Twin Peaks 2017 episode 3 and 4 review: An ode to Lynchian comedy

*WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR TWIN PEAKS SEASON 3 EPISODE 3 AND 4*

"Heeeeelllllloooooooooooo!"

While Twin Peaks' season 3 premiere opened strong on frights, a showcase of David Lynch's mutation as an artist into his era of Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, the following two episodes stirred a major new ingredient into the director's dreamy surrealist pot.

That is, humour. Not necessarily the humour fans will so warmly remember from the original series, though: the quaint, bumbling quirks of small town life and an FBI Agent fixated on coffee, pie, and donuts.

Here, Lynch has doubled-down on his own surrealism, and there's a tinge of nervousness to the laughter now; episodes 3 and 4 are littered with strange, stilted, but strangely effective pantomimes.

Dale Cooper, fresh out of the Black Lodge, awkwardly shuffling around a casino while hitting jackpot after jackpot; Lucy's horrified confession that she ate a piece of evidence, a small chocolate bunny, because she was suffering from gas; the introduction of Lucy and Andy's son Wally as Michael Cera dressed in poor Brando cosplay.

All scenarios that sound ridiculous on paper, but in the world of Twin Peaks, they fit. Their strangeness is both funny, but also slightly eerie; especially when characters from the first two seasons are suddenly acting colder, quieter than before. Something is so clearly wrong.

The episodes' horror moments themselves felt less immediate in their nightmarishness, too; for example, in episode 3's opening sequence in which Cooper was flung into a plane of existence inhabited by a woman with no eyes, and a skewed sense of time making it impossible for her to communicate.

These scenes, in their paper cut-out theatre-like qualities, seem so strongly reminiscent not of any of Lynch's recent work, but of his directorial debut Eraserhead. And, yet, though these flirtations in style would come off as inconsistent in the hands of almost any other director, it's a testament to the depth of Lynch's dreamworld that all of this seems to fit so beautifully together.

The question is: where do we go next? Narratively, artistically. It's surprising to see Dale Cooper launched out of the Black Lodge so soon, especially when it seemed like Hawk's mission, as dictated by the Log Lady, was to rescue him.

Yet, there are more intriguing paths which have been laid: in the exact creation of Dougie Jones, and how he could seemingly have lived a normal family life with Naomi Watts' Janey-E Jones and their son. Or in the mention of one Phillip Jeffries.

In prequel film Fire Walk With Me, Phillip Jeffries is an FBI Agent who disappeared in Buenos Aires, only to suddenly reappear two years later out of the elevator of the FBI headquarters in Philadelphia wearing the same clothes, ranting about unfamiliar events and a woman named Judy before vanishing once more.

Jeffries seems to have had some association with Cooper's evil doppelganger, with the revelation in episode 4 being that Jeffries had requested information concerning an agent in Colombia, claiming it was crucial to Cooper's safety. A week later, the agent in Colombia was killed.

Presumably there'll be more answers to this down the line, though it won't be expected that Jeffries himself will appear since, in Fire Walk With Me, he was played by the late, great David Bowie. It was confirmed by actor Harry Goaz that Bowie was meant to have a cameo in the new season, with Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost presumably having to then write around his death.

With 18 episodes in total, it'll be interesting to see whether this bold, strong start can hold out for the season's entire run.

Twin Peaks airs 2am on Mondays on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV with the Entertainment Pass, in a simulcast with the US. Twin Peaks airs 2am on Mondays on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV with the Entertainment Pass, in a simulcast with the US airing on Showtime. 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.