The exterior of the Great Northern Hotel is ensconced in the self-consciously moody fog of second season pathos. We join Dale Cooper, our downed and intrepid hero, lying motionless on the floor of Room 315, much in the same position he has maintained for the entire summer of 1990, while we callous viewers were mindlessly off watching endless reruns of Parker Lewis Can't Lose and squeezing the last drops of unhumor from that oxymoronically named comedic genre known as "Gulf War Humor" (well then, why do they call it friendly fire? BWAH HA HA HA HA...ha?) and generally lazing around on the couch picking potato chip crumbs off of our Ocean Pacific shorts. Inside the room, the phone lies off the hook on the desk, and on the other end, Andy repeats numerous variations on the central theme of "Agent Cooper, it's Andy, can you here me?" The phone receiver lies on top of the note Audrey slid under Cooper's door what seems like so many weeks before, which we view from any number of different artsy angles (yes, thank you, David Lynch. We know you directed this episode. Your name appears sixty times in the opening credits, not the least memorable of which is after the words "Directed By." We already know. You can stop showboating now. Love, Fans of directorial subtlety, and Earth) while Cooper lies helpless with blood collecting in the rightward region of his abdomen.
Into a shot of the open room door eventually walks an extremely tall, extremely slower, extremely oldest hotel employee bedecked in a white tuxedo shirt and a bow tie, carrying a tray containing a glass of milk. He offers up new meaning to the verb infinitive "to amble like the walking dead" as he ambles in like the walking dead and announces proudly, "Room service!" The Elderly Room Service Waiter (this, according to the IMDb, is his character's actual name) notices an inanimate, plasma-drenched Cooper with no amount of alarm at all and leans down toward him with the query, "How're ya doin' down there?" Andy's private "Agent Cooper" monologue wails almost inaudibly in the background. TERSW announces the contents of the tray: "Warm milk." Cooper, somehow mustering the ability to speak coherently despite the aforementioned entire summer of internal bleeding, requests, "Would you put it on the table, please. And would you call a doctor?" TERSW assents, proceeding to the table which holds the phone, puts down the tray, and stares blankly at the phone receiver for the length of several cycles of the moon. A lengthy extreme close-up of the listening end of the black phone receiver (yes, Mr. Lynch. We know. You're a very wonderful director. Clap clap clap) reveals Andy's continuing, increasingly fearful yelps, and TERSW picks up the receiver and very. Slowly. Hangs. It. Up. He turns back to Cooper: "I hung it up for you." Cooper wants to know if he called a doctor, and the confused ERSW repeats that the phone is hung up. And it's not until this moment at which Cooper and TERSW really begin to interact that I wonder, in reality, which one of these variously infirmed individuals is, in fact, closer to death's door and more immediate requiring of medical attention. 'Cause I can't say I'm not just a little worried about them both.
No, really, this sequence is still going on. The only reason I even began a new paragraph is because I have a really small computer monitor and, quite frankly, my eyes were starting to hurt a bit. Cooper again asks if TERSW has called a doctor, and the old man becomes exasperated in didactically enunciating, "It's HUNG UP. THE PHONE." Because Cooper's the idiot, see. Cooper gives up and thanks him. TERSW tells him it's no problem, before turning to the desk to retrieve the bill for the room service delivery and leaning down for Cooper to sign it. Cooper takes a glance at it and inquires breathily, "Does this include a gratuity?" Heh. A little first season quirk coming right up, thanks. And for those of you eager to start tying up some loose plot ends that have been left dangling over the course of the show so far, fear not. Closure cometh: the bill does, in fact, include a gratuity. Cooper signs. The end.
up, TERSW warns Cooper that the milk will get cool if he doesn't drink it soon. Awwwww. What an unbelievably helpful member of the food service industry this man is. TERSW begins to leave, then turns back to Cooper, smiles big, and announces, "I've heard about you," before offering a big thumbs up. He leaves. He returns once more. He's heard about Cooper. Another thumbs up. Cooper returns the favor. TERSW smiles and leaves. Big pause. He returns. Thumbs up. The deafening roar of televisions all around the country switching the channel to ANYTHING ELSE drowns out any potential dialogue that might have taken place over the last six minutes. Let 'em go. Secretly, I like this whole sequence.
TERSW finally gets gone for good, but if you think that development is going to signal a dramatic increase in plot evolution, locale diversity, or camera movement, you've joined the second season already-in-progress and you've probably never seen it before. Onward: as Cooper continues to lie motionless, an even balder, even slower-speaking, and much, much, much taller figure appears above Cooper as the lights dim, and this giant's shadow looms large. Strangely, he is also wearing a bow tie. Cue ten million perspective shots of The Giant as shot from the floor. Right. Tall. Got it. He speaks: "I will tell you three things. If I tell them to you and they come true, then will you believe me?" Cooper wants to know just who in the holy hell this guy is, and The Giant cryptically responds, "The question is: where have you gone." No, it's not, Billy Crystal's tall and wacky comic foil in the slapstick sensation My Giant -- the question is why Cooper is two for two in visitors who won't beckon for medical attention while someone's bleeding to death right in front of them. That, in fact, is the question. But The Giant wants to talk of issues ambiguous rather than issues transfusional, and so he continues. Here are the three things he tells Cooper. None of which, mysteriously, is "the ambulance will be arriving directly. Oh, and the mainstream American viewing audience is not collectively paralyzed with alienated boredom right now." Because then Cooper wouldn't have a reason to believe him. The three things are thus:
1. There's a man in a smiling bag. [Eh?]
2. The owls are not what they seem. [Eh? redux]
3. Without chemicals, he points. [Check, please.]
Oy. The Giant tells Cooper that's all he is permitted to say. He then takes Cooper's ring and tells him that he will return it when Cooper "find[s] these things to be true." The Giant insists, "We want to help you." Well then, for freak's sake, pick up the phone and call...oh, never mind. But wait, there's more: "Leo locked inside a hungry horse. There's a clue at Leo's house." Well, now, there's something a bit more tangible, eh? The Giant also offers his version of procuring for Cooper an opportunity to live out the scene with his final declaration: "You will require medical attention." Oh, you don't say. I wasn't aware your actual name was DOCTOR Giant. That part was left out of the usually comprehensive IMDb. But now I know. The Giant fades and disappears and the room returns to its lighting scheme. Cooper bleeds. Lynch and Frost high five. The rest of America lies comatose and disoriented on their couches, waiting with dwindling patience for the series premiere of Law & Order.
Jacks. Ben knocks on the door of the red velvet room where Audrey has accidentally gotten wrapped up in this whole whoring game. Audrey shuts herself behind two curtains surrounding her bed. As Ben advances, she slaps at him through the curtain, causing him to smile and announce, "Mmmm, vixen." Not the desired reaction, or so I imagine.
Outside the room, Jerry enters Jacks to find Blackie, and asks what room Ben is in. Blackie acts coy and slyly provocative for a change, asking Jerry, "Why's he holding out on me?" Much to Blackie's surprise, Jerry's character has been hastily redrawn as a much darker, tantrum-prone (for, like, one episode) firebrand, who advances quickly on Blackie and shouts, "What's that, Blackie?" and "Who's holding out on who?" and blah blah blah I-think-the-word-is-"whom"-cakes. He shines an overhead light in her face and she winces. He drops a small bag of white on her desk and leaves. Incidentally, Jerry is wearing a leather jacket in this scene that makes loud, crinkling sounds when he so much as moves a finger or when his heart beats, and it subdues much of the intended intensity of the whole incident, I imagine. He leaves and she spits "bastard!" Which, truth be told, he is. For one day.
Back inside the father/daughter conference room, Audrey tells Ben she thinks he should leave. He accepts, chalking it up to foreplay, and walks toward the door. He slams it shut and stays inside, advancing again on the red velvet curtains. Audrey, not raised a fool (say what you will for her upbringing from a moral perspective at this particular moment), knows this game isn't over, and spots a decorative mask hanging above the bed. She removes it from its hook as Ben advances. He tears the curtain open and sees just the feet of his intended sexual conquest, the rest of her concealed beneath a blanket. He pulls back the blanket. Her face is hidden behind the mask, and she thwarts his insistence to see her by smacking him away again and again. Just as his patience starts to evaporate, Jerry knocks on the door and announces that they have "a situation." But just as he departs, Ben tells his "new girl" that "time [they] will play a different game...Fun game! Everybody wins." Ben departs. Audrey takes off the mask and looks horrified, staunch in the knowledge that two of the primary life experiences she has yet encounter -- having sex and having a conversation with her father -- should probably not occur simultaneously. Especially the first time for either.
Back at the Great Northern, Cooper lies stiller than still. He speaks: "Diane, my recorder is on the table. I am unable to reach it at this time." He hopes that the voice activation feature has been, well, activated, and we cut briefly up to the table to note that his words are being recorded. He tells Diane he has been shot and, even though he was wearing his bullet proof vest at the time, he had folded the bottom of the vest up in futile pursuit of a wood tick who had found its way under. He's in pain. He is bleeding. He waxes mortal: "All things considered, being shot is not as bad as I always thought it might be. As long as you can keep the fear from your mind. But I guess you can say that about most anything in life. It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind." He tilts his head up off the floor ever so slightly. He checks his hand. The ring, in fact, is gone. Well, if he really needs proof of The Giant's existence in the room, why doesn't he just wait until he returns to the land of the not so dead and, oh, I don't know...check the voice activated tape recorder, maybe? Incidentally, that's also the smart piece of evidence I would use to insure the swift and brutal dismissal of a certain ERSW I might think to name here, what for his being so "helpful" just a few short scenes back. Cooper waxes mortal, part deux: "I would like to climb a tall hill. Not too tall. Sit in the cool grass. Not too cool. And feel the sun on my face." He also regrets not cracking the Lindbergh baby case (quirk. Amusing. I like it). He also wishes he could visit Tibet. And so he believes it is his time to go. But just as he closes his eyes, Truman, Hawk, and Andy come crashing into Room 315, guns a-blazin'. Cooper smiles wanly and whispers, "Ah. They're here." Viva la Coop!
Cut to the interior of the hospital, where Cooper is lying on a bed, quietly explaining the wood tick and the bulletproof vest and the three shots fired to a slowly-focusing group of Doc Hayward, Truman, and Lucy. The good doctor holds up a pair of tweezers in which is a bullet with a dead, bloody tick at the end of it and observes, "Hell of a way to kill a tick." Again, nice. Truman suggests that Lucy bring Cooper up to date. She obliges: "Leo Johnson was shot, Jacques Renault was strangled, the mill burned, Shelley and Pete got smoke inhalation, Katherine and Josie are missing, Nadine is in a coma from taking sleeping pills." Cooper just about brings down the room (my room) when he asks incredulously, "How long have I been out?" Cooper knows intrinsically that they need to obtain a warrant to search Leo's house ("There's a clue..."), and Truman responds that said warrant will not be necessary as Leo was shot in his own living room. Cooper sits up. Hayward tells him that he is not going anywhere, and old Cooper returns for a flash when he holds up a hand and insists, "Doc, when the will is invoked, the recuperative powers of the physical body are extraordinary." He tries to move. "Just give me a couple of hours to get dressed." I've changed my mind. This show never tanked. At least not in this scene.
Funky tracking shots of the charred mill that would probably look really, really cool in widescreen. Because we haven't spent enough cumulative time inside the hospital over the course of the last three hours of Twin Peaks screen time, this footage is being shown on a television above Shelley's bed in another hospital room somewhere. Summer has not been kind to Shelley. She lies in bed, tubes everywhere, hair a tousled mess, whimpering, "Bobby, Bobby," over and over and over again. Mr. Reporter Man reports for our benefit that the mill burned "under what fire department investigators are calling mysterious circumstances."
Cooper is dressed in his FBI duds once more and walking very, very slowly out of his hospital room. Hayward chases after him warning, "This is totally against my recommendations." They are interrupted by a stretcher carrying a plastic covering which obviously conceals a human body. Hayward tells him that it's "Jacques Renault," and Cooper does absolutely no good in convincing his friends and colleagues that his mental or physical state are up to par enough to continue in this here law-enforcing business when he peers at the stretcher and mystifyingly (to them, anyway) inquires, "Is that bag smiling?" Lucy wants to know just what there is to smile about. Cooper hobbles after the stretcher.
And, in a long neglected wing of the place, Ronette Pulaski stirs for the first time in some time. She whispers, "Laura, Laura," and opens her eyes ever so slightly. Wait. Who's "Laura"? Haven't heard her mentioned in a while.
Sarah and Maddy chill silently in the Palmer living room, Maddy staring intently at a patch of carpet in front of the chair and distractedly thwarting Sarah's surprising attempt at sane, non-yelping small talk of any kind. But they have to rile her up, don't they? Maddy: "I had the strangest dream last night." Uh. Oh. Her dream was about the rug. Sarah leans forward -- surprise -- disturbingly, and whispers, "Was Laura in it?" But before she can answer, Leland comes bounding out of the darkest corner of nowhere, smiling broadly, dancing with great jollity, and singing a rousing chorus of "Mares Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats." Sarah rolls her eyes in that yeah-at-least-I'm-not-possessed-by-the-devil kind of way and turns to face him, and Sarah and Maddy note at roughly the same moment that Leland's hair has turned completely white overnight. And to accentuate the coloring even further, he's wearing a black suit and looks completely clean cut and healthy for the first time since the pilot. He sings and sings. "A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you? A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you. [Slows down] A kid'll eat ivy too [big finish, jazz hands to the sky] wouldn't you!" He bids the two ladies a good morning, kicks it up a half step, launches into verse two, and takes off from the room. Sarah looks confusedly around before deciding to "but Ricky, I want to be in the band" after him, and takes her leave of the living room. Maddy checks out the carpet again as a red, blood-like substance of some kind spreads across the floor before her eyes and disappears. She shrieks and wails and goes ten different kinds of crazy in the place where "ten different kinds of crazy" got its good name to begin with.
Best. Scene. Ever. Ben and Jerry stand in Ben's office as Ben barks orders to Jerry for post-mill-fire damage control. He wants to find Katherine, he wants a medical report on Leo Johnson and his prognosis for recovery, he wants Hank Jennings to tell them why Leo isn't being implicated for the fire. He wants...he wants...he wants...HE WANTS TO DANCE! And dance he does, when their meeting takes a sudden turn for the Tommy Tune in the form of Leland appearing at the door smack dab in the scenery-chewing middle of "Mares Eat Oats," verse ten million and seven. Or so. Ben and Jerry exchange a "well, why the hell not" glance before dancing up the two steps to where Leland stands. Ben starts to snap (on the one and the three, which is a little bit strange) and then leaps on his desk and partakes of a very adept tap dance intended to remind the viewing audience that, yes, he really, really was in West Side Story. Jerry leaps off the steps onto the floor in a reminder that if he wasn't cast as the wacky comic lead in Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, he definitely should have been. All he needs is the refrigerator box and the reek of failed actor rising off him like a fog wherever he goes. Leland croons up to the unresolved cadence, "Now if the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey. Say mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy..." Then he stops, the dramatic high point primed enough for Leland to break forth with his big announcement, "I'm back. Back and ready." Gong.
The law-enforcing quartet is back in full force over at the Johnson place. Cooper, standing stationary in one corner of the room, puts together the entire sequence of events leading up to Leo's shooting. He knows someone was knocked back into the television, and he knows it has to be someone who weighs more than Shelley. He still can't identify the shooter from outside. Hawk enters the place with some fresh issues of Flesh World recovered from Leo's truck, along with a jacket smelling of gasoline. Meanwhile, outside the house, a large white luxury sedan of some kind pulls onto the property, and out of the car steps a stoic-looking Albert, toting, as per usual, some of the more official members of His Team. Andy cowers away and yells into the house that "it's Agent Rosenflower," and turns to run. Instead, he steps on a loose plank on the porch, which lifts from the ground and slams him directly in the forehead. Andy embarks on a rather lengthy dance of delusion as Albert stands shaking his head and announcing, "And it's another great moment in law enforcement history." Welcome back to Twin Peaks, Albert. But, as it turns out, beneath the floorboard Cooper and Truman discover "a new pair of boots and a lot of cocaine." Oh! "Leo needs a new pair of shoes!" I think I just got it somehow.
Yeah, so, um, I can pretty much do without all this right here. Over at the Double R, Donna meets Maddy to show off her vampy new hairstyle, increasingly skeletal frame, advances in blush and rouge make-up technology, and, if I'm not mistaken, an even straighter nose than the one she had last season. Maddy has brought Donna Laura's sunglasses, as requested, and Donna takes them and lights a cigarette. 'Cause she's a bad girl now. Speaking of radical doings in corrective eye wear (quite a brave arc for this scene to take on), Maddy takes off her giant red glasses and asks Donna, "Do see these glasses that I'm wearing?" Seeing as those glasses are one of three man-made structures visible from space, I'm going to have to go ahead and guess that Donna can, indeed, see the glasses. Maddy breaks them in half. She's a bad girl now, too. The conversation turns to Jacoby, and Maddy frets that they were responsible for Jacoby's heart attack. Donna tells her to shut up about all that. Maddy spookily recounts to Donna the current coloring state of "Uncle Leland's hair." Norma brings over a note delivered to the Double R for Donna that reads, "Look into the Meals on Wheels." At the booth over, the Log Lady drinks coffee and spits a large wad of gum onto the table, picks it up, and sticks it conspicuously up on the wall to the booth. 'Cause it's the second season. And we're real moody now.
Yeah, I know he was shot right in the tummy and all, but a shot of shirtless Cooper evokes just one too many mental associations with the lobotomy-necessitating pool sequence in Showgirls, so it's of the utmost apprehension to me when we arrive in the police station to find Albert inspecting Cooper's wound. Albert determines that Cooper was shot by a right-handed gunman at less than a three foot range. "Meanwhile," Albert continues, "One of your principal suspects is killed in his hospital bed and the other is shot in his living room. You tell me: vigilante justice or just clean, country living?" Yup. Still funny. Cooper suggests that Albert attempt to make peace with rural life if he intends to stay on and get his job done. Albert volleys: "Great. After the square dance maybe we can all take a hayride." Andy enters. More "country mouse, city mouse" hilarity ensues, which I'm skipping because I think I've transcribed every line Albert has spoken so far in the entire series and it's giving me carpal tunnel. Andy reports that Leo was in jail in a town called Hungry Horse, Montana on a night that Cooper and Albert identify as the same night Theresa Banks was murdered. So that offers him an alibi for the serial murder string and even clears up The Giant's clue "Leo locked inside a hungry horse." But it's not even one of the "three things" that The Giant had to say. It was a clue addendum. A throwaway Hardy Boys plot not getting us any closer to what the holy hell is really going on here. Albert dispenses further rudeness.
Lucy sits at her desk and watches a man with one arm holding a suitcase enter the police station. He asks for Truman, and Lucy apologizes over the eerie strings that try to make the black-clad man even slightly imposing and he tells Lucy: "I'm here to sell him some shoes." The camera zooms closer, closer, closer on Lucy for, like, five hours, until she finally looks around curiously and inquires, "Shoes?" And speaking of awkward, stilted timing (some intended, some James), Truman and James sit in an interrogation room listening to the tape Laura made for Jacoby the night she was murdered. I'm glad the tape finally made it into the right hands. Slater Fetus (looking no less downy and unfully formed than he did last trimester -- I, er, mean "season") tells Truman that he doesn't think the "mystery man" on Laura's tape is Leo or Jacques. Remember, Slater Fetus begs, that Laura tells us that the mystery man can "really light [her] fire." He remembers a time he and Laura were in the woods and Laura lashed out to James, "Would you like to play with fire, little boy? Would you like to play with BOB? Would you like to play with BOB?" Yawn. Even this material he makes deader than dead.
Cooper and Hawk enter the room, and Cooper launches in: "I know you have the other half of Laura's necklace. I want it. Give it to me." James does turn in a pretty adept simulation of "sub-par actor who thinks he's expressing surprise," but he turns over the necklace anyway and tells Cooper that he found the offending jewelry in Jacoby's office, "in a coconut." Cooper has Hawk escort James back to his cell and, as soon as he is gone, Truman asks how he knew James had the necklace. 'Cause he's real smart, like. He knew James had it because he and Laura were in love, and he would have willfully turned it over to the police should someone not have spooked him into thinking that keeping it would get him in trouble. The wild card in all this, Cooper tells Truman, is what role Jacoby plays and how he ended up with the darn thing.
More police station hijinks for Lucy. Donna and her new best friend Maxx, TJ Maxx, make their way into the police station, and Lucy glares for a moment as Donna smokes and broods before inquiring, genuinely curious, "Donna?" Donna takes a drag. "I'm here to see James." Cut to her seeing James. They talk through the bars. Donna offers up that the police haven't asked her for information, so she hasn't gone out of her way to be particularly forthcoming with any. And then, in an otherwise pretty darn tootin' good episode, it must be said, the following exchange inexplicably takes place:
Slater Fetus: When did you start smokin'?
Donna: I smoke every once in a while. Helps relieve tension.
Slater Fetus: When did you get so tense?
Donna: When I started smokin'.
Okay, that exchange right there might have worked with Audrey and Cooper, or Shelley and Bobby, or Moe and Curly before a rib-tickling "nyuck nyuck nyuck" and the throwing of numerous cream pies, but these two...I'm sayin'. They kiss through the bars. Drivel ensues.
Back at the police station, Cooper sets Lucy and Andy to the kind-of-mean mutual task of sitting together at a long table, on which are boxes of "every edition of Flesh World published for the last three years." He gives them a photograph of Theresa Banks and tells them to find a picture of her in the magazine. He leaves, informing them that he and Truman will be at the hospital and, more importantly, "behave yourselves." He takes his leave of the room, letting Diane know as follows: "I have just received the back issues of Flesh World. Good work. It's nice to see some cooperation with the law, especially from a company that preys on human weaknesses." Very interesting social commentary there, Coop.
Wait just one moment more. Are we at the hospital again? Back at Calhoun Memorial, Doc Hayward asks an attending nurse if Jacoby is "on something." He looks into Jacoby's eyes and sees only a dazed stare. The nurse tells Hayward that "he did take some of his food," and a shot of the tray sets in motion a running sight gag in which six pools of grossly non-primary colors sitting on a tray constitute meal time for the infirm. Cooper and Truman bust into Jacoby's room. Skipping the politeness altogether, Cooper unkindly bursts in: "I don't want any baloney, magic tricks, or psychological mumbo-jumbo. I want you to tell us how you came into this or I'm going to have to place you under arrest for obstruction of justice." He unearths the heart necklace. Jacoby reiterates his story about following a man in a red Corvette the night Laura died. He lost sight of the car near the Old Saw Mill Road, as he told Cooper in one of the first three episodes, and finally finishes his story seven weeks (or, in TV time on this show, about six hours) later with the saga's continuing arc: "As I sat there, cursing my lack of horsepower, a motorcycle drove by, followed by a police cruiser. But you lost them. They went into the woods. I saw them, I followed them in there on foot. They spoke intently for a while but I couldn't hear what they were saying." Couldn't hear them? Lucky you, doctor. He reports truthfully the rest of the story. They buried the heart necklace and he commandeered it as a keepsake. Jacoby continues that Laura was living a double life, but that the last time he saw her it seemed as if she had reached a peace with herself. Which, remember, is what Slater Fetus said on the matter once before. But now, Jacoby believes, Laura displayed such clarity the last time he saw her because she had come to a decision that she would "allow herself to be killed." One more thing. They want to know if Jacoby saw anything concerning the Renault murder. There was a "peculiar smell," he reports, of "oil. Scorched engine oil." Well, I heard there was a fire at the mill, so…maybe the writers were taking all pains necessary to try and create a second season story arc anywhere near as consistent as the first. The very key to which, of course, is making sure that two out of every three characters mention the riveting "smell of oil." I see season three renewal lurking around the shadowy corners of that hospital even as early as right now.
Y'know, folks, we joke and we laugh and all, but when it comes to tape interference, there's nothing funny about it. Particularly in the second season debut of one Bobby Briggs, who enters Shelley's hospital room during a particularly severe static storm. Here's what sort of happens. Flowers. Food is bad. Leo in hospital. Shelley afraid. They kiss, and Bobby's continuing superhuman hotness melts the plastic tubing running in and out of each of Shelley's facial orifices, dissolving them instantly and killing her, causing Bobby to hightail it over here to be comforted in my comfy, non-hospital bed. God, I love this scene.
My not-always-easy task of funny commentary once again takes a back seat to the technically challenging but enviable mental interlude in my recapping existence when Albert (see where this is going?), Truman, and Cooper watch Bobby emerge from Shelley's hospital room. The three note Bobby.
Cooper: What's he doing here?
Truman: He doesn't look sick.
Albert: Sheriff Truman, to see this kind of investigative genius at work. It's just a real treat for me.
No reaction from that crowd. I guess they've heard that joke before. They continue down the hall, running into Ed outside of Nadine's room. The gas station owner offers Cooper a strangely Tribiani-esque "How YOU doin'" before segueing into a speech about the domestic horror that is his every moment on Earth: "I never believed in fate, Agent Cooper. I always felt you make your own way, you take care of your own, you pick up after yourself." Albert takes a stab as to the source material of this little homily: "Farmer's Almanac?" No one laughs. Wow. Thud again. Maybe he should try moving to some bluer material. Cooper sends Albert packing (wow. He got gonged. He is off today. I thought he was great. Then again, I'm a LaBarca fan, myself ["And, really, who isn't?" -- Sars]). Harry and Albert stand about three feet off to the side, drinking coffee and listening to Ed's response to Cooper's inquiry, "When did you get married, Ed?" Apparently, Ed had been dating Norma for four years, and she ran off with Hank one weekend in high school. He barely even knew Nadine at the time, but she endeared herself to him real quick-like, and they drove all night the night they met, and Ed proposed to her right there and then in some backwoods part of Montana. Rather than in one of those sprawling urban centers Big Sky Country has to offer. "I asked her to marry me. Half joking, half drunk, half crazy." One and a half Eds. Wow, ain't that just enough down-home, good-guy, syrupy sincerity for an entire county. Yes sirree Bob, you betcha. Anyway, Norma stayed chaste on her getaway weekend with Hank. Big time oopsie. Albert checks his watch. So Ed and Nadine took off on a honeymoon to a remote cabin in the woods; Ed was hoping they would find some time to talk about a divorce or an annulment. Wow, this charming country tale could really use a jolt right about now: "Y'know, by golly, I shot out Nadine's eye on that honeymoon." Albert reintroduces himself to the story. Turns out Ed took a shot at a pheasant and the bullet ricocheted directly into her eye. Albert begins to smirk, barely concealing the braying laughter he would like to express at this moment. Anyway, Ed feels guilty. "I don't believe in fate. You make your bed, you sleep in it." Slater Fetus inexplicably drops in to say hi.
Cooper turns toward what appears to be an empty janitorial room of some kind and notices a large black bag suspended from two hooks. It is open and sags in the middle. It appears, if one must formulate a text description of its appearance, to be a "smiling bag." Hey, it's Clue #1. Thanks, Giant!
A mysteriously alive Pete Martell peers at the foodstuff product on the tray before him, and he removes his oxygen tubes just long enough to smell the food, recoil at the continued culinary horror, and replace the tubes in all great haste. Back in the hallway, Cooper tells Harry he is ready to "lay the whole thing out." Truman asks if he will be requiring "rocks and bottles," and Cooper responds that "chalk and blackboard will be just fine." Truman muses as to the necessity for jelly donuts, and Cooper finishes off his role in a surprisingly solid hour of quirk with the retort, "Harry, that goes without saying." They walk past Shelley's room, where Norma is exiting with yet another crack about the food. They arrange to sneak in some treats later on. Norma takes her leave and walks past Nadine's room before she exits the hospital, and spots Ed kneeling beside Nadine's bed and holding her hand and looking very, very sincere.
Meanwhile, over at the finest (read: only) eating establishment the sprawling Twin Peaks metro area has to offer, Bobby Briggs sits at the counter at the Double R, smoking a cigarette and looking very, very impatient with the service. His uniformed father sits in a booth behind him, and as my TV screen turns inexplicably blue for a minute (have those DVDs been released yet? Have y'all chipped in to get me that new DVD player...yet?), Bobby has apparently been beckoned over to the table by the esteemed major. I use this blue time wisely, musing on my joyful relief that the baldness gene is passed down through the mother's side. We rejoin the action already in the progress, the two exchanging awkward unpleasantries of the "How was school" and "How was work" and "Who's your daddy, you fresh-faced hunk of man meat, you" variety. Except for the last one which, mercifully, was a shouted ad lib from that improv bastion known as "my apartment," which would be a perfectly acceptable sentiment if delivered by any OTHER character than the current daddy in question. Um. Anyway. Bobby hazards some inroads into this spellbinding conversation, even taking the time to sit, fully erect (ew, not like that) in the booth and deadpan across the table, "Dad, what is it that you do, exactly?" The major takes a thoughtful bite of his delicious pie (they serve delicious pie at the Double R. I'm not sure this has been thoroughly established enough) before answering, "That's classified." The major takes pains to steer the conversation toward less a confidential arena, opting for the son-friendly rhetoric of the decidedly unclassified Project Sara Lee, asking, "Bobby, would you care for a piece of pie? The huckleberries are particularly delicious. Particularly fresh. And delicious." No pie for the crestfallen Bobby.
Without even the slightest alteration in the tone of voice the major employs for every sentiment, he does his best I'd-like-to-bring-the-room-down-a-bit routine and miraculously changes the entire tone of the conversation with his request, "Bobby, may I share something with you?" And so the major's patented brand of undeniably unique, thesaurus-friendly, Yoda-esque syntaxed rhetoric kicks into high gear anew. It works great in this scene. It's been an excellent complement to the action of the show in numerous other places in the past. In. Small. Doses. But if you listen ever so carefully (and again, I'll be needing someone to buy me the DVD just so I can be sure) to the very end of this scene, you can practically hear the "man overboard" cries for help and the subsequent watery splash that are part and parcel of the major's character ever so subtly jumping the shark. But let us revel in the good times while the times are still good, shall we then? He begins: "A vision I had in my sleep last night. As distinguished from a dream, which is mere sorting and cataloging of the day's events by the subconscious. This was a vision, fresh and clear as a mountain stream. The mind revealing itself to itself." Oops. That was so complexly trippy I think I just became stoned by accident. But in that kind of clichéd "how do you know that the color green you're seeing is the same color green I'm seeing" sort of way. But the vision is significant, as it comes to bear in numerous later episodes where the major launches into several identical speeches of conspicuously diminishing returns. And as goes the shark, so goes the jumping. As they say. Anyway: "In my vision, I was on the verandah of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within this gleaming, radiant marble. I had known this place." Hmmm. An outdoor terrace in a place containing surfaces of questionably authentic precious veneers, experienced by a man with a penchant for dessert-like confections of all varieties? Do I smell a wacky crossover episode where the major disappears from Twin Peaks for an extended period and shows up one fateful Miami night eating cheesecake on the Golden Girls' lanai? You know how that wily, over-sexed Blanche loves herself a bald man. Perhaps it's fate. Or perhaps it's a stretch. Or perhaps I'm rambling pointlessly to within an inch of my job. It's difficult to know for sure. ["Hey, you worked the word 'lanai' into a recap. Don't beat yourself up." -- Sars] Bobby checks out the latest OED definition of "nonplused" for the greater part of this story, and exhibits it marvelously until his father finally makes it all about the boy, reporting, "Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock at the door." I'm sorry, is he describing a particularly spirited game of Zork he recently played on his Commodore 64? Because if so, he'd better get about lighting that lantern posthaste and looking out for the lurking grues. They're out there. Anyway, the knock at the door yielded this: "My son was standing there. He was happy and carefree. Clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced, warmly, a loving embrace. Nothing was held back. We were, in this moment, one." He woke feel feeling real happy and optimistic for Bobby's future. Bobby smiles and starts to cry. The major wishes Bobby all the best as he rises from the booth and, in a personal favorite directorial touch of mine, reaches out and shakes his son's hand. He grabs his overcoat, salutes Hank on the exceptional pie, and leaves. Brilliant. Consistent. Over. Splash.
Norma passes the major on her way in to the Double R. Hank inquires as to Shelley's well-being, and Norma morbidly requires that she "can't talk right now." She retreats to the kitchen, and Hank shrugs his shoulders and tosses Bobby that "Women. Can't live with 'em, can't be ambiguously eeeeeevil around them" kind of male bonding ritual that does nothing to rouse Bobby from his paternally-induced revelry. That is, until, he stares one moment too long at Hank and experiences a flash of Hank shooting Leo in the Johnson living room. He clenches his fist and stares pensively at the salt shaker, which offers no Magic-8 ball answers of any kind. How ambiguous. How eeeevil.
Police station. Cooper takes a sip of coffee and delivers to the assembled crowd of Truman, Hawk, Andy, Lucy, and Albert a Cliff's Notes version of the only reason people were tuning in to the show at this point anyway. Cooper now believes that the "Nervous about meeting 'J' tonight" reference in Laura's diary does in fact refer to James Hurley, since she was to break up with that evening. While Cooper and Albert trade voice-overs, a Lynchian look-I-learned-this-and-this-and-this-and-this-and-this-on-my-summer-vacation- and-oh-look-at-this-button-on-my-what's-this-called-oh-yeah-a-camera mess of first season shots ensues, covering ground from the crime scene to the traffic light to the ominously blowing trees in the wind, all double exposed over a slowly moving shot of the table of donuts that sits before them in the conference room. Why? Because if Academy voters don't understand what it is they're looking at, they are statistically more willing to nominate the show for yet another trunkload of Emmys it ultimately has no chance of winning. Because that's what it means to create art. Purposeless, self-indulgent, so-conscious-if-its-own-existence-it-can-see-itself-coming-art, clearly. But art of the highest order. Before Laura left her house on the night of the murder, Leo called her and arranged to see her after her meeting with James. This is why Laura leapt off James's motorcycle and ran frazzled into the woods at the intersection of Sparkwood and 21. There, Laura met up with Jacques, Leo, and Ronette. They went to Jacques' cabin, passing the Log Lady's house on the way, indulged in many drug fun times, Laura had tied-up bondage sex with Leo and Jacques, Waldo pecked, Jacques and Leo fought, and Jacques passed out outside, waking up to find Leo and the girls gone. Cooper conjectures that Leo left the girls alone and took off in his Corvette. Apparently (someone explain to me when this came to light and I'll give you the gift of allowing you to buy me the DVD), Hawk found evidence of a "third man" outside of Jacques' apartment, and they believe that he is responsible for the murder. Since the "Fire, Walk With Me" note was written in a blood type that doesn't match any of the other participants, they believe it was this man who hit Ronette and killed Laura. Andy stares down the prom photo of Laura sitting on the table, which was also a visual element of the Bar-Mitzvah-video montage going on for the better part of the last few minutes, and begins to cry at the barbarity of it all. Agent Rosenflower pipes up first, comforting, "I know, Andy I know, I know, I know. It's what we call a real three-hanky crime." Andy stands up for himself, standing and telling "Agent Roserfelt" to shut his mouth. He leaves. Stunned silence and heartfelt support for Hick's Rights all around. Cooper continues with the facts of the case, ducking every so often to avoid getting smacked by one of the many smug looks ricocheting off the walls of the conference room: "Laura Palmer is dead. Jacques Renault is dead. Ronette Pulaski and Leo Johnson are in comas. Waldo the bird is dead. This leaves only the third man." In other recap news: Josie. Still alive. James. Still alive. Bobby. Still dressed. Someone solve for me these heinous TV crimes, and then we'll talk about Mr. Third Man and the mysterious evil that lurks within as much as you please.
Pete Martell, hacking and coughing still, is accompanied into his home by the endlessly helpful Truman. Pete stops by the kitchen counter to retrieve a note in an envelope, and the two sit down for the reading: "Dear Pete, I had to leave the town on an emergency of business to Seattle. I will phone you when I arrive. Hope you did a good day at the mill. There is ginger beer in the refridge. Love, Josie." Yay! Seattle! I simply could not be any happier with her being in Seattle. If by Seattle, of course, you mean, well, "dead." But Seattle is far enough for now. Pete comforts Harry that Josie takes off for Seattle every few months and that this hardly seems out of the ordinary, and Pete proposes, "You want my opinion, I think she goes over there to indulge a secret vice." Big buildup, big buildup, big buildup..."shopping." He laughs at his own joke, a guffaw that quickly turns into the racking hacks of a smoke inhalation victim, and Harry calms him down just in time to set his already fragile emotions on edge once more: "Pete, we haven't found Katherine." Pete tears up. He divulges that he always figured Katherine to be "the last person to withstand an atomic war," so it comes as a great surprise to them both that she should have put up so little a fight before finding her new home at the great Raquel Welch-esque Derivative Hyper-Dramatic Acting School in the sky. Pete can rationalize what a nightmare she was to live with, but, well, goddamn, he loved her. He wails a nicely believable "God bless her miserable soul," and I officially change my vote from Big Ed to Pete for the winner of the "Least Obsequiously Sincere Innocent Too Good Good Guy" Award, which Ed has been a little too dew-eyed to maintain these last few episodes. And don't think Pete's shrewd propensity for avoiding string ties as part of his everyday wardrobe didn't have just a tiny little bit to do with that. The phone rings. Truman runs to retrieve it, and on the other end is an Asian man sporting a pony tail calling from a pay phone at the Great Northern. He asks for Josie, and when Truman tells the man that she's "out of town," he hangs up abruptly and makes another call, an "international" enterprise, "collect," to "Hong Kong." Do I remember anything about this man's character? Does his presence insure increased exposure to the many faces of Josie in upcoming, post-blessed-Seattle episodes? Does it make it wrong that these facts conspire to make me instantly hate him? Extra, extra, read all about too many extras.
Elsewhere at the Great Northern, Ben and Jerry walk through the lobby while Jerry speaks at length about a yummy dessert food he has recently had the good fortune to sample. They walk inside Ben's office, which is dark and shadowy for the first time in series history, because it's a) moody, b) moody, c) Hank Jennings. Yes, yes, and NO!!! But really, yes. He is standing in front of a roaring fire, barely visible, and the Horne brothers waste no time getting to the business at hand. Where's Josie? Why isn't Leo dead? Where's Katherine? Who's to blame? Ben theorizes on the matter: "Gentlemen, if they don't hang the arson on the late, lamented Katherine and her co-conspirator Leo, I'll give up sex." Jerry gets in Hank's face about nothing, and the whole scene almost comes to fisticuffs.
Over at One-Eyed Jacks, Audrey takes a meeting with Blackie, who tells her ingenue "Hester" that "the owner" was a little disappointed with her "performance" last night. Blackie strokes Audrey's hair and cajoles, "And what is your type, exactly?" Audrey leans in and responds with a line so casually delivered it seems like an ad lib left in by an editor with a great sense of humor and penchant for the leisure activities of the unemployed: "Not you. No offense." A hulking bodyguard is beckoned to manhandle Audrey while Blackie ups the intensity: "When you work for me, everybody's your type." Audrey stands resolute, determined to keep herself pure in love until the right man can show her some real lovin'. And I'm sorry to project into the foreseeable future of a plot thread so pointless this can't even be considered spoilage, but if I were Audrey I'd pocket some of that resolve I used to stave off the advances of the "owner," which she'll need a few weeks down the line when a "true love" character rolls into town and takes care of the deflowering duties straight-away.
It's raining steadily outside of the Hayward's modest suburban home, because all that drippiness in her character needs somewhere to go, now that Donna's character has become suddenly redrawn as so unbelievably (sarcastic open quote) cool (eye-rollingly superior end quote). Ahem. She's on the phone with Norma, telling her she wants to take over Laura's Meals on Wheels route. Huzzah. Inside the living room, Leland and Sarah, Maddy, Donna's parents, Donna, and her intriguingly recurrent sister Harriet (hope springs eternal for Sylvia Horne, it suddenly seems) sit around the living room table while yet another Hayward sister, Gersten, welcomes the assembled attendees to "The Hayward Supper Club." Gersten sports a fairy princess ensemble, replete with a magic wand and tiara -- a costume, she tells them, she will be wearing in an upcoming school play. (Shhh. You guys, I can't recap the scene if I can't here it over your loud collective cries of, "Yeah, but why is she wearing it AT DINNER?" I really don't know. Why, indeed? Why is Leland wearing a tuxedo? Why is Donna once again dressed to the Maxx? Wasn't the disbelief of the viewing audience supposed to be suspended indefinitely right after you turned to your loved ones and quietly muttered, "A giant? In his bedroom? I don't get it. But it's, well, it's brilliant.") Gersten announces that she will be playing the piano for their continuing entertainment, but first Harriet will read a poem about Laura. Harriet reads. She saw Laura "glowing in the dark woods." Yeah, didn't we all. Moving right along. Gersten kicks into some Mendelssohn, which, as all classical music lovers know, means that it's time to talk loudly so as to drown out the accompanying music with all great haste. I mean, c'mon, those pieces can go on forever. Donna whispers to Maddy that she procured the Meals on Wheels list from Norma, and allows me to uncleverly retort that I already knew that and I STILL DON'T CARE.
Doc Hayward begins talking about the mill fire, asking Leland point blank, "I suppose this will open the door for Ben Horne and his big development plan." Leland advises the good doctor that he is both Hayward's and Ben's lawyer, and is consequently unable to comment. Hayward turns it around nicely: "Well, as your doctor, Leland, what the hell happened to your hair?" Awkward laughter all around. Leland reports that he feels he has turned a corner, that he feels "as if a great weight has been lifted from [his] heart." It makes him want to sing a song. He leaps up from the table and informs Gersten that it's time to "get happy," and she begins to play (and she's really playing, much to my detail-obsessed delight) "Forget Your Troubles." It's kind of a meager follow-up, a sophomore slump of sorts, to the critical and commercial powerhouse of "Mares Eat Oats." But still, you gotta give the guy credit for moving so effortlessly into the dinner-theater downturn of a dwindling career and still showing up and giving a thousand percent night after night after night. The show's audience looks on in a wide spectrum of wonder, from Donna's blatant snickering at Leland's quickly deteriorating mental state to Sarah's continuing "yeah, this is much more fun than having a LIVING DAUGHTER" look of acquiescent misery. But Leland's tempo goes haywire, and Gersten the unfortunately named fairy princess gives up following him just as Leland stops singing and falls to the ground like a sack of depraved, unraveling, demonically-possessed potatoes. Pandemonium. Doc Hayward makes it over first and revives Leland with smelling salts, who is quick to comment, "I feel happy. I feel happy." And then, finally pulling ahead of Sarah Palmer in the psycho-sprint with no intention of ever falling behind again, his eyes glaze over and he fairly shouts, "Begin the beguine!" Battle of the criminally freakin' insane, we have a winner.
Cooper lies in bed and revisits the linear time structure that used to be a little sacred and now is just short of a little indiscernible: "Diane, it's 11:55 pm. Approximately nineteen hours since the shooting incident which nearly caused me to make a premature purchase of the proverbial farm." Heh. He's really tired. He got so "goofy," he tells her, that he hallucinated a giant in his room while he was lying in a pool of his own blood. And I said it before and now here it is again: Check the tape, Cooper. THE TAPE! Meanwhile, across the border, Audrey lies alone in bed, whispering a prayer for her "special agent" to find the note she left and come rescue her from Jacks. Over in the Great Northern, the note lies unread under Cooper's bed. Audrey frets that she wants to help him with the case and all, but she fears she has gotten in a little over her head. She weeps, "I hope you won't think any less of me for trying to help you." She is the prettiest ever. "And if there's any way in the world you can hear me right now, please help." But Cooper has other, er, giant, um, problems at the moment, as a shadow passes in front of the camera and that strange lighting that signals, of course, the presence of giants, glimmers again. Cooper tells The Giant he was right about the smiling bag, and The Giant tacks on some new cryptic clues: "One person saw the third man. Three have seen him, yes, but one only known to you. Ready now to talk." The Giant also tells him he "forgot something." Why doesn't he just give him the note. "This," he could say. "You forgot this. This note. Is what you forgot." And what would this episode be without one more book-ending shot of Calhoun Memorial. Ronette Pulaski is mid-nightmare about the night of Laura's murder, and we see a screaming and bloodied Laura getting hacked to death by the long-haired character we have come to know as BOB. Which clears things up for us almost somewhere between absolute zero and not at freaking all.