Nothing can prepare you for the finale of Twin Peaks Season 2. For over two decades it was, as far as anyone knew, the finale of Twin Peaks itself. On television, it is virtually without precedent. Before June 10, 1991, when it aired back-to-back with “Miss Twin Peaks,” only the surreal series finale of Patrick McGoohan’s proto-prestige masterpiece The Prisoner was even in the conversation.
In the oeuvre of David Lynch, who returns to the director’s chair, it is a turning point. The most avant-garde narrative work he’d done since Eraserhead, it marked his full-on entrée into the elliptical storytelling and supernaturally tinged surrealism that characterized not only the show’s prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but also Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Twin Peaks’ own triumphant return to television in 2017. Of Lynch’s major post-Peaks projects, only The Straight Story — a rare instance of Lynch directing from someone else’s screenplay — played it straight. Everything else is a zig-zag labyrinth of time and meaning.
As a series finale, it’s a series of controlled demolitions. Storyline after storyline is taken to its logical conclusion, then blown up, in one case literally.
Death by a thousand cuts. Max Cady (Javier Bardem) has already compared his (allegedly) undeserved prison sentence to this form of piecemeal torture. He may have actually committed it, if indeed he’s responsible for severing a certain teenager’s toe. But after this episode of Cape Fear, it’s apparent that Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom Bowden’s (Patrick Wilson) happy family is under lethal threat, and death by a thousand cuts is how they’re in danger of being taken out.
The funny thing is that this isn’t a super-funny episode of Widow’s Bay, or a super scary one, or one that riffs on one or two very specific stories or subgenres. Sure, there are shades of Nope and The Lighthouse here and there, and a twister straight out of The Wizard of Oz, but there’s no one central horror here — no sea hag, no sunset cocktails death ritual, no machete-wielding Boogeyman. Other than Chris Fleming’s untimely demise and the genuinely chilling cold open, this episode feels mostly like set-up for the finale. It’s funny in places and creepy in others, but in both the horror and comedy categories, I’m hoping it’s just the calm before the storm.
Just to reiterate: We’re watching the queer glam rock incest vampire show. This one’s for the sickos, and brother, that’s me.
Lestat is for anyone who’s ever wanted to watch a show about gay draculas who sing “The Jean Genie” knockoffs into a camera dripping with human blood, then go bitch about it to Eric Bogosian. It’s for anyone who loves The Lost Boys and Velvet Goldmine and Cabaret and Bram Stoker’s Dracula and has ever thought “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if all those were the same thing at once?” It’s for people who know that even if that dark spot on Lestat’s pants at the end of one his performances isn’t his vampire blood-semen from ejaculating on stage, the fact that it’s even a question is a very good sign indeed.
We have it all now: the who, what, when, where, how, and why.
Who: Windom Earle — former FBI Special Agent, liaison to the Air Force’s paranormal investigation Project Blue Book, Dale Cooper’s former partner and mentor, the husband and murderer of the love of Cooper’s life, master of disguise, serial killer, seeker of secrets, would-be sorcerer.
What: The entrance to the Black Lodge — diametrically opposed to the benevolent White Lodge, home of the murderous entity called Bob, an immeasurably powerful place of evil for evil’s sake.
When: During the astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn from January to June, whose opposing expansive and contractive forces augur times of great change, for good or evil.
Where: Somewhere in the woods outside of Twin Peaks, at a location indicated by the petroglyph from Owl Cave, which both Windom Earle and Deputy Andy Brennan have figured out is actually a map.
How: The doors to the Lodges require a key, and the Black Lodge is opened by fear (“my favorite emotional state!” whoops Windom), a feeling to which creatures like Bob are drawn as “their bread and butter.”
Why: Power. Is not the will to dominate the root of all evil?
When we open, Max Cady’s life has been turned upside down. Seven years ago, in a flashback sequence depicted in gritty black and white, Max is attacked in the prison weight room by a trio of Nazis. He gets the better of them, definitively killing two of them before passing out from his own head injuries, which we know continue to plague him even now.
But this bare-bones description does not do this cold open justice. Cape Fear has just given us the most brutal television fight scene since the Mountain dueled the Red Viper on Game of Thrones, possibly even since Dan Dority met Captain Turner in the thoroughfare on Deadwood. Simply put, it’s fucking unbelievable.
Horror is a genre in conversation with itself. Tasked with frightening their audiences, horror filmmakers naturally turn to what has frightened them. Even the very best works in the genre borrow ideas and images from their predecessors, often quite openly. Provided the end result is something unique unto itself, this process can yield results as vital as cover versions or well-chosen samples do in music.
Nick Antosca, creator and writer of Cape Fear, has a distinguished track record in the genre himself, creating or co-creating the shows Channel Zero, The Act, Brand New Cherry Flavor, Candy, and A Friend of the Family — a mix of gory, surreal horror and true crime served at a bone-chilling temperature. Here he’s working directly from a trio of sources: John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners, J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film Cape Fear, and Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of it. All three are credited as source material on screen.
But the show’s very first scene isn’t a reference to any of those works that I can see. With its inverted, photo-negative images soaked in lurid color, with its images of a happy family enjoying the good life on the Fourth of July, it feels like a nod to a very different movie: of all things, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.
“There’s something wrong. This isn’t right. There’s something wrong here.”
These are the last words of this episode, spoken by Dwayne Milford, mayor of the town of Twin Peaks. He hasn’t suddenly developed concerns beyond his usual ones: badly presiding over local events, talking slowly, flirting with his much younger girlfriend Lana. He is in fact simply struggling with the microphone at a Miss Twin Peaks event. There’s a sight gag where he adjusts the mic only for it to sink away from him when he lets go that’s one of the funniest moments of the episode, even.
But we’re privy to information and observations to which Mayor Milford is not. We’ve spent a full episode listening to some of composer Angelo Badalamenti’s most unsettling work, much of it a series of ambient, ominous whooshing and humming. We hear it over the roar of the falls, in the wooden interiors of the Great Northern, in the formica paradise of the Double R diner. There’s something wrong here.
The camera of Stephen Gyllenhaal (Jake and Maggie’s dad) follows suit, its slow movements drawn out to at times genuinely striking lengths. There’s a seemingly endless shot of Coop and Annie mooning at each other over the counter, talking Augustine and Heisenberg as if this is how everyone flirts, where our viewpoint drifts further and further from them, as Badalamenti’s horror-movie synth slowly overwhelms the jaunty country-western music on the diner jukebox.
There’s no immediate explanation for any of this, no source of the visual or sonic disturbance that we can identify, no real reason for the shot, which ends with a breathless match cut on Annie and Coop leaning in for a kiss, at all. And there’s no reason for the slow-motion shot of syrup dripping from shattered dishware on a noisily dropped tray, oozing like blood, that follows the kiss. There’s something wrong here.
In the meantime, it’s still a marvelously made show. The vocal effects for Warren feel like something out of Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, and the age makeup holds up extremely well under direct closeups. But even less showy aspects of the episode are striking, like the sharp blue-tinted white light used to illuminate the boat and its cabin, cutting against the digital gloom that often plagues nighttime scenes set at sea on streaming shows. It’s a minor thing, but minor things add up, whether you’re making a show about a haunted island, or actually living on one.
Betty Gilpin is television’s most valuable player. She has that Catherine O’Hara/Philip Seymour Hoffman factor: She’s good in absolutely everything, no matter how good that thing is. To name two recent examples relevant to her work in the first of this week’s two Widow’s Bay episodes, she played a ferocious survivor in Mark L. Smith and Peter Berg’s brutal ordeal, American Primeval, and a momentary First Lady in Mike Makowsky and Matt Ross’s creepily relevant assassination drama Death by Lightning. The former felt like a project written with her in mind, the latter one like one where her character was an afterthought. Regardless, she’s excellent in both. Unsurprisingly, she’s excellent here.
So is Hamish Linklater. (Jeez. Is this the most “actors beloved by TV critics” cast ever assembled or what?) His most relevant recent work is Midnight Mass, Mike Flanagan’s story of a small island fishing town beset by evil forces, in which Linklater plays a God-fearing religious protector of the village with a sinister secret of his own. Sound familiar?
Before his departure from Twin Peaks, Dale’s supervisor, Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole, makes his move on Shelly, asking for a kiss before he leaves, perhaps for good. To him, she’s a goddess, not only due to her looks and personality but the fact that she’s magically cured his hearing loss, somehow for herself only. I mean, that is kind of hard to argue with.
But even as they’re locking lips, Bobby walks in, leading to a needle-scratch sound effect from the jukebox and a fantastic reaction shot from actors David Lynch (hooray!) and Mädchen Amick, who has never looked lovlier. (Let’s face it, the entire human race has never looked lovelier.)
“YOU ARE WITNESSING A FRONT THREE-QUARTER VIEW OF TWO ADULTS SHARING A TENDER MOMENT!” Cole informs him. “Acts like he’s never seen a kiss before,” he says to Shelly at a conversational volume, his face wearing the unmistakable look of a man who knows he’s successfully punching way above his weight class. “TAKE ANOTHER LOOK, SONNY!” he shouts back to Bobby. “IT’S GONNA HAPPEN AGAIN!” Then he leans in for his second kiss, fulfilling his, and one can only assume David Lynch’s, fondest wish. (Series mainstay Harley Peyton and co-creator Mark Frost wrote this episode, and Lynch’s fondness for his leading ladies, usually platonic but occasionally less so, is well-documented.)
The mindlessly destructive, implacably angry Godzillas of 1954 and 1984 feel like a custom-made representation of America, the country responsible for its creation, in 2026. Godzilla loves sinking ships full of sailors. It loves recklessly attacking nuclear facilities. It loves carelessly ripping up famous architecture in the capital city. It loves spreading a trail of uninhabitable environmental ruin wherever it goes and leaving rubble in its wake. And it loves stepping on people too slow or sick or just too unlucky to get out of the way. As Return puts it, “It does as it pleases, and continually destroys.”
But for the most part, Tom’s trip is depicted through what we don’t see or hear. Smash cuts to black punctuate the action, which repeatedly resumes with Tom suddenly finding himself in some other place with some other character and no recollection of how they got together and then got where they currently are. From Todd’s house, to his office, to the historical society, to a meeting full of townsfolk furious with his curfew, to a meeting suddenly empty of townsfolk furious with his curfew (Tom’s only clues to their absence are dry erase marker in his hand, a message on a whiteboard, and a trashcan full of his vomit), back to the historical society, to Rosemary’s car, to a gas station, and finally to his house — he’s getting booted through time and space by the drug like he’s Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-five.
The discovery of that hidden panel and that symbol is what prompts Coop to declare that they’re on a journey to “a place both wonderful and strange.” This is as apt a description for Twin Peaks, and Twin Peaks, as I’ve ever heard. With only four episodes left in the show’s second season, which for a quarter century meant only four episodes left in total, things are getting truly mystical. We have a white wizard in the form of Dale Cooper. Now we have Windom Earle as his opposite number, a dark sorcerer. A clash seems inevitable. What wonderful and strange place will it lead us to? Will it fill us with wonder, or leave us stranded where the stars are strange?
“She came to me,” Harry says, “and she made everything better.” He repeats himself, breaking down, in a way that’s hard to hear if you’ve ever worried about losing someone who’s done that for you. “Everything, so much better.” Dropping his gun, he collapses into Coop’s arms, and the two hold each other in the show’s most arresting portrait of their free and easy friendship yet. These guys love each other, man. How can you not love that? How can you not love them?
With characters this well drawn and this locked down this early, there’s almost no limit to where you can go. Look at Cheers or The Golden Girls: Those characters were those characters immediately, and thus their pilot episodes contain some of the funniest jokes in the entire run of the series. Kind of reminds you of a show we’re watching right now, right?
There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss it joke in the series premiere of Widow’s Bay. It’s one I didn’t even mention in my review, because on this show there’s simply a lot of good stuff to talk about. Mayor Tom Loftis is turning the page of his wall calendar, which features pictures of wolves. The month of July, however, is a picture of a car wreck. On one level, this is just a funny sight gag, one of many sprinkled in to show that things in Widow’s Bay are a little bit…off. On the other hand, dear God why is there a full-page photo of a crashed car in a wall calendar?
Two episodes deep into Widow’s Bay, I’m starting to understand just how fruitful an approach this whole “is it funny, or, if you stop and think about it, is it actually deeply disturbing?” thing is going to be.
“Shut it down. Shut it all down. It’s starting….Close the port. Shutter the businesses. Sound the siren….You refuse to accept our history, to accept the truth, and I’ve lived with that for years, but now it’s gonna get people killed….The island has lain dormant, but she’s waking up, and that’s when bad things happen. You think the fog out there is natural? No, it ain’t natural. It already took Shep and it will take the rest of us tonight. It’s a haunt!”
It may not look like it to read it, but this is some of the funniest dialogue I’ve heard on TV all year. Delivered by the legendary character actor Stephen Root as Wyck, the eccentric old harbormaster of a quaint New England fishing village called Widow’s Bay, it’s a warning about impending death and damnation…and I got no further than the third sentence in the speech, “It’s starting,” before bursting out laughing. A guy who talks only in the voice of bad Stephen King knockoffs from the 1980s? Why, he’s speaking my language!
Like most of the episodes in this critically disfavored stretch of the series — be careful which Twin Peaks fans you say the words “pine weasel” around — this feels, well, extremely Twin Peaks to me. It makes room for everything from Andrew Packard gleefully proclaiming “I’m aliiiiiiive” to Josie like he’s his own Dr. Frankenstein, to huge moments in the romances between the Hurley boys and their beloveds, to goddamn Bob and the Man from Another Place reappearing. It all fits.
The show reminds me of a well-recorded rock song in this way, where if you sit and single out any given instrument, you hear something almost totally new. Want to focus on how Mädchen Amick is the best-looking human being ever to be filmed for the small screen as she sits at the bar in the Roadhouse in a brown leather jacket smoking a cigarette? Want to marvel at Thomas Eckhardt’s garish robe as he breathes his last, ending legendary bad-guy actor David Warner’s brief stint on the show? Want to contemplate the cosmic injustice of a woman forced into moral dissolution by powerful men, punished by demons, and trapped in a wooden limbo forever? Twin Peaks makes all of it possible, even the things you wish weren’t.
