Episode 10
Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 9:18 pm
My notes on Episode 10, or Episode 11 including the Pilot, or Season 2 Episode 3, also called "The Man Behind Glass". Unmarked spoilers below.
The beginning of this episode has always confused me. How did the killer get in to put a letter under Ronette's fingernail when Truman explicitly stated there was a 24 hour guard? Why would the killer decide to put a letter under her fingernail now, after not giving her one the first time, when she still isn't dead? Why was the IV tainted with blue dye? We later learn that the IV had been tainted with haloperidol, the same anti-schizoprenic drug Philip Gerard, the one-armed man, was injecting himself with to stop "Mike" from "inhabiting" him. I remember reading a crazy theory a while back that Leland never came into Ronette's hospital room at all, and that Ronette was, in fact, briefly possessed by "Bob" to put the letter under her own fingernail (explaining why no one saw anyone enter her room past the 24 hour guard), with the One-Armed Man putting haloperidol in her IV to exorcise Bob out or protect her from him. I seriously doubt that was the intended explanation, but it is still a mystery to me how or why that occurred.
I really could have done without Albert's speech to Harry. I like Albert serving a similar role to Cooper in that he has provided the audience with an outside perspective into the town, in his case, snidely calling out the quirky, secretive town and it's ineffectual (save for Hawk, of course) Sheriff's Department. He provides a vent for some of the reactions that modern viewers especially have to some of the more ridiculous, hammy and unprofessional actions of the local police and townsfolk, and, in some cases, this actually makes it seem more sympathetic rather than cheesy melodrama, such as the case with Ed's story about how he and Nadine got together whilst Albert laughs and mocks him. But this speech about his pacifism and "loving Sheriff Truman" all the sudden seems to be there purely to soften his character, when I feel there is no need to at all. Albert should just stay being House, since that's pretty much who he is, several years too early. Also, when he is on his way out of the Sheriff's Station, there is a great little moment where he deliberately slams his shoulder into James. Some pacifist.
WIth the arrival of Dick Tremayne to the station, we realize the show's increased budget is introducing a lot of new characters into the mix. While it is pure fluff and takes the show more towards the campy side of the scale, I actually do find it amusing how completely oblivious he is (he lights a cigarette right in front of the no smoking side, prattles on while Lucy is obviously uninterested), how he acts like such a stuck up dandy and fancies himself high society when he, in fact, really just works at a department store.
This should just be noted again and again, but Hawk is the best. I love how he is insulting Dick to his face, while at the same time coming up with more words containing B, T and R for Lucy's scrabble game. There is nothing he does not excel at. Has it been mentioned yet on the podcast how it seems like so often Harry and Cooper just sit in the Sheriff's Station and eat donuts and drink coffee or talk while they send Hawk off to go do the actual work of investigating? When the new series airs, I want Hawk to be the Sheriff.
It's really funny how Leland actually lights up a match and throws it in a Sheriff's Station no less to make his point, perfectly making it into the ash tray. But did anyone notice the posters hung up on the wall behind him?! There is a hilarious one that might explain how Andy got his job--it says "Is your job a bore? Not any more! Become a Deputy Sheriff". So good.
The shot where Leland holds up the "Have You Seen This Man" poster for "Bob" and covers his face seems, to those of us who have the benefit of having seen the reveal, like another one of those possibly deliberate allusions to the fact that he is the killer. It's interesting that neither he nor Cooper seem to find it strange that Leland recognizes the man in the sketch as the very same man who lived next door to his grandparent's summer home, as if no time had passed at all.
It looks like the demo James, Maddy and Donna recorded already made it on to the Double R Diner jukebox. Oh joy. It has been made clear that Maddy is an adult woman with a car, her own house and a job back in Missoula, Montana. She just came here for her cousin Laura's funeral and to help her aunt and uncle get through it. Why in the world is she hanging out with these high school teenagers investigating mysteries and even flirting around with James, an underage boy? Maddy says running away won't solve anything, but because James is one of the worst characters for me, and his storyline is so odious (especially later in the season after the Laura Palmer mystery is wrapped up), I'm pretty sure him running away right now would solve a lot of things in the show for me. And, hilariously, in the end it's when James finally does just ride off after the whole Evelyn thing that the show starts to pick up again, though that is due to a lot of factors. I love Maddy's "hand caught in the cookie jar" face when Donna walks in though.
I love how Cooper sees right through Shelly's scheme and sends her on her way with an evil, knowing grin. It's weird, there's a lot of "damn good questions" going around in the Sheriff's Department, like who shot Cooper, who all is involved in the conspiracy to burn down the sawmill and Shelly's insurance scheme, that they acknowledge but then don't seem to put any more effort into answering. It must be a very lacksadaisical police department.
The unsettling, creepy scenes with Gerard in the bathroom, having what looks like some kind of schizophrenic episode off his medication are both enlightening and effective. And the french horns or whatever those are on the soundtrack really add to it. I love the metallic effect on his voice too. He does know Bob after all, despite what he told the police the first time he was questioned at the motel in Season 1. I wonder is this supposed to be because he really doesn't know any of that stuff when he isn't being inhabited by Mike or was he actually under the influence of Mike the first time they questioned him and deliberately throwing them off (later when Cooper asks him why he lied to them, Gerard says, clearly afraid, "it wasn't me! Don't you understand it wasn't me?!")?
During his hypnosis session, Dr. Jacoby clarifies that he smelled the scorched engine oil smell in that park when he was assaulted. So either the writers wanted to correct the earlier information about it being smelled in the in the hospital when Jacques died, which would have exactly pinpointed Leland, or they wanted to say it was smelled at both places for some reason. Was this change made to avoid tying together Leland and the scorched engine oil smell in the viewer's mind just yet? I love the brief shot where we see Harry starting to fall asleep under Cooper's hypnosis too and he has to gently call him out.
I do find the scene where Donna shouts all her frustrations at Laura's grave pretty effective. One, it reminds us that Donna isn't really as nice a person as she might have seemed in the pilot. Or maybe she's just very immature. And two, it keeps the effect where the ghost of Laura seems like a character in her own right. I love that about this show, the more we learn about her life and her fate, the more real she seems to us.
The scene with Maddy and James at the Palmer house is very weird to me for a number of reasons. First, James just walks in. I know he was Laura's friend, but wasn't that a big secret? So Leland and Sarah probably wouldn't know who this kid was right?. I mean I guess Maddy's allowed to have house guests over. Hey Maddy, kissing him isn't going to put out that fire, honey. But then Donna also just appears inside the Palmer house. Ok, she's her childhood friend whatever. Then James freaking smashes the Palmers' living room lamp in a rage! And Leland finally comes down to see what all the ruckus is about. Talk about a rude house guest! The scene where he screams "WHY?!" at Donna peeling away in her car is equally ridiculous, as if the answer is hard to understand. Well, maybe for him it is.
When Maddy is crying about how she isn't Laura and Leland tries to comfort her, I half expect Leland to hug her and be like "I know. There there, Laura... Oops!". She really has become like his surrogate daughter. I think this scene might have also been done to go against a pretty popular crazy theory at the time, that Maddy was, in fact, secretly Laura in disguise, through some weird scheme or mixup. So they wanted to double down on the fact that, no, Maddy isn't Laura.
But then Sheriff Truman and Agent Cooper just walk into the Palmer house! Apparently, James left the door wide open. I think the Palmers need to lock their doors. It's just really weird to me when you think about how all these people just stroll into the Palmers' house and even break their stuff without a thought.
The beginning of this episode has always confused me. How did the killer get in to put a letter under Ronette's fingernail when Truman explicitly stated there was a 24 hour guard? Why would the killer decide to put a letter under her fingernail now, after not giving her one the first time, when she still isn't dead? Why was the IV tainted with blue dye? We later learn that the IV had been tainted with haloperidol, the same anti-schizoprenic drug Philip Gerard, the one-armed man, was injecting himself with to stop "Mike" from "inhabiting" him. I remember reading a crazy theory a while back that Leland never came into Ronette's hospital room at all, and that Ronette was, in fact, briefly possessed by "Bob" to put the letter under her own fingernail (explaining why no one saw anyone enter her room past the 24 hour guard), with the One-Armed Man putting haloperidol in her IV to exorcise Bob out or protect her from him. I seriously doubt that was the intended explanation, but it is still a mystery to me how or why that occurred.
I really could have done without Albert's speech to Harry. I like Albert serving a similar role to Cooper in that he has provided the audience with an outside perspective into the town, in his case, snidely calling out the quirky, secretive town and it's ineffectual (save for Hawk, of course) Sheriff's Department. He provides a vent for some of the reactions that modern viewers especially have to some of the more ridiculous, hammy and unprofessional actions of the local police and townsfolk, and, in some cases, this actually makes it seem more sympathetic rather than cheesy melodrama, such as the case with Ed's story about how he and Nadine got together whilst Albert laughs and mocks him. But this speech about his pacifism and "loving Sheriff Truman" all the sudden seems to be there purely to soften his character, when I feel there is no need to at all. Albert should just stay being House, since that's pretty much who he is, several years too early. Also, when he is on his way out of the Sheriff's Station, there is a great little moment where he deliberately slams his shoulder into James. Some pacifist.
WIth the arrival of Dick Tremayne to the station, we realize the show's increased budget is introducing a lot of new characters into the mix. While it is pure fluff and takes the show more towards the campy side of the scale, I actually do find it amusing how completely oblivious he is (he lights a cigarette right in front of the no smoking side, prattles on while Lucy is obviously uninterested), how he acts like such a stuck up dandy and fancies himself high society when he, in fact, really just works at a department store.
This should just be noted again and again, but Hawk is the best. I love how he is insulting Dick to his face, while at the same time coming up with more words containing B, T and R for Lucy's scrabble game. There is nothing he does not excel at. Has it been mentioned yet on the podcast how it seems like so often Harry and Cooper just sit in the Sheriff's Station and eat donuts and drink coffee or talk while they send Hawk off to go do the actual work of investigating? When the new series airs, I want Hawk to be the Sheriff.
It's really funny how Leland actually lights up a match and throws it in a Sheriff's Station no less to make his point, perfectly making it into the ash tray. But did anyone notice the posters hung up on the wall behind him?! There is a hilarious one that might explain how Andy got his job--it says "Is your job a bore? Not any more! Become a Deputy Sheriff". So good.
The shot where Leland holds up the "Have You Seen This Man" poster for "Bob" and covers his face seems, to those of us who have the benefit of having seen the reveal, like another one of those possibly deliberate allusions to the fact that he is the killer. It's interesting that neither he nor Cooper seem to find it strange that Leland recognizes the man in the sketch as the very same man who lived next door to his grandparent's summer home, as if no time had passed at all.
It looks like the demo James, Maddy and Donna recorded already made it on to the Double R Diner jukebox. Oh joy. It has been made clear that Maddy is an adult woman with a car, her own house and a job back in Missoula, Montana. She just came here for her cousin Laura's funeral and to help her aunt and uncle get through it. Why in the world is she hanging out with these high school teenagers investigating mysteries and even flirting around with James, an underage boy? Maddy says running away won't solve anything, but because James is one of the worst characters for me, and his storyline is so odious (especially later in the season after the Laura Palmer mystery is wrapped up), I'm pretty sure him running away right now would solve a lot of things in the show for me. And, hilariously, in the end it's when James finally does just ride off after the whole Evelyn thing that the show starts to pick up again, though that is due to a lot of factors. I love Maddy's "hand caught in the cookie jar" face when Donna walks in though.
I love how Cooper sees right through Shelly's scheme and sends her on her way with an evil, knowing grin. It's weird, there's a lot of "damn good questions" going around in the Sheriff's Department, like who shot Cooper, who all is involved in the conspiracy to burn down the sawmill and Shelly's insurance scheme, that they acknowledge but then don't seem to put any more effort into answering. It must be a very lacksadaisical police department.
The unsettling, creepy scenes with Gerard in the bathroom, having what looks like some kind of schizophrenic episode off his medication are both enlightening and effective. And the french horns or whatever those are on the soundtrack really add to it. I love the metallic effect on his voice too. He does know Bob after all, despite what he told the police the first time he was questioned at the motel in Season 1. I wonder is this supposed to be because he really doesn't know any of that stuff when he isn't being inhabited by Mike or was he actually under the influence of Mike the first time they questioned him and deliberately throwing them off (later when Cooper asks him why he lied to them, Gerard says, clearly afraid, "it wasn't me! Don't you understand it wasn't me?!")?
During his hypnosis session, Dr. Jacoby clarifies that he smelled the scorched engine oil smell in that park when he was assaulted. So either the writers wanted to correct the earlier information about it being smelled in the in the hospital when Jacques died, which would have exactly pinpointed Leland, or they wanted to say it was smelled at both places for some reason. Was this change made to avoid tying together Leland and the scorched engine oil smell in the viewer's mind just yet? I love the brief shot where we see Harry starting to fall asleep under Cooper's hypnosis too and he has to gently call him out.
I do find the scene where Donna shouts all her frustrations at Laura's grave pretty effective. One, it reminds us that Donna isn't really as nice a person as she might have seemed in the pilot. Or maybe she's just very immature. And two, it keeps the effect where the ghost of Laura seems like a character in her own right. I love that about this show, the more we learn about her life and her fate, the more real she seems to us.
The scene with Maddy and James at the Palmer house is very weird to me for a number of reasons. First, James just walks in. I know he was Laura's friend, but wasn't that a big secret? So Leland and Sarah probably wouldn't know who this kid was right?. I mean I guess Maddy's allowed to have house guests over. Hey Maddy, kissing him isn't going to put out that fire, honey. But then Donna also just appears inside the Palmer house. Ok, she's her childhood friend whatever. Then James freaking smashes the Palmers' living room lamp in a rage! And Leland finally comes down to see what all the ruckus is about. Talk about a rude house guest! The scene where he screams "WHY?!" at Donna peeling away in her car is equally ridiculous, as if the answer is hard to understand. Well, maybe for him it is.
When Maddy is crying about how she isn't Laura and Leland tries to comfort her, I half expect Leland to hug her and be like "I know. There there, Laura... Oops!". She really has become like his surrogate daughter. I think this scene might have also been done to go against a pretty popular crazy theory at the time, that Maddy was, in fact, secretly Laura in disguise, through some weird scheme or mixup. So they wanted to double down on the fact that, no, Maddy isn't Laura.
But then Sheriff Truman and Agent Cooper just walk into the Palmer house! Apparently, James left the door wide open. I think the Palmers need to lock their doors. It's just really weird to me when you think about how all these people just stroll into the Palmers' house and even break their stuff without a thought.