Although I generally think late season 2 is an improvement on mid-, this is one of my least favorite from that stretch. It has a draggy, obligatory air to much of it, setting up the grand finale (which ended up being quite a different grand finale than expected, but that's another story). In particular, the Ben-Audrey scene feels really flat to me (though her line about "will it hurt this much in a week?" is - unintentionally? - hilarious). The Cooper-Annie dialogue is painful, and I could do without much of Miss Twin Peaks shenanigans (Lana's snake dance did not charm me). But there are good bits as well.
Highlights include:
-Windom Earle's black teeth/white face. Favorite image from this episode and one of the scariest Earle moments.
-Lucy's dance is cute although. How far along as she in her pregnancy though?!
-Maj. Briggs' babbling in the sheriff's office, about Judy Garland and the Queen of Romania (though Cooper's Jupiter-Saturn-comet-speed of light speech makes my head hurt)
-I LOVE Shelly & Donna goofing off and sharing a cigarette in the back of the chorus line. Blink and you'll miss it but a classic little character (or maybe just actor) moment. Wish we got more stuff like that to remind us that after all, they're just high school kids at the end of the day. (Shelly's not, I guess, but I get the sense she married Leo as a teenager so maybe she should be...)
Interesting that Laura Palmer's name gets dropped for the first time in a few episodes, and while brief it's the most substantial reference since James' talk with Evelyn. Shelly's "I think it will take more than a day" to recover feels like a dig at the show's missteps circa episode 17.
Indeed, there are several moments in #28 that feel like the show criticizing/referencing itself. The girls dancing in plastic see-through raincoats at the Miss Twin Peaks definitely seems like a wrapped-in-plastic in-joke and a perhaps unintended comment on how Twin Peaks has allowed its mystery to descend into kitsch. Also noteworthy is the Log Lady's appearance. She's being molested by the grubby salesman/choreographer and then she is actually replaced by Windom Earle in Log Lady drag. Which as a good a summary as any of what happened to the series link with the subconscious.
Some of the flaws feel similar to ep. 16, which Tim Hunter also directed though he can't be blamed for the screenplays. There are logical lapses for the sake of setting up a big climax: how hard is it for Andy to find Cooper in the one-room Road House???
Question for people who watched the two-part finale back in 1991: were there credits after 28, before 29? Or, as I'm assuming was the case, were the two episodes edited so that when Andy says "It's a map!" we faded to black and then came back from the commercial with the quick establishing shot of the sheriff's station and then the close-up of Andy/Lucy without any guest credits imposed over them? (Or were those credits there, just not the end-credits for #28?) When #29 ended, did the Laura-in-the-coffee cup credits go longer than usual to incorporate stuff from #28?
I doubt anyone has this good a memory, so I guess I'm asking if anyone is compelled to check their old VHS tapes.
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Oh...and that's definitely John Wentworth carrying the deer head, right? I've never heard anybody note this but it seems pretty clear to me.