No, it's not.

He's been surprisingly excellent in this.

His best role since The Principal!

I wonder if Lynch wrote the Dougie Jones arc so that he could take over the series as the lovable eccentric FBI guy. "That darned Kyle Maclachlan! I've just got to do something to get myself into the spotlight!"

There's no doubt that Dale's Dougie Jones Odyssey is a tour de force , for the creators, and for Kyle McLachlan.
( The allusion is deliberate, since the original Odyssey was also about a hero's long and difficult homecoming), but while Dale is hopefully working his way back to us, Gordon Cole is standing in for him as the solver of mysteries and the representative of the FBI of Twin Peaks. In 1990, the excesses and crimes of J Edgar Hoover were still
fresh enough in the collective memory that the FBI that Agent Cooper and his associates represented -- eccentric, incorruptible, engaged with the paranormal-- was as much an ironic departure from our stereotype as Twin Peaks was a departure from TV small towns of the past like Mayberry and Hooterville.

The FBI of Twin Peaks represents a vision of America as a weird but positive place, and that helped frame the town of Twin Peaks as something more nuanced than the facade that hides a mysterious evil, the rotten heart of the rotten heartland.

Gordon is the natural heir to carry that mantle. And I love how he's doing that.

Lynch has been so fantastic as Cole in the return that anytime I imagine Lynch saying or doing anything, I imagine it VERY LOUDLY.

I really did not expect Albert and Cole to be so heavily involved in the The Return, but I could not be happier with it, doubly so that it gave Miguel Ferrer so many opportunities to shine right before his death.

Gordon and Albert are the mystic septuagenarian buddy cops I never knew I wanted. "Say please" has been one of my favourite character moments.

fuck you albert