Let it be weird.
No need to explain it.
No need to figure it out.
Credit: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME
No need to tame it with reason or theory.
Just let it be weird.
Part 8 ofTwin Peaks: The Returnwas the David Lynch on heroin wed been promised.
I decided to accept Gotta light?
as an act of pure Strangelove.
I stopped worrying about it and just enjoyed all the crazy bomb drops.
This is not to say we wont be trying to understand it in this recap.
So Ill venture to be disciplined in my theories.
(Poor hexed scapegoat truck!)
He then threw the phone out the window, the big litterer.
The earth cried from mans indifference to the environment, and not for the last time in this episode.
Tension between these two criminals: palpable.
Dirty Cooper knew that Ray had accepted a $500,000 contract to rub him out.
(No, not Ike the Spike a gun!)
What Dirty Cooper didnt know was that Ray was pretty hip to all this.
Truly, there is no honor among thieves and their corrupt jailers.
Dirty Cooper directed Ray to exit the highway and take an alternate road to their final destination.
(The shows biggest whizzer, coffee-chugging Dougie, was MIA this week.)
Perhaps Dirty Cooper could smell the bulls on Ray.
Ray spun around with a gun of his own.
Dirty Cooper was the first to pull trigger but the gun didnt fire.
And thats when s got freaky.
He was last seen last week, wandering the halls the Buckhorn police morgue.
Inspired by the credits, we shall now be referring this brotherhood of sinister shades as the Woodsmen.
Note the way Lynch shot this scene.
But then Dirty Coopers body faded back into view, so now the Woodsmen were pawing him.
As Dirty Cooper became more solid, the action of the manhandling smeared blood over his clothes and face.
Out popped BOB, his scruffy, sneering mug encased within a gray slimy sac, a corrupt chrysalis.
Thats one way to perform an exorcism, I guess.
Are the Woodsmen good?
Here, at the moment of their introduction, its hard to know.
Perhaps they were functioning as Repo-Men, executing the work of reclaiming BOB for the Black Lodge.
Perhaps they have their own agenda and they stole BOB from Dirty Cooper to advance it.
He scrambled to the car and drove off.
(Meanwhile, the Woodsmen and Ray vanished.)
Ray made a panicked call to a man named Jeffries.
(We remember that this phantom was desperately seeking a reunion with BOB.)
Is he an undercover agent?
If so, for what agency?
Ladies and gentlemen, The Roadhouse is proud to welcome The Nine Inch Nails.
And sure enough, there was (The) Nine Inch Nails!
Performing their song Shes Gone Away from their recent albumNot the Actual Events!
Man, the new generation of Renaults have some serious industry pull.
I took the she to represent both a literal female and a figurative personification of innocence.
But you also see the song as a reference to the absent but felt presence of Laura Palmer.
Are you still here?
the song asks in its closing line.
When it comes to Laura Palmer,Twin Peaks: The Returnkeeps answering the question yes in various ways.
But surely not the same as he ever was, right?
After all, the Black Lodge doppelganger was no longer a vessel for BOB.
What does this loss do to Dirty Cooper?
Does the voiding make him less dirty?
Does it make him capable of change?
And then… Gotta light?
got really,reallyweird.
Establishing shot: the colorless, lifeless landscape of Jornada del Muerto.
Translated, it means Journey of the Dead Man or The Working Day of the Dead.
We got text that gave us a a specific date and the locations more familiar name.
July 16, 1945.
White Sands, New Mexico.
and a mushroom cloud rise into the sky.
An optimist might consider that work to be a heroic endeavor, an initiative to end World War II.
Lynchs camera approached the mushroom cloud.
With its bulbous plume and spindly column, the cloud evoked the Evolution of the Arm, a.k.a.
SQUEEZE HIS HAND OFF!)
The implication of this episode is that Trinitys detonation brought supernatural evil into the world.
(Recap continues on page 3)
The camera then pushedintothe mushroom cloud.
We were bombarded with abstracted images evoking destruction and energy, stormy nebulas and/or the internal workings of engines.
Black and white walls of fire.
But Lynch wasnt ripping off other masters.
He was dialoguing with them, talking back to their narratives with a mix of agreement and quibble.
And so Gotta light?
was about the birth ofpost-modernism, a losing my religion story.
(They couldnt guess?)
The smoke gathered mass, the windows melted, but the building did not fall.
Are the Woodsmen the original Black Lodge demons?
Do current Black Lodge demons simply play out a story encoded in their genetic memory authored by the Woodsmen?
Two other ways you could interpret these hobgoblins: (1) Ghosts.
Did the Trinity explosion claim some lives?
I mean, presumably.
Maybe Experiment just ate some bad clams.
We then cut to fire, the blaze loud on the soundtrack.
(More BOB allusion there.Fire, walk with me.
)We saw something forged in the heart of the inferno, a golden bead of… pure Garmonbozia?
(Im actually going to suggest it occurred a decade later.
Well get to that in a moment.)
I think these scenes also suggest BOBs reincarnation in the present.
Now that BOB is without a human vessel, the parasite needs a new home.
You wonder if he might find it in the low-life baddies bedevilingTwin Peaks.
Hey, Richard Horne?
Is there room in your shriveled kid-sized heart for the soul of a serial killer rapist?
A massive structure, it resembled something like Frank Gehrys Guggenheim Museum Bilbao or Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Im thinking this is another fabled, never-seen location inTwin Peakscosmology; Im thinking this is the White Lodge.
There was Senorita Dido (Joy Nash) sitting on a couch, listening to a gramophone.
It began to bleat, and in doing so, it became something else an alarm bell.
(In the credits, hes identified as ?
?
?
????
For this, the eighth episode maybe?)
Question Marks took note of the sound, then seemed to look toward camera, to look at us.
(Hi, Giant!
We love you!)
Actually, I think he was just gazing out upon the lavender water through that opening in the wall.
He raised his hand to the screen, activating the projector behind him.
He paused the show here.
He levitated several feet above the floor and went vertical, as if assuming a sleeping or meditative posture.
Golden particles swarmed out of his mouth like fireflies.
(Take that, Experiment!)
From this glittering mass splooged an orb to match the BOB glob.
She blessed the globe with a kiss and let it go.
The pipe pivoted toward the screen, now showing a black-and-white cartoon image of the planet Earth.
It was probably headed to Twin Peaks.
(Think:The Day The Earth Stood Stillor2001; The Giant = The Monolith.)
You could even view Mr. Lynch is basically forever and ever responding to his first cinematic love.)
As for theTwin Peaksof it all, I know fans are wondering if Mr. (From this point of view, Mr.
Question Marks isnt a next-gen Giant; The Giant is Mr.
Question Marks, descended from his lofty perch.)
But Im thinking Mr. Maybe now we know what happened.
Actually, Im hoping to see her Hulk out.
Laura Palmer Smash Puny BOB!
(And Dick Horne, Too!)
Regardless, we know this wont be the last time we visit Mr. We saw 1945 appear on screen, then click ahead in time, stopping at Aug. 5, 1956.
Did the egg fall to earth from some fissure in the fabric of reality triggered by the explosion?
Basically, Part 8 ofTwin Peaksis Lynchs take onGodzilla.
But note how even here, one of the seasons big themes adultery reared its ugly head.
Girl asked Boy if hes still dating Mary.
Nope, he said, he had broken it off.
Did you believe him?
Girl found a penny, Abe Lincoln side up.
I heard that brings you good luck, she said.
I hope that itdoesbring young good luck, Boy said.
We cut back to the desert and a shot of shadowy wraiths descending from the sky.
One of them was The Woodsman, maybe chief of all Woodsmen.
He certainly had a presidential vibe to him.
He was played by Robert Broski, actor and professional Abraham Lincoln impersonator.
He was probably radioactive.
And he was a brain-crushing killer.
The disc jockey had just cued up My Prayer by The Platters.
(FUN FACT?The B-side of that record?
She didnt, and it wouldnt have mattered, anyway.
I think its just a thing The Woodsman says.
Anyway, he put his hand on her head and cracked her skull.
Somewhere across oceans of time, a tiny evil brain tree cheers him on.SQUEEZE THEIR HEADS OFF!
SQUEEZE THEIR HEADS OFF!
The Woodsman moved into the control booth.
This is the water and this is the well.
Drink full and descend.
We cut to different locations around town, one of those quintessential midcentury American burghs.
We watched an auto mechanic collapse.
We watched a waitress at Pops Diner fall.
It was icky and evocative.
Back at the radio station, The Woodsman completed his broadcast by puncturing the DJs head.
With that, Gotta light?
