Hi. This episode is plot-driven as hell and even more dialogue-heavy than usual. Sit back and get comfortable, folks. We're all gonna be here a while.
This week on Twin Peaks: Rejoice! Mom fell asleep at the wheel and accidentally documented a slice of Americana at the turn of the last decade by not pausing out the commercials this week. This poses quite the interesting sociological experiment, and we inhabitants of the future have quite a bit to learn from these artifacts: How did people in that prehistoric eon that was the early 90s live? What were their ways, the language, their customs? Let's take a trip back to the Spring of 1990 and find out!
As the first commercial after the theme song indicates, natives indigenous to urban areas during this period often ate at some kind of local Irish bistro apparently named after its founder, a Mr. McDonald. This restaurant apparently focused on the preparation of hamburgers, french fries, and chicken-like products not actually made of chicken. As the commercial for this "McDonalds" indicates, their clientele was diverse, indeed! A man in a business suit walks down a city street wheeling a baby carriage (how radical!) and yakking importantly on a cell phone approximately the size of cable car. Across town, a woman in an office building conducts herself some wheelin' and dealin' corporate business of her own (even more radical!) while holding yet another baby in her other arm. I guess this was during that period in the very early 90s when McDonalds was mixing fertility drugs in with the beaks and salt of their McNuggets and what-have-you. How else to explain this fast food induced babyfest taking over the streets of this bustling, impersonal urban center? And more importantly, dear viewer, where, oh where, could those beleaguered city-dwellers go to seek sanctuary from the sheer, brow-beating affliction that was everyday life? And how 'bout if you were hungry, to boot? A cloyingly sincere, Randy Newman-discovers-the-joys-of-helium voice thinks it's time for us to find out:
There's a newfangled daddy, comin' down the street
A modern mamma, movin' to the beat
In a high-tech world, you need an oasis
A place where you can get you get back to basics
[cue the jaunty dancers and other assorted circus folk performing some all-get-out high-wire trickery in their Jerome Robbins choreography and their "Yeah, like I'd put that crap in my body" physical contours.]
Food, folks, and fun
Food, folks, and fun
Food, folks, and fun
You're the one, McDonalds
La la la la la la la
Food, folks, and fun!
"In a high-tech world, you need an oasis." From what? The daily rigors of playing Lemonade Stand on your Apple IIE? Sitting around waiting for Q-Bert to be invented for a personal computing interface so you don't have to hang around the arcade to get your fix? Tough times, technology wise. Tough times. And who told "oasis" and "basics" they were allowed to rhyme? Anyway.
Dissolve from the opening credits waterfall to a shot of Audrey inside the Great Northern, wearing a flaming red "sex me" dress and leaning against what appears to be a wall-size replica of the immunity idol from Survivor (sorry for the anachronistic cross-reference, but it really does look like it). From around the corner comes Cooper, informing Diane and us alike that "I'll be heading to the Sheriff's after breakfast, and from there we'll be heading on to Laura Palmer's funeral." As Cooper walks into the Great Northern's dining room, he encounters Audrey, now standing in front of a fireplace and bidding him a "Good morning, Colonel Cooper" with a right-handed salute. He corrects her in a subtly delivered, faux-Dragnet style, "Just Agent, Audrey. Special Agent." Snare Drum Shuffle rages on as he invites her to have breakfast with him. She initially refuses (she has no time for any of food, folks, or fun this morning, it seems), but is quick to change her mind when Cooper compliments, "Audrey, that perfume you're wearing is incredible." Oh, ye both of silken skin and perfectly coiffed hair. Your flirty ways are so fabulous to behold. They sit at a nearby table, and Cooper is quick to ask Audrey to write her name on a provided piece of paper. While she does so, he flips open the note slid under his hotel room door reading, "Jack with One Eye." He looks at her handwriting, apparently deems it a match, and informs her, "Audrey, there's something you'd like to tell me." Vintage Audrey responds in her typical cadence, that subtly endearing mix of "coy vixen with the perfect smile" and "I'm just lost -- LOST -- without my meds," asking, "There is?" Cooper: "You slipped this note underneath my door night before last." Audrey: "I did?" See what I mean there? Cooper inquires as to what "One-Eyed Jacks" is, exactly, and she tells him as euphemistically as possible (he is, after all, an elder) that it's a place "up North" where men "go" and women "work." Hookers, Coop. They have sex with men for money. Cooper asks if Laura worked there, and Audrey tells him she doesn't know. She elaborates: "Laura worked at my father's department store." At the perfume counter. Cooper makes the Ronette Pulaski connection, but quickly steers the subject away from the investigation with the warning, "Audrey, that rightward slant in your handwriting indicates a romantic nature. A heart that yearns. Be careful." And though this statement signifies the first in a procession of tacit admissions that numerous extenuating circumstances prevent the two of them from being involved as more than friends, Audrey smiles broadly in the knowledge that she has gotten under the skin of a cosmopolitan, dashing out-of-towner who possesses the good graces to flirt using the word "yearn," rather than any of those words used by the drunken, flannel-clad old men shouting out Audrey's name from their porches in conjunction with words like "purdy," "real purdy," and "fine, fine, filly that one is" for the better part of her last eighteen years living in the forest. That was the longest sentence...ever.