10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 6
5. The Female Characters Are Developing Agency
Naomi Watts' Janey-E Jones character has attracted as much curiosity as criticism thus far for her inability (or unwillingness) to recognise that something is deeply wrong with her husband.
In Part 6, Lynch and Frost add layers to the oblivious housewife. Her failure to grasp situations around her is not limited to her husband, which indirectly lends that storyline more credibility. In a scene in which she half pays off Dougie's gambling debts to two henchmen, she cannot comprehend the concept of a vig - but her doltishness ("people were playing games, he made a bet where he lost $20,000?") is charming here, where previously it was something of a narrative convenience. She also tells the two men off in a fierce, bizarre maternal way - "I suggest you take a good, hard look at yourselves because I never want to see either of you again!"
Where Janey-E revealed a hitherto unseen grit, Doris Truman revealed the root of her compulsive nagging: her son committed suicide in the not too distant past. Suddenly, the character evolved from caricature.
We've seen beautiful, naked murder victims, girls in trouble, women of impossible glamour - now, Lynch is expanding on his characterisation of women by layering them with moxy and pathos.