A Pilgrim's Peaks - Episode 7
The journal of my Twin Peaks rewatch. Begin here.
Deputy Sheriff Andy Brennan has spent the bulk of the first season of Twin Peaks as the continual butt of jokes about his lack of confidence and frequent bouts of crying whenever he’s met with a corpse. A training regimen was outlined for him at one point but never mentioned again until this final episode where, in a moment of panic not unlike the very end of Die Hard, Andy is the calm center of a storm, dispensing justice from the barrel of his service weapon and putting Jacques Renault in the hospital, where he will later be murdered after his protection is distracted. Throughout the series, Andy has been presented as lacking in the kind of performative masculinity one associates with law enforcement. While his colleagues care for him, it’s clear that there’s a separation between him and other officers which also appears to be affecting his relationship with the receptionist at the station, Lucy Moran.
By committing this act of legal violence against another man who was in police custody, he proves himself worthy of the job title he has likely had for years before the incident. It becomes a story his fellow officers tell about him and his newfound prowess. It regains him the affections of Lucy. But it is also a hollow victory, largely performative in nature, because even though Andy has passed some rubicon of perceived masculinity, he’s still, essentially, a boy. This lack of maturity is borne out in the same scene with Lucy; after their reunion kiss, she tells him she’s pregnant and it leaves him speechless, devoid of all the pride he had just moments before and his shuffle off the exit stage left may as well have been scored by Vince Guaraldi.
Being a man, or perhaps just being an adult, requires a lot more than just being able to pull a trigger (arguably not pulling the trigger is a better litmus). It requires an emotional maturity and respect that we’ve rarely seen a male character present in this show. James Hurley and Special Agent Cooper are pretty good examples, though even Coop has done the equivalent of shrugging and saying, “Women!”
Still, it’s an improvement over the 31 flavors of toxicity running through a lot of the other men in town. Benjamin Horne’s need to acquire power and the trappings of status in Twin Peaks have led him to cheat on his wife constantly, double cross and arrange the murder of at least one person. He’s so blinded by a pathological desire to sleep with every girl his brothel hires that it’s putting him on course to commit incest with his daughter. I don’t think it’s something he’d do if he had full knowledge of the situation, but the lifestyle choices he’s making could have serious consequences.
Not much more has to be said about Leo Johnson and how he performs his brand of masculinity by using violence (or its threat) to subjugate the world around him. The consequence being that violence tends to breed violence in response and for the second time in three episodes, he gets shot. This time Hank Jennings was the shooter, punctuating the message his beating from the earlier episode apparently hadn’t gotten through. Hank is a finer tool than Leo; he’s learned that violence is something which only needs to be used sparingly and has become proficient at emotional manipulation. It’s both overt in his conversation with Josie Packard (hard to be subtle when you’re making a blood pact) and… well, I can’t really call what he does with his wife Norma, “subtle,” with 21st century eyes, but suffice to say he probably expects a letter from the RSC any day now.
Amongst all of these men walks Special Agent Dale Cooper, such a picture of mid century, patrician masculine veneer that they just go ahead and have a character call him out as looking like Cary Grant. It’s a fitting callout. He naturally exudes a level of culture, intelligence, wit and sophistication that all of the men in Twin Peaks merely play at. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else from the show sitting across from Jaques Renault as he tells his sordid tale about Laura Palmer with the level of restraint he does. The “good” men would slap the beer out of his hand and the “bad” ones would be panting like dogs or high-fiving Jacques.
So of course, upon returning to his hotel room after a long night, he gets shot.