| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Major, honking, chocolate-covered shout-outs with a creamy nougat center to Adam, Josh, Marisa, and the roomies, whose group-tastic approach to collectivist television viewing imbues this Show of Shows with a superlative level of snarky goodness it would not have otherwise possessed.
Yippee-ha! Twin Peaks! Like the kid who owned the wiffle ball bat or the most advanced weaponry to which the Laser Tag genre ever ascended, I remain convinced that the real reason I was given this plum assignment in the first place is because I already had the series on tape and loudly voiced my selfish unwillingness to share them with anyone else. Call Sars. She'll tell you it ain't no lie. Which brings me to a note about said tapes: The tapes off of which I am recapping these episodes are in excess of ten years old. So while we're thanking the gods of all things good and holy in the programming universe for the very existence of the show, let's give a tiny shout-out to my mom, who possessed not only the media savvy to capture this cultural moment on videotape its first time around, but also the technological clairvoyance not to rest her faith in the normative video conventions of the day and render this whole project futile from its inception by recording it on Beta. Which, really, was quite a danger back in the day. Nevertheless, the 99-cent tapes purchased at Genovese in the Spring of 1990 have, due to their analog nature, become a bit worn in certain places. So don't panic if an entire scene passes with no more than the cryptic recap, "Ensconced in squiggly white lines and a blinking red light declaring 'tracking,' Laura Palmer remains, I think, dead. Or something." In fact, fear not at all: there will be many more scenes of a similar nature to follow. I promise. End criminally insane blathering here.
This week on Twin Peaks: Tracking! TRACKING!!
We begin with the decidedly mood-setting and utterly melancholy World's Longest Opening Credits Sequence in the History of the Moving Image. For those of you who have been catching the series this time around on Bravo, thus be warned: the opening credits in this, the Pilot, run just a smidge longer than the definitive version beginning with Episode 1. For this, the two-hour ABC Sunday Night Movie, the credits feature not only the familiar opening bird shot and the sequence at the mill and the waterfall in front of the Great Northern, but also several other establishing shots, one of which contains, well, a large piece of lumber sitting in the middle of a field. And after about eight seconds of staring at said log in said open field, I can hardly imagine that any tears were shed at the thought of the shot of that felled tree getting, er, axed. Ha ha ha. Yikes. Sorry about that. I know that when I watched this show for the first time I was deep in the process of lunging toward the beginnings of puberty, but that's really no excuse for the humor in this recap to be ripped from the pages of Bananas magazine, my reading material contemporary with the original airing of this show. Won't happen again. Cut to shot of the road leading into Twin Peaks, where the Welcome to Twin Peaks sign sports a population of 51,201 (according to numerous show-related FAQs, though if I had to take a guess based on the supplied VHS technology and my ten-inch television screen, I'd have to guess it says, "19b55fork," a slightly less likely conclusion for the Census Bureau to draw), all of whom are about to be individually mentioned by name in this sprawlingly long credits series, now entering its third full minute. Roll credits: Kyle MacLachlan. Yay! Sherilyn Fenn. Yay! Piper Laurie. Yay! Madchen Amick. Ya -- uh, who? Oh, it's Shelley. Hi, Shelley! You're pretty. So yay! Harry Goaz. Yay! Joan Chen. Sigh. Yeah, well, we'll get to that, now won't we?
This episode is written by co-creators Mark Frost and David Lynch, and is directed by David Lynch. With such intensely focused creative minds at the helm of their own pet project, one would think that there would be any other opening shot for the entire series than that of the recipient of The Richard Belzer Honorary Award for Excellence in Proving that No Show is Ever Without at Least One Sustaining Flaw: a mirrored reflection of Josie "Farewell My Twelve-Year-Old-Boy Concubine" Packard applying make-up and humming mindlessly. But we don't know her name yet, do we? Oops. Sorry. No more presupposing knowledge of anything, lest I be accused of spoiler-ific behavior in light of this brand-new show and its many mysteries. Let's just pretend we're seeing all this for the very first time, for the purposes of linear recapping, shall we? So who, then, is this twelve-year-old Asian drag queen man-child, and why are my feelings for him so spiteful and negative -- er, I mean "ambivalent"?
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Cut to another location, apparently within the same interior space (I do not know where it is. This is, after all, the Pilot. How on earth would I know, then? Clearly, I would not), where a flannel-clad older gentleman bearing the USDA maximum recommended allowance of fishing tackle, grabs a thermos, kisses his hand, and plants said kiss-carrying hand on the neck of a person I AM allowed to identify as Piper Laurie. Continuing to read her newspaper and seeming wholly nonplused by this unsolicited outpouring of pure carnality, we immediately identify Piper's character as so icy that I'm surprised The Fisherman's hand doesn't get stuck behind her ear and need to be pried off in a daring escapade featuring the state police and the jaws of life. The Fisherman, intent on living up to the word-for-word definition of his soon-to-be-shed nickname (or perhaps it will be around for a very long time? Such is the titillating ambiguity of all things new) gains notoriety with the first line of dialogue in the series, "Gone fishing." And we're off. He seems nice, and a little put upon, perhaps. But as he leaves, we cut back to the illegitimate love child of Elvis and Jet Li imprisoned behind the walls in an attic somewhere, and I wonder if maybe The Fisherman is, in reality, just up to no sort of good. After all, how would I know? The boy looks up from the mirror and toward what I imagine to be the sound of the front door closing, as The Fisherman strolls outside, away from his incarcerated property, away from the guilty conscience he knows he cannot escape. Or, in reality, that's exactly how it's NOT. Don't ask me how I know. I just do.
Outside the house, The Fisherman regards the sound of the foghorn I thought was just tape interference (he must also live in a house ensconced in squiggly white lines with a neon sign affixed to it reading "tracking," as that is part of the mise en scene of what's on my screen right now, too. See? Told you I'd be using that joke). But wait just one second, now. What's this he sees down on the rocky cliffs near the water? The Fisherman makes his way down to the sand, warily eying someone else's misplaced entry in the yearly World's Largest Ziploc Bag competition. He inspects it, then backs off quickly before we see a close-up on long hair spilling from the top of the Ziploc. Back inside, The Fisherman nervously makes a phone call to someone named Lucy, dispensing finally with the inanely generic nickname place-holder I tagged him with in haste and have been wishing would just go away, identifying himself as Pete Martell. Yay, Pete! Pete asks to speak with a "Harry," and we cut to a law-enforcing locale of some kind, where we become acquainted with both the Lucy and the Harry in question. And before you ask: her name is Kimmy Robertson, NOT Victoria Jackson. Look amazingly cool at your Twin Peaks convention or Twin Peaks-themed Bar Mitzvah (what do you mean? I go to those all the time) by not asking this question. Ever. Do not e-mail me and inform me that I am wrong. Because though I love you and am sure you possess vast stores of knowledge on any number of diverse subjects concerning media, politics, religion, and this crazy world we live in, if you think that's Victoria Jackson, I can assure you that you are completely wrong. Kimmy Robertson. Even logistically it doesn't work, really. To wit: Victoria Jackson was in New York shooting Saturday Night Live from 1986-1992, whereas Twin Peaks began filming in 1989 in the far different locales of Washington State and Los Angeles. Finishing up her six-year stint as "The Annoying One" during that brief, late-'80s, SNL resurgence when you could say that and only mean one person and not three cumulative years of revolving door cast members, Victoria was shown the door by both Lorne Michaels and Hollywood, where she received her parting gift from the fickle game of Celebritydom, a large porcelain toilet with the words "Your Career" stenciled across the top. Since then, she has been spotted in numerous dinner-theater capacities with David Caruso and an increasingly sinister (and buff, though!) Gary Coleman, including last year's smash hit "How to Succeed in Show Business Without Really Succeeding," performed for a packed house of hearing-impaired senior citizens in the prestigious Hiawatha Room at the Sizzler in downtown Boca Raton. And during the early-bird special, no less! Never doubt her staying power. This I warn you now. Kimmy Robertson, however, has remained a veritable fame powerhouse since her appearance on Twin Peaks. Besides a towering role in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Kimmy was last to be seen in the sleeper favorite Stuart Little, in which she played the indispensable "Race Spectator." And I ask you this: how the hell you gonna have a race without any spectators? And according to the IMDb, she dated David Duchovny for spell. So there you go. Kimmy Robertson. Love 'er.
Where in the holy living fuck were we? Oh, my, yes. Lucy is apparently a ditzy secretary or office assistant of some kind, and we come to know her as a rather delightfully off-center comedic presence which somehow works perfectly inside the dramatic structure of the show. It's hard to do. Hate to self-indulgently cross-reference here, but to ascertain the difficulty of fostering an environment in which the quirky and the somber can work in tandem, please see any -- by which I mean ANY -- of the twenty-two available recaps of Roswell for a counterpoint on how the incorporation of an out-of-context wacky character can serve no purpose other than causing a blinding migraine in a show that otherwise takes itself to a Schindler's List-esque level of seriousness. You won't be sorry.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Lucy tells Harry, who she refers to as "Sheriff" (subtle character development ahoy!) to pick up the phone in an instant-character-establishing kind of way: "Sheriff, it's Pete Martell, up at the mill. I'm gonna transfer it to the phone on the table by the red chair. The red chair against the wall. The little table, with the lamp on it. The lamp that we moved from the corner. The black phone. Not the brown phone." Hee. Keep in mind that Harry, holding a cup of coffee and politely waiting for her to finish, is standing about five feet away from her and another five feet from the dozens of phones her complex switchboard seemingly accommodates. On cue, he takes a swig of coffee, picks up the appropriate black phone, and bids Pete a good morning, as it seems small town folks have a wont to do. Pete, in a bit of a tizzy, utters another memorable early line, kicking the plot into gear: "She's dead. Wrapped in plastic." Yup. She sure is. Harry finishes the call as quickly as the standards of good taste willfully allow, informs Lucy to "get Dr. Hayward, tell him to meet me up at the Packard mill . . . roust that Andy out of bed . . . not a word about this to anyone, until you hear from me." He runs out of the office in what purists would probably consider an "action sequence," considering the one-day-per-one-episode pace of the show, turns on the sirens, and peels off, sirens a-blaring, leaving a cloud of dust and your final remaining notion that Victoria Jackson appears anywhere on this show, behind us all, forever.
Back at the mill, Piper Laurie and the extraordinarily well-dressed, fur-bedecked little Asian boy stand on the stoop watching the menfolk examine the Ziploc bag. Pete stands stunned some feet from the body, while Harry and who we can guess is Doc Hayward examine the situation more closely. The doctor observes, "We better get some pictures," as deductive reasoning introduces us to Andy, who appears in the frame in a police uniform, holding a camera. He asks, "Who is she?" Harry tells him to just take the pictures, perhaps unwilling to personalize this experience, one which does seem quite barbaric. Andy photographs the Ziploc from every angle like he's in the middle of a fashion shoot, sans the chatter. Which would go how, exactly? "Excellent! Now look dead! Great, great, now give me dead! Go cold on me. Cold! I need both the rigor and the mortis here, people!" But sadly we will remain chatter-free, as Andy begins to cry. Harry wants to know if this is "going to happen every damn time," then relents and sends Andy off to get a stretcher. All of which leads us, Doc Hayward indicates, to turn the body over and reveal the identity of the victim within. This development cues one of the three musical compositions Angelo Badalamenti wrote to fit every mood and scene for almost the entire series. We'll call this particular swelling orchestral bonanza Sad String. We'll catch up with Theme Song (used throughout the action) and Snare Drum Shuffle later, when the sass begins to flow a little more freely. And so Harry and Doc Hayward roll the body over and pull down the plastic to reveal that the dead girl is "Laura Palmer." Oh, yes, first-time viewer who has ne'er heard of the show. Try to keep the shock at bay.
Cut to the inside of a suburban home, where a motherly-looking type calls from the kitchen, "Laura, sweetheart, I'm not going to tell you again." She extinguishes her cigarette and walks to the steps, calling Laura's name repeatedly. She finally relents and climbs the damn stairs herself, but the camera remains perched at the bottom, settling on a downright terrifying shot of the upstairs landing, the entryway to Laura's bedroom, and a ceiling fan which spins and spins and spins some more. Counterpoint this agile handling of slow-building suspense against the post-Blair Witch, post-Homicide, hand-held frenzy of a camera, bereft of tripod, running kamikaze up the stairs right behind her that would, in almost every example I can conjure, typify this dawning knowledge that something is amiss. It's okay to just sit still sometimes. Really. Sorry, Dick Wolf, this means you, too. After finding all the rooms as well as Laura's bed empty (we do go upstairs for a brief moment to discover this), Mrs. Palmer runs back down past the camera's up-the-stairs perspective. Attempting to suppress the basic weirdness of his directorial style and failing miserably to do so, Lynch allows for a lingering close-up on the three light bulbs of the ceiling fan before we return to the kitchen. Why? I have no idea. But it's enigmas like this one that get your series nominated for fourteen Emmys, my friends. That's also how you garner limited enough mainstream acceptance to only win two of them. And that's how you get canceled after fourteen months, when the audience who fell asleep during Perfect Strangers wakes up in the middle of Episode 14 just for the purposes of rolling off the cable box and getting up to turn off the television. So, oh well, really. Oh well on all counts.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Lighting another cigarette, Mrs. Palmer (whose acting résumé includes at least two roles under the "dead girl's mother" umbrella, considering her stint as Susan's alcoholic mother on Seinfeld. Susan's father, incidentally, was played by Warren Frost, who appears on Twin Peaks as Doc Hayward) picks up the phone. Cut to another suburban house, in which a blonde woman with funny bangs massages the back of a rather hefty bald man who is wearing a military uniform and reading a newspaper. No, really. Well, it sounds much weirder than it looks. Anyway, the blond woman answers the ringing phone and informs an increasingly apoplectic Sarah (she identifies herself by her first name) that a "Bobby" is probably at football practice, and that Laura is probably with him. Yeah, I'll just bet that's true. Cut to Unnamed Football Coach, reporting over a phone hanging in the locker room that Bobby is late for practice, as he has been every day this week. And for several weeks before that. Sarah Palmer hangs up the phone looking even more concerned, somehow, than the insta-psycho look she possessed in no short supply even before she knew anything was wrong. Strange things are afoot, I believe, at Dead Girl Central.
Cut to the waterfall from the opening credits sequence, followed by a shot of a giant concrete sign reading "The Great Northern." With the light brush of a snare drum forming the musical skeleton for what will eventually become Snare Drum Shuffle, a short-haired girl in a plaid skirt exits said Great Northern and steps into a waiting limousine. Close-up of her black-and-white schoolgirl shoes. She sure does look a bit like Sherilyn Fenn, this one.
Inside the posh Great Northern, two men in suits, who in fact look more like each other in the earliest part of the series than Kimmy Robertson and Victoria Jackson look alike ever, are deep in discussion in front of a roaring fire. The standing man asks if "they're ready to sign," and the man on the couch worries that the standing man has not mentioned that they "have not as yet acquired access to the Packard land" as the standing man, clearly in charge of the proceedings, bends over and inexplicably snarfs into the fire. Um, ew? Oh, but then he apologizes. Much better. Standing Man says he has it on good authority that the Packard Saw Mill is going to "go belly up" before the end of the year. "We're going to be able to get it for a song. One verse, no chorus." Uh-oh. Packard, eh? I know a certain twelve-year-old boy who may just have a thing or two to say about this arrangement. And so Sitting Man stands up as Standing Man informs the former that its time to go and "get those cheese eaters where they live." Just by way of incorporating the names of characters into the action as quickly as possible and assisting vastly with my recapping responsibilities, I believe, Sitting Man shakes his head with a "tut, tut" kind of reaction and admonishes, "Oh, Benjamin." Darn. And the brilliant and well thought out nickname "Standing Man" had so much long-term potential.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
I stifle any and all of a vast array of silly ABBA jokes as we cut to so-called "Benjamin" deep in the process of "getting those cheese eaters where they live," standing in some kind of conference room and speeching a large group about the benefits of the "clean, wholesome environment, much like your very own" of "The Ghostwood Country Club and Estate" project. All the while, a seated translator renders Benjamin's words into some kind of Scandinavian strain that I'm SURE -- and please correct me if I'm wrong on this one -- has to be completely fake. (Sample translation: "Health and industry go hand in hand" becomes the linguistically curious "Health'so industry-a, dee goh hond-ay-hondah.") The closed-captioning (and I'll give a quarter and a Coke to anyone who can explain the futuristic technology that allows for ten-year-old tapes played on my new VCR to possess real-time captions, by the way) indicates that the translator is "Speaking Norwegian," a claim I will only believe if I fast-forward to the closing credits and confirm that the Swedish Chef was listed as a script consultant.
All of this revelry is soon to be interrupted by a hotel concierge arriving to tell Sitting Man that he has a phone call from his wife. She says it's urgent. He stands up (damn. Stick to the nickname, stranger, stick to the nickname) and excuses himself. Benjamin ceases his public address long enough to lean over to Sitting-Cum-Standing Man and warn, "Make it snappy, eh?" Sitting Man walks to the room, sits again (oh, thank God) and takes the phone: "Sarah, what is it?" Where's Laura? She's not with Sitting Man. Well, she's not at home, either. Sarah becomes (and I know I'll be using up a Roget's worth of words on Sarah Palmer synonymous with the word "crazy," so I'm trying to conserve some of them for later) frenzied some more, just as a van pulls up outside and Harry enters the hotel. Harry approaches the concierge desk and indicates that he is looking for a "Leland Palmer." Bingo. Leland looks up at Harry and breathily mutters, "Sheriff Truman." Sarah freaks out and begins to scream Laura's name over and over as Leland puts down the phone and stands up. "Is this about Laura?" It is. He drops the phone and Sarah freaks out anew, just as an ill-timed Benjamin walks testily into the room and informs Leland that "we're ready to go with the contracts." As the orchestral swells of Sad Strings kick up and Benjamin asks what's wrong, Leland grabs onto Harry's jacket and sobs, "My daughter's dead." Leland and Truman (yes, the Sheriff's name is Harry Truman. I think there's exactly one direct reference to it in the course of the entire series. So if they didn't make a big, stupid deal about it at any point, neither will I) exit. Cue artsy shot panning the length of the black phone cord Leland has just left behind. Back to the Palmer kitchen, where Sarah clutches her head and screams and screams and screams us right into our first commercial break. Sadly, my Robo-Mom of a taper was a bit too thorough, maximizing tape space in all but a very, very few episodes by pausing out the commercials. Hence, there will be regrettably few references to all the wacky fun one can have on his or her Intellivision game system, or about that cozy little government operation called Desert Shield going on somewhere in the Middle East. Which is too bad, because it's important for us, as Americans, to remain informed about current events and their impact on our lives. And I hear that Saddam Hussein fellow is one reeeeeeally bad dude.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Yowza. Is it me or did it just get hotty in here? We return from non-commercial to a rather stylized diner with antique-y sugar dispensers, a tan, L-shaped countertop, and three different colors of neon lights on the ceiling. Sitting at said counter is a black-clad male sporting the hair-cut I fell into six years ago and still haven't been able to climb out of with any real authority for longer than a month or two at a time. He wears it much better than I do. It matches his perfect jaw line and instantly recognizable devil-may-care bravado, neither of which were part of my own genetic kismet. His eyebrows are maybe a tad too close together and could one foreseeable day meet to form the dreaded uni, but it would take at least another fifty years for that to happen, and pretty much everything else is falling apart by then anyway. So until then, you won't hear me complaining about one gosh-darned thing. A German waitress we immediately learn is named "Heidi" enters the diner, and another waitress -- also insanely beautiful and extremely talented and deserving of nothing less than all of our servile, almost canine devotion to her -- makes a joke about knockwurst I don't entirely understand. Counter Boy chides that he "thought you Germans were always on time," prompting another lovely, coffee-bearing waitress to observe that "I thought the only time you cared about, Bobby, was making time." Genre-jumping, ignoring of the dead girl across town, stylized dialogue much? Waitress, I'd like the No Wonder This Show Failed in Prime-Time Special, please. Bobby asks the younger waitress, Shelley, if she's on her way out, offering to drive her home on his way to practice. Knowing glance from the older waitress. Bobby throws some change on the counter and makes his way to the jukebox to the exit: "Here's a tune for you gals." He points at the older waitress, observing, "Norma. I'll see you in my dreams." Norma: "Not if I see you first." And really, what other response could there be? Most politely, the jukebox waits for the conversation to end before kicking into a screaming organ solo that becomes the background music for Shelley and Bobby's conversation inside of Bobby's black, vintage automobile whose make I'm at a loss to identify. Car experts? Bobby suggests that Norma might know about the two of them, and Shelley observes, "Fat chance." Then they kiss and I almost have to excuse myself. Damn, they're pretty.
Cut to an open road, where a sirens-blaring police car comes roaring toward the camera as Snare Drum Shuffle rages. Bobby and Shelley pass the car traveling in the other direction (clever coming together of disparate plot lines, anyone?) and Shelley waits until the police car passes before extracting a silver flask and taking a swig. More "Jackrabbit Slim's" dialogue ensues, including the needs-to-be-quoted Bobby contribution, "Baby, you're more like a three-stage rocket. A pocket rocket." Yup. Bobby changes the nature of the conversation to Shelley's "old man," confirming that he's still out of town. According to Shelley, he's far away and doesn't have a phone "in his truck." But upon approach to the house, they spy the very truck I imagine they were trying so hard to avoid. Bobby dumps Shelley, turns around, and peels the hell out of there, determined to spread his gospel of sexy in some new and as yet indeterminate locale.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Sad old people in dark clothing again! But we were having so much fun. In what I imagine to be the morgue, Truman and Leland walk in to meet a seated Doc Hayward, who stands up when they approach. Leland mourns, "Seventeen years old," and is then accompanied by Truman to identify the body. In another room, the Ziploc freshness seal is pulled back and Leland swoons. It's Laura, and she ain't looking so fine.
A shot of trees blowing in the wind. Cut to the interior of a school, where -- oh my God, it's Lara Flynn! That's my clever little abbreviated pet name for her, and I can call her anything I want because I watch The Practice, and because I'm convinced that the only thing keeping me and her from being friends is the fact that I haven't met her yet. She is not loved by all, and at least two of the Twin Peaks fans I know believe her to be a boring drain on the early episodes. I'm just happy for these heady times when she still had a little meat on her bones, and it never looked so good. Don't get used to it. Cardigan-sweatered good girl that she is, she approaches her locker and smiles at the red-shoed smoking-in-school Sherilyn Fenn bad girl. An excessively unappealing leather-clad yucky boy who would look a bit like Christian Slater if he were taken out of the mommy oven before he was completely done cooking (we'll call him "Slater Fetus" until otherwise indicated) sneaks up behind Lara Flynn, who's looking suddenly very much like Winona Ryder circa Heathers, and asks if she's seen Laura. Lara Flynn reports, "Not yet," and Slater Fetus observes that it's a "nice day for a picnic." Lara Flynn shoots back a "yeah, but picnics mean food and I'm trying to cut down on all that" giggle that sends Slater Fetus on his way. An amazingly non-sequitur shot ensues, one of an almost-empty hallway containing a student closing his locker, snapping his fingers, and actually dancing, electric-slide style, through the entire frame and out the other side. It makes me laugh for twenty minutes every time I watch it. I have just watched it upwards of fourteen times. Suddenly, it is three o'clock in the morning.
Bad Boy Bobby arrives in school to be told that he's wanted in the office. Right now. Cut to a classroom interior, where a teacher mercifully takes attendance and washes away some more of that stinky character name ambiguity. Lara Flynn is Donna Hayward, who we can deduce is the doctor's daughter. Sherilyn Fenn is Audrey Horne. Slater Fetus is James Hurley. Which is kinda too bad, because I had grown a bit attached to that nickname. Such is life. And he responds to his name with a call of "Yo!" 'Cause he's just so bad like that. A police officer enters the classroom and inquires as to the whereabouts of Bobby Briggs. Wrong classroom. The policeman needs to speak to the teacher anyway. Donna and James look up with an increasing amount of concern, just as a girl screams and runs across the lawn outside. Another policeman enters. The teacher looks up, stunned, and Donna and James stare in horror at Laura's empty chair. Donna begins to cry. James breaks a pencil, showing an unusual amount of strength. Y'know, for a fetus.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Cut to the school library, where Deputy Andy and another cop (Michael Horse. Yay.) grill Bobby on where he was the night before and this morning. He explains that he woke up, went running, had breakfast at the Double R and didn't go to practice because he "didn't feel like it," accentuating his point by gently hitting his fists on the table in front him and snapping his fingers. It's difficult to explain, but if you come over I'll show you. Suffice it to say it's cool. 'Cause it's Bobby. Pan around to reveal that there's another man in the room, who turns out to be the principal and also -- I have no idea why I know this -- the diner owner from the end of Pulp Fiction who tells everyone just to stay down and no one will get hurt. He's not a hero. And apparently, he's not a procurer of extensive roles in anything. Ever. He has to make "the announcement," and he leaves the library in preparation to do so. Truman enters and asks Bobby if he's been informed of his rights. He has. But he has no idea why. Truman informs him that his "girlfriend, Laura Palmer, has been killed," following this up with the crystal clear accusation, "She was with you last night and you weren't where you were supposed to be this morning." It takes a few seconds, but it finally dawns on Bobby: "You think I killed her?" Physically alluring, sure. But perhaps not the smartest, I'm guessing. He responds angrily and a struggle ensues, Truman warning, "We're going to talk about this. Later." For all his good-guy small-town-sheriff characterization, I never realized before how tough Truman can be. Good man, good man.
Principal's announcement. He announces Laura's death to the empty school hallways and the grieving classrooms. The police have asked anyone in the know to come forth with relevant information. Question the fetus. He doesn't look so trustworthy to me. I think the fetus has a secret or two hiding in his amniotic sac. I hate the fetus. I demand you to as well. The principal dismisses classes, but asks first for a moment of silence. Sad Strings rages in the background as we move to a close-up of a photo of prom queen Laura in the school's trophy case. Donna, suddenly aware that the Tic-Tac she had for breakfast may not have been sugar free, weeps uncontrollably.
Alphabetically speaking, my computer's thesaurus suggests that my new word to describe Sarah Palmer's behavior is "amok." It's pretty good, all things considered, but I can't lie about my excitement about eventually getting up to the far more Victorian "touched" in a few more episodes. Certainly I sympathize with her mondo-believable fictional TV pathos and all, but you gotta admit, the brouhaha of the sounding cuckoo clock that plays quietly though perceptibly in her presence almost drowns out her dementia-induced screaming at any given moment. Palmer living room. The photo of Laura from the trophy case sits on an end table. Doc Hayward, Andy, and Truman discuss the facts according to Sarah: she saw Laura for the last time at nine o'clock last night, coming home from Bobby's house. Presently, some unfamiliar noises upstairs set her off anew, leading to that fear-inducing shot of the stairs and the ceiling fan once more. Cut to upstairs, where Leland sits on Laura's bed while Michael Horse collects some of Laura's belongings as evidence. He finds her diary. Leland asks if they have to take that, and Michael Horse promises to return it soon. It doesn't have a red cover, so I wonder briefly if it's the same diary as The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, written by David Lynch's daughter and sold during the show's brief but unfortunate marketing blitz. It was available at Genovese or your nearest international airport, to be found to all the soft-core Harlequin novels featuring a pre-I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter-commercial Fabio on the cover and containing sentences like, "And Rick was sucking on my nipples and making noises like he was hungry and getting fed, or like he was eating an ice cream that was delicious" (J. Lynch, 39). By the way, Shout-Out Part Deux to my brother Adam, who actually owns this fine piece of literature and was able to supply the appropriately tawdry reference. Anyway, I don't think this diary is that one. More on that in the future, I'm thinking. Back downstairs, silence and brooding all around. The phone rings, so Truman asks a question about phone calls. Comprehensive investigating there, Truman. Andy returns from the kitchen. The call was from Lucy, telling the men in blue that another teenage girl has disappeared. Hopefully this news will not also serve to make Sarah Palmer any more, er, "berserk" than she has already become.
Establishing shots of the mill in action. Pete Martell sits at a desk, mindlessly muttering a tune I think must be called, "Two by fours, four by eights," as these are the only words. This temporary tranquility is soon to be quashed by the off-camera rantings of Piper Laurie, screaming that "you can't do that to my workers" to the twelve-year-old boy. Twelve-year-old boy speaks. Oh, it's a grown woman, after all. My bad. Apparently, s/he is the owner of the mill, and is overruling "Katherine's" protests of shutting down for the rest of the day. S/he demands that Pete "push the plug," and Katherine tells him not to. Pete offers a tenuous "Katherine, please," picks up a phone, and informs someone to "shut down." Katherine storms out. S/he picks up a microphone and delivers a speech beginning, "This is Josie Packard," informing the workers that the mill will be shut down due to Laura's death. Katherine makes her way down a flight of stairs, and after a perfectly timed iteration of, "Bitch," she stops by a random mill worker, asks him his name, and fires him on the spot. Piper Laurie, man. If she isn't the biggest bitch since . . . um, I can't even finish that sentence, as I usually categorize other people as the biggest bitch since her. Josie also announces that Ronette Pulaski, the daughter of another mill employee, is also missing. The mill grinds to a halt, leading to a really abrupt cut to a windy bridge, across which walks a girl in a tattered nightgown who has obviously been the victim of some very, very bad things. I'll keep this paragraph going under the pretense of "while we're being morose," and we cut to bad-boy James on his bad-boy motorcycle pulling into a gas station and talking to a genial (the guy offers to buy Slater Fetus a coke. I mean, that's genial) looking fellow. James gives the man a note and asks him to pass it along to Donna. James puts on his sunglasses even though it's cloudy as hell out, but I understand his plight solely on the basis of his eyelids not yet being fully formed at this stage of his prenatal development. The motorcycle pulls away. From inside a house behind the gas station, a loony-looking women with an eye patch screams at "Ed" in the world's most shrill voice about wanting "those drapes up by nightfall." I have no doubt but that Sarah Palmer's cuckoo clock tolls for this one.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Viva la non-obtrusive introduction! Without even the dramatic crutch of a post-commercial fade-in, we are introduced to a new character, wearing a black suit and talking into a small cassette recorder to an unseen presence named "Diane." Accentuating this character's immediate importance to the action, the camera is positioned pretty much on the floor of the passenger's side, filming him from below in an authority-demanding way. He's also pretty much the first person we've seen who's not wearing any flannel. So that's even more important than the dime-store-textbook-film-analysis thing I did back there. Camera positioning. Who the hell do I think I am, by the way? Anyway, I'm not going to repeat his whole speech, but it's rather brilliant. Speaking into the tape recorder, he gives the geographic location of Twin Peaks, quotes W.C. Fields, reports the temperature, offers a small editorial on the life and times of meteorologists, reads the mileage from the dashboard, recounts the price and quality of his lunch, and clues us in for the first time on his love for cherry pie. Snare Drum Shuffle rages on all the while. "Oh, Diane, I almost forgot," he goes on, "I've got to find out what kind of trees these are." He pauses briefly, driving past the sign welcoming visitors to Twin Peaks featured in the opening credits before finishing his thought: "They're really something."
At one end of an insanely long hallway inside of a hospital, Truman and "Dale Cooper, FBI" shake hands and walk toward the camera. The FBI has been called in, Truman lets us know, because Ronette Pulaski stepped across state lines on her trek back to town. Cooper suddenly turns to face the Sheriff, delivering what I guess to be a Bureau-prepared speech about how local law enforcement often has problems with the FBI when they get called in. Truman has no problem with submitting to Cooper's authority. Cooper breaks into a wide grin: "Sheriff, what kind of fantastic trees you got growing around here? Big, majestic . . ." They're Douglas Firs. And, without missing a beat and almost in the identical tone of voice, Cooper asks for a copy of the coroner's report on "the dead girl." The autopsy hasn't been done yet. Cut to Cooper and Truman being introduced to a doctor, who takes them to see Ronette in ICU. She was raped several times. Cooper asks if there's any connection to "the dead girl," and Truman observes that though they went to the same high school, there is no apparent connection and that they barely knew each other. Cooper asks to question Ronette, but the doctor indicates that she may have suffered neurological damage that precludes her from being much more of a tenable eyewitness than a shoe box filled with doorstops. Changing approaches, Cooper asks to examine her fingers. Curious ehs? all around. Whatever he's looking for, he doesn't find it. Ronette stirs and stops.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Continuing their self-guided tour of the hospital's extensive facilities, Cooper and Truman stand in an elevator behind a one-armed man (yes, that's right. A one-armed man. And if you think that might sound significant for any reason, you might just want to make a mental note of it. But I'm not making any demands on that, okay?) who exits and turns left. But before the door closes on that floor, a ranting man in a white lab coat spots Truman and makes an unsuccessful dash toward the elevator door, as Truman looks anywhere but straight ahead. The elevator continues its descent, but the deranged man Truman so stringently attempted to avoid goes vaulting down the stairs to meet them on the bottom floor. Lab Coat is identified as Doctor Jacoby, who observes that this is a "terrible, terrible tragedy," and the three stand in total silence for several incredibly awkward seconds, until Truman finally introduces Cooper. Jacoby takes an enormous piece of cotton out of his ear and asks if the man in the suit is, in fact, "Gary Cooper," and I believe that Jacoby's character is as well of such extensive lunatic proportions that he genuinely believes that this is not completely out of the question. Jacoby volunteers that "Laura was a patient of mine," and Cooper throws an unbelievably subtle glance Truman's way. Tactful, thy name is Dale Cooper. Jacoby asks to accompany them to the morgue and is resolutely denied access. By the way, Jacoby tells them, "Laura's parents . . . they didn't know she was seeing me." He can barely finish the sentence without breaking into a giggle so mirthful and non-anxious I wonder if I missed that all-important frame where Cooper reaches into his pocket and yells, "It's funny balloon-animal time!" and pulls out several long party balloons and makes Dr. Jacoby the perfect twisty balloon representation of, like, Sigmund Freud or something. But that's not what happened. Jacoby's just another freak, is what happened. Cooper and Truman turn wordlessly away and start down another hall. They wait until they are out of earshot, and Cooper almost inaudibly (to the viewer of a ten-year-old tape, perhaps) speaks for all past and present viewers of the show in curiously inquiring, "That guy's a psychiatrist?" Every line, Coop. Every line more brilliant than the last.
Inside the examining room, Lynch again reminds us of his non-artless directorial presence by virtue of a faulty overhead fluorescent light that makes it appear as if Cooper is examining the dead hands of Laura Palmer outdoors in the middle of a really sinister thunderstorm. After just a few seconds of observation, Cooper finds underneath Laura's nail what he did not find under Ronette's. Expressing a certain amount of professionally-oriented excitement, Cooper grabs a tweezer and, squeamish among us beware (actually, squeamish among us, run for cover, and run like bloody hell to get there before it fills up and there's no room left for you), inserts the tool underneath the fingernail into one of Laura's fingers. And in it goes. And goes and goes and goes and goes. And goes some more. But it's not all for nought, as it turns out, as he extracts a tiny piece of paper. He turns on the tape recorder to inform Diane of his findings, telling her that in her "ring finger, under the nail" there appears the letter "R." Cooper informs Diane to pass along this evidence to "Albert and his team." Truman, finally a bit incredulous at being left out of the loop, asks just what the hell exactly is going on. Cooper looks up, basks for a moment in the ghastly shadow of the menacing blinking lights, and smiles a smile that I would probably interpret as downright sinister if I didn't intrinsically know that he were just so damn cool: "Sheriff, we've got a lot to talk about." And as the plot goes, so goes the thickening.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Fade up on Donna Hayward, emerging from the largest brown station wagon ever owned by a middle-class suburban family ever, and walking toward Ed's gas station. The two meet and hug mournfully, and Donna asks if Ed has seen James, reporting that she's already "been up to the roadhouse." Ooh, the roadhouse. Sounds interesting. In a purely eschew-pointless-mental-connections-to-inconsequential-Patrick-Swayze-movies kind of way, of course. Ed gives Donna James's note, which reads, "Meet me at the Roadhouse after 9:30." Donna internally celebrates the fetus-note-writer's apparently successful development of opposable thumbs and functional motor skills. But before long, a vintage car much uglier than Bobby's pulls up, driven by someone much uglier than Bobby. Okay, we've seen this cat before, but we don't know his name just yet. He's the friend who told Bobby that they wanted to see him in the office this morning at school. Anyway, he peels into the parking lot and shouts for Donna to get in the car and join him at the police station. Shut up, varsity lettering dumb jock guy. I think he's supposed to be really dreamy and popular or something. Yeah, buddy, tell that to the hairdresser who saw fit to curse you with that mullet you sport so atrociously. And I don't care if this scene was filmed in 1989 or yesterday afternoon. I'm not offering you fashion-trends amnesty. Because the mullet was never, ever, ever okay. In any time or any place. Ever. Anyway, Mullet and Ed have a short scuffle, and Mullet tears out with an order for Donna to get right on down to the station. Donna sadly mutters to Ed that she can "really pick 'em," at which point the eye-patch woman slams open the screen door and screeches, "Ed? You waitin' for those drapes to hang themselves?" Ed hurls out a way-too-jubilant "Yeah, okay!" that makes me laugh every time I watch it, and comforts Donna by the fact that he "knows how to pick 'em, too." Donna asks Ed to tell James she was looking for him. Ed remains comforting, but stops just short of advising Donna to wait a few months and check in with the stork. Which is what I would have told her.
Police Station. Cooper and Truman are in an interrogation room of some kind, Truman in the midst of an informal show-and-tell of the department's finding in Laura's room. In their possession are a videotape Cooper wants to show to Bobby, a key-free diary, and some various items we'll get to in a minute. Cooper cracks the lock on the diary and reads to Diane from the last entry, dated February 23: "Nervous about meeting 'J' tonight." My, that's revealing. Eighteen days before on the diary's first page, Cooper uncovers a plastic envelope containing a key to a safety deposit box and a white residue. Cooper guesses cocaine, but Truman tells him that's impossible, prompting Cooper to ask, "You ever been surprised before?" Cooper regains his Professional Guy persona long enough to command a court order to open the safety deposit box and a test for the white residue before turning back to the recovered objects and uttering a line of such unparalleled brilliance it requires no kind of embellishing: "Diane, I'm holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies." End of scene. No joke.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Counterpointed nicely against the joviality of the comment is a scene containing a truly yucky-looking trainyard type of place in the middle of what appears to be nowhere, where numerous officers of the law stand around while Andy makes a call to Lucy and informs her to "tell Harry we found where it happened. Where Ronette and Laura were taken and tortured." And then, through the wailing, whimpering sobs, "Tell Harry I didn't cry." And Lucy calls Andy "sweetie." Well. Well. Well?
Back in the interrogation room, brilliance ensues in the form of Cooper getting down to questioning Bobby, his first suspect. Everyone is completely brilliant in this scene. Everyone. Even the extraneous bald puffy lawyer guy who speaks, like, one line and then disappears forever. Truman and Cooper enter and sit down across from Bobby and Puffy Lawyer at the table. Cooper sits down, switches on a tape recorder, redefines the intrinsic acting decision of "deadpan," and lobs question #1 across the table: "Bobby, did you kill Laura Palmer?" No, he didn't. She was studying at your house last night, though, eh? Bobby responds, "Yeah," and Puffy Lawyer reminds him with a scolding "Bobby" to readjust the ol' attitude. "Yes, sir." Cooper asks about a fight with her, and Bobby goes maniacal against Puffy Lawyer's wishes with the almost poetical response, "So what if I had a fight with her, if I sang songs with her, if I went skipping rope with her, what difference does it make? I didn't kill her." Oh, to sing songs and skip rope with Bobby. Strangely, though, Cooper does not seem quite so enamored at the prospect. Well, to each his own. Cooper freezes for a moment before turning to Truman and breaking into a ridiculously wide smile. Cooper tells him to just answer the freakin' question as asked, before turning his attention to a television on the table near them and playing the videotape found in Laura's bedroom. Cooper asks who shot it, and Bobby genuinely has no idea. The video is of Laura and Donna at a picnic on a mountaintop, dancing the day away. Puffy Lawyer snags an Oscar-clip moment in asking what exactly Bobby is being charged with, but Cooper's attention has been diverted to a Texas Instruments type of device on which he types the words "He did not do it" and hands it off to Truman. Bear in mind, purists -- that was Cooper's spoiler, not mine. Cooper wants to know who filmed the video, guessing it would be the other man Laura was seeing. As the shot switches back to the video of the picnic, Laura walks toward the camera, putting her eye up to the lens and looking right into it. Cooper asks Bobby again for a name, offering, "Here's a hint. First initial 'J.'" Bobby looks at the video again before muttering, "No. She wouldn't do that to me." Cooper taunts him, "You didn't love her anyway," before getting up and telling Truman to let Bobby go.
Fade up on the tightest shot ever recorded of a pencil being slowly inserted into the side of a paper cup. Bad girl Audrey Horne is sitting at a desk marked "Concierge," to an individual I will logically deduce is titled "Concierge" herself. A man enters the frame and sets up the entire dramatic action for the scene with the warning that "the Norwegians are signing the contracts at four o'clock, when Mr. Horne returns. Make sure they do not hear about Laura Palmer's death. It will blow the whole deal." For no apparent reason, Audrey pulls out the pencil and intentionally spills coffee all over the poor, put-upon, Concierge and her desk. Putting the "perk" back in "perky but obviously a delusional psychopath," Audrey laughs this indiscretion away and heads toward the room holding so many previously established contract-signing Norwegians. As the Norwegians Are Leaving Theme (to be repeated only once, in a few scenes from this one) plays, Audrey walks in on the group of about fifteen men regarding one Norwegian-speaking man, and casts a generally downward glance while looking self-consciously sorrowful. People start to stare. The leader of this group (we'll call him Sven for the sake of narrative continuity, but I believe Leif would really be a better-suited name for him. I don't know why) finally regards Audrey and, oh, the syntactical hijinks of the foreign: "Excuse me, is there something wrong, young, pretty girl?" Audrey recounts a rather graphic story of her newly dead, recently murdered friend, found naked and face down on a rocky beach. I believe this is what is called, in the cutthroat world of Scandinavian real-estate acquisitions, "hon dealbrüker."
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Police Station. Bobby is being released from custody, and he meets his good buddy Mullet in the hallway. Bobby wants to know if "you straightened [Donna] out yet?" Bobby goes on to recount the story of the letter "J," telling Mullet that "some freakin' biker is gonna get his head busted open." But before he has a chance to communicate any more salient information, Bobby turns around to spy the always-intrepid Lucy pretending to type at her desk right behind them. He suggests they move the conversation outside. On their way there, they walk past the bald man and blond woman standing with Bobby's lawyer, the bald man (obviously his father) suggesting, "I'll be home this evening if you need a sympathetic ear." Cue rebellious-teen-oriented response. Bad bad bad bad boys. Et cetera.
Inside the interrogation room, Donna has apparently just finished lying to Cooper about the picnic in question, telling him that there was no one else up on that mountain with them. Well then gosh-darn-it, Cooper asks, turning on the videotape, just how did these pictures get taken? Donna pieces together an obviously false story about a female hiker who came along and videotaped them for a while. But Cooper? He don't play the fool. He tells her, "Donna, this is serious business." And it must be, or else why would Sad Strings be ringing so plaintively all the while? He continues: "More serious than Laura falling in love with someone other than her boyfriend. Much more serious than you know." Donna again begins to cry, staring into the TV screen and grimly musing, "Is that cake? Was I actually eating CAKE??" But before she's able to calculate the amount of Weight Watchers points this sets her back through the end of the month, Lucy busts in on the intercom and tells Cooper than Truman is ready to go to the crime site, and "I've got something else for you here." After Cooper lets Donna leave, Lucy and Truman enter. Lucy tells Cooper that she heard the entire conversation between Mullet (Mike is his name) and Bobby, and typed it out for Cooper's convenience. But before Lucy reads word one of her findings, Cooper interjects, "They said the person we're looking for is a biker." Stunned "yeahs" all around, but how did he know? At which point Cooper unfreezes the video of the picnic in question and watches. Cooper waits for the extreme close-up shot of Laura referenced before, and when just her eye fills up the entire frame, Cooper freezes it again and they take a closer look to reveal the image of a motorcycle in the reflection of Laura's stare. And I ask you. How freakin' cool is that? Dissolve briefly to the motorcycle in question, where James, sixteen years from his permit test even, sits astride his ubiquitous vehicle atop the very mountain of the well-documented picnic in question. And one last visit to Great Northern, where the Norwegians leave hastily en masse to the cries of the Concierge repeatedly yelling, "The Norwegians are leaving!" As the ironic jollity of the Norwegians Are Leaving Theme fills the air a final time, Ben Horne screams that the Norwegians are missing out on the investment opportunity of a lifetime as Audrey looks on, delighted. But sadly, the Norwegians have decided not to "take a chance on Audrey" or the Ghostwood property. Mamma Mia! Oh, damn. And I promised I wouldn't quote ABBA. And then I went and did it twice.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Ooky crime scene. Cooper and Harry walk with flashlights through darkened, abandoned train cars. They spy lots of blood, and Cooper clears up the specifics with a recorded repartee with Diane: "Here's something we haven't seen before. A mound of dirt approximately a foot and a half in diameter. On the top is a gold necklace with a gold heart. Correction: half a gold heart. At the base of the mound of dirt is a torn piece of newsprint written with the words -- which appear to be in blood -- fire, walk with me." Cooper says they need to find out who has the other half of the heart. Cut back to James on the hill, half a gold necklace in his hand, looking morose and particularly zygotal.
Inside the Great Northern, Audrey sits silently beside a woman we have not yet seen while a man in full Indian headdress regalia bangs his head against a toy house. And in case you were wondering, yes, it does look just as weird as it sounds. A nurse walks down some stairs and suggests that the woman might tell Johnny herself that Laura isn't coming to work with him today. Mrs. Horne, as she is referred to by the nurse, wants to know why that's so freakin' difficult for him to understand. Mrs. Horne's reply is impassioned and well-delivered. After one more line -- one more word, in fact -- the episode after , we will not see her again for the span of approximately twenty-seven episodes. Sorry.
Inside a bland office space of some kind, Cooper and Truman enter with Laura's safety deposit box. Apparently Lynch decided that this set needed some sprucing up as well, for he has chosen for room accessorizing a giant elk's head (is that an elk?), antlers and all, to sit on the table before them and take up fully a quarter of the screen. It is referenced only once, by the woman who escorts them into the room, with a dismissive, "Oh. It fell down." Cooper maintains his professional decorum admirably, but the furtive glances he tosses toward this accouterment throughout this sequence are nothing short of priceless. The woman stays long enough to confirm Laura's public good-girl image once more, then retreats to obtain the records of how long she's had the box. Alone in the room now, Cooper and Truman crack open the box to reveal the following: a copy of a porno mag called Flesh World and over $10,000 in cash. (Cooper: "That's a lot of Girl Scout cookies.") The wide grin returns as he turns to Truman, Flesh World in hand, and celebrates, "Here's a page that's marked." And on said marked page is a black-and-white photograph of a scantily clad Ronette Pulaski, hands in her hair and posing for the camera. Cooper confirms the connection and Truman expresses further shock. Pan to another photograph on the same page, one of the truck Bobby and Shelley recoiled from in fear earlier in the day. Yes, it's still the same day.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Inside the wood-paneled house belonging to the truck in the photo, Shelley watches a television news report on the Ronette Pulaski situation. A man in the house we have not seen before picks cigarette butts out of the ashtray and angrily insists that Shelley turn off the television and join him on the couch. She tells "Leo" that she wants to watch the report, but Leo threatens her again in a way that's probably supposed to come across as being really scary and foreboding, but isn't. Shelley, though, is really pretty, and pretty people are innately better souls than the rest of us, so she obeys without further confrontation. She moves to the couch. Leo asks what kind of cigarettes Shelley smokes, and she tells him that she picks up different packs from the diner. Leo rails that there are two things Shelley the good wife needs to do for him: the first is to always have the house clean when he arrives home, and the second is to only smoke one brand of cigarettes from now on. I remember him being much, much more forbidding a character when I was twelve than I do now. If she fails to follow his two simple rules, he puts it to Shelley, "I'm gonna snap your neck like a twig." Oh, come on, Leo. You couldn't snap her neck like a twig. You couldn't snap a twig like a twig.
Cut to Ed's gas station, which we learn from the establishing shot is called "Big Ed's Gas Farm." Appropriate name. No one's arguing with that. The phone rings inside, and Ed picks it up to discover Norma from the Double R on the line. She apologizes for calling him there, but he tells her it's okay. She needs to see him. They arrange to meet at the previously discussed Roadhouse at 9:30. He calls her sweetheart, and I immediately think they're the cutest together. I wholeheartedly support his decision to not throw similarly endearing terms to his one-eyed domestic partner whose name we do not yet know, who is to be found in the room playing with the drapes, opening and closing and opening and closing and opening and closing them. Ed looks on briefly in the horror that is his life.
Town meeting, and many of the usual suspects are present and accounted for. Cooper, Truman, and a man who is easily a thousand years old sit behind a table watching a crowd assemble in an auditorium. After taking a moment to get carried away with the wildlife diversity of the Pacific Northwest, Cooper regards the group and starts asking questions. When Josie walks down the aisle toward her seat in the front row, Cooper immediately pipes up, "Who's the babe?" OKAY. I KNOW IT'S A WOMAN NOW. I'm SORRY. Very, very sorry. No need to say anymore. Truman refers to her as "one of the most beautiful women in the state." Yuck? What state? State of delusion? State of insanity? State of . . . oh, never mind. I wasn't going anywhere funny with that, anyway. Truman fills in some of the blanks: Josie's husband died in a boating accident and left her everything, including the mill, much to the unending incredulity of his now-resentful sister, Katherine. So Piper Laurie and Josie are sisters-in-law, then. They sit on either side of a pitiable Pete Martell. Ben Horne approaches Josie, and Cooper refers to him, much to my delight, as "the glad-handing dandy." I have no idea what that means, but I'm going to spend the entire rest of my day referring to everyone I speak to as such. I pray you'll try it as well. Anyway, Truman reports, Ben Horne owns half the town, and he's only talking to Josie because he's after her land, not because he's after her. The lights start to turn on and off, and a cut to the back of the room shows a woman, holding a log, flipping the switch back and forth. The lines of dialogue deserve nothing but my most revered verbatim treatment of them:
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Cooper: Who's the lady with the log?
Truman: We call her the log lady.
Exactly.
The thousand-year-old mayor brings the meeting to order, fails to bring the house down with a little "is this thing on" senile microphone schtick, and Truman quickly hands the floor over to Cooper. Incidentally, Cooper's official title is "Federal Bureau of Investigations Special Agent." He tells a little story about the FBI discovering the body of a girl named Theresa Banks in south-west Washington State a year ago. She had no family, no one claimed her, no one cared. But for numerous reasons Cooper is unable to share, he believes Laura to be the victim of the same killer. He tells them the murderer may be someone from Twin Peaks, and implores them not to turn the investigation into a witch hunt before instating a town-wide curfew for those under eighteen with a reminder that "these crimes occurred at night." Cut to night in Twin Peaks, where a leitmotif traffic light turns from green to yellow, and then to red.
Doc Hayward is recounting the events of the day to his wheelchair-bound wife named "Eileen." He tells her on the hush-hush that the crime scene turned up the half of a gold heart, one that they are positive is Laura's because it was featured in the picnic video, about which Donna would not reveal details to the police. A slow pan out of the living room and up the Hayward steps comes to rest on an eavesdropping Donna, who hears her father report to his wife that "they think the killer may have the other half of the heart" before sneaking back up the steps and out of earshot. She sneaks into what I guess is her sister's room. I'm not particularly enamored with her sister's poetry-composing, black-clad-with-turtleneck, extra-in-a-concert-scene-in-the--Midge-Ure-video aspects, and all I can really do is roll my eyes for the forty seconds and pray for a swift conclusion to her participation on the show. I fear not but that it shall come quickly. Donna needs her faux-lesbian sister to cover for her, curfew be damned, when she sneaks out of the house on some top-secret, Laura-related business. Done. As Donna is sneaking out the window, she tells "Harriet" that she needs to borrow her bike. Done, just put air in the tires. Cut to Bobby's black Vintagemobile, Mullet Mike in the passenger seat, pulling up to the Hayward house. In two simple words, they are wa. Sted. Bobby takes a swig of beer and does a little drunken shuffle on the roof of the car. Mullet Mike rings the bell, and Doc Hayward answers the door. He is concerned that the youths are drinking and driving, and Mullet Mike puts his fear to rest with the promise that, "Bobby's doing most of the driving." Heh. Mullet Mike requests to see Donna. The doctor tells Mullet Mike that he'll ask her if she wants to see him. Harriet closes the door to her bedroom and says something pretentious. Doc Hayward enters and discovers Donna missing. My sentence construction is becoming repetitive. He returns downstairs, now in the position of needing Mullet Mike's help. Mullet Mike thinks perhaps he knows where to find Donna, heading back to the Vintagemobile and demanding, "Roadhouse. Let's go." Doc Hayward looks on, woe-be-it-for-the-youth-of-our-nation style, and goes back into the house.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Staked out near the Roadhouse, Cooper and Truman receive a call from Lucy over the intercom letting him know that Doc Hayward on the line. They patch him through, and Hayward tells the two that Donna is missing. Truman says they'll be on the lookout. Cooper expresses an emotion just short of satisfaction for Donna's entrance, explaining, "How else is she gonna lead us to that biker?" Coo-PER! Coo-PER! Coo-PER! Because he's right, you know.
We're in the Roadhouse! We're in the Roadhouse! Roadhouse . . . er, never felt so good. Or something. Cut to a red backlit stage, where Julee Cruise, the Vonda Shepard of the early nineties, croons a worded version of Theme Song called "Falling" for a smoky-hazed group of patrons. In a red booth hidden in the corner, Ed and Norma sit together, discussing the status of their secret relationship. I love that they're together. Ed's repeated use of the word "drapes" indicates that he's talking about his insane wife, who's name we still don't know. Ed plot develops nicely with the subtle, "What about you and Hank?" following that up with, "When your sweetheart's husband is in the joint for manslaughter, the word parole's got a nasty ring to it." Most other times, too, considering it means you've probably been in jail. Back out to Cooper and Truman, where the outsider FBI agent is quickly developing a fondness for country living:
Cooper: You know why I'm whittling?
Truman: Okay, I'll bite again. Why are you whittling?
Cooper: That's what you do in a town where a yellow light means slow down, not speed up.
Now I'm not a hundred percent sure what whittling is myself or why Truman says "again," and I apologize if that exchange seems a tad extraneous for straight transcription at this late point in the episode, but I think it's important in light of Cooper's character development as he becomes more involved with the daily workings of the town. So there you go.
More Julee Cruise, who incidentally sang back-up with the B-52's for a brief time when Cindy Wilson was briefly in rehab or dead or something in the lean post- "Love Shack" years. I had the opportunity to see her live in that very capacity, and for some reason I took it. That's where having too much disposable income in junior high gets you. Coop sees Mike and Bobby show up at the Roadhouse. The two enter, and are called "Mutt and Jeff" from afar by some people I feel like we never see again. Oh no, we do see one of them again. Back outside, Donna pulls up on her bicycle, and Cooper blows through his newly whittled contraption, making a whistling sound and following this action up with the howlingly funny comment, "Why don't you whistle for a little back-up?" Truman calls for back-up and tells Lucy to call Doc Hayward. Cooper gives the thumbs-up to it all.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Donna enters the Roadhouse, and Mullet Mike causes quite a scene when he grabs her and angrily tells her that everyone has been looking for her. Ed stands up and tells them to break it up, but Bobby takes Ed down with a punch, and a full-on Roadhouse brawl ensues. One of the "Mutt and Jeff" callers grabs Donna and tells her that he'll take her to James. They jump on his motorcycle and Truman follows. One more shot of fighting. The sequence ends with Donna on the back of a motorcycle, cutting periodically back to Cooper and Truman following discreetly. The last line of dialogue in this scene I actually have to rewind the tape numerous times to adequately comprehend. Truman asks Cooper, "You think they spotted us?" Cooper responds -- no, really he does, "Give me a donut," as the two vehicles drive along the same dark road under the cover of Twin Peaks nighttime.
Fade up on Cooper and Harry, having lost Donna on the motorcycle. Hearing motorcycle sounds, Harry backs up and starts heading to an old logging road they can only access from a road five miles away. Cut to random motorcycle guy dropping Donna off smack in the middle of nowhere, where James is waiting for her. James doesn't have an alibi for last night, and he's afraid. He was with Laura right before she died. Laura had secrets, James tells her: "There were things she was involved with, things she let herself get pulled into, things she thought you'd hate her for." Donna knew Laura better than Laura thought she did, Donna says. Laura told James about Bobby killing some guy, but didn't produce a name. He thinks it makes "some terrible sense" that Laura died. Then, he reports, Laura and James "came to the light at Sparkwood and 21 and she put her hands around my neck and she screamed she loved me. I looked into her eyes, they were clear. It was like she was Laura again. She was so sad. She sounded so desperate. She ran off. I let her go and she died." Cue racking sobs. Donna comforts him a little too successfully and, in a reckless moment, she simultaneously breaks every known statutory rape law in the entire country by at least sixteen years as she kisses him passionately. Twice! The sound of sirens interrupt their revelry, and they make a quick decision to bury the evidence of the necklace before they return to town. This bodes well.
Back on the highway, Cooper and Truman spot the motorcycle and pull out after it, sirens a-blazin'. Truman announces that James should "stand away from the bike, stand away from the girl, put your hands behind your head" over Donna's repeated protests, "He didn't do anything." Cut to the police station, where they're taking James in. Doc Hayward has already arrived, and Truman releases Donna to her father's custody. Hawke (Michael Horse has been given a name. Hallelujah) and Andy escort James into a cell, which happens to be directly across from where Bobby and Mullet Mike have been taken in for fighting. Inside the giant station wagon, Doc Hayward and Donna pretty much just talk about the speediest possible recovery of Harriet's bicycle, important for Harriet's immediate recovery so she can hop on that two-wheeled powerhouse and pedal her damn self right on out of all future scripts.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Truman and Cooper walk into the interrogation room, which is filled with a whole hell of a lot of donuts. Cooper tells Harry he needs a motel, and Harry tells him twice that he can get him a good rate at the Great Northern. Cooper walks out of the room, announcing to Diane that it's 12:28 AM, and Truman takes a quiet moment to smile, glad that his governmentally-appointed partner in crime is, as I've mentioned, so damned cool.
This is a clip I really wish I could just e-mail to all of you. But I have a Mac and it's got like no attachments, and if you were watching the show right now and not reading about it at all, you'd be me and I'd be fired. So I'll tell you what happens instead. Because I'd hate to be poor. Bobby holds onto the bars of his cell, stares down James across the way, and speaks the words, "When you least expect it," before, with help from Mullet Mike, barking like a very angry dog (not like the happy ones that bark in unison to "Jingle Bells") for the better part of twenty TV seconds before dissolving back into silence. James remains stone-faced. Which is pretty impressive, considering that a lot of babies I know are afraid of dogs. Then again, Bobby isn't really a dog. And James isn't really a baby. Yet.
Over at the mill, Truman approaches the front door of the Packard house to find Josie. Truman says, "I understand you wanted to see the Sheriff up here." And then he walks closer. And then they kiss. NO!!!! Oh, Harry. Come on. Do better. I beg of you. It can't be that hard. It's not like you're living in some remote logging community where men outnumber women, like, 9000 to 1. Gender distribution seems to be pretty equal in these parts. At least since Josie made up her mind. Looking out the window and assumedly at this spectacle, Katherine announces over the phone, "He's here again," prompting the voice at the other end to suggest, "Let's get together and talk about it." Cut to Ben Horne. Go figure. Back to Truman and Josie together (d'oh! I don't even like typing that), Truman observing that "it must have happened about this time, twenty-four hours ago," and Josie responds that she's "afraid." Boo-hoo, hermaphrodite man-child. The traffic light remains on red.
Cut once more to the Palmer house, where Sarah sleeps on the couch, impressively so considering her proximity to the spinning ceiling fan, now shown under the even-more-ominous cover of darkness. She's having a dream about an unseen presence walking through the woods, followed by a gloved hand sifting through a pile of dirt and digging up a necklace, one half of a gold heart. She wakes up and screams. Roll credits.
| Season 1 | Aired on 04.07.1990
Right after this episode ends, by the way, a Kyle MacLachlan-narrated ad for the show features a small assemblage of clips from the show with the notion of dispelling the nasty rumor that ABC execs have "hidden Twin Peaks." Narrowing his choices, he finally finds the show. On Saturdays! God bless the self-consciousness of the ABC publicity department, as this commercial actually ends, "Saturday. Who would think to look for it there?" Exactly. Cancellation rumors swirl in the air already. Oh, and the voice over accompanying the closing credits says we all should make it a priority to tune into Good Morning, America tomorrow to hear more about this pesky Kuwait situation everyone's been talking so much about. Joan Lunden just told me it was really important. Apparently she thinks she's hosting the show again, for some strange reason. I guess her allergies are feeling better.