In PRESTIGE PREHISTORY, Pop Heist critic Sean T. Collins takes a look at classic TV shows that paved the way for the New Golden Age of Television — challenging, self-contained series from writers and filmmakers determined to push the medium forward by telling stories their own way.
Twin Peaks Season 2, Episode 3
“Episode 10” aka “The Man Behind the Glass”
[NOTE: The pilot episode of Twin Peaks is not numbered; this, the eleventh episode overall, is officially designated “Episode 10.”]
Original Airdate: October 13, 1990
Writer: Robert Engels
Director: Lesli Linka Glatter
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Mädchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, Richard Beymer, Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Warren Frost, Peggy Lipton, James Marshall, Everett McGill, Jack Nance, Kimmy Robertson, Ray Wise, Joan Chen, Piper Laurie, Eric Da Re, Harry Goaz, Michael Horse, Sheryl Lee, Russ Tamblyn, Miguel Ferrer, Ian Buchanan, Lenny Von Dohlen, Wendy Robie, Don Amendolia, Victoria Catlin, Michael Parks, Galyn Görg, Al Strobel, Phoebe Augustine, Mak Takano, Jennifer Aquino
The only glimpse I caught of Twin Peaks during its initial run occurred on October 13, 1990. I was 12 years old, it was after 10 p.m., and I must have been flipping through the channels absent-mindedly before bed after the Golden Girls/Empty Nest block on NBC had ended. I was aware of the show by then, even as a person who’d only freshly become aware of “pop culture” as a phenomenon; the cast and the parodies were absolutely everywhere for months. But this was my first look at the show itself.
I saw a one-armed man with a syringe have a seizure in a men’s room stall, then emerge in perfect calm, talking to an unseen figure like a man possessed.
I was a squeamish kid. That was plenty of Twin Peaks for me.
Thirty-five years later, with several viewings of the series under my belt, that scene — Philip Gerard failing to inject himself with some kind of drug in time to stop the seizure, suffering agonizing convulsions, then becoming Mike, his persona from Agent Cooper’s dream — remains uncomfortable to watch. Much of that is down to actor Al Strobel, who both commits himself in full to the physicality of the scene, and who’s displayed such an ability to seem kindly, suspicious, sinister, or otherworldly depending on the needs of the moment.
But it also makes clear, if it wasn’t already, that contact with the mystical forces swirling around Laura’s case comes at a cost. Philip is only able to transform into Mike because he fails to take his medication in time, and that transformation is a painful one. Now Mike is resuming his hunt for the killer Bob — seeing that sketch of him is what brought on the seizure in the first place. “I know you’re near,” he says.
He’s right. Somehow, Bob snuck into Ronette Pulaski’s hospital room, drugged her IV drip, and inserted the letter B beneath her fingernail. But to become Mike and stop Bob, Philip must suffer. As the mysterious Giant put it in the clue that Cooper repeats when he finds Philip/Mike’s discarded syringe, “Without chemicals, he points.”
This fits a pattern. Most, though not all, of our heroes’ encounters with the supernatural appear painful to endure. Sarah Palmer and her niece Maddy are terrified by their uncontrollable visions of Bob. Laura’s increasingly strange references to her mysterious tormenter directly accompanied her final downward spiral. Cooper’s encounter with the Giant occurs after he’s been shot multiple times. Even the psychic powers of the Log Lady’s log appear tied to the tragic death of her newlywed husband.
There are exceptions — Cooper’s initial dream of the Red Room, Major Briggs’s interstellar transmission about the owls not being what they seem, perhaps even Donna’s encounter with that strange old woman and her grandson — but pain is otherwise all but a prerequisite for contact with the strangeness in the woods, or whatever it is we’re dealing with here.
Leland Palmer, too, associates pain with his brush with Bob. Partially obscuring his own face with the wanted poster, he informs Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman that the man lived near his grandparents’ house on Pearl Lakes, where he used to spend summers. He’d flick matches at young Leland, snarling “You wanna play with fire, little boy?” At that moment, Cooper — who’s heard from James that Laura used to use this phrase verbatim — knows they’re talking about the same man.
But how can that be? We’ve gotten a good look at Bob by now — too good, if you ask me — and raggedy though he may be, it’s hard to imagine he was a grown man already when Leland was just a little kid.
Speaking of which, for a man who recalls having lit matches tossed at him by a suspect in his daughter’s rape and murder, Leland seems peculiarly fond of that time in his youth. “If life could only be like those summers up at Pearl Lakes,” he tells his niece Maddy later. Why would you want that, Leland?
Whatever’s going on with Laura’s father, it seems his crime during Season 1’s cliffhanger finale has finally caught up with him. Using hypnosis on Dr. Jacoby with the help of his Hawaiian wife, Eolani (Jennifer Aquino), Cooper is able to walk him through his foggy recollection of the hospital room he shared with Jacques Renault. The doc IDs Leland as the killer, and Harry arrests him.
Leland is holding Maddy in his arms when the arrest takes place. His cryptic Pearl Lakes comment was a non sequitur attempt to comfort her, now that she’s found herself part of a love triangle with James and Donna. Donna has walked in on her and James’s displays of physical affection for each other not once but twice; she’s angry and hurt, and Maddy feels horribly guilty. All she wanted to do, she tells Leland, was come to town in honor of the cousin she loved. Now she feels like she’s being made to live out Laura’s life, with all its attendant drama.
Donna, too, resents Laura’s posthumous hold over them all. At her grave, she complains that she spent most of their friendship dealing with Laura’s problems, a pattern that continues even now that Laura’s dead. “It’s almost like they didn’t bury you deep enough,” she spits with uncharacteristic venom. The personality change that James remarks on to Maddy — “she acted like she wanted to do it with me through the bars” of his jail cell, he says — seems to push and pull her emotions in all kinds of directions, but the shadow and example of Laura looms over them all.
The visit to Laura’s grave is Donna’s first, which comes as something of a surprise. A dutiful friend in both life and death — to a fault, as she herself knows best of all — Donna might be expected to have made a habit of coming there to talk to her late bestie. But it’s only because of another close friend of Laura’s, a secret friend, that Donna makes the trip at all.
In this episode Donna makes the acquaintance of Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen), the man to whom that old lady and her grandkid directed her last episode. He’s one of Laura’s Meals on Wheels clients, but not out of age or infirmity. A gregarious young man who’s charming in his own soft-spoken, off-kilter way — Donna wonders aloud at Laura’s grave if she was sleeping with him — Harold is nevertheless a severe agoraphobic who cannot leave his house.
Instead, he tends to low-light tropical flowers and plants that he grows indoors, keeping his home’s temperature elevated for the purpose. The lady’s slipper orchid Donna places on Laura’s grave is one of Harold’s, which she places there on his behalf.
Getting in touch with a stranger like Donna just so she can put a flower on Laura’s grave is a sweet thing to do, at a glance anyway. But it could also read as sinister, as Donna seems to realize when she looks around Harold’s living room and finds a book with a blank cover: the secret diary of Laura Palmer.
“If you knew her so well,” Donna asks Harold earlier, “why didn’t she ever mention you to me?”
“Well,” he repies, “Laura liked to think of me … as a mystery in her life.” His possession of her diary is pretty mysterious, alright.
Harold is just one of three or four seemingly major new characters who arrive this episode, clearly setting up storylines for the rest of the season. We also meet Dick Tremayne (Ian Buchanan), an unctuous creep with a pompous Mid-Atlantic accent … and, apparently, enough rizz to get Sheriff’s Department secretary Lucy Moran to sleep with him on a display bed at Horne’s Department Store. (He works there in men’s fashions, which speaks once again to the hiring judgment of Ben Horne.) Dick is, unfortunately for everyone, the other leading candidate for father of Lucy’s baby besides Deputy Andy. I say this with great sincerity: Please, I am begging you, may the best man win.
Though Jacques Renault’s murder has been solved, that won’t stop the episode’s other newcomers from seeking revenge. Jacques’s older brother Jean (Michael Parks) and his girlfriend Nancy (Galyn Gõrg) — the sister of One Eyed Jack’s madam Blackie — show up at the casino, looking to kill Cooper, whom they blame for setting in motion the deaths of both brothers. With Blackie and her associate, perfume counter manager and human trafficker Emory Battis, they’re recording hostage tapes of Audrey Horne getting forcibly injected with heroin.
Their plan is to force Ben Horne, still blithely unconcerned about Audrey’s disappearance, to arrange the kidnapping of Cooper and hand over ownership of One Eyed Jack’s in exchange for his daughter’s life. This is payback for Blackie as well as for Jean: Ben got her hooked on H herself long ago, the better to control her. That said, she wants nothing to do with her sister; apparently the Renault brothers got along better than the O’Reilly sisters.
In other news, Josie has surfaced safe and sound in Seattle. “You know,” says Harry, “there’s a chance she’s not involved in any of this.” Whatever you say, guy!
Shelly is refusing to press charges against Leo in what Coop instantly susses out as an insurance scheme that someone else put her up to. (Coop not-so-subtly reminds her what she’s in for if Leo wakes up on her.)
James is cleared of cocaine possession, since the coke came from Leo’s supply and was obviously planted by someone. Even so, he tells Maddy he’s been thinking of leaving town.
Nadine wakes up from her coma with enhanced super strength and no memory of her life since she was an 18-year-old high schooler trying out for the cheerleading team. Her husband, Big Ed, is understandably aghast.
And finally, on the verge of once again coming to blows with Sheriff Truman, FBI Special Agent and world-class asshole Albert Rosenfield says this:
“You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I’m a naysayer and a hatchet man in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another, because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retalliation. The foundation of such a method is love. I love you, Sheriff Truman.”
“Albert’s path is a strange and difficult one,” Coop pronounces to a dumbfounded Harry as they watch the man walk away. Some of that difficulty is of Albert’s own making, to be sure. But if indeed he is a pacifist in a violent world, then some of that difficulty he takes upon himself deliberately, in many cases for the sake of people who are no longer alive to appreciate it. People matter to Albert, even if he’s got a funny way of showing it. Laura Palmer is not the only person in Twin Peaks who is full of secrets, and not all those secrets are dark.
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