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EPISODES |
PARTS ONE THROUGH EIGHTEEN (2017)
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Opening Credits (0:55-2:14) Along a sycamore-lined dirt road hemmed by wooden and wire fencing, a blood-soaked Mr. C. walks at a faster clip than one might expect from a man who just survived being shot by his partner, manhandled by a cohort of spectral woodsmen, and exorcised of his demonic companion in Part Eight. He comes upon a red bandanna hanging from a fencepost, presumably marking the path to waiting accomplices, and rips it from the post. (2:15-2:42) On the plane back to Philadelphia from Yankton Federal Prison, Gordon Cole is looking out the window. Agent Preston approaches him from the flight deck carrying a hot cup of coffee, passing, on her way, Diane and Albert who are sleeping on opposite sides of the aisle in the front cabin. She delivers the coffee to Cole and allows him a moment to sip it before handing over the satellite phone: “Patched in through the office, it’s a Colonel Davis for you from the Pentagon. Urgent!”. Gordon takes the phone, and she cautions him to keep his voice down, shooting an exaggerated side-long glance back toward slumbering Diane and Albert as he greets her warning with his signature stentorian “Whaaat?!”. After sternly upbraiding the Colonel for perceived use of profanity, Gordon realizes that the offending word was actually “Buckhorn.” “Buckhorn, South Dakota. West South Dakota. By golly, we’re over east South Dakota right now!”. As the Colonel briefs him, Cole asks Preston to “take this down: K.n.o.x. Knox. Lieutenant Knox. Buckhorn Police Department.” As Cole shouts the letters and repeats the name, Diane stirs from her slumber, seemingly taking note, as a look of knowing concern crosses her face. “Alright. Thank you, Colonel!,” Cole yells, and hangs up the phone. (2:43-4:10) Mr. C. arrives at a ramshackle farmstead just off the sycamore-lined dirt road. As he balls the bandana into his jacket pocket, Hutch approaches and greets him, concerned that Mr. C.’s belated arrival is a departure from the plans laid with his wife Chantal in Part Two: “Hey partner. We was expecting you last night. Looks like you been spillin’.” Never one for pleasantries, Mr. C. gets right to it: “Who owns this establishment?” “Farmers,” Hutch replies, “they’re sleeping out back. Whatchu need?”. Mr. C. produces the firing-pin-less .357 from his back pocket and hands it to Hutch: “A couple of clean phones and something for this.” Hutch sizes up the revolver with contempt, proposing an alternative and announcing Mr. C.’s arrival to his wife, all folksy like: “Aww, fuck that. I’ll get you some real nice puppies and some biscuits. Hey Chantal…boss man’s here…grab the kit.” “Is he hurt?,” Chantal yells with concern, emerging from one of the farmstead’s rustic out-buildings: “Shit (upon seeing his beleaguered condition)…we was waiting for you all night…where’d they get you?”. Mr. C. lifts his blood-drenched shirt to reveal a bullet hole on the left side of his abdomen, prompting a yowl from Hutch and a command from Chantal to rest up: “Looks like you was lucky…I’ll get the kit…get inside!” She retrieves a large blue duffel from a black van with dark-tinted windows (South Dakota license-plate DSX 636) and follows them inside. (4:11-5:15) Back on the plane, Cole approaches a fitfully sleeping Diane, putting his right hand on her left shoulder and gently massaging her awake, inquiring whether she’s willing to abide a brief detour to Buckhorn for something “quite important.” After receiving her emphatic stock reply (“Fuck you Gordon, I want to go home!”), Cole counters (as the awkward shoulder massage continues) that the detour might interest her, given that it “involves a man that Cooper once knew.” “A Blue Rose case?”, Diane asks. “Yes!”, Cole confirms. With a look of resignation, Diane summons the two empty vodka bottles that Albert supplied her for the flight to Yankton and waves them expectantly at Cole. “Coming up,” he promises; “got to talk to the pilots first.” At the cockpit, Cole informs the pilots of the reroute to Buckhorn as Rosenfield, just barely awake, glances across the aisle at a burdened Diane. Noticing his gaze, she prepares an insult, but Albert pre-empts her, turning his back to resume napping: “I know…I know…fuck you, Albert!.” Looking disgusted, Diane takes out her phone and attempts to check it, only to find it blocked. In the rear cabin, Agent Preston answers the satellite phone and then hurries it up the aisle to Cole who is procuring Diane’s vodka provisions from the mini-bar. It’s Crooked Warden Murphy bearing the bad tidings that Cooper has escaped. “How the hell did that happen?!,” Gordon screams into the phone. Dropping the receiver from his ear before Murphy can reply, he conveys the disturbing news to Rosenfield, Preston, and Diane: “Cooper’s flown the coop!”. (5:16-7:15) Mr. C. and Chantal round the corner of a modest ranch farm house, nonchalantly passing by the presumed corpses of its proprietors—a portly, bald man in brown suspenders slumped, seated, against the house with a woman sprawled across his lap. They approach a jacked-up black Silverado pick-up parked behind the house, as a rested and refreshed Mr. C. reaches into his back pocket to produce a pink flip-phone and begins texting while Chantal leans against the truck aggressively chewing gum. The phone display shows the second frame (“2/2”) of a small-case punctuation-less text composed to an “unknown” recipient: “around the dinner table the conversation is lively”; the display reports the time as “11:09p,” though the broad South Dakota daylight suggests the phone is mistaken. (7:16-7:50) After sending the text, Mr. C. immediately dials Duncan Todd in Las Vegas, who sits in dread as the designated iPhone he desperately wishes would never ring buzzes menacingly from a drawer in his desk. “Did you do it?” Mr. C. bluntly inquires without waiting for a greeting from Todd. “Not yet,” Todd reports, petrified. “Better be done next time I call,” Mr. C. replies with cold malice. Badly shaken, Todd attempts to return to working but decides it’s wiser to act immediately and summons Roger into the room. (7:51-8:36) A denim-bedecked, shotgun-toting Hutch shambles up alongside Mr. C. and Chantal with an ammo can and a duffle bag, presenting the open bag—presumably full of weapons—for Mr. C’s approval: “How’s that Boss?” “It’s real good, Hutch,” Mr. C. replies, stowing the weapons in the cab of the truck and nearly taking Hutch’s head off with the side view mirror: “I want you to kill a warden within the next two days.” “A warden. Alright.,” Hutch bumbles, sounding several bicycles shy of a full deck, “you want Chantal to mess with him before I kill him?”. “He’ll sing for me,” Chantal cheerfully offers, smiling lasciviously and lewdly popping her pelvis, thumbs in her front pockets. “Whatever you want,” Mr. C. replies, “and then I’ve got a double-header for you in Vegas.” “Oh let’s play two!,” Hutch exclaims to a guffaw from Chantal. “I’ll text you details after you do the warden. Remember this: Warden Murphy. Yankton Federal Prison. Kill him at home, at work, or on the way.” Hutch dumbly replies “’Kay!” as if taking instructions to replace a spark plug in a lawnmower rather than to execute three human beings, and then instructs Chantal to “give the boss man a wet one.” Mr. C. turns to Chantal who removes her gum and kisses him deeply as Hutch looks stupidly around, distracted by a plane passing overhead. As the embrace ends, Chantal puts her gum back in her mouth, lamenting that she “wishes it was more,” to which Mr. C. offers to take a rain check. “You got it sweetheart!,” she says, pulling a bag of Cheetos from her back pocket and planting it in Mr. C.’s hand while gazing plaintively into his eyes as though a woman sending her man off to war. Taking the Cheetos, Mr. C. produces the flip-phone from his back pocket and tosses it to the ground, telling Hutch to “kill that phone and clear out of this place.” Hutch points the way to main road and, as Mr. C. departs, pumps a flurry of buckshot into the pink flip-phone. (8:37-10:25) At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Cooper and Janey-E wait in the lobby as the Detectives Fusco finish questioning Bushnell Mullins on Dougie Jones’s situation. “Did he ever give you any problems?,” one of the Fuscos wonders. “Naaaah, I’ve never had any trouble with Dougie at all…he’s a solid citizen!” Fusco: “So you can’t think of any reason why someone would try to kill him?” Mullins (perhaps thinking about the Mitchum brothers): “Not off the top of my head; 'course in the insurance business, people have been known to hold a grudge if things don’t go their way.” Fusco: “It’s usually about money, Bushnell, pure and simple. No one needs any more reason than that. So what’s his background? How long’s he been with you?” Mullins: “Twelve years now. He’s a good worker. He’s slow…steady…” Fusco (prompting an eruption of laughter from his colleague “Smiley”): “Little more emphasis on the slow.” Mullins: “Dougie had a car accident, as I recall, not long before he came to work for me. Every once in a while he shows some…lingering effects…his wife can talk to that better than I can.” Indicating that the meeting is over, the Fuscos express their appreciation to Mullins for coming to the station. The tenor of the meeting, which had been amiable, suddenly sours as it dawns on Mullins that he is being dismissed. He looks intently at the Fuscos, then glances out into the waiting room at Cooper and Janey-E, angry that the Fuscos seem to have no intention of taking the case seriously. After an awkward pause, he says “Well I really appreciate your help” in a register that betrays his belief that they haven’t been much help at all. After a protracted silence from the Fuscos, Mullins continues: “Damn strange business. First his car blows up and then somebody tries to kill him.” The Fuscos look on steely-eyed, not sure what to make of Mullins’ resolve. “We’ll get back to you as soon as we have something.”, Flattop non-committally offers. Mullins draws a deep breath, surveying the Fuscos with a stone-faced frown and closing and opening the fingers of his right hand repeatedly into and out of a balled fist, maybe to communicate that this former boxer means business (or perhaps in a veiled nod to Lil’s code for “trouble with local law enforcement” in FWWM). The detectives watch in silence as Mullins finally departs their office. (10:26-12:46) As the Fuscos leer out from their office window, Mullins enters the waiting area where Cooper and Janey-E are sitting: “Dougie, you can take the rest of the day off.” Relieved, Janey-E expresses her intent to take him to the doctor. Mullins continues: “Starting tomorrow, you and I are going to work together to get some answers.” “Answers,” Cooper blankly replies. Mullins pats Janey-E on the left shoulder in a kind display of empathy and leaves. The Fuscos, watching all the while, resume their conversation: “So get this…there is nothing, I mean nothing on our Mr. Douglas Jones prior to 1997. No driver’s license, no passport, no social…class records, tax records…no birth certificate.” They attempt to puzzle out the mystery, wondering whether Dougie is under witness protection and whether maybe a connection at the Justice Department can furnish answers. Stymied, the conversation takes a different direction, as Cueball suddenly asks Flattop whether he “Got that taillight fixed?”. “To the tune of 239 bucks…for a fucking taillight!”, Flattop snaps. “Must be a beauty,” quips Cueball, prompting Smiley—who is standing in the middle holding the open file on Dougie—to erupt into his trademark oafish laugh. Flattop is not initially amused, and—sensing this—Smiley turns to him and attempts to bring him in on the gag: “Remember that Australian guy with the pliers?”. The three of them break into peals of obnoxious laughter, which undoubtedly seems perverse to Janey-E, who peers in disapprovingly from the waiting area. Flattop brings the conversation back on point: “Shall we talk to them again?” “It’s like talking to a dog,” Cueball replies. “And she does all the barking,” Flattop observes, impressed with himself. They look out their office window to see Janey-E reaching across Cooper to put his empty mug on the coffee table next to him. Cue ball has a brainstorm: he delivers “Dougie” a fresh mug of coffee with intent to lift his fingerprints from the previous one. The mission succeeds, and just as he is bagging the evidence (“Gotcha!”), their Sargent emerges to inform them that “the palm prints came back on that gun” with a match to “our old friend Ike the Spike;” “we just got a twenty on him at an off-strip motel.” Preparing to “join the fun” of busting Ike, the Fuscos hand over the evidence bag to their Sargent for “prints and DNA please,” and instruct him to let the Joneses go, which he pledges to do after logging the mug. (12:47-16:55) Stuck in the waiting room until the Sarge finishes with the mug, Cooper swigs coffee while staring at the opposite wall as Janey-E inspects her fingernails, adjusts her hair, and sits in bored silence. Cooper gazes intensely at something across the room which we discover is a gold-fringed star-spangled banner perched in a flag-stand in the corner. A nostalgic arrangement of America the Beautiful fades in and plays as he stares, moist-eyed, at the flag. As the music plays, a trim, smartly dressed woman in bright red stiletto heels walks through the room, diverting Cooper’s gaze from the flag to her shoes, which he follows intently across the room. As she passes an electrical outlet, his gaze is diverted yet again, drawn back to the outlet as the music takes a dark turn into a low groan and a look of deep concentration overtakes his face. (16:56-18:46) The Detectives Fusco traverse the police station parking lot, stopping to admire flattop’s $239 right taillight on a shitty Cherokee before proceeding to their police vehicles. At the Premiere Motel, Ike the Spike is pounding Evan Williams and attempting to raise “JT,” first on his cell phone, and now on his other line: “The message is no cigar; taking medical leave.” He hangs up and downs a shot. As the police gather in the motel parking lot, he pounds another, grabbing a suitcase and throwing his jacket over his wounded right hand to make his escape. As he walks down the hall, three police enter with guns drawn. Ike calmly turns and walks in the other direction, only to end up facing the Detectives Fusco, all brandishing heat in his general direction. Flattop melodramatically announces the charge: “Ike, you’re under arrest for attempted murder.” Cue ball follows up: “We have your palm print.” Not to be outdone, Flattop clinches it: “As a matter of fact, Ike, we have your whole palm.” Smiley erupts, as Ike drops the suitcase and jacket to put his arms up in surrender, revealing a right hand thickly wrapped in gauze and emitting a defeated whimper. (18:47-21:02) The sun breaks through the trees behind the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, where Andy and Lucy are seated at their desks perusing furniture online at the Canworth Furniture Design website. After clicking back and forth between two fabric options on a lounge chair, Lucy stridently walks back to Andy’s desk and peevishly proclaims, “Andy, I really love the beige chair,” before pouting back to her place. Brooding, Andy gets up and bumbles over to her desk, equally petulant: “And Lucy, I really love the red chair.” Once he’s back in his seat, Lucy returns to his desk yet again: “And I really love the beige chair, Andy.” After a short while, Andy is back at her side, repentant: “I’m sorry, Punky. You can get the beige chair.” He nuzzles her head and pats her left shoulder before returning to his desk. With a gleam in her eye and a self-satisfied giggle, Lucy purchases the red chair, twirling in her swivel to catch a glimpse of Andy at his desk, proud of her altruism. (21:03-23:38) We see a shot of ceiling timbers in an as-yet unfamiliar house and hear the heavy footfalls of a large man running, as an agitated voice we discover to be that of Sylvia Horne rings out: “Mary, what are you doing? Who let him out?” A man in blue pajamas streaks across the banisters of a second-story balcony at top speed,” as Sylvia cries “Who let him out? Johnny? Johnny, where are you?” Johnny suddenly emerges from a door on the first floor, running at breakneck speed into a room across the hall where we hear a crash and the electrical pop and flash of a lamp hitting the floor. There’s a blood-smeared hole in the drywall with streaks of blood leading down to the floor, where a frantic Sylvia Horne discovers Johnny lying, bloody face to the baseboard, surrounded by the remains of a shattered framed photograph of the falls at the Great Northern. She reaches out to touch his left shoulder, crying his name. (23:39-24:32) Betty Briggs is seated at a table in her condo logging some screen-time on her MacBook Pro. Bobby arrives and she greets him warmly and offers him coffee. He graciously declines because he’s there on business with Hawk and Sheriff Truman; they have some questions for her. She consents and he goes to the door to usher in Hawk and Truman, giving her a few seconds to collect herself. One gets the distinct impression she knows exactly what’s coming. After the obligatory pleasantries, Sheriff Truman announces their intention to inquire about Cooper’s visit with the Major the day before he died. Betty puts her hand up to stop the inquiry in its tracks and delivers an astonishing monologue that holds her interlocutors mesmerized: “Alright, listen to me. Right after Agent Cooper left that day, Garland pulled me aside and he said that one day our son Bobby, and Hawk, and Sheriff Truman—I didn’t know it would be this Sheriff Truman—he said that they would come and ask me about Special Agent Dale Cooper. He squeezed my shoulders when he told me this. I tried to ask him what it was about, but he wouldn’t say anymore. He just said, ‘When they come to ask you about Agent Cooper, you give them this.’ And now you’re here.” As they dangle at the edge of her every word, she suddenly switches gears and offers coffee to her rapt audience. Shell-shocked, they hastily decline in unison as the burning desire to know more consumes them. “Alright,” she says. “Come with me.” She gets up from the table and walks all of eight steps to an ornate red Victorian arm chair in the living room. Anxiously patting the wood trim of its high back, she says “This is the chair. I can’t believe this day has come.” Pointing to the trim, she instructs them to “watch, right here,” as she bends down and turns a switch on the side, opening a secret panel in the trim containing a mysterious, seamless metal cylinder about the size and shape of a small cigar. She cradles it in her hands and says to an increasingly emotional Bobby, “when your father told me this, you were a very long way from where you are today. Somehow he knew that it would all turn out well. He saw this life for you. Your father never lost faith in you.” She brings the cylinder over to the men who stand dumbfounded, as if in a trance, and hands the cylinder to Sheriff Truman, breaking the spell to the great relief of all by bringing things back around to refreshments: “Well fellas, let’s have that coffee.” (24:33-28:07) At the Buckhorn morgue, Diane, Cole, Preston, and Rosenfield report for their meeting with Lieutenant Knox and Detective Mackley. As they file into a receiving area, Cole conspicuously blurts “the waiting room!” as Diane makes a beeline for a green couch against the back wall and Albert announces the arrival of Knox and Mackley right behind them. Cole invites Diane to join the group and, brazenly lighting a cigarette, she snaps “I’m not in the mood to see a dead body this morning. I’ll just wait for you guys here.” Mackley informs her that she can’t smoke in the building, and after glaring at him for a few seconds to let the full weight of her contempt sink in, she yells “It’s a fucking morgue” and continues smoking with impunity. Defeated, Mackley leads the group back to where Briggs’ body is stored as Gordon, the last one out of the waiting room, casts a disapproving glance over his left shoulder back at Diane. Spitting a homophobic slur in their direction as they leave, she waits to be sure they’re gone and checks her phone. After some frustrated fidgeting to get the phone to comply, she discovers a text message from “Unknown,” properly punctuated and in all caps: “AROUND THE DINNER TABLE, THE CONVERSATION IS LIVELY.” As she looks up from the phone, her eyes narrow to slits, burning holes in the door that the rest of the group just exited. (28:08-29:38) As they walk toward the autopsy room, Knox informs the group that Mackley was the investigating officer and that he’ll bring them up to speed. Mackley unloads the sordid tale: “William Hastings was having an affair with the local librarian Ruth Davenport. Now Davenport’s head was found atop the headless body of your Major Briggs. Once we took Hastings into custody, his wife was murdered in their house, apparently by their lawyer—a man named George Boutzer—who is now also in custody. And the next day, Hastings secretary died in a car explosion.” Before Mackley can get any further, Albert grabs his arm and interrupts: “What happens in season two?”. “Apologies in advance for Albert,” Cole sheepishly adds. (29:39: 30:22) As they file into the autopsy room, Coroner Talbot is waiting for them and wastes exactly no time looking Albert up and down as he sizes up the body. Mackley breaks the silence: “Well, this is your Major Briggs.” He goes on to inform them that “Hastings, along with the help of Ruth the librarian, was researching and publishing some strange little blog about some alternate dimension.” Albert interjects, “This from the principal of your local high school!”, to which Talbot zings “not to mention marble champion of the sixth grade!” Sparks fly between them as Albert takes the bait: “When did he lose his marbles?”. Without missing a beat, Talbot cocks her head and returns volley with perfect poise barely suppressing a self-satisfied smirk forced north to her brow: “When the dog got his cat’s eyes.” Albert offers a sarcastic smile but is clearly smitten, a fact which is not lost on a side-eyed, faintly smirking Cole. Albert snaps the case file and takes the floor: “About one week ago Hastings ended his blog entry with this cryptic sentence: ‘today we finally entered what we call ‘The Zone’ and we met the Major.’” He looks down at the corpse and observes that “this is the body of a man in his forties,” which Talbot breathlessly confirms, gazing luridly into Albert’s eyes. He turns back to Cole with a knowing look, and Cole pulls him out into the hall. (30:23-31:54) Cole puts his arm on Albert’s shoulder and draws him close: “Let’s think out loud.” Albert gets right to it: “Major Briggs would have been 72. As you know, we thought he died in a fire in that government facility outside Twin Peaks 25 years ago, at about the age this man is now.” Cole lets these words sink in and counters: “Well consider this. Cooper knew Briggs, Cooper was around Briggs 25 years ago, and now Cooper shows up in this neck of the woods.” Albert amplifies the point: “On the loose in this neck of the woods.” “Right.”, Cole adds with resolve. As they rejoin the company in the autopsy room, Talbot remembers something and turns to an instrument trolley behind her to retrieve the ring she discovered in Briggs’ gut: “And I found this in his stomach…it’s inscribed; it says, ‘to Dougie, love Janey-E.” Rosenfield, Cole, and Preston all look equally baffled, and Cole announces that they’ll need to interview Hastings. (31:55-33:17) The wind blows and birds sing before a thickly-wooded mountainside. A backpacking-toting, TCH-addled Jerry Horne is still in the woods, still in his mother’s hat, and leering down his right leg to his foot, which timidly explains to him, in a voice caught somewhere between a Teletubby and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, that “I am not your foot.” Unpersuaded, Jerry tentatively reaches down to try to grab his foot, only to recoil, short of breath, as the foot will not move, appearing as though it is staked to the forest floor. He leans back, shifting his weight to his bent left leg, as if engaged in an invisible tug of war. He attempts to grab is foot again and again recoils, practically hyperventilating upon touching it. He steels his resolve to go in for a third attempt and this time succeeds, screaming “Go away!”, before pulling his own foot out from under him and crashing to the forest floor. (33:18-35:17) Ever the epitome of human flourishing, Deputy Chad lunches alone on two microwave dinners in the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department conference room; kernels of corn are visible in one of the trays. Returning from their revelatory meeting with Betty Briggs, Sheriff Truman, Hawk, and Bobby enter the building through the front entrance as Lucy cautions them that “I’m not here! I’m on my lunch break!”. Chortling into his magazine, Deputy Chad slurps at his lunch as Sheriff Truman, Hawk, and Bobby bust into the conference room. “No lunch in the conference room, Chad,” Sheriff Truman scolds. “I know, but you guys have coffee and donuts in here all the time,” comes Chad’s sheepish excuse. “Chad, take your lunch to the lunchroom,” Truman demands. Offering a half-hearted apology, he assures the Sheriff it won’t happen again and awkwardly gathers his magazine, bowl, mug, and two trays and makes for the door without a free hand to open it. Hawk stands just a few feet from the door but looks on in contempt, forcing Chad to suffer the indignity of pleading for help before opening the door to let him out. (35:18-36:59) As the door shuts behind him, Truman asks Bobby to open a window to dispel the stench of Chad’s microwaved garmonbozia. Hawk and Truman take places as the table as Bobby leans against the windows. Truman inspects the cylinder, observing its properties: “no seams, no openings—how the heck you supposed to open this thing.” “Maybe there’s a hidden button,” Hawk ventures, but Truman can’t find one. The Sheriff notices Bobby beaming by the window: “What are you smiling at?” Scarcely able to believe it himself, but obviously most pleased, Bobby says “I know how to open that. My Dad brought one home one night.” “You having fun with us, Bobby?”, Truman edgily asks. “Yeah, sort of, yeah,” Bobby admits. “Go for it!”, Truman commands. Bobby informs them that they have to go back outside and, surprised but compliant, Truman and Hawk follow him out, passing Lucy slurping a soda and noshing on an enormous sandwich, her hand raised in defiant signification that she is still off-duty (37:00-38:11) Outside, as Hawk and Truman observe, Bobby winds up and throws the metal cylinder hard against the concrete sidewalk, sending it caroming into the grass. He retrieves it and holds it to his ear as a resonant sound not unlike a long note held on a harmonica fills the air. He runs it back to Hawk and Truman and holds it to their ears to share the sound. Astonished, Hawk exclaims “What the…?!”, only to be shushed by Bobby, who puts the cylinder to his ear again, clearly waiting for something. The single resonant note abruptly transitions into the sound of tiny gears meshing and a pin dropping into place, at which point Bobby hastily throws the cylinder hard against the concrete. As Hawk and Truman look on stupefied, Bobby fetches the cylinder and returns beaming, handing it to Truman in pieces. Truman removes a smaller cylinder nested into the main fuselage and extracts two tiny scrolls of paper from it. He hands the empty cylinders to Hawk, unrolls the first paper, and reads: “253 yards east of Jack Rabbit’s Palace. Before leaving Jack Rabbit’s Palace, put some soil from that area in your pocket. And two dates and a time—same time—2:53. That’s two days from now and the day after. Jack Rabbit’s Palace? I never heard of such a place!” As Truman puzzles through the cryptic message, Bobby looks on, anxiously running his tongue along his smiling top teeth, clearly dazzled and unable to believe what he is hearing. “He did it again! Wow! I know exactly where Jack Rabbit’s Palace is. My Dad, when I was a little kid, took me to this place near where his station used to be. It was our make-believe world, you know where we made up stories and *laughs in disbelief* I was the one who named it Jack Rabbit’s Palace.” Reeling from Bobby’s revelation, Truman manages “He saw all of this…whatever this is…” “That’s my Dad!”, Bobby resolutely confirms. “Well go up there two days from now and you can lead the way, just as your Dad wanted.” Truman suddenly notices the second paper hiding under the thin first layer. “Wait a minute…there’s something else…,” he says, displacing the top sheet to reveal a string of letters and three digit numbers separated by front-slashes and two discernible words back-to-back with a third instance of the word cut in half: “COOPER/COOPER/COO”. “Two Coopers!”, Hawk exclaims, as Bobby and Truman struggle to take it all in. (38:12-41:09) Back in Buckhorn, Diane leans against the wall on the steps of the Police Department smoking a cigarette. Cole and Preston arrive on the scene, and Cole announces with a slight smirk that they’ve come to join Diane while “Albert is indisposed,” presumably carrying out a meticulous inspection of a certain body. A long, awkward silence ensues as Diane smokes, Gordon looks nervously back and forth between Diane’s eyes and her cigarette, and Tammy struggles in vain to conceal that she’d rather be sliding down a razor and landing in a pool of manure than keeping company with Diane. Eventually, Gordon extends his fore and middle fingers to indicate his intent to bum a drag and Diane complies over Tammy’s protest (“Gordon?!”) as he puts the cigarette to his lips and closes his eyes in ecstasy, inhaling deeply and then curling his lips and wincing as the welcome quitter’s wallop hits home. “Whoa!”, he blurts with a wistful boyish grin, admiring the cigarette in his hand. “We used to smoke together way back when, do you remember?” Offering what seems to be a genuine smile, Diane concurs, “Yeah, we sure did, Gordon. Sure did.” Gordon contemplates another hit and raises his hand to take it, but thinks better of it and hands it back: “Thanks, Diane.” “You want to finish it off?”, she asks with a broad grin. He shakes his head no, smiling back. (41:10-43:18) A brown-jump-suited Bill Hastings, head in shackled hands, is blubbering away in a Buckhorn Police Department interrogation room. Mackley, Cole, Preston, and Diane are assembled behind the two-way glass and Cole gestures to Preston that she’ll be doing the honors. She enters the room and introduces herself, spawning a fresh meltdown as Hastings takes in the fact that he is now the target of an FBI investigation. She informs him that she is recording the conversation and requests that he state his name and age for the record: Hastings: “William Hastings. 43.” Preston: “Mr. Hastings, are you the author of an online journal or blog entitled “The Search for the Zone?” Hastings: “Yes.” Preston: “What sort of things do you write about.” Hastings: “Different things.” Preston: “Approximately two weeks ago, did you write an entry about encountering what you described as an “alternate reality”?” Hastings: “A different dimension. Yes. But it’s real. It’s all real.” Preston asks him how long he’s been interested in the subject, and he says many years and that he’s done a lot of reading. She reminds him, however, that his latest post goes well beyond reading: “You actually found and entered such a place and that while in this place, you wrote, “we met the Major.” Hastings concurs and the story comes bursting forth: “You see, Ruth was very good at uncovering hidden records, and she had indications that if we went to a certain place at a certain time we would enter the dimension and make contact with a certain person, and so we went there.” “And that’s where you found the Major?”, Preston inquires. “He was hiding there…or hibernating as he said…and other people were maybe going to find him and he wanted to go to a different place and so he asked us to get him numbers…important numbers…coordinates. And we found them in the place he told us to go—a secure military database.” “Do you still have those coordinates?” “No Ruth had them. She wrote them on her hand so that she wouldn’t forget.” “What happened then, William?”, Preston pushes for pay-dirt and gets it: “We brought him back the numbers last Thursday and then something terrible happened. These others came in and they grabbed me by the neck and they pushed me down and they said ‘What’s your wife’s name? What’s your wife’s name?’. Phyllis, I said. I didn’t kill Ruth! I didn’t kill her! You have to believe me! I loved her! It’s all my fault! It never should have happened!” As Hastings trails off into incoherence, Preston regroups and presents him with six mugshots, asking him if the man he refers to as “the Major” is represented there. He identifies the Major straight away at bottom left and Preston asks him to circle, sign, and date the photo. He does so, mumbling “9/29” as he scrawls the barely legible date next to his signature. Preston returns the document to the case file and goes back in for the goods: “Can you tell me what happened?” Temporarily calmer, Hastings resumes his fantastic story: “We gave him the numbers and he started to float up and he said some words—“Cooper…Cooper”—right before his head disappeared. It was something like no one has ever seen before...YOU DON’T KNOW YOU WEREN’T THERE…he…he…it was beautiful. And then Ruth was dead. It was so terrible and I had to hold her and then I woke up and I was in my home.” Preston presses him for specifics: “Did the Major kill Ruth?” “No…there were so many people there. You have to believe me. I didn’t kill Ruth. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Why can’t you help me? We were so happy together. We were going to go to the Bahamas. We were going to scuba dive and drink mixed drinks on the beach…” As he becomes increasingly agitated and repetitive in his descriptions of their planned Bahamanian escape, Albert sums up what some of the kinder people in the room also seem to be thinking: “Fruitcake anyone?”. (43:19-49:56) Laura’s theme fills the air as we move from fog rolling in over the mountain, to the falls beneath the Great Northern, to a taxidermy ram’s head and mounted antlers inside the hotel. Ben Horne and Beverly are once again at work attempting to suss out the origin of the singing bowl noise that has taken up resonance in the receiving room outside Ben’s office. They move to the lamp in the corner of the room where the sound is loudest and Beverly observes that the tone is mesmerizing, prompting Ben to compare it to “the ring out of a monastery bell—it has the same quality…otherworldly.” They turn toward one another in an accidental embrace that is anything but, her hand on his lapel, his on her arm. He caresses her cheek with more caring than we are used to from him, “Beverly, I can’t do this. I don’t know why it is.” “You’re a good man, Ben,” she replies, though the embrace seems far from over and neither seems convinced. (49:57-52:31) At the Roadhouse, Hudson Mohawke DJs a set as Ella—by all indications a sparkle junkie—sits alone in a booth amidst a bowl of peanuts and a can of cheap-ass beer, in turns moving to the music and worrying at a wicked rash under her left arm. Her friend Chloe (who is also clearly powdered up) plunks down into the booth across the table from her as Ella swigs her beer. “You know that Zebra’s out again,” Chloe says, smiling. They both laugh. A half-hearted, profanity-rich conversation ensues about Ella’s employment situation; she lost her old job flipping burgers because she came in high a couple times, so now she has a new job flipping burgers across the street. They laugh nervously, drink awkwardly, and Chloe shells and gobbles peanuts, Ella scratching away intermittently at the rash. As Au Revoir Simone takes the stage to perform “A Violent Yet Flammable World,” Ella inquires of Chloe, “Have you seen that penguin?”. “Whaaat?”, Chloe counters. “You know, the penguin.” They both sit back, laughing, revealing meth-mouths full of rotting teeth, as Ella goes back to work on the rash. (52:32-55:40) Au Revoir Simone closes out the evening as the credits roll: "Tonight I sleep to dream of a place that's calling me. It's always just a dream, still I cannot forget what I have seen. The crowd's hard to believe, at their faces I'm looking, but your feet I'm following in soft steps on a path the way you lead." (55:41-58:43)
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