Twin Peaks, Episode 3.6: The Return, Part 6

Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 6
Don't Die

In its sixth part, “Twin Peaks: The Return” continues to show us some very unusual things. Dale Cooper, still living as Dougie, receives more visions from MIKE in the Black Lodge, some intuitive sense of knowledge possibly slowly returning to him. Janey-E, Dougie's wife, deals with his money issues in a very direct manner. Albert Rosenfield tracks down the often-referenced but rarely seen Diane, in hopes that she will help the FBI sort out what's happened to Cooper. Deputy Hawk makes a possible breakthrough with the Twin Peaks Sheriff Department's own investigation. Just to give you a few examples.

“Part 6” features what is, perhaps, the most viscerally upsetting moment in all of “Twin Peaks.” (If not in all of Lynch's entire filmography.) Richard Horne, still unidentified, attempts a drug deal and is humiliated by a parlor-trick playing dealer. Enraged and high out of his mind, he tears through the town in his truck. Meanwhile, a mother and her young son playfully prepare to cross the street. Do you see where this is going? The little boy is flattened by the speeding truck, Richard never looking back. Lynch focuses on the dead child and his mother's agonized wails, as she cradles his body. It's one of those cinematic moments that just make you shout in disgust and disbelief. Partially becomes there's nothing fantastical about this event. It is an every day, all-too-plausible form of horror. Fittingly, Lynch cuts away most of his surreal touches in this moment, presenting the horrible sights directly and honestly.

Lynch does not indulge in this grotesque display simply for shock value's sake. The young boy's brutal death is yet another manifestation of “Twin Peaks'” obsession with loss and grief. The woman screaming for her dead boy, cut down in a totally senseless fashion, certainly recalls Leland Palmer's cries over the dead Laura. “Peaks” is, after all, a story rooted in the unbearable pain of a parent loosing their child. It's a horrible, unsettling scene and certainly fits into the tapestry of the feelings and events “Twin Peaks” has always been about.

What makes the death of the little boy all the more surprising is the radically different approach to violence Lynch takes elsewhere in this episode. Another bizarre character introduced to “Peaks'” growing cast is Ike the Spike, someone who is a little person, a bodybuilder, and a professional hitman. He brutally stabs another accomplice of Dougie's to death with an ice pick. The gore in this moment is exaggerated and fake-looking, like something out of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie. Combined with the bizarre qualities of the killer, this is a scene obviously meant to make us shout in comical disbelief. In case there was any doubt, the sequence ends with the Ike upset that he bent the tip of his beloved ice pick.

Why does Lynch throw these equally graphic but wildly different approaches to violence into the same hour of television? That's a question I can't answer. However, Ike the Spike's farcical murder is far from the only moment of comic relief in this episode.  One of the funniest moments we've seen in “The Return,” so far, concerns Janey-E chewing out the men blackmailing Dougie. While handing them the money, she gives them a piece of her mind. Naomi Watts' maintains a perfectly self-righteous tone, treating the criminals as if they were misbehaving children. It's a shame “The Return” came a few years before “Karen” entered our popular vernacular, as this moment is a perfect example of such behavior. 

When not blindsiding us with graphic violence or making us laugh with oddball comedy, Part 6 of “The Return” remembers that it's a mystery. A quarter rolling under a bathroom stall finally provides Hawk with the lead he's been searching for the last six episodes. Once again, this shows Lynch's atypical approach to the detective genre. Happenstance and intuition continues to be the most useful tools in this universe, when it comes to resolving a mystery of some sort. This moment even sees Hawk dismissing another officer calling out for more traditional police work.

While I'm still frustrated that the pace is only crawling along, “Part 6” continues to prove that there's simply no other show on TV like “Twin Peaks.” I can't imagine any other series springing so wildly from the deepest, most real sense of loss and death and then over to absurd bits of goofy dialogue. [7/10]