Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Mädchen Amick is like a lot of the original Twin Peaks cast in that she will always be at least partially defined by her role on that show. Playing Shelly Johnson, the young waitress with an abusive boyfriend and a hot fling on the side, Amick was one of those characters you were always rooting for amid the weirdness. So whenever she’d show up in anything else — as a teen girl who falls in love with a cat boy in Sleepwalkers or Rory Gilmore’s new stepmom on Gilmore Girls — it was like revisiting an old friend.
Revisiting old friends was also the dominant vibe in the closing moments of the second hour of Twin Peaks: The Return. We got to revisit the old Bang Bang Bar, where a different band was playing on the stage, but (some of) the same familiar faces were waiting for us. Specifically James Hurley (James Marshall) and our girl Shelly. More than any other moment in the two-hour premiere, save for perhaps the Log Lady, seeing James and Shelly smile at each other, smile at us as if to welcome us back, it was the most nostalgic moment of the night. And for a David Lynch creation that had merely minutes before showed us a creature emerge from the dark of a glass box and devour two young people, it was positively sweet.
It was also the latest in a series of great moments this spring for Mädchen Amick. As mentioned, she’s been working all this time, but in 2017, she finds herself with roles on two of the buzziest shows on TV: Twin Peaks and Riverdale. The latter is almost a more interesting accomplishment than the first. As Alice Cooper, mom to perfect girl-next-door Betty, Amick began the season as a cold, suspicious woman, aggressively trying to keep her daughter away from most of the other families in town while at the same time looking suspicious as hell. Alice didn’t really make sense in the first half of the season. Was she a rich lady? Middle class? Religious? A newspaper reporter? Did she want to keep Betty away from the rest of the world for purity reasons or paranoia about the town? Why is she acting so crazy half the time, yet cunning at other times?
One of the best parts of Riverdale‘s back half was watching Alice emerge as easily the most compelling of the adults (a group that included Luke Perry, Skeet Ulrich, and Molly Ringwald). Once she realized her husband was up to his elbows in the Jason Blossom case, and that her daughter was being held by those very Blossoms, Alice kicked it into high gear. Turns out, she is that newspaper lady we thought she was. In the season’s best subplot, Alice recruited Archie and Veronica to do some snooping for her, accidentally creating the best possible Riverdale spinoff: “The Alice Cooper Teen Detective Agency.” Tell me you would not watch.
Also, the scene where Alice and Betty storm the Blossom mansion to retrieve Polly and expose the Blossoms’ dark history of incest is a goddamn DOOZY.
All hail Mädchen Amick, queen of line deliveries in Riverdale. “Enough of this Doctor Moreau experimentation in breeding and eugenics! It’s over!” pretty much takes the cake.
It’s a moment 25 years in the making, but Mädchen Amick is finally having it. Can’t think of anything more well-earned.
