TV Rewind: Twin Peaks
Episode 7
By Eric Hughes
August 23, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
As “Episode 6” led me to believe, cliffhangers lingering from the week before would be mostly answered, and a few new ones would get introduced for TP devotees to chew on over summer break. Not so. “Episode 7” was a snappy, quickly cut finale that I think tried to do too much in the 45 or so minutes afforded by ABC.
Therein lies one of the problems, then, of a large, ensemble cast. Beefed up character trees can create rich stories and complicated webs of mystery, yes. Yet, in the case of Twins Peaks (or better said, its season one closer), it might’ve forced the writers to feel that they had to pack more stuff in the episode than they should have – at the expense of penning a satisfying finale.
“Episode 7” begins inside Jacoby’s lair, with Donna and James making strange observations about Laura’s ex-therapist. For one, he’s a collector of those tiny umbrellas used to dress exotic cocktails. Apparently, he keeps them to remind himself of the times and places that he meets young women. And, inside a coconut is the missing tape from a few episodes ago, and half of Laura’s heart-shaped necklace Jacoby was clutching at the end of “Episode 1.”
For Donna and James, the necklace links Jacoby to Laura on personal, tangible grounds – much like the audio tapes – but they don’t come to conclusions on what that might look like. We wouldn’t expect much from James, though, because as we learn later on from a recording of Laura’s voice on missing tape, Laura thought him to be a big doofus.
Meanwhile, having taken the bait on a Laura look-alike in town (Laura’s brunette cousin, Maddy, in a blonde wig), Jacoby arrives at the gazebo she’s standing in front of and gets a good enough look at Not Laura to be convinced that it might actually be Laura. An unknown assailant, donned in black, attacks him from behind, though, and leaves him for dead in the grass.
In a moment that may have been lifted 15 or so years later on Lost, we begin on a close up of Jacoby’s face before zooming slowly towards one of his eyes, which saturates our view entirely. An extreme eye up was used earlier in the season to link James to a video of Laura and Donna prancing around like idiots, yet this one wasn’t as revelatory. This time, the camera lingered on Jacoby’s eye for an uncomfortably long time, and then that’s the last we see of him.
I’d like to think Jacoby will be hanging around for another season – his oddball antics are indeed refreshing – yet his character arc may be complete. Barring deeper involvement in Laura’s disappearance and murder that hasn’t come to fruition, Jacoby’s life ended in a way that makes sense: He’s laying in the field, striving for the young woman he’ll never have. And instead of chasing after him, “Laura” hops on the back of some dude’s bike and drives off.
On the flipside, James and Donna gathered significant clues regarding Laura’s deviant behavior through the Jacoby tapes, and that’s that. As James says in the finale, Jacoby was merely helping Laura, not killing her.
Over at One-Eyed Jacks, Cooper was absolutely crushing it at Blackjack with Jacques as his dealer – would we expect anything less from Agent Coop? – before spilling the beans that he’s a friend of Leo’s (he isn’t). Going further, he tells Jacques that he’s Leo’s drug money financer (also not true).
The insider info buys Cooper a little insight into Laura’s final night alive: According to Jacques, he had Ronette, Laura and Leo over at his cabin to get high and have fun. Soon enough, Leo let Waldo out of his cage, the bird flew over to Laura’s shoulder and began pecking at it. Laura freaks out, so Jacques stuffs a One-Eyed Jacks poker chip in her mouth and tells her to “bite the bullet, baby.”
A surprise for me is how much of a major Twin Peaks player Norma’s husband Hank became by season’s end. Released from jail midway through the season, he established himself as a total badass in just a couple episodes. In the finale, especially, he’s able to convince smart people like Catherine to head down to the mill to maybe get offed. The mill catches fire, so Pete goes in, too. And Shelly’s in there already because Leo tied her up and secured her with a homemade bomb, so three people may have died at the direct or indirect workings of Mr. Hank.
The way he can manipulate others so easily – Hank even scrounges up some time in the finale to take a blood oath with Josie – leads me to believe that he played a part in Laura’s death that hasn’t been unearthed yet. Yes, the number of people with an interest in Laura’s death continues to grow. Yet it’s a necessary thing to keep things nice and complicated for me and you.
In addition to that, I apparently misjudged how Leo fits in to the big picture. I’ve been screaming “red herring!” since “Pilot,” and yet every next episode digs Leo into a deeper hole. From Jacques, we learn that at that party in the woods, Jacques got hit with a whiskey bottle, bled out hefty amounts of blood and passed out. When he woke, Leo, Ronette and Laura were all gone – pinning the girls’ disappearance totally on, well, Leo. I’m anxious to see where that picks up.
The episode ends with two reappearances by the Man in Black. First, he suffocates Jacques with a pillow – while revealing himself to be Leland – and then shows up at Cooper’s door to issue a handful of bullets into the agent’s chest.
Cooper will somehow be fine. I can’t imagine the show moving on without him. As for Leland, the reveal is shocking, but I don’t think he’s in control when he puts someone in the death grip. It’s like that moment he had on the dance floor when Hawk was talking about souls. Souls move about when their human bodies expire, and where they end up, we really have no way of knowing. After suffocating Jacques, Leland’s face is as distressed as if he were standing in the room watching it all unfold. It was like he didn’t have the power to not make it happen.