Slaves And Masters

With little going on in the early 90s besides a few small roles in little-known indie films like Father of the Bride and The Godfather: Part III, Diane Keaton pretty much had all the free time in the world, it seems. Fresh off a string of directorial triumphs that included an episode of China Beach and the 1996 Kubrick-produced, Oscar-winning feat known the world over as Belinda Carlisle: Runaway Videos (check the IMDbI swear I'm not making this up), she helmed this late episode of Twin Peaks, a show in such a dire spiral that it was hard as hell to point fingers at one person alone for an entire episode collapsing under its own artsy pretension, compromised artistic notions, and disappointed expectations. In other words, the perfect training for her once-and-future stint with the Ephrons.

A wildly overwrought as-I-walk-through-the-shadow-of-the-valley-of-Milton-Bradley opening montage lands us smack in the middle of a giant chessboard, where we weave rather ominously past life-size pieces like we're in the front car of Disney's new thrill ride roller coaster, the Geekland Adventure. Whee! After this can we go on X-treme Checkbook Balancing and then run straight to catch the end of the Bargain Shopping For Aluminum Siding Parade? Please? Please can we?

Cut to a slow pan up from the floor, past patterned black stockings, a hand with red painted nails and a wedding ring, and up to the veiled-in-black face of Evelyn "Crimes Of The Heart" Marsh, looking generally distraught. I feel you, Ms. Marsh. Over at the front door, a policeman grills Brother Malcolm on the "kid," who Malcolm only remembers is named "Jim." Evelyn eventually calls over from her perch on the bottom of a mysteriously-appearing staircase, informing Brother Malcolm and the policeman that the drifter was named "James Hurley," and that he told her he was from "Twin Peaks." Brother Malcolm continues that "he was probably long gone by the time Mr. Marsh pulled out of the driveway," grabbing, as he did, onto a drifting chunk of plywood (which, for some reason, has a name of its own"Donna Hayward") and swimming down the birth canal as fast as his just-sprouted opposable thumbs would take him. To freedom. Freeeedom! Anyway. The policeman has a wacky hijinks of a time spelling "Jaguar" because we don't get enough in the way of blundering law-enforcers back in town (which, from the show that made us all want to slap up a yellow "Have you hugged your FBI agent today?" sign on our car's window pane, isn't really that big of a surprise), and then turns the questions to how Evelyn met this James Hurley in the first place. She recaps their first meeting, and Officer Dunderhead Number Sixty Billion promises to check it out. Office Dunderhead leaves. Brother Malcolm makes with the threats, warning Evelyn, "I'm not sure I can tolerate a nervous co-conspirator." She turns to face him and sighs, "I just want it over with, all right?" The ABC programming department, hardly able to track down so much as a leaf of Major Dad stationery beneath the crates of unsold second-season merchandise of the "Shape Of My Eckhardt: A Sixteen Month David Warner Calendar" or Cooking With The Guy Who Played The Mayor's Brother That One Time variety, all yell out "Word, Evelyn" in an eerie unison and order ten extra episodes of American's Wackiest Toaster Explosions to fill in an upcoming hole in the schedule. We want it over with too, Evelyn. We all do.

Many's the dramatic strings that ship us over to Wallie's (oh, how Diane lobbied and lobbied to change the name to "The First Wives Club" for just one episode, but alas) where a tableau of six uniformed men hold cigars and gaze off in one direction at nothing in particular, the reason for which I am still today attempting to discern. Oh, Diane. You sure did invent art. Yes, you did. Some kind of lilting soprano aria blasts from the soundtrack. What this song really needs is some kind of a "runaway video" treatment of some kind. Anyone around here had any solid experience working in that delicate art of the so-called "runaway video" want to throw some tips in ouroh, hello, Director Keaton. They say in heaven love comes first. But you learned all about that back in your runaway video days, now didn't you? Into the frame skulks James "Baby Boom" Hurley followed by Donna "The Little Drummer Girl" Hayward, Donna quietly asserting, "James, we can't get out of this by ourselves. We're gonna need someone to help us." James recaps for the casual observer with no feet and a recently broken remote, "I didn't do anything. Malcolm killed Mr. Marsh. I'm being framed!" A bartender slides into the frame and asks Donna if she would like anything to drink (though she can't because right now she's with child and blah blee blarg oh ha ha ha, really), and she shoots back one of her patented as-a-test-case-study-for-the-young-Doctor-Atkins-I-really-ought-not-to-eat-or-drink-anything-at-all-unless-of-course-it's-bacon glare (y'know, that glare) and chokes out a polite enough "no, thanks" that sends the bartender packing. Donna pulls James over to the bar and suggests calling Ed, but James initially refuses. So she suggests it again, telling him, "We've gotta keep moving." James wants to take his chances talking to Evelyn, trying to convince Donna, "She'd listen to me, though. I know she would." Donna senses the extreme sexual tension that existed between James and Evelyn (and, in sensing it, is the very first) and plays the jealous once-girlfriend in asking, "Why?" Pause. Pause. Pause. Answer, James! I guess the words "she loved me for my good, sexy lovin'" shouldn't come easily to someone so young, but come on; I just sang an entire verse and chorus of "Mad About You" and even storyboarded some quick ideas for a runaway video during that endless break in the action.

Donna makes for the phone, and before she would be expected to take two steps away from Slater Fetus, she enacts her side of the fake conversation on the fake phone: "Hi, Ed? Hi, it's Donna. Listen, I don't have a lot of time, but I think James is in trouble." She starts in about the woman and the car and the house and the accident, but is soon forced to employ her every last skill in the field known as "ACTING" when a local law-enforcer type walks right up to Donna and tips his cap. Donna pretends that she is having a casual conversation with an "Annette," and even the purely fictional Annette, to whom Donna is gabbing on an unplugged phone, hangs up in a grand hurry for fear she'll be associated with this criminally dead-end subplot for the reset of her fictional existence. Said policeman then makes his way to the far end of the bar and mutters, "Excuse me," and the six uniformed Maytag Men at the bar turn in unison and respond, "Hi, Frank." Art? Art.

The soapy noir spin-off potential of The Marshlands finally gives way to a show called Twin Peaks, as we turn up at the sheriff's station. In the interrogation room, Cooper and Truman stand imposingly above Bobby "My Unstrung Hero" and Shelly "The First Wives Club" Johnson, barking questions about why exactly Bobby would have been at Shelley's house after Leo came to. Bobby reverts to the very same bratty teenager characterization he has adopted each of the three or so dozen times he's been brought in for questioning, until Truman presses him for answers and Bobby finally spills it all: "Look, here's the deal. Shelley and I are together, okay? We have been for a long time. Since before Laura died" I'm sure he said more, but I'm a little too busy holding my hands over my ears and bellowing songs of the "Mary Had A Little Lamb" variety at a high-decibel volume during Bobby's proclamation of love for another. Cooper too seems disturbed by this turn of events, and he stares at a conveniently-appearing chess board and volleys, "Bobby, where were you the night the mill burned?" Themill? That was this show? Cooper posits, "Leo tried to kill you. Maybe you shot him." But Bobby IDs Hank as Leo's original shooter in keeping with his lover-not-a-fighter routine, though he doesn't know what the connection between Hank and Leo could be. How ambiguous. Duh. Truman turns the questions to Shelley, asking her if she has any idea where Leo could be. She has no idea. Truman tries to put her mind at ease in telling her, "I'll assign a couple of my deputies twenty-four hours a day. " Bobby tells Truman to "skip the deputies" because he knows as well as anyone that the rapidly expanding and contracting size of the Twin Peaks police force stipulates that "twenty-four hour surveillance" involves a two-hundred watt bulb for the porch light and a complimentary copy of outtakes from Cops. Because reallythree people work at that station.

Doing his tired rebel swagger thing out the door of the interrogation room, Bobby walks by Albert "The Only Thrill" Rosenfield, who immediately reclaims the show and the planet as his own, calling after a departing Bobby, "Get a life, punk!" Heh. Albert shares a huge hug with Truman, which would be vaguely gay if not for the vigorous, manly slapping of the other's back. Actually, it's vaguely gay anyway. After the intros, Albert announces that he was given his "invite back to Twin Peaks," and pulls a document out of his silver briefcase that should be the Nielsen figures showing Twin Peaks has now fallen behind several late-night shows on the UPN, a netlet suffering from the obvious programming detriment of not being in existence yet, but still killing in this timeslot nonetheless. But, according to Albert, that's not why he's back. The document turns out to be a glossy eight and-a-half by eleven of Windom Earle, wearing a fedora and sporting a Hitler-esque moustache. No wonder they've been unable to track down the man's whereabouts, using as they are this outdated photo of Windom Earle snapped at the "You Can Be A Rat Pack Member" costume photo booth inside the Excalibur. Albert tells Cooper and Truman that he's back as per Gordon Cole's request, "as he so succinctly put it, 'I'M WORRIED ABOUT COOP!'" Albert is so proud of his imitation he almost bows. Giggles everywhere. Even here. That was so Miguel's idea, overruling the director's suggestion that instead of imitating Cole, Albert should speak the words backwards and in German, all the while wearing a clown suit and crabwalking around the room through a giant pool of grape Jell-O. Because she's real arty like that. Albert unfolds a map of the U.S. on the table, pointing at a black half-circle drawn in marker straight through the middle of the country. Is that supposed to be a "C" for Cooper? That man really holds a grudge, y'all. Anyway, Albert fills us in that "Earle's been sending gift wrapped packages to police departments in major law enforcement agencies. Each looks like mail bomb but they turn out to be harmless. The deliveries were paid for by a phony credit card signed Windom Earle." Each box contains one article of clothing, all once belonging to Caroline. Officer Doom's little slideshow continues with a photo of the dead vagrant, and Truman notices that his finger is pointing directly at a chess piece. He asks how that can be, considering the rigor mortis and all. Albert? The man knows everything: "Rigor mortis goes from head to toe, but after two days it leaves the body from toe to head." The man is a fount of knowledge. Director Diane sighs with regret that no one thought to wait a few more days and give that a try with Sofia Coppola. Nah. That never would have helped. "Daddy?"

Some really unnecessarily lush strings kick up abruptly (I'm sorry, is this Brahms: Runaway Videos or am I missing something?) as Cooper has a private moment by the window. Albert walks up behind him, putting a hand on Cooper's shoulder (is there one overarching stage direction for "vaguely gay," or did they have to stipulate a specific set of actions each time?) and tells him, "He's making his move, most definitely." So are you, friend. Or so it seems. Or so it vaguely seems. Albert then changes the subject to the topic of clothes (natch), deadpanning out of nowhere, "About the uniformReplacing the quiet elegance of the dark suit and tie with the casual indifference of these muted earth tones, it's a form of fashion suicide. But call me crazy. On you it works." He tugs at Cooper's collar. Wow. I take back everything I said earlier. Well, the "vaguely" part, anyway.

Back outside in the middle of nowhere, a pan across a cluttered wood cabin lands us on the face of Windom "Look Who's Talking Now" Earle, playing some kind of long, Pied Piper-esque flute not even in vague time with the like-sounding instrument on Badalamenti's soundtrack. It feels very much like a clip from a movie I saw once on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a big band is playing and a saxophone is wailing, but the saxophone player in the band is sitting in a chair snapping while the sax sits in his lap. It looked exactly the same as this does now. But with more robots. Oh, but there's Eric DaRe. I guess I stand corrected. Windom, looking far more the sex-offender type of psycho evil guy than the special-agent-hunting type of psycho evil guy, wears a flesh-colored unitard kind of footsy pajama ensemble, looking like he's one artist's rendering of the small intestines away from resembling Slim Goodbody's unkempt, hard-drinking brother, uh, Rupert. He stands up with his Soundtrack Defying Flute, dancing around the log cabin. Why, for the love of Kay Corleone, won't someone please make him stop doing that? Seriously, why am I standing on the observation deck at Ass National Park right now? Put. Those. Away.