“I AM the FBI.”
OMG YOU GUYS, FINALLY. THANK GOD.
With two episodes remaining, now it…finally feels like things are coming together? Regardless, this episode was satisfying. Let’s hit the questions and discuss.
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH AGENT CREEPER?
Well, he FINALLY PLAYED HIMSELF. When he turned to Sansa and was like, “whenever I’m trying to figure someone out, I assume the worst of them,” I was like, “JUST WAIT. You just SCREWED YOURSELF, DUDE.” Oh, wait. Wrong Sunday night show. Instead, he took Dickface Richard to Two of the Coordinates — you surely remember The Coordinates! — and then made him stand on said coordinates and DICKFACE RICHARD GOT ELECTROCUTED UNTIL HE EXPLODED. “Goodbye, my son,” saith Agent Creeper. “Eh, no great loss,” says the rest of the world.
HOW ABOUT CREEPER’S BUDDIES, JENNIFER JASON LEIGH AND TIM ROTH?
They continue to be two totally AWFUL PEOPLE and when they get in a gunfight with an angry Polish accountant whose driveway they are blocking whilst they’re waiting for Dougie to come home, it’s hard not to think that they had that coming. Anyway, they’re DEAD.
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH AGENT COOPER?
Well, first he’s in a coma. And while he’s in a coma, his room fills with the Annoying Lamp Sound you may remember from the Great Northern, and when His Kindly Boss From the Insurance Company wanders out to find the source of the Annoying Lamp Noise, MIKE appears in the hospital room AND “DOUGIE” COMES TO AND TAKES OUT HIS VENTILATION AND HE’S AGENT COOPER AGAIN YES THANK YOU GOD.
“You are awake?” MIKE asks.
“100%” Cooper says. This seems like a good place to note that Kyle McLachlan is SO GOOD in this part. You can tell it’s Agent Cooper: Original Flavor and not Fugue State Coop the INSTANT he opens his eyes.
“Finally,” MIKE says, along with the rest of the audience. “The other one. He didn’t go back in. He’s still out. Take this.” He gives Cooper the green ring.
“Do you have the seed?” Cooper asks, referring to that tiny gold seed that people leave behind when they disintegrate (wow, this show is weird). MIKE does. “I need you to make another one,” Cooper tells him, taking something out of the back of his head and giving it to him. I had to actually read the Vanity Fair recap to make sure I was explaining this correctly, and I think am (you know it’s a complicated show when you’re cross-referencing other recaps to make sure you didn’t misinterpret stuff): Judging from what Cooper tells Naomi Watts and Sonny Jim later, I think he’s asking MIKE to make another doppleganger to send back to be a nicer, better, more human version of Dougie for that family. If Agent Creeper is bad Cooper, and Dougie was…Corporate Creeper (for lack of better term), then Good Cooper is asking MIKE to make Corporate Cooper. Right? But if…does this mean that Dougie was never a real person? My head hurts.
Whatever. I can’t worry about Naomi Watts and Sonny Jim anymore, now that Cooper is so nice and normal and competent. He has this under control. He politely demands sandwiches and his boss’s gun and the credit music kicks in as soon as we learn that he’s getting on a plane to Spokane, and this is basically the most satisfying moment of this entire season, with the possible exception of Sarah Palmer eating the man who tried to give her a hard time in the bar. As Cooper gets ready to leave the hospital, he shakes the hand of His Kindly Boss From the Insurance Company, and tells him, “I will not soon forget your kindness, and decency,” proving that he definitely remembers what happened when he was trapped in Dougie’s…whatever.
“What about the FBI?” His Kindly Boss From the Insurance Company asks, as it seems one branch of the Feds are en route to the hospital to talk to Dougie (presumably about how Major Briggs’s dead body has his fingerprints). “I am the FBI,” Cooper tells him.
Reader, I applauded.
HOW’S JIM BELUSHI DOING?
He is a damned delight on this show and it’s the most I’ve ever liked him. He and his brother Rodney are letting Cooper take their private plane to Twin Peaks, and I think they may be coming with him. “Dougie, we love you. But we are not traditionally welcomed such places,” Rodney says, referring to the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Station. “Or by such aforementioned people,” Jim Belushi says. But they share a literal group hug when Cooper assures them that all that is about to change, thanks to the Mitchum brothers’ hearts of gold. I hope the Mitchums turn out to LOVE Twin Peaks and settle down there to live quiet lives of intense weirdness. I certainly think they’re going to get along great with Lucy.
I ASSUME DIANE IS GREAT!
Diane is dead. And Diane has possibly BEEN dead for a long time? I mean, I guess it’s possible the REAL Diane is like trapped in someone’s face somewhere or whatever the hell, but OUR Diane — Laura Dern — is actually the tulpa (that’s the Twin Peaks version of doppleganger) for the actual Diane. (There are some theories that Real Diane is stuck into That Eyeless Lady They Found In The Woods?)
So, the upshot is that Laura Dern gets an AMAZING Emmy-worthy monologue this week. She get a text from Creeper informing her that that Richard Dickface is dead, and she internally freaks out (I must note that she does all of this in a fantastic top) and then sends Creeper the final set of coordinates that he needs before going upstairs to meet with everyone else, a gun in her purse. She opens her heart to Albert and Tammy and Gordon Cole about a night Cooper (AKA Creeper) came to visit her, about three to four years after Cooper disappeared. He asked a TON of questions about what was going on at the FBI. Then he kissed her, and as soon as their lips touched, she said, “something went wrong, and I felt afraid.” Then Creeper raped her. Poor Diane. I cannot express enough how good Laura Dern is in this episode. She is astonishing as an actor. “Afterward,” Diane says, “he took me somewhere. He took me somewhere like an old gas station. An old, old gas station.” At this point, she looks down at her phone and then says, totally freaking out, “I’m in the sheriff’s station. I’m in the sheriff’s station! I sent him those coordinates. I’m in the sheriff’s station because I’m not me. I’m not me. I’M NOT ME.” (This DOES make it seem like she might be Lady Eyeless?)
And then she takes out her gun to shoot Albert or Tammy or Gordon, but they’re too quick on the draw and shoot her first and then she totally DISAPPEARS INTO NOTHING. “Wow. They’re real. That was a real tulpa,” Tammy says. Just another day on the job, Tam. I’m telling you: CALL DENISE. DENISE CAN HELP.
Anyway, while the Feds are presumably grappling with the fact that Actual Diane probably needs to be tracked down in an alternate universe, Diane shows up in the Red Room. “Someone manufactured you,” MIKE tells her. “I know. Fuck you,” she tells him. (In her defense, that’s kind of a harsh way to greet someone.) Then she cracks her jaw very alarmingly and then her face crumbles open into a hole full of nothingness AS ONE’S FACE DOES and a larger version of what Cooper called “the seed” comes floating out of it. (They look like Snitches, but I think they’re more like Horcruxes. Right?) Then Diane explodes into dust, leaving her Seed behind. Ashes to ashes, seeds to seeds. I just need to know what’s gonna happen to her amazing apartment.
HOW IS AUDREY?
Audrey shows up at the Roadhouse and looks concerned and nervous the whole time. Her husband attempts to toasts to her, but she toasts to Billy, and, honey, Billy is NOT a good man choice for you! But before they can get into this, the emcee comes out.
“Ladies and gentleman, Audrey’s dance,” he says, and everyone clears the dance floor and the classic Twin Peaks Audrey Horne music starts up, with the snaps and whatnot — you know the one I mean. It’s all do do do do dooooooo SNAP SNAP. You feel me. At the sound of her theme music, Audrey sort of slinks onto the dance floor and dances, all dreamy Audrey Horne-style, alone in a spotlight. But her reveries get broken up by a bar fight, and she runs back to her husband. “Get me out of here!” she says.
And then we cut to a shot of Audrey somewhere else — a white room — looking at her makeup-less face in a mirror. “What?!” she asks. Tell me about it, sister.
And then we cut to black, and back to the roadhouse, where the credit music rolls backwards.
