I’ve said before, Mulholland Drive would seem to be a (blue) key to understanding what is going on structurally with The Return. Or at least the idea of Mulholland Drive the television series. Its winding narratives would have wound up in different places had it continued in its originally intended form. I’m not complaining that it didn’t of course, as Lynch delivered one of the defining works of cinema when he turned the pilot into a motion picture.
I Don’t Know Where I Am
Everything in part 7 is in service to the pervading sense of ominousness. This includes the opening sequence with Jerry Horne in the woods. At a story level, Jerry is high. He thinks he has lost his car (prefiguring the stolen car scene with Cooper/Dougie later on) and he phones his brother Ben. That’s it. In terms of mood setting, and in the moment, it’s as if this is the most important scene ever.
Lynch cuts from Jerry to his POV as he surveys the woods right in front of him. It is day, but that doesn’t prevent a feeling that something terrible is just out of reach. I don’t mean to suggest there’s an expectation that some monstrosity from beyond our ken is going to come crawling towards him. (Although I wouldn’t rule that out considering what happens a little further into part 7.) It doesn’t have to be anything like that to induce unease.
Shooting digital at night or indoors with controlled lighting arguably comes closer to film. It looks much harsher, less traditionally cinematic, in daylight. Yet that brings its own set of advantages. Lynch more than makes use of them here. The raw light is visually closer to how people see the world. A visual palette unfiltered by the markers of cinema may be jarring. It is unfamiliar in movie terms but all too familiar in terms of real life. Close to home isn’t a place audiences necessarily want to be. And David Lynch knows it.
Turning a Page
A paranoid Jerry peering into the woods isn’t a throwaway scene. Not only does it set the mood for part 7, but it also exposes any and all scenes of the revival to reinterpretation. Not in terms of plot perhaps, but certainly in terms of how they interact with the whole.
If the Jerry in the woods scene means anything at all, it’s that things are about to change. Something is in the air around Twin Peaks and although there’s always music in the air, it still manages to signify or usher in transformation. There are other, rather musical, sounds later in part 7…
The very next scene proves that things will never be the same again. Mark Frost and David Lynch do not make viewers wait to find out what Hawk found in the bathroom stall door at the end of part 6. That would have been too cruel. The narrative must transition into its latest state – rather like Fred Madison becoming Pete Dayton in Lost Highway – and these pages are a vital part of that. Hawk’s investigation was always the search for Cooper, but he didn’t know it. Elsewhere, Gordon, Albert, Tammy, and Diane realize they haven’t found Cooper. Although they do not realize there is another Cooper out there.
This Came to Me in a Dream Last Night
The pages are indeed from Laura’s diary (cue all of Twin Peaks fandom dancing on their ceilings – backwards) and confirm that she did indeed write Annie’s message in her diary:
“I’ve been with Dale, and Laura. The good Dale is in the Lodge, and he can’t leave. Write it in your diary.”
“This came to me in a dream last night…” wrote Laura. “That’s what she said to me.” She noted “(me??!!!)” next to her name. Which makes sense, not only because it was a dream, however vivid, but Annie says “Laura” rather than “you”. Another instance of Laura as two people.
“What do you think this means?” Sheriff Frank Truman asks Hawk.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure this is what the Log Lady wanted me to find. I think that Annie is Annie Blackburn, a girl that went into that place.”
That place being the Lodge. Hawk continues:
“These are from her diary. The diary found at her friend Harold Smith’s. These are three of the four pages that we saw were taken out and missing. And – and there’s still one missing.”
What could be on that still missing page? I’ll have to consult my log on that one.
Pragmatist and Mystic
As to who hid the pages, Laura left a telling clue: “NOW I KNOW IT ISN’T BOB. I KNOW WHO IT IS.” Hawk surmises that it was Leland who hid the pages, possibly when he was brought in for questioning regarding Jacques Renault’s murder.
“But if the good Cooper is in the Lodge and can’t come out, then the one who came out the Lodge with Annie that night was not the good Cooper.”
Hawk is open to such lines of investigation, to imaginative leaps. He “is a unique combination of pragmatist and mystic” according to Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town. Truman takes up the investigation too. Harry and Doc Hayward saw Cooper that day and since Harry is too ill to discuss the matter, Truman contacts the doc via telephone then Skype. He operates a twig-like lever on his desk and the monitor rises up, encased in wood. It’s a beautiful thing.
Mighty Strange
Doc Hayward says Cooper “was acting mighty strange” that morning. He saw him sneaking out of the intensive care unit, fully dressed. “I saw that strange face again,” says the doc. Cooper turned and walked out, disappearing. Hayward thought Cooper might have been visiting Audrey Horn, who was in a coma.
The Missing Pieces revealed that a nurse took the Owl Cave ring from Annie in the hospital. It would seem that Mr C used the Owl Cave ring to manufacture Dougie, at least in part. Dougie did at least wear the ring. One may assume that the reason Mr C was in intensive care was to take the ring from the nurse.
Who said Twin Peaks doesn’t deal in answers? My beloved future past scene not only directly addressed on the show, but vital to the direction Twin Peaks is going in. From ominous to satisfyingly ominous. Part 7 so far.
There’s a Body All Right
More answers, a lot more ominousness. Lieutenant Knox from the Pentagon arrives in Buckhorn, South Dakota. She is investigating Major Briggs’s prints.
“Where did you lift them from? A crime scene?” she asks.
“No. Off the body,” replies Detective Macklay.
“There’s a body?”
“There’s a body all right.”
They go to the morgue and the coroner confirms that the man was in his late 40s when he died, which happened within the past 5 or 6 days. This doesn’t stack up with the facts as known. Knox calls Colonel Davis to tell him as much:
“There’s just one thing, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“Actually two things. The head is missing. And he’s the wrong age.”
“What do you mean, Cindy?”
“What I mean is that his head is not here. It’s missing. And the body, it’s that of a man in his late forties who died a few days ago.”
“If he died recently, Major Briggs should be in his seventies.”
Knox is standing in the corridor at the morgue as she is making this call. Drones rumble away underneath her words. Something is wrong. The dark man previously seen in the Buckhorn jailhouse walks slowly up the corridor. He is at a distance, but his approach is a black cloud of fear and loathing. Knox returns to the room and the dark man walks on by the door. It is absolutely terrifying.
The Most Powerful Man in the World (And His Identical Twin Brother)
Part 7 briefly, yet significantly, returns to Cooper/Dougie. There’s some stolen car business then the dwarf assassin makes an attempt on his life. Cooper’s intuition drives to the forefront of his being and he senses the assassin is there, getting Janey-E out of the way, wrestling him to the ground and chopping him in the throat. Janey-E jumps in to help too (she rocks). The Evolution of the Arm protrudes out of the concrete and shrieks at Cooper to “Squeeze his hand off,” which Cooper sort of does. The assassin runs off. A crime scene investigator later peels a thick piece of skin off of the handgun.
Cooper hasn’t returned, but part 7 offers the clearest indication yet that he is going to wake up in the not too distant future. Perhaps.
It’s Louder Now
There’s a humming sound at the Great Northern Hotel. Beverly has alerted Ben to it and the two attempt to locate the sound. They try the lamps and the totem, but as they get close, it seems further away. It’s not an ominous hum as such, but is another indicator of change. There is of course always music in the air. “Listen to the sounds,” the Giant told Cooper in the opening black and white scene of The Return.
Ben asks Beverly when the humming began:
“Sometime last week. I think it’s louder now.”
Interestingly, Cooper’s key to room 315 just arrived in the mail. Hawk has found the missing pages from Laura’s diary. Cooper has fought off an attack. His room key has turned up after 25 years (nowhere to go but home). Events are converging and sound is itself a key to unlocking mysteries.
Ominous sounds abound in part 7. Andy finds the hit and run truck and the trucker agrees to meet him but doesn’t show up. Lynch cuts to the trucker’s home, his door open, wrongness in the sounds underneath the shot.
Part 7 ends up at the RR Diner rather than the Roadhouse (Lynch visited that location earlier, with a lighter tone as a man swept the floor for a couple of minutes – it was therapy in the midst of darkness). A 1950s instrumental track plays out over the scene at the diner. A man opens the door and shouts, “Hey, anyone seen Billy?” before running off into the night. (Is Billy the aforementioned trucker?) Twin Peaks drones underpin the upbeat nostalgic tune. Again, nothing is as it seems.
Tough Cookie
Gordon Cole whistles a tune and Albert comes into his office. Albert’s meeting with Diane was not a success. Gordon asks how it went.
“Not well. I said, ‘Hello Diane’. She said, “This is about Cooper, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Maybe’. She said, and I quote, ‘No fucking way.’”
Albert tells Gordon that it is his turn. Gordon agrees, but only if Albert will go with him. Albert makes him say “please”, which is a delightful moment.
Laura Dern’s Diane gets a full introduction in part 7. She’s everything I dreamed and more. Her apartment is mid-century modern minimalist and she’s a “tough cookie”. She certainly has a way with words. Her favored phrase is a variation on “Fuck you, Gordon”. Diane is here playing the role of modern Hawksian woman, an equal of Lauren Bacall. Yet her strengths and depths go beyond that. They are apparent in every word she says, every movement she makes. A tough cookie indeed.
Gordon tells her that her former boss, ex-Special Agent Dale Cooper is in a federal prison.
“Good.”
“Diane, this may require a slight change of attitude on your part.”
“My attitude is none of your fucking business.”
She brings them coffees and Gordon delivers words that Cooper hasn’t been able to articulate yet: “Damn good coffee.” He continues trying to convince Diane to come and speak to Cooper.
“This is extremely important, Diane, and it involves something that you know about. And that’s enough said about that.”
That something surely refers to blue rose.
Yrev, the Backwards Word
Diane agrees to go with them and while she is slugging back miniatures on the plane, Tammy speaks to Gordon and Albert. She has found that Cooper’s prints do not match; one is in reverse. The reverse print leads Gordon to mention their meeting with Cooper in the prison and how he said “yrev” instead of “very” before correcting himself. “What does this all mean?” asks Tammy.
In an explanation that recalls Lil’s dance in Fire Walk With Me, Gordon asks Tammy to put out her hands. He pinches each fingertip between thumb and forefinger, working his way from right (her left) to left. Gordon speaks each word of Cooper’s greeting as he does so.
“I’m – very – very – happy – to – see – you – again – old – friend. This is the spiritual mound, the spiritual finger. You think about that, Tammy.”
Ten words, ten fingers. The first “very” was in reverse. That corresponds to Tammy’s ring finger. Not that rings have any significance in Twin Peaks of course…
Albert shows her the only known picture of Cooper from the last 25 years. He is standing in front of a mansion outside Rio.
“Looks like the man we met in prison,” says Tammy.
“The man we met in prison,” echoes Gordon.
The FBI team and Hawk have arrived at similar conclusions from different pieces of the puzzle.
Who Are You?
Diane goes into see Cooper/Mr C alone. The glass between them is a dark, unfathomable gulf.
“I knew it was going to be you. It’s good to see you again, Diane.”
His slowed down, modulated voice through the glass is a horror in itself.
“Oh yeah. When was that, Cooper? When did we see each other last?”
“Are you upset with me, Diane?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re upset with me.”
“When was the last time we saw each other, Cooper?”
“At your house.”
“That’s right. You remember that night?”
“I’ll always remember that night.”
“Same for me. I’ll never forget it. WHO ARE YOU?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Diane.”
“Look at me. Look at me.”
This is the most distressing, world-wrecking scene yet in The Return. That it echoes Laura’s words to Bob/Leland in Fire Walk With Me strikes absolute horror and disgust into my heart. The idea of “that night” recalls Lost Highway; people repeatedly tell Pete Dayton of something unspeakable that happened.
Shadow of a Twisted Hand Across My House
Lynch has often brought horror home. Leland inspecting Laura’s nails for dirt in Fire Walk With Me, anything with Bob/Leland, the transitions in and out of darkness in Lost Highway or even his painting Shadow of a Twisted Hand Across My House. What happened between Mr C and Diane happened in her home. That her trusted friend Dale Cooper turned up at her house and likely raped her is an utterly sickening thought. It’s the ultimate betrayal of the good man that is Cooper.
Diane doesn’t have an answer to her question. But she has come to some understanding. “That is not the Dale Cooper that I knew,” she tells Gordon. “NOW I KNOW IT ISN’T COOPER,” to paraphrase Laura’s diary. She does not, however, know who it is. That he escapes by the end of part 7 is not a comforting thought. Not a comforting thought at all.