Twin Peaks Rewatch 16: Drive With a Dead Girl

[Jake]

Twin Peaks Rewatch 16:

Drive With a Dead Girl

Following last week's revelations, Laura's killer becomes even more brazen as he continues to evade capture. It seemed like the show reached its climax, but it's still building as we continue our weekly examination of Twin Peaks' original run.

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• Episode 17 Pre-Discussion Thread

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[LostInTheMovies]

This will probably be my final post for a little while (not too long, maybe a few weeks at most) as I am attempting to go off the grid soon, to get some stuff accomplished. For that reason, I'll comment on ep. 17 & 18 (by the podcast's count) as well. Spoilers are only for those episodes.

First, this episode.

All in all, it's pretty solid. Ray Wise is excellent and our subtle shift away from Cooper's perspective is interesting and very Hitchcockian (at times we are more aligned with Leland in terms of knowledge if not sympathy, which is very different from our usual Twin Peaks pov). But as was the case a few episodes ago, the non-mystery subplots drag. And some of the new stuff that is introduced already feels like we're getting into the pointless/goofiness of the mid-season (I'm looking at you, Ernie Niles).

A more fundamental issue for me is that the tone of the episode feels a bit jarring giving what we just saw. Twin Peaks has often varied between playful and ominous but it had never hit us with anything as hard as the Maddy murder. I find it telling that the episode repeats her death scene but shifts the focus outside the house, at a safe distance. It feels like the beginning of a retreat from the core darkness that Twin Peaks had tapped into.

Narratively speaking, the end of the previous episode feels like it should probably be the end of the series. That image of Cooper staring into space with the music softly dying and everyone devastate really sums up the series. It would have been a hell of a downbeat ending, but very powerful and very appropriate for what Twin Peaks was up to this point.

But of course, American TV shows did not operate that way in 1990 and the show must go on. And in a way, I'm glad it did because the best bits of Twin Peaks are yet to come (granted, Lynch could have gone on to make the prequel after the killer's reveal, but we never would have seen the unforgettable finale).

Ok, and now for episode 17:

It kinda kills me that I'll probably be away from the forum/podcast for this episode because it's one of the most interesting to discuss. But I look forward to reading everyone's responses. A lot of fans LOVE this episode. I do not.

For a number of reasons, but I'll start with what struck me on first viewing: this feels rather anticlimactic after all the build-up. Cooper gets the answer from his dream, and despite the previous mystical content, this feels like such a cop-out. Especially because the episode handles most of the material in such a Law & Order kind of way (if Lynch had directed, maybe he could pull it off). The gathering at the Road House feels very hamhanded & forced (Bobby? Comatose Leo? Big Ed??) as if trying to say, Hey, guys, remember when all these threads were releated?. The gum clue is, in my opinion, just dumb. I realize they were trying to incorporate everything from the dream (which is another problem - these "clues" were more effective when they were loose rather than specific) but it's so forced. There has never been any gum on this show for 16 episodes and now suddenly the waiter, Cooper, and Leland are all gum-chewers? Give me a break.

Not to mention the useless cutaways to Lucy-Andy-Dick when this whole storyline is climaxing. It feels realy disrespectful to not give this conclusion the breathing room it deserves.

I don't think it bothered me too much on my first viewing, at least not consciously, but the treatment of Leland/Bob also doesn't feel right. On Lynch's episode we get the sense that somehow these two are intertwined which is so much spookier and more sinister - and much more resonant. But on this and the previous episode, it enters into Exorcist material. There is still some ambiguity in the actual text ("Leland is a babe in the woods with a large hole where his conscience used to be" while Laura says "My father killed me" and Leland says "I killed my daughter"). But the way it's directed does not feel very ambiguous.

And honestly, I wonder how much of this is in Ray Wise's acting choices. In interviews he's said that he was really horrified by the realization that his character was the killer. He often talks about how he had a young daughter and that playing an incestuous serial killer really didn't sit well with him. (Keep in mind that he did not find out he was going to be the killer until right before that episode was shot - which also means he was basically given three weeks' notice on his job! It was a rough day for Ray Wise.)

He also mentions that when he played Leland/Bob, in his mind it was like a light switch going on and off - one character, then the other - and that he tried to hold on to his idea of Leland being a good guy who is a victim of this evil spirit. I know that he also came up with several of the gestures, such as Leland hooting like an owl in the jail cell.

Now, don't get me wrong - I think Wise is brilliant in this part and this new incarnation of Leland makes a wonderful (and often wonderfully comic) villain, especially since Frank Silva's Bob is less scary when other directors handle him (and also now that we know just what he is - no longer the creepy abstraction). But I wonder if this was, dramatically, the right direction to take it in. When he's behind the camera, Lynch seems to guide it where he wants to go while simultaneously respecting Wise's choices, but perhaps Caleb Deschanel and Tim Hunter just went with the flow by letting Leland become Bob's puppet (Hunter in particular seems kind of lost at how to treat the material he's been handed - his season 1 episode is one of the best but on this he relies way too much on Dutch angles and other flashy effects which ring rather hollow).

It's also difficult to glean Mark Frost's perspective on Bob as a dramatic device. In interviews from the time, he seems to harp on the ambiguity - is Bob like a vampire/evil spirit? is he a general manifestation of the evil that men do? or is Leland just nuts? - even though the show itself seems to come down definitively on the evil spirit side of things. It's interesting that Frost wrote this episode but he didn't write it alone. I wonder if he was already starting to back out of the show, as Lynch clearly was. (Boy, would I love to know if Lynch was even present on the set when this was shot. I really doubt it although it would be a nice gesture to be around for Wise's dramatic exit.) According to the oral history, Frost continued to do a final run-through on all the scripts but I think he was already beginning research/pre-production on Storyville.

With all my objections, the episode remains fascinating - I've returned to watch it a few times independently of series rewatches - both for its missteps and the underlying concepts. The idea that Laura solves her own mystery is powerful and feels correct although it's executed poorly. Some of the imagery is cool - I love the shot of Cooper's ring landing on the floor (and the whole ring idea is really compelling and has interesting parallels to a very different ring in FWWM). Although I don't think Leland really earns the closure they try to give him (and apparently - Between Two Worlds special feature spoiler -

neither does Lynch, given how in-limbo Leland seemed in the recent Palmer family interviews he conducted for the blu-ray

) the staging of his death is very effective, Wise is excellent, and MacLachlan nails the "into the light" speech which is certainly one of the series' strongest non-Lynch moments. Incidentally, it's either a paraphrase or an exact quote of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

I also like the final scene, though it's very awkward. In fact that's kind of WHY I like. Through a lot of its run, Twin Peaks has been playing fun games with us so that we're never quite sure when it knows where it's going, and when it's just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. This scene lets down its guard to reveal that the writers are as lost as we are - and I would include Lynch and Frost in this as well as Peyton & Engels, who were burdened with carrying the series forward into a very uncertain future. There's something kind of endearing about that because I don't think it's something later shows like Lost would own up too. Understandably, as it's a bit of a slap in the face of people who have been watching and trusting the show. But it also means anything could happen, good or bad. That's part of what makes Twin Peaks strong, its willingness to venture forth into the darkness and see what it finds. (Although, on that note, this is a bizarrely sunny scene given what just happened - a reminder that they were, after all, shooting this show in southern California.)

The first time I watched the end of this episode, with this dialogue and then the owl, it all made sense to me. Though disappointed with the investigation's resolution, I could see how they would now take the Laura mystery and expand its scope so that we could fully investigate the darkness of the woods and hopefully keep her character involved as a gateway into this Twin Peaks mythology. I got it. Or so I thought...

Episode 18 (it's hard for me to type the "wrong" numbers haha...):

To me this is the weirdest episode of Twin Peaks. Not for the usual "Twin Peaks is weird" reasons but because it completely forgets what the show is all about. It's crazy how many things go wrong within one episode: the disastrously mishandled setpiece of Leland's wake - with the dumb introduction of the feuding brothers, Cooper kicked out of the FBI, his rather cold rejection of Audrey, Super Nadine throwing a jock 40 feet in the air (good Lord, what a "jump the shark" moment), and that's just what pops right to mind; I'm sure there's other stuff.

When I first saw the series I was horrified with this new direction. Now that I am prepared for it, I find it fascinating in a train-wreck kind of way. Were the actors even told why Leland was dead (keep in mind the reveal episode had not yet aired, so I'd imagine they were trying to still keep things quiet)? The episode's director, Tina Rathborne, is pretty down on this episode. She also did the funeral one but she says she did not understand what this one was trying to accomplish and you can see it in her direction. The wake scene's weird shifts between different music cues really capture this confusion. Everyone's cheerful and happy, they've completely forgotten both Laura and Leland, and they are all absorbed in their silly little side stories. Even Donna, who was devastated by Laura's death and obviously very disturbed when it started to dawn on her who/what Leland was, is now totally concerned with James fleeing town (and oh boy, wait till you see where THAT story leads...)

The funny thing about all this is that, while it doesn't play as drama t all...in a very meta, conceptual - and COMPLETELY unintentional - sense it works. The show embodies the phenomenon it has been depicting: confused repression/denial of a trauma. For the overall arc of Twin Peaks to go from this shocking revelation to this completely panicky retreat feels weirdly appropriate.

Anyway, what you've heard about much of season 2 is true - it's a tough slog. There are good and bad bits, though even the best bits are nothing like what came before. But the show will eventually recover (for me, the nadir lasts about seven episodes and I think episode 25 is where a rebound begins, though others place it an episode before or later). Somebody made a great chart which I will share in the general thread that seems to reflect the general consensus of the show's peaks and valleys. If your commitment to the series is not great, I'd still say try to stick with it and if you can't, as I said in another thread at least watch the final episode and the feature film. But honestly, Twin Peaks is worth taking in its entirety. The weaknesses ultimately tell us just as much as the strengths and like life, you gotta take the good with the bad. Well, ok, you don't have to (you can't fast-forward life) but it does make you appreciate the good even more.

[AgentCoop]

This episode is problematic for all of the reasons LostInTheMovies outlines. The shift in tone from the previous episode seems really jarring, which is strange seeing as how such swings from dark to light are generally right in Twin Peaks' wheelhouse. It also seems really odd that the audience now knows more than Cooper does. Up until this point Cooper has always been two steps ahead of everyone, which lent his character a certain dynamic quality. Now that we know more than he does it makes him seem passive somehow. As a Cooper lover, I don't like him being made to look stupid.

The flashback to Louise Dombrowski dancing with the flashlight goes on way, WAY too long. It's an early symptom of something that gets much worse as we move forward from here: Directors who aren't David Lynch trying to be "Lynchian". Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are some dark times ahead, my friends, but be strong. It's worth sticking with.

The episode isn't all bad, though. There's still good stuff to be had:

Ray Wise is terrific, as always. In fact I think it's safe to say he steals the show here. There's a subtle shift in the way he's playing Leland now that's really effective. Leland's manic behavior is still there, but rather than being tragic it's taken on a hint of insincerity. In this episode I feel like BOB is fully in control.

Pete's visit to Ben Horne's jail cell is pretty fun. I love that Pete has now apparently become Catherine's co-conspirator.

Jerry's back! I love the fact that he seems to take it for granted that Ben is guilty.

Was Leland/BOB planning to beat Cooper and Truman to death with a golf club in the middle of the street in broad daylight? Because I kinda think he was.

I really like the Cooper/Audrey scene at the end. The show doesn't touch base on this friendship nearly often enough, and I love how it's handled here.

Looking forward to next week!

[SirJakoz]

As a first time viewer it seems the number of uninteresting sub-plots skyrocketed this week:

 

Bobby decides to get a job in the blackmailing business, Pete does the same, thanks to 'Piper Laurie as Mr. Tojamura' (I did enjoy that scene, though). 

 

Andy and Lucy's storyilne has always been ridiculous and it's not getting better.

 

The worst offender has to be Hank, he's dragging an interesting character (Norma) into madness, with his roundhouse kicks, old prison pals, beer chugging and chicken wings eating.

 

As always LostInTheMovies and AgentCoop are much better than me at translating their feelings into words and I agree with everything they said.

 

I'm still enjoying the show, I just wanted to point out some of the things I didn't particularly like this week!

 

I can't wait for the podcast / next week's episode! 

 

Cheers

 

Ps: I loved everything about Leland and Jerry's return was great, I missed him and his fantastic haircut

[Argobot]

Some things I noticed watching this episode a second time:

 

There's a picture of Harry S. Truman in Sheriff Truman's office

In the flashback scene with young Jerry/Ben, young Ben is also smoking a cigar

The scene where Cooper walks up behind Leland is very reminiscent to Cooper's dream where the Man from Another Place is shaking, also with his back to the camera. Both Leland and the Man are holding on to a pole of some kind.

 

The dream connection was the most interesting part to me, since I feel like most of it is not ever directly explained in the show and it was nice to piece some of it together.

[mikemariano]

As far as secret identities go...

 

Do new viewers have any doubt as to the identity of the restaurant critic?

[Afterward]

mikemariano,

 

I didn't suspect a thing when I watched it the first time, but I was rolling my eyes when the revelation came.

[SirJakoz]

As far as secret identities go...

 

Do new viewers have any doubt as to the identity of the restaurant critic?

First time viewer, I honestly have no idea

[BigJKO]

I hadn't seen up to the reveal of that when I first watched it, so on this rewatch I had zero idea..

 

[Elen]

I like that Cooper is shown whistling a snippet of "Surrey With the Fringe On Top", emphasizing his psychic connection with the killer. (Fat lot of good it does him, but still...)

[Argobot]

Ah, I thought that was the case but wasn't sure! Oklahoma would be the favorite of someone like Leland (and Cooper).

[SuperBiasedMan]

The tiny moment at the start where James and Donna have a little laugh to themselves about Leland's wacky golfing is such a good reminder of how everyone responds to Leland's goofiness. He's just a quirky funny guy, almost no-one in town knows what's going on underneath so they just laugh at his antics, but this is (at least on first viewing) the first time we've seen him like this after our peek inside Leland.

 

I also totally forgot there was a gap between the audience reveal and the investigation catching Leland. I was compressing the time in my head so that last week I thought it was all one episode, then I expected this week to almost instantly begin with Cooper seeking out the real killer.

 

I loved the scene with Pete gleefully playing Catherine's message. That was a pretty functional scene that could've easily just been him saying "Oh buddy, you're in for it now." But Pete actually just enjoys it so much, true to his character.

[agorman]

I really enjoyed the jail scene. Seeing Ben Horne bested and  infuriated that he's in a situation where he can't get the upper hand was a lot of fun to watch.

 

It made me even more bummed out knowing where his character arc goes from here

[Nappi]

Something got messed up in my AV receiver when I started watching this episode, which resulted in the opening credits sequence playing without a sound. It was eerie as hell, but somehow very fitting – a moment of silence for Maddy – and for quite a while I thought this was intentional, especially because everything was working perfectly just a while ago in the bluray menu. I started to get suspicious when Donna and James were mute as well.

[O.K. Bob]

Side note:  Ben & Jerry's 'babysitter', Lousie Dombrowski, played by the assistant to producer Gregg Fienberg, is Emily Fincher, whom I believe is [director] David Fincher's sister.

[mikemariano]

 I started to get suspicious when Donna and James were mute as well.

 

James being mute:

[Professor Video Games]

The podcast conversation reminded me about Invitation to Love, which I guess has been dropped in season 2? I need to know what happens!

[Apple Cider]

Two notes from the podcast, I spoilered one because they elude to themes or scenes from FWWM, even if not explicitly.

 

1.) Leland's elation:

I wonder if Leland/Bob's elation, similar to Jacque Renault's murder comes from both Maddy and Jacque's murders coming from a place where Bob largely subsumes Leland's own guilt or denial about himself. It could also come from a place where he is killing someone that burdens him with the truth of his participation in Laura's murder - Jacques' feels motivated by that really bizarre retribution but also that more underhanded "I'm the only one who gets to do things like that to Laura" and Maddy's murder being that she reminded Leland of Laura, hence the guilt he wishes to avoid. Getting rid of both of them feels like a Bob and Leland control/power move, largely based on Lost in the Movies' assertions about what kind of power Bob represents.

 

2.) Weird angle shots of Leland from above:

Though probably a technical reason for including things in the shot, I wonder if it's somewhat akin to Leland's perspective, as if he's disassociating, but that's wild speculation on my part since it's literally never used in the show on a regular basis. The idea of "going somewhere else" when you disassociate also ignores other current theories of the Bob/Leland interaction but it is interesting if you refer back to the idea that Bob sometimes drives Leland's body around and Leland wants to be blind to his own innate evil.

[Argobot]

Am I the only one who thinks that Norma's mom hates Hank? She called him Henry twice, even after Norma corrected her. It's clear to me that Hank is just another part of Norma's life that her mother criticizes (even though it's entirely clear that she has a similar poor taste in men).

[mikemariano]

Am I the only one who thinks that Norma's mom hates Hank?

 

She doesn't hate him only because she doesn't have to.  If Hank came up to her with one of his schemes, she'd shut him down fast.  But you're right that Hank is another avenue for Vivian to criticize Norma, though all she has to do is be nice to Hank (at a remove) and he's basically self-criticizing.  Norma and Vivian see the same dope we all do.

 

I'm trying to think of a way to make sense of Norma staying in the exact same spot for her entire life while her mother travels around (and seems to have not been to Twin Peaks in years) and her sister is basically locked up in a convent.  When did Vivian leave town?  Where did Annie grow up?  Are Annie and Norma 20 years apart in age?  Is Annie even Vivian's kid?

[Jutranjo]

A silly detail that no one mentioned so far, when Jerry visits Ben in prison, there's a small Japanese flag on the bed after Jerry gets up. The moment after, when the camera moves within the cell, the flag is gone.

[mikemariano]

A silly detail that no one mentioned so far, when Jerry visits Ben in prison, there's a small Japanese flag on the bed after Jerry gets up. The moment after, when the camera moves within the cell, the flag is gone.

 

I did like that callback to the second episode when Jerry returns from France with a French flag.  No Japanese food this time around, though!

[Zeppin]

A silly detail that no one mentioned so far, when Jerry visits Ben in prison, there's a small Japanese flag on the bed after Jerry gets up. The moment after, when the camera moves within the cell, the flag is gone.

 

He has it in his chest pocket when he initially walks into Ben's cell. It disappears when Jerry and Ben hug so either they shot the bed scenes before the hug or someone on set was thoughtful enough to drop it onto the bunk bed. The mystery deepens with yet another dangling plot thread in Twin Peaks.

 

Also I didn't notice this until now but all of the license plates in Twin Peaks say "The Timber State"; Washington's actual license plate slogan is the "Evergreen State"

[Apple Cider]

LostIntheMovies touched on this in his series, if I recall correctly, but the Donna/Leland scene is really the biggest indication of what Laura's life might have been like until you get to FWWM. 

[mistercrayon]

I thought it was interesting that cooper ceded control of the investigation to Truman. In a way Truman is right - cooper does do a lot of nonsense but It feels in direct contrast to the pilot where cooper expresses that the fbi is in charge. 

 

I find it really odd how in the show people swing from cynical about weird stuff but also accepting of it (cooper is guilty of it at first, Truman is part of the bookhouse boys because of a weird darkness). 

 

Cooper strikes me as being a really really terrible policeman except he’s also one gifted with amazing intuition and feel. I think him relying on this in certain situations is his downfall a lot of times. 

 

I liked how jerry had a copy of “criminal law” in his bag and Ben managed to keep a cigar squirrelled away. 

 

I think hank has just absorbed Leo’s awfulness except he’s also entirely false when necessary (and convinces people as well). 

 

I think Leland goes a little bit too mad in this episode. His dancing is good. It’s not clear to me why the death of maddy causes such a gleeful reaction when his reaction to Laura’s death was muted. maybe it’s just bob now in a Leland skin  rather than any amount of Leland left. 

 

Bobby is such a criminal bum. 

 

I disliked pete being revengey on Ben. It seemed out of character to me (even though Ben was awful to two people he cared about). I don’t get how Ben works out that Catherine set him up as well - unless Catherine murdered (or arranged the murder of) Laura on that night.