Thoughts on The Orchid’s Curse:

Cooper: “I’m going to begin today with a headstand.”

• Lord, how I love Cooper. His oddball habits save the day again as an impromptu headstand leads to the discovery of a note from Audrey, which confirms that she was headed to One Eyed Jack’s.

• Hawk has a turquoise earring? Have I just not noticed this before, or did the two retired schoolteachers he interviewed in connection with Leland’s story about Bob being his neighbor at the lake give it to him?

Lucy: “Sometimes the “Can-Do” girls…can’t.”

• That’s a cute line. Less cute is the implication that Lucy’s taking the day off to have an abortion – something that was rare to see on television when this episode first aired, and that might be even rarer nowadays. Even rarer: Can you remember the last time you saw a fictional character decide to go through with a decision as difficult as this one, and not suddenly decide to keep it?

Mr. Pinkle: “Sometimes you’ve got to be tough with these things. You gotta hit it hard. A machine is like a woman – that’s what we always say at the machine shop.”

• That’s a particularly ugly line. The fact that Shelly’s a battered wife may indicate a desired irony here, or it might not. After all, Twin Peaks likes to menace its ladies. I’ve brought up violence against women as a notable aspect of this show before. It’s moments like this one that make me think its something worth bringing up. I know that some of the readers of this column are female – am I being overly-sensitive in noticing this pattern? Is it something that you’ve noticed as well? Do you care, one way or the other?

• Did you notice that Mr. Pinkle, the salesman in this scene, is Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley?

• Bobby refers to Leo as his cousin – is this just subterfuge for the salesman, or are they actually family?

Truman: “Your Honor. Leland Palmer is a well-known, well-liked, well-respected member of this community.”

• Leland’s pre-trial arraignment takes place in the Roadhouse, illustrating that Twin Peaks isn’t large enough to have its own courthouse. On an interesting-and-obvious note, red curtains make their reappearance in this scene as the backdrop to the stage where the Judge presides.

Donna: “Maybe our dreams are real.”

• That’s an interesting line, especially on a show where dreams have a kind of queer reality to them, where the town itself feels dreamlike and suspended above “reality.”

• Jimmy Glick Harold continues to be weird and generally creepy, leading up to a moment in which Donna taunts him with the Diary in an effort to get him to come out of his serial-killer-house – I mean, “Orchid hothouse.” Harold makes it to the doorway, looks up at the sky, and falls down shaking. What’s his deal (I honestly don’t remember)? Major Briggs has brought in the notion of aliens being involved on this show – is Harold afraid of being abducted?

• Thanks to Shelly’s ill-considered insurance scheme, her subsequent unwillingness to testify against Leo, and the Defense’s contention that Leo is a garden-fresh Vegetable, it becomes impossible to try him for his crimes. Thanks to Coop’s conversation with Judge Sternwood we get an accounting of where we are in the storyline: Cooper’s been here 12 days. Not coincidentally, we’re now 12 episodes in.

• I don’t know what a Black Yukon Sucker Punch is, but I think I’d like to try one. And yes, there’s a band with that name. I suspect that for every fictional reference on Television, there’s a band with that name (“Monster Eats The Pilot” being another example). Is there a post-punk trio named “These Pretzels Are Makin’ Me Thirsty”? There should be.

Judge Sternwood: “I’ll advise you to keep your eyes on the woods. The woods are wondrous here, but strange.”

• So, Sternwood apparently knows a little something about the town’s woods. That’s interesting, and I’ll be interested to see if they ever follow up on this. As it is, Sternwood’s comment again underlines for us the metaphysical aspect of the woods. “Wondrous…but strange” doesn’t line up with my own view of the woods, interestingly. So far, without exception, the woods have been a place of unease for me as a viewer and for the characters in general.

Nadine: “It just came right off.”

• Uhhh….Ooookay….

We re-join Big Ed and Nadine, post-hospital, and learn that Nadine firmly believes she’s in High School. We also see more of the extent of her mysterious super-strength when she rips the door off the fridge – an unbelievably odd story choice. I’m being honest when I say that I have no idea if this goes anywhere relevant to the larger mythology or if its just bone-deep strange for the heck of it.

• Josie’s Mysterious Japanese Business Man Named Tojomura reveals his purpose in the town at last, at least in part – he’s there to offer a competing bid for the Ghostwood project. I’m starting to remember where I think this plot line goes. If so, it’s pretty safe to say that it’s weirder than you’re expecting.

• Duck call!

Jean Renault: “Are you ready to play?”

• So, here we are – Horne’s set Cooper up to be tortured/killed, Cooper and Truman are preparing to infiltrate One Eyed Jack’s, and Audrey’s trussed up and pumped to the gills with good ol’ Heroin. This feels like a set-up episode for most of its running time, and while it’s well-done as a whole you’ll notice that I don’t have much to say about it. As an hour of television its fine, but only fine. Serviceable seems like a good word to describe it. But then we get to the point – eventually – and the episode picks back up.

• Andy gets the result of his “semens analysis” and while I’m not loving the continued idiot-ification of the character, the line “I’m a whole damn town” cracked me right up.

Donna: “I was about thirteen years old, fourteen maybe. Me and Laura put on our tightest, shortest skirts – too tight. Laura talked me into it. We were going to the Roadhouse to meet boys. Their names are Josh, Rick and Tim. They’re about twenty years old and they’re nice to us.”

• Uhhh….Oooookay….

Remember me talking about the weirdly exploitative quality of “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer”? Yeah, this is pretty much what I’m referring to. Donna’s version here is actually the much-sanitized version.

• Cooper and Truman storm One Eyed Jack’s, but not before Cooper catches sight of a large owl looking down on him from the trees. Can we assume that Bob is watching him, using the owl as intermediary? Not necessarily. It’s not spoiling anything for me to point out that Cooper’s search through One Eyed Jack’s mirrors another search he’ll undertake by the end of the season, nor that the Red Curtains present here and in the Roadhouse mirror the Red Curtains we saw in that strange room during Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer.

Potentially Important Harold Line with Lost-related-ironic-significance: “Its all basically a matter of water and light, isn’t it?”

• There’s nothing at all sexual or suggestive about Harold’s Orchid talk in this episode, nor in the way that Donna fingers the “labellum” of the flower. Just sayin’.

• Voyeurism continues to burble along as one of the show’s major preoccupations with this episode, as Truman watches Jean and Blackie’s fatal kiss.

• Remember all my crazy talk about Cooper functioning, in essence, as a kind of Knight? Yeah, this is the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I think we can all agree that Coop’s flattening of Jean’s female partner is awesome, yes?

• Hawk cements his bad-assness with a well timed knife throw.

• And the episode ends with a bit of weird, inexplicable violence – the sight of Harold dragging a garden tool across his face as Donna and Maddie huddle in fear. That’s Twin Peaks for ya. One minute it’s all labellums and living novels, the next it’s all self-mutilation and screams.

This Week’s Twin Peaks Ephemera

Each week I’ll link to a bit of pop culture ephemera that was created around the time of Twin Peaks’ airing, or that was created due to the show’s influence/inspiration.

This week’s item is special. Fro Design Store is an internet site featuring the work of Fernando Reza, a graphic designer with an eye for the sort of clean, stark imagery I find really compelling. Here’s the poster he recently created in appreciation of Inception:

He’s also done a bunch of prints on Lost. Here’s one of them:

Neat, no? If you head over to his site you can check out some of the prints he’s designed. Turns out he’s also a Twin Peaks fan, and he’s agreed to produce a Twin Peaks print in conjunction with this column. He’s at work on it now, and I should have a link up for you to view it soon. I’ve already agreed to purchase a print, and to answer your question: No, I don’t see a dime from this. Given the relative dearth of Twin Peaks items out there, and my appreciation for a good piece of pop art, I just thought it seemed like a fun idea. My sincere thanks to Fro for agreeing to design the print, and for being a very nice guy. I hope it’s enjoyed!

Catch up on Lost & Found!

• Lost & Found: An Introduction, A Proposition, A Preponderance of Purpled Prose
• Lost & Found: And The Winner Is…
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (S1, Pilot)
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (Eps. 1 & 2)
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (Eps. 3 & 4)
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (Eps. 5 & 6)
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (S1, Ep. 7 & S2, Ep. 1)
• Lost & Found: Twin Peaks (S2, Ep. 2 & 3)