TV Rewind: Twin Peaks

“Episode 25”

By Eric Hughes

January 2, 2012

Ebert gonna sue someone.

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Every now and again, David Lynch moves from behind the camera to in front of it to appear as Agent Cooper’s superior on Twin Peaks. He’s a delight each time he appears.

Like many of the town’s characters, Gordon’s got a touch of the strange, and his -ism happens to be that he’s hard of hearing and speaks very loud. So loud, in fact, that he’ll inquire to a friend seated with him about a woman standing half a room away and, well, reveal his hand to her – figuratively – without intending to do so.

Actually, the character is so comic that it’s a surprise Seinfeld, to the best of my knowledge, never played around with its own loud talker. The show had a close talker and a soft talker and a high talker and, yes, a woman with man hands, but a loud talker never happened. Shame.

What became interesting about Lynch’s character this week – besides that nice nod to the audience when Gordon’s booming voice interrupted Windham’s Operation Bonzai Tree – is that he may have found a voice (or maybe the voice) that doesn’t require any special apparatuses of his to hear. The voice belongs to our dear friend Shelly, and god knows what any of this could mean.

Even for Twin Peaks, the reveal felt odd. I mean, Lynch has hardly been in front of the camera – for argument’s sake, let’s say he’s appeared four times – and now even loud talker Gordon’s got some new (and potentially juicy) storyline to play with! Perhaps loud talker Gordon is a big kook and we won’t return to any of this. Or perhaps - er, Shelly’s got some hidden power to enable the legally deaf to hear? Heck, Nadine rips permanent cabinetry off walls and tosses around men like they’re bean bags, so who knows.

Heather Graham was back again as Norma’s sister, Annie. And she’s as fresh off the convent boat as can be because she’s got few social graces and little to no knowledge of conversational niceties.




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At the diner, a love struck Cooper asked Annie how she’s been. Instead of a quick “I’m well,” Annie literally describes how she’s been: That’s she good, but feeling anxious and awkward and that she, well, doesn’t really know how to best answer him. Cooper spits back a confused “oh.”

Like an Amish teen on Rumspringa, Annie is merely acclimating herself to typical middleclass America for maybe the first time. She’s learning how most of us operate. That scene in the diner was a gentle, “aw shucks!” reminder of basic stuff we take for granted for already knowing.

In addition to that, Annie might be discovering what it’s like to have a romantic interest in dudes. What fills my heart with joy is that the boy in question is Dale Cooper, our friendly and very single agent who hasn’t been on one date, even, for the run of the show. Audrey had a thing for him awhile back, you know, but Cooper didn’t want to consummate and now Audrey’s got her eye on Billy Zane anyway.

For every silly social thing Heather Graham’s character doesn’t yet know is a totes bizarre fun fact about the town recalled from the recesses of her tiny mind. Like how combining into one the mysterious tattoos on persons Briggs and Log Lady is a match to a symbol she’s seen before inside Owl Cave. Bam!

“Episode 25” marked the first time the show’s mentioned the locale, and by its end we go spelunking inside with Cooper, Harry and Andy. They make it in and, as Heather Graham had told them, there is indeed bizarre markage etched on one of its walls that’s an equivalent to their tats. As it’s discovered, an owl swoops inside and terrorizes our friends some. Andy pursues it with his pickaxe, misses his intended target and thusly slices into the odd symbol.

A basketball-sized hole appears – kinda like a hidden room would in the movies when a guy removes a book from the bookshelf – and, well, we’ve got yet another mystery on our hands.

Something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by me is how uneven the series’ pacing can be. You know, it took Lost an entire season for its heroes to discover the hatch and then figure out a way to finagle a way inside. On Twin Peaks, we’re served not only the hatch, but its innards, too, in half an episode.

But then there are other Twin Peaks mysteries that kindly unfold over several episodes, if not more. Windham’s sinister chess match with Cooper has been running most of this season, and his separate game with Shelly, Audrey and Donna is just now fleshing out after he spent an episode introducing it to them three or four weeks ago. All an effort to keep us guessing, I suppose.


     


 
 

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