“Part 12” of Twin Peaks was kind of all over the place and didn’t move the story forward much at all. Agent Dale Cooper was only in the episode for a few seconds, when he took a baseball to the chest from Sonny Jim, which was disappointing with only six episodes left now. “Part 12” wasn’t a bad episode, but things are more confusing now more than ever. The focus of this review will be on the final third of the episode, when we saw one of the main characters from the original 1990-1991 series return.
Finally, she’s back. Audrey Horne, that is; who seems rather normal, physically, after the explosion in the bank at the conclusion of Season 2 in 1991, which she apparently was in a coma from. While she is OK physically, mentally is a different story. Audrey is married to Charlie, whom she is appalled by. They have some sort of contractual agreement of marriage, and it doesn’t seem like they have any physical relationship. While Audrey always had a bit of a brat personality, she was sweet too—but this is totally different. Audrey was very, very nasty to her husband.
Audrey desperately wants to find “Billy”, who was last seen by “Tina” according to “Chuck”. We have no idea who any of these people—or her husband “Charlie”—are, so this undeniably brought up more questions than answers.
My take is some of these scenes are not even real. A big part of David Lynch’s work is dreams—something that was more prevalent 25 years ago with Agent Cooper. How much of this do I think is a dream? I have no idea, but Audrey’s conversation was very much surreal. Thinking of it as a dream makes a lot more sense than thinking and trying to make sense of it as a real event. Despite the confusion about her situation, it’s great to see Audrey back.
As for Audrey’s presumed son, Richard, Benjamin had to deal with the aftermath of his manslaughter of the little boy and the beating (attempted murder, probably) of Miriam. The scene between Benjamin and the new Sheriff Truman shows how much Benjamin really changed late in the original Twin Peaks. Now, if only we knew what went on with Donna Hayward (who’s been nowhere to be found and not expected to be seen).
Sticking with original characters, Sarah Palmer had a frightening episode in the supermarket, triggered by some beef jerky. It seems Bob or someone else from the Black Lodge might be having some type of impact on Sarah. It was just as peculiar when Hawk went to visit the Palmer residence to make sure everything was OK. That noise—I have no idea what it was, but I hope we find out.
Going all the way to the beginning of the episode, Tammy was let in on the “Blue Rose” team, which she was very happy about. If nothing else, this reminded us of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Phillip Jeffries. But it also indicated that Albert is the only one left from the original team of four (Albert, Coop, Jeffries, and Chester Desmond) for Blue Rose. The Diane situation is something to monitor, and we don’t really know what’s going on with her and Evil Cooper.
So there was some fine acting, like with the scene between Gordon and Albert, but this episode was pretty much just a build up one. We also don’t know who those two young ladies were talking about at the end of the episode, and we might not ever know. There’s a lot we might not know and a lot that might not be explained. This is David Lynch we’re talking about.