Twin Peaks “Part IX” Has Us Asking Once More: Where the Hell Is Audrey Horne?

Last time, did I not ask the question “Where the hell is Audrey Horne?”

Yes, yes I did.

OK! Bad Coop still seems to be Bad Coop. So all those shadowbeasties that fed on him last time maybe didn’t totally consume him. He’s on the move, headed back to that Farm thing, and getting saddled up and provisioned. You know, with firearms. He leaves instructions for Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh: Kill Warden Murphy.

Good Coop is still locked inside Dougie Jones. Ike the Spike is arrested. OK. The Fusco Brothers have determined that Dougie Jones didn’t exist before 1997. Witness protection program? Yeeeeahhh. Or trans-dimensional doppelgänger action. You be the judge.

While sitting with Janey-E in the police station, Dougie-Coop is staring melancholically at the ol’ stars and stripes (one of many emblems that seems to give him a—well, a jolt), but what gets his attention Damn-Fine-Coffee style is a woman walking by in red high heels. Remember Audrey Horne’s bad-girl red pumps? I do. I bet Cooper does, too. I thought maybe Coop would wake up when confronted with coffee. I thought he might wake up when Ike the Spike tried to kill him. Now I wonder if Audrey’s going to be the catalyst. Now, we know there is a Richard Horne, but we haven’t seen his (presumed) mom: Audrey was last known to be in a coma after the explosion at the bank. Having just given it up to Billy Zane at the time, it’s entirely possible she gave birth to that creepy kid while comatose. Perhaps she was awake, too. We don’t know yet, but we definitely got some Audrey foreshadowing. Wouldn’t it be neat if they both woke up when confronted with each other? But I digress. We don’t yet know Audrey’s status. We just got a boatload of info on Major Briggs, though.

In Twin Peaks itself, the mystery of the disappearance—and decapitated reappearance—of Blue Rose King Garland Briggs is finally getting some attention. Bobby, Hawk and Truman ask the Widow Briggs for some answers. She has some, hidden in a strange scrollie-do in the framework of an armchair. There’s writing inside, indicating a possible dimensional portal near a site Bobby remembers from his childhood, and a message that Hawk deduces means “Two Coopers.” Because everything has a twin, a red armchair shows up in the sheriff’s office as Lucy and Andy passive-aggressively attempt to purchase furniture online. (Sigh.)

Garland Briggs was a very, very perspicacious dude.

Albert, Diane (also in red shoes), Gordon and the plastic-coated Tammy Preston are still trying to work out what’s going on. They question poor, addled Matthew Lillard, who in broken half-intelligible sentences tries to explain that he never hurt his wife but there was this portal thing and this crazy incident and… sob, sob, unintelligible. I’m sorry he didn’t get to go scuba diving. He seems to have really wanted to.

Ben Horne and Beverly are still dancing around each other, too. Jerry Horne is still lost in the woods and now he’s getting distressing and disingenuous messages from his foot. (Not a typo.) Johnny Horne, the developmentally disabled older brother of the missing Audrey, puts in an appearance in which he dashes his head against a wall and might or might not be dead.

OK: That was a lot of stuff that inched us toward something, much needed after the eight episode’s surrealist jaunt into Origin-Storytown, as awe-striking as that was.

Wake up, Coop. Wake up.