Fade up on a nighttime shot of The Palmer House of Non-Ambiguous Daughter Murdering (um, spoiler?), accompanied by a soundtrack featuring a sustained, dissonant orchestral chord and prerecorded screams providing a similar amount of realistic terror to those pumped through the speakers behind your slowly moving tram car on "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride." Dissolve to the following morning, where a shot of moodily, non-blowing (oops. Could someone get around to plugging in the machine that makes the…yeah, thanks) trees pans down to a slightly tighter shot of the house. And then we're inside, panning past the oft-filmed Laura shrine of framed photographs: Laura as a pig-tailed youth, Laura as a beaming prom queen, Laura smiling through the obvious humiliation of forgetting that the Twin Peaks Middle School annual "Dress as Your Favorite Cheryl Ladd Circa 1978 Haircut" theme day fell on the very afternoon as her family's Glamour Shots appointment (that shot is harder to find. It's there, but it takes some searching), Laura snorting blow with a fat Frenchman behind an abandoned train car while a scraggly long-haired demon man takes a club to the back of her head and tweezers to her fourth finger. Oh, wait, that last one actually never made it to the mantel now, did it? But if it had, buh-bye series, eh?
Continuing the pan over the Laura Ashley Couch of Once Domestic Bliss and the Smartly Placed Throw Rugs of Their Forgotten Sensical Past, into the frame enters a mess of golf balls and accompanying tees, littering said couch and floor while the sound of a sinister chuckle punctuates the fact that some eerie, eerie shit is going down in this house. Panning, panning, panning, over to a patch of green on the floor with a pile of golf balls to it. A club raises on high and we cut back to see Leland "Too Happy Gilmore" Palmer, standing in the living room, hitting ball after ball. After ball. Leland is still wearing the suit he was wearing at the end of the last episode, which I believe is supposed to indicate that he's been actively and consistently vying for the golf legend title of "The Tiger Woods…of DOOM" for the greater part of the past twelve hours. Even though it's 1990, and Tiger Woods is, like, four. He's the only golfer I can name, so handle the hackneyed reference as best you can and we'll just move on, okay? Wait, here's another one: Arnold Palmer. I think he's a golfer. Either that or he wrote "Simply Irresistible." But I digress. For a freakin' change.
Leland stops his swinging to answer a knock at the front door, and is more than hospitable when he lets Donna "For Whom Good Nicknames Are Growing, Ahem, Thin" Hayward and James "Rosemary's Baby" Hurley in with a broad smile. They have come, it seems, to say goodbye to Maddy, but, according to Leland, "I dropped her off at the bus station not twenty minutes ago." I'm sorry, did he say "dropkicked her through the Gates of Hell [though to this jaded New Yorker, the difference between that place and Missoula, Montana remain a mystery], as my all-powerful self has the wont to do"? Because if he didn't, I'm not sure I think Leland is being the most truthful about Maddy's current whereabouts. I'm starting to think that maybe Leland isn't such a docile, good-natured golfing type after all. Leland continues, "She thought you were coming over last night." James asks if Maddy said anything, and Leland cocks an eyebrow and tut-tuts, "Well, I would have to say that she was a little bit disappointed." Hee hee. I so dig Leland the Murderer embarking on a passive-aggressive guilt trip at this particular moment in the plot progression. You've got to respect the acting ability of a character who can go from channeling "the rawest form of demonic possession of all mankind" to channeling "my Jewish mother" and then back again with such seamless precision. Sarah calls for Leland from the top of the staircase, and Leland excuses himself upstairs to go act the human bodily host for "Even-Keel Non-Demonic Killer Husband Guy" in another room of the house. This guy is like Cybill with a snappy designer suit and a killer handicap. Golf handicap, that is. He doesn't, like, have a hump suddenly or anything. Or is it "golf learning disability"?
Leland goes, and Donna and James take a moment to survey the living room. They notice dozens -- hundreds, even? -- of golf balls strewn all around the place, all over the floor, the two chairs, the side table, et cetera. And this man is a good shot, too, seeing as he was swinging with an open field's worth of ferocity and somehow managed to avoid the giant picture window at the far end of the room and numerous framed pictures on the wall. They gaze upon the sight and can barely stifle their childish giggles as Leland walks back down the steps and offers, "If you'd like, you could write her. I'm sure she'd be glad to hear from you." They think that's a kick-ass idea, because there's no such thing as e-mail yet. And apparently Ma Bell is still in short pants and yet to be a "ma" at all, considering that advanced technology known as "the telephone" is also never mentioned. Leland bids them both farewell, asking of Donna, "You say hi to your folks for me," failing to mention the taboo topic of James's mom, who has never appeared on camera and is also really busy with that eighteen-or-so-years-overdue pregnancy the tabloids keep writing all about. Bravo-promo-cakes as Leland gazes in the mirror and straightens his tie while Devil with a Blue Jean Jacket On looks back at him. From the top of the stairs, Sarah enigmatically calls down, "Remember to sign us up for Glenn Miller Night at the Club." Ooh, fun times. He calls up that he will not, in fact, forget. He opens the door to the living room closet and extracts his overcoat, unzips his golf bag, and in it places his club, to a huge mound of bloodied pulp he once called his niece. Hey, there's even a visible hand in there. And though I've alluded to the fact that I'm no golf pro myself, I can pretty much recap firsthand that her grip pretty much sucks. Oh, ha ha. Golf humor. I am so Cheech Marin in Tin Cup right now that it's not even funny. That's right. It's not funny. Leland grabs the bag, bids his wife a too-hearty goodbye, and leaves. He walks outside to his fifties-ish blue convertible, throws the bag in the trunk, puts the top down, and pulls out of the driveway, humming "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" from Oklahoma. Which will now be in my head until I die, and probably for several years after that. ["Mine too. Thanks. Thanks a lot." -- Sars]
Ben Horne is in lockup and, it must be reported, does not look so good. He's trapped behind bars and fiddling with a tube of toothpaste in a tiny, stained sink and acting in a far prissier manner than I saw in all of my Oz-recapping halcyon days. Even his once-impeccably pressed designer duds look like they've been treated with all the care of a polyester leisure suit yanked off the clearance rack at a Going Out Of Business Sale at the local Fashion Bug. Shouting ensues outside the cell, and Jerry Horne comes busting through the metal door with an introductory "Konichiwa" for his teeth-brushing brother. Apparently he's been doing some traveling. Jerry takes a good long look: "God, you look terrible." And he does. Fashion Bug bad, as I've mentioned. They hug (awwww), and Jerry outlines the current predicament: "Ben, since your regular mouthpiece has been charged with murder himself, I'm gonna be handling your case personally. So let's get started: Did you kill her?" Ben unembraces Jerry and utters an incredulous "Jerry, for God sakes." The diminutive Horne sits down on the lower bunk, lights a pipe, and inspires Episode 2 levels of hilarity with his continuation, "Sorry, you're right. The last thing a good defense attorney needs to know is the truth." Ben asks if his brother can get him out, and the camera frames Jerry as the pipe-smoking young Perry Mason that he so definitively isn't when he responds with great conviction, "They can only hold you for twenty-four hours without charging you." Pause. "Or is it forty-eight?" Ben sits on the bed and takes a cigar out of his lapel pocket. Pipes, cigars. My gosh, if this isn't just the most regal prison I've ever seen. Not to mention my palpable relief in encountering a cigar during a jail sequence with two men trapped alone in a cell and actually having it represent…a cigar, but that's just the Oz talking again, now isn't it?
Jerry gets the formal questioning underway: "So, where are we saying you were on the night Laura died?" Ben volunteers that he was with Katherine, which Jerry suggests isn't "a good choice." But it is the truth. Jerry asks if there's been any sign of her. "Bone fragments?" No. "Teeth?" No. "Charred corroborating note regarding your whereabouts?" Goddammit, I love that line. Jerry reiterates his exact sentiment in the exact tone as he did when he found out Laura was murdered, noting, "I'm so depressed." Poor guy's been through so much. Jerry stands and walks toward the sink, his vague imitation of a professional demeanor suddenly evaporating when he takes a survey of the entire cell: "Bunk beds!" He runs back to the beds and hops on the top one, officially joining the "But I get to be on top" quip in Big as pioneering advances in that niche comedy genre known to its fans as "inappropriate bunk bed humor." Damned if this moment isn't much, much funnier, too. Once comfortable on the top bunk, Jerry curls up, real fetal-like, and muses upon simpler times past: "You remember our first room, Ben? Me on the top bunk and you on the bottom bunk. And Louise Dombrowski dancing on the hook rug with a flashlight?" A non-sequitur says what? Was that line in there just to see if we were paying attention?
Apparently not, and for some reason, this memory cues a gauzy flashback sequence of a silhouetted girl holding a flashlight and dancing to a "Blue Moon" type of ballad that sounds like an unreleased B-side off of James Hurley and the Hurlettes' newest album, Can't Stop The Hurlin'. Dancing. Dancing. Dancing. Twice we cut to the bed itself, to spy two dorky-looking boys with black-framed glasses watching the dancing. And then back to the dancing. For TWO FULL MINUTES. I'd be happy to supply you with some more relevant details concerning this sequence, but really, there aren't any. So instead, here are the details of the phone call placed to my apartment during this Star Search audition's tenth exciting hour:
Sars: Hey, Djb, why is this recap so short?
Djb: Louise Dombrowski.
Sars: What?
Djb: Nothing.
Sars: You are so fired.
Djb: And with good cause, I might add in my own non-defense.
(Note to the literal: Dramatization. May not have happened.)
Over at the Sheriff's Station, Lucy enters carrying a teddy bear and attending to a blabbing doppelganger -- even more blonde than she is but just as relentlessly teased -- cradling a baby. Lucy spots Hawk and cuts off her identical counterpart, asking him, "Have you seen Andy?" Doppelganger jumps in: "Oh! You must be that native person I've heard so much about. Eagle-Eye?" Hawk provides her with the correct name before turning to Lucy and deadpanning, "Sister?" It is. Her sister's name is Gwen, and she has arrived straight from the Tact-Free Zone: "God, how you must hate us white people after all we've done to you." I would take the time to be more surprised and horrified if I weren't so darned accustomed to that kind of shoddy and misdirected so-called "political correctness" from back in my Vassar days. The baby cries just as the tear runs down the Indian's face at the end of that anti-pollution PSA from the seventies, and Hawk deadpans through the pain, "Some of my best friends are white people." Gwen looks appropriately confused and makes a mental note to rent Dances With Wolves because of how much she thinks it will open her mind.
Truman, Cooper, and Diane stroll down a hallway at the Great Northern, Cooper acting the informant on their latest dealings with the One-Armed Man. Rounding a corner, the two (well, um, three) come upon Leland in the lobby, where he is wowing the crowd with his moves, but less in a "Wow, he walks on air" kind of way and more in a "Wow, someone keep Fred A-Scare at a safe distance from my children" kind of way. And he's using his golf club! As a cane! Great touch. Someone do me a favor and shout that directorial subtlety into whatever hole Glatter crawled into after directing her last episode. And here's hoping I mean it when I say "last." Cooper asks Truman if Leland knows about the Ben Horne arrest, and Truman surveys the scene before soothsaying, "Doesn't look like it." Leland shakes and shimmies his way over to the two men, and Truman wastes no time: "We've arrested Ben Horne for Laura's murder. He hasn't been charged, but we're holding him." Leland furrows his brow and expresses an impressive kind of shock that accomplishes the dual tasks of convincing Cooper and Truman that he is truly sorry to hear the news while convincing the viewing audience that he is expressing utter sadness though barely concealing a palpable and delusional joy. Y'all feelin' it for Leland this week? I totally am. Leland asks if they have a strong case against Ben, and then looks dourly down at the floor and intones, "The law will handle this." Cooper: "As it should be." Leland walks away from them and makes it to the far end of the room, turning a corner and disappearing from sight. He puts his forehead on the golf club and begins to sob uncontrollably but, as Leland's creepiness dictates he must, he soon looks up and the crying turns to a silent, suppressed, teacher-just-sat-on-a-whoopie-cushion-but-if-we-laugh-out-loud-we-get-detention barely contained laughter. Back in the lobby, Cooper sends Truman on his way and walks toward Leland to investigate further. Staring into Leland's back, it appears to Cooper as if Leland is still sobbing, but Cooper is way too the coolest to let a ruse like this elude him for long. Cooper calls Leland's name from about ten feet behind. Leland clears his throat and looks up, his face becoming almost comically stony all at once. Cooper continues, "If you can remember anything unusual about Mr. Horne's behavior the night of Laura's death, would you please let me know?" Leland promises through the non-tears that he will. Cooper leaves, and Leland giggles anew. Tellingly, Truman meets Cooper back in the lobby and asks, "Is everything okay?" Cooper: "I'm not sure." Crafty. The lobby empties out completely, and Leland taps the golf club on the floor and resumes his jigtastic ways right on out the door. He's really good.
Over in a dimly-lit interrogation room somewhere deep inside the Sheriff's Station, Doc Hayward removes a rubber glove from a first-aid kit and regards Ben while Jerry, Cooper, and Truman look on. And though even those of you who haven't seen this show ever could see it coming, it still works to great effect when the good doctor snaps it on and announces, "This won't hurt a bit." As the doctor administers a blood test, Jerry protests this brutal treatment of his client. Hayward gives Ben his pricked pointer finger back, and he shoves it in his mouth like a five-year-old still waiting for his Dum-Dums lollipop after his visit to the pediatrician's office. The doctor will have the results in a couple of hours. Hayward leaves. I would say that we couldn't hear Jerry from all the way up there on his litigious soapbox, but when he's standing on that thing, he's pretty much the same height as everyone else in the room for the first time in series history. And this is what he says: "Gentlemen, I demand that my client either be released or charged. Never in my years of practicing law have I witnessed such a complete and utter disregard for an accused man's Constitutional rights." Cooper fights back with the facts, launching into a memorized reiteration of Jerry's legal credentials, including, "Graduated last in his class of 142. Passed the bar on his third attempt. License to practice revoked in the states of Illinois, Florida, Alaska, Massachusetts." Jerry tries to keep control: "Hey, I'm not on trial here." Heh. Didn't work. Cooper, it seems, has wrested control. He carries over Laura's red diary and drops it on the table, asking Ben if he knows what it is. "A book," Jerry advises him to say, before Cooper takes it back from him and reads the passage about Ben, who Laura will one day "tell the world about." Cooper sits: "C'mon, Ben. We're all adults here. A wild, young girl like Laura Palmer. She becomes a threat to your business, your family." Ben rises and points, fairly screaming, "You cannot talk to me like that!" Oh, but he can. Yes, he can. You are in the chair, Ben. You are. Jerry asks for a moment alone with "my brother -- er, my client." Once Cooper and Truman assent, Jerry advises Ben to stop blurting out hot-tempered confessions or it's going to be a problem springing him from the Big House. Which is, realistically, solid legal advice. But then it's followed up with a stern warning: "Your alibi has been roasted, they can establish motive, and your blood may have Laura's fingerprints on it." Don't ask me why, but I still find lines like that freakin' hilarious. Jerry advises Ben to "get a better lawyer." These two need a spin-off, stat.
In a cozy, rustic, tarp-covered room way at the back of Chez Johnson, a bandanna-sporting Bobby Briggs sits holding a small tape recorder (maybe Diane has relatives in visiting for the week) and listening to the microcassette he fished out of Leo's boot. It's the conversation between Ben and Leo that took place in the woods: "Insurance investigators should read arson. Block letters, about six feet high. The deal as we discussed." Bobby identifies the voices, writes a note reading, "Dear Ben/Think we should talk!" and places it with the tape in a plain white business envelope. His dreams of international espionage are put temporarily on hold, however, as a crash from the kitchen sends Shelley running toward the back of the house, dripping with the Gooey Chewed Food of the Garden Variety Invalid, yelling, "He did it again. It's your turn to clean him this time." Ew. Shelley notices the envelope and asks what it contains. Bobby divulges, kinda: "Since our cash cow in the other room has turned into a sinkhole, I've decided to pursue a career in business." Really? Really. He promises Shelley smooth sailing ahead and promises her anything she wants. She wants a "full-time nanny." Um, hey Shelley? I know paying constant attention to Mr. Potato Head in the room takes a certain mental toll and all, but for someone who can get the good good Bobby lovin' whenever she wants and however often and for however long, I'm just saying that wish
ing for anything else in life when you've already got that is in violation of at least four of the deadly sins. And "sloth" ain't one of them. 'Cause Bobby takes stamina. I can just tell.Wow. Thank God this riveting subplot came along when it did. Down at the Double R, Norma serves lunch to a trucker kind of guy sitting at the counter. She looks up to spot a gray-haired woman standing to him. Norma plot develops where plot development never needed to take us: "Mother!" Bored already. Mother makes a crack about the food before grabbing a fork off of the table and taking a bite of the stranger's potatoes. Oh, mom! This is such a poor excuse for a Norma arc now that Ed is trapped on the other side of town caring for Na-Teen. Norma asks what she's doing there, and mom responds, "I want to introduce you to my new husband." Hey, she married Larry the used-car salesman from Three's Company! Right down to the crooked toupee and the plaid "Fashion Bug" sports jacket. But his name is "Ernie." They're "honeymooning." Norma apologizes for being so short with them, but "there's a food critic coming, and I'm short on help." They leave, and as Norma tidies the counter up, she finds a newspaper with the words "$1000, Houston by three points" written on it and circled in black marker. End. END!!! Oh. It ended.
The One-Armed Man lies in a bed at the Great Northern while an attending nurse sits in the corner knitting and wishing she had become a flight attendant. His left nub of a non-arm begins twitching violently under his shirt, and I don't mind being the one to have to tell you that it's, like, really gross. Like, really. He opens his eyes suddenly and intones, "He's close." He asks the nurse pathetically for a glass of water, and she takes her leave of the room and walks past the guard sitting just beyond. Said guard stands to take Nurse Careless's place, but he walks in to find the bed filled with no arms at all. From behind him, the One-Armed Man comes at him with some kind of ambiguous Clue weapon, slamming him on the back and saying in his rich "Mike" voice, "I'm sorry," before escaping out an open window.
But the Hank came back, the very day. Ambiguous Bad Guy rears his ugly (metaphoric, literal, what have you) head sometime later at the Double R, all, "I guess I'm a little late. I'm sorry. I had some business I had to take care of." How ambiguous and filled with potential evil. The Double R is The International House of Boredom these days, isn't it? Boring boring boring. He tries to apologize, but Norma snipes back all woman-in-charge, "Don't sweet talk me. I'm thisfar from telling you to take a hike." He whines that people from his past want to see him fail and that sometimes "it's just best to hole up and wait for the storm to pass." Yawn. The coffee is all decaf and the special is "slice of Sleepy Pie and a sixteen-ounce fountain NyQuil." Because this is boring, people. Anyway, Mama Legs (that'd be the matronly figure playing Peggy Lipton's mother) comes out from the kitchen wearing an apron and announces, "The prodigal son returns!" Hank yawns (oh, wait. That's me. Hank says, "Vivian!" Whatever) and embraces Norma, telling Mama Legs that they'll be joining the newlyweds for dinner tonight, even as Norma tries to beg off. Norma can come hang out at my house, instead. We're having pizza. And we're also having fun, which is a novel concept considering the dreckful plots of poor, undeserving Norma's last few episodes. Oh, and wine. We're also having wine.
Truman stands in his office (?), looking out the window through a pair of binoculars. Pete enters the room and asks, "What you got?" Harry responds with a too-bumpkin "woodpecker," and the two bond over bird-watching. First golf, now bird-watching? Jane, would you get me offa this crazy thing called Episode 15? What's , watching my accountant do my taxes? Yes, I'm still bored. Pete speaks: "Josie's gone." Yay! Oh, I mean, "[Sniff sniff.]" Harry knows, adding, "She sold the mill to Ben Horne." Pete continues, beginning to get just a little teary about it all, "I loved her." Truman puts the binoculars down. "There, I said it. No offense, Harry." Diggin' Pete today, woodpeckers or no. Truman commiserates that he loved her too, and that he felt all hopeless when he "watched her go, watched her assistant carry her bags away." But the ambiguous "assistant" named "Mr. Lee" is who Pete was introduced to as "her cousin, Jonathan." They agree to have a "bad feeling" about all this, just as Cooper runs in to break up the proceedings and inform Truman that "Gerard's missing." They pass Andy on their way out, and he enters the station to see Lucy holding Gwen's baby. He faints dead away because he was hired to provide comic relief on this show, even though I can name, like, fifty people on this show funnier than he is. Oh, sorry. Shouldn't be speaking ill of the dead. Or am I?
Oh, now this is just too rich right here. Pete Martell enters the holding cell of the police station through the large metal door and spies Ben Horne lying on his bed, locked away. Pete cracks up at seeing Ben helpless and broken, and it also makes me crack up, too (he even checks the bars for structural integrity! Go, Pete!), and Ben keeps the ante of this scene high with his retort, "Step right in, Pete. We desperate criminals are locked safely in our cages." Pete offers, "I have a message for you," reaching into his bag and pulling out a large cassette player, thus confirming the "Diane's Family Reunion" theory proposed above. This must be "Brutus," the large but lovable tape recorder. Whatever that means. Pete presses play. Piper Laurie fills the room: "Hello, Benjamin. Oh, I'm sorry I haven't dropped by for a visit, dear, but I have a strong aversion to prisons." Ben fairly leaps off the bed and grabs the bars. "She's alive?" Pete cracks up again, and Katherine continues about "that night we spent together long ago…the night Laura Palmer died." Oh, hello, alibi. Ben grabs at the recorder through the bars, but Pete backs up and cackles again at the sport of it all. What does she want? "In exchange for my testimony, dear, you will sign the mill and Ghostwood Estates back over to me. I will consider letting you keep your precious hotel." Well, duh. Where else to stage all of those Civil War reenactments when Ben goes all loo-loo? On second thought, take the hotel, too. Dear. Katherine continues coyly that "a representative of mine will come to you with the documents within twenty-four hours." And the rest of this speech is in no way germane to the action as a whole, but it is so perfectly snarky and Katherine and oh, damn, it's good to have her back. The straight transcription is worth that small extra push toward carpal tunnel. Here it is: "If you won't cooperate, well, I'm confident that you'll go on from here to excel in one or another of the many fine career opportunities offered by the federal prison system. Ben, so nice to see you again." Pete brays, literally brays, as Ben sits on the bed whispering, "She set me up. She set. Me. Up!" Pete: "She's a caution, isn't she?" Pete leaves. Ben stands and freaks, tearing the mattresses off the bed and beating the pillows against the bars. Said pillows burst open, spilling feathers all over the room, because down pillows are a central tenet of the federal prison system. I'm so glad David Lynch or one of his committed minions didn't direct this episode, lest those pillows be spilling all over the room in slo-mo while light refracted through them and Ben danced around, pirouetting in a tutu or some such overwrought thing. This episode is so straightforward. By the guy who directed The Natural, no less! Way to slum it on TV in style, my friend. Quelle relief.
Back in Krazy Leland's Krazy Konvertible, the Demon Prince of Suburbia is all over the road while again singing "Surrey With The Fringe On Top." And while I'll grudgingly admit that I know every word to that song through a series of exigent causes I'd rather not go into here or ever, it is still my contention that this show owes something to realism, having so aptly captured the cross-section of people who enjoy Oklahoma, those people so often being demon-possessed Satanists and other assorted psychopaths. Of which Leland is both. Cut briefly to the police cruiser, in which Cooper is humming the same song. Oh, the mind-melding synergy of it all. Leland swerves all over the map, and the two cars nearly collide. Truman barely gets out of the way and blares his sirens for Leland to pull over. Leland regards the rearview mirror: "Uh-oh." But not in a scared way. In a craaaaaaazy way. Cooper and Truman walk to the car, and Leland apologizes, telling them that he was on his way to the club to try out his new golf clubs and he started thinking about Ben. They offer him the requisite PSA on leaving your troubles at home when operating a motor vehicle, and are poised to let him go when Leland keeps them around: "I did remember something, as you asked, about the night Laura died. I was working late at the office with Ben, it was about ten o'clock. He left the room to make a phone call. I don't know who he was talking to, but his voice was raised. He was angry. I heard him mention something about…a dairy." Cooper corrects him: "A diary?" Leland's not sure. Just at this moment, Lucy calls for Truman over the cruiser's radio, and when he's off, Leland asks Cooper, "You play golf, Cooper?" Cooper does: "I enjoy the precision." I dig that line. Leland wants to show him the clubs, and high drama ensues as Leland courts exposure as he opens the trunk wide and wrestles the club from Maddy's hand. Truman yells to Cooper that Hawk found Gerard, and Cooper quickly excuses himself. Leland gets back in the car and looks into the rearview mirror. BOB smiles back. Yeah, that was scary the first ten billion times we saw it, okay? Now it's just…okay, it's still scary. Damn scary. Fine.
Gwen the Superfluous Sister chats relentlessly as Lucy holds an ice pack up to Andy's head. He turns to her and whispers, "I want to talk to you about my sperms." Gwen leans in to listen to the private conversation intended specifically for not her, "Sperms? Y'know, that's all men think about." And the like. Andy keeps whispering, telling Lucy that Doc Hayward gave him the results of his test, and that the baby Lucy is pregnant with is his after all. One would also have been able to come to this conclusion based on the fact that Dick, her other suitor, so obviously dabbles in that sexual art known as "sleeping exclusively with men." Tell me I'm wrong. Come on, people. Anyway, Andy and Lucy tell Gwen to shut up, and she leaves in a huff. Andy? Lucy? Tell me to shut up so I can leave too, k? Thanks.
Ben's looking a little better. In the interrogation room, he stands tall while Mike circles him, bizarrely intoning, "BOB is very close. BOB is not here now." Jerry again demands of Truman, "Charge my client or let him go." And so Truman steps up and charges Ben with the murder of Laura Palmer. Oops for Jerry. Cooper takes Truman into the hallway and tells him, "I don't think Ben killed Laura Palmer. We should release him." At which point, Truman turns on Cooper and delivers a weirdly out-of-character non-believable "I no longer support your methods" speech that goes a little something like this: "Cooper, I've backed you every step of the way, but I've had enough of the mumbo-jumbo. I've had enough of the dreams, the visions, the dwarfs, the giants, Tibet, and the rest of the hocus-pocus. Now we've got hard evidence against Ben Horne, and it's my job to lock him up." Cooper apologizes and walks away. What?
Dinner with the Yawntastic Four at the Great Northern. Norma excuses herself to the bathroom and Mama Legs offers to come along, leaving Hank and Sports Jacket (if I had a nickel for every character I've nicknamed cruelly because of their choice of a cheesy sport jacket, I could afford to buy a wife. Not that I'm in the market for one just at the moment, but I'm just sayin') alone. Once the women are out of earshot, the two men laugh, and we discover that Sports Jacket and Hank were in prison together. This plot line goes nowhere. This scene will be recapped in depth when the breezy winds of the Arctic Circle blow through Hell.
Cooper's room. A slice of untouched cherry pie sits by the phone as a hand reaches for Diane, who must be tired after a long day of meeting and greeting tape recorders who have flown in from all around the world for the reunion. Cooper speaks: "Diane, it's 11:05 PM. I'm in my room at the Great Northern Hotel. There's not a star in the sky tonight. Ben Horne is in custody. The trail narrows, Diane. I'm very close. But the last few steps are always the darkest and most difficult." Have I mentioned that Cooper is shirtless through this sequence? I want that to be good news for y'all, but his whole abdomen is bandaged anyway, and even the slightest allusion to shirtless Kyle is too akin to Showgirls, so bummer. There's a knock on the door, and Cooper answers without asking who it is because he's too intrepid to worry about getting shot again. It's Audrey. She knows that her father has been arrested, and Cooper sidesteps her question of whether or not he's guilty, hedging, "That's for a court to decide." Audrey stands in the corner, looking appropriately sheepish when she delivers the equivalent "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed" line of this otherwise-pretty-well-written episode, telling Cooper, "All I ever wanted was for him to love me." Oh, dude. Gag me with a moodily blowing tree. Seriously. Audrey begins to bare her soul that she never let a man touch her when she was at One-Eyed Jacks, but the phone rings and Cooper attends to duty. "How long ago? I'm on my way." He tells Audrey to go to her room and lock the door, and also to leave out the part of any upcoming scripts in which she may run the risk of uttering a line of dialogue like that ever, ever again.
Waterfall pathos gives way to police lights and great chaos in the middle of a clearing somewhere. A girl is dead. They roll her over. It's Maddy Ferguson. She's dead. Wrapped in plastic.