We are about half way through the season and with Episode 8, I feel it will be a big episode!   I am sure that Audrey will make a long-awaited return and we will get more info on where she has been, if she is the billionaire and who exactly Richard Horne is to her.  Also, we will meet up with James and his uncle Big Ed, that we are getting closer to Coop (Kyle MacLachlan) snapping out of his “Dougie” daze, but that we will spend a lot more time in Buckhorn and learn more about the murder that occurred there and how Hastings is involved.

Twin Peaks: The Return Part 8

Fresh out prison, Bad Cooper and Ray (George Griffith) have discovered their car is being tracked. Bad Cooper changes the trackers to follow a truck instead. Ray apologizes for running off and getting caught like he did. He asks Bad Cooper where Daria is and he tells Ray she’s waiting at “The Farm.” Bad Cooper brings up the coordinates he needs from Ray. Ray tells him he has them memories and goes on to try to extort “quite a lot of money” for the information.

What it is that Ray has memorized?   Is it a combo to a safe?   Why is this worth money?  What is this thing that Bad Cooper wants so badly?   Is this items something we have seen already and or something we should be familiar with?   I for one can’t think of what it would be or why Hasting’s secretary Betty would have had the info for it. 

Bad Cooper tells Ray to get off the freeway and take a small road. The paved road soon turns in a dirt one. Ray continues to drive for a bit before saying he needs to pull over and take a leak. Bad Cooper waits in the car. He opens the glove compartment and pulls out the “friend” he instructed Warden Murphy leave there. He takes the gun and points it Ray demanding the info. Ray turns around holding his own gun saying I tricked you.  Bad Cooper tries to fire off some shot but the unloaded gun only clicks. Ray shoots Bad Cooper twice in the chest.

How did Ray know that there was a gun in the glove box?   Did Warden Murphy have a meeting with Ray and discuss killing Bad Cooper? 

As Ray approaches the fallen Bad Cooper lying on the ground to shoot him again, several translucent ghost-like copies of the burned man from the Buckhorn Jail come streaming out of the surrounding woods. A few begin dancing around Ray while others begin digging at Bad Cooper’s body. Ray is horrified and confused by what he is seeing. He falls to the ground a sees a bubble containing BOB’s (Frank Silva) smiling face coming out of his wounds.

OMFG … is that BOB? It is BOB!!!!    Along with this, what were with all the burnt spirits that came to save Bad Cooper?   For a moment, I thought that Ray was not able to see them, however, his reactions stated that he could.

Terrified, Ray scrambles to his feet and runs for the car. He drives away as the spirits continue to dance for a bit before fading away. As he drives away he makes a frantic call to “Phillip” telling him that he shot Cooper but is not sure that he’s dead.  He also tells him that he saw something in Cooper that could be the answer to “what this is all about.” Ray mentions that Cooper knows where he’s going so if he shows up he’ll deal with him then.

 I don’t believe that Bad Cooper is dead since that seemed like a way to easy way for him to die. And with Ray having left a message for Phillip saying he is not 100% sure he is dead, but believes he may be, I for sure don’t think he is dead. And is this Phillip, Phillip Jeffries?

Meanwhile at the Roadhouse, nine inch nails takes the stage. Suddenly in the woods, Bad Cooper sits straight up.

Why was NIN playing at the Roadhouse? I know that we have seen many acts play there over the course of this season and maybe the place has turned around and is indeed a popular music spot. Maybe NIN is going out on the road and needed a small place to test out new music. I told you he was not dead! And did Bad Copper just have a dream about NIN playing at the Roadhouse? That is what it looked like to me!

July 16, 1945 White Sands, NM at 5:29am (MWT.) The desert is quiet except for a countdown coming over a PA system. At zero a bomb explodes in the distance creating a mushroom cloud high into the sky.  The camera moves closer to it at a steady pace and before long we are inside the cloud. Particles are flying everywhere as a series of several more small explosions occur inside the cloud. The scene is truly indescribable.

That whole explosion scene was incredible!   It reminded me of TREE OF LIFE or 2001.  And then we move onto the scene with the convenience store, where it’s shot in black and white and feels like stop motion.   And has a look of Lynch’s art work.   

A small convenience store with two gas pumps out front appears to catch fire as time seems to be jerking back and forth in short bursts. The burned men wander back and forth and in and out of the store in rapid jerky motion.  A vaguely female figure appears to be floating in nothingness when a stream of thick fluid begins to emanate from her featureless face. In the stream is a bubble with the face BOB. It’s very similar to the one coming out of Bad Cooper. In addition to BOB, the are several eggs in the stream including one that breaks loose as BOB’s head passes the camera.

And now we see the burnt spirits there.   Is this then where it all began, in White Sands NM?   Is this where the spirits from both the Black and White Lodge came from? Then we see this floating figure and a bubble with BOB’s face?   Is this the birth of BOB???  WOW … BOB … WOW!!!   There is so much happening here!!!

Elsewhere in the explosion, a shiny golden ball is taking shape.  Small red blobs go racing pass as if we’re inside a bloodstream. The bloodstream image gives way to the endless ocean from the beginning of Episode 3. Panning up to a large smooth structure at the top of a jutting island, the camera then moves in through a window to reveal the location Cooper sat with the Giant in the opening scene of Episode 1.

Music is playing a phonograph as a woman (Joy Nash) in a fancy evening dress sits nearby a bell shaped structure like the one on top of the box in space from Episode 3. A noise like an alarm begins sounding a light flashes above it. The Giant (Carel Struycken) comes into the room and stares off into the distance for a while. Eventually he turns his attention to the structure and flips a switch to turn off the alarm. The woman remains seated as the Giant exits.

He goes upstairs to what appears to be a movie theatre without seats.  The room contains another bell like structure near the screen. The Giant approaches the screen and watches it as it shows he what we have just watched including the explosion and the burned men at the convenience store. When he sees the image of BOB in the stream, the playback stops and the Giant heads to the corner of the screen where he is lifted high into the air. The woman soon enters and cannot take her eyes off the image of BOB.

The Giant lies motionless in the air as the woman, bathed in spotlight, approaches. Gold light and particles begin flowing from the top of his head. The woman watches with a mix of delight and concern on her face. Soon a golden ball leaves the light and particles above his head and floats down to her.  As she takes it in her hands she sees the faces of Laura (Sheryl Lee) in it. She raises it in the air. It floats up into a golden tube above the screen. The ball goes through the tube and onto the screen where an image of the earth is now showing. Next it slowly moves across the US and the scene fades to black.

Is this the White Lodge? It appears to be so and it appears to be in the same place as Coop came to after falling through the floor in Episode 3. And this is shot in black and white too. I figure it’s due to the time frame we are in of 1945 to set a feeling of it being older than the time we are in now. The other thing in this scene is that it appears Laura Palmer is created to be sent into the world to combat BOB? Again, this is NOT the episode I thought we were going to get this week, and I’m trying to process everything that is going on.

In the New Mexico Desert, the years pass by to August 5, 1956. One of the eggs from the stream rests on the sand. Soon it begins to crack as something hatches. It appears to be part bug part frog. It slowly crawls away from the remains of its egg.

A teenage boy (Xolo Maridueña) and girl (Tikaeni Faircrest) are walking past a gas station when suddenly she stops. She finds a penny on the ground heads up. She tells the boy that means good luck. He hopes it does bring her good luck.

What is that thing, a bug or a frog or a bug-frog? What purpose does it have outside of the of freaking me out! I also still like this choice of using black and white since we are in the past. And the scene where the two kids are walking feels like a scene from any B-Movie. For a moment, I thought that this bug-frog was going to have grown bigger and attached these kids.  Is one of these kids supposed to be Leland Palmer or Sarah Palmer?  

Back in the desert, the figure of a man (Robert Broski) floats down to the ground and begins walking. The two look like unburned versions of the burned men. Nearby another man appears. The two stop a couple (Tad Griffith and Leslie Berger) driving along the desert road a t night. The taller of the two men approaches the driver’s window and in a scratchy slightly muffled voice begins repeatedly asking “Got a light?” Before long the couple speed off.

I am still not sure how these burnt spirits are fitting into the telling of this story. This episode is getting more and more strange as it goes along, and I am loving it! I like how this episode is scored and how in certain places it sounds like it’s been slowed down, which makes it sound eerie and feels uncomfortable.

The boy and girl continue to walk. She surprises the boy by telling him he lives in town by a school. He asks how she knows that, she replies she just does. She mentions that she thought he was going with Mary and he tells her no, that’s over. She asks if he’s sad about that and he replies no. When they arrive at her house, she thanks him for walking her home. He asks to kiss her. She reluctantly agrees. After they kiss runs to the house and waves bye.

I feel like the girl is Sarah Palmer due to her way of speaking. Remember, Sarah has a minor psychic ability, which we have seen in the previous seasons. And she is establishing this in the scene by knowing things about her date which they have obviously not discussed.

The taller of the two men crosses the desert and arrives at a radio station.  The residents of the town are listening to the music from the station as they end their day. A mechanic working on a car, a waitress cleaning a diner, and the teenage girl sitting on her bed thinking about the boy are all listening to the music play. The man enters the radio station and asks the receptionist (Tracy Phillips) in the same scratchy voice “Got a light?” Somehow she is drawn to him. When she nears him he crushes the life from her skull.

He enters the DJ booth and places his hand on the DJ’s (Cullen Douglas) head slowly crushing the life from him as well. As he does this, he grabs the microphone and begins to repeat the following:

 “This is the water and this is the well.

drink full and descend.

The horse is the white of the eyes

and dark within.”

All the while he continues to crush the DJ’s skull. Soon the listeners begin to pass out. The bug frog makes its way to the girl’s house. It flies up into her window. Inside she has passed out as well. The bug frog flutters its wings. The sleeping girl’s mouth opens and it crawls inside.

HE IS CRUSHING SKULLS!!! And what is with this thing he continues to say that appears to be putting people to sleep. I have been trying to figure out if there are key words and or if this is an answer back to the FIRE WALK WITH ME poem. Do these fit together somehow? He says the horse is the white of the eyes.  Sarah has seen a white horse before; does this mean she has drank from the well somehow? The girl we have seen in the previous scenes must be Sarah. Especially now that the bug-frog has crawled into her mouth and is now inside her.  

At the station the man finishes his verse and brutal crushes the rest of the DJ’s skull. He leaves the station heading back out it the desert and soon fades into the black of night as the whinnying of horses can be hears. The girl lies sleeping peacefully in her bed.

Final Thoughts

WHAT DID WE JUST WATCH?!?!  There is no way to predict this show at all, and I am so glad about that!  I loved how this episode just washed over you with images and sounds. And of course, now, I have a lot more questions about what I just watched and how this ties into anything. This has been such an interesting season so far, and I cannot believe we only have about 10 Episodes left. How is this all going to tie together, if at all? 

For those characters, we love and that are near and dear to us, who we have already seen, was that it for them? Do we ever find out more about Hastings, his secretary and why Ruth was murdered?  Who is Becky’s father? More important, who are Richard Horne’s parents?   Will anyone ever discover that Bobby Briggs killed a guy 25 years ago? Are we going back to New York and the cage? Will Coop snap out of his “Dougie” daze? I feel like I am all over the place trying to figure out this new season.

We must wait until July 9^th to find out if any of my questions, or your questions, are going to be answered.  

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