The joke must be on me, because after last week’s coherent, straightforward, and satisfying hour of “Twin Peaks,” I struck up conversations with friends, family, and pop culture aficionados in which I explained to them it was obvious the often slow-moving, consistently frustrating but equally as brilliant series had changed its confounding ways and was ready to give fans everything they wanted. The previous episode doubled down on the time the revival spent in our favorite sleepy Washington town, offered an illuminating backstory on Diane (Laura Dern, fabulous as usual) and Bad Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), and seemed to give viewers the illusion that they had any idea what was going on. But David Lynch doesn’t play by any rules, and last night’s slice of “Twin Peaks” was a haunting, hallucinatory, and strangely beautiful hour of television that made “Eraserhead” look as accessible as a Tylenol commercial. So let’s do the impossible and try to break down what is undoubtedly the weirdest episode of “Twin Peaks” ever.
Fresh out of prison, we immediately touch down on Bad Cooper traveling at night with his former associate Ray (George Griffith), who guns him down in cold blood during a bathroom stop that doesn’t go as planned. After Bad Cooper dies, a cluster of charcoal demons (the ones spotted in the morgue and in jail in previous episodes) tear into him with their hands and then feast on the body, which appears to rid itself of Bob (Frank Silva). We then head over to the Bang Bang Bar where Nine Inch Nails does a moody version of “She’s Gone Away” (a fitting Laura Palmer tribute) before landing back on Bad Cooper, who lurches forward from the spot he died in as though he was taking a quick catnap and not ripped apart by a band of soot ghouls. Buckle up, folks, because that was the easy stuff.
Next, a title card takes us to White Sands, New Mexico, at precisely 5:29 on the morning of July 16, 1945, when an atomic bomb is detonated. The mushroom cloud that follows produces an explosion of colorful flurries, dancing specks of white light, and the feeling that we’re trapped inside a particularly energetic screensaver from the ’90s. But more importantly, the blast prompts a floating, slimy, white figure to throw up a substantial amount of what looks to be a more congealed version of “garmonbozia,” or the “pain and sorrow” that resembles creamed corn from “Fire Walk with Me.” Whatever it is, the vomit reveals the face of Bob, suggesting that we could be in the middle of the killer’s origin story, if not the entire backstory of the Black Lodge as well as its inhabitants.
We’re also introduced to an old-timey gas station/convenience store in a baffling sequence that also includes a handful of soot-covered ghosts roaming the premises. Lynch isn’t giving us a ton to chew on here, but hardcore “Twin Peaks” fans will remember the Lodge spirits in “Fire Walk with Me” that meet in a room above a convenience store in one of the film’s most terrifying scenes, which this episode seems to be heavily drawn from.
We then cut to the top of a lighthouse on a small island in the middle of a purple ocean and find the Giant (Carel Struycken) watching a large theater screen replaying the effects that we just saw from the bomb. He pauses when he sees Bob, floats up to the screen, and on his back, produces gold light from his head, specifically a golden orb housing the famous image of a smiling Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer. It’s sent through the screen destined for Earth, and it’s hard not to get the sense the show is suggesting Laura Palmer (good) was created to combat Bob (evil). So far we know how that battle went, but the show’s mythology seems to be directly tying Laura to the Giant and potentially setting up new stakes for the show by offering one hell of a thought-provoking prologue.
Then we’re propelled forward to 1956, where an egg hatches a slimy insect with wings and frog legs, and with everything else we’ve gone through, this feels tame by comparison. A charming teen couple known as “boy” and “girl” return home after a school dance while a gaggle of the charcoal demons who previously feasted on Bad Cooper wreak havoc on the small New Mexico town. But one seems to be most troubling: the Woodsman (Robert Broski), who asks everyone he encounters if they “gotta light,” eventually makes his way to a nearby radio station where he murders two employees by violently squeezing the top of their heads, effectively crushing their skulls and splattering brains everywhere. Then the nicotine-starved creature hijacks the live broadcast, reciting these disturbing words over and over: “This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, the dark within.”
With this, we watch as several people listening to the broadcast fall over and die, but not the girl returned home from the dance, who is tuned into that station while riding the high she feels from her first kiss. She’s not exactly off the hook though, as the aforementioned winged insect crawls into her mouth as she sleeps, finding shelter as we all plan the search for our own safe space. The credits start to roll and our mouths are also fittingly left ajar, forced to make sense out of all of this while “Twin Peaks” takes a break next Sunday.
So was this the definitive Bob and Laura origin story we didn’t know we needed? And to that end, a welcome late-night detour into pure Lynchian madness or an unnecessary pitstop that wasted our precious time? Could the unnamed boy and girl be characters we already know? My money is on the girl being a young Sarah Palmer, by the way. And where do we go from here? I’m not sure, but the ride certainly won’t be boring. See you in two weeks.