2x06 Demons

[4.2/10] Look, Twin Peaks just needs to stop trying to write romantic dialogue of any sort, but especially dialogue involving the teenagers. Maybe it’s that the younger actors on the show are not nearly as adept as the adults. Maybe it’s that Lynch & Co.’s conception of what teenagers sound like, or ought to sound like, is just so painfully off that no actor could salvage it, but my god, it is consistently one of the most painful parts of the show and that is no small feat.

Unsurprisingly, two of the worst offenders on that front are scenes involving James Hurley. His colloquy with Donna on the sidewalk after rescuing her and Maddy from an insane, vengeful Harold is the stuff that facepalms are made of. It’s not at all clear what motivated them to reconcile or feel differently than they had been (I guess Donna realizes Harold is a nut which breaks her attraction, and James realizes he cares about Donna enough to rescue her, even though he rescues Maddy first?). But regardless, the lines about how if they just put their two hearts together nothing can stop of them is the worst kind of purple prose and neither of the young actors can deliver it in anything approaching a solid fashion.

The whole sequence involving Bobby’s last minute defense of the two girls is pretty weak too. Maybe I should forgive the show it’s corny swerve, but it’s a very convenient way to get Maddy and Donna out of harm’s way just in the nick of time. There’s something that feels really cheap about that, particularly with the way the prior episode ended on a threatening cliffhanger. I’m not saying I wanted to see the girls hurt by Harold in any way, but anytime you let your characters evade the seemingly mortal peril you set them up for in a cliffhanger without a single real consequence or hardship from it, it’s hard for the conflict as a whole not to feel like a waste.

The other terrible scene involving James is his farewell to Maddy down by the water. It’s another overwritten set of lines, with Maddy talking about how it was nice to get to try Laura’s life on for size and James admitting he was trying to relive his time with her. Those sentiments aren’t bad, but the way they’re put down in the script is overly florid and unbelievable. Sure, teenager can be melodramatic and embellish their speech, but the conversation between Maddy and James never feels sincere, just overblown.

There’s also some horrid stuff with Shelley, Bobby, and Leo. Again, these are all characters who have pretty well outlived their usefulness on the show, to the extent they were useful in the first place. (Though again, it’s worth noting that nigh-lifeless vegetable is the part Eric DaRae was born to play.) Presumably, at some point , Leo is going to wake up and try to take his revenge on Bobby and Shelly, and the two of them bitching about their insurance scam going awry and making out in front of him will come back to bite them. But for now it just seems like a lot of wheel-spinning and table-setting for that seemingly inevitable conclusion.

We also get David Lynch casting himself in his own show, which is always a dicey proposition. (Though technically he was already cast in vocal form as the same character, so maybe there’s a reprieve there.) Him playing Cooper’s boss as someone hard of hearing has some odd comic value to it, so there’s that, and him delivering an avuncular attaboy to Cooper while also expressing some concern that he’s in too deep with this case has some merit in it too.

But hey, we also get some of the biggest and most meaningful progress in the Laura Palmer case we’ve had in a while. Hawk tracks down the one-armed man, and when the folks down at the police station corner him and force him to undergo his seizure without his medicine, the truth comes spilling out. The one-armed man has been possessed by Mike, some sort of supernatural creature who used to be partners with Bob. He basically reiterates the story we got from Cooper’s dream, with a few details here and there.

I’ll admit, I kind of like it. The supernatural elements to this show have often been hit or miss, but this feels well-established, or at least established well enough. The performance from the one-armed-man is a little outsized, but the actor does a good job of distinguishing the somewhat timid shoe salesman from the more self-assured, ethereal being that borrows his form. There’s some hokey parts involved, but it works about as well as it needs to, and it’s one of the few parts of this episode that can say that. I can only hope that, as the show seems to be circling ‘round the endgame for the Laura Palmer storyline, more scenes from the episode follow that tack.

Warning, Spoilers below for some predictions on who killed Laura Palmer

Mrs. Bloom’s guess is that it’s Leland, with her reasoning being that everyone who saw Bob was connected to him in some way, that he himself saw Bob when he was a kid, and that he’s in the hotel all the time, making him a good candidate to be possessed by the evil spirit.

My guess is that it’s Audrey’s brother, the one who wears the Indian headdress all the time. I’ll admit, I don’t quite have the good reasons that Mrs. Bloom does, but she and I were discussing characters we hadn’t seen in a while (what the hell happened to Donna’s original boyfriend, Mike?) and I realized that he’d been MIA for some time. Other than him obviously being at the hotel a lot, I don’t have a great rationale for why he’s the one that Bob possessed, but there’s something about the disturbed manchild who no one would suspect because what motive would he have in this town full of backstabbing and treachery that feels like the kind of faux-profound irony and out of left field answer this show would go for.

We’ll see who’s right! Or if there’s even an answer at all!