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EPISODES |
PARTS ONE THROUGH EIGHTEEN (2017)
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Opening Credits (0:55-2:14) A paranoid Jerry Horne is alone in the woods at bright midday wearing his mother’s hat. With feverish intensity, he erratically scans his surroundings: ferns, mossy trees, clusters of foliage. Does the field of vision seem to flicker, or is it his imagination? Or ours? He produces an iPhone and calls his brother Ben, informing him that “Someone stole my car!”. Through the speaker phone, Ben confusedly replies, “What’s going on? Someone stole your car?”. As if Ben’s search for clarification is a corroborating piece of evidence for Jerry’s own bizarre claim, Jerry stammers: “You say the same thing?”. A befuddled Benjamin Horne leans into the phone: “What? Jerry?”. In an intense moment of epiphany, an agonized look seizing his face, Jerry yells, “I think I’m HIGH!”. Disgusted and incredulous, Ben’s tone of concern shifts into a more dismissive register: “Oh good lord, Jerry!”. Ben moves still nearer to the phone, as if closer proximity to the mic will illuminate his brother’s unhinged behavior. Fully in the grips of a cannabis-induced existential crisis, Jerry screams “I don’t know where I am!,” his chest heaving in shallow gasps. Ben sits by as the line goes dead. (2:15-4:07) Deputy Chief Hawk and Sheriff Frank Truman sit at the conference table in the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department perusing Hawk’s discovery from the bathroom stall door: three of the four missing pages that were ripped from the secret diary that Laura Palmer had entrusted to her friend Harold Smith for safekeeping; a single page remains missing. Truman picks up a page and reads Laura’s words through the evidence bag: “This came to me in a dream last night: ‘My name is Annie. I’ve been with Dale and Laura. The Good Dale is in the Lodge and he can’t leave. Write it in your diary.” Puzzled, Truman inquires: “Dale as in Special Agent Dale Cooper? What do you think it means?” Hawk’s not altogether certain, but he says that he is sure these pages are what the Log Lady wanted him to find in telling him that his heritage would help him to discover something missing. Annie, he thinks, is “Annie Blackburn…a girl who went into that place.” After confirming that these are genuine pages from Laura’s diary, and that one remains missing, Hawk obliges a request from Truman to explain how he thinks they ended up in the Sheriff’s Department bathroom. He hands Truman a page from the diary that more or less outs Leland Palmer, Laura’s father, as her abuser and rapist. Truman reads it: “It’s 1:30 am. I’m crying so hard I can hardly breath [sic]. NOW I KNOW IT ISN’T BOB. I KNOW WHO IT IS.” Hawk follows up: “I’m sure it was Leland who hid these pages. He found them and realized that she knew.” Leland hid the pages, Hawk suspects, when they had him in for questioning for the murder of Jacques Renault; “maybe he thought we were going to frisk him and that’s when he hid them.” Struggling to put the pieces together, Truman quizzically observes that Laura never met Cooper; he came to town after she died. Hawk reminds Truman that Annie’s warning came to Laura in a dream, and goes on to make the terrifying ramifications of this warning more explicit: “This thing she said: ‘the Good Dale is in the Lodge and can’t come out.’ But Harry saw Cooper come out of the Lodge with Annie that night. Doc and Harry took him over to the Great Northern. But if the Good Cooper is in the Lodge and can’t come out, then the one who came out of the Lodge with Annie that night…was NOT the good Cooper.” Truman takes in this unwelcome revelation with a wince, “And he left town soon after…who else saw him that day?” Hawk: “Like I said, Doc Hayward, but I don’t know who else.” Truman: “Let’s bring Harry up to speed and see what he thinks.” (4:08-7:35) Sheriff Frank Truman picks up the phone to reach out to the other Sheriff Truman, his convalescing brother Harry. From Frank’s end of the conversation, which is all we see or hear, we assume that a hospital employee has put him on hold to summon Harry. Harry comes to the phone, and though we must infer the details of what he says to Frank from Frank’s sad if stoic response, it becomes clear that Harry has experienced some kind of set-back in his treatment. Sensing that Harry is too fragile for a discussion of the diary pages at the moment, he demurs on pursuing the conversation, telling Harry not to worry about it and to get some rest: “it’s nothing urgent.” The brothers share a tender moment as the conversation ends: “And Harry: do me a favor; beat this thing!” (7:36-8:42) On a farmstead somewhere in Twin Peaks, Deputy Andy Brennan gestures toward a Ford flatbed truck in the background that sits adjacent to his empty police cruiser, lights still flashing; the truck bears a striking resemblance to the one that Richard Horne was driving in the hit and run in Part Six. A terrified farmer, clearly in fear for his life, pleads with Andy to leave the premises, presumably because the police presence is likely to draw unfriendly attention from Horne or one of his unsavory associates. “But if you weren’t driving the truck, I have to know who was,” Andy scolds. The farmer pledges to tell him the whole story off the premises, and Andy suggests a rendezvous off the logging road above Sparkwood and 21, “just past the Joneses down by the creek.” Growing more paranoid by the second, now veritably begging Andy to go, the farmer pledges to meet him in two hours at the appointed location, to which Andy replies: “4:30 then.” As we take in the possibility that “4:30” might be relevant to the Giant’s command to Cooper to “remember 430” on the outset of the series, Andy returns to his cruiser. No less terrified for Andy’s departure, the farmer retreats into the house through the back door which closes behind him. (8:43-9:44) Still looking for leads on the diary pages, Frank Truman follows up with Doc Hayward, one of the few people to have seen Cooper after he emerged from the Lodge and before he skipped town. After a brief telephone conversation to learn Hayward’s Skype handle—MiddleburyDoc—Truman “saddles up” and they proceed to video chat. “What’s this all about?”, asks Hayward. Truman lays it on him: “Doc, do you remember way back to the night Harry called you in to examine Special Agent Dale Cooper at the Great Northern?” Noticeably chilled by the question, Hayward replies, “I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I remember that…we all knew Coop and that morning he was acting mighty strange. I took him to the hospital and I had him checked out while I made my rounds. About an hour later I saw him sneaking out of intensive care fully dressed. He turned and looked at me and I saw that strange face again. I called out to him. He didn’t say a word. He just turned around and walked out.” “What was he doing in Intensive Care?,” Truman wonders. Increasingly downcast, Hayward continues: “I thought at the time he might have been looking in on Audrey Horne…that terrible business at the bank and she was in a coma.” Intuiting that this trip down memory lane is upsetting the elderly Hayward, Truman abruptly changes the subject to how the fish are biting. After an odd report from the good Doc about two trout in his pajamas that unluckily ended up breakfast, Truman brings the conversation to a close: “Keep working the sunny side of the river, Doc.” (9:45-13:21) Following up on the hit on Major Briggs’ fingerprints in Buckhorn, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Cindy Knox enters the Police Department and introduces herself to Detective Macaulay, making no bones about her mission: “You submitted fingerprints to our database a few days ago and I need to verify the source.” Playing dumb, Macaulay informs her that he can show them to her, but their search was blocked—“must have been from your end?,” he deadpans. Refusing to play ball, Knox repeats her request dressed up in a patronizing smirk: “I’d like to see the prints please. Where did you lift them from? The crime scene?” “No,” Macaulay laughs, “from the body.” Knox’s confidence dissipates: “There’s a body?” “There’s a body alright,” Macaulay chortles. (13:22-14:13) In the Buckhorn morgue, Coroner Constance Talbot pulls Briggs out of cold storage and lifts the sheet to reveal his beheaded corpse to an astonished Knox. In disbelief, Knox looks to Macaulay: “Where’s the rest of him?” “We don’t know!”, Macaulay replies, exasperated. Knox intensifies her gaze on the corpse: “How old was this man?” “Late forties,” Talbot offers. Looking utterly bewildered, Knox tries again: “When did this man die?”. Talbot does the math and guestimates that Briggs died within the last five or six days. Knox fails to suppress a gasp: “You’re sure this is the body you took the prints from?”. Talbot provides assurances and offers to pull the prints again, as Macaulay—lodging another dig at federal obstruction—sardonically observes how much easier their investigation would be if they knew who the body was. Flustered, Knox excuses herself to make a phone call and walks out into the hall. (14:13-15:21) Shell-shocked, Knox calls Colonel Davis at the Pentagon: “It’s not just prints this time…it’s a body. It’s him.” Surprised but stoic, Davis presses Knox on whether she’s certain, and upon receiving her assurance prepares to excuse himself to “make that other call” to the FBI. “Just one thing,” Knox persists, “actually two things: his head is missing and he’s the wrong age.” As she clarifies the situation for a confused Davis, elaborating that the body is that of a man in his late forties who died a few days ago, a dark blurry figure appears at the end of the hall just barely visible over her shoulder and the music takes a turn for the menacing (16:10). Davis counters that Briggs should be in his seventies if he died recently and that there must be some mistake, but Knox protests that she’s seen the body herself and that the coroner verified the age and the prints; as she speaks the dark figure shambles down the hall toward her, revealing itself to be akin to the soot-faced specter two cells down from Bill Hastings in Part Two (and to the “woodsmen” we meet in Part Eight). Colonel Davis orders her to stay there, pledges to get back to her, and picks up the phone to call the FBI. As Knox turns to rejoin Talbot and Macaulay in the morgue, she seems to sense the dark presence and appears to throw a sidelong glance directly at it, but registers nothing like the response one would expect had she actually seen what the viewer sees. Back in the Morgue, she orders Talbot and Macaulay not to give anyone else access to the body and rebuffs yet another attempt from the latter to wring information from her: “You didn’t hear it from me, but I don’t think this is going to be your investigation for very much longer.” The dark figure walks past the open door and down the hall. (15:22-17:25) Under a print of a stylized ear of corn hovering above a sheath of dense cirrocumulus clouds, Gordon Cole—eyes closed and reclining—has his hearing aids turned up and is whistling himself a tune, the looming portrait of the Trinity atom-bomb explosion threatening to envelop him from behind. A pounding at the door sends his hearing aids shrieking. “Come in!”, he yells, adjusting the aids. Albert enters and Cole asks him how it went. The answer is “not well:” “I said ‘Hello, Diane!’, she said ‘This is about Cooper, isn’t it?’, I said ‘Maybe.’, she said—and I quote—“No fucking way!”; “I was at home dripping wet on the verge of pneumonia fifteen minutes later. How was your evening, Chief?” Cole: “This is not good news, Albert; she needs to see him!”, Cole yells in his signature stentorian tone. In a classic spat of Cole-Rosenfield repartee, they negotiate the terms of their next move: Albert: “Your turn!” Gordon: “But you’ll go with me?” Albert: “Say please!” Gordon: “What?” Albert: “You heard me.” Gordon: “Please!” (17:26-18:52) In an elaborate Philadelphia brown-stone straight from a brochure on affluent living in the atomic age, a boy-toy in a smartly-tailored smoking jacket opens the front door for Cole and Rosenfield: “FBI, Champ! Friends of Diane’s!”, Cole barks. The boy toy ushers them into the living room, and Diane emerges from the dining room in a stunning red silk robe, cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other. She’s not happy to see them: “Oh my God!”. As the boy toy leaves, blowing her a kiss, Diane makes her intentions known to Cole: “Well, this won’t take long: I’m just going to say the same thing to you I said to him.” Refusing to be put off, Cole begins the negotiations, as he and Albert help themselves to seats on the couch in the living room and Diane stands defiantly at the edge of the dining room: Gordon: “Now take it easy, Diane, and let’s just sit down and have nice simple chat. You got any coffee?” Diane: “No. And I don’t have any cigarettes either.” Gordon: “Ahhhh! The memory of tobacco! But I gave it up.” Diane: “Fuck you, Gordon.” Albert: “Now you’re getting the personal treatment.” Diane: “Oh, you want personal? Fuck you too, Albert!” Gordon: “Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way…” Albert (under his breath to Gordon): “I never even got this far.” Gordon: “Your former boss and former Special Agent Dale Cooper is in a federal lock-up in South Dakota.” Diane (defiantly, clearly trying to mask her pain): “Good!” Gordon: “Diane, this may require a slight change of attitude on your part.” Diane: “My attitude is none of your fucking business.” Diane turns around and disappears into the dining room to retrieve coffee service, as Gordon notes to Albert that she’s a “tough cookie—always was!”. She reappears momentarily with a tray and cups of coffee for Gordon and Albert. Gordon thanks her with conviction, takes a sip, and obligatorily pronounces the coffee damn good, as Diane settles into a chair across from them, looking pained and dragging deeply on her cigarette. Tossing her head with a flourish, she dares Cole to get on with it: “So, say what you came here to say.” Cole looks at Albert and nods at him to fill her in: Albert: “We have a feeling something is wrong. We don’t know exactly what it is. But we need someone who knows him extremely well to have a talk with him and afterward to tell us what you think.” Diane: (heaves a sigh, looking terrified) Gordon: “This is extremely important, Diane, and it involves something that you know about. And that’s enough said about that.” Anxiously rubbing the thumb and middle finger of her smoking hand together, Diane exhales and steels her resolve. “Federal prison. South Dakota.” She is resigned to making the trip and determined, too. (18:53-22:01) A Gulfstream G450 is in flight on its way to South Dakota, windows mysteriously blinking some unknown code as the jet passes over a snowcapped mountain. Aboard are Diane, Rosenfield, Cole, and Special Agent Tammy Preston en route to Yankton Federal Prison in Souix City for Diane’s private meeting with Cooper. Gordon looks on as Albert procures vodka from the snack cart and hands it to Diane: “Judge not lest ye be judged. Just the fact that you’re here speaks louder than words,” he offers. She raises the bottle in a mock toast and wearily replies, “Fuck you, Albert!”, as he walks to the rear cabin with a wry smile to join Cole. Preston follows Albert into the back cabin and presents Cole and Rosenfield with a side-by-side of Cooper’s finger prints from twenty-five years ago and Cooper’s finger prints in prison two days ago: “Identical, right?” (as Preston talks, we see Diane looking put out in the front cabin, as Tammy clearly grates on her). “Maybe,” Albert hesitates. “What do you see,” Preston asks? Albert observes that the scoop mark is reversed, hypothesizing that an incompetent guard flipped the print trying to make it look like the original. Cole points to the reversed print, looking knowingly at Albert, and cryptically says “Yrev…the backwards word.” A puzzled Preston is lost: “What does this all mean?”, she wonders aloud. Cole congratulates Tammy for doing excellent work—“passing one test after another!”—and bids her to put out her hands. She offers them palms up and he tells her to flip them over. Starting with her left pinky finger, he takes each of her fingers between his right pointer finger and thumb, lightly pinching each while saying one word per finger: “I’m very, very happy to see you again old friend.” When he’s pinched each finger, he returns to her left ring finger—the same one whose print was reversed on Cooper’s recent prison prints—and touches the fleshy lobe just above her knuckle: “This is the spiritual mound, the spiritual finger…you think about that Tammy.” She looks utterly baffled, but Albert has new business to discuss and produces the only known photo of Cooper in the last 25 years, depicting Mr. C. looking like a third-rate Miami Vice guest villain poolside at his mansion outside of Rio. “By the time we checked it out it belonged to some girl from Ipanema,” he deadpans. Tammy misses the joke completely, exclaiming “Looks like the man we met in prison.” In the front cabin, Diane overhears and winces, either in disapproval of Albert’s sense of humor, or of Tammy’s density, or both. “The man we met in prison,” Cole repeats, nodding his head. (22:02-24:19) Diane, Cole, Preston, Rosenfield and some suits from the prison are walking with purpose down a corridor in the Yankton Federal Prison. Diane reminds Cole of their terms: “Ten minutes, tops! And I speak to him alone.” Cole emphatically affirms the arrangement: “That’s exactly the way it’s going to be, Diane. You control the curtain and the microphone.” As Diane is marshaling her courage and prepping her game face, Preston interrupts in an ill-timed attempt to be cordial, offering to Diane that “we’re very appreciative.” “What did you say your name was?”, Diane snaps. “Tammy.” “Fuck you, Tammy!” (24:20-24:56) Diane enters the meeting room. It’s dark and she collects herself, visibly shaken, adjusting the microphone and finally activating the curtain. It rises to reveal a dead-eyed Mr. C staring out from behind the glass, shackled hands in his lap. Diane stands to meet his gaze. “I knew it was going to be you. It’s good to see you again, Diane”, he drones in a voice so malevolent and dead that it can only be described as a vacuum of empathy. Looking rattled but unblinkingly holding his dead gaze, Diane engages: Diane: “Oh yeah, when was that Cooper? When did we see each other last?” Mr. C.: “Are you upset with me Diane? Diane: “What do you think?” Mr. C.: “I think you’re upset with me.” Diane: “When was the last time we saw each other, Cooper?” Mr. C. (in an especially menacing tone that recalls The Mystery Man): “At your house.” Diane (searching him for any sign of life, as if she suspects that he is pulling memories from her by some feat of magic rather than producing them from the bottomless void of unspooled selfhood before her): “That’s right. [She doesn’t seem convinced.] You remember that night?” Mr. C.: “I’ll always remember that night.” “Same for me. I’ll never forget it,” she replies, but her eyes tell another story and the passion has gone out of her voice. She now knows Cooper isn’t there and that anything Mr. C. says is a feint. “Who are you?”, she asks, eyes boring into him. “I don’t know what you mean, Diane.” Perhaps still searching for a shadow of doubt in what she already feels beyond certainty, she implores Cooper to look at her: “Look at me. Look at me!” Her last ditch hope met with nothing but rapacious emptiness, Diane makes haste to shut the curtain, nostrils flaring and breathing in staccato, and bolts the room. (24:57-27:38) On a beeline from the visiting room, a deeply shaken Diane leads a procession down the corridor with Rosenfield, Preston, and Cole in tow. Halfway down the hall, Warden Murphy intercepts Cole, who offers him the glad hand, thanks him for the opportunity, and instructs him in no uncertain terms to “hold this man until you hear from us!” As Cole departs, Warden Murphy looks troubled, like a man who knows this may not be a commitment he can keep. (27:39: 28:04) Rosenfield and Preston wait by the town car, each signaling via body language that they haven’t gotten anything from Diane, who stands alone on the far side of the car. As Cole approaches and announces himself, she grabs him and pulls him over to a safe distance from the group: Diane (in agony): “Listen to me! That is not the Dale Cooper that I knew.” Cole (turning up his hearing aid): “Please tell me exactly what you mean.” Diane (beside herself): “It isn’t time passing. Or how he’s changed. Or the way he looks. It’s something here (points to heart) or something that definitely isn’t here (crying).” Cole: “That’s good enough for me Diane, that’s good enough for me.” Diane unabashedly embraces him and Cole awkwardly allows it, trying to keep it professional and reluctant really to return the hug in earnest. As she composes herself and fidgets with the vodka bottle, Cole follows up: “That last night you mentioned in there. Something I need to know about?” As Rosenfield, Preston, and assorted prison staff look on at a distance, Diane replies, “You and I (he cannot hear) YOU AND I will have a talk sometime.” She looks at Gordon, struggling to remain composed, and offers another mocking toast, her agony fully on display: “Cheers! To the FBI!” (28:05-29:56) Two guards escort Mr. C. back to cell, and as one of them takes off his restraints through the bars, he says: “Listen to me a minute: Tell Warden Murphy I have a message for him. I need to speak with him in his office.” “Yeah right!,” the guard laughs in his face. “Just tell him we need to speak about…a strawberry.” (29:57-30:34) We see fog creeping up the side of a heavily wooded mountain in Twin Peaks, as Laura Palmer’s theme plays in the background. Off the logging road near Sparkwood and 21 at the appointed rendezvous point, Andy waits for the farmer on whose property he saw the Ford flatbed. He looks up and down the road but sees no sign of the man. A cut back to the farmstead reveals that the back door we saw the farmer close behind him as Andy departed earlier that afternoon is now menacingly ajar; a low drone sounds to confirm our unease. Getting restless, Andy looks at his watch (a Rolex!), which shows the time at 5:05 pm, a full thirty-five minutes after the scheduled meeting time of 4:30. He returns to his cruiser and leaves. (30:35-31:45) Two guards bring Mr. C. into Warden Murphy’s office. “Sit him down and leave,” Murphy barks at them. They shackle Mr. C. to the chair and follow orders. “I’ve turned off the security cameras. We can speak freely…(he pulls out a .357 and points it at Cooper)…and privately.” Mr. C. wastes no time: “The dogleg. That dog had four legs. One you found in my trunk. The other three went out with the information you’re thinking about right now to people you don’t want coming around here if anything bad happens to me.” Initially skeptical, Murphy wonders, “how do I know you know anything about…THIS?” After an agonizing pause, as if perhaps he is extracting the very thought from Murphy’s mind that minute, Mr. C. utters: “Joe McCloskey”. At the sound of this name, Warden Murphy goes ashen and weak-kneed, and—sucking wind and visibly shaking—puts down the gun and takes a seat. “What do you want?, he asks, utterly defeated. “I want a car. Cheap rental if you like. For myself and Ray Monroe. I want a friend in the glove compartment. 1:00 am tonight. Smooth and safe. And if your mind should wander to a place where I might not make it out of here alive, remember the doglegs. I’m not interested in you. You’ll never see me again and no one will ever hear anything again about Joe McCloskey or your late Mr. Strawberry.” Warden Murphy swallows hard as Mr. C. gazes emptily through him. (31:46-34:13) In the circle drive outside Lucky 7 Insurance, Janey-E stands in front her terrible car waiting for the man she believes to be her husband Dougie to finish work. Inside, the corrupt agent Anthony Sinclair is pumping Cooper for information about the meeting with Bushnell Mullins earlier that morning (shown in Part Six). Outside, Janey-E has finally had it with waiting, slams the door to her Jeep, and heads inside to get Cooper. Meanwhile, Sinclair is getting exactly nothing out of Cooper, who is ignoring him entirely while vacantly digging at his desk pad with a pen, as if still hard at work on the illustrated history of Sinclair’s insurance fraud, complete with chicken-scratched chutes and ladders on imaginary case files. Lucky 7’s secretary enters and informs them that police officers are there to talk to Dougie. Sinclair beats it like a broom to a squirrel in the birdseed upon hearing the word ‘police,’ and after an awkward interchange, the secretary assumes that Cooper’s preference is to have the police meet with him in his office. (34:14-36:12) The secretary goes to fetch the police and comes back followed by three homespun lugs who not only seem to have purchased their wardrobes together at Men’s Wearhouse in 1993, but also appear to be brothers or cousins, as the cue-ball of the three holds out a badge and absurdly announces them to Cooper as “Detectives Fusco” (sort of like “attorneys general”; the credits reveal that, indeed, all three characters share the same surname). Cooper repeats “badge” and reaches out to touch it, but before the interaction can go farther off the rails, Janey-E storms in to the rescue in full mama-bear mode, standing at Cooper’s side ambiguously holding his arm at the bicep in a gesture that teeters between controlling and affectionate: Janey-E: “What’s going on here?” Detectives Fusco: “Who are you ma’am?” Janey-E: “I’m his wife. What’s going on here?” Detectives Fusco: “We’re here about his car.” Janey-E: “That’s why I’m here.” Detectives Fusco: “What do you mean by that?” Janey-E: “I’m picking him up. He doesn’t know where his car is.” Detectives Fusco: “Was it stolen?” Janey-E asks Dougie whether it was stolen, and he blankly repeats: “Stolen.” Sensing a break in the story, two of the three Detectives Fusco whip out their note pads, as Bushnell Mullins—attracted by the commotion on the premises of his business—enters behind them looking concerned. Cue ball Fusco asks Cooper directly, “Did you report the car stolen, sir?”. Cooper blankly repeats “Sir.”. Getting increasingly hot under the collar, Fusco re-asks the question at a stentorian volume, at which point Janey-E intervenes again: “No. He did not report the car stolen. I would know. His car went missing. We haven’t seen it. Isn’t that your department?” Once again, she masterfully turns a situation in which Cooper is on the ropes into one where his persecutors are eating out of her hand. What began as an interrogation of Cooper over what happened to Dougie’s car ends up an interrogation of Detectives Fusco over their various failures: to find the stolen car, to disclose information about its whereabouts, to refrain from badgering a stressed-out couple at the end of a long day. Sensing that the detectives are withholding important information, Mullins steps forward and skeptically interjects that “you did find his car, didn’t you?”, as Janey-E scowls ever more disapprovingly at their incompetence. Cue-ball admits it: “The car’s been found. It was involved in an apparent explosion.” “Multiple fatalities,” offers Flat-top. Janey-E (yelling): “Why didn’t you tell us that to begin with?” Cue-ball Fusco: “The deceased had ties to a gang associated with multiple car thefts.” Janey-E: “Well, there’s you’re answer. Now, if you don’t mind, our son is home alone waiting for his supper and in case you think we’re neglecting him, he’s being watched by our neighbor as a favor, and we’d like to go—we were supposed to be home by now, at the end of a very long and stressful day, which I’ll tell you about later Dougie, c’mon, let’s go.” Much more conciliatory than we’ve seen him so far, Cue-ball attempts to request further paperwork, to which Flat-top promptly replies that it can wait, hands Janey-E a business card, and cordially invites her to follow up in the morning, thanking them for their time and wishing them a good evening. On the way out, Cue-ball quips to Mullins that “I guess he won’t have any trouble collecting the insurance,” which elicits a bizarre guffaw from the third heretofore silent Fusco, “Smiley.” As the Detectives Fusco depart, Mullins, too, wants a word with Cooper about the Sinclair files, but an indignant scowl from Janey-E morphs Mullins from imposing to cordial like a Jedi mind-trick, putting a prompt end to the would-be meeting: “You go ahead. We can take care of that tomorrow.” (36:13-40:31) Making their way to the car, Janey-E leads Cooper through the lobby of the Lucky 7 building chattering a mile a minute about her snappy solution to his extortionist problem (from Part Six) and her hopes for the insurance money and their nest-egg from the jackpots (from Part Three and Part Four). As they exit the building, she enjoins Cooper to forsake gambling and carousing for the sake of their family future, at which point the soundscape is suddenly flooded with the terrifying musical equivalent of whales sounding off from deep under water. On cue, Ike the Spike Stadtler emerges from a group of bystanders with a .45-magnum trained on Cooper. Muscle-memory kicks in and with speed and precision that one witness later describes as “cobra-like,” Cooper pushes Janey-E out of harm’s way, grabs Ike’s arm with gun in hand, neutralizes him with a devastating open-handed strike to the trachea, and wrestles Ike’s gun-hand to the ground, squeezing it with both hands, as a recovered Janey-E attacks Ike from behind, screaming bloody murder. Without warning, the Arm (or perhaps the Arm’s doppelgänger, though no malignant tissue appears visible) sprouts up out of the very pavement in front of them, repeatedly screaming “Squeeze his hand off!” until Cooper complies and administers a second tracheal strike that sends Spike reeling, sans the heel of his right palm, into the crowd and away. Cooper stands up as if in a trance, eyes drifting toward what we suspect is the lawman statue (though we don’t actually see it) as Janey-E embraces and consoles him. (40:32-41:56) The scene is transformed by dusk as the lights and sounds of a search helicopter, police vehicles, and crime-scene photos shuttering in rapid-fire dramatically fill the square; it almost feels as though we’ve entered a tawdry Las Vegas true crime show struggling to keep its slot in primetime. The off-kilter mood persists as a series of noticeably quicker-than-usual edits depict, in turns, Janey-E and Cooper (ever reaching for badges) interviewed by police, and witnesses describing the attacker (little girl: “He smelled funny.”) and Cooper (young woman: “Douglas Jones—he moved like a cobra—all I saw was a blur.”), presumably to the media. The scene concludes with a shot of the gloved hands of a forensics tech prying Ike the Spike’s right palm flesh from the left side of the handgun’s grip module—a shot that is doubly strange for the facts that it is framed by a spotlight (with the rest of the scene noticeably dimmed) and that the spotlighted event (Ike’s palm-flesh being extricated from the wrong side of the grip module) depicts either a clear continuity error or yet another instance of Lodge-induced mirroring/flipping. (41:57-42:43) Establishing shots of the falls, the hotel, and a yawning concierge pushing papers behind a sweeping wooden desk announce the Great Northern. As we pan past a colorful winged totem sculpture, a sound like a singing bowl fills the receiving room adjacent to Ben Horne’s office. Ben and his assistant Beverly are puzzling over the advent of this humming sound, moving around the room in a vain effort to discern the source of the sound. They stand uncomfortably close together and there is palpable sexual tension between them. “When did you first start hearing this?”, Ben wonders. “Sometime last week? But I think it’s louder now. Maybe that’s because nobody’s here,” Beverly replies. With his hands hovering uncomfortably close to her breasts, Ben says: “Don’t move. Just listen carefully. Where do you think it’s coming from?” They traverse various areas of the room to no avail, chuckling at the awkwardness of the situation. As they move past her desk, Beverly notices the key to Room 315: “Oh, this might be of interest. It came in the mail today.” She tosses it to Ben. Ben: “Wow. My God! That’s an old one! We switched to cards over twenty years ago. Room 3-1-5. Wait a minute. I think that was the room where Agent Cooper was shot.” Beverly: “Who’s agent Cooper?” Ben: “FBI. He was here, I don’t you, maybe 25 years ago, investigating the murder of (with emphasis) Laura Palmer.” Beverly: “Who’s Laura Palmer?” Ben (as if coming out of a trance): “Oh! That, my dear, is a long story!” They stand awkwardly in one another’s presence, Beverly beaming at Ben, no one rushing to fill the maturing silence. Finally, Ben asks Beverly to have maintenance “check out that hum in the morning,” and as Beverly refuses to withdraw her smiling presence, Ben notes that “it’s getting way past quitting time.” Beverly dons her jacket preparing to go, and says “Thank you, Mr. Horne.” “Ben,” he warmly replies. She nods in smiling approval, gathers her things, and walks to the door, pausing for a dramatic farewell: “Good night, Ben.” “Beverly,” he nods. As she leaves, he wistfully sizes up the key (“Hmmm.”) and heads into his private office as the singing-bowl hum rings out from the wood. (42:44-47:32) Beverly arrives at home, where her sick husband Tom is convalescing. His at-home caregiver greets Beverly at the door, informing her that Tom had a rough day and is somewhat better, but needed extra pain medication. She departs on the news that Tom has waited for Beverly’s return to eat dinner, which is on the stove. “He’s missing you,” she says with uncomfortable urgency. Beverly walks in with a smile: “Sorry I’m late, honey. You hungry?” Tom, in his bed clothes, sighs heavily from his wheelchair, oxygen and IV by his side. “I heard you drive up. Why were you late?”, he accusingly inquires. “I had some things to do,” comes the dreaded stock reply; “would you like your dinner?” Tom is curious, and not in the happy sort of way: “What things?” “I had some work to do. Some things came up and I had to do them. Are you hungry?” “Not really,” he heaves, defeated. We get the sense that this routine is pretty well rehearsed, as Beverly’s fuse is short: “I know you’re sick and suffering. Do not use that to fuck with me! Do you know how lucky I am to have this job to help us survive? Oh, for crying out loud, don’t fuck this up Tom!” He stares back at her, dejected. (47:33-49:48) At the Roadhouse, Booker T.’s “Green Onions” rocks the juke. The bar is closed and a bearded young man in black sweeps the floor as Jean Michel Renault attends to business behind the bar. After an ample two minutes of watching the Roadhouse employee sweep the floor, the phone rings and the lascivious Jean Michel picks up, laughing in response to the caller’s opening salvo. “Of course he loved it! Who wouldn’t? Wait, he owes me for two! He wanted blondes I sent him two blonds.” The caller informs Renault that the women were under-aged, and Jean Michel protests that they both had good IDs: “This has nothing to do with the Roadhouse. The Roadhouse has been owned by the Renault family for 57 years we’re not going to lose it now because of a couple of 15-year-old straight-A students.” The caller continues to press for a discounted rate, but Renault isn’t biting: ‘No, those girls…they are whores pure and simple. From what I hear though, they are straight-A whores…He owes me for two.” (49:49-53:12) It’s 1:00 am at Yankton Federal Prison and the plot to spring Mr. C. and Ray Monroe seems to be unfolding according to plan. A guard shines a flashlight down the desolate cell block. The door to cell 27 slides open and Mr. C., now dressed in his civies, emerges into the light. Monroe follows suit from a cell down the corridor and another guard leads them out of the facility and down into a receiving area where a nondescript beige rental awaits them. The guard hands Mr. C. his phone: “Keys are in the car.” Mr. C. tells Ray to drive and they depart the prison as Warden Murphy looks on, troubled, from a balcony above the lot. (53:13-55:35) “Sleep Walk” plays over the juke box as Norma does paperwork in a back booth and Shelly serves coffee to a customer happily ensconced among a sizeable R&R nightshift crowd. A young man (credited as “Bing”) runs into the diner, shouts “Anyone seen Billy?”, and immediately leaves. (NOTE: His words are garbled enough to invite curiosity as to whether he might have said “Anyone seen Bing?”). A look of puzzlement crosses Shelly’s face, but the rest of the diner seems unperturbed, and her concern diminishes as she approaches Heidi and shares a laugh. The diners continue to enjoy the evening as the credits roll, and just one second before the bitter end, Bing is back in the restaurant, seemingly with a companion. (55:59-58:00) In Memory of Warren Frost.
4 Comments
Brian
7/5/2017 08:59:52 pm
Part 7: One thing to possibly mention at the end during the diner scene, is that between the two angles shot in the diner, many of the diners have either shifted or been replaced. Many of us doubt this was an accident.
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bromandudeguy
7/6/2017 02:11:19 am
at the end Mr. C's car passed by the Double R 4 times and a blue car with a roof storage thing passed 3 times.
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WHOA! I didn't notice any of that! I'll have to rewatch and play much closer attention to what's going on outside the windows. It is obvious once you're looking for it, or will I have to zero in/enlarge, etc? Many thanks for your extremely close attention to detail!
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