Twin Peaks: The Return Part 13 toys with time, gets into an epic arm wrestling match, and asks reality to come out to play.
By Stewart Gardiner // I’ve been away. Contrary to the rumors, I wasn’t pulled into a vortex in the sky and it hasn’t been 25 years. I was just in another place for a little while. Anyway, I’m back now and it is time to catch up, starting with part 13.
Twin Peaks: The Return part 13 knowingly eschews normal narrative momentum, while it also avoids stalling. David Lynch takes an almost Burroughsian approach to time by subtly employing a version of the cut-up technique. This occurs on a macro level rather than chopping into the episode itself. Narrative units have been re-assembled from the 18 hour whole. It doesn’t draw excessive attention to itself, nor is it without purposeful decision-making. The cumulative effect is quietly discombobulating; time is out of sorts in and around the town of Twin Peaks.
Northwest Passage of Time
Becky calls her mom Shelley bemoaning the fact that Steven hasn’t come home for two nights. Is this really taking place after she stormed over to Steven’s mistress’s apartment and fired a few rounds into the door? Neither does Shelley seem too concerned that she might have to do some serious stunt work again. It might just be highlighting the cycle of abuse, yet feels out of sync in a similarly disconcerting way to some other scenes in part 13 and previous episodes. This particular scene certainly appears to precede the gun incident.
It is day when Shelley takes the call. Two scenes later and Bobby enters the Double R at night; Shelley has left for the day. While this in itself doesn’t suggest, to borrow a phrase from Philip K. Dick, that time is out of joint, it nevertheless draws attention to the passage of time.
Sisyphus’s Boxing Match
Bobby tells Big Ed (he’s back!) and Norma that they found something that his dad left today. Well, that doesn’t stack up, does it? I thought we were past that point and moving towards two days later. Of course I am writing about part 13 after watching part 14 too, but I don’t want to take future past advantage of the situation. So I’ll keep quiet on that score for those who haven’t seen the next episode yet.
The Sarah Palmer scene is naturally the most disturbing instance of time coming unstuck. Anything featuring Sarah Palmer is brilliant and worrying. An old boxing match is on the television, except it is on a short, endless loop. It feels as if Sarah is being punished in a Sisyphus-like fashion, except she did nothing to deserve such treatment except to already suffer during her lifetime. Sarah searches for more vodka as the television goes on and on in the background. Has she drunk what she bought (if it was indeed delivered to her house) or is this the last of the vodka before she goes to the store? Time is wrong in the Palmer house.
Nighthawk
Speaking of Big Ed, he gets to eat soup over the end credits. He’s sitting alone at Big Ed’s Gas Farm looking out at the lonesome highway. It’s desolation, loneliness, and late night snacks at the heart of Americana. A moving (emotionally and in terms of movement) Edward Hopper painting if ever I saw one.
A Wrong Has Been Made Right
Part 13 has Dougie, the Mitchum brothers, and Candie’s angels do the conga into Bushnell’s office. The soundtrack is gleefully at odds with what one would except. In place of anything straightforward, there’s a “weird glitchy track” playing, as my friend Magnus described it to me. The glitchy conga leads to gifts from the Mitchums to Bushnell and the great Dougie Jones. Back at the Joneses, Janey-E takes delivery of a gym set. It’s lit up at night (day to night again thanks to the magic of editing) and Sonny Jim leaps about on it. “Seven heaven,” says Dougie. In heaven everything is of course fine.
Dougie walks into a glass door and Anthony plots to poison him. He takes Dougie for coffee and Dougie naturally gets distracted by a slice of cherry pie; from the same café as he got the pie that saved his life in the desert. Dougie returns to the table and notices dandruff on Anthony’s shoulders. As he examines it, Anthony breaks down.
Anthony goes from potential poisoner to confessor. All because of Douglas Jones. Man has an aura about him. “I only want to die or change,” says Anthony. Dougie must of course change back to Cooper or else die at the hands of his bad self. But part 13 isn’t the place for that. Not now. Not yet.
The Las Vegas Police Department receives the results of Dougie’s DNA test. Apparently he escaped from a high security prison two days ago and he’s a missing FBI agent. Crazy and hilarious! The Fuscos of course laugh it off.
I Am the Arm (Wrestler)
Mr C turns up at the Farm, which is a Western Montana warehouse where newbies have to arm wrestle the boss. Ray just wants to shoot the guy and who would blame him? But the Farm has rules and that ain’t going to end well for Ray.
“What is this, kindergarten? Nursery school?” asks Mr C when he’s told that he has to arm wrestle. He goes on to make a mockery of it all when he toys with the boss during the match:
“It hurt my arm when you moved it down here. But it really hurt when you had it down here. See? Doesn’t that hurt your arm when I go like that? I think it’s much worse when it’s down here. Let’s go back to starting positions. It’s really much more comfortable.”
Does that describe the narrative games of part 13? Perhaps.
Mr C stops playing with him, slams the boss’s arm down onto the table and then literally punches in his face, killing him instantly.
The Cheese Does Not Wear Me
He clears the room so he can speak to Ray alone. Except there’s a little guy in glasses, shirt and tie, and v-neck sweater, credited as the Farm Accountant. The little man asks Mar C (his new boss) if he needs any money. Mr C tells him he does not, but at least he doesn’t punch a hole in the guy’s face. Part 13 briefly brings to mind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Farm Accountant reminds me of the Cheese Man from the season 4 finale “Restless.” He appeared in each of the Scooby Gang’s dreams and spoke the wise words, “I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.” What’s that got to do with part 13 of Twin Peaks: The Return, you ask? The glasses, the out of the place nature of his appearance, you know, dreams. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me.
Interview with the Doppelganger
Mr C shoots Ray in the leg and proceeds to interrogate him. He asks Ray who hired him. The request “came through a man named Phillip Jeffries. At least that’s the name he gave us. I never met him. I only talked to him on the phone.” Mr C asks why Jeffries wanted him dead. “He said that you got something inside that they want.” Jeffries apparently never mentioned Major Briggs.
Ray reaches into his pocket and takes out the Owl Cave ring. Which is a wow moment.
“Jeffries said I was supposed to put this on you after I killed you.”
“Where did you get that?”
“It was given to me. Right before I walked out of my cell and saw you.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“A guard. I don’t know. He was dressed as a guard, but I’d never seen him before.”
“Put it on. Ring finger. Left hand.”
The words of the Man From Another Place in Fire Walk With Me come to mind: “With this ring I thee wed.” Ray has committed to death. “I know who you are,” he tells Mr C, but it won’t do him any good.
Where’s Phillip Jeffries?
Although Mr C cleared the room, the goons and the Farm Accountant watch it all on a screen from another room. In walks Richard Horne, who is transfixed by the dark man who may well be his father.
Ray reaches into his pocket once more and this time removes a piece of paper. It supposedly has the co-ordinates on it. Mr C has what he wanted, but needs to know one more thing:
“Ray, where’s Phillip Jeffries?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ray. Where’s Phillip Jeffries.”
“Last I heard, he was at a place called The Dutchman’s. But that’s not a real pla-”
Bang. Mr C shoots him dead. “I know what it is,” he says. Cold as ice.
The Owl Cave ring disappears from Ray’s hand. It falls on to the floor of the Red Room. Ray is still on the floor of the warehouse. Mr C walks away. Cut to the Red Room where Ray’s dead body also lies. Mike places the ring back on its special table.
A World of Her Own
Part 13 returns to the inscrutable conversations of Audrey and Charlie with fascinating and intriguing results. Nothing is as it seems here. Or everything is in fact as it is, but something is most certainly wrong. Could Audrey still be in a coma after the explosion at the bank all those years ago? What lies beyond their front door? But as obscure as the Billy references have been, they aren’t exclusive to Audrey and Charlie. It isn’t a sealed off dream because other people are also looking for Billy.
All is not right with Audrey regardless. Her crisis is one that would just as readily apply to Agent Cooper in his current state as Dougie:
“I feel like I’m somewhere else. Have you ever had that feeling, Charlie?”
“No.”
“Like I’m somewhere else and I’m somebody else. Have you ever felt that?”
“No. I always feel like myself.”
Charlie treats her more like a patient parent than a husband. Although there are cracks in his patience.
“Well, I’m not sure who I am, but I’m not me.”
“This is existentialism 101.”
This Place Makes Me Wonder
I was getting a Shutter Island vibe off of these exchanges, with Charlie as psychiatrist even more than parent. But it is with his next comment that things get really strange:
“Now, are you going to stop playing games or do I have to end your story too?”
“What story is that, Charlie?”
The story that springs to mind for me is The Twilight Zone episode “A World of His Own” penned by Richard Matheson. It’s about a writer who can bring his characters to literal life simply by describing them into his tape machine. Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting that this is the answer to the Audrey riddle, but it’s a delicious connection to consider nonetheless. Not that tape machines have ever been a part of Twin Peaks… Twin Peaks: The Return does of course feature a search for the Zone and part 13 introduces the notion of the Twilight Zone, if only in the most indirect fashion.
End My Story
I’ve just been told that I have been gone 25 years and I’m starting to remember where it was that I went. There was a room. I saw the bearded men there. Dirty bearded men in a room. But it’s okay now. I’m here, in the Roadhouse, listening to James Hurley singing “Just You.” It’s good to be back writing about Twin Peaks.