Women Are Still the Backbone of 'Twin Peaks'

After the surreal maelstrom of the first five episodes, Twin Peaks: The Return has now settled down enough that themes can start to emerge. "Part 6" is, among other things, about the sacrifices—mental, emotional, and physical—that women make for men.

We don't know much about Janey-E, wife of Dougie and now unwitting companion of post-Lodge Cooper. But one thing we can figure out, from the way she immediately snaps into caretaker mode when her dazed faux-husband (fauxband?) is delivered to her door, is that her life with Dougie has prepared her for being the only adult in the room. She's been guiding Cooper, correcting him, cooking for him, and generally keeping him in line since he returned from the Black Lodge. Faced with information in this week's episode that could have made her walk away, she instead goes to bat for him in an extraordinary scene where she gives Dougie's would-be extortionists a piece of her mind.

"What kind of world are we living in where people can behave like this, treat other people this way without any compassion or feeling for their suffering? We are living in a dark, dark age and you are part of the problem," she spits at the men who are trying to collect on Dougie's gambling debts. They want $32,000 in interest on a $20,000 loan, but she sends them away with a total of 25 grand—"that is my first, last, and only offer to you." "Tough broad," one of them says admiringly as she speeds away. If these were the only guys out for Dougie's blood, you get the feeling they'd back off out of respect.

Then there's the brutal murder of Lorraine (whose name, as far as I know, we only get from the credits)—the nervous woman with the Blackberry who last week seemed to be masterminding or at least overseeing a whole other hit on Dougie. We now know that her direct employer is Mr. Todd, the haunted-looking guy with the midcentury modern office, whom we last saw saying "tell her she's got the job" and who now terminates that job by sending her photograph to a hit man. We know, or are pretty sure, that Mr. Todd's employer is Doppelcoop.

We don't know precisely what Lorraine is killed for; maybe because her hired guns have had a hard time finding Dougie, maybe because she sent the code "ARGENT 2" to that box in Buenos Aires. But it's clear that she's taking the blame for a bungled hit that has in fact failed on numerous axes, not least the fact that the real target was sucked into the Black Lodge and dismantled days ago. She's a sacrificial lamb, and she winds up on the spit.

But even adding in two different instances of maternal loss—the mother whose child is killed by Richard Horne's car, and our new information about why Frank Truman's wife is such a harridan—both these scenes could just be coincidental occurrences of female stoicism and sacrifice. What brings them together into a theme is a nearly-wordless moment that only reveals its full import to fans of original Peaks. Albert Rosenfield exits a cab in the pouring rain, cursing Gene Kelly, after being reassured by a warm and dry Gordon Cole that his mission is very important. He enters a bar and zeroes in on a woman with her back to him, who's sporting a bright white bob hairdo and a lavishly embroidered dress. "Diane?" he says, and she turns around.

For David Lynch fans who didn't watch Twin Peaks, this is still a fun moment: the return of the Dern. (This episode also features Lynch faves Harry Dean Stanton and Balthazar Getty; the gang may not all be here, but an awful lot of them are showing up.) But for people who loved the original, it's a bombshell. Diane was, of course, Cooper's offscreen amanuensis, with whom he communicated solely through tape recordings. It was Diane who sent him silicone earplugs when the Icelanders keep him up at night; it was Diane to whom he told his dreams while lying bleeding on the floor. It was Diane who transcribed the tapes, who kept the notes, who quietly and invisibly knit together the story of what happened to Laura Palmer. We've never seen her before. It was her job to remain unseen—Cooper's shadow and repository. But here she is.

Between these three women—Janey-E, Lorraine, and Diane; the blonde, the dark, and the white—we have a spectrum of ways that women lay themselves on the line for men. Diane toils in silence, Janey seeks out and stands up, Lorraine is hunted down. One loses her face, one her cool, and one her life. What would they say to each other, if they had a chance?

Notes for Peaks freaks of old:

• If you'd like to celebrate Diane being made flesh by revisiting some of Dale's tapes, a collection (not all of which appeared in the show) was released on cassette back in the cassette era and is now available on YouTube. Unfortunately it ends with the events of the episode "May The Giant Be With You," and thus doesn't make it as far as my favorite: "Diane, I am now upside down."
• It paled in comparison to the Diane revelation, but I yelped out loud when we saw the traffic light.
• This would be a deep cut, but my simultaneous Peaks rewatch has now made it into the Valley of Dumb Subplots in season 2, so I was reminded about newspaper owner Dougie Milford. The name seems like a coincidence, except that Milford was an extremely significant figure in Mark Frost's book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, in which he was revealed to be a government agent working with Project Blue Book and deeply steeped in the weirdness surrounding the town. Is there a connection between that Dougie and this one? Agent Tamara Preston, the wiggly one who's been traveling with Albert and Gordon, figures into The Secret History as well.
• I don't know what Hawk found in that stall door, but 25 years previous, Philip Gerard came by the station to show Sheriff Truman some shoes and excused himself to take medication in that very bathroom. Truman, meanwhile, wandered off to take a statement and forgot about Gerard for what may have been hours. Gerard emerged from the bathroom later in the episode, transformed into MIKE, but he would have had plenty of time to write a note.

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