**Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the show.**
And you thought that last episode was weird. David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” goes off the edge in this week’s two episodes. Like a modern update on “Eraserhead,” the beginning of episode three, “Call For Help,” is some kind of spellbinding bewitchery, featuring easily the strangest, most unsettling images that Lynch has committed to celluloid since the rabbit scenes in “Inland Empire” or some of his early experimental short films, of which the opening scene of episode 3 is very reminiscent. The haunting 17-minute scene is mostly silent outside of stray bits of dialogue and industrial clanging, but it’s nonetheless completely arresting.
READ MORE: ‘Twin Peaks’ Returns And It’s Freakishly The Same & Arrestingly Different [Review]
Remember the end of episode two when it appeared that Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was shot into space? Well, it appears he was flung into some new inter-dimensional netherworld and landed. It’s a strange celestial place that’s visually epileptic and employs jittery stop-motion animation and eerie backward tape-loop sounds. It’s weird as fuck. Whatever world this is, it’s certainly a new one we haven’t seen before. There’s an Asian lady with her eyes sewn shut speaking to Cooper in incomprehensible backward clicks and hisses, a ghostly figure who whispers “blue rose,” and an American woman pleading with him opaquely to escape (she wears a watch with the time that says 2:53, for what it’s worth). Cooper, seemingly being ripped apart in a manner which defies logic and physics, is then sucked into a piece of ornate steampunk-looking machinery. The only element that’s apparent here is that the mysterious force pulling him inside seems to trigger a switch that affects all the Dale Coopers in this story (and they keep growing in numbers).
One must resist the urge to be reductive in all forms of criticism or media, and in the world of David Lynch you need to be really open-minded. But in this new “Twin Peaks,” it’s tough not to get a little binary as per the way the show is laid out. We already know there are two Agent Coopers, and at this point it’s becoming safe to say the “good” or normal Agent Cooper lives in the Black Lodge of the Red Room and the evil doppelgänger with the bronzer tan and mullet is the one out in the real world (this might have been obvious from the first two episodes, but you at least want to see where things go a little before you put a label on them).
But wait, in bonkers episode three, there’s Dougie, another version of the good Agent Cooper, sporting a hilariously bouffant haircut and gauche tacky duds, who’s seen in the real world, post-coital with a call girl. But because this is “Twin Peaks,” this gets extremely outlandish, Dougie has a supernatural fit, and evil Cooper has some kind of psychic/spiritual conniption at the same time. Soon enough, both of them are retching up some nasty bile and passing out. So, there are now three versions of Dale Cooper, and Dougie and the good FBI agent have switched places. Dougie has been transported into the Red Room (the one-armed man telling him, “Someone has manufactured you and it has already been fulfilled”), and the good FBI agent has taken over Dougie’s place on Earth.
Confused? You should be. The wrench in all of it is that the original Special Agent Dale Cooper is now in a kind of catatonic state, unable to really speak and behaving like he’s mentally challenged. Complicating matters, someone is trying to assassinate him and some strange Opioid Mom has entered the picture (it’s some tangent and I have no clue what it’s about, but it will surely explain itself later). He then spends time in a casino, and it gets weirder from there.
READ MORE: The 45 Best & Weirdest ‘Twin Peaks’ Moments To Prepare You For Its Return
Meanwhile, we’re suddenly reintroduced to two old characters: the largely deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole (David Lynch himself) and agent Albert Rosenfield (the late, great Miguel Ferrer). Cole and Albert are investigating the butchering in New York (from episode one) in the glass room and the murder in South Dakota featured in the last episode. But suddenly, everything changes when they receive a call about the whereabouts of Special Agent Dale Cooper, who’s obviously been missing for 25 years. He’s also in South Dakota. The FBI agents are stunned and jump on the first plane they can get.
“The absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence. How about a truckload of valium?” Albert asks only half-jokingly after the surprising phone call. “Call For Help” is off-the-charts crazy and hilarious. It’s so utterly bizarre, it feels like anyone who’s been on the fence about this new “Twin Peaks” might just jump off right here. It’s the make-or-break episode for newcomers.
If that’s not enough, another new character is introduced, the fetching agent Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell, apparently from “The Secret History Of Twin Peaks” book). I have no clue what Lynch is going on about right now and frankly, I love being confused in his world. But if there’s one constant to “Twin Peaks,” it appears it’s going to be at the end of each episode: a band plays a song live in the club in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington. Last week it was Chromatics. This week it’s The Cactus Brothers’ track “Mississippi.”