10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 12
9. The Tragic Ballad Of Sarah Palmer
Sarah Palmer has been reduced by the horrors of her life to an alcohol-dependent shell. She roams a supermarket aisle for Bloody Mary mix, cigarettes and vodka. If there weren't a mere three bottles left, you wonder how many would have found themselves in her trolley.
She is disturbed by the unfamiliar presence of Turkey Jerky. "Is it smoked?" she asked. "Were you here when they first came?" she asks. The subtext is brutal. She talks strange talk of the room seeming different, and of "men coming" (smoked, charred woodsmen?). She then dissolves into an OCD self-reprimand, instructing herself to "leave this place" and find her "godd*mned car keys". The looming history hovering above her head is as terrifying as her breakdown.
Hawk then pulls up to her house to check in on her. We hear a commotion in the background; she's not alone. The dreaded ceiling fan whirs. "It's certainly a godd*mned bad story, isn't it, Hawk?" she says, veering from terrified to terrifying, channelling her performance in Inland Empire with a weird, subtextual menace.
Until now, the genre stylings of the skull-crushing woodsmen have a lacked a certain human agency. These scenes, masterfully acted by Grace Zabriskie, reconcile with gut-punching dramatic depth the extreme, harrowing influence of the supernatural on the material world.