10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Premiere
1. Twin Peaks, Finally, Is Back
Very few scenes in The Return take place in the titular town.
We see Derek Jacoby, (once?) the town's psychiatrist, emerge from a shanty in the fabled woods to accept a delivery of shovels. The conversation he shares with the driver is almost deliberately incomprehensible, filmed at a muted distance. The effect of the brief aside is startling; it's as if Lynch is deliberately separating us from the town on a subconscious level, much like the fractured protagonist, compounding the aforementioned sense of detachment.
We cut shortly thereafter to the Great Northern, as the brothers Horne, Ben and Jerry, discuss the latter's blooming medicinal marijuana business. Scenes in the Sheriff's station, and Hawk's foray into the woods, are similarly truncated. The plot as outlined by Showtime President David Nevins is centered around Cooper's epic odyssey back into Twin Peaks. Those alienated by the disorienting locales and characters can take heart; it is a journey we, the audience, are sharing with him.
It's only in the very last scene that we are truly allowed to luxuriate in the town's ambiance, with the new Chanteuse of the Roadhouse, Chromatics' Ruth Radelet, lending her haunted tones to a beautiful web of sexual intrigue much in the eerie and folksy atmosphere of the original series.
Twin Peaks, after a shockingly disparate and beguiling premiere, eventually came back to us.