Thursday, June 29, 2017

Twin Peaks: The Return 3x07 Recap: "Part 7: There’s a Body, All Right" (Ominous Music Plays) [Contributor: Erin Allen]

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"Part 7: There’s a Body, All Right"
Original Airdate: June 18, 2017

Part 7 has thrown me into a Snoqualmie Falls-size black hole of mystification. There are just too many clues and hypotheses and theories to wrap my brain around. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mystery, but WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? I’m going to try and break it down, which will include my many, many questions.

The episode begins with Jerry trippin’ out in the woods. “I think I’m high!” That’s kind of how I feel reading all the different takes on what happens on this episode. He calls Ben and says he thinks his car is stolen. (OMG, is this a precursor to the stolen car bit with Cooper/Dougie and the police?) While we are seeing Ben’s side of the phone call, the phone cuts off. Did Jerry hang up? Did something happen to him? SOMEONE GO CHECK ON JERRY!

Hawk goes over the pages he found in the bathroom stall door on Part 6. He reiterates clues that we know about from Fire Walk With Me. It figures the most explicit explanation is of something we already know about. That doesn’t lessen the excitement over the discovery of these pages that we’ve been waiting for 25 years to be found. Lynch spends a good amount of time on this scene, which allows for the gravitas of it to be adequately felt.

To recap, the pages Hawk found were three out of the four that were missing from Laura’s secret diary found at Harold Smith’s. In it she writes about a dream she had where Annie visited her and told her that the good Dale is in the lodge and he can’t leave, and to write it in her diary.” On the back of another page it implicates that Laura knew that it was her father. Hawk thinks that Leland hid these pages for fear of being discovered.

Frank calls Harry to get his take on it, but he’s too consumed by his illness and treatment. Frank decides not to bother him with it. “Beat this thing.” Yes, please, Harry beat this thing! Frank then Skypes with Doc Hayward. They Skype! Frank has got a fancy built-in monitor that rises out of his desk with the turn of the lever, and Doc has been diagnosing patients via the internet as he spends his days fishing. The citizens of Twin Peaks using modern technology is a sight. Also quite the sight is Doc Hayward, played by the late and great Warren Frost. They talk about the day Cooper and Annie came out of the Black Lodge. Doc had noticed that Cooper was acting strange and took him to the hospital to be checked out. Later he saw Cooper sneak out of intensive care, and suggests he might have been checking in on Audrey who was in a coma after the explosion at the bank. Both Doc and Frank get somber at the mention of Audrey, and they change the subject. This gives me the feeling that things aren’t going well for Audrey at present, and concerns me enormously.

Andy is investigating the hit and run from Part 6. Well, at least he’s investigating the truck that Richard was driving. The man who owns the truck is very nervous about Andy’s questioning. He insists that he wasn’t driving it and begs Andy to leave, saying he will tell him the whole story, but not now and not here. Andy agrees to meet him elsewhere in two hours. We later catch up with Andy at their meeting place and the truck owner hasn’t shown. There is a cut to the shack where Andy was first questioning him. Ominous Twin Peaks music plays as the camera pushes in on the door.

Lt. Cindy Knox follows up on the latest hit on Major Briggs’ prints. Det. Macklay informs her that they got the prints off of the actual body. “There’s a body, all right.” They show Knox the body and tell her that the body is a man in his late 40s who died about 5-6 days ago. Knox is appropriately surprised and confused by this information and notifies her superior, Colonel Davis (so we get to see Ernie Hudson again, yay!). While Knox is on the phone with him and as she mentions for the second time that the head is missing, a dark figure appears in the background and walks toward her down the hallway. She senses his presence and looks behind her. The camera focuses on the man, and it is the same freaky guy that was in the jail cell with Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard)! Remember his head floated away like a balloon and Major Briggs’ head floated in space? Also, ominous sounds play whenever he is on screen in this scene. The amount of times I wrote "ominous sounds" or "ominous music" in my notes was considerable.

Lynch blesses us with a moment of him as Gordon Cole whistling in his office with the mushroom cloud photo behind him. We get a glimpse of another piece of art, as well, a painting of an ear of corn. Gordon is hard of hearing and garmonbozia is creamed corn. Many are interpreting that Gordon is either a Black Lodge or White Lodge entity of some kind. We also see that his hearing may be conveniently selective and that he knows more than he lets on.

Albert accompanies Gordon to Diane’s. (He did say “please.”) She is not happy with their presence and she makes her distaste obvious. They tell her that Cooper is in federal lock-up, to which she answers coldly, “Good.” She begrudgingly serves them coffee, and we are blessed again by Lynch as Gordon saying, “Damn good coffee.” He says, “this is extremely important, Diane, and it involves something that you know about, and that’s enough said about that.”

This must’ve convinced her because the next scene is the three of them plus Tammy on a plane to South Dakota. Tammy shows Gordon and Albert an incongruity on Cooper’s fingerprints sheets. The prints taken from BOB/Cooper at the Yankton Prison have one of the digit’s boxes reversed. Someone tried to make it match Cooper’s prints from 25 years ago. Gordon has Tammy hold out her hands. He says Cooper’s greeting to him as he touches each finger. “I’m very, very happy to see you again, old friend.” The first “very” lands on the left hand’s ring finger, and is also the “very” that BOB/Cooper said backwards, “yrev.” Gordon says that that finger is “the spiritual mound, the spiritual finger.” It also happens to be the same finger on which people wear the owl cave ring and where BOB hides the letters under the fingernails of his victims.

One of the best scenes of the episode is Diane’s meeting with BOB/Cooper. Both Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan are eerily superb. Diane is visibly upset by seeing him. BOB/Cooper has the deep, monotone voice affectation that he had when Gordon met with him.
Diane: When was the last time we saw each other, Cooper? 
BOB/Cooper: At your house. 
Diane: That’s right. Do you remember that night? 
BOB/Cooper: I’ll always remember that night. 
Diane: Same for me. I’ll never forget it. Who are you?
What happened that night?! Did they sleep together? Did she get pregnant? Is it the Linda that the Question Mark Man mentioned? This is the direction my thinking is going with all this. It’s possible that BOB/Cooper was better at mimicking Cooper back then enough to fool her. It would also explain her animosity towards just the mention of Cooper’s name, meaning he bolted after that night. She tells Gordon something is definitely wrong. When Gordon asks about the night they were referring to, she tells him that they will have a talk about it.

BOB/Cooper knows that the FBI knows that something is amiss, and he’s not going to be released, so he makes other arrangements. Using some information that includes dog’s legs, Joe McCluskey, and the late Mr. Strawberry, BOB/Cooper bribes the warden. He lets BOB/Cooper and Ray Monroe escape.  

Back at Lucky 7 Insurance, Tony grills a silent Dougie/Cooper on what he talked about with the boss. He gets nowhere and leaves when the police come to see Dougie about his car. They don’t get much information from him either until Janey-E shows up. They have a roundabout conversation about whether his car is missing or stolen. They finally reveal that his car was involved in an explosion with multiple fatalities linked to a car theft gang.

Cooper and Janey-E leave somewhat relieved that the car mystery is solved and the thugs are paid off. When they get outside, the hitman, Ike the Spike from Part 6, charges at them with a gun. Cooper snaps out of his haze, pushes Janey-E out of harm’s way, and takes down the gunman. As they struggle for the gun, the arm tree thing from the Black Lodge pokes its head up out of the sidewalk, and says, “Squeeze his hand off.” Cooper complies, but Ike gets away, leaving behind a chunk of skin from his hand that Cooper squeezed into the gun handle. (Which is totally gross, by the way.)

The police show up to take evidence and interview bystanders. The child of one woman says that Ike “smelled funny.” Maybe like scorched engine oil? Another woman says that “Douglas Jones moved like a cobra.”

At the Great Northern, Ben and his assistant Beverly (Ashley Judd), try to find the source of a ringing hum in her office. They flirt as they roam the room. Beverly is the new employee that Ben said he wasn’t sleeping with because she was married (and because of R-E-S-P-E-C-T). He’s definitely gotten better at restraining himself around women, but his desire is still there. It doesn’t seem one-sided, though. Beverly boldly flirts back, and we learn later that her married home life is not a happy one. Her husband is incapacitated by an illness, and she is working to support them. I could not help but think the humming sound was Josie’s spirit in the wood. The camera (ominously) pushed in on the wooden walls as the tone continued.

But, that’s not even the most important part of that scene. The hotel key that Jade had put in the mail arrived back at the hotel. Ben remembers that it was the key to the room that Agent Cooper stayed in while he was investigating Laura’s murder. Ben Horne, you take that key to Hawk right now!

We cut to The Roadhouse to watch a guy sweep the floor for almost 3 full minutes as “Green Onions” by Booker T and the M.G.s plays. Jean Michel Renault is in the background. Watching this guy do this boring chore seems so insignificant that it is probably very significant. The phone rings and Jean Michel answers it, proving two things. One, he is just as scummy as his deceased relatives, and two, the Renault family is still involved in pimping out girls.

Another seemingly inane scene ends the episode. But, like most things on Twin Peaks, it most likely means something. The scene is at the Double R Diner at what looks like the dinner rush. “Sleep Walk” by Santo and Johnny plays on the jukebox. A guy runs in and asks, “Anybody seen Billy?” and runs out again. This simple scene is the source of much confusion and speculation. The closed captioning was incorrect by quoting what the guy said as “Anybody seen Bing?” Executive Producer, Sabrina S. Sutherland has confirmed that it was a mistake. The guy that says it is named Bing, and he is played by Riley Lynch, David Lynch’s son and member of the band Trouble, which played at The Roadhouse on Part 5.

As if that wasn’t odd enough, there is what looks like a continuity error, but might actually be something intentional. The patrons in the diner change as they cut to different sides of the counter. The music track starts to have, you guessed it, ominous overtones after Bing runs in. Large and small events happen that move the story along, but bring up even more questions. Such is the world of Twin Peaks.

Stray Observations: 
  • Doc Hayward’s Skype handle is MiddleburyDoc. Warren Frost passed away at his home in Middlebury, VT. 
  • I am here for this Diane sass. 
  • All this spiritual finger business and looking at Tammy’s hand made me think of the odd line that Red said on Part 6, “Do you ever study your hand.”
  • “What does this all mean?” My motto for this whole series so far.
  • “It belonged to some girl from Ipanema.” This means something, too. I just know it. 
  • “Cheers to the FBI.”
  • It’s so great that the blackened man is back to haunt my dreams. Thanks, Lynch.

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