10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 12
8. The Return Requires A Cooper Anchor
You could argue that this was the weakest Part yet; unlike the previous three post-nuclear fallouts, this seemed to have no structural or thematic conceit. It was very much a return to the fragmented 18 hour movie structure.
We see only ten seconds of Kyle MacLachlan. His Dougie Jones/displaced Dale Cooper, divorced as ever from reality, is escorted into his garden to play catch with Sonny Jim, who bonks him on the head with a baseball. End scene. It's the only time we spend in Las Vegas, a vignette sandwiched between Peaks scenes and the ongoing Blue Rose investigation. The scene is a sort of subverted domestic bliss (you could generously read it as relevant, given the manner in which we check into the residents of the Pacific Northwest) but really, it seems arbitrary - a means of maintaining MacLachlan's lead credit.
Elsewhere, Part 8 is a loose, unconnected reel of scenes of varying quality and relevance.
You could make that argument. That said, even with its mundane domestic set-ups and agonising pace, an hour devoid of otherworldly dream logic still manages to furrows its way into the subconscious - largely through a bizarre and surely unprecedented writing technique deployed as the hour drew to a close...