They made us wait after that impossibly mental eighth episode. A week off for dumb Americans to have their dumb Fourth of July celebrations. But, like everything else in this show, it was all planned for and you can bet they very deliberately put that crazy one before the break. It was an episode that needed a little coming down from, you know. An episode that wasn’t easy to move on from.

A week off and back into things though, sweet as. However I have to admit that I felt like number nine suffered from the lingering shadow of the Birth of Bob and all that, making it pretty hard to get around to writing about. There was a lot of Major Briggs. Bobby snapped open the secret message stick thing (reminded me a lot of the box that Catherine Martell had in season two, which was busted open the same forceful way). Ooh and we saw Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh, that was fun. It was all just a little slow though, and not in the way that Twin Peaks usually is.

Which is fine, that was the episode to get some of those formalities out of the way with. No worries. A week later we then rocked right back to form with one of the best hours they’ve done in the whole return. It was funny, it was revealing, it was frightening, it was... mate, it was Twin Peaks.

Some questions from E9:

Will Sky Ferreira and her terrifying rash be the new Laura?
“Around the dinner table the conversation is lively.” – what’s up with that?
The red shoes… a mixture of Audrey and Wizard of Oz, right?
How is Ben Horne still pulling birds when he’s like 80 years old?
Can somebody make Shaggy shut up, honestly?

The important stuff from that one had to do with Briggs. Hastings apparently ran a blog which included his search for the Black Lodge and he got there eventually, meeting the Major before he was ambushed, presumably by EvilCoop though we don’t know that yet, and… yeah more of that jazz. Best not to freak out about the tricky things yet. Most relevant thing right now is that Gordon, Albert and Tammy now have Dougie’s wedding ring, which was found in Briggs’ stomach. Finally a genuine link to the real Cooper and it only took half the series!

Richard Horne. They’re really not trying to be subtle with him, are they? Straight up murders the cupcake lady then threatens, strangles and robs his own grandmother. What an arsehole. A couple things that came of that: we pretty much had it confirmed that he’s Audrey’s son. Too old for them to have had another kid and he obviously ain’t Johnny’s… phew, glad to see the poor bugger survived the head knock he took the other week. Also, this bear:

HELLO JOHNNY, HOW ARE YOU TODAY!?

(Doesn't its head looks a bit like the electric tree from inside the Lodge?)

The other thing, coming from what’s her name’s call to Ben later on, is that it sounds suspiciously like they’ve been divorced somewhere along the way. Not really a shocker given what Horne used to get up to in the old days, even if he has changed his ways since. If not divorced (he’s still wearing his ring) then at least separated or separating or something.

Man, somebody’s gotta slap that Richard prick. Thing is we’ve already seen him dominated by Balthazar Getty’s character that time and his closest ally is the dumbest person on a police force that also includes Andy Brennan so he’s hardly big time. When his probable-daddy rolls into town it’s hard to see young Dick cutting it with him much either, EvilCoop prefers his henchmen with red necks and disposable lives.

What’s Nadine been up to all these years? Why, making her dreams come true of course.

The finest scene in this episode, possibly the finest all series, was when Harry Dean Stanton started singing. Absolutely perfect… right up until a red mug goes flying through the window and interrupts him. His trailer park was further out in the film but this appears to be a new site on the outskirts of Twin Peaks ("New Trout Trailer Park"). Not only does/did cupcake lady (hey, she lost a lot of blood but she was still breathing and the place hadn’t gone up in flames yet when we last saw her) live there but Shelly’s daughter and her dropkick boyfriend do too. As horrible as it was to see her squirming while he yelled at her… wouldn’t rule out the possibility that she really did do something terrible and he was justifiably angry. All that “don’t act so innocent, I know what you’ve done” stuff. He never hits her either, which is always a positive. Either way, shades of Leo and Shelly are laid on strong. Apple, fall, tree, etc.

But while Harry Dean’s serenade was #1, following on close second was the stuff in Vegas at the casino. Now, had you told me a scene involving John Belushi could ever be a highlight before then, frankly I’d have punched you in the gut and walked away. But dammit, how good! Clearly Candie was the MVP there but Belushi’s line about how Mr Jones is actually… Mr Jones was a classic. It never occurred to me that they didn’t know who Mr Jackpot was but of course they didn’t, how could they have? He didn't even know who he was and they sure didn't either. Not until he moved like a cobra and got on the local news.

I’ve had flies buzzing around that I just couldn’t catch too. Every single time I would’ve smacked a casino overlord in the face with a remote control to make them go away.

She’s fascinating, that Candie. Not only because of the pink minidress either. Some combination of her almost deliberate aloofness at the casino and here complete inconsolability at the hotel suggests that one way or another something’s up there. What was she telling the insurance guy out by the pokies? It really didn’t look like a weather guide.

The insurance guy was the same one from Dougie’s firm who was lying that time in the meeting. He’s the one who acted all suspicious about Dougie’s findings on the CASE FILES. He’s also now become a known cohort of the dude with the eyebrows who has some connection to the glass box and has an open line to EvilCoop as well as Ike the Spike (who finally stepped on his own dick and got arrested). The web is getting tighter and not only because we now know, through more stunning investigative work from Agent Tammy, that EvilCoop had something to do with the glass box as well.

Damn, Dougie! Have you been working out? Janey finally got him to a doctor and even there nobody seemed to notice how distant he constantly is. Of course, Janey was focussing on something else by that point…

The more I think about it the more that role seems ridiculously hard – hence casting Naomi Watts there. Like, she’s gotta sell a stereotypically frustrated housewife character but she’s gotta do it in a way that also plays believably with the man-child she’s married to (and not in a Marge Simpson way either). She had to seduce a person with the cranial capacity of a dog in this episode. And she bloody well did it, too. Aye, Dougie? Aye mate!

The woman who sang at the end is Rebekah del Rio, probably best known to fans of this show as the singer from Club Silencio in Mulholland Dr. – which I watched again during the Twin Peaks week off and it still holds up as a masterpiece (in case you were wondering). Another Lynch favourite and that voice is magnificent, gotta say it. That was Moby on guitar as well. Yes, that Moby. You know, we’re all sitting back watching how the new Twin Peaks followed on from the old Twin Peaks but stylistically it really has more in common with those late period Lynch films, the stuff he’s done since. A little Lost Highway, a little Inland Empire and a whole lot of Mulholland Dr… which began as the idea of an Audrey Horne spinoff, where she moved to Hollywood to become an actress. Now the circle is almost complete.

And, ah, while we’re at it all, here’s the Log Lady’s monologue in full: “Hawk, electricity is humming. You hear it in the mountains and rivers. You see it dance among the seas and stars and glowing around the moon. But in these days, the glow is dying. What will be in the darkness that remains? The Truman brothers are both true men. They are your brothers. And the others, the good ones who have been with you. Now the circle is almost complete. Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river, that which is and is not. Hawk, Laura is the one.”

Here’s to Albert for finding love. Here’s to Gordon Cole for drawing a weird elk picture and then hallucinating the image of a screaming Laura Palmer in the doorway later on when Albert came to visit. Diane is communicating with EvilCoop through texted codes. We’ve still got eight more hours of this wondrousness.

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