This review will cover the first two episodes of “Twin Peaks” that aired last night, May 21. **Spoilers ahead.**
“I’ll see you in 25 years,” were the last words Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) spoke to Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in the season two finale of David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” back in 1991. Now, just one year over schedule, Lynch has returned to the small town, with Showtime footing the bill, and it’s like revisiting a ghostly memory: it’s freakishly the same and yet vaguely different in the abstract sense that time erodes recollection.
Touching upon life and death, the future and the past, the real and the unreal, stasis and evolution, Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” seems fixated with the yin and yang of opposites to the point that the figurative and literal concept of the doppelganger is featured front and center. And watching the new “Twin Peaks” is much like the strange and familiar sensation of staring into the mirror of a new self.
If “Twin Peaks” had an opening crawl, it might be akin to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” which led with the bold line: “Luke Skywalker has vanished.” And so it goes here, as Special Agent Dale Cooper — at least as we once knew him — has been missing for 25 years, and hasn’t been seen or heard from. The last time we saw Cooper, he was smiling into the mirror, blood trickling down his face, possibly possessed by the demonic spirit of Bob that haunted the town in the original two seasons of “Twin Peaks.” Cooper is back, in a sense, but he’s taken on a new alter-ego. He might still be inhabited by the spirit of Bob, but he also might be a murderously rogue FBI agent — it’s hard to tell. “Twin Peaks” is still as wtf inscrutable as ever.
Featuring that hallmark Lynchian tone — the wonderfully weird mix of absurdity, surrealism, mysteriousness and awkward character eccentricities — “Twin Peaks” is still in fine form, but takes on a grim and darker dimension, far less soap opera-y and conventional as season two slipped into (it featured a terrific finale directed by Lynch, but was marred by preposterous writing even for this weirdo show). By the end of the two-hour premiere (ok, two one-hour episodes), it even takes on horror tones and an unsettling nightmarishness perhaps more austere than we’ve seen in the past. And as askew as it is, it’s deeply absorbing stuff.
Meanwhile, a triangle of points broaden the series’ scope: there’s an eerie, mysterious glass box in New York that’s constantly under watch (or is it monitoring you?); the warmth and good coffee of Twin Peaks, Washington remains present; and another new locale is the seemingly tranquil suburbs of Buckhorn, South Dakota. One supposes the triangle expands into a square if you include the infamous extradimensional Red Room, looking a little bit more well-lit than it was in the past, though it’s sadly missing the presence of the Man From Another Place (the diminutive backwards-speaking fan favorite isn’t returning for this new run).
Unconventionally laid out, even for “Twin Peaks,” there’s a new murder in town. A South Dakotan high school principal, Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard), is accused of killing Ruth Davenport, a librarian he’s been having an affair with. His fingerprints are discovered all over the apartment that contains her gruesome body — but wait, that’s her decapitated head and a man’s body in the bed. In New York, a college kid (Ben Rosenfield) is hired to surveil the unexplainable glass box. The why of it is unknown to him, but he’s being paid well, so he’s happy to not ask about its top-secret nature. His sort-of girlfriend, however, is much more fascinated, and her inquisitiveness is the type of curiosity that kills cats with brutal rancor. And in cozy Twin Peaks, Washington, much is the same. The fir trees still rustle and the air still flows through them with gentility or malice, depending on the time of day. But the Log Lady’s lumber has a new piece of info for Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse): “The stars turn and a time presents itself,” she warns, and he ventures into the woods, ‘Blair Witch’-style, to investigate.
Concurrently, “Special Agent Cooper” is back, dressed in black, and looking like a deeply tanned Johnny Cash. He’s some kind of criminal doing hit jobs for money, and he’s contracted to look into the murder in South Dakota (I think….the narrative is opaque as ever), but a double-cross almost blindsides him (cue a Jason Jennifer Leigh cameo). And in the Red Room there’s “normal” Special Agent Dale Cooper, seemingly trapped in this purgatory, unable to return to reality while his doppelganger wreaks destruction. He’s kept company by Mike the One Armed Man, his arm having evolved into some kind of freakish alien-esque tree, and Laura Palmer. “I’m dead… and yet, I’m alive,” she says in the now familiar backwards patois.
Lynch is still the master of anxiety, but he’s not afraid to let the show get downright silly if need be. Silence is a weapon, sound-design a disquieting force, stillness is a wrenching and disarming tension, and odd laughs are still a bizarre delight. Minimalism is perhaps a new key; there’s less music, there’s more rigor to the Red Room, and some scenes, particularly those centered in New York, are especially tightly controlled to the point of menace. The imagery is still arresting and evocatively ghostly.
Where any of this is going is anyone’s guess, but the show lays out a string of tangents and multi-faceted narrative strands, some of which are likely red herrings and dead ends (the murder here feels like a MacGuffin). At this early point, “Twin Peaks” feels like the story of two Dale Coopers: one on the inside, one on the outside, all shrouded in a curtain of creepiness, theatrically, stilted acting and unnerving moments sandwiched in between (there’s even a black and white version of the red room to complicate matters further).
“Remember 430,” the aberrant, Eddie Munster-like Giant intones. “I understand,” Agent Cooper responds. We don’t, not at all, but after a long 26 years, we’re more than willing to give David Lynch the benefit of the enigmatic doubt. [A]
