A Look At Twin Peaks: The Return | TV/Streaming

It is impossible to judge “Twin Peaks: The Return” on the basis of its story at this point as the various narrative strands are still being introduced and have yet to come together in any coherent matter. As a collection of individual scenes, however, they do an excellent job of reestablishing the unique tone of the old series without merely copying it. There are moments of pure surrealism, such as Cooper’s various wanderings through the Black Lodge. There are moments of grand hilarity, the funniest of which is probably the revelation of Andy and Lucy’s son, a moment that I wouldn’t dream of revealing. Horror lurks around every corner as well, both in the various depravations of the evil Cooper that we witness and the bit where the guy who is charged with keeping an eye on that glass box picks the wrong time to start making out with his girlfriend. And yes, there are even moments of swoony romance as well, the best of which comes when Shelly (Madchen Amick) and James (James Marshall) spot each other from across a crowded bar.

Any worries about Lynch being a bit rusty after going more than a decade without directing a major film will be relieved to know that his work is just as beautifully bizarre as ever. Freed from the shackles of directing according to the rules of episodic television, in which every episode has to build to some kind of climax. Here, he establishes a deliberately slow and meditative pace that may baffle newer viewers but which is tonally right for the material. He juggles the scenes in such a way that you literally can never tell what is coming next. His ability to conjure strange and haunting visual moments is as strong as ever—the scenes inside the Black Lodge, which include the sight of Laura Palmer removing her face and revealing a bright light behind the facade and something known as “the arm” are as bizarre as anything that he has ever offered up before. Lynch also gets a lot of help from his technical team as well. Cinematographer Peter Deming, who shot “Mulholland Drive,” has done the honors here and I can almost guarantee that you will not see a better-looking TV show (or possibly even a movie). Composer Angelo Badalamenti has returned as well and contributes a score that kicks off with the pure nostalgia of the iconic “Twin Peaks” theme before going off in new and memorable directions that evoke the past without becoming a slave to it. (Speaking of music, I also like how the various episodes, for lack of a better word, are concluding in the Bang Bang Bar with a different band delivering a full performance of a song.)

As we are still relatively early in the proceedings, most of the characters, new and old alike, are still being established and many of them, chiefly Sherilyn Fenn’s Audrey, have not yet made an appearance at all. Nevertheless, they are all uniformly good—the veterans slip back into their old characters with such seeming effortlessness that it feels as if they never let them slip away in the past quarter-century while the newcomers do a good job of fitting in with the tone of the material. Kyle MacLachlan gets the most on-screen time here so far and his performance is quite striking in the way that he conjures up his three variations of Cooper—the noble one trapped in the Black Lodge, the evil one capable of killing virtually anyone he encounters just for the heck of it and the one who inhabits the body of Dougie Jones but seems unsure of how to work the controls, much to the exasperation of Dougie’s wife (Naomi Watts) and the amusement of his child. Of the newcomers, the most memorable performance comes from, of all people, Matthew Lillard, who is really kind of great as an outwardly nice and normal man who is accused of committing a horrible crime that he has absolutely no memory of—his extended interrogation scene is especially powerful and gripping thanks in large part to his powerful and wrenching work.

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