Twin Peaks: The Return Part 11 turns up the interdimensional weird, takes a trip out to the desert, and makes Stewart Gardiner talk about Gwyneth Paltrow.
By Stewart Gardiner // David Lynch recounts an incident from his childhood in The Art Life documentary that certainly evokes a scene from Blue Velvet. He was out late playing in the streets one night when a woman walked out of the nearby woods. She was hurt bad. One obviously thinks of a naked Dorothy Vallens reaching out to Jeffrey, but the story also applies to the beginning of Twin Peaks: The Return part 11. A kid watches in horror and fascination as a bloodied Miriam crawls out of the woods. It’s an unsettling beginning to another magnificent hour of television.
I noted last week that Richard left Miriam’s oven open and the gas on, then lit a candle before leaving. It made me think of an imminent explosion. My friend Duncan Ritchie pointed out to me that since Richard had smashed through her door to get into the trailer then it was unlikely to go kaboom! Air would kind of get in. Luckily my grasp of basic physics is as bad as Richard’s. I hope to heck that Miriam survives.
Incident at Fat Trout Trailer Park
Part 11 picks up Becky’s story once again. During the previous hour her husband Steven was threatening her in a rage. Becky – clearly a victim of domestic abuse – finds out he is with another woman this week. It turns out the other woman is none other than Donna’s sister Gersten Hayward. The girl’s gone bad….
Becky doesn’t have a car, but she does have a gun. She calls her mom Shelley, who leaves the Double R and drives over to the trailer park. Becky jumps in the car and drives off, with Shelley on the windshield no less! Shelley tumbles to the ground and her daughter drives off. More red shoes in part 11 – Shelley’s go flying off her feet. Also more Red later on, as Shelley is apparently dating the weird and bad drug dealer who plays tricks with coins.
Carl is there to assist. He calls a cab. Or rather, he whistles through a metal tube and a VW turns up. (I just bet Carl could get Hurley to show up in a Dharma Initiative van if he really wanted to.) Shelley phones Norma, while Carl gets Bobby on the police radio. Did I mention that Carl Rodd is a total dude?
Fast and Spooky
Becky arrives at an apartment building, although Steven and Gersten have already vacated room 208. Not one to be fazed, Becky fires a few rounds through the door. Then a strange and unexpected thing happens (he says while writing about Twin Peaks). The camera pushes down through the apartment corridors fast and spooky. Nothing is objectively happening at this point in part 11, but it sure feels as if it is. There’s no Bob, no woodsmen. Only unease and there is plenty of that to go around. There’s a feeling that something is very, very wrong with the world.
She’s Sick
Part 11 confirms that Bobby and Shelley got married and had a kid. But Shelley is getting all happy and girlish over that Red guy, who is – hello-o-o-o! – bad news. Bobby has become a good man like his own father it would seem, but that doesn’t appear to be enough to save his marriage. He doesn’t have to dwell on the unfairness of the situation too long though, as shots are fired through the Double R window.
A camouflaged hillbilly type’s camouflaged hillbilly son grabbed a gun from the backseat of their car and fired it. It’s a messed up situation, made all the more disturbing because it is Twin Peaks in reality mode. The car behind keeps honking its horn and Deputy Briggs goes to try and sort it out, get the traffic moving again.
The woman sitting in the car exaggeratedly shouts her head off. “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?” she screams at Bobby, at the world. “Her uncle is joining us. She hasn’t seen him in a very long while,” she explains in Lynchian cadences. Although as far as explanations go this one falls short due to a complete lack of context. Who exactly is she? “She’s sick,” adds the woman. Then a girl rises from the passenger seat, arms stretched out like a zombie. Green vomit dripping from the side of her mouth onto the woman. Weird, horrific, and hilarious. Bobby looks on.
There Were Cars Everywhere!
Lynch has once again discovered new ways to explore the horror of the banal. Cars and traffic again provide him with material ripe for investigation. Remember the blaring horns and harsh soundscape of the roadside scene in Fire Walk With Me with the One-Armed Man, Leland, and Laura? Then there is the sad quiet at the side of the road in Wild At Heart, where Sherilyn Fenn’s accident victim doesn’t know she’s a dead woman walking. The hit and run scene earlier in The Return was shocking in its brutal finality. Here there is less at stake, but Lynch is able to tap into the modern malaise of folks trying to go about their lives but meeting obstacles at every turn.
Lynch returns to the theme from a different perspective later in part 11. Candie once again displays symptoms of disconnectedness from her surroundings. The Mitchum brothers wonder where she has been. She finally snaps out of it and describes a commuter’s nightmare as a story of wonder:
“There was so much traffic on the strip. It was incredible. There were cars everywhere!”
Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down could have done with some of Candie’s wide eyed calm.
Check Your Head
Bushnell Mullins sends Dougie to meet with the Mitchum brothers. He has a check for $30 million, the pay out for their insurance claim, with him. Good news, no? But the brothers think one Douglas Jones ruled it arson and is out to get them. They are therefore intent on killing him. Dougie has a vision of Mike and the Red Room before getting into the car for the desert. So he wanders into a store and comes out with a cardboard box. It was obvious to me what was in the box right away: Gwyneth Paltrow’s head. The number se7en has featured and headlessness has been a theme of The Return. So, you know. Obvious.
Gangsters planning to wack somebody out in the desert is a stock crime movie scenario, yet in Lynch’s hands it becomes something never before seen. Part 11’s desert scene is beautifully weird and strangely moving.
This One Certain Thing
Bradley Mitchum tells his brother that he had a dream “all fucking night” about killing “that Douglas Jones fuck.” He can’t wait to do it. But out in the desert the dream goes to work on him. Bradley recounting his dream is like the Winkie’s sequence of Mulholland Drive, but in reverse as far as death is concerned. This dream brings life.
“What?” asks Rodney.
“My dream.”
“Ugh, the dream.”
“In the dream. In the dream your Candie cut was completely healed.”
“What?”
“The cut Candie gave you.”
“How can that be?”
Bradley tears off the plaster. Rodney doesn’t have a mark on him. Dreams infect reality in Lynch’s work and this is a subtle example with significant consequences.
Dougie shows up carrying the box. This sparks more dream remembrances from Bradley. “There’s something in that box,” he tells his brother, “and if that something is what I saw in my dream we can’t kill him.”
I was wrong. Gwyneth Paltrow’s head is not in the box. That wouldn’t have saved Dougie Jones anyway. But a cherry pie? That and a $30 million check makes gangsters into friends.
“This pie’s so damn good,” says Rodney in the restaurant. “Damn good,” parrots Dougie and there’s a look he gives, as if searching for meaning long forgotten. A look that says Coop is in there somewhere, just beneath the surface, waiting to come out. If and when he does it will be glorious.
This is the Place
Part 11 reveals the site Hastings spoke of. He takes Gordon, Albert, Tammy, Diane, and Macklay there. The place is like a nuclear test village within city limits and without the dummies. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series features an abandoned lot with connections to another world. This is that and then some.
Hastings explains that he went through the fence and walked about 15 to 20 feet in. That’s where Briggs was, but he doesn’t remember any more. “This is the place,” confirms Tammy after speaking with Hastings. There doesn’t appear to be anyone about, although there’s a woodsman in back of the place, manifesting and disappearing. Creepy ain’t the word.
Gordon and Albert make their way through the fence.
“Think there’s one in there, Albert?” asks Gordon.
“We’ll soon find out.”
One what? Gordon goes on ahead. Albert watches Gordon stop, as if pushing against an invisible barrier. It’s like a real world version of Coop pushing against the electrical field around the machine in the Purple Room. Then things get strange (he says while writing about Twin Peaks). Gordon starts to go in and out of focus. The effect is similar to what happens with Diane in Mulholland Drive when the dream breaks down. Or to Pete in Lost Highway, when he stares up at the light and the bugs are more real than real.
2240 Sycamore
For Albert there is no sonic equivalent of the blurring. However, from Gordon’s perspective there is a rush of noise and the clouds and sky swirls and distorts into a vortex. The noise in the maelstrom is terrifying. Albert sees Gordon reaching up towards the sky, sunlight bleeding through in the near silence. Lynch cuts to Macklay, Hastings, then Diane. They are much further back and there is nothing to alert them to any phenomena at all. Lynch goes to a wide shot which shows Gordon Cole awkwardly raising his arms and nothing more. The weirdness is localized, albeit cosmic in scope once close enough in. The further away from it one is the less strange it appears.
Back with Gordon and things have intensified. The vortex opens up to black, threatening to engulf its immediate surroundings. A room appears. Three woodsmen are standing at the top of a flight of stairs. Gordon is drawn to them. He reaches out. Albert sees Gordon slow down then flicker in and out of existence. He grabs Gordon and pulls him out of there before he goes the way of Agent Chet Desmond. There is relief but also a sense of discovery, like the good blue rose detectives they are.
“Well, I guess we found out.”
“We sure did, Albert.”
Meanwhile, Diane spots a woodsman out back. She says nothing.
Ruth Davenport, I Presume
Albert and Gordon find a headless corpse (hint: it isn’t Gwyneth Paltrow’s). It is of course Ruth Davenport, although there’s no sign of Major Briggs’s head. Too busy floating through Eraserhead space one assumes. There are co-ordinates on Ruth’s arm however, which Albert photographs.
Diane watches as a woodsman appears and disappears on his way to the car with Macklay and Hastings. She doesn’t alert anyone. The woodsman gets into the back seat with Hastings. He is unseen; a presence only. But that’s enough. Listen to the sounds… of a man’s head being squeezed until it bursts. Hastings’s head explodes off screen and Macklay can’t get out his vehicle fast enough. He calls for backup, but Diane calmly tells him, “There’s no backup for this.” What does she know and who is she working with?
Hastings has lost more than half his head. “He’s dead,” states Gordon Cole. Lynch knows exactly when to turn that valve and release the tension. Part 11 needed that right here.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Back at the station, the blue rose team try to piece together what they saw. Gordon’s hand is shaking uncontrollably. “Cat on a hot tin roof,” he says. “Never done that before.” And this guy knows weird.
“We saw somebody, Albert and I. Out back. Out back where we found Ruth Davenport’s body.”
“What did he look like?” asks Diane.
“He looked like a homeless man. Old clothes, beard, wool cap,” says Albert.
Part 11 furthers the links between the man in back of Winkie’s in Mulholland Drive and the woodsmen.
Diane admits she might have seen the man. Although she says he was getting out of the police car. No mention of his approach.
The conversation triggers further recognition from Gordon:
“Now I remember. I saw them. In a room. I saw the bearded men. The same type Albert and I saw. Dirty bearded men in a room.”
Dirty Bearded Men in a Room. Now, there’s a band just waiting to happen.
Like Modern Day Electricity
At the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, Frank Truman and Hawk continue their investigation. Part 11 introduces thrilling new elements to the lore via Hawk’s living map, which performs an analogous function to the Owl Cave map in season 2.
Frank examines an online map and notes that there’s no road to the location specified by Major Briggs. Hawk rolls out a scroll-like thing on the table.
“The information that Major Briggs gave got me thinking. You’ll understand a lot more when I explain my map. This map is very old, but it is always correct. It’s a living thing.”
Hawk points to Blue Pine Mountain, which is where Briggs’s station was. “A very revered sacred site,” he tells Frank. That’s where the coordinates should take them.
Franks asks about the fire on the map:
“Looks like a campfire. What is this?”
“Not a campfire,” says Hawk. “It’s a fire symbol. It’s a type of fire. More like – like modern day electricity.”
Did anyone else get Fire Walk With Me shivers and start hallucinating that electricity pylon? No? Just me then. Okay.
“Good?” asks Frank, which is a sensible question.
“Depends. Depends upon the intention behind the fire.”
Yikes.
The date Major Briggs provided can also be read in the stars on the map. More disturbing than the fire is the black corn, a field of Garmonbozia if you like. Hawk explains that if the corn is combined with the fire it makes another symbol on the map: “black fire.” This being Twin Peaks that cannot be good.
Frank points to the swollen black owl symbol on the map. He recognizes it from Briggs’s slip of paper.
“What is this?”
“Frank, you don’t ever want to know about that.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Ominousness upon ominousness from part 11. The excitement keeps building.