Diane, June 28th, 1 p.m. Our hero, Agent Cooper, has been shot. The mill has burned down, one of our murder suspects is dead, a number of primary characters are missing or comatose, and if that’s not enough, a mystical, otherworldly giant has come to town – as a friend, of course. The town of Twin Peaks has broken open, and the show Twin Peaks seems to be following suit. In its two-hour premiere and second episode, season 2 hits the ground running and then meanders in the way only Twin Peaks can – bafflingly, fascinatingly, and with a wink and a laugh.
Here’s five thoughts on season 2, episodes 1 and 2, “May the Giant Be With You” and “Coma”
1. Fright Night
What in the world is this show? Season one blurred genres with a knowing nod and an air of evil that invites analysis. In my last write-up, I compared the plotlines of the show to Stranger Things, where each storyline feels like it’s in its own separate sub-show. If season 1 nominally played by those same rules, with a twisty noir overlaid with a soap opera overlaid with a supernatural mystery, season 2 is determined to upend them, twisting its labels beyond recognition.
The biggest change this season is that Twin Peaks has openly embraced its position as a horror show. The previously sparse disturbing and unsettling imagery is popping up multiple times an episode now, and Angelo Badalamente is layering on the eerie screeches and off-key hums to keep your skin on edge even in the (seemingly) peaceful of scenes.
Something has broken in town after the finale. Characters behave bizarrely, careening between emotional states from scene to scene. The characters with intricate schemes abandon them, the ones without schemes launch into new ones. The uneasy status quo established in season one is gone, and what’s left is a great unknown.
2. The Owls Are Not What They Seem
Just to hammer home the point that the world we’re in is not the world we knew, the season premiere picks up right where the finale left off, with Agent Cooper bleeding out on the floor from his gunshot wound. As Cooper lies there, the strange surreal landscape that he has only visited in his dreams begins to cross over into the real world.
This isn’t the only time in these two episodes that the dream world and the real world are indistinguishable from one another. The show hasn’t been this outwardly weird since the end of episode 2 and the introduction of The Man from Another Place, so kicking the season off with, uh, whatever this is sets the path the show will (fire) walk down. Cooper is visited by a large man (aptly credited as The Giant, played by the towering and striking 7 ft tall Carl Struycken), who fades into the room as if from nowhere. He speaks in with an accent and tells Cooper “three truths” that sound like riddles: “There is a man in a smiling bag,” “the owls are not what they seem,” and “without chemicals, he points.” The first puzzle is solved only a few scenes later, but the other two linger like guns hanging on the wall, waiting to fire.
Later we get confirmation that this scene did truly occur and wasn’t just a glimpse into Cooper’s (prophetic) nightmares – Cooper’s ring is missing, and at the same time Cooper was shot, Major Briggs at the military outpost intercepted a message from space in the middle of a bunch of jumbled space noise: The Owls Are Not What They Seem.
3. The Third Man
Once Cooper is discovered and set on the mend, his allies list off the events that unfolded the night before, causing Cooper to ask, “How long was I out?” It’s a clever jab at the bonkers plotting, but mostly it sets the pieces back onto the board for the investigation to continue ¬– as much as there still is to investigate, anyways. Halfway through the premiere, Cooper lays out the details of the last hours of Laura’s life fairly clearly. Season one answered the what and the how of Laura’s death, and now all that’s left to solve is the who: the third man, first mentioned by the Log Lady’s log.
Continued belowThe Giant later refers to that man in a roundabout way, saying one person saw him, and that three had seen him but not his body. Who exactly those four are is an open question, but his truth likely refers to the evil spirit identified as Bob in season one, who has at this point appeared to at least Sarah Palmer and Agent Cooper as well as Ronette Pulaski. When Ronette awakens from her coma, she sees a police sketch of Bob and violently panics.
With Cooper wounded (but stubbornly insisting on forging ahead), the FBI sends another seasoned agent to investigate the shooting: Albert (a welcome return by Miguel Ferrer), an absolute ass who pissed off the locals in his first visit last season. If the soap opera Imitation to Love served as a jokey commentary on the show’s hysterics in season one, this time around Albert is filling that role, chuckling at the folksy shenanigans and resisting the expression of genuine emotion at any turn. He’s a foul person, but a perfect counter for a world where every person’s emotions are threatening to explode at any moment.
4. Get Happy
With the aesthetics of the show changing and the investigation entering a new stage, the show has decided to mess with the character dynamics in fascinating ways as well. Nice girl Donna Hayward sheds her naïve charm for an aggressive, overly sexual persona that feels more akin to Laura than herself. At the same time, Laura’s nearly identical cousin Maddy takes off and snaps her glasses in half, making her resemble Laura in all but their hair color. The two are converging towards their shared connection, with Donna copying her personality and Maddy copying her physically.
Both are present for a showcase from another greatly changed character: Leland Palmer, Laura’s father. Last season saw him on the verge of a mental breakdown, but after murdering Jacques Renault he awakens as a new man with, as he puts it, a weight lifted off his chest. His hair turns white overnight, and he’s all smiles and sunshine as he greets the new day. He walks around singing and dancing and asking others to sing and dance as well, a type of hedonism that would seem gentle if not for Ray Wise’s performance, which gives the gestures a manic energy. It all culminates in a party where Leland hijacks the piano performance of Donna’s sister to demand she play “Get Happy” instead. He sings along at an increasingly fast pace until his voice breaks and he collapses.
Whatever is going on with Leland can’t be good, either for him or the people around him. It seems likely that he is under the influence of the same forces that either corrupted or killed his daughter, and that slow undoing is advancing further into the Palmer household. Later in the second episode, Maddy has her first sighting of Bob as he creeps across the room and menaces her. She’s been marked, and the suggestion that she might go the same way as her cousin is getting stronger.
5. I Guess I Love You, Too… Yeah…
Bobby Briggs is stealthily one of the show’s most fascinating characters. He’s often purely reactive, matching the energy of whoever he’s with and shifting to the extreme to meet whatever the circumstances call for. These episodes drive home his impulsive emotional state with two key scenes, both very different but equally interesting. In the first, he visits Shelly, recovering from smoke inhalation after nearly dying in the mill fire. As he leaves, Shelly tells him she loves him, and rather than brushing it off or immediately responding, he hesitates, saying “I guess I love you, too,” as if he’s just coming to the realization. It doesn’t feel like a lie as much as him changing his internal chemistry in order to make himself believe it.
In the second scene, Bobby runs into his father at the diner. The awkward interaction shows the two on completely different wavelengths – Bobby is only able to mirror his father’s discomfort. Then, Major Briggs tells Bobby of a dream he had recently, where he saw a future Bobby living happy and content. Bobby matches that emotion with an earnestness of his own, eyes watering with tears, accepting his father’s belief in his future well-being as the expression of love that it is. Bobby can be casually cruel, pigheaded, and immature beyond belief, but in his own way he’s startlingly empathetic.
Another mercurial main character is finding her way, to less stellar results.* Audrey Horne went undercover last season at One Eyed Jacks, her father’s secret brothel, to investigate Laura’s double life. Her note to Agent Cooper informing him of her location is forgotten by him after his shooting, leaving her to fend for herself. She’s highly capable, but in way over her head, and though she gets the information she’s looking for, the episode finishes with her captured by the brothel’s matron, identity exposed and in big trouble – roll credits.
*Ok, sure, that transition was tangential at best, but that’s the end of the episode and this seemed like a good time to talk about it. I’ll weave it in better next time, scout’s honor. You will be back next week, won’t you? Wouldn’t you like to play with fire?
