10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 4
8. Important Circumstantial Evidence
As the old adage goes, you can learn a lot about a man by the company he keeps. This is important to bear in mind when reconciling the bizarre way in which Dougie Jones interacts with the wider world - or the bizarre way in which the wider world interacts with Dougie Jones.
Cooper as Dougie Jones encounters his friend Bill Shaker and his wife Candy in the Las Vegas casino intent on showering him in riches. Bill is portrayed as utterly oblivious to the fact that Dougie exists in a catatonic state. There is no next stop: rocket science for Dougie, this base dimwit, who must have bagged Watts' Janey-E Jones with some combination of hapless charm and a hyper sex drive. Dougie is also a man who simply said "That's...weird" when his hand deflated in the Red Room.
Lynch and Frost have ultimately done enough for fans to accept Cooper-as-Dougie, who is played with such warmth and conviction by MacLachlan that he, as much as his writer and director, makes it work. The role of Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon) is also key. His playful interactions with Cooper, even when undercut with ominous facial expressions, do so much to make sense of it all. His presence repurposes Cooper's reacclimatisation as a fun game between father and son.
As for circumstantial evidence elsewhere, what is Mr. C doing with a machine gun, a massive bag of cocaine and a dead dog's leg? Is this just grim, window dressing iconography, or did Mr. C go back to a certain South Dakota apartment complex?