By Caitlin Malcuit
If this wasn’t one of the most beautiful and harrowing hours of television, David Lynch wouldn’t be doing right by us. And amid the visual wildin’, we got some real, honest-to-god answers in Part 8 that led to—wait for it—more questions.
Dark Cooper and Ray (George Griffith), on the road after their prison escape, discover three mobile tracking devices on their car. They pass it off to the license plate of a truck ahead of them, and Cooper chucks the receiver out of the window. Ray, putting on airs of gratitude, thanks Coop for getting him out of the pen. He asks after Darya’s whereabouts, probably knowing that she’s dead, and asks where they’re going. “You’d probably like to go to that place they call ‘The Farm,’” says Cooper. He cuts through the shit immediately, telling Ray that he has something he wants. Ray says yes, he’s got it memorized—all the numbers. Naturally, Ray tries to extort Cooper in exchange for this information.
Cooper wants Ray to pull off the highway, and they follow the curves of the darkened road and the increasingly busted chevron signs, headlights dimly bearing down on the darkness in that true Lynchian dolor. Ray pulls over to relieve himself, and Cooper riffles through the glove compartment to grab a loaded handgun and hold his companion up. But Ray whips out his gun—no, not that one—and slugs Cooper with a few bullets ‘till he’s down.
The moment is cathartic for milliseconds before lights flash and sooty, ghostly figures mob Dark Cooper’s body and flail around Ray. The ghosts tear at Cooper’s body, patting his corpse to resuscitate, smearing blood from his torso to his face. Stuck in his horror, Ray watches as a tumorous blob rises from the body, revealing the grinning visage of BOB. He scrambles back to the car and jets, leaving Phillip Jeffries a voicemail saying that Cooper may have survived, but he saw something inside—“It may be the key to what this is all about.” Ding-ding-ding-ding!
“The Nine Inch Nails” play the Roadhouse with the appropriately discordant track “She’s Gone Away.” (Lynch and Trent Reznor collaborated on “Lost Highway”). Dark Cooper snaps awake as the music seizes.
Following the muted blues of the night drive, the show takes us to the black-and-white frame of White Sands, New Mexico in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945. A voice over a PA counts down, marshalling the flash of the first atomic bomb as Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” pierces our ears and sends us on a 10-minute visual journey through the Brakhage-esque flickers and vapors of time and space. We see the ashen ghosts spill out from a gas station convenience store, and we also see the creature from the glass box spew out the blob that contains the demonic entity of BOB.
Upon a cliff surrounded by crashing waves sits a smooth, metallic building. Inside, the Giant and a woman named Senorita Dido (Joy Nash) play back the events following the explosion. They create a golden orb in response to BOB’s arrival, an orb with the face of Laura Palmer. Dido christens her with a kiss and sends her off to Earth to oppose the evil that stemmed from man’s hubris.
On August 5, 1956, in the New Mexico desert, an egg hatches and out crawls a creature akin to a frog and insect hybrid. Two young people (Xolo Maridueña and Tikaeni Faircrest) walk home in the night, because that always bodes well. As the evening grows darker, the coal-blackened—or uranium-burned, perhaps—ghosts prowl the arid landscape. One, called the Woodsman (Robert Broski), approaches a concerned couple in a car with his cigarette, telephone wires crackling around him. He asks over and over, “Got a light?” in a guttural sizzle that sounds as if tuning fork rolled through tar. The couple drive off screaming.
As the ‘50s boy drops the ‘50s girl safely to her home, the Woodsman approaches radio station KPJK. He enters as they spin The Platters’ “My Prayer,” crushing the receptionist’s head in his hand before storming into the DJ booth. The Woodsman seizes control of the microphone and repeats, “This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within,” over and over, causing any listeners to fall unconscious. Among them is the young girl, whose mouth drops open right in time for the creature to crawl right in for a tasty late-night snack. The Woodsman wraps up his time at the station, crushing the MC’s head before disappearing into the desert’s abyss, distant horses neighing in a frenzy.
See you in two weeks!
More “Twin Peaks” Coverage:
- ‘Twin Peaks’ Part 7 Recap: A Little Ditty ‘Bout Coop and Diane
- ‘Twin Peaks’ Part 6 Recap: Call It, Friendo
- ‘Twin Peaks’ Part 5 Recap: Shovel Yourself Out of the Shit
- 'Twin Peaks' Parts 3 and 4 Recap: Doughnut Disturb
- The Time Presents Itself: 'Twin Peaks' Premiere Is A Beautiful/Terrible Nightmare
- Episode 195: ‘Twin Peaks’ and Other Tales
- There's Always Music in the Air: Revisiting the 'Twin Peaks' Soundtrack