Part one of a two-parter, this recap is. So don't you be expecting any of that trademark closure and resolution that has, until now, been so part and parcel of the final moments of your average Twin Peaks episode, with the moral lesson and the "One to Grow On" music and the well-I-think-we've-all-learned-a-little-something-today-Mister-Drummond blah-di-blah. 'Cause it ain't coming this time around. Just so you're, y'know, prepared.
Fade up on a shot of a clear Twin Peaks night sky completely filled by a full moon. The musical accompaniment is that of loud, stomping, ostensibly drunken men singing what I imagine to be the national anthem of some ambiguous and obscure Scandinavian country we'll just call "Foreignia" for the purposes of linear recapping. The shot swings us through a window and into a room at the Great Northern. A mysterious hand checks a wristwatch and reaches for a tape recorder sitting on the nightstand, picks it up, and speaks. Hey, it's Cooper! He's angry. And you thought [SPOILER of all SPOILERS for all time immemorial, forever and ever, amen] you'd have to wait twenty-nine episodes to see evil Cooper rear his evil head in the Great Northern and become evil evil evil. [End terribly irresponsible imbedded-in-recap SPOILER alert here.] Um, Cooper's in a bad mood. And so he rants to Diane, "It is 4:28 AM. I have just been woken up by the most god-awful racket which you can probably hear over the sound of my voice." He holds up the tape recorder so Diane can share in the pathos of it all. "Can you hear that?" I have no doubt she can. Cooper continues with some more woe-be-it-to-fates-of-the-business-traveler rhetoric about how "once a traveler leaves his home, he loses almost one hundred percent of his ability to control his environment." He asks her to send two pairs of ear plugs he used on his "last trip to New York. Naturally, I didn't bring them with me on this trip because I didn't feel it would be necessary. However..." And he holds up the tape recorder once more, as the off-camera Scandinavians bellow with nationalistic pride. My, how they seem to adore their far-away homeland of Foreignia, with its many frozen lakes and rivers and log rolling opportunities and universal health care, or whatever else nebulous Scandinavian countries are said to offer.
morning in the Great Northern's dining room, an unusually contentious Cooper bids the increasingly Alice's Restaurant-esque waitress a "get me some freakin' coffee, bitch" kind of good morning before taking his place at a nearby table. Over the bellowing of an even drunker rendition of a new song, which in translation reads "I'm Drunk, You're Awake, Let's Chop Us Down Some Trees," the waitress lets Cooper know that the rowdy crowd of chanteurs is "a business junket. From Iceland." And sure enough, the closed captioning finally kicks in with the too-little-too-late didacticism "Singing Icelandic Drinking Song." Thanks, closed captioning. Where were you when I insulted the entirety of the non-English speaking population of a little place I like to call the northern hemisphere by making up a reductive catch-all name like "Foreignia?" Were you, perhaps, actually transcribing dialogue as a public service to the deaf, I imagine? Yeah. I thought so. Anyway, wacky waitress tells Cooper that the wacky Icelanders (Icelandics? Islanders? Frozen Fun Pops?) arrived at three in the morning. Cooper volleys that "it will take them a day or two to reset their biological clocks." Wacky waitress closes out the conversation with the hard-boiled response, "Hope the herring holds out," and I realize that another one of the several billion finer points I so appreciate about this show is that it asks us to go along with it in making assumptions created by the insular universe of the show and sweeps us right along with them. Y'know, like the one where we nod politely at the inherent wackiness of people from Iceland, a topic I must admit I hadn't spend a whole lot of time considering previously. But I promise I will from now on. ["Yeah, really. Björk, dude. Get with the program." -- Sars]
The ruckus of all things Arctic Circle is soon to be drowned out by Snare Drum Shuffle, as Audrey saunters into the dining room and sits down at Cooper's table. He tells her that he's "tired and a little on-edge," so she cuts to the chase and gives him what she hopes he'll perceive as very, very good news: "I got a job. And I thought maybe now I could help you with your case." But before she can flesh out the topic any further, Cooper holds up a "cease and desist, little one" hand and tells her that he's late and has to get going. She offers to go with him, and there follows a glee-inducing exchange that to merely recap would be an injustice against God, man, and all things holy in the universe. Verbatim fun times ahead:
Cooper: Well, Wednesdays were traditionally a school day when I was your age.
Audrey: I can't believe you were ever my age.
Cooper: I've got the pictures to prove it. [Glacial, oh-what-I-would-do-to-you-if-this-weren't-network-TV-in-the-days-before-FOX-made-it-okay pause] How old are you?
Audrey: Eighteen.
"Legal!" I shout optimistically before writing "Mrs. Audrey Cooper" on a slip of flowery perfumed stationery and slipping it into my hope chest. But Cooper still has to depart for his day's work, so this round of stylized flirting must desist until an as-yet-undetermined future time.
Over in another corner of the dining room, Jerry Horne works his best Nordic mojo before quickly retiring to his brother's office. Ben, meanwhile, sits alone smoking a cigar, and when Jerry bursts in, the exhaustive closed captioning again aids us greatly in telling us that he is "speaking Icelandic." All right, who bought the cheap and totally unhelpful closed captioning at a garage sale? Apparently, I did. Anyway, Ben rails all faux-hostile, "We have had complaints from nearly every guest in the hotel. What are they on, nitrous oxide?" Heh. Jerry placates his brother by telling him that "they are insane for the Ghostwood Estates Project" and then throws a frozen leg of lamb the size of a small nation down on Ben's desk, which was given to him as a gift of thanks by his Nordic ice princess, Heppa. Jerry tries to pull Ben back to the party, but Ben mysteriously strings together a series of familiar words I wasn't even convinced had ever been used in this order in 1990 in telling Jerry to sit down and "grab some down time." Ben stands and lets Jerry know that he's planned a "gala reception for your fair-haired boys tonight. All of Twin Peaks' best and brightest." Jerry hilariously asks if the extensive invite list of "Twin Peaks' best and brightest" necessitates hosting the event "in a phone booth." And, Ben continues, putting the cigar in his mouth, "if we still need a kicker to nail the sale, I'm thinking maybe they might enjoy a little road trip to you-know-where," putting one hand over one eye, indicating that a little casual prostitution might be just the ticket for Heppa's boys to invest in the Ghostwood property. And if that weren't an offensive enough prospect, try this on: when Ben covers his eye with his left hand, the wedding band on his fourth finger gleams brighter than the surface of the sun, a woeful reminder that not only is Ben unconscionably unfaithful to Poor, Poor Disappearing Sylvia, but also that he has given not even a thought to her dire turn in life, gone as she is to work in numerous secretarial and telemarketing capacities to make ends meet while waiting for her agent to call with an audition spot for the Twin Peaks Dinner Theater Touring Company production of Cats. Poor, poor, disappearing Sylvia.
As Jerry and Ben shake hands to seal the deal on crossing the border to love, their revelry is soon to be interrupted by the appearance of one Leland Palmer, standing at the door of the office. Looking terribly spiffy, as usual. Minus the "spiffy" and the "y" at the end of "terribly," of course. Ben asks the rumpled, sweater-vested Leland what on Earth he's doing there, and he responds that he heard of the new investment group in town, and wants to be of some help, that he needs "something to occupy [his] mind." Ben unsympathetically tells him to take some time off, and to take Sarah with him, and Leland unsurprisingly responds that he is "afraid to." Blame him? I think not. With that, Leland collapses to the floor in racking sobs. And as the increasingly clamorous strains of the latest Icelandic theme, "Three Sheets to the Hundred Mile and Hour Wind of Living on a Glacier," approach the office, Jerry bolts for the office door and closes it hastily. Goodbye, good mood.
Cooper, Truman, Andy, and Doc Hayward roam around Jacques Renault's apartment. Truman has discovered that Jacques Renault is a "Canadian national. He worked the lumber fields this side of the border. Until he put on a little excess tonnage a couple of seasons ago. That's when he started bartending at the Roadhouse." Excess tonnage? Is that a shrouded reference to drug trafficking or an overt-as-hell testimonial to how fat he is? I honestly have no idea. Call, e-mail, smoke signal, semaphore flags, lemme know. Whatever it takes. Cooper indicates that he needs coffee, as "there is a large group of insane men staying on my floor." Again, heh. Anyway, no one has seen Jacques for two days, and Truman sent Hawk to find Bernard, who they believed to have jumped bail. Nope. Dead. Wrapped in plastic. Doc Hayward, who had been on the phone, hangs up and tells Cooper that the blood on Leo's shirt was not Laura's. The phone rings again, and Cooper looks toward the ceiling. After taking a long swig of coffee, he asks if Truman will hoist him up, and Cooper removes a ceiling panel and pulls down the same copy of Flesh World that was in Laura's safety deposit box way back then in the pilot. Meanwhile, the good doctor reports that Jacques' blood type matches the blood on Leo's shirt. Ta-da! Inside of Flesh World, they find an envelope filled with responses to Ronette's ad. So Jacques is tied up in the whole Flesh World subplot, then. Got it. For now. One letter has a Polaroid included, about which Cooper comments, "The beard sort of ruins the effect of the lingerie." And sure enough, we see a picture of, well, a bearded man in lingerie. As you may well have expected from the comment. Also, as a helpful reminder, there is a picture of Leo's truck on the same page as the photo of Ronette, and so we again...
...dissolve to inside the Johnson house, where Shelley prepares a breakfast of sex 'n' eggs for her high-school boy-toy, Mr. Bobby Briggs, who back-stories, "the biggest mistake of your life was dropping out of the eleventh grade to marry that road hog." She serves him breakfast and sits on his lap, asking, "What would you do if he walked in right now?" And though they both know the only truthful answer to this question is, "Run like hell while soiling myself with every biologically malfunctioning resource in my incontinence arsenal," Bobby instead takes a brief mental journey to Leo Johnson Fantasy Camp and gets all down and James Dean in brandishing a gun and threatening no one in particular, "If you so much as utter one harsh syllable to this beautiful girl, I'm gonna shoot your ugly face off. Okay, man?" But a momentary rustling sound outside the house forces them to abandon their pre-coital position, and they look out the window to notice it's only Andy, coming by to do some sleuthing of his own. Bobby runs to sequester himself in a nearby closet, telling Shelley, "Do exactly what I said, and everything's gonna be fine." Ah, a caper! I see. So Shelley answers the door for Andy, who enters the house and asks if Leo is around. He's not. "Is he in some kind of trouble?" She baits the trap even further by asking if all this is about Laura, and then tells Andy that Leo had been arguing with Jacques Renault about her the day he left town. Andy tells them to get in touch with the Sheriff's Office as soon as they hear from him. He leaves and Bobby erupts from the closet, all kissy fun times. But then -- can no two lovers in this town ever share a private moment together without a spouse popping in to ruin the whole thing? -- the phone rings and Shelley finds Leo on the other end. He asks if anyone has been looking for him. She tells him he's a paranoid freak. Kind of. She tells him everything is fine as Bobby puts the gun in her hand. I used up all of my cloaked phallic references for that gun last week, so suffice it to say: it's his penis, see.
A radiant, sun-drenched Norma shows up at Ed's gas station. She asks if it's okay if she is there, and Ed retreads the going-nowhere-and-silently Nadine/drape runner/blah subplot in telling Norma that Pirate Nadine has found a patent attorney to go harass and won't be back for hours. Oh, and, um, Hank got his parole. Norma tells Ed as such: "I only saw him a minute before the hearing. He seemed so hopeful. I didn't want to say anything." What a coincidence, in fact, as star-crossed Ed hasn't exactly said anything to Nadine just yet either. She's not well, see. Yeah, but does what she have ever really have a chance of getting better? A tear appears at the corner of Norma's eye, which practically causes me to rise up and smite he who dares to make this glorious woman cry, before I come to the triplicate realization that a) inside, Ed weeps, too; b) these are fictional television characters whose actions are predetermined by a set of scripted line, therefore absolving them of smitability; and c) I'm not God; I don't have carte blanche smite privileges. Anyway, they're sad. She tells him not to call her for a while. "I love you, Ed." And then she walks away. Noooooooooooooo!
Hmmm. Let's see. Small logging community. Only one apparent (though exceedingly prominent) stoplight. Police station the size of a pediatrician's office, only with a smaller staff. Flannel, everywhere. Pretty much the archetypal TV small country town. So what better location to round this out this provincial image than with a full-service department store and retailer of numerous luxury goods, right smack in the middle of town. Enter Horne's Department Store. Mom got a smidge trigger happy with the ol' pause button this week, believing when she saw the establishing shot of the Horne's building that it was perhaps really a commercial for the store itself, and it's not until we enter the store that she saw Audrey and began to muse, "Wow, I didn't know Sherilyn Fenn was doing commercials for...oh, wait," and hastily began recording anew. So we're only a few seconds worse for wear, really, and when we pick up the action again, Audrey is inside the store's executive offices talking to a bald, suited fellow named Emory Battis. He thinks that Audrey should "start low and aim high," as per her father's corporate cliché suggestion (I'll bet he tells her to "work smarter, not harder" and "K.I.S.S." on a regular basis as well), and Emory suggests that Audrey begin her stint in the family business over in the disdained Wrapping Department. Snare Drum Shuffle kicks up anew, which means the Great Northern's waterfall is flowing with only sass today and Audrey is about to get her way no matter what. She suggests the perfume counter, and Emory bristles at the thought of putting the boss's inexperienced daughter in "one of our more, uh, sensitive areas. Expensive items, delicate customer relations." Whores. Audrey rises and sits on the desk facing Emory as he worries that he would have to talk to Ben about this unconventional development, and Audrey puts way too fine a point on her desire for one department and one department only, utilizing the heady pre-Disclosure salad days of the ignorant corporate atmosphere of sexual harassment: "Emory, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna tell my father that I'm busy as a bee wrapping boxes with the drones. Then you're gonna put me to work behind the perfume counter. 'Cause if you don't, I'm gonna rip my dress in half and scream at the top of my lungs and tell my father you made a pass at me. Does that help to clear things up for you?" Yes. Yes, it does, you splendid opportunist bitch, you.
Oh, come on. All right, listen up, people. I know that, blessed with the opportunity of recapping such a unique show as this one, the actual three-way ratio of the wonderful to the bearable to the just plain ol' craptastic is a bit skewed in my favor here. But, fellow fan, you know the clichés as well as I do: When it's James, it pours; the Hurley turd gets the squirm; don't count your fetuses before they hatch. I could go on. Don't? Fine, then, I won't. But I think I've made my point amply clear. And the point is that when James is on-camera, particularly when he's trying to establish those telltale non-Laura subplots that did in so many other substandard characters when the second season reared its wildly disparate head, well, um, kill me. You know? Anyway, here's a sampler of what's to come. Suffer as I suffer. The scene opens with Donna running toward a gazebo we haven't seen up until this point (but look out for it in an actually dramatic-as-hell scene late in the series. You won't be sorry), and she meets James inside. And now, the winner of the first ever I Care Because I'm Paid To Care approach to Twin Peaks recapping. Sigh. I feel so alone. "Donna. There's some things I gotta say. I told you that my dad died when I was ten. He didn't die. He was a musician. We were living on the west coast. He was a bum and he ran off on me and my mom. My mom's a writer. She was really good. Poems and short stories. She's an alcoholic." Who? Freaking? Cares? You can almost feel the recently out-of-work ABC After-School Special people elbowing their way into this story meeting. More? More! "It's true, she was out of town this week. But she wasn't traveling. What she does is, she goes to another town, shacks up in some cheap hotel with a couple of bottles and picks up guys and..." He breaks off, despondent. In all fairness, though, James does a wonderful job here of sticking to the emotions laid out so clearly for him in the stage directions. If, of course, the stage directions read, "Spoken as if reading a recipe off the back of a box. For boring cake." Donna comforts him, "It's all right." Yuck. No, it's not. He says he's telling her all this because he doesn't want there to be any "secrets" and "lies" between them, and I sigh with relief at the possibility that those two words are supposed to signal the stunned-at-the-malfunctioning-dialogue audience member that there is some kind of pre-Oscars-Mike-Leigh improvisational exercise at work here that's gone horribly, horribly awry. Other than that, I'm out of ideas as to how to account for this train wreck, and I'm out of this scene before it does any more damage to my already aching soul.
Back at Jacques Renault's apartment, in that protective where-tiresome-subplots-fear-to-tread radius that seems to surround our man Cooper at all times, rubber-gloved forensics folks pass around a plate of donuts that ends up in front of the aforementioned special agent. He takes a bite of the donut and flips open a cupboard above the sink, looking at a few photographs taped to the inside of the cabinet and muttering quietly the words "red drapes." Just at this moment, Hawk and Harry reenter the house to inform Cooper that the P.O. box containing the replies to Ronette's sexy Flesh World ad is registered to one Jacques Renault. He cracks a letter open and notices that there are "two different ad numbers mailed to the same post office address." So whoever was responsible for getting Ronette involved in the dirty, dirty porno underworld was also doing just the same for another girl in the magazine. Cooper flips to the other ad, which reads, "Young student requires education in the ways of love. Only generous, mature men need apply." There is a photograph, but the girl's face is concealed. Cooper looks at it for one brief moment and comments with absolute metaphysical certitude, "It's Laura." But how the hell do you know that, Coop? He runs a magnifying glass across the photo and chillingly responds, "The drapes." He then moves back to a photo taped inside the cabinet and indicates a log cabin with red curtains inside, almost whispering, "Red drapes, Harry. From my dream." But before Angelo Badalamenti's highly dramatic "look ma, new chord" minor-key strings barrage has a chance to hang
in the air one moment too long, Cooper changes directions completely and asks, "Now why would an apartment dweller buy fifty gallons of heating oil?" Harry's got this one: "To heat a log cabin." And they're off again for the latest round of utter sleuth-i-tude.Over at the Double R, Hank kicks the jukebox into action, all Swayze in Roadhouse (or so I imagine, having never seen the movie and dying to reference it anyway, as Hank maintains that very same impossible mix of swarthy and sleazy that Mr. Dirty Dancing himself possessed with so much confidence in scads of his other four movies) and walks out of the shot. Meanwhile, SJLP walks in to find James and Donna waiting for her. She introduces herself to Donna: "My name is Madeline Fergusson. My friends call me Maddy." Very good, then, Madeline, let's all dispense with the chatty Maddy blah-di-blah and get on with this electrifying James-driven subplot. James goes off to get her a drink, and Donna leans in to tell SJLP that "Laura used to talk about a secret hiding place she had, somewhere in her house, maybe in her room." Anyway, there's something in that hiding place, and they need it. She'll help them. Huzzah. The three rise from the table and go their separate-but-equally-grating ways. The camera pans to the table, where Hank sits eavesdropping, so evil a presence that his jukebox selection chosen just moments before is drowned out by the "pure eeeeeevil" chord the increasingly prolific Angelo has cooked up just for the purposes of this evil scene. As SJLP exits the diner, a dolled-up Norma and Shelley enter, looking far less gorgeous than they do when they're not trying to be gorgeous (see: Norma's makeover pledge, last ep), giggling about their heavily made-up eyes and their grandmotherly Glamour Shots beehive hair-don'ts. Who's the stylist in town these days anyway, Ann Landers? I really want to know. A steak dinner is riding on this (note: for a far funnier rendition of the above joke, please see maggie's last Freaks and Geeks recap that I just ripped off wholesale. I needed the Ann Landers reference, but I felt it necessary to give due credit for its origins. Anyway). Hank asks if Shelley is Leo's girlfriend, attempting to bond with Norma with the questionable sentiment, "Not much meat on her bones." Hank asks what he can do to win Norma back, and she tells him that "washing dishes would be fine." Meanwhile, Shelley sits in the back, sadly watching the action unfold on Invitation to Love, as some sweaty guy we've never seen, perhaps the final dramatic resting place for the Warthogs' collective stunt double, punches out poor, put-upon Chet and laughs maniacally. Poor Chet.
And we're back on track, cool-scene-wise. This sequence opens with alternating close-ups of Major Briggs and his always-barely-on-the-brink-of-being-Sylvia-Horne'd wife looking inches to the right of the camera and offering an as-yet-unseen presence news about "he," including, "It's become much more difficult to engage him in conversation" and "we've been told by the school that his attendance has become erratic at best" and "then there's the matter of public fighting, both at the Roadhouse and at the funeral." Cut to Doctor Jacoby, lying back in his chair a little too comfortably for professional courtesy to reasonably allow. He asks, "Are you using drugs, Bobby?" and we cut over to see Bobby lying at a forty-five degree angle to his rigid, stock-still parents. He doesn't use drugs. Jacoby tells the Briggs parents that he needs to spend some time with each member of the family alone and would like to, couldn't you guess it, start with Bobby. Bobby yawns big. The major and (his definitely minor) spouse take leave. Jacoby wastes no time: "Bobby, let's just cut the crap, eh?" Jacoby wants to talk about Laura, and Bobby thinks it's all part of the psychotherapy mumbo-jumbo until Jacoby halts the softball inquiries and starts in with, "Bobby, what happened the first time you and Laura made love?" Bobby: WTF? Jacoby: "Bobby, did you cry?" Slowly, ever so slowly, Bobby moves toward the couch and actually becomes a patient, as Jacoby's knowledge of Bobby's relationship with Laura is a little more extensive than Bobby might have anticipated for a crackpot therapist, what with the ketchup-and-mustard butterfly-collared sports jacket and the blue-and-red prescription sunglasses brought to you by the fine folks at UPC Symbol Incorporated. Anyway, Bobby cried when they first made love, and then she laughed at him, because "people tried to do good but they were really sick and rotten. Her most of all." Jacoby volleys that "Laura wanted to corrupt people, because that's how she felt herself." Bobby cries and tells Jacoby that she made him sell drugs, and I would be on the brink of becoming amazingly impressed at Jacoby's ability to draw Bobby out if I knew that he weren't doing all this exclusively for his own gain.
The woods. Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and Doc Hayward come upon a cabin that may or may not be the one they're looking for with a connection to Renault. Guns drawn, they creep up to the front door, and in a quick moment the infamous Log Lady appears on the porch and yells, "It's about time you got here!" She retreats back in the house, and they follow on the insistence they "come on, then. My log does not judge." They enter, and she offers them tea and cookies. She would be almost completely a normal person -- a bit dowdy, sure, but on the verge of good, standard country stock -- except for repeated throwaway comments like "the owls won't see us in here" and the even better "shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames." Oh, and the whole log thing, of course. They sit at the table and Cooper goes for a cookie, but "Margaret" (this is what Truman calls her) slaps his hand and tells him to wait for the tea. Hawk smiles for the first time ever. Truman asks if she's been expecting them, and she tells them that they're "two days late." Before she dispenses even more cryptic mumbly-jumbly, she lets them know that "my log saw something. Something significant." All of which reminds me, for a host of obvious reasons, of the totally hilarious Saturday Night Live skit (I know many of the younger folk in our midst may not be used to seeing those words in that order, but trust me when I tell you there was a time when the expression "totally hilarious SNL skit" didn't automatically signify Molly Shannon, underpants, and falling. And if you think I'm needlessly being Grumpy Old Man, well, that was one of Dana Carvey's funnier characters, wouldn't you say?) in which Kyle MacLachlan hosted what I think was the season opener, right after Nora Dunne got sacked for boycotting the Andrew Dice Clay-hosted episode the season, leaving a severe dearth of women on the show. Anyway, the Twin Peaks spoof took place inside of Cooper's room at the Great Northern, and it centered around his unwillingness to leave town even after the murder had been ostensibly (the SNL skit ran before the murder was solved, so there's nothing but spoiler-free smooth sailing ahead. Remember, by the time the murder was solved, the show was already way past its cultural punchline stage and not rife for satire in that cutting-edge forum that is NBC late-night programming) solved. Truman (Kevin Nealon) tells Cooper that the police department is convinced Leo Johnson is the murderer, but Cooper insists on employing unconventional methods of crime-solving, including "I'll throw this rock at the window. If it breaks, Leo is innocent," even as Leo stands handcuffed in the corner of the room repeating numerous derivations of "You don't get it. I KILLED HER! Look, here are some pictures. Here's me, about to kill her. Here's me, killing here. Here's me, wrapping her in plastic." Ha. Even Audrey (Victoria Jackson -- don't ask. I told you there was a dearth of women) makes an appearance, walking silently into the room, placing a cherry stem on her tongue, and pulling out a fully wrapped gift with bows and ribbons and what-have-you. Anyway, the police are escorting Leo out of the room, but Cooper still won't give up the search. "What about the Log Lady?" he insists. "We stil
l haven't heard from her." Sheriff Nealon breaks the news as gently as possible: "You're not going to be hearing from the Log Lady." Well, why on Earth not? "Because there are only two women left on Saturday Night Live and we've already used both of them." Yup. At which point Jan Hooks (who had been playing a raving Nadine) runs panting into the room, decked out in those same SJLP glasses and holding -- no, really -- a log, pants, "Hi. My log says Leo did it. I gotta go," and tears ass back off the set. Cue the red stage lights and a shimmying Mike Myers as TLMFAP's identical twin. Funny as hell. Almost as funny, in fact, as watching Colin Quinn trying to sound out the words on Weekend Update as if the English language had just been invented moments before the broadcast began. Almost.And so Cooper is allowed an audience with the log itself. And so he asks it, at Truman's silent assent, "What did you see that night? The night Laura Palmer was killed." Margaret helpfully agrees to translate the response for our benefit: "Dark. Laughing. The owls were flying. Many things were blocked. Laughing." You said laughing already. "Two men, two girls. Flashlights passed by in the woods over the bridge. The owls were near. The dark was pressing in on her. Quiet then, later footsteps. One man passed by." A third man. "Screams. Far away. Terrible, terrible. One voice, girl. Further up, over the ridge. The owls were silent." Bravo, log! Bravo, indeed! Insert your own "that log's acting was barely more wooden than" punch line here. Oh, hell, I'll toss in one for you to get the party going: James.
Outside, Cooper and Truman recap again that the two girls were Laura and Ronette, and that two of the men were Jacques and maybe Leo. Who, then, was the third man? Back through the woods, Hawk points skyward and asks, "Do you hear it?" A too-artsy shot of a bird is followed by a way-too-artsier shot of the four men's faces entering the frame in what is probably an homage to some obscure German art film, but to me just looks like a rip-off of the Meet the Beatles album cover, followed by a too-artsiest I-just-looked-up-mise-en-scene-in-my-film-dictionary shot of a bird's eye, blinking, blinking. Add a Julee Cruise burn-off song from the lower third of the four billion tracks soundtrack (I think it's the one right after those still-sustaining classics "Angelo Returns an Overdue Library Book" and "Angelo Tells His Wife She Should Buy Him Some Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey On Her Way Home From The Dry Cleaners") and a memo from the head of programming at ABC to "throw us a freakin' bone here, people" directed to the front offices at Lynch/Frost Productions, and you've got yourself the following, ever so slightly contrived, pay-dirt discovery. Doc Hayward stays behind as Cooper locates the log cabin from the photo in Jacques' house. Guns drawn once more, they edge ever closer, finally walking through the open door to discover that the Julee Cruise song has been playing on a phonograph. Cooper takes the needle off the record and cross-references, "And there's always music in the air." (Get it?) A birdcage swathed in red curtains (got it?) reveals the missing Waldo, a spot of tell-tale blood lies in the middle of the floor, a roll of twine sits in one corner (good), and a cuckoo-free cuckoo clock spills forth poker chips from One-Eyed Jacks. Oh, and there's a camera with film in it.
Opening shot of a shadowed figure sitting in Ben's office, smoking. And back to the quirky fun we go. It's the night of the Icelandic party for the town's best over at the Great Northern, and all the regulars are there. Katherine enters and introduces herself to the Nordic moose-antlered woman taking invitations, "Katherine Martell. And spouse." Ouch. The Icelanders sing loud songs, the major speechifies at a Foreignian diplomat who has no idea what the man talking about, Jerry romances his tall Nordic princess, and Leland enters alone, hopefully having remembered to include his now-ubiquitous partner, Twitchy McFreakytwitters, on the guest list as well. Cut to Katherine, apparently forgoing the usual IV drip of alcohol administered directly into the bloodstream for the more conventional glass of champagne. She carries it over to Ben, who is in the process of entertaining a large group of potential investors, and pours just a dab of the offending liquid all over his right shoe. He excuses himself and tells her to meet him in his office. She's mad. He has no idea why. Audrey, in anticipation of an impending bit of action, retreats behind the wall with the removable panel. She gets there just in time to discover Ben and Katherine fighting about making a scene in front of the guests. Katherine asks about the One-Eyed Jacks poker chip, which Ben tells her Jerry gave him. She slaps him. He tells her it's a good luck charm. She slaps him on the other cheek. He asks if she is "quite finished." She slaps him again, and then he takes her down on the desk, good lovin' style. Audrey's laughing turns to a kind of curious horror. Katherine tells Ben she wants to burn the mill tonight. Ben says that he will give Josie one more chance to sell it (you mean Josie, who is sitting across the desk in the dark, smoking? That Josie?), but failing that, he has "retained the services of a qualified professional." Then, for some reason, he offers her a breath mint. Behind the wall, Audrey thinks the whole thing is ten different kinds of hilarious all over again.
Back at the party, Jerry commandeers a microphone and offers a thank-you speech to all for coming. But before he can set the Ghostwood propaganda mill ablaze, as it were, the band interrupts his remarks with a swinging rendition of some swinging swing number. The very kind a certain Leland Palmer I might mention just loves to groove to. And as his typical Pavlovian response would dictate, Leland grabs his head between his arms and begins to wail before breaking into a rather impressive tap. The whole party watches with apprehension. Ben and Katherine walk back in at this moment, and Ben thinks fast in insisting that Katherine "dance with him." So she runs over and acts the partner, and slowly other couples begin to join in the fun. There's even a totally freakin' hilarious lest-we-forget-dead-girls-are-funny moment in which Leland puts his hands up to his ears, and Piper Laurie mimics this motion as if to let the Icelanders in on one of America's favorite dance crazes. All the other couples join the fun, dancing in just the same fashion as Leland indicated they all should, and Ben makes his way over to Jerry and delegates, "Get Jacoby. Get a net. Get him out of my life." Audrey looks on in tears. Another shot of a darkened figure sitting with cigarette over in Ben's office.
Over at the Palmer house, SJLP slinks down the steps and makes a clandestine call to Donna. She found an audio tape in Laura's bedpost. They arrange to meet tomorrow. Sarah stirs upstairs, and SJLP hastily terminates the call. Sheryl Lee looks much better with her fake brunette wig pulled back and away from her face than she does with her fake brunette wig hanging all over her face, reminding us how fake it is. I sigh with nostalgia because scrunchies used to be the height of fashion. They used to be so mint.
Shot of a darkened figure sitting with cigarette in Ben's office redux. Ben enters and turns on the light. Hey, look at that, it's Josie! What a surprise. The real surprise, though, is where on Earth she went when Ben and Katherine were in there five seconds ago. Perhaps the director might have waited another moment to show us that fascinating shot of smoke curling out of the pitch black one fewer time than he actually did. Oh, well. Small quibble, really. Ben turns on the light and asks, "Did anyone see you come in here?" Not the continuity editor, clearly. Josie hands Ben the ledger that "was hidden in her desk. Like you said it would be." He kisses her hand, telling her that they "can proceed tomorrow night." Uh-oh. Never try to double-cross a double-crosser.
Shelley lights a cigarette off the stove and sits at her kitchen table in a bad kind of anticipation. Outside the house, Leo arrives home and runs to collect two large canisters of heating oil from yet another hidden panel outside. But before he has a chance to do anything with them, the always-up-for-a-good-game-of-eeeeeeevil Hank approaches from behind and sucker-punches Leo, telling him, "I told you to mind the store, Leo, not open up your own franchise." Then there are several more instances of clocking. And he's gone. Leo walks in the house a bloody mess just a moment later, slams Shelley to the floor, and insists that she get him a beer. So she extracts the gun, informs him quite correctly that "you're not going to hurt me anymore," and shoots. Leo screams and goes down.
Cooper returns to his room under the latest cover of darkness available. Silence reigns for but a moment before the Icelandic hymns of praise to fishing through holes and beer in cans erupt anew. Cooper raises his hands in as much fury as he can muster. But as he approaches the door to his room, he grabs his gun as he notices that the door is a crack open. He stands in a corner of doorway and demands, "Reach over and turn on the light." The perp obliges. Ack! It's Audrey! "Don't make me leave," she cries, clad in just the bed sheets and a healthy, healthy dose of ravish-me seduction, and the final noise you hear is the sound of every adolescent boy's heart breaking now that Audrey has decisively given herself over to someone who wasn't them. Not that I speak from experience. Sniff.
The...end?