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It’s funny. Jean Renault took the words right out of my mouth.

As “Episode 20” unfolded, I came to realize that quite a lot has happened to our friends in Twin Peaks since Laura Palmer’s death. And not much of it is pretty.

I mean, look at some of what’s happened this season: Sam is a kook, Nadine thinks she’s in high school again, Leo’s an invalid, James ran away, Josie is a housemaid to Catherine, Catherine proved she could pass as a tiny Asian man, Maddy died, Leland died, Briggs might have been abducted by aliens…

It’s as if Laura’s death signaled the rolling demise of what was once a secluded and quiet town.

Jean more or less says that exactly to Cooper once he’s got him pinned down at what was planned to be a sting operation orchestrated by Cooper, Harry and Denise to nail Jean. With a moment to spare, Jean tells Cooper he thinks Cooper ruined Twin Peaks by bringing with him a nightmare. By killing Cooper, Jean - who personally has lost a handful of family since Laura’s death - thinks he can extinguish the nightmare for good.

How very funny. Only a few scenes before it, I was rolling through my head the terrible situations our characters find themselves in - be it by their own irresponsibility or something else.

Look at Shelly and Bobby. They so wanted to be together in season one that they snuck around behind Leo’s back to flower each other with kisses and attention. Now they’re together and they’ve got an unresponsive Leo balanced between them. And based on “Episode 20’s” ending, he’s awoken from his seated coma.

Look at Ed and Nadine. Ed wouldn’t agree he had any feelings for Norma, so he reluctantly recommits himself to Nadine, his wife. This season, Nadine has been empowered with superhuman strength - quite literally: she tears cabinetry off the walls and can put anyone in a super press - and she assumes she’s a 17-year-old girl, not a woman in her mid to late 30s. This makes Ed miserable.

Look at James and Donna. James was in love with Laura Palmer, and then she died. So James did the noble thing of shacking up with her former best friend, Donna. Laura’s “twin” cousin arrives in town, is pursued by - yep - James, and then she dies. James runs out of town and meets a strange woman in a bar looking for someone to work on her automobile.

We can agree that the people of Twin Peaks are in worse shape now than when Laura Palmer’s body washed ashore and Dale Cooper first stormed into town for some investigatin’. When will things get better for our characters, and how ever do we reach it?

Jean thinks the answer is in the murder of just one more person, which seems to contradict his notion of wanting to make Twin Peaks a happier place. Jean also isn’t all that philanthropic either, so for him to want a return to stability shouldn’t be read as “Jean getting wholesome with us.” I’m sure his interest is tied to the drug trade or some other illegal business.

Would Cooper’s death signal an end to the terror? Well, we won’t find out - for now - because through a little Denise horseplay, he survives the Jean kidnapping, and manages to get Jean killed in the process. Yet another body to add to the pile, I guess.

I do find the notion intriguing, though. Jean doesn’t really know what we know per se, so I doubt he broke it down much like I’m about to, but Cooper’s arrival in Twin Peaks probably does bear some significant weight. I mean, Cooper’s an FBI guy. He’s also incredibly intelligent. So much so that I was convinced early on that he was probably an alien.

On top of that, Cooper has had multiple encounters with a giant (who was real enough to steal Cooper’s ring and correctly predict three occurrences through riddle) and a few dreams that have led Cooper further along in his ongoing investigation than all the other minds of his team combined. Cooper has been steps ahead of everybody else from the beginning, really.

Naturally, Bob would want to do away with a person who’s getting too close and approaching too quickly to the truth. So, he wreaks havoc on those near and dear to Cooper (Audrey gets kidnapped; Maddy dies) and even those who aren’t near and dear but are at least good people (most of that other stuff I mentioned earlier on). It’s all an effort to throw Cooper off his game.

But I give Bob too much credit here. You see, what the characters believe they want, and what they get from what they thought they wanted seems to be at the heart of this thing. Most of it has been relational, but look at what has happened to our characters when they chose one person over another, or decided to do this over some other that. They’ve more or less ended up miserable, and all of it, really, stands as a result of Laura’s death. Her death is the action that led to all these other things.

Perhaps we’ll never get to Twin Peaks’ as-yet-untold moral and settle for the eternal happiness of our characters. Or, perhaps we will get there, but at the expense of more character deaths and other calamities.

Either way, I do not foresee a happy endgame.