Ramblings Concerning Nothing

Twin Peaks: S02E10 “Dispute Between Brothers”

How do you follow greatness? The past three episodes for Twin Peaks have been really good, wrapping up the central mystery and killing off a few characters. What can Frost & Co. do now?

There’s obviously still a lot left to do in Twin Peaks, even if Cooper plans to leave midway through. (I’m a little surprised he even thinks about leaving, since Bob got away, but I don’t think the Bureau would let him stick around for that.) Bob is still loose, we still don’t know a whole lot about Pittsburgh and Cooper, and the One Eyed Jack’s business is still up in the air. All of these get some headway in “Dispute Between Brothers.”

But from what I’ve heard of the post-reveal episodes of Twin Peaks, the show becomes unbearably quirky (without the Lynchian weirdness, which is way different from quirky) and poorly written. And there were huge helpings of that, although a few made me chuckle.

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Twin Peaks: S02E09 “Arbitrary Law”

Why are David Lynch episodes the best of Twin Peaks? Is it that he gets the best scripts, or is he just supremely talented? The same goes for Jack Bender of Lost: every time his name would come on screen, I knew we’d be in for a classic. To answer my question, I’d suspect it’s both. 

Alas, this is not a David Lynch episode, but rather a Tim Hunter episode. I’ve been surprised to look at the names that have directed episodes of Twin Peaks to see they’re still directing episodes of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and the like. Even though I love those two shows, this is one of the only times I’ve been thoroughly disappointed in the directing in an episode.

I’m not sure whether to blame Tim Hunter or the three-man writing team for this episode, which feels extremely rushed. ABC pushed you to a reveal about Laura’s killer, right? Did they push you to get rid of Leland too? “Arbitrary Law” feels like we’re pushing towards something inevitable, like this is supposed to happen, but it is also missing a lot of good, quiet moments. There were glimpses of it, for sure, like Donna’s meeting with Leland or Leland’s death monologue. But most of it felt like it was going by so fast, I couldn’t savor the moments and intensity. 

Plus, I hate dutch angles. And the final shot? Just lazy.

Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E08 “Drive With A Dead Girl”

It surprises me how quickly Leland has emerged to become the best character on the show. I mentioned a few episodes ago how Cooper was no longer driving the plot (from our eyes, at least) and that other characters were stepping up. Well, our frontrunner is Leland Palmer. I’m not sure if you can steal scenes where you’re the only character, but man, Ray Wise does some fine work. His laughing/crying scene in the Great Northern was excellent, as was his first scene with James and Donna. 

As I mentioned in the recap for “Lonely Souls,” I was expecting Leland to be revealed as incredibly conflicted inside, trying to reconcile the love for his daughter and Bob’s murder through him. Nope, the other side is much more frightening, and an idea I hadn’t even considered: he’s one with Bob, and while they each have their moments, their pursuits aren’t separate. It makes me want to watch the first season again.

Watch. 

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Twin Peaks: S02E07 “Lonely Souls”

Leland Palmer stands in his house. Only a few hours before he comforted his wife and niece, and they seemed to all finally be recovering from the death of Laura Palmer. Now, Leland is silently putting on those awful latex gloves, ready to take Maddy away.

For me, this is the most horrible, awful moment of the episode: the calm before the storm, when we know Maddy’s coming downstairs, and we don’t know what will happen. We don’t know if the episode is almost over, if we’ll cut somewhere else and let our minds piece the crime together, or if Lynch will show the brutal violence for us to see. Of course, we get the latter. We are only processing the incest and violence that has surely been occurring for years at the hands of Laura’s father. Frankly, I was scared for Everyone at that moment. Not just the people in the show, but for humanity as a whole. There isn’t a lot of positivity in the last few minutes of the episode.

In this recap, there will be no bitching about Super-Soldier Nadine or the characters and subplots I usually complain about. (And that’s not just because even those things were handled well in this Frost/Lynch tag team.) Frankly, this was a masterpiece. I’m not sure that it’s as good as “Zen,” which I felt was great through the entire episode. But these last 15 minutes, from the first time we see Sarah Palmer crawling down the stairs, are some of the most chilling images I’ve ever seen.

Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E06 “Demons”

True story: after the first 30 minutes of “Demons,” I wanted to have this write-up as an intentionally awful poem. Partly as an inside joke to myself, because I’m in a poetry class with a famous poet and I don’t write poetry particularly well, and also to show how much I dislike the schmaltz Twin Peaks often has. Roomie, the first time he’s seen me watching the show, asked me multiple times if I was sure I wasn’t watching a soap opera. I wasn’t so sure.

But then the show kicked into high gear and delivered two memorable scenes back-to-back. I looked it up, and like I guessed, the next episode is where we discover Laura’s killer (or, as I think, Bob’s proxy - or host - but let’s save that for later). I liked last episode because I appreciate a momentary change of pace - at least it’s different from a wheel-spinning episode like “Laura’s Secret Diary” - but these last two scenes were really excellent in particular. This episode didn’t have any real connecting thread, other than the one I’ll discuss after the jump, but it captured the mood much better than the last two episodes did. Looking forward to next episode. 

Everybody run…to Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E05 “The Orchid’s Curse”

You want to know how much I liked “The Orchid’s Curse?” I’ll give you three consecutive lines directly from my notes for this episode, all some of my favorite moments of the show.

“Did Truman just grab that guy’s crotch?

‘Excuse me a minute’: Harold definitely just came

Did Cooper just punch that girl in the stomach?”

Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E04 “Laura’s Secret Diary”

Hayward: “We’ll need a psychiatric exam. I’ll tell you one thing, parents should not bury their children. Anyone who’s been through what Leland has…” Cooper: “Do you approve of murder, Dr. Hayward?”

The most interesting person in Twin Peaks is Leland Palmer. I’ve thought this since that spectacular scene in the pilot where the cops come while his wife is on the phone. I like Cooper as much as everybody else, but Leland so clearly embodies the entire town: he has heartbreak, some dark secrets, some violence, but he’s just trying to get by. He goes back to work with Horne, who just screws with him; he tries to go to social functions and just ends up dancing with his dead daughter; and he tries to spice up dinner parties by singing a little happy tune and ends up on the floor.

During Season 1, Leland was clearly a crazy man, but no one really noticed. Everyone just danced with him instead. This season, his hair isn’t the only thing that’s changed. He did something of questionable morality: the killing of his daughter’s murderer, and his outlook has been much more positive since he got revenge. Except he didn’t get revenge, but he doesn’t know it or seem to care. To him, in one of these personal investigations the citizens of Twin Peaks are so fond of, Renault was the killer, and he’s beginning to move on.

Now people are calling him crazy, even though he’s currently the most level-headed and real we’ve seen him. It’s a screwed up world we live in, Leland. 

Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E03 “The Man Behind Glass”

Before I began watching Twin Peaks, I looked up some general information on the show concerning why the show was canceled. I think this is an important part of watching past shows - why, exactly, did they end when they did? Seinfeld had nine good seasons and was getting crazy; Arrested Development was too smart for audiences and went crazy; and Lost needed an end date to finish up the story (and went infected). I was surprised reading why Twin Peaks left the air: people got tired of it, and the murder was solved midway through the second season. Lynch wanted the story of the characters to overshadow the murder mystery, and ABC didn’t see it that way, so the show lost its steam, okay, got it. I agreed with Lynch: my previous experience was with Lost, and I don’t need to know what The Island scientifically is, just how Jack and Kate and Hurley interact with it. I got you, Lynch.

But now I don’t, so much. This episode had nice bookends, but the middle section was filled with storylines I don’t care about. James/Donna/Maddy triangle? One Eyed Jack’s torture? Leo’s pension money? The mill? Check!

This show moves along wonderfully when there is progress towards solving the murder, and a part of that is the deepening mythology. But Lucy’s friend from 1957 doesn’t factor into that at all. Most of these characters are way too one-dimensional, and the weight of the show cannot rest on these outlying, boring characters. It needs to fall on Cooper, the Giant, and most importantly, Laura’s dead body. I fear when Laura’s storyline is behind us. I don’t think we’re close right now, but I hope it’s in the tail end of S2.

Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E02 “Coma”

If you look at that image, it’s pretty absurd. It’s just a guy’s face with an owl over it. Even Bob himself isn’t creepy as we, as a society, define creepy. He’s just a dude in a jean jacket with a moustache. He doesn’t have gruesome teeth, red irises, or look like one o’ dem Islams. Nothing we’ve seen even shows Bob explicitly doing something horrible. In this episode, he crawls over a couch and table, but there’s a sense of violation - that he’s violated this domesticated American house, and eventually you feel he’s violated your television and yourself as he crashes into the camera. There’s a short shot of Bob not in focus that seems wrong as well. 

This is one of the good things writing these has done for me. Why, exactly, do we define terror, or evil, in such a way? This is something the show does remarkably well: comment on the many forms and nature of evil.

But a drawback of these write-ups is the work it takes. The season premiere resolved most of the plot threads thrown up in the air really well. “Coma” mostly set up new ones. Due to the magic of the Internets, I can go directly to the next episode. But for me, I try and mine these episodes for thematic and character moments. Episodes like “Coma” are a little sparse on those. I love episodes like the premiere and “Zen” because they make this job so easy. 

I looked up some reviews (which I generally don’t like to do), and the episode is fairly well-liked, so I guess the plot threads brought up here work down the road in some capacity. Still, I was lukewarm at best. And this is with bringing up aliens.

Watch.

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Twin Peaks: S02E01 “May The Giant Be With You”

Lucy: “Leo Johnson was shot. Jacques Renault was strangled. The mill burned. Shelly and Pete got smoke inhalation. Catherine and Josie are missing. Nadine is in a coma from taking sleeping pills.” Cooper: “How long have I been out?”

Aaaaaaaaaand we’re back.

I’d like to say my break from the strange town of Twin Peaks was because I wanted to mimic the real wait of a new season and to appreciate the little joys of usual network television a little more (even though I did experience that), but I think we all know what the real answer is. (If you guessed StarCraft II and general laziness, then you’d be right!) 

I’ve heard Season 2 gets pretty crappy after a point, but “May The Giant Be With You” is just as good as most of Season 1. It still contains plenty of awful dialogue and clumsy plot points, but there are some nice signposts here that I think will be important. As far as the column goes, I’ll try to catch up and be done by Christmas. But, as always, who knows. Maybe I’ll blame my next hiatus on Bob.

For right now, watch it here. Also, reading the actual scripts here are pretty illuminating. It’s worth looking at them during the commercials/after the episode to look at how things changed during the production.

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