Keith, there’s a moment late in last night’s episode that felt like the most meta thing David Lynch has ever written. Good Coop/Dougie has turned in a stack of paperwork — all, notably case files involving Tom Sizemore’s character — covered in pencil drawings of ladders, staircases, and more abstract scribbling, which understandably leave his boss, Bushnell Mullins, baffled and annoyed. But then Mullins keeps looking at the drawings, and looking at them some more — at a pace that threatens to rival the Lawrence of Arabia-length scene where we watched Dougie make them — until understanding dawns on his face, and he thanks Dougie, admitting, “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.”
Is this Lynch admitting that no matter how slow, impenetrable, self-indulgent or outright incoherent his work may be, there will always be critics and fans willing to stare at it long enough until they decide that there’s a method to the gibberish? Is the Mullins scene the closest he’ll come to saying, “Yes, I’m the emperor, but sometimes I’m just naked, and it’s okay for us all to admit it when it happens?”