In Which We Smell Like Last Night's Rain

This review covers episodes five and six of Twin Peaks: The Return.

Dark Women

by ELEANOR MORROW

Twin Peaks: The Return
creators David Lynch & Mark Frost
Showtime

There is a certain kind of woman that has captured David Lynch's attention over the years. She is either a blonde or a brunette, and very rarely both. Her cheekbones reverberate through her face, and speech comes as a relief for them, a momentary release from the tension that inhabits her face like a rite. Her attention is focused on something — a person, an idea — for as long as she can hold it without completely losing track of herself. In these areas Naomi Watts has always been Lynch's perfect module. She is the most brunette a blonde could ever be, and the most blonde a brunette could ever be. In comparison to Twin Peaks: The Return, the previous statement is the height of comprehensibility.

Trying to figure out what absolutely everything means in Twin Peaks: The Return is the kind of task that could take weeks, months, or even years. Imagine if they brought back Cheers and Ted Danson's character was now brain-dead. Actually, that's not that big of a stretch. Through six episodes Kyle MacLachlan remains an impotent loiterer who grabs his private parts in abject pain every time he needs to go to the bathroom. In a way, this subversion of our expectations is a brilliant joke on what most of us expected from this long-awaited revival, but in other way, it feels like a sketch that may have outlived its usefulness. Watts may as well be acting with a CGI racoon for all that MacLachlan's impotent character gives her on a scene-to-scene basis.

Fortunately this is Naomi Watts, and maybe she has never received the full adulation and appreciation she deserves as an actress. She is also the only character seemingly involved in any tangible plotline who is not an officer of the law. Watching her try to settle her husband's debts was like a lot of moments on Twin Peaks: The Return: ludicrous with a serious plausibility at its base. Despite this abstract feel, Twin Peaks: The Return succeeds on the basis of one thing which makes it completely unique and hilarious – the manner in which one human person relates to another.

Lynch is at his best in these two person scenes, when there is only one thing bouncing against another. Particularly amusing was Sheriff Truman (Robert Forster) and his verbal battles with his wife Doris (Candy Clark). It was legitimately hard to make out the coke-addled dialogue transacted between Becky (Amanda Seyfried) and her mess of a boyfriend. Each encounter between person A and person B is fresh and inimitable. This is such a different type of comedy, one that surpasses Ionesco and the stagey parodies of the original series while retaining just enough verisimilitude to keep us watching. Twin Peaks: The Return features a tone best described as merciless.

Strangely, it is the not-so opulent setting of the original that seems most diminished and diluted in this revival. The original Twin Peaks looked like it actually took place in a small Washington town. I don't know if it was a budget issue at work or what the deal is here, but the sets have not generally been up to par. When Miguel Ferrer finds Laura Dern in the warmth of a crowded bar, we see how little Lynch needs to create his specific moods, but larger set pieces are few and far between. Perhaps that can account for the lingering Las Vegas storyline, since any part of that plastique city is easily reproduced on a soundstage.

The plot, as well as I can surmise, concerns the two Dale Coopers: one is a demon, and one is a saint. This moral binary colors every individual in Twin Peaks, in Las Vegas, and in South Dakota. The only character who can be said to reside in the grey area would be the FBI agent that Lynch himself portrays. We have learned that only one Dale Cooper may live, and so soon Twin Peaks: The Return will turn into Prison Break. Maybe with only one Dale Cooper on the loose, we can finally revisit some of the loose ends of the original show.

Whatever you say about Twin Peaks: The Return, it is about as far from fanservice as anything can ever be. Fanservice reached an all-time low point when J.J. Abrams released a Star Wars movie with the exact same scenes as the previous films, only with slightly altered characters. If people could pretend to enjoy that, they would surely gobble up whatever is left of Lara Flynn Boyle writhing in a hotel room, but Ms. Boyle is mercifully missing. Lynch developed a severe distate for the dark woman when she ruined his storylines and subsequently her face through artificial maxillofacial alterations. Bringing her back and having loud fights with her on set would have been somewhat along the lines of Kylo Ren.

At least Star Wars was always empty commercialism – like Wonder Woman, it was a property strictly conceived to make money at the expense of act. Twin Peaks was mercurial and original, and to watch it surrender to the whimsies of television executives would have been a fate worse than the show originally encountered when Lynch was pressured to name the murderer of Laura Palmer against his better judgment. No matter how many old properties are callously dragged before us with many of the original actors still involved, I will always be grateful that Mr. Lynch did not cave this time.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording.

In Which We Enter The Life Of A Doug

The following review covers episodes three and four of Twin Peaks: The Return.

Hello!

by ELEANOR MORROW

Twin Peaks: The Return
creators David Lynch & Mark Frost
Showtime

Watching David Lynch the actor gives you a basic idea of why David Lynch the director is so great. The only other all-time directors who were as skilled in front of the camera were Orson Welles and John Cassavetes. Welles often seemed distracted onstage, and sometimes was forced to play roles that did not really suit him for one reason or another. Lynch never has this problem, since the singular role of Gordon Cole represents a law enforcement side of him that should probably come to pass in the real world. We desperately need an FBI director who knows when to mind his own business.

The type of comedy that Lynch excels at in this role is pretty unusual; it can potentially be described as either the wackiest satire or the most photorealistic farce. Smartly he uses the talents of another understated performer, the late Miguel Ferrer, to play off him as the ideal straight man. In Twin Peaks: The Return, we observe the FBI as an organization taking on many hats. David Duchovny was the only disappointing aspect of this journey: it felt like he was mugging for the camera.

When Cole receives word that Agent Dale Cooper is in a South Dakota prison, he rushes there with Ferrer and Chrysta Bell, the singer with whom Lynch has produced two albums. Bell sayshays like some kind of alien FBI agent, doing the familiar Twin Peaks work of making something beautiful into an absolute nightmare once you look beyond that initial appeal.

A man's return to Earth from another dimension should come as a tremendous relief. Instead Agent Cooper finds himself in the life of a man named Doug, who visits prostitutes. Janey- E (Naomi Watts) is his relieved and angry wife. In other hands the Stranger in a Strange Land routine would seem quite silly and predictable, but MacLachlan surprises with wonderful timing. Twin Peaks: The Return features a lot of characters who are neither particularly perceptive or particularly bright at first glance. Yet we are all promised, as children, a measure of intuition.

The only real lost people are those without that innate quality. Wally Brando (Michael Cera) and Sheriff Truman (Robert Foster) would under other circumstances have enough chemistry to manage the investigation of crimes of their own accord. Cera presents himself in Twin Peaks fresh from the road, and he is perfectly suited for the town, capable as he is of switching from an overly broad view to an overly specific one in the turn of a scene. His mother Lucy (Kimmy Roberson) possesses an innate misunderstanding of the possibilities of cell phones that was as hilarious as anything in these new episodes.

In recent days Twin Peaks' low ratings have cause some critics to sneer, but it is so far ahead of anything else on television that it will probably become popular again much in the same fashion of the original. While the original series was deeply amusing at times, the somber tone of Laura Palmer's death pervaded everything, and the more hilarious elements did not quite cohere with the overall mood being broadcast by the setting and music.

So many years later, no one would dare contradict any of Lynch's creative imperatives. Sorrow, pain, and wonder come and go with differing levels of clarity depending on the image. The resulting atmosphere of Twin Peaks: The Return feels completely new as a result, a vast and unimaginable playground like that of a peculiarly vivid dream.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find her review of the first two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return here.

In Which We End Things On A Sour Note

All Farewells Should Be Sudden

by DICK CHENEY

Objectively we know Jesse Pinkman has the right to be ungrateful. "He cares for you," Hank tells Jesse about Mr. White. "He has done things to bring you closer, to keep you around." It is not so much that Jesse does not believe these words, but that they are only words. I have to admit that there is probably something missing in me, because I had made up my mind about what Walt should do about Jesse the moment the words Old and Yeller were invoked. God knows I hated that fucking dog.

too bad there is no extant video of the krysten ritter murderNot as much as I despise the prick who hosts Talking Bad. The thing I need least in the world after an involuntary hysterectomy is an actor geek explaining to me how mad Walt is now. Inserting it between the commercials is embarrassing amateur hour, AMC. The performers don't mingle with the audience during intermission you selfish fucks. If you're going to analyze the last scenes of the best show on television, bring the emaciated corpse of Terry Eagleton, the scalp of Elvis Mitchell, a painting resembling Camille Paglia or nothing at all.

they could call the after show Peaking Twins... "What does Shelly want right now?"

Imagine if during the commercials of Twin Peaks David Lynch was muttering about the tragic dream he had the previous night while nibbling on a Snickers bar: "Chris, in my vision God was dressed like a prostitute with gold teeth..." If Twin Peaks had a godawful wrap-up show, it would never have been around to turn to shit shortly after they revealed the murderer of Laura Palmer. Some bespectacled doofus would interrogate the man with, "Where did the thinspiration for the character of Donna come from?" and Lynch would just gargle and beatbox.

you know what's a much better lie Mr. White? "I spilled some gasoline." End of story.

Weak after-show aside, it was tough to see the internal machinations Walt had to go through in order to justify his decision to spare and then murder his former partner. This precocious indecision was also slightly unbelievable, emphasized by Mrs. White observing, "What's one more?" in her swanky hotel room. Things have been pushed so far beyond the brink already that my own internal compass was smashed the minute Saul Goodman's nose was broken or, really, when Gus Fring had half his face blown off. Walt is retired now, and when he gave up cooking meth, the curtain dropped for me - this extended wrap-up is like the third part of "November Rain."

Jesse's final surge of energy and rage reminds us that all heat seeks a lower state to rest. Dissauded from burning down the White homestead, he passed out like an overdosed addict at Burning Man. Sleeping it off in Marie's guest room we were reminded that a right turn resembles a wrong turn in all the most superficial ways.

still better than alaskaIt is hard to remember the epilogue of anything that was really enjoyable, the way all goodbyes should be sudden. The end of Cheers was a 60 minute view of Ted Danson's bald spot, the only other show I can remember the ending to was M.A.S.H. and that was because it was entirely self-congratulatory. Most finales reek of stale death.

I've booked you a flight to a dome. No tears only security checkpoints now

Ending Breaking Bad - or anything worthwhile - gracefully requires a high degree of skill. We have seen Jesse and Walt butt heads so often that the feel good route might have been to pit them both against Lydia. That would have been a false equivalence and a cop out, but the path we tread now shows how difficult it is to make Walt vs. Jesse fresh again. Here every last word spoken is like an invocation, just like Twin Peaks' "fire walk with me." I think I have mixed approximately 80 metaphors since this essai began, I need to go lie down and dream of bombing Syria after this.

remember him on sex and the city. yeah you do

Breaking Bad would be easier to deal with if every possible ending for these two jokers was not so unhappy. By the same token, Walt living in a retirement community and intimidating seniors wouldn't feel fitting either. When Twin Peaks began to fall apart shortly before ABC executives forced David Lynch to reveal the central mystery at the heart of the show, he resisted. He knew that once we knew that MacGuffin was bullshit, the threads the show's characters hung on would fade as well.

I have a similar look on my face every time Lynne suggests going to Applebee's

Breaking Bad already unraveled the moment Mike died. (I'm still not sure how that happened but I blame Jesse, or possibly Todd.) Now the mysteries of the show have been vanquished, and the remainder is merely obituary, the lowest form of art after reporting on college football. Vengeance is the only motivation left for Mr. White's antagonists, and revenge constitutes a state of being without thought. We can't, don't engage with it, we simply witness what occurs.

lara flynn boyle aged 40 years during this show and another 20 during the practice, making her true age 124 today

During that fateful final season of Twin Peaks, Mr. Lynch argued with co-creator Mark Frost, who felt they had to detail the perpetrator of Laura Palmer's murder in a train car, after a parrot named Waldo had pecked her shoulders bloody. By that point it had already become obvious Laura Palmer was the most useless person in the town, making her death itself a kind of mercy. Frost was incredibly wrong in wanting to explain the reason for her death, since no answer would have been satisfying, and the one given led to nothing afterwards.

So too with Walt and Jesse: they already survived their lives. The rest is a footnote.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He sometimes sips gasoline when he is cranky. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Alive" - Empire of the Sun (mp3)

"Disarm" - Empire of the Sun (mp3)