The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. This entry is a preface surveying characters who won't get standalone treatment. There will be spoilers.
Despite the brevity of their appearances, and the very little we often know about them, these characters frequently make a sharp impression. Some are among the most memorable faces of The Return - Ike the Spike, the bleeding, drooling prisoner, and of course the "he's gotta mean something, right?" Red. Even on many narrow lists of favorites, the warily resourceful Jade, the unsettling "ONE ONE NINE!"-screaming mother, and the unforgettable Wally Brando would probably find a place above regulars who have five or six times their screentime. On the other hand, several of these characters were more nondescript, stealthily assembling more or longer scenes than more prominent individuals.
All characters are featured exclusively in the third season, and therefore are only written by Mark Frost and David Lynch, and directed by David Lynch.
30. Jean-Michel Renault (Walter Olkewicz)
Parts 2 & 7
When we reach the Roadhouse at the end of the wild two-part season finale, we are swept into a yearning, nostalgic mood by the melancholy urgency of The Chromatics and the indelible atmosphere of the location. What guarantee and embellish this mood, however, are not just familiar motifs but familiar faces. There's James Hurley, more solemn in his leather jacket, older and probably not wiser (even if he may be more mature). And Shelly Johnson (is it still "Johnson"?) laughing with friends in a corner booth, worrying about her daughter, teasing a companion, making eyes at a guy across the room. Why, that's even Jacques Renault tending bar in the cor...wait a minute! Jacques Renault? The villain who was suffocated by Leland Palmer way back in season one?!? Granted, the character was resurrected for Fire Walk With Me but that was a prequel; what possible scenario could explain the return of this long-dead French Canadian rascal? It's not long before the credits reveal the trick; this is, you see, Jean-Michel Renault, yet another brother in that ill-fated crime family.
Unlike his siblings Bernard, Jacques, and Jean, this Renault will still be alive at the end of The Return, at least as far as we know (or as far as such things can be determined at all in this timey-wimey narrative). In other ways, however, Jean-Michel shares his brothers' destiny. His second scene reveals an underage prostitution scheme gone wrong as he receives a phone call and angrily refuses to yield to the threats of a disgruntled customer, while still finding a moment for the sort of lascivious chuckle ("From what I hear, though, they were grade-A whores...") that Jacques always specialized in. No doubt Jean-Michel was invented to give Walter Olkewicz a part; not only did the actor have severe health and financial problems at this time (he's since passed away), but Lynch always had a fondness for him. Olkewicz often told the story of Lynch finally meeting him after the first season wrapped, expressing regret that they never got to work together but promising they would yet. When Olkewicz reminded him Jacques was dead, Lynch countered that this was Twin Peaks: anything could happen. And so it did - twice.
Jean-Michel statistics: roughly 3 minutes - 2 scenes - only Roadhouse (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 7
He has more screentime than returning character Doc Hayward in this season.
29. Jack (Steve Baker)
Part 2
For the majority of his screentime, the mechanic Jack is just a shoulder or a hand in the corner of the frame, completely absorbed in his (third) plate of spaghetti at a diner while his criminal cohorts scheme and spar amongst themselves. He's only spoken to twice; once when Ray Monroe teases him about his appetite, and again when the ominous Mr. C stares at his placid, greasy face and beckons him closer. And then we get the one unforgettable image that allows viewers to remember Jack at all: as he stares meekly, passively, without any sign of nervousness or submission or liveliness at all, the taller figure grabs his cheeks and massages his jaw in slow, methodical fashion. This seems to relax Jack - to the extent he wasn't already a wet noodle - and when the motion stops, something in Jack seems to stop too. Later, Mr. C will tell Darya that Jack is dead.
We also learn that Bill Hastings' secretary died in a car accident, and - given that they talk about her in Jack's presence - we can assume the mechanic disabled her vehicle in the garage we see him closing before he's killed. Other than that, what do we know about this character? What can we say about him? I was honestly surprised to even see him make this runners-up list (before realizing I'd miscalculated, I expected the Polish accountant to appear here instead), but his final image certainly is memorably iconic. Baker's public resume is peppered with bit parts or extra work in scattered films throughout the eighties/nineties, including a run of classics around 1989/1990: Ghostbusters II, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Goodfellas, Jacob's Ladder. I don't know if these are speaking roles but in Twin Peaks, despite all the previous talkers he's ranked over, Baker never utters a single word. Jack is erased from existence with the casual, thoughtless ease of a man destroying a bug, or a god destroying a man.
Jack statistics: roughly 3 minutes - 2 scenes - primarily roadside diner (Buckhorn)
He is among the top 10 characters in Part 2, and would rank just below Nancy O'Reilly (Blackie's sister) on a combined list.
28. Marjorie Green (Melissa Jo Bailey)
Part 1
Chatty and confused as she discovers something wrong with her neighbor, Marjorie recalls the woman we meet in the beginning of The Straight Story, right down to the Midwestern twang and phone-induced fogginess (she can't recall her own address while Alvin's neighbor can't remember the number for 911). Unlike that lady, Marjorie also has an incongruously small dog, making her even more of a quintessentially Lynchian figure. She serves as our introduction to Buckhorn, a comical way into a mostly dour, deadpan location (at least until the wacky FBI agents come to town). Suitably - for the overall mood if not necessarily the comedy - her dialogue is mostly handled in a straightforward, unblinking fashion, a bit flat even, as the cops patiently process her scatterbrained information. She tries to explain who may have spare keys to her (as it turns out) dead neighbor's apartment, and then eventually remembers she's holding them herself; that problem resolved, she disappears from the story.
Marjorie's functionality could have been handled in a few seconds of screentime, but Twin Peaks chooses to let it breathe, both finding room for character flourishes and allowing that extra padding to become part of the texture itself, as we become antsier and antsier to find out exactly what her dog was drawn to, and what she herself smelled. Bailey, given plenty of room to play around with the part through mannerisms and delivery, has a few credits scattered over a couple decades, several at the turn of the millennium and more in recent years, with a break in between. Here she's given an opportunity to leave a flourish on her own little corner of the canvas. Including the screenshot collection I opened this series with, Marjorie is officially the two hundred fiftieth character/group of characters covered in this series. A quarter of a thousand little stories into this list, none with more than five minutes onscreen, and yet each one makes their own distinct mark.
Marjorie statistics: roughly 4 minutes - 4 scenes - only Ruth's building (Buckhorn)
She is among the top 10 characters in Part 1, and would rank just above Nancy O'Reilly (Blackie's sister) and just below Little Nicky on a combined list. She has more screentime than returning character Johnny Horne in this season.
27. Wally Brando (Michael Cera)
Part 4
Finally we meet the long-awaited son of Lucy and Andy (or does his loquacious pomposity suggest a parent in the vicinity of Horne's Department Store, menswear?). Wally is a character who would make many shortlists of Return favorites, despite not even cracking the top hundred in terms of screentime. No matter; Wally's single scene is unforgettably hilarious (to me) and even if you find it atrocious, it's an atrocity that will stay with you. Where to begin? The ludicrous costume, with its Wild One stylings not just one or two but three or four generations past its prime, even past the point of retro kitsch appeal? (An emblazoned "Wally" on its breast only deepens the silliness of this outfit.) The absurd conceit of casting zeroes nebbish Michael Cera (the only bona fide star on this list, Cera's most prominent roles, in Arrested Development, Superbad, Juno, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, are all around a decade old)? Not just casting him, but presenting him as a macho fifties icon in clothing and name, albeit one who, in keeping with longstanding Twin Peaks tradition, spouts poetry rather than obscenities from his motorcycle? That gushingly purple dialogue only further heightened by the actor's theatrical gestures, lengthy pauses, and Marlon-mumbly (by way of Cera-congested) voice?
Everything from conception to execution renders Wally an absolute delight even though in theory he could, maybe should, have been a disaster. Wally is also a perfect marriage of Lynch and Frost (absurdist humor always brought them closest together) but with Frost very much leading the way. Harley Peyton has noted that Wally is "pure Mark" and indeed, if we weren't already convinced by the loving attention to wordcraft paired with the flourish of a winking, scenery-chewing ham (reminiscent of how Frost would write Office Renko's mellifluous down-home delivery in Hill Street Blues), the name-drop of Secret History's own Lewis and Clark would seal the deal. Lynch stretches the scene beyond even the page's gleeful ridiculousness, refusing to allow us to look away or move along, swimming in the awkwardness of the moment in a way that makes Wally both alienating and endearing. Meanwhile, the business about allowing his parents' study and his nostalgic, mildly patronizing longing for this small town generate genuine pathos amidst its own ridiculousness, hinting - along with other fleeting, nearly throwaway scenes set in Twin Peaks - at a series that has continued, away from us, for twenty-five years, building legacies and memories that we can only glimpse for a moment. Then they're gone, like Wally's shadow before the overcast Washington skies mask it once again.
Wally statistics: roughly 4 minutes - 1 scene - only sheriff's station (Twin Peaks)
He is among the top 10 characters in Part 4, and would rank just above Daryl Lodwick (state prosecutor) on a combined list.
26. Miriam Sullivan (Sarah Jean Long)
Parts 6, 10 - 12
There's a general impression that The Return paints the town of Twin Peaks, when we get to visit at all, not with the complicated mixture of light and dark we saw in the original series but as an almost relentlessly negative environment. I'm not sure I agree, but it would admittedly be hard to come up with a better example for that thesis than Miriam. Sure, her opening scene, chomping down on two slices of cherry pie, is set in the sunlit diner and suffused with good cheer as she chats with familiar faces Heidi and Shelly. But the almost exaggerated joie de vivre of this moment (well-conveyed by Long, who - if IMDb is to be believed - has only ever appeared onscreen in Twin Peaks) is immediately drowned out by Miriam's true purpose in the narrative: to witness a horrible hit-and-run accident involving a child, to be nearly murdered (and savagely beaten) by the child's killer, and then to crawl painstakingly out of the woods, moaning and dripping with blood, so that she can finally share her experience. The last time we see her she's in the cold, sterile environment of Calhoun Memorial Hospital (frequently employed as a counterpoint to the diner's warm glow in the season two premiere), bruised, battered, and barely conscious. This isn't a delicate balance between good and bad, happy and sad, it's a tease of good will before bombarding us with brutality. Yet it also seems important that Miriam doesn't die.
Throughout her brief story, she is linked to children, as both their protector (she is a schoolteacher) and a repository of childlike cheer and perhaps naivete herself (when Richard visits her unseasonably Christmas-decorated trailer, she doesn't seem to realize that he can overpower her or that her dutiful police report - almost certainly to the corrupt Deputy Chad - may be her undoing). Also, she gets into trouble precisely because she seeks justice for a dead child, and in the end, children are the ones who call for help to save her. She is subtly linked as well to Ronette Pulaski, another townsperson who bore witness to a traumatic death and suffered greatly as a result. When the ball-playing boys stumble across Miriam, the bridge that Ronette crossed in the pilot - or at least a bridge that suggests that icon - hovers in the background. And Miriam is the only character all season to appear in the hospital, Ronette's primary location in the original series. Note that Lynch places an angel statuette in Miriam's yard just before she's attacked. In Twin Peaks, the angels rarely prevent violence, but sometimes they guide its victims (including Ronette) toward escape, which may be all they can hope for.
Miriam statistics: roughly 4 minutes - 5 scenes - primarily her trailer (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 10
She would rank just below Rusty Tomaski ("Heavy Metal Youth") on a combined list.
25. Deputy Jesse Holcomb (James Grixoni)
Parts 4, 6, 11
Why does Jesse exist? In narrative terms, he may just seem like a functional background character - there to deliver messages, fill in the sheriff's back room, or relieve Bobby at the scene of an accidental shooting so that he can pursue a more fruitful tangent. Indeed, we could even question why a single character needs to perform these tasks; is the quiet young deputy simply a matter of production economy? But this is Twin Peaks, so Jesse exists because Lynch keeps finding hilarious ways to utilize Grixoni, punctuating tense, mysterious, somber, or humorous moments with an aura of the inexplicable. The actor, a Seattle local (whose resume suggests mostly bit parts), obviously impressed the director with his strange posture, unusual delivery, and concentrated yet spacey facial expressions. And so Jesse is deployed as off-kilter comic relief. (The actor provides a cheerful - and grateful - interview subject in a quite enjoyable episode of the Talking Backwards podcast, which fleshes out some of this speculation.)
As the dispatcher and a deputy bicker about the sheriff's dead son, Jesse gazes off into space (intent yet hilariously unmotivated) while the light hum of the Great Northern emerges on the soundtrack. Lucy and Andy race out of the room to see their goofy son and Jesse, who could simply cue this action in a casual manner, strangely lingers over each line. Perhaps most memorably, as Sheriff Frank Truman and Deputy Hawk ponder an ominous map in the conference room, Jesse appears in the doorway to invite Frank to look at his new car. Frank politely defers to the next morning, and as he closes the door it's hard to say whether his perplexity is due to the mystical map or the mystifying Jesse. His desk strategically placed right alongside Chad's, Jesse may be the "good cop" to Chad's bad among the new batch; revealing, perhaps, that he's a well-meaning, vaguely childlike figure, no real match for corruption in the ranks. Always an interloper amongst familiar faces, Jesse's presence introduces a new generation available for initiation. But only the veterans can fathom, let alone fight, the darkness in the woods...or the darkness of their own department.
Jesse statistics: roughly 4 minutes - 5 scenes - primarily sheriff's station (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 6
He would rank just above Rusty Tomaski ("Heavy Metal Youth") and just below Dougie Milford on a combined list.
24. Little Boy (Sawyer Shipman) & Drugged-out Mother (Hailey Gates)
Parts 3, 5 & 6
"1-1-9...1-1-9!" A cry that has seared itself into Twin Peaks fans' brains (11/9 became a day of celebration on Twitter for example), this forms the only dialogue spoken by either of these characters across three scenes (one of which repeats footage from the first scene). Why? What do these two destitute characters represent? One is a strung-out mother sitting at a fold-out table decorated with a variety of vices, the other a quiet little boy who witnesses the placement of a bomb under a car across the street, attempts to touch it (would it be disabled or triggered?), and then witnesses the explosion of said car and the carjackers who chase him away. They don't really serve any narrative function, and at times they barely seem to exist in the same world as everyone else (does the coroner's team inform residents if they'll be climbing on their roof to retrieve shrapnel, and wouldn't they notice her condition and echo her backwards call for help?).
Some have theorized that mother and son are new incarnations of the Tremonds/Chalfonts (though of course we eventually meet other Tremonds/Chalfonts in The Return), sent by the Lodge to watch out for Cooper - hence the boy's attempt to disarm the car bomb. Is the mother trying to deliver a message of some sort? It certainly seems significant that she speaks backwards. More likely, of course, the sad little family demonstrates Lynch's interest in life on the extreme margins, and Frost's interest in general social decline; they reside in a mostly abandoned neighborhood, a relic of the housing boom and crash of ten years ago. It's worth pointing out that the "drugged-out mother," aside from what looks like a powdery residue (which could just be crushed-up pills), is only seen with touchstones of legal addiction: alcohol, cigarettes, prescription medication, and cards for gambling. She may have found herself in this condition not by defying society, but rather by following its dictates and becoming ensnared in its socially-sanctioned traps.
Gates, born a few days before the premiere of the original Twin Peaks, cuts a memorable figure. She was even featured in an online video alongside interviews with Lynchian leading ladies like Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, and Patricia Arquette (Gates speaks about Lynch's intense focus on arranging the material on the character's table). Gates' mother was Joan Tewkesbury, the acclaimed screenwriter of Nashville, and her father was mayor of Santa Monica - she herself has worked in publishing and as a model in the fashion industry, as a writer/producer/director in the film industry, and as a host of the Viceland show States of Undress. Shipman is a busy child actor, with work in several shows and films (including a segment on Saturday Night Live), and his most recent appearance was in the show...9-1-1.
Boy & Mom (1-1-9) statistics: roughly 4 minutes - 3 scenes - only their Rancho Rosa house (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 5
They would rank just above Dougie Milford on a combined list.
23. Ike "the Spike" Stadtler (Christophe Zajac-Denek)
Parts 6 & 7, 9 & 10
Most of Ike's scenes have an air of droll comedy, between his deadpan expression, unexpected reactions, and funny little noises. This makes it all the more shocking, in a paradoxically typical Lynchian fashion, when the hitman races into an office and brutally stabs Lorraine (also involved in Mr. C's assassination machinations). At first this moment too seems archly absurd, Lorraine's loud and incongruous hip-hop theme blaring on the soundtrack as Ike chases her around her office with an ice pick. But guffaws quickly give way to gasps when Lynch indulges in a series of bloody, iconic close-ups as jarring and tonally disorienting as any murder sequence since Psycho. When an older woman - a seemingly innocent bystander whom we would never expect to be killed, even in a show as occasionally violent as Twin Peaks - stumbles onto the scene, Ike snarls with animalistic fury and viciously dispatches her too (albeit offscreen). And then there's another moment of comedy, when he realizes his ice pick is damaged and he sighs and cradles it with true sorrow, like a child who shoots a bird and holds the dead creature in his hands, realizing in horror that the damage is his fault (of course, the damage to the weapon troubles Ike, not the people - at least three - he's just slaughtered).
Lynch revels in Ike's oddities - his habit of tossing dice and writing down the numbers, his Batman/Dick Tracy-esque nickname, his noirish but sunlit motel headquarters (ostensibly in Vegas, although there's a fairly obvious L.A. banner flapping near the top of the frame). That said, in one of his most memorable scenes, as he's strangled by Janey-E Jones and his palm is squeezed off onto his gun by "Dougie" (who is being accosted by a presumably invisible talking flesh-head atop a tree poking up through the sidewalk crack), Ike may in fact be the most normal character onscreen. Some viewers were uncomfortable with Lynch's seeming fascination with Ike's stature, another example in a long career of treating real physical differences as surreal touches on his skewed canvas; that said, this is a rare role for Zajac-Denek in which his size isn't the primary hook (see "Dancing Munchkin", "mini Cowboy", "Pengrove the elf", even a Donald Trump version of an Oompa-Loompa on The Jimmy Kimmel Show). Zajac-Denek is a multitalented performer: Detroit hard rocker, surfer, stuntman, and animal wrangler as well as actor.
Ike statistics: roughly 5 minutes - 5 scenes - primarily his motel room (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 6
He is among the top 5 characters of Part 6.
22. Kristi (Francesca Eastwood)
Part 18
Kristi offers coffee, the quintessential Twin Peaks liquid treat, but without the cheerfulness of the RR staff. Like Hap's in Fire Walk With Me, Judy's restaurant (where Kristi works) establishes this locale (Odessa, Texas) as a kind of anti-Twin Peaks. The space is cavernous rather than bustling, the patrons harass rather than chitchat, and the help looks exhausted rather than enthusiastic. When Cooper glances up at Kristi's nametag and examines her face, there's a hint of Mulholland Drive (in which Rita, and later Diane, take something from the otherwise anonymous server's name). Many initially expected a reverse shot of Laura Palmer or even Annie Blackburn pouring Cooper's coffee; instead Kristi is one of the few characters in Episode 18 to exist entirely outside the familiar Twin Peaks framework (even strange homeowner Alice turns out to be a Tremond). As Cooper shoots her assaulters, aimlessly waves his gun in her general direction, and gets her to write down her absent co-worker's address while he deep-fries the cowboys' weapons, Kristi seems to wonder not so much what strange world she's fallen into as what strange world has migrated into her own familiar, banal environment.
Eastwood got an early start in Hollywood, with small roles as a baby opposite her mother in The Stars Fell on Henrietta and as a small child opposite her father in True Crime; after a fifteen-year break, she returned to the screen with synchronicity-evoking stints on the shows Oh, You Pretty Things! (name clearly inspired by the man who said, "We're not gonna talk about Judy") and Heroes Reborn (her last episode on that series is coincidentally titled "Odessa"). With five other roles in 2017, her career was on the uptick and here her memorable face and husky voice are a perfect fit for this young but world-weary character. Of course Lynch is always attuned to the frisson of casting the offspring of Hollywood royalty - see Natalie Wood's daughter in Lost Highway among others - so there's another compelling reason to cast Clint's kid in a "western" scene, what with its out-of-town stranger sauntering through the door of a Texan saloon-style diner, squaring off in a dramatic showdown against three cowboys.
Kristi statistics: roughly 5 minutes - 1 scene - only Judy's restaurant (Odessa)
She is among the top 5 characters of Part 18.
21. Lady Slot-Addict (Linda Porter)
Parts 3 & 4, 11
Just as her in-story fortunes shift over the course of her screentime, so the character's stature within the cast unexpectedly grows the longer we stick with her. Initially, she provides some local color as an extra - an old woman clad in shabby clothes, her hair scraggly and her face grimy as she desperately yanks down on the slot machine and loses over and over again. Just another sad soul in Las Vegas...but as soon as "Dougie" starts winning, she becomes prominent. Given ample room in the frame to huff and scowl, "Lady Slot-Addict"'s facial expressions convey an amount of personality we wouldn't expect from a background figure. After a couple minutes, she even gets to interact with the show's main star, albeit silently (giving him, and later the surveillance camera, the finger). She speaks her first line when the floor supervisor shows up, spitting out a bitter, "The nutcake left." Then, of course, "Dougie" wins his second jackpot, the old woman realizes he's onto something, and she rushes to the slot machine he pointed at before she angrily dismissed him. Jackpot! And everything changes.
Only in her second episode, a continuation of her first scene, does the Addict speak extensively, in surprisingly pleasant tones (albeit perhaps not so surprising now that "Mr. Jackpots" - as she dubs him - has helped her win). Finally we glimpse her after a seven-episode interval, dressed to the nines and hanging onto the arm of a young, well-dressed man (her "dear son Denver...back in [her] life again" as she puts it). The hardset features that screamed desperation in her first appearance now suggest a subtle dignity; she thanks "Dougie" profusely for putting her life back ontrack, and the camera centers her in the composition, the extra become a star in her final minute. Well, this is all profoundly ridiculous. What is the moral here? That you should follow the advice of a passive savant, win a fortune gambling, and restore yourself to a respectable status with materialist symbols and relatives who are clearly taking advantage of your newfound good fortune rather than operating out of familial compassion?
It's all too absurd, and presented at face value would suggest a Forrest Gump-esque cynical naivete, caping for the most bluntly venal Prosperity Gospel under the guise of The Secret pep talk pap. And, to be fair, despite its profound spiritual roots and clear social utility, the Transcendental Meditation organization (for which David Lynch, ambiguous in most matters, is an unabashed evangelist) to which this minor subplot undoubtedly owes some of its ethos, can fall into this gilded self-help ethos at its worst. But what redeems Lady Slots Addict's absurd arc is that it's cheerfully aware, and not in a cloying, winking way, of just how absurd it is. Lynch, as is always the case, makes no effort to disguise the ludicrousness of the scenario, and the fact that he simultaneously delivers it with sincere pathos (the Addict's speech to "Dougie," amplified by a heartstrings-tugging piano tune - one of Angelo Badalementi's best bits for the new soundtrack - is as genuinely touching as it is laughable).
Porter, who had a busy career after making her screen debut in her mid-fifties, appeared in several comedies from different eras (Twins in the eighties, The Truth About Cats & Dogs in the nineties, Dude, Where's My Car in the zeroes) and dozens of popular TV shows, including Murder, She Wrote, Frasier, Roseanne, Mad About You, ER, The X-Files, Melrose Place, Malcolm in the Middle, Gilmore Girls (three episodes as Fran Westin), Scrubs, The King of Queens, That's So Raven, How I Met Your Mother, and The Mindy Project, among many others. She then landed a recurring role as Myrtle in twenty-three episodes of Superstore and appeared as an elderly relative in The Middle, as did Twin Peaks' own Frances Bay (Mrs. Tremond). She passed away in 2019 after this capsule was written, but before it was published - and a couple years after fortune smiled on her long enough to earn her place in the Twin Peaks canon.
Addict statistics: roughly 5 minutes - 3 scenes - primarily Silver Mustang Casino (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 3
20. Detective Don Harrison (Bailey Chase)
Parts 1, 5
There are few people in the memorable world of Twin Peaks who slip under the radar to the extent that you may not recall them even when pressed. Harrison, a state cop from Rapid City who joins the Buckhorn investigation into Ruth Davenport's death, fits that bill. The performance is good, and the character has a few memorable moments, albeit playing second fiddle to local cop Dave Macklay (himself ultimately a straight man to the more outlandish FBI agents): he finds a piece of flesh in suspect Bill Hastings' car and, in his only appearance outside of the premiere, he examines the ingested "Dougie" ring found in Major Briggs' autopsy. Major Briggs...it almost feels odd typing that larger-than-life figure's name in an entry for the keep-his-head-down law enforcement official who has more screentime than Wally Brando, but who could be identified by perhaps two percent as many people. In the third season premiere, Harrison is onscreen more than any season one/two veteran with the sole exception of Cooper. His presence is used to establish a perversely weird normalcy in the Buckhorn scenes of The Return, a sense that the old quirky cop show, with its colorful ensemble and cheerfully corny banter, has been infiltrated by a more coldly professional era of police procedural.
Befitting his character's sturdy, dutiful presence, Chase has a long career as a recurring character on such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (thirteen episodes), As the World Turns (twenty episodes), Watch Over Me (seventeen episodes), Ugly Betty (four episodes), Queen of the South (seven episodes), Damages (five episodes), and 24: Legacy (eight episodes, the majority of the season). He also landed a very regular part as Branch Connelly on Longmire (thirty-three episodes, more than half the series) and as Butch Ada, a leading member of Saving Grace (credited for all forty-six episodes, appearing in all but one). Detective Harrison himself seems to have dropped in from one of those more conventional shows, a not-so-strange stranger in a very strange land.
Harrison statistics: roughly 5 minutes - 3 scenes - primarily police station (Buckhorn) - top episode: Part 1
He is among the top 10 characters in Part 1.
19. FBI Agents Wilson (Owain Rhys Davies) & Randall Headley (Jay R. Ferguson)
Parts 14 - 17
In contrast to Harrison, Agents Wilson and Headley exemplify the usual Lynch/Frost manner of dealing with small parts: take characters who in most shows would be purely functional, give them ridiculous yet fully relatable quirks, and watch the sparks fly. Headley is a comically enraged clean-cut (and slick-suited) official, prone to screaming rebukes like "This is what we do in the FBI!!!" and insults like "Wilson, you son of a bitch!" Wilson is his terminally cowed underling, wincing as he recovers from the last Headley jab and failing to realize the longer he winces, the harsher the next slap will be. The characters are paired in their first three scenes (one of many memorable duos in The Return): receiving their mission from Gordon Cole to find Douglas Jones, realizing that Wilson (with his most hilariously horrified grimace) picked up the wrong Jones family, and examining the Jones homestead with impatient, assholish swagger (Headley) and earnest, awkward inquisitiveness (Wilson). Even apart, however, they exhibit their trademark characteristic; Wilson cowers while the Polish accountant shoots up the neighborhood, only emerging to arrest him when his back is turned and his victims are already dead, while Headley offers empty boasts on the phone with Gordon Cole in the hospital, impatiently fuming when his boss seems far more interested in what an elderly insurance agent has to say.
Of no apparent relation to John Rhys-Davies, Owain Rhys Davies has appeared in over twenty films or series, most prominently as voice talent in Alice Through the Looking Glass (playing "Delivery Frog"). Ferguson was already a TV veteran in his early forties when he was cast in Twin Peaks, with starring roles in, among many others, the TV adaptation of The Outsiders (as Ponyboy Curtis), four seasons and nearly one hundred episodes of Evening Shade (as Taylor Newton), and most famously Mad Men, which he joined in the fourth season as Stan Rizzo. He followed Peaks with another FBI part (as Agent Keith Evans in American Crime Story) and since then has been a recurring character on thirteen episodes of Living Biblically and ten episodes of Briarpatch, though his primary role has been Ben Olinsky on the Roseanne spin-off The Conners over fifty-seven episodes and four seasons since 2018. Prior to Peaks he was also cast as the love interest of Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee, in The Makings of You (in which Grace Zabriskie plays Lee's mother once again).
Headley & Wilson statistics: roughly 5 minutes - 6 scenes - primarily Lancelot Court (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 16
They would rank just below Einar Thorson (Icelandic investor) on a combined list. They have more screentime than returning characters Gersten Hayward and Sylvia Horne in this season.
18. Renee (Jessica Szohr)
Parts 2, 13, 15
On the page, there's not much there: Renee is a townie for James to stare at wistfully, with only three lines of dialogue ("Are you kidding me? Everybody loves Steven," "Stop it Chuck!" and "Talk to me! Baby!"). We don't know the extent of her relationship with James: in the first scene it seems like James has a crush which she's intrigued by without knowing him well; in the second she is moved to tears by his torch song, suggesting greater depth (and mutual feeling) to their connection; in the third, he appears to be an awkward interloper whom she may have affection towards but doesn't love. What gives this odd, fleeting subplot any resonance is the amount of time we linger over it, Szohr's ability to wring pathos from the situation in her close-ups (even as her admirer croons one of Twin Peaks' most mocked songs in falsetto), and Lynch's decisions about how to shoot her scenes: two of the three (not so much the last one) are presented at least as much from her point of view as James'. Her link to Shelly in that first scene also helps - we're inclined to see her as "one of the gang" from that point on. Indeed, we never learn her connection to the significantly older group of friends, but they lend her greater weight in the community. Through all of these elements, a character who could simply be an onscreen cipher is rendered more compelling.
Around the time of Twin Peaks, Szohr had a recurring role on another Showtime series, Shameless, as well as the Fox series The Orville. In the past, she appeared in several episodes of Kingdom, Complications, What About Brian, and CSI: Miami, as well as smaller roles in feature films, but her biggest character to date has been Vanessa Adams in Gossip Girl. Promoted to cast regular after a smaller part in the pilot (albeit based on an important character in the original book from which the series was adapted), she played Vanessa for eighty-three episodes, during which time she was elected one of People Magazine's "Most Beautiful People in the World." (The other Peaks veterans who have shared that honor include Chris Isaak, Sherilyn Fenn, Joan Chen, Ashley Judd, David Duchovny, Heather Graham, Diane Keaton, and Amanda Seyfried.) Those numbers on Renee's arm, by the way, are the actress' own. Though fans wondered if it contained some relevance to the mysteries of Twin Peaks, the tattoo actually memorializes the wedding date of Szohr's grandparents.
Renee statistics: roughly 5 minutes - 3 scenes - only Roadhouse (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 13
She would rank just above Einar Thorson (Icelandic investor) and just below Jones (Eckhardt's assistant) on a combined list.
17. Burns (Brett Gelman)
Parts 4 & 5
Sometimes comedy ends in tragedy - and vice versa. Certainly Silver Mustang manager Burns' "I'm dead" reaction to "Dougie" Jones' winning spree is played for laughs. The following scene, the character's longest, in which he painfully extends what should be a quick payout to alternately entice the winner to stay and intimidate him for potentially ripping off the casino (but how do you "cheat" at slots??), is even more overtly comical. Brett Gelman (a veteran comedian who wracked up nearly a hundred credits in about a decade with the likes of Funny or Die, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, and most notably Stranger Things) was clearly told to play the bald, bearded neurotic as broadly as possible, gripping the literal bag of cash as if his life depended on it while gritting his teeth. At one point Burns and the gambler are leaning in so close they look like they're going to kiss, but there's no intimate understanding between the blank Mr. Jones and the desperate manager. "That's right," he growls, when "Dougie" notices a surveillance camera. "We're watching you."
But ultimately, Burns knows he's the one who's being watched...and who will have to pay the price. Not that the vicious Mitchum brothers, gangsters who own the casino and suspect Burns of conspiring with the big winner to get a cut of the victorious $425,000, would ever let the quiet customer off the hook. Burns must know the mysterious "Mr. Jackpots" is doomed; his own focus is on what will happen to him. The Mitchums allow him to live but when Rodney Mitchum is finished beating him to a pulp, the bleeding, barely conscious Burns is dragged from the room. And Bradley, who stands silently as Rodney kicks the hapless underling in the ribs, is ultimately no more merciful himself: "Leave town," he growls. Burns has most certainly spent his last day in Las Vegas and wherever he is taken to treat his broken bones and concussion, it will probably be outside city limits. And the Mitchums will not be picking up the bill.
Or will they? By the end of The Return, the brothers have become jolly, good-natured associates of the very man whose windfall inspired them to decimate Burns. Could they have had a change of heart about him too? Possibly, but more likely - having served his utility as a convenient punching bag to establish the Mitchums' predatory bona fides before the narrative switcheroo - Burns has simply been forgotten. At any rate, he isn't present to see the Silver Mustang storyline become cheerful once again. Some people have all the luck...and others have none.
Burns statistics: roughly 6 minutes - 2 scenes - only Silver Mustang Casino (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 4
He would rank just above Jones (Eckhardt's assistant) and just below the Invitation to Love cast on a combined list.
16. Walter Lawford (Grant Goodeve)
Parts 13, 15
Tan, grinning, jaunty in his walk - the kind of guy who probably slicked back his hair and dressed in sleek tailored suits in the eighties but knows enough to affect a slightly casual look in 2017 - Walter immediately sticks out like a sore thumb in the RR Diner. And yet he is, in a sense, one of its owners...or rather, it seems, the manager of the "Norma's Double R Franchise" that has evolved from the simple small town diner of the original series. He comes bearing good news: three of their five locations have turned a profit, the business is way over-performing expectations, and the customers - even those at far-off branches who've never met the founder - revere Norma's name and presence as "the face of the brand." So why does it feel like he's delivering a warning? Maybe it's the way he nitpicks Norma's decision-making, condescendingly questioning how she makes her pies "with love" (love that's too expensive for the taste of the board). Maybe it's his vaguely slimy pep talk full of weasel words, allowing that the various franchise owners follow her recipes closely but "exercise their discretion" in purchasing cheaper ingredients that aren't "local, organic, natural" as Norma prefers.
Or maybe he's off on the wrong foot to begin with, smugly interrupting Norma's dinner with Ed and Bobby to stare at them as if they're in his way, responding to Ed's pointed greeting with vague pleasantries which suggest he hasn't taken the time to know the community his business is born from, even to learn the name of one of his associates' closest friends (as his follow-up question to her confirms). Of course Walter has ulterior motives for both his treatment of Norma's onetime lover and his eagerness to sugarcoat corporate reprobation - he's clearly smitten with the resourceful founder, taking her out to dinner to celebrate and asking later if she got his flowers. His follow-up visit turns into a disaster when Norma calmly tells him she's letting him buy out the other franchises, hanging on to her flagship restaurant, and - politely as possible - dismissing Walter from her life. It's this that clearly stings the most, although a spurned Walter frames most of his objections in business terms. As he leaves, he shoots Norma a withering stare and snaps, "You're making a huge mistake - and I believe you're going to regret it." These are parting words, but also opening shots. If there's ever more Twin Peaks, I expect Walter to play a not-very-positive part.
Appropriately, one of Goodeve's most prominent roles before Twin Peaks was as Rick Pederson, a recurring character on Northern Exposure, the series widely seen as Peaks' tamer, more gently quirky Northwest drama-comedy CBS rival. (Before taking a long break for much of the nineties, Goodeve also starred as one of Dick Van Patten's sons on a hundred eleven episodes of Eight is Enough, landed a recurring role on eight episodes of Dynasty, and played several characters each in different episodes of The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Murder, She Wrote.) On Northern Exposure (spoiler ahead), Pederson was one of Maggie O'Connell's many ill-fated boyfriends. Shortly after discovering to his relief that he doesn't have cancer, the hapless Alaskan is killed by a falling satellite. If Walter tries to move in on her business in the future, may Norma be so lucky.
Walter statistics: roughly 6 minutes - 2 scenes - only RR Diner (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 13
He is among the top 10 characters in Part 13, and would rank just above the Invitation to Love cast on a combined list.
15. Officers Douglas (James Giordano) & Olson (Christopher Murray)
Part 1
In a season filled with law enforcement, these two nondescript small-city South Dakota patrolmen are the first cops we meet. Astonishingly, the duo have more screentime than most other characters in the The Return's debut episode. Douglas and Olson (even their names suggest plain, straightforward Middle America) act as straight men in the off-kilter environment of Ruth's apartment building with its bevy of names to remember (Barney, Hank, Chip, Harvey), its hapless resident whose absentmindedness leads them on perpetual wild goose chases, and its maintenance man who exists in his own parallel plot (in which he seems to think he's going to be arrested for some activity the police seem entirely unconcerned with). Then there's the body - when they finally enter the locked room whose stench got them called there in the first place, the officers find a woman under the bed covers with a hole where her left eye should be. "Uh oh," the mostly quiet Olson murmurs, and in his following scene he utters the exact same phrase when the detective and coroner arrive and pull back the sheets. The head of a woman has been placed atop the body of an entirely different victim. This is all obviously way out of Douglas' and Olson's territory and we never see them again.
Like the police officers in Mulholland Drive (one of whom plays the detective that joins them) or Lost Highway, they exist to provide an insufficient down-to-earth counterpoint to the dread surrounding them. Unlike in those other works, however, Lynch's filmmaking seems as plain and unflustered as their reactions (Douglas occasionally slips into exasperation but for the most part they remain calm and professional). The scenes play as flat for some viewers, but this style, and the cops' presence, works to set Buckhorn up as an ordinary place, far more ordinary than anywhere we've seen in Twin Peaks before. In a show infamous for being weird, the inordinate amount of time spent with these very unweird individuals may feel weirdest of all. Both Giordano and Murray have acted in supporting and/or bit parts in film and especially TV for decades; in Murray's case this includes recurring roles as a police captain in Aquarius and the school headmaster in Nickelodeon's Zooey 101. Murray has deep family connections with the Lynchverse through his parents, famous actors who got their start in the fifties. His mother, Hope Lange, played Jeffrey Beaumont's mother in Blue Velvet, and his dad, Don Murray, is none of than Twin Peaks' very own Bushnell Mullens.
Douglas & Olson statistics: roughly 6 minutes - 5 scenes - only Ruth Davenport's building (Buckhorn)
Together, they are among the top 5 characters in Part 1.
14. Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler)
Parts 2, 6, 9 & 10, 13, 15
Duncan has a job to do - several jobs in fact. He's cool under pressure, resigned to his fate, professional to a fault, and unafraid to command others to do the same dirty work he must do. Yet, inescapably, Duncan fails at every turn. We only ever see him his office, taking and giving orders. All of these orders have to do with the murder of one Mr. Douglas Jones. Even the assassinations of other individuals are intimately linked to the "Dougie" assignment. Initially, Duncan calls his assistant Roger to his desk to tell him that some mysterious woman has "got the job." The next time we see Duncan he receives a mysterious red square on his computer screen; he removes a file from a safe and stares at it ominously. Later he admits to his threatening-sounding boss, one Mr. "C", that while he hasn't "done it" yet, he soon will. Then he's informed that Ike, the designated hitman, has fallen short, and Duncan calls upon Anthony Sinclair, an insurance salesman who works with "Dougie," to either pressure Duncan's criminal rivals, the Mitchum brothers, into killing the target, or to figure out a way to do it himself. When Roger informs Duncan that he can't reach Anthony, the disastrously inefficient Duncan remains composed but is shot in the head before he can formulate a new plan, victim to the same process he facilitated.
In his very first scene, Duncan tells Roger "Never become involved with a man like him. Never let a man like him into your life." But it's too late for both of them. (Chantal, the shadowed assassin who dispatches the dispatcher, kills both boss and assistant, at the behest of him.) Duncan's first scene, aired on Showtime during the two-hour premiere, could easily have been a classically Lynchian non sequitur. In fact, many viewers speculated that it would be just that, recalling Fischler's most famous work in a Lynch film (in addition to recurring roles on Nash Bridges, Mad Men, Lost, Southland, Californication, Silicon Valley, Once Upon a Time, Doubt, and Happy, among well over a hundred credits): as the perturbed man in the diner who shares his dream and is then shocked - apparently to death - by a creature hiding behind a dumpster, and is never seen again (well, almost never seen again). But this is Twin Peaks, not Mulholland Drive, with Mark Frost on board as co-writer and a series format to continue. And so the eerie Duncan finds a plot point, enmeshed in the Cooper doppelganger's attempt to erase his own double. This is, in a way, a clue as to how Mulholland Drive itself might have proceeded as a TV series, taking those cryptic standalone scenes and weaving them into an ongoing narrative.
Duncan statistics: roughly 6 minutes - 6 scenes - only his office (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 2
13. Muddy (Frank Collison)
Part 13
Muddy strides up to the gigantic surveillance flatscreen at the Montana headquarters of his brutish gang, and stands with a couple other characters: Renzo, his revered "Boss," and Ray Monroe. Over the course of the subsequent sequence, he will be just as prominent a character as them, explaining the demented bylaws of his clique to a mysterious interloper (any visitor must face Renzo in an arm-wrestling match; if he wins he becomes the boss, if he loses he must join the gang and do everything Renzo says) and then refereeing the arm-wrestling himself. When Renzo unexpectedly loses, and then his face caves in from a well-executed punch, Muddy dutifully follows the very rules he laid out, referring to the grimacing Cooper as "Boss," and turning over a terrified Ray to the new master as his reward. Muddy's bemused pride in Renzo's ability gives way to an awed if confused obedience toward Cooper. He knows his place, even as the earth beneath him quakes. I should note that, in terms of screentime, I could have also included the entire colorful gang (including the out-of-place accountant who pauses to ask Cooper if he needs money) in this line-up. After all, they're onscreen for nearly ten minutes. However, aside from the accountant's brief intercession, they generally don't speak or interact with anyone else. Their function is a background one, and so I incorporated them into the (Extremely) Brief Appearances entry instead.
Like several other Twin Peaks actors, Collison is connected to a Lincoln impersonator, although in this case it was his father rather than him who played the part (young Frank accompanied John Collison in his tours as the sixteenth president, performing as Tad Lincoln himself). He's also linked to Lynch, appearing alongside John Lurie and other colorful bit players at the decrepit motel in Wild at Heart. His first real breakthrough in the industry, after decades onstage, was a junkie in Hill Street Blues (a few seasons after Frost's departure). From there he guest-starred on Moonlighting, Matlock, Night Court, Quantum Leap, NYPD Blue, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Monk and Silicon Valley, among many others, including recurring appearances as Jasper on Carnivale, Kenny's dad on My Name is Earl, Vern on Good Luck Charlie, Real Ishmael Pork on American Horror Story, and several voices on Mr. Pickles. But Collison's strongest TV impression was made as a cast member in one hundred nineteen episodes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, where he played telegraph operator Horace Bing. He also worked as a character actor in films like The Blob, K-PAX, The Village, and as Wash Hogwallop in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Muddy statistics: roughly 6 minutes - 1 scene - only the Farm (Montana)
He is among the top 10 characters in Part 13.
12. Pianist (Smokey Miles)
Part 11
Identified variously as Burt Bacharach, Angelo Badalamenti, Mel Brooks, and even Roman Polanski, the mysterious pianist in the Italian restaurant is actually...a clown-faced, fez-adorned vampire accordionist. No, really. (Things like this tend to happen when you dig into even the smallest parts in a David Lynch production.) Onscreen, the character is introduced after the Mitchums embrace "Dougie" and all three of them gather at an Italian restaurant to toast their mutual success: the Mitchums at recouping millions of dollars, their guest at not being shot and buried in the middle of the desert. We barely see the pianist at all - only twelve seconds before his extended minute and a half one-shot during the closing credits - but we hear him practically non-stop throughout the scene, playing three different tunes (the first and third sound roughly similar, while the second, appropriately titled "Heartbreaking," is distinctly slow and poignant, repeated to close the episode).
Indeed, the pianist's variation between two essential modes is one of the best musical summaries of Twin Peaks you'll find - its variation between broadly comical and touchingly sincere even further complemented by some of the action that accompanies the latter, particularly the now-elegant Lady Slots Addict's gratitude for "Dougie" (which itself seems parodic although the soundtrack lends it great emotional depth). Meanwhile, the jauntier tune, varying between bemused wonder and knowing impatience, feels like it should be called "Candie's Theme." As we return to the little-seen pianist's face for long contemplation, his focused expression yields no further answers, generating more questions instead.
Pianist statistics: roughly 7 minutes (mostly offscreen as we hear him play) - 1 scene - only Santino's Restaurant (Las Vegas)
He is among the top 10 characters in Part 11.
11. Bleeding Drunk (Jay Aaseng)
Parts 14 & 15, 17
The "Drunk" (as he's simply listed in the credits) makes an interesting complement to the Pianist. Both are essentially background figures who form a constant aural presence in one particular location. Both vary between two types of sound, which each reflect an aspect of Lynch's approach to Twin Peaks. Both offer complement and counterpoint to the foregrounded action and seem like they may be providing a kind of aural equivalent to the emotional experiences of other characters. The contrasts embedded within these connections immediately become apparent. The composed pianist plays music in a tony restaurant, the grotesque drunk mimics other characters' dialogue in a dim jail cell. The melodious pianist shifts between jaunty and bittersweet tunes (emphasizing Lynch's mixture of exaggeration and earnestness), while the cacophonous drunk alternates between slurred words and beastly noises (demonstrating Lynch's enthusiasm for both abstracted dialogue and noise as its own nonverbal element). And the pianist amplifies the vacant yet pregnant silence of "Dougie," gently enlarging his presence, while the drunk echoes both the vulgar Chad and the desperate Naido, grimly encircling their oppression.
One podcast even suggested that the Drunk may only be visible (or perhaps more importantly, audible) to Chad, like a kind of invisible friend or even a tulpa. One thing's for sure: the Drunk collects and synthesizes the ambient misery of this dismal location, a locus of negativity in the already not-especially-positive Twin Peaks, lending it both a comic dimension and nightmarish disorientation. One can imagine Lynch on the set, gazing down the line of cells, considering the elements onhand, and deciding he needed to bring in one more figure to heighten and bring home the purpose of the location. For all its practical relevance, the sheriff's jail is also a metaphysical nexus, Lynch's "suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity" made concrete, and the drunk is that same rubber clown suit made flesh (and expressed as noise). Caked beneath a mass of bandages, scabs and raw, pussing and bleeding scars (an Eraserhead baby-like image to go along with the baby-like squawks and similar negativity-made-flesh concept), Aaseng cuts an unforgettable figure. With experience as both a cast and crew member on several productions over the past decade, he has a long-standing connection to the director including work on Inland Empire and quite a few Lynch-related projects from the same time period. This character feels a lot like a Lynchian motif wrapped in a Frostian scenario - in other words, quintessential Twin Peaks.
Drunk statistics: roughly 7 minutes - 8 scenes - only sheriff's station (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 17
He would rank just below Thomas Eckhardt on a combined list.
10. Red (Balthazar Getty)
Parts 2, 6, 11
We first see him at the Roadhouse. He's just another customer, except not quite...looking slick in his leather jacket and suave with his salt-and-pepper hair, evoking earlier Lynch work through the actor's association with Lost Highway, Red is watched not just by us but by beloved Twin Peaks star Shelly Johnson. They seem to already have a relationship as she smiles and Red grins back, cocking his finger in a playful point/gun gesture. There's an air of danger as well as excitement attached to the silent patron...we'll have to keep our eye on him. Red's breakthrough moment arrives in his next scene, four episodes later, when he deals drugs to Audrey Horne's wayward son Richard (another close connection to a familiar favorite), bossing the punk kid around. Red puts Richard in his place not just through verbal tics, physical threats, and strange behavior - stomping his foot and groaning about his kidneys - but through a bizarre, apparently supernatural coin toss which lands a dime inside Richard's mouth and then back in Red's palm. Is this a sorcerer from another realm or a criminal with an unusual talent for mindfuckery? The scene lasts nearly six minutes; Red's earlier scene lasts less than thirty seconds, and his following scene - motioning to Shelly at the diner, and kissing her outside while her ex-husband and daughter stare in disbelief - lasts less than a minute. Red speaks one line of dialogue before he runs away into the night, triumphant. At this point, the possibilities seem endless for this character.
At the halfway point of season three, Twin Peaks fans were not necessarily in agreement on the nature of Red's importance. All, however, seemed to agree that he was very, very important. What were Lynch and Frost setting up? A grand climax in which green-gloved Freddie would defeat this earthly evil while Cooper tackled his own supernatural demon? Would Red himself hail from the Black Lodge, a new spirit able to manipulate physical reality with his coin tricks, a host for Bob (after all he references The King and I, as did Leland when he was possessed), or even Pierre Tremond all grown up, the grandson conducting magic by conjuring objects in his cupped hand? All these theories, and many more, circulated in that heady time after Part 6. Surely The Return harbored big plans for this mysterious one-named stranger. When Red finally popped up again five episodes later, viewers observed his proximity (in both time and place) to an accidental shooting at an intersection. Is he spreading negative energy everywhere he goes? Considering his indirect influence on Richard's hit-and-run, is he a magnet for traffic-related mayhem? This brief glimpse felt like a promissory note, a reminder that big things were in store. Calmer voices warned against expecting too much from Red's arc; as Bobby's romantic rival, perhaps he would be destined merely for a face-off against the local cop rather than a truly grand climax. Either way, of course, Red was a major player, one of the most iconic presences of the new series and someone fans couldn't wait to find out more about.
And then...
Yeah, we never see Red again.
In retrospect, it's clear that Red was always one of many dangling threads in The Return, a perfect example of Lynch's and Frost's ability to sketch a fascinating detail, suggesting so much more - and then just leave it at that. Many season three scenes set in Twin Peaks feel like they belong to a much longer show, establishing various subplots that will continue - even though this outing was designed as a limited series without plans for more. Is this evocation just perverse transgression on the creators' part? Or does the aura of a character like Red arise organically rather than through calculation; a simple background character meant to flesh out our impression of Shelly in middle age and Twin Peaks' drug trade, given unexpected emphasis by Lynch's growing interest on the set? (Incidentally, "Sparkle" is mentioned only once, by Red during the drug trade - another example of viewers crafting an entire mythology from a fleeting moment or two onscreen.) One podcast, I can't remember which, even suggested that perhaps Red was designed as two separate characters, combined to give Getty something to do and thus beefing up a functional Richard sequence into something magical - literally and figuratively. Duwayne Dunham, the series editor, speaks of witnessing multiple takes of the big scene (it was supposed to be shot in the woods, but was re-located to an industrial interior due to rain). Through these takes, Red's mannerisms evolve; the director sculpts his drama on the fly. We all mistook Red for a plot device when in fact he was something else entirely...talk about a sleight of hand.
Getty has appeared consistently in films and TV shows over the decades since he was a child actor. Particularly noteworthy is his participation in the main cast of Alias for one season (as Thomas Grace, fifteen episodes) and especially Brothers & Sisters for five seasons - the fifth as a recurring guest (as Tommy Walker, seventy-two episodes). He has also appeared in smaller recurring roles on Pasadena (thirteen episodes) and Charmed (six episodes). Scion of the billionaire Getty family, the actor got his start as a teenager in the 1990 adaptation of Lord of the Flies, perhaps still his best-known role...or, most likely thanks to Lynch, his second best-known. Getty played Bill Pullman's other half in Lost Highway as Pete Dayton, a confused young man who wakes up in a death row cell (after a mysterious nighttime encounter on his suburban front lawn), having inexplicably displaced a convicted wife-killer. Released from prison, Pete is smitten by a femme fatale (Patricia Arquette, who is also the Pullman character's murdered wife) and intimidated by her gangster husband Mr. Eddy with the help of an otherworldly figure dubbed "The Mystery Man" (like Red, his name is never spoken - his only attribution is his credit). In The Return, Lynch allows the formerly cowed, bewildered Getty to switch places with his tormentor...now another young man meekly quivers in the actor's presence, as he alternates between Mr. Eddy-like crime world force and Mystery Man-esque supernatural intimidation. It's a bit like watching Jeffrey Beaumont became Frank Booth, a gesture the third season makes more directly too, of course.
Funny, Red just barely makes the list of top ten characters with less than ten minutes of screentime, but I'll bet in ten years we'll still be talking about him.
Red statistics: roughly 7 minutes - 3 scenes - primarily unspecified industrial building (Twin Peaks) - top episode: Part 6
He is among the top 5 characters in Part 6, and would rank just above Tim Pinkle and just below Teresa Banks on a combined list. He has more screentime than returning character Phillip Jeffries in this season.
9. Phyllis Hastings (Cornelia Guest)
Parts 1 & 2
In their quietly tasteful but unpretentious home in Buckhorn, South Dakota, Phyllis Hastings and her husband Bill, the local high school principal, prepare for a night of entertaining ("But the Morgans are coming to dinner!" Phyllis will protest in just a few minutes). Dave Macklay, police detective and Bill's fishing buddy, shows up at the door with a surprise: Bill is under arrest. Phyllis seems politely horrified and later huffy when Macklay returns with a search warrant ("Has to be done," he states matter-of-factly). Turns out Bill is accused of murdering a librarian, with incriminating fingerprints all over the apartment. When she visits her husband in the prison, Phyllis still seems a model of both wifely concern and respectable restraint. And then, suddenly, she doesn't. As Bill grimaces, proclaiming his innocence while weirdly acknowledging he dreamed of the victim that night, Phyllis pushes back: she's had enough, she knows all about Bill's affair with the librarian, and she's aware of all the evidence against him. The two push one another's faces back and forth without touching, as if they were positively vs. negatively charged magnets and their verbal exchange does as much work as the physical confrontation to establish their tit for tat. Bill answers Phyllis' accusation of infidelity with "I know about you and George!" - the lawyer who's about to visit him in that very cell. Phyllis has the final word however, given the situation: "You're going down, Bill. Life in prison, Bill. Life in prison," she practically spits, savoring every word before smirking on her way out (and again, as she informs his lawyer/her lover, "He knows").
Her moment of triumph will be brief; at home she's greeted by a long-haired man she seems to recognize, smiling coyly as she asks, "What are you doing here." He says a few things before he shoots her dead, through the eye (just like Ruth Davenport, incidentally), but the most chilling is "You follow human nature perfectly." What to make of this strange exchange? Among various speculations, fans have wondered if she's a tulpa (I don't think so), if Mr. C was the "maybe somebody else too!" lover that Bill alluded to (more likely), and if there's some greater significance to the way her body "stutters" when she's shot, similarly to Duncan Todd's in a later episode (you got me). The Hastings' marital spat - confronting one another with hidden scandals and implicit conspiracies - also feels like a callback to the golden age of prime-time melodrama, in a season that mostly eschews the soapy legacy of the original Twin Peaks. For a moment in the Hastings saga we're as much in the realm of Dynasty as The X-Files.
That callback to the eighties is appropriate since Guest has been described an "Eighties 'It' Girl" (as well as "the first celebutante" and "Debutante of the Decade"). A close friend of Truman Capote and Andy Warhol who partied at Studio 54 and dated Sylvester Stallone, Guest's godparents were the former King of England and Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who brought about his abdication. Her parents were married on Ernest Hemingway's estate in Cuba, with Hemingway himself as the best man. Her aristocratic father, subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in his infancy, was Winston Churchill's cousin and her mother was a fashion icon born of Boston Brahmans - like Churchill and Hemingway (and David Lynch), elegant C.Z. Guest was once featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Following a whirlwind debutante season in 1982, the younger Guest sought her own path in show business, making appearances on David Letterman and Arsenio Hall but mostly pursuing acting in her forties, with several parts in films and TV shows of the past decade. Primarily she has been occupied with vegan products and animal rights activism, as you can see on her website. In 2012, she joined the I'd Rather Go Naked PETA advertising campaign alongside another victim of Bob: Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee.
Phyllis statistics: roughly 7 minutes - 5 scenes - primarily her home (Buckhorn) - top episode: Part 2
She is among the top 5 characters in Part 2, and the only character on this list to appear in the top 10 of 2 episodes. She would rank just above Heidi on a combined list.
8. Jade (Nafessa Williams)
Parts 3 & 5
Jade is introduced simultaneously with Dougie Jones - I don't have to put that name in quotes this time because this is the actual Dougie, some sort of duplicate (tulpa?) of Mr. C, likely manufactured for the express purpose of trapping the good Cooper on his way out of the Lodge. Of course, Jade doesn't know any of this. She is in this model home, part of a largely abandoned Las Vegas real estate development, to have sex with the middle-aged, paunchy insurance salesman. He's dressed; she isn't - she knows her role is to entertain (and get paid) and his is to receive (and pay). Only while showering does the sex worker sense, or more specifically hear, anything amiss. Following the loud, jarring noise, she gets dressed and tries to send Dougie on his way, only to discover with a mix of curiosity, bemusement, and frustration, that the shaggy-haired man in the yellow jacket whom she left in the bedroom is now a mute, short-haired man in a dark suit. He's incapable of tying shoes, driving a car, or saying more than a few repetitive words or phrases (most notably, "Jade give two rides"). Jade could leave him behind - she's well within her rights, having been hired as a short-term companion, not a babysitter. Instead, she helps him out, finding his clothes and driving him to a casino, and even offering him money and some sound advice: "Call for help," given that she suspects he may have had a stroke.
The episode associates Jade with Laura Palmer ("You can go out now," both of them say to Cooper), another incarnation of the movie cliche, given extra depth and warmth by Lynch, of the "hooker with a heart of gold" (Jade will reappear once more when she realizes the Great Northern key was left on the floor of her jeep and smiles to herself before mailing it back to the hotel, inadvertently assisting in Cooper's larger narrative arc). Nonetheless, the basic conception of the character has been criticized most notably (but certainly not solely) by Niela Orr: as one of the very few black women in The Return (indeed, in all of Twin Peaks), why did she have to be a prostitute? And why did Lynch shoot her as gratuitously nude (while Kyle MacLachlan is fully clothed), a potentially objectifying and/or exploitative gesture? Are we being asked to regard her body, so unusual in the context of Twin Peaks until now, as just another surreal element juxtaposed with the racially-coded "normality" of the show's Americana? In a TV commentary landscape dominated by discussions about diversity and representation, these questions were bound to emerge and Lynch's work doesn't always acquit itself well in that light.
On the other hand, the character is deeply sympathetic and likable, in some respects subverting broader, dehumanizing stereotypes about sex work even as the characterization fits certain tropes. Indeed, despite her jarring introduction, Jade is essentially the audience surrogate during her sequences; we have no real idea what's going on in Cooper's head (a conceit that will continue, and continue, and continue...) and she's essentially the straight woman in these comedic bits. It's also worth noting that, unlike the character's doctor, co-workers, friends (except for Bill's wife Candy), or even his family, Jade actually recognizes something is wrong with "Dougie," and even identifies a possible physical explanation. Her last scene cements the impression of her thoughtful consideration with another generous gesture. With relatively little screentime, Jade is established as one of the most endearing and memorable new characters of season three. Williams plays her brilliantly, with perfectly-timed and subtly expressive reactions to "Dougie"'s spacey behavior; this is one of the most delightful turns in the series, a fascinatingly down-to-earth counterpoint to the episode's other major female character (and helper of Cooper), Naido, who has her own racially problematic connotations.
Williams began acting in 2011 and has already stacked up a fairly prolific resume, especially in the past few years. After landing the lead role in the Meek Mill film Streets (Williams, like Mill, lived in Philadelphia, where the film was shot), her first TV role was a big one, as Deana Forbes on One Life to Live, a legendary soap opera. Initially brought onto the soap for just a handful of episodes, Williams was quickly signed to a four-season contract. Sadly, this major breakthrough immediately fell through when - after four decades on the air - ABC cancelled the series just a month into her stint. After working steadily in films and TV shows throughout the teens (including as Charlotte Piel in Code Black), Williams landed another main series role as Anissa Pierce, the titular superhero's daughter in Black Lightning. Anissa is a "metahuman" like her dad (created for 70s DC comic books, the character comes out of retirement in 2018), a med student and part-time teacher who clashes with police over a Confederate statue, and eventually, against her father's wishes, embraces her "metahuman" abilities and becomes the superhero Thunder in the ninth episode of the show. "I'm just really grateful to tell the story for young lesbians -- and black lesbians in particular," Williams has said. "My hope is that when you watch Anissa, a young lesbian is inspired to walk boldly as who she is and to love herself and to love herself exactly how she looks."
Jade statistics: roughly 7 minutes - 4 scenes - primarily empty house in Rancho Rosa (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 3
She is the only single character on this list to achieve a #2 ranking in an episode (Part 3). She has more screentime than (semi-)returning character Major Briggs (corpse and vision) in this season.
7. Constance Talbot (Jane Adams)
Parts 1, 4, 5, 7, 9 & 10
Constance keeps busy. She's on the scene of the crime, at her office desk behind a computer, doing the hard work in the morgue, even finding the time for a date with another forensics expert who has a mordant sense of humor...plus, as she informs us (and her nonplussed colleagues) she's still doing stand-up on the weekends. And Constance gets results. This officer with the Buckhorn Police Department is introduced in Ruth Davenport's apartment; right away she congratulates Detective Macklay for finally wearing his crime scene gloves, perhaps Lynch and Frost winking at themselves for applying this rule so erratically in many first and second season episodes. Her assured demeanor is challenged with one startling discovery after another; she's present for the unveiling of the body under the head and she is the one who makes two key findings: that the prints all over the crime scene belong to Bill Hastings, and that the "male John Doe" corpse matches a profile blocked by the military.
The next several times we see Constance, she's in the morgue, proudly displaying the headless body of Major Briggs for her colleagues, a representative from the Air Force, and finally a group of FBI agents. She's the first person outside of Las Vegas to mention Dougie (she finds his ring in Major Briggs' stomach, a never-explained incident offering the first counterpoint to popular fan theories about Cooper having been transplanted into an imaginary realm or alternative universe). Her marble jokes catch Agent Albert Rosenfield's interest and the last time we see her she's laughing over dinner at a hotel. Albert leaves Buckhorn a few days later, so perhaps these kindred spirits were ultimately just ships passing in the night. But out of the whole South Dakota crew, it's certainly Constance who feels the most like she belongs to the classic Twin Peaks world. Everyone else there tends to play the straight man, while Constance has just the right combination of eccentricity and professionalism to fit in with the show's long-running commitment to wacky law enforcement. Maybe, if she's interested in a career change, her encounter with the Feds can land her in a black suit. She certainly wouldn't be out of place with this series' conception of the FBI.
Adams has a long history playing quirky characters in offbeat films like Todd Solondz's Happiness and the Michel Gondry-Charlie Kaufman collaboration Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (half of a couple with David Cross, who is married to Dr. Jacoby's daughter in real life). She was a recurring character on Frasier, eventually wedding one of the main characters, and received a Golden Globe nomination for the HBO series Hung. Offscreen, she won a Tony in the nineties for An Inspector Calls. A Julliard grad who has worked with Arthur Miller, she started her post-graduate career with the Seattle Repertory Theater shortly after the Twin Peaks production wrapped. Had she begun a few months earlier, perhaps Adams would have found her way into this world in 1989 instead of 2015. As it happens, Constance exists on the margins of the Lynch-Frostverse, but spiritually she feels much closer to its core.
Constance statistics: roughly 7 minutes - 7 scenes - primarily police station (Buckhorn) - top episode: Part 1
She would rank just below Vivian Niles (Norma's mother) on a combined list.
6. Lieutenant Cynthia Knox, USAF (Adele René)
Parts 5, 7, 9
Parts 5, 7, 9
During the buildup to The Return, many fans eagerly anticipated the possible scope and scale of the new series. Some wondered if it would pick up on the worldlier hints of the late second season, in which the Air Force, Project Blue Book, and all sorts of governmental conspiracies and global implications were teased. One military officer went so far as to warn that a top-secret matter pertaining to the woods outside of Twin Peaks could "make the Cold War look like a case of the sniffles." With this in mind, speculation strayed as far afield as Washington, D.C. - would the tentacles of the Black Lodge reach deep into the FBI now, even as far as the White House?! (Well...) The Secret History of Twin Peaks, of course, only fueled such anticipation and while Lynch didn't let Frost's historical and political fascinations carry the story too far, the third season did feature a couple scenes set in the heart of the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon. The subject of conversation between two Air Force officers is, unsurprisingly given those second season mythology plot points and the content (and narrator) of The Secret History, Major Garland Briggs. But Briggs is of course dead, and the authoritative Col. Davis plans to stay behind a desk, so this part of the story will have to be carried by Lt. Knox.
Knox is perhaps the closest character The Return has to the book's Tamara Preston: a strong young woman with impressive rank, a by-the-book pro who is also a little bit offbeat, deeply fascinated with where her professional work takes her and barely able to hold back her enthusiasm while uttering lines like, "I don't think this will be your case for very much longer." If Lynch had wildly different ideas than Frost for Tammy, he strikes a closer balance with Knox, who fulfills her Frostian expository role while sustaining a particularly Lynchian expressivity (thus embodying a sense of slightly out-of-place whimsy that links the two creators, recalling their most famous creation, Agent Dale Cooper). This interesting dynamic between Lynch and Frost is further illustrated as Knox speaks to Davis on the phone, explaining the Briggs situation. The mysterious, just slightly inexplicable scenario, and the matter-of-fact way the information is relayed, bears the mark of Frost's fiction. Meanwhile, however, out of focus in the background of Knox's close-up, a dark, dusty figure trudges down the hallway, ominously unrushed as both a guttural growl and non-diegetic drone consume the soundtrack. In this uncanny gesture, the dread and wonder evoked on the page by the Major's narrative significance finds a purely audiovisual manifestation. Knox casts a quick glance over her shoulder before hurrying along; does she even see the Woodsman? She has other matters to address.
René began acting a decade ago, including several guest appearances as Karen on the show Namaste, Bitches, while also working on nine productions (including Namaste, Bitches) as casting director, a craft she learned under Johanna Ray (who cast Twin Peaks and most of Lynch's films). René has no Wikipedia entry, but open up her IMDb bio and a fascinating family portrait emerges. Many in her family were actors as well, including father John Randolph Jones, and two of her maternal great grandparents were men of science; one was a famous physicist renowned for accurate measurements of gravitation and the prototype of the compass Charles Lindbergh used on his famous flight, while the other invented the Heyl Phasmatrope, "the first camera to show pictures in motion." Oh, and he also invented the stapler. René, an advocate for the disabled (she recently spoke before Congress on behalf of that cause), enthusiastically took to Twitter following Twin Peaks, often engaging with the fan community both online and at live events.
Knox statistics: roughly 8 minutes - 5 scenes - primarily police station (Buckhorn) - top episode: Part 7
She is among the top 10 characters in Part 7 and would rank just above Vivian Niles (Norma's mother) and just below Jonathan Kumagai (Josie's handler) on a combined list.
5. Warden Dwight Murphy (James Morrison)
Parts 4 & 5, 7, 12
When we meet the warden, he doesn't particularly stick out. Like many of the law enforcement characters in The Return, he exists almost as wallpaper, convincing us we're in some facsimile of an ordinary, gray twenty-first century crime/law series so that the strange Lynchian touches will stick out all the more. But those touches are for others, of course; save for our beloved FBI eccentrics (and of course the small-town sheriff's department), the job of Twin Peaks law enforcement is to offset the surrealism. In this case, the distinguished-looking, white-haired official helps debrief the federal agents on the strange case of a former colleague, a long-haired MIA rogue imprisoned after throwing up on himself and crashing a car with cocaine, a machine gun, and a bloody dog's leg in the trunk! Murphy doesn't even say much during the first few scenes as he accompanies outsiders through nondescript prison halls - the state cop, Hollister, does most of the talking. He's only singled out when Gordon Cole shouts, "I want you to give him [Cooper, the peculiar new prisoner] his private phone call and I want to know all about it!"
This simple task initiates the warden's undoing, as well as his expansion as an interesting character. Our first hint arrives with the way Cooper (or rather his doppelganger, though no one else knows this) looks at Warden Murphy in the phone room - and the way Murphy looks back, just slightly unnerved. He cracks his first smile in the surveillance room with Hollister, bemused by the fact that Cooper seems to be fully aware of the spying - but it's all downhill from there. "Maybe I should call Mr. Strawberry?" the grim prisoner asks and Murphy begins to freak out, sweating, covering his mouth, and murmuring, "What the hell..." Later, Cooper asks for a meeting and Murphy pulls a gun, demanding to know what's going on. The prisoner and the warden share a mutual, if hostile, understanding as Cooper mentions the four legs of the dog (the three remaining have been sent to dangerous people as insurance for Cooper's release), "Joe McClusky," and of course "the late Mr. Strawberry" once again. They each know what's going on, but we in the audience are left to wonder. And many did, including the following: Is Mr. Strawberry the dog? Does Murphy have a secret relationship he tried to cover up? Does the fantastical-sounding name refer to a Bob-like "invisible friend" haunting his past? In The Final Dossier, Frost reveals that the same warden worked at Twin Peaks' private prison (built as part of the Ghostwood development) and writes, in Tammy Preston's voice, "It may be worth our time to see if his subsequent murder related back in any way to his years at Ghostwood."
That "subsequent murder" occurs in the warden's final scene, at the hands of Chantal and Hutch (assassins in the doppelganger's employ). Having apparently messed with "Cooper"'s gun, conspiring with Ray Monroe (another prisoner liberated alongside his boss) to have the blackmailer killed, the warden's desperate, dangerous plan has backfired. With spiritual intervention, this evil Cooper is resurrected and orders his minions to kill a certain employee of Yankton Federal Prison. We know what's coming next. When we last see him, Murphy is approaching the front door of his home and is shot twice by a sniper's rifle, once in the back and once in the head. As he lies dead in the walkway, a boy runs from the house screaming frantically, "Dad! Dad!" Yet another complication expands our knowledge of (and empathy with) the dead character, while illuminating just how much we don't know.
Morrison honed his theatrical skills in Alaska (where he was raised) and despite his sturdy, straight-ahead screen presence developed his craft as a circus performer, specifically as a high wire artist and clown - maybe his stage name was Mr. Strawberry? Morrison's stock rose steadily in the eighties, nineties, and zeroes, from small roles in miniseries to guest spots on hit shows like Quantum Leap, Doogie Howser, M.D., L.A. Law, Walker, Texas Ranger, Frasier, The X-Files, Six Feet Under, JAG, The West Wing, and CSI: Miami, and eventually recurring roles on Private Practice (William White), Hawthorne (John Morrissey), Revenge (Gordon Murphy), and Blue (Olsen). His most important roles have been Lt. Col. Tyrus Cassius "T.C." McQueen on Space: Above and Beyond, Frank Bisgaard on Those Who Kill, and especially on the blockbuster series 24 as Counter Terrorist Unit director Bill Buchanan, a recurring guest made central cast member for several seasons (sixty-four episodes total). There's a common thread through these roles, over a hundred of them to date: Morrison frequently plays doctors, lawyers, cops, and military officers - particularly (for whatever reason) colonels. He is often a respected authority figure with particular attention to law enforcement. This time at least, he's given a shadow side to the conventional persona. Offscreen, his supplementary work has been eclectic, encompassing lecturer, filmmaker, and yoga instructor.
Warden statistics: roughly 8 minutes - 8 scenes - primarily Federal Prison (Yankton) - top episode: Part 7
He would rank just above Malcolm Sloan (Evelyn's brother) and just below Roger Hardy (FBI agent who suspends Cooper) on a combined list.
4. Warrick (David Dastmalchian)
Parts 4 & 5, 10
There are many long scenes in Twin Peaks: The Return, and many of these long scenes are filled with extended pauses, in which characters remain silent - communicating only via their expression or sometimes just their presence. Perhaps more than the original series, much of the action takes place in professional spaces, where people are paid to be present, various assistants and underlings hired to stand by passively while others engage in (often violent) business. All of this explains how Warrick, a character who speaks maybe a half-dozen lines and is very rarely foregrounded in the frame, is able to rank so highly on this list. With eight minutes of mostly standing mute, sometimes out-of-focus in the corner of the frame, Warrick is technically onscreen/present far more than many more distinctive characters (including his own boss) - indeed, he has almost as much screentime in season three as Jerry Horne. His biggest moments are collecting "Dougie" after his big win (and spinning his finger next to his head to indicate the gambler's perceived mental state), getting promoted to his brutally beaten boss' position by the Mitchums when they're still in their "ruthless" stage, and losing his earpiece in pain when his new bosses shout at him to hurry Candie along. When the Mitchums' world becomes goofy and fun, Warrick disappears - his functionality as a henchman in a brutal chain of command is no longer relevant.
Despite the character's functionality, the actor does make a visual impression with a particularly Lynchian look - wide-eyed fear/disbelief struggling to maintain composure - reminding us of Patrick Fischler, especially in his memorable Mulholland Drive role (in the third season, Fischler is more of a Burns-type character, with poor Roger as his own Warrick). If you think you've seen Dastmalchain before but can't quite place him, it may be because you remember him as Thomas Schiff, a paranoid schizophrenic terrorist who works for the Joker and is threatened by Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. After years in the theater, this was Dastmalchian's cinematic debut; he followed it with an acclaimed supporting role in Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners as well as a South by Southwest-winning screenplay for the film Animals (in which he also played the lead). In less than a decade and a half of work, he wracked up seventy-five TV/film credits, including Blade Runner 2049, Ant-Man, Sushi Girl, The Employee, Cass, The Flash, Gotham, Ray Donovan, and eight different films in 2018 alone; just recently he appeared in The Suicide Squad and Dune. Coincidentally given the actors' back-to-back placement on this list, he shares both an Alaskan background and a circus resume with James Morrison.
Warrick statistics: roughly 8 minutes - 3 scenes - only Silver Mustang Casino (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 4
He would rank just above Roger Hardy (FBI agent who suspends Cooper) and just below the Room Service Waiter on a combined list.
3. New Mexico Townspeople: Boy (Xolo Maridueña), Wife (Leslie Berger), Husband (Tad Griffith), Disc Jockey (Cullen Douglas), Mechanic (unknown actor), Pop's Diner waitress (unknown actress), Receptionist (Tracy Phillips)
Part 8
Many entries in this series will cover multiple characters at once. Sometimes these characters are duos, sometimes they are close to a dozen, sometimes there are too many to count. In the latter case, you can include the snapshot of the Montana gang featured in the (Extremely) Brief Encounters line-up, and in the first case you can include pairs like Chantal/Hutch and Chet/Sam. The New Mexico townspeople fall somewhere between those two poles, in terms of both screentime and size of ensemble, including seven characters impacted by supernatural beings who invade a White Sands Desert town in 1956. The boy is one half of a pair of courting teenagers, blissed out as they leave some sort of town hall/gas station where they listened to a song (and perhaps attending a dance - which reminds me of this photo). The husband and wife are a couple, maybe not technically local townspeople, driving down the nearby highway when they run into the surreal Woodsmen, one of whom is topped by a Ruskie and/or logger cap (making him a symbol of either Cold War foreign invasion or homegrown backwoods Americana, his Lincoln-esque beard perhaps implying the latter). The stranger asks that notorious question "Gotta light?" and the couple barely escape into the night, dodging other Woodsmen along the highway. The mechanic and the waitress are listening to their radios as they tinker away into the night, alone at their jobs where they tune up an engine or sweep a counter, only to pass out as supernatural static saturates the airwaves, a voice hypnotizing them into somnolence. At a local radio tower, the receptionist (clearly inspired by an Edward Hopper painting) and the DJ are bloodier victims of the murderous Woodsman's iron grip; one has her brains smashed by a single violent jolt, while the other is tortured until a cryptic poem is read aloud many times, at which point his skull finally cracks like an egg.
Through this small New Mexico town, Lynch is able to present one of his quintessential scenarios. As much as the idyllic Blue Velvet intro, interrupted by a stroke and a cutaway to vicious bugs beneath a well-manicured lawn, Part 8 establishes an all-American (yet still subtly eerie and "other") counterpoint to the surrealist violence on the horizon. The individuals contribute to this tapestry, each linked to the iconography of an earlier era - cars, diners, radio stations. The DJ and the receptionist probably come closest to matching their archetypes, while the mechanic and waitress are a bit older than we might envision from a description, and the boy is quite a bit younger. Indeed, both he and his girlfriend - who, of course, will be featured in a much later entry - appear to be just barely in their early teens, a far cry from twentysomething James Dean posing as a rebel without a cause (if, admittedly, closer to the mark of Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood). This wide breadth in age, a community of tired townspeople in late middle age juxtaposed to two children tiptoeing into adolescence, contributes - along with the wide-open spaces of nighttime desert separating the various locations - to the feeling of a community less tight-knit than loosely associated on this far-flung frontier, all the easier to chop apart with the verbal-physical intervention of the Woodsmen.
Unlike American Graffiti, with its bustling, honking, neon-lit central strip, this town has no nexus, just a handful of dispersed outposts, in keeping with the (literally) sleepy feel of the ballad "My Prayer" which plays until the Woodsman scratches the record - no rock 'n' roll in earshot. Nonetheless, George Lucas (Lynch's almost-boss on Return of the Jedi) must have adored this sequence when it aired five years ago, with its combination of the postwar adolescent dream - diners, DJs, sleek cars, teen couples - and creature feature pyrotechnics. The latter half of Part 8 plays like Graffiti on acid while employing the spare, fluid sensibility of early, THX 1138-era Lucas rather than the bustling vision of the Star Wars auteur (though the CGI alien bug is an inevitable technological nod to Lucasfilm's later innovations). Indeed, because of works like Graffiti and Happy Days (or even, if anyone had bothered to watch it, Lynch's and Frost's own On the Air) - but especially because of purely visual iconography like Hopper paintings, Norman Rockwell illustrations, or picture-postcard snapshots - we don't really need any introduction to these characters as individuals in order for them to invoke a sensation. Few have any dialogue; the wife screams in slow-motion, the DJ gags as he's held in a stranglehold, and the receptionist faintly greets her soon-to-be assassin before falling into a daze. Only the boy really speaks, and only he avoids the Woodsmen, at least as far as we can see onscreen. As such, and in conjunction with the fact that he wrangles a kiss from his shy date, he alone seems to hold any sort of conscious power in this landscape of hapless humans.
Some fans speculated at the time that he was Leland, spurred in part perhaps by this subtle power, but mostly because the girl seemed to align with Sarah (a supposition later confirmed by Frost). Others observed that the actor was clearly Hispanic, unlike Ray Wise; true, but for that matter, the actress who played the young Sarah may also be from a different ethnic background than Grace Zabriskie. Is this a sign that Lynch perhaps had a different purpose in mind while shooting? Lynch, both in general and specifically with this material (aside from a very particular date and location at the outset of the sequence), tends to favor the archetypal and iconic, avoiding the nitty-gritty of personal biography/backstory whereas Frost enjoys filling in a more specific context. In his follow-up novel The Final Dossier, Frost re-visits this town, described as "a new suburb built on the edge of the desert specifically for workers involved in the program [The Manhattan Project]." He describes what we see in Part 8 thusly: "[F]ifteen miles outside of the town...an AM station was viciously and mysterious attacked. Two employees - a receptionist and a nighttime DJ - were found dead inside the building, their heads crushed in particularly gruesome fashion by what forensics called 'extreme blunt force trauma.' Included in the accounts that followed over the next few days: half a dozen sightings of strange solitary figures in the area that night, on the road, with at least two placing them in the vicinity of the radio station. Details are sketchy - it was a dark, moonless night - but they sound like drifters or, as one witness [the highway driver perhaps?] called them, 'hobos.'"
Frost also follows up with what happened after the Part 8 sequence ends: "When the sounds stopped, just as abruptly as they'd started, and the station went to dead air - which, when they were unable to raise anyone there on the phone, prompted police to head to the station - all of these people immediately regained consciousness, with no memory of the event." We are informed that the "emergency room doctors found nothing wrong with ... all of those they looked at that night; the paper suggests it was a close to a dozen people." And in the narrator Tammy Preston's voice, Frost concludes by asking, "What to make of it? I have no idea, do you? This may not mean anything, either, but all of this took place a few hours away from the air base at Roswell, where, as we know from the dossier, a young army officer named Doug Milford allegedly witnessed the mysterious 'UFO' crash nine years earlier."
Xolo Maridueña, who plays the boy, began acting at ten and has appeared in a number of commercials, TV shows, and films since then, most notably as a recurring character and eventually a regular cast member on Parenthood until its cancellation in 2015 and as one of the leads in the YouTube Red series Cobra Kai, a continuation of The Karate Kid starring Ralph Macchio himself. Notably (given the Twin Peaks context) Maridueña's interest in performing was sparked by a visit to a radio station when he was a little kid. An L.A. native with Mexican, Cuban, and Ecuadorian background, his name means "Dog Star" in Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs). Leslie Berger, the woman in the car (whose look and actions anticipate the other screaming driver in Part 11), is an acting coach, comedian, and entrepreneur, and appeared in bit parts on iCarly and Heroes as well as in the film Hancock. Her IMDb bio offers a glimpse of her very busy early career but further investigation reveals that she has mostly retired from acting; Lynch brought her back, against her own initial resistance, because he was so taken with her headshot. It was a dream job, as she explains in an endearing Huffington Post interview from 2017, in which she also reveals that she'd never even heard of Twin Peaks before being cast!
One of Berger's anecdotes in that interview involves her genuine shock as her "husband" ripped away from the Woodsman in his car - she didn't realize that she'd be driving so fast at the hands of Tad Griffith, a prolific stunt driver, performer, and coordinator. Griffith was, in fact, one of three stunt coordinators on the whole third season, whose work is featured in eleven episodes. His prolific career, with over a hundred credits in the past twenty years, includes stunt work on The Patriot, Seabiscuit, Master and Commander, Spider-Man 2 (and 3), 300 (where he specifically handled the horses), Iron Man, and Mad Max: Fury Road. Cullen Douglas, whose turn as the DJ is (aside from the boy) perhaps the most memorable of this bunch, is a playwright and actor who has toured the U.S. with Afraid to Look Down, his autobiographical one-man show about raising a son with Downs Syndrome. Since the mid-nineties (when he broke into the industry with guest spots on All That and Keenan and Kel), he has appeared on The Steve Harvey Show, Walker, Texas Ranger, ER, Scrubs, Alias, Charmed, CSI, The Shield, Bones, Deadwood, Without a Trace, Psych, Grey's Anatomy, and American Crime Story as well as the films Love Liza and Sunshine State. Most notably, he landed recurring roles on Pure Genius, Criminal Minds, Scandal, Big Bag, and as Edison Po on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Tracy Phillips, who plays the receptionist, is a dancer, choreographer, and actress - a fixture in music videos from nineties icons like No Doubt, Will Smith, The Offspring, and Ricky Martin. In the following decade, she often appeared as a dancer in films, including Clerks II, Dreamgirls, Charlie Wilson's War, and 500 Days of Summer, and in 2011 she was the choreographer of Water for Elephants. Her father Wade Phillips has worked in the NFL for forty years, most notably as head coach of the Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills, and Dallas Cowboys, and her grandfather Bum Phillips was head coach for the New Orleans Saints and Houston Oilers in the seventies and eighties. This seems an appropriate pedigree on which to conclude this entry on an all-American, very Western ensemble.
Townspeople statistics: roughly 9 minutes - 4 scenes - only White Sands Desert small town (New Mexico)
Collectively, they achieve a #2 ranking in Part 8, and would rank just above Deputy Cliff Howard (the corrupt cop shot by Bobby) and below Johnny Horne on a combined list. They have more screentime than returning character Jerry Horne in this season.
2. Al, limo driver (Jay Larson)
Parts 4 & 11
After that heady crew, time for something a bit lighter. It's somewhat surprising to find the Silver Mustang Casino chauffeur so high on this list; admittedly some of the screentime I counted features his vehicle rather than his presence behind the wheel. Still, he himself is onscreen for a decent amount of time - questioning his strange passenger Douglas Jones about the house with the red door, helping hapless Dougie onto that house's lawn with his sack of money, waiting in awkward silence before the passenger's wife storms out to confront them, and attempting to explain the man's winnings before slinking away while she continues to berate Mr. Jones (whose mind seems to be elsewhere). The next time we see the driver, he's quite bemused to be picking up Dougie again, chuckling to himself as he drives down the Las Vegas strip, taking this same man from the insurance agency where he works to Santino's, a tony Italian restaurant, just as he promised Dougie's boss... Oh wait, no. He doesn't take the still mostly silent passenger to Santino's at all (despite his promise); Al takes him deep into the desert where the Silver Mustang's owners, the Mitchum brothers, are ready to execute the harmless, good-natured Dougie.
What does Al make of all this? We don't really get to know (though we may glimpse a fleeting look of angst on Al's face after he remembers the red door and recognizes the man he's transporting to death). In the desert, Al is held in long shot for several minutes, calmly standing by while the Mitchums threaten Dougie, open up the cardboard box he's carrying, and then celebrate the presence of both a cherry pie and a substantial check. We never cut in for a close-up or reaction shot, although Al's body language when Rodney waves a gun is both understandably skittish and amusingly restrained. Just as as with the patient wait on Dougie's front lawn, Al doesn't let unusual circumstances shake his professional duty; despite justifiable confusion, the driver never looks irritated or bewildered. Al must be the one who drives the trio to Santino's when they finally do decide to go, and presumably he is driving them all to the airport near the end of the series - but we never see him behind the wheel again. No, we leave Al in the desert, distant but present, literally a background character in this crucial scene yet one that, as always, Lynch's generosity allows to display his own distinct, amusing, likable personality. Incidentally, Al is also the only character in the entire third season to observe and comment upon an owl, pointing out the bird to his passenger as it flies over the quiet suburban neighborhood where they're waiting.
Usually sporting a scruffier look than the cleancut Al, Larson is one of many L.A. comedians mixed into Twin Peaks' ensemble. Although most of his work has been in short films, stand-up, television, and podcasting (he co-hosted the popular CrabFest with Ryan Sickler for seven years), he played Ben in the well-received horror feature The Invitation. That film co-starred John Carroll Lynch, who went on to direct David Lynch (no relation) in the excellent Harry Dean Stanton showpiece Lucky - perhaps a connection that helped Larson land a dream job on Twin Peaks, or perhaps just one of many Lynchian coincidences. Larson writes humorously about the experience on his own site, including how he and Lynch shared an awkward/bonding moment over the Vegas statue, modeled on Lynch's father. Larson's most viral moment came in 2012 when his Laugh Factory routine "Wrong Number" - a tale of how he messed with a worried businessman who accidentally called his cell phone - was featured on "This American Life" and topped Reddit. I missed it at the time but just heard someone recount the story for the first time a few days before writing this (speaking of coincidences).
Al statistics: roughly 9 minutes - 3 scenes - primarily Nevada desert (Las Vegas) - top episode: Part 4
Al would rank just above Johnny Horne on a combined list.
1. Renzo (Derek Mears)
Part 13
In what appears to be an abandoned warehouse in Montana, Renzo leads a motley grizzled gang, whose purpose remains hazy but whose initiation rituals will soon be made very clear. One of Renzo's men, Ray, recognizes the man on the surveillance screen who has just pulled into their garage - he's supposed to be dead and this time Ray wants to finish the job. But Renzo holds him back: "You can have him, but I want to have some fun with him first." Muddy, Renzo's right-hand man, explains the rules of the gang to the dark stranger: for twelve years, Renzo has battled every challenger in a bout of arm wrestling and he's won every time. If this man, who says he's just here to see Ray, loses the match he will be under Renzo's thumb forever. If he wins, he's the new boss - a prospect whose outlandishness sparks laughter from Muddy and everyone else in the room (which has become quite crowded since the guest was first spotted). The stranger is contemptuous - "What is this, nursery school? Kindergarten?" - and Renzo is insulted, punching him in the back of the head and sneering, "That's from the nursery school teacher." The stranger is not amused.
Over the course of several minutes, as Renzo struggles against his seemingly nonchalant opponent, his expression subtly shifts. At first he's full of condescending contempt for the much smaller man, knowing that he will crush him in an instant. When this doesn't happen, he grows frustrated and downright angry, his face swelling red, his veins popping, his teeth gritted, and his eyes glaring...until the stranger effortlessly swings Renzo's arm back to the "starting position" and even lowers it close to the other side of the table. Now Renzo is distressed, his determination slipping into desperation, too astonished to even be terrified: whatever his concerns about the consequences of losing, at this point pure animal survival seems to be driving him - his entire identity, a dozen years of unquestioned brute force, is being overturned by someone whose prowess is utterly inexplicable, even uncanny. And then, the final shot: the stranger violently wrenches Renzo's arm all the way to his right and he screams in pain. Within seconds, the broken arm is the least of his worries - the stranger punches him in the head so hard that his entire face collapses, blood oozing out of his flattened eyes as he lays sprawled across the floor, still seated in his overturned chair. And there he remains, a pathetic symbol of his own ultimately impotent power, as the stranger settles his business with Ray.
This strange, goofy sequence - played utterly deadpan despite some winking hints of self-awareness - recalls the 1987 Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling film Over the Top. Renzo's bald, hulking appearance, and endurance of brutal violence, also brings to mind Vince Vaughn in the neo-exploitation flick Brawl in Cell Block 99 (which actually came out several months after this episode of The Return in 2017). However, Renzo's bald, clean-shaven appearance and pouty behavior - as well as the apparent harmlessness of his macho ritual - make him seem a bit more like a giant baby ("What is this? Nursery school?"), adding another cheeky aspect. If Part 13 takes a page from the traditions of action cinema it does so only to rip them up. Yet the effect of Renzo's rage, downfall, and utter destruction isn't simply to parody his machismo: it's to signify the much deeper threat of Evil Cooper, his inhuman coldness that undercuts even the toughest physical prowess, revealing the mortality beneath such assertion.
It's perhaps appropriate that this domineering yet hapless figure just misses the cut for his own standalone study, coming in just below the ten-minute mark. Renzo is the ultimate runner-up.
A stuntman who has also acted in numerous horror and sci-fi films over the years, Mears has variously played a werewolf (Cursed), a zombie (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), a cyclops (Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters), an alien (Predators), and Krampus, the evil Christmas monster (Grimm). Most notably, he was cast as Jason Voorhees in the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th and its sequel (unfortunately, the MTV Movie Awards uses a weird cut-off point for their nominations, so he lost Best Villain to Heath Ledger's Joker from another year). Like his arm-wrestling partner, Mears appeared on the Marvel series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - albeit not in one of Kyle MacLachlan's episodes. Even on the comedic Community, Mears is larger than life, portraying "KickPuncher", an old-school TV superhero whom the characters admire. In 2019 he landed the starring role in Swamp Thing, the much-hyped DC adaptation whose quick cancellation stunned Mears (he conducted a round of interviews on the subject soon after) and upset DC fans rallying to its defense; with shades of the old COOP organization, a #SaveSwampThing campaign was launched on social media. Later that year, I had the good fortune of meeting Mears at a convention in Worcester, Massachusetts along with the Twin Peaks Unwrapped hosts. He was friendly, generous, and engaging, posing for a humorous photo in which we attempted to replicate Mr. C's victory. Despite deploying three against one, we could not dislodge the boss.
Renzo statistics: roughly 9 minutes - 1 scene - only the Farm (Montana)
He is among the top 5 characters in Part 13.
After 17,000 words and many, many months of on-and-off work, this concludes the runners-up - from now on each character or grouping gets their own standalone entry.
Next (available now): Julie
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To immediately read a month of upcoming entries, updated weekly to stay a month ahead...
(at the time of publication, this includes revised full entries on bonus characters, plus full entries on new or revised characters among #86 - 52)
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