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A wailing saxophone and moody-as-Seattle-in-January-four-seconds-before-the-cancellation-of-your-moody-show-about-Seattle-in-January-and-surrounding-environs snare drum kick up on the soundtrack. The ditty is a Badalamenti-penned so-called "jazz" so-called "riff," which I'm sure even Kenny G dismissed as being "a bit on the generic side," drop-kicking it right back to the dreary television ghetto that is a late-series episode of Twin Peaks. An extreme close-up of a scruffy and despondent-looking Harry "The No-Joy No-Luck Club" Truman is intercut with flashback shots of his current interior monologue: gauzy shots of Harry with his lost (or is she?) lady (or IS SHE?) love, Josie "Hooker With A Heart Of Bad Acting" Packard. In his memory, she smiles at him. She winks at him. She appears shy and submissive and young, a coquettish lover like the Greeks used to fancy. Because of the part where she's a little boy. That's right, folks. Pedophile humor. Drink it up, America. Drink it up like Harry drinks up yet another shot (extraneous segue alert!) of some hard-core beverage dispensed out of a glass bottle which might as well be a jug with three x's tattooed across the side. Wow. That's some strong poison, cowboy. Who even mass-markets moonshine anymore? Oh, Lord, look what he's done. The poor man has depressed himself right into Prohibition times.
The Massapequa High School Jazz Band, under the direction of Deafly McSmoothJazz, concludes its scorchingly watered down "selections from Broadway's City of Angels" medley just as Truman glances up to spot a concerned Hawk staring down at him. Speak, oh stock character wise native man. But speak slowly. And gravelly. And with the deep meaning of nature and of Earth and of birds punctuating every pearl of ill-constructed dialogue. And so Hawk speaks: "One of Norma's breakfasts. Made special." Hawk places the plate he'd been carrying in front of Harry. The Sheriff Of Krazy Kounty glances at the breakfast ephemera of eggs, toast, and bacon -- all greased in copious amounts of high-fat pity -- and laughs a loud, hearty laugh which, in that niche genre known as Breakfast Food Humor, is most often reserved for times when the food is configured into a human smiley face, with the two fried eggs as the eyes and the bacon as the grinning mouth. That's when it cracks me up, anyway. Though that's not what's happening at the moment. But the Sheriff Of Krazy Kounty wants to laugh at life's folly right now, and so he shall. He squares off with the food, which I believe multi-tasked by also writing all of the dialogue for this scene. And here's some of it now: "God bless Norma! Maybe later. Maybe later." Crazy men say everything twice. Crazy men say everything twice. Truman, sitting deep in the shadows because ABC has pulled the plug on this lot's power supply in an apparent attempt to force the cast and crew to give themselves up voluntarily rather than taking the time to cancel the show outright, points things plotwards: "How's things [sic] at the station?" Hawk offers Truman a deep-tissue backstory massage, filling him and us and the hiatus-plagued audience in: "Earl's chess game is the big concern. The man has a poor sense of recreation." Truman tells Hawk that he and Cooper can handle everything. And why? "It's a pretty simple town." Except for all of those times that we've learned that this was never a simple town, even before Laura's (who? Exactly.) murder. But it sets up the following pathos, which is why this line was written by those homefries to begin with: "Well, it used to be. I guess the world's just caught up to us." It caught up to you, passed you at ninety on the Entertainment Highway, and is now across the street watching Women in Prison on that newfangled FOX network. Move. It. Along. Hawk salutes Truman with one finger of his right hand, the Native American international symbol for "Shave it off, Bar Mitzvah boy. Even Buffalo Bill took time off from his craziness to track down a Mach 3." Hawk leaves, and Harry pours himself another one. God. The jazz. It is the most never-ending. Wait. Is this the theme song to Designing Women?
“ It's almost like her character has been around since the beginning of time, stealing roles from good actresses who can't smoke those last five pounds off and land a job on a network show. ”
Augh! I didn't see "Utter Lack of Talent" on the menu at the Double R. Oh, wait. Actually, there it is. Right to Hank's name. But they'll need to add another one to the list of specials, because here comes the most utter lack of acting talent this show could ever have hoped to display. Through the front door of the Double R walks an eighteen-year-old Heather "Say It Isn't So" Graham, her Crystal Gale-length hair so blonde and so teased that a late-eighties junior prom threatens to break out of nowhere by virtue of that hair's very existence. Carrying a suitcase and indicating by official order of the prop department's Foreshadowing Specialist that she might just be staying a while, she makes her way around the counter and stops when she sees Norma walk out of the kitchen and not too pleasantly exclaim, "Annie." They hug. Norma introduces Shelley, who smiles and welcomes her, adding, "Norma's told me all about you." She walks away, and Heather Graham (Im still settling on a nickname. And while "Rollergirl" has a certain ring, that's also the only time she's put in a good performance ever, so I wouldn't want to sully her one moment of artistic success by referring it back to this I'm-reading-my-lines-off-my-palm monotone performance) looks back at Norma: "All about me?" Norma brushes it off: "Shelley's like family." And it's just an expression. Used in every hackneyed script ever written to hastily develop hastily invented characters. But Heather Graham wants to explore this notion further: "Withourfamilythat'snotexactlyacharacterreference." Hoo ha wha? I think that might have been some simulation of the sentence, "With our family, that's not exactly a character reference," but Heather Graham apparently forgot to pack her Stella Adler manual and her ability to breathe or deliver her lines to any other character besides that which most evokes her own acting style. By which I mean "the floor. They sit down on two barstools, and Norma tells Annie she's happy she's there. Annie looks around all wide-eyed and remarks, "Feels a little strange. The real world. Little things like I'd almost forgotten how to use money. The closest we came in the convent was Bingo chips." Convent. Check. Backstory made easy. It's almost like her character has been around since the beginning of time, stealing roles from good actresses who can't smoke those last five pounds off and land a job on a network show. Heather Graham: living, breathing, organic proof that only the hot turn heads in Hollywood. Well. If you can call this living. If only someone would explain just what the hell "littlethingslikeI'dalmostforgottenhowtousemoney" means. Anyway, Heather Graham changes tone from "dead asleep" to "other strains of catatonic" in suddenly going all serious: "No charity, Norma. Promise." Norma promises she's going to work Heather Graham "until [she] drop[s]." Please take it easy on her for a while. Can't you see she's straining already?
Over at the other side of the counter, Major Briggs watches as Shelley writes his bill out. He stares her down and utters the single word "compelling." Shelley, late as she is for her Central Park West audition, smiles wanly, slaps the check down in front of the Major, and walks away. From behind him, two fingers reach out and place themselves on Briggs's neck. Pan back. It's the Log Lady. She sits to him at the counter. She touches her log. Uh, you guys? Don't you have auditions you should be getting to as well?
Wounds and Scars
“ Gee, thanks for dropping by with a little quick script-doctoring, Mr. Hemingway. Those sentences. They are short. They are declarative. The chess board contains pieces. Chess is chess. ”
Sheriff's Station. Cooper sits behind a desk, reading a file marked "Interpol" across the top. Oooh, how Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego of them. All this time, who knew that Windom Earl was nothing more than a particularly crafty V.I.L.E. Henchman? Coop shouldn't just be sitting there when he has airline reservations to make. To Oslo. Which is in Norway. Where the chief export is "textiles." Hawk enters and tells Cooper that Truman is about to "hit bottom." Cooper asks if he's eating, which we already know the answer to. The food! It's just too funny to consume! Hawk asks Cooper if he could use some help, and Cooper turns it around: "That's a question I should be asking you." Gravelly, with the wisdom of many generations of harvesting and birdsong, Hawk volleys back, "You're the senior lawman, Cooper. Let's just let the rain fall as it has been." Fall as it has been? Oh wait, there's a wacky punchline on the horizon. "Besides, I hate paperwork." Cooper bemoans the fact that the "international documentation" of this case makes it a trickier case than some he dealt with in his kick-ass, man-in-black routine with the FBI. He unearths a copy of Josie's autopsy and tells Hawk that Doc Hayward was unable to discover the cause of her death. Well, whatever. He's a nice guy and all, but I don't think anyone ever said he was the greatest doctor in the world. Further mystery comes from the fact that "the body only weighed sixty-five pounds." Fine. Done. Cause of death: Actually being a second-grader. I'm so hired. Hawk wants to know how that's possible, and Cooper posits that perhaps it had something to do with what he saw in the room the night Josie died. Hawk responds, "Maybe we'd better just whistle on our way past the graveyard." So mystical. So natural. So dancing with wolves. And I have absolutely no idea what the hell it meant. Hawk then asks if they've gotten "anything on Earl," and Cooper promises that the trail is "stone cold. Still waiting for his response."
Wait no more. The Pan Flute Of Psycho/Nature Bonding carries us out to the cabin in the woods where Windom sits in a chair, holding a large flower (who knew he had the fashion instincts of such a pre-Carrie-Bradshaw Carrie Bradshaw?) and breathing in an unusually heavy fashion. Leo, still in the red robe, tromps around in deep focus, occasionally walking to Windom's chair and announcing things like, "Slippers." Then later, "Pipe." Windom blathers straight on till morn about the "healing tonic" of country life. Shut up, Windom Earl. Leo hands Windom a newspaper, and the crazy old bastard reminds us for neither the first nor the last time, "Let's see what move our poor Cooper has come up with this time." Leo leans in as Windom refolds the newspaper (and now, chess-playing with the anal-retentive psychopath!) and moves Cooper's piece into position. Uh-oh. Somebody's mad, or something. "This isn't a move. This is a trick. He's playing a stalemate game. Cooper doesn't know the meaning of stalemate. He's getting help." Gee, thanks for dropping by with a little quick script-doctoring, Mr. Hemingway. Those sentences. They are short. They are declarative. The chess board contains pieces. Chess is chess. Windom loses his temper and screams that he doesn't like people who don't "play by the rules," using his best friend, Pan Flute, to flog Leo across the chest twice. Some people go to camp in the woods; Windom instead chose to spend this summer at campy. He notes, "Many people are going to regret this," before picking up the pan flute and playing himself a little tune to calm himself down. From my recorder days, I was actually under the impression that "Hot Cross Buns" and "Oh Susannah" were, by law, the only two songs permitted on this genre of instrument. Cut to a close-up of Windom's wedding ring, his symbol of lost love for his darling, unforgettable Carolyn or Caroline, depending on the scene and speaker of her name. Enough with the lilting, reedy soundtrack, people. Cram it, Windom. Cooper is going to regret "this." I think by "this," he means that we're going to regret his excessive playing of the pan flute. What the hell else could he be talking about?
Wounds and Scars
“ Thankfully, he never took third-grade music, and so he is forced to calm himself not with a pensive pan flute solo, but with a welcome and encouraged commercial break. ”
Great Northern. Audrey "Don't Your Palms Ever Itch Anymore?" Horne makes her slo-mo way down a hallway and into a large banquet room of some kind and asks no one in particular, "Got it?" Eh? Across the room, Dick "Johnny" Tremayne approaches two busty women and exclaims, "Ladies, may I say that you both delightfully represent the sanctity of nature." He offers them a cigarette, and the taller, blonder of them jabs back, "I prefer to keep my chestclear!" Who in the living name of Gary Hershberger are these people? No matter. They walk away in some protracted kind of disgust, just as Audrey marches up to Dick and inquires, "Have you spoken with Pinkel?" Tremayne would like to know just what a "Pinkel" is (though with the constant calling into question of what and who really represents the sanctity of nature to the refined, fashion-loving aesthete, I suspect he already knows just exactly what a "Pinkel" is, and also how to use it), just as said Pinkel marches up. He's an expert on the pine weasel, the ferret they're going to make their crusade to save in order to stop Katherine Martell from building land on Ghostwood Estate. Whew. Caught up? It's a little tricky. Audrey takes a break from the merely ambiguously annoying to take a crack at kowtowing to the quantifiably annoying: John. Justice. Wheeler. He's wearing some kind of wide-brimmed black hat. Is he in Blues Traveler, maybe? They begin talking quickly and simultaneously, apologizing for their conversation at dinner the night before. They stop. Audrey asks, "What are we talking about, anyway?" They have no idea. They'll have to get in line to figure it out. He asks her if she would like to go with him on a picnic. She accepts. Dick banters with Pinkel. Oh, you just bet he does.
Dark and stormy Truman. He's sounding even more grizzled than this morning. Cooper walks into Truman's house and launches right in: "We got Josie's dossier in from Interpol." Interpol. Have I mentioned yet how much I love that word? Truman doesn't so much like that word, and he tells Cooper that he's "not interested." Cooper doesn't so much care: "In addition to killing Eckhardt, trying to kill me, and killing Jonathan in Seattle, she's also wanted for a variety of felonies in Hong Kong." Harry pours himself another one, refutes the obvious need for a spot of Norelco product-placement, and repeats that he doesn't want to hear it. Cooper doesn't want to hear him not hearing: "She's also had two prostitution arrests, Harry." Yay! Now that it's been made explicit by the show, it isn't just a random swipe at her character for us to cry out what we've really thought of her all along. Sing it if you know the words, people: "WHORE!" And she is. Cooper says so. And so she is. Slam those nails deeper into the coffin, Coop: "Harry, eventually its gonna help you to know she was a hardened criminal. A killer." Truman whispers repeatedly for Cooper to "get out," until he too loses his temper, rising with all his Wolfman Jack superpowers and bellowing, "Get outta here! Go!" Thankfully, he never took third-grade music, and so he is forced to calm himself not with a pensive pan flute solo, but with a welcome and encouraged commercial break.