Ssssssh! Be very, very quiet. The audience is sleeeeeeping. Damn, it's dark in here. We're back and alone in The Cave That Lighting Technicians And Other Assorted Best Boy-Type Personnel Forgot, the stage directions indicating the inverse of the "two ghosts eating marshmallows in a snowstorm" line about the blank white piece of paper. Two black cats eating the yucky black licorice while watching this episode of Twin Peaks, perhaps? A sudden flood of flashlight beams indicates that some kind soul on the set for ABC's more popular early-nineties programming -- American's Funniest Toaster Explosions or some such thing -- lent the now-bankrupt production staff of Twin Peaks a sympathy double-A or two. Andy, unable to make out the words on his cue cards, resorts to his default acting style of "they left my last chromosome on the cutting room floor," noting right along with the rest of us, "Nighttime or daytime. Once you get a few feet into this place, you can't tell the difference." In fairness, Andy, it's not easy for us to tell either, seeing as the final four episodes of this show were pretty much burned off by ABC at that ambiguously-lit time of day known as "right after the Suzanne Somers ab-cruncher video infomercial, but just before dawn."
Hawk, dispensing his usual amount of "this is how white men decide I talk, even though the collective Native American immersion by the collective writers' staff includes getting lost on their way to Mount Rushmore and ending up accidentally seeing Crazy Horse from their cars," notes with faux-deep-deep-deep spirituality, "Probably why it's all remained so untouched." That's right. Feel the Earth turn, Dances With Hawk. Cooper warns them to take one step at a time and to stay together, approaching a cave wall with a design on it and noting, "Harry, someone's been here already. Look, they did our work for us." Harry, silhouetted behind him (it might be Harry…the only indication that it's him is Cooper addressing him as "Harry" and also the wide-brimmed hat, but it's difficult to say for sure. Maybe it's Harry. Maybe it's Bob Saget. He did lend them the double-As, after all), shines a flashlight on the wall. Hawk leans down and notes tracks in the dirt, which Cooper immediately identifies as Earle's. Harry (okay, it's Harry. Glad we cleared that one up, even with so very little help) asks, "What would Windom Earle be doing here?" Cooper responds that that is "a frightening question to contemplate." Oh no! Run! Cooper delegates duties as any federal lawman in government subsidized spelunking gear must, ordering, "Andy, I'm gonna need an accurate, large-scale rendering of this petroglyph. Harry, let's get Major Briggs on the phone." Harry walks away quickly, exposing himself to the outdoor light and never working again because his eyeballs explode instantly. Oh. So that's why he never worked again.
Voice-over-palooza, as we dissolve from a shot of Cooper staring idly at the cave wall (the stress of that Don't Tell Her It's Me press junket is really taking the extra sparkle right out of his eyes, I'm sayin') to the reedy pan-flute scariness of Windom "Funny, But Not 'Ha Ha' Funny" Earle, smoking a pipe and telling this story: "Once upon a time, there was a place of great goodness called the White Lodge. Gentle fawns gamboled there amidst happy, laughing spirits. The sounds of innocence and joy filled the air. And when it rained, it rained sweet nectar that infused one's heart with a desire to live life in truth and beauty." Gentle fawns gamboled there amidst happy, laughing spirits? Hi. Did my TV really just say those words to me? Was this episode translated from English to Japanese and back to English like Jimmy James's autobiography? And by the way, the first time I transcribed that sentence, I accidentally wrote "gambled," like that really famous painting of gentle fawns playing poker. You know the one.
But Earle is soon to change tacks, as we must remember that he is EVIL and does not like good. So, after describing the happy fun place with the sylphs and leprechauns and frolicking unicorns and orange stars and purple horseshoes and other ephemera from The World's Most Vividly Rendered Lucky Charms Commercial, he continues, "Generally speaking, a ghastly place. Reeking of virtue's soul smell." 'Cause he's evil, see. As the prattling prattles with pratilious prattlization, we pan across the room to find Leo "…" Johnson listening as intently as his rapidly-deteriorating cerebral cortex will allow. Earle finishes up his description of the White Lodge, moving on to let Leo know, "I am happy to point out that our story does not end in this wretched place of saccharine excess." Because he's evil, so he doesn’t like good. Check. "There's another place -- its opposite -- a place of almost unimaginable power, chock full of dark forces and vicious secrets. No prayers dare enter this frightful maw." "Maw"? "Gambol"? "Super karate monkey death car"? What's going on? And what's going on with the casting call in this room, as we pan to the far end of the room to find that Leo is not Earle's only guest at the rustic all-night poetry slam? Sitting at a desk clear across the room is a guy sporting long hair and a bandana, listening intently. Earle goes on: "This place I speak of is known as the Black Lodge. And I intend to find it." Bandana pipes up from the back, "Hey, man. The story's cool. But you promised me beer. You told me there was gonna be a party!" Oh, crap. Earle's cracked open the door to the Black Lodge ever so slightly, and the impenetrable evil known the world over as "the forgotten members of Stryper" came pouring out into the sullied woods. Darn stupid Black Lodge. Windom, unbothered by the interruption, picks up the pan flute and plays a familiar tune. God. This Badalamenti pan-flute love is totally getting out of control. This is like when George Harrison started hanging out with the maharishi and was all, "Hey, other Beatles! You know what would make this song sound better? Sitar! And you know what would make those corn flakes taste better? Sitar! Oh, and a lot of LSD." Anyway, it's exactly like that.
Martell's Wood-Paneled Palace. Pete regards a chess board, moving pieces around and all forlornly saying, "I think that I shall never see a girl as lovely as Josie. When she walks into a room…" He pauses long enough for me to volley the usual variation on, "I want to hit her with a broom." But he says some silly thing about flowers and blooming and what have you. He repeats the poem, but his monotone is interrupted by the sudden arrival of "Whatever Happened To Baby" Katherine Martell, who screams for no apparent reason, "Oh, stop your obsessive invoking!" I think that's what she said. Thanks for the script doctoring, Mr. Earle. I guess she doesn't think Josie was the same kind of gambling maw as some others in the room, eh? And then she really slams further into the room, sans gamboling of any kind. She reminds Pete that Thomas Eckhardt left her the box that now contains her entire relevance to this show's action, expositing that she's "been trying to open it for days. I want it open. I want it open now." Pete takes the box and dumb-hicks away, "You got a key?" Katherine reminds him that if she had a key, the box would probably be open by now. Pete notes that "it doesn't even have a keyhole," remarking, "It's a puzzle box!" A what? Oh. "The trick is to fit the pieces together just so." Katherine asks how long that process can last, and Pete tells her, "It could take years." And thus unspools the beginning of perhaps my favorite utterly random subplot available for late-series exploration. Stick around, y'all. This one's a true pleasure. Because it's about a box.
Double R. Shelley sits at a booth, fidgeting with her watch, while Bobby -- HI, BOBBY! You don't call, you don't write, you don’t, apparently, bathe -- sits to her, pretending he hasn't missed an episode. He reinserts himself thusly: "Shel, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the future, and what it takes to get ahead in the world." Yes, Bobby, what's the secret? "Beautiful people get everything they want." He uses this as a means of reintroducing the flyer for Miss Twin Peaks, telling her, "Once you get that crown on your head, the sky's the limit." He tells her she has to "enlist" by this afternoon, which I don't think was the word he was going for. Shelley grabs the flyer all angrily and gambols off, past a table containing the Mayor and his young Robyn-Lively-esque bride, who tells her husband that she wants to win the Miss Twin Peaks contest, reminding him, "You're one of the judges!" This exchange is cut mercifully short by the gamboling in of Cooper, who bids Annie "Be My Yoko, Oh No" Blackburn a fond hello behind the counter. He tells her, "I've got four hungry lawmen out in the police cruiser. We need donuts. And coffee." She tells him she'll be right out with that, but before she gets away, Cooper continues, "And I'd like to ask you if you'd like to accompany me on a nature study this afternoon." She accepts his offer, and he tells her that he gets "a tingling sensation" in his stomach whenever he talks to her. So do I. It's called "pity." Shelley, nonplussed about the whole Bobby-is-now-kind-of-ugly unfortunate reemergence of earlier in this scene, sulks over the cash register: "What is all this sweet work worth, if thou not kissed me?" Cooper looks up and asks what she just said. Shelley pulls her shred of the "anonymous poem" out of her bag, reminding Cooper and us and the world that she received a third, and so did Donna and Audrey, recalling the finer moments of the "and you'd had a letter, and you'd had a letter, and you'd had a letter" sequence of the Clue movie before the rest of the cast finds their voice and screams back, as I am screaming now, "Get on with it!" Yoko returns with the coffee and Cooper makes haste out of the front door, smiling long enough to tell Yoko that he'll see her this afternoon at four.
Police station. Truman yokels his way through this scene, sounding out the shards of the poem Earle sent to Shelley because, for some reason, the people on this show actually seem to be getting dumber, asking, "What's this all about?" Cooper thinks it's time for us to know what we have never, ever known: "It's a poem, Harry." Rather than, say, a Hummel figurine or a used Chevy or several of the other things it could so easily be mistaken for. Truman asks with concern, "You mean Windom's contacted all three girls? Are you sure?" Cooper again recites the poem's first two lines, which I believe I transcribed verbatim the same day as I filed my workman's comp complaint for having typed those same letters into eternity, nailing it home, "It's a poem I once sent to Caroline." No! Love makes Cooper stupid and shows slow. Cooper continues, "I hope it's nothing more than a taunt, Harry. Earle takes perverse pride in his ability to insinuate himself into innocent people's lives." Hawk enters just then with Donna's section of the poem, and reminds us that he couldn't track down Audrey's piece of the puzzle because she's in Seattle until tomorrow. Hawk also delivers the news that Major Briggs has arrived at the station, but before he takes his leave of the room, Cooper asks, "Would you please bring me Leo Johnson's arrest report?" Truman: "Leo?" Hawk: "On only the purest of hearts and of the arrest report the wings of solemn sparrows do glide." Okay, not really. He doesn't actually say anything. He just leaves, and Truman stays one step behind at all points, inquiring, "Leo?" Cooper smiles big as he holds the two pieces of paper in each hand and notes, "Putting the pieces together, Harry." Cut from the final script, I guess, was the part where Harry looks up at him and smiles all dumb, "Like, literally. Pieces. I get it. Do we gonna solve da murder, Mr. Policeman? A-yuck, a-yuck, a-yuck." Seriously, when did they turn him into such a bumpkin?
Conference room. Andy stands at the chalkboard, transcribing the contents of the cave wall, and Major Garland "Eight-Ball, Corner Pocket" Briggs sits behind him, noting, "As I remember, the line you were drawing should proceed downward, not across." Andy all spookily asks, "How did you know that?" in that way that totally means, "Well then, draw it your own damned self, Backseat Courtroom Stenographer," if you're me and everything you say has a nasty, nasty subtext. But not these polite country folks. Nuh-uh.
Cooper enters the room and launches right on in: "Major, we need your help. But I am unable to accurately explain to you how or why." Briggs, all "your confusing thesis has captured my attention…please continue," listens intently as Cooper ties up the loose ends of most of the last few episodes, telling Briggs that he thinks there is a connection between Leo's disappearance, Earle's escape, and the arty drawings on the wall of Owl Cave. Cooper thinks that "these mysteries are not separate entities, but are, in fact, complementary verses of the same song. Now, I cannot hear it yet." Don't worry, Coop. It's all filled with the clanging sound of a thousand different pan flutes playing a thousand different melodies, anyway. I've heard the song. I can practically listen no more. Briggs wants to know how he can help, and Cooper very solemnly intones, "I need to know everything that there is to know about Windom Earle's work with Project Blue Book." Well, first you take an all-essay college exam. Then you name a top-secret government project after it and wish someone would invent the Internet so that people like us could spend their days slacking off at work and wondering why they decided to call it that, thus keeping the show alive and writing my paycheck simultaneously. Briggs, however, has a different answer, responding, "My security clearance was revoked shortly after my disappearance." He goes on that he wouldn't have a problem physically accessing the appropriate materials, but that there are "certain moral judgments" that he needs to wrestle with for that dramatic period of time ending riiiiiiiiiight…now. "Will this information help you to prevent future loss of life?" Yes. "Is this the copy of the petroglyph you found in Owl Cave?" Golly. Check out the big brain on Briggs. Cooper asks Briggs if he's seen the glyph, and Briggs of course responds, "I've dreamed it. Or seen it. Somewhere." Much squinting ensues on Briggs's part, and he suddenly lets them know, "I will do what you ask." Hawk gambols in with Leo's arrest report, states, "The wings of sovereign prayer in the forest float higher than man's ability to foretell the doing of wrongs," doesn't really say that, hands Cooper Leo's police report, and stands in impressive submission. Cooper puts the report to the scrap of the poem, and doesn’t miss a beat before announcing, "This poem. Sent by Windom Earle. Was transcribed by Leo Johnson." Scary music indicates that it might just be time to be scared.
Inside the Great Northern, we land in the office of Ben "Sometimes It's Bad To Be Good" Horne, who enters to find Dick "Yes I Am" Tremayne waiting for him, nose in numerous bandages for reasons I am only barely able to recall. Dick notes with alarm, "It is only scant hours until our wine-tasting benefit begins, and I can't find your daughter anywhere." We are once again reminded that Audrey is in Seattle for the day. Ben refers Dick instead to the concierge, which I believe Dick might find off-putting for some reason. Ben then asks how Dick's clearly rhinoplastied nose is. Because I grew up on Long Island and believe me, I know what it looks like. People make up all the excuses in the world -- "I fell off a bike!" "It was a deviated septum!" "I was bitten by a crazed pine weasel on the loose!" -- whatever. All the excuses sound the same to me. And they all sound a bit like "NOSE JOB," if you want to know the truth. Dick promises that his nose woes are "a small price to pay in the service of a greater good," but Ben assures him, "We will, of course, pay any medical expenses." Dick thinks worker's compensation might also be involved, and Ben chokes on it before returning, "Easily done." But Dick works in the department store, so isn't this all a volunteer project, thus making a weekly percentage of his usual pay from Horne Inc. still approximately, um, "zero dollars"? Dick walks away all satisfied, and Ben does his best Iago-ish Shakespearean aside, growling, "Sometimes the urge to do bad is nearly overpowering." The late-season writers know just what you mean. He grabs a carrot out of his lapel and begins gnawing away, because beta-carotene-enriched food products are shorthand for "good guy," and also because that's a visual we've never had the opportunity to find completely hilarious before.
Cabin In The Evil Woods. Windom, decked out in a green checkered apron that doesn't have the words "Ask me about my grandkids. Or my bipolar dementia. Or my vast subtlety as an actor. And I will IGNORE you" embroidered across it but probably should, hands Leo an open bottle of beer that Leo carries over to The Lead Singer Of Stryper. Said vagrant is encased in what appears to be a giant plaster chess piece, and I wonder again at Earle's ability to procure fake glasses, tweed suits, and other large novelty chess pieces even though he is an escaped convict living in the middle of the woods. The Black Lodge gift shop must have a corporate sponsorship with Spencer Gifts. A really eeeeevil Spencer Gifts, though. ["I think that's probably a redundancy." -- Sars] Earle offers a short speech about how Stryper has lived his short life "in odium and obscurity," but now he's going on to a most exciting place. Earle unearths a bow from seeming nowhere and tells Leo to fetch him "an arrow." Leo has the audacity to try to recognize the wrongness of it all, but upon seeing his request refused, Windom also takes out a zapper (oh yeah, it's Spencer Gifts for sure. Earle's about one step away from taking out a pile of fake dog doo and being all, "Smell your fate! SMELL IT!!!") and points that thing right at Leo. Leo recoils in some serious bad pain, and Stryper stupidly responds, "That hurts!" Leo relents and brings an arrow over to Windom. In agonizing close-up, Windom readies the arrow and aims it right at Stryper, speeching about "lives after this life" and cackling like a big fool. Windom gives the order to himself and screams "now" to no one in particular; he lets go of the bow string, and the arrow flies into the side of the chess piece, cutting to a slo-mo shot of Stryper's head all tilted to the side, blood running out of his mouth. I'll see Stryper in hell, and I'm not the first person to promise that.
Enough, Miss Twin Peaks. Wait. It really, really is. The red telltale "remember these" curtains hang from floor to ceiling in the Roadhouse behind the Dirty Old Man Brigade commissioned to host the event: Doc Hayward, the mayor, and Pete Martell. The Mayor Of Ill-Advised Return To The Action remarks several times that this year's project promises to be "very exciting." The first order of business, Hayward tells us, is to listen to remarks from Ben Horne. Ben approaches the table and starts right in. Wait. Guess what. He's good! Real, real good, like. Let's listen in: "Gentlemen, my purpose is simple. The age of the ogling, swim-suited jiggle festivals of the past is dead." Miss Twin Peaks, he believes, is now "a celebration of the totality of a woman's qualities." In case you didn't see this theme dropped into a barrel and sent careening over the Great Northern waterfall at an unfortunate speed, he believes that "Miss Twin Peaks is an event in search of a theme. What I propose is simple: The topic of this year's speeches should be how to save our forests." Pete, for once made to look smarter even as the collective intellect of Twin Peaks inches towards cheap beer and cheaper novelty toys, laughs all cynically and asks without hesitation, "Your opposition to the Ghostwood Development Plan wouldn't have anything to do with this?" Ben resents the implication, of course, and Hayward responds that they'll "take it under advisement." The mayor loudly repeats that they'll take it under advisement, because he's Mr. Magoo, but without the heady though hilarious subtext only Leslie Nielsen was really ever able to bring to it.
Over at a table across the room, Ben walks up to Bobby and reminds him, "Don't forget the dry cleaning," as a prop to get him near enough for Donna "Slim Fastest" Hayward to give him a sinister glare. Icy cool. From the podium, Pete calls out for the first candidate to approach the committee. The mayor's wife walks up and plants a big one on her husband's cheek, causing Bobby to ask Shelley and Donna, "Does anybody smell a fix here?" as if Donna's father isn't sitting right to the mayor. Shelley bemoans her inability to speak in public, and Donna leans in to promise, "You're gonna be great." Nadine "Watch Out For The Soggies, Cap'n" Hurley and The Mullet Formerly Known As Mike enter just then, excited that all the other girls have decided to enter the contest as well. Seeing him, Bobby pulls Mike over to a corner and tells him, "This is very scary, Mike. I think I don't know where you got this sudden interest in the life of the fossils." Mike responds, "I wouldn't expect you to understand," before clearing up this relationship for all of us with a simple though elucidating, "Do you have any idea what a combination of sexual maturity and superhuman strength can result in?" He leans in and whispers about three words in Bobby's ear, and Bobby screams a "whoa!" that turns everyone's attention toward him. Those must have been some three words.
Martell's Wood-Paneled Palace. Katherine carries in a pot of tea to Harry, who has come to belabor the Josie situation once more. He wants some kind of information that will help him understand, information like, "What was she after?" Katherine tells him that she's been asking the same exact questions. "In spite of all the things she tried to do to me and my family," continues Katherine, "I find it very hard to hate her for it." And Truman is bizarrely sure he knows why: "Well, she was so very beautiful." I think that's gotta be just it, Harry. Katherine, though, stands and tells him that "there is a clue that could benefit both of us." She pulls out the puzzle box and carries it over. He yokels like Pete once did that there is no clasp and no lid, just as Pete himself enters from the back door, screaming, "Wowee, Bob, have we got some beauties in the contest this year." He notes the box and takes it from Harry, asking if he's had any luck with it. But in his attempt to commandeer the thing, he drops it on the floor, eliciting a completely hilarious response of "Butterfingers!" from Katherine, who must be sensing that the end is near and ensuring the future of her résumé by padding it with an audition for that commercial for the board game Operation. Remember that commercial? When the buzzer goes off? And the kid yells the…? Dammit, people. I. Am. Old. Pete picks the box up, and the three notice together that the outer shell has slipped off, revealing a smaller box inside with symbols of the half-moon and diamond (and purple horseshoes!) variety etched on top. Pete drops it to the floor again, thinking that may be in and of itself the solution, and Katherine goes full-tilt "everyone's trying to get me Lucky Charms" crazy, yanking the box away from him and thank you, Pete. Thank you very much.
So there's a lake now? With a gazebo? And a canoe? Oh. I guess we have been to this outdoor filming locale before, just before Maddy left town forever. Charming, this. In said canoe on Lake Mysterious Reemergence, Cooper and Yoko sit and look at all the naturely placidity. Yoko is talking about how Norma was always "Miss Popularity" in high school, and that she never had many friends. She tells of the one boyfriend she had her senior year of high school, and puts the instant kibosh on the whole convo when Cooper asks if he's what forced her into the convent. There are geese just screaming in the background and I'm surprised they aren't cracking up right now. But the mating call of the African swallow is a pretty powerful aphrodisiac around these parts, and Cooper takes Yoko's hands and tells her, "Annie, I know how hopeless things can seem. I know about the dark tunnel you can fall into." He continues that something once happened to him that made him want to disappear from the world, and "because of that, maybe I can help you." They smooch and smooch and I just hate it, man. Yoko tells him that she doesn't know him very well, but that she's trying to learn how to trust her instincts. Cooper asks what her instincts are saying now, and she tells him, "Trust." Awwwww. But up on the shore, a nice, normal, typical, bird-watching type -- ah, hell, fool me not again…it's Earle -- hides his eyes behind binoculars and scopes out their every move. This guy is all about doing his own legwork. He's a full-service psychopath with a knack for the hands-on stuff. And a music lover, to boot!
Back at the Great Northern, Robyn Lively helps both gay blade and dull blade Dick Tremayne to set up and pretty up a table filled with bottles of wine and accompanying glasses. He bids a room full of studio audience members from the Funniest Toaster Explosions set welcome and ports them over to several tables. They watch him in rapt attention as he clinks a fork against a glass and welcomes the confused old-timers -- not to be denied the hilariously crude $10,000 winning "Man Getting Hit In Crotch With Toaster" clip they were promised at the top of the show -- to "an oenophiliac soiree. Another in a continuing series of public events sponsored by Horne Industries to benefit the Stop Ghostwood development project." Andy, sitting alone at a table in the back of the room with a fearful, out-of-place expression and a well-what's-the-opposite-of-clip-on-then suit that hangs off him like, well, you know. He looks up at Lucy, asking, "Ona-what?" Lucy leans in an confides, "Something to do with wine." And not, as this vaguely confused, suffix-challenged recapper thought, "something to do with masturbation." Because a cheap suit is better than no suit at all, and if I want Twin Peaks porn, I've got The Secret Diary on my shelf and also Bobby fan fic on my hard drive in a locked file, the password of which is not now, nor has ever been, "hibobby." Heh. "Hard." "And now," Dick continues, "to the tasting." Robyn Lively and Lucy approach and he bids them help with the pouring. He speeches about "the reds," and Andy busts in that "there are also white wines and sparkling wines," smiling broadly because dumb = funny. The old-timers, dripping with woeful Saget-love, couldn't agree more. Andy starts to drink the wine before the wine is allowed to be drunk, and hijinks ensue, from Dick bellowing for him to stop to drenching his nose bandage in red when he finally gets around to taking a sip himself. They spit. Andy swallows. There's another porn joke in there somewhere, but if it's not for the HiBobby files, it's probably not worth fleshing out in that much detail. I'm on a deadline here, people.
Double R. Cole is finishing up a story about his wild bravery in the face of FBI adversity to a dazzled Shelley, practically standing on her side of the booth to communicate how shit-eating one has to be to pull off this particular subplot. Awwww. This is such a time-honored love story: where the young, beautiful waitress who is also the most talented young star on the show falls head over heels in love with the seasoned executive producer, can't pull it off convincingly for the first time in series history, and never works another day in this town again. Sigh. I love that one. It's Shrek with laughs. Cooper and Yoko are quick to approach the booth, and the four agree to sit together for pie before Cole -- there for no apparent reason to begin with -- takes off for all points On The Air and then right back behind his young, unemployed paramour on the bread lines. But before he goes, he leans in and tells her, "Meeting you has been more than a privilege. It's touched my heart. And if I don't kiss you now, I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my days." Gack! The legendary Hollywood casting couch writ 13 inches large! As he moves in on her with his dry old executive-producing tongue, HiBobby scratches the needle off the soundtrack as he barges in with a brash, "Hey! What's going on?" Cole screams back that he's witnessing nothing more than "two adults sharing a tender moment," and leans in on her, promising a bold future of movies and Hollywood stardom in that legendary Central Park West in the sky. Bobby looks dumbstruck. He doesn't like kissing old people either. Can't he see it's perfect? Perfect!
Wine. Drinks. Social discomfort. Twee ascots. You'd think they'd be more full on wine. With all this filler.
Cooper sits in what I think is a newly-invented room of the Great Northern, when an apparently wasted Billy Zane ambles in, sits down to him like the guy who refuses to check his luggage on an airplane (or his rancid, lurking smarm), and compromises the social nicety of not talking to people who are simply SO DAMN MUCH BETTER THAN YOU by observing to Cooper, "Love is hell." Right. Love is hell, roses are red, raw is war, clichés are those. Cooper's drinking milk. Yay, Coop! Taste that bouquet. Cooper notes to Wheeler that "the Hindus say that love is a ladder to heaven." They espouse on the pain that love causes, Billy Zane telling Cooper, "I am roped, tied, and rabid." Ew. Cooper explains that it feels like someone is taking a crowbar to his heart, straining the blue-collar steel-factory-worker metaphor a little with the unnecessary addition of, "I think it's been locked away long enough." They toast to Cooper's innate superiority in every way (okay, they toast to "love," but we know the truth), until a concierge delivers a telegram to Wheeler. He reads and exclaims to the concierge, "Bellman, will you kindly tell the front desk I'll be checking out." He nods a vague goodbye at Cooper and walks the wrong way -- that way being "not into the blazing fire" -- out of the room.
And finally, under the moonlit, fake-CGIed light of nighttime, we're back at The Gazebo Of Audience Protested Love, this time the site of the far less disturbing specter of police lights and Truman warning Cooper, "We thought it was a bomb." Inside the gazebo lies a huge wooden box, on which is a lever and a frilly calligraphy sign (thanks, Mr. Tremayne) reading, "Pull me." Heh. Cooper looks up at said box and taps into an emotional connection to the material that we haven't seen from his character in a while (at least this time the wooden box he's acting opposite is an actual wooden box), speeching, "Harry, there was a time when I could comprehend with a high degree of clarity Windom Earle's twisted logic. But his actions of late have left me completely bewildered. He's changing the pattern of the game board. Any hope of deducing his move has evaporated." And thus, The Abandon Hope Of Continuity All Ye Who Enter Here rationalizes and discards Earle's no-longer-calculated foray into madness. I, for one, am really looking forward to it. Cooper has Andy back up the gathering crowd, then hands a rock to Harry and wraps a piece of police tape around it. He walks right up to the box then, attaches the tape to the box, backs up way behind the truck, and shoots the box open in a bit of confusing methodology that occurred mostly with Cooper blocking our view of it. Uh-oh. Total cameras remaining: one. Total directors: zero. Total viewers: fewer, somehow. The box shoots open, and Stryper lies all dead inside the chess piece, wearing a sign that reads, "time it will be someone you know." But we all knew Stryper. And I think, maybe just a little, we all felt their loss on so many levels.