We can think of Twin Peaks as an off-balanced three-act play. The first act was the town-wide response to the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer. Once that question was answered (over the course of the seventh, eighth, and ninth episodes of the second season) the show meandered for a while in its second act. Without a central question of what happened, all it had to fall back on is what would happen.
The end of this episode marks the beginning of the third act with the very explicit new mystery: What happened to Josie?
We know it’s something that has to do with the White Lodge and Bob because—well, because there’s Bob asking the question right on screen. Also, there’s the man in the Red Room, dancing once again. (Let’s not forget that Cooper has frequently been described as a dancer in this season.) And Josie seems to be trapped in a knob in the Great Northern, which is a terrible fate. Did she resist Bob’s advances? Or give in to them? Is she being punished, or saved?
Josie’s death makes the Catherine/Eckhardt/Andrew plot slightly more relevant. It’s still a struggle to care, though. Eckhardt and Andrew are relatively recent additions to the cast, both vindicting for actions that happened before the show started. I’m more interested in their long-running feud in terms of what is has provoked: Josie’s mysterious death and Ben Horne’s new attempts to stick it to Catherine once again.
Ben Horne’s new devotion to environmental causes is also a fun chance for Audrey to flirt with Billy Zane. The two of them look so much like classic movie stars that I just want to pull them off the screen and force them to breed.
Indeed, this is an episode that focuses on love. Harry’s conflict over his duty to his job and his love for Josie is quite tragic. Norma and Ed are engaged; Norma and Hank are getting a divorce; Nadine and Mike are going steady. Donna has decided that James should roam free and find himself.
The love theme also intersects with the background threat of Windom Earle, who sent parts of Percy Shelley’s “Love’s Philosophy” to Shelly, Donna, and Audrey. It’s a beautiful poem, and that is probably part of what made the young women all show up at the Roadhouse even though they realized what Norma said outright: it sounds dangerous. Earle seems to be choosing his next victim with care. He has the time to do so thanks to Pete’s chess expertise.
If you’ve stuck through Twin Peaks this long, you’re in for a real treat in this last act, the last six episodes of the show. All the pieces but one are on the board and we’re moving fast towards the spectacular series finale. You’re also quite lucky: back in 1991, Twin Peaks went off the air after this episode. Josie-as-knob would be a horrible series finale, wouldn’t it?
Josie Kafka is not now, and has never been, a knob.
Josie, are you sure Twin Peaks went off the air after this episode. I was sure I missed the last episode when it aired (S1 E22) and I knew Cooper did what he did that last episode and Wikipedia has # of US viewers for all episodes. Or maybe I am misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly, whatever research I did when writing this review indicated that the show stopped airing after this...and then maybe the burned off some episodes in the summer?...I must have read that somewhere, since it's not the sort of fact I could have accidentally made up.
ReplyDeleteBut I wrote this review a long time ago and don't remember. And I was so young when it aired that I wasn't allowed to watch it.
IMDb says there was a six-week hiatus. Maybe that's something I just misinterpreted at the time.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I have no idea.
Andrew and Pete sharing a stupid laugh over the little face he shaped Andrew's breakfast into made me crack up. This awful middle arc wasn't so bad to get through for little moments like those. I liked a lot more out of it than most people - I found Dick charming too, for example.
ReplyDeleteJosie's death scene, back then and weirdly now as well, is one of those things I have a delayed non-reaction to. But then I'll watch it out of order on youtube and feel totally disturbed. It only happened this time again because the algorithm spookily recommended it shortly (well not shortly, a day later) after I finished this episode. It's weird, it's like the ambience of the show makes it almost seem natural. But I'd rather have that primal reaction so I think it's fair to fault the show for failing to make it land as part of the episode.
Nothing on this show quite slams into me like that protracted scene of poor Maddie's death. I'm actually still kind of hung up over it, and hate the town for how quickly they got over it after that one scene where they all instinctually reacted to it in "real-time."
I feel really bad for Josie too, mostly for how pathetic her state of affairs were for this period of time. Felt kind of like a slow humiliation ritual that I'm glad is over with as well. Everyone just seems so mean to her, fans and in-show characters alike. Maybe I can enjoy Catherine again now that she's not bullying her..