Traces to Nowhere

Diane, it's 2 18 PM. Welcome to the second episode of Twin Peaks Peaks. We're gonna be covering Traces to Nowhere. Now I just call it Episode 1.

I don't buy into these fancy titles with words in them. I know from when it was aired in Germany, right? I think it was Germany. Yeah, that's when they...

I don't know who gave them the titles though, that was never clear to me. Yeah, well, I think Traces to Nowhere is a good title. Yeah, it's a fine title. I am Matt Olson, your sidekick.

I'm sorry for this. I'm Ashley Grant and I guess I'm not the sidekick. No, I mean, I am definitely the Watson to your Twin Peaks Sherlock here. And then I guess I'm Special Agent Dale Cooper.

Well, in a way, you can make that connection. Let me do that in that episode. Let's start with some Revival Nervice. Ooh.

So David Lynch, speaking to the students in his David Lynch MA Film Course, confirmed that the revival will be shot on digital and expressed an artistic preference for digital over celluloid. So that's not really surprising if you're looking at the landscape of TV, but I think naturally some Twin Peaks fans will be disappointed. Yeah, I mean, I think it's getting harder and harder. And I'm talking about this not even from like a prosumer level.

I've never myself worked with film, though I do have some inklings, some opinions about it. I think it's getting harder from an enthusiast level to even muster a real, like, it's gotta be film because these days you can do so much with digital cameras and a lot of technology. Yeah, exactly. A lot of not just like technology, but like sheer artistry and like care has been put into making those systems.

It's not a surprise that for practical reasons and for like genuine like, no, I like the way this looks. I like what you can do with it now. Reasons that any TV show is gonna be hard sell to put it on film. And the reason to do it would be to more to just kind of have that like, yeah, we made it on film.

Yeah, that'd be the only. Yeah, David's MA class on film. That's what a special bunch. Incredible.

Fun fact. Did you know that Breaking Bad was one of the last shows to be shot on film, but now Better Call Saul is being shot on digital. I didn't know that. In their podcast, they had, I believe, one of their cinematographers, the director of the film.

I think one of their cinematographers, the director of cinematography, talking about kind of the changeover and also expressing a preference. They actually were able to like add clouds to scenes. Yeah. Yeah, there's just as opposed to just like laying a filter over a shot and being like, all right, that's it.

That's all we can do. That's what it looks like. Yeah. No, I think it also reminds me of the frame rate debate for big screen movies where it's just like, I get, I actually get that more.

You know, double versus half the frame rate. And it's like one you're very used to seeing and it just kind of speaks, you know, to being filmic in quality and the other not. But the benefits there in terms of, you know, matching one to one with what you want to do it with effects or looking good on particular systems or like, you know, especially like home entertainment systems or new digital projection systems and beaters. It just like, it gets harder and harder to justify using, using older tech unless you really know how to make it look right.

Like, of course, that's what you know, and you can make it look fantastic that way. You can't the other way. That's the direction you go with. I think we could trust that if David thinks she's enthusiastic about doing things one way, he's probably not going to, at least technically, he's probably not going to screw it up.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's really turning towards digital. But the other thing that I think will be interesting is the revival will probably be widescreen.

It won't be. I haven't been thinking about that. Three aspect ratio that we're seeing. Well, I mean, it won't be the first time we've seen the world of Twin Peaks and widescreen, though, either.

Yeah. Yeah. We have two hours of movie to analyze and actually, I will say, you haven't seen that movie again. We come back to the fact that there's quite a lot of this you haven't seen.

And it's not spoiler to say. I only came to Firewalk with me years after I'd originally seen this show. I held off on it. And I'm not exactly sure why I think part of it was out of hope that we'd be in the position we are now, where it's like, oh, now we're going to get more show.

In the meantime, I'll save this little morsel, which turned out to be kind of different in tone. And one of the things that struck me as different was how it looked. Because it looks widescreen and in other ways, too, very different from the show. There's some things that we can start to talk about today in terms of, I guess, your cinematography.

I'm not that much of an expert, so we can just say style techniques that are used throughout the show. And the movie, kind of to me from what I remember, changes things up and adopts its own characteristics that are still very much in Lynch's wheelhouse and feel appropriate to the different feel of the movie. But definitely, I think maybe for the audiences of the time, maybe some of the response, which will get two weeks and weeks from now, may have thrown them off as well as just the content of the film. Yeah, absolutely.

So it'll be interesting to see how much of the previous aesthetic is retained in the revival, especially understanding that technically we will be working with different technology digital widescreen. So inherently, we're going to have those differences already present in the revival, and then from there what measures are going to be taken to preserve the existing aesthetic, or how will it be advanced and transformed. Yeah, I honestly wouldn't be too surprised and would be very interested to see if the new show ends up looking more like, or also interesting tone, because it won't be restricted to the network television rules if toner content-wise, it ends up resembling firewall with me more. That's true.

We can talk about that in the future. Is that what I got for revival news? That is my only revival news. The newsroom, David Lynch's, MA film works.

Yeah, no news on casting or when they're going to start. No, technically it sounds like Kyle McQuacklin is still the only person on the cast who signed a contract. It sounds like most other cast members have spoken with David Lynch at this point and are expecting to be part of the revival, but at this point, Kyle's the only one who signed a contract. Interesting.

Still in this limbo. Especially considering the amount of work that Sheryl and Fen put in her beautiful Facebook campaign to bring David back. She deserves all the kudos in the world and a huge signing bonus. Oh yeah, absolutely.

One Euro. Yeah, interesting that so many strong women in the cast just are waiting in contract with Wimma at this point. We will see how this resolves. Hopefully soon.

They kind of, you know, I was just checking in on other things that have started filming today, movies and TV shows starting and I'm just thinking to myself like, okay, you know, they're set to come out 2016, 2017. This TV show's got to move on. Yeah, I mean, they said they're going to start filming in the fall. Okay.

So we'll be, we'll be somewhere around season two by then and yeah, nice. Yeah, we'll go up to North Bend. Yeah, we'll take our trip. Alright, so episode two or Draces to Nowhere opens up with the incredible shot of Cooper upside down in his hotel room.

Talking to Diane. Yep. And I think that that shot establishes so much about Cooper and his strangeness. Yeah, I think about that.

I think they parodied that when Kyle was a guest on SNL, which is something we should talk about. We should pull up that clip at some point. But the weird boot attachments he has, like it's not just, it's not, I like that it's not a strength thing. It kind of act, it actually is.

Is it? Yeah. So the dismount that he does is like all from his core. Oh, yeah.

I was thinking of just like, just the hanging. I think that just the hanging, if that was just being done with like, I don't know, feet or something. It would, it was just something about the image. Also, his, his finely starched underwear, the boxers that are standing straight up somehow.

The whole, the whole picture to me. And then he's part, it's clearly part of his morning routine. Like he must have been so excited to see this, the horizontal pipe in his room when he got there. Or even maybe requested room with one.

It's, it's, it's part of his, his like boot up sequence basically. But, but these like metal clasps on do my hang, record my morning message for Diane. And I think as we'll see is next episode, Zen, Zen et cetera. Yeah, the skills, the art, the art together.

I think it's art together. I don't know. I was looking at it last night and I was like, it's almost a title of Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, but it's not. I think there's a word change, but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, that's next episode, but you get more of Cooper's either motivation or is like the base that informs his like, every action there. And also establishes that, or it's just like, this is how he wakes up in the morning. And I mean, this is an obvious point, but I think it's worth stating that like he is literally putting himself in oppositional orientation to the rest of the world. He's like, defying gravity.

And I think that really like says a lot about like him as like a force in this town, his like orientation as a character. And like what we're going to see of him in the future. Yeah, gravity defying boxers. Yeah.

Very heavy symbolism. Yes. Hope to see that in the revival too. Yeah.

Recurring that thief. I swear if there are floppy underwear in the revival, I'm out. Yes. And then he says this incredible line, what really went on between Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy's and who really pulled the trigger on JFK.

Because this is something that he wonders in the mornings and that he's at the end. Right. But what I thought was really interesting was that it's sort of almost anti-exiles that statement because he's not a part of this grand conspiracy that's covering up what really happened in that situation in the fictional universe. And he's also not, you know, drinking the Kool-Aid and just accepting the narrative that's been given to him.

He's an outsider and he is in a position to wonder about these things. It's almost gives me the sense that, and I mean, at other points, he can kind of exhibit this too of well being totally invested in the here and now of the town and of sorting this out. His mind can just run wild. And that's like, that's like filed away for later for later date when this is resolved and I can go investigate this thing on my own time.

Oh, is that going to be the season three plot? Is he going to be the season three plot? Yeah, I mean, if they want a new direction, sure. They could get great kineer to play JFK and flashbacks.

Yeah, I'm really into that. David, are you listening? Hello. I have filed this idea away.

Thank you very much. Have a good one. I think we just had a guest appearance. So strange.

He came to us in a vision and luckily neither of us started screaming like Grace Sabriski. Oh, you heard that too. Good. Okay.

But David, if you want us to write up that spec script, you know where to find us. Yeah, on Twitter. We'll give it to you in 140 character chunks. It's a new medium, not unlike digital.

Yeah. And then so then we go to Cooper getting his coffee, which he super hyped about. And then we see Audrey Horne in her most iconic sweater, the lavender tree sweater, which no one has ever IDed and no one has ever recreated. So that's another hope for the revival.

I would buy that. A challenge to both the, you know, costing people on the revival, but also to cosplayers. See if you can match that cardigan. I dare you to.

Beautiful item. And here we get Audrey in Dale's sort of first flirtation. Yeah. Yeah.

I have some complicated feelings about that. Yeah. Both in the way that this relationship between Audrey and Cooper plays out, you know, through the rest of the show. And as we'll talk about at some point down the line what the writers were thinking, what the crew was thinking about it.

But I'm trying to divorce myself of what I know about the future and know about the course of this relationship. There's still as kind of, oh, I don't know. I don't want to use a tacky word, but electrifying, let's say, as this first encounter is still kind of weird because we get Audrey in the world. Like to me, Audrey has not yet done, she has shown her independence.

She has shown that she does not move in step with the rest of Twin Peaks High School, but it's still very much of that world. And I get kind of the PBGBs a little bit. I mean because of the age gap. Just purely that, you know, I know there are people, this is like, you know, I don't know if you've run across the term ship on the alt-dot Twin Peaks forms.

I don't know when that was coined, but this is definitely that for some people. And I see why and it's not like it's a thing that's not there in the show. It's just coming out of nowhere. But at the same time, I don't know, it's harder for me to look at this plot line without being like, but Dale, you don't get away with this just because you're weird.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of people have excused it by saying it's a fictional show, which I say, bullshit. But I mean, we know the goodness of Dale Cooper, so we know that he's not a predator. But when you have that sort of age dynamic, those relationships can be very predatory, but there's also just like an inherent power dynamic between someone who's still in high school, who's still under the thumb of her parents, and someone who's an adult.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I've heard of Audrey.

She's quite under the thumb of her parents because she don't just fuck up Ben's business deal so bad. As true as that is, she lives in their home. Yeah. She financially dependent on them.

Yeah, there's not many other places she could go into in peace at this point. With the possible exception of I guess anybody's house because everybody lives in big, beautiful houses with the exception of Shelley and Leo. Yeah. But the other way of thinking about this in the pilot is that Shelley and Bobby also have about similar dynamic, and obviously it's not totally the same because sort of the gender and age dynamics are flipped, but it's also pretty inappropriate.

inappropriate. You know, I wouldn't want to date a high school quarterback now at the age of 22. Yeah, oh yeah, I guess yeah, because Shelley is a couple years out. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, it's less of a gap, but it's so...

I was having this conversation with friends the other day about this is just in a kind of general, totally separate from Quinn Peek's post-grad on we... What is the right age we, you and I, as 22-year-olds can date right now? You're 22, right? Yeah, I'm 22.

Just checking. And they were saying, oh, you could date, they did like the half plus seven rule. No. And I think what, that would come up with, well, that would come up with, in our case, 18.

But I think my friends were saying, you could date a 19-year-old and I was like, no, I couldn't. No, no. I would, I would, at this point, say, now that I am out of the college environment, I need to be able to go out with someone and get a drink. If that means they're 20 and have a fake, that might fly, but otherwise, you gotta be, we gotta be in lockstep.

I can't go too much further below. But this isn't a show about who is and isn't right to date based on your age, except for all the parts where it will be that. Because of telling them it's part of every episode. It's good, too, it's part of every episode.

Yeah. But yeah, so you wrote, you wrote a big old thesis in college on Lolita. So you do have something like, you have some very strong feelings about how these kind of relationships are portrayed in fiction, whether on screen or on page, what have you? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Do you, do you, well, I guess I'll just put it this way and we can see how this evolves as we re-watch the show. But do you ship Audrey and Cooper? I would ship Audrey and Cooper in like four years or something like that. It was Audrey matured?

Yeah, I mean, I would want her, I would want her to not like turn 18 and then shack up with Dale. Like, I don't think that that would be appropriate. Yeah. I'd be going from like basically from her dad to Dale.

Oh, yeah. I don't think that that's good for, you know, your broken development as a human being. I want her to spend a couple years doing her own thing. Maybe chilling with Dale, maybe they make out a little bit, that's chill.

Maybe they make out a little bit, like in my fan fiction I wrote. Exactly. But no, I would like love to see Audrey like being her own person. Yeah.

I can see that. Okay. Yeah. I'm glad.

I'm glad I was the only one who was gonna just be like, yeah, I don't know. A lot of Twin Peaks fans are very much pro this relationship and invested in it. Yeah. And then they have feelings about it later on as the plot develops and so forth that just I mean, I think their chemistry is like incredible.

But it's also one of those situations where I think that like it is just right to think that Dale would be uncomfortable and rightly so. And if he's not, then that's a huge red flag. And as amazing as that chemistry is, you can't just, and amazing as a character is Dale Cooper is, you can't just be like, he's so cool, he gets a pass for, you know, being flirtatious. Like, it's weird.

It's weird. Anyway, that's a great Northern. Yeah. But I'm just going back to Shelly and Bobby for a second.

I don't think I've ever read anything where anyone pointed out that age difference. And like I said, it's not age difference isn't as great. You know, there's this kind of flip in gender and power dynamics, although I think Bobby is still very domineering. Shitty quarterback.

Like, do they know each other in high school? Like, we see like a friend who was like a senior is that situation. So I was getting confused on this and I don't know if it's stated explicitly in the show. So you can tell me if it is or not and I just missed it.

So Shelly is 21.22 at this point. No, it's. Because I was, you know, at various points, I've been under depression. Like, yeah, Shelly's got to be a couple of years out or maybe, you know, Shelly dropped out like junior senior year and only like one or two years out.

That's possible. But you're, I think you're right. And I'm not sure. You know, now I'm not sure where I got it from, but that she is at least a little bit older, like a little bit further out.

It's always the sense that I've had. Bobby. Okay. So maybe we're both going off of complete gut feeling here and they're actually completely age matched.

Well, I think it's one thing that we can say in terms of Asian, again, this is gonna be a huge chunk of a couple of episodes, Asian power dynamics here is that Leo's definitely definitely mid 20s. Or Or Or Or Or. He's not looking so good. You know, there's this, there's this great collection of images anyone can pull up.

I think just, you know, basically it's type of Google Twin Peaks fashion. Yeah, where they get the cast together, because I mean, you know, it wasn't just the, you know, the standouts, everybody in the cat. Well, one, it's a pretty good looking cast. Yeah, just generally, you know, conventional good looks all that.

And so they were like the it cast and there's this great photo shoot that they did where they're all wearing stuff totally unlike what their characters would wear. It was from a dealiest catalog in the 90s. Just the style of the time. And there are these ones of, oh, who's who's Leo?

Is that Eric? Right? I'm gonna look this up on my phone. Anyway, it's seeing Leo in something other than his, and I will say it stereotypically, you know, very rough sketch of like an abuser type clothes, where it's just like he has the gross ponytail and is always looking shlubby and like he's about to try and like break a table in half.

Not a very, I would say this Leo is not a very nuanced character here in these first couple episodes. He is being played straight up as the unhinged, violent one who strikes fear in his business partners and spouse and also just like, you know, like as like a viewer, you know that either he's involved substantially with the crime of what with Laura's death or is being stuff to be like the biggest red herring just because he's always accompanied by the shit, your pants music and always being very scary. The alt.tv forums have some thoughts on that that will come to an a little bit. So anyway, age dynamics, do we have anything more to say about that?

No, really. I was just gonna say that from what I read, it sounds like so the director for this episode is doing Dunham was one of the four episodes written by David Lynch. So it's the pilot this episode, the next episode and the season two opener were written by Lynch. But it was the director David Dunham who had edited the pilot and became the director for this episode who suggested the flirtation between Audrey Cooper.

Oh yeah, I also came across it. Are you familiar with what else Dwayne Dunham has done? Yes, I look that. Homeward Bound.

Homeward Bound, Halloween Town. I think, I think Halloween Town is for folks of R.H. who had the Disney Channel growing up, a kind of cornerstone film every year, come, you know, well, like late September really, but you know, come October, you flip past the Disney Channel. They're like, yo, we're running Halloween Town or one of its sequels, like every night, like you cannot escape it.

And that's Dwayne Dunham. Yeah. It also served as editor on a couple of David Lynch films. And I believe it was editor for a couple episodes of Twin Peaks that got an Emmy for it.

And he did, yeah. And David Lynch actually poached Dwayne Dunham from another editing project to edit Wild at Heart and basically the sort of cherry on top that was supposed to make him jump projects was the opportunity to direct this episode. Also, he was an editor on Star Wars Empire, or not Empire Checkback, Return of the Dead Eye, which is a movie David Lynch had been tapped to direct. Interesting.

Yeah. Did you know that? I don't know. He even talked to Drex that, though.

He tells a story about going out on a car ride in George Lucas's convertible, and George is trying to get him to sign on for, I guess, at that point, Revenge of the Dead Eye or whatever. I don't know exactly when this happens relative to Doom, but I think he might have been pre-dune, but just imagine there's a YouTube video someone made of like the David Lynch edition of Return of the Dead Eye. Oh my god, why haven't you made me that already? It's, I recognize a lot of the stylistic Lynch jokes they make in it because a lot of them are based heavily off between weeks.

Yeah. I don't think it's a funny video. I don't think it's someone who was going to be able to craft a very subtle David Lynch does Star Wars joke, but anyway, that's worth checking out. That's our Dwayne Dunham facts for today.

Wow. I think he does a really good job, and this is something that the show will have its successes and failures with of matching and working in David's style or in the vision for the show with this episode. Probably because he's such a formative Lynch collaborator. Yeah.

Right. There's a mention of the kind of red tint to most of the scenes in the episode, and this is all stuff you can find online. Great quinpeaks resources out there. Sounds like you do the same with a B.

Well, also, you can do, I mean, there's so many quinpeaks fansites. Really, if you do want to get lost for a while, watch an episode and then just search its name on Google and read through all the fansite kind of responses and notes and so forth. Just waste a couple hours. That's what we do.

But that, sorry, I wasn't a choice. Lens warmth to even the most, yeah, even the most like scary discomforting scenes in this episode have it applied to it, which is again, something like the soap opera being turned on its head, which comes up as a point of analysis for the show so much, that it's not like, it doesn't do that for its regular scenes and then take it away when it wants to be scary. Like, it's always there. And that's what I feel like kind of creates some of that dissonance or like sense of disruption that people feel that's very intentional, obviously.

Totally, totally. I was just thinking about some of Audrey's lines as well when she says to Cooper, sometimes I get so flushed it's interesting your palms ever itch. That those sentences do not make a ton of sense. Let's just like, if someone just said that to me, I would be very confused about what they were trying to convey, but Cheryl and Ben is so charismatic and has such just like an aura around her of just like, charmingness that like, I'm willing to accept that.

You want to flirt with by a lot more, okay. You're 22, I'm gonna say that's creepy. Oh, that's true. I gotta wait.

Yeah, you gotta wait. So I mean, okay, so so far this has been the Cooper and Audrey podcast. There are other people still living their lives in the town of Twin Peaks. Some of you need to be questioned like our letter jacket boy James Hurley, who's been taken in.

Oh James. Oh James, James who. The saddest boy in all of the two weeks. Yeah, definitely that.

And his weepy eyes when he's being questioned by Cooper of The Necklace and then the flashback to Laura giving him his happiness. With his soft filter and like- The soft filter, I wrote down, you were interested in Audrey's lines. I was interested in lines that made me laugh the hardest this episode. And now I misplaced my notes.

There we go. James asking Laura, why is it that she's so happy? Because your sin is so soft. Your sin is so soft.

Your sin is so soft. No, because your skin is so soft and you smell so good. It sounds like he's talking to a child. It's- It's lines like this that make the Donna James plot work better for me because this one little glimpse we get into Laura and James's relationship where James is just like, you know, not sad boy James, but this like grinning like I am just like a massive really bad platitudes and like all those pickup lines boy.

I at least like that around Donna, the smiley as he is. He also can just be sad boy James. Like then I believe it. Then I believe it because on his own he's sad boy James.

Yeah. But you see around Laura, he's just like, like just really like cringy goofball. Yeah, cornball. And Donna does Laura's so dirty.

Yeah. Oh my God. I'm like trying to watch out for my best friend, trying to like keep this relationship a secret. She's dead the next day she turns around.

She turns around and she's like, really this whole time it was about me and James. It was not about my best friend who was going through some real tough shit and dead. It's about me and James from here on out. Yeah.

Everybody in this episode seems to be, I mean now the initial day one shock is gone. And you get a lot more mentioned I think or it seems a lot more to me. They mentioned that everybody knew Laura was going through some hard times. And it's like, well I should hope so because Laura had the most extra curriculars that is of anybody ever.

Girls college applications, what it looks real good because we got meals on wheels. We have helping Johnny Horn and Josie, Judy and Joe's in English. And then well, is there anything else? Anything directly at the high school that I'm missing?

I'm remembering right now. I mean obviously involved enough to be voted homecoming queen in the lives of the high school. I mean there's some other extracurriculars that she wouldn't be writing on her college application. Yeah.

Well, obviously. Namely being involved in distribution of cocaine it seems. We get that look in the, well, okay. You want to talk about their nicknames they have for each other, Mike and Bobby.

It's so ridiculous. So they call each other Bopper and Snake when they're in the jailhouse. Yeah. Bobby is Bopper and Mike is Snake.

No one else ever calls them that. It kind of fades away. It says a lot about the fact that and also the fact that they are now $10,000 short and going to be in the shit with Leo Johnson. It says a lot about how small time they are.

They're neither of them are the brains of the operation or the brawn even. But yeah, so we get that little confirmation kind of filling in the gaps of this mystery. That's where at this point that they were they were involved in the distribution of this along with Laura and that they were answering in some way or another to Leo. So it's just like Bobby, like, you know, you're like working with Leo, you don't have a great working relationship with Leo.

Why are you having sex with his wife? Why are you making that? Well, I don't think I think so far I'll sign this point to Bobby not being very smart. You might be right.

And that's one of them. We'll have to see how this unravels. I don't think we need an explanation of why he's doing it. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

That's fair. He's not the star student of Twin Peaks. Something else that I found a little weird. Laura's cause of death.

Yeah. Blood loss from shallow wounds. That's not fatal. The only way that that could happen is over the course of days where someone's reopening a wound or if you don't have the clotting agents in your blood.

Yeah. Well, the circumstance is otherwise Laura's death are very strange. Yeah. And that's what I'm wondering is if it's just like we didn't want to deal with it so we didn't worry about it in the writing process or if it's supposed to be another like mysterious layer on her death.

I would I would lean towards the latter personally. Yeah. Yeah. I lean towards the latter.

And this isn't entirely based off of things I know that you don't or that the watchers who are watching along with podcasts don't know. I'd say that the way that line is presented is also supposed to be like, hmm, that's like that's what the autopsy turned up. That's cause of death. I see why Doc Hayward was strangely accepting of it, but he also didn't conduct the autopsy.

He also didn't conduct the autopsy. And he also like then like breaks down. Yeah. He's not doing so hot.

We you're right about Donna doing Lord of Very Wrong. Right away. I do one of the moments that stands out to me her. You know, it's like I'm living the most beautiful dream and most terrible nightmare all at once.

That's that's a feeling I had a lot in college for various reasons. So, you know, there would be times when I'm scrolling through tumblr and that pops up as a quote. And I feel it. I don't feel it because you know my best friend died and I then stole her boyfriend.

But I feel it. I get you Donna. I'm not a Donna. Are you sure you're not a Donna?

I'm pretty sure. I'm a Pete. I think I'm a Pete Martell who has his I think stand out most memorable moment in the entire show this episode. Yeah.

How did it get in there? How does a fish make it into the percolator? Not unless someone puts it there. Not unless someone puts it there.

That's the new element of mystery that this episode introduced that I want answers for. How did that fish get into that percolator? I think I think you know our lead suspects are Pete in which case I'm not going to describe motive. I'm going to say that's just, you know, a flub.

Could have been Josie. Could have been Josie. Now I think at that point in the day. I'm going to serve her boy Harry some contaminated coffee.

Yeah. Yeah. Could be. Oh man, that's another, yet another instance of Cooper's just like.

It's a weird omnipotent. Yeah. Well, I mean he says body language. But he gets it in one.

You know, he knows that Harry and Josie are fucking. Yeah. And we get, you know, you were talking about the Harry conspiracy theorists last week. But you know, this would be, I don't know if this would be more fuel for that fire.

You know, they've been announcing each other for six weeks he says and Andrew Packard died a while ago, like a year and a half. There's a lot of looking at it this way. I don't know if it's sticking out to me more just because I'm trying to be, you know, more attentive to the seeds that are being planted or because like now I'm at a different age and state my life where the the back room stuff around the mill is like suddenly more interesting to me. Catherine Ben's rendezvous put some more information on that story.

But I don't know, just like, I love it. That's actually one of the elements. It's immense it as a small town show is the is the what's going to happen to this song. The source of employment for so many people in the town.

And the fact that everyone is sleeping with everyone, there is not a single person in this town that is faithful to their spouse. Yeah, you have a note about Ben here. Yeah, I just think that he's gross. He's gross?

Just think he's gross. You have a note about his foot thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

He like basically started sucking on Catherine's toe at one point, which is nasty. I think, yes, nasty. I think a brilliant move when you want to characterize the, well, both, you know, put some stuff out there about the characters just through action on this network television show. While also being lavicious and like, just like, yeah, it's, I don't think you're supposed to look at those two.

Actually, I will say Richard Bamer, who plays Ben Horn, go look at pictures of him when he was a movie star, I guess on 5060 and so forth. He's a, he was a handsome man. Oh. He was a handsome young man and he was cast as such.

He was like, you know, a studly leading man type. And now he's been who wears creepy glasses and sucks on Catherine's toes. And you know, like the whole stage in that scene, the action of it, I think it gets this kind of like, like, cringy, like, oh, I don't want to be seeing this. I don't like these people.

These people aren't bad on that. We're telling her to concentrate a power in that room. Yeah. They're basically trying to like, run and destroy the whole town.

Yeah. So big move with the shakers making some news here in bed. Yeah. And then we move over to the Palmer House, which Donna is visiting to talk to Laura's mom while she's doing Laura dirty and we get that.

I'm getting, I'm starting to get the sense here as we record this that you are somewhat anti-dawna. I'm not, I just like, I'm not. You're not teamed on it. I'm not teamed on it.

And I don't think. I don't know anybody who is teamed on it. FYI, so it's not like this is a. Yeah.

She, if you're watching the first time, you may not understand why people don't like Donna. It will become clear to you through time. But for now, I just don't, couldn't she just chill on the James thing until Laura's like, buried or something maybe? No, no, evidently not.

But anyway, we get that super imposition of Cheryl Lee's face over Laura, Laura Flynn Boyle's face, which, um, A plus effect for the time. Yeah. But very campy. A limitation that I think still, it still works.

Like now, now. There's nothing much chunk of like Laura's blonde hair, like attached to the super imposition. You'll see this kind of technique. I feel like this isn't the only time it appears in the show.

And the thing is that now, actually, if we want to talk revival and style and all this, if they were to pull that move again in the revival and it didn't look kind of janky, I might feel weird. Yeah. Like if they were to be like, well, yeah, we scanned such and such as face and then made a three model and then did face tracking all this so we can completely like replace it. I'd be like, yeah, but now it would lose something for me.

Yeah, it was really like really silky aspects of the show that I think are really essential. Yeah. Then again, you know, we're going to be moving to digital, essentially we're going to be doing widescreen. So maybe, I could say maybe the opposite where if then it was just like, and all of the effects and little things done to convey story in the show are meant to look bad, you can you can fuck that up and then it just looks worse than it would have looked originally.

That's true. Well, I think about just like dated. I think about dated, you know, like the 80s aesthetic like action movie type thing that people try to imitate now because they're like, it's radical. It's time that we really appreciate it and they like apply VHS filters to their movie and like do purposely bad effects.

There's a way to make that just look awful and like idiots will eat it up. But that kind of like we're going to make it this look this way for the sake of making it look this way shouldn't be the motivating factor for anything in the revival. It should be, I feel like this was the case when they made the show. They did that effect on Lorifen Boyle to show like the only reason why that special effect is in there at all rather than just you just have a shot and she just starts, you know, crying out Lorifen or something.

Something's up with Lorifen's mom. Yeah. And then right after this, it's like the Q in to be like, okay, what's again, we're going to sense that something's up with the way that she's seeing the world. It's not just like, you know, the insertion of the flashback like we had earlier James.

Yeah, that's true. You get the appearance of this dude. Yeah, the mysterious figure at the end of the bed. One of the creepiest shots of all time, it always startles me a little bit.

Because they just cut to it. It's not like it's, I think now, you know, we can, we can throw around like a different show would have done it this way all the time. But it's just such a bold decision to say, bam, this is the shot. And I think you're set up for it by that special effect earlier.

Yeah. Like you get the sense that this is what she's seeing. And it's a scary moment. And we'll have more to say about that guy later.

Oh my god. Frank Silva just really good looking creepy without doing anything. Right. Yeah.

Well, I think that that's how he got the part. Another moment that we shouldn't leave behind that. And I think it's before what would have been a commercial break in the show. When they go and just unrelated to anything seemingly show the video of Laura on the picnic.

And you get the help me overlay over it. It's like that's the kind of thing that I would feel I would really miss if it doesn't come back with the reply. And the thing that I feel like the show starts to at a certain point not do as well in these episodes in the original run is these moments where the story of the show comes through in a different way. It's not just coming through in the day to day narrative like this scene that scene suddenly.

They're really making like cinematic stylistic choices at this point to tell the story. Yeah. Things come in out of nowhere to tell you that something else is going on as well. We'll have more to say about that next episode on terms of where is any of this stuff coming from.

Why are we getting this sudden cut to video? Does this actually have some kind of can we tie that back into the plot where it's purely a stylistic thing? Well, that's some things for you yet. You got a ton of notes.

I have a ton of notes. I have a ton of notes. I have a ton of notes. Is there anything else about the mystery that we get out on the table that we really need to talk over there?

No, there's a couple of weird lines when Shelley introduces herself to Cooper. He says, Shelley Johnson with a J? What other letters? She's selling her last single.

What other spelling of Johnson does he know? G-H-O and... Johnson with a Y? Just like if they're weird lines like that that just slip through and it's not until you're like third, fourth, watch that you start to be like, that line doesn't make any sense.

I, back to my earlier grumblings about how Leo is right now very one-dimensional. We get his blood shirt. We can come to that when we cover the all that TV board. Okay, yeah, the O-theories.

Yeah, the other two things I wanted to bring up though. Lucy talking about how she can tell us a long distance call because of the open air sound, that's not going to be familiar to a lot of current viewers. No, yeah. What does a long distance phone call sound like?

I don't know. It's a good question. And then Sheriff Truman makes this comment that he needs to start studying medicine because he's the Dr. Watson of this relationship.

And it's a really overt commentary on like their dynamic and it really tells you that like Truman's going to be way in the backseat for a lot of this. But I don't often think of this show as in that way being a take on the Holmes Watson dynamic. Yeah, no neither do I. What do you think of when TV shows so bluntly make, you know, hey, you can think of the relationship between these two characters in this literary reference way?

I'm fucking sick of Sherlock Holmes. You're like, you're sick of that particular one. Okay. And I think that like at times it can be interesting particularly if they're making reference to like other aspects of the work.

But if you're using it as the shorthand to establish a relationship and a relationship dynamic, I think it's very lazy writing. Okay. Anyway, moving on. Yeah.

So all.tv had a few theories about what was going on in this episode. There were only I think four or five posts because we hadn't really, the boards hadn't really picked up yet. Although this episode was second to cheers in the ratings for the week. So this was another lower than the pilot but an overall high point in the ratings between peaks.

Yeah. Really only going downhill from here. One theory that someone posted, they had four theories for the killer. Everyone.

So it's a wide conspiracy to kill Laura. Okay. No one. So she OD's or she commits suicide.

The log. Oh, right. The fourth one. And this is a comment posted in April of 1990.

Spice was spice around at this time. Spice. Spice. I think I can only assume it's the spice that we would think of.

Is there another spice? Spice the. Like an OD on spice synthetic marijuana. Oh.

There was a whole thing about that a couple of years ago. Okay. I'm pretty sure no. Are you not where my mind went is Spice is the name of the substance in Dune?

Oh, I haven't seen. I bet that person's just making a joke because David links to Ragged Dune. That's really funny. That's like one, not sorry.

I'm not up on the synthetic marijuana game. You know, maybe that's just because I'm from a West Coast. You really shouldn't be. But too, I'm pretty sure that's just a goof.

That's just a joke about Dune. That's really funny though, that I read that. And I was like, who had synthetic marijuana? You were concerned.

Yeah. No, I was concerned because I'm more concerned about this guy's log assertion. Because yes, we do get some more log-lating this episode in the diner. But I mean, the log's not done.

Anybody done anybody wrong yet? What do we know about the log? Well, the log will have something to say about this. I know.

The log's awesome thing. Yeah. But Cooper needs to ask the log. Cooper needs to believe in the log.

Exactly. Which should have been printed on t-shirts at the time of the show. Believe in the log. So basically, the consensus was kind of split between Leo Bobby and James are too obvious in the killer.

Okay. And the tracks are being laid. It's like a double red hairings in here where they're too obvious, but the tracks are being laid enough. And there were a couple of interesting things about Leo that I hadn't been thinking about.

So the shirt. Yeah. And there's another shirt that Leo will do to me since this is the second shirt that you've lost. This is something like that, Tachelli.

And there's obviously the other murder of Theresa Banks that occurred. Yeah. Earlier this year. So question being, could those students be connected?

Yeah. It was a trucker. So. That was a lot.

There's also a lot of plastic rappling around his house. Yeah. Okay. Again, though, I just feel like I put some more in the like, you know, also just the scene of abuse where it's like, yes, he is a dangerous, terrible person.

It's never in any show. Is it the person who is shown to be the most dangerous and terrible of the bunch, the one who did it? Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. So. Yeah. And then glad to see that people are like, you know, these are probably red herring things.

Because if the state of TV analysis in 1990 or whatever, it was just like, well, he's scary. He probably did it. Like, you know, people logging on to bulletin board systems and then they'd be like, my theory is that it's the one who like very much an egg man. Yeah.

I feel really bad. Someone proposed that it was a doc Hayward. Okay. So then he was too good, too nice, kind of too invested.

People don't really advance the share of Truman theory at this point. And then there was a very extensive argument about whether the cleanliness of the beach was realistic or not. Someone argued that if a body could wash off on a beach, there should also be like, trash and like used condoms and stuff like that. And then someone said, no, I live in Washington.

It's too cold to do that kind of stuff on a beach in Washington. And I think that that's pretty accurate. Yeah. There.

Also, I mean, what are you going to do for your opening shot of your TV show? It's a hard sell to be like, you know, we're going to we're going to take our actress. We're going to like very carefully put sand on her face and give her the blue makeup and get her hair all messing the plastic to create this striking image of this dead teenager's body. And then the rest of the set department is going to make sure there's a lot of trash out on the beach.

Like. That'd be a different show. Different show entirely. That's fine.

And then a couple of other points that people brought up. I believe Truman asks Big Ed, how's that coconut in response to like his head injury at the bar the night before? And then we start to see Jacoby's weird obsession with Hawaii and his like coconut with a secret compartment. Yeah.

Yeah. Final, final moments of the episode. He is the one who dug out that necklace. Yeah.

And he's got secret tapes from Laura. I know. When the when the audio cuts when he just put headphones on, that's another like moment of intense restoration. Why does he know about Laura that nobody else knows?

Yeah. So no one was saying like Jacoby's got to be involved somehow this week on the on the boards. Not as strongly as people were debating the merits of Leo or not. OK.

All right. But the other kind of people brought up that I think was interesting is the idea there being multiple necklaces. So they're being multiple necklace houses, particularly because it seems that Laura has or had multiple relationships with people. Yeah.

Yeah. And maybe they're thinking like next episode we'll get another flashback where someone's just like you smell good and your skin is soft. Like break necklace. With Leo, Dr.

Dicobi. We get a scene where Cooper goes into the Cooper goes into the Twin Peaks Chashiki shop and Laura just buys them out of all their part necklaces. Yeah. Could be.

Could be. I'd like to see that. It's an interesting theory to advance because I think it's a lot it's a lot. It's a lot of different phrases really easy to read.

It's like there's one necklace and we know where both houses are. Right. That's true. That's true.