10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 4
7. We've Heard One Of The Most Beautiful Lines In Twin Peaks History
We are reintroduced to Denise Bryson in Part 4. She has been promoted to Chief of Staff of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a formal title she luxuriates in saying out loud and in full.
It's symptomatic of the carefully thought out way in which her scene is presented. In the original series, the depiction of the trans character was incredibly progressive for its time - even by today's standards - and the beauty lay in how carefree it all was. There was an element of weird for weird's sake - this was mid-period Twin Peaks season two, after all - but her gender wasn't treated as a punchline but as something perfectly natural and almost entirely incidental.
Here, the gender issue is laboured on in a scene between Bryson and the likewise promoted Gordon Cole. It's unnecessary, but only a minor misstep in what is another seminal and unprecedented hour of something that barely classifies as episodic television.
That said, even if the scene is very slightly laboured and expository, Cole emerges from it as a sweetheart, reminding Bryson that he supported her cause by telling her detractors to "fix their hearts or die". He also butters her up with a compliment that simultaneously advanced Tamara's arc ("there's room in this Federal Bureau of Investigation for more than one beautiful woman!").
Cole was an amiable if periphery figure 25 years ago; this scene established him as part of The Return's emotional core.