Diane, baby. It’s been a minute. Actually come to think of it, not sure we’ve ever really seen you before. In fact we’ve never even heard your voice – you were just an address. Or a muse. Or something. But Albert knows where you drink and what do you know, there ya were.

Now… if you could somehow bring Agent Cooper back to reality then that’d be cool.

It was clear roughly three minutes into the premiere of the rebooted series that trying to place these episodes into any kind of usual judgement would be insane. First off because the stuff we glean might feel wasted at the time but then some clue could become crucial in time, casting the whole episode in a new light. Like, maybe. But also because Twin Peaks 2017 is just way better absorbed without too much critical telly thinking. Who cares about episode ratings when you get to see Albert cursing out Gene Kelly in the rain?

So Laura Dern is Diane, the unseen recipient of all those tape memos that Coop famously made throughout the first couple seasons (and the movie too). Seen a few people guess as much from the cast list, makes sense. One of David Lynch’s favourites and all, plus you know she’s got that on-screen thang going with Kyle McLaughlin going all the way back to Blue Velvet. She was only seen for a second and her first task will probably involve dealing with Evil DoppelCoop so good luck with that. But this… yeah, this is an exciting development.

The bulk of the episode was devoted to the ongoing trials and tribulations of Dougie Jones, however. Still trying to chug away at that job of his, we pick up the ep exactly where we left off last time with Dougie getting told off for loitering at the cowboy statue. Bloody wife forgot to pick him up, ended up getting a lift with the cops.

I realise that we're supposed to see Dougie interacting in society as comedy, like look how polite everyone is that nobody's making a deal of this nutcase. Everybody's so patient with him and yet he's stumbling around like he's just had a stroke. Oh yeah, it's funny. But it's so weird too. I'm gathering Dougie was pretty aloof before, being the decoy duck creation of EvilCoop and everything. But how in the hell did Naomi Watts end up married to this idiot? Even before he was swapped for Dale he was running up $20k of gambling debts and whoring around.

In between getting yelled at by the missus, sharing a moment with the young lad and scribbling symbols all over those insurance forms – guided by the light in the same way that the red room told him which pokies to play, supernaturally guiding him to apparently discover some secret fraud attempt – Old Mate Dougie seems to pick up a few new skills. As much as the clapping thing with the lights, the boxing stance from the poster and the finger to the lips in shush were just Dougie assimilating to his strange new existence, it also feels like the kind of thing that might come in handy again in some callback, Karate-Kid-Wax-On-Wax-Off way. Don’t you reckon?

The boxing stance especially because there’s a dwarf fellow out there tryna kill him. Already wiped the floor with the chick with the line to Buenos Aires last time, which suggests this has something to do with DoppelCoop. She called the black box which DoppelCoop somehow tripped into some magic shapeshift… but the dude who sends the assassination targets to the dwarf was the bloke from the New York highrise – meaning there’s a connection to the big empty box from the premiere too. Also the lady who gets knifed is the one who called the hit on Dougie that got his car blown up, so who’s on whose side? Eventually this’ll all fall into some proper focus so don’t get caught up on the little things, just note the connections as they come.

RIP to this dude’s favourite shank. Always a sad day when you have to bury a reliable prison weapon. (Bro, don’t forget to take a bath when ya get home either).

We’ve been missing out on the soap opera romance of season one with this reboot but we’re still getting some of that soap opera guidance as to which characters are heroes and which are heels. Young Richard Horne is not one to sympathise with, for example. We’re given reason to almost feel sorry for him when Balthazar Getty starts calling him kid but then he drives outta there like a madman and runs over an actual kid. Driving on the wrong side of the road too, in case you thought it was gonna be an accident. The Murder Dwarf (Ike The Spike!) is also not a nice fellow, nor the bloke at Dougie’s firm who gives him a shifty glance, the bloke he called a liar last time.

And that one dude at the cop station who’s a complete arse. Makes fun of the Sheriff’s dead kid, took a big payoff from Dickie Horne, made fun of Andy that time. Usually when things get dark and serious it’s the guys like him who very quickly find themselves out of their depth. Balthazar can handle himself in a tough situation, he can do magic… although his liver’s giving him problems. This dude though, he’ll get in over his head just you wait.

Are these numbers relevant?

No Dr Jacoby this week. Hell, we’re still missing a number of familiar faces as the show takes its time unfolding things. Audrey, anyone? Doubt that Donna’s gonna show, Harry either. Big Ed hasn’t made his reappearance yet, while we got a quick look at James in episode two and he’s not been back since. There’s been no Bobby the last two eps, pretty sure. Argh, there’s too much going on to notice though. One more reason to eat what’s served up on the table, trust the cooks.

Hawk figured out the heritage thing. He dropped a coin in the men’s room, it had a Native American face on the back. Then he noticed a visage with a headdress on the stall, a manufacturer’s logo. So he tears up the stall and while I’m sitting there wondering how this’ll relate to that time in season two that the one-armed man went crazy in there it turns out there were a couple pieces of paper hidden in the walls. At a guess here… the missing pages from Laura Palmer’s diary?

Oh Naomi Watts paid off the guys Dougie owed cash to. That oppressive nagging of hers finally coming in handy. Naomi Watts is a big casting, another Lynch favourite. If she’d only been tossed in this show to yell at an invalid Dougie then we’d be watching an enormous waste of an enormous talent so you knew her character was gonna swing it back around soon enough. Tough dame that she is.

Shout out to Jeremy Davies on the left too, he was so good in Justified. Moustache is a little weak, but.

Ah yes and speaking of acting talent it may well be that there is none greater than the legendary Harry Dean Stanton. Into his 90s now, he’s still, on occasion, rolling up on set for the odd thing and there he was, Carl Rodd. Still chugging along, still puffing on those cigs.

That big chap sitting next to him fits the ‘interesting to look at’ bill but his acting was mostly awful. No worries, this show made Leo Johnson work, acting’s not really the main focus. Although Harry Dean gives an Oscar worthy twenty seconds when talking about smoking. Big fella says he quit, Harry Dean says he’s smokes for 75 years, every day. Then he laughs the most well-earned laugh in the history of film or television.

Now, if you ain’t seen the movie then you probably should get to that sooner rather than later. It’s been referred to plenty already and you don’t wanna miss out on that, this show is hard enough to keep up with at the best of times. Brace yourself because she’s a tearjerker, that Fire Walk With Me is. But you also get to meet curmudgeonly trailer park owner Carl Rodd, who it’s implied might have visited the Black Lodge before. Well, he’s there when Horne Lad kills the kid and he seems to see the boy’s soul rise up to the sky in light as it happens. He’s a conduit of some sorts, that man. If it means we get to see more of Mr Stanton then yes please, let’s do that.

Still waiting on David Bowie to show up, alive and well.

We did, however, close out on a killer Sharon van Etten track and that was enough for now.

Find an ad on the page somewhere, pretend you're Dougie and the ad is a police badge. Go on, give it a whack. You'll be helping the Cache as you do.