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There must be a limit beyond which a viewer has to hand in their critics' badge though - it just doesn't make sense to be basing criticism on something you haven't watched properly. Maybe you can work around slightly bad sound, or missing a few bits here and there, but would you have much that is useful to say as someone who, say, scaled the show down to watch it on such a small screen that it was hard to differentiate the characters? (Not saying that this is equivalent to watching on a phone necessarily, just making the point that there must be a limit somewhere). Ultimately an artist doesn't get to say how their work is experienced once it is out in the world, but I think if I am going to make public proclamations about it after the fact, I should probably try to give it a decent shake first. (Granted this forum is maybe not exactly a 'proclamation', but it is public, and we are playing at criticism here) This is something that annoys me disproportionately... I had an ex with whom I had this argument, as she had an infuriatingly precise ability to jump up to go grab a drink, or do whatever, when we were watching something at *exactly the worst moment*. (My theory on this was that her attention-span was really well synched to the usual length of the buildup in an important scene, sans its conclusion) I would return the show to the point before she had left, (probably making a bit of a production about it, truth be told) and often we would disagree about whether that was necessary. My eventual position was that just about any film or TV show can be made significantly worse (or possibly nonsensical) by removing just one or two sections of less than a minute each. Hers was that while that might be true, the majority of sub-minute sections in a show can be safely missed without significantly degrading the experience. (She disagreed with my general claim that her timing was like this, although she did concede a few specific examples of scenes she had missed being important)

I suppose the non-matching Miriam surname stuff is less likely to be relevant if Miriam herself is still alive... (Also, if she gives a statement to the Sheriff's Dept and tells them about the letter, and they put that together with what Lucy saw, Chad could be in some trouble.) I rather enjoyed this episode - it had a few good moments that prompted me to startled laughter: "He's dead", the gun totin' kid, the zombie kid rising from the shadow Shelly hooking up with Red is a downer in character terms, but does make me hopeful we'll get some more of him on-screen. Seems like whatever the story is with The Zone, the woodsmen have it pretty well guarded. I assume they are not necessarily working with Badcoop - given how deadly they are it would have been a lot easier to arrange for one of them to materialise nearby and just crunch Dougie's head rather than mess about with hit-men if it were an option. (But then who knows what other rules or restrictions might be in play) Also looks like the Hawk & Truman investigation is not leading to exactly the same spot as The Zone (although it still may turn out to be where Jerry Horne has been wandering). We got a lot of character stuff this week - Shelly's continued terrible choice of men; some more perspective on the dynamics of Becky's awful marriage; the Mitchums now have a friend in Dougie Jones; that Bobby is Becky's father (was this revealed earlier and I missed it? It was news to me, anyway); Diane is definitely up to something, but in an ambiguous way - not sure what the point of changing her story about the woodsman as she did could be. I wonder what the point of killing Hastings was? I got the impression that locating The Zone was the only time any of his studies about other planes and such had yielded anything significant, and he has already passed that information on. It really does look like it'll be late in the series by the time we get Goodcoop back, but I am really looking forward to the FBI story intersecting Dougie's life - even having Gordon or Albert stand-in for us as the audience and remark on Dougie's detachment, or moments of near-clarity would be a relief in an odd sort of way.

If @Mentalgongfu's speculations are correct, I wonder if Bob is the doppleganger of another not-evil spirit, or if he is the original and is just corrupted. If he is the original, then presumably he has a doppleganger somewhere also.

Hmmm... maybe Goodcoop was supposed to have been annihilated by the Lodge but the spirits within decided to let him remain after Bob & Doppelcoop escape? Bob not returning on time seems to definitely be a violation of some kind of order/rules but I don't remember S2 clearly enough to guess whether he and the doppelganger escaping in the first place was seen as a similar violation. The motivation of the other Lodge-denizens is unclear, but they at least seem to be less nasty than Bob, as a rule. It might explain the Doppel-arm's cry of 'NONEXISTENT' as it causes Coop to drop through the floor into the glass box/purple sea-world, too, if he is supposed to have been annihilated by now, but wasn't. In any case, I am very interested to see what 'The Zone' reveals. It would be cool if it is a whole different aspect of the Lodges, or if we get to see the White Lodge... (From the Major & Hastings' accounts of the place it sounds like a positive experience for the most part, but presumably it is not beyond the reach of the less savoury spirits if Briggs got beheaded while there)

On first viewing, I actually thought there was a small special effect played during Candy's long-winded talk with Anthony on the casino floor, but it is actually just someone behind her lighting a cigarette just a she brings her hands together... (For a moment I thought it was a small version of the 'guiding vision' that Mr Jackpots is following to different machines) I wonder what the Mitchums meant by "she's got nowhere else to go" too. Why would they care? (I may be being harsh on the Mitchums here - they seem pretty brutal when conducting business, but maybe outside of that they're not such bad guys?) Is her erratic behaviour part of why she wouldn't find work elsewhere?

I think that's supported by what we've seen so far... We have the reversed fingerprint on Doppelcoop, the change in physique & hairstyle as Coop replaces Dougie, Doppelcoop's black irises etc.

Is Doppelcoop supposed to be in Cooper's original body? Was there an unconscious body left behind when Cooper went into the Lodge which was then 'possessed' by Doppelcoop? I didn't think so, but my memories of the end of S2 are pretty hazy at this point. I thought the doppelganger had escaped, (with its own body) and that Cooper (in *his* own body) has only recently returned to find himself in Dougie's life. (The Dougie we briefly see in the Lodge is more overweight than Cooper and has slightly different coloured hair, so it would seem he retained his body too) @anderbubble - so that's the Twin Peaks version of 'A wizard did it?'

An aside about Coop's abs... I guess being in the Lodge ages you, but does not impact your physique? I mean, we don't know exactly what Cooper was up to in there for those years, but it seems unlikely there is a Lodge Gym, and 25 years of just hanging around is not going to leave one with great musculature. I suppose Cooper has pretty good posture: maybe he was just sitting *really really straight* in his chair for that 25 year stretch and that has worked his core... Or maybe we'll get a flashback of him doing pushups with the Arm sitting on his back, or kettlebell exercises with one of those statues. Interesting point about the missing gunshot wound, too - it might just not have been visible from the angle we got, but one would expect a doctor to remark upon a scar that hadn't previously been there.

Ooh, I didn't spot that - I had just gone back to double check if it was 'Miriam' in both cases, but didn't think to check the credits...

I don't remember any specific cues that he did, but then he did flip through pretty fast, and I don't think Richard told him the name of the sender, so maybe...

Some random musings: I wonder if Steven was referring to a specific incident when bellowing at Becky that he "knew exactly what she had done", or if it is just part of his horrible internal justification for treating her like that, or just paranoia or an attempted bluff... I wonder how Ben Horne & Beverley's relationship is going to pan out - he is still wearing his wedding ring, but his phone call with Sylvia does not seem like that of a loving, or particularly friendly, couple, and only in its aftermath does he ask Beverley to dinner. I wonder if Ben is supposed to be trying to keep a failing relationship with Sylvia alive... This wouldn't seem all that likely by the psychology of original-series Ben Horne (unless she had leverage over him of some kind), but perhaps in his new 'attempting to be a good man' incarnation this is the case. Film Crit Hulk has done a recap for Vulture this week, it is pretty good: http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/twin-peaks-the-return-recap-part-10.html If you don't know Film Crit Hulk, he mostly writes for birthmoviesdeath.com and is often worth reading IMO. Re: Dougie's ability to consent... Well, he does seem to have some agency, in that he reaches for things that interest him and seems to fix his gaze on stuff that is meaningful to him, and occasionally to volunteer information, as when incriminating his co-worker. It has been pointed out that he was able to defend himself from Ike effectively, and so presumably would be able to fend Janey off if he wanted to. This argument does rather depend on how much of his self-defense was Goodcoop taking over in a situation of danger (which presumably might not happen with Janey). He certainly seems happy enough to go along with it once we see his reaction shot, but that does not alter the fact that he may not have known what he was getting into, and thus perhaps could not have consented. Given we don't see the transition from him eating cake to them having sex, it is hard to know how involved he was, but presumably he just shuffled along where she led him as usual.

Hmmm fair point... Not too encrypted for the feds! Re: Doppelcoop having amassed enough of a fortune to be the 'anonymous billionaire' - maybe he ran around for years robbing banks, as has been suggested, but surely with his magical technology mojo he could probably arrange something easier.

I don't think we've been given any real insight into Doppelcoop's motivations, but I think the line where he seems to be checking if Bob is still with him would indicate that whatever Bob's role is currently, he probably isn't in control. Also, depending on what the hell was going on with the woodsmen and Bob's face on the blob they remove, it may be that Bob is not even with Doppelcoop any more.

Seems a bit of a waste to even bother with code-talk like "Around the table the conversation is lively" if Diane is just going to respond with clear-text status information. I continue to hope that Jerry's drugged ranting has more to it than just being a gag - this week we have him shouting "You can't fool me, I've been here before" apparently to his phone which has no service (and we see that like Agent Preston, he seems to use Twin Peaks UI on his phone). With any luck there is actually something weird going on in the woods within which he is wandering. Perhaps, as others have speculated, he will be nearby when Hastings leads the agents to the site of The Zone. More use of music this episode: there was 'Charmaine' playing in the background of Richard's home invasion, and we got some Badalamenti for the Mitchum brothers pondering what to do about 'Mr Jones', as well as the usual Roadhouse music, and more stuff listed on the music credits that I didn't make a mental note of during the episode. Do we think Lucy saw Chad pocket the incriminating letter? I think she is suspicious of him, but her angle was bad, and I reckon if she'd actually seen him grab it she just would have asked about it point blank. Maybe not my favourite episode so far, but I didn't hate it. Lot of details I liked: Cole & Preston's giggle watching Albert; Dougie's arms flopping around; "My bitter enemies and business rivals the Mitchum Brothers"; Jacoby's rant...

Hah! Nice job... Which tools were you using for such things @marblize?

There are groups of folks who believe they are able to perceive messages of various sorts in radio static. I suspect that this comes down to Ganzfield Effect or wishful thinking / apophenia (or less pleasantly, maybe mental illness), but there is an analog weirdness to radio & TV static which you don't find in digital tech. (Although digital errors can have their own horror: my favourite is when you get that effect where the compression is glitching out and getting the shape right, but still displaying the previous content, so you get people-shaped smears of background talking to each other.)

I had also interpreted this as Hawk waiting for a 'please' (or maybe knowing he wasn't going to get one and trying to make a point about it), but it could also just be that Hawk is sick enough of Chad's shit to happily watch him struggle. I think him trying to use the coffee & doughnuts in the conference room as an excuse for why he should be able to eat his lunch there deliberately highlights his place as an outsider - I can't remember if we see the coffee & doughnuts tradition in the conference room being started in S1, but it is a definite part of the cameraderie of the original Twin Peaks Sheriff's Dept.

I was interpreting the horse thing as being about using someone as a vehicle - directing the cicadafrog towards the face initially "the horse is the white of the eyes" then into the mouth "the dark within". But your guess is as good as mine! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Totally! Like silent-film era sci-fi!

Well... Looking forward to seeing how the podcast treats this 'un. I'm also not a great fan of an expansion into epic good vs evil, but I think it's also a bit soon to tell if that is where we're headed. Maybe Experiment/Mother was a being who usually absorbed garmonbozia from Earth but the amount accumulated from a nuke was too much all in one go? Not sure the 'sending to Earth' sequence needs to be an 'aliens' thing exactly: the golden blob gets sent to Earth more through a process that looks like magic, rather than being fired from a spacecraft or something: it is all very abstract - could also represent beings from another dimension, or some kind of afterlife, or any "other place" really.

Excellent questions! If Doppelcoop is the owner of the box (and he could conceivably have acquired millions in the quarter century gap between seasons), I wonder whether it was involved in his plan to mess up the Good/Bad Cooper crossover, or if he is more interested in the 'Mom' being that seemed to be pursuing Coop (or neither)... Another thought - we still don't know who not-Phillip-Jeffries was who taunted Badcoop about going back in. This could be another candidate for the shadowy billionaire (he seems to know a lot about the Lodges, perhaps studying things travelling back & forth to them with the glass box is part of how this knowledge was acquired)... Utterly speculative of course. Also, amongst the garmonbozia Badcoop was throwing up was a lot of what looked like oil. I wonder if there is a connection with that oily stuff, and the 'opening to a gateway' oil that the Log Lady gives Coop in S2...

Yep, I suspect you're right and we're heading for a change in the Coop-as-Dougie plot. Although now that both Coops are on the loose, that change could just be Doppelcoop trying to kill Dougiecoop more personally (I wonder how the luck of Mr Jackpots would hold out against a co-ordinated attack from a doppelganger and his ghostly assistant), or the comedy of errors of the investigation only finding Dougiecoop after Doppelcoop has escaped, and assuming (at least initially) that they are one and the same. (It seems like Albert and Gordon at least are already sufficiently up to speed on the idea of a 'bad Cooper' that they might figure that Dougicoop isn't the same person, but others in the Bureau / police are unlikely to make the same assumption) Man it would be nice to get a fully-functioning Goodcoop again though. Still, I will settle for some more detail on what Doppelcoop's plan is, and what he has been up to all these years.

Ah, gotcha! While I think Badcoop's inability to fake it in his meeting with Gordon was at least partly situational (given the slowed-down speech and strange affect), it does seem unlikely Diane wouldn't have known something was wrong if Badcoop had turned up post-lodge back in the day. I don't think he had the black irises back in the end of S2 / FWWM days, but presumably was 'missing something' then too. (My memories of FWWM are very hazy at this point) I hope it doesn't end up being some kind of assault, though I must admit I still harbour some suspicion it will. Possibly just a few too many girlfriends-in-fridges in my media over the years...

The 'stock footage' at F shares several of the same crowd members, in the same costume, as 'scripted scene' B - particularly at the counter itself, although the tables change around a bit. @Gailbraithe - not sure I buy it, but I don't think we know enough yet to be sure... In particular, I didn't get the impression that Doppelcoop was faking a head wound - I think he was actively trying to put one over on Albert and Gordon, but having trouble being convincing. For the moment I am assuming that this was because Goodcoop had just entered the world, and this was messing with Doppelcoop's mojo in some sense, although it may be that his mojo is only affected when attempting to impersonate Goodcoop now that he has returned. (Granted this would be oddly specific, although it would sort of thematically tie in with Goodcoop being stuck 'impersonating' someone else too). Either that, or it was the loss of his garmonbozia which was causing Doppelcoop's unconvincing behaviour, and since that scene he has caused enough misery just within the lock-up to refill the tank somewhat. Also, not sure Diane's reaction to Doppelcoop must necessarily be read as you have... Consider this: say Doppelcoop did assault her after leaving the Black Lodge, and got away with it either because in those days he was more convincing when pretending to be the 'real' Cooper, or because Diane had no reason to suppose he wasn't. Perhaps what she is dreading when she goes to see him is that he *will* be the guy she knew for years, that he'll just be good old Cooper, and as a corollary, that good old Cooper is capable of horrible things, and that she had been too blind to see it for years. This becomes anger when it becomes apparent that she was attacked by some new, soulless thing, rather than by a colleague/friend of long standing. Your thoughts on her anger at Gordon & the FBI in general might still fit this interpretation, Gordon and the Bureau being responsible for Desmond & Jeffries turning her from the FBI, but possibly also blaming them for the change in Coop which would make him violent/abusive. All of which said - I don't really think that what we have to go on conclusively supports either interpretation.

Was there any hint on why Doppelcoop might have wanted to send dog legs to his dangerous associates? It seemed like he was saying that he had informed his people of whatever the warden was up to, and that if he came to harm, then so would the warden, but splitting up a dog to do it seems like unnecessary work. I suppose there might be some ritualistic thing going on, or possibly just a grisly way to link these people for the sake of a future investigation...