A Pilgrim's Peaks - Episode 18
The journal of my Twin Peaks rewatch. Begin here.
Something I think I’m starting to glean about soap operas from watching Twin Peaks is that they’re only as good as the performers are game for the meal that’s on offer. It shouldn’t be a revelation; an actor who comes off as unengaged in their role because they’re either not able to connect with the role through lack of skill, connection to the material, or sufficient direction throws a wet blanket over any scene they’re in. It’s particularly noticeable in this show’s more sudsy sections, though, as I slog my way through television that’s still thoroughly spinning its wheels in search of a plot to peel out on. For the first time, I felt genuinely engaged in the storyline with Joise and Catherine as some serious scene got gnawed upon. Yeah, it feels like there’s an uncomfortable power dynamic where rich, powerful white people have conspired to effectively indenture an immigrant Asian woman who’s fled an exploitative situation in her home country into servitude that I have a dubious curiosity as to how the early-90’s will play that out (hopefully better than Catherine’s yellowface earlier this season), but there’s palpable pleasure in how Piper Laurie plays the scene, finally on solid ground after spending so much of the show on her heels. And then there’s the reveal that Joise’s husband - Catherine’s brother! - is back from the dead!!
Woof. Someone draw me a bath because I have happened upon a wealth of cleansing product.
The flipside of this is the storyline spreading out in front of James “I’ve never met an emotion I couldn’t run away from” Hurley’s hog as he motors his way into a completely different universe of adult femme fatales with classic sports cars who drink martinis in dive bars in the middle of the day. Seeing this Boy mumble his way through scenes with someone so eminently comfortable in their own skin as this Evelyn Marsh appears, is like watching two kids stuffed into a leather bomber jacket try to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie; initially funny, but painful as it keeps going. As mildly curious as I am about where this story that seems completely and utterly disconnected to anything we’ve seen before will go, it’s also hard not to hear the show grinding gears every time James stares moodily in response to everything.
Speaking of trauma, Ben Horne doesn’t seem to be dealing with the failures of his multiple business [double] deals, his recent near-incarceration for the murder of Laura Palmer, and the revelation that his friend and lawyer Leland Palmer was responsible for the same. It’s rarely a good sign when a character in fiction spends time watching their past with glassy, eager eyes, and Ben is no different. You’d almost feel bad for him if he hadn’t almost slept with his own daughter, had sex with Laura Palmer, conspired to burn down the town’s largest employer for his own financial gain all while being the owner and operator of a caino and brothel that funcitoned as a small international drug and sex trafficking ring. Then dumb, one-note Hank Jennings bumbles in to give Ben more bad news and you do feel a little sorry for him. Hank’s a genuinely worthless human who preys on the trust and weakness of others with an odious excess of guile that may as well be pathological. It’ll be curious to see how Ben copes with the lumped trauma of his many recent defeats and what mask he chooses to don as cover for those wounds.
We get another gust of the supernatural coming through the forests and into town as Special Agent Dale Cooper, Sheriff Truman and Deputy Hawk interview Major Briggs’ wife about his disappearance. She’s as forthcoming as someone whose husband requires a professional amount of secrecy can be, but after she leaves we get more concrete details about the White Lodge from Hawk. Is it weird that the only Native American actor in the show is dispensing this exposition about something that could be read as mystical or spiritual in nature? Mhm. No mention is made of ancient burial grounds, but then, this wasn’t written by Stephen King. Still, it’s engaging and creepy in the way that absolute dualistic portrayals of good and evil can be when they happen in media that have exhibited a decent hand at the supernatural. It makes you remember the episodes that Lunch has directed, where that hand has been strongest and steadiest, and then you look in your box set or scroll down the list of episodes in Wikipedia and realize you’ve still got eleven episodes until he comes back from wherever he’s gone to.