LOST & FOUND: TWIN PEAKS – EPISODES 7 & 8

The Last Evening & May The Giant Be With You (S1, ep. 7 & S2, ep. 1)

 “It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.” – Anatole France

The Giant: “Don’t search for all the answers at once. A path is formed one stone at a time.”

And with that, Season 1 is over and Season 2’s begun.

How’s everyone doing? Enjoying the ride so far? Able to think about anything other than the fact that Inception is opening this weekend (Read Nick and Renn’s tag team review here)? If this is your first time watching the series I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. You can leave your comments below, slap them up in the dedicated thread on Chud’s message board, visit Verbosity and comment there, or join my rapidly-expanding Twitter army, where you’ll receive daily subliminal messaging designed to make you more susceptible to eventual conquest. Two quick items before we barrel ahead with this week’s episodes:

1) Due to the overwhelming votes for Renewal over the past voting sessions, Twin Peaks has been renewed to the end. I’ll continue covering two episodes a week, every week, until the end of the series, at which point I’ll do a special Lost & Found column to talk about the prequel film “Fire Walk With Me.” Those of you who aren’t into the show: don’t worry. At this point there’s just one season left, which means that we’ll be moving on to the next Lost & Found candidate before you know it. Even if you aren’t enjoying Twin Peaks, I hope you’ll continue to check back here and cast your votes when it comes time to choose the next show!

2) “All I know is that I do not believe in anything anymore and that I must find something to believe in or I will cease to be.” – excerpted from The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life. My Tapes.

This week brings your first homework assignment (hooray!). Over the next few weeks I’d like you to read The Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life and Tapes.

It’s available to read for free right here (albeit in an annoying, bubbly font), and it is canon – meaning that everything you’ll read there has real bearing on Cooper’s character, and that some of what you’ll read has real significance for the mythology of the show. You’ll learn about his boyhood, his mother, about the events that lead up to his being called to Twin Peaks, and about the woman who taught him the meaning of love, then broke his heart. What you learn over the course of Cooper’s “autobiography” will prep you rather nicely for what’s coming in Season 2 of the show and give you a much more well-rounded view of Cooper’s character. Serious kudos to Mark Frost once again, who authored the entirety of the book.

You don’t need to read “My Life. My Tapes.” in order to enjoy Season 2, but I still recommend it. It’s a breezy read, and I’ll be referring to it further on down the road.

With that out of the way. let’s rock! As always, I’m sure I’ve missed stuff that you think is important/interesting. I invite you to talk about it below. And, as always, I appreciate you keeping the comments a spoiler-free space. Thank you for that.

Thoughts on The Last Evening:

• Written and directed by co-creator Mark Frost, The Last Evening serves as a ne plus ultra cliffhanger for the first season of the show and Frost deserves serious accolades for the way in which everyone, and I mean everyone, is left hanging literally or figuratively by the time the credits roll. It’s ridiculous, and yet it all feels compellingly organic. Melodramatic as all get out, sure, but not ‘false.’ We’ve got people trapped in burning mills, people being shot by mysterious third-parties, young women coming face-to-face with the likely prospect of incest, weirdo psychiatrists being bludgeoned over the head by mask-wearing psychos, and a partridge in a pear tree. Conspicuously missing from this mix is any hint of the metaphysical; there are no vibrating dwarves or red-draped rooms to be found. Here at the season’s end there’s only man’s inhumanity to man, alongside the inherent decency of some of the town’s denizens.

• The finale opens with a shot of idyllic, unmoving Utopia – namely, a gigantic photo of Hawaii that serves as the wallpaper in Dr. Jacoby’s home. We’ve talked before about how Jacoby’s fixation on Ha-vai-ii mirrors Cooper’s fixation on Tibet/the town of Twin Peaks, and how all of these places share an arguably-idealized quality, serving to represent a Utopia that, as the name implies, is both a “good place” and “no place.” The still, unnatural quality of the palms, shot in close-up to disguise their true nature, reinforces this duality for me.

• Jacoby’s box of tropical drink umbrellas, each of them labeled with a date and an important event, is pleasingly-odd, and appears to function as a pseudo-diary of his life which is a nice “twin” to Laura’s diary. In the course of snooping around, James and Donna (aka Fred and Daphne, both because of their Scooby Doo-ish tendencies and because they are boring and wooden and not nearly as interesting as the other characters around them) discover the half of the necklace they’d buried in the pilot.

• Jacoby’s gone off to find “Laura” (who is really Madeleine in a Vertigo-esque blonde wig) but before he can learn the truth about the situation he’s clobbered from behind by a guy in a trench coat and ski mask. It’s safe to assume that this person is involved in Laura’s death.

Cooper: “We’re in sync now, Jacques. Can you feel it? Can you?”

• Special Agent Cooper and Big Ed are still undercover at One Eyed Jack’s, where Cooper uses the $1,000 chip found in Renault’s cabin (a portion of which, remember, was found “half-dissolved” in Laura’s stomach) to tip his quarry before inviting him for a drink. The scenes between Jacques and Cooper are probably my favorite scenes of the episode – McLachlan projects a steely, chipper vibe that’s barely disguising his desire to make with the chin music ‘til Renault canaries. Cooper’s chat with Jacques would have had me convinced that Lynch directed this episode if I hadn’t seen Mark Frost’s writer/director credit at the beginning. It’s unsettling stuff. The close-up of Reno’s slavering mouth as he recounts the sordid details of Laura’s night in the cabin is grostesque and singular as an image. It’s classic Lynch without actually being Lynch, which is pretty impressive in my opinion. Renault’s monologue about Laura cements the emerging portrait of Laura as a young woman in the thrall of dark, forbidden pleasures. Increasingly one feels as though “Homecoming Queen” was the mask that the “real” Laura Palmer wore, disguising something far more ambiguous and unsettling.

• Cooper and the Sheriff’s Department set Jacques up for arrest back on US soil, and Andy’s total lack of proficiency with firearms gets a nice callback here as he’s the one to incapacitate Renault after the portly barkeep/drug-runner manages to get a gun off of one of the other unnamed officers.

• The tape player that Donna, James and Madeleine use in this episode is the same tape player that my sister used to own, waaaaay back in the day, before compact discs, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Ah, Nostalgia – you work in weird ways. The rest of Laura’s message to Jacoby further underlines the picture of a young woman in freefall – self-destructive to an extent that’s only become apparent in the wake of her death. I like the way that Madeleine reassures Donna and James that she’s okay, making it evident that she’s not okay at all.

• Hank’s suddenly become a lot more interesting. In the course of one episode he goes from ex-con who’s going to mess up Ed and Norma’s already-messed-up courtship, to ex-con who was hired by Josie Packard to kill her ex-husband, putting her in charge of the mill. Nice job, Mark Frost.

• A great, utterly-creepy touch: Josie using the blood on her thumb to redden her lips.

• Thanks to a quick round of questioning, it’s confirmed for us that Jacques did not kill Laura Palmer, nor was he involved in her murder. In fact, Jacques’ story emphasizes that Laura was not simply a victim – in Renault’s words it was she that came up with the idea to pose herself and Ronette for Fleshworld, and to post their pictures in the magazine.

Ben: “To Ghostwood Estates, and country club!”

• Notice the “Say No to Ghostwood” posters up in the Double-R Diner. I like this detail. It sets up a clash between the blue-collar past of Twin Peaks and the arguably more rapacious, white collar aspirations of some of the town’s denizens. This clash is one that’s happening on several levels of the show’s narrative. We’ll talk much more about this in just a few episodes’ time.

• Nadine’s largely-inexplicable suicide is a beautifully-handled moment. I enjoy the details of this scene – the princess dress, the brightly colored pills poured into a stark, white bowl, the blanket she lays down – indoors – in a touch that’s part ritual, part picnic.

Leo and Bobby finally have it out, and it looks as though Leo’s going to split the top of the kid’s head in half until Hank shows up and shoots Leo through the window. Hank, you have completely redeemed yourself in my eyes as a character. I look forward to seeing what you do in future episodes (we’re rapidly approaching the point where my knowledge of future events on the show will effectively end, at least as far as some of these peripheral characters are concerned).

• Hooray for the burning Mill! You folks’ve let me know that I’m not alone in finding Season 1’s Mill plot the least interesting portion of the show. Whatever your opinion, I think we can all agree that setting fire to it made for the most interesting drama of the season as far as that location and its related characters are concerned. Incidentally, the mill plot lends the episode its best, most Peaksian line. As Catherine comes upon Shelly, bound up and gagged, Shelly tries to ask for help. Cool as a cucumber, Catherine replies “I can’t understand a word you’re saying – you have a thing in your mouth,” without making any attempt to dislodge the gag.

• Leland Palmer goes freakier than usual here – and that’s really saying something. His act of violence is genuinely shocking, especially as Ray Wise plays it. I’m not afraid to say that, should I ever have the profound misfortune of losing a loved one in a murder, I’d feel the urge to do exactly what Leland does here.

• Apparently, One-Eyed Jack’s employs a hunchback to dress their ‘new girls’ – a hunchback that uses secret doors in the walls to get around. To my recollection, she is never seen again. In a show filled with wonderfully twisted strangeness, the image of a medieval hunchback scurrying away as Ben Horne prepares to unknowingly deflower his daughter is in sharp competition for a top spot. WTF?

• Speaking of Ben Horne and Audrey…I’m not certain what Ms. Horne’s plan was in getting hired by Jacks, but I’m fairly certain that engaging in incest never factored into it. This show goes to some seriously dark places, all while wearing an unsettling smile.

• What about that ending, huh? Oh, how it brings me back. I was too young when Twin Peaks first aired to understand the conventions of serial drama, and how any danger posed to the central star of a show was practically guaranteed not to be fatal. All I knew then was that Cooper was in serious trouble – maybe even dead. I’d never seen a show end that way before and it taught me that upended expectations can be one of the best things about telling stories. Watching it again now, I know Coop’s going to be okay but that doesn’t detract from the power of the ending. It’s legitimately shocking. It’s also –  if Chud’s estimable commenters are to be believed – an homage/satirization of sorts of the TV show “Dallas,” and its famous “Who Shot JR?” plotline. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it certainly lines up nicely with the way in which Peaks has satirized and celebrated soap operas all season long.

MEET THE BFG, AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!