Part 18 (''Twin Peaks'')

"Part 18"
Twin Peaks episode
Carrie Page (Sheryl Lee) screams upon hearing Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) calling the name Laura in the final scene of the series.
Episode no. Season 3
Episode 18
Directed by David Lynch
Written by David Lynch
Mark Frost
Featured music Angelo Badalamenti
Cinematography by Peter Deming
Editing by Duwayne Dunham
Original air date September 3, 2017 (2017-09-03)
Running time 57 minutes
Guest appearance(s)

"Part 18", also known as "The Return, Part 18", is the eighteenth and final episode of Twin Peaks revival series. It was written by Mark Frost and David Lynch and directed by Lynch. "Part 18" was broadcast on Showtime along with Part 17 on September 3, 2017, and seen by an audience of 240,000 viewers in the United States.[1] The episode received critical acclaim.

Plot

What is your name?

— Dale Cooper (used as a promotional tagline for the episode)

Background

The small town of Twin Peaks, Washington, has been shocked by the murder of schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the attempted murder of her friend Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine). FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) has been sent to the town to investigate[2] and has come to the realization that the killer was the father of Laura, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), who acted while possessed by a demonic entity—Killer BOB (Frank Silva).[3] At the end of the original series, Cooper was trapped into the Black Lodge, an extra-dimensional place, by BOB, who let out Cooper's doppelgänger to use him as his physical access to the world.[4]

Twenty-five years after the events, Cooper manages to escape the Lodge by traveling through a portal between worlds; during this process, Cooper was supposed to replace the doppelgänger (now known as Mr. C), but instead he takes the place of a second doppelgänger (known as Douglas "Dougie" Jones), fabricated by the first as a decoy for the exchange. Mr. C, exhausted from the process, crashes his car and passes out, allowing the police to capture him;[5] he subsequently manages to escape, dividing his time between his search for access to "the Zone"[6] and organizing his minions' attempts to eliminate the now catatonic Dale Cooper, who is mistaken by Douglas Jones' family and colleagues as the original Dougie. After numerous attempts, Mr. C finds the correct coordinates to access the zone;[7] he is redirected towards the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station, where the real Dale Cooper is also arriving after awakening from his incapacitated state.[8] Mr. C is shot by Lucy Brennan (Kimmy Robertson), the Station's secretary; when BOB, in the form of an orb, tries to escape, he is punched to his destruction by Freddie Sykes (Jake Wardle), an English boy with a Lodge-powered gardening glove. One of the station's prisoners, Naido (Nae Yuuki), turns out to be Diane (Laura Dern), Cooper's assistant, trapped by Mr. C in a deformed body. Cooper then travels through time to the night Laura Palmer was killed, seemingly successfully impeding her homicide.

Events

In the Black Lodge, Mr. C sits with a blank expression, set ablaze. MIKE (Al Strobel) creates a new Douglas Jones, who rejoins his wife Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and his son Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon). Cooper leads Laura Palmer through the woods of Twin Peaks, when she suddenly disappears with a scream. Cooper sits in the Lodge; MIKE, seated next to him, asks: "Is it future or is it past?"[9] MIKE disappears; Cooper observes the chair where Laura Palmer was usually seated in her Lodge appearances,[4][10][11] which is now empty. MIKE then leads Cooper to the Evolution of The Arm, who asks "Is it the story of the girl who lived down the lane?"[9] Since Cooper does not answer, the Arm reiterates the question. Laura Palmer whispers in the ear of a now seated Cooper; when she is done, she screams twice and disappears. Cooper walks to another room, where he finds Leland Palmer, who asks him to "find Laura."[9] Cooper shakes his hand and the curtains billow, allowing him to walk outside.

In Glastonbury Grove, Diane awaits for Cooper. When he comes out, she asks him if it's really him, to which he answers affirmatively and asks her the same question. When she answers affirmatively, they smile as the curtains behind them disappear. In the morning, Cooper and Diane drive 430 miles before stopping on the side of a desert road, next to an enormous power line. Cooper gets out of the car to observe the surroundings, subsequently getting back in and confirming that they are in the right place. Diane asks Cooper whether he still wants to take on this task, which Cooper answers by asking her to kiss him, as once they cross "everything could be different."[9] They kiss and start driving again, apparently through a portal which takes them to a deserted highway at night. They keep driving until they reach a motel; while Cooper goes to check in, Diane, inside the car, sees herself stepping out from behind a pillar. Cooper returns, and the two of them walk into their room. Diane turns on the light, but Cooper asks her to turn it off. They kiss and begin having sex; during the act, Diane cries and covers Cooper's face.

The morning after, Cooper wakes up in a different motel room to find Diane gone. He finds a letter from a woman named Linda, addressing a man named Richard: the woman is gone and she asks Richard not to search for her.[n 1] Cooper reacts positively to the letter. He subsequently walks out of the motel, gets into a different car than the one he was driving before and leaves the parking lot.

Cooper reaches Odessa, Texas; while driving, he finds a diner named "Eat at Judy's."[9] He walks in and orders coffee; he then asks the waitress, Kristi (Francesca Eastwood), whether there is another waitress working there, but he is told that she has the day off. He subsequently spots three cowboys (Matt Battaglia, Heath Hensley and Rob Mars) harassing Kristi, and tells them to stop. The cowboys walk to Cooper's table and threaten him with a gun; Cooper manages to incapacitate the first, uses his gun to shoot the second cowboy's foot and forces the third cowboy to stand down. Cooper collects the cowboys' guns, then walks behind the counter and asks Kristi to write down the other waitress's address; meanwhile, he drops the guns in the deep fryer, advising the staff to stay away as the heat could set off the bullets. Cooper collects the address and leaves. One of the cowboys, aghast, asks "What the fuck just happened?"[9]

Next to the waitress's house, Cooper spots a utility pole with a number "6" attached to it. Cooper knocks at the waitress's door; upon hearing that it is an FBI agent, the waitress (Sheryl Lee) anxiously asks him "Did you find him?"[9] Despite looking like a grown version of Laura Palmer, the waitress is confused when Cooper calls her Laura, and identifies herself as Carrie Page; she appears, however, to react nervously when Cooper tells her about Laura's mother, Sarah. When Cooper insists that she is Laura Palmer and offers to take her home to Twin Peaks, Carrie, who is already eager to leave Odessa, agrees to follow him. As Carrie prepares herself, Cooper waits inside the house, where he spots the corpse of a man who was shot in an armchair and a white figurine of an horse standing on the fireplace. A phone begins to ring. Carrie asks Cooper if she should bring a coat, to which Cooper answers affirmatively; she then says that they have no food, and Cooper replies that they will buy some on the way. The two leave the house.

As they drive through the night, Carrie begins reminiscing about her past in Odessa, and how she tried to keep a clean house despite not knowing any better. They stop to refuel the car at a Valero gas station. At one point a set of car headlights appears behind them; Carrie wonders whether someone is following them, but then the car turns off. When they arrive at Twin Peaks, they pass by the Double R Diner before parking in front of Palmer House. Carrie, however, does not recognize anything.

Cooper knocks on the door, but a stranger (Mary Reber) answers instead of Sarah. The woman identifies herself as Alice Tremond, and, after speaking to her unseen partner, she tells them that they bought the house from a certain Mrs. Chalfont, that they do not know who was the prior owner or who Sarah Palmer is. Cooper thanks her, and he and Carrie walk away, perplexed. Cooper hesitates and turns again towards the house. While walking mechanically, Cooper absent-mindedly asks "What year is this?"[9] Carrie turns to look at the house and hears Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) screaming "Laura." She suddenly screams like Laura; at that moment, all the lights in the house go out.

In the Black Lodge, Laura whispers into Cooper's ear as the credits roll.

Production

"Part 18", like the rest of the limited series, was written by Mark Frost and David Lynch and directed by Lynch himself.[12] Frost had already written ten episodes of the original series — the "Pilot" and Episodes 1, 2 and 8 with Lynch, plus Episodes 5, 7, 12, 14, 16, 26 and the original series finale, Episode 29. Lynch also directed six episodes of the original series — the "Pilot", "Episode 2", "Episode 8", "Episode 9", "Episode 14" and "Episode 29".[13]

Music

Almost every episode of the 2017 Twin Peaks series featured a live performance by various bands at the Roadhouse, with this episode being one of the exceptions. The song "My Prayer" by The Platters is used in the episode, during the sex scene between Diane and Cooper; the song had already been used before in the show, during the closing scene of Part 8.[14] One of the founding members of the group is a singer named David Lynch.[15] The episode's credits are underscored by an original musical composition by Angelo Badalamenti; the piece was eventually released in the September 2017 soundtrack album Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Original Soundtrack under the name "Dark Space Low."[16]

Reception

"Part 18" received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the episode received an 88% rating with an average score of 8.58 out of 10 based on 24 reviews.[17]

Writing for IndieWire, Hanh Nguyen awarded the episode an "A," defining the sex scene between Diane and Cooper as "one of the most disturbing and fraught scenes in the series," and expressing the necessity to regard "this finale as a true ending to the Twin Peaks saga." She ultimately praised the episode as a "brilliant and no doubt controversial ending for a show that had come back after 25 years to leave fans wanting yet again."[18] In her similarly positive review of the episode, The A.V. Club's Emily L. Stephens gave the episode an "A-" stating that the episode smashes Part 17's "answers to pieces and poses more staggering questions", ultimately enforcing the "bitter, brutal truth that closure is a luxury, not a guarantee."[19]

The New York Times' Noel Murray gave the episode a positive review, saying that he "personally loved" the episode and defining certain scenes as "pure televised poetry," while recognizing some validity to the fans' annoyance over "the elliptical nature of the finale.[20] In his recap for Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Jensen favourably compared the episode and its predecessor to Lynch's own Lost Highway, ultimately praising the series as a whole as Lynch's "do-over at a big saga fantasy, produced at a length and rich with the poetic abstraction that he couldn’t get from a Hollywood feature film."[21]

Notes

  1. ↑ The number 430 and the names Richard and Linda were referenced by the Fireman in the opening scene of Part 1.

References

  1. ↑ Metcalf, Mitch (September 6, 2017). "UPDATED: SHOWBUZZDAILY's Top 150 Sunday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 9.3.2017". Showbuzz Daily. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
  2. ↑ David Lynch (writer and director); Mark Frost (writer) (April 8, 1990). "Pilot". Twin Peaks. Season 1. Episode 1. ABC.
  3. ↑ Tim Hunter (director); Mark Frost (writer) (December 1, 1990). "Episode 16". Twin Peaks. Season 2. Episode 9. ABC.
  4. 1 2 David Lynch (director); Mark Frost (writer); Harley Peyton (writer); Robert Engels (writer) (June 6, 1990). "Episode 29". Twin Peaks. Season 2. Episode 22. ABC.
  5. ↑ David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (May 28, 2017). "Part 3". Twin Peaks. Season 3. Episode 3. Showtime.
  6. ↑ David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (July 9, 2017). "Part 9". Twin Peaks. Season 3. Episode 9. Showtime.
  7. ↑ David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (September 3, 2017). "Part 17". Twin Peaks. Season 3. Episode 17. Showtime.
  8. ↑ David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (August 27, 2017). "Part 16". Twin Peaks. Season 3. Episode 16. Showtime.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (September 3, 2017). "Part 18". Twin Peaks. Season 3. Episode 18. Showtime.
  10. ↑ David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (April 19, 1990). "Episode 2". Twin Peaks. Season 1. Episode 3. ABC.
  11. ↑ David Lynch (director & writer); Mark Frost (writer) (May 21, 2017). "Part 2". Twin Peaks. Season 3. Episode 2. Showtime.
  12. ↑ "Twin Peaks- Part 1 (1990) – Full Cast and Crew". IMDb. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  13. ↑ "David Lynch movies, photos, movie reviews, filmography, and biography". AllRovi. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  14. ↑ Ekstein, Alexandra (September 5, 2017). "5 Things You Might Have Missed In The 'Twin Peaks' Season 3 Finale". Moviepilot. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
  15. ↑ "The Platters". Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Retrieved August 26, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series". Rhino Records. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Twin Peaks - The Return, Episode 18". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
  18. ↑ Nguyen, Hanh (September 4, 2017). "'Twin Peaks' Finale Review: David Lynch Steps Outside of the Dream for a Brilliant, Mindbending Final Journey". IndieWire. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
  19. ↑ Stephens, Emily L. (September 4, 2017). "One last time, Twin Peaks takes your hand and walks you into the dark". The A.V. Club. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
  20. ↑ Murray, Noel (September 4, 2017). "Twin Peaks' Season 3 Finale: The Curtain Call". The New York Times. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
  21. ↑ Jensen, Jeff (September 11, 2017). "Twin Peaks finale recap: 'The Return: Parts 17 and 18'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
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