that log lady scene had no business to be as funny as it was wtf :joy::joy::joy:
man, i love agent cooper.
[4.4/10] Thank goodness for Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Cooper. That’s about all I can say for the second episode of Twin Peaks. There is such a joie de vivre, a wide-eyed, confident heap of quirk to the character and the performance, that his presence instantly elevates every scene he’s in. From the Batman-like introduction in this episode, to his meticulous evaluation of coffee, pie, and various other breakfast foods, to his ability to sniff out that the Sherriff is seeing Ms. Packard, there’s the sense that Cooper is certainly eccentric, but also scrupulous and good at what he does because of it. It doesn’t hurt that MacLachlan can make Lynch and Frost’s dialogue sound believable in a way that no one else in the cast can.
The only other character in the episode who offers anything of note is Audrey. There’s parts of that I find unpleasant, because her role seems to be to titillate as much as she’s meant to be a legitimate character. But the other side of the coin is that there is an intrigue and an unassuming pathos that cuts through the way she’s uncomfortably cast as a teenager oozing sexuality.
That comes through in her apple cart-upsetting ways. Like everything in Twin Peaks, it’s absurdly over the top, but the scene in which she pulls her pencils out of the cup she just bored into, just to see what happens when the coffee spills everywhere, represents the way in which she is something of a wildcard, willing to stir the pot for the sake of stirring the pot.
But as much as it seems like adolescent nihilism, or causing trouble for trouble’s sake, there’s also the sense that it’s a cry for attention. It’s trite to have the wealthy parents with kids who make problems because they feel neglected, but it’s at least an interesting tack to take in the scene where her dad confronts her for scaring off the Swedish investors with the news of Laura’s death. It’s all a little silly, but unlike most of the characters in Twin Peaks (Dale Cooper excepted) she at least has a presence about her that makes her stand out in a show full of thinly-drawn, stereotypical characters. (It may help that she typically doesn’t have to spit out too much of the series’s abysmal dialogue.)
And no one in the show is more of a flat, stereotypical character than Leo, the abusive husband of Shelley. But before we get into that, let’s tease out the ridiculous, lumpy, love-dodecahedron that the show has going with its teen cast members at the moment. It starts with Leo, who’s married to Shelley, who’s seeing Bobby on the side, who was also dating Laura, who was having a dalliance with James (and possibly two other guys), who is not romantically involved with Donna, who is officially dating Mike. If that weren’t enough, there is Naomi (the eye patch-wearing nut obsessed with drapes), who’s married to Ed, who’s secretly seeing Norma, who’s married to a man in jail. And just to make sure there’s enough tangled romantic webs to really make things convoluted, the Sherriff is seeing Mrs. Packard, who is flirting with Pete, who is married to Catherine, who is schtuping Audrey’s dad. Phwew. Suffice it to say, this is a show where you need a diagram to keep up with all the romantic connections, and it’s utterly, utterly ridiculous.
Anyway, we get Leo’s homecoming with Shelley, where he is viciously jealous (over unfamiliar branded cigarettes in his ashtray) and willing to beat her with soap in a sock over a missing, blood-stained shirt. I’m willing to cut some slack to a show made in 1990, but I can’t help but wince at something as serious as spousal abuse being depicted in such a cartoonish, Halmark Channel-esque fashion.
Rest-assured, there’s plenty more crap where that came from, as we dig deep into a budding relationship between expressionless James and Donna. There’s the grain of something solid there, with the idea that grief provokes strong emotional states in people that sometimes forges unexpected connections, but there’s next to no chemistry between the pair.
It doesn’t help that James has all the ability to emote of a particularly dull Rock, or that Donna is saddled with the cringiest of bad dialogue. Her little monologue about this all seeming like a wonderful dream, but also a nightmare, is a noble attempt to capture the confused feelings that emerge around grief and comfort, but it’s written with all the nuance and eloquence of an episode of G.I. Joe.
That level of depth and subtlety carries on in the scene that Donna shares with Laura’s mom. As if the over-the-top acting the mom had already shown weren’t enough, we get some poorly-done special effects to superimpose Laura’s face on Donna’s to signify that the mom is delirious or out of it in her grief and grasping in vain for her daughter. The frantic screaming when she sees a random dude peeking from behind the couch is too much too, and it’s hard not to laugh when the show at least seems to be going for sincere, grief-stricken emotion.
The thrust of the episode seems to be a dichotomy of Laura as someone who was an upstanding young student on the one hand – dating the captain of the football team, volunteering at meals on wheels, and tutoring Audrey’s mentally-challenged older brother, and a doomed ingénue on the other, two-timing her boyfriend, doing cocaine, and getting lost in dark forests with mysterious people. But it’s a rote sense of duality, the usual Madonna/whore complex without any wrinkles in the early going beyond mystery thrown on top of mystery in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it’ll all be going somewhere.
That’s the best I can hope for this rewatch of Twin Peaks, that eventually all this over-exaggerated camp and baroque plotting turns into something decent beyond its status as an intermittent showcase for Kyle MacLachlan. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Everyone in this serie looks like crazy people
Liked this more than ep 1, which I still enjoyed, but this just felt a bit tighter thanks to the shorter runtime. Overall I just love the weird vibes. Odd characters all around and I'm here for it! So curious about how the rest of the season will unfold.
Feeling david lynch with that piano sound music effect. Also it shows classic lynch when Laura's mother saw that hallucination and screamed. Those things reminded me of his movies.
There are lots of characters and most of them are related. So, it made me confused for 2 episodes.
Cooper is interesting character. Fan of black coffee and desserts. He is funny.
This episode was better than the last, but the show still doesn't have me hooked. The only truly interesting character is Agent Cooper, which is terrible considering the large cast. Everyone else is either a generic cliche or just decent. For a show so focused on characters, this shouldn't be one of the areas it's struggling the most with...
~SF16~
Shout by Wéjih M'zoughiBlockedParentSpoilers2017-12-06T22:44:04Z
I love Agent Cooper. The actor is so good and probably the best one of the casting so far as far as I'm concerned. He's marvellous.
Also, so many creepy people in this episode lol
When, Laura Palmer's mother imagined seeing a man staring at her and started screaming, even I was scared as hell, and it wasn't even a jumpscare or anything. haha! Nice episode overall. Also, the humour isn't actually that bad. At times it's good.
Mr special agent Cooper, it's 2017 now, and we still don't know who pulled the trigger on JFK! :(