Twin Peaks: The Return Part 9 Recap: Let's Get Down To Briggs' Business

After last episode's colourless ride through time, I was looking forward to some regular Twin Peaks dealings — hanging with the sheriff, drinking the damn good coffee, histrionic women, you know the drill. And this episode delivered. Its primary directive is figuring out the nonsense happening with Major Briggs, father to Bobby Briggs and the man whose body has appeared in multiple locations since his disappearance 25 years ago. Most recently, his body popped up next to Ruth Davenport's disembodied head.

But first, we had to visit Cooper (the doppelganger), who seems to be alright after the demon-feast of last episode. Here, I thought he was dead, or at least occupied by a different demon. (Perhaps a nice one that will help Dougie be not-so-Dougie?) He seems to be back at base pace, though, albeit a little bloodied and worse for wear. Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh appear just long enough to prove to us all that Cooper's still evil. They hand him a rifle. He asks them to kill Warden Murphy and they oblige. Then, as if to prove that (again) he's still evil, Cooper pays a call to Mr. Todd, asking if "it" is "done." Apparently, "it" will happen in the next few days.

Not so fast, though: The police in Dougie's neck of the woods are on the case. In fact, in this episode, everyone's on the case, and moving swiftly. The police who leapt to defend Dougie Jones, lead by David Koechner as Detective D. Fusco, are puzzled as to why Dougie Jones is under attack. The FBI is puzzled about the whereabouts about Major Briggs, and the Sheriff over in Twin Peaks is going to get to the bottom of this note found in the bathroom door. All of these investigations are pointing towards Cooper — here we are, slouching towards Bethlehem!

When it comes to Dougie, the police have done one very important thing: They've found Ike the Spike, the hit man who attempted to kill Dougie/Cooper. He answers to Mr. Todd — due to the timing of his capture, it's not likely that the "task" evil Cooper asked about will actually get done.

The FBI, then, are working towards the center of this mystery from the side of evil Cooper and the body of Major Briggs. They lug poor Diane along with them because... actually, there's no reason she needs to accompany them on these adventures, but I'll take Laura Dern's icy GTFO stare in every scene without complaint. (Given her past trauma with Cooper, the emotional part of my brain wants her to go home and have a stiff cocktail on a velour lounge chair. I would watch a full episode of that.) They learn in this episode that Cooper has escaped from jail — whoops. But more importantly, they go to investigate the bloated body that seems to belong to Major Briggs. The writers take a moment to remind us that the coroner (Jane Adams! My girl! Loved you in Hung!) found a ring in the belly of the body that belonged to Dougie Jones.

This investigation of the body leads the FBI to William Hastings, who in turn provides a slough of information necessary to decode the Cooper puzzle, as I've decided to call it. Hastings maintained a blog dedicated to finding another dimension. He tells the FBI that just before his wife Ruth died, they found the other dimension. There, they met Major Briggs. Briggs wanted cold, hard info from them because he wanted to go a "different place" — he wanted coordinates and apartment numbers. When he received this info, he had a version of a Cooper-gasm. (He floated towards the heaven and said, "Cooper.")

That's when the bad stuff started happening. Hastings's histrionics seemed to imply that this was the "inciting incident" for the whole show — this is why all the bad things have been happening. Perhaps this is why the young boy died in the hit and run. This is why Amanda Seyfried is currently snuggling with an abusive boyfriend. This is why we had to witness a violent death-by-ice-pick.

And it all comes back to Major Briggs, whom Hastings circles on a paper police lineup.

The Twin Peaks folks are coming to the same conclusion about Briggs. They trace the note Hawk found to the Briggs homestead, where Betty Briggs is expecting their arrival. She was told this would happen, you see, and has an informative gift to give the guys. The Twin Peaks storyline is beginning to resemble a scavenger hunt — find a paper, go to the next location. Receive another tiny paper from the inside of a metal tube. It, like the paper from the bathroom door, contains a message; this one is from Major Briggs. One paper instructs the guys — including Bobby Briggs himself — to go 253 east of Jackrabbit Palace. Jackrabbit Palace is a land of make believe, but its location is perhaps the key to finding the Black Lodge. The other paper gives a series of numbers — coordinates? — and reads, "Cooper/Cooper." Hm. That seems awfully familiar to the information Hastings gave "the Major."

This episode's orphans — brief, seemingly out-of-context scenes — were a little more intriguing than most. (There are times they seem as if they've been selected from the David Lynch archives and are just there to give us more befuddling content. #Goldenshovels.) We have a bearded man who looks a little like the woodsman from last episode talking to his foot.

"I am not your foot!" the foot insists in a voice I'm not not convinced is Jenny Slate's. (Marcel the Shell, is that you?)

The episode ends with a roadhouse orphan, as many of the episodes have. These last-minute scenes tend to be tangential, but their ritualistic occurrence is, at this point, soothing. In this, we meet Ella, who is played by Sky Ferreira in her anticipated debut. Ella just got fired from her waitress job, which is fine. What's interesting is that she seems to have a coded language with Chloe (Karolina Wydra). They talk penguins and zebras in a way that suggests they're not talking about animals at all. Perhaps they're talking about the Black Lodge. Perhaps they, like everyone else in this episode, are talking about Major Briggs.