10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 10
6. Erm, So Johnny Horne Isn't Dead
Last week's review included an embarrassingly premature obituary. As revealed in Part 10, the late Johnny Horne is not as late as the lingering shot of him was misguidedly interpreted.
His fate is somehow worse than that. We found Johnny strapped to a chair in Sylvia's home, wearing a helmet, his feet tied to both chair and table. His only stimuli is a grotesque Lynchian creation of a comforter: a decapitated teddy bear with a glass sphere acting as its head, lighting up when triggered by a repeat, grimly rhetorical greeting of "Hello, Johnny. How are you today?" The answer is a depressing not good. Horne is a prisoner to both himself and the abuse suffered by his carer/mother Sylvia in another scene in which the theme of domestic abuse is explored.
Richard Horne exploded into the room demanding money from Sylvia to leave town. She refused. This compelled Richard to grab her by the throat and threaten to "squeeze the sh*t out of" the "c*ck-sucking bitch". All the while, the comforter continued to drone "Hello, Johnny. How are you today?" The scene was played for both morbid laughs and the sheer need - not want - for catharsis and comeuppance. Sylvia was another female character ruined by the evil that men do.
Mileage varies on the subject. Obviously, one would hope that it is never the aim of a filmmaker to depict violence against women as glorification, and that such incidents are cheap dramatic devices - or worse, subconscious representations of the id within. But this theme is something on which the very work is based. In this continuation, Lynch has reoriented an abused McGuffin into a saviour. It's difficult to conceive that Lynch is exploring the theme dispassionately in order to simply portray select male characters as villains.
Richard made his exit by dropping the first use of the word "c*nt" in Peaks lore. It was shocking - hopefully not as his shocking as his ultimate departure.