Twin Peaks season 3, episode 14 review: The Monica Bellucci dream
'We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?'
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Is Twin Peaks about to reach terminal velocity? Or are we just suffering the symptoms of prestige TV? The expectation that every series is a puzzle, with the pieces laid out in front of audiences, and a clean and simple answer at journey’s end.
The clues have certainly been laid out. In fact, they were projected over Andy (Harry Goaz) in his brief trip into the dimension inhabited by the Giant (Carel Struycken). The birth of BOB. The Woodsmen. Naido, the woman with no eyes who clicks like a dolphin. Two Coopers. The telephone pole bearing the number 6.
One could go mad trying to tie these answers together. The problem is, Twin Peaks is the world of dreams. And dreams mean entirely different things to different people. All we can be certain of is that these threads are slowly being drawn together with Twin Peaks itself at the epicentre. So perhaps the better question is, under whose bidding is this happening?
James Hurley (James Marshall) was told a curious story by his co-worker Freddy (Jake Wardle), for example. Freddy – ignoring the trite Cockney-isms, and the fact no one outside of a Dickens novel calls it “London town” - wears a glove that he refuses to ever take off, confessing, “It’s a part of me”. He was compelled to buy it from the local hardware store after being transported into a vortex and coming face-to-face with the Fireman.
The Fireman is exactly how the Giant (or someone who looks like the Giant) described himself to Andy; this individual also gave Freddy the message to leave “London town” and come to Twin Peaks.
It's hard to tell who exactly on screen is in control of their own destinies, if anyone, and who may be propelled in their actions by the machinations of another dimension. We discover even that Janey-E just happens to be Diane's sister; a fairly usual coincidence in television, but with Twin Peaks it seems to bear a deeper significance.
Naido (Nae Yuuki) also finds herself in Twin Peaks, seemingly projected out of the vortex and left naked on the forest floor for Andy and his fellow police officers to find. Her clicks now take on a new urgency, and it’s a wonder whether we’ll ever find out what her message is meant to be.
Naido was found because Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) led his co-workers to Jack Rabbit's Palace, an old hideaway he would sometimes visit with his father, having now been instructed by him to return as part of the message in the metal capsule hidden in the Briggs family home. Lines and tracks, but is General Briggs responsible for Naido's deliverance, or should we be looking to who first gave Briggs the message?
Indeed, Twin Peaks is often about the delivering of messages, through dreams and dimensions. Gordon Cole finally telephoned Twin Peaks this episode, to discover the information hidden within the missing pages of Laura Palmer’s diary, discovered in the bathroom stall of the sheriff department by Hawk. These are the pages that indicate there are two Coopers.
Cole is transmitted another message this episode, too. One from his own dreams, in which he meets with Monica Bellucci (yes, the real Monica Bellucci) in a Parisian café, and she points behind him: to the past, and to a memory of Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) entering his office to deliver his own message, an event predicted by a dream of Cooper's. He points to Cooper and says, “Who do you think that is there?”
The dream echoes a conversation between Albert (Miguel Ferrer) and Tammy (Chrysta Bell) moments earlier, in which he tells her of the very first Blue Rose case: in 1975, Cole and Jeffries came upon a dying Lois Duffy, whose final words were “I’m like the Blue Rose". Her murderer was found screaming in the corner: also Lois Duffy. Tammy understands that Lois, like a Blue Rose, was not natural. A conjuring. A tulpa.
Does this have anything to do with the Sarah Palmer we see at the episode’s end? When continually threatened and harassed by a man at the bar, she opens her faces like Laura Palmer did in the Red Room and reveals a void which utters, “Do you really want to f*ck with this?”
Indeed, there’s always been a sense that the characters we see on screen are merely pawns in a greater game. One for which Laura Palmer was like the Queen’s chess piece, and so we see her projected to Andy by the Giant surrounded by angels. Will we ever find out who this game is being played out between?
In the wise words of Monica Bellucci, “We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?"
Twin Peaks airs 2am on Mondays on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV with the Entertainment Pass, in a simulcast with the US. The episode will then be shown again at 9pm on the following day. You can catch up now on season one and two via Sky Box Sets and NOW TV.
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