Twin Peaks: The Return, USA, 1,014 minutes
Director: David Lynch
Writers: Mark Frost, David Lynch
Photography: Peter Deming
Music: Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise, Johnny Jewel, Chromatics, Cactus Blossoms, Au Revoir Simone, Paris Sisters, Trouble, Blunted Beatz, Sharon Van Etten, Nine Inch Nails, Rebekah Del Rio, James Marshall, Lissie, ZZ Top, Veils
Editor: Duwayne Dunham
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Michael Horse, Miguel Ferrer, David Lynch, Chrysta Bell, Robert Forster, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Grace Zabriskie, Catherine E. Coulson, Russ Tamblyn, Sherilyn Fenn, Peggy Lipton, Everett McGill, Richard Beymer, Ashley Judd, Frank Silva, David Duchovny, Dana Ashbrook, Madchen Amick, Harry Goaz, Kimmy Robertson, Matthew Lillard, Melissa Jo Bailey, Patrick Fischler, Eamon Ferren, Walter Olkewicz, Michael Cera, George Griffith, Don Murray, David Patrick Kelly, Christophe Zajac-Denek, John Pirruccello, Jim Belushi, Robert Knepper, Clark Middleton, David Bowie, Jay Aaseng, Jake Wardle
I thought—and still think—that 18 episodes and 17 hours is on the long side for a TV season, let alone a feature movie on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? It’s long even for the 21st-century version of director and cowriter David Lynch. But as I geared down for the soporific pace of the third season of Twin Peaks it came back to me that at heart the franchise is a loving parody and embrace of TV’s soap opera style, latterly dignified as “daytime drama” shortly before ushered off the stage of US entertainment, along with network TV at large. At the moment we appear to be down to four: The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. I recall hearing that some of these soaps got into wild storylines, with time travel, serial killers, and aliens from outer space and such, though I can’t find any evidence of that online at the moment. The point is: for daytime dramas, 17 hours is not that much, maybe a month’s work.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about what I found on a recent return to the epic third season (acknowledgments to the Showtime network for enabling this unlikely development even to happen). It’s just that it’s incredibly slow, one of the slowest things I’ve ever seen episode to episode. Even two in a row tended to set my mind wandering off-topic to things like grocery lists. It is ridiculous, often hilarious, and strangely meditative. Twin Peaks: The Return, as it was called on initial release, launches or picks up approximately 1 million narrative threads that are touched on in random turns. Most of the principals from the original run in the early ‘90s are on hand, 25 years older. Lots more stars of profile made it into the cast too. I often didn’t know what was going on (“didn’t know what was going on”). Some threads are resolved, some are only kind of resolved, and some are just dropped, including a highly indeterminate finish with a lot of screaming from Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee, then and now) and a wandering, unsettling version of an interdimensional Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie). Kyle MacLachlan gets top billing and he should, playing multiple roles.
I thought—and still think—that 18 episodes and 17 hours is on the long side for a TV season, let alone a feature movie on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? It’s long even for the 21st-century version of director and cowriter David Lynch. But as I geared down for the soporific pace of the third season of Twin Peaks it came back to me that at heart the franchise is a loving parody and embrace of TV’s soap opera style, latterly dignified as “daytime drama” shortly before ushered off the stage of US entertainment, along with network TV at large. At the moment we appear to be down to four: The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. I recall hearing that some of these soaps got into wild storylines, with time travel, serial killers, and aliens from outer space and such, though I can’t find any evidence of that online at the moment. The point is: for daytime dramas, 17 hours is not that much, maybe a month’s work.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about what I found on a recent return to the epic third season (acknowledgments to the Showtime network for enabling this unlikely development even to happen). It’s just that it’s incredibly slow, one of the slowest things I’ve ever seen episode to episode. Even two in a row tended to set my mind wandering off-topic to things like grocery lists. It is ridiculous, often hilarious, and strangely meditative. Twin Peaks: The Return, as it was called on initial release, launches or picks up approximately 1 million narrative threads that are touched on in random turns. Most of the principals from the original run in the early ‘90s are on hand, 25 years older. Lots more stars of profile made it into the cast too. I often didn’t know what was going on (“didn’t know what was going on”). Some threads are resolved, some are only kind of resolved, and some are just dropped, including a highly indeterminate finish with a lot of screaming from Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee, then and now) and a wandering, unsettling version of an interdimensional Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie). Kyle MacLachlan gets top billing and he should, playing multiple roles.
He is the evil Agent Dale Cooper, born of the sinister work of Bob (Frank Silva) in the final episode of the second season in 1991. This Dale Cooper wears a mullet and a black leather jacket. Lynch slows down MacLachlan’s voice for extra menace but he’s already scary. MacLachlan also plays Dougie Jones, an insurance man in Las Vegas, married to Janey-E (Naomi Watts). The story on Dougie is that he had some kind of accident that slowed him down considerably. There is some business involving the Black Lodge / Red Room, backwards-speaking folks, and the good Agent Dale Cooper taking over Dougie’s body and life. Dougie is practically catatonic even though he is holding down a responsible job and providing for his wife and son. He is often entirely non-responsive and when he does respond it is usually repeating the last few words that were spoken to him. He loves coffee and cherry pie, so we know it’s Cooper. He seems to be surviving on a kind of divine grace, as things just keep going his way. At last, way late in the show, the familiar old good Agent Dale Cooper makes an appearance. He thrills when he delivers the line, “Is the coffee on?” I wanted to give him a standing ovation.
I have to note how good Naomi Watts is in this. She can be more hit and miss when away from Lynch, but she seems to light up and give extraordinary performances with him. Janey-E is no exception. In fact, there’s an interesting and unmistakable sideline feeling of nostalgia interwoven with many of these roles and players. Watts is just as good as she was in Mulholland Dr., for example, in a rhyming role. Laura Dern as the never-before-seen Diane, who Cooper recorded notes for in the first two seasons when he was trying to get his thoughts in order, is equally remarkable. Her scenes with MacLachlan are inevitably reminiscent of their dynamics in Blue Velvet. Lynch is once again playing FBI Chief Gordon Cole, with the hearing aid and incisive powers of deduction on issues involving the worlds beyond. There’s more potent chemistry between Lynch and Dern, a deep and sentimental attachment that is felt.
There is thus an interesting sense that this third season of Twin Peaks is a kind of career retrospective as well. He finally got to do Twin Peaks the way he wanted, for one thing, with nobody leaning over him telling him he has to solve the mysteries he introduces. So he doesn’t. He only deepens them—not in the way that the Lost TV show did, desperately piling on with them, evading the rational while promising it. Lynch makes his mysteries feel profound, like the point itself—mystery—even though so much here is ludicrously and explicitly weird. The experience comes to feel like a kind of privilege even as it is also some small labor. We are rewarded in most of these episodes with live music at the end with the crowd out at the Bang Bang Bar roadhouse in Twin Peaks—the fare is dream-pop, of course. It can feel like coming home from work and putting on your current favorite album.
I’m still not entirely sold on 21st-century Lynch. Inland Empire is an exercise in frustration for me and until recently Lost Highway always had been too. Mulholland Dr., my favorite Lynch movie with Blue Velvet, is something of an exception to his 21st-century style, but I credit that to the fact it is basically the pilot for a projected TV show that was ultimately rejected by whatever network or studio was financing it. Note how Robert Forster is barely in it, even with the top billing (note also how transcendently good Forster is in the third season of Twin Peaks). The last 20 minutes of Mulholland Dr. is the work of 21st-century Lynch and easily the most befuddling part of the movie. I’m not entirely sold on 21st-century Lynch, as I say, but this Twin Peaks is also a collaboration with 20th-century Lynch, if that helps. It is rich with mood and character and incident. For me, it was an absolute pleasure to reserve an hour a day for a couple of weeks to drop into this strange, bewildering, and often very funny world (don’t miss the chicks in pink that the Mitchum gangster brothers keep in tow wherever they go). It reminded me in all good ways of when I watched an hour a day of All My Children on my lunch break when I worked for a few months at a K-Mart.
I have to note how good Naomi Watts is in this. She can be more hit and miss when away from Lynch, but she seems to light up and give extraordinary performances with him. Janey-E is no exception. In fact, there’s an interesting and unmistakable sideline feeling of nostalgia interwoven with many of these roles and players. Watts is just as good as she was in Mulholland Dr., for example, in a rhyming role. Laura Dern as the never-before-seen Diane, who Cooper recorded notes for in the first two seasons when he was trying to get his thoughts in order, is equally remarkable. Her scenes with MacLachlan are inevitably reminiscent of their dynamics in Blue Velvet. Lynch is once again playing FBI Chief Gordon Cole, with the hearing aid and incisive powers of deduction on issues involving the worlds beyond. There’s more potent chemistry between Lynch and Dern, a deep and sentimental attachment that is felt.
There is thus an interesting sense that this third season of Twin Peaks is a kind of career retrospective as well. He finally got to do Twin Peaks the way he wanted, for one thing, with nobody leaning over him telling him he has to solve the mysteries he introduces. So he doesn’t. He only deepens them—not in the way that the Lost TV show did, desperately piling on with them, evading the rational while promising it. Lynch makes his mysteries feel profound, like the point itself—mystery—even though so much here is ludicrously and explicitly weird. The experience comes to feel like a kind of privilege even as it is also some small labor. We are rewarded in most of these episodes with live music at the end with the crowd out at the Bang Bang Bar roadhouse in Twin Peaks—the fare is dream-pop, of course. It can feel like coming home from work and putting on your current favorite album.
I’m still not entirely sold on 21st-century Lynch. Inland Empire is an exercise in frustration for me and until recently Lost Highway always had been too. Mulholland Dr., my favorite Lynch movie with Blue Velvet, is something of an exception to his 21st-century style, but I credit that to the fact it is basically the pilot for a projected TV show that was ultimately rejected by whatever network or studio was financing it. Note how Robert Forster is barely in it, even with the top billing (note also how transcendently good Forster is in the third season of Twin Peaks). The last 20 minutes of Mulholland Dr. is the work of 21st-century Lynch and easily the most befuddling part of the movie. I’m not entirely sold on 21st-century Lynch, as I say, but this Twin Peaks is also a collaboration with 20th-century Lynch, if that helps. It is rich with mood and character and incident. For me, it was an absolute pleasure to reserve an hour a day for a couple of weeks to drop into this strange, bewildering, and often very funny world (don’t miss the chicks in pink that the Mitchum gangster brothers keep in tow wherever they go). It reminded me in all good ways of when I watched an hour a day of All My Children on my lunch break when I worked for a few months at a K-Mart.
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