Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episodes 16-18

Sheriff Truman: “I don’t understand. There’s a whole lot I don’t understand.”
Agent Cooper: “We’re all right there with you.”
Me: NO FREAKIN’ KIDDING.

Let’s start with Josie. Agent Cooper asks her why she shot him. She says, “Because you came here. Because I knew this day was going to come.” NOPE. Not buying it. There’s no real motive for anything she does, and here the writers had a crime and couldn’t figure out who committed it, so they thought this was a match made in heaven! I disagree. Strongly. Then, having been caught, she dies. Not of anything. There’s a sound that’s probably supposed to be her soul leaving her body and she falls over, dead. This is the second time the show has implied that a person can will themselves to die. Considering how often there are tragic accidents and children die and their parents keep living, I’m going to go ahead and say that scientifically speaking, that’s not how it works. And then there’s a weird shot of Josie’s soul apparently being trapped in the drawer pull on the bedside table. So she can keep being used for all of eternity, just like she was in life. Also, her body only weighed 65 pounds but they can’t find a cause of death. Those two things are contradictory. Just the fact of weighing 65 pounds can kill a grown woman, but assuming that’s not what happened, whatever it was in her body that weighed 40 pounds or so (she is tiny) that was removed was likely a cause of death.

Quirky is one thing. Quirky might not make sense right away, but there is an internal rhyme and reason and it becomes known at a certain point. This is “gaping plot holes.”  This is “we created a mystery and have no idea how to solve it.”

I’ve had a lot of jobs that involved interacting with the general public, especially retail. You know what happens when someone hands me a note inviting me to a “gathering of angels?” I throw it away and mutter, “religious nuts.” I certainly don’t go. And note that I said “when” and not “if.” Because there’s a certain segment of the population who are religious nuts and target young women, and you learn quickly how to deal with them. You never, EVER, follow them to a second location. You know why? BECAUSE IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A SERIAL KILLER.

Nadine announces that she wants to break up with Garage Ed. Since they’re both in love with other people, this makes perfect sense, except for the mentally incompetent part. If she’s incapable of understanding that she’s getting a divorce, how can she possibly be treated fairly in it?

Josie’s former pimp’s assistant tries to kill the Sheriff by seducing him in his sleep and then strangling him. So… what was the point of the seduction? This is not the sort of crime one needs to be in a negligee for. When the Sheriff asks the very valid question of why he was targeted to begin with, Agent Cooper blows it off as “sexual jealousy.” When a bonsai mysteriously shows up in the Sheriff’s office, it’s blown off as “a gift from Josie.” Despite her never having done anything like that before, no one even tries looking for the bug the SERIAL KILLER put in the plant.

What I liked about the show was that it was totally bonkers, but in a completely original way. Nobody else had a Log Lady, or a musical interlude, or a main character who literally reads the script out loud to an imaginary friend. Now there’s a whole thing where Ben is Donna’s real father, which is the best-kept secret in the world, as long as all the adults involved agree it should be, but now that Ben has lost his mind, he’s decided he’d like a relationship with a daughter he didn’t try to bone so he runs around acting so suspicious that even Audrey catches on pretty quickly. This is not original. More insultingly, it’s lazy. Even the main characters, who we’ve all seen work very, very hard at all hours are suddenly being lazy. It’s dispiriting.