[5.0/10] Something of a letdown after the fireworks of the last episode, with most of the material feeling like filler. But here’s a shoutout I didn’t expect to make -- I thought Jerry Horne was pretty hilarious here! Between him whispering to Ben that “it’s a book” or warning that they might “find his fingerprints on the blood sample” or having enough sense to tell Ben that “as your lawyer...you need to find a better lawyer,” he was an unexpectedly good bit of comic relief here.
It was also amusing to see Leland hamming it up a bit here. It’s a little over the top, but I’m slowly but surely making my peace with the fact that that’s just what Twin Peaks is, Lynch or no Lynch. Him swerving around and singing showtunes is oddly bonkers.
But most of the episode is more dull stuff. I have very little interesting in the domestic life of Norma and her newly arrived mother. There’s some minor intrigue in Hank knowing his mother-in-law’s new beau from prison, but for the most part it’s a subplot the episode could do without. By the same token, the arrival of Lucy’s sister Gwen (who’s the voice of Pepper Ann!) is not nearly as comedically successful as Jerry’s turn in the episode, and it just furthers this interminable, long past its expiration date storyline about Lucy’s pregnancy.
And there’s another excruciating chapter in Bobby and Shelly’s plot to up their financial situation, this time with a plan to blackmail Ben based on a tape of his conversation with Leo (the one from the boot). Yawn. I just can’t be bothered to care about Bobby and Shelly, and the storyline moves at such a glacial pace.
The episode’s also not without its random weirdness, checking in with another mostly pointless sequence in the form of Ben and Jerry remembering when some woman used to dance with a flashlight in their rooms when they were kids in a scene that goes on about three minutes longer than it needs to. Lynch’s spirit lives on, kids. It lives on.
The business with Gerard is interesting, if only because the actor who plays him brings a dramatic quality to his escape and efforts to sniff out Bob. I like that Cooper, who’s committed to the truth of the paranormal, immediately has his doubts that Ben is their man once Gerard (the one-armed man) dismisses him as being Bob’s vessel, but that Sheriff Truman, a regular lawman, says he needs to proceed based on the hard evidence, and Cooper respects that.
Again, MacLachlan is a pro, and he sells the way that all the forensic signs and circumstantial evidence seems to point to Ben, but something is just off about it in a way he can’t put his finger on. I’ll admit I was disappointed in his little reunion with Audrey (mostly for Audrey’s “I just wanted him to love me” line about her dad that turned good subtext into overly blunt text), but Cooper seems nicely conflicted about following the hard evidence but having a feeling that they’re on the wrong track.
Of course, we get the recovery of Maddy’s body, and it’s the pilot all over again. It doesn’t work as well as a gut punch as the episode seems to intend given that we already know what happened, but it’s a nice jolt to Cooper’s fear that drafts off the imagery that kicked off the whole series.
Overall, there’s little outright bad in this one, and even a bit of good. It mostly just feels like marking time on the way to bigger and more dramatic things.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-06-28T02:30:07Z
[5.0/10] Something of a letdown after the fireworks of the last episode, with most of the material feeling like filler. But here’s a shoutout I didn’t expect to make -- I thought Jerry Horne was pretty hilarious here! Between him whispering to Ben that “it’s a book” or warning that they might “find his fingerprints on the blood sample” or having enough sense to tell Ben that “as your lawyer...you need to find a better lawyer,” he was an unexpectedly good bit of comic relief here.
It was also amusing to see Leland hamming it up a bit here. It’s a little over the top, but I’m slowly but surely making my peace with the fact that that’s just what Twin Peaks is, Lynch or no Lynch. Him swerving around and singing showtunes is oddly bonkers.
But most of the episode is more dull stuff. I have very little interesting in the domestic life of Norma and her newly arrived mother. There’s some minor intrigue in Hank knowing his mother-in-law’s new beau from prison, but for the most part it’s a subplot the episode could do without. By the same token, the arrival of Lucy’s sister Gwen (who’s the voice of Pepper Ann!) is not nearly as comedically successful as Jerry’s turn in the episode, and it just furthers this interminable, long past its expiration date storyline about Lucy’s pregnancy.
And there’s another excruciating chapter in Bobby and Shelly’s plot to up their financial situation, this time with a plan to blackmail Ben based on a tape of his conversation with Leo (the one from the boot). Yawn. I just can’t be bothered to care about Bobby and Shelly, and the storyline moves at such a glacial pace.
The episode’s also not without its random weirdness, checking in with another mostly pointless sequence in the form of Ben and Jerry remembering when some woman used to dance with a flashlight in their rooms when they were kids in a scene that goes on about three minutes longer than it needs to. Lynch’s spirit lives on, kids. It lives on.
The business with Gerard is interesting, if only because the actor who plays him brings a dramatic quality to his escape and efforts to sniff out Bob. I like that Cooper, who’s committed to the truth of the paranormal, immediately has his doubts that Ben is their man once Gerard (the one-armed man) dismisses him as being Bob’s vessel, but that Sheriff Truman, a regular lawman, says he needs to proceed based on the hard evidence, and Cooper respects that.
Again, MacLachlan is a pro, and he sells the way that all the forensic signs and circumstantial evidence seems to point to Ben, but something is just off about it in a way he can’t put his finger on. I’ll admit I was disappointed in his little reunion with Audrey (mostly for Audrey’s “I just wanted him to love me” line about her dad that turned good subtext into overly blunt text), but Cooper seems nicely conflicted about following the hard evidence but having a feeling that they’re on the wrong track.
Of course, we get the recovery of Maddy’s body, and it’s the pilot all over again. It doesn’t work as well as a gut punch as the episode seems to intend given that we already know what happened, but it’s a nice jolt to Cooper’s fear that drafts off the imagery that kicked off the whole series.
Overall, there’s little outright bad in this one, and even a bit of good. It mostly just feels like marking time on the way to bigger and more dramatic things.