Twin Peaks Season 3, Episode 13: “Part 13”
Tagline: “What story is that, Charlie?”
Original Airdate: August 6, 2017
Writers: Mark Frost & David Lynch
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Mädchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, Jim Belushi, Kelsey Bohlen, Rachael Bower, Larry Clarke, Frank Collison, Giselle DaMier, Christopher Durbin, Eric Edelstein, Eamon Farren, Sherilyn Fenn, Patrick Fischler, Pierce Gagnon, Grant Goodeve, George Griffith, Robert Knepper, David Koechner, Andra Leal, Sheryl Lee, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Peggy Lipton, James Marshall, Everett McGill, Derek Mears, Clark Middleton, Don Murray, Wendy Robie, Tim Roth, John Savage, Amanda Seyfried, Amy Shiels, Tom Sizemore, JR Starr, Jessica Szohr, Russ Tamblyn, Naomi Watts, Grace Zabriskie
After three episodes in which all roads seemed to be converging, Twin Peaks scatters itself to the winds once again. With the FBI in Buckhorn and the Sheriff’s Department in Twin Peaks absent, their investigations take the week off. Meanwhile, when the Detectives Fusco run Dougie Jones’ prints in Las Vegas, they discover he’s both a missing FBI agent and an escapee from a federal prison just two days prior. Understandably, they assume the results are a big mix-up and toss them in the garbage, ending their investigation entirely.
But while the two Coopers’ storylines advance, just as much of the episode consists of brief scenes that exist more to add color than advance the plot. It’s a confounding move, especially with only five episodes to go, but deliberately so — a not so fast, pal from co-creators Mark Frost and David Lynch. We may yet solve the mystery of the two Coopers, but we’ll stop and smell the roses (and the corpses) along the way.
In sunny Las Vegas, the lucky breaks just keep on coming for “Dougie Jones” and everyone associated with him. After a full night of carousing, the Mitchum Brothers, their female companions, and Dougie himself come cha-cha’ing into Bushnell Mullins’s office, presenting him with gifts that include a new car to match the one they’ve given Dougie. Even if these guys are slimeballs — they’re very Seasons 1 and 2 Horne Brothers, aren’t they? — their happiness is contagious. As Bradley poetically puts it, “A wrong has been made right, and the sun is shining bright.”
Back home, Janey-E is visibly delighted to see the rewards being showered on the family by the Mitchums, which include not just a convertible Beemer but a preposterous new backyard gym set for Sonny Jim.
It’s more than enough for her to forgive Dougie for disappearing for yet another night.
But good luck for Dougie is bad luck for Duncan Todd, rival of the Mitchums and servant of Mr. C. Seemingly out of professional hitmen, Todd tasks Dougie’s crooked colleague Tony with killing him. Tony turns to a dirty cop, Detective Clark (John Savage), for help in finding an undetectable poison that can do the job. Clark and his partner wonder if their insurance-peddling criminal colleague is cracking.
He cracks alright, but not the way they’re thinking. When Dougie is distracted by a cherry pie in the coffee place in their office building’s lobby, Tony spikes his beloved coffee with the poison, a white powder. Returning to the table with his pie, Dougie is mesmerized by the similar white flakes of dandruff on Tony’s shoulders, which he gently touches with his usual infantile fascination.
It’s too much for Tony to take. Concluding that Dougie knows his coffee has been poisoned, a guilt-stricken and teary Tony rushes to the restroom, pours the poisoned coffee down the urinal, and tosses the tainted mug in the trash. (“That bad, huh?” says a guy at the urinal.) Tony breaks down and confesses everything to both Dougie and Bushnell.
“Anthony,” Bushnell says in the voice of a disapproving father, “Dougie already showed me. He explained all this already.” The whole scheme, Duncan Todd’s role, the “real” Dougie’s involvement, even the identities of the crooked cops: Somehow, Battling Bud got all of this out of Dougie’s scribbles.
I love this show.
Tony, however, is even more grateful to Dougie than Bushnell is. Dougie may have saved Mullins some money and exposed a criminal conspiracy at his firm, but he stopped Tony from becoming a murderer. With a guilty conscience that’s preventing him from sleeping and has him vomiting blood, his conscience simply couldn’t take it. “Dougie saved my life,” he sobs. “Thank you, Dougie.” Mr. Jackpots keeps on changing lives.
So does his doppelganger, to the opposite effect. Like clockwork, Mr. C tracks down his traitorous associate Ray at the western Montana warehouse base of the gang with which he has sought refuge. They’re a motley crew of street toughs straight out of a 1980s Marvel Comic or a Golan & Globus film, a bunch of bikeless road warriors with shaved heads and big beards and prominent weapons. They’ve got a completely out-of-place bespectacled accountant (Christopher Durbin), a wild-eyed spokesman named Muddy (Frank Collison), and a towering, hairless boss named Renzo (Derek Mears). And oh yeah, Richard Horne is there too. Between him and Ray, I guess this is some kind of refuge for dirtbags on the run.
The gang has a peculiar ritual in store for cocky newcomers like Mr. C. If he wants to get at Ray, he’ll have to arm wrestle Renzo for it. The enormous ganglord hasn’t been beaten by a challenger for his position of authority in 14 years. Losers must either work for him or die. Win and you become boss yourself, not that there’s any chance of that happening..
“What is this, kindergarten?” Mr. Cooper asks incredulously. “Nursery school?” Renzo cracks him on the back of the head for that one.
What follows is exactly what you might predict would happen to someone who hits an extradimensional doppelganger possessed by a demon in the back of the head. Mr. C effortlessly resists Renzo’s most strenuous efforts to pin his arm; instead, his dirt-encrusted hand moves Renzo’s arm back and forth with ease, just to illustrate how this contest isn’t even a contest for him. Finally he slams the man’s arm down, then caves his face in with a single punch, killing him instantly.
Mr. C turns his attention to Ray. “He’s all yours, Boss,” says Muddy. He knows who’s in charge around here now.
Shooting Ray in the leg, the doppelganger extracts a full confession. Ray was hired to kill Mr. C by none other than Philip Jeffries, or at least someone claiming to be the missing FBI agent. (Ray never met him in person.) After killing Cooper, Ray was to place something on his finger: the jade ring from Fire Walk With Me, previously seen on the hand of the original Dougie Jones.
Why does Jeffries want Mr. C dead? “You’ve got something inside that they want,” Ray says After getting both the Briggs/Hastings coordinates and Jeffries’s location (a possibly imaginary place called the Dutchman) from the wounded criminal, Mr. C shoots him in the head. The ring vanishes from his hand and materializes on the floor of the Black Lodge, where we see the hand of Mike place it back on its pedestal. Ray winds up in the Lodge as well, in corpse form, though his body stays in the warehouse. Tough break, Ray.
Meanwhile, the entire gang is watching all this on a huge television screen on the ground floor of their HQ. No viewer is more attentive than Richard Horne, who is visibly affected by Mr. C’s presence.
Dad? Is that you?
Elsewhere, Hutch and Chantal discuss Mormonism.
In Twin Peaks proper, the action is mainly centered on the Double R and its fetching staff. Becky calls her mother Shelly, worried that her husband Steven hasn’t been home in two days, fearing the worst. Shelly rallies her spirit by offering her some pie if she comes by the diner, at which point they can talk things over.
Some time later, Bobby Briggs shows up, trying to catch Shelly, but she’s already departed for the day. He instead sits down with Norma Jennings and, drumroll please, Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill, back at last and looking like the Old Man of the Mountain). Bobby worries he’s interrupting something, but Ed assures him there’s nothing going on between him and Norma anymore.
Sure enough, along comes Walter (Grant Goodeve), a white-toothed, tan-skinned businessman who’s all smiles when he pops into the diner to discuss its financials with Norma. They greet with an embrace that shows they’re more than just friends. Ed and Bobby dutifully skedaddle; Ed spends the rest of his meal staring mournfully at his longtime flame, which clearly isn’t as extinguished as he makes it out to be.
Walter, we learn, has helped Norma turn the Double R into a small chain, now with four additional locations. But they turn a profit by using cheaper ingredients, and they’re all called Norma’s Double R, changes he’d like to see her implement here at the original location.
“Norma,” he says, “you’re a real artist. But love doesn’t always turn a profit. We believe in you one hundred percent, but from a business perspective, the board would like you to consider some alternatives, without sacrificing any of the high standards that you’re so well known for.”
How many times do you think Lynch and Frost heard that exact same speech from a network executive?
Like the Detectives Fusco making plans with their mom while some kind of obscene brawl breaks out in the next room, Twin Peaks is a place of high highs and low lows, existing simultaneously.
At the Roadhouse, James Hurley puts on a showstopping performance of his immortal love song “Just You” with a pair of dreamy-eyed backup singers (Kelsey Bohlen and Rachael Bower) and no visible backup band. (“No hay banda! There is no band! Il n’ya pas d’orchestre. This is all a tape recording. No hay banda, and yet…we hear a band.”) The performance moves his crush Renee to tears.
Elsewhere in town, Dr. Jacoby stops short when he sees one of his golden shovels in the display window of Run Silent, Run Drapes. He’s shocked to discover that the owner is his old patient Nadine Hurley, whom he hasn’t seen in seven years. But he’s got that last sighting committed to memory, and as Nadine describes the impact his podcast has had on her life, it’s clear he’s as smitten with her as she is with him. Could Nadine once again have found love outside of Ed, only this time not with a high school student?
But there are people we care about in Twin Peaks who are suffering. The eeriest of these is Sarah Palmer, who chainsmokes and binge drinks while watching a several-second snippet of a decades-old boxing match that somehow keeps repeating over and over and over. Do you ever get the feeling something isn’t right with Sarah Palmer?
Audrey Horne’s plight is only marginally less disturbing. Still arguing with Charlie over the unheard half of his phone call with Tina and the long-delayed trip to the Roadhouse to find her lover Billy, she starts sounding less angry and more frightened.
“I feel like I’m somewhere else,” she tells her husband. “Have you ever had that feeling, Charlie? Like I’m somewhere else, and like I’m somebody else. Have you ever felt that?”
“No,” says Charlie, unmoved. “I’ve always felt like myself. And it may not always be the best feeling.”
“Well, I’m not sure who I am,” she says. “But I’m not me.”
Charlie dismisses this as “Existentialism 101.” But it soon becomes clear that Audrey somehow doesn’t know where the Roadhouse is, neither how far away nor how to get there from here. She grew up in the area, at the very least, and has apparently lived there again for some time. So why would she ask a question like “Is it far?” And why does it sound so troubling to hear her ask?
Charlie will take her there, he says, however far. “Now are you gonna stop playing games,” he says, serious as a heart attack all of a sudden, “or do I have to end your story too?” Another gangster, it seems.
“What story is that, Charlie? Is that the story of the little girl who lived down the lane?” She’s talking like a nursery school teacher.
“Charlie, help me,” she finishes. “It’s like Ghostwood here.” She breaks down in terrified tears.
Why Ghostwood? Why that haunted place? Where is Audrey Horne?
There’s no need to wonder where Big Ed Hurley is. He’s at Big Ed’s Gas Farm tonight, like he is every night, like he has been for decades. He sits by himself, eats takeout soup from the Double R, watches the cars pass in the dark from his island of light, and suffers in silence.
Does Big Ed regret that the stars have never aligned for him and Norma? Does he regret that he didn’t do more to align them himself when he had the chance? Whatever the case, he’s trapped in a limbo every bit as paralyzing and soul-destroying as the one Dale Cooper spent the past 25 years in. No ring, no curtains, no zigzag floor — just a life spent watching the traffic go by on the road not taken.
