Showtime says of Sunday’s “Twin Peaks”:
This is the chair.
Previously. On “Twin Peaks.”
* :01 DESTINATION FARM. “Cooper” discovers three tracking devices are monitoring his car’s movements. He types in the license plate of a random truck he spots and announces “That should do it” before throwing his smartphone out the window. He tells driver Ray Monroe (George Griffith) that (dead) Darya is waiting for their phone call once they get to a safe place. “You probably want to go to that place they call The Farm,” “Cooper” tells Ray, who agrees. “You have something I want, Ray.” “Yes, I do. I got it memorized. All the numbers memorized perfectly. But honestly, Mr. Cooper, I think it might be worth some money. Maybe quite a lot of money.”
* :07 HOMELESS GREMLINS. Now on a dirt road, Ray asks Cooper if he can stop to pee. Cooper agrees. “Looks like you’re out half a million,” says Cooper, pulling a gun on Ray. When Cooper’s gun fails to fire, Ray shoots “Cooper” twice in the chest. But before Ray can get off a third shot, Homeless Gremlins emerge from the woods and begin molesting “Cooper” and his wounds. Ray sits and watches for a bit, then speeds off.
* :11 WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT. “Phillip, it’s Ray. I think he’s dead but he’s found some kind of help so I’m not 100%. I saw something. Cooper. It’s maybe the key to what this is all about. I told him where I’m going so if he comes after me I’ll get him there.”
* :12 CONCERT TIME. The Nine Inch Nails performs “She’s Gone Away,” which first appeared on an EP released Dec. 22, 2016.
* :17 AWAKE! The song makes “Cooper” sit up.
* :17 BOOM! July 16, 1945 WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO 5:29 AM (MWT) An atom bomb explodes. (For what does the W in MWT stand?)
* :22 CONVENIENCE STORE. Smoke and light and Homeless Gremlins consume a convenience store.
* :25 A BOB IS BORN. The Experiment (Erica Eynon -- the one that escaped the glass box and destroyed nearly-naked Tracey Barberato in hour two -- vomits a stream of something containing a Bob Bubble.
* :26 GOLD GLOBULE. A sequence almost certainly designed to remind us of the beginning of the final act of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” begins with what looks like a giant golden gob of honey.
* :27 THE BLACK GRIMACE. We see a vast dark Caladan ocean much like the one Cooper saw after exiting the glass box in hour two. Perched atop a massive outcropping is an edifice that vaguely resembles a gigantic art-deco observatory. (Is this what The Black Lodge looks like from the outside?) We enter a comparatively tiny passageway in the structure and discover a woman, Senorita Dido (Joy Nash) sitting in a parlor with a Victrola and a big black transformer that looks like Lorraine’s Argent 2 Blinking Beeping Buenos Aires Box crossed with The Grimace.
* :31 ENTER THE GIANT. An alarm sounds and flashes. The Giant appears. He looks at Dido, then The Black Grimace, then something offscreen. He disables the alarm by flipping a switch on The Black Grimace, shares a glance with Dido, then exits.
* :33 LAORB. The Giant climbs a staircase into a room that contains at least one other Black Grimace. He raises his hand and watches on a movie screen the White Sands nuclear test, the Homeless Gremlins outside the convenience store and the Bob Vomit.
The giant floats to the ceiling and begins spewing Gold Vomit. Out of The Giant’s Gold Vomit emerges a Golden Orb bearing the face of teenage Laura Palmer (who would go on to be born in the early 1970s).
Dido kisses the Golden Orb and pushes it toward a Golden Saxophone/Pipe Thing that aims the Orb toward a depiction of Earth on the movie screen.
(All this vomit puts me in the mind of the 1987 movie “The Hidden,” which was made halfway between “Dune” and “Twin Peaks” and starred – get this – Kyle MacLachlan as a possessed FBI agent. In that movie a bad parasitic extraterrestrial intelligence moves between hosts via a process that looks a lot like vomiting, while the good parasitic extraterrestrial intelligence moves between hosts by vomiting a golden stream of light.)
* :41 1956 AUGUST 5 NEW MEXICO DESERT. An egg cracks open and a creepy winged frog-insect (frogsect?) emerges.
* :43 THE TEENS EMERGE. A teen couple (Xolo Mariduena & Tikaeni Faircrest) exits a gas station. The girl, who looks a lot like Natalie Portman, finds a penny and deems it good luck. (Mariduena played Erika Christensen’s adopted son Victor in “Parenthood.” This episode may be Faircrest’s first screen work ever.)
* :45 GOT A LIGHT? A Homeless Gremlin (Robert Broski) floats gently from the sky and onto the New Mexico desert. “Got a light?” he asks passing motorists (Tad Griffith and Leslie Berger), who flee.
* :47 THE KISS. The teen girl asks the teen boy if he is dating Mary. He says not anymore. The girl sounds pleased. He asks if he can kiss her and his request is approved.
* :49 BROADCAST. The Homeless Gremlin approaches KPJK-AM.
He squeezes the heads of a receptionist (Tracy Phillips) and a deejay (Cullen Douglas) and recites this into the microphone: “This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.” People listening to the radio begin to pass out.
* :54 TAKING UP RESIDENCE. The Frogsect enters the unconscious teen girl’s room and mouth.
* :57 DONE. The Homeless Gremlin exits KPJK-AM and walks back into the desert, his cigarette still unlit.
