In a Lynch-directed scene with Lynch-driven dialogue beginning a Lynch-inspired episode (in a show created by, and I had to look this one up, none other than feature film director and television visionary David Lynch), we fade up on complete (can silence be stylized? If it can, or if it couldn't, then it can, and is, right now) silence in the Horne's private dining room inside of The Great Northern. Ben, Audrey, Headdress Johnny, and Poor, Poor, Disappearing Sylvia cut their food and sip their beverages, actions so icy and emotionless they are practically drowned out by the clamor of the opening credits. Which, incidentally, are also silent. Silence and brooding, silence and brooding. Pretty much the only other sound to be heard is the deafening buzz of WASPs that comprise this unbelievably detached lot, and so it goes for an unprecedented minute of screen time. No, sir, you'd just better believe I don't give any credence to those rumors propagated by unreliable Internet sources that this episode was the love child of an uncredited Joe Eszterhas screenplay and the directorial flair of a young Paul Verhoeven. This is Lynch tone and style all the way, and I will not sit around and listen to specious arguments to the contrary.
So right on out of nowhere, the closed swinging door to the dining room bursts open in a contrast so heart-stoppingly severe it sounds suddenly like a jumbo jet has flown into the building and come to rest mere feet from the jarred and unsuspecting family (maybe we'll need Verhoeven on this after all) whose dining tranquility, stilted as it may have been, has been unceremoniously compromised. Through the door walks a silly, silly looking short man wearing sunglasses and a button-down shirt accessorized with suspenders and a bow tie that do nothing to offset the previously established silliness of said man's every silly gesture. Ben character-develops, "Jerry, back from Paris." Silly Man is yelling at several uniformed porters that "I've got a sandwich in there, I want all those bags open, we're looking 'til we find it." He prances over to Audrey and excitedly reports, "Uncle Jerry's back!" She barely turns her head. No one's more excited to see Uncle Jerry than Uncle Jerry is, it soon becomes clear. He turns a few degrees toward the other woman in the room and attempts an unctuously sincere, "Sylvia," a salutation met with a disgusted, "Benjamin!" Ben (yes, in fact, their names are Ben and Jerry. You got a problem with that?) barely raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of wine, a pretty apt protective method for a husband who would define his own best attribute in this marriage as, "Well, I may not have spoken out in your defense against this freak, but at least I'm not out sleeping with dozens of other women. At the moment." Jerry soon finds what he is looking for, and he unwraps a bread-based food product from its protective wax paper and informs Ben, "This is the best damned sandwich I ever ate." It's a French concoction featuring tons of cheese and butter, and Ben forgoes his entire dinner to take several large bites and scream his enthusiasm for its manifold yumminess. Through his gorged mouth, Ben enthusiastically chokes out what the sandwich reminds him of: "Ginny and Jenny down by the river," some unexplained and doubtlessly prurient memory inappropriate for further reference in front of his put-upon mother and two silent children. So Ben suggests that the two retire outside, and as he stands up to go, he shoots his wife that patented "see you in twenty-seven episodes, sucka" glance and bids the rest of his family the brilliant nugget, "Always a pleasure." Sylvia Horne puts her head in her hand woefully in a gesture that communicates "I can't believe this man is my husband" just as much as it does "Oh, please God, don't make me go back to temping," as the scene ends and her character is retired to that great and holy One Hour Drama in the Sky known as late-night infomercials and part-time secretarial work. Poor, poor Sylvia Horne.
Out in the rustic hallway, Ben and the genetically recessive and diminutive version of Ben discuss developments in Twin Peaks since the latter has been in Paris: "Leland's daughter was murdered and the Norwegians left." Jerry wants to know if "they signed," and Ben tells him that the deal is off:
Jerry: We had those Vikings by the horns! What happened?
Ben: We're not a hundred percent sure. They took their translator with them.
Yes, if you're wondering, this sequence is played for high camp. And yes, it works marvelously. Continuing in the same vein, Jerry slowly comes to a realization of Ben's first statement and asks, "Did you say Leland's daughter was murdered?" Ben confirms that it is so, and Jerry observes, "I'm depressed." Why? I would have a difficult time imagining that Jerry's concern over a dead girl would stem in any way from humanitarian causes considering the way his slimy character has been drawn thus far, so it is of little surprise when Ben again plot-develops the day away with the healing promise that "there's a new girl at One-Eyed Jacks, freshly scented, from the perfume counter. And you, brother Jer, have a fifty/fifty chance of being first in line." Jerry observes that "all work and no play make Ben and Jerry dull boys," and it immediately becomes clear that bad-girl Laura's bad-girl qualities may have run even deeper than we'd anticipated over the course of the episodes. Jerry's mood drastically improves as Ben suggests they "jump in the boat." And so the "depressed" feelings brought on by Laura's death recede, and Jerry's character gets fleshed out enough for us to know that his mood at any given time centers entirely around the prospect of his getting laid as quickly as humanly possible.
Dissolve to the two of them under the cover of darkness, actually in a boat. This is surprising to me, because I thought "jump in the boat" was a veiled sexual innuendo of some kind, particularly considering the fact that I cannot entirely divorce myself from my pre-gained knowledge of One-Eyed Jacks and what goes on there. But then again, no scene should have more than its fair share of winking sexual nods, and the introduction of the phrase "One-Eyed Jacks" is, in reality, more than enough cloaked phallic allusion for an entire episode.
Cut to the far more wholesome dining experience of that found at the Hayward house, where a shot of a roaring fire cuts to James "Amniotic Sac of Crap" Hurley, sitting on the couch as far as possible from Donna "I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Tater Tot" Hayward while her protective parents hover ever close. Doc tells the two that he and his wife are going to say good night, and Eileen delivers her one line as adequately as possible and takes leave soon after, perhaps concerned that a sub-par performance might cause her to be ungraciously "Sylvia Horned" from the show as well, marginal as her wifely character seems destined to become.
Cut to an outdoor shot of a large neon sign displaying a deck-of-cards-depiction of a jack, the letter "J" blinking on and off in the upper-right corner of the sign. In front of said sign stands a fur-bedecked, er, working girl, it appears. At the dock, Ben and Jerry step off the boat, and a scantily clad woman in a sailor's cap (see where this is going?) welcomes Mr. Horne by name. Jerry frets that the two aren't going to "go in the casino first," are they, to which Ben frees himself from all that swirling subtext in responding, "Jer, I didn't come here to lose my shirt. I just came to take it off." Hookers. In a locale just barely north of the Canadian border. Which fronts as a casino. There. I said it. Inside, another wanton woman tending bar hears over a phone that "the Horne brothers are here," and she responds that she'll "tell Blackie." The brothers walk into the otherwise empty room and take a seat at the bar. Do I have to quote verbatim every line Jerry Horne ever deigns to speak? Oh, wait, actually, I think I do:
Jerry: Sweetheart, I'd like to order two drinks. One double scotch on the rocks. And my brother would like a double scotch on the rocks.
Wanton Woman Behind the Bar: That's two double scotch on the rocks.
Jerry: stop, rocket science.
As a credit to Jerry, he delivers lines like that last one in such a "don't worry, we're all in this dumbness together" cadence that it's hard to believe he's attempting to victimize anyone with his sarcasm (see: Albert Rosenfield). All this conversation is soon to be interrupted by the appearance, through a red velvet curtain, of numerous sparsely dressed women. Ben and Jerry smile approvingly, and through the curtain a black-clad mistress appears, looking a bit like Bebe Neuwirth in those Cheers episodes when she let her flowing locks down and became a seductive woman of the night. Did that ever even happen? ["It happens during Summer Of Sam, and on those Visa commercials. Close enough." -- Sars] Regardless, Ben refers to this character as "Blackie." He fondles her liberally as he breaks into a spontaneous rendition of Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" speech from some play that may actually be a sonnet. Raise your hand if you were an English major. ["Sonnet 18." -- Sars] Jerry soon interrupts his brother's irksome display of theater-camp bravado with the pragmatic matter at hand, nuzzling up to the two of them like the dorky younger brother he is and inquiring, "Where's the new girl?" So out she walks, a blond PYT who stands nervously by the curtain as the men look her up, down, over, around and back again. Jerry flips a coin and Ben calls "heads," which is, of course, where it lands. The harlot-in-training from the perfume counter continues to fidget nervously as Ben puts down his drink on a nearby pool table and advances lecherously as hell. Really, though, I guess you gotta give the guy a break, having just lost his wife to that terrible, terrible scourge of unempowered wifedom, a plague that seems to be striking even the wealthiest, most influential men in town.
The sound of an audibly ticking grandfather clock in the corner of the Hayward's living room perfectly reflects my feelings toward any scene which prominently features the morose acting stylings of one James Hurley. Sitting on the Hayward couch in an inordinately tight shot of only their faces, James mutters something about his feelings for Donna, telling her that their relationship "isn't wrong" because he thinks "it would have turned out this way anyway." They neck and kiss and heavy-pet some more. He tells her that he almost told her he was in love with her many the time. As the Sad Strings theme finds a poignant instrumental rebirth on a piano, they each whisper that they could never admit their feelings for each other "because of Laura," and also, I suspect, because "Hurley" would be such an unacceptable last name for Donna to adopt, seeing as it sounds too much like what Donna does after a big meal, or a stick of gum, or a glass of water for that matter.
Back at the Great Northern, Cooper steps into his room holding his coat, comes to a halt, blows through his favorite whittled tool, and looks approvingly at his surroundings. Lots of smiling Coop in this episode. I like it. The phone rings. Hawk is calling to let Cooper know his findings on the Ronette Pulaski situation, and Hawk is forced to utter the line, "Body and spirit are still far apart," as I imagine the sadly typecast Native American law enforcer must often feel inclined to do. Significantly (to us, if not so much to Cooper as yet), "Ronette recently quit her job at the perfume counter at Horne's Department Store." Perfume counter? Everyone get that? Who's paying attention? Very good, then. Everything else is status quo, with the exception of "a one-armed man snooping around intensive care." Hawk couldn't track him down (as we saw in the last episode), so a suddenly concerned Cooper orders an around-the-clock watch on Ronette Pulaski. Also in this dizzyingly action-packed sequence, Cooper hangs up the phone to tend to a knock on the door. He finds a card slid under reading in a feminine calligraphy, "Jack with One Eye." He closes the note and smells it, and the scent is obviously some kind of perfumed goodness that makes Cooper smile for an unprecedented third time in one appropriately quirky scene.
Under pitch black skies, the headlights of the Vintagemobile cut out and a flashlight-toting Bobby "Babe in the Woods" Briggs and his buddy Mullet Mike walk through the forest, right smack in the middle of absolute freakin' nowhere. They come to a hollowed-out tree and search for some parcel within, Bobby commenting, "He was supposed to leave it in a stupid football." Discovering said stupid football, they find some but not all of whatever it is they were looking for. Another flashlight switches on to reveal Leo Johnson commenting, "Cash on delivery, Bobby." One of them whispers that Leo's got a gun because, as it turns out, Leo has a gun. Another shadow lurks in the dark and Bobby panics, "Is there somebody with you?" (I don't think we ever find out just exactly who that is, do we?) Bobby wants to know where "the rest" is, and Leo says he needs the other half of the money. Bobby tells him the same story we heard last week about the other $10,000 being unfortunately stuck in Laura's safety deposit box, and Leo curiously but effectively utters another fan favorite: "You punks owe me ten grand. Leo needs a new pair of shoes." Fine, then. I'll admit it. Leo is freakin' scary in this scene. Bobby suggests that they don't take delivery on the drugs until they can get him the rest of the money, and Leo lessens the distance between them a step with the threatening inquiry, "Do I look like a bank?" Rhetorical question, Bobby, so don't do something stupid like launch into a nervous speech about Leo not having FDIC insurance or something. The tension escalates further, causing Bobby to ask outright, "What's your problem?" This is another rhetorical question, of course, but seeing as Leo has the gun and weighs a few pounds more than little high-schoolers Mike plus Bobby plus the sixteen ton Acme weight that the Road Runner keeps dropping on that poor, hapless Wile E. Coyote, Leo takes a moment to supply a rhetorical answer: "You're on the road, driving back and forth, gone for days. You get back and guess what. You find out your old lady's been giving it away . . . steppin' out in your own damned bedroom. That's a problem." Leo keeps ranting, and Bobby agrees with him repeatedly as a method to continually ask, "You know who?" Funny. Suddenly, holding the flashlight up to his face like he's about to tell scary ghost stories about a forest dweller with hooks for hands, Leo laughs maniacally and orders Mike and Bobby to "go out for a pass." He cocks the gun and screams for them to run away, as pre-Blair Witch handheld camera mayhem ensues until the boys get back to the car. As they arrive back at the Vintagemobile, the empty football lands square on the hood. They drive off, ten different kinds of completely freaked out.
morning (the first time the show has seen the dawning of a new day in the middle of an episode), Ed Hurley's grease-covered hands gingerly open the front door of his house. As he attempts to sneak past Nadine, who is exercising on a rowing machine in a corner of the room, he trips over her drape runners and snaps one of them in half. He also spills some of the oil from his hands onto the cotton balls she bought in last week's episode. She turns her head and squeals incredulously, and Ed apologizes until she bellows further and he feels forced to defend himself, "Well, honey, it was right out in the middle of the floor." She retreads her wish to invent the world's first silent drape runner, and trumps his attempt to speak his mind with her opinion on the matter: "Ed, you make me sick!" Ed retreats quickly, and Nadine takes out her fury on the rowing machine, which she bends all the way back until the metal gives out in foreshadow number one of Nadine's superhuman strength. Ship-shape, that woman's health is.
Back in the woods but this time under broad daylight, Lucy holds one end of a tape measure while Truman and Hawk measure, apparently according to Cooper's orders, sixty feet and six inches, precisely the distance between the pitcher's mound and the plate, according to major league baseball guidelines. Panning past a table filled with donuts, the camera comes to rest briefly on Cooper standing at a chalkboard on which is written the names of several familiar players in the Twin Peaks world. At the end of the tape measure, Truman and Hawk have rested a glass bottle on top of a tree stump. Hawk asks Truman, "What do you think he's up to?" Truman expresses uncertainty.
Over in the Johnson house, Shelley watches a television show called Invitation to Love, a hilariously melodramatic soap opera containing the tag line, "Each day brings a new beginning, and every hour holds the promise of an invitation to love." Considering the Leo-inflicted wounds Shelley sports, her eye-rolling cynicism is sadly understandable when she comments, "Right," and shuts off the television. A knock at the door reveals Bobby, who Shelley initially won't let in for fear of Leo discovering them. Upon entering, he takes one look at her marred face and asks, "What the hell happened to you?" And so she answers, "Leo Johnson happened to me." Shelley warns that Leo will kill them both if he ever finds out of the affair, and Bobby lashes out that if Leo ever does anything like this again, Bobby is going to be the one doing the killing around here from now on. Meanwhile, over at the Double R, my other favorite illicit cutie couple with the unceasingly dysfunctional spouses, Norma and Ed, share a brief moment of making me love them all the more than I had even two minutes before.
And so this entire episode thus far has been merely a prelude to the sheer greatness of the rest of the episode. Back in the woods, Lucy offers the assembled group of Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and Andy a coffee refill, and they all gladly accept. Cooper takes a quick sip, spits it right out onto the ground, and breaks into the smiley Cooper thing he's been doing so much of this week, commenting, "Damn good coffee! And HOT!" Lucy, Andy, Truman, and Hawk sit on four conveniently placed bridge chairs facing the chalkboard. Cooper extracts a retractable pointer from seeming nowhere and extends it to its full length before commenting, "By way of explaining what we're about to do, I am first going to tell you a little bit about the country called Tibet." As the four attendees lean forward in perfect unison, Cooper flips over the chalkboard to display a full-sized map of the country. He offers a quick background of the political system of the nation, solidifies the Dalai Lama's place within its social and religious contexts, and retracts the pointer. And so to the point: "Following a dream I had three years ago, I have become deeply moved by the plight of the Tibetan people and filled with a desire to help them. I also awoke from the same dream realizing that I had subconsciously gained knowledge of a deductive technique involving mind/body coordination operating hand-in-hand with the deepest level of intuition." And these are connected how? Who cares, really, because we're in the middle of one of the coolest, most Twin Peaks kinds of sequences, so just shut up and watch, you.
So Cooper's plan is as follows: on the non-Tibetan side of the chalkboard are written the names of the usual suspects whose first or last names begin with the letter J, as this concerns Laura's last diary entry reading "Nervous about meeting J tonight." Today, Cooper proposes, "we're going to concentrate on the Js." To accentuate this point further, he circles the letter J on the chalkboard. Hee. Everyone is given a different job concerning their role in this caper, as Andy is instructed to stand near (but not too near) the bottle, Hawk holds a bucket filled with rocks, and Truman reads aloud each of the names on the board and briefly outlines each person's relationship to Laura Palmer. Cooper is going to throw a rock at the bottle each time Truman reads a name, and Lucy is given a piece of chalk and the order to mark on the board those times Cooper hits the bottle. Just like they teach in FBI school. Not. But really, that's what makes it good. Incidentally, after each name is spoken, we quickly cut to a picture of the person being described. This is helpful both as a refresher as well as a satisfying reminder that Joan Chen has procured so little screen time this week. And the results of the FBI's First Annual Inter-Bureau Baseball Game are as follows:
James Hurley, described by Truman as "secret boyfriend": The throw is low and outside, ball one.
Josie Packard, "was instructed in English by Laura": Low and in the dirt, and now there's action in the bullpen.
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, "Laura's psychiatrist": There's a strike down the middle, and the bottle goes toppling off of the tree stump but remains perfectly intact. Cooper tells Lucy to make a note of that. Andy replaces the bottle, and play resumes after a short delay.
Johnny Horne, "Laura was his special education tutor": This one hits the garbage can several feet from the stump. The crowd voices its discontent with that pitch.
Norma Jennings, "Helped Laura organize the Meals on Wheels program": Again in the dirt, ball four. No psychic connections to the fourth dimension helping us solve any murders today, I guess.
Shelley Johnson, "Waitress at diner and friend": Just to show how far off the mark this one is, the rock goes ricocheting off of a nearby tree and Andy becomes the hit batsman as he takes one for the team, right in the head. He comments, "Didn't hurt. It didn't hurt a bit," in a way that clearly communicates "that hurt like a mofo and I'll have to remember to cry about it later if this concussion doesn't inhibit my brain's natural ability to reason independently." Pitching coach Truman pulls Cooper aside and tries to center him with the question, "The idea of this really came from a dream?" Cooper responds that it did. Because it did.
Jack with one Eye is the name on the board, and a discussion about this one ensues before a pitch is ever thrown. Lucy suggests, "Maybe it's the letter I. But there's no I in Jack." Hawk brings up Nadine's name because of her patch, but Harry clarifies that One-Eyed Jacks is "a casino up north . . . on the Canadian side." The name is erased and the pitch suspended. What do we call that one? A balk? No one can ever really say what that is, anyway, so maybe it's this.
Leo Johnson, "Husband of Shelley, drives a truck, connection with Laura unknown": And it's a blistering fastball that catches everyone looking. The bottle smashes into bits and the hometown crowd goes wild.
The Hayward clan (now down to its three basic members) enjoys a post-church breakfast at the Double R when Audrey Horne walks into the diner by herself. She strolls to the jukebox and hits the button marked "Badalamenti," at which time Snare Drum Shuffle kicks up in the diner while also forming the soundtrack for the sequence, and I remember a very informative lesson my brother taught me after his first film class about diagetic and non-diagetic music. It was really interesting. She strolls to the bar and orders coffee from Norma, at which point Donna stands and approaches the bar where Audrey is sitting. Donna tells Audrey that Mom and Pop Hayward saw her at church, and Audrey responds, "Yeah, I came by because of Laura." But why, Audrey? Did you even like Laura? "There were things about Laura I didn't like. But she did help to take care of my brother, Johnny. Guess I sort of loved her for that." Big ol' pause. "You like coffee?" Donna says she does, with cream and sugar. Audrey leans right in to Donna and volunteers that "Agent Cooper loves coffee." She loves Agent Cooper. Loooooooooooves him, I mean. Girlish giggling ensues, and Audrey stops laughing long enough to add, "But Agent Cooper likes his coffee black." More out of habit than out of appropriateness to this scene, I react by reflex with that memorized Airplane classic line, "Like my men," and when I look up again, Audrey returns me to plot development with the line, "Did Laura ever talk about my father?" Donna has no idea what she means by that, and when pressed, Audrey offers up only, "He used to sing to her," before embarking on her all-too-believable "when in doubt act crazy" crusade and spontaneously standing up on the line "God, I love this music." And so she dances, hypnotized. Donna looks on, just happy all that ill-intentioned "food" her parents keep threatening her with is all the way back at the table.
Cooper and Truman sit in the interrogation room, taking a look at a blood-soaked towel Hawk uncovered at the crime site. Cut to the front door of the station, where a rather imposing cadre of men in black enters rather forcefully, toting dark sunglasses and metal briefcases. The front man marches up to Lucy's desk and immediately starts barking, "Tell Agent Cooper that Albert and His Team are here." Lucy puts down her book (it's about Tibet!) and inquires, "Albert?" Said "Albert" character, already resolutely out of patience with Lucy's laggard treatment of his arrival, spells his first name condescendingly. Pause. Spells his last name. More condescendingly. Lucy finally makes for the intercom, and Cooper guesses that Albert and His Team are here, telling Lucy, "We're on our way." Lucy attempts to recapture some of her secretarial decorum in relaying that very message to Albert, who sends the cast and crew running for warmer climates with his icy-as-hell, "Yeah, I can hear perfectly well, Curly." He unearths a cigarette from somewhere and turns around to light it, and Lucy takes this opportunity to stick her tongue out at the back of his head. So ha ha to him. Back in the interrogation room, Cooper fills in the blanks that Albert is the best forensics guy, like, ever, but that "he's lacking in some of the social niceties." Truman responds that "nobody's perfect," and Cooper agrees before playing a quick round of "got your nose" with Truman and making a funny little "got your nose" noise. Hee hee and more hee. You're wrong, Cooper. Nobody is perfect. Except for you.
Cooper's wide grin remains as Albert meets Truman, and Albert endears himself further to the natives with his patented charm: "What the hell kind of a two-bit operation are they running out of this treehouse, Cooper?" Truman stands stunned, and Albert digs deeper: "I have seen some slipshod, backwater burbs, but this place takes the cake." And then Albert . . . hell, I'm going to have to just quote his entire role verbatim. Half the time I'm convinced that his lines are written first, and then the rest of the script is created around his biting words, a refined level of pure snark I can only dream about possessing myself one day. Cooper hands off the pathology report, and Albert takes barely a glance before announcing, "Welcome to amateur hour." And as Cooper looks on in the unfocused background, Truman requests a private audience with Albert. He escorts him a few steps beyond and they go toe to toe, Truman coercively intoning, "I hear that you're real good at what you do . . . 'cause normally if a stranger walked into my station talking this kind of crap, he'd be looking for his teeth two blocks up on Queer Street." Whoo! A very liberating "Arnold and Willis finally stand up to the Gooch" laugh-track whoop needs to be inserted into this moment, as Albert skulks off and His Team follow. Er, I'm sorry, did he just say "Queer Street"? The close-captioning tells me it is so. I never noticed that before. Huge thumbs-up from Cooper.
Over at the Hurley place, Ed arrives home to a shriek from the bedroom of "Ed? Is that you?" It is him, and yet his return call does not satisfy the voice. So she screams again, and louder, "ED!!!" More downcast even than usual at the domestic horror that is his every waking moment, Ed looks practically into the camera and bemoans, "Oh my God." Nadine comes bursting out of the room and makes a beeline for her husband, quite surprisingly running into his open arms and screaming, "I'm so happy, sweetheart, I have to thank you." Er? As it turns out, Ed did her the great service of spilling some grease on the cotton balls of her drape runner experiment. The grease, would you believe, assisted greatly in the gliding process of the drapes on the runners, and now the process, as Nadine demonstrates, is "completely silent." More celebration as Nadine tells an almost frightened Ed, "We're gonna be so rich!" If by "rich," you mean "crazy," of course.
Over at the Packard Saw Mill, Katherine and Pete are in a bedroom of the house. After bitching that "everything smells like fish around here," Katherine unsegues into the conversation topic at hand: "What did that FBI man want up here today?" Today? Say, there, do I spy the smallest of continuity errors cooking? No biggie, but listen to this, 'cause I really want to be right and thus outsmart this show smack in the middle of what is arguably its greatest episode: Cooper and Truman came to visit the mill during the last episode, when Pete served them the Chock Full o' Carp brand coffee. They then left and went about their business, and night fell on that day at the beginning of this episode at dinner in the Horne residence. Night scenes ahoy followed accordingly, hookers and cocaine playing their appointed roles, until day broke for the first time when Ed arrived home with his grease-caked hands earlier in this episode. Day happened and Cooper threw rocks. Night fell again when Ed arrived home once more in the scene. No visit from Cooper to the Packard Mill today. I am the most brilliant. Let choirs of children sing songs of praise in my minutiae-obsessed honor.
Back in the part of the recap where I actually talk about things that matter, Katherine disappears into the bathroom as she asks Pete about Cooper's visit. Pete again recounts his regrettable experience with "a fish. Took a liking to my percolator!" I cannot hear that enough times. When Pete is certain Katherine will be in the bathroom for some time longer, he runs over to the door while continuing an as-normal-as-possible conversation. He opens the door to reveal Josie, hands her a key, and reports, "Here's the key. The ledger is inside." Yay, Pete! Even though he's abetting the twelve-year-old boy, it's nice to see he has a fire in the belly and isn't just a pathetic put-upon doormat sap of a husband. And he gets off a great line here, when Katherine asks why the FBI didn't want to talk to her: "We told him you were on your world tour. He should contact your press agent." Just slightly less amused by this excellent line than I am, Katherine screams for Pete to "get your boots off my bed and go to your room!" Oops. Separate beds. Remember what I said about him not being a pathetic put-upon doormat sap of a husband? Cut to Josie opening a safe, where she extracts two large ledger-type books and observes, "Two books." Uh-oh. When the little 'un gets inside Mommy and Daddy's belongings, every little thing is about to go terribly, terribly wrong.
Over at that beacon of mental stability that is the Palmer house, the spotlight is shifting to a new subject of absolute crazy-itude, and this time it's Leland's turn to unravel. Three well-timed words best describe the mood of this sequence: Creepy. As. Hell. Leo stands before a phonograph, snapping his fingers, then puts the needle on the record. The big-band classic "Pennsylvania 6-5000," which is probably by the Glenn Miller Orchestra (because what big band song isn't, really? ["correct on both counts" -- Sars]) kicks up as Leland paces around in an extremely distraught fashion. He walks to the closing credits photograph of Laura, framed and sitting on a nearby table. He picks it up and begins to whimper, spinning in increasingly faster circles and eventually turning those whimpers into downright screams. Upset that dementia-induced screaming should be produced by lungs other than her own, Sarah soon runs in and attempts to stop him, but he continually repeats, "We have to dance, we have to dance." She tries to commandeer the picture, but their struggle causes the photo to drop back onto the table, smash into a zillion pieces, and slice Sarah's hand with an errant shard of glass. Leland puts his hand in hers, then kneels down before the smashed frame and smears the photo with Sarah's blood. She races over to the phonograph and slams the needle off of the record, all the while screaming, "Leland! What is going on in this house?" And if there is anyone on this show capable of convincing and repeated displays of deranged screaming, it is none other than Sarah Palmer.
And so another day ends in Twin Peaks. Back in his hotel room, Cooper turns off the bedside light, closes his eyes, and positions himself in bed for a long, comfortable, dreamless night of refreshing respite. Yeah. Right. After an elapsed shot or two of Cooper drifting off into that remote region of REM sleep where simple manifestations of the unconscious such as "The Falling Dream" or "The Naked in School Dream" fear to tread, we cut to a shot of a considerably aged version of Cooper sitting in profile in a room swathed in red curtains. He turns his head slightly toward said curtains to spy the back of twitchy-looking little man (which every external source in the history of this show tells me is named "The Man From Another Place." And y'all know that it isn't my propensity to presuppose knowledge about the show that I can't discern from the actual episodes as they occur, but "The Man From Another Place" certainly makes for a better nickname than "Fidget the Midget," the moniker I probably would have come up with if left to my own devices. 'Cause remember, he's twitchy).
A series a of quick-cut shots follow, as if recorded by a camera's flash. Sarah Palmer runs down the steps of her house as the ceiling fan spins and spins and spins all the while. The Scariest Man in Show Business, who Sarah had the misfortune to see in last week's episode, lurks behind the couch for a quick flash. Shot of the crime scene. Shot of Laura in the morgue. All the while a far-off, hazy, slower and deeper version of Sarah Palmer's cries of "Laura, Laura" can be heard.
The flashing stops and we cut briefly to Cooper asleep. This shot dissolves to a shot of a room too dark to make out, containing the person we recognize as the one-armed man from the hospital. So now we can rationalize our fear of him, seeing as he is really creepy when in Cooper's dream state, and we can claim reasons for being afraid of him beyond the fact that we're yucked out by his only having one arm. He delivers the following speech directly to the camera: "Through the darkness of future pasts, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds. Fire . . . walk with me." Hmmm -- that don't make no kind of sense now, does it? Good thing it's not supposed to. At all. More Coop tossing and turning. The one-armed man goes on to relay a fractured back story about a convenience store that "we lived above," and that "I too have been touch by the devilish one. Tattoo, left shoulder. Oh, but when I saw the face of God, I was changed. Took the entire arm off. My name's Mike, his name is BOB." Why is his name capitalized? No idea, but it's another FAQ issue I'm simply not willing to argue with after ten years of entrenched protocol. I prefer to think it's because of how freaky he is, and whenever I see him I yell, "ACK! It's BOB!" My yelps of fear are always capitalized. Perhaps that is why his name will always be as well.
BOB, as it turns out, is the lurker behind the Palmer couch. After Mike's disjointed introduction, we cut to what appears to be an abandoned storeroom somewhere on the Twin Peaks soundstage. Crouching down a bit and bedecked in a sleeveless denim vest which he somehow manages to make look imposing, the long-haired face of evil threatens to "catch you with my death bag. You may think I've gone insane. But I promise -- I will kill again." A circle of lit candles on the ground go out by themselves. I half-expect him to bust out into the MWAH HA HA HA cackle of the garden variety psychopath, but with so much more ruining of my tender adolescent dream state still left undone, BOB realizes he needs to keep some of his sinister behavior in check so he can drag it out for further use at some as-yet undetermined time.
Back to Cooper's profile shot inside of this red room, he looks once more at The Man From Another Place (hereby TMFAP), who stands in the corner making the bone-chilling noise of rubbing his hands very quickly together. Cooper then looks to another chair and sees a well-dressed and very much alive Laura Palmer staring back at him. Back to Cooper and then to TMFAP again; this Verne Troyer of the early nineties turns suddenly around, claps his hands, and delivers the line I can understand only with the help of the accompanying subtitles, "Let's rock." And he looks like he's ready to rock, bedecked as he is in a butterfly-collared red shirt and accompanying red leisure suit. For the uninitiated, a quick lesson in why these voices are so unintelligible: The actors memorized their lines backwards, the scenes were acted out backwards with the actors saying the backwards lines with the film cameras running backwards, and the resulting footage was shown forward, reversing everything and giving both the strange quality of movement and the distorted speech. Except for Coop, who speaks normally and without subtitles. So there you go. As TMFAP begins to walk toward Laura, the camera pulls back and offers a shot of the entire room: The red curtains run along the entire visible wall. Cooper sits to one side in a black leather chair, and TMFAP and Laura sit in what appear to be velvet-upholstered chairs of a darker red than the curtains. A marble statue of a man of some kind stands behind the two red chairs, and two tall floor lamps stand at opposite sides of the frame. A close-up on Laura, who touches her right index finger to her right nostril. Cocaine reference, anyone? A shadow of indeterminate origin flits across the back curtain, and TMFAP continues to rub his hands together. The undercurrent of one-scary-note accompaniment stops and the soundtrack fades into silence; TMFAP ceases to rub his hands together. He addresses Cooper directly: "I've got good news. That gum you like is going to come back in style." Cooper shifts his disbelieving stare to Laura. TMFAP fields it: "She's my cousin. But doesn't she look almost exactly like Laura Palmer?" Downright jarring, Cooper opens his mouth and, bereft of subtitles, speaks in perfectly normal cadence: "But it is Laura Palmer. Are you Laura Palmer?" Thrilled to be released from the blue fingernails and rigor mortis that typified her acting decisions heretofore, Sheryl Lee pounces on this moment to make an impression with the line, "I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back." Bravo, Sheryl. Brilliantly rendered, indeed. TMFAP observes that "she's filled with secrets" before deciding all this Laura Palmer talk is like totally played and changes the subject entirely: "Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song and there's always music in the air." And so TMFAP begins to feel the party spirit as the flashes of light return and Snare Drum Shuffle begins to rage. He stands up, shimmies to a chair-free portion of the room, and begins to shake it, shake it, shake it. Cooper, mercifully, at no point offers to call him "Mini Me."
Cooper and Laura (or TMFAP's cousin, depending on which version of the story you believe) sit for a moment, not watching the Star Search audition going on some feet away. Laura eventually rises, saunters over to Cooper, and plants a kiss. She then smiles and whispers something in his ear. Cooper nods. Suddenly, back in his room at the Great Northern, Cooper awakens with a start and turns on the light, the echo of Snare Drum Shuffle ringing ever so imperceptibly in the room (now that is some cool directing right there). Sitting up, he displays a peacock-esque case of bedhead. He grabs the phone and dials: "Harry. It's Cooper. Meet me for breakfast 7 A.M. in the hotel lobby. I know who killed Laura Palmer." Big ol' pause. "No, it can wait until morning." Cooper hangs up the phone and begins snapping along to the suddenly resurgent strains of the Snare Drum Shuffle, right there in the hotel room. Credits. Now that is some cool directing right there.