By Caitlin Malcuit
“Did you ever see the movie ‘The King and I?’” Red (Balthazar Getty) asks Richard Horne, the cretin found near the close of last episode. Their hawkish features stare each other down—one steely, the other snarling and antsy. Red, moving the cocaine through Twin Peaks, is getting to get know the town. And he asks Richard if he has his part of the dealing under control, because, “I don’t know you yet.”
We last saw both in the Bang! Bang! Bar, basking in their smoky and sleazy element. It’s clear that tough-talk-no-nerve Richard is the only one out of his in this bleak warehouse, as Red flips a dime, causing it to float and spin mid-air, materialize in Richard’s mouth, then drop back in Red’s hand. “Heads, I win,” he tells Richard. “Tails, you lose.” Whether Red is another agent of the Black Lodge or if this is a coked-out fever dream, well, we can’t make heads or tails of it just yet.
Cooper is still working out his supposed obverse, stranded outside of Lucky 7 Insurance and tugging at the oversized cuff of the lime sports coat. A kindly officer helps escort him back to Lancelot Court—to the house with the red door—and delivers “Dougie” to ever-frazzled Janey-E. She fixes him a sandwich, then leaves Cooper to tuck Sonny Jim into bed.
The Jones’ life is a story, despite the crushing debt Dougie saddled upon them, that finds light and levity under the weight of our anxiety. Cooper’s childlike fascination with Sonny Jim’s cowboy clapper lamp brings literal light to the situation. Janey-E looks to bust through the gloom, and she’s not going to take any guff. She answers a phone call from the collectors, naming the time, place, and what bag she’ll be carrying for the money drop. And once again, Cooper follows the sparkles: he scrawls nonsense images that will incriminate Tony all over the case files after a vision of MIKE tells him it’s time to wake up, and, more importantly, “Don’t die.”
The disquiet snaps back like a rubber band on skin as Richard drives back to Twin Peaks in frustration. Red kept calling him “Kid” and he resents the humiliation he endured at the warehouse. At the same time, Carl Rodd (Harry Dean Stanton), owner of the Fat Trout Trailer Park, hitches a ride into town. A tenant, Mickey, rides with him, as Carl grimly shares that he’s got nothing to look forward to at his age except the hammer slamming down. He kindly asks after Mickey’s wife Linda—maybe the Linda we’re on the lookout for—who just received an electric wheelchair that’d help with her war injuries a great deal.
At the RR Diner, a grateful patron tips well beyond her means for the double helping of pie she enjoyed, with Shelly declaring to her coworker that they’ll treat her upon the next visit. Richard speeds on the roads in a mix of rage and drug-induced exhilaration. Carl sits on a park bench and gazes up at the sky before being watching woman playing tag with her son. Richard sees building traffic at the stop sign and weaves around, and it dawns on you in horror that everyone is converging at this intersection. He hits the young boy as he crosses the street, witnesses wrought with agony as Carl cradles the mother and son, the diner patron staring down Richard as he races away from the scene.
The thunderclap of violence doesn’t cease—it seems that Lorraine’s number is up, definitely landing tails after her failed hit on Dougie. An assassin (Christophe Zajac-Denek) zeroes in on both of their photos in his hotel room. He targets her office, making short but gruesome work of Lorraine and a pair of her office mates. Surely Dougie is next, but maybe, just maybe the hit will be called off: Janey-E meets with a pair of goons, negotiating her husband’s debt from $52,000 to $25,000. If only I could do that with my student loans!
Deputy Chief Hawk lands heads when he drops a coin in the men’s room of the sheriff’s department. His eyes wander to the stall door, eyeing a Nez Perce logo. His eyes scan upward, noticing a screw missing from the corner, so he decides to go to town with a crow bar. He pries open the panel, discovering several handwritten pages inside. Back in Philadelphia, Albert is back to his foul-mouthed self, free from the confines of network standards and practices. He trudges through the rain, screaming, “Fuck you, Gene Kelly!” as the wind bends his umbrella. He sees a platinum blonde head of hair in a bar. “Diane,” he calls out, as Dale Cooper’s previously unseen and unheard recipient of the dictograph recordings turns to reveal the face of Lynch’s longtime screen siren Laura Dern.
“Hello, Albert.”
More “Twin Peaks” Coverage:
- ‘Twin Peaks’ Part 5 Recap: Shovel Yourself Out of the Shit
- 'Twin Peaks' Parts 3 and 4 Recap: Doughnut Disturb
- The Time Presents Itself: 'Twin Peaks' Premiere Is A Beautiful/Terrible Nightmare
- There's Always Music in the Air: Revisiting the 'Twin Peaks' Soundtrack