Let's Rock

My rewatch of Twin Peaks: The Return continues. I’ve seen Parts 9 through 14 again, now. This block of episodes includes the resolution of some of Dougie’s problems and other threads and paves the way for Cooper’s return in Part 16. Most significantly, the second best character from the original series finally reappears, Sherilyn Fenn’s Audrey Horne. Of all of the changes, or lack thereof, experienced by the original characters since the first run of the show, the cruelest fate seems to have befallen Audrey.

We last saw her entering a bank in Twin Peaks just before it was destroyed in an explosion in the final, cliffhanger episode of the second season. What has happened to her since is not explained; when we first see her in season three, she is arguing bitterly with a disabled man named Charlie (he appears to be a little person; apparently the actor suffered from severe juvenile arthritis which curtailed his physical development to some degree). Sherilyn Fenn, once called one of the most beautiful women in the world, in her early fifties when The Return was filmed, rather harshly contrasts now with Audrey’s youthful form. She is still recognizable and pretty, but has aged less well than some of the other former ingenues of the series.

Although we didn’t know her fate after the second season, it’s even more mysterious how she wound up in her current predicament. She’s married to a man who seems intent on controlling her, arguing with her, even gaslighting her. We can’t trust him, but it’s also devastating to see Audrey, once a stunningly beautiful, courageous and extremely resourceful girl, who seemed likely to inherit her father, Ben’s, business empire, as a puffy, washed-up shrew, screaming pathetically at a strange husband the young Audrey would not have seen herself with in a million years. Their bickering, in a long scene carried over to subsequent episodes, is both deeply unsettling and deeply off-putting; it’s one of the major moments in season three in which Lynch smashes audience expectations and underlines his themes of loss and age and stasis. Lynch’s work is full of Brechtian distancing; here it’s open hostility.

As we will glimpse before the season wraps up, there is something very different going on with Audrey than what we see. In her early scenes, she wants her husband to take her to the Roadhouse to search for her missing lover (an unknown character named Billy). Why she can’t simply take herself to the Roadhouse is not explained. However, at one point in Part 13, Charlie says that they may “have to stop this story” if Audrey doesn’t change her attitude; she asks, tauntingly, “What story is that, Charlie?” which is also the name of the episode. Although nothing is made clear, it suddenly seems that we might not be seeing reality—that, possibly, Audrey might be in a mental health facility, role-playing with a doctor, and we see what she’s imagining. Her final appearance, in Part 16, supports this theory, as, after visiting and dancing at the Roadhouse, she suddenly wakes up in another place. We can’t see where she is, but it’s not where she thinks she is.

Audrey’s story is one of the most frustrating threads of The Return since, after the original show, we care tremendously about her. There are intimations that Cooper’s doppelgänger might have assaulted her while she was in the hospital after the bank explosion, which would have been a particularly horrific, given her love for the special agent. Then, there’s her son (presumably), Richard Horne, the violently deranged black sheep of the Horne clan who killed a child in a hit-and-run and attempted to murder the witness who could identify him. Who is Richard’s father? Is it Evil Cooper? This question will be addressed in a later episode—but the horror of this and its effect on Audrey will be left unresolved. If there is a fourth season, it seems likely that this storyline will be one of the major threads. (But who knows—Lynch is nothing if not unpredictable.)

Ed Hurley has only a minor role to play in The Return, but gives us one of the most poignant moments. We knew from the first season that Ed and Norma were high school sweethearts, but a series of unfortunate events led to Norma marrying Hank Jennings when Ed was in Vietnam and Ed later marrying the insane Nadine. Ed never got over the loss, such that in the first two seasons he and Norma were eternally pining for each other. It’s not clear whether Ed and Nadine are still together now, but Hank Jennings died years ago. Yet Ed apparently never made a play to get Norma back once and for all. He visits the Double R in season three; later, the credits roll as we watch him slowly and sadly eating dinner alone at the desk of his gas station. In all the years, he didn’t step up to right the wrongs done to him and Norma and it seems she moved on long ago.