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Twin Peaks: Wounds and Scars

“It’s a pretty simple town. It used to be.”

Okay, okay. I promised you that things would pick up in my review of the last episode. And yeah, we’re not quite there yet—but we’re close. And, hey! We’ve got Heather Graham. Her introduction as Norma’s little sister Annie, former nun and current waitress, is one of the surprise highlights of the end of this show.

I love the way Heather Graham reads lines. I can’t say I love the way she acts, since she doesn’t. She just reads lines straight off the page. Sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, always with the implication that the words are irrelevant. Sometimes, that stylized delivery seems hammy. Here, Graham’s delivery makes her a great match for Maclachlan’s (more intentional) offbeat style.

But just as Coop meets his angelic, nunnish love interest (because what else could she be?), Harry has to struggle with Josie’s death. I’m glad that the show gave him a chance to work through his grief, and I’m rather touched that he chose to do so in the Book House, which feels more like home to him than his real home. It’s a testament to the notion of the Book House as a force for good—a place where good men do what they must.

Harry’s delivery of the line about how Twin Peaks used to be a simple town was unconvincing: does he really think that? It brought to mind Jean Renault’s speech to Cooper in “Check Mate,” in which he says “Maybe you brought the nightmare with you.” Harry wasn’t there to hear that speech, but I wonder what he thinks of Cooper bringing Windom Earle to Twin Peaks. Not on purpose, of course, but Coop is the lure that hooked a new evil fish.

Hawk described Earle as a man with “a poor sense of recreation.” He’s certainly a man with a penchant for disguises, for stalking pretty girls, and for beating Leo with a flute-stick. But Coop also describes Earle as impatient; Earle, in turn, described Coop as unable to want a stalemate. Earle wants an ending—a brutal one, with a sacrificed queen—but Coop wants…delay? That’s never the way to solve evil. Coop can’t keep biding his time.

The show also can’t keep this up. The Audrey/Billy Zane picnic took too long, although Zane catching Audrey as she fell at the fashion show was cute. The fashion show itself, which took nearly a quarter of the episode, was less cute.

Clues, Questions, and Answers:

• The Log Lady saw the mark on Major Briggs, and revealed some marks of her own, which Coop conveniently put up on the Big Board. Why doesn’t Coop have marks? Why did he see the light in the woods, but not lose any time?

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

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