Diane, August 9th, 1 pm. A shaken Major Briggs returned from his disappearance with a warning of what’s to come. Though the military takes him away before he can fill in all the gaps, he provides some key details about his disappearance – he believes he was taken to the White Lodge, and something evil is coming and coming soon.
A few episodes ago, Twin Peaks wrapped up its investigation into Laura Palmer’s murder, but now the forces of darkness lurking in the woods (and living in the owls) are coming out to play. Only eight episodes remain in the original series run, and Mark Frost and David Lynch have arranged the pieces around the chess board for one hell of a final game.
Here’s five thoughts on episodes 20 and 21 of Twin Peaks, “Checkmate” and “Double Play.” Spoilers below. CW: domestic abuse.
1. The Last of the Renaults
Agent Cooper’s plot to expose the drug runners and clear his name forms the spine of “Checkmate,” and the episode brings with it a clarity of the show’s intent. I’ve noted several times that Twin Peaks is a show about actions and consequences, but this episode suggests those consequences are less cause and effect than they are a cosmic joust.
On the face of things, the series of events this episode are pretty down to Earth; Cooper teams up with DEA Agent Denise Bryson (David Duchovny) to set up a sting operation on Jean Renault and the Canadian mountie that is framing Cooper for stealing a boatload of cocaine. Denise chooses to go into the meeting disguised as her old self. The show doesn’t play this decision as a punchline, but it doesn’t exactly take it seriously, either – the day is ultimately saved by Denise sauntering into a hostage situation as her true self with a gun hidden in her garter. Oftentimes Twin Peaks plays fast and loose with its dissection of cultural norms (see below for more on that), and though it’s somewhat subversive to use the sexualization of a trans woman as the key cause of the undoing of the big scary gangster, it still plays into the same tropes it’s undercutting.
The straightforward plot of the episode, however, has a metaphysical wrinkle. Just before his own death, Jean Renault explains his hatred for Agent Cooper. He doesn’t blame Cooper for his brothers’ deaths directly; rather, he implies that Twin Peaks was thriving without Cooper, and that his presence has brought chaos down onto the peaceful little corner of the world. Cooper has caused a lot of trouble as side effects of his investigation, but has Cooper’s quest for the truth, and his efforts to dig into the heart of what’s going on in the town, disturbed the normal order of things? Would the town be better off if he had never come?
2. Excuse Me, That is a Child
James is hooked by a married woman named Evelyn Marsh who is a suffering from domestic abuse. I have to be honest – my stomach for this plotline ran out about three episodes ago. (What’s that you say? Evelyn only appeared 3 episodes ago? Interesting.) It was immediately clear that Evelyn was lying about everything and manipulating her young boy toy, but James is too deep in his own hero complex to recognize it.
Having learned nothing from his experiences, he considers attempting to save Evelyn, realizing too late that she’s in league with her “brother” (actually her lover) Malcolm to frame James for the murder of her husband. He’s rescued from arrest by a way too understanding Donna – girls, get you a boyfriend who won’t immediately cheat on you with the first sad married woman he meets at a bar on his motorcycle trip to find himself – but unfortunately, it’s unlikely that will be the end of this storyline.
Since this seems like as good of a spot as any to put all my gripes, the other plotline involving someone forgetting that they’re dealing with an actual child is somehow more insufferable. Dick Tremayne and Deputy Andy are a match made in hell, and their dynamic duo attempting to prove that a ten-year-old murdered his parents stretches the soap opera logic of the series to its breaking point. It wraps up in suitably soapy hysterics at the end of “Double Play” with Doc Hayward summarizing Nicky’s tragic upbringing, but it’s hard not to feel like all of it was a complete waste of time.
Continued below3. Men Will Literally Reverse the South’s Defeat in the Civil War Before Going to Therapy
It’s plausible that every problem in town would be solved if they simply had a therapist who wasn’t unhinged. Dr. Jacoby’s strategy seems to be “idk let them work through it and see how that goes,” which has thus far worked…poorly. Twin Peaks is often fascinated with toxic pieces of americana that are swept under the rug – that’s the closest I can come to making sense of whatever happened with Catherine Martell and her yellow-face arc at the beginning of the season. Ben Horne’s obsession with the confederacy folds in another aspect of the American identity, for better or worse.
Ben now fully believes himself to be a Confederate general – or, at least, he’s putting on a very convincing “The South Will Rise Again” hissy fit. He manages to get it together at least briefly when Catherine Martell visits to seduce him. It’s unlikely that she actually has interest in him – just like everyone else in town, Catherine is playing an angle, and Ben is compromised enough to buy it.
Catherine is nurturing her assets because Thomas Eckhardt (David Warner) is on the way. Eckhardt, we learn, was a former business partner of Catherine’s brother Andrew, and after Andrew wronged Eckhardt the latter made his plans for Andrew’s demise. Catherine and Andrew managed to sidestep the assassination attempt, and now they’re wielding a weapon they think will bring Eckhardt into their hands: Josie.
As we get closer to the show’s endgame, there’s no one in a more precarious position than Josie. Josie is working as Catherine’s maid, kept under control to lure Eckhardt into the lion’s den. Sheriff Truman tries to convince her to come move in with him, but Josie knows she benefits from Catherine’s protection – from things Catherine knows about but that Josie wasn’t able (or willing) to tell Truman. Her secrets have piled up on her, and she’s running out of allies – Truman finally seems suspicious of her once the man she travelled with to Seattle turned up dead in his hotel room.
4. Love is a Losing Game
No one’s relationships are going well. Norma and Hank are on the rocks, so she falls back into the arms of Big Ed (who is having his own trouble dealing with his wife, Nadine, who has mentally regressed back to high school age). Hank immediately finds out, but his attempts to beat up Ed are thwarted by Nadine, who puts Hank in the hospital with her superhuman strength.
What’s most surprising to me is that unlike the other cartoonish plotline (Dick and Andy), I find this one charming. The soapiness feels like it’s dialed to the right level, and the absurdity of the events offers a more pleasant counter to the show’s grimmer aspects. Part of it is certainly the performances – I’ve really come around to love Wendy Robie’s performance as Nadine, which is manic and extra and perversely a blast. Twin Peaks can have little a cartoon antics, as a treat.
Darker things are happening on the other side of town, however. While her boyfriend Bobby is off flirting with Audrey Horne and attempting to wring money out of Ben Horne’s confederate coffers, Shelly is stuck trying to care for her formerly abusive husband Leo. She’s in over her head, which goes from bad to worse when Leo suddenly wakes and is none too happy with his lackluster treatment at Shelly and Bobby’s hands. He immediately tries to murder her (again), but she and Bobby manage to fight him off. He runs off into the night – and right into the cabin of the terrifying, shadowy Windom Earle.
5. The Big Bad
With BOB in the wind (inside an owl?) and Jean Renault dead, Twin Peaks needed a final boss, and we finally have one in the form of Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh). Cooper looped Sheriff Truman in on his backstory with Earle: he was Cooper’s first partner, and the pair was tasked with protecting a murder witness named Caroline. Cooper lapsed in his guardianship due to falling in love with Caroline, and while his guard was down, he was knocked unconscious and Caroline was murdered. Most of that we’d heard before when Cooper shared that story with Audrey, but this time he shares some crucial additional details: Caroline was Windom Earle’s wife, and Cooper believes that Earle killed her.
As if to put a button on Renault’s hypothesis, Earle engineers a power outage and a fire as cover to sneak into the department and leave his next chess move for Agent Cooper. That move comes in the form of a dead man pointing at a chess board with a chess piece in the corpse’s mouth. Earle has taken a pawn, and it’s Cooper’s move.
As a villain, Earle is a fascinating piece to play this close to the end of the series. He’s a dark past of Cooper’s that has loomed over the show since its earliest episodes, to the point that he almost feels primal in the same way BOB and MIKE do. But he’s a creature of flesh and blood just like Cooper, and he seems to be Cooper’s opposite in every way: amoral, vicious, and driven by a devotion to logic and cruelty in the same way Cooper is devoted to vibes and good feelings. Will vibes beat out logic? Eight episodes (and a movie) until we find out.
