Twin Peaks has finally returned after 25ish years, and it's kinda like it never left.
Tonight's two-hour premiere felt pretty much exactly like two hours of Twin Peaks should: like a dream mixed with a nightmare where nothing makes sense, all in its own absurd little world.
This time, however, the world's been expanded a little bit. But we'll get to that in a second. First, let's talk about all the old characters we caught up with tonight.
Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and Andy (Harry Goaz) are married, and their jobs haven't changed. Lucy's still the police station secretary, confusing men who come in asking for Sheriff Truman by asking them which Sheriff Truman they're looking for (one is sick and one is fishing). Their son, Wally, is now 24.
Hawk (Michael Horse) is also still a deputy, and tonight he was taking calls from the Log Lady (the late Catherine E. Coulson), whose log was certain he was missing something related to Agent Cooper. This sent Hawk into the woods.
Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) spends her days chain-smoking and watching animals devour animals, and Shelly (Madchen Amick) and James (James Marshall) seem to be well-adjusted adults hanging out at the Roadhouse. Shelly's a mom now, and James has been quiet ever since a motorcycle accident.
Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) still runs the Great Northern with a new assistant named Beverly (Ashley Judd), and his brother Jerry has grown a beard fully embraced Washington's legal weed with his own business.
Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) lives in a trailer in the woods, still wears his weirdo glasses, and has a lot of shovels for some reason.
And then there's Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), who's been missing ever since he went to the Black Lodge.
The real Dale Cooper has been trapped in the lodge ever since while his doppelganger—with long greasy hair, a snakeskin-patterned shirt, a leather jacket, and a penchant for violence—has been out and about, collecting cohorts, murdering people, and framing others for his crimes.
It seems that he even made it over to Buckhorn, South Dakota where a librarian has been murdered (shot through the eye). Her head was laid on her pillow, but the body under the covers was that of a large man.
A local principal named Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard) was arrested for the crime, and at first it seemed like his wife might have had a hand in setting him up, since they were both having affairs. Then, evil Dale Cooper showed up at their house.
"You did good. You followed human nature perfectly," he said, then shot her through the eye.
Evil Cooper wanted to know what Hastings knew, but his pals Ray and Daria weren't being particularly helpful. He soon discovered they were being paid to kill him, so he killed Daria, downloaded the schematics for the prison Ray had gotten himself thrown in, and got a and was on his way to get Ray out of the prison he claimed to be in (so he could find out what he knew & kill him) when the Black Lodge opened right above the highway.
Meanwhile, real Cooper was still trapped in the Black Lodge's red room, with older versions of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), and the one-armed man (Al Strobel), along with a tree with a brain that called itself the arm (replacing the Man from Another Place). They told him a lot of very familiarly confusing things, but also that he could get out of the lodge if his doppelganger came back in.
Cooper eventually found an exit from the red room that opened up over the highway. He fell through space and right into the premiere's strangest subplot of all.
Somewhere in NYC, a young man had been tasked with sitting on a couch and keeping watch over a large glass box, occasionally having to switch out the memory cards in the cameras pointed at it. He wasn't allowed to bring anyone in to see the glass box, but when the security guard mysteriously disappeared, he took the opportunity to sneak in his curious friend Tracy.
He explained that an anonymous billionaire had set up this box, and he was supposed to watch it in case anything appeared inside it. Nothing had so far, but that all changed when he and Tracy started having sex on the couch. The box went black, and a terrifying demon appeared inside it. Suddenly, the demon was outside the box, murdering the two lovebirds.
What they were completely unaware of was that before the sex, while they had been outside checking for the missing security guard, Agent Cooper himself had appeared in the box after escaping the Black Lodge, but no one was there to spot him. He then disappeared and was sent hurtling through space or something that kind of looked like space.
So...that was all very weird. It looked and felt like the old Twin Peaks, but so far, it's a little difficult to tell if all of this will come together in a satisfying way. In other words, it's hard to tell if we're in season one of Twin Peaks or late season two.
Either way, at this point, we're in.
Just a couple of questions:
Who was that creepy dude in the jail, two cells down from the principal? And why did he disappear?
What job was that guy at the desk hiring someone for and who's controlling him? Could it be that the glass box needs a new watcher? What "anonymous billionaire" owns that glass box? Will we meet the glass box's new watcher?
Will we get to meet Wally???
Twin Peaks airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.