GRADE: A
SYNOPSIS
Cooper goes through an extra-large electrical socket, emerging in a house in Las Vegas moments after a double of him (named Dougie) disappears from there. At the same time, Mr. C, who is due to return to the Black Lodge, feels a disturbance while driving and has a car accident. He is not pulled back in, because he created Dougie to take his place.
Cooper, whom everyone will now assume is Dougie, gets a ride with the prostitute Dougie had been employing. Two hit men (likely hired by Mr. C) are waiting to kill him, but don’t see him leave. One puts a device under Dougie’s car, which remains parked at the house. Cooper, who is barely mentally functional after his trip through the electrical socket, wins several jackpots at the casino, guided by clues sent from the Red Room. Lawrence Jacoby paints shovels gold. At FBI headquarters, Agent Tamara Preston shows Gordon Cole and Albert Rosenfield information about the murdered couple in the glass box room in NYC. Gordon gets a call that Cooper has been found.
Cooper, whom everyone will now assume is Dougie, gets a ride with the prostitute Dougie had been employing. Two hit men (likely hired by Mr. C) are waiting to kill him, but don’t see him leave. One puts a device under Dougie’s car, which remains parked at the house. Cooper, who is barely mentally functional after his trip through the electrical socket, wins several jackpots at the casino, guided by clues sent from the Red Room. Lawrence Jacoby paints shovels gold. At FBI headquarters, Agent Tamara Preston shows Gordon Cole and Albert Rosenfield information about the murdered couple in the glass box room in NYC. Gordon gets a call that Cooper has been found.
REVIEW
The episode opens with The Return’s most other-worldly, awe-inspiring sequence yet, one that takes up almost half the running time. Cooper drops from outer space onto a balcony in some kind of purple world. It is dark, and all he can see is a vast sea.
He enters the building, and everything, himself included, is glitching. The sounds – and the soundtrack – are menacing. The entire sequence certainly holds many mysteries, but it can be understood narratively as detailing Cooper’s trip back to our world. It was easy for him to enter the Red Room, but the Arm’s doppelgänger, perhaps in conjunction with Mr. C, seems to have made it complicated for him to return from it. Cooper’s expression after the oversized socket tries pulling him in is a preview of what he’s about to turn into.
He enters the building, and everything, himself included, is glitching. The sounds – and the soundtrack – are menacing. The entire sequence certainly holds many mysteries, but it can be understood narratively as detailing Cooper’s trip back to our world. It was easy for him to enter the Red Room, but the Arm’s doppelgänger, perhaps in conjunction with Mr. C, seems to have made it complicated for him to return from it. Cooper’s expression after the oversized socket tries pulling him in is a preview of what he’s about to turn into.
We get a solid impression of Dougie Jones as a character in the brief time we spend with him. He’s kind of dim, and also kind of innocent, even though he’s cheating on his wife. It’s like he doesn’t know any better. After Cooper takes his place in Las Vegas and everyone starts calling him Dougie, the fans made the mistake of also calling him that. But this isn’t Dougie, it’s Cooper – he’s just dazed from the experience of travelling through an electrical socket. The only words he can speak are things he hears others say, and he seems to be experiencing everything for the first time, like a newborn. That’s a far cry from Dougie’s more ordinary soft-headedness.
One neat effect of Cooper’s condition is that people around him become touchingly helpful. A prostitute gives him five dollars to help him get home. An empathetic casino clerk seems to grasp instantly what she’s dealing with, and is gentle in helping him navigate the casino. It seems to be women in particular. Even before he returns to our reality, Cooper is helped by two of them in that purple world, with Naido even possibly sacrificing herself for him.
Stray observations:
- The way Naido (the first woman Cooper meets in that purple world) reacts to Cooper will take on new meaning in Part 17.
- Phoebe Augustine shows up, but according to the credits, she’s not playing Ronette Pulaski, but rather the unhelpfully named “American Girl”.
- “Jade give two rides.”
- If Lucy was ditzy originally, here she and Andy seem almost too dense to be alive. Hawk is basically their babysitter.
- In The Return, Lynch takes full advantage of the existence of digital effects. But unlike every other director, he doesn’t seem concerned with making them look as real as possible. It’s a decision you have to roll with, because it continues throughout the series. Perhaps he figures the things he’s portraying don’t exist in our world, so maybe they should look like they don’t belong. Or maybe he just likes things to look hand-made.