Twin Peaks Episode 11 Recap: Meet the Deeply Troubled Millennials of Twin Peaks
This week’s Twin Peaks, for once, focuses on Twin Peaks. In particular, its younger characters like Becky Burnett (Amanda Seyfried), who is the closest stand-in for Laura Palmer this time around. There are of course drop-ins on the other storylines in South Dakota and Vegas, but we kick off with high-octane fireworks in the titular Northwest town, a jolt to follow last week’s sleepier episode. This week’s episode also, for the most part, sticks to one locale at a time, making it ever-so-slightly easier to follow– not that clarity is exactly paramount to Twin Peaks devotees. Read on for the latest.
Twin Peaks
Three boys playing catch at the Fat Trout trailer park notice someone in the bushes—it’s a beat-up and bloodied Miriam, who survived her attack by Richard Horne. Meanwhile, a distraught Becky, who also lives in the park, screams into her phone, desperate to get somewhere. A+ scream here.
At the Double R Diner, Shelly gets a call from Becky saying she needs her ASAP—it’s about Steven. A wise Norma looks on as Shelly runs out. Once Shelly is at the Fat Trout, Becky grabs her gun, muttering “I hate him!” as she steals away in the car without Shelly, who in response jumps on the hood of the car. A crazed Becky wheels her off the hood onto some nearby grass; she’s all crazy eyes.
A haggard Shelly asks Carl, owner of the park, for a ride back to the diner. “I know there’s been trouble in that trailer, we’ve all heard it,” he says, filling her in. “I feel for you and your girl.” Back at the diner, Norma suggests that Shelly call Bobby. Reveal time: Becky Burnett is the former Becky Briggs. Seems as though the third generation of Twin Peaks residents, from Becky Briggs to Richard Horne, is more screwed up than the last.
Amanda Seyfried and Mädchen Amick in a still from Twin Peaks. Photo: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME
Elsewhere, Becky pulls up to an apartment building and then bangs on the door, enraged and demanding to see Steven. No one is there. Seyfried gives a solid performance here; it’s fun to watch her going against type for once after years of playing the good girl. “F— you Steven!” she screams as she shoots into the door. We get some very cool shots snaking us down the hall to where Steven and his hookup are hiding a few floors below. As the credits reveal, he’s with Gersten Hayward (Alicia Witt, another zeitgeist-y cameo). Yet another strike against the Twin Peaks millennials.
The sheriff’s department immediately starts getting calls from the building to send someone about the gunshots.
The next bit actually comes a little later in the episode, but it’s below chronologically, and comes interspersed in the Buckhorn plot—rarely does Lynch let the splicing of the storylines work so neatly. Rhythmically, it makes sense why Lynch follows the various stories this way: it always keeps us in suspense, and we catch up with plotlines whenever he decides we will. Still, for us recappers, this week was a treat.
Bobby and Shelly meet up to talk to Becky at the Double R. Becky says she wants a divorce but still loves Steven. Her parents tell her she has to pay for the door and apartment and she throws a tantrum—though she’d be in jail if her dad didn’t work for the sheriff. Shelly offers her a loan since Becky doesn’t have the money. Becky shirks it off—Steven has spent everything she’s ever given her. Bobby offers to pay. Shelly says she needs out of the trailer.
“He’s just going through a bad time right now,” she says about Steven. Yikes. “He’s good inside.” She lies and says he hasn’t hit her. I had a Leo Johnson flashback here. Like mother, like daughter?
Norma gives Becky a knowing look, and she immediately changes her tune toward her mom, exclaiming, “Are you ok?… You flew off the windshield! I didn’t mean to do that!” Immediately hugs her. Hmmm. What does Norma know?
We see Red—the drug supplier from a few episodes back, played by Balthazar Getty—through the window. And guess what? He’s with Shelley. Dear god. This really is a case of like-mother-like-daughter. Shelley bounces to make out with him. Man, this sucks. Remember, he’s the one getting drugs into Twin Peaks through Richard Horne, and presumably over to Steven. Bobby and Becky are left alone, sulking, and Norma looks pissed. Shelly comes back with a self-satisfied smile. Great parenting! Some things in TP never change. And then, bam: Double R hit up with gunfire. Bobby springs into action.
Apparently there was an accident as a couple screams and argues—the wife didn’t know there was a gun in the car, and we’re led to believe a little boy found it and shot into the Double R. Uh. The little boy just stares Bobby down. Ditto the husband. Cars honk relentlessly. The woman behind them in the next car screams about how her girl is sick and they have to get home. A little girl in the passenger seat suddenly springs up like she’s possessed, vomiting gross sludge as the woman screams.
Back at the sheriff’s, Truman and Hawk look at an old, Native American map of Hawk’s to find out about where they’re going according to Major Briggs’s date, time, and location, which they got in the last episode. “It’s a living thing,” Hawk says of his map. The coordinates lead them to a symbol for fire on the map—“like modern-day electricity.” The surging? As for the date, Hawks knows by the stars that it refers to one spot, where there’s a symbol for corn—but it’s black, so diseased or unnatural. If you put fire and black corn together, you get black fire, as Hawk points out. I’m wondering if this represents the electric currents that bring people in and out of the Red Room. Truman sees another symbol that he recognizes from the slip of paper in Briggs tube; it looks like a black demon. “You don’t ever want to know about that,” Hawk says. My money is on the Woodsmen.
Log Lady calls! “You found something didn’t you?” she tells Hawk, adding, “My log is afraid of fire. There’s fire where you are going.” They’re on the right track. Throwing out the connection between the log and the Woodsmen now!
Buckhorn, South Dakota
The FBI folks pull up to the place where Bill Hastings claims he saw Major Briggs: a deserted house behind a chain-link fence. Diane wears a leopard coat and red palazzo pants; I want to note this outfit is really cool. Bill sees one of the Woodsmen appear, but apparently Bill isn’t the only one who can see it, because Gordon sees something, too. Albert and Gordon go toward the front door, and we hear the electric socket sound. Uh oh. Gordon looks at the spot—and it appears the spot is looking at him, another cool shot in this episode.
Up in the sky, parts of the surroundings swirl up into a kind of black hole. A portal opens up, and it sees Gordon, who is becoming hazy from Albert’s perspective only a few feet away. Yet from the car, from Diane’s POV, it looks like nothing is happening. Gordon reaches up into the hole opening up in the sky. The black center comes closer—he sees into a room full of Woodsmen. As Gordon begins to flicker away from Albert’s perspective, he grabs him back before he disappears. “I guess we found out,” Albert says, to an ever-upbeat Gordon. “We sure did, Albert!”
Miguel Ferrer, David Lynch and Laura Dern in a still from Twin Peaks. Photo: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME
Diane is looking on a bit uneasily. The Woodsmen still flicker in and out of view. Albert and Gordon then find, just near the site, the body of a headless woman. It’s obviously Ruth Davenport, whose head was found with the body of Major Briggs. There are coordinates written on Davenport’s arm.
Diane can see a Woodsman coming for Hastings and the Buckhorn police car, but she doesn’t do anything. Hastings is shaking when… bam! His brain explodes. “There’s no backup for this,” Diane says. We get a gratuitous shot of the carnage. “He’s dead,” Gordon ascertains. Woof. Cut.
Later, the stunned team recaps the night at the station with some strong coffee. Albert shows a picture of Ruth’s arm with the numbers. Diane is clearly trying to memorize them. Albert sees her doing this and puts the photo away, eyeing her suspiciously.
No one can believe how Hastings ended up dead. Albert and Gordon mention they both saw somebody who looked like a homeless man. Diane says she thought she saw someone like that, too. Is she playing into their story or did she really not know what it was? I’m betting on the former.
Las Vegas
Bushnell Mullins, the head of the insurance agency, calls in Dougie (aka the real Cooper), who is trailing the coffee like a dog. Who doesn’t want a strong cup of coffee while watching these, I wonder.
Dougie’s work has exposed a ring of organized crime, and possible police corruption. The Mitchum Brothers case wasn’t arson but actually accidental—that means they are separate of someone else who is calling the shots on Dougie. Anyway, the Mitchums want to meet with Dougie—as we know, they mean to kill him. Mullins is skeptical but since Dougie uncovered the corruption by Anthony, it feels safe, especially since he has a $30 million check for him to hand them, which is what they deserve.
At their midcentury pool-side manse, the Mitchums can’t wait to whack Dougie. Bradley Mitchum (Jim Belushi) dreamt all night of killing Dougie Jones.
Robert Knepper and Jim Belushi in a still from Twin Peaks. Photo: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME
When the time comes, Mullins walks Dougie to the car the Mitchums sent, but Dougie sees One-Armed Mike gesturing him toward a mirage of the Red Room. Dougie follows but the room soon fades away to reveal a shop. Later, Dougie enters the limo with a box, and he’s driven out to the desert far beyond the city.
Bradley is feeling hesitant about the assassination. In the dream, apparently, Rodney’s cut from Candie, the ditzy hostess, was completely healed—and so it is now. There’s more, but he can’t remember. When Dougie appears with the box, he remembers that in his dream Dougie also had a box, and if it holds the thing he saw in his dream, they can’t kill him. It means he’s not their enemy…if he has a cherry pie. What’s in the box? (7even, anyone?)
Yep, a cherry pie. They frisk him—and find the 30-million-dollar check. They howl with glee and yell “I love this guy!” Cut to: they take him to a champagne dinner. Dougie/Cooper notices something about the piano player. An old woman—the crazy one from the casino– recognizes him. Thanks to Mr. Jackpots, she says, “I have my life back again.”
The Mitchums and Dougie eat some of that cherry pie. Candie, Mandie, and Sandie come back. “Where’ve you been, Candie?” Rodney asks. “There was so much traffic on the strip. There were cars everywhere!” she says with robotic melodrama. What’s up with this girl? Cooper loves the cherry pie. “This pie is damn good,” the brothers say. “Damn good,” Dougie/Cooper says back, with more gusto. “Here’s to the pie that saved your life!” And there you have it.
A Field Guide to Recognizing Your Favorite Twin Peaks Actors Now, 26 Years Later
Though Kyle MacLachlan has since starred in other cult series, even when he was Charlotte’s impotent husband on Sex and the City and a murderer on Desperate Housewives, he’ll always be known as Special Agent Dale Cooper, a man never too far away from a slice of cherry pie or cup of strong, black joe. (No word yet on whether Diane will be returning, too.)
Death be damned, Laura Palmer is coming back with a bang by starring in all 18 episodes of the new series—that is, unless Sheryl Lee, whose first post-Peaks role was Salome opposite Al Pacino, and who has since showed up in Winter’s Bone and Woody Allen’s Café Society, is simply reprising her role as Laura’s suspiciously identical cousin, Maddy.
Dana Ashbrook has kept up acting with a steady roster of smaller films, including 2012’s The Agression Scale with Ray Wise, aka Leland Palmer, and more than a few appearances on Dawson’s Creek, presumably making him more than up to the job in reprising his role as the annoying ultimate bad boy Bobby Briggs—even now that his hair’s gone gray.
Though she’s now a long way from a schoolgirl, the ever flirtatious Audrey Horne may have a chance at getting together with Coop after all, especially since actress Sherilyn Fenn has been keeping up her acting chops on shows like Gilmore Girls and Shameless (not to mention appearing on the cover of Playboy in the ’90s).
At 70, Peggy Lipton scarcely seems to have aged since she last played Norma Jennings, the owner of the Double R Diner, though she has since raised another actress, her daughter Rashida Jones.
Richard Beymer‘s eyes seem only bluer than ever since the now 79-year-old actor last turned up as Benjamin Horne, Audrey’s father and the owner of the Great Northern Hotel (not to mention an appearance in West Side Story, which helped to earn him a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year that he shared with Warren Beatty). Not that viewers have been able to appreciate them: Twin Peaks is only Beymer’s fourth on-screen appearance so far in the 2000s.
From blue streaks to twin top knots, Kimmy Robertson seems to have as much appreciation for an out-there hairdo as Lucy Moran, her curly-haired secretary in the sheriff’s office. Robertson has since lent her high-pitched voice to shows like Batman and The Simpsons, plus appeared onscreen on an episode of Drake & Josh—all good practice for appearing on all 18 episodes this season.
Like Leland Palmer, Laura’s potentially murderous father, actor Ray Wise has since gone gray, a new look he’s shown off in shows like Mad Men, Fresh Off the Boat, Gilmore Girls, 24, and How I Met Your Mother. That’s range.
Another face who’ll be showing up in the full series, Mädchen Amick has lately turned up on Riverdale, plus a host of cult shows like Mad Men, Gossip Girl, ER, Gilmore Girls, and Dawson’s Creek. Fortunately for her character, the waitress Shelley Johnson, though, her abusive husband Leo won’t be back.
Since playing Deputy Hawk, one of the most reasoned voices in the sheriff’s office, Michael Horse has gone on to not only appear in shows like Malcolm in the Middle, but pick up a full-on artistic career as a jeweler and painter.
Though Michael Ontkean has maintained his curly head of locks since starring as Sheriff Harry S. Truman, the actor, who last showed up in The Descendants in 2011, has decided to leave Coop hanging and won’t be returning to Twin Peaks.
Lara Flynn Boyle won’t be returning to this season but she’ll always live on as Donna Hayward, Laura’s best friend of sorts who was never short on spectacular sweaters.
Russ Tamblyn‘s daughter Amber has since gone on to become an actor and even director herself, but Tamblyn has kept up an acting career of his own since playing the ever eccentrically-outfitted psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, recently picking up roles in films like Django Unchained.
Like the actor who plays fellow bad boy Bobby Briggs, James Marshall, aka James Hurley, Big Ed’s nephew who can’t get enough of riding his bike, has also gone gray, but still showed up on-screen with a few films and an appearance on CSI.
Like her on-screen daughter, Laura, the grief-stricken Sarah Palmer will be returning for all 18 episodes, although actor Grace Zabriskie has turned up in shows like Charmed and Big Love.
Fittingly, like her beau Sheriff Harry S. Truman, sawmill owner Josie Packard won’t be returning to the series—like fellow mill worker Piper Laurie, aka Catherine Martell, David Lynch apparently never asked her back. But actor Joan Chen has been looking young as ever lately in shows like Netflix’s Marco Polo.
Read W**‘s recap of Part 10 of Twin Peaks.**
Related: Laura Dern and Naomi Watts Open Up About David Lynch, And Tease Twin Peaks
Read all W‘s Twin Peaks coverage here.
Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Patricia Arquette, and Hailey Gates Open Up About Working with Legendary Director David Lynch:
