At this point, reviewing the last two episodes, my strongest impression is that the writers simply didn’t know what to do with the characters anymore, ever since the Who killed Laura Palmer mystery had been solved.
Let’s start with
Josie. OK, so we saw she was involved in a complicated and messy situation involving many bad people, and the one person who brought her into the fold, Andrew Packard, was plotting against her and obviously only married her for her to be the scapegoat. I get why she fell from grace, thought the reason why she shot Cooper never became clear to me. I also get how Catherine got to be in control of things (she’s ambitious, greedy, amoral and has a big help from her brother, who’s plotting everything, whatever it is, I don’t know for sure).
What I don’t know is why she accepted the humiliating situation of becoming Catherine’s maid, and how smart and observant people like the good men in municipal law enforcement never thought it was weird that the former owner of the business now worked as a maid there…
Anyway, she became Cinderella, and it seemed to me that, like Cinderella, she would be constantly belittled by Catherine and that would be the preparation for her big revenge/reaction and Josie would turn the tables on Catherine. But now, she was humiliated until the end, she grew meeker and meeker and then simply died just like that.
Finally, to add insult to injury, her soul got trapped in the wooden drawer knob??? WTF??? OK, I sort of get the wood thing, after all Ghostwood, with that eerie name, is a saw mill and kills the forest by cutting its wood, so there’s some karmic justice there, but having her face trapped in the drawer knob was just too weird to make sense. And that was a curious attempt to use a CGI effect, something uncommon for that time.
Who else can we talk about? What about
James and Donna? James leaves town and gets involved with the wrong kind of woman and what was evident was going to happen, happens. OK. Finally, Donna goes find him, helps him and gives him her unconditional support. But, no James cannot come back to Twin Peaks yet because… reasons. (The real reason is that the writers didn’t know what to do with him, of course.) And without James, Donna has no purpose, so she’s also in a story limbo.
Then there’s
Leo. Leo was part of the Bobby/Shelly/Leo triangle. Tension was built up (poorly) for several episodes (which seemed to last forever, but wouldn’t seem that long if we were binge watching this show as we should), then he eventually woke up, made a lot of noise and scared Shelly, got wounded, escaped into the forest… and became Windom Earle’s plaything, shock collar and all. Basically just someone for Earle to talk to. So, another character without a purpose.
Now that I’ve mentioned Leo, let’s talk about
Shelly. She’s back as a waitress, and waitresses usually are non-entities. They are extras that have short conversations with the real characters and, again, provide them with someone to talk to. So, maybe something is going to happen to her, maybe not.
It was laughable how she doesn’t see herself pretty enough to be in a beauty pageant (especially such an inexpressive one like the Miss Twin Peaks one). Come on, by any objective or subjective standards you use she is beautiful. In fact, every young woman in Twin Peaks is fashion-model level beautiful.
And I don’t know if that’s the light or color palette used in the series, or simply a characteristic of white Americans (especially those pretty enough to be on TV), but all these white women, and some men as well, look pink in closeups. Well, the concept of “whiteness” differ in North and South America, so it is expected there would be many examples of White American actresses whose skin has lots of little freckles concealed by make-up. Personally I’d be more than glad to check that out personally, and at a closer range. The point I’m trying to make is, yes, Shelly is pretty enough to be in the Twin Peaks pageant, and so is Donna, Audrey, (late) Maddie, Josie, the models for the “Save the Pine Weasel” fashion show and even Lucy. Plus, now they have a young Heather Graham!
Since I’ve talked about Leo and Shelly, of course I have to talk about
Bobby. He started as Laura Palmer’s troubled love interest she was cheating her boyfriend with, then he became just troubled, then he was involved in a scheme to profit from the insurance money paid because of Leo, then that was dropped and he became Ben’s assistant and nothing is really happening there. Writers, give Bobby something to do!
Audrey had a crush on Dale and had a restless and curious nature, which she used to investigate crimes and get herself into trouble. She would also conspire against her father’s economic interests. It seems to me that the moment she found out her father was the boss behind that brothel in Canada and that innocent perfume counter girls were lured into the sex business, Audrey would definitely want to get him in jail. In a twist, however, her father became incapacitated and she took over the business so that offered a chance for big character growth.
However, her father got better and now she’s also in a limbo. The writers gave her another gentleman caller because her thing with Cooper went nowhere. By the way, that’s Billy Zane! With hair! Now I realize I missed Billy Zane’s hair.
I spoke about Audrey, so let’s talk about
Ben. After all that Civil War nonsense, he has become the white knight of endangered species. This could be part of a consistent plot to destroy Catherine’s business by closing Ghostwood, but at this point I couldn’t tell.
The whole
Lucy/Andy/Dick triangle became stale quickly. They tried to add some spice with that spawn of the devil plot, but it got them nowhere. Now, Dick is just hanging around, and there’s nothing else to say there.
Dr. Jacoby stopped being relevant a long time ago.
The Log Lady makes occasional appearances just for the sake of appearing.
Major Garland is no longer even interesting enough for me to call him General Hammond. He basically just appears to point out,
“Look at me, I have a cool story to tell, but first you have to waste time with all those meaningless subplots. Keep waiting until I finally do something worth watching.”
I was almost forgetting
Nadine. As I said before, the writers had to get rid of her for Ed and Norma to be together, so she became delusional she was a teenager again and that she loved Mike. So she breaks up with Ed, because Ed can’t feel guilty about her anymore if he’s supposed to end with Norma. Supposedly, she has moved on, even though she is DELUSIONAL! And probably sooner or later she’s going to wake up and realize she’s living a false life and will want her husband back, I suppose. Or not, since the writers even made Mike fall for her for some inexplicable reason, considering Mike is not delusional.
There’s also the
Cooper vs.
Windom situation, but that’s in the back burner. Sheriff Truman is very depressed, but let’s see where that goes. I’m sure who that Jones lady knocked out and went to be with and what that means, so I’ll talk about that in my next review.
Quickies:
- Of course the weasel was going to bite someone. That’s a wild creature, not a pet. Mr. Pimple could’ve just shown the animal in a cage.
- Cool stuff on Truman’s desk: a whale figurine and deer head bookends. I loved the owl. I think it’s not what it seems.
- Lucy does her phone calls alphabetically.
- Pete likes chess and to make clown-face omelets.
- The Hurleys have lots of figurines as well.
- Leo’s silence speaks volumes. Or an occasional unpunctuated paragraph.
Episode 16 gets 6 miniature brass owls under a glass dome in display.
And episode 17 deserves the incongruity of 4 stuffed animals to represent an endangered species in an ecological protest.
