The Daily Beast heaped praise on the actor and the character, and her relationship with David Lynch's Agent Gordon Cole. The tables are turned. 25 years ago, Cole was Bryson's boss. Now she's Chief of Staff. Cole's interaction with Bryson is perhaps one of the new series's least Lynchian moments, and he handles it the exact way you'd expect an older agent with a heart of gold to do so, a bit awkward and straight to the point, once telling those who tried to stand in her way to "fix your hearts or die."
We should all aspire to be so direct.
Cole hasn't become more politically correct with age, and neither has Bryson. The two debate the assignment of a hot, young FBI Agent (Chrysta Bell) to a "Blue Rose" case. Bryson calls Cole out for his penchant for sexy young agents, and Cole reminds Bryson that the agency is big enough for two attractive women. It's a charming scene in a series full of bleak imagery, incest, rape, and murder. And although the frenzied internet has (for the most part) welcomed Bryson back, Twitter and social media have been every bit as reactionary as you'd expect.
"Cringe worthy" was the phrase tossed around Twitter. But if you step outside of Bryson's mahogany walled office and into the universe of Twin Peaks, her's is by far the least cringe worthy scene.
Twin Peaks is a show that has made truly unique art out of awkward sentence structure, backwards speaking, dreamscapes, and nightmares. It's full of long pauses, bizarre language, and completely implausible plot points. It is not a show set in any reality, and more a series of isolated vignettes that are likely meant to stir a mood or feeling rather than advance the story, whatever it happens to be about. The entire show is deliberately "cringe worthy."
So to read Bryson's character described as such leads one to wonder whether these viewers actually watched the first four parts in their entirety or simply fast forwarded to Bryson's scene. In the context of the entire show, Bryson's scene is mild to dull, and that's what's always made her the best representation of a trans character on television, in 1990 and today. While Bryson's gender identity is discussed in the show, it's largely incidental. Take away Cole's loud, monotonic voice and it's the real conversation you'd expect between an FBI Agent and his boss.
It's unlikely we'll ever know why Lynch chose to incorporate a trans person into Twin Peaks, but it's not hard to guess. Lynch's works are populated with the unordinary: dwarves, amputees, agoraphobics, giants. We'd all like to pat ourselves on the back and say that transgender people are just like everyone else, and they should be, but the reality is, they are not perceived to be of the ordinary by most people. Lynch also creates strong female characters who struggle against the odds. Drug addicts, rape victims, and women who fall prey to "the evil that men do" abound in Twin Peaks, and Denise Bryson, a trans field agent who climbed to a high ranking office in the testosteronal United States government is an ultimate example of this. That she's shown to have done so without relaying the heart wrenching stories of her transition gives her character the same respect of anyone in the show. Like Deputy Hawk who happens to be Native American, Denise Bryson is an FBI agent who happens to be trans.
Obviously the biggest gripe about Denise Bryson's reprisal is that she's played by David Duchovny, a cis male actor, and accusations of "trans face." I really hope that phrase dies before it takes off because it's an insult to performance art and our own intellect. Acting is about playing someone else. Maybe it's the result of being bombarded by reality TV, docudramas, and deeply personal journey stories like Transperfect, but audiences have been inflicted with the notion that characters can only be played by actors who personally identify with the role.
Only 0.3% of the country's population identify as trans, and plenty are too busy being architects, doctors, lawyers, and teachers to gratuitously play a trans character simply because of how they identify.
If an actor can superficially pass for the character that's needed, the best capable actor will do. That's acting. Gay men and lesbians play straight roles and vice versa, Italians play Greeks, Christians play Muslims. When you're crafting performance art, you want the best talent for the job. And when you're casting a trans character, you can't cast Laverne Cox or Jamie Clayton in everything. In fact, doing so would demean the abilities of talented trans actors capable of playing cis characters too. Expecting trans characters only to be played by trans actors turns those roles into superficial cliches.
Denise Bryson is a compassionate portrayal of a trans woman in a series with a love/hate relationship with compassion for anyone, especially women. Twin Peaks is a surrealist hell-scape of good versus evil, and an unconventional piece of outsider art. It doesn't exist in our universe, literally or figuratively, and to try to make sense of it in the context of our own social rules and expectations is to go looking for trouble. As an unabashed Lynchian and Peaks Freak, my opinions are entirely biased, but I'm thrilled that Duchovny returned as Denise Bryson as more than just tokenism or fan indulgence. She's back and she's relevant. But if you try to dissect Bryson's character or Lynch's directorial choice to recast Duchovny, you need to actually watch the series. Twin Peaks is a world of nonsensical demons, and if you use logic to pick apart every character, or the show itself, you'll fall down a rabbit hole of maddening frustration.
"It's not about the bunny," and if anyone doesn't get that, they need to shut up about a show they clearly never bothered to watch.
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