Twin Peaks Episode 6 Recap: Hello, Laura Dern!
In part six, the revival of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks focuses on Las Vegas and the town of Twin Peaks, giving viewers a respite from the constant carousel of new plot lines and characters—except one much-anticipated entrance.
This week’s installment of Twin Peaks gets us almost completely out of pure exposition territory. The first four episodes caught us up with the world of Twin Peaks circa 2017, and episode five did a lot of heavy lifting in that regard as well, with characters in North Dakota, Las Vegas, and beyond. Now, by episode six, the show has plot lines set up all over the country, so it makes sense that this week we weren’t introduced to any more completely new stories or major characters (save for one much-awaited appearance). Instead, this week focuses on plot lines in Las Vegas, where Agent Dale Cooper has ended up in the body of hapless Dougie Jones, and Twin Peaks, where small-town felonies are afoot. We get nothing on the prison-bound Bob inhabiting Cooper’s body in North Dakota; only one scene takes place further afield… but we’ll get to that later. Thankfully, with two competing—and let’s hope eventually complementary—storylines, this week’s rundown is a bit more streamlined.
Las Vegas
We find Dougie/Cooper where we last left him, wandering around his office compound. He touches his left arm, which may be a reference to One-Armed Mike. (Remember, the real Dougie Jones felt a pang in his arm right before he got body-swapped). A cop picks him up. “He’s got this thing for my badge,” he explains to Janey-E when he brings him home. Cooper remembers his badge; it’s becoming clearer that he may snap out of this.
Anyway, way to go—this is the first person to say outright that something’s definitely wrong with the so-called Dougie Jones. Though, apparently, per Janey-E, it doesn’t sound as if the original Dougie had a ton of brain power to start with.
At home, Cooper at least remembers that the folders his boss gave him are case files. He goes to tuck in Dougie and Janey-E’s son, Sonny Jim, who appears swathed in a blue blanket in blue light. This character is almost always pulling focus whenever he appears. I’ll be keeping an eye on him, as well as the kid who lives in Rancho Rosa. The kids on Twin Peaks, often silent, are usually more perceptive than the adults.
Janey-E snoops, looking at the files. Apparently, Cooper didn’t pay off the loan sharks— whoops—because they dropped in a photo of Jade escorting him out of the Rancho Rosa house. Like a dope, he happily repeats, “Jade give two rides” to Janey-E. Oy. She sets up the meet with the bad guys herself, “in the park, at the corner of Guinevere and Merlin.” Ha. She’ll be the one with the red purse. (Of course.) Side note: good on Naomi Watts for carrying scene after scene while she has to play off a character who is literal dead weight with an increasingly tired gag.
Elsewhere, a red stop light surges the same way the sockets did when Cooper passed through. One Armed Mike wanders around the Red Room trying to find… you guessed it, Cooper.
“You have to wake up. Wake up,” Mike says, coming out of the fireplace, speaking to Cooper. “Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.”
Cooper turns back to working on the case files, scribbling nonsense with a pencil. Well, that didn’t seem to work. But wait: green-lighted points appear on the form, like they did over Anthony during the meeting and at the casino on the jackpots. (Wow, if only this trick worked for politicians.) Cooper draws scribbles on the points.
Elsewhere in Vegas, the man who handed off some money from a corporate-looking office a few episodes ago (we haven’t seen this guy in a while) types on a screen when a mysterious red square appears. He opens a safe and takes out a folder with a black dot. Later, in a motel, a guy gets the folder with the dot: inside is a picture of Dougie Jones and Heidi, the hustler who tried to have him killed. So that’s settled.
A coroner and cops come to Rancho Rosa trying to ID the bodies and the car that blew up in the last episode; they will soon figure out the car belongs to Dougie Jones. Across the street, the drugged-out mother is still screaming “119.”
Back at the office the next day, Dougie at least looks more like the old Cooper: he’s in a trim suit with a thin black tie. To say that the jokes related to his burnout are getting old is an understatement. Seriously, six episodes is enough.
The boss wants to see him; his colleague, Anthony, looks nervous. Obviously the reports Cooper did are incomprehensible. We can see they all allude to his time in the Red Room: the Arm is there; the patterns of the room; the staircases from the in-between place. This boss is not having it. It’s not looking good for him when, apparently, something he did makes sense to the boss: everything leads back to Anthony Sinclair. What Dougie shouted in the meeting was spot-on; Sinclair has been scamming the company. Meanwhile, Janey-E waits in park for the guys, who explain that he borrowed money three weeks ago because he owed $20,000 on a bet.
“We drive shitty cars,” Janey-E says. “We are the 99 percenters.” Her monologue lays out a lot of Lynch’s concerns in the world of Twin Peaks, delivered in a surreal, histrionic monologue. “What kind of world are we living in that people can behave like this, treat other people this way?… We are living in a dark, dark age,” she says, and then hands them the wad of cash.
Heidi, the hustler from the last episode, asks her guys, “What do mean he wasn’t in the car? Three bodies?” regarding the explosion in Rancho Rosa. But the assassin is already there, and kills her mercilessly with the pick axe. He bent it killing someone. He gets very sad about this. Good bit. The takeaway? Apparently this pursuit of Dougie Jones doesn’t just have to do with the money.
Twin Peaks
In the first scene of the storyline set in Twin Peaks, we’re at a warehouse somewhere in the Pacific Northwest where Richard Horne is meeting with Red (Balthazar Getty), whom we also saw in an earlier episode hanging out at the Bang Bang Club. Richard just tested out some coke he’s going to sell back in Twin Peaks. “Law enforcement’s asleep at the wheel,” he tells Red. “Sheriff’s like 90 years old.”
Red says not to f— with him or he’ll saw his head open, then flips a dime which somehow ends up in Horne’s mouth, then back in his hand. “This is you, this is me,” Red tells Richard. “Heads I win. Tails you lose.” Apparently, Red is another supernaturally charged character in the Twin Peaks universe.
A distraught and extremely high Richard drives home in his truck, screaming. Meanwhile, Carl Rodd, owner of the Fat Trout, in Oregon, gets a ride to Twin Peaks. Remember, the Fat Trout is where Teresa Banks lived and where Agent Chester Desmond disappeared in Fire Walk With Me. At the Double R Diner, a woman named Miriam indulges in pie as Shelley works her shift. In the park, Carl sees a woman playing with her son. Horne is still barreling into town in his truck—and, in a climax that feels inevitable, speeds into the woman’s son in a hit-and-run.
Miriam, however, sees him driving off. Carl hears the commotion and sees the killed boy, held by his screaming mother—and watches as a green ghostly light leave the boy’s body. We hear that same surging in the wires. Richard tries to wash off his car in the woods; it’s only a matter of time before this guy gets caught. No word yet on how he’s related to the Hornes, although my money says this is Audrey’s son.
Back at the station, Hawk drops a coin in the bathroom, leading him to find “something to do with his heritage,” per Log Lady, which will help them figure out what happened to Cooper. The clue? Nez Perce Manufacturing—the company that makes the bathroom stall doors—which uses a Native American as their logo. Something there is missing, too. A screw from the door. Two points for Log Lady. Hawk busts it open—inside there is a note! Doris storms in to argue with Sheriff Truman about a car. Some office banter reveals that their son committed suicide, partly explaining why Doris is so wound up all the time. (This may reveal more about the Trumans later on.) The original Sheriff Truman, Harry S., his brother, is still mysteriously ill. And back at the Bang Bang Bar, who’s performing tonight? Sharon van Etten.
North Dakota
There’s one scene in the North Dakota storyline, though we’re not quite sure where it takes place. FBI agent Albert is on the phone with Gordon: he’s undercover and on his way to Max Von’s Bar, a dark and old-school watering hole. At the bar, he meets a woman with white-blond hair named Diane. It’s Laura Dern. Reports have said that her new character will have a crucial role this season. Let’s hope next episode we find out what that issue is.
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 Five 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:
