Many of the negative things you could say about this installment reflect back its best meanings.
Agent Coopers Dougie-ish, childlike state taxed our patience.
Just grow up already, right?
Credit: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME
And yet, the stories were all about acquiring a heart or not for the strangers among us.
We could be Carl and bravely choose to attend to the suffering others.
We could be Chad and be indifferent to it.
Toughen up, wussies!
Survival of the fittest and most calloused: thats what life is all about.
Her spectacular turn-to-camera intro was made more memorable by the fact that it was theonlybit of Diane we got.
It was the first signal thatTwin Peakswasnt going to be advancing Coops story by much this week.
But I was immediately captivated by the feeling of the scene.
I like this idea.
Loafers, it looked like.
Where have all the cowboys gone?
Into insurance, apparently.
A police officer tried to shoo Cooper away as if he were poopy pigeon.
Janey-E sent Dougie upstairs to say goodnight to Sonny Jim Jones.
The boys room was conspicuously decorated with very boyish things that also spoke to Americas Manifest Destiny myth.
A strip of artwork depicting cowboy and Indian scenes circled the room.
Model rocket ships were on the shelf.
Sonnys pajamas were covered with cars.
Hardy Boys novels, perhaps?)
Sonny patted on the bed, inviting his father to sit.
Cooper offered a potato chip.
The boy said no, he had just brushed his teeth.
(He played Nate a character we named after my youngest son!)
Too distracted by my color theories, I guess.
Coopers inability to understand was mistaken for assent, so Sonny clapped his hands and the overhead lamp activated.
He clapped his hands and the light clicked off.
Sonny giggled and clapped the light back on.
All credit to Naomi Watts for being able to wring laughs and pathos from this archetype of beleaguered womanhood.
Jade gives two rides, he said.
I bet she did!
The men who sent the envelope wanted their money: Dougie owed a $52,000 gambling debt.
Janey-E got tough, skewering the logic of their criminal M.O., or what she assumed their criminal M.O.
to be (how could Dougie pay them back any faster if they broke his legs?
), and negotiated the terms of the payoff, which she set for noon-thirty the next day.
Coopers movement in this sequence represented a kind of coming-of-age allegory.
Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.
But maybe thats not always good thing, as the parable of the scribbles will soon tell us.
We cut back to Cooper, who looked to the rug at his feet.
He saw Mike emerge and speak to him with his backwards-frontwards accent: You must wake up.
Cooper turned his attention to the case files.
This went on for a while.
But back to the Mike of it all.
Heres another way to make sense of the scene.
Mike could sense or see that Cooper was struggling to navigate the world as a bumbling, stumblingtabula rasa.
He may have even been worried that Cooper might not survive long enough to confront and conquer Dirty Cooper.
(We know death is stalking Cooper.
Dougies got a few enemies, too.)
So he lent him some magical learning that could help him survive and thrive.
We moved from Cooper to another stuck soul in need of a push.
encouragement from Gordon Cole over speaker phone.
(Cole was sipping Chablis with female company, nurturing the portrayal of Cole as incorrigible ladies man.)
(Was that Agent Tammy Preston giggling with him?)
(Yeah, yeah, Three-Eyed Raven inGame of Thrones, too.
Whatever, nerds.)
Here, in this swanky underworld, Albert found a spirit held hostage to sadness, Diane.
She was more film noir femme fatale than unkempt barfly, but she smoked like both of them.
The older of the two, Red (Balthazar Getty), was briefly glimpsed at The Bang!
Bar at the end of Part 2, toasting Shelly from across the room.
(Someone alert Deputy Bobby Briggs… unless the former drug-dealing bad boy is helping him?)
What came as a big downer for him, though, was hearing Red call him kid.
Richard doesnt like being called kid the way Marty McFly doesnt like to be called chicken.
He also needed Richard to understand that he would always be one false step away from being fired.
And eaten, too!
(I will saw your head open and eat your brains if you f me!)
Red was clearly wasted, as well, throwing Tai-Chi punches and stomping feet as the drug kept kicking.
I have a problem with my liver, he said.
I welcome any and all of your theories on the significance of this reference.
Red said he was heads and Richard was tails and flipped the coin into the air.
When the dime reached its apex, it kept position and kept twirling.
Richard was transfixed with slack-jawed awe and then he felt something clink in his mouth.
It was the dime.
This subversive illusion left Richard feeling unraveled and settled matters between them:Kid, you are now owned.
I suppose we could wonder if Red has supernatural powers if hes another Red Room demon.
(I certainly suspected that of Richard last week during his high-impact intro.)
Carl presented as a cantankerous, leathery chap, but he possessed a soft, wounded soul.
All of that was more than 20 years ago.
Here, in the present, Carl manages The New Fat Trout Trailer Park, located outside Twin Peaks.
What was most striking about the Carl-Mickey scene was how it stood in contrast to the Red-Richard scene.
Carl said he didnt have much to look forward to except for the hammer slamming down.
It was hard to tell if Carl feared the reaper or would welcome him.
Carl was proud of his habit.
I been smoking for 75 years every fing day, he said, and laughed a defiant cackle.
(Recap continues on page 4)
Miriam Sullivan.
She just loved a good pastry and couldnt stop yelping about Normas cherry pie.
She left a huge tip for Heidi, Shelly, and Norma.
The boy would run ahead and stop; she would run after him and catch him.
They did this over and over.
In the park, Carl heard the wailing of the mother.
On the side of the road, shell-shocked Miriam eyeballed Richard eyeballing her as he raced past.
We should begin worrying about Miriam: Richard knows that she can identify him.
Carl hustled to the intersection as fast as his 90-year-old legs could get him there.
God, said Carl.
Then, Carl did what no one else could.
He stopped watching and joined the mother in her grief.
He extended a hand to her shoulder an attempt at comfort, certainly a show of human solidarity.
We exited this miserable tableau on a shot of a utility pole branded with the number 6.
We remember that electrical current is a medium for Red Room spirits (maybe; who knows, really?
This week, he was typing on his computer when a crimson square appeared on his screen.
Whatever he did probably set multiple things in motion, including this coded message and tasking of Duncan.
Im beginning to think that Drugged-out Mother has nothing to do with anything or anyone.
Shes a grace note for a story about a grace-challenged world.
I think lots of thoughts, dont I?
The paper was folded so it could hold two photos.
The other pic was a surveillance photo of Dougie.
Ike drove his spike through Lorraines photo, killing the song on the soundtrack.
Then he did the same to Dougies pic.
Do we think Ike the Spike is a Black Lodge devil or just one effed-up killer?
At first, Bushnell was baffled and bothered by all of Dougies doodling.
Is it possible that Bushnell was psychically nudged toward enlightenment?
(Conclusion: Yes.)
And so it was an affirmation of Lynch.)
But Janey-E only paid them half of what they said Dougie owed them.
We are not wealthy people, she said.
We drive cheap terrible cars!
We are living in a dark, dark age, and you are part of the problem!
Tough dame, said Jimmy.
Im glad LynchFrost let Janey-E have this moment.
But my psychic alarm bell is ringing.
Something tells me Janey-Ewillbe seeing these guys again… and perhaps another monster, too.
By which I mean Ike the Spike.
Ike stabbed her to death, and two other women, too.
Three lives for three lives.
The violence was brutal and bloody, and it left Ikes very Freudian spike bent out of shape.
The little prick was really broken up about it.Wah-wah.
(Recap continues on page 6)
Part 6 ended in Twin Peaks.
Major Garland Briggs planted them there.)
But if you did, thenHELLOOOOOO, Mr. Jackpots!
Her fathers car still didnt work, or so she thought.
Problem was, Deputy Chad knew the Trumans story, and he didnt give a crap.
Yeah, I heard something about that, he said, pretending to cry.
He couldnt take being a soldier.
As a beat of plot, it was an awkward way to end.
No episode ofTwin Peaksshould end on a hanging Chad.
In a dark, dark age, which will win?
