Video Games, Choice, Japan

[Jill Duffy, who you should totally remember from her Twin Peaks blogs, is back with a look at video games.]

Sid Meier, best known for the Civilization series of games, is almost as well known for saying: "a [good] game is a series of interesting choices" (Game Architecture and Design, Rollings & Morris, eds., 2000).

Among video game designers and developers, "choice" is a consummate word. “Choice” is the thing that defines a good game. What the user can choose to do at any particular moment, and how those choices are presented, is the most crucial question that game designers ask themselves as they design and iterate their creations.

Generally speaking, developers agree that the more open the game environment — that is, the more "choice" the player has — the closer the game gets to realizing the ultimate vision of what an interactive world can be. This is especially true of virtual worlds and other games that strive to be immersive.

But there is more than one kind of "choice," and not all players want choice the way that developers assume they do.

Some of us believe in constraints. Back in 2004 Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, gave me a demo of Second Life about a year after the game first debuted. This was before Second Life really found its footing as a true virtual business world, before online universities were holding classes there, before organizations were using it to connect employees who lived far apart. At the time, users (and Rosedale himself) saw it more as a game.

He launched us into Second Life. We flew around for a while. We checked out a virtual rave. And I thought, “But what am I supposed to DO?”

The so-called freedom that comes with sandbox play isn’t for everyone. Even as a child, I sought out board games and organized outdoor play, like tag and kickball, where clearly defined rules protected me from the whims and exploitations of older kids, especially my sister, who could otherwise manipulate the unspoken rules of play.

A game of Grand Theft Auto, where there is “something to do,” a series of tasks to complete, but always the open “choice” to do something else instead, is too much freedom for me. I will always want to complete the tasks as efficiently as possible.

A recent New York Times article about the 2010 Tokyo Game Show got me thinking about this, especially because only a few days earlier I had listened to Sheena Iyengar's TED talk on the art of choosing.






The Times article reflects about Japan's place in the world of video game development, and to an extend consumption. Jake Kazdal, a game developer with a history at both Sega and Electronic Arts, was interviewed for the article:

"Part of Japan’s problem, Mr. Kazdal said, is a growing gap in tastes between players there and overseas. The most popular games in Japan are linear, with little leeway for players to wander off a defined path. In the United States, he said, video games have become more open, virtual experiences."

In light of Iyengar's talk, and other ruminations about choice and false choice (including Malcolm Gladwell's "spaghetti sauce" TED talk), Kazdal's point makes a lot of sense. But I don't think it’s a matter of "taste" so much as culture. The Japanese are not "lagging behind," as Keiji Inafune of Capcom tells the Times reporter. It's that their whole ideology doesn't embrace "choice" the same way that Western cultures do, but they're being asked to both produce and consume games in a global marketplace.

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 22: THE END

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter [completing her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. I make a brief comment below.]

“And now, an ending. Where there was once one, there are now two. Or were there always two? What is a reflection? A chance to see two? When there are chances for reflections, there can always be two or more. Only when we are everywhere will there be just one. It has been a pleasure speaking to you.” –The Log Lady

When the Log Lady speaks her parting words about duplicity, sameness, and reflection to introduce this final episode of Twin Peaks, I honestly wonder what she wants us to think about.

There is no obvious answer, but the two “twos” that come to mind first are Bob and his “host” (Leland, for example), and Laura and Maddy.

Let’s start with Bob. We haven’t seen much of Bob lately at all. Then there’s Leland, who came apart at the seams and finally died a few episodes back. Maddy has been dead for quite some time, and Laura was never seen alive on the show ever.

I never really thought about that until now. Laura Palmer isn’t really on the show.

I guess for Laura at though, her absence was her presence. Her whole role in the show was that she was dead at the start of it.

But in this final episode, directed by David Lynch, many of these people come back.

What Happens

The show gets off on a roll. There’s some turmoil in the beginning about Pete and a stolen truck—just enough to establish a conspiracy and pick up some momentum. Pete thinks Margaret, The Log Lady, stole his truck, but it was actually Windom Earle disguised as Margaret. (More Bugs Bunny stuff for you right there!)

Earle has kidnapped Annie and is taking her to the woods in the stolen truck. His plan is to invoke fear in her, because he needs fear in order to open the gateway to the Black Lodge and the other side.

I feel like it’s strange to watch Annie at first in this scene because she’s almost cold. But something else about her seems strong, like she is deliberately trying to not show fear so that Earle can’t get what he’s after. None of that is explicit, and maybe it wasn’t even intended, but that’s how I felt about her performance.

Annie at first repeats prayer (she used to be in a convent, if you recall) and talks to her captor rationally. But aggressively, Earle makes her submit and forces into a circle of sycamore tree. The moment she steps into the circle, she becomes totally washed over.

A flashlight shines on Annie in the darkness, with high contrast, and she looks a little like Laura at a glance. Then she and Windom walk behind a red curtain that appears in the backdrop. They just slip behind it and disappear in the woods. I can’t imagine what that moment must have been like to see on television when this episode first aired.

Meanwhile. . .

Nadine and Mike suffer head trauma, which causes Nadine to come back to full consciousness and adulthood again. She back in reality, but she’s also back to her frail and crazy self.

I don’t like the Nadine thing ending this way. It’s sad to see her acting like a hysterical woman, screaming about drape runners again, when she had become such a strong and fearless young woman.

It’s strange that this scene is butted up against the one with Annie, as two women who were momentarily strong are not anymore.

As for Donna, she has learned that Ben Horne is her biological father. There’s a confrontation, and Doc Hayward goes berserk, punching Horne hard and causing him to spin, stumble, and crack his head open on the fireplace. Doc Hayward falls to his knees, shaking his fists and head in anger, or in frustration at being overcome by emotion or darkness enough to knock another man out cold. That was totally unexpected. Doc Hayward is the last person you’d ever suspect to lose his cool, or worse, be overtaken by Bob—and there’s a hint from the music cues and the level of gore in this scene that maybe that’s what’s about to happen.

Back In The Woods. . .

Cooper goes to the woods, in pursuit of Windom Earle and Annie, with Harry, but says he has to go forward alone. The lighting uses a lot of flashlights, and there’s a lot of handheld camera work. It’s very Blair Witch Project, only less nauseating.

Cooper finds the circle of 12 sycamore trees, sees a pool of oil, and just like that, slips behind the same red curtains where Earle and Annie disappeared.

Harry seems to look on. Can Harry see the curtain? When the camera is from his perspective, it’s there, though I’m not 100 percent convinced he can see it. Maybe he sees Coop just disappear into a little strike of light.

Behind the Curtain. . .

Behind the curtain, the dim spot-flashlight lighting changes and we get strobe instead. There’s an old singer with an old-fashioned mic with heavy reverb. The little man is there.

We see the little stage area of two couches and a statue where Laura once appeared with the Little Man in Cooper’s dream.

The red room is what’s memorable about Twin Peaks, so I understand why Lynch and Frost want to end the series here. But it is odd that so much time has passed since Twin Peaks took place in the red room. This is riveting for television, and what I think makes it riveting is returning to this magical and special place that was never explained to us. We get to return to this place that we wanted to know more about.

Seriously, riveting! The characters in this show go into another dimension, where there are strobe lights, murdered high school girls, a midget—and!—this isn’t even the first time they go to this place! There are people on the outside, namely Harry now, waiting for the characters to return to the normal world. Usually if this kind of alternate universe were taking place in a television show or movie, no one but the character experiencing it would know so that we, the audience, would always have to wonder if the entire experience were only some allusion or delusion.

In Twin Peaks, though, we have Harry, Hawk, Margaret, and Briggs to back up the story. We had the one-armed man Mike. We had the little boy who made the creamed corn disappear. All the corroborated stories tell us, “This is really happening!” This place really exists.

At daylight, Andy and Harry are waiting for Cooper to reemerge. It’s been about 10 hours, they say.

Again, Meanwhile. . .

Audrey goes into a bank and handcuffs herself to the local Savings and Loan to protest its investment in Ghostwood.

There’s an excruciatingly old man working at the bank. I like the old geezer cameos, like the one in Cooper’s hotel room after he has been shot. They walk as if they need a walker or cane, but can manage to take just a few steps on their own... just a few more… just a few more. They limp along at a hilariously slow pace.

In the bank vault, we get a lot of Lynchian shots, where we watch, in one continuous shot, the old man walk way down a hallway, fetch a glass of water, and then walk all the way back to Audrey, and then walk another stretch to put the glass down, and then pace around some more.

This long distance shot, which is still in effect when Andrew and Pete show up, puts a huge amount of distance between us and them. It also, though, tells us that the action is due to move back our way any moment now.

Andrew has come to the bank because he has a key from Eckhart that is, apparently, for a safety deposit box. Andrew finds the box, opens it, and inside there is a note—“Got you, Andrew”—and a bomb that immediately blows the whole place to smithereens. We can only assume everyone is dead.

At the R&R Diner, Shelly and Bobby are hanging out. Sarah, Laura’s mother, and Dr. Jacoby enter looking for Briggs and his wife, telling them they have an urgent message. Sarah sits down and tells Briggs, in a crazy demonic whisper, “I’m in the Black Lodge with Dale Cooper.”

Who is channeling Sarah to say this? Is it Bob? Windom Earle? The midget? Laura? Suddenly, there is a shot of the red room hallway, and voice saying, “I’ve waited for you.”

We are now 31 minutes into this 49-minute show, if you can believe it. I can’t. That’s why I made a note of it.

In the red room, Laura arrives. The elderly hotel porter arrives. The giant arrives and says, “One and the same,” as people continue to appear and disappear or turn into someone else.

One unique thing about Twin Peaks that I’ve harped on before is how explicit the show is in getting across some of its messages. When Bob inhabited Leland, nothing was left up to interpretation. We saw and heard several times how Bob took over Leland’s body. There was never any doubt in anyone’s mind about what was happening.

Now, however, what the hell is going on?

It’s kind of great. What could be creepier? And again, I can’t believe this was ever on prime time.

Cooper picks up a cup of coffee. It’s fake and the liquid is fake, and doesn’t pour. He rights it, tips again, and now it pours like normal. He rights it again, pours again, and now it pours like molasses. Cooper is experimenting in the world, I think, testing things out to see what happens. The problem is, objects do not seem to have fixed properties, much like how people morphed into one another only moments before.

The Little Man says, “Wow Bob, wow,” and “Fire walk with me.” Then more strobes.

Cooper exits to the hallway, through the curtains, and parts the curtains on the other side only to find a replica of the room he was just in, except devoid of people. He returns to the first room, and the Little Man yells at him, “Wrong way.”

He exits again, goes back to the second room again, and finds the Little Man there this time, yelling and gyrating. He says, “Another friend,” and we see a silhouette coming from behind the curtains. It’s Maddy. She says, “Watch out for my cousin.”

Cooper goes to the first room.

It’s empty.

Then the Little Man appears, but his eyes are messed up. He says, “Doppleganger.”

Laura appears, also with messed up vampire eyes. She screeches and screams, blood curdling, for a long time. Cooper runs away. Now he’s bleeding. He goes back and forth between the two rooms so much that I lose track of which was the first room and which was the second. Where are people good, and where are they bad?

He enters one again. Each time it’s different. Now he sees Caroline dead on the floor lying next to his own body double. She rises and it becomes Annie, with a bloody and punctured throat.

He exits, reenters. Annie is there. “I saw the face of the man who killed me. It was my husband.” Then Annie becomes Caroline, then Annie again, then Laura, then Windom. He says, “If you give me your soul, then I’ll let Annie live.” And Windom seems to take his soul. Then fire. Then Bob tortures Windom.

Bob tells Cooper to go, that Earle is “wrong.” “He can’t ask for your soul. I will take his.” As Bob laughs like crazy, Cooper flees the room, toward the camera. Then there is a shadowy figure behind the curtain at the opposite end of the room, and in through the curtains comes Cooper, now with messed up eyes, and he joins Bob in laughing.

We are 45 minutes in. I can’t believe how much happens in this episode in only 45 minutes.
Leland appears with the cataract eyes, and colored hair again (remember his hair went white). He says, “I did not kill anybody."

Another Cooper appears in the same shot. Cooper 1 leaves. Cooper 2 approaches Leland. Cooper 2 has an evil grin. Cooper 2 goes after Cooper 1.

The two Coopers run in circles, as much as where they are can be said to put them in circles. The evil Coop catches up with the good one just as we cut to the woods and see Harry waking, and yelling out to Cooper, who is now in the ground in the sycamore circle. Annie is there as well, knocked out, with a bloody face.

This is the 47 minute mark.

Cooper wakes up in the hotel room. Harry and Doc Hayward are there. He says several times that he needs to brush his teeth and goes alone into the bathroom. Something is off about him. Obviously, he’s upset, and that’s an understatement.
Once in the bathroom, he squeezes toothpaste into the sink, then raises his head at the mirror and smashes it into it, bloodying his face, cracking the mirror. As he lifts his face, it’s Bob’s reflection. In a maniac’s mocking voice, he repeats, “How’s Annie? How’s Annie? How’s Annie?” and laughs at himself. And that’s how it ends, at 49 minutes: Bob takes over Cooper.

Last Rites

I don’t know what to make of it. I’m glad the show is over because I wouldn’t have wanted a season three in which Bob manifests as Cooper. What would have been the plot? Waiting for Cooper to kill Annie or Audrey or some other young girl? That would have been too dark, too grim, and too much of a stretch with Cooper’s character.

I think Cooper already became someone that I wasn’t as crazy about in season two when he fully became a community member of Twin Peaks. In season one, he is an outsider, hanging upside down in his hotel as part of his daily exercises, making voice recordings to Diane, his secretary back at home base, in short, a kooky guy who has brought his kooky ways to this small town, which he then learns has its own kooky ways.

Knowing that at the end of this episode, there is no more Twin Peaks the television program, I think it works to end it this way. Having Cooper be overtaken by Bob works only if it isn’t explained or followed through on. It works because we don’t know what will happen next.

[I kind of disagree about not knowing what will happen next, but I am in the minority on this. I think that just like in Lost Highway the whole thing comes full circle. Next up: a beautiful young girl is murdered, and the person who did it is the person you would least expect: someone who loved her very much. I think this is partly why when Lynch does the Fire Walk With Me movie it does not really advance anything -- it just acts as a prequel, not really revealing much.]

[Also: Thank you very much Jill Duffy!]

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 21 (or episode 28): The Penultimate Episode

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

What is the purpose of this episode?

Given that the final installment of Twin Peaks is near at hand, this episode should theoretically help to speed up some plots, give vital information, and otherwise help tie up loose ends. And in many ways, it does. We learn some things that are crucial to understanding the last episode and understanding the true nature of a few characters. For example, Windom Earl reveals that he was the one who actually killed his wife: “I haven’t been this excited since I punctured Caroline’s aorta,” he says when he learns how to get inside the Black Lodge. I think we’re supposed to gasp a little bit at this moment, having previously believed that Caroline was killed by some villain who was really after Cooper (that’s a basic summary, though it’s slightly more complicated than that).

But at other moments, this episode is a free-for-all. There are three -- count ’em, three! -- dance numbers. They all take place during a “Miss Twin Peaks Beauty Pageant,” but three dance performances is fluff no matter what context it’s in.

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 20 (or episode 27)

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

Rusty is dead!

Wait, who the hell is Rusty?

At any rate, some dupe named Rusty got nabbed by Windom Earl. Earl built a gigantic pawn chess piece has put Rusty on display inside it, in public park.

When Deputy Andy sees this and hears Rusty’s friend identify the body and talk about his deceased friend, he cries – no, he wimpers. Is that to point to how ridiculous the scene is?

We learn that Windom Earl may be in search of the Black Lodge more than he is after Cooper. Earl tends to think out loud, which is annoying and cliché, but serves to explain what the hell is going on.

Despite poor dead Rusty and the evil villain Earl, there’s some real creepy stuff afoot once again, thank goodness. Twin Peaks had substance to its uncanny style, and I want more of that.

I think what makes the uncanny parts work is that it’s not always explained. So much of the show very explicitly answers the questions it poses, as I’ve pointed out before. We learn what Bob is, where he came from, and where he lives. We learned and saw with our own eyes how Bob kills. But we never learned why the creamed corn disappeared from an old woman’s plate only to show up in the hands of a little boy. Neither have we ever been told who the giant is and why he comes to warn Cooper. The uncanny works.

Donna looking into her past by sorting through old photos, is in her family’s attic, where a fan whirls and creates a strobe effect, reminiscent of the fan clicking and whirling when Laura died. A few peoples’ hands start shaking violently at different points in this episode for no reason. A slow pull-out shot of Cooper and Annie as they are having a sweet conversation, overlaid with dark music, is juxtaposed with a close-up of them kissing, then a crash, as dirty diner dishes shatter on the floor, followed by one more close-up of disgusting goop dripping in slow motion from the broken coffee cup, with a spooky audio cue of a looping thud, like the telltale heart.

Later, as Annie and Cooper kiss a second time, the giant appears, with a frantic face, shaking his head, mouthing “no,” and waving his hands. Another reason moments like these are creepy is because they happen in the same scene as an exceptionally tender moment.

It’s also that we don’t know what’s going to happen when the giant appears. Is Bob taking another life? Evil is certainly stirring, but how? Why is the giant telling Cooper, “no!”?

Then, we see a shot of the woods and Bob crosses from the other side into the real world.

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 19

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

Why is Windom Earl so hokey?

Before we knew him, when we only knew of him, he was threatening. Before a character is formally introduced, if we viewers are told that he’s a mastermind evil genius, we’ll buy it. “Hey, our guy Cooper seems legitimately afraid of what Windom Earl might do, so we’d better take him seriously.”

Eventually (several episodes ago), Windom Earl does become a character with a face, a voice, body language, and a maniacal laugh. Only the laugh isn’t so maniacal. It’s more like the laugh of a bad guy on a children’s Saturday afternoon low-budget television show; like I expect Windom Earl to shout out, “Rats! Foiled again!” and shake his fists in anger when 30 minutes is up. Here, and in the previous one or two episodes, he keeps putting on ridiculous disguises as he trails Cooper, Donna, Shelly, and Audrey. It’s goofy. He’s very cartoonish. Need I remind anyone that this is the same tactic Bugs Bunny used to outwit Elmer Fudd?

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 18 (or episode 25)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter

[Jill Duffy continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks]

I used to have a literature professor who, before discussing a new work that the class had read, would start the class by asking, “What happened?” meaning, “Let’s recap the thing we all just read.” We’d talk about “what happened” in only a few minutes. It’s such a basic question, but it oriented everyone. It also made us understand what other people in the class saw as the most important or most striking features of the text. (It’s also an unintimidating question that gets people talking.)
After we had answered that question, the professor would say, “Okay. So, what’d ya think?”

We were allowed to answer that question generally at first (“I liked it”), but she’d eventually press and ask, “What part did you like?” “What character did you like?” And finally: “Why did you like it?”

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.

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 16 (or episode 23)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter

I think what bothers me most about the second season of Twin Peaks is how 80 percent of the episodes are pretty much soap opera drama crap. The openers are often, but not uniformly, strong in some way, be they terrifying or intriguing, and punctuated with a wry humor. Sometimes the humor almost reminds me of Monty Python in that it doesn’t really make sense, but it’s the absurdity and uncomfortable-ness that make it funny.

Then the all through the middle of the show, who cares what’s happening? For example, I can’t even follow all the ins and outs of what’s happening with Thomas Eckhardt, Josie, Andrew Packard, Catherine, and so on and so forth. I don’t know who is evil anymore (though at the end of this episode, I do!).

There’s ongoing drama with James and Donna. Do they really love each other? “Why doesn’t he love me more?” she always seems to be thinking. What is her problem? I have since gone and found pictures of Lara Flynn Boyle in the present day, and let’s just say it’s not pretty. Seeing how she turned out, I keep now reading an undercurrent of desperation in her, even as a character. I guess the strain between Donna and James is supposed to be sad and sappy, but it’s not. Let’s move on.



Ben Horne was evil, then he went crazy, and now he’s a different sort of crazy, a reformed-crazy crazy, like a born-again hippie. He now wants to save weasels, which is also a way for him to sabotage the Ghostwood development project.

But then, at the end of the show, more stuff happens in that Josie-Catherine-Andrew-Truman debacle and the next thing you know, Josie is possessed by Bob and when the show ends, she is trapped in wood.



I assure you, there are no typos in that previous sentence. Josie becomes a prisoner of wood, like felled trees made into furniture. Yeah… What?

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 15 (or episode 22)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter [Continuing her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. I make a brief comment below.]

Diane Keaton directed this episode. She positions a lot of her shots to look through doors, doorways, windows, and other real-world frames. I can point to a couple of movies that use this trope, American Beauty for instance, but here, I’m not sure what the point of it is.

In at least one shot, the camerawork adds levity. Two people are seen talking somewhat heatedly, on the other side of a entryway where a swinging door continues to swings full tilt throughout their conversation.

I wonder who added the humor to Twin Peaks. Was it the writers? The episode director? Frost and Lynch? Was it the actors suggesting flourishes for their characters? Here, I’m pretty sure Diane Keaton is playing around with her direction, almost exercising herself as a director by trying to incorporate humor through direction alone. She lays down the funny stuff in tandem with serious and dark, audio, dialogue, and action.

She also uses a good amount of theatrical music, including an aria.

Albert returns, which always revives my interest in watching. One of the notable things about Twin Peaks’ sense of humor is the number and variety of ridiculously odd characters, like Albert, Pete, and Cooper.

Windom Earle is a sociopath, and we’re supposed to ponder whether Leo, who is now in Windom’s charge and is being brutally and sadistically beat by his captor, is getting what he deserves. The flip side would be to say that no one deserves this kind of treatment despite his previous actions in life. For me, I don’t care enough about Leo to think too long or too hard about this. What Leo suffers is traumatic, but I don’t have a close enough connection to his to care. He’s not a real person in my eyes. He’s a soap opera character, and who cares what a soap opera character suffers? I guess in a way, once Leo is established as a monster (both in how he treats Shelly and then more literally when he becomes “Franken-Leo,” as Bobby calls him), our ability to feel empathy for him is minimized.

Audrey, for once, isn’t in over her head. She’s actually in control and ready to take on her father’s estate now that he’s incapacitated, even though Jerry starts to make a grab for it. This is a refreshing change of pace for the younger female characters on the show, who sometimes seems to be taking on more than they can handle, and then clearly are taking on more than they can handle. Laura Palmer would have been someone who fit this bill, and the lesson we learn from her is that getting in over your head, or playing with fire, leads to death.

That’s not quite the same for the older female characters, or at least not for Catherine. In this episode, Catherine invites Thomas Eckhart, who supposedly killed her brother Andrew (though he’s really alive) to dinner, with Josie there in a demeaning French maid outfit to serve them. The scene reminds me of the movie Clue in that it has a completely staged air to it. Maybe that’s just more of Keaton’s direction, drawing out the over-the-top nature that’s become a signature of the show’s subplots.

[I have only the dimmest memory of this episode, but when you mention Diane Keaton and using the door as a frame for a shot, I cannot help but think of her in the doorway at the end of the first Godfather. The female characters taking charge thing is doubly interesting in this context, since Keaton herself is a woman taking charge (any other female directors on Twin Peaks? Lynch's daughter?). And David Lynch, for what it is worth, is all about weird doorways to other spaces that are right next to our own - most dramatically in Inland Empire, where a simple door literally takes you to this completely different reality. I don't know what to do with any of that, but there you go.]

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 14 (or episode 21)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter

[Jill Duffy, girl reporter, continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. This is going up on a weird day because I have been away from the internet. Things will return to normal soon.]

Another murder has just occurred in Twin Peaks, and the sheriff and his team are looking for clues and piecing together what happened in the moments before they discovered the body. But this murder is not like the ones that came before it. We in fact don’t care about the guy who died—he’s a vagrant—and we don’t hear much him. Instead, the focus is on the killer: Wyndam Earl.

When Laura was killed, the focus was on her killer, too, but it was also on her with the assumption that only through understanding Laura could we figure out who her murderer was and how he knew her. It was never thought to be a random act of violence with Laura, but for this new dead man, Cooper explains, he was picked at random to be a person with no meaning, just a pawn to sacrifice.

The third scene (there’s a very short second scene in which Audrey provides some set up to what’s happening with her father) is terrifying. Leo awakens and tries to kill Shelly. He fully attacks her, comes at her with an axe, and she tries to defend herself. Bobby shows up outside their house, hears Shelly’s screeches, and is able to come to the rescue and help Shelly, who actually stabs Leo in the leg, which causes him to retreat into the woods.

The scene is nearly five minutes long. Lynch and Frost really draw out horror in Twin Peaks to such an extent that it’s almost unwatchable for me. In most of the movies I watch, there’s a lot of build-up to horror, and it’s the suspense that’s terrifying. In Twin Peaks, we see minutes upon minutes of slow struggles and blood-curdling screams. We get the full effect of how awful a five-minute attack really is.

Wyndam Earl is now the focal point of the show—or rather, the plotline that involves Wyndam Earl, as we have hardly seen the mad man himself—though the other characters are charging onward. James is still living with an older woman, working as her mechanic, and I mostly fast-forward through those scenes. I watched them all in full once, the first time I watched Twin Peaks a few months ago, and at the time I remember groaning every time he or the co-actors in his storyline came on. Dr. Jacoby is observing (and explaining) Ben Horne’s madness. Horne thinks he is the general of the south in the Civil War and is reenacting battles using figurines. Andy is trying to uncover the truth behind little Nicky’s parents’ deaths. Norma, Big Ed, and Nadine are still wrapped up in their love triangle.

Briggs has the other main plotline, but it seems to come and go. I’m actually more interested in his very X-files-like scenario than anything else. The supernatural stuff that went on with Bob had my attention, and now I want to know what supernatural stuff is going on with Major Briggs. I want to know what the secret service knows. I want to know what the White Lodge is all about. But instead of finding out a little bit and opening up new avenues of curiosity, the same few key words keep stringing me along. Someone will mention the White Lodge, but I know as much about it now as I did three or four episodes ago.

Pete is still hilarious, and Catherine is dynamite to watch (and her diction is musical), but they get little screen time in this episode. However, when they do appear, we learn more about Andrew, Catherine’s supposedly dead brother, who is not at all dead. Pete does a good job of being “us,” the audience, asking what happened to Andrew and how Josie and Eckhardt are tied up with them.

When Eckhardt does show up, checking into the Great Northern Hotel, there’s demonic music and his face is shown in sunglasses with a fire reflecting in them—the sign of evil in this show. This is one of those clues and tip-offs that never goes anywhere later. We can only assume that, had the show continued past two seasons, perhaps these and other clues could be pursued and fleshed out later.

What could it have been? What might have happened to keep me interested and push the show forward? How about if someone totally unexpected died, like the Lucy, the pregnant secretary at the sheriff’s? What if Catherine became possessed by Bob? What if Wydam Early seduced Donna or Audrey?

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 13 (or episode 20)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter

[Jill Duffy continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks.]

What happens when you are 13 episodes into a season, and the show you’ve been following just isn’t the same one you started with?

I make a lot of comparisons between Twin Peaks and the other serial shows I watch, notably The Wire and Lost. Most of the time I’m looking at the larger planning aspects, wondering how much of a season or series the writers and creators have mapped out ahead of time. I wonder whether television series writers even have the authority or job security to plan the major movements of a show one or two seasons into its future.

With Twin Peaks, I wonder how, or rather when, the writers got to the point where they knew they would be writing this whole new thing, this show that was no longer about solving the death of a high school girl.

The new main plotline is about Major Briggs, father of Bobby Briggs (which is easy to forget; they’re almost never shown together and they have nothing in common). We don’t know what’s happening with Briggs, but it appears to deal with aliens, or at least outer space and some such supernatural being or force. We see Briggs at the opening in a weird montage, fire overlaid, and a cheesy, swirling image of a biohazard symbol, the same symbol that has shown up as a scar on Brigg’s neck.

Just as Briggs tells Harry and Cooper about the “unofficial work” he and a few people have been doing investigating UFOs and “the heavens,” and “in the case of Twin Peaks, below,” some uniformed service guys barge in and whisk him away. He goes without a fight.

In a way, I like that Briggs doesn’t stick around long enough to tell us anything of substance, not now and not at the moment of his disappearance a few episodes ago. Stringing out his plotline does indeed keep me interested and curious to know what will happen next.

Meanwhile (cue spinning bat emblem and music) . . . Ben Horne is going crazy, setting himself up as a general in the Civil War for the South, setting himself up for failure in the process. Audrey calls in Jerry and Dr. Jacoby to help, but Catherine shows up before they can get there. Catherine is then trying to seduce Ben, which I don’t quite understand. She makes it seems as if she can’t resist him and can’t stay away, but I’m definitely thinking that there is a catch to it and that she’s going to use him for something.

Other than Briggs, the memorable moment happens when Cooper, Truman, and the other lawmen set up a drug bust. The whole drug bust isn’t really set up too well. It’s rushed rather than developed, and Renault, on the drug side, is dropped in rather than introduced slowly.

We do see and hear a lot of planting before the moment, but it’s kind of fun to watch, pay attention, and try to figure out the logical snags that will happen based on the clues given via planting, sort of like reading a classic detective novel, the kind that gives the reader just enough clues to piece together and solve the crime.

As the drug bust starts, Ernie, the mole, is sweating profusely (a condition that was established earlier), causing the wires taped to his body to sizzle and smoke. Ernie and David Duchovny’s character, who in this scene is “Denis,” are found out. Cooper trades himself for those two hostages.

Renault and Cooper’s situation turns into a standoff. Coop and Renault have an exchange as they are waiting out the standoff and trying to figure out what to do. Renault has a monologue that is really good (Renault is French-Canadian, so his English is intentionally full of errors):

Renault: “…first we must decide to give up quietly or to kill him.”
Cooper: “Then we both die.”
Renault: “I know.”
Cooper: “Is my death so important to you?”
Renault: “My two brother died. I hold you responsible.”
Cooper: “Why?”
Renault: “Why? Before you came here, Twin Peak was a simple place. My brothers deal up to the teenagers and truck drivers. When I check welcome to businessmen they tell us quiet people live the quiet life. Then, a pretty girl die, then you arrive, then everything change. My brother Bernardo, shot, then left to die in the woods. The grieving father smother my remaining brother with the pillow. Kidnapping. Death. Suddenly, the quiet people, they quiet no more. Suddenly the simple dream become the nightmare. So, if you die, maybe you will be the last to die. Maybe you brought the nightmare with you. And maybe the nightmare will die with you.”

At that moment, Denise/Denis, now dressed in an R&R waitress uniform, approaches the house carrying a tray of food. She saunters in to deliver the food, hikes up her skirt a little to show a gun in her garder, which Cooper grabs and fires at Renault. The sheriff and Andy storm the building. Renault dies.

In the very last scene, a tied up dead body is left in the Sheriff’s office in front of a chessboard. It should be a very dramatic moment, but it falls flat because it’s a cliffhanger that hasn’t been set up. It’s just introduced out of nowhere and is meant to be shocking, but with no build up.

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 12 (or episode 19)

By Jill Duffy

For this series of blog posts, I take notes while watching the episode, and then fill in the blanks with a little more synthesis later. But for this entry, I’ve decided to leave my notes as they are and just share them raw. Enjoy! –Jill Duffy

This is the episode in which Ben Horne really starts to go crazy.

Bobby is trying to blackmail Horne, but between Horne’s crazed state and Bobby’s stupidity, he can’t pull it off. Instead, Bobby ends up working for Horne. What a dupe.

Cooper is dressed like Harry and is considering buying a house in Twin Peaks. As he’s talking to the real estate agent, he comes across a listing for a mysterious house.

Is that Molly Shannon as Little Nicky’s case worker? Dick Tremane meets her and says, “Charmed, I’m sure.” I wonder where that expression came from and what it really means.

The mayor’s brother dies of what seems to be death by sex, with his young new wife.

Nadine joins the wrestling team. Mike is being toyed with by her.

There are lots of little oral stories: Little Nicky’s parents died of mysterious circumstances; before Nadine joins the wrestling team, the coach tells a story about black players trying to get equality; another guy at the house where James is now working tells a story (backstory) about Mrs. Marcy and how she operates; the real estate agent tells Cooper a little about the house,

Dead Dog Farm; Mr. Niles, who is wrapped up in the drug sell and trying to get out of the charges against him, weaves story after story to try to win over the cops’/FBI’s sympathies.

James is living with Mrs. Marcy.

Dick is trying to change a tire.

Colonel Riley is investigating Briggs’ disappearance.

The show gets very X-files like with Briggs stuff, but it’s still a huge fucking soap opera with James and Mrs. Marcy.

Audrey is a much more appealing character at this point than Donna.

Pete and Catherine have Josie working for them now. The relationships between them make for more interesting plotlines. We like Catherine because she’s great on screen, dynamic, self-obsessed, but she’s also a villain. On the other hand, Josie is kind of getting what she deserves, and so we don’t think of Catherine as being as much of a cold-hearted witch as it at first seems. We don’t know the real relationship between Pete and Josie either, except that we know he loves her—we just don’t know to what degree, though it’s been always platonic in the show.

David Duchovny as Denise is a joy to watch.

Some characters, like Norma and Ed, keep showing up, but they have nothing to do. They’re being included in a very soap opera way; we follow up with them simply because they’re a part of the show and we can’t just ignore them for a few episodes.

One thing that’s interesting is how much the show now has strong female characters.

Oh my god, I forgot that Bobby is Bobby Briggs, son of Major Briggs. In the final scene, he goes home and sees his mother, who is up late at night, just sitting and waiting and worrying about her husband. Bobby comes home and tells a story about a dream he had about his father. Then out of nowhere, he is in the living room in an old-fashioned pilot’s uniform, with a long leather coat, white scarf, and goggles.

What the hell? Why is there the photo of Laura again behind the end credits? Grr.

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 11 (or episode 18)

By Jill Duffy

[Jill Duffy continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks.]

Now well into Season 2, with Laura Palmer’s murder solved and Twin Peaks chugging steadily forward, some of the action moves into the local high school.

It feels funny (and doesn’t last too long), and not just because Nadine—the adult woman with the eye patch who is suffering from some kind of amnesia and thinks she is 16 years old again, and has superhuman strength, too (oh, that Nadine…)—is plopped back into the academic halls. It also feels funny to see Donna closing her locker and listening to gossip. We accept that she is a high school aged young woman, but we hadn’t before seen her in school. It kind of reminds me of Beverly Hills 90201, how all the actors are just way too old to be in school.

Another thing that feels odd are the1950s themes throughout the show now. Nadine’s school clothes include patent leather Mary-Janes, party skirts that flare and rise like a helicopter when twirled, and ribbons tied in her ponytail. James plays an old-fashioned juke box. Dick Tremane mentions going to have “a malted.” I can’t make much sense of them. Are they there to make Twin Peaks seem weird? Dated? Different? As if it were a place ungoverned by time?

On the other hand, modern audiences might pay more attention than is necessary to something that I’m going to guess is unintentionally dated: a huge portable computer that the FBI Internal Affairs investigators bring with them while they are investigating Agent Cooper. The thing looks like a desktop printer. I get as much of a kick out of seeing this behemoth as I do when Jerry Seinfeld answers his machete-sized cordless phone.

The real kicker in this episode, the pure entertainment that makes me keep watching, is David Duchovny, who shows up as Denise, a cool, confident, and extremely self-aware transvestite.

Elsewhere, the plot begins to sprawl uncontrollable, like Los Angeles, seeping out into hills and valley and infecting other places that are not really Twin Peaks at all. For example, James runs away to somewhere that is not all that far, but is not Twin Peaks, and meets an older woman, who is obviously trying to seduce him. The relationship is flat, clichéd, and ill fitted to the better themes of the show, like supernatural evil, the dark underbelly of common people and common places, and all that lies beyond our knowing.

There’s a new focus on storytelling within the show. Josie is back in the picture, and she tells Truman a story about a man in Hong Kong named Thomas Eckhart, and how she worked for him as a young girl. Then she married Andrew Packard, whom we already know died a year or so ago in suspicious circumstances. Eckhart, she says, thinks Josie is his property and wants her back, and when Andrew died, she was left without his protection. She says she thinks Eckhart was responsible for Andrew’s death. It’s backstory and storytelling rolled into one. But Josie is whiny and a little pathetic—a put-on to further seduce Truman. Seduction, again here as with James’ plotline, is trite and kind of annoying.

Horne, disheveled and alone, is watching old home movies of when The Great Northern first opened, when he and his brother Jerry were little boys. The storytelling here is visual, and I like it, especially as it taps into a lost era rather than “that topsy-turvy plotline that happened last year, that’s still alive and well and will greatly inform what’s to come in the show.”

As much as the conspiracies and transgressions are, for the most part, dry and paltry, it is neat that they are all intertwined. Catherine is a good example of that. She basically enslaves Josie, telling a story as she does it. I like how Catherine is a villainous character who we feel more empathy toward over time. In a way, we don’t blame her for enslaving Josie. It’s a smart decision, politically, and it also seems very businesslike.

Just as Josie leaves, Andrew, whom we were told is dead, appears: “… and now dear sister we wait for Thomas Eckhart to come looking for his one true lover, and when he does…”

Catherine: “We’ll be waiting for him.”

A welcomed relief is that for the end credits, there’s new music and new footage, and the photo of Laura is gone! Yay.

Jill Duffy on Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 10 (or episode 17)

[Jill Duffy continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks]

Poor Sarah Palmer. Considering what she’s been through, you would think she would have had a bigger part in the show. Now, not only is her daughter dead, but so is her niece and her husband, and her husband (sort of) killed the two girls. Sarah also encountered Bob, and in the opening moments of this show, she describes him.

When Sarah Palmer is first introduced, it’s easy to see how quickly she will become an exhausted shell. Her hair is a huge frizz of curls. Her eyeliner rings her eyes with such weight, they seem to create the creases on her gaunt face. Cheekbones jut out, her frame is frail, she looks like someone whose hands shake at the suffering of everyday life.

There’s a gathering after the wake, in which all the characters are brought into one room. It allows everyone to mourn and share stories, as well as make new plans, so we can get a glimpse of how the characters (and the show) will move forward. We meet two new characters, too, the mayor and his brother.

What Happens

Cooper explains to Audrey what happened with his lost love and Wyndam Earl. Bobby conspires to blackmail Horne, but Shelly doesn’t seem to be into it. Horne starts to go batty. The Lucy, Dick, and Andy web continues to tangle; Nadine re-enrolls in high school; Norma is still bickering with her mother; Hand and Norma’s step-father are still scheming; Audrey is still flirting with Cooper—basically all the minor plot lines that were set up earlier are just being drawn out, sometimes at a painfully slow crawl.

Catherine (Piper Laurie), who went missing for two weeks, tells Truman a crazy story about where she has been. We only know some of what happened to her, and that part that she recounts is partially true, so whether we decide to believe the rest of it is really up to us—but I buy it because Piper Laurie is awesome. Here’s a snippet:

Catherine: “Thank god we always kept a well-stocked pantry. I went in, and I opened a can of tuna fish, and I waited for whoever it was who was trying to kill me to finish the job. A loaded gun by my side, I was terrified that every moment was going to be my last.”
Truman: “What made you come back?”
Catherine: “I ran out of tuna fish.”

And that’s where the scene ends.

Cooper gets suspended from the FBI for crossing into Canada unlawfully and for his methods and motives, apparently.

What Could Happen Instead?

Television programming has changed so much since 1990, and it’s all changed drastically since 2000, when Survivor first aired. Knowing what we know now, we could take a page from The Wire by ending the season and starting a new season with some huge changes in the cast, scenery, investigations. We could follow the lead of many other shows by pushing the show into the future, say six months or a year, so that when the show begins again, we have all new recent history to uncover about all the characters, some thing to keep us guessing about their new motivations and changes to their lives. We could push the show out of Twin Peaks and follow Cooper to a new town, but that would create a problem in calling the show Twin Peaks.
What I’m looking for in the show at this point is a drastic change to give me something new. It’s hard to care about the old stuff now that the major plotline has been totally and completely resolved. But in 1990, this isn’t what television shows did.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m trying to re-write a show that ended 20 years ago, but it is interested to consider how a great premise to a show could be improved based on the new techniques and tricks television writers and directors have at their disposal now.

What I like, and what seems to work most, is the hint of something new to come with Major Briggs, which only comes at the very end of this episode. Briggs disappears into thin air. It smacks of X-Files now, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.

(Oh, and let’s ditch that senior portrait of Laura Palmer when the credits roll!)

Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 9 (or episode 16)

Or ‘End it on a High Note’

By Jill Duffy

You know when you watch a movie and just before it ends, you say to yourself, “and... scene!” in hopes of willing the film to end at that very moment? Maybe you say to yourself, “This movie would have been excellent if it had ended at the height of the emotional drama, rather than dragging on for a 20-minute dénouement. I don’t care that they got married, and then the father-in-law approached the bride and made a joke. I don’t friggin care.”

If you frequently find yourself making that judgment call, my advice is to quit watching Twin Peaks after episode 16. This is the natural end. In fact, I can tell you precisely when to turn off your DVD player. It’s when FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield, played by Miguel Ferrer, says, “Maybe that’s all Bob is, the evil that men do. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we call it.” You could even skip that and call it quits at the moment Leland dies.

In any event, this is the pinnacle episode in many ways. I really liked the Log Lady introduction in particular, because she very clearly explains where we are in the series and why one should continue to watch. It’s not enough to make me agree with her, but it’s a gutsy move—to have a minor character tell you why you should keep watching. In fact, in her assessment, the Log Lady sees infinite future episodes of Twin Peaks! It goes like this:

“So now the sadness comes. A revelation. There is a depression after an answer is given. It was almost fun not knowing. Yes. Now we know. At least we know what we sought in the beginning. But there is still the question why, and this question will go on and on until the final answer comes. Then the knowing is so full there is no room for questions.”

What Happens

I mentioned in my previous post that I found the explicit nature of the show more useful than a turnoff. There’s no room for interpretation in terms of what happened. Sure, we can discuss the meaning of it all. We can talk about evil, and Frost and Lynch’s philosophies about human nature. But there’s no trying to figure out what happened. We know because we are told. Repeatedly. Bob is an evil being. Bob inhabited Leland. Leland-as-Bob killed Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson, and tried to kill Ronnette Pulaski. And if that weren’t enough, we find out exactly how he did it, too. We even watch with our own eyes how he commits the second murder.

Let’s talk about what else happens in this episode, leading up to the big moment.

The lawmen—Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and Albert—walk up to Maddy’s investigation, outside, below the trees in the forest. As before, there’s a clear formation of their body language, a lineup, suggesting a Western feel to their movements and attitudes.

Hawk, whom I love watching, says to Cooper, “You’re on the path. You don’t need to know where it leads. Just follow.”

Donna stumbles across a clue and, with Cooper’s help, pieces it together with other information to retrieve pages from Laura’s secret diary.

Cooper pays a visit to Gerard/Mike (Al Strobel), the one-armed man, who is in a hotel bed at The Great Northern, shirtless, allowing us to see where his arm was amputated. No one likes to be voyeuristic, but it is fascinating to see Gerard shirtless, the bones from his naked shoulder jutting into nowhere. He tells Cooper really cryptic stuff, helping him piece together more clues. Strobel, who appears to have had a pretty small acting career, is brilliant as Mike. I don’t know a whole lot about acting, and I’ve heard that playing a crazy persons is like cheap acting because it’s easy to do, but I don’t care. I love this scene and think Strobel is great in it. I think he’s great throughout the show. The character must have been well written, but Strobel takes it to its peak.

Truman and Albert continue sniffing out their case against Horne. They have some convincing evidence, but Cooper seems less and less sure.

Remember Tojamura? One thing I didn’t mention about the previous episode (number 15), but that I think Geoff Klock (you know, the guy who runs this blog) will appreciate, is that Piper Laurie is credited as playing the role of Tojamura at the very end of the episode, only after she has revealed that Tojamura is Catherine in disguise. One complaint that Geoff has filed repeatedly about Lost is that sometimes the audience is led to believe that a character is dead or missing, but then his or her name appears in the opening credits, tipping us off to their reappearance before we are emotionally built up for it. (On the other hand, given the nature of the show, the characters could, conceivably, appear in flashbacks.)

So Tojamura/Catherine reveals herself first to Pete, but now, she does the same to a locked-up Benjamin Horne, whom she calls “a slimy rat bastard,” with same confidence in her voice as how Catherine Hepburn might say it. Piper Laurie is a pleasure to watch!

Donna goes to visit Leland, and there are overwhelming suggestions that he’s going to kill her: Leland looking at Bob in the mirror, Leland dancing, music cues, Leland slowly approaching Donna from behind and touching her hair gently, Leland dancing with Donna and suddenly and violently grabbing her close. We’re on edge throughout their whole exchange. Then the doorbell rings and it’s Harry, who’s come for Leland’s help, explaining that there’s been another murder.

Toward the end, Cooper arranges a gathering suspects. “Gentleman,” says Cooper, “two days ago a woman was found murdered by the same individual I believe responsible for the death of Laura Palmer. I have reason to believe that the killer is in this room. As a member of the Bureau, I spend my time seeking simple answers to difficult questions. In the pursuit of Laura’s killer I have employed Bureau guidelines, deductive technique, Tibetan method, instinct, and luck. But now I find myself in need of something new, which for lack of a better word, we shall call magic.” Strike of lightning!
Horne: “Would you like us to hum? A Tibetan chant perhaps?” (Ha!)

Major Briggs shows up with the old man, the one who came to Cooper after he was shot. The old man gives Cooper a stick of gum. Leland says that gum was his favorite when he was a kid. The old man says that gum will come back in style. Once all these clues are laid before us, we watch Cooper’s face as he pieces them together.

A freeze frame happens, with each person bathed in a blue spotlight. We see still shots from different angles of all the people in the room. Cooper remembers his dream and hears Laura whisper, “My father killed me.” The giant appears and delivers the ring that he took from Cooper many episodes ago.

Cooper brings Horne back to the station, and says Horne might like to bring Leland along as his attorney. It’s a set up.

Back at the station, Cooper whispers to Truman, but we don’t hear what it is. This is a good technique. We know what they’re up to, but aren’t sure exactly what’s going to happen. Given the fact that we, the audience, have for some time now known more than the characters in the show, it’s refreshing to get a little slice of secrecy again.

Truman and Cooper throw Leland into a cell, and he goes nuts! He immediately becomes Bob fully, completely, uncontrollably. He throws himself against a wall and hollers like a maniac.

He confesses, and during his confession, it’s a very Jack Nicholson in The Shining style performance.

Then, the fire alarm goes off (Dick had light a cigarette while talking in another room with Lucy and Andy), and the sprinkler system engages. What interesting about this is that it creates a rainstorm inside. I like the sleight of hand in that.

Bob screams at the top of his lungs. He starts throwing himself repeatedly against the door until he smashes his own skull. He lies in a wet mass of blood and water, crying “I killed my own daughter,” and it’s Leland now, but he has recovered some strange ability to talk about his experience of Bob inhabiting his body. Again, we have no questions whatsoever. Everything is fully explained.

Cooper gives Leland some kind of last rights, but honestly, it’s pretty much gibberish. Leland dies as the sprinklers turn off.

And there, we could end it. We could exit on a high note. But instead, the show moves outside, beneath the forest canopy, wherein the men discuss Bob, where he is, what he is, and what he means.

Albert: “Maybe that’s all Bob is, the evil that men do. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we call it.” [End it here? No...]

Truman: “Maybe not. But if he was real, if he was here and we had him, trapped, and he got away, where’s Bob now?”

The protagonist will now proceed to chase Bob, a demon spirit, symbolized by an owl, through the woods until he inhabits someone else. So, do you see why I want it to end just a few minutes earlier?

[Leland killing himself is one of the things that has stuck with me through the years since watching the show. I am surprised how often I think about it.]

Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 8 (or episode 15)

By Jill Duffy

[Jill Duffy continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. For more in this series see the labels at the bottom or the toolbar on the right.]

The same horrific screaming, moaning, dull thuds, and low music that marked the murder scene from the previous episode, bring us right back to that mood of terror in this episode. We see the Palmer house at night, with a few windows lit up. But it’s really the audio reminding us of what has happened.

Then it’s morning and we are zooming out from photographs of Laura. We hear thudding again, but this time it’s just golf balls as Leland chips them from a patch of Astroturf inside his living room. When Leland looks in the mirror, he still sees Bob. His golf bag contains sheet plastic and a bloody hand and hair, so we know that Maddy’s body is inside. Leland stuffs the golf bag in the trunk of his car, lowers the top of the convertible, and drives off.

It’s a bit weird, for a murder mystery/soap opera/nighttime TV drama for the audience to both know and not know what has happened without the detectives knowing. We know that Leland-as-Bob killed Maddy, though no one else even knows yet that she’s missing much less dead. We know, or at least very strongly suspect, that Leland-as-Bob killed Laura, too, though Cooper and Truman are on the wrong trail entirely, trying to coax a confession out of Benjamin Horne. And yet, there may be something more about Horne that we don’t know, that perhaps he was complicit in Laura’s murder in some way.
If you haven’t seen the show in 20 years, since it first aired, I can absolutely see how easy it would be to wipe from memory about 60 percent of the show. It’s easy, and in fact better, to remember Leland’s sinister possessor, Maddy’s murder scene, Cooper’s foray into the other world, and the one-armed man and his cryptic poems. I can see having a moment of “Oh, yeah! I kind of remember that,” when being reminded of Lucy and Andy’s comic love story, Catherine’s feigned death and return as the stereotypical Chinese man, Pete’s quirky manner of speech, and Nadine, who has a kind of amnesia that has propelled her back 20 years so that she’s reliving things like cheerleader tryouts. But you’ve probably forgotten Norma’s mother coming to visit and how Bobby tries to blackmail Horne and Lucy’s sister, Gwen. You might have also forgotten just how explicit Lynch and Frost are in getting the viewers to understand that Bob is Leland. We see the Leland recognize Bob has himself in the mirror multiple times, and on top of that, we are told several times and in several ways that Bob killed Laura. It leaves nothing to interpretation.

This episode ends with the discovery of Maddy’s body, wrapped in plastic, just as Laura’s was. I almost think the season and series could end here.

Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 7 (or episode 14)

By Jill Duffy

[Jill Duffy, girl reporter, continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. for more in this series see the toolbar on the right or the labels below]

“Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse,” the Log Lady says in her introduction.

I like the opening scene of this show, wherein, from left to right, Hawk, Gordon, Cooper, the one-armed man, Andy, and Truman are all neatly lined up against a wall in the police station, talking. I like the lineup and the long shot it takes to get them all in the frame. Seeing them from this distance gives the sense that they are somehow ordinary people, even though each is anything but normal.

This episode is slightly more stylized than some of the previous ones. For example, after the opening scene, Cooper and Gordon clink coffee cups to end the scene, and the audio put in over it is the echoing sound of a metal sledge hammer hitting a spike. It sounds like prison.

Hawk goes to Harold Smith’s house, lets himself in. There are plants all over the floor, cut, and we see a body hanging in the orchid room. Harold has hanged himself, neatly wrapping up that plot line. And thank goodness. Harold was quickly introduced and just as quickly taken out. Good riddance.

When the sheriff and his crew come over to investigate and take down Harold’s dead body, flash bulbs create an eerie over-exposed effect, lingering with a blue light. Again, it’s all highly stylized.

Maddy—The other Laura

In a scene with Maddy, Leland, and Sarah, the niece tells her aunt and uncle she’s ready to leave. Pictures of Laura are everywhere, all over the house. This is a slow, normal scene, much like the normalcy of that opening lineup shot. Nothing crazy or weird happens. But it has a hard cut ending, which is jarring.

It’s odd that Maddy has been staying with her aunt and uncle since her cousin died, leaving behind her own life for so long that she has become very close with Donna and James. I think this scene is meant to address this flaw, air it, and then move past it, though later, we find out there’s a plot reason to have Maddy preparing to go home.

Shelly, Leo, Bobby—The Odd Couple

Another odd thing, when you think about it, is that Bobby, who is more or less living with Shelly and Leo, is only in high school. So in this episode, the writers take care of that, too. Bobby tells Shelly he can’t keep telling his parents that he’s sleeping over at Mike’s house, and that’s he’s missing economics class at this very moment. Abruptly, to whisk on to a new topic, Leo is stirred from his otherwise comatose state, surprising the bejesus out of Shelly and Bobby. He makes noise, spits, and speaks almost like a parrot: “New shoes.” It’s totally funny. It’s just too bad that Bobby has to be in this scene because Shelly and Leo are great in it, but Bobby is not.

Audrey—Her Father’s Daughter

Audrey confronts her father so directly it’s uncomfortable, saying she knows about all the people at One-Eyed Jack’s and that she was Prudence, the girl wearing the little white mask. Audrey begins questioning her father, as if she were an investigator, about Laura. He admits to sleeping with Laura. And when asked point blank, “Did you kill her?” Horne says, “I loved her.”

Cooper—Voice of Explanation, But Not ‘Reason’

Cooper investigates Laura’s diary that was found in Harold’s place. He dictates into his recorder that Laura did mention Bob and also that Ben Horne has some kind of secret. Then Audrey comes in and tells Cooper that Laura and Horne were sleeping together and that Horne owns One-Eyed Jack’s. Audrey is stuck in the middle and it seems like she doesn’t quite know what she wants to happen next. Cooper tells Truman they need a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Horne.

(I’m getting to the good stuff. Hang on.)

Horne and Tojamura—It’s Just Business

Tojamura, the stereotypical Chinese man who showed up one day, and Horne have a meeting about Ghostwood. As they are making a business deal, the sheriff, Cooper, Andy, and Hawk barge in and say Horne is wanted for questioning about the death of Laura Palmer. Horne struggles to get away while they cuff him and take him out.

‘The’ Moment Begins

Midway through the episode, at 29:40 on the DVD, we see a record at the end of its play cycle and the Palmer household washed in red light. Sarah is groping her way down the stairs on her belly. Spinning overhead is a ceiling fan, which viewers may remember from the film Fire Walk With Me, too.

Then, the log lady shows up at the sheriff’s office. She says ,”We don’t know what will happen or when, but there are owls at the Roadhouse.”
Cooper: “Something is happening, isn’t it Margaret?”
Log lady: “Yes.”

To draw out the suspense, we’re thrown back into a scene with Tojamura, who lays a big fat kiss on Pete. It is revealed that Tojamura is Catherine! I loved that moment.

Back to Sarah Palmer, still crawling through her house. She looks toward the windows and a white horse appears to her in a spotlight. She faints. We see Leland in just the other room straightening his tie.

At the Roadhouse, that weird blonde chick is singing with a band. It’s sappy and oddly uncomfortable. Donna and James are there. The log lady, Cooper, and Truman show up together. After a while, the performer sings a new song, a slower number. Everybody just watches the performance. To Cooper, the performance disappears and the Giant takes the stage, in the spotlight. With both a sense of urgency and the kind of calm demeanor that comes with acceptance, the Giant annunciates, “It is happening again. It is happening again.”

We cut to Leland, who is watching himself in the mirror. He sees Bob, and we know there is major trouble about to occur, but by golly, you have no idea how awful it’s going to be.

Really, I don’t know how this was every shown on a major television station.

First, it is made very clear that Bob is possessing Leland. Leland-as-Bob puts on surgical gloves. We hear Maddy’s voice, calling, saying it smells like something burning. When she enters the room, Leland-as-Bob goes after Maddy, chasing her manically. It’s slow and real, unlike an action film. There are no fast cuts here. All the movement is labored.

He strangles her, and she’s screaming, until he punches her in the face. She gets loose and runs around the room, trying to get away from him. It cuts between Leland being himself and being Bob. There is a lot of slow motion and the spotlight is on them, bathing them in a stark bluish light. The screaming slows and begins to sound like moaning beasts. Maddy’s teeth have blood all over them. She is shoved onto the couch, and Leland-as-Bob punches her in the face twice. The punches sound like dull thuds, which again is unlike what you would expect in a cinematic fight scene. It’s horrifically real. The scene is still highly stylized, but not how one might expect it to be.

Leland-as-Bob then lifts Maddy and drags her around the room in a dance. He is not a big man, and she is not a tiny girl. We see him heft the weight of a full-grown woman. She chokes and coughs blood. Sarah is still passed out on the floor. Creepy. Leland says Laura’s name a few times. We see Bob, in slow motion again, suck at Maddy’s chin and kiss her neck. Then Leland says you’re going back to Mezula Montana and smashes her, face first, into a glass-framed painting. Maddy collapses and is covered in blood. He holds her bloody finger and using an Xacto knife, places something under the nail. The whole scene is five minutes long, almost to the second. It’s unbearable.

The Giant and Cooper

The Giant fades, the singer and band reappear. The old man who came when Cooper was shot appears. He comes over to Cooper and pats his arm and says, “I’m so sorry.”

The camera moves around to Donna, James, Bobby, the Log lady. Donna begins crying, but we can’t hear it for the song. Cooper looks puzzled and like he’s thinking. Then the credits roll on a red curtain.

Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 6 (or episode 13)

By Jill Duffy

What’s funny about this episode is that you can easily pick and choose the scenes worth watching. It opens with a lame scene involving Harold Smith, the orchid-grower. In fact, it picks up precisely where the previous episode left off, in Harold’s house with Donna and Maddy scared for their lives, with Harold dripping blood from his face and delivering a little soliloquy. James rushes in to their rescue. Outside, after they’ve all escaped, Donna paws at James in front of Maddy. It’s boring. Who cares? Let’s move on.

I actually found the series of shots during the opening credits to be worth watching, as they set the mood for the later part of the show. We see a pan of trees, then the forest, an owl, and a lineup of motorcycles outside the lodge.

Elsewhere, not only has James rescued Donna and Maddy, but also Cooper has rescued Audrey. Why are all these helpless women being rescued? Even Bobby is trying to rescue Shelly from Leo, an ongoing situation that has become more comic now that Leo is a vegetable. He is 99.9 percent catatonic, and we get all kinds of gags about it, like watching his face fall into a plateful of birthday cake, and Shelly and Bobby sticking a kazoo in his mouth and then making out in front of his lifeless face.
Shelly and Bobby have a plan to scam the insurance company to the tune of $5,000 a month by caring for Leo in this state, but they end up paying so much for his healthcare that they get a measly few hundred dollars a month.

I’ve written before about how Twin Peaks is unafraid to use old school tricks to orient the viewer and remind the audience what’s going on and why, in case you weren’t paying attention. Twin Peaks does this exceptionally well, especially considering all the paranormal and indefinable stuff that David Lynch deals with. The show seems to say, “In case you missed last week’s episode or weren’t paying close attention, here’s a summary of what happened and why.”

This episode has a great example.

Cooper: “Jean Renault was after me.”
Truman: “The man who killed his brother.” [This reads as, “He’s after you because you killed his brother.”]
Cooper: “He planned to kill me and he used Audrey as bait. I went out of my jurisdiction—twice. I violated my professional code, and now Audrey is paying the price.”
Truman: “You got her back. And she’s going to be okay.”
Cooper: “Harry, this isn’t the first time my actions have brought suffering to someone in the name of doing what I had to do. Damn it, I should have known better.”
Truman: “That doesn’t change the fact that she’s here now and not at Jack’s with a needle in her arm.”

So, just in case you missed it, Cooper killed Jacques. Jean and Jacques were brothers. As revenge, Jean wanted to kill Cooper. He kidnapped Audrey and used her for bait to bring Cooper to him in Canada, which is technically out of Cooper’s jurisdiction. Because Cooper cares for Audrey, he left his jurisdiction to rescue her. They all almost got in deep do-do, but everyone is safe now, including Audrey whom, just in case you missed the reference, was drugged while she was at One-Eyed Jack’s.

Other highly watch-able moments include the introduction of Gordon Cole, played by David Lynch. Gordon Cole is Agent Cooper’s supervisor. He wears an old fashioned hearing aid, and he’s got a bunch of gags about not being able to hear, so people are constantly shouting at him, and he is incessantly shouting back. (I wondered if the character was shaped this way because Lynch can’t deliver convincing dialog.)

The final scene, which involves Philip Gerard, the one-armed man, is pretty amazing, and again, it explains with great clarity a lot of the supernatural stuff. On the other hand, this scene is full of riddles. I think that’s what makes it enjoyable to watch. That which is explained is explained totally clearly while that which is not explained is presented in a way that teases the viewer into wanting to know what it means, even if that requires waiting a few episodes. Twin Peaks gives the audience payoff by clarifying all the crazy stuff so that when new and unexplained stuff crops up, we feel pretty sure that it will be explained at some later date.

Anyway, in the final scene, the one-armed man is off his meds. “Mike,” an inhabiting spirit, hosted by Philip Gerard, tells us some information about Bob. “He is Bob, eager for fun. He wears a smile. Everybody run.” And: “Bob requires a human host. He feeds on fear. And pleasures. They are his children.”

Mike, apparently, used to be Bob’s partner in crime, but one day he “saw the face of god and was purified.” Mike changed his mind and decided he wanted to stop Bob. Few people can see Bob’s true face, he tells us, the gifted and the damned. Cooper presses him by asking where Bob is now.

“Bob is at the lodge house made of wood, surrounded by trees. The house is filled with many rooms, each alike, but occupied by many souls, night after night.”

Cooper: “The Great Northern Hotel”

Again, there’s that payoff. The riddle is explained, and we viewers trust that the show will do this over and over. Now, if only we could figure out who really killed Laura Palmer…

Jill Duffy on Twin Peaks Season 2, Episode 5 (or episode 12)

[Jill Duffy continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. For more in this series see the labels at the bottom or the toolbar on the right.]

We are reminded of the smallness of the town of Twin Peaks when a court case to try Leo Johnson takes place in a saloon. The judge’s table is situated on the music performance stage, and the attorneys are seated below in the audience area.

Horne is as vile as ever, more concerned with following through on business transactions than he is with rescuing his daughter, Audrey, who is being held for ransom by Jean Renault and Blackie. As they discuss their situation and what they will do with Audrey (kill her), Jean says to a slightly hesitant Blackie, “You know, you love a good steak, but you don’t want to know how it got on your plate.” Jean is also conspiring to kill Cooper.

Deputy Andy gets comic relief laughs when he fills in for Lucy as the sheriff’s office admin. The details in the set design make his scenes even more fun to watch. At one point, he is covered in Post-It notes. They are stuck to his shirt everywhere. He looks down at the ink blotter pad covering Lucy’s desk, and it’s filled with childlike scribblings and drawings.

Harold, the shut-in orchid-grower, has a significant role in this episode. When he was first introduced, I had high hopes for his character. I liked the idea of bringing in some other love interest for Donna and Maddy besides James, the dumb hunk. Harold, on the other hand, is literate and very odd, but he fits with the overarching theme of the show by being an unknowable figure, perhaps spiritual, perhaps just a little too reserved—but whatever the case, the point is we don’t know him and every time we learn something about him, it just opens more questions. For example, he’s a recluse, but why? He had a relationship with Laura that may have been sexual in nature, but we don’t really know for sure.

Donna hatches a plan to seduce and distract Harold while Maddy breaks into his home to steal Laura’s secret diary. In the previous episode, Donna was equally cruel to him, luring him outside with the diary, only to have him shake and collapse in a panic attack. As Maddy goes for the diary, Harold catches her, and becomes confrontational with the two girls. His character grows dark, and we realize in this moment just how little we really know of him. “Are you looking for secrets?” he asks them. “Do you know what the ultimate secret is?” He raises a rusty gardening tool. “Do you want to know? Laura did. The secret of knowing who killed you.” Then, instead of attacking them, he tears the rake across his own face.

Twin Peaks: Season 2 Episode 4 (or episode 11)

[Jill Duffy, Girl Reporter, continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. For more in this series see the toolbar on the right or the labels on the bottom.]

Darkness.

A shrill scream of terror.

A faint voice sings, repeatedly, “Bobby?” and “Leo.”

This is a terrifying opener. It grips the audience and promise a mystery. For me, it works. I’m immediately into this episode. This is what Twin Peaks is all about. The level of terror and horror is over the top by television standards. It’s truly frightening, not just on the surface, but deep down where real unspeakable stuff lies.

There are several scenes in this series that I cannot believe were ever allowed to air on television. However, the opening terror in this episode is counter-balanced soon after with comedy. Here comes good old Deputy Andy, asking Doc Hayward if he’s allowed a do-over on his sperm test.

And then, the episode tumbles downhill, with more subplot focus than I can keep up with. For example: There’s a buzz in the wee town of Twin Peaks that the biggest food and hotel critic in the Northwest is on his way! But, oh no! No one knows what he looks like! Everyone from Norma at the greasy spoon to Horne at his hotel is sprucing up the joint, laying out the linen tablecloths and rolling out the red carpet. Who could it be?

Who cares?

Meanwhile, the orchid guy, Harold, inexplicably and out of nowhere has Laura’s secret diary. Donna continues to hang around him and flirt with him. Audrey gets drugged. Some one gets shot. Maddy and Donna are at odds with each other, fighting over James mostly, but at the same time they have to work together. Josie is playing Truman like a freaking fiddle, and Josie and the mysterious man from Hong Kong have one of the worst acted scenes I’ve seen in a long time.

But, you have to watch. This is one of those shows that make it difficult for viewers to skip an episode, as you never know when something big is going to happen. With soap operas, the rule of thumb is that as long as you watch on Monday, when all the plots and characters get their new direction, and Friday, when the cliffhanger happens, you can reasonably keep up. With Twin Peaks, I started to feel like I had to pay attention to all the scenes, plots, and characters that didn’t interest me because they might be important to resolving the murder-mystery. The whole premise of the show is that I will be rewarded for paying close attention to detail as Cooper and Truman put together the pieces of the puzzle. That’s what mysteries do. That’s part of the genre.

The problem with Twin Peaks is deciding whether it fits in that genre at all, as many people argue that it does not. As I wrote in one of my original posts on Twin Peaks, I never understood who Frost and Lynch intended to write a murder mystery in a television series that did not have a definite end date. Many of the best television drama series that have come around in the past few years knew ahead of time that the show would only last, say, six seasons, allowing the creators and writers to better pace out their extended miniseries.