Darkwing Duck, Season One, Episode Forty-Four: "Twin Beaks"

Bushroot is in prison, but then he sees this blinding light and, bam, nothing left but desiccated Bushroot husk with empty eye sockets--undeniably creepy.  Truth is, I've never seen Twin Peaks, but I feel like I have a pretty clear idea of the Lynchian aesthetic, which seemed to come through well enough in this episode.

So Honker's family has DISAPPEARED.  Where could they be?  Must be this Twin Beaks town, which has few people and a bunch of giant cabbages just sitting here and there and everywhere, and once again this is effectively surreal.  Less effective is the plotline running through this whole thing where Launchpad decides he has psychic powers that he can use to solve crimes and shit; it just comes from nowhere, doesn't feel true-to-character, and doesn't even tie in with the main story in any meaningful way.

Be that as it may, it turns out that the criminals are alien body-snatching cabbages, and Bushroot's actually been recruited by sapient alien cow from the planet Larson (HO HO HO), to stop them.  And, well, DW has a cool-looking dream sequence that doesn't amount to much, and the aliens are ultimately stopped, though in a very deus-ex-machina-y way.  Also, Honker has an Aunt Trudy, who looks exactly like Binkie only with an eyepatch.  I thought you'd want to know that.

This episode does create a really effective atmosphere in places, but it's all tied to a less-interesting overarching story.  I wish the creators had had the courage of their convictions, and just told a surreal story without clambering back onto that life-raft of comfortable genre tropes.  But, they did.  So, there we are.  

AN' ANOTHER THING: can I tell you how sick I am of that "yep, yep" thing DW does when he's being casual about his awesomeness?  The answer is "very."  I don't know if it's become more prominent of late, but it really grates, and emphasizes the douchey side of the character to a really unnecessary extent.