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 5
“Episode 12” aka “The Orchid’s Curse”
[NOTE: The pilot episode of Twin Peaks is not numbered; this, the thirteenth episode overall, is officially designated “Episode 12.”]
Original Airdate: October 27, 1990
Writer: Barry Pullman
Director: Graeme Clifford
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, Harry Goaz, Michael Horse, Sheryl Lee, Grace Zabriskie, Chris Mulkey, Lenny Von Dohlen, Royal Dano, David L. Lander, Wendy Robie, Victoria Catlin, Van Dyke Parks, Ritch Brinkley, Fumio Yamaguchi, Michael Parks, Galyn Görg, Claire Stansfield, Bob Apisa
The people of Twin Peaks sure do enjoy their quests. Like a replay of the Season 1 finale in miniature, this episode of Twin Peaks builds to a dangerous double climax, as two parallel plans to infiltrate potentially hostile territory, steal a priceless treasure, and get away clean are set in motion. One goes reasonably well, if you count multiple homicides as “reasonably well.” The other is a disaster in the making.
Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry Truman make their way to One-Eyed Jack’s, but no one’s posing as a high-roller this time. This is a smash and grab operation for the two men: force their way past the guards, make their way through the brothel’s labyrinthine, gaudily wallpapered halls, and rescue Audrey Horne before her captor, Jean Renault, can spring his expected trap on Cooper.
The whole plan made possible because Coop stood on his head. In an attempt to hasten his recovery from getting shot using “15 minutes of yogic discipline” per day, he flips himself upside down — and finds, at long last, Audrey’s note alerting him to her whereabouts. It had been knocked under his hotel bed the night he was shot. (He’s only been in town twelve days, if you can believe it!) “The Giant was right,” Coop says. “I was forgetting something.”
Now Cooper doesn’t have to go through with the ransom-delivery rigamarole Jean spelled out to Ben Horne, which both men intend to lead to the FBI agent’s death. But not everyone avoids the grim reaper tonight. Blackie O’Reilly, One-Eyed Jack’s madam, thinks she’s part of Jean’s scheme to seize control of the place; instead she’s just a pawn, whom he kills almost out of hand. He plans to murder Audrey, too. I can’t imagine his girlfriend, Blackie’s sister Nancy, will be long for this world if Jean gets his way either. Even Ben Horne himself ought to watch out.
But a firefight erupts when Jean and Harry lock eyes through a glass door after the sheriff helplessly watches Blackie’s murder. With the help of Deputy Hawk, who followed along on a hunch and kills a security guard who has them dead to rights, Harry and Coop escape with the badly drugged Audrey, whose location Cooper forces out of Nancy.
But Jean escapes in the confusion too, and gets the jump on Hank Jennings, whom Horne sent along to monitor the proceedings and retrieve his daughter. Does this spell the end of Canada’s most infamous den of sin? Or does the fact that Jean believes Hank to be prosecutor Daryl Lodwick, last seen showboating at the hearings for Leland Palmer and Leo Johnson’s murder charges, save Ben’s bacon?
On the American side of the border, another perilous mission is underway. Donna Hayward is determined to get her hands on Laura Palmer’s secret diary, rather than simply listening to a passage at a time during her visits to Harold. Don’t get her wrong — she likes the guy, is drawn to him in fact, but her need to help her friend find justice is simply more urgent.
So Donna and Maddy spring a plan. She’ll distract Harold by leading him into the greenhouse portion of his home while Maddy unlocks the secret compartment where the diary is stored and makes off with it. After seeing how Harold reacts when she uses the diary to draw him outdoors — he collapses in the sunlight like a psychic vampire who feeds on people’s stories, not their blood — she may assume she’ll be safe from any repercussions as long as she gets away.
The sequence that follows is fascinating for how directly it addresses female desire, a constant theme where Laura is concerned. To help flesh out Harold’s “living novel” and satiate his thirst for secrets — in exchange for which he’ll read to her from Laura’s diary — Donna tells the story of a time in junior high when she and Laura dressed up in their tightest clothes to pick up boys at the Roadhouse.
The college boys who pick them up wind up going skinny dipping with them, which is Donna’s idea, not Laura’s. Laura had begun dancing provocatively, and Donna is desperately trying to keep up. She imitates the dance, half in shadow, to make her point.
As Laura makes out with two of the three young men in the water, the third swims out to where Donna is and kisses her hand, then her lips, a feeling she remembers almost physically even now. “I never saw him again,” Donna tells Harold with tears in her eyes. “It was the first time I ever fell in love.”
Harold is blown away. He takes her back to show her his orchids, paying special attention to the “lower lip” of its petals, “called a labellum.” The words hang in the air, dripping with innuendo.
“So delicate,” Donna purrs. When Harold explains it’s a landing pad for pollinators, Donna replies, “Romantic, isn’t it?” The two kiss before Harold, suddenly anxious or self-conscious, breaks it off and scampers away.
There are any number of taboos being violated here, giving the scene the heat of the forbidden. There’s the obvious erotic power of that story over Donna even now, yet it’s not presented as some lascivious Lolita kind of thing. In how she tells the story, Donna is clearly expressing feelings she experiences now, as a young adult…and which Harold experiences as an older one. So there’s that age gap aspect, too.
But at the same time, Harold’s severe mental illness, and his ignorance of Donna’s true motives, put her in control of the much older man, not the other way around. The whole thing is a psychosexual bramble, and its thorns are hard to disentangle yourself from.
In the end it’s all for naught. Maddy bumbles the diary retrieval, making a noise and alerting Harold to the ruse. Grabbing a gardening rake, he tells them that the ultimate secret, one which Laura knew, is knowing who killed you. He drags the rake across his face, leaving three bloody gashes. The girls recoil in fear, like Marion Crane when the shower curtain opened in Psycho.
In other news from this beautiful lumber town, Andy finds out his sperm count has improved dramatically. (“I’m a whole damn town!” he exclaims, in contrast with the “three men on a fishing boat” he’d been previously.) But when he calls Lucy at her sister’s place to tell her the good news, he finds she’s gone to an abortion clinic instead.
At the arraignments, presided over by the friendly Judge Sternwood, Leland is released on his own recognizance thanks to a favorable testimonial from Sheriff Truman himself.
Leo’s defense attorney (played by countercultural rock icon Van Dyke Parks) successfully argues that the man, whose brain is barely functioning, is incompetent to stand trial. This will leave him to the tender mercies of Shelly and Bobby, who scamper off to have sex while a dorky salesman (David L. Lander, better known as Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley) tries to sell them a mechanical wheelchair lifter or something. It’s as goofy as it sounds.
Elsewhere, Mr. Tojamura pays Ben Horne $5 million up front for control of the Ghostwood Development Project. Hawk tracks down the One-Armed Man and finds his mysterious supply of drugs, but not the One-Armed Man himself. Nadine still believes she’s in high school, and is strong enough to rip a refrigerator door off its hinges without trying. This, too, is as goofy as it sounds.
But despite some of its sillier elements, this episode still has very sharp teeth. The entire Donna/Harold storyline feels as fecund and frank as the passages we’ve heard from Laura’s diary. Jean Renault’s careless sociopathy demonstrates the kind of man you have to be to make it in a One-Eyed Jack’s world. Even the casino itself has never been creepier: Signs boast about the forthcoming construction of “Tiberian Baths,” which if you know anything about the Emperor Tiberius and his bathing habits is, in a word, bad.
And even as Coop and Harry make their move on the place, Cooper notices an owl watching from above. “Keep your eye on the woods,” Judge Sternwood advised Coop before he set out on his mission. “The woods are wondrous here…but strange.” I’ll say.
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