For better or worse, as the new season settles into what will be its normal rhythm, the episode that marks that occasion is probably one of the least focused.  It’s a bit more mundane than what we have seen before, by many measures, but that’s not the issue.  Instead, it’s that this episode progresses a ton of plot and character threads incrementally, and it doesn’t feel like there’s much else to the hour.  Which is, frankly, exactly what you expect to get when it’s just another part of a much larger whole.

 

 

One major downside to the episode is Cooper’s continued semi-catatonic journey through Dougie Jones’ life.  I felt that the joke had effectively run its course in the previous two parts, and sure enough, this episode seemed to deliver diminishing returns.  Part of the frustration is that it’s still entirely unclear what the purpose is, other than perhaps keeping Cooper from being an active participant in the story until the time is right.  I suspect that whatever Hawk is supposed to find is meant, in some way, to bring body and spirit back together.

 

To a degree it calls back to the idea that the body is just a vehicle driven by whatever mind happens to be in charge at the time, with Cooper’s control over Dougie’s body being limited in some fashion.  Meanwhile, we see that Dark Cooper still shares a body with Killer Bob, though it would appear that the two of them are co-habitating, rather than Killer Bob running the show.  It’s an interesting twist on the usual formula for Killer Bob, or so it seems from what we’ve seen before, but perhaps the garmonbozia has never been sweeter than when produced by the fear a wayward Cooper invokes.

 

 

Far more time is spent in the confines of Twin Peaks itself, which is a nice change of pace.  We meet the current Sheriff Truman’s wife, and suddenly his relative patience with Wally Brando makes a lot more sense.  We meet Shelly’s daughter Becky, and it turns out that she is in a dangerous relationship, which doesn’t exactly bode well.  Richard Horne is causing trouble in the Roadhouse (and groping underage girls), and Jacoby is off in the woods making videos laced with conspiracy theories and selling gold-painted shovels to the gullible.  One gets the sense that all of this will continue to become more prominent as the plot threads converge on Twin Peaks.

 

But that progress is a bit slow.  We learn, for example, that there is a connection between Dougie’s wife and the body that was found in South Dakota.  Evidence at that crime scene connects to Major Briggs, which is turn connects to Dark Cooper.  So the various pieces of the puzzle are starting to form a picture, but it’s still indistinct.  Since Dark Cooper apparently retains some measure of power and influence derived from the Black Lodge, it also stands to reason that the White Lodge also continues to counter those moves in some way.  There’s plenty of time, I suppose, for those connections and such to reveal themselves.

 

 

An intriguing detail is the fact that Dark Cooper’s phone call reached some kind of device in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and caused that device to transform in some fashion.  This is relevant because that is where Philip Jeffries, played briefly by David Bowie in Fire Walk With Me, happened to be stationed when the incident with “Judy” took place.  That film strongly suggests that Jeffries entered the Black Lodge at one point, so the fact that Dark Cooper has referenced him a couple times and something is happening in Buenos Aires is a sign that one of the biggest mysteries of the older material might finally get some kind of explanation.

 

It’s also a bit disappointing that there wasn’t more follow-up to the discussions between Gordon and Albert from the previous episode, which may have contributed to the feeling that this installment was marking time somewhat.  The odd scene with Agent Preston staring at pictures and fingerprints didn’t exactly inspire confidence.  Hopefully, when the next episode drops and more of the tale is told, this will seem a little more meaningful.