It feels like this is the week we might really get back to Buckhorn. A lot of people has been speculating that this is the week that Cooper becomes himself again. However, I’m not sure that’s going to happen just yet. As with every episode I hope for substantial time in Twin Peaks. There are still old friends we’ve yet see like Audrey, Big Ed, and Doc Hayward as well as others we’ve seen but just not very much. I really find more about Red (Balthazar Getty) and who he is to Shelly.

Twin Peaks: The Return Part 6

The episode opens where the last one left off with Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) by the statue outside of Dougie’s work. The Sheriff (Juan Carlos Cantu) that, in the previous episode, told him there was no loitering and that he needed move on comes by again reiterating this. In the time between these encounters however, Cooper has managed to get his hand caught in his sleeve. The Sheriff asks him his name and where he lives. Cooper says his name is Dougie Jones and he lives at home. Cooper sees the Sheriff’s badge and begins to grab at it. Concerned about his state the Sheriff takes him home.

Familiar words and icons seem to continue to bring Coop closer to being himself again.

When they get “Dougie” home, Janey-E (Naomi Watts) is waiting and wondering again where his car is at.  Before leaving the Sheriff picks up an unmarked envelope that has been dropped on their doorstep and hands it to her. She thanks them and takes Cooper inside to make him a sandwich. Concerned about his condition over the last day, she tells him she will take him to the doctor to get looked at. She asks him about the files he brought home. He says only “case files.” She then sends him upstairs to say ‘goodnight” to Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon) who has been waiting for him.

Case files came up as a familiar phrase for Coop last week.

He manages to get himself upstairs and into Sonny Jim’s room. Sonny Jim is lying in bed reading a book. Cooper sits next to him on the bed. Sonny Jim asks if he can keep his cowboy lamp on and if he’ll stay with him until he falls asleep. Sonny Jim claps to turn on the lamp. Amused by this Cooper repeats the behavior and turns the lamp back off.  The two alternate turning the lamp on and off as Sonny Jim thinks his dad is playing a game with him.

Clap on, clap off.

Suddenly Janey-E calls from downstairs that “Dougie” needs to come down right now. She tells him he is in the doghouse. She has opened the unmarked envelope and discovered a photo of Dougie and Jade walking hand in hand. Cooper lights up as he recognizes Jade (Nafessa Williams) and calls out her name. Janey-E is stunned that Cooper admits to knowing her. The phone begins to ring and she answers it. The caller on the other end asks for Dougie. She replies he is in dispose and lets the caller know they got his envelope. She insists she knows nothing about any of this and balks the demand for $50,000. When the caller threatens to call Dougie at work the next day she tells him “no” and says she will meet him in the park on the corner of Guinevere and Merlin the next day at noon-thirty. When she hangs up, she tells Cooper he better get started on the work he brought home so he doesn’t lose his job.

It makes sense that Coop brightened up when he saw Jade, a familiar face to him, in the photo.

Janey-E kisses Cooper on the top of his head and goes up to say “goodnight” to Sonny Jim. He sits there in front of his case files tracing the number seven on the Lucky 7 Insurance cover page with his finger. The stop light in Twin Peaks changes from green to yellow to red before we see Gerard (Al Strobel) wandering in the red room with his hand outstretched looking for something. Meanwhile, Cooper stares at the pages in the file. He looks of to the right and sees Gerard in the red room appear. Gerard tells him “It’s time for you to wake up” and repeats three time “Don’t Die.”  Gerard and the red room fade away. Cooper looks back at the paperwork in front of him and sees small dots of light that appear to guide him in marking up each page.

Albert (Miguel Ferrer) is driving through a city at night in the rain wrapping up a call with Gordon (David Lynch.) Gordon reminds him of the importance of what he’s doing and that he will think of him as he sips a fine Bordeaux. Albert gets out of the car into the rain. He curses Gene Kelly and heads into Max Von’s Bar. He makes his way through the crowd to a blond woman seated at the bar.  She turns around as he says her name: “Diane.”

Diane!!!! I knew that who Albert was going to find and that she would be played by Laura Dern. Has she changed her look over the years or has she always looked like this? Also why does the sign for Max Von’s look so much like the Bang Bang Bar’s sign?

Back in Twin Peaks, Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) is meeting with Red and his men in a garage. Richard is sampling a powerful cocaine that Red tells him he can pick the rest up at Mary Ann’s. Richard asks how he knows that name and if knows the area. Red tells him that he’s been all around there the last couple of weeks and that he likes the place. They can bring the sparkle right down from Canada. Suddenly Red begins repeatedly stomping his foot on the ground saying he has problem with his liver.  Richard talks about how small towns are great because the law enforcement’s asleep at the wheel. Red interrupts him to ask him if he’s ever seen The King and I and repeats that he likes the town. He further continues that the one problem with Richard is that he doesn’t know him yet and he’s going to be watching him. He threatens to saw his head open and eat his brains if Richard screws him over and calls him kid.

Richard expresses his dislike at being called kid. Red calls him kid a couple more times and then flips a dime into the air that appears to continue spinning for far too long before stopping and appearing in Richard’s mouth. Richard pulls the dime out and then it falls from the sky into Red’s hand. Richard looks downs as sees the coin is no longer in his own hand. Red shows him the tails side and say this is you. He flips it over to show heads and says this is me. “Heads I win, Tails you lose.”

Richard doesn’t seem so tough face to face with Red. Last week I commented on Richard seeming like the reincarnation of Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper,) but Red seems like he could be Frank’s son. Red is completely different from what I thought from his first appearance in episode 2. If something is going on between him and Shelly it makes sense since she has shown to have terrible taste in men.

By himself in his own truck, Richard is back to being tough again, fuming over Red calling him kid. He bangs the steering wheel several times and then tries to calm himself down. At the Fat Trout trailer park a man named Mickey (Jeremy Lindholm) runs over to Carl Rodd (Harry Dean Stanton) and asks if he can ride into town with him to pick up Linda’s mail. Carl says sure and they both climb in to a small waiting bus. On the ride Mickey mention that Carl heads to town nearly every day around that same time. He asks why and Carl says it gets him out of the trailer park. Carl asks Mickey “How’s Linda?” Mickey says that government’s finally coming thorough with her new wheelchair. Carl offers him a smoke. At first Mickey accepts but then changes his mind because he quit a year ago. Carl states he’s been smoking for seventy-five years every day.

So now we know who the Richard and Linda are that the Giant mentioned at the beginning of episode 1. Or do we?

At the Double R, Heidi (Andrea Hays) is giggling as school teacher Miriam Sullivan (Sarah Jean Long) is talking about how much she loves the Double R’s pies. She leaves a hefty tip for Heidi and Shelly (Mädchen Amick) but they feel bad about it and decide they will pay for her pie next time. Meanwhile, Richard is still fuming as he angrily drives looking more and more insane. Carl sits on a park bench with a cup of coffee staring up into the trees. A mom (Lisa Coronado) and her young son (Hunter Sanchez) are playing a game along the pathways in the park. He runs a few a feet then stops and she runs up to join him.  Richard pulls up behind a line of cars stopping at a four way stop. Angry about having to wait he pulls into the oncoming lane and increases speed. The mother and her son have left the park and are looking to cross the street still playing their game. The driver stopped at the sign waves them across unaware of Richard fast approaching on his left. The boy runs across the cross walk just as Richard’s smack into him.

Richard saw the boy a split second before hitting him but he didn’t stop. He angrily yells at the kid for not moving as he continues to drives briefly making eye contact with Miriam as she is getting in her car.  The mother cradles her son’s body as Carl approaches the intersection and witnesses as a glowing flame leave the boy’s body and float up to the sky. Carl says “god” and then goes over to comfort the mother. Other witnesses hold and comfort one another. A telephone pole with the number 6 on it and a loud electrical box at the top is seen.

First…I was completely stunned by Richard hitting the kid. That was one of the most awful things I’ve seen on a show. No question Richard is a bad guy.

Second…about Carl and the Fat Trout trailer park: In Fire Walk with Me, the Fat Trout Trailer Park is in Deer Meadow, OR. But here Carl rides into Twin Peaks as if it’s a short distance. Twin Peaks is about 12 miles south of the Canadian border and it would about another 250 miles further south to the Oregon border. I don’t think Carl is catching a quick 4 hour+ ride into Twin Peaks every day. Lynch and Mark Frost have made clear and the show has already shown us that the events of Fire Walk with Me are important so I don’t think they are just pretending it’s always been in Twin Peaks. It would seem more likely that Carl would have closed or sold the location in Deer Meadow and opened a new Fat Trout back in his hometown of Twin Peaks. But did he?

In Las Vegas, Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) sees the image of a red square appear on his screen. He clears it away but clearly knows what it means. Behind his desk is a safe, he opens it and pulls out a white envelope with a black dot. He sets it down on his desk and stares at it for a moment.

At Rancho Rosa, the police are removing the remains of Dougie’s car when an officer who has climbed to the roof of the junkie mom’s house reports he has found the license plate. Inside that junkie mom (Hailey Gates) is back to sitting at her table repeating 1-1-9. The officer on the roof reads out the license plate.

A small man with a large ice pick is sitting in a motel room rolling dice when the envelope Duncan Todd had in office is slid under the door. Ike “The Spike” Stadtler (Christophe Zajac-Denek) pulls two photos out of the envelope one is of Dougie and the other is of Lorraine. He traces their faces with the ice pick and then stabs each photo in the head.

Ike “The Spike” looks like bad news.

Cooper arrives at Lucky 7 for work but fails to get off the elevator as he is amused by the doors opening and closing. Phil (Josh Fadem) finally coxes him off and gets him to follow him into the offices. Dougie’s boss Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray) calls Cooper into his office as Anthony Sinclair (Tom Sizemore) watches from his office. He takes a look at the files and the marking Cooper has made. He asks how he supposed to makes sense of his child scribbles. Cooper just stares at Mullins old boxing poster and mimics the way he holds his gloves. As Mullins looks closer at Cooper’s markings he discovers something and thanks him asking him to keep this disturbing information to himself. Mullins says he made need his help again as he’s given him a lot to think about. He tries to shake Cooper’s hand but Cooper doesn’t understand.

Obviously Cooper’s scribbles have shed some light on something big.

Janey-E is approached in the park by the two men (Ronnie Gene Blevins and Jeremy Davies) who have come to collect the $50,000. She asks what the money was for. They explain that he bet $20,000 on a football game and lost. With interest his debt has now risen to $52,000. She scolds them for lending him the money in the first place and proceeds to tell them she will repay the original $20,000 plus 5% interest only. She hands them a wad cash after she scolds them yet again and storms off. The two men stand stunned only saying “Tough dame.”

Janey-E doesn’t anything from anybody. She is a “tough dame” and certainly the superstar of this episode.

As Lorraine (Tammie Baird) sits in her office on the phone finding out that Dougie wasn’t in the car when it blew up, she hears screams coming from out front. She stands up as Ike “The Spike” runs into her office and begins stabbing her numerous times. When he turns around he sees another woman who has just witnessed what he did. He jumps and chases he through a door before stabbing her as well. As he leaves her behind he feels a twinge of sadness as he notices his pick has become severely damaged.

This episode has had some pretty brutal moments.

Richard finally stops his car in a field where he gets out and checks out the front. He frantically cleans the blood of and gets back in the car. At the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s station Deputy Chief Hawk (Michael Horse) notices the top of one of the bathroom stall’s door is partially pried open. Given that the door is made by a company named after Hawk’s tribe, Nez Perce, he decides to pry it open the rest of the way. He’s interrupted by Deputy Chad (John Pirruccello) who threatens to tell the Sheriff what Hawk is doing. Unfazed, Hawk continues and ultimately finds what appears to be a multi-page letter.

What could the letter be? Maybe it’s Bobby’s confession. I feel like I’m the only one concerned about the fact that Bobby killed a guy!

Doris Truman (Candy Clark) comes storming into the Sheriff’s Station yelling at Frank (Robert Forster) about the fact that her dad’s car still isn’t fixed. He takes her to his office to talk. Deputy Chad mocks her after they leave and Maggie (Jodi Thelen) the dispatcher says he doesn’t understand. She wasn’t always like that but their son committed suicide. Chad says he knows and then mocks their sons for not being able to “take being a soldier.”

Chad’s a fucking dick! That’s it, a fucking dick. I hope he gets his soon, asshole.

The episode closes at the Roadhouse with a performance from Sharon Van Etten.

Final Thoughts

While I was right about Cooper not getting back to being himself I was wrong about a return to Buckhorn. But I’m sure that’s coming next week. I was also happy that we got to learn a bit about Red but it was not what I expect. This episode certainly had a couple of really shocking scenes, chiefly Richard running over the boy. I so glad to see Diane, now I can’t wait to get a scene where she actually speaks.

Join me here each week during the season for recaps and discussion of every episode. Twin Peaks airs Sundays at 9 pm on Showtime.