“What year is this?” Dale Cooper asks in the final scene of Twin Peaks: The Return, the last of many
unanswered questions left as the 18-part feature film concluded a week ago.
It’s far from the first time we’ve seen someone who looks like
Dale Cooper lost for answers over recent months. But it might be the first time
we have definitive proof that he’s in over his head.
Mr C, Dale Cooper’s doppelganger, who was first seen in the
original series’ finale back in 1991, returned to the town of Twin Peaks with a
goal in mind. Mr C was flexible, though. He had to be; he’d set so many things
in motion over twenty-five years, if he’d remained fixated, he would never have
come as far as he did.
Dougie, Dale Cooper’s tulpa – created by and from Mr C,
wandered aimlessly through life, but slowly made every life he touched better.
Plans change and Dougie changed with them. Slowly but surely, Dougie pieced
together Cooper’s past life and became richer for it.
Agent Cooper, the third part of this Trinity, remained far
away for most of the story, but when he finally returned, he was already in the
middle of long-made plans. And that was the problem. His plans didn’t change to
suit the environment. His plans didn’t change to factor in his missing years.
*
The original series of Twin
Peaks was a detective mystery set in a soap opera town with elements of the
supernatural weaved in. Dale Cooper was an FBI agent who used his intuition,
rock throwing and dreams to solve the case of who killed Laura Palmer. He was,
as Agent Albert Rosenfield explained, “the only one of us with the coordinates
for this destination”. He was perfectly equipped to answer the mysteries of a
small town with big secrets.
A quarter of a century later, the world has moved on but
Agent Cooper has not moved along with it. We entered The Return hoping to go back to the town we loved, but as we
watched each part, viewers were continually denied the reunions we hoped a
revival might bring. In an early episode, Deputy Hawk tells Lucy to bring
donuts and she does, but they remain in the box; we do not get to see the
spread of baked goods the original Twin
Peaks had made iconic.
As the new series progressed, though, elements of the show
that we remembered from 1990-91 were slowly reintroduced. Characters we hadn’t
seen for twenty-five years were paraded throughout the eighteen parts; Dr
Jacoby in one of the earliest scenes of Part 1 through Ed Hurley who remained
off-screen until Part 13.
But after waiting so long for the series to return, the
character withheld from us the longest was Special Agent Dale Cooper. The
paragon of virtue. The knight errant. A character who has never really been seen
on television before or since; an odd mix of worldly and naïve.
And when he did finally return in Part 16, viewers and fans
rejoiced. And then the rug was pulled out from under us again.
*
It’s not that Dale Cooper was flawless. The end to his
original story was a classic tragedy; his imperfect courage saw him fail. Yes,
he solved the mystery he came to town to solve, but he got stuck there and got
drawn into trying to answer a larger question – what was hiding in the woods?
As you might expect from a soap opera, the villain who
haunted Cooper late in the series was his ex-partner, a man who went mad after
Cooper slept with his wife. Windom Earle was his nemesis in the classic
melodramatic style; his obsession was personal but his plan was, well, world
domination. Earle wanted to harvest the evil in the woods and Cooper had to confront
his shadow self to save the woman he loved.
He saved the woman but was trapped in limbo. For twenty-five
years.
“What year is this?” Cooper asks, perhaps coming to grips
with all he’d lost. Or perhaps realising the futility of his best-laid plans.
*
Twin Peaks: The Return
was released with very little indication of what to expect. The trailers gave
very little away, even if many of the images turned out to be from the final
two hours. Without context, these glimpses meant nothing. In context, they
weren’t much clearer.
In early weeks, with the show’s resistance to nostalgia and
its insistence that fans and viewers not be pandered to, it became more and
more clear that while Twin Peaks, the town, was the subject of the original
series, it was the object of The Return.
Viewers might have been allowed more and more time there as the week’s
progressed, but this was setting up the end goal; for Mr C, for Dougie and for
Agent Cooper.
The town when we first visited many years ago was “a long
way from the world” and it felt out of time. The music was dreamy, the clothes
and hairstyles were classic and the male and female roles were stereotypes; men
were the law enforcers and women were the homemakers. The mystery uncovered the
dark underbelly of small town America and expectations were continually
upended.
We had no such certainty when the series was returned to the
world. There was no central character; Cooper had been split into a triumvirate
and it was harder than ever to grasp where the story was headed. The further in
we travelled, the harder it was to get a grip on. As Agent Phillip Jeffries
explains in Part 17, it’s slippery in here; he’s talking about time but he
might as well have been talking about narrative.
*
The final moments of the original second season are hard to
come to grips with; evil has won and the good Cooper is stuck in another world.
Surely, the new episodes would give us closure and resolution. Surely.
But we have lost twenty-five years and so has our paragon of
virtue. He is far away and a long way from the world. Cooper is no longer of
the earth, he is an agent of the Red Room.
This is difficult to accept. The hero we waited so long for
doesn’t solve the problem of his doppelganger; the destruction of Mr C and BOB
are left to supporting players, both long-standing and brand new.
Cooper is there to observe; much like The Fireman helps Andy
to make sure Lucy is in the right place at the right time, Dale is only at the
Sheriff’s station to make sure Freddie fulfils his destiny. It feels
narratively perfunctory, but tells us that Agent Cooper has bigger things to
contend with. Much like Windom Earle, Cooper is now playing off the board.
And the moves he makes are difficult to parse; even though
we have some idea of his two end goals – find Laura and stop Judy. Two birds
with one stone.
*
Laura Palmer is The One, the Log Lady tells Hawk. But the
one what? In Twin Peaks, she was the
object. In the film Fire Walk With Me,
she is the subject. In The Return,
she is an open question and as much a destiny as the town of Twin Peaks itself.
“Now the circle is almost complete. Watch and listen to the
dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. That which
is, and is not. Hawk, Laura is the one.” Margaret Lanterman was never easy to
decipher and no easier in her dying days. But she is warning about the dream of
time and space; it’s slippery in here.
Early in this new series, Cooper is implored by Laura’s father,
Leland, to find her. We see this moment again in Part 17; is it future or is it
past? Some of The Return has played
out of chronological order, so these moments that are outside of time cannot be
definitively placed. But much like the icons of the series we have revisited,
shot from unexpected angles, these replayed scenes are slightly different. Are
these the exact same moments? Or is Cooper experiencing them again?
Is it happening again. And again?
And again.
The mystery of who killed Laura Palmer was long solved. The
mystery of where she is plagues Cooper now – and the way he chooses to fix this
problem brings about the final leg of this strange and troubling return.
*
Bringing back long dead film and television franchises often
feels cynical, like a network or a studio wants to make money from brand
recognition. It’s a fraught business because fans want the world they once knew
but writers and directors want to stretch themselves creatively; the concerns
of David Lynch and Mark Frost in the late 1980s are not the same concerns as
they have now in 2017.
As Mark Frost explained during production, this new series
or eighteen-part film, is not an exercise in nostalgia. In fact, it’s something
of a criticism of nostalgia; ironic given how much the original series feels
nostalgic for an era long gone.
Pie and coffee is withheld from us and from Cooper. We don’t
hear any music from Angelo Badalamenti for hours and few new cues from him until
late in the season. And our hero, our Special Agent, makes a mistake so
fundamental that it changes the world and upsets the premise of the original show.
That long-ago question of who killed Laura Palmer is rendered moot; I tell you,
she has not died.
Agent Cooper does not remember the dire warnings of The
Fireman. Beyond getting 430 miles (from where?), he does not remember Richard
and Linda. He does not listen to the sounds. And much like Lot and Orpheus, as
he tries to rescue Laura, he looks back.
And she is gone. Gone from his grip and gone from history.
No longer dead nor wrapped in plastic.
*
In this current era of prestige TV, lead characters need not
be heroes; they may well be villains. Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper
are varying shades of dark, but they gain the benefit of our doubt because they
are the series’ lead character. We are appalled by their behaviour, but much of
the time we are hoping they get away with things. Narrative gets us on their
side.
We are on Dale Cooper’s side throughout The Return, willing him to come back to the world, to us and to
Twin Peaks. Perhaps, like Dougie saves the people he meets in Las Vegas, Dale
Cooper might save Twin Peaks from itself. No longer a quiet logging town, it’s
infected by drugs and threatened by political fucks and franchise stores.
We are with Dale Cooper right up until…
The climactic scene in the Sheriff’s Station should have
been unambiguously triumphant, but the story is almost anti-climactic with the
super-powered green glove and evil reduced to a fiery ball. Unnervingly, Cooper’s
face is superimposed over this moment; he’s observing these people, these
objects, these pawns. His plan is running like clockwork, though it cannot
reach 2:53 – the moment (and number) of completion.
“The past dictates the future,” he explains. Things will
change. Beyond life and death.
Dale Cooper is no longer the hero of the story. He changes
the past and alters the world. And not for the better. I’ve spent much of the
past week trying to understand the plot and the details; trying to break the
code and solve the show. But this has always been futile. I knew this all
along.
The hardest thing to reconcile was the fact that Cooper has
failed. Again.
And worse than before.
*
Agent Cooper of the Red Room is stuck in a loop. He is
trying to save Laura Palmer. He is trying to give her more life. But he doesn’t
understand that he cannot do that. He doesn’t understand that he cannot erase
trauma. He asks Diane if she remembers everything and she tells him that she
does. But this doesn’t stop him from trying to fix her by recreating the
assault visited upon her by Mr C.
This doesn’t stop him from trying again and again and again
to find answers and to solve the world, returning Laura and Diane to moments of
deep hurt and not listening to them. Not all can be said aloud now, but when
these women speak, Cooper should listen. But he doesn’t.
His plan continues. Is it future or is it past? He enters
one motel and exits another; another try and another loop. He enters as Dale
and exits as Richard; another try and another loop.
He swishes his hand and the curtains part; he’s learning
things but not the fundamental lesson.
He cannot save Laura. He cannot give her more life. He
cannot erase her trauma without victimising her further.
Dale Cooper is not Dougie. Dale Cooper is not Mr C. By the
end of The Return he may be an
amalgamation of all three parts, but there’s one thing he is not.
He’s not the hero.
He may be the villain.
*
Dale Cooper finds a woman named Carrie Page, but doesn’t she
look almost exactly like Laura Palmer? She’s living in Odessa, a clear allusion
to Odysseus and the epic of The Odyssey.
We thought this was the story of Cooper returning to the world and to the town
we had such sweet memories of.
But Odessa is the feminine of Odysseus and it is
Laura who is returned to Twin Peaks and Twin
Peaks. By force. Without thought for the woman or her story.
This is not nostalgic.
This is traumatic.
*
Twin Peaks: The Return
doesn’t end with the question “What year is this?” It ends with the blood curdling
scream of Laura Palmer.
And as the credits roll, Laura once again – as we saw in
parts past and decades ago – whispers into Cooper’s ear. We do not hear her
this time.
And if Cooper listens to her sound, he seems not to hear
her, either.
And that is why he fails and why his return is so troubling.
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