3x13 Part 13

[7.0/10] I had a heuristic for original recipe Twin Peaks. The more an episode focused on Agent Cooper, the better it was going to be, and the more it focused on the townies, the harder it would be to sit through. That hasn’t proven entirely true for “The Return.” The Cooper material is still great, but even episodes that haven’t focused on him have managed to find interesting places to go. But it’s definitely true for “Part Thirteen” which is fairly hard to rate since the half featuring the continued cruel machinations of Mr. C and the continuing misadventures of Dougie Jones is great, and the half featuring the motley pack of misfits the revival has mostly kept on the sidelines up to this point was crap stacked on crap.

Let’s start with the good. I expected my roll my eyes when The Bad Dale wanders into what can only be described as a den of thieves plucked right from an eighties action thriller starring Stallone or Van Damme. But damnit if Kyle MacLachlan doesn’t make it work. He deserves awards recognition for his amazing work this season, and the way he just exudes power and control and singular focus as Mr. C absolutely anchors the scene.

In contrast to long scenes that can feel interminable, Lynch lets The Bad Dale’s encounter with the gang that’s safeguarding his former associate Ray build and breathe. The show of power during the arm-wrestling match, the interrogation of Ray, and the cold steady walk out of the place all make The Bad Dale a formidable opponent for anyone, let alone a brain-addled doppelganger.

It also makes him a formidable opponent for Phillip Jeffries, whom we learn for certain is the man behind the attempt on Mr. C’s life. The appearance of the owl signet ring ties ocne more into the mythology of the show, and Richard Horne’s fixed gaze on The Bad Dale’s stroll out of the hideout hints at where his unrepentant evil might have come from. It’s a hell of a scene of tension and fearsomeness from The Revival’s main antagonist.

(As an aside, I just love that the gang of ruffians in the lair of the big bald brute includes a meek man with a wardrobe Mr. Rogers would approve of. It’s those sorts of odd details that get the biggest laughs out of me.)

That only makes Dougie’s role as this season’s protagonist seem all the more like an uphill climb. We learn a bit more about the shit his co-worker Anthony is into, who, with the Mitchum brothers plan having failed, now finds the task of killing Dougie has fallen to him, and despite threats from Todd and help from a pair of crooked cops, he doesn’t have the stomach for it.

It’s another story of how happenstance and chance help let’s Dougie live another day. I’ve gone on and on about the inherent commentary of how The Catatonic Cooper and the comedy of errors that allows him to survive this tangle of criminals and conspiracies is brilliant. But this is just another outing where, like those before him, Anthony’s own hangups and projections on to Dougie save him, rather than anything Dougie does himself.

But my god, the humor of it all! Just the image of the Mitchum brothers, their showgirls, and Dougie conga-lining into Battlin’ Bud’s office tickled me pink. Details like Dougie walking straight into a glass door, or pawing feebly at cherry pie behind glass that he’ll later obviously eat as Anthony pours out his soul, or even his inadvertent massage of Anthony while poking at the powder on his jacket all cracked me up. Hell, the funniest moment of the entire show may be when a weeping, guilt-ridden Anthony pours the poisoned coffee in the toilet, throws away the mug, causing a nearby urinator to remark, “that bad huh?” The comic stylings of the show’s original run fell on deaf ears in my household, but the adventures of Dougie and friends have been a laugh riot from start to finish.

Unfortunately, that ends when we get back to Twin Peaks and delve back into the uninteresting lives of most of the people who live there.

So help me god, why are we doing another Norma-Ed love triangle twenty-five years later? Presumably, whatever they had, they’d have worked out or not by now, and the fact that their relationship has been in stasis for more than two decades just reeks of a writer going “I want to get the catharsis of them coming together so I’ll just pretend they’ve been in a holding pattern this whole time.” I was never that invested in Norma and Big Ed, but this just feels like a cheesy way to get to deliver their coming together in the revival.

Nevermind the fact that Walter, Norma’s current beau, is the worst kind of stock type -- the heartless businessman. I appreciate the extra care and “love” that goes into local and small batch products as much as the next guy, but my god, I could go another twenty-five years without another character who supercilious denies the value of whatever the “old ways” are because “it’s bad for business.” It’s such a cliché, and the fact that he’s not only the guy trying to get Norma to change the way she operates the diner, but also the romantic impediment to her and Ed getting together just makes him a cornball bad guy. Sure, Ed’s sad lonely dinner over the credits has a certain resonance, but the obstacles in his way are so contrived that the whole thing falls flat.

(My prediction -- and I’ve been constantly wrong with this show so take it with a grain of salt -- is that the point of all the “Nadine admires Dr. Amp” business is that she leaves Ed for Jacoby, clearing the way for Ed and Norma to be together. That seems to be what “Part Thirteen” is setting up with Nadine and Jacoby’s face-to-face here.)

We also get even more painful, soap opera-esque drama between Audrey and her nebbish of a husband. There’s something interesting in the idea the scene teases out -- the strange feeling that you’re not yourself or not where you ought to be -- but her overwrought protestations matched with her soft-spoken husband’s meh reassurances just go on and on and leave the whole thing as a mystifying, uninteresting interlude.

So we get Shelly having a conversation with her daughter, Sarah Palmer watching boxing on a loop, and an endless scene of James Hurley playing the fabled “Just You” while some random woman gushes over him in the audience. Is there a point to any of it, beyond checking in a few characters and bringing back an aural touchstone? God only knows, but it’s just part and parcel with the townie-focused bits that bring the back half of the episode to a screeching halt.

This show has proven that it doesn’t need Agent Cooper -- in either of his forms -- to be the center of attention to make a good episode. The antics of the G-Men, the origin story episode, and even surprisingly good outings for the likes of Bobby, Sarah, and Ben have proven the contrary. But this is one of those episodes where, if Kyle MacLachlan isn’t on the screen, you’re probably better off looking away.