“We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream.”

It appears we might be making some progress, Twin Peaks fans. FINALLY, things are happening and worlds are colliding (even worlds I sort of forgot over the past ten weeks), and David Bowie and Monica Bellucci both popped up to say hello. We even got a very quick reunion with Real Agent Cooper, albeit in a dream sequence. Let’s do some Questions and Answers, shall we?

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE FBI?

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Actually, several things that may prove to be interesting. First! Gordon Cole gets on the phone with Sheriff Truman, who tells him about the missing pages from Laura’s diary, and their Two Coopers theory, and Gordon Cole is like “THAT’S INTERESTING BUT I CAN’T TELL YOU WHY.”

He then pops in to see Tammy and Albert — interrupting Albert’s Helpful Exposition to Tammy about the Blue Rose Project, and additionally, it’s sort of hilarious to me that we get ALL this exposition from Albert in episode 14 of 18 — and blah blah blah yada yada yada, it turns out that Naomi Watts is Diane’s estranged half-sister, and the (possibly totally incompetent) Las Vegas FBI are on the case to track her and Dougie Jones down. It’d be GREAT if that could happen at some point over the next four hours, guys. I’m beginning to think that Cooper will be returned to himself, but only in the last minute of the series, which will be frustrating in a wholly different way than it would be frustrating if we never were reunited with him.

HAS ANYONE HAD ANY INTERESTING DREAMS THEY’D LIKE TO TELL US ABOUT?

Funny you should ask! Gordon has had a (beautifully shot, black-and-white) dream about Monica Bellucci, who appears as herself, and who tells him, “We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream.” You guys: Is this whole thing going to be a dream? If Kyle Maclachan wakes up to find Sherilyn Fenn showering in his hotel room, I might be annoyed.  But wait, Monica has more to say: “But who is the dreamer?” she wonders. The dream expands to give us Real Agent Cooper (and I have to confess I’m not sure if this is a recent dream or a memory of a dream), and DAVID BOWIE (in footage I assume is from Season Two of the original run, a series of episodes that David Lynch doesn’t care if we’ve watched or not and I did not), who points at Cole and asks, loudly, “WHO DO YOU THINK THAT IS, THERE?” I don’t know who anyone is, David Bowie, but I wish you were still around to explain this to me

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE HAPPENING IN VEGAS?

Nah.

WHAT ABOUT IN TWIN PEAKS?

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WELL! For once, a lot of stuff happened in Twin Peaks! It’s almost like this is a show called Twin Peaks! Let’s run it down:

1.  That shithead Officer Chad got ARRESTED and tossed in a cell, which was GREAT. Also great: He was lured into his arrest by sandwiches. That’s how they’ll eventually get me.

2. Everyone finally hiked out to the Two Coopers Coordinates, where my closed captioning had a field day. It was all “ELECTRICAL CRACKLING” and “WHOOSHING INTENSIFIES.” When they get there, they find the woman with her eyes sealed shut from the Weird Condo In the Sky, naked but alive, and then…There is a pulsating….electrical…thing? And a swirling vortex opens in the sky and it appears to be to….another dimension? Like the one from when Matthew Lillard’s head exploded.

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And Andy gets sucked into it and finds himself in The Black and White World from the WTF Episode, where he is greeted by that tall, Lurch-looking dude, who finally identifies himself as “the Fireman,” and who gives him (kinda?) a…thing (god, this show is hard to recap) that emits smoke that then…tells a story. (As a sidebar, these segments from The Black and White World are gorgeously shot.)

Here’s how The Smoke Tchotchke tells a story. A round skylight opens and we see: some of the weird shit that was in The Box (remember The Box?); a brief flash of BOB; flashes of the WTF gas station and those scary goblin people (“got a light?” one asks); a shot from the original pilot (of a girl running across the campus at Twin Peaks High School); the red room; Laura’s face in her prom queen pic surrounded by angels; then back to the current timeline with the eyeless woman; Cooper and Creeper with their faces overlaid on each other, eventually shaking out into separate two men; a telephone;  Lucy and Andy themslves (but mostly Lucy); Andy on earth, holding Eyeless’s hands (at this, my Closed Captioning reads: “LOW DISTORTED GROANS”); and, finally, the number six on an electrical pole. I must admit that I wish Hawk had been the one to be sucked into the alternate dimension because I don’t have a lot of confidence in Andy putting this all together for everyone.

ANYWAY. Everyone eventually re-appears in our Earthly Timeline, and Andy wraps Eyeless in his coat and says they have to get her down the mountain because “she’s very important and there are people who want her dead.” (Also, you know. A naked woman in the woods whose eyes have been sealed shut probably needs medical assistance and you are the police, so…) “We need to put her in a cell where she’ll be safe. Don’t tell anybody about this,” he continues.

“What happened to us back there?” Sheriff Truman asks Hawk. “I don’t know. Something. But I don’t remember a thing,” Hawk says. Neither does Sheriff Truman. Does Andy? As ever, I have questions.

Back at the station, Lucy gives Eyeless some jammies and a robe and settles her in for a super-not-relaxing at all evening in a cell facing the cell containing Asshole Chad the Asshole, and next to an f’ed up drunk who parrots everything everyone says and is bleeding from all his faceholes and should be in the hospital, and who we find out at the end of the episode is (probably) Audrey’s allegedly missing lover, Billy. Audrey has TERRIBLE TASTE IN MEN if this is the case. He’s not even hot, Audrey, and he’s bleeding from all his faceholes.

HEY, DID ANYTHING EXCITING HAPPEN AT THE GREAT NORTHERN?

James Marshall in a still from Twin Peaks. Photo: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME

Well, yes! James — I cannot call him Jimmy — hears a very interesting story from his British Coworker Freddie, who has a rubber glove on his hand that gives him super-strength. James seems unruffled by either this, or by Freddie’s origin story, which is: one night, back in London, Freddie was walking home alone from the pub and saw a high stack of boxes and he jumped on them. And that’s when he ALSO got sucked into the Air Tunnel Vortex to Another Dimension, where he met The Fireman, who told him to put on the glove (I’m condensing this story; it’s very VERY VERY long). “Your right hand will then possess the power of an enormous pile driver,” the Fireman told him, and then gave him directions to go to Twin Peaks to “find [his] destiny.” So he did all these things, and the strength part is real; the destiny is still TDB. James is all, “what a neat story,” and I have to say: Freddie The Superhero seems nice.

Also: James closes the episode in the basement with the hotel’s furnaces and it’s probably important to note that Ashley Judd’s Annoying Lamp Sound is SUPER LOUD down there.

DOES ANYTHING INTERESTING HAPPEN WITH SARAH PALMER?

YES IT DOES.

Grace Zabriskie in a still from Twin Peaks. Photo: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME

Sarah Palmer goes to a WHOLE NEW BAR, where a gross dude hits on her and won’t back down when she tells him to get lost. He is very aggressive with her,  all, “it’s a free cunt-ry,” and is basically incredibly nasty. (“Brooding atmospheric music!” notes the Closed Captioning.) “You like to eat cunt, huh?” he eventually sneers at her.

“I’ll eat you,” Sarah Palmer tells him very calmly. His response to this is to threaten to “pull [her] lebso titties off” and so she TAKES HER FACE OFF to show him the void behind it. Kinda like her daughter did in the Red Room, but even scarier; A giant mouth SMILES at him from the void. Man, I wish I could do that to men I dislike, because it is fucking ALARMING.  “Do you really want to fuck with this?” Sarah Palmer asks.  And then she puts her face back on and BITES HIS CAROTID ARTERY OFF AND HE FALLS OVER DEAD. I guess she paid attention during all of those violent wild animal documentaries.

“Sure is a mystery, huh?” she tells the bartender when he comes over to investigate. SARAH PALMER 2020!

Tags: Twin Peaks
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