Twin Peaks: The Return Part 14 triggers memories of old dreams, takes a trip into the woods, and reveals a monster behind the mask.
By Stewart Gardiner // My recent search for the Zone (otherwise known as being on holiday) led to nothing, but Twin Peaks: The Return part 14 has the answer. Apparently there is a vortex in East London and that’s where I happen to work. So the search will be much closer to home that suspected.
Part 14 is a thrilling, mind-blowing installment. David Lynch advances the story, draws vital connections, and delivers a WTF moment that outdoes everything else on television. Mainstream thrills may be had from the likes of Game of Thrones, but nothing comes remotely close to this. Twin Peaks: The Return is indeed peak TV and then some.
All Through the Years
The outside world definitively intersects with the town of Twin Peaks when Gordon Cole calls the sheriff’s office and Lucy answers. He is returning a call from Sheriff Truman. His interaction with Lucy is a beautiful thing and as close to nostalgia as The Return goes.
“Is that you, Lucy?”
“Director Cole.”
“You’ve been there all through the years, Lucy?”
“Well actually I have gone home and Andy and I have taken some vacations. One year we went to Bora Bora.”
Gordon says nothing. His eyes subtly dart back and forth, looking into the conversation void that has opened up. Lucy finally breaks the silence by asking if he wants to speak to Sherriff Truman. He sure does.
After establishing that it is the other Sheriff Truman on the line, Frank tells Gordon what they’ve found:
“Now, I just thought you should know this. It’s going to sound strange. Something’s been found. Something Deputy Chief Hawk found. Missing pieces from a certain Laura Palmer’s diary that could indicate two Coopers. I don’t know any more than this.”
Gordon reveals this information to Tammy and Albert. It seems to trigger the memory of a dream.
Double Agent
Part 14 serves up the beginning of Tammy’s full Blue Rose debriefing as promised previously by Albert. The case that started it all occurred in 1975 in Olympia, Washington. Two young field agents turned up at a motel to arrest a suspect called Lois Duffy. They hear gunshots outside. Upon entering they find one woman prone on the floor. Another woman backs away from them.
“They recognize the wounded woman as Lois Duffy. She speaks her last words to them: ‘I’m like the blue rose.’ She smiles, then dies, then disappears before their eyes. The other woman, screaming in the corner, they now notice is also Lois Duffy.”
Doubling and doppelgangers abound of course. “By the way,” Albert adds, nodding to the soap opera roots of Twin Peaks, “Lois did not have a twin sister.” Laura Palmer did however have an almost twin cousin.
The remaining Lois Duffy hung herself while awaiting trial for a murder she swore she didn’t commit. Albert reveals that the two arresting agents were Gordon Cole and the long lost Phillip Jeffries. “Now, what’s the one question you should ask me?” Albert asks Tammy. “What’s the significance of the blue rose?” she replies. He prompts her to answer her own question. Which she does, brilliantly:
“Blue rose does not occur in nature. It’s not a natural thing. The dying woman was not natural. Conjured. What’s the word? A Tulpa.”
Dougie Jones was manufactured to prevent Mr C from returning to the Lodge after the original Cooper got out 25 years later. One could say that he was conjured. Part 14 therefore doesn’t shut down this mystery with an answer, but instead offers up a parallel solution.
Window to the Soul
Part 14 also delivers Lynch at his zaniest. The light Lynchian humor of The Cowboy and the Frenchman is on full display in a scene where a window cleaner disrupts Gordon’s hearing aid. It’s like something out of Jacques Tati. I actually recommend watching a Jacques Tati clip while also listening to something spooky from the Twin Peaks Archive. Certainly achieved the desired effect for me.
The exaggerated antics of the window cleaner is partly achieved through movement. In that sense the scene resembles silent comedies, which Jacques Tati also recalls. However, the key element is sound. In this case the screech against the window cuts right into Gordon’s brain as he manically adjusts his hearing aid down to something bearable.
However, as ever in Twin Peaks, darkness is never far from the light. Where the camera moves up and down momentarily, achieving a sort of blurring of Gordon’s POV, it is similar to the effect used when Gordon was near the vortex. That Lynch hints at ominousness within a moment of comedy is disconcerting. That he doesn’t double down on it by making something ominous happen only heightens the effect and once again displays his total command of the form.
Deputy Diane Reporting
In part 13 Mr C asked Ray if Phillip Jeffries ever mentioned Major Briggs. Ray answered in the negative. Part 14 has Gordon ask Diane if Cooper (Mr C) mentioned Briggs that night. She reluctantly admits that he did. Or, rather, reluctantly says anything at all about the night in question. Gordon then gives Albert the nod to tell Diane about the ring that was found in Major Briggs’s stomach. The one inscribed from Janey-E to Dougie.
Diane’s response is surprising to say the least:
“My sister’s name is Jane. My half sister. She’s married to a man named Douglas Jones. Everybody calls him Dougie. Her nickname’s Janey-E.”
I trust Diane at this point as much as the Blue Rose task force do, which is to say not at all. If Janey-E is her sister then that opens up a whole host of connections. But what if she’s outright lying? Diane received a text from unknown in part 12 about Las Vegas and whether Gordon and co. had asked about it yet. Whether Janey-E is family or not, the intention appears to be the same: get them to Vegas and Dougie Jones.
Diane says that she and her sister are estranged and they haven’t talked in years. “I hate her,” says Diane, which is true to her character and at least lends credence to her revelation. A familial relationship would be easy to verify by the FBI, although also easy enough to fake for Diane and whomever it is she is working with. However I would suggest that Janey-E is indeed Diane’s sister, but that Diane is well aware of Dougie Jones. Motivations are unclear, yet she may not actually be working against the Blue Rose task force. And she surely doesn’t know that Dougie is now the real Cooper.
This is What We Do
Gordon calls the FBI office in Las Vegas and asks them to look into Douglas Jones. There are apparently 23 Douglas Joneses in the area. “How are we going to find the right one?” asks one of the agents. His superior blasts him in a classic over the top Lynchian manner: “WILSON, HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YO-O-O-U, THIS IS WHAT WE DO IN THE FBI.” He slams his fist on the desk. Scene over. So funny.
And Then She Said the Ancient Phrase
Gordon tells Tammy and Albert about Sheriff Truman’s discovery and then relates that he had “another Monica Bellucci dream.” It’s apparently a dream that he feels able to tell them about, rather than the other kind. Lynch shows the dream scenes in black and white.
In his dream, Monica arranges to meet Gordon at a certain café in Paris. She arrives with friends and Cooper is also there, although Gordon cannot see his face. “And then she said the ancient phrase,” Gordon tells them. “’We’re like the dreamer who dreams then lives inside the dream,’” says Monica. “We are like the dreamer who dreams then lives inside the dream,” narrates Gordon, the doubling effect feeding into the core of part 14. “I told her I understood. And then she said: ‘But who’s the dreamer?’ But who is the dreamer? A very powerful uneasy feeling came over me.”
Because of the Dream I Told You About
Monica indicates that Gordon look at something happening over his shoulder:
“I turned and looked. I saw myself from long ago in the old Philadelphia office. Listening to Cooper tell me he was worried about a dream he had.”
Part 14 thus delves right into Fire Walk With Me territory and indeed footage. Cooper never did say what the dream was that he was worried about, but one would assume it relates to the reappearance of Phillip Jeffries and the doubling of Cooper in the video footage. In Fire Walk With Me, Phillip points at Cooper and says: “Who do you think this is there?” In The Missing Pieces and here, he says: “Who do you think that is there?” ‘That’ implies a greater distance, both geographically and in psychic terms. Regardless of iteration, it is a Twin Peaks moment vital to The Return.
Fascinatingly, it is only now that Gordon and indeed Albert can access this memory. Gordon’s latest Monica Bellucci dream is a key to unlocking this piece of information.
“Damn, I hadn’t remembered that. Now this is really something interesting to think about.”
Understandable that he couldn’t remember it. Phillip Jeffries’s reappearance disrupted reality. Phillip spoke of a meeting above the convenience store and his words conjured images that acted as a parasite on the present.
Hanging Rock
Bobby distributes sandwiches before he, Hawk, and Truman take a trip up the mountain. Time has caught up to the ‘two days later’ from Major Briggs’s note in part 14. They arrest Chad before leaving, which satisfies the demands of another narrative thread. It’s a lot simpler to execute closure on a drug dealing cop thread that, well, pretty much most things in Twin Peaks.
There’s a shot of electrical cables in the forest, accompanied by an electrical thrum. The team make their way along the road near where Briggs’s station was. Jack Rabbit’s Palace in the shard of an ancient tree. That it’s presented as something primal and monolithic recalls the portrayal of Hanging Rock in Peter Weir’s movie. “Father did tell me never to wander around here without him,” says Bobby. Advice that might have served the schoolgirls who vanished at Hanging Rock.
Soil in pockets, they make their way 253 yards east from Jack Rabbit’s Palace. Upon reaching the co-ordinates they find smoke and electricity crawling across the floor of the woods. A woman is lying there. It is the eyeless woman from the Purple Room. When last seen she pulled a lever on the exterior of the Purple Room before falling off into space. (The same space that Major Briggs’s disembodied head floated through saying “Blue Rose.”) Naido is naked, but apparently unharmed. Andy goes to her and shows immediate compassion. His is a true heart.
It’s 2:53, Fellas
There’s a mound of earth housing a pool of golden liquid that looks like the opposite of scorched engine oil. Is this some White Lodge equivalent? Something is about to happen. Frank checks his watch. “It’s 2:53, fellas.”
A vortex opens up in the sky above them, pulling in the canopy of trees. Crackles of electricity reach out. Andy is drawn to it. He manages to get Naido to let go of his hand and stands up. He is bathed in white light. Then Lynch cuts to a wider shot where the group can be seen, before Andy is suddenly not. He pops out of existence.
Andy snaps into existence in the Slow 30s Room within the White Lodge. That last part is still a probably, but it works. Andy is indeed a true hearted fellow and it therefore makes perfect sense that he would be the one to visit the White Lodge. The vortex and his inherent goodness make a temporary trip to the White Lodge possible. Andy looks the part sitting there. Lynch lingers on his face and it’s gotten even more interesting with age.
The artist formerly known as the Giant (???????) reveals his true name to Andy: “I am the Fireman.” He makes a sculpted device appear in Andy’s hands. It seems to channel smoke that manifests around it, projecting it up onto the ceiling in a what could be described as an upside down, man-made version of the pool. Andy gets his own White Lodge silver screen to look upon.
Through the Looking Glass and What Andy Saw There
Images:
Experiment. Bob spewing forth from Experiment. Convenience store with Woodsmen. The “Got a light?” Woodsman. Electricity lines and pylons. Screaming student running outside Twin Peaks High. Portrait of Laura with angels on either side. Naido as they found her. Cooper and Mr C (two coopers) separated before red drapes. A telephone in the Sheriff’s office. Andy showing Lucy something (is this future or is it past?). He guides her forward, towards something…. Andy helping Naido in the forest as she tries to tell him something in her strange non-human language. The electricity pole with the number 6 on it – or poles, for it was at the original Fat Trout Trailer Park and there’s one near the new location (there are three shots here).
The device takes in the smoke again and vanishes. Then Andy snaps out of sight.
Hangover From Hanging Rock
Back at Jack Rabbit’s. Multiple ghostings of Bobby, Hawk, and Frank wander about. Different parts of time are existing simultaneously. Is part 14 suggesting that time distortions in Twin Peaks emanated from here, backwards and forwards in time like ripples in a pool?
The ghosts are still and the three men manifest again. Andy is the last to appear. He is carrying Naido. Andy has purpose, a mission. He gained meaning from those images.
“She’s very important and there are people who want her dead.”
They need to get her to a cell for her own safety. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” warns Andy. Frank and Hawk cannot remember what happened back there. They let Andy take charge.
Shutter Island
Andy and Lucy help Naido into a cell and make her as comfortable as possible. Chad is in another cell, as is a drunk man who has suppurating sores on his face (like other sick and/or bloody people). The drunk repeats anything anybody says. Including the non-language of Naido, which sounds oddly monkey-like in this scene. This might be the closest David Lynch ever gets to explaining the monkey face from Fire Walk With Me. Chad has to listen to the sounds and it makes him feel like he’s in the “fucking nuthouse.”
A conversation at the Roadhouse between two young women (Megan and Sophie) at the end of part 14 also makes reference to the nuthouse. “That’s because you’re hanging out at the nuthouse” and “Just don’t go in that nut place” Sophie says to Megan. Megan is supposedly hanging out in such a place and might have been the last person to see Billy. He was bleeding from nose and mouth, just like in Audrey’s dream of him. Megan twice starts to say she thinks her uncle was there, but then isn’t sure. Her mom was seeing Billy and when her friend asks her mom’s name she says Tina, who Audrey’s husband Charlie called. Tina’s name is mentioned and drones flood the soundtrack. That this all leads back to Audrey by association is very telling indeed.
The Green Glove
James and Freddy are security guards at the Great Northern. Freddy wore one green glove in the premiere when he was briefly introduced. That seemed like merely a Lynchian affectation. However, turns out it is much more than that. The story he delivers to James in part 14 is proof that telling can be just as evocative as showing when done right. It helps that the audience has seen the vortexes in action, including earlier in part 14.
Freddy cannot remove the glove. “It’s part of me,” he explains to James. “Doctor tried to take it off once and I started bleeding.” How he got it in the first place surprisingly ties directly into the core mysteries behind The Return. There was a vortex in East London. He found himself “floating in the air. Way up somewhere.” The Fireman appears and instructs him to visit his local hardware store and buy a particular green rubber gardening glove.
“One package will already be open, with only a right handed glove inside. Purchase that package and place the glove on your right hand. Your right hand will then possess the power of an enormous piledriver.”
Freddy floats in space. Whereas Andy goes to the White Lodge. Interesting.
The Fireman tells him to then go to Twin Peaks, Washington. USA. “And when I went to buy my ticket to fly over here, they told me I already had a ticket.”
James goes down to the furnace room of the Great Northern, which is eerily reminiscent of Bob’s lair from the European ending of the pilot. That the strange sound in the hotel appears to be emanating from there is extra spooky.
Strange times and they only get stranger by episode’s end.
Face/Off
Sarah Palmer must’ve run out of vodka again, decides to go to a bar for a change, get out of the house. It looks like she has stepped out of the woods in part 14 before going into the bar. Which is kinda creepy, but par for the course with Twin Peaks – perhaps.
A vile, ponytailed woman-hater sits beside her at the bar. He hits on her then turns nasty after she asks him to leave her alone. He starts calling her a lesbian, which is the disgustingly unsurprising reaction of such a creep. It looks like another example of Lynch highlighting misogyny until Sarah takes control of the situation and then some. “I’ll eat you,” she says before pulling her face off.
Laura lifted her face off to reveal blinding white light in the premiere. Sarah’s action is similar, yet the results are terrifying rather than beatific. Electricity crackles out of the void behind Sarah’s face. There’s smoke in there. A hand. Then a toothy, terrible smile manifests.
“Do you really wanna fuck with this?”
She replaces her face then pounces at the man and in the blink of an eye removes half his throat. Sarah watches him fall over and die. A beat. Then she screams.
Sure is a Mystery, Huh?
Nobody else in the bar saw anything and Sarah is free of blood. The bartender is not sure though. “We’ll see about this,” he half-threatens. Sarah Palmer deadpans her response:
“Yeah. Sure is a mystery, huh?”
One mystery may be creeping towards some sort of conclusion: that of the girl in 1956 who consumed the winged amphibian. I’ve thought she was Sarah Palmer since part 8 and this exhilarating WTF moment might as well be the proof. Although I take nothing for granted where the magic of Twin Peaks and David Lynch are concerned.