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 15
“Episode 22” aka “Slaves and Masters”
[NOTE: The pilot episode of Twin Peaks is not numbered; this, the 23rd episode overall, is officially designated “Episode 22.”]
Original Airdate: February 9, 1991
Writer: Harley Peyton & Robert Engels
Director: Diane Keaton
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, Joan Chen, Piper Laurie, Eric Da Re, Kenneth Welsh, Russ Tamblyn, David Patrick Kelly, Miguel Ferrer, Wendy Robie, Annette McCarthy, Nicholas Love, David Warner, Brenda Strong, Robert Bauer, Matt Battaglia, Gerald L’Ecuyver, Kevin Young
David Lynch is not the only notable name to direct an episode of Twin Peaks. Lesli Linka Glatter, famous for her later work on Mad Men and Homeland, directed four episodes. Duwayne Dunham, whose résumé as an editor includes Return of the Jedi and Blue Velvet, directed three, as did Caleb Deschanel, cinematographer of The Natural and The Right Stuff.
But it’s fair to say that Diane Keaton — yes, that Diane Keaton — is the biggest star to sit in the director’s chair this side of Lynch himself. While she’s most famous as an actor, Keaton brings more than just her Oscar and her star on the Walk of Fame to the proceedings. While clearly working with the stylistic palette established by Lynch himself, Keaton takes the opportunity to flex.
Her use of nature-scene interstitials, for example, takes things farther even than Lynch had on the show at this point, anticipating Mike White’s similar work on The White Lotus Season 3 by three decades. She’s fond of closeups so tight they’re practically visual effects, whether she’s focusing on each chess piece on the board of Dale Cooper and Windom Earle’s deadly game or pushing the camera through the fake field grass surrounding Ben Horne’s final performance as General Lee.
Dreamy overlays and slow-motion shots of the black widow Evelyn Marsh — behind her veil, blowing smoke rings — recur over and over, as do images of multiple people lined up in a row doing the same thing at the same time. There are even moments of cringe comedy, like a waiter (Gerald L’Ecuyver) dogging Donna Hayward’s every step, that are as uncomfortably funny as anything on the show so far.
“Do whatever you want,” Keaton once reported Lynch telling her. “You have any ideas? Do it.” A relative novice as a director — her most prominent credit at the time was the music video for Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” — she took his advice to heart, and the result is one of the most purely fun visual experiences Twin Peaks Season 2 has to offer. Meanwhile, core Peaks writers Robert Engels and Harley Peyton don’t take the week off either, wrapping up a pair of prominent storylines and advancing the ball well downfield on several others. I remain impressed by how strong this allegedly weak stretch of the show remains.
The most prominent story this episode is James Hurley’s continuing sidequest into a film noir. Not yet out of town — he’s ensconced at the local road house with Donna, a weird place where the identically uniformed patrons smoke identical cigars in identical poses while listening to opera and speak in unison when spoken to — he’s actively being framed by the haunted widow Evelyn and her abusive boyfriend Malcolm.
James unwisely returns to the house to try and get Evelyn to listen to reason. Donna endures an assault by Malcolm at the bar while she waits, then unwisely goes to the house herself. She stops Malcolm from forcing Evelyn to execute James, who’s been knocked unconscious, then screams in horror as Evelyn shoots Malcolm instead.
The storyline ends with Evelyn lying against the corpse, rehearsing her story in a sort of fugue state. Even though the bad guy got it in the end rather than our wandering hero James, it’s hard to call this a happy ending.
You could say something similar about the end of Ben Horne’s War. He’s now fully subsumed by the persona of Robert E. Lee, a state of incapacitation his suddenly ambitious baby brother Jerry sees as his opportunity to run the family business — until his niece Audrey reminds him that if her father is out of commission, she’s in charge. All of a sudden, curing Ben becomes priority number one.
So Dr. Jacoby initiates the Appomattox option. Dressing up as General Ulysses S. Grant, with Jerry, Audrey, and Bobby all playing era-appropriate roles (Audrey’s special-needs brother Johnny briefly shows up in culturally appropriative war bonnet, too), Jacoby surrenders on behalf of the North. General Horne accepts…and passes out, waking up as himself once again and quoting The Wizard of Oz (“You were there…and you were there!”) while he’s at it. Having reversed the defeat of one of history’s all-time piece-of-shit powers, Twin Peaks’ piece-of-shit-in-chief is back.
Ben’s erstwhile lover and partner-in-crime Josie Packard finds herself in a lot of hot water this week. Back in town on the orders of Gordon Cole, FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield — who’s now BFFs with his one-time enemy Sheriff Harry S. Truman — discovers that fibers Cooper recovers from one of Josie’s coats are a perfect match for those found on the floor outside his room the night he was shot. Albert’s heart goes out to his newfound friend, if a bit condescendingly so, and Coop swears him to secrecy for the time being.
Meanwhile, Josie is also suspected in the murder of Jonathan Kumagai, the “Asian Man Killed!!” in Seattle while working for Josie’s one-time pimp, Thomas Eckhart. And Thomas himself is in town, apparently courtesy of an unlikely ally: Catherine Martell, the woman whose brother Andrew he erroneously believes he had killed.
With Andrew hidden away somewhere, the two villains discuss how best to trade Josie back to her one-time master in exchange for a price yet to be named by Catherine. They celebrate with a magnificent feast: a pig’s head, with an apple stuffed in its mouth, served to them by Josie, whom they’ve forced to overhear every word.
Unwilling to be fully honest with either Harry or Cooper, Josie’s facing all of this on her own. (Unless you count her pal Pete, who can barely make it in the door with her dry cleaning without falling over or suffocating to death.)
Elsewhere in town — specifically in his marital bed — Big Ed Hurley finally makes plans for the future with his long-time love, Norma Jennings. True, her criminal husband Hank may soon be out of the hospital that Nadine Hurley beat him into. But between parole violations and a new charge, the attempted murder of Leo Johnson, courtesy of eyewitness Bobby Briggs, she’s likely to be free of him forever.
Nadine, meanwhile, has fully moved on from Ed. She’s in love with Mike Nelson, which comes as something of a shock to Ed, and she’s “COMPLETELY COOL!!!” with finding Ed and Norma in bed together. She even hops in before admitting she knows what they’ve been up to! It’s one big happy family! Surely nothing will go wrong!
Later, at work, Norma happily welcomes back Shelly Johnson, who can now return to the Double R since her comatose husband Leo is…well, it’s not exactly clear where he is, to anyone in town anyway. Finally admitting to the world that they’re a couple, Bobby and Shelly are obviously very concerned about “Leo-stein,” so the comfort of the diner is just what she needs.
Leo, meanwhile, continues to reap what he sowed during his years abusing Shelly. Following his humiliating convalescence, he’s now been enslaved by the deranged Windom Earle, who uses a shock collar and a hard bamboo flute to bend the hulking but mentally incapacitated murderer to his will. Earle intends to use him as a pawn in his game against Coop, in which one of three young women — Donna Hayward, Audrey Horne, and Shelly Johnson — will be his “queen.”
By this point, Cooper has already figured out that every time Earle takes a piece off the board of their chess game, he’ll murder someone. The last name of the man he killed and left in Harry’s chair shared matches the maiden name of Earle’s wife and Coop’s lover, Caroline, whose wedding attire Earle has been sending piecemeal to law enforcement agencies across the country. Coop suspects each killing will send a similar message. Based on that, I’d have to assume Audrey Horne’s in the most danger, but surely the corpse of Laura Palmer’s best friend or Leo Johnson’s battered wife would speak volumes as well.
With everything riding on a chess game, Cooper knows he can’t count on himself, since Earle beat him every time they played. Harry tips him off to his unlikely savior: Pete Martell, a chess savant who checkmates Dale, Doc Hayward, and Double R regular Toad (Kevin Young) in three separate games simultaneously. If anyone can grind Windom Earle’s twisted game to a halt and spare as many pieces as possible, it’s the man who found a fish in the percolator.
But when Cooper returns to his hotel room, he discovers someone else has been there. Wearing a ridiculous disguise, Earle has infiltrated the Great Northern, leaving Caroline’s death mask and a taunting tape recording on Coop’s pillow. “It’s your move,” he says on the tape, as Cooper stares through the hollow eyes of the woman he loved. It’s hard not to see reflections of Evelyn Marsh’s dead-eyed stare there, and wonder how many hollowed-out people we’ll encounter before our time in this strange place is through.
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