Episode 10

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Aerozhul
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Re: Episode 10

Post by Aerozhul »

David Locke wrote:And Andy's "sperms" plot is unspeakably annoying -- frankly, as a character he's never been of much interest to me at all, and Lucy is certainly better but gets wasted in stories like this.
Thank you, now I know I'm not the only one that gets irritated by Andy. He was much better in Season 1 before they decided to make him into a cartoon character.

I liked this episode overall. Really dug the Donna graveside scene - LFB did some fine work in that scene.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Episode 10

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Having just rewatched this episode, I agree with many of the sentiments written regarding this episode being a bit of a harbinger of the weaker aspects of season 2. While overall a strong one, this episode has some very weak scenes (and introduces some weak long-running plot elements) which destroy my suspension of disbelief, and as a result, this one marks the first time in this rewatch where I stop feeling like a visitor to the town of Twin Peaks and start feeling like a viewer of the TV show Twin Peaks -- which I love for all its warts and appreciate as a beautiful but flawed whole. But the immersive effect of the Pilot and those first 9 is fading rapidly.

That said, I was shocked to read in LostintheMovies's post that the Donna graveyard scene gets criticized "by seemingly everyone." I find the scene to be one of LFB's most incredible moments on the show. For me, it has a terrific mood, and defines the Laura/Donna friendship as much as anything in FWWM (that's high praise from someone who considers himself to be a Lynch fan first and a TP fan second). It runs the gamut of emotions over the course of a few minutes in a single take, and LFB kills it. I'm glad everyone who's commented on this thread seems to like it.

However, aside from that scene (and the Harold scenes, which are fine) this is where the James/Maddy/Donna stuff starts to completely derail for me. Count me in as a fan of "Just You" (Sheryl Lee's beautiful performance -- seductive, then self-recriminating, then horrified -- and Bob's single most terrifying appearance ever make that scene work for me as a unified whole), but the James/Maddy diner scene in this one is painful. The dialogue about "do[ing] it through the bars," while certainly accurate lingo to 1990-era teens, feels painfully out of place in this world. Marshall is given cliche upon angsty cliche to work with ("Sometimes I think I should just get on my bike and go"), and I blame the writers more than I blame him (although he certainly doesn't do much to elevate the material).

As StealThisCorn pointed out in the initial post in this thread, the Palmer house scene is so dedicated to shattering our suspension of disbelief that it actually works as madcap farce, although I don't know that that was the intention. (It may have been -- listen to Glatter's audio commentary for Episode 5 on the Artisan DVD, in which she delights in pointing out how stupid she finds James's dialogue about his alcoholic mom, but how she feels it works because it's so self-consciously parodic. I'm not sure that this was the writers' intention -- although Engels in particular seems to have approached much of the material with tongue firmly in cheek, based on his own comments -- but this definitely seems to have been the way Glatter approached the teenage angst material.) To be fair, Engels tried to make the comings-and-goings in the Palmer house a bit less absurd by indicating in the script that "We hear faint sound of voices off" before Donna's entrance, indicating presumably that Leland let Donna in -- I'm guessing Glatter eliminated this detail so she could get her (admittedly fun) one-shot of James's entrance, the kiss with a turnaround camera angle, and the surprise reveal of Donna when they split. James smashing the lamp is really weird though. As shot by Glatter, it appears that he actually very consciously pauses on his way chasing Donna, apparently more interested in committing some unnecessary property damage than mending fences with the woman he loves. Leland's priceless "WTF" reaction is gold. Note that the script gives James a legit Darth Vader "NOOOO" moment: "He stops, kneels in the street, puts his hands over his eyes and cries out." By the time Harry deadpans, "The door was open," you have to assume that everyone from the writers to the actors was in on the joke.

Other thoughts on random scenes:

While I'm generally opposed to the softening of TV characters over time to make them more cuddly for mass consumption, the hairpin turn in Albert's character is so odd, the speech so beautifully delivered by Ferrer, and Coop's button on the scene so damn funny (not to mention, more generally, the hilarious concept of a dedicated pacifist with severe anger management issues), I can't help but love it.

The Coop/Ben scene feels weirdly off to me. It's a thrill to see the two performers play off each other, and I wish we'd gotten more of that, but to me, the scene should be about Coop's disgust with Ben's callousness. Instead, Ben seems to come out the winner, and arguably gets away with threatening to shoot an FBI agent in barely-veiled terms (it's not clear that this is his or the writer's intention, but Coop would have been entirely justified taking it as a "dad on the porch with a shotgun" speech). Instead, Coop seems somewhat chagrined and apologizes for caring that a young girl has gone missing a week after Laura's murder! (The script spells this out even more clearly--Cooper is "biting his tongue in self-reproachment.") I understand that Cooper is (rightly) feeling a little guilty that he has complicated feelings for a high school girl, but the way Coop cedes the moral high ground to Ben with no resistance is really unsatisfying to me.

I'm really disliking the decline in Blackie's autonomy this go-round (maybe moreso because LostintheMovies did such a good job of highlighting it in his character study). While I like the dark background info that Ben apparently forced her into heroin addiction to keep her a subjugated employee, and she's getting revenge by doing the same thing to his daughter, I find Jean rubbing Nancy in her face is one knife-twist too many to poor Blackie. From a behind-the-scenes standpoint, I enjoy the offscreen evolution of Nancy (from seemingly being Audrey's buddy in the Episode 8 script -- a scene apparently shot, with Görg credited but cut in the final episode -- to a more conniving presence in a scripted Episode 9 scene where she pieces together Audrey's identity, to her final iteration as Blackie's sister that actually made it onscreen). However, nothing that the writers or the actress actually do with the character does anything for me.

The moment when Harry nearly zonks out during Coop's "golf zen" monologue is hysterical because I imagine most of Ontkean's life is now spent on Hawaiian golf courses.

Chronology is also beginning to suffer at this point in the show, with the writers seeming less attentive to the ins and outs of the "one-day-one-episode" storytelling -- a gimmick which was a huge narrative plus in the tight first season, but feels like more of an oft-ignored burden to the writers in the second season. For instance, Gerard showing up at the sheriff's station in Episode 8 then vanishing with no explanation, only to turn up again two days later; or Leland dashing out of Ben's office to tell Harry about his grandfather's summer house in Episode 9...then waiting a full day to do so. These kinds of things make sense from a serialized storytelling perspective, but really kill my suspension of disbelief and start to pull me out of the world of the show.
Aerozhul
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Re: Episode 10

Post by Aerozhul »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:Having just rewatched this episode, I agree with many of the sentiments written regarding this episode being a bit of a harbinger of the weaker aspects of season 2. While overall a strong one, this episode has some very weak scenes (and introduces some weak long-running plot elements) which destroy my suspension of disbelief, and as a result, this one marks the first time in this rewatch where I stop feeling like a visitor to the town of Twin Peaks and start feeling like a viewer of the TV show Twin Peaks -- which I love for all its warts and appreciate as a beautiful but flawed whole. But the immersive effect of the Pilot and those first 9 is fading rapidly.

That said, I was shocked to read in LostintheMovies's post that the Donna graveyard scene gets criticized "by seemingly everyone." I find the scene to be one of LFB's most incredible moments on the show. For me, it has a terrific mood, and defines the Laura/Donna friendship as much as anything in FWWM (that's high praise from someone who considers himself to be a Lynch fan first and a TP fan second). It runs the gamut of emotions over the course of a few minutes in a single take, and LFB kills it. I'm glad everyone who's commented on this thread seems to like it.

However, aside from that scene (and the Harold scenes, which are fine) this is where the James/Maddy/Donna stuff starts to completely derail for me. Count me in as a fan of "Just You" (Sheryl Lee's beautiful performance -- seductive, then self-recriminating, then horrified -- and Bob's single most terrifying appearance ever make that scene work for me as a unified whole), but the James/Maddy diner scene in this one is painful. The dialogue about "do[ing] it through the bars," while certainly accurate lingo to 1990-era teens, feels painfully out of place in this world. Marshall is given cliche upon angsty cliche to work with ("Sometimes I think I should just get on my bike and go"), and I blame the writers more than I blame him (although he certainly doesn't do much to elevate the material).

As StealThisCorn pointed out in the initial post in this thread, the Palmer house scene is so dedicated to shattering our suspension of disbelief that it actually works as madcap farce, although I don't know that that was the intention. (It may have been -- listen to Glatter's audio commentary for Episode 5 on the Artisan DVD, in which she delights in pointing out how stupid she finds James's dialogue about his alcoholic mom, but how she feels it works because it's so self-consciously parodic. I'm not sure that this was the writers' intention -- although Engels in particular seems to have approached much of the material with tongue firmly in cheek, based on his own comments -- but this definitely seems to have been the way Glatter approached the teenage angst material.) To be fair, Engels tried to make the comings-and-goings in the Palmer house a bit less absurd by indicating in the script that "We hear faint sound of voices off" before Donna's entrance, indicating presumably that Leland let Donna in -- I'm guessing Glatter eliminated this detail so she could get her (admittedly fun) one-shot of James's entrance, the kiss with a turnaround camera angle, and the surprise reveal of Donna when they split. James smashing the lamp is really weird though. As shot by Glatter, it appears that he actually very consciously pauses on his way chasing Donna, apparently more interested in committing some unnecessary property damage than mending fences with the woman he loves. Leland's priceless "WTF" reaction is gold. Note that the script gives James a legit Darth Vader "NOOOO" moment: "He stops, kneels in the street, puts his hands over his eyes and cries out." By the time Harry deadpans, "The door was open," you have to assume that everyone from the writers to the actors was in on the joke.

Other thoughts on random scenes:

While I'm generally opposed to the softening of TV characters over time to make them more cuddly for mass consumption, the hairpin turn in Albert's character is so odd, the speech so beautifully delivered by Ferrer, and Coop's button on the scene so damn funny (not to mention, more generally, the hilarious concept of a dedicated pacifist with severe anger management issues), I can't help but love it.

The Coop/Ben scene feels weirdly off to me. It's a thrill to see the two performers play off each other, and I wish we'd gotten more of that, but to me, the scene should be about Coop's disgust with Ben's callousness. Instead, Ben seems to come out the winner, and arguably gets away with threatening to shoot an FBI agent in barely-veiled terms (it's not clear that this is his or the writer's intention, but Coop would have been entirely justified taking it as a "dad on the porch with a shotgun" speech). Instead, Coop seems somewhat chagrined and apologizes for caring that a young girl has gone missing a week after Laura's murder! (The script spells this out even more clearly--Cooper is "biting his tongue in self-reproachment.") I understand that Cooper is (rightly) feeling a little guilty that he has complicated feelings for a high school girl, but the way Coop cedes the moral high ground to Ben with no resistance is really unsatisfying to me.

I'm really disliking the decline in Blackie's autonomy this go-round (maybe moreso because LostintheMovies did such a good job of highlighting it in his character study). While I like the dark background info that Ben apparently forced her into heroin addiction to keep her a subjugated employee, and she's getting revenge by doing the same thing to his daughter, I find Jean rubbing Nancy in her face is one knife-twist too many to poor Blackie. From a behind-the-scenes standpoint, I enjoy the offscreen evolution of Nancy (from seemingly being Audrey's buddy in the Episode 8 script -- a scene apparently shot, with Görg credited but cut in the final episode -- to a more conniving presence in a scripted Episode 9 scene where she pieces together Audrey's identity, to her final iteration as Blackie's sister that actually made it onscreen). However, nothing that the writers or the actress actually do with the character does anything for me.

The moment when Harry nearly zonks out during Coop's "golf zen" monologue is hysterical because I imagine most of Ontkean's life is now spent on Hawaiian golf courses.

Chronology is also beginning to suffer at this point in the show, with the writers seeming less attentive to the ins and outs of the "one-day-one-episode" storytelling -- a gimmick which was a huge narrative plus in the tight first season, but feels like more of an oft-ignored burden to the writers in the second season. For instance, Gerard showing up at the sheriff's station in Episode 8 then vanishing with no explanation, only to turn up again two days later; or Leland dashing out of Ben's office to tell Harry about his grandfather's summer house in Episode 9...then waiting a full day to do so. These kinds of things make sense from a serialized storytelling perspective, but really kill my suspension of disbelief and start to pull me out of the world of the show.
Great summary, Mr. Reindeer. On this rewatch I grew pretty tired of the One Eyed Jacks shenanigans. While I love Audrey, this subplot with her working undercover at Jacks just dragged on far too long, spread over too many episodes. And I couldn't care less about Blackie, her sister or Emory Battis. Jean Renault was built up to be a decent villain, but fizzled out quickly - even he got tiresome.
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Jonah
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Re: Episode 10

Post by Jonah »

A pretty good episode. Not much to note.

Good points here about how Leland/Bob managed to get to Ronette - and the blue dye. Has any of this ever been explained?

I love Harry (and Albert's) reaction to Cooper being visited by a giant.

Hawk with Lucy and Dick and the letters is great stuff.

So is Albert and Harry's interaction and Albert's speech. "I love you, Sheriff Truman."

I like the scene with Coop and Shelly and Harry.

I really like the Dr. Jacoby hypnosis sequence!

I like the Donna/Laura sequence.

The Maddy/Leland scene is eerie, especially when you know what happens in Episode 14.

Surprising how a lot of the weaker elements I associate more with the stretch from Episode 17 onwards started showing up so early here - such as the Nadine storyline.

And the close on "This is the Diary of Laura Palmer" at the end is great.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Episode 10

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

In retrospect, Harold’s “LOOK INTO THE MEALS ON WHEELS” note was needlessly clandestine. Why didn’t he just write, “Hi Donna, My name is Harold. I knew Laura. Please come visit me in Bungalow 2 at your earliest convenience! I’m always home!” It would have saved Donna a lot of time delivering meals to shut-in Lodge spirits.

Funny that Hawk says smoking is prohibited in the sheriff’s station, but no one said anything to Albert when he smoked in there in Episode 2.

This is the episode where the retcon of Albert being Blue Rose really starts to strain belief. He’s so dismissive of everything Cooper says about Bob and the Giant. But I guess every team of supernatural investigators needs its resident skeptic, and “Albert’s path is a strange and difficult one.”

There’s the tantalizing detail of Leland mentioning the Palmers’ Pearl Lake neighbors on the other side, the Chalberts. Engels wrote both this episode and of course cowrote FWWM. Did the Chalfont name evolve from Chalbert? Were the Tremonds on the other side of Leland’s childhood summer house, watching Bob groom him?

I think Dale feels tremendous guilt about his feelings for Audrey. He backs down with Ben even though he is completely in the right, and he does a very abrupt 180 with Harry after telling him not to let personal feelings interfere with work (presumably realizing that he’s being a hypocrite when he himself has done the same). Whatever turmoil is going on beneath the surface certainly has something to do with what happens when Mr. C is unleashed in a few weeks’ time.

I wonder whatever became of Eolani. She’s still one of the most jarring one-off characters on a rewatch. I don’t think Mark ever even mentions her in his books.

This episode in Dale’s Diet:
— “Harry, time for a break”: Coffee in his FBI mug and a jelly donut (which he never gets to eat before going off to search for the One-Armed Man)
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Re: Episode 10

Post by Henrys Hair »

Another episode that debunks the 'Season 2 was crap' talk. Admittedly this is the first we see of Dick Tremaine and Nadine waking from her coma, but the wacky elements are nowhere near overwhelming the show. There's a sense that the show's not in a any rush to solve the murder, which could well frustrate anyone still tuning in to find out who the killer is. Also first appearances for Harold Smith (aside from the hand at the window last episode), Jean Renault and Nancy O'Reilly, while the writers seems to have lost interest in some of the main cast (no sign of Norma, Josie, Pete and only a cursory appearance from Doc Hayward). Some other thoughts:

Harry turns the beeping machine off in Ronette's room - hopefully it wasn't a life support machine or something equally vital. Speaking of the hospital, the nurse with the mullet and moustache is certainly busy this episode. Was this a side job for the Tiger King?

The letters on the blackboard are written in the order they appear in 'Robert' rather than the order they were found. Words Lucy's made on her scrabble board include 'rabbit', 'butter' and (I think) 'Birt'.

Is this Jacoby's best season 2 scene? We don't see much of him from here on - and even less of his wife. Harry starting to nod off is a great touch.

Despite Emory Battis saying he saw Cooper at the town meeting, there was no sign of Battis in the town meeting scene.

Leland's backstory here contradicts his backstory in the Frost books. I'm going off memory here, but I think the books suggest he moved to the town whereas this episode definitely suggests his family have a long history there.

James & Donna. The cracks are very much starting to show in their relationship. And they've only been together a week. James smashing the lamp and running into the street shouting 'Why?' is maybe a bit much.

Ben's comment to Cooper about getting buckshot in his tail feathers in poor taste given Cooper was shot by an unknown assailant in his hotel two days ago.

Lastly, the One Armed Man... he takes a funny turn while selling shoes to Harry and goes to the toilet. Harry then talks to Shelly with Cooper, and afterward Cooper goes to the Great Northern. When Cooper gets back, Harry asks Hawk if he's seen the One Armed Man, who presumably needs a rope...
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