Hey we learned some stuff this week. New information came to light. Revelations were made. Theories were given a further step towards validation. Twin Peaks started acting kinda like a normal television show again.

Although only a little bit, there was still a scene towards the end where a dude literally just sweeps a floor for multiple minutes of screen times to the tune of Green Onions (jam!). Way too long to get away with being anything other than brilliantly captivating… and yet that’s what it was. Man, I was all over that mess like don’t miss the bit on the left and make sure you bring that pile in nice and tight so you can get at it with the dustpan (we didn’t quite get that far, sadly) ooh and remember to sweep under the barstools.

Then the phone rang (we were at the roadhouse bar) and the guy that looks like Jacques Renault answered and it turns out he’s actually Jean Michel Renault and yeah, another one of those buggers. It’s the same actor as played Jacques though so this wasn’t the most guarded secret out there.

Nor was the fact that the pages Hawk found in the bathroom stall were Laura Palmer’s missing diary entries – the ones that mention the dream she has in Fire Walk With Me - where Annie Blackburn comes to her in a dream and warns that Good Cooper is stuck in the Lodge still. Now, Hawk was the one who first elucidated to Cooper the legend of the Lodge. Even that thing about your soul being ‘utterly annihilated’, I believe the words were. So Hawk has some point of reference here, plus he mentions how Andy saw Cooper return from the Lodge way back when (season two’s finale). Seems like the kinda thing that might change your life to know about but then 25 years is a long time.

Hawk explained all that to the Sheriff, who has a chat over the phone with his brother Harry who’s clearly getting pretty sick there. Note there was no audible voice coming from the other line in the scene while you could hear Sheriff Frank’s conversation with Doc Hayward from both ways (only just). Nice to see Hayward getting a scene, even if over skype. Warren Frost died not long after filming and while a man in the state he was (he lived to be 91) didn’t exactly ring true as a regular fisherman, you’re a cold-hearted person if you can’t just go along with it for the fun.

Anyway, Frank called up Hayward to chat about Cooper and it’s revealed that Cooper visited Audrey Horne in hospital as she lay in a coma following the bank explosion. No mention on what happened to her after or even before but we can deduce that this could only have been EvilCoop. Now, if you, like I, are of the persuasion that Richard Horne might have been fathered by a demonic dimensioned doppelganger then that might just be the hint you need to solidify that.

This was one of those episodes where I experience a moment of temporal disorientation. Specifically the feeling of: this had better not only have another five minutes to run because I’m enjoying this. Except that this week I checked the clock first and it wasn’t even half way through. There’s a hint right there that we covered some ground. Like for one thing, Andy has a shady source who’s willing to talk (what the hell is Andy out investigating?) but he never showed for their clandestine meeting. And also the latest Renault Bro is slightly worried about some scandal involving money and an underage hooker or two that might cost him his business but probably not.

A lot more immediately disturbing is the military realisation that those prints of Garland Briggs’ weren’t just found at the murder scene… they belonged to the victim. I’d thought they knew that already and were investigating why all these people keep turning up sharing Briggs’ prints but now, duh, I realise I’ve been a bit dumb there. Although in my defence it’s equally as feasible that his exact fingerprints are transposed onto different bodies as it is a body to appear that’s roughly 30 years younger than its own age.

Speaking of prints…

(The FBI sure like their Samsung’s don’t they? No wonder they haven’t solved a damn thing yet).

But EvilCoop’s fingerprints appear to be the mirror image of Original Cooper’s. Albert proposed some ‘Cro-Magnon at the prison tried to line this up to make it look like the original’. More likely, given what we know that he doesn’t, is that the whole other side of the mirror thing is in action here. Good versus evil, reversed prints and all. Opposites and whatever. If you look at the horrifically calculating EvilCoop compared to the complete blank slate of Dougie Jones then that’s another layer to this too.

“Tammy, you’ve been doing excellent work, passing one test after another. Put out your hands. Flip ‘em over. I’m. Very. Very. Happy. To. See. You. Again. Old. Friend. This is the spiritual mound, the spiritual finger. You think about that Tammy.”

That’s Gordon talking. The spiritual mound is her ring finger. There’s been a recurring thing about a green ring and the Black Lodge – there was that thing with Cooper’s ring and the giant too. Probably connected, those two things. Other than that… buggered if I know.

I can’t quite decide if the show respects Tammy or not. Like, her name is Tammy for one thing. Not Tamsin or Tamara but the slightly juvenile sounding Tammy. Although in wiki-ing the name to find out what it’s actually short for I did notice that in Greek the name comes from the word for twin and in Hebrew from the word for palm tree. Trees and twins, sounds familiar alright. But then they also make a point of staring at her ass, they also make a point of Denise giving Gordon a word on his intentions and Diane straight up tries to humiliate her. Yet you can’t deny she’s done a good job on the ol’ case so far. If this were a Clarice Starling type role though you’d have assumed Lynch woulda given it to a more esteemed actor than his mate the musician with a new album just come out.

Which takes us to the defining scene of the episode and one of the most crucial things we’ve witnessed so far. Diane, grizzled alcoholic who needs plenty of convincing to go along with the plot, gets face to face with EvilCoop and is absolutely terrified. They had an encounter at her place many years back and, yeah, you can probably guess from the reunion that she hasn’t gotten over whatever it was in the intervening passage of time. We’ve never seen Diane before, we’ve never quite known if she was Dale’s secretary or lover or muse of all of the above. We don’t know if that encounter’s what drove her to drink. We don’t even know what it was that happened that night that they’ll each never forget.

But we do know that Laura Dern absolutely obliterates that scene, not only adding to what’s already a stellar IMDb page but also giving this new series of Twin Peaks a real kick in the guts that it needed as we enter the middle third of what Lynch has made several mentions of as an 18 hour film. In other words: things are about to get real.

EvilCoop then manipulates/blackmails his way out of prison despite Gordon Cole specifically saying to keep him in custody no matter what and he leaves in a rental car with his mate Ray Monroe. I’d call that a reason to be wary, sure. Elsewhere Dougie judo chopped a murder midget. Like, out of the blue he saw the little guy coming and just whupped his ass. Janey helped too, getting in a couple blows before the friggin’ tree, the one from the Lodge, shows up and starts telling him to squeeze his hand off. At least the Lodgers have his best interests at heart, right? They honestly have to peel skin off the gun handle afterwards.

Haha, and then the slightly off-kilter witness reports. Douglas Jones, he moved like a cobra. Yep, that’s the Dougie I know. Shows that beneath it all he’s still got that FBI training in there somewhere, although I’m giving up seeing real Coop any time soon even despite the advancements on both Dougie and EvilCoop’s side in part seven. Which means that’ll be exactly the time he comes right. I’m gonna feel super bad for Janey and Sonny Jim when that happens, I’ll tell you that much. Starting to grow on those two.

Ashley Judd is on this show. She’s already been introduced but I legit didn’t recognise her. Ben Horne’s secretary. Ben Horne… he’s not quite the same, aye? A little doddery these days but mostly I think he just took that nice guy thing too seriously over the last couple decades. Civil War General Ben Horne was a step in the wrong direction (although in isolation I didn’t hate that) and he couldn’t survive being the devious sod he began as but… I dunno. He’s not as eccentric anymore. He coulda kept that up without being an arsehole. Sorta think it’s down to Richard Beymer being nearly 80 years old now though.

So secretary Beverley and Ben Horne are looking for a mysterious humming sound. Is it coming from there? No, it’s coming from there. Hmm except it isn’t. Eh, maintenance will take care of it, by the way this key came in the mail. Room 315. The room Agent Cooper got shot in, back around the time of the Laura Palmer case. Who’s Laura Palmer? Baby that’s a loooong story. Beverley also has a very sick… husband (?)… and he might be a bit emotionally manipulative. Presumably there’ll be more of that down the line although we haven’t seen anything more from Shelley’s kid or Wally Brando or James Hurley or Shaggy from Scooby Doo or a few others who’ve been in and out again like that. What’s Bobby up to? This is what happens when you double the episode order with production already started.

Oh and spare a prayer for Jerry Horne who is lost and high in the woods and somebody stole his care and he doesn’t know where he is. Stay strong, Jer. We’re all with you on this one. (Did Richard steal his car last episode? Because he parked his truck next to another car in a wooded area when he went to clean the blood off the grill – maybe figured his (probable) uncle might not mind. Also… was that the stolen car in the background of the dude Andy spoke to?).

Can you head that humming noise? Pretty sure it’s coming from the ads on the page, best give one a click to be sure. Or just whack one to support the Nichey Niche, either way.