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Time and Time Again

Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Carrie Page/Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee)

The following is a guest post by Robert Giles, a member of our Facebook group. Please leave a comment and let Robert know what you think!


As I was reading Eileen’s article about the Season 2 finale. I was composing a comment, when I came up with this idea. Episode 29, which brought Lynch and Frost back in the driver’s seat, certainly laid the groundwork for what they gave us in Season 3. I had waited 25 years to see Cooper’s doppelganger on the loose. They, and more specifically, Kyle MacLachlan delivered big time. I then started looking at how they handled Cooper being the Black Lodge and what Mr. C had been doing all that time. Oh, he was only amassing a fortune and trying to catch a “powerful negative force” that goes by the name of Judy.

This made me deeply consider the passage of time and how it was such an important part of Season 3. 25 years. That’s a hefty chunk of time. How were Lynch, Frost and company going to handle coming back after all that time? Pretty much from the start, after the first announcement, they said it was going to be one of their primary focal points. In the eyes of this fan and of many others, they handled it gracefully, always character focused and made us feel the joys and despair of each of them, because I’ve aged 25 years too so, it makes you reflect on our own passages through time as well.

Beyond the Great Escape of Dale Cooper, other characters started popping in my head. Before getting to them, time had not been kind to the town of Twin Peaks as whole. The closing of the mill and the declining lumber industry dealt a deadly blow to the town’s economy. The struggling townsfolk still had familiar places to take refuge in, The Double R, Big Ed’s Gas Farm and the Great Northern among others. The familiar faces we find in there make us feel like we’re reuniting with old friends. They also prove the more things change the more they stay the same. Ed and Norma are still apart, Nadine is still there and Walter is mucking things up too. Ben is still up at the Great Northern trying to be a better man and think less of the past unless reminiscing about his old bike, which was a wonderful moment. And good ‘ol Jerry is making a fortune and stoned out of his mind while tripling the revenue of Horne Industries. Shelley’s taste in men hasn’t improved much as she is seeing the nefarious Red. What the hell? Her old husband Bobby has become a poster boy for self-improvement, teenage punk to Deputy Briggs.

We see through Bobby a lot of changes in the townspeople. I found myself several times seeing how they acted around him. In Part 4, we see he’s using his old street smarts for the powers of good. Laura Palmer still has an effect on him and when he breaks down you can see in Hawk’s face his memories of taking him in for questioning mixed with their current working relationship. And Hawk, he’s a rock, always had been and that hasn’t changed one bit. He reopens the Laura Palmer case to find what the Log Lady had put him onto about Agent Cooper, sounds like Twin Peaks to me. Now, Deputy Chief, of course why wouldn’t he be right, a quiet dignity and welcome reassurance is what you get when he’s on screen. Let’s not forget Andy and Lucy, not only did I delight every time I saw them and if there’s two people who are still just the way we love them, it’s these two. None of us, as Season 3 rolled on however, thought that Andy would have an audience with The Fireman and Lucy showing her marksmanship skills. Those two items are a good example of the writing of Lynch and Frost giving us big and fantastic surprises.

This brings me to one and only Major Briggs. He’s already amassed much importance to the world of Twin Peaks from the original series and The Secret History of Twin Peaks. We all miss Don Davis and he would have jumped at the chance to reprise that role. What did Lynch and Frost do? They made him a major character knowing he wouldn’t even be on screen, well, except for his floating head. He’s been tripping the Lodge fantastic for the last 25 years too, but now he’s working Lodge magic in his favor and with the Fireman to defeat Evil Coop and Judy. He’s everywhere in Season 3 and it’s wonderful. With Major Briggs and later Betty, we see more of Bobby and get another beautiful scene. We also get the father and son working together of sorts with the journey to Jack Rabbit’s palace.

Lastly, another way we see the passage of time, is through the children of our beloved favorites. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with most of these offspring. Becky, Bobby and Shelley’s daughter, is married to one of the biggest lowlife’s in town (who later brings in the Haywards in unexpected ways) and it mirrors Shelly’s marriage to Leo. Wally Brennan is just what you would expect from Lucy and Andy’s kids mixed with a heavy Brando vibe. Richard Horne, yes he is the son of Audrey, but when half your gene pool is coming from pure evil you’re going to get everything we saw with Richard.

As I re-watch Season 3, and even more so now with the Blu-ray release, I still enjoy Mr. C’s antics, The Mitchum Brothers, the omnipresence of Major Briggs, the Cole/Rosenfield escapades (although not in the town of Twin Peaks, we see the same things I have discussed with these two and Phillip Jeffries). How time has affected every one of us and all those inhabitants of Twin Peaks becomes another character as we move through Season 3 time and time again.

Written by 25YL

This article was written either by a Guest Author or by an assortment of 25YL staff

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