Fade in on complete silence accompanying a jarringly disparate introductory shot of a tropical backdrop, replete with palm trees, some high clouds, and a golden sun setting over a placid body of water for once not featured in the opening theme song. I briefly muse on the possibility that I have erased the horror of a wacky Twin Peaks theme episode called Special Agent's Twin Peaks Spring Break Party to Go '90 featuring special musical hosts Julee Cruise and Don Ho, bedecked in the latest in brightly-hued cabana wear of the Pacific Northwest, but then I remember that these are still the waning days of the show's first season, and that such a blatant creatively spiraling direction couldn't be imagined until at least Episode 14 or so. And so the beach scene continues. The serene tropical silence pervades. Yeesh. Nice to see that at least the ever-expanding opening credits all made the flight. I'm sure when the scary music starts to underscore any and all plot development that might come our way, and some of those "characters" we've been hearing so much about finally hit their mark and arrive at this new and experimental set, the action will pick up and riveting doings will ensue. Of this I am sure. My certitude only increases when we pan away from the backdrop in Jacoby's office to the door, and Donna and James...oh, damn. I was wrong. Because I did propose that "riveting" would be the dominant emotional response of the day, did I not? Quite wrong, indeed.
On the hunt for a cassette-tape clue to Laura's murder, the two have arrived at Jacoby's office-cum-love den, a place that puts the "psycho" back in pretty much every word it prefaces. A spoken exchange which screenplay auteurs of the future will doubtless use as a definitive template of how to write meaningful dialogue is practically drowned out by the deafening Babel of said words being translated manically into hundreds of other languages so that peoples and cultures different than our own should also have these pearls to enjoy:
Donna: Where do we look?
James: I don't know. Everywhere.
Donna: Where should we start?
James: [indicating the first drawer to, by happenstance, collide with his eyeline] Maybe this is something.
Opening a drawer mysteriously NOT filled with the dozens of Emmys one would anticipate Mark Frost would have garnered for independently penning the above words which, in their way, defined a generation, Slater Fetus and Donna "A Shake for Dinner, A Shake for Lunch, And a Sensible Meal on My Birthday" Heyward crack a drawer and pull out a box filled with decorative paper parasols from any variety of frosty alcoholic beverages I wish I were in the process of drinking at this very moment. Finding nothing germane to their case in this box, Donna continues her tour around the room, happening on a button on the wall and pressing it to kick into gear some really loud hula-hula type music. She panics. James tells her to press the button again. Different hula music. She panics further. Yeah. We know. The dude likes Hawaii. Thank you, set designers of the South Pacific. While James locates the volume switch and sets the assault of at least one of my senses temporarily back to zero, Donna locates the telltale coconut on the wall and pulls it down. She opens it to reveal the very cassette tape they came for and, as an extra special parting gift in this round of "Pilfer the Loony Doctor Man's Office," the heart necklace from so many episodes ago. Cut to outside, where the two hop on the hog and depart in the general direction of their own abiding interests. When the motorcycle leaves the shot, it is filled by the far less hoggish Bobby, who forms his two hands into the shape of a gun and makes an "I have just shot you with my gun I just made with my hands" sound effect. Hi, Bobby.
Back at the gazebo, Jacoby needn't bother whispering into the darkness, as his outfit pretty much screams his arrival even under the darkest cover of Twin Peaks night. It's a tropical floral print with its own ecosystem, from frolicsome trees and flowers to its own sparking blue waters. I'm aware that this probably didn't require a specific mention, as Jacoby has a history with eccentric wardrobe choices, but you see a shirt that actually requires photosynthesis to survive, you're gonna stop and make the easy joke. It's basic human nature. Anyway, Jacoby spots the blonde hair through the trees and whispers, "Okay, Laura, this is where you shot that video." For those of us used to watching this show on the radio, I guess. But just as Maddy turns around and Jacoby sees that the girl he is looking at is identical to the girl he believes her to be, a black-clad man in a mask attacks the bad doctor from behind and beats him to within an inch of his life with what appears to be the squiggly white lines of ten-year-old tape interference. Ooooh. Smart choice of weapon. They should introduce that mortal killing tool into the rotation as an instrument of death on the board game Clue. The black-clad man runs off as Jacoby looks up to see "Laura" disappearing into Donna's departing station wagon. Jacoby rolls over on his back, and the camera advances on his face until only Jacoby's left eye remains in the shot, and I want to laugh and mock Mark Frost for taking the easy way out with Hitchcock and using the one reference no one who's ever heard of the verb phrase "to go to a movie" could possibly miss. But my cross-referencing superiority has been kind of shaken by the whole Hester Prynne glossing-over, so I don't feel at liberty to decide who should be catching what and when this week. And as long as shots like these stay in the obvious realm of the homage and don't threaten to cross that thin line into cheesy rip-off, a close-up on an eye from the shower scene from Psycho is still better than the four interminable hours I spent watching What Lies Beneath. Hey, Harrison Ford? Could you, um, put your shirt on now? Just 'cause you're a thousand. Thanks ever so much.
The steely gaze of Jacoby's frozen eye morphs slowly into a spinning roulette table (I'm sorry, is this Hoffa?), and we're back across the border at One-Eyed Jacks. Jacques and Cooper are locked in what appears to be a private game of blackjack, and Cooper smiles broadly when hitting twenty-one on his eighth card beats Jacques' two kings. Coo-PER! Coo-PER! Coo-PER! On Cooper's prophetic "Mother always said I was born lucky," a young painted harlot, of some prostitutional repute, I am sure, propositions Cooper in his ear, and he has the good grace to turn her down and console that "maybe later" would be a better occasion for some tryst-y fun times. Cooper sees that this moment might make for a good time to change the topic to all things underworldly. He produced the $1000 poker chip with the large chunk missing, which formerly took up residence inside of Laura's small intestine, and slides it across the table to Jacques with the baiting sentiment, "I'm a friend of Leo's." Jacques seems to be able to discern this particular poker chip from the millions of other poker chips One-Eyed Jacks has to offer, or perhaps Jacques came to know Laura so intimately that he can even recognize the digestive juices that contributed to the eating away of this chip to begin with. Either way, something flickers in Jacques' already suspicious, fleshy eyes (yes, even his eyes are fat somehow), and he seems to accept an invitation from Cooper to "buy [him] a cocktail." Even his eyes are fat.
Upstairs in Blackie's office, two more painted harlots flank the door and a newly-sexed-up Audrey (I mean Hester. HESTER! See how much I know about all that excessive Hester-calling going on around these parts? A lot! That's how much) enters the room, wearing a white (of course) bustier flecked with very, very small red ("of course" times a thousand) bows. Blackie tells her to approach the desk, and as she does so, Audrey briefly spots Cooper on a surveillance camera Blackie has been watching. Blackie tells her this will be a good night to break her in, as the owner of the joint will be coming by and he "likes to spend some time with all the new girls." Audrey asks just who that mysterious owner might be, and Blackie tells her, "No names, child. You don't offer. And you don't ask." Good news for the Hester-blundering population of the recapping world running around out there, wherever they may be. Blackie tells Audrey to pick a card from a deck that lies conveniently on her desk. Because it makes for extremely stylish television, is why.
Hawk and the Village People version of Ed Hurley sit in a nearby van, recording the conversation we cut to between Jacques and Cooper. Cooper asks, "Leo ever mention me to you?" Mention the undercover FBI agent who currently suspects Leo of killing Laura? Jacques is too thick to know even the answer to this question. And so Cooper decides on a tactic of dividing and conquering the Renault/Johnson axis: "Leo played you like a violin. Had you and your brother taking all the risk running the product across the border. Never cut you in on a piece of the action." Jacques remains reluctant to play the ol' divulging-information game, so Cooper tells Jacques to take the chip out of his pocket, and Cooper reminds him that it's from "a very special night you spent up at your cabin." At which point Cooper launches into a This is Your Life, Flight and Foul Edition moment in recalling the dear departed memory of one Waldo the mynah bird when he calls quietly, "Laura, Laura." Jacques slams down his drink and is in the process of very. Slowly. Getting. Away. But Cooper grabs his arm and admonishes, "Take it easy, take it easy." Cooper convinces the Canuck brain trust that he has been financing Leo's smuggling operation, and that Leo never mentioned his name to keep Jacques and his brothers in the dark, continuing to "mule it across the border." Cooper has a job for him tonight, and at the sight of the $10,000 Cooper removes from his pocket, Jacques licks his gigantic, fleshy lips and downs the rest of his drink. Before they part, Cooper takes a risk: "Leo told me all about that night with the girls. I'm curious about the chip. How'd that happen?" And in what sounds like little boy Jacques' most favoritest story in the Fairy Tales for Dead Girls compendium ("Ronette and the Rigor Mortis," in which the joint-stiffening condition actually appears as an adorable furry sidekick which follows a doomed Ronette around wherever she goes, is another classic around the Renault house), begins, "It was that crazy bird. He had a thing for Laura, saying her name all the time, like he was in love or something." Then I can't hear too much over the sweating and spitting and drooling for a while, and I am forced to tune back in to this horrifying display of excess and general fat-itude for the sheer visual revulsion of an extreme close-up of Jacques' fleshy mouth and lips backstorying, "Leo takes the chip, puts it in her mouth, says, 'Bite the bullet, baby. Bite the bullet.'" Then Jacques collects himself. Strange. Could this story be in bad taste, then? Cooper agrees that they'll see each other "on the other side." Back upstairs, Audrey sits around on an otherwise empty bed in a red curtained room, looking very very very much like she is playing a character by the name of Hester. So, good thing she is, then.
Over at the wood-paneled low-income house of perpetual sadness (except when 1-800-BOY-TOY shows up so unexpectedly with a piping hot delivery of Bobby, of course) that is the Johnson house, Shelley washes her hair in the sink and gingerly places her self-laundering agents of a towel, a bottle of shampoo, and a gun (For that "Head Blown Off" kind of shine!) to the right of the basin. An errant bubble of soap creeps its way eye-ward, and Shelley grabs for where she knows the towel to be, only to find it is moving farther and farther away from her on its own seeming will. Or not so much, for as she takes a hopeful swipe for the gun, a suddenly resurgent Leo grabs the firearm and her neck, yelling, "You made me do this, Shelley. YOU MADE ME!" Okay, Leo. You just put down the gun and we'll let you be as right as you gosh darn want.
Truman and Andy park it covertly in the police cruiser, waiting for the Renault deal to go down. Truman passes the time with an inquiry into the current status of Andy and Lucy's relationship, and Andy deadpans, much to my glee, "As we say in the law enforcement game, it's a cold trail." Truman verily seems to stifle a snarky recap of Andy's last comment, including even the relatively congenial and simple to create, "Oh, so that's we say? We say that, then, do we?" I expect another round of machismo driven "can't live with 'em, pass the beernuts"-esque male bonding, the likes of which we haven't seen since the shooting gallery sequence some weeks back, but pesky plot seeps in where talk of a-huntin' and a-fishin' and a-shootin' defenseless animals and the love of a fine, fine filly all collectively fear to tread, as Hawk chimes in on the CB that the cops are on their way. The in a seemingly endless series of fish-related metaphors tells us that Jacques is in range and Cooper will probably miss the initial arrest. All of which is probably for the best, as the arrest reaches some rather botched proportions. Jacques steps out of a car some feet from where the cruiser sits, clad in a flannel shirt and about five days' worth of facial hair accrued within the last hour. His arrival is an obvious indicator for a battalion of law-enforcing storm-troopers to blare their own lights and ride on into position. Truman pronounces Renault under arrest "for the attempted murder of Ronette Pulaski and the murder of Laura Palmer." But before local law enforcement guy can secure the fat Canuck in the handcuffs of the damned, Jacques uses his copious perspiration as a Bond weapon and wriggles to temporary freedom, grabbing a gun from aforementioned law enforcement guy's holster. Cries of, conveniently, "gun" and "he's gotta gun" -- and maybe that one law enforcement official with a high taste for camp and an upcoming audition for the ill-fated Cop Rock singing a clip or two from Pat Benetar's ode to carbine reverence, "Hit me with your best shot. Fire away." Pandemonium as Jacques prepares to wield said gun. But just at this moment, another shot rings out and slams Jacques in the shoulder. It was Andy. Perfect hit. All hail the first cycle-completing story arc in the history of the show.
A phone rings at the Hayward house, and Donna waits until her father picks it up in another room before retiring to the kitchen, where she meets James and Maddy with the cassette tape recovered from Jacoby's office which was recorded by Laura the day before she died. The tape is the very one we heard Jacoby listening to way back at the beginning of it all, except I am utterly and completely sure it is a different recording of said tape. But it really serves the same purpose, even more so this time, as James is finally around to hear himself called "sweet but he's so dumb. And I can take only so much of sweet." James looks mournfully at the tape recorder in that "but my frontal lobe isn't even fully formed yet" glazed way we're becoming all too familiar with, and then he looks away with a far less certain "wait, I am James, right?" mien. The tape continues that her "mystery man" drives a red Corvette and has tried to kill her and that he really lights her "F-I-R-E." Red Corvette, you say? If this mystery man has red hair, eats fish, and is an avid golfer, I think we may just have a warrant to arrest Carmen Sandiego. Somebody break out the World Almanac and let's have a look-see!
Shots of the mill in action. Leo enters an abandoned room at said mill with two large red canisters, filled to the brim, I am sure, with a liquid specifically designed to set a whole lot more than Laura's panties on F-I-R-E. He places them down and walks over to a tied-up Shelley. He puts what looks like a stop watch nailed to a wooden plank (Oh, no! Run!) down on the floor to her and warns, "You've got about one hour to think about what you've done to me. And think about it, too. Because by then Bobby Briggs will be dead." He heads for the door and, right before the slam, a pathos-ridden off-camera braying of "YOU BROKE MY HEART" ensues. Ah, the poor cuckold. So broken indeed.
Short and exceedingly simple to recap, introducing: Scenes With No Dialogue. Yay! They sure give the wearied recapper a bit of a lift when times are getting tough. Hey, here's one now: Nadine, spiffy in a pink gown ripped right out of the Massapequa High School Class of 1987 prom collection (either that or it's white and it's her wedding dress and -- no, really -- these tapes suck) kneels on a blanket, seals a letter, pours a glass of water, and gives new meaning to the kitschy phrase "killer meds" when she empties two bottles of pills into a bowl, and (oops, there is dialogue) whispers, "Goodbye." Curtains for Nadine? Well, then, how about the runners for those curtains to slide back and forth on?
An ever-so-slightly longer scene of absolutely no repute is to follow. Over at the already smoking mill, Josie forks over a suitcase full of cash to Ambiguously Evil Hank, because it is important to hand over large quantities of cash to those who remain evil without developed intent, lest they turn said ambiguous evil on you. He thanks her for the money, and she looks downcast and like a boy, and he launches into a speech about spending eighteen months in prison and how we could all die tomorrow and blah blah blah the-mullet-tolls--for-thee-cakes. He tells her, "You want a lot for your money. And I want a lot for my time." Josie mindlessly repeats, "We had an agreement" so many times in this scene that it makes me yearn endlessly for the breezy improvisational acting acumen of one Waldo the mynah bird. Shut up, Josie. Hank tells her that "once you're in business with someone, you're in business for life," cutting her thumb open with a suddenly manifested knife and melding it with his own bloody finger, which he cuts consequently. And so it shall be evermore, Hank and Josie, joined in their mutual desires to spread the revolutionary gospel of ambiguous evil to the tertiary, the superfluous, the peripheral, the poorly coiffed, and the, uh, ambiguously evil. And others just like them.
Inside an office at the mill with "Accounting" stenciled on the door for our convenience, we join Katherine Martell right in the middle of becoming as unglued as a fair percentage of the rest of the prom-dress-wearing, Hawaii-climate-loving, washing-their-hair-with-guns population of this quirky, quirky town. Memo to Katherine Martell: just because Sarah Palmer forgot to show up this week doesn't mean the front float on the crazy parade is automatically yours for the commandeering. Anyway, Katherine is frantically shuffling through papers and throwing books and creating a general sense of intra-office mayhem the likes of which I haven't seen since my last visit to MBTV corporate headquarters in Duluth. Don't make me go into detail on that, either. It'll be putting all of our jobs in jeopardy. Suffice it to say it looks a bit like this scene. ["Hey, we've hired a cleaning service since then. Ish." -- Sars] Anyway, she's looking for the ledger -- either of them, I think -- and her suspicions and paranoia have grown exponentially since she the heady salad days when she thought she possessed that special little title of "Sovereign Ruler of Everyone and Thing on This, the Planet Earth." Pete enters. She's starting to get edgy: "You're not helping her to pull something here?" Pete wants to know just exactly who it is he's helping to pull just what, as all the while Pete hastens around the room to close the blinds to the outside world where numerous mill workers look on at her paroxysmic ways. Pete says he's not helping Josie. Katherine walks closer to Pete than we've seen a married couple get to each other during the full run of the show so far, with the possible exception of when Ben picked up Sylvia just so he could drop-kick her inconveniencing ass right back out of the frame and the script. Clearly, Katherine is appealing to his soft side, and it's working. She tells him to "forget everything that we've said or we've done to hurt each other." Ah, how fiery passion and young love have coalesced into spiteful, crusty oldness. Just the way it always happens. On TV. Or in every bittersweet pop song since "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant." Katherine tells him that Pete needs to remember why they fell in love to begin with so he can help her. He couldn't be more thrilled, and he grabs her and wails her name repeatedly. She rolls her eyes in the area of three dozen times and comes so close to looking directly into the camera that I briefly consider putting some clothes on. They hug and hug.
Hawk and Ed are deep in the process of sharing Andy's tale of The Shot Heard Round The Tri-Counties with the only three enforcers of the law in the Pacific Northwest who got stuck on assignment guarding the leitmotif stoplight while everyone else was over at the big Renault arrest earlier in the evening. Lucy edges into the frame in the seeming activity of watering plants, but instead stands riveted during the actual story and even sends a you-say-your-gun-shot-straight-for-once excited little smile in Andy's general direction before turning away this time. She walks past them all and into the station's kitchen, and the menfolk offer Andy some quick words of encouragement before sending him after her. He walks with as much confidence as someone cursed with such ostrich-like gestures (and hair, oddly) can, sauntering in (as an ostrich might saunter, anyway) and shutting the sliding plastic divider that separates the kitchen from the rest of the world. He puts his hands on her shoulders. She turns to face him and they kiss and kiss. She turns and delivers a single line with a measured pathos that proves Lucy's many hours in front of Invitation to Love have not all gone to waste: "Oh, Andy! I'm pregnant!" A quick pause ensues, and a silent cut later, Andy walks dejectedly out of the kitchen and Lucy's back is once more turned away from the camera. Hawk and Ed exchange the quickly tiring "we're guys, they're dolls, what can you do?" set of glances 'round the room, and Lucy informs them in her iciest tone that there is "Fresh. Coffee." The phone rings and Lucy takes it as a personal affront, picking it up with a furious, "What?" It's Bobby, doing his best Clint-Eastwood-in-every-movie-except-maybe-The-Bridges-of-Madison-County impression, passing along a message that, "Leo Johnson said to check out James Hurley. He's an easy rider." He hangs up. Damn! He can do impressions, too? The special skills are unending! Where oh where is the dinner theater stage that will see this man's revived career safely through to the other side? Life just ain't fair sometimes. Meanwhile, on a rehearsal stage over at the Twin Peaks backlot, two young unknowns named Heather Graham and Billy Zane receive the good news that they'll be showing off their skills in an upcoming set of unquestionable season-two triumphs.
Over at the hospital, where an increasing number of the area's finest have turned up on this increasingly perilous night, Cooper and Truman finally rejoin forces in questioning Renault from his bed. The four of them (Jacques, Leo, Laura, Ronette) had been to Jacques' cabin many times, it was Laura's idea to have Jacques take her and Ronette's pictures for Flesh World, and the bloody shirt (well, blood is the COLOR of a red herring, so maybe we shouldn't be that surprised) that looked so promising in the pilot was the result of Leo smashing Jacques in the head with a whiskey bottle. Eh? After all that, Jacques walked outside and passed out. When he woke up, Leo, the Corvette, and the girls were all gone. He knows nothing about a train car. Outside his room, Truman recaps for mightybigcanuck.com that "Leo had to take the girls to the train car by himself." Cooper (still in his tux, by the way. I felt that was important to note) comments that he believes Jacques' story simply on the conclusive, deductive basis that "he's too stupid to lie." Heh. Didn't need a twenty-minute red-velvet dream sequence about Tibet to make a leap of non-faith to that conspicuous conclusion. No, sir, he did not. Hayward walks up to meet them and offers the Jacoby status report: "Listen, he says he got a phone call from Laura Palmer. He was on his way to see her when he was jumped. That brought on the heart attack." No description of the masked assailant, of course (how ambiguously eeeeeeeeevil), but Jacoby made sure to pass along the information that he did, in fact, see Laura Palmer standing in front of the gazebo. Which is kind of cool, really, considering that in real time the murder happened, like, six days ago. So let's see: A man is attacked for no reason, which brings on a heart attack, just so he ends up in the hospital as pivotal events are slated to transpire? Hmmmmm. This sounds a bit like one of those random, sniping attacks in this rash of ambiguous evil that seems to be taking over the city of late. I'm not going to name any names just yet, but let's just say I have my strong suspicions.
Katherine brings the office reorganization skills she showed back at "Accounting" into her house's library, almost allowing me to make a contrived joke with absolutely no set-up but with the punch line "homewrecker" in no short supply. She's tearing the place apart, yelling, "It's not here, it's not here." Pete continues his streak of being a total favorite for all time immemorial, amen, when, amongst the screaming and the throwing and general cacophony of a lunatic at large, he begins musing over his high-school yearbook which he has unearthed amidst the rubble. The phone rings. I say, good show, is that the lusty ring of ambiguous evil that pierces the night? Ah, yes. I'd know it anywhere. An ambiguously evil voice offers, "It's at the mill." What is? "What you're looking for." Katherine wants to know what she needs to provide in exchange for this information, and the ambiguous evil on the other line ambiguously and evilly tells her that he will let her know. My God, man. Who is this monster? Cut to the other end. Hank Jennings hangs up a pay phone. Wow. Er, I mean, "not wow." Back at the Martell house, Katherine grabs a gun from the secret drawer which should also contain numerous mathematical interpretations of the mill's simultaneously increasing and declining profits. She checks, I believe, to be certain that the gun is unloaded. The reasons for this pronounced move are left ambiguous. But in an evil kind of way. Of course.
And back at the Double R, Hank makes nicey-nice with his unambiguously super-terrific lady of a wife. He sits on the counter while she stays at a nearby table idly holding receipts, and he tells her as such: "Night after night I dreamed of you lying there on that big feather bed." She prefers ghastly silence to the continuing mental image of those long, mullety hairs getting all on and in her supple down comforter, and he apologizes for being so "familiar with the boss lady." She absolves him in that bad-ass Norma way we haven't heard from her in a while: "Can't blame you for dreaming." Heh. He continues that he wants his life with her back, and that he's going to try and be the best golly-gosh-darned husband he knows how to be. And then they kiss. She looks mournfully down. Over at the Hurley place, Ed walks in on Nadine and calls for an ambulance.
Commercials: Say, I don't want to alarm anyone here, but Roseanne might be pregnant. And while we're checking out what's on ABC's Tuesday slate, make sure to keep those eyes peeled for a "special preview" (read: only episode) of Married People, a show about a wacky landlord that suggests "Archie Bunker make way for Nick Williams." Don't worry, Archie Bunker, you can move back in one episode. You won't have to make way for too long, really. Oh, and incidentally, we've all been invited to "get a little closer." Arrid says it's okay. So who's comin' over?
Truman and Cooper make their way back into the Sheriff's Station, and Lucy stops them to let them know that Leo Johnson called them, and that she could hear the clock at Easter Park striking in the background. Go, intrepid Lucy. Cooper sets up a perimeter of officers around Easter Park. Slater Fetus enters just then, and Cooper tells him they must speak. Turning around in the controlled, countrified mayhem, Truman walks directly into Leland, who asks, "Is it true? You found him? You've got the killer?" Truman tells him that they've arrested a suspect but can't release any more details, and all Leland wants to know is if they've got the right man. I don't know, Leland. Do they? The good doctor happens by and tells him to go home and rest, and Leland craftily inquires, "You're going back to the hospital?" Hayward says he's going home. Leland, temporarily alone in the office, turns almost directly to the camera, registers a sinister glare we're just not used to seeing in a man of his noble standing and of his notable grief. He speaks the word "hospital." That's right, Leland. Make haste. And be sure to say hi to everyone else in town for us as well. Just, y'know, while you're there.
Meanwhile, over in a mysteriously dark conference room, James is getting himself into an amniotic sac full of trouble when he hands the tape of Laura to Cooper but can't come up with a story as to where he got it. Cooper tells James about Jacoby's heart attack, asking, "James, what kind of dangerous games you been playing?" Cooper tells James he's been extremely patient with him, but that from now on, he's "gonna need a better set of answers." Enter the planted cocaine from the first act going off in the third, which Harry brings into the room. Blah blah blah fetal position joke here, and I need a new method of description for James Hurley, starting week I promise.
Over at Jacks, the leader of the Icelanders finalizes his deal for Ghostwood as some obscure group of indistinguishable northerners signs the damn papers already. Ben is overjoyed enough to suffer a fool gladly for about ten full seconds of merriment until the phone rings. It's Hank, which is important because the intents of each character in this scene were so well-defined and rigidly coherent it had just started to give me the beginnings of a migraine. Hank says something about Leo "getting a house call," which Ben seems to think is just a fine idea indeed. Everything's right in the world for Ben.
And speaking of the discreet charms of the Johnsons, Bobby turns up at their fine abode and tip-toes through the open front door, whispering Shelley's name into the darkness. She's not there, but luckily for Bobby there is one Johnson available to take his call. Leo stands behind the door, and Bobby is almost able to recover quickly enough to make it believable. He's really just there, he tells Leo, to warn him that the police are after him. Awwwww. Whatta guy. Leo believes that the real reason Bobby is there is to be murdered at his hand, a hand which is actually brandishing an axe, like the ones they use to chop down large trees or in scary ghost stories about men with hooks for hands who kill with an axe or something. Bobby gives chase and Leo lumbers after, landing blow after blow in a way that would have doubtlessly ended with him maniacally chopping his way into the bathroom and announcing, "Heeeere's Leo!" if he weren't suddenly shot right in the upper half of his body somewhere by a bullet which, to the collective surprise of not me, was ambiguous in everything about it save for its timing. Hank walks away from the window. Is he being paid by the pointless action or what? And if so, what's the current market value on Promethean levels of superfluousness? Quite a bit, you say? Well, then, Hank, you can probably tone the whole killing thing down a notch or twelve. You're a rich man!
Alone in the mill, suspended from the ceiling and gagged up real good, Shelley continues to writhe in her dance of the damned. A gun appears in the frame, and we pan back to see it brandished by Katherine Martell, who regards Shelley carefully and responds to her shrieky grunts with the timed-just-right bitch-out, "I can't understand a word you're saying. You have a thing in your mouth." Heh. A thing. That dastardly pocket watch/wood plank combo from earlier dings and bursts into localized, exceedingly unthreatening flames. Katherine pulls the gag down and asks Shelley her name and if she knows who asked her to come here. She doesn't know anything. And her name is Shelley Johnson. The small flame hits, well, something flammable, and becomes a significantly larger blaze. Katherine grabs a nearby axe (what is this, the Twin Peaks default death tool?) and hacks Shelley to freedom. They make a dash for the door as we cut to the hospital, and a shadowy figure entering under the cover of darkness. Said black-clad silhouette enters Jacques' room, uses white medical tape to secure Jacques' arms to the bed, and simultaneously puts an end to both Jacques' breathing and to my need to enroll in a Chronically Contrived French-Canadian Accents for Dummies seminar. Who has done this? Pan to...oh, my! It's Leland. Now that's odd. All the while, a fire alarm has been ringing. Did I not mention that?
Burning mill. Pete tells a fire marshal that Katherine might still be inside, puts on his safety goggles, and utters the sentiment, "She's still my wife," before flying into the blaze. Over at Jacks (I'm trying to establish the connection between these two events by not starting a new paragraph. Am I the most clever or what?), Ben and his Icelandic friend again pat each other on the back for finally procuring the Ghostwood land. Ben sends Sven off for the post-contract-signing coitus of his dreams, then has a private audience with Blackie in which he tells her that this event calls for a celebration: "Let's have a look at the new girl." Noooooooooo! Over at New Girl's room (no names. But I think hers might be Hester), Audrey hears the voice of her approaching father tell her that what she's about to experience is "what dreams are made of."
Cooper returns to his room, walking down the hall with Diane, letting her know who's been arrested and who is still under suspicion, basically recounting the events of the last hour for our convenience. He notices that the large group of insane men staying on his floor "have either checked or passed out." He has ordered some hot milk, he tells her, and comments on the good times that room service brings about. He enters his room to find Audrey's note on the floor, but before he gets around to opening it (she addressed it to "My special agent." Awwwwwww), the phone rings. Cooper asks if it can wait until the morning, then puts down the receiver to answer a knock on the door, what he believes to be his room service. Of hot lead. As he walks over, we pan closer to the phone receiver and hear Andy yelling they they've found Leo Johnson. Cooper opens the door, he sees a gun. Bang. Bang. Bang. Cooper hits the floor. In just about the most unambiguous way I know.
To be continued. season.