Fade in on a hotel room inside of the Great Northern. The sassy pulse of the Snare Drum Shuffle, the third in Angelo Badalamenti's non-continuing series of three all-purpose musical compositions, rages on. Not, mind you, that I begrudge the man even slightly his ability to help set the tone for the entire series through such consistent scoring, though I have to admit straightaway that I downright covet the business savvy that turned these notes -- the few, the proud, the recurrent -- into their own lucrative corner of the show's short-lived marketing blitz. A brief back story, if I may. Back in headier days, I maintained a proud and egalitarian co-ownership of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, a collection of Badalamenti's "contained in and inspired by" compositions that miraculously totaled something close to double digits' worth of tracks, doubtlessly including such filler additions as "Angelo Listens to the Car Radio" and "Angelo Teaching His Son to Read." When my brother, with whom I maintained this joint CD ownership, fled for the manifold freedoms of his collegiate experience a full year before I did, we were forced to split the entirety of our collection in a lamentable execution we, to this day, unironically refer to as The Divorce. Mind you, deciding upon the beneficiary of music procured almost solely as a result of my mother's hard-fought money was not the easiest of tasks, so it became necessary to rely on numerous other intangible methods of concession. And though I annexed for my parting gifts the canonized two-CD oeuvre of Scandinavian ABBA-fallout band Roxette and the to-this-day-fresh-in-its-hermetically-sealed-plastic pop stylings of a Split Enz spin-off band (a chapter of musical history unto itself) called Schnell Fenster, I was unable to convince my brother that the Twin Peaks soundtrack should be mine all mine. And so it goes in the year 2000.
Good thing there's a point in here somewhere. Oh, yes, there it is, buried underneath all that pesky self-indulgent free family therapy you all watched me get paid to drag you through. On said exalted CD, Snare Drum Shuffle took on at least three separate incarnations in tracks for which I now must make up the titles, from "Audrey's Theme" to "Cherry Stem Blues" to "Horne-u-copia," each of which distinguished itself from another by its incorporation of a lute or the sound of a human snapping, remaining otherwise identical. There must have been something special about this CD, though, because I really wanted it then and I still want it now. Meanwhile, Adam, rest assured in the fact that the World Party CD I stole from you as the U-Haul was pulling away will be returned any day now. 'Cause they're the Beatles, you know. And you can also have the "Aspects of Love" London cast recording back, whenever you want to come pick it up. It's not that I don't respect what Lloyd Webber has done for the mainstreaming of the musical theater genre and all, but, you know, showtunes are for sissies. And with "Cats" closing, well, things have just been really hard for me lately.
Dear Djb, Please check your contract and cut/copy/paste the section in which my lawyers finely detailed the part about you spending the whole freakin' recap talking about yourself and your fascinating family history. E-mail that whole part to me so I can look it over, okay? Oh, you say that section doesn't exist? Well. Exactly. Best regards, Sars. ["I didn't write that. But I will add that this Dr. Freud who keeps garnishing your paychecks is a real pest." -- Sars]
A long, slow pan of the room is soon to be accompanied by Cooper's latest address to Diane, in which he brings her up to date on the activities that landed him in Room 315 of the Great Northern. The room fulfills Truman's promise of being "clean, reasonably priced accommodations," and Cooper adds a few thoughts on his satisfaction concerning issues as diverse as the quality of the mattress, the bathroom, and the telephone. It's a very routine iteration of the first night of his stay, all of which makes the visual irony of what appears on the other end of this pan all the more effective. For during the "clean, reasonably priced accommodations" line in this opening speech, the camera pans to two black-clad feet suspended from a bar just below the ceiling, and the camera proceeds to pan slowly down the length of a human being hanging upside-down. The socks are held up by suspenders, which from this angle and in association with the shoes look very bondage-like in their appearance. Further on, the camera reaches a pair of bare knees, and there is one heart-stopping moment in which we see only skin, the indication of any future naughty-bits-concealing fabric growing more unlikely by the second. I wonder for but a brief moment of sheer, dawning horror if the middle American focus groups and Nielsen families were so vocal about their alienation from the Pilot that the execs at ABC decided to tinker with the tone of the entire series and turn it into a bawdy, cutting-edge weekly chronicle called 1-900-FBI-LOVE, a show about the wild times of a law-enforcing federal bachelor who the ladies can't resist and who lives by the credo "anything you say or do can and will cause me to be held against you in a court of love." Anything to keep up with that upstart new Fox network everyone keeps talking about. Because, you know, it's 1990 and all.
But this, oh thank the programming gods above, turns out to not so much be the case. As the camera pans down a bit more, the clothing reappears in the form of boxers and a tank top, and as Cooper enters the portion of his speech which muses on the television's reception, the camera stops on his face and I realize that we've caught up with him in the middle of his morning exercises. Finally treated to a more comprehensive shot of the room, we see Cooper hanging upside-down in his entirety. But, he adds, "the true test of any hotel, as you well know, Diane, is that morning cup of coffee, which I'll be getting back to you about within a half hour." She must be so relieved, as I can only imagine how that information comes to bear on her daily tasks as his assistant. Or as his tape recorder, as the case very well may be. He turns off the tape recorder, gets down from the poll, thinks of another essential piece of information necessary to recount to his intrepid Diane, and flips the tape recorder back on as the music abruptly ceases and an air of utmost seriousness descends. Uh-oh. What unforeseen plot development could this dramatic tonal shift signify? How 'bout this? "Diane, it struck me again earlier this morning. There are two things that continue to trouble me, and I'm speaking now not only as an agent of the bureau, but also as a human being. What really went on between Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys, and who really pulled the trigger on JFK?" Hee. Dang, three and a half full minutes into this episode and I've already forgotten to communicate the most important piece of information yet: I freakin' love this show.
Downstairs in the dining room at the Great Northern, a waitress pours Cooper his first cup of Twin Peaks coffee, taken black, and he keeps her from leaving until he has taken the appropriate interval to sip it, swish it around a bit, take in the aroma and bouquet, and generally endear us to him even further, if such a thing is possible. It is, as Cooper reports, "a damn fine cup of coffee." The flattered waitress leaves him the entire pot, and Cooper embarks on the multi-volume process of ordering his breakfast, further establishing his trademark idiosyncrasies with requests like, "Two eggs over hard. I know, don't tell me, it's hard on the arteries. But old habits die hard, just about as hard as I want those eggs." Audrey appears at the door of the dining room, her hair and make-up highly evolved from the Pilot and some of her bad-girl schoolish vixen characterization tuned down, a shrewd move considering I don't think we ever see her in school again. Stymied in his attempt to order grapefruit juice after catching her eye, Cooper reports that he only wants juice that is "freshly squeezed." And actually, I think that's the name of one of the tracks on the soundtrack, the one playing now in which Snare Drum Shuffle features the melody played on a vibes-related instrument of some kind, rather than the obligatory saxophone. I love this song. It's almost as good as the track on the Twin Peaks soundtrack which also maintains a similar melody to this one, entitled "It's Horne-tastic!"
Audrey approaches the table and introduces herself, setting into motion a round of stylized and extremely skillful flirting on both sides. She asks if she can sit at his table, and Cooper tells her that if she is in the same Horne family as Ben, the owner of the hotel, she can pretty much sit anywhere she darn well pleases. But he does take pains to go on, "I'd also like to add it would be my pleasure." She sits, and the conversation quickly turns to Laura Palmer's death. Cooper asks if Audrey was friends with Laura, and Audrey pauses for a spell before volunteering that Laura tutored Audrey's brother: "Johnny's twenty-seven and he's in the third grade. He's got emotional problems. It runs in the family." Unable to shift the conversation ever so slightly away from the numerous symptoms and manifestations of the chemical imbalances of the Nut Family Horne, Audrey instead opens her mouth and lets forth the sentence, "Do your palms ever itch?" Cooper regards her curiously, but it's plain to see he's loving it. Package that kind of crazy and have it flash that smile every once in a while, and you'll have men lining up around the Great Northern to help administer Audrey's multiple IV dosages of Zoloft whenever such assistance should find itself required.
Over at the Sheriff's Department, Cooper enters to discover Andy, Lucy, and Truman in the middle of their morning donut-scarfing ritual. In the conference room, Cooper starts right in on the business at hand, telling Truman he's "got the rest of the day mapped out." He wants to interrogate "Be My Little Baby" Bobby and then have a little chat with "Rock-a-Bye Pre-Baby" James, run a test on Bobby's car, and various and sundry other little items to which Truman cannot respond through his donut-stuffed mouth. Cooper flies through the rest of the plans, ending said speech with, "Let's meet back here in three minutes. Harry, I have really got to urinate." Cooper departs and Harry chews and chews and chews, finally swallowing the donut.
Post-bladder-relief and post-excess-pastry-consumption, Cooper and Truman rest comfortably in the conference room while Doc Hayward brings them up to date on the findings in Laura's autopsy. Time of death is estimated between midnight and 4 am, she died from loss of blood as a result of numerous shallow wounds, self-inflicted bite marks on her shoulder and tongue, she had been bound at the wrists and feet, and she had sexual relations with at least three men in the final twelve hours of her life. Hmmm -- I don't know, natural causes? Wait, probably not, because Ronette Pulaski had been assaulted in the same exact fashion. The good doctor reflects again on "who would do a thing like that?" Cut to Leo "Hey, I Would Do a Thing Like That" Johnson working in his truck. Shelley "I'm Scared of You 'Cause the Script Says It Is So" Johnson emerges from the house and tells him she's leaving for work. Leo attempts to method-act his way into a "taller and less bald than I really am" frenzy in an attempt to inspire fear in pretty much anyone, but as I said last week, I remain unconvinced by his ostensibly sinister characterization. He hands her a large bag of laundry from within the truck and insists that she do it "now, Shelley." She walks over to the washing machine outside the back door of their house, and discovers a bloody shirt that she holds up and helpfully announces is "bloody." She stuffs the shirt into the drawer of a bureau to the washing machine as Leo storms out the back door and tells her that Norma has come to pick her up. As she attempts to make her way past him, Leo does in fact achieve a supreme level of intended creepiness as he grabs Shelley's cheek and scolds so subtly, "I might stop by the diner sometime today. Be a good girl and save me a piece of pie." She looks back his way, a look communicating "I will save you a piece of banana cream shards-of-glass pie and a tall, refreshing arsenic shake, so don't even fuck with me" glance only true Shelley fans such as myself (clearly, Leo is not one) can successfully discern.
Back in the conference room, Cooper is going tough but fair on James, perhaps still feeling out whether Slater Fetus should be tried as an adult, a youth, or if the entire criminal investigation against him should just be, um, aborted. Cooper begins by showing James the video of the Laura/Donna picnic, and James admits that the ubiquitous motorcycle is, in fact, his. Cooper wonders how James thought he could keep his relationship with Laura secret, what with Laura being the homecoming queen and the girlfriend of the captain of the football team. James looks sullen and evasive, Cooper seems poised to change approaches and become combative in the same way he approached last week's interrogation with Bobby, and I take this opportunity to briefly pause the tape and volley the following exchange at the screen:
Cooper: Don't lie to me, kid. I wasn't born yesterday!
Slater Fetus: I can't lie to you, sir. I haven't been born yet at all!
Damn, I'm clever. Good thing more disciplined, better-written heads prevailed at Lynch/Frost Productions, and Cooper remains composed in asking James if he knew that Laura was using cocaine. The fetus did know, but he tried to get her to stop. And according to his report, she did so for a while. But then "something happened a couple of days ago." Genuinely interested, Cooper perks up and asks what happened, but James says he only knows something scared Laura into not wanting to see him anymore. James briefly recounts the story he told Donna about Laura jumping off his motorcycle the night she died. Cooper produces the half of a gold heart recovered at the crime scene. He opens the diary recovered from her room and asks, "What happened on February 5th, and who has the other half of this heart?" James looks down at the desk despondently as if to communicate the reality that on February 5th he was trapped in the first trimester, lacked long-term memory function, and was the size of a peanut. In fact, the only similarity between the Slater Fetus of late March and the Slater Fetus of early February is in his continuing ability to make the people around him experience morning sickness and other various types of pervasive nausea. But in reality, James does have a mental image of February 5th, and through a hazy flashback we discover a pre-dead, wholly un-purplish Laura telling James that she's so happy today because "I really believe you love me." She continues, "Now my heart belongs to you" as she breaks the telltale heart and hands half of it to James. Back in the conference room he looks up through weepy eyes, and as the musical theme Sad Strings plays in earnest, James begins to cry. Then he utters the outright lie, "I don't know" anything about February 5th. Wah, wah, Mr. Sad Biker guy. I thought a fetus of your age couldn't even cry successfully until you were actually born and someone slapped you in the ass. Not that I'm volunteering.
Meanwhile, over at the Johnson place, Leo tears his truck apart while a look of dawning badness crosses over his face. He checks everywhere. He checks the washing machine. He screams in frustration and hits the washing machine. Clearly it ain't trouble he's unable to track down. Because apparently he's just stepped in a big ol' steaming pile of just exactly that.
Over in the jail cell containing Mike and Bobby, Mike adds an extra cup or two of flour to the still thickening plot in establishing a connection between the two of them and Leo Johnson. Mike tells Bobby that Leo called him at home looking for "the money." Mike had been under the impression that they were supposed to give it all to him today, and, much to Mike's consternation, Bobby tells him that he's already given Leo half of the money. Sadly, whatever transaction of goods and services these furtive business associates had been planning was severely stymied by a small impediment called Laura's death. Turns out she was holding the rest of the money in her safety deposit box, and Bobby absolves himself of guilt with the too-true defense that "I was supposed to get it today, then she went and checked out on us." Mike wonders how they plan on obtaining another ten grand for Leo, and Bobby defensively suggests that they "could sell light bulbs door to door." Mike rails back that this "isn't funny," and Bobby assures him that he's "not laughing." I am. But it's kind of a nervous, girlish, ask-me-to-the-dance-oh-please kind of giggle. Hi, Bobby. Their conversation ceases instantly, however, when Hawk escorts Slater Fetus back into his cell. Bobby slinks up to the bars and follows James's every step with a corresponding step of his own. When it comes to Slater Fetus and the rights of the unborn, Bobby is clearly remaining staunchly pro-choice on his approach to James' future.
A few seconds of the Laura/Donna picnic are soon to dissolve into the Hayward house, where Donna in running down the stairs and asking her mother why they didn't wake her for her scheduled questioning at the police station. As the theme song accompanies this scene, Donna explains to her mother that she and James had been falling in love all the while he and Laura were together. She asks, "I feel like I've betrayed my best friend, and if it's true, why am I so happy?" Hugs and more hugs.
Over at the police station, Truman introduces Ed, whose head is bandaged from the fight at the Roadhouse, to Cooper for the first time, and Cooper makes the family connection between Ed and James. Ed enigmatically observes that he's looking after James because "his mother is out of town" (well, wouldn't that mean that -- oh, never mind) and that James works in Ed's garage. Cooper comforts Ed that James "didn't kill anybody," and that he's sure of this based on "one small doubt, which he cleared up for me." And just as Cooper warns Ed that Mike and Bobby will be released today as well, Lucy interrupts their chat in telling Cooper that an "Albert Rosenfeld" (gee, well, I sure as heck don't know what or who this Albert character will turn out to be like, but something about this moment just makes me want to say YAY YAY YAY. Don't quite know why, though) is calling, and it "sounds like long distance. It has that open air sound, y'know, where, it sounds like wind blowing. Like wind blowing. Through trees." Re-watch this. It's funny. As Cooper takes the call, Ed tells Truman he thinks something was wrong last night at the Roadhouse. Although he was at the Roadhouse to see Norma, Ed reports, he was also "on my stake-out." When he got up to investigate the fight between Mike and Donna, he became light-headed and didn't even remember getting hit. Ed's conclusion? His beer was drugged, a theory made all the more credible to the two of them considering that "Jacques Renault was tending bar." Back to Cooper; he's in the process of promising said "Albert" that he can have access to Laura's body for further investigation "tomorrow," but that her funeral is on Monday morning and that's pretty much that. Cooper doesn't let him go without telling him about the Lamplighter Inn and their amazing cherry pie. And I know we don't know Albert yet, but I can pretty clearly hear his response to Cooper's instant acclimation into slower, country living, and it has nothing to do with asking about the quality of the coffee or why those flannel-wearing farm dwellers are so damn stupid to begin with. Oh, wait. It might be that second thing. Albert's power is so strong that we haven't even met him yet and already I am channeling his every move.
The extremely-normal-and-charming-and-wonderful-in-almost-every-way-I've-had-the-pleasure-to-see-so-far Norma and the put-the--phrase-in-parentheses-and-write-the-word-NOT-in-twenty-foot-high-letters-before-it Nadine literally run into each other at the entrance to the Twin Peaks General Store. Nadine volunteers the information that she has spent her last quality weeks "inventing a noiseless, completely silent drape runner," and we receive a top-notch insight into the demented mind of Nadine Hurley, who is so trapped in her tiny psychotic universe that she realizes no one's issues but her own: "Do you what makes it work? The thing I thought of at four in the morning, when I was waiting for my husband to be released from intensive care?" Do you know what makes the silent drape runners work? No whammies? Big bucks? It's cotton balls. And you have to give her credit, because if Nadine were to be furnished with a copy of the script of this episode, she would identify her discovery of the perfect silent drape runner as the absolute dramatic high point of all of their lives. And she's off. Norma rolls her eyes and I feel horribly, horribly sad for Ed, wherever he may be, sitting quietly and meditating on the domestic shambles that are his every waking moment of life.
Hey, it's Ed, sitting in the police station, meditating on the domestic shambles that are his every waking moment of life. James, his nephew and charge in his mother's absence and therefore an integral part of the domestic shambles that are his every waking moment of life (see the two sentences for more information on this), is being released from custody. He asks Ed if he had to post bail, and Ed assures him (because he's the best) that James was not charged with anything. As they leave, James dourly lets him know that he'll be needing "a hand from the Bookhouse Boys." Ed, the most patient man ever to endure a psychotic wife who thinks she's a pirate and a non-gestated nephew who thinks he's fully gestated, tells him that it's already taken care of as they exit the station.
Back in a different interrogation room, Cooper does the talking while a silent Truman watches the latest edition of Third Degree enacted on Mike and Bobby. Mike tells Cooper they were just in jail for fighting, and he argues that they only fought out of "self-defense." And so Cooper lets them go, just like that. Completely perplexed by this sudden shift in Cooper's attitude but unwilling to stick around and perform a psychoanalysis on the matter, the two jump up and ready themselves for departure. But before they're fully out the door, Cooper whistles into the hollow tube he spent much of the Pilot whittling so successfully, and announces, "One more thing. Pray for the health and safety of James Hurley, because if anything happens to him, we're coming for you." And they go. Cooper solves another of life's little predicaments. He looks at Truman to see him rather downcast and tells them they have "places to go, people to see." Truman volleys that he feels as if he should begin studying medicine, and when Cooper asks why, Truman responds with a please-don't-make-me-say-this pause, "Because I'm beginning to feel a bit like Doctor Watson." Well, I thought it was funny, anyway. And after all the elapsed time so far in this series without a questionable line of dialogue of any kind, I find it understandable, almost refreshing, really, that one line of quirky humor would fall squarely onto the previously unutilized waka-waka-waka side of the fence.
Over at the Packard Mill, Pete Martell wiles away the hours scaling some dead, slimy fish. An "oh, finally, something in the room more offensive than I am, even if just slightly" Josie Packard enters the room. Sounding more and more as if she has been watching and rewatching the "I help grandpa push lawn-mowing machine" sequence of Sixteen Candles for tips on hilarious linguistic slip-ups, she offers upon entering, "On top of the morning to you." Pete corrects her patiently, because he's a saint and a wonderful actor, but Josie sees fit to suck the air right out of that with her own acting decisions of "unsaintly" and "non-good." Josie thanks Pete for standing up for her against Katherine the day, but the conversation ceases when Truman rings the house's buzzer and announces through an intercom that he's there to see Josie. Cut to Pete, Josie, Truman, and Cooper sitting in a sitting room of some kind, Josie having changed into a bright red "by the way I'm a female, really" dress. Pete pours Truman and Cooper a cup of coffee and takes off, and Cooper asks Josie about her relationship with Laura. Josie paid Laura to tutor her with her English twice a week, and she saw her last on Thursday afternoon. Josie reports that Laura seemed very different on Thursday, and that she told Josie out of seeming nowhere, "I think now I understand how you feel about your husband's death." The phone rings in the room and Josie exits to answer it, and Cooper takes this opportunity to show off his investigative acumen by asking Truman, "So, Harry, how long you been seeing her?" Truman is amazed at Cooper's ability to discern such a thing, and he admits that they've only been together for about six weeks, seeing as "Andrew died a year and a half ago." Silence falls on this line of conversation, so the two men take this opportunity to take a sip of the coffee Pete had poured. But just as they take that first sip, Pete runs back in with another of my favorite early-episode lines, the non-sequitur of the ages, "Fellas, don't drink that coffee! You'd never guess. There was a fish! In the percolator!" Cooper affects a downward stare and a vague, disbelieving shake of the head that makes me laugh every time I see it, and the scene ends with the two of the attempting to keep the thought at bay that they've just sampled a mighty big gulp of Pete Martell's special Chock Full o' Carp house blend.
Over at Josie's phone call, we cut to Katherine on the other end, sitting on a bed in some as yet indeterminate location. Deep in full queen-bitch-goddess mode (as well it should be), Katherine tells Josie that "your sentimental, good-will shenanigans cost us yesterday -- you do know what 'shenanigans' are, don't you?" She goes on to tell Josie that shutting down the mill cost them over $87,000, which she can't imagine would have "made brother Andrew happy." Katherine hangs up the phone and picks up a glass of wine, and another glass of wine in the hand of a person we do not see toasts her heartily in her continuing effort to ensure that Josie ceases to feel so on top of this particular morning, after all.
Back in the Martell kitchen, a shot of Pete incredulously sniffing the contaminated coffee pot cuts to Josie once more in the presence of Cooper and Truman. She asks them what "shenanigans" means. Cooper volunteers, "Nonsense, mischief, often a deceitful or treacherous trick." Josie looks sadly downward: "And, um, what do all those words mean?" Okay, she doesn't say that.
Cut to Katherine once more in the hotel room, where the hand with the wine turns into Ben Horne putting his suit on and preparing to leave. Katherine sits in bed, cynically asking why he has to rush off every time. Katherine is growing impatient with some terribly devious plan the two have taken pains to cook up, but Ben offers the optimistic possibility that "a few more local tragedies and Josie might just run the old mill into the ground all by herself." Katherine indicates that she would like to bankrupt the mill far more quickly than a slow draining process would allow for, and she even worries that her "knothead husband may peek in the ledger and sniff out the creative arithmetic." Ben proposes a plan it sounds as if he's suggested dozens of times, saying, "Maybe it's time to start a little fire." Katherine flirts, "Are you talking about business or pleasure?" Ben responds with his trademark "look, Katherine, I do intend to have sex again today, it just probably won't be with you" subtext, telling her deadpan, "I'm talking about the Packard Saw Mill." But the idea of it gets Ben all hot and bothered again, and after he commences kissing Piper Laurie's feet for a spell (which, truth be told, makes me less than hot and more than a little bothered), he takes off his jacket and settles in for another round of off-camera coital fun times I'm pretty sure we have no need to be part of.
Uh-oh. Grab your remote and locate the "volume down" button, the "off" button, and the "excise this mad spooky shit from my mind forever, please" button, as you will need them all to plow through the two minutes of freak-ass screen time. And while you're at it, move your couches as far back from the television set as the space of your home allows (do you have a lawn? You'll be able to hear it from the lawn. Damn you, I want a lawn). You've been warned. We're inside of the Palmer house, in the first of a series of scenes that forever altered my preadolescent concept of "nightmare" and relegated "The Falling Dream" and "The Naked in School Dream" and even "The Ambiguous Boogie Man in My Closet Dream" far, far down the list of childhood neuroses that plagued me in the hours after the sun went down. Leland approaches a comatose Sarah, sitting on the couch, and tells her that Donna has come to see her. On his way out of the room, Leland suggests to Donna that she "try not to upset her." Hee hee hee. I'm sure Donna has a very good chance of placating her completely. Donna has come with only the best of intentions, I'm sure, perhaps to offer a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on, maybe to offer Sarah a thing or two to eat from the last twelve meals Donna now suddenly sees fit to forgo. A maniacal Sarah tells Donna four times with increasing amounts of dementia that "I miss her so much," before looking at Donna's face and seeing Laura's in its place. She screams and hugs Donna for a moment, until her eyes settle on another presence in the room crouched and lurking behind the couch, a long-haired man with a face so sinister that even if he'd been back there smiling and making funny balloon animals and singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" (never mind, actually. That clownish imagery probably would have made the whole thing even more scary, if this is at all possible), he would never cease to freak me out. Even ten years later. I can't recap this scene anymore. I don't want to talk about it. And I don't want to go to sleep again. Ever. Sarah screams and screams. I think. I'm out on the lawn, remember?
Over at the hospital, Hawk talks to Ronette's parents about the last time they saw her. She went straight from school to Horne's department store, where she worked as a sales girl at (plot twist indicator! Pay attention!) the perfume counter. Hawk takes note of this, but his attention is soon to be redirected by the appearance of a one-armed man (remember this from last time? When I said it might just be important? EH? Yeah, well, there he is again. Do with this what you see fit) walking out of the elevator. Hawk excuses himself and walks after the man down an empty hallway and into a room at the end which is entirely blue. I think. Tape troubles for djb again. Hawk follows a sign to, I think, the morgue. This would be an excellent time to cut to commercial, not just for the dramatic high points at hand, but as well as an excellent opportunity for me to remove the tape from the VCR and proceed to indulge myself in that time honored fix-all method of repairing disintegrating, ten-year-old technology by peering closely into the black strips under the "do not raise this flap" part of the tape and blowing on it. Which I shall now proceed to do.
Inside Ben Horne's plush office, Audrey, still the poster child for unbelievably endearing chemical imbalance, sways in time to Badalamenti's "Audrey's Theme Redux on Oboe and Glockenspiel." Ben enters and shuts off "this racket," telling Audrey that he's told her numerous times that it disturbs the guests. Segueing from a "you're ruining my life" to "you're ruining all of our lives" discussion tactic, Ben asks Audrey if she can connect the dots between her visit to the Norwegians conference room yesterday and their spontaneous decision to leave without signing the contracts. Audrey can't think of a possible reason why these two events could be connected. Oh, wait, and then there's this: "While I was in there, I happened to mention that I was sad." Um, about what, darling? "About my dear, close, friend Laura bring brutally murdered." Ben threatens her with a line so lyrical it should be put to music (and I hear that Angelo Badalamenti is available for the task, by the way), "If you ever pull another stunt like that, you are going to be scrubbing bidets in a Bulgarian convent." Audrey calls his bluff, and Ben storms out on the line, "Laura died two days ago. I lost you years ago." Ouch. And it's only been two days?
Meanwhile, over in the Briggs house, the Major says grace and attempts to engage his son "Robert" in a dialogue about "the events of the past few days. Not necessarily the physical events themselves, but rather the thoughts and feelings surrounding them." The Major's speeches remained remarkably unchanging during the course of the show, a credit to the consistency of his character considering the unique cadence he is able to maintain. ("I respect your rebellious nature. However, being your father, I am obligated to contain that fire of contrariness within the bounds established by society, as well as those within our own family structure.") Bobby sits silently brooding, then takes out a cigarette and puts it in his mouth, right there at the table. The Major, barely altering his tone at all, slaps the offending carcinogen right out of Bobby mouth, and it flies across the table and lands sticking straight out of his mother's meatloaf. It's a mental image that has stuck with me for some amazingly bizarre reason I'm at a loss to discern, and I've always thought it would make a really good promotional still for those poor collectors who have every other available piece of Peaks paraphernalia manufactured through the ages (except for permanent ownership of the CD, of course). Major then goes on to say something about their "beclouded and tempestuous existence," and Bobby's docile mother chimes in with the phrase that pays: "We're here for you, Bobby." She picks the cigarette out of her dinner and regards it curiously. Bobby wants to die, looking around in disbelief as if the only saving grace of his having been saddled with such a pithy and rigid father is that the gene for hair loss is passed down through the mother's side of the punnet square. This guy is like, really bald.
This scene makes me giggle more than a few times. Over at the Double R, Truman suggests to Cooper that he try a piece of their delicious cherry pie, and Shelley runs off to get it. Truman offers Cooper the quick low-down on Shelley and her trucker husband. After Cooper comments on the fact that he still cannot get the taste of the fish-laden coffee out of his mouth, they both spot the Log Lady sitting alone at the other end of the bar. Word-for-word transcription follows:
Cooper: Log Lady.
Truman: Right.
Cooper: Can I ask her about her log?
Truman: Many have.
Norma arrives and introduces herself to Cooper. We discover that Laura volunteered as part of a Meals on Wheels program, organized through the diner, in which she helped deliver "hot meals to elderly shut-ins." Cooper requests a copy of the list of people on her route and "two more pieces of this incredible pie." The Log Lady walks over to the two men, and more verbatim greatness which I could never fully do justice ensues:
Log Lady: My log saw something that night.
Cooper: What did it see?
Log Lady: Ask it.
[Glacial pause befitting perhaps any activity better than waiting for a grown man to interrogate a big ol' hunk of lumber.]
Log Lady: I thought so.
[Exit Log Lady. Raucous applause.]
See that, I couldn't even do it justice when I transcribed it verbatim. Trust me. It's a winner.
Over at that happy, happy domestic dwelling that is the Johnson house, Leo is in the process of slicing a deflated football open when he hears Norma dropping Shelley off. Hiding his arts-and-crafts project on top of the refrigerator for later use, Leo walks over to the sink and places a bar of soap into a sock and advances on her with the threat, "Where's my shirt?" What shirt? The blue one. He tells her he's going to "teach her a lesson," and he turns on the radio and swings the homespun weapon above his head until it's moving fast enough to really, really hurt her. And speaking of strange meetings in the home, over at the Hayward place, Donna is stepping out with her baby, as James has dropped by for dinner with her and Donna's parents. After introducing himself to her parents, they are left alone for a moment and Donna promises they can "talk after dinner." Outside the house, though, Mike and Bobby pull up in Mike's vintagemobile, and Mike correctly observes, "First your girlfriend, then mine," as a pissed-as-hell Bobby finally gets around to smoking that cigarette he garnished his mother's dinner with just a few short hours before.
And in the final moments of this week's episode, we find ourselves in Doctor Jacoby's office as he is putting a cassette tape in a recorder and pressing play: "Hey, what's up, Doc? It's Laura Palmer, in case you haven't guessed." He plugs in a pair of headphones and carries them with him across the room as we learn that Laura is in a "weird mood," reporting that "James is sweet. But he's so dumb." Um? Can I make one more "well, he's pretty advanced for his age" joke and still get away with it this late in the recap? Fine. I just did. Walking across the room, Jacoby pulls a coconut out of a fake tropical tree of some kind in one corner of his office (yes, it is just that tastefully decorated). Laura reports that she just knows that she's going to "get lost in those woods again tonight." She begins a sentence, "You remember me telling you about that mystery man?" But Jacoby puts the headphones on all the way and we cannot hear the rest of her oratory. He lies down in his patient's chair and cracks open the coconut and removes, of all things, a half of a gold heart. He holds it up and emotes some downright frightful hybrid between laughing and crying as the closing credits roll over a song or two we've all doubtless heard before.