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‘Twin Peaks’ episode five recap: The cow jumps over the moon

Mädchen Amick and Peggy Lipton in 'Twin Peaks: The Return' (Showtime)
Mädchen Amick and Peggy Lipton in 'Twin Peaks: The Return' (Showtime)

by Jay Gabler

June 05, 2017

Is Audrey Horne's son dealing drugs at the Bang Bang Bar? Did Agent Cooper's second doppelgänger kill a man in small-town South Dakota? Will we ever get the old Agent Cooper back? Is Sheriff Harry Truman dying? I'm going to go ahead and say yes, no, maybe, and probably.

Episode five of the new season of Twin Peaks rarely stayed long in any one place, jumping from Washington to Argentina to Las Vegas. Let's catch up with everything we learned.

Special Agent Dale Cooper is still having a hard time recovering from his quarter-century in the Black Lodge — which, in fairness, is a lot longer than Han Solo spent in carbonite. Cooper's living the life of his second doppelgänger "Dougie," a Las Vegas insurance agent who's just back from a few days in "bendersville," as far as his coworkers know.

Being virtually unresponsive is causing a few problems for "Dougie" on the job, which he might be about to lose. Nonetheless, at least one of his attractive young coworkers still thinks he's pretty suave, even when he's about to pee his pants (because he can't find bathrooms by himself). Cooper, though, only has eyes for a pistol-pointing statue outside his office — by the end of the episode, he's standing alone, rubbing its toe like a Harvard Yard tourist.

Cooper does still love his coffee — leading to one of the episode's best throwaway shots, when his coworker finds his coffee thirstily consumed by "Dougie" and, trading drinks with another coworker, discovers the joys of green tea lattes.

Meanwhile, O.G. doppelgänger Cooper — Dougie, the second doppelgänger, having been condensed into a tiny sphere in the Black Lodge — is mouldering in jail in South Dakota. He flashes back to the end of season two, when he became one with Bob, and muses tenderly, "You're still with me, and that's good." (Actor Frank Silva, who played Bob, died in 1995.)

Evil Cooper gets one phone call, which he uses to call a long, unknown number that has the effect of setting off the prison's alarms so that the snooping cops can't hear him intone the phrase that, apparently, pays: "The cow jumped over the moon." I'd like to think this is completely meaningless and he's just screwing with the cops, but no, it's probably some kind of signal.

Back in Twin Peaks (remember when this show actually took place there?), we find Norma (Peggy Lipton) still running the Double R Diner — and Shelly, who we saw earlier this season hanging out at the Bang Bang Bar, is still working there.

Her daughter Becky (Amanda Seyfried, who at age 31 is a little old for this role) shows up to borrow money for the third time in two weeks, and the cash seems to be going straight up the nose of her loser boyfriend Steven (Caleb Landry Jones, who you might recognize as the creepy brother from Get Out and who looks here like, as my friend Stephen Grothem observes, "a coked-up Rupert Grint").

How do we know Steven's a loser? There was an earlier interview scene where Steven's résumé was so disgraceful, he couldn't even be hired by the adult Mike Nelson (Gary Hershberger) — one of Bobby's jock friends from the original run.

At the sheriff's office, Hawk and Andy are still poring through the Laura Palmer case files, trying to figure out what the log has been warning them about. (If you're this far in and you don't understand why law enforcement officers are taking tips from logs, I'm afraid I really can't help you.) Sheriff Frank Truman gets off the phone with his unseen brother Harry, who's apparently waiting for some test results, to be harangued by his wife about this, that, and the other thing.

Were you wondering what Dr. Jacoby was doing with all those gold-painted shovels? I was hoping that he was building an E.T.-style device for interstellar communication — but this isn't Steven Spielberg, it's David Lynch. Jacoby, as "Dr. Amp," is selling them for $29.99 each, marketing them as "s--t-digging shovels" to viewers of a paranoiac webcast who are looking for a symbol of their resistance to The Man. (That's The Man as in The System, not a Twin Peaks character name like "the Arm.") It looks like Nadine (Wendy Robie) might just be in the market.

But wait — there are even more plot lines to catch up on! The South Dakota cops are trying to identify the corpse of a headless man who was left in the bed of the murdered librarian. (Her head remained, paired with a body that must have been a downgrade for her.) The coroner finds a ring in the man's stomach: a wedding ring, inscribed "To Dougie with love, J.E." Is it Dougie's actual wedding ring, or is a message from the people who want to kill him?

Oh yes, there are still people who want to kill Dougie — and will happily settle for Agent Cooper, not realizing their actual target has become a ball bearing. The two assassins we saw earlier are still on the case, as are four more menacing dudes in a black sedan. The two sets of killers seem to be working for different teams, since team A failed to inform team B that Dougie's car was rigged — and half of team B is incinerated when they hotwire it. Oops.

Team A reports to a nervous woman who, learning of their failure, texts 2 to ARGENT on her BlackBerry. What does it mean? Who knows, but it causes a strange metallic fixture in Buenos Aires to suddenly shrink. That's something we're just going to have to roll with for the moment.

A few more plot threads: the floor supervisor who watched Dougie win $425,000 gets beat up and fired, by a team of supervisors including...oh, hi, Jim Belushi. Garland Briggs's fingerprints have been found in Buckhorn, and the Air Force (in the person of Minnesota's own Ernie Hudson) wearily agrees to investigate. (It's the 18th time the missing major's prints have been detected in 25 years.) The hooker hired by Dougie finds the Overlook Hotel key that Cooper dropped in her car and puts it in the mailbox. Does that still work? We're about to find out.

There's still no sign of Audrey Horne — but we do meet a "Richard Horne," a sleazy-looking young man who's passing cash and harassing women at the Bang Bang Bar. Audrey's son? The issue of one of Ben's affairs? We'll have to wait and see.

Unlike the previous three episodes, this one doesn't end with a musical interlude at the bar — but we do see a band onstage during the Richard Horne scene. It's Trouble: a band featuring David Lynch's son Riley along with music supervisor Dean Hurley on drums and Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches) on tenor sax. They sound...exactly how you'd expect.

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