Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 17 (or episode 24)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter [continuing her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks.]

When was the last time someone asked you to seriously examine yourself? When was the last time you willfully dismissed the consequences of your own actions, knowing someone else is taking a huge hit for your actions, or as the Log Lady puts it, ruined by a horrible “sadness.” Sadness is a surprising word.

We might usually presume someone hurt by our actions would respond with fury, or revenge, or a long-held grudge. But perhaps a great and deep sadness is really all it is. This set up asks us to exam our own lives, as well as those of the protagonists in Twin Peaks. Many of the protagonists have shifted, like on a carousel, turning round slowly from one position on their high horse, to another, where they, having hurt someone, must now look them in the eyes.

A few new people turn in up this episode: Annie, from the convent, a woman named Jones who turns up like a thorn in Catherine’s side. We hear of a dead body that was autopsied, for which no cause of death could be determined, and which only weighed 65 pounds, a suggestion that something from the body was now missing, but no one could determine what it was—its soul?

There’s a silly scene at the end of with a loose weasel wreaking havoc at a party, sort of like in those old cartoons when a mouse in the house causes some high-heeled woman to stand on a chair, screaming for her life.