A Pilgrim's Peaks - Part 6
The sprawl of The Return continues to echo the thematic subjects of Twin Peaks’ original run across generations, even as we begin to see promising first glimpses of the eye around which part of this storm is forming with one long-running subject that stretches back to Fire Walk With Me, and possibly even the final episode of season two.
Before we get to that, though, there’s a double-helping of violent men acting out in this episode as we witness two astonishingly sudden and graphic moments that shock as much for what they depict as they do for the contrast in which they stand to the mood of bemused complacency the show has lulled us into as we followed the charmed half life of Dougie Jones, 21st century Chauncey Gardner, and his Dave Bruckbeck-scored breakfast adventures. While his wife Janey mercilessly dismantles the machinations of his blackmailers, a pair of apparently idiot boys, Dougie happily ambles about drinking coffee and dowsing out insurance scams with the help of his leftover Black Lodge Shine. All of which is a perfect rope-a-dope to the explosion of violence the assassin sent after Dougie and another woman sets off when he brutally ice picks the entire staff of the latter. We haven’t really seen that kind of sustained, graphic violence yet this season since the first episode when Sam and Tracey met their end. Since then it’s mostly been brief acts of murder after a build up of psychological terror, like Darya’s death. The other shock comes when That Horne Twerp runs over a young boy in a crosswalk, instantly killing the child in front of his mother. It’s a grimly accurate depiction of the sudden but definitive divide that such tragic moments in life have, and the ache that the inalterable changes wrought by them leave in their wake.
The returning theme this week from the original series is the violent man who’s controlled by someone who’s much smarter and cruel than he is in ways that the more pedestrian counterpart can only dream of in the limited capacity offered by his callow imagination. The dynamic we’re familiar with is the relationship between the thuggish pig Leo Johnson and the suavely self-deluded, conniving Hank Jennings. Their Return echoes are This Horne Twerp and the mononymous Red. All we need to know we see in their one extended scene together, as That Horne Twerp is deferentially muted compared to his abusive bluster last night at The Roadhouse. Red doesn’t have to do anything so desultory because he wields a power far more unsettling than smoking where he shouldn’t and threatening young women; he’s weird. His conversational style is non-linear and while he speaks he makes sudden, unexpected moves that imply both a potential for violence and a level of personal physical control that’s somehow more threatening for what it makes you imagine he’s capable of when he’s fully present, which he definitely isn’t in conversation with This Horne Twerp, because he just doesn’t need to be. Someone like Red knows exactly what someone like This Twerp is about, is capable of, and sees that it’s all brute force. That’s why he’s able to completely throw him into a paroxysm of insecurity with just the slightest hint of the supernatural and why we believe him more than we would most when he levels the threat, “Just remember, kid. I’ll saw your head open and eat your brains if you fuck me over.”
Something I’ve come to recognize is that the most capable and powerful characters in this show are the ones who are best able to accept and live with wonder. At a minimum, the ability to accept the supernatural gives a person an edge that’s lacking in those who can't deal. Sheriff Truman’s acceptance of Special Agent Dale Cooper’s methods early on in the first season both helped the investigation into Laura Palmer’s murder and aided in the formation of a true friendship. Windom Earle got half way there; believing in the supernatural, but was limited because he only saw it as another thing he could exert control over in the same manner as the victims he held captive, but he would never have been able to match Agent Cooper, who was made stronger by his guileless capacity for awe that never sought power from the world, just a greater understanding of it. This Horne Twerp can’t deal with the smallest glimpse Red gives him of a greater world, so he becomes even more unhinged at his own ignorance in response and the end result, for now, is a dead child and grieving mother.
Overseeing all of this in the background, as the mother is comforted by Carl Rodd of The Fat Trout trailer park and at other points in The Return, is the continuation of a subtle theme from way back when that highlights Lynch’s capacity for the esoteric expression of deliberately communicated ideas. There’s been a supernatural element to the show stretching back to at least Fire Walk With Me where The Arm (aka The Man From Another Place) tells Agent Cooper that, “this is his voice,” followed by a sound that we hear in The Fat Trout trailer park as Special Agent Chester Desmond investigates the murder of Teresa Banks only to disappear mysteriously. This season, we meet an evolved form of The Arm and its doppelgänger, who appears to be responsible for a sound like tree branches scratching against a window. That sound follows Agent Cooper around the Black Lodge until he’s booted out of it by the doppel-arm. We hear it again in the street after the boy is run over. Both then and back in the presence of Agent Desmond, we get ominous shots of a telephone pole or power line.
It’s unclear what all of this means at the moment, but what comes through without a doubt is that, as much as I may sound like someone tying yarn between push pins on a corkboard, David Lynch Has A Thought, and he’s trying to telegraph it to us in a way that only he can.