TV Rewind: Twin Peaks
Episode Five
By Eric Hughes
August 9, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Why the quirk ended up in the story isn’t clear to me yet. Perhaps Lynch wanted a fun way to distinguish the Icelanders from the Norwegians. Perhaps he wanted to steep the cold open with a touch of comedy. Or, perhaps he wanted an excuse to wake up Cooper early so we could enjoy him enjoying another pot of coffee.
At the table, his server offers him an odd well wish before her departure: “I hope the herring holds out.” The offhanded comment didn’t figure in to what they’d been talking about at all, and I can’t decide whether to read the interaction as a wink by the writers’ room to viewers following the exchange – and the show itself – with any sort of closeness.
I mean, right off the bat in TV Rewind, I decided Leo Johnson was the show’s official red herring, and that he couldn’t be Laura Palmer’s killer because it would be too obvious. He was the sole baddie established in “Pilot,” and for Lynch to show his hand that early would be totally disappointing. The comment, then, was a vote of encouragement for me to keep fighting the good fight. Perhaps Leo is my red herring!
Cooper gets his coffee fill and then joins Harry and co. at Jacques’ to gather more clues. While there, they learn that the blood on the shirt they discovered an episode ago is type AB- – or, not a match to Laura. Cooper, a step ahead, is certain it’s a match to Jacques. Sure enough, we find out moments later that Jacques is, well, AB-.
Add it to the list of Things Cooper Strangely Knows Before Anyone Else in Twin Peaks. I mean, hell, I don’t even know my own blood type…
The idea I rolled with early on was that Cooper’s an alien. And as scary as it is as a critic to write something so silly, I haven’t come across much that contradicts that standing. If anything, plot development keeps pointing to an awareness in Cooper that seems so, um, otherwordly. And until I get tossed a thing or two that dismisses my argument, I’ll continue reading his strange kernels of brainpower, eccentric behaviors and extreme needs for coffee and donuts as mightily significant.
Anyway, at Jacques’ Cooper and Harry find an issue of Flesh World, a magazine we haven’t seen since “Pilot.” Connections made this episode between it and people from Twin Peaks:
Sexy pictures of Laura and Ronette have been in the magazine before.
The same is true of Leo’s truck. (Though the truck, as it were, is significantly less sexy than Laura and Ronette).
Letters sent to both girls were mailed to a PO Box registered in Jacques name (a hunch of Cooper’s, of course, that he later confirms).
Laura’s photo, from the Flesh World copy at Jacques, has Laura staged in front of a set of red drapes – matching the drape color from Cooper’s dream.
It so happens that Jacques’ other dwelling, a cabin in the woods, has red drapes, too. So off they go to the cabin for clues. On their way there, they have a run-in with the town’s Log Lady, whom we’ve seen once before. They call her (Margaret) the Log Lady because she cradles a log around like it’s her small child and imparts prophecies and wisdom based on what the log “tells” her. Really.
Her message for the boys, lifted from the night of Laura’s death, was something like this: Two men, then a third man, two women and owls aplenty. Cooper deduces that the two men are Leo and Jacques, and the women Laura and Ronette. But the third man? Who’s that?
I don’t know, but I do wonder if this paves the way for the Leo/Jacques and One-Armed Man/Bob camps to merge. Is the third man, then, the One-Armed Man or Bob? Are Leo and Jacques for sure dudes one and two? As well, we know from “Episode Four” that Laura slept with (or was raped by) three men before she died. Are the three men the Log Lady’s log “saw”, or is it all unrelated?
Cooper and Harry’s bit ends at Jacques’ cabin. Indeed, his drapes are red and they go inside. There’s a record player playing some music, which reminds Cooper of a quote – “There’s always music in the air” – said by the little person in his dream. Jacques’ pet bird is in there, too, which might’ve been the bird that plucked chunks out of Laura’s shoulder. And to top it all off, two significant things are on the cabin floor: a spot of red – perhaps blood – and poker chips to One-Eyed Jacks.
I’d expect Cooper and Harry to next investigate the strip club, a spot a few Twin Peaksians like Jerry and Ben have frequented already on-screen. But nothing by way of formal search has happened yet.
Else wise, James and Donna – whose sappy romance just isn’t working for me yet – lunched with Laura’s cousin, Maddy. They let her know that they knew Laura more than anyone else in town, and buy Maddy’s trust by saying they have ideas that might lead to Laura’s murderer, but are without proof to back up the claims.
Maddy says she’ll go to bat for them by peeking around Leland and Sarah’s house for clues. Specifically, she’ll keep her ear to the ground for a secret hiding place Laura used to talk about.
Well, the hiding place turns out to be the inside of a bedpost. And Maddy’s big discovery is a tape, which, I hope, gets played in “Episode Six.”
What’s on the tape? My guess is it’s a sit-down session with Dr. Jacoby. In “Episode 1,” we watched the creepster listen to a recording of Laura discuss with Jacoby a mysterious man she met. So, we know tapes exist, and it wouldn’t be a stretch for Laura to have her own copies. Or, the tape could be an audio diary of Laura’s. Perhaps she used to record herself when things, say, went to shit.
Either way, I’d expect it to be Laura’s voice on that tape.
Speaking of Jacoby, he’s apparently been conducting family counseling with Bobby and his parents. At one of their meetings, Jacoby dismisses Bobby’s mom and dad and suggests something big to Bobby: Was Laura harboring information, however important, that she was willing to die to keep it a secret?
Hmm. We’re six episodes deep, and the exchange marked the first time, I think, that any Twin Peaksians ever spoke on motive. We don’t yet know enough about Laura’s final night to give Jacoby’s idea backing, but the thought of Laura dying in order to protect something is interesting indeed.