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You see, there was a lot of disappearing and then sometimes reappearing in this episode.

The episode, in a way, functioned as a way to reintroduce us to characters we hadn’t seen in awhile, perhaps a whole season. Before Cooper even ends up inside the Black Lodge, he has a run-in with Ronette, Laura Palmer’s gal pal who managed to escape death the night it took Laura. We easily hadn’t seen her since Harry and Cooper were still chasing after their red herring, Leo Johnson.

Anyway, inside the Black Lodge we see again guys like Leland and the elderly bellhop, the giant, Windham’s former wife Carolyn, Laura’s cousin Maddy. Sort of like a who’s who of Twin Peaks celebrity.

I think these cameos played more like nods to the audience than anything else: Maddy warns Cooper to not trust her cousin, Leland tells Cooper that he didn’t kill anyone, Laura says to Cooper that she’ll see him again in 25 years. And blah blah blah blah blah.

All of it, really, was like a hodgepodge of crazy for me. It probably didn’t help that anything said inside the Black Lodge - save for whatever came out of Cooper’s mouth, oddly - would be projected as if said in reverse, or something. Rarely did voices bind with their mouths. I won’t even consider what it would have been like to watch it all unfold without subtitles.

So Laura screams a lot and cowers behind a chair, Cooper twins himself a doppleganger and chases himself about the lodge, the bellhop hands Cooper coffee that is both a solid, a liquid and a molasses-like substance all at once. Oh, and Windham gets murdered by Bob because he supposes he can take Cooper’s soul in exchange for Annie’s freedom.

And then Annie, as you know, we discover on the floor, and when she arises she resembles Carolyn, and then she transforms back to Annie, and then she transforms back to Carolyn, and yeah, you get it.

But I think the big picture stuff to come out of the lodge is this: Windham is dead, Annie is alive - we’re told this; we don’t ever see her again in reality -- and Cooper is in bed recovering. But then he’s moved to go and brush his teeth, and as soon as he’s in the bathroom with toothpaste tube in hand, he squeezes gobs of it into the sink, smashes his head against the mirror and then reveals himself to be part Bob. He cackles: “Where’s Annie? Where’s Annie? Where’s Annie?”

Yes, Bob even grabbed hold of our hero, too. And all Cooper wanted in the lodge was a measly cup of coffee and, well, to save Annie’s life.

And you know, it’s a fitting conclusion to a show that appears to operate in ritual. At the top of “Pilot,” Laura Palmer is murdered, perhaps by Leland. Then midway through this season, Maddy is offed, again by Leland grappling with a Bob inside. And then Annie’s a target, bound to be destroyed by the man who once loved her.

Always women. Always men against women. And as we learned a bit ago - or, as I suppose we learned - women are keys to the Black Lodge. Could it be that the women that came before the Windham/Annie thing were taken so that their captors could get inside the Black Lodge? Perhaps they were killed, then, because their purpose had been exhausted.

So, Twin Peaks: anything like what I’d expected? No, not really, even though I probably can’t remember what it is I expected. I did have an itch to see something different, though, and this show fit that bill. Bits of it, whole scenes even, won’t be lost on me quite yet.

But for a series that really hit a stride, oh, about halfway through season two - right around the time Leland murdered Maddy - it’s a shame indeed that its audience wasn’t large enough to warrant another season or two. As I’ve already alluded, Lynch had to bring everything back around quickly - sort of - or risk a non-ending.

Between what we got and what could have been, I’m actually glad we got this. But I still have so many questions.

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