Diane, July 19, 1:00 p.m. Everything in Twin Peaks, and in Twin Peaks, comes back to Laura Palmer. This pair of episodes featured a titanic shift in the show’s premise – the mystery has been mostly solved, and another brutal murder has occurred, this time on screen. But the new victim, in her death, is denied an identity of her own, instead existing only as an echo of Laura. And in solving the mystery of Laura’s death, Twin Peaks only deepened the connection between her and the evil that haunts the town. We’re halfway through the series now, and though technically Laura’s book might be closing, her looming presence continues to have consequences that reach far beyond her grave.
Here’s five thoughts on episodes 7 and 8 of Twin Peaks season 2, “Lonely Souls,” and “Drive with a Dead Girl.” Spoilers follow. Content Warning: Suicide, domestic abuse.
1. Everybody Loves Laura
Laura gets maybe her biggest amount of screen time since the pilot in “Lonely Souls.” She’s on screen for nearly the entire scene where Maddy tells Laura’s parents that she’ll be heading home the next day; Laura’s framed photographs hover just at the edge of the frame during the long take. While they talk in niceties, the photographs keep the subtext of the conversation from being forgotten. Maddy has been staying with the family as something of a ghost, a visual copy of Laura who seemed to represent the shining, idealized version of how the majority of the town saw her. It makes sense, then, that Maddy would never be allowed to leave.
“Lonely Souls” unlocked another sad sack who was ensnared by Laura’s charms – Ben Horne, who, when prompted by his daughter into confessing many of his indiscretions, claims he was in love with her. Twin Peaks loves giving its seemingly irredeemable characters a moment of emotional honesty, and this appears to be Ben’s moment. His love for Laura, though disgusting, seems genuine, and it’s believable that he could have developed feelings for her without ever questioning his own morality. It’s just as believable that he is having his first sad reaction to Laura’s demise – I’d buy that he’s barely given it a passing thought until Audrey asked him about it point blank.
Ben is arrested for Laura’s murder off of a combination of Audrey’s report and his proximity to the actual killer setting off some supernatural false alarms, but the arrest and the answer are too easy. It’s immediately clear that he’s not the culprit, although it takes us a bit to get to the consequences of that misidentification.
2. Actions Have Consequences
Nobody learns anything in this town. Many of the principal players spent the first season making massive mistakes, recovering from the consequences across the first few episodes of this season before making nearly identical mistakes once more. Now that everyone is trapped in a mire of their own making, it’s tough to feel all that sorry for them, even if that mire is extremely bleak.
Big Ed and Norma were drawn back to their neglectful and abusive spouses, only to find themselves repeating old patterns (or, in Ed and Nadine’s case, repeating the 12th grade); Bobby and Shelly were both nearly killed after attempting to outsmart her abusive husband, and are now saddled with debt after their poor attempt at insurance fraud; Ben Horne screwed around with everyone in his life, had his daughter kidnapped and nearly killed, and is so unable to think more than five minutes ahead that he’s blindsided by his implication in Laura’s death. Each of them is the architect of their own unhappiness, in some cases abused by a loved one or by the twists of fate, but always caught in a trap of their own design.
The only person who seems to have even a passing understanding of how she’s erred is Donna Hayward. She treated Harold Smith like a mark, messed with his head and invaded the only place he felt safe in pursuit of Laura’s diary. The game she poorly played ended with his death by suicide, feeling abandoned and alone. While James tries to make excuses, Donna owns her actions. She gets that she can’t call the situation complicated and shrug it off; her choices had permanent, tragic consequences for herself and others, and there’s no way for her to grow if she pretends they never happened.
Continued below3. Death of a Doppelganger
After Agent Cooper is visited by the Log Lady to warn of the increased owl activity at the Roadhouse, we’re treated to a gathering at the biker bar that in many ways mirrors the pilot. Julee Cruise, who appeared in the pilot to sing her version of the title theme, returns to sing a different downbeat ethereal tune. Many of the bar’s patrons in the pilot are back, with James and Donna in a booth, Bobby Briggs at the bar, and Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman at a table with the Log Lady. That echo of the past becomes explicit shortly. As they listen to the music, Agent Cooper has a vision of his helpful, vague giant with a warning: It’s happening again.
Thus, we finally have the identity of Laura’s killer confirmed, in the most tragic way possible. Last episode we learned that the culprit was an “inhabiting spirit” named BOB who needed a vessel to do his dirty work, and as Leland Palmer looks into a mirror after drugging his wife, we see the face of BOB smiling back. Maddy comes downstairs and becomes only the third person to see both Leland and BOB as one and the same, after Laura and Ronette Pulaski; unfortunately, she’s also the second not to survive the experience.
Maddy’s death is horrific and disorienting. The frame rate of the playback, the pitch and speed of her screams, and the harshness of the lighting are all constantly in flux as Leland violently beats her unconscious and dances her body around the room. The surreality of it feels like a rush of adrenaline, or like the fragments you might remember from a nightmare. When he smashes her head into a picture frame, everything snaps back into reality, and the trauma of Maddy’s death ripples out across the town.
All of the principal players at the bar, even though they don’t know the source, react with sadness as soon as Maddy dies. Donna bursts into tears, and both Bobby and the Log Lady look visibly upset. As Cooper tries to figure out the source of that rush of grief, the old man who often appears just before or just after the giant appears again, telling Cooper he’s sorry for the additional loss.
4. A Better Lawyer
If Ben Horne seems to lack any sense that his actions have consequences for others, he’s at least starting to notice that his actions have consequences for himself. Most of the other characters on the series act in some version of self-interest, but they at least manage to hide that under a few layers of small town decency and wholesomeness. Not so for Ben, who wears his id on his sleeve, chomps on cigars, and responds to his every emotional impulse without a worry in the world. His wealth has inoculated him against giving the tiniest rat’s ass about anyone other than himself – I’m not convinced he’d react with more than annoyance if his brother was shot dead in front of him.
Speaking of his brother, Jerry is his brother’s new lawyer helping him avoid prison for Laura’s murder! Unfortunate, since it seems Jerry has been banned from practicing law in four states. Though Ben will likely get off from this case when the being of pure chaos that has possessed Laura’s father is discovered, for now Ben is getting a healthy dose of karma courtesy of the U.S. justice system. I knew it was good for something.
Leland takes advantage of Ben’s predicament, taking steps to frame Ben further for the crime as he ferries Maddy’s body out of town. He gives Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman further clues that implicate his boss, but his erratic behavior is finally managing to ping Cooper’s radar. Cooper is a curious person, and he smells a rat. He knows something is off about Ben as the killer, and one must suspect Leland/BOB can’t keep up the ruse for too long. Especially not as the episode closes with the discovery of Maddy’s body.
5. Some More Soapy Antics
I’ll group together some notes about the various interweaving soap opera threads that I wasn’t able to place elsewhere. The two biggest ones have been developing in the background of the C-plots of the show for several episodes now, and given how often those side plots tend to loop back around to become crucial to the A-plot, it feels like they deserve at least a brief mention here.
Lucy is pregnant, and the identity of the father has been up in the air for a bit. Deputy Andy was initially ruled out as the father, but it turns out he’s not as infertile as was once thought. The two are a hokey pair made hokier by the slapstick antics Andy frequently is caught in. Meanwhile, Norma’s mother Vivian has come to town with her new husband in tow, disrupting Norma’s calm while she’s attempting to prepare for the secret critic that should be arriving soon. As it turns out, Vivian’s husband Ernie is an old prison buddy of Norma’s husband Hank, meaning he’s likely to get drawn into the scheming and violence that Hank has been moonlighting in.
Finally, and most distressingly, Pete Martell is accosted in this episode by Mr. Tojamura, who reveals himself to be Pete’s missing wife Catherine, working some sort of scheme on Ben Horne by appearing to him in yellowface. I hate this plotline, and I hate this reveal. Much of the points the series is attempting to make are deliberately obscure, but I can’t make heads or tails of this one. Tojamura has looked like a racist caricature from the start, and even if the point of the plot is that it’s absurd for all of the businessmen he’s interacted with to take him at face value, I hate that this show made me look at a background yellowface character for five episodes and pretended it was normal. Time will tell how this plot pays off, but it’s a frustrating element in an otherwise stellar episode.
