Eureka! Man alive. Great day in the morning. Gee, Djb, why all the generic-proclamations-of-joy-befitting-a-grizzled-1890s-prospector, right here in the prologue to this recap, eh? Here's why: Sars bought me the entire Twin Peaks series on VHS for my life-alteringly cool Christmas present (or, as Amazon has since decided, considering their rather haphazard delivery schedule, my "life-alteringly cool Purim present"). Hence, I'll be using these tapes exclusively to recap the rest of the series. I know. I'm really, really sorry, mom. Your taping skills so many years ago were not in vain. You were a very, very good mom. As long as your relevance lasted. So, um, I guess that means that Sars is my new mommy now. Right? Well then, yippee-ki-yay! I done struck gold! Hee-haw! Ahem. Sorry.
Fade in on a panning shot across a really starry night sky in the much-visited land of Stock Footage Of Excessively Starry Night Skies, a doubtless retroactive shout-out to the fact that the first, like, sixty episodes of Roswell began the exact same way (not to mention the dozens of other shows in the history of the televisual medium that center around space and the prospect of life beyond our own planet…Hence, I'm almost surprised when the words "The Truth Is Shout-Out There" don't appear on the screen before I get on with my recapping day, which should begin in earnest in the unlikely event I should ever get around to closing these here parentheses). A voice whispers "Cooper," and the Class Trip To The Planetarium music (which, on this show, is defined as "every note ever heard on the soundtrack not including Julee Cruise…and sometimes that which includes Julee Cruise) kicks into high gear. Out of this I've-seen-more-realistic-renderings-of-the-night-sky-with-a-few-white-pegs-on-my-Lite-Bright-set background, a yellow symbol depicting three interlocking triangles comes spinning toward the camera. Spinning through space, spinning, spinning, spinning. Ooooh. I'm in a trance. Hypnotized. Your wish is my command, Mr. Lynch. I will find On the Air to be hilarious. I will deem my small-claims lawsuit for the $7.50 I am still owed for Lost Highway to be "frivolous" and finally drop it. I will also…huh? No, I'm fine. I'm back. Well, that was scary.
Spinning, spinning, spinning. When the CGI triangle thingee finally spins out of space and into the camera and bursts apart, General Zod and his marauding band of Superman-hating intergalactic travelers are finally released into the world to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting "Houston," which…oh, wait. That's actually not what happens at all. Actually, the shot becomes all engulfed in flames, flames which slowly clear to reveal behind them Garland "Major Pain…Ha Ha, Duh" Briggs sitting on an ivy-covered throne, surrounded by really green trees and bushes and not really green dry-ice smoke. He sits perfectly still, and a voice-over indicates, "I remember stepping from the flames, a vague shape in the dark, then nothing. Till I found myself standing by the cold remains of our campfire two days later." Another voice-over we recognize as Doc Hayward's garbles on with that far-away you're-having-a-dreeeeeeeam reverb I haven't seen used unironically since the Golden Girls faded from the three-chaired kitchen table and into their last flashback episode ("Get the cheescake, Rose, for I remember a time that Ma ate all those raw vegetables at the nursing home picnic and began uncontrollably…") before the style was co-opted and killed by the fine folks at Wayne's World, "Major, there are some new techniques that might help us break through your amnesia." Briggs retorts in his convoluted MajorSpeak that his memories are "immune from regression," and that he knows the memory of his disappearance lives somewhere in his mind, but the knowledge remains "beyond [his] reach." Garbled Cooper drops in to ask if Briggs remembers anything else. "Very little," Briggs recounts, "Save for one disturbing image of…a giant owl." Cut to a brief montage of super-faux-artsy proportions, containing an owl flying through a blinding white light, a shot of a man's neck tattooed in red with the compliments-of-the-OPEC-product-placement-department triangular symbol, and a camera flashbulb, and just like that we're inside the interrogation room of the police station, which contains a seated Briggs and an alternately pacing and standing Doc Hayward, Cooper, and Truman. The good doctor shows the assemblage a Polaroid of the area behind Briggs's ear and notes, "Three triangular scars behind the right ear, in perfect proportion." See that? Mom always said you're supposed to wash behind there. One can only hope that the Major was wearing clean underwear when he was abducted and hadn't eaten within a half-hour of said abduction, as mom also frequently advised. And no, this time by "mom," I do not mean "Sars." For once.
Truman tries the hard line, having asked this question so many times I can't believe there isn't a Twin Peaks drinking game centered entirely around it, "Exactly what does your work involve?" But guess what. It's classified. Drink! However, Briggs continues that he thinks sometimes there are secrets that outweigh the human need to conceal information. I wasn't aware that that was a basic human tenet, but I guess I'm more inclined to believe it; after all, the American government just told me it was true. So off we go with the not concealing: "Are you familiar with Project Blue Book?" Yeah, isn't that the name of those thin volumes of lined paper the proctor gives out to college students taking essay exams? It's a little more difficult than the standardized "Project Scantron Sheet," but at least the former has a ring to it. Cooper has a different idea, and it turns out he's right and I'm not. Such is life: "The Air Force investigation into the phenomena of unidentified flying objects." Briggs confirms that the project was discontinued by the government in 1969. Hee. "Sixty-nine." Oh, man. I am eleven years old. "But there are those of us who continue in an unofficial capacity, examining the heavens as before. And in the case of Twin Peaks, the Earth below." I…wha? He's still working on a government op that ended in 1969, and he continues wearing his uniform and taking home a paycheck from Uncle Sam? Looking for aliens? Aliens that live below the Earth? Below it? Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars, hard at work. Besides which, if we all got paid for performing our job the way it would have been done in 1969, I would be recapping this show on a computer as large as this entire room. Briggs only manages to choke out the sentence, "We are looking for a place called the White Lodge," before the door opens and reveals two men sporting strange military uniforms with really fey chapeaux that make them look less like intervening government agents and more like the groomsmen at Guy Ritchie's wedding. The men tell Briggs to come with them and Truman tries to stop them, but the Major realizes he must go and bids everyone else farewell. Once alone, the three remaining main characters (when was the last time you saw that many people we care about in the same room at the same time? A quality episode emerging?) stand close and regard the Polaroid of Briggs's tattooed neck. Close-up. A drop of water splashes onto the photograph, and Cooper looks up to note that it's from a leaky sprinkler head directly above them. SprinklerCam gives them quite the close-up, and the sound guys lean in with their mics for a raucous sound effect of the interior of the sprinkler system. Remember, future directors of the planet: pointless callbacks to the effortlessly quirky visual style of the show's glory days are still pointless. Say it together.
Speaking of which, donuts. On the table to the phone. No one's eating them. But they're there. Because we get it. Cut to Truman's office, containing Denise "The XX-Files" Bryson and Ernie "So Peripheral I Got A Migraine Just Trying To Look Directly At Him" Niles. Denise files his nails and begs, "Make the call." Ernie goes for the phone and backs away several times, brushing away Girlie Mulder's hands, which keep coming down on his shoulders, I guess because "transvestite panic" was such a hot-button issue for comic and cultural exploration contemporary with the original airing of this show. Cooper enters and actually takes a donut, asking the two, "So, have we set the buy yet?" Girlie Mulder pronounces Niles "gun shy," which inspires Ernie to defend himself in that alternately Welsh/Geri-on-Facts-of-Life accent of his: "Gun shy? Ernie Niles is as bold as can be! Let me at him!" In a brave flourish which would probably be rendered all the more brave if I could remember
a damn thing about how this subplot shakes out, he grabs for the phone and begins dialing the fake TV "555" exchange of his choice. Someone on the other end picks up, and Ernie asks for Jean Renault. Ambiguous Canuck Frenchmen Drug Smugglers have secretaries? Maybe it's -- say it with me, long-time readers -- Sylvia Horne. That joke doesn't even make sense anymore, and yet I never tire of it. Ernie is put on hold, and takes this moment to put his hand over the phone and beg, "Don't make me do this. This is suicide. I know. Please." Etc. Pause. Ernie: "Hi, Jean. I've got that big out-of-town buy, here." Cooper gives the thumbs up. Oooh. Go Mr. Big Maybe Welsh Man. Ernie Niles ain't just a river in Egypt, after all.Andy walks in the front door of the police station and bids Lucy hello. Around the first corner past her desk, he walks into Dick "Love Triangle, Pick Triangle, It's All The Same" Tremayne, bedecked in a monochromatic beige outfit with a matching private investigator bowler cap. He shushes Andy before he even has a chance to ask what in the holy hell, then pulls him into another hallway behind a glass door so Lucy can't hear them…talk. Dick asks where Andy has been hiding, and Andy responds that a cat was stuck in a tree. Dick doesn't care, launching right back into the dumbest televised subplot concerning a child since the series premiere of Passions, bringing us all up to speed: "Fortuenately for us, my apples have borne more palatable fruit." Heh. "Fruit." Sorry. See "sixty-nine" explanation from before. The one about me being eleven. Dick continues that he visited the adoption agency to find out what happened to Little Nicky's parents, but unfortunately "they've been sealed and returned to the orphanage." The parents? Oh, the records, I guess. Andy frets that they'll never know what happened to Little Nicky's parents (though clearly the prognosis from this end is that they DIED OF BOREDOM), but Dick pulls up his collar and promises to sneak into the orphanage and gather more information. Andy offers to "tell Lucy," but Dick leans in as close as the ABC censors would allow and tut-tuts, "This is strictly a man's job." Here's hazarding that's not the first time he used that line. Nice hat. Shut up, Inspector Gay-dget.
On Andy's iteration of the word "Lucy," the mentioned Ms. Moran looks up from her desk, but by the time she makes it to the door, the two men are gone. While she stands staring into the empty hallway, Cooper approaches behind her, walks to the water cooler (wow. Direction that actually makes sense. What's going on?), and asks, "Any luck?" Lucy shakes her head: "I checked the personals columns and every national newspaper on the list, and I didn't see anything that looked like a chess deal or find any mention of the name Windom Earle. I'm sorry." Cooper fills his cup with water from the cooler and ends the chat by walking away, thus making Kyle MacLachlan and the chick who looks like Victoria Jackson the only two human beings left in America who stand around the water cooler talking about what's going on on Twin Peaks.
Double R. The belabored melodrama that is Norma/Ed escalates further when she drops her perky and optimistic into his pensive and sad when she approaches his booth to refill his coffee cup. She smiles: "Is everything all right, Ed?" He tells her that things "couldn't be better," handing her the check, on the back of which is written, "We need to talk." So talk, then. Does Ed think he can finally woo the love of his life to betroth herself to him forever if he just becomes as maddeningly ambiguous as the man to whom she's already married? Wow. Short scene.
Chez Johnson. Shelley "The Cook, The Thief, The Wife, And The Lover" Johnson shovels some hideous-looking black gruel down Leo's gullet, food that he probably wouldn't eat even if he weren't in the same culinary family of "undesirable vegetable" as that which she's trying to feed him. In the background, the theme song and opening phrases of the long-forgotten Invitation To Love ring out from an unseen TV. I love that Todd Holland makes no secret of the fact that not only has he gone without directing this show since way back in Episode 11, but also that he hasn't so much as tuned in since that very same week. Do the words "luckiest man in show business" leap to anyone else's mind? Bobby "Jock, Strapped" Briggs saunters through the living room, throwing back a beer, and sits in a chair to Leo while Shelley wails in frustration and kicks the floor. "Dammit, it was your turn to feed him, Bobby." Bobby reads a newspaper and mutters something about "practice," and Shelley tells him to expect to clean up when he gets back. Bobby, for some reason, believes this to be the perfect time to drop a bomb: "I ain't comin' back?" Eh? Bobby continues: "You're looking at Ben Horne's new boy. Do the words 'golden opportunity' mean anything to you?" Have you checked out either of their résumés in the past ten years or so? Apparently the answer to that question is a scarily resounding "no." Central Park West wasn't even a manganese opportunity. Bobby continues that he doesn't have time to "give Leo Johnson a bubble bath." Shelley asks, "What about me, Bobby? Do I not have anything better to do?" Bobby deadpans it: "Not that I can think of." Shelley administers a quite believable stage slap and Bobby takes off. She screams after him and continues stomping the floor. Which does suck, because of the beautiful children they'll never get to have. But come on. Like this relationship had any damn chance of actually working. Sigh. Each day brings a new beginning, and every hour holds the promise of an invitation to love. Cue strings. Thanks for dragging that soapy thematic device out of mothballs. Cut to Leo. Apparently, Todd Holland missed the memo that close-ups of Leo's eyes fluttering no longer scare anybody at all.
Oh, but this right here does. In fact, it scares just about everyone. The sound of a ringing phone accompanies a pan of moodily foggy mountains, and a VO advertises, "Big Ed's Gas Farm." Cut to inside The Marshlands, where James "Babe In The Woods" Hurley talks on the phone, telling Ed, "I need a favor. I need you to get all the money out of my savings account." We can barely hear Ed respond from the other end that it's only "twelve dollars." Thank you, Lynch/Frost, for at least paying him only what he's worth. Plus a twelve-dollar bonus for remaining unborn and not disrupting the production schedule with a visually obvious and time-consuming birth like an early-season Gillian Anderson would, for example. But just as Slater Fetus begins to explain his current predicament to Uncle Ed (who may one day pass it along to the rest of the world, because I honestly don't know what the problem is, myself), Evelyn enters the room in these absolutely gigantic sunglasses that I've only seen really old women wearing over their real glasses when they drive their huge old Chryslers practically into innocent bystanders at four miles-per-hour in the Food Lion parking lot. "Hell's Grannies," my brother used to call them. Banter of the most incomprehensible variety. Evelyn asks James why he left Twin Peaks, and I finish patting myself on the back following my impassioned cry of "Popular demand!" to find James smack in the middle of describing his woes: "I loved a girl who died. Her names was Laura. I thought I knew her, but I didn't." Isn't he, like, three miles from Twin Peaks right now? It surely seems to me Evelyn might have heard about the grisly girl in plastic and what have you. Blah blah his life sucks, and even shots of Evelyn provide no relief from looking at James, as he is reflected in pretty splendid detail in her sunglasses. His entire body. Hell, men on Mir are using those things to put in their contact lenses, while a team of history experts makes haste to add them to the list of man-made object visible from space. James adds that he tried to ambiguously "help," but in his efforts to do so, "another girl got murdered." And so he wanted to get on his bike and "take off, go as far as the thing would take" him. As far as it would take him? What brand of motorcycle is that anyway, The Adobe? He's around the block, people. I'll bet he didn't even dial a fake area code before punching in the "555" to ring the ol' gas farm. What. Ever. James moves closer and takes off Evelyn's sunglasses, nearly thrashing through the floor in that Money Pit kind of way, what with the sudden added weight on his tiny, incipient organism frame. He notes that she has a black eye and asks, "Why do you let him hurt you?" Whatever. She got that trying to put those damn things on. They kiss madly. Evelyn hears a car pull away and tells James, "Jeffrey's leaving. I need you. Will you help me." Cut. CUT!!! Is this scene directing itself, or what? Or perhaps Todd Holland has gotten waylaid, running though the Marsh house and shooing away extras and other assorted personnel who have accidentally stumbled in from over on the Double R set or maybe the one of the Great Northern. Because he's around the block. The traffic light stays on red. Remember the traffic light? Todd Holland does.
"Cap'n" Nadine Hurley sidles up to Mike "Full" Nelson at the counter at the Double R and bids him a good morning. Mike chokes out a pretty humorous "Oh, Lord," and she asks if he wants to share a soda or "a nice, big piece of cherry pie. Two forks." Continued refusal. She seems to process his non-ambiguous (so refreshing around these parts) go-away-you-crazy-old-bat message, and she backs off for a whole cumulative second before volleying the satisfying non-sequitur, "Meatloaf!" Ah, the food of love. At eight o'clock in the morning. Mike doesn't like the sound of such early-bird protein either, and he turns on her and rails, "I don't want to talk with you, I don't want to walk with you, I don't want to see you, I don't want to know you. Is that clear enough to understand? Or do I need a court order to get my point across?" Obviously he's about to regret that he left out not wanting to "rock with you, all night, rock the night away," because Nadine doesn't even breathe before turning back to him and stage whispering, "Mike Nelson, you are the handsomest boy I've ever known. And I would really like it if you and I could go out on a date." She leans in and smooches him hard, knocking him right off his stool. She apologizes, claiming she's not able to help herself sometimes, and walks away. Walk with you? Who says that? Is this My Fair Lady?
Back behind the counter, Hank sees Norma putting on her coat asks where she's going. "To pick up the pieces of my reputation as a cool character on this show before a deadly future of TV movies and snickering shouts of "Hey, is that Skeletor in drag?" guest shots on Popular. Nah. That's not what she says. She tells him she has errands and he argues that they're still in the middle of something called "the breakfast rush," even though this is the first time in series history I've seen more than three booths filled at that place at any given time. Nice job with the cultural influence over people's cuisine choices, M.T. Wentz. Yawn. She smiles: "Just you and a kitchen full of scrambled eggs. I'll be right back. Just think of it as a test, Hank." He carries two plates and watches her walk out: "I'll do that." Or will he? See, because the whole thing is left just a little bit…oh, God, never mind. I'm even boring myself with that now.
A five-hour establishing shot of the Packard home cuts to the interior of the Packard home (sorry for the seemingly redundant nature of that statement…but at this point in the series, getting shit like that right is not just a matter of course), where Josie "Member Of The Cabinet…The Kitchen Cabinet" Packard dons her subservient candy striper outfit and her pillbox hat. A knock on the door reveals Harry, and she takes off the hat in a dramatic flourish and walks into the kitchen. Truman asks her why she hasn't left the house yet to move into his place (which I didn't remember at all), and she argues that she is in her "home." Big man gets incredulous: "After everything Katherine has done to you?" Oh, boo hoo. She has "no choice." Truman comes up behind her (augh!) and kisses (yech!) her (fah!) neck (bleeeee!) until she turns to face him and begs, "Go home!" Well, thanks for the cliché words of wisdom, but that line's been done, Base-y Ullmann. Truman's begs, "Let me take care of you," but Josie asserts that she's safe as long as she sticks around. He kisses her. Have the sound design people completed some invasive surgery by which microphones are actually installed into the tongues of these two actors? Or is it the new tapes? Because that right there is some damn smacky kissing. It's still going on. Still. And still now. And I type fast. But not that fast. Stop that.
Great Northern. Audrey, looking resplendent in a gray business suit, is practically mowed down in the hallway by a girl about her own age, running away from Ben's office holding a drum and sporting a bandage on her head that's dabbed with fake blood. She stops a second to gaze at Audrey, stares down at the drum, and takes off again. And if that girl is, as I've always hoped, just really upset because she showed up to audition for the role of "brave, valiant, foot soldier" and left in tears when she found out that she didn't get the part, well, then, this subplot is about to get us right back on track, right? RIGHT? Audrey watches after her, but her attention is pulled back toward the office by the sound of her father's voice yelling something about "leading a charge" somewhere. She tries to open the door to the office and finds it blocked with many the cardboard box, and she finally pushes her way in, only to find her father lying on the floor holding two figurines, one of a man holding a Confederate flag, the other of a small man on a white horse. The two figurines are not friends; alas, no. They scream back and forth at each other in Southern accents last seen used in the South when the South was found in the rural parts of Maine depicted by minor characters in Steven King novels who speak all of the really bumpkiny lines like, "A-yuh, a storm's a-comin.'" As such: "And where's Gen'ral Stewart and his cavalry?" "He's coming, suh." "Damn his arse!" "He's comin', suh. Ah knowit! He's comin'!" "He had betta be! For all our sakes. 'Cause the enemy. We'll meet the enemy hee-uh!" He pounds on a full-scale model of what appears to be the entire American South, circa 1862. Audrey begins calling, "Daddy" over and over, with varying levels of alarm. She kneels down to him and asks just exactly what's going on. "There's a war, darling. A war between the states." He then asks her to remove herself for the office, both because "this is a very important day," but first he needs Audrey to stop "standing on General Stewart." As he screams for Confederate autonomy and the scale-model battle rages, Audrey lunges for the phone and informs whom that answers, "I need you to get me Jerry Horne. It's an emergency." Why do I have a feeling that that call was, at some point, made in actuality by the folks at ABC?
Hurley home. Ed opens the door for Norma and they begin talking madly at the same time. Only the Pavlovian response the two have when "Sad Strings" kicks up on the soundtrack can adequately calm them down. Norma speaks first: "You're the last thing I think of when I go to sleep at night. And you're the first thought on my mind when I get up in the morning. I know this world is going to pieces and it feels designed to keep us apart. But we love each other, Ed. I want to be with you." Mom! Norma's been in the Harlequin novels again! Either that or some production assistant just got really, really fired for accidentally slipping Peggy Lipton the shooting script for that afternoon's episode of All My Children. And the episode after that. More smacky kissing. Gams shot of A Woman Named Legs, as her coat falls to the floor and off-camera coitus is again mercifully only implied. Ew. Josie and Truman are probably doin' it right now.
Actually, no. There he is. Cooper paces around Truman's office, while Harry sits behind his desk watching Hawk wire up Ernie Niles, who was someone else I really needed to see without his shirt on before I went ahead and gouged my eyes out with the sharp corner of the VHS tape containing Episodes 25-29. Because I mean really; what the hell else would I do with it? Ernie rambles. Cooper, cognizant of the fact that this plot is so far from making sense that it started sending Cooper messages from deep space warning him about it episodes and episodes ago, helps Cliff's Notes things up for the audience in demanding of Ernie, "Repeat your instructions to me step by step." And so he obliges: "I take Denise up to Dead Dog Farm. I introduce her to Renault. I take Renault through the buy. I complete the transaction and get the hell out of there." Thanks a ton, MightyBigErnieNiles.com, but the recapping job is already filled, thanks. More insane begging that he doesn't want to do this, that he's a coward, plot-holes-the-size-of-Jupiter's-moons-cakes. Cooper frets that he won't be able to join them, seeing as he has "temporarily lost [his] enforcement franchise." Truman responds that he's been giving that some thought, and tosses Cooper a badge that reads "Deputy." Awwww. Deputy Coop then asks where Denise is, and at this moment Girlie Mulder walks into the office wearing a man's business suit and slicked back hair. He tells Cooper he thought it would be "more appropriate." That entire scene existed exclusively for that hilarious visual punch line. Where's Hawk? And Harry? Percentage of people currently in the room who have the slightest chance of appearing in week's episode: 33.3%. So everyone just. Get. On. With. It.
Oh, NOT. The most excessive use of the trees that moodily blow ever pans down to a sign reading, "Dorritt Home For Boys." Dick, still in his Schlock Holmes outfit, whispers to an accompanying Andy, "We may have to pick the lock." They appear to be breaking into some kind of administrative office deep inside the orphanage that once contained the gleam in the eye for the subplot that has me collapsed on the floor of my apartment, pounding the floor like the kid with the placebo Ritalin. Damn sugar pill. We find out that "everyone" is at lunch, and Dick takes about scouring the file cabinets for a "Nicolas Needleman," and he pulls out the correct manila envelope and begins combing through it. He observes, "The plot thickens." Well then, maybe I should be watching a television show called Still Photos From That Kid's Adoption File, because I haven't uttered those words regarding this show in some time. Andy continually warns him that they need to get right on out of there, but they are soon to be interrupted by a couple knocking on the glass door and asking to be let in. They're a couple adopting a child named "Donny," and they ask to see him. Dick hedges and manages to choke out, "He's dead." Extraneous Male Extra and his wife, Mrs. E.M. Extra, react in horror. Dick catches himself and tacks on, "Dead tired, I mean." Which would have been really funny. If I found the concept of the words "child" and "dead" to each other an area rife for comedy. I mean, do you? Sicko.
Back at Ed's, there's a knock knock knock on the door, revealing Donna "I Watched My Weight But It Disappeared Anyway" Hayward, nervous that she hasn't seen James in a few days. Nervous as in "nervous the piñata won't get here in time for the celebration bash" nervous, or some other kind of nervous altogether? Ed tells her that he heard from James, and that he asked for money. She gets really whispery so you just know that she's acting: "I'll take it to him." Donna kisses him (is there Spanish Fly on that envelope glue? This man is an absolute lady-killer today) and leaves. Norma walks back into the frame, gives him more action than I've pretty much had in the cumulative period that has elapsed since I graduated from college, tells him, "We have a lot to talk about," and leaves. Ed turns back toward the living room, and comes to face to face with Hank, who is finally, mercifully, amazingly, enacting vengeance on someone or something for a quantifiable reason. Which, in and of itself, is kind of ambiguous. He slams Ed in the face many more times than once, knocking him to the ground and pelting him repeatedly. Nadine just then walks through the door, running to protect her "Eddie," drops her cheerleader pom-poms (I thought she was on the wrestling team, but whatever), and throws him through a decorative display case which I don't even think appeared in the house until sometime in the middle of the scene. Hank is splayed out, unconscious, and Nadine runs over to see how Ed is. He's not okay. I can't believe this episode isn't over. I can't believe my unbroken streak of Twin Peaks recaps in which I have ended at least one paragraph with that sentence. That sentence being: I can't believe this episode isn't over.
It looks like Badalamenti finally made it to a staff meeting, the one in which David Lynch repeatedly banged his fist against the table and speeched to his nine-eps-from-destiny production staff that if the show is to remain fresh, people are going to have to start doing new things. Like writing scoring music for a soundtrack which, twenty episodes into the run of the show, still only has three songs. So. Back at the Great Northern, The Staccato Snare Drum Of Southern Patriotism And Encroaching Dementia leads us right back into Ben Horne's office, where Bobby watches in horror as Ben stands on his desk and points with a really long and pointy sword at The Uncivil War scale model and talks troop movement on the Mississippi with young Commandant Briggs. Or "Meade," as Ben is now calling him. "Chamberlain's desperate maneuver ended, Bobby. And here we are. Little Round Top, Bobby, was ours! From the vantage point, we were able to [sorry, this dialogue is completely washed out by the cigar in Ben's mouth in addition to his Fred-Gwynne-in-Pet-Sematary-impression, and oh yes the fact that he's craaaaazy]…VICTORY!!!" Audrey peeks in through the door and sneaks back out as Ben hands Bobby the long and pointy sword (ew. Not like that) and tells him, "General Meade. You have suffered an ignoble defeat. And I accept your unconditional surrender." He puts out his arms to take the sword back, but Bobby has clearly lost all patience, telling Ben he's going to go "talk to President Lincoln." Ben is left blue-balled, yelling, "Sir?"
Out in the hall, Bobby meets Audrey, who tells him that Jerry is on his way home (that'll help) and that Doctor Jacoby will be coming over tomorrow. With this crack team of legal and mental problem-solvers, Ben will be on the fast track to Yankee partisanship in no time. Bobby reassures Audrey, "Don't worry, baby. Bobby's on the case." Audrey tells him not to call her baby. Yeah. Don't.
On their walk down the hall, Bobby and Audrey pass right by Katherine Martell, who continues up the stairs and out of their sight. Back inside Ben's office, the frontiersman himself fires up a kerosene lamp and prepares to lecture a disinterested group of school children about living off the land and maize and how that lamp wouldn't still be burning bright without the helpful fire agent of whale blubber to keep it going. I defy you to grow up in a coastal "Colonial" town named after an Indian tribe and somehow make it to twenty-five without that knowledge firmly in check. It can't be done. Trust me. Katherine knocks, and receives permission to come in: "Enter lively." Heh. The man kills me. He spots her and immediately returns to sane form: "You've come here to gloat, haven't you? To celebrate my demise. Well, you go ahead. You laugh. You defeated me." Pause. "Like I have defeated General Meade." Oh. They engage in the standard refrain about his attempt to both double-cross and kill her and her successful thwarting of his very bad evil. But really, it doesn't matter what they say at all. Because the two of them, alone in a room, reading a user's manual for a used Yugo translated from English to Esperanto and then back to English again is so infinitely more interesting than anything else going on. Each syllable of dialogue is poured on so thick that you know that they know that they're the only thing this show has going for it right now. For instance, the spoken line is, "Hello, Ben." And the subtext is, "We were invited to the Emmys. Our spouses were invited to the Emmys. Hell, Sylvia Horne's children sat on my lap at the reception dinner after the Emmys. Take that, Mayor's wife subplot." But some quality dialogue slips through almost by chance: "I wanted to bury you so deep that future generations would unearth and exhibit your remains: Slimy rat bastard Americanus. Do not feed." I'm surprised he doesn't correct her that he is, in fact, a slimy rat bastard Confederatus. She walks up behind him and laughs, "Despite everything I know about you, I find myself here with you. Wanting you." Gah! They kiss. I guess the South will rise again. Ha ha. Not.
James. Car. Champagne. Smoochy. Brother Malcolm, who looks more like one of Buffy's protruding-forehead undead than he did last week, looks on at Evelyn and James making babies on the driveway with that "haw haw haw" evil laugh and all but rubs his palms together with pure chewing evilness. He's even dressed like one of the spies in Spy Vs. Spy. I guess he's evil too.
Broad daylight at Dead Plot Farm. We see the happenings inside from some distance, Manly Mulder claiming that he wants to "hurry this up" while Ernie engages in his usual amount of blathering. Ernie's sweating. Canadian Mountie Guy sees his shirt smoking and discovers the wire. The two bad guys drag Ernie and Manly Mulder onto the front lawn at gunpoint, Jean yelling the proto-Canuck equivalent of the former special agent's name: "Gooper! Gooooper!" Who? Gooper climbs up onto the grassy knoll behind which the police vehicles had been hiding, and listens as Jean outlines some demands: "I want safe passage to the border." Goop agrees, telling Jean to let the hostages go. Jean claims that they are at "cross-purposes, Gooper," and Gooper threatens to kill them both if this one demand is not met. "Den everybody dies." Gooper offers up a trade: "Ernie Niles and Agent Bryson for me." Gooper drops his gun because he's bad like Shaft, and Truman whispers to Hawk to call for the state police. To serve and protect. Gooper, that is.
A silhouette of a female figure is tossed against the nighttime shadows of The Marshlands. That was my attempt to write a sentence as cheesily noir as this mess. How'd I do? Not cheesy enough? Awww. Thanks. Pan down to Slater Fetus asleep in the bed, nekkid as the day he was…oh, never mind. Evelyn slips out of the room and meets Brother Malcolm on the other side. The two kiss passionately. Damn. Five steps out of the city and V.C. Andrews novels start spontaneously breaking out everywhere you look. Either that or they're not really related. Wanna have a contest? Wanna just go to sleep?
The shoot-out at the Not Okay Corral enters its second excruciating TV minute, as the cavalry has arrived directly and every car with a blue and red light in the state sits outside of Dead Plot Farm. Inside, Cooper sits on the floor, his hair doing that floppy thing it's done in his every failed project since this series wrapped, his forehead gashed. Damn Canadians and their notoriously violent tempers. Canadian Mountie guy looks out the window, all worried, asking Jean if they can just "deal and run." Jean asks Gooper if the police will allow them to run. No. No, they sure won't. Will they deal? No. Cooper suggests that the only way they'll escape with their lives is to surrender, and Jean agrees surprisingly quickly to this proposal. But. But? Jean: "But first we must decide to give up quietly or to kill him." Cooper observes that killing him will lead to all of their deaths, and asks Almost Dead Canuck Brother #3 (oops. Spoiler), "Is my death so important to you?" Jean holds Cooper (Gooper…sorry) responsible for his brothers' deaths. Why? "Before you came here, Twin Peak was a simple place." Twin Peak? I guess it was simple back in the day because the continental plates had not yet shifted enough to create the other peak. Lose. The. Accent. Pseudo-Canuck. Anyway, after "the pretty girl die [sic sic SIC,]," everything went to Hell, and Jean has decided that offing Gooper will make the world right again. Just then, Canadian Mountie actually deigns to ask Jean, "You order any food?" Because the first thing I'm thinking about when I'm holding a federal employee hostage is dialing up Domino's. Bad Andy. Jean looks through the front window of DPF and notes that the person approaching is "Just a girl." They open the door (okay, this is really dumb, and the pensive chord on the soundtrack ain't going real far in convincing me otherwise) to a "woman" wearing a Double R outfit and holding a tray of food. It's Girlie Mulder, come to save the day! While Jean's face dawns with recognition, Girlie Mulder lifts up the skirt of the uniform to reveal a gun in his garter that's visible to Cooper at seated level. He grabs it and fires a shot at an escaping Renault. Girlie Mulder pins Canadian Mountie Guy. Jean Renault is dead. Which, in the grand scheme, constitutes the third most dramatic death of a drug-dealing, border-crossing, FBI-agent-framing Canuck named Renault. Ever. In television history, people.
Johnson house at that really scary, blue part of the night where you can't decide if it actually constitutes morning again or what. Badalamenti's default "Diner Jukebox Blues Rock Riff In The Key Of We Get It Minor" plays on a phonograph, which suddenly turns itself on and off as the lights in the house begin to flicker. Shelley, sleeping on the couch, wakes up at this and calls Bobby's name. Oh, sweets, it's so not Bobby. Even in his most "pouty in the lower lip, I'm too good for this crap, I'd rather live with my parents than buy replacement bedpans with expired food stamps, babe" crankfest mood, Bobby couldn't think to enact what's about to go down right here. Bobby. Go down. Mmmm. Anyway. Shelley gets off the couch and continues to call Bobby's name, once adding a "this isn't funny." The flickering lights illuminate the silhouette of something hanging by a noose behind a translucent screen. In Leo's bed lies a wind-up clown with moving parts, rocking back and forth but primarily confined to its back. The lights flicker. The music plays. Sort of. Shelley walks into the kitchen and spots the back of Leo's wheelchair. Empty. She looks up and looks him straight in the eye, standing across the kitchen, his party hat on from a recent birthday, cake all over his face. Remember when I said in the pilot that I didn't really think he was that scary? Nothing like a few weeks in a coma to really cultivate that sinister glow, then. He glowers. "Shelley." She screams and screams. Gets me every time.
Cooper, still sporting the Showgirls hair, accompanies Truman through the front door of the police station, where all of the lights appear to be out. Lucy tells the two something about "a bomb planted in the woods" and "an explosion." There was a fire at the power station. And as Lucy rambles on to Truman about a generator and a light converter, Cooper sneaks out and takes a walk, his lighter showing the way. He stops in the interrogation room and calls back to Harry, alerting him, "You better take a look at this. Alone." Truman follows and sees what he sees before we do. "Good Lord." Panning, panning, panning. The animal head from Truman's office lies on the table, leaning against the body of a dead hippie-looking guy with black-framed glasses and a mouth taped shut. On the table in front of them lies a chess game. Cooper takes us to the credits: "It's a chess move. Windom Earle's move." Close-up. Minor chord. Damn dirty hippies.