The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Vivian is crisp, calm, and articulate – she will destroy your confidence with artfully phrased passive aggression rather than overt hostility.


Friday, March 10, 1989
Vivian shows up in Twin Peaks on a honeymoon with Ernie Niles. She expresses keen interest in the food at her daughter Norma’s diner, the RR. Norma, initially pleased to see her, quickly grows weary but Vivian seems oblivious or indifferent – maybe both. Norma tells her mother she’s nervous about the arrival of a mysterious food critic, M.T. Wentz, and Vivian asks Norma about her husband “Henry” (everyone else calls him Hank), who just got out of prison. Then she introduces her own new husband to Norma. Later, Vivian returns to the diner to help out in the kitchen. She greets Hank when he reappears after a long absence, eavesdropping on his argument with Norma before cutting in. Hank gets along with his mother-in-law; he chuckles off her needling questions about his criminal record and eagerly accepts her invitation to a meal at the Great Northern Hotel. At dinner, Vivian criticizes the salmon before taking a bathroom break with her daughter. When they return, Hank proposes a toast.

Saturday, March 11, 1989
Vivian sits at the counter for a country breakfast. By now Norma’s irritation is palpable but Vivian keeps plowing forward with her “helpful” comments. She spits out her omelette, teases Norma about the quality of food, and suggests ingredients outside of the RR’s budget.

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
Vivian lingers in town nearly a week after her arrival, having clearly overstayed her welcome. When she arrives at the diner this evening, a distressed Norma is removing all of the fancy decorations. When told that M.T. Wentz wrote a terrible review, Vivian completes Norma’s quotation and confesses, as if it’s all a delightful misunderstanding, “I wrote it.” Norma is horrified to find out that Vivian savaged her own daughter’s business in print but Vivian digs in her heels: “It’s simply not a good restaurant.” Norma responds, “I want you out of my restaurant…and out of my life.” A peeved Vivian finally has nothing to say, and strolls out of the RR Diner as Norma cries.

Vivian seems all wrong for this town, and we wonder if she helped raise Norma in Twin Peaks or was mostly absent, leaving the child-rearing to an ex-husband. Certainly, Vivian has no patience for the provincial; her insistence on polished protocol clashes with the easy-going, eccentricity-tolerating flavor of the community. What she tells us about Twin Peaks is mostly through contrast with her surroundings and also with her daughter, who embodies the area’s earthy integrity. On the other hand, Vivian clicks with Hank (unsurprising given her own disingenuous husband). There is, after all, another side of Twin Peaks – a conniving, self-serving undercurrent that Vivian corresponds with all too well. Like many characters on the show, she has a secret/dual identity. The mostly silly M.T. Wentz plot can in fact be viewed as a lighter, more conventionally soapy parallel to the Leland/Bob reveal (a major plot point coincident with Vivian’s own appearance). In both cases, a parent suppresses their hostility toward their offspring by assuming another identity and lashing out behind that mask. On the old alt.tv.twin-peaks forum, Barb Miller observed how Vivian contrasts with the other, much more demure mothers on Twin Peaks (the comment is worth reading in its entirety – scroll down to 7/29/91 in my collection of notable Usenet writing on TwinPeaks). The “devouring mother,” as Miller calls her (noting the term’s literal connotations in this case), feels like a very soapy motif: think Alexis Carrington in Dynasty. The M.T. Wentz storyline, which begins on a sitcom note with Louie the concierge way back in episode 11, has certainly hit a more melodramatic note by Vivian’s revelation in episode 17.

In a way Norma, not Vivian, is the character with a clear arc in this situation (I’ll save that discussion for Norma’s own entry). Vivian doesn’t change much from the time we meet her to the moment she walks out that door, but she does slowly reveal herself. At first we might mistake her for a genuinely affectionate mother but Vivian’s war of verbal attrition takes its toll on us as well as Norma. Furthermore, the quality of her comments decline; when she first tries her daughter’s food (rudely snatching a potato from a customer’s plate) she offers praise. Even her backhanded compliments are, at least nominally, compliments. By the next morning she’s literally gagging on Norma’s eggs and on the final day, she’s entirely dismissive of her daughter’s feelings, presenting a coldly genial front which is the final straw. Vivian has some strong parallels with Hank: like him she declines to declare her intentions upfront. Unlike him, she doesn’t indulge in much flattery. However, they do share a certain brisk “friendliness” that disarms a person like Norma. She approaches the world more straightforwardly, making it difficult for her to fend off their parries. As this mother-daughter catasrophe unfolds over a few days, we witness a crucial snapshot of a much longer relationship; this is a microcosm not only of Norma’s difficulties with her mother, but also her husband.

Twin Peaks features its fair share of Hollywood legends, and Greer certainly belongs in that pantheon – particularly for her work as Out of the Past's Kathie Moffat, one of film noir’s iconic femme fatales. Greer was signed by Howard Hughes as a teenager after posing for LIFE Magazine; she later sued RKO/Hughes, won, and then continued to appear in his films! (This site features a quick rundown of her career with some great photos.) Greer developed her performing skills at fifteen, when her face was partially paralyzed by palsy and she was forced to undergo expressive exercises to restore movement. Her film career petered out in the early fifties, but she was a TV regular for about a decade and continued to act onscreen until semi-retirement in the ninieties (Twin Peaks was one of her last roles). Interestingly, she had a quick cameo in one episode of Saturday Night Live in 1987 – on an episode hosted by Robert Mitchum, her Out of the Past co-star.


Vivian was introduced in Scott Frost’s teleplay, received one scene in a Mark Frost/Harley Peyton/Robert Engels episode, and was wrapped up by Tricia Brock. She was directed by Caleb Deschanel, Tim Hunter, and Tina Rathborne.

Vivian is onscreen for roughly seven minutes. She is in five scenes (with a costume change for each one) and three episodes, taking place in three days over the course of a week. She’s featured the most in episode 15, her arrival. Her primary location is the RR Diner and she definitely shares the most screentime – all of it, in fact – with Norma...




• A close contender for best line, as cavalierly cruel if not as pithy: “Darling, I wanted to give you a good review. But this is just not a good restaurant! I can’t violate my professional ethics.”

• Until Vivian’s final scene, M.T. Wentz seems like a separate character with an independent trajectory. Louie and Ben discuss her (mostly assuming Wentz is a man) as a travel writer for the Seattle Post-Dispatch though by the time Vivian actually arrives, the emphasis is entirely on food criticism. Daryl Lodwick, the state prosecutor, is mistaken for Wentz, as is mysterious “Japanese businessman” Tojamura (actually Catherine Martell in disguise – another double identity in the vicinity of Vivian’s subplot).

• Through Ernie’s dialogue when Vivian is offscreen, we learn he met Vivian at a Republican fundraiser. She thinks he’s a financial analyst. As it turns out, Ernie is a charlatan and ex-con who served time for robbing a Savings & Loan (coincidentally, Hank recognizes him from prison and uses this information to blackmail him). Vivian, so intent on sniping at Norma, doesn’t even recognize the kind of man she's married. Of course, her affection for Ernie and even, it seems, Hank, betrays a weak spot for duplicitous men, sadly passed on to her daughter.

• In fact – I’ll dwell on this point more extensively in Norma’s entry – it’s when Ernie appears that Norma’s interactions with Vivian truly head south. Whether this is because of his personality, a deeper frustration about her mother and men, or simply because it shows that Vivian didn’t just come to town to see Norma, the surprise marriage to Ernie is obviously a point of contention between mother and daughter. Yet it’s never openly discussed by them, left to simmer on the backburner when other issues are raised to a boil.

• Vivian is mentioned twice after she leaves the series. First: when Ernie returns from a “hunting trip” (actually a visit to a whorehouse/casino), Norma tells him that her mother has gone back to Seattle, and he should join her. Second: when her daughter Annie shows up in Twin Peaks and gets a job at the diner. “How’s Mom?” Annie asks. “Well, we could talk about her or we could feel good for a change,” Norma mutters. “I vote for the latter.”

• In Mark Frost’s novel The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Norma’s mother appears several times. There’s only one problem: the mother we meet in this book is an entirely different character. Named Ilsa Lindstrom, she works as a waitress at the very diner “M.T. Wentz” savages… and dies in 1984, five years before the events of Twin Peaks. This is possibly a simple oversight – Frost has said he didn’t rewatch the series much after it aired and he may have forgotten the existing character when sketching in Norma’s family history (to be honest, I didn’t even notice until someone else pointed it out). That said, Vivian-related material covers a sizable chunk of season two, stretching from the first comical mention of M.T. Wentz to Ernie’s involvement in the Dead Dog Farm standoff. Is it possibly Frost wrote her out of Twin Peaks history on purpose? Annie is also missing from the book, though she isn’t replaced – a fate that only Vivian experiences in the entire Twin Peaks ensemble.


SHOWTIME: Greer passed away in 2001. We can only imagine what happened after episode 17. Did she find out about Ernie’s criminal history? (Considering his involvement with a hostage situation in Twin Peaks a few days after she left town, this seems likely.) Did she and Norma ever mend fences? How did she react to the violent kidnapping and hospitalization of her other daughter, Annie? Given her erasure in Mark Frost’s book, we’ll probably never know.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Jonathan spends several days observing the town as a mysterious stranger before revealing his very focused agenda.


Friday, March 3, 1989
Jonathan, recently arrived at the Great Northern Hotel, calls the Blue Pine Lodge looking for Josie Packard. Sheriff Truman answers the phone and says Josie is out of town. Jonathan hangs up without saying who he is.

Saturday, March 4, 1989
As two FBI agents chat over breakfast at the Great Northern, Jonathan sits across the dining room "reading" a newspaper but actually staring intently at one of the agents.

Sunday, March 5, 1989
The same FBI agent exits an elevator and, again disguising his gaze with an open newspaper, Jonathan watches him talk with the hotel's owner. Then he folds his paper and follows the agent out of the room.

Monday, March 6, 1989
At the Blue Pine Lodge, Josie is making out with the sheriff. Jonathan, illuminated occasionally by lightning, stands outside the window gazing in at the couple. That evening, he finally makes contact with Josie, and she introduces him as her "cousin" to Pete Martell, the recently widowed proprietor of the Lodge. In fact, as it turns out, Josie and Jonathan had something to do with his widowing. When he exits the room, Jonathan mocks him and the provincial town, and tells Josie that their boss Eckhardt wants her back in Hong Kong, now that her mission (including killing Mrs. Martell) is nearly finished. He asks her about the sheriff, and she evades the question. Late that night, he appears in the RR Diner to confront Hank Jennings, a local criminal who tried to blackmail Josie after helping her out. Jonathan beats him up and, mocking Hank's own gesture toward Josie, presses his bloody thumb against Hank's as a "blood brother," calmly stating, "Next time, I'll take your head off" before smashing a flashlight next to Hank's head.

Wednesday, March 8, 1989
Buttoning up after a tryst with Josie - which looks suspiciously like rape - Jonathan demands that she come back to Hong Kong with him that night. She continues to avoid commitment (saying she has to get money from a co-conspirator), but Jonathan threatens her verbally and physically, even vowing to kill her lover if she isn't on the plane out of Seattle that night. Sheriff Truman shows up a few hours later, as Josie and Jonathan hustle out with suitcases in hand. Josie introduces Truman to "Mr. Lee," her "assistant," and Truman asks Jonathan to leave the room as he pleads with Josie to stay. Jonathan complies, confident that Josie will make the right decision and that the hapless sheriff has no idea who he's dealing with.

Jonathan expresses contempt for Twin Peaks and is certainly too focused on his mission to enjoy its charms, even in the grotesque fashion of a Windom Earle (who, incidentally, Lynch leads us to believe Jonathan might be at first - his second appearances follows Cooper's and Albert's first conversation about Earle). Handed a stuffed animal by Pete, he can barely contain his rolling eyes and contemptuous sneer. And he's more than happy to threaten assassination of the town's chief official in order to pry Josie loose. In other words, Jonathan is another quintessential outsider, contrasting with the small town (especially given his appearance and accent in the almost homogeneously white environment) but also complementing its sinister vibe with his own. As for Twin Peaks the show, Jonathan is part of a melodramatic strain especially prominent in Josie's storyline during season two. It's appropriate that his early appearances are associated with Windom Earle. Even though they turn out to have no connection, Jonathan is part of a trend that culminates with the rogue agent's violence: a shift from Twin Peaks as a town full of interior secrets to a town threatened by outside forces (Jonathan's boss Eckhardt will eventually play his part in this progression too).

The character does not change internally, but his presentation certainly does. Jonathan's mysteriousness is sustained nearly to a breaking point over four different scenes in four episodes. Twin Peaks leaves us guessing as to his motives for over a quarter of his screentime; yes, he asks for Josie right away but he also seems curiously attentive to Coop (in fact, we never really find out why). It's almost a little bit of a letdown when his expository dialogue with Josie reveals his true intent. But his penultimate scene effectively displays his menace, making us believe that he is a very real threat to Josie and, unbeknownst, to Truman. Jonathan's journey culminates offscreen when we learn that he was killed by Josie via a deflatingly undignified headline ("Asian Man Killed!" it screams, as if there wasn't a significant Asian population in Washington state). It's a bit of a letdown from those ominous early appearances, but when he's onscreen, the character delivers.

Takano appeared in a few other films and TV shows in the nineties, including as a stuntman, but his primary career has been training actors, boxers, MMA fighters, and other athletes, as shown on his website. (He was largely responsible for the choreography of his fight scene in Twin Peaks.) Takano discusses this aspect of his work, as well as interesting anecdotes about his time on Twin Peaks, in this interview with Brad Dukes. In the oral history book Reflections he goes further, remembering how he was suspicious of Piper Laurie's in cognito appearance on set as "Fumio Yamuguchi," supposedly a famous Japanese actor cast as the character of Mr. Tojamura. (The cast and crew were kept in the dark about her true identity.) "I'm Japanese, but I was playing a Chinese character," Takano explains. "I looked at the cast list and there's this Japanese character with a Japanese actor's name next to it. They made a big fuss about it and I had never heard of them. ... We were shooting something and Piper Laurie comes in with all the makeup and stuff and it was like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's! ... [laughs] I wasn't insulted, but it was definitely weird." (pictured with Oscar de la Hoya)

Jonathan was written by Mark Frost, Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, and Jerry Stahl. According to Takano, David Lynch wasn't present for the casting and was initially dismayed (he didn't like the headshot) but grew to appreciate Takano's work. Lynch directs Takano's first two appearances, while Todd Holland directs nearly half of his screentime. His best work, however, maybe solicited by Lesli Linka Glatter, who directs one of his early appearances and then returns to film his belligerant encounter with Josie. This episode was nominated for a Director's Guild Award, and Takano cites the experience as one of his favorites from the series.

Jonathan is onscreen for roughly seven minutes. He is in eight scenes in five episodes, taking place over about a week. He's featured the most in episode 11, when he finally presents himself to Josie. The majority of his scenes take place in the Blue Pine Lodge (the Packard residence). He shares the most screentime with Josie.




• Josie returns to Twin Peaks about five days after she left with "Cousin Jonathan," stumbling into Truman's cabin and explaining that she fled Jonathan in Seattle. In fact, she shot him in the back of the head. The sheriff's office later receives a fax of the above newspaper article (by the way, click on the picture and check out the actual text of the piece - it's a fascinatingly dedicated word salad). Agent Albert Rosenfield confirms that Josie was the shooter, and Jonathan ends up as one more piece of evidence in the docket against Josie's character. Although given what we've seen, we can hardly blame her for icing her tormentor.


SHOWTIME: No, Takano is not on the cast list for 2017. There's not much to speculate about the character either, since Jonathan's arc concludes on the show. Many of the characters directly implicated in this particular intrigue - Josie, Jonathan, Eckhardt, Andrew - die within a few weeks. Even the co-conspirators who may still be alive - Jones, Ben - aren't in great condition the last time we glimpse them (only Catherine, who didn't widow Pete after all, seems to end up on solid ground...but we'll get to that eventually).

My first video essay of 2017 is finally available and it took a while to put together. As part of "Oscars on Fandor Month" it celebrates Ezra Edelman's 8-hour documentary O.J.: Made in America, which is nominated for Best Documentary in tonight's ceremony.



In order to analyze this film, I "cheated" and took two different approaches. The two-and-half minute introduction compares Made in America to its coincidental 2016 companion, the dramatized miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson. Then, I move on to the primary approach: delineating seven subjects the film deals with besides O.J. Simpson, although they all involve him of course.

Here is my introduction to the video:

There are so many different paths to follow into Ezra Edelman’s documentary O.J.: Made in America that one almost doesn’t know where to start. For the introduction to Not Just O.J., my contribution to this month’s “Oscars on Fandor” theme, I decided to begin with Made in America’s sister film, The People v. O.J. Simpson—also presented as a TV miniseries, also released in 2016, and also, of course, covering the criminal trial of athlete-actor O.J. Simpson in 1995. The differences are revelatory: People homes in exclusively on the trial, and while it presents us with intimate moments as a documentary couldn’t, its narrow scope naturally excludes a much broader historical context. Made in America, on the other hand, not only stretches back to Simpson’s early days (and his later fall); it’s also just as much about America, about pop culture, about the history of the L.A.P.D. and the African-American community, as it is about Simpson. (Read the rest on Fandor Keyframe)

This was a busy week on the video front. I uploaded ten older videos to my YouTube channel for the first time: Learning to Look (eye contact in Satyajit Ray's The Big City), 4 Times Back to the Future: Welcome to Hill Valley, The Passion of Anna Karina, Manufacturing Dreams: The Quay Brothers' STREET OF CROCODILES, Come, Sweet Death (The Phantom Carriage/Wild Strawberries), The Medium & The Message: 7 Forms of Filmmaking in Lynne Sachs' STATES OF UNBELONGING, The Colors of DAISIES, Meshes of Lynch (Maya Deren & David Lynch), 6 Years in America: Louis Malle's GOD'S COUNTRY, and Mirrors of Kane ch. 1: Meeting Kane.

I also discovered that Learning to Look and 6 Years in America had been restored to Fandor's Vimeo channel after disappearing in January. And finally, I am happy to announce that yesterday 7 Facts About Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, already by far my most popular work in any medium, crossed over the 100,000-view mark, a major milestone for me personally. That video, by the way, was very much a template for Not Just O.J. (and both share their "7 Things About" structure with the Lynne Sachs video). I'm particularly proud that its march to that number was so steady and consistent - rather than rely on one single rush of traffic, it keeps attracting viewers day after day. Thanks to everyone who watched and shared that video over the past couple years.

Here are some images from Not Just O.J.:

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Cable is surly and smug in defense of his provincial prerogative...until confronted with FBI fisticuffs.


Friday, February 12, 1988
An FBI agent barges into Sheriff Cable's shabby little office in Deer Meadow. Brusquely introducing himself as Chet Desmond, he demands to see the body of a girl who was recently murdered. Initially taken aback by the rude entrance, and then serenely malicious in a (mostly) passive-aggressive fashion, Cable mocks Desmond and resists his entreaties until Desmond pulls rank. Finally the sheriff hands him the dead girl Teresa Banks' files and directs the federal agent to the morgue (on his way out, Desmond notices a framed newspaper photo of Cable bending a steel rebar). Cable has already sent an upset Deputy Cliff out of the room, but once Desmond exits, Cliff returns and he and Cable exchange knowing glances.

Saturday, February 13, 1988
A van arrives to take Teresa's body to the FBI's Seattle headquarters. Cable refuses to release the body and when Desmond asks if they found a ring on the corpse, the sheriff practically snickers, "We got a phone here...it's got a little ring." Clearly this isn't going to be easy. Cable and Desmond retreat to the backyard, where the sheriff has apparently installed a ridiculous barricade of haystacks in front of the morgue entrance. After Cable demonstrates his steel-bending skills, an extended fistfight unfolds. Cable takes the first cheap shot while Desmond is getting ready, but the FBI agent soon overcomes him with an endless albeit slow-paced barrage of punches to the face until Cable collapses. To rub it in, Desmond bends a piece of steel himself and then leaves the humiliated, bloodied sheriff gasping in the dirt.

Like Carl Rodd and Teresa Banks, Sheriff Cable shows us Deer Meadow rather than Twin Peaks; but one town highlights quite a bit about the other. Specifically, Cable is the Bizarro Sheriff Truman. Whereas Truman is amiable, accepting Cooper's authority and welcoming his friendship, Cable takes the classic figure of the surly local police chief to its illogical extreme. There's more than a whiff of corruption about the place; why is he so eager to withhold Teresa's body and obstruct the FBI? Cable highlights how radically the film Fire Walk With Me (he never appears in the TV show) transforms the series' quirk into something even more subversive. His dialogue, and particularly his delivery, is weird in a typical Lynch fashion: long pauses and odd intonations punctuated by subtly demonic expressions all pitched to a level of very dry black comedy. The blunt, absurd violence of the fight scene also shows how relaxed yet focused Lynch's style can be in The Missing Pieces.

Cable is introduced as a powerful figure, limited perhaps in his capacity but stubbornly determined to dig in his heels. He ends up an absolute wreck, degraded by Desmond's blows. Here's where a contrast between Fire Walk With Me and The Missing Pieces might be instructive; in the film there is no fight scene, so even though we see that Desmond is somehow able to move the body, Cable retains his air of ominous, inscrutable autonomy. Only the complete picture, as provided by the deleted scenes, reveals his fall. There's something archly amusing about the fight (though it's tedious too) but I think I might prefer the version of Cable's story in which he remains oddly defiant; this feels more indicative of Deer Meadow's overall intransigence and the FBI's inability to penetrate this sinister obscurity.

Bullock emerged as a character in film and television only in middle age, and worked for about a decade and a half before his onscreen credits dried up, although he narrated a documentary about a World War II fighter group a few years ago (he is a passionate, lifelong model airplane enthusiast). In the nineties and zeroes, his height and unusual looks made him a shoo-in for Abraham Lincoln, whom he played on on multiple episodes of three separate shows; in fact, he launched his career in theater with a one-man show he wrote about Lincoln. He was also a natural fit for several horror and sci-fi parts (he was cast both as the character Goth - see above - and a Klingon on different Star Trek spin-offs). His voice has led him into consistent work as an audiobook narrator. He is also an author; he and his wife often work together, and share a website devoted to their work (including recordings of Dickens novels which she performs and he engineers). Before Bullock took up acting, he had a career as a computer programmer working in various observatories. In another great interview with Brad Dukes, Bullock describes his various passions and experiences, as well as several screenplay ideas; he's also interviewed in the great Moving Through Time documentary featured on the blu-ray for the film/series. (series pictured - Star Trek: Voyager, 1997)


Only appearing in material shot for the film, Cable was written by David Lynch and Robert Engels, and directed solely by David Lynch.

Cable is onscreen for roughly eight minutes. He is in three scenes in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces taking place in two consecutive days. All of his scenes are set in or around the Deer Meadow sheriff's station. He shares almost the entirety of his screentime with Desmond.




• A few hours after his fight with Cable, Desmond returns to the trailer park where Teresa lived...and then he promptly vanishes. Since we last see him reaching for the Owl Cave ring under a trailer, most viewers assume his disappearance is supernatural. However, I've also heard speculation (I think maybe on The Twin Peaks Podcast, among others?) that Cable and Deputy Cliff had him killed. We do learn later in Fire Walk With Me that Cliff is part of a drug-running ring and given some of Cable's interactions with Cliff, and his general aura of resistance to federal investigation, it's likely he is involved too. Maybe they murdered Desmond because they were afraid he was getting too close, or maybe even just as revenge for Cable's humiliation?

• Cable is actually named in Scott Frost's 1991 novel The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes, in which Agent Cooper is the one to conduct the Teresa Banks investigation in Deer Meadow (as was originally intended for the film, before Kyle MacLachlan whittled his schedule down to a few days out of hestitation to participate at all). I remembered the character being rather plain and not at all evocative of the film's strange character, but on revisiting the book I see I'm wrong. This is actually a pretty good starting point for the man we see in Fire Walk With Me: "Diane, the local and apparently only authority is a large ex-marine going by the name of Cable. Locally known as the Chief. He is none too pleased about having a federal man on his turf, though it is clear that the last serious crime he saw was in a gangster movie." According to My Life, My Tapes, Cable is called "the Chief" by locals, his crime scene report is described as "a work of fiction worthy of a Pulitzer," and he gets sick while helping Cooper conduct the autopsy. Take all of this as you will, since the central conceit of these scenes is directly contradicted in the film. (Incidentally, you may want to revisit my Teresa Banks entry too, since I just added a note about the Cooper book - as well as one about Hap's Diner.)


SHOWTIME: No, Bullock is not on the cast list for 2017. The Deer Meadow situation in general is sketchy; according to The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Fat Trout Trailer Park is in Twin Peaks, not on the other side of the state. What happened to Cable after his beatdown? I am not as inclined toward the "ring transported Cable to the Lodge" reading as most, so I like the idea that maybe Cable had something to do with Desmond's disappearance - I'll discuss that more in the agent's own entry. Anyway, if Deer Meadow still exists I'll bet Cable is out there brooding still. Who knows what he's up to...

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Malcolm dumps a lot of exposition in bizarre, rambling dialogue while hiding his sinister plans.


Friday, March 17, 1989
Malcolm, chauffeur for at the Marsh estate, enters the room of James Hurley, a recently arrived mechanic. Joshing about servants' solidarity, he tells James he's "heading up a local service rebellion. Wonder if you'll help me bundle up some loose sticks and burn that master." Before long, it's clear he's only half-joking. While drinking his boss' liquor Malcolm introduces himself as the brother of Evelyn Marsh (the woman of the house), confessing that this job she got him is a huge improvement on his previous "life of wanton dissipation." However, he also acknowledges that his sister is abused by her husband, which seems to shock James. That night, the newcomer overhears a violent fight across the courtyard; as James looks out the window, Malcolm returns to mutter about how someday he'll work up the courage to kill Jeffrey Marsh.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
Sipping champagne and celebrating the restoration of Jeffrey's car, James and Evelyn embrace and begin to make out. Unseen by them, Malcolm watches from down the driveway, turns away, and smiles. That evening he catches Evelyn exiting James' bedroom. He finds out the "lucky boy" is asleep before kissing his supposed "sister" himself.

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Malcolm explains who James was to a state trooper, with some help from Evelyn - who is sitting on the staircase dressed in widow's black. Her husband has been killed, and James is now the prime suspect. However, as the police exit the room, Malcolm warns Evelyn that he can't "tolerate a nervous co-conspirator" and kisses her again, before she breaks away, upset.

Monday, March 20, 1989
Malcolm discovers a drunk Evelyn at Wallie's Hideaway, a nearby bar, and he escorts her out before threatening the young woman she was addressing: James' girlfriend Donna Hayward. He warns her that if she ever returns to town, he'll kill her. Back at the mansion, Malcolm clobbers James over the head and explains to Evelyn how they will kill him and make it look like she was defending herself. Then Donna storms in, hovering over James and pleading for them to spare his life. A furious Malcolm asks Evelyn for the gun so he can finish the job; she refuses, steps away, and shoots Malcolm as he pursues her. He collapses and dies in her arms. Evelyn rehearses her version of the story aloud as the two of them lie entangled on the floor.

Malcolm is one of very few characters on the TV series who never actually sets foot in Twin Peaks. The town he lives in is never named, but probably isn't too close to Twin Peaks since James takes five days to arrive (that said, his route must be meandering; Donna gets there in a day). Other than Wallie's (a great location in a not-so-great subplot), the estate is all we see of the town - given that it looks like, and probably was, a mansion somewhere in Pasadena, it's hard to get any real physical sense of the larger location like we do with Deer Meadow in Fire Walk With Me. As for Twin Peaks the show, Malcolm's storyline indicates just how far into unapologetic soap opera territory the series travels in early season two (although film noir was the more conscious influence, the leisurely pace and rich, luxurious colors feel much closer to the plush, stretched-out televisual form). His soliloquies are so ridiculous that one could charitably interpret the whole storyline as an attempt at parody but by the final scenes, there's no lingering humor whatsoever. This isn't to say the plot takes itself very seriously; in director Diane Keaton's hands, the Malcolm material embraces stylized pastiche rather than plodding sincerity, somewhat in keeping with a Twin Peaks flavor despite its general deviation from that mood.

Malcolm has an arc, but it consists of revelation rather than growth. He's the same conniving bastard from beginning to end, it just takes us a few scenes to learn this. Unfortunately, at least half of Malcolm's scenes take place after his villainy is established, so most of his action consists of sneering, scowling, and manhandling Evelyn and Donna. He is one of the most unambiguously malevolent characters in Twin Peaks, an unpleasant presence without much redemptive charisma or dramatic interest. When he dies, Keaton calls back to the Leland/Madeline scene in episode 14, an embarrassing parallel between one of the show's worst scenes and one of its best. From a mildly amusing figure of camp to a tediously self-serious monster, Malcolm's journey is the crisis of Twin Peaks' mid-second season in a nutshell.

Billed as "Nick Love," the actor is yet another Wild at Heart veteran; he appears for a few seconds at the end of the 1990 Lynch film, rolling up to a car accident in his wheelchair, groaning in horror as a bloodied victim writhes on the pavement and shouting, "Oh no! Oh man! Hey man, same fucking thing happened to me last year!" before making a strange sound and twitching. Love had several other roles throughout the eighties and nineties, including on other Twin Peaks alum-staffed shows like Amazing Stories and Red Shoe Diaries. He debuted in The Boogey Man, starring his sister Suzanna Love and directed by his brother-in-law Ullli Lommel (whose films Suzanna frequently funded). The Loves were heirs to the famed Dupont fortune, so Nicholas was probably intimately familiar with the Marsh milieu he inhabited on Twin Peaks. One credit in his filmography remains perplexing; for some reason, Medium Rare, featuring both Burt Young and Timothy Leary, is listed on IMDb as both a 1987 film and a 2010 TV episode (though Love is only in the credits of the TV episode, they appear to be the same entity). Any explanations are welcome! (film pictured: Wild at Heart, 1990)


Presumably, Love's casting had something to do with Lynch since they worked together on Wild at Heart a year earlier. However, Lynch never directed Love; he worked under Caleb Deschanel, Todd Holland, and Diane Keaton. All of his scenes were written by Harley Peyton (who also pitched the Marsh idea to Lynch and Frost in the first place), sometimes solo and sometimes in screenplays credited to both him and Robert Engels.

Malcolm is onscreen for roughly eight minutes. He has eight scenes in three episodes, taking place over four days. All but one of his scenes are set in or around the Marsh estate. He appears to share the most screentime with Evelyn. He is one of the top ten characters in episode 22, onscreen about as much as James in the conclusion of that arc.




• In what must be the best nickname concocted for any Twin Peaks character, Brad of the Twin Peaks Podcast dubbed this guy "Exposition Malcolm." It's hilariously true! This is one of those names you can't unhear once you've heard it. Brad explains (at 18:20 in the podcast): "It's so damn funny because he comes out of nowhere and just spouts off an insane amount of exposition. Like, a ton. And he's laying things out as obviously as possible. And then he says, I'm sorry if I'm being obscure. Which he's not in the least! And then he thanks James, and I don't know what he's thanking him for, for coming in and letting him talk for a really long time, and then just walking out, with nothing happening?"


SHOWTIME: No, Love is not on the cast list for 2017. Malcolm is dead, and I'll save further thoughts on the Marsh legacy for an upcoming entry...

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Roger is a stern, humorless hardass who executes his unpleasant assignment without question but he is also, we sense, an honorable individual.


Wednesday, March 15, 1989
Roger enters the Twin Peaks sheriff's station with Canadian Mounty King, interrupting fellow FBI Agent Dale Cooper as he says goodbye to the local officers (he has just solved a murder case in the small town). Roger, who is with Internal Affairs, announces that Cooper has been suspended from the FBI. Cooper has been accused of misfeasance ("the improper and unlawful execution of an action that is itself proper and lawful") and also of an association with drug trafficking, which shocks him much more. Roger and the Mounty present Cooper with evidence of his transgressions (photos of corpses at One Eyed Jack's, the Canadian bordello where Cooper went on an unauthorized raid to rescue a hostage victim). He defends his honor, explaining how the deaths occurred and vociferously denying he had anything to do with drugs. He then surrenders his badge and gun. Roger and the Mounty than speak with Truman, who angrily refuses to help them in their investigation unless they can legally compel him.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Roger and two other agents question Cooper, but he refuses to defend himself. Roger is shocked, pressing Cooper by reminding him what is expected of an accused agent. Cooper smiles and recites a monologue about looking at the big picture, listening to the wind blowing through the trees, and so on. Roger is perplexed and begins to suspect Cooper has lost his mind - he tells him that he "may recommend a full psychological workup." Cooper thanks him for his candor and leaves the room. On his way out of town, Roger stops at the RR Diner to read a newspaper (whose headlines announce the death of the murderer Cooper recently captured), and enjoy a pie and coffee provided by the friendly waitress Norma Jennings. Roger smiles and acknowledges that he's heard "so much about" the pie. Later, still sitting in the booth to finish his paper he is startled by a deputy crashing to the floor nearby.

Roger is quite stern, and his visit to the town is (almost) all business. He seems baffled by the loyalty of the locals and especially by whatever provincial ailment has affected Cooper. Like some other outsiders, he doesn't seem to be a very good fit with the town's vibe. However, that final scene shows a different side to the professional, an ability to relax (even in a still slightly buttoned-up fashion) and enjoy his surroundings as a formal tourist. His confession about the pie even indicates that his interactions with Cooper haven't been entirely antagonistic. And that final bit, with Andy crashing to the floor, allows a whiff of the town's broad comedy to drift Roger's way - if only for a moment. Perhaps most interestingly, Roger's newspaper is one of the very, very few references in the show to Leland Palmer after he has passed away (there's only one other until the finale, and it's also in this episode). I would love to read whatever that article has to say about how the town dealt with the revelation that Leland killed his daughter (or if law enforcement even told the townspeople this), especially since Leland's actual wake provides no clues.

Roger remains pretty solid throughout, never quite losing her composure or betraying much of a human side in his execution of duty (the pie and coffee is relief, not release). However, there is a subtle arc as Cooper defies his expectations, captured subtly in that penultimate scene. When Cooper refuses to play the game by defending himself or providing excuses (though he doesn't confess his guilt either), Roger has a nice moment of both slight exhaustion and a hint of acceptance: he looks down at the table, betrays a whisper of a sigh, and speaks a bit more calmly when he looks up again. In all the earlier scenes, he's more of a stock figure for Cooper and Truman to bump against, relaying exposition and dramatizing the trouble our hero is in. Only his final meeting with Cooper gives us some insight into a more complex character, setting us up for that nice little button in the RR.

Williams' two-episode appearance on Twin Peaks was something of a big deal, primarily because it represented a reunion with his Mod Squad co-star Peggy Lipton (if you're wondering why Roger, whose plot circulates entirely around Cooper, showed up at the RR...that's why). Entertainment Weekly covered the guest spot at a time when Twin Peaks wasn't getting much coverage at all, even reaching out to the third Mod Squad member Michael Cole to see if he'd be interested if David Lynch reached out to him (Cole would, but Lynch didn't). Hailing from a famous musical family (his grandparents were composer/pianist Clarence Williams and blues singer Eva Taylor), Williams achieved initial success as a theater actor (aside from a couple small parts in The Cool World and Pork Chop Hill, where both he and fellow Twin Peaks alum Harry Dean Stanton were uncredited). He was invited to Hollywood by Bill Cosby and Aaron Spelling in the late sixties, where he jumped right into fame with the hip prime-time crime show. A great interview with the Chicago Sun-Times in 1999 even credits Williams with popularizing the word "Cool" on TV. As that interview notes, after a lot of TV work, Williams experienced a late-career film revival thanks to director John Frankenheimer. Now in his late seventies, he still makes occasional appearances, including in films like Lee Daniels' The Butler and TV shows like Empire. (series pictured: The Mod Squad, c. 1970)


Roger is written by Tricia Brock and Barry Pullman, and directed by Tina Rathborne and Duwayne Dunham.

Roger is onscreen for roughly eight minutes (including when he's speaking from offscreen). He is in five scenes in two episodes, taking place in two consecutive days. His primary location is the Twin Peaks sheriff's station. He shares the most screentime with Cooper. He is one of the top five characters of episode 17 and one of the top ten characters of episode 18.




• Roger's crew provides us one of our rare glances at a computer in Twin Peaks - a clunky Apple "laptop" circa 1990. How modern technology is integrated into the Twin Peaks universe will be one of the interesting features of the new series.

• Until the diner scene, Roger almost never cracks a smile. The closest he comes is a split-second flicker when he tells Truman that his cooperation would be "greatly appreciated."

• In the interview linked above, Williams says, "Sometimes I think it's healthy not to think in racial terms when casting. But, then, sometimes you wonder what people were thinking, especially when they cast a show like The West Wing without any black faces in the White House." With that quote in mind, it's worth noting that Roger is the highest-ranked black character on the list, aside from the upcoming "Spirits of Twin Peaks" entry which incorporates three African-American actors with much smaller parts. In the cultural climate of 2017, the diversity of the new Twin Peaks cast - or lack thereof - is certain to attract some attention. In the case of the original series, there is something of an excuse (the population of Washington state is only 4% black and likely lower in rural areas); that said, the series is not otherwise terribly interested in offering an accurate social depiction of America in the early nineties so they could probably have cast anyone they wanted. Indeed, the universe Lynch likes to depict (and subvert) is so rooted in stereotypes of fifties-era Americana - white, middle-class, patriarchal, heteronormative - that it has sometimes provoked criticism from those who see his reflection of a racist era as itself racist. In David Lynch Keeps His Head, David Foster Wallace opined, "why are Lynch's movies all so white? The likely answer involves the fact that Lynch's movies are essentially apolitical. Let's face it: get white people and black people together on the screen and there's going to be automatic political voltage. ... The films are all about tensions, but these tensions are always in and between individuals. There are, in Lynch's movies, no real groups or associations." Wallace has it a bit backwards here; excluding black characters arguably politicizes a work far more than including them. This lead into the much broader subject of the political/social/cultural content of David Lynch's not-overtly-political works, so perhaps I've opened too big a can of worms to deal with here. But it seemed to be worth addressing. I will actually be discussing politics in Lynch (and specifically Twin Peaks) in an upcoming episode of the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast, so stay tuned. To return to Roger, his race plays no overt part in his story; incidentally, the script describes the Mounty, but not Roger, as black.


SHOWTIME: No, Williams is not on the cast list for 2017. (There's another Williams, Nafessa, but they appear to have no relation.) Where did Roger go next? Does he work out of the Philadelphia office too? I'm not sure how diffuse the Internal Affairs department is, if they're just centralized in D.C. or spread out over different regions, but I do get the sense that Roger and Cooper had already crossed paths. Will they again? If the "bad Cooper" starts acting up, does Roger have to launch a new investigation? And if so how does that version of Cooper react? Maybe there's a reason we won't be seeing Roger again.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Appearing at potent dramatic moments, the nameless waiter slows the pace, sometimes comically, sometimes poignantly, but always carving room for meditation.


Thursday, March 2, 1989*
As the night stretches toward the early morning hours of the next day, FBI Agent Dale Cooper lies immobile on the floor of his Great Northern Hotel room, suffering from a bloody wound in his stomach. Someone on the phone is shouting to him but he can't respond. This is the scene when a tall, thin, elderly waiter shows up in the doorway and announces, "Room service!" Annoyed by the noise from the phone, the waiter struggles to hang it up and then shuffles over to Cooper to hand him a bill. He's brought warm milk for the guest, but warns him sensitively not to let it cool down (he seems to be less sensitive to the fact that Cooper may be dying; when the injured man asks for a doctor, the waiter flinches and persists in announcing that he hung up the phone). Cooper, obliging the good-natured if unhelpful senior citizen, asks if gratuity is included (it is). The waiter tells Cooper "I've heard about you!" and gives him a thumbs up followed by a wink. He leaves the room. Then, slowly, he shuffles back into the doorway, repeats his incantation and offers another thumbs up, which Cooper returns this time. He exits, returns, and gives one more thumbs-up and wink. Cooper faintly wags his finger. The waiter seems cheered, and slowly ambles out one more time.

Thursday, March 9, 1989
The waiter sits at the bar in the Road House while the perfomer onstage sings "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart". A few minutes later, as the same singer croons "The World Spins", the waiter stands up and slowly walks over to Cooper. He places his hand on his shoulder, leans forward, and says softly, "I'm so sorry." Cooper looks stunned, staring in disbelief at the waiter's sympathetic expression as he turns away and walks back to the bar.

Saturday, March 11, 1989
The waiter runs into Cooper again, at the end of long hallway in the Great Northern. For the first time, they are meeting in the afternoon. The waiter repeats some of his previous catchphrases, with slight variation, then offers another thumbs-up before walking off with a milk glass on his tray. Cooper reacts as if he's on the verge of an epiphany. That afternoon, the waiter hitches a ride with Major Briggs in a lightning storm, asking to be taken to the Road House, where Cooper has gathered a group of people to await some sort of revelation. The waiter approaches Cooper and offers him a stick of gum. Leland Palmer, a white-haired lawyer standing nearby, proclaims that he recognizes that brand - "That's my most favorite gum in the world.""That gum you like is going to come back in style," the waiter assures him as lightning strikes outside. A few minutes later, as Cooper shuffles a murder suspect out the door he turns to offer one last, confident thumbs-up to the waiter, who salutes him with an amiable smile.

There is a Red Room outside the normal confines of time and space. Cooper is inside, seated in a chair, while the wizened little Man From Another Place is on a couch nearby. Sitting next to him is the waiter, who makes the sound of a stereotypical Indian war whoop with his hand cupped over his mouth and then proclaims "Hallelujah!" which the little man echoes. Then the waiter offers coffee, repeating the word several times as he awkwardly steps closer to Cooper, before placing the cup on the little table next to him. Cooper follows the cup with his eyes and then glances up with a look of surprise, as if seeing something he didn't expect...

The waiter's presence reminds us that Twin Peaks is a place where time seems to stands still (something almost forgotten when the first season's pace accelerated to break-neck speed). This is Lynch telling us to calm down, to find the patience to linger over atmosphere and mood; paradoxically, nothing will get to the heart of the mystery better than letting it wash over us without rushing. Most importantly, the waiter evokes a sense of magic in the town - this is something we've only glimpsed directly for a fleeting moment in Jeffries' entry, and even then far outside of Twin Peaks' borders. The waiter, on the other hand, suggests an otherworldly current integral to Twin Peaks itself, finally leading us directly into the Red Room (presented in the episode as the Black Lodge), our first trip in over a month of character studies and our introduction the Man From Another Place. With the sole exception of Teresa Banks, the waiter is our most important character so far. At the very least, he's present for more important scenes than anyone else we've met. His introduction radically shifts the nature of Twin Peaks as a series, arguably rivaled only by Cooper's drive into town, the Red Room dream, and the murder of Maddy (and perhaps, in a negative way, Leland's wake). The waiter has even been accused of souring audiences on the previously popular show, contributing to a rapid decline in ratings already evident in the second hour of the season two premiere which he opens. The waiter also marks the violent, shocking murder of Maddy, when Leland Palmer is revealed as Bob's host and the killer of Laura Palmer. The old man's gesture of kindness is the only comforting note in a symphony of abject pain and sorrow. The waiter is inserted directly into the (perhaps too neat) resolution of the investigation, and while this role generally suits him, it's notable this is the only appearance Lynch didn't direct. Even the delivery of the lines - "I know about you" vs. the more poetic "I've heard about you" and the addition of "...but it's getting warmer now" to "That milk will cool down on you..." - suggests the waiter is being torn from his more mystical status in order to provide more literal encouragement. That's redeemed by his final appearance; even while clarifying the waiter's connection to the Giant, the scene is so full of strangeness that the character's mystique is only deepened.

A simple man whose still waters run deep, the waiter doesn't evolve so much as occasionally re-emerge from a place of stability to remind us of an underlying order. In the first scene his presence is mostly comical and perverse but the next time we meet him he is gentle and kind, completely up to the requirements of a deadly serious moment. Our knowledge of his identity develops thanks to what we see when he's not onscreen - namely, the Giant. In fact, almost every single time the waiter appears, the Giant follows (the only exception is when he tells Cooper "you're getting warmer now" in the hallway). When the waiter (finally) leaves Cooper's hotel room, the Giant makes his first appearance, offering Cooper three clues (echoing the waiter turning back three times for a thumbs-up). Before the waiter comforts Cooper at the Road House, the Giant appears onstage to warn "It is happening again." The waiter's incantation about gum triggers a vision of the Giant returning Cooper's ring. Then in the finale we get our clearest confirmation yet: the Giant literally replaces the waiter in front of Cooper, sits down next to the Man From Another Place, and says, "One and the same." The waiter's dramatic arc takes him from a humorously human figure to a guiding spirit, though the suggestion of the latter has been there all along.

Worden began acting in his twenties, appearing onstage in the Jazz Age and in his first feature early in the Great Depression, before he had turned thirty. Even so, he'd already lived a rich life: born on a Montana ranch, he was a true cowboy - he didn't just play one onscreen in a hundred or so Westerns. He was also a Stanford-educated engineer who flunked out of flight school shortly after World War I and became a rodeo performer, breaking his neck in one accident although he wouldn't discover the fracture for several decades. He has something in common with another Twin Peaks actor; like Jan D'Arcy (Sylvia Horne), he was encouraged to pursue a Hollywood career by a real-life encounter with Lynch's beloved Glinda, i.e. Billie Burke (the Ziegfeld legend who played the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz). Small world. Worden's most famous role was Mose Harper in The Searchers, one of twelve collaborations with director John Ford and seventeen with John Wayne. The character is not entirely dissimilar to the waiter: a mentally disabled part-Comanche cowpoke whose often inappropriately cheerful demeanor conceals some helpful wisdom. His trademark is an Indian war whoop - Lynch's use of this in the finale (which then spills over into the Fire Walk With Me, where it's appropriated by the waiter's couchmate) is almost certainly a direct reference to The Searchers. I could've sworn the character also proclaims "Hellelujah!" but it looks like I'm wrong about that; I haven't watched the movie in a while and can't find any references to that line. (You can read my reviews of The Searchers here and here.) Worden appeared in over two hundred films during a sixty-year career. Incidentally, his New York Times obituary credits the last episode of Cop Rock as his final screen appearance but they're wrong - the Twin Peaks finale was shot and released later, making it his true farewell. (film pictured: The Searchers, 1956)


Mark Frost wrote the teleplay for the waiter's first appearance, with the story co-credited to Frost and David Lynch. Certainly a genial, frustrating, slow-moving old man is very much a Lynch motif (and indeed, Carol Struckyen, who played the Giant, reports that on the set Lynch kept requesting Worden to move even slower). However, the scene bears a striking similarity to an episode of Hill Street Blues written by Frost seven years earlier (more on that in the "additional observations" section). So it feels like a true meeting of the minds, with Frost quite likely conceiving the situation in the first place. Frost also included the waiter in the script for the killer's reveal, though it was Lynch who improvised his addition to the finale. Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels co-wrote the waiter's role in the resolution of the mystery, in an episode directed by Tim Hunter. All the other waiter episodes were directed by Lynch.

The waiter is onscreen for roughly eight minutes. He is in five scenes in four episodes, taking place over about eight or nine days, aside from his Red Room appearance (who knows how or why the waiter got there). He's featured the most in episode 8, when he walks slowly around Cooper's room. His primary location is the Great Northern. He shares all of his screentime with Cooper.




• The waiter is mentioned in one scene he's not in, from episode 9 (written by Harley Peyton and directed by David Lynch). Cooper discusses his shooting over breakfast with FBI colleague Albert Rosenfield, who notes, "Oh, the world's most decrepit room service waiter remembers nothing out of the ordinary about the night in question. No surprise there. Senor Droolcup has, shall we say, a mind that wanders." Though not exactly intended as a term of endearment, "Senor Droolcup" has been adopted as such by fans ever since.

• The waiter's outfit (which he wears even when he's not on the job) is an entirely functional uniform; nonetheless it serves other evocative purposes too. Most obviously, his bow tie matches the Giant's, working alongside his height and slowness to underscore their connection. Also, the small apron combined with the formality of the shirt and tie distinctly evokes the Freemasons' costume, a very important motif for Mark Frost. Frost envisions the Masons as an esoteric force for good in a larger spiritual struggle, much like the Giant and the waiter in Twin Peaks. From his book The Secret History of Twin Peaks: "These theories suggest that there were two esoteric organizations vying for future control of the developing nation: one with positive democratic intentions for its citizens (Freemasons) and the other malign (the Bavarian Illuminati), interested only in enriching its elite class at the expense of the general populace. Opposing ideologies, it might well be said, which continue that struggle to this day."

• As I mentioned above and pointed out on Tumblr, "In the season 3 finale of Hill Street Blues - co-written by Mark Frost - an oblivious room service waiter comically interrupts a potentially serious scene, repeating 'Thank you' and returning to the room several times. In the season 2 premiere of Twin Peaks - written by Mark Frost - an oblivious room service waiter comically interrupts a potentially serious scene, repeating 'Thank you' and returning to the room several times. Hmmm...." In Hill Street Blues' case, two lovers are trying to indulge in quickie during lunch break when the waiter interrupts and then collapses on the floor, forcing them to address his needs instead of theirs. You can watch the episode on Hulu (or jump to a low-res clip, cued up, on YouTube).



SHOWTIME: No, Worden is not on the cast list for 2017. If he was alive today, he would be in running for oldest person on earth (even twenty-five years ago, the eighty-nine-year-old was the oldest person associated with Twin Peaks; the late Warren Frost, at ninety, beats his record in the new series). Worden passed away at ninety-one in 1992, a year and a half after the finale. Did the waiter himself die during the events of the series? Some have speculated that this is why he's allowed inside the Lodge (unlike Cooper, Windom and Annie who entered through the curtains in the Glastonbury Grove - it's hard to imagine why or how the old waiter could have made it that far into the woods). I think that may be looking at things a little too literally; besides, how much of what we see is generated by Cooper's own consciousness, how much is separate entities presenting themselves to him, and how much is a collaborative if chaotic "meeting of the minds"? The waiter always exists with one foot in the physical world and one foot in the spiritual realm - the perfect guide for Cooper.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Cliff takes peculiar delight in being a jerk, but unfortunately for him he's not a very effective bully: his nose gets yanked, his boss is beat up in front of him, and finally he's executed by a couple stoned teenagers.


Friday, February 12, 1988
Deputy Cliff saunters out of his office - in the suspiciously home-like Deer Meadow sheriff's station - to mock the FBI agent waiting for a meeting. "Take a seat," he snickers, "because it's gonna be a while." Neither he nor the receptionist can contain their giggles. Agent Chet Desmond resolves the situation by grabbing Cliff's nose and squeezing hard, dragging and dumping the hapless buffoon into a chair before strolling into the sheriff's office. Cliff wanders in to see Sheriff Cable a few minutes later, but is sent away, returning only when the FBI agent has gone outside. Cliff and Cable give each other a look: trouble has arrived in the form of federal authority.

Saturday, February 13, 1988
Cliff, arms folded, stands behind Cable as he refuses to allow the FBI agents to transport a body from their morgue. When Cable cracks a punning joke about a phone "ring," Cliff snorts and snickers. Then he follows his boss outside to watch him beat up the interloper. Instead, Cliff and the receptionist are horrified to see Desmond rain down blow after blow on the bloodied sheriff, eventually punching him out and chasing the two witnesses away with a threatening gesture. Cliff's macho rivalry with the agent ends in utter humiliation.

Tuesday, February 21, 1989
A year later, Cliff arrives in the woods near the Packard Saw Mill in Twin Peaks with a packet of what appears to be cocaine. The meeting with two teenage drug dealers has been arranged by local criminal Jacques Renault. The teenage girl, obviously drunk or stoned (or both), gazes in awe at Cliff's product and he grins: "Like that, little girl?" Without missing a beat, he drops the packet and starts to pull a gun from his waist before the teenage boy beats him to the draw. Cliff is shot once and yells in pain. The boy shoots again, knocking Cliff to the ground. As he crawls away, one more shot: BAM! to the back of the head... Cliff's brains explode all over the forest floor. The panicked teenagers kneel down next to his corpse, checking the gory remains of his skull and desperately shoving dirt over the body in an attempt to hide their victim.

Cliff is the one of the few characters in Fire Walk With Me to appear in both Deer Meadow and Twin Peaks, forming our only bridge between the two totally different universes of the movie. (The only other characters to visit both towns are Cooper, who only makes it to Twin Peaks in the series, and Laura and Leland, whose Deer Meadow flashbacks are contained in the latter half of the film.) In fact, some viewers don't even recognize Cliff when he shows up for the drug deal. Thus, in a way, Cliff impresses upon us the stark differences between the Teresa Banks investigation and the last week of Laura Palmer, even while subtly reminding us of the connection between these dual narratives (the first time David Lynch dipped his toes in what would become a favorite technique). Even more than Cable, Cliff underscores the corruption and venality of Deer Meadow, revealing that its law enforcement isn't just rude but criminal. If Cable is Truman's doppelganger, then Cliff and the giggling, snooty receptionist are the Bizarro Andy and Lucy - a deputy who goes out of his way to be an asshole replaces a deputy almost childlike in his gentle demeanor. Cliff's scenes are over-the-top and ridiculous, but in a very different way than the series. Fire Walk With Me's comedy is more dry than the show's, and it feels stranger somehow. The quality of the music, the design of the set (which really was a house converted into a shabby station) combine with the weird comic beats of the performance to set us adrift in a slightly disorienting way. Cliff plays his part in this off-kilter vibe; this plus his violent death make his rather one-dimensional character feel much richer than he has any right to be.

Cliff's Deer Meadow arc is a clear-cut decline, much like Cable's. He doesn't even have the dignity of standing up for himself - Cliff's beatdown arrives by proxy as he watches the sheriff get pummelled, and he himself is spooked by one minor flinch. When he shows up again, he's cocky but his fall is even quicker and more final. That last scene also serves as a retrospective game-changer (confirming hints provided in Desmond's Lil analysis - more on that in his entry). Cliff's involvement with the cocaine trade - and willingness to murder a high school student - suggests that Cliff's (and Cable's) dislike for the "J. Edgars" may not be purely territorial. They were probably worried about their own operations being uncovered, especially if Teresa was the customer her employer suggests. In fact, Cliff's deadly drug deal calls back beyond the beginning of the movie, bending chronology in similar fashion to Teresa. In the pilot, James tells Donna that Laura said Bobby killed a guy. If we look at the internal timeline of the story, this comment comes after we've already met the victim, making it the last reference to Cliff in the narrative. In the course of Twin Peaks' actual production, however, that mysterious line plants the earliest seed for Cliff - one of many ways Fire Walk With Me gives form to the pilot's suggestive abstractions. (I've just now gone back to add a line to Teresa's "journey" entry too, extending this idea.)

Aiello, the son of Danny, was everywhere around the time of Twin Peaks, usually as either cop or criminal (how appropriate that Fire Walk With Me allows him to play both in one character). He and Miguel Sandoval were NYPD partners in two different Spike Lee joints, Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. He was also a regular cast member of Dellaventura, a short lived series starring his dad, and played the hitman Ray-Ray D'Abaldo in a couple episodes of The Sopranos. (film pictured: Do the Right Thing, 1989)


Introduced as a vague concept (the man Bobby killed) in the pilot by David Lynch and Mark Frost, Cliff's actual character was written by Lynch and Robert Engels for the film (and his personality aligns very well with Engels' penchant for arch goofiness). He is only directed by Lynch.

Cliff is onscreen for roughly nine minutes (including his presence for the fight scene, when he's often out of frame). He is in in four scenes in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces taking place over the course of a year. His primary location is the Deer Meadow sheriff's station. He shares the most screentime with Desmond.




• Desmond violently twisting Cliff's nose is a nice reversal of Cooper playfully pinching Truman's nose in episode 2 of the series (kudos to whoever pointed this out first - I don't think I noticed it on my own).

• In The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, Jennifer Lynch creates an alternate scenario (and victim) for Bobby's kill although it also involves a drug deal and self-defense (and Laura as a witness, making it strange that James says "Bobby told her" in the pilot). I'll save that quotation for Bobby's entry.

• The script includes additional material (not in The Missing Pieces, and probably never shot) linking Desmond to Fat Trout Trailer Park (where he lives) and Teresa. He follows the wounded lady into Teresa's trailer and continues to taunt Desmond, who asks him where he was the night Teresa was killed. Cliff says he was partying, and Carl Rodd makes the suggestive claim, "Maybe if you did a little less partyin' that little girl would still be alive." (The implication is that he was distracted from doing his job, but knowing what we know there's more to it.) Desmond intimidates Cliff once again, causing him to slip on the steps. After Cliff has driven away, Agent Sam Stanley asks Desmond if he suspects Cliff killed Teresa. "He's not the murderer," responds Desmond. "But he's a bozo.""Yes," Stanley says, in one of the worst deleted lines (although Kiefer Sutherland probably could have pulled it off), "he is like a clown."

• When Desmond returns to the trailer park in the evening, he asks about Cliff's trailer as well as Teresa's. As I mentioned in Cable's entry, there is speculation that maybe Cliff killed Desmond as vengeance or to cover his tracks.

• While trying to bury Cliff, Laura bursts into giggles and starts taunting Bobby in nonsensical fashion: "Bobby, you killed Mike!" A distraught, addled Bobby begins to wonder if she's right: "Is this Mike?" Although we don't hear much more about him in Fire Walk With Me, Cliff's storyline does continue after his death in The Missing Pieces. The morning after the shooting, Bobby talks with Laura in a high school hallway and gets angry when she continues to tease him. "I killed a guy," he impresses upon her. Clearly he's shaken by this event. Later, testing the "cocaine" Bobby realizes that Cliff played one last trick on him - the product is actually baby laxative (a callback to the series' Dead Dog Farm subplot, where the criminal gang cut their coke with laxative). Bobby delivers the bad news to Laura when she visits him a couple nights later. Disgusted, she sneers, "What is the world coming to you when you kill a guy for baby laxative?"


SHOWTIME: No, Aiello is not on the cast list for 2017. Cliff is dead but it's possible his character's influence on Twin Peaks will linger. Many fans are hoping that Bobby has reformed in adulthood, joining the sheriff's department. Will the killing from his past come back to haunt him?

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Despite his stern demeanor and sharp red uniform, this Mountie is no upstanding law enforcement official.


Wednesday, March 15, 1989
Two figures burst into the Twin Peaks sheriff's station. Standing ramrod straight in the classically bright and flashy dress of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, Mountie King asks for Sheriff Harry Truman. Having made contact, he allows his compatriot - the equally stern FBI Internal Affairs officer Roger Hardy - to announce that the FBI agent at this station, Dale Cooper, has been suspended and is under investigation. Cooper is told that he violated international law by crossing into Canada and rescuing a young woman from a criminal gang, killing two people in the process and possibly stealing some drugs that had been planted there by the Mounties. This Mountie is particularly furious because he'd been preparing a sting operation for months and feels that this rouge FBI agent stepped on his toes and ruined the deal. Cooper denies any involvement with drug trafficking and the sheriff refuses to cooperate (unless legally required). That night, the Mountie (in a tuxedo rather than his red jacket) shows up at One Eyed Jack's, the very bordello he was supposedly going to raid. He greets Jean Renault, a crime lord he described as "missing" earlier in the day, and opens up a suitcase...full of cocaine. When his two potential partners, Hank Jennings and Ernie Niles, leave the room, the Mountie expresses his doubts about Ernie to Jean: "I don't like the look of him. Too nervous." He then tells Jean that he's going to plant some cocaine in Cooper's car to set him up.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
A few days later, the Mountie, Jean, Ernie, and a fourth man (a slick out-of-town buyer) are finalizing their deal at Dead Dog Farm, a run-down property on the margins of Twin Peaks. Hank isn't present, for uncertain reasons. Ernie starts sweating so much that his shirt begins smoking, and the Mountie tears it open to reveal a wire! They are under surveillance, so Jean and the Mountie seize Ernie and the buyer as hostages, forcing Cooper to reveal himself nearby. He offers to surrender himself if they turn over the hostages, and they do, taking him inside the farm. That night, a bruised Cooper is taunted by Jean while the Mountie nervously looks out the window, growing impatient with Jean's rambling. He notices a waitress approaching the building, and they let her inside. It's a trap: the waitress tackles the Mountie while Cooper grabs her gun and kills Jean. The waitress, actually an undercover agent, cuffs the Mountie as the officials congratulate each other in a successful ruse. The Mountie is now little more than a common criminal, on his way to prison.

The Mountie is the first character in the series to lead us into one of its most conventional subplots (although Roger plants the seeds): a law-and-order caper in which Cooper, a DEA agent, and the sheriff's department must prove the hero's innocence and battle armed thugs. So through the Mountie's eyes, Twin Peaks is not terribly different from any other police procedural landscape, albeit dotted with some quirky touches - including the Mountie himself. He initially appears as a comic signifier; to many Americans, Mounties are whimsical beings, as nationally evocative as a German in lederhosen or a Frenchman in a beret and striped shirt. In fact, the Mountie might tell us more about the show's vision of Canada than of Twin Peaks. Like the Renault brothers, One Eyed Jack's, and the Pink Room nightclub, the Mountie paints a dastardly, sleazy portrait of our usually pleasantly-perceived neighbors to the north. It's an image so wildly divorced from the usual stereotype that it seems more outlandish than offensive, akin to South Park's vision of Canadians "with their beady little eyes and flappin' heads so full of lies."

Externally, the Mountie has a clear arc: a transformation from overbearing lawman to beaten-down outlaw. Internally, on the other hand, there's no real evolution and not even very much personality to begin with. In fact, it's hard to determine exactly why this character even exists: what role does he perform that other character's couldn't? Despite his copious screentime over two episodes, the Mountie is usually a silent sidekick or background presence, playing second banana on both sides of the law, to Roger and then to Jean. If this surprisingly insubstantial character leaves any distinct impression, it's due to his look: the reddish-blonde crown of hair, piercing blue eyes, bushy moustache topping an imposing frown, and of course that instantly-recognizable Dudley Do-Right costume (which, patient Canadians like to remind their neighbors, is not typically worn by Mounties in their day-to-day activities). He's essentially an iconic presence in search of a character.

As the son of Dan O'Herlihy (who debuted as Andrew Packard one episode later), the O'Herlihys joins the Twin Peaks father/son teams of the Lynchs, Frosts and Parks (just this weekend I learned from commentator William Remmers that the Mo's Moters attendant in Fire Walk With Me is James Parks, son of the actor who plays Jean Renault). O'Herlihy's most notorious role is probably Richie Cunningham's older brother Chuck in Happy Days, who has become the poster child for "Characters who disappear without a trace." Chuck Cunningham was recast and then erased from the show, with varying theories as to why (some criticized the performance, others said the character was eclipsed by the Fonz). In an entertaining 2013 interview from the site OnMilwaukee (in which the author randomly posted about Chuck Cunningham on Facebook only to discover two of her friends were the actor's nieces), O'Herlihy explains that he actually asked to leave the show because it wasn't for him. Fortunately, the rest of his career was more gratifying, with roles - often as a handsome villain - in films like Willow, Never Say Never Again, and the miniseries Lonesome Dove. British viewers are likely to remember him as Leroy in Sharpe's Eagle rather than as the disappearing Chuck. (series pictured: Happy Days, mid-1970s)


O'Herlihy's character (described as "a black Canadian Mountie in full, red uniform") is written by Tricia Brock and Harley Peyton (wife and husband, though they worked independently on two different episodes). He is directed by Tina Rathborne and Todd Holland.

The Mountie is onscreen for roughly ten minutes. He is in six scenes in two episodes, taking place over half a week. He's featured the most in episode 17, when he arrives in town. His primary location is the Twin Peaks sheriff's station. He shares the most screentime with Cooper. He is one of the top three characters in episode 17 (with over six minutes of screentime, third only to Cooper and Truman), very unusual for a character this low on the list.




• Like many other characters on the show, the Mountie's full name - Preston King - is a classic TV reference. Sergeant Preston of the Yukon was a popular fifties show about a Mountie, and Sergeant Preston's dog was named Yukon King. (The opening is on YouTube, along with comments from nostalgic boomers who endearingly only know how to post in bold and all-caps...maybe they're Gordon Cole?) The Wikipedia entry contains this gem: "In 1955, the Quaker Oats company gave away land in the Klondike as part of the Klondike Big Inch Land Promotion which was tied in with the television show. Genuine deeds each to one square inch of a lot in Yukon Territory, issued by Klondike Big Inch Land Co. Inc., were inserted into Quaker's Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice cereal boxes."


SHOWTIME: No, O'Herlihy is not on the cast list for 2017. The Mountie must have regretted Jean's death, albeit not for compassionate reasons. Had they both been captured, maybe he could have lightened his own sentence by testifying against the crime lord. As it is, he might still be serving time today. Question for the legal experts: was he tried in American or Canadian court? (And while you're at it, head back to my Jones entry and tell me what you think about that case too.)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Sternwood is an outsider but not a stranger to Twin Peaks; his every word and gesture conveys a love for the town so great it may ultimately blind his judgement.


Monday, March 6, 1989
A flash of lightning illuminates a tall, striking figure entering through the double doors of the Twin Peaks sheriff's station. Circuit Court Judge Clinton Sternwood, clad in a long slicker, bolo tie, and cowboy's rumpled fedora, has arrived inside the small town's warm, dry, cozy headquarters. He embraces Lucy Moran, the receptionist suffering some private sorrows, and reminds her that "Life is hard, dear. Still, it's harder in most places than in Twin Peaks." Sheriff Harry Truman shows up and seems troubled too; Sternwood right away recognizes that his mind is on a lady. FBI Agent Dale Cooper joins them, and Truman notes wryly, "You two should have a lot in common." Cooper express his pleasure with Twin Peaks and Sternwood, who also clearly loves the town reminds him that "This week, heaven includes arson, multiple homicides, and an attempt on the life of a federal agent." Sternwood then presides over a meeting with a confessed murderer in the conference room. Leland Palmer is an old friend, an admired legal colleague who lost his daughter and killed the suspected perpetrator in a fit of rage. Sternwood expresses his admiration for Leland, as well as his recognition of the duties incumbent upon him. A bail hearing will be set for the morning, and once Leland has returned to his cell, Sternwood sighs, "We have hard jobs." His mood brightens when his tall, beautiful assistant Sid arrives and they hustle off to the Great Northern Hotel together.

Tuesday, March 7, 1989
Court is held in the Road House tavern, with chairs arranged along the peanut- and sawdust-strewn floor, while Sternwood is seated at a tall table on the red-curtained stage. The prosecutor, Daryl Lodwick, argues that Leland should not get bail given the violence and premeditation of his crime as well as his unstable state of mind. Truman, however, stands up for Leland's character, reminding the court of his deep roots in the community and the stress that he's been under. Sternwood sympathetically releases Leland on his own recognizance, demanding only that he stay in town and check in with law enforcement until a future court date arrives. Most of those in the room nod in agreement, happy that this unfortunate man has received such a generous ruling. Sternwood's second case provides more difficulty: Leo Johnson, comatose after a gunshot wound, is accused not only of arson and attempted murder but also the murder of Laura Palmer, Leland's daughter. The prosecutor pushes to take Leo to trial so that Twin Peaks can receive justice in the loss of its beloved homecoming queen. An irritated Sternwood calls a recess and, while drinking Yukon Sucker Punches at the bar with Cooper and Truman, reflects on the best course forward. Cooper naysays Leo's guilt so Sternwood declares Leo not competent to stand trial, dismissing the charges so he can go home and be cared for by his wife. While Truman informs the young woman, Sternwood advises Cooper, "I'd advise you to keep your eyes on the woods. The woods are wondrous here. But strange."

Here's a character who doesn't technically belong to Twin Peaks, yet seems more at home there than anyone else we've met so far. It's not hard to see why Truman links Sternwood with Cooper: both are outsiders who belong in Twin Peaks on some fundamental level. Yet both have a tendency to over-romanticize its rustic charms (even as they occasionally recognize the grimmer truth), and it may be Cooper's self-awareness that causes him to keep a slight distance. In their several scenes together, I never quite sense the chemistry one would expect between the two characters. Cooper seems quiet, Sternwood occasionally a bit gruff, though they clearly respect each other. Perhaps they see their own flaws in one another, alongside the similar charms and perceptions. Like Cooper, Sternwood has a mystic, magical vibe. His first appearance is timed to a bolt of lightning as if electricity has manifested him out of thin air (shades of Fire Walk With Me), he has the near-psychic ability to sniff out Truman's "filly troubles," he calls upon the imagery of Valhalla to honor Leland, and his last words to Cooper remind him of the woodland's supernatural aura. With Sternwood on hand, Twin Peaks fully embraces its down-home, old-fashioned, fairy-tale-wrapped-in-Americana spirit, tiptoeing on the edge of parody (the Road House as a court house?) but not quite spilling over thanks to Royal Dano's bona fide western cred. If Sternwood represents the idealized portrait of Twin Peaks as an honest, good-natured community, it's fitting that he also represents its shadow side: a sense of self-satisfied authority/social structure that doesn't actually protect the vulnerable, an inability to see past the reassuring surface to tease out the darkness underneath. This is one area where Cooper potentially surpasses the wise old man, but he too can fall prey to this blindness.

Sternwood is a great character and not just because he has so many damn good lines. At first glance, he's a well-played cartoon - the classically grizzlad lawman of the frontier, updated slightly for the modern era but not too much. However, the more time we spend with him (not just over the course of his several scenes, but on repeat viewings), more subtle, ambiguous gradations emerge. Little moments allow us to glimpse chinks in his armor, but nothing convinces us that he was misguided more than what happens after his arc has ended: Leland, who killed Laura, kills again. And in Sternwood's gestures of compassion and trust, we see a microcosm of the whole town's inability to discern the truth of Laura's abuse, the cold fact that evil can exist not just in their midst but in the presence of one of their most beloved citizens. Why is Sternwood fooled? Does the traveling judge simply long to believe that life really is harder in other places, that Twin Peaks is a refuge of decency in a troubled world? Does his disarming manner conceal a deep-seated sense of sexist patriarchy (see his slightly condescending manner with Lucy and his "if they don't take the saddle, you got two options" comment about women to Truman)? Does the perpetual drifter identify so deeply with the ethos of the rooted Palmer clan, as cited by Truman, that he wants to irrationally push back against the brash universalist logic of the prosecutor? We can think of many reasons, some much more justifiable than those listed, why Sternwood might not consider Leland a risk but the fact is...Lodwick is right. Leland is crafty. Leland is deeply imbalanced. And Leland is a violent criminal. With that in mind, Sternwood's arc ends not at the comfy Road House bar, but on the bloody floor of the Palmer living room.

Dano was a frequent presence in cinema and television from the fifties to the early nineties, bearing a chiseled face and gravely voice perfect for westerns, historical dramas, and horror films. He played both Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, but it was another Civil War-era performance that may have been his biggest missed opportunity: a death scene in John Huston's The Red Badge of Courage was apparently so powerful that it alienated the test audiences and was cut. (Huston, who regretted the decision, later cast Dano as Elijah the grizzled Nantucket madman/prophet in Moby Dick). Dano also appeared in Alfred Hitchock's The Trouble with Harry and as Saint Peter in King of Kings. One prevalent myth is that he played the chief Winkie in The Wizard of Oz (the one who declares, "She's dead! You killed her!" when Dorothy melts the Wicked Witch). In fact, while the voice and facial structure are vaguely convincing, Dano was still a high school student in New York when Oz was shot; he wouldn't make it to Hollywood for another decade at least. (This thread does a good job clearing up the confusion.) Filmstuck has a good, illustrated run-down of his career though it seems to get a few dates and ages mixed up. (film pictured: The Trouble With Harry, 1955)


Sternwood's introduction is credited to Jerry Stahl, Mark Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels, while Barry Pullman writes his courtroom scenes. He is directed by Todd Holland and Graeme Clifford.

Sternwood is onscreen for roughly eleven minutes. He is in four scenes in two episodes, taking place over two consecutive days. He's featured the most in episode 12, when he holds court in his primary location, the Road House. He shares about equal screentime with Cooper and Truman. He is one of the top five characters of episode 12 and one of the top ten characters of episode 11.




• Sternwood is a member of a nearly extinct tribe, the "traveling judge" who would "ride circuit," traveling from town to town on a regular basis to hear cases that had arisen in the interim (one wonders how long a suspect could be held before a judge arrived to set bail). This was especially a phenomenon of the Old West, which is no doubt what the writers hoped to evoke with this character (is there any genre Twin Peaks *doesn't* touch upon?).

• Sternwood and Sid drive around in a Winnebago motor home from town to town, so it can probably be assumed they have no permanent address. Winnebago Industries (named after the Iowa county where its Forest City headquarters are located) was launched in 1958 to give a boost to the declining local economy, and the brand name has since become synonymous with RVs. Sternwood tells Cooper and Truman he's going to "hook up the Winne" after arriving at the Great Northern; will they use its electricity and dining facilities without reserving a room, spending the night in the car? There's certainly something romantic about this lifestyle, which compellingly offsets and motivates Sternwood's attachment to the rooted nature of Twin Peaks.

• Ray Wise (Leland Palmer) loved working with Dano, noting in Brad Dukes' book Reflections that "he sort of looks like Abraham Lincoln. I believe he actually played him at one point and he was a great character actor, especially as the lightning rod salesman in Something Wicked This Way Comes, a great Ray Bradbury story. I was just thrilled to be in the scene and actually have dialogue with him because I had admired his work in movies from the time I was a little kid. I was a bit starstruck with Royal in that scene."


SHOWTIME: No, Dano is not on the cast list for 2017. He died in 1994 from a heart attack following an argument over a car accident (his son, a disabled Vietnam vet, had died earlier that year). Sternwood is a character I both would and wouldn't want to know more about after his appearance on the show. On the one hand, how did he react to the news that Leland killed Laura? Or that those woods he warned about had some sort of supernatural involvement with the terror seizing Twin Peaks? Would he feel guilty for his role in facilitating the murder of Maddy? On the other hand, Sternwood's involvement is perfect just as it is. He wanders into town as the wise man, makes an incredibly unwise decision, and wanders off before the ramifications of that decision can be felt. Somehow this feels like the perfect metaphor for a town whose collective heart may seem to be in the right place, but whose vision is dictated by what it wants to see rather than what's there.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

As cowardly as he is sleazy, Emory desperately tries to survive despite choosing very dangerous company.


Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Emory Battis, manager of Horne's Department Store, cheerfully greets the owner's daughter, Audrey Horne. Remembering her as a little girl who visited the store, he welcomes the teenager to her first job with the offer of a part-time slot in gift-wrapping. Audrey has other ideas. Within minutes she's gripping Emory's tie close to his throat, threatening to accuse him of sexual harassment if he doesn't place her at the perfume counter. Emory acquiesces, disgusted but ultimately not particularly shocked by a Horne's ability to manipulate him.

Thursday, March 2, 1989
While Audrey deals with a surly customer at the perfume counter, Emory asks to speak with her stylish young co-worker Jenny. Inside his office, Emory gives Jenny a glass unicorn - "an ancient symbol of purity" - and then surreptitiously offers her the role of "hospitality girl" at One Eyed Jack's, providing contact information for the bordello's madam, Black Rose (aka Blackie).

Saturday, March 4, 1989
It's the weekend, and Emory is ready to relax across the Canadian border. Visiting One Eye Jack's, he's up to his usual erotic routine: blindfolded, tied with his hands and feet in the air, toes painted red, a girl in a cowboy outfit vacuuming nearby, while another girl approaches with a bucket full of ice. "Frosty?" he asks, when the vaccuum stops. "My little snowman...I feel a cold front moving in!" Instead a cord is wrapped around his neck as his blindfold is yanked off - to reveal Audrey wearing a black dress and a sneer. As he chokes, she demands information, forcing him to confess that her father owns One Eyed Jack's. She also asks him about the recently murdered Laura Palmer, and he admits she came up there for a weekend and slept with Audrey's dad, but was soon fired for drug use. He then compares Laura's willfulness to Audrey's. That night Emory gets his revenge, informing Blackie of Audrey's identity. Blackie hangs up Audrey's phone in the middle of a tearful conversation, and as Emory hovers smugly behind her, the madam tells the owner's daughter that she's about to find out what trouble really is.

Sunday, March 5, 1989
Now it's Audrey's turn to be tied up...and drugged up too, while Emory videotapes her. Blackie plans to ransom the girl but Emory is terrified of possible reprisals from Ben. Ignoring his demand that they "get rid of her," Blackie easily dominates the nebbishy underling. Later that day, she shows him a surveillance video of a man in a tuxedo visiting the casino, and Emory recognizes FBI Agent Dale Cooper. One shock follows another when Blackie introduces Emory to Jean Renault, a Canadian crime boss who plans to kill Cooper in the process of acquiring Ben's ransom. Jean, Blackie, and Blackie's sister Nancy mock the flustered Emory, who is clearly in way over his head.

Monday, March 6, 1989
Feeling a bit cockier now, Emory drags the woozy Audrey to a meeting with Jean. She practically collapses into her seat, out of her mind on heroin but conscious enough to inform Jean that Emory hit her. Sensing that Jean disapproves of this abuse, Emory spouts conciliatory gibberish, not noticing until it's too late that Jean is holding a pistol. By the time his body and chair hit the floor, Emory is already dead. The sprawled, bloody corpse lies unattended as Audrey sobs and Jean comforts her.

Emory is a very typical Twin Peaks resident: one thing on the surface, another underneath. The professional veneer cloaks his involvement with sexual exploitation and criminal conspiracy. It's also clear his interest in One Eyed Jack's isn't purely a business matter: in a narrative full of offbeat sexuality, few characters' (very Lynchian) kinks are explored as fully as Emory's. The cowardly henchman is a classic type in crime fiction, and Emory crosses this figure with its close cousin, the sniveling middle manager, again expressing the duality of Twin Peaks even in its fidelity to genre conventions. How appropriate that his two locations represent two extremes of the series: an upscale downtown department store with a ritzy perfume counter, and a plush backwood whorehouse. Emory reveals these locales as different but connected corners in Ben Horne's vast web.

Emory seems disingenuous from our first encounter and it doesn't take long to discover his dirty secret. From there he only becomes more cowardly and unsavory. It's amazing to consider how much happens in less than a week of Emory's life, dragging him down to his death with Audrey in tow (sometimes she's the one doing the dragging). On a Wednesday, he looks like a respectable department store manager interviewing the well-dressed boss' daughter for an afterschool job; by the following Monday he's administering heroin and slapping her around in a Canadian brothel, before being shot dead for his rough treatment. Of course, while Emory likes to fret and feel sorry for himself, his predicament is of his own making nearly every step of the way, rooted in years of corrupt, predatory behavior. This is one of many Twin Peaks characters whose onscreen evolution results from revelation rather than inner change. His journey is also something of a roller coaster...or perhaps the best analogy is a tug-of-war between him and Audrey. In the end, she wins the battle without even trying; as both he and she acknowledge, she always gets her way.

Amendolia, like so many other actors on the show, was friends with the Frosts in Minneapolis before he came to Hollywood. He already had a busy career in the eighties and nineties, mostly in television (including "The Rye" episode of Seinfeld) although he branched out into feature films by the mid-nineties. He played a priest in two back-to-back projects (A Walk in the Clouds and My Brother's Keeper) as well as appearing in Wayne's World, Fearless, Ed Wood, and Boogie Nights. One of his most interesting roles is in the short film 12:01 PM, in which he plays a scientist, the only man who can explain to the protagonist why he's repeating the same hour of the same day in an endless loop. The film was remade as a TV movie in 1993, but by then a major theatrical release had already stolen its thunder: Groundhog Day uses a very similar premise (repeating a day instead of an hour), albeit with different themes and structure. The filmmakers and author of the 1973 short story attempted to sue the producers before giving up. (None of this has anything to do with Amendolia, of course, but this series is all about interesting anecdotes, so there you go.) Anyway...the actor's screen work has slowed in recent years, as theater consumed more of his time. In 2009, he began playing the Wizard of Oz in the national touring production of Wicked, which he discusses (along with his work in Twin Peaks of course) in an interview with Brad Dukes. (film pictured: 12:01 PM, 1990)


Emory is written individually by Mark Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels - his final appearance is credited to all three, plus Jerry Stahl. He is directed by Lesli Linka Glatter twice, and once each by Caleb Deschanel, David Lynch, and Todd Holland.

Emory is onscreen for roughly eleven minutes. He is in seven scenes in five episodes, taking place within a week. He's featured the most in episode 9, when Audrey catches him in One Eyed Jack's (his primary location). He shares the most screentime with Audrey.



• As always, Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer provides keen, wry insight into a member of the ensemble through Laura's eyes. The narrator writes, "Mr. Battis, the store's manager, reminds me of a large fruit - something slowly rotting .... What is he doing here and when will he leave? Poor guy." That note of pity doesn't last very long, as the entry details all of Emory's obnoxious qualities, complaining that he hovers around the perfume counter too much. "He's a constant pest," she writes, "who won't allow me a bullet blast or a pat on Ronnette's ass ... somewhat rotund and older, less distinguished than I had imagined and far less interesting to be around. Either way, I have to tell him sometime quite soon that he's more annoying to everyone down here than he is helpful, and that I personally am tired of pretending to smile at his ridiculous face and boring sense of humor." Later she meets with him in her office, observes to herself that he likes her, and accepts his invitation to One Eyed Jack's. The encounter drives her back to cocaine after a stint with sobriety.

• What is Jean talking about when he asks Emory to contact Ben and get Cooper to show up? Jean handles this by himself in the next episode (before casually killing Emory, whom he obviously has no further need for). Perhaps Jean and Blackie are stringing Emory along, making him think they needed him until they figured out the best time to get rid of him. Regardless, once he informs Blackie of Audrey's presence, and identifies the man in the tuxedo as Cooper, Emory's utility has ended. From that point on, he's more of a burden to the conspirators than an asset.

• Emory is mentioned again in episode 17, when FBI Agent Roger Hardy and Mountie Preston King confront Cooper with photos of dead bodies from One Eyed Jack's. Humorously, Emory's picture shows him sprawled out on the floor, just as we left him in episode 11 (a full day earlier than Cooper's raid), suggesting that Jean never saw fit to move, let alone bury, the body! However, this is obviously just a continuity oversight since there's no body in that room the day of the raid.


SHOWTIME: No, Amendolia is not on the cast list for 2017. Emory is dead, and it looks like he'll stay that way. I do wonder about the fate of the Horne's Department Store/One Eyed Jack's trafficking ring that Audrey exposes, especially since the police seem so unconcerned with breaking it up - or even charging Ben - but I'll leave that investigation for Ben's entry.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Betty is a family woman, almost unnervingly pleasant but harboring a deep, abiding love and concern for her husband and son.


Thursday, February 23, 1989
Betty Briggs sits quietly in her home, sewing as her husband Air Force Major Garland Briggs reads from the Book of Revelations in the Bible. They are interrupted by a doorbell and Betty welcomes Laura Palmer, the girlfriend of their son Bobby, into the house. She directs Laura to Bobby in the basement where "he belongs," as Laura jokes. She continues to listen to the Major read as Bobby and Laura come upstairs again and say goodnight. The Major tells Bobby to put out his cigarette (he doesn't) and then continues to read scripture.

Friday, February 24, 1989
Betty is massaging the Major's shoulders as he reads the newspaper. The phone rings and when she answers she is greeted by Sarah Palmer, the mother of Bobby's girlfriend. She is worried because Laura isn't at the house on a school morning and together the two mothers try to figure out where she might be. Betty explains that Bobby goes for an early-morning run before football practice and Sarah wonders if her husband took Laura with him to work. But when Sarah hangs up, Betty looks concerned. Later in the day, she and the Major must pick up Bobby from the sheriff's station where he has been taken for questioning after the murder of Laura. The concerned parents talk to the Bobby's lawyer and when Bobby exits he has no patience with his father's outreach. Betty is flustered and demands that they all just go home.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
The Briggs pray before dinner and the Major attempts to give Bobby a pep talk. The bratty teenager isn't particularly interested and his father ends up slapping his cigarette from his mouth. It lands in Betty's meat loaf and she picks it out with a stunned expression on her face before recovering; "We're here for you, Bobby," she says reassuringly, although Bobby doesn't look reassured.

Monday, February 27, 1989
Betty summons the men of the family with a big smile on her face (matching the yellow smiley-face pin on her lapel), adjusting her gloves as she holds a rosary and reminds them that Laura's funeral is imminent. The Major and Bobby don't seem very enthusiastic. At the funeral, Betty stands near the Major as the preacher pays tribute.

Wednesday, March 1, 1989
The Briggs sit in family therapy with Dr. Lawrence Jacoby and share Bobby's troubles with the psychiatrist: he's moody, he's violent, he drinks. Jacoby asks to see each family member alone, starting with Bobby. On their way out of the room, Betty looks back at their slouched-over son with concern.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Betty speaks with Sheriff Harry Truman and FBI Agent Dale Cooper about her husband, who disappeared in the woods the night before. Cooper was with him but has no idea what happened, and Betty can only help out so much. She acknowledges that he is fascinated with the woods, and that he often disappears although it's usually work-related, but can't tell them if he's attempted to contact "some element that lives in the woods" ("That's classified," she tells Cooper.) "There's certainly no manual to be married to it," she says with a sense of genial resignation. As she leaves, she offers to share some notes the Major left behind.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Bobby comes home in the middle of a thunderstorm to find his mother sitting alone in the dark. Betty begins to weep and they talk about the Major. She is worried that this disappearance might be different from the others. Bobby shares a recent experience with his father, in which the Major recalled a beautiful dream about the two of them. Betty praises the Major, and expresses her longing for him. Then the lights go out and the Major appears in an old pilot's uniform. He asks how long he's been gone, and an overjoyed Betty embraces him and doesn't let go.

Monday, March 27, 1989
At the RR diner, Betty and the Major cuddle and kiss while Bobby sits at the counter and holds hands with a waitress. Jacoby enters with Mrs. Palmer and interrupts the lovers' reverie, informing the Major that she has a message for him.

Betty's sphere in Twin Peaks encompasses the Briggs household and little else. That in itself is quite a bit, however. Through her husband and son, she's involved with Laura, the subsequent fallout over her murder, the top-secret business of the Air Force, the supernatural aura of the woods, and even Cooper's trip into the Black Lodge. She's usually more of a spectator than a participant, but we get a fairly strong sense of the town through her eyes. As a show, Betty's Twin Peaks is kinda quintessential: unsettlingly offbeat (even viewers who forget most scenes with her character will probably remember her playing with the scissors when Sarah calls), delightfully quirky (that cigarette in the meat loaf, the incongrous smiley pin on the way to the funeral), and surprisingly poignant.

Like several other supporting characters, Betty actually gets more breathing room in the backwater of season two, a much-maligned period of the show. In season one, she's little more than an amusing caricature, but episodes 18 and 19 allow her to develop an actual personality, as a woman who loves her husband very much but is pained by the sacrifices his gifts and responsibilities entail. Probably her most heartwarming arc is with Bobby; the sullen, bratty adolescent of late February has blossomed into a sensitive, compassionate young man by mid-March (at least towards his mother - his maturity in relation to Shelly and authority figures outside the home will take a little more time). No doubt the trauma of his girlfriend's death and the persistence of his father's mentorship contribute to his reformation, but perhaps his mother's worried patience plays a role too.

Stewart lived a dual life in the seventies, splitting time between her role as the wholesome schoolteacher Mrs. Beadle and the multiple-year opus that was production on David Lynch's debut feature Eraserhead, in which she played Mary X, member of not one, but two of the most dysfunctional families in cinema history. (It's not totally clear if the productions overlapped at all but Eraserhead took so long to finish that she started it before she'd been cast for the first season of Little House and the film was released at the end of the third season). Stewart's offscreen life was pretty wild too - she arrived in Los Angeles in the sixties and befriended Jim Morrison, living the hippie life to the hilt. Her recent memoir, Little House in the Hollywood Hills: A Bad Girl's Guide to Becoming Mrs. Beadle, Mary X, and Me documents her ups and downs over a long career, and she's discussed that journey (and shared excerpts) on the Red Room Podcast, Twin Peaks Unwrapped, and The Brad Dukes Show. She was also Brad Dukes'first interview on his site, paving the way for his iconic Reflections oral history book. Although her role in Twin Peaks is relatively small, Stewart has been a constant presence in fan communities since the show aired, and a crucial member of the Lynchverse from the very beginning. (series pictured: Little House on the Prairie, 1970s)


Stewart first heard about the show when David Lynch had dinner with her and her roommate Jack Nance (who starred as her husband in Eraserhead and played Pete on Twin Peaks). Betty was written by Mark Frost and David Lynch in the first couple episodes, continued in solo scripts by Harley Peyton and Mark Frost, and carried into the second season by Barry Pullman and Robert Engels (co-credited with Peyton and later Frost too). She was directed by Lynch, Duwayne Dunham (twice), Tina Rathborne, Lesli Linka Glatter, and Caleb Deschanel.

Betty is onscreen for roughly eleven minutes. She is in ten scenes in seven episodes (and the deleted scenes from the film), taking place in just over a month. She's featured the most in episode 19, when the Major returns to the Briggs home (her primary location). She shares the most screentime with the Major.



• Betty's prominent crucifix (and the palm fronds we see on the wall before the funeral) stem from the conception Stewart brought to the writers. As she's said in subsequent interviews, "Betty was Catholic, Garland was in the military, and Bobby was screwed!"

• That owl lamp she turns on when Bobby comes home is a thing of beauty.


SHOWTIME: Yes, Stewart is on the cast list for 2017. This will make her Lynch's longest living collaborator (only Catherine Coulson worked with him for an equal span). I'm quite curious how Betty is doing. Since the actor who play Major Briggs has passed away, Betty will be a widow. Will she still be presented in relation to her son, if not her husband? Will we see her with her grandkids, or even great grandkids? Or will Lynch and Frost present Betty outside the family sphere for the first time?

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Denise's professional acumen and pleasant personality keep those around her focused on the job, even as they adjust to her transition as a female.


Thursday, March 16, 1989
Denise Bryson arrives at the Twin Peaks sheriff's station on behalf of the DEA and she causes a stir right away, not because of her task - to investigate FBI Agent Dale Cooper for his alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking - but because of her appearance. "Dennis?" asks a stunned Cooper, who knew Denise when she identified and presented as a man. "Actually, I prefer Denise, if you don't mind," the DEA agent responds politely. She is introduced to Sheriff Harry Truman and Deputy Hawk Hill and chitchats about the pleasant nature of the town ("It's a bit more complicated than that," Sheriff Truman admits when Denise remarks, "I picture you chasing lost dogs and locking up the town drunk"), before discussing Cooper's case (Cooper says he's being set up) and her impending stay at the Great Northern Hotel. That night, Cooper greets her at the bar of the hotel, where a big wedding is being celebrated (she caught the bouquet, although she admits her advantage as a former varsity wide receiver). She tells him that they found cocaine residue in his car - while she believes it's a frame, there's only so much she can do to help him in her position. After she gently reminds him to call her "Denise" not "Dennis," Cooper asks about her transition, and she says that she discovered her identity during a sting operation in which she played a transvestite to bust a dealer. In the process, she discovered she felt far more relaxed in women's clothing and would remain in "costume" after the workday was finished. Later in the evening she dances with a delighted Deputy Andy Brennan.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Denise enters Cooper's hotel room to discover him with Audrey Horne, an attractive young woman. She's initially jealous to see another woman in with Cooper. Then she discovers Denise is in the DEA; thrilled at the possibility of female agents, an excited Audrey kisses a surprised Cooper on her way out the door. Cooper then reveals to Denise what the teenage girl brought him: black-and-white surveillance photos of a meeting between Jean Renault (a Canadian mobster), Preston King (the same corrupt Mountie who accused Cooper of stealing cocaine from Jean's bordello), Ernie Niles (a visitor to town), and Hank Jennings (an ex-con local). Cooper is impressed by the pictures and wants to set up a sting, but Denise pushes a more important subject: how old is Audrey? Cooper chuckles at Denise's interest, assuming that because she identifies as a women her sexuality would change. Denise playfully corrects his impression with a turn of phrase (see "Best Line") followed by, "Know what I mean?" A cheerful Cooper admits, "Not really." That night, Denise approaches Ernie in the RR Diner, revealing the photos of him, her DEA badge, and an ultimatum: either he helps them bust the rest of the gang or he's going back to prison for a long, long time. As a thunderstorm rages outside Cooper's room, Cooper and Denise interrogate a nervous Ernie, eventually getting him to reveal the proposed deal: four kilos of cocaine are to be unloaded, but he doesn't have a buyer. Denise volunteers for that role.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
A stressed-out Ernie, pushed by Cooper and Denise, finally makes the call to Jean, setting up the buy for that afternoon. A few hours later, while Ernie is being wired by Deputy Hawk, Denise returns to the room disguised as "Dennis," a male buyer in a suit and ponytail, feeling that this persona will be more "appropriate" for the exchange. Observed from a nearby hiding spot by the sheriff and his deputies, including Cooper (the suspended FBI agent has been deputized just for this occasion), Denise and Ernie enter the decrepit Dead Dog Farm to make the deal. Unfortunately, Ernie's wire is discovered due to his prodigious sweat. Jean holds a gun to Denise's head and shouts to Cooper that the gig is up. Cooper offers himself in exchange for the hostages and remains inside the building as night falls. Then, a "stranger" approaches the door: it's Denise, dressed as a waitress, and carrying a tray. She lifts her dress to display her leg, but just as Jean starts to recognize her, Cooper spots the handgun tucked into her garter and grabs it. He shoots Jean dead as Denise tackles Mountie King, punching him out and pressing him up against the wall to handcuff him. Cooper thanks her for her ingenuity, and she credits Truman for the idea. The mission has been successful: the truth of the drug allegations has been discovered, a narcotics ring has been bused, and Cooper has been vindicated.

Most immediately, Denise demonstrates the town's tolerance. In 1990, transgender acceptance was much lower than today, and certainly her status surprises some in the town (others don't even seem to notice). Yet, with a few corrections and some time to get used to it, most grow to casually accept her as who she is. Whether this is a function of an enlightened populace or the more outdated view that this is simply another wacky eccentricity in a town full of such quirks, most of the time the acceptance is pretty heartening. And she is a character who can be funny without being over-the-top, a welcome relief in the sometimes outlandish middle section of season two. As a DEA agent involved in a local drug operation, Denise emphasizes the criminal aspect of Twin Peaks the town and thus the crime-genre aspect of Twin Peaks the show. And she is yet another outsider who arrives in town and finds herself amenable to its charms.

The big part of Denise's arc occurs before we ever meet her, as explained during a couple minutes at the wedding reception. But she's clearly in a space where she's still navigating the contours of her newly discovered identity and especially its social implications. For whatever reason, she reverts to the "Dennis" identity when making the buy. Is this because she still views dangerous action as a man's job (as one feminist critique suggests, also noting that she only returns as Denise to use her sexuality as a tool)? Is this because she's prudently cognizant of the dealers' own prejudices? Is she simply embracing a convenient cover in case the criminals have seen her around town already? Whatever the reason, it allows us to glimpse Denise both as she was, and as she really no longer is (as several podcasters have noticed, her mannerisms and presentation are still very "Denise" even when dressed as "Dennis" - she's in drag as him, not in her other scenes). Denise's arc also reveals and emphasizes her loyalty to Cooper alongside her professional duty, demonstrating an ability to hold both in balance in a fashion Cooper himself can greatly admire.

Duchovny is most famous for the work that followed Twin Peaks a few years later, which many feel was at least partly inspired by Twin Peaks (and featured several other alums in guest parts, as did the Duchovny-hosted erotic cable series The Red Shoe Diaries a few years earlier). Agent Mulder on The X-Files is one of the iconic character of the nineties, a dashing offbeat young man who drew a bit from Agent Cooper while very much coloring within his own lines. Although he helmed two X-Files films, the bulk of Duchovny's work has been in television. He followed The X-Files with Californication and then Aquarius, though the latter series was recently cancelled (considering it deals with the Manson cult, and the upcoming season was to finally reach the murders, you'd think they could have let it continue for one more year, or even a few extra episodes). Most recently, Duchovny has been working on two major revivals of nineties shows: The X-Files and...well, we'll get to the other one soon. (series pictured: The X-Files, c. 1990s)


Denise was written by Barry Pullman, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels (in collaboration with Peyton). Mark Frost conceived the character, telling Brad Dukes in the oral history Reflections that he "wanted to introduce a character that had transgender issues; I just thought it was an interesting subject that hadn't really been tackled much, certainly not on network television." Denise was directed by Duwayne Dunham, Caleb Deschanel, and Todd Holland.

Denise is onscreen for roughly twelve minutes. She is in nine scenes in three episodes, taking place in three consecutive days. She's featured the most in episode 19, when she finds out Cooper was framed and contacts Ernie. Her primary location is the Great Northern Hotel. She is one of the top ten characters in all three of her episodes.




• From the script to episode 18, after Denise tells Cooper the story of her discovery: "So one thing led to another and I'm currently into a specialized kind of program called Gender Relocation Inhibition Therapy, or G.R.I.T. Part of my treatment is to dress the part for six months prior to any further therapy; hormones, electrolysis - ..." I encountered this excerpt in an (excellent) article about Twin Peaks' take on trans issues and initially thought the author was being cheeky, adding a bit of extra dialogue to make a satirical point about what the show was and wasn't willing to say about trans issues in 1990. To my surprise, however, I looked up the script and yup, this is a direct quote. Why was it removed from the episode, especially since viewers are sometimes confused about whether Denise is transgender or transvestite? Perhaps the director or editor felt the situation was best left ambiguous for aesthetic purposes or that such real-world details detracted from the whimsical air of Twin Peaks. Or perhaps it's a case of transphobia that the writer even anticipates in the script itself (the following scene description says this is "more than [Cooper] wants to hear" - a reaction shot that would have undermined the positive aspect of detailing Denise's process). Or perhaps, from the opposite angle, the creators felt they were getting too much wrong by representing the situation this way (I can't find references to the acronym outside of this script). Regardless, this solidifies where the writers were coming from with Denise and her gender identity.

• In Scott Frost's My Life, My Tapes: The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper, we meet Denise when she went by "Dennis," working undercover with Cooper in Tijuana. Cooper actually spends several years working with a DEA/FBI task force and express his temperamental difference with "the cowboy esprit de corps that is prevalent in their ranks."

• The question of how Twin Peaks handles a sensitive subject (that it was pretty far ahead of its time to address in a positive manner at all) seems to attract what could paradoxically be called "cautious enthusiasm." The praise I've seen takes the time and context into consideration (Denise's arc wrapped about a month before The Silence of the Lambs came out, after all) while a lot of the criticism addresses (though by no means exclusively) the casting of a cisgender man as Denise. She is definitely a character who comes up a lot on social media (see Twitter and Tumblr). Though I'm more interested in what trans woman have to say on the subject (please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments - I'm also keen to link to any applicable essays/posts), I am writing this entry so I might as well share my brief thoughts. It struck me on this viewing that, while the portrayal is very positive overall especially in context, every scene (even every time we return from a cutaway within a scene) makes room for at least one gag/punchline about Denise's gender. Many may be harmless, some are subtle enough to miss, but their persistence suggests the writers were not quite comfortable unless arching their eyebrow just a bit, nor could they allow her gender to recede entirely as other aspects of her character arose. Without completely dismissing the writers, who do some good work here along with some more questionable decisions, I think the direction and especially the performance are where Denise shines brightest. One notable aesthetic decision: Denise's first scene continues almost no music (and in Twin Peaks the score is never afraid to tell us how to feel). Her other scenes tread lightly on the soundtrack too; this is probably a source of both discomfort and appreciation for many viewers. Like so much else in Twin Peaks - both in terms of what it depicts and how it depicts - the portrayal of a trans character is caught between nervously relying on some lazy assumptions/devices and boldly, with almost unconscious ease, getting some big big things right that hardly anyone else in the mainstream pop culture could even see.


SHOWTIME: Yes, Duchovny is on the cast list for 2017. The casting will be both celebrated and controversial, especially since a quarter-century later there exists a widespread preference for trans actors playing by trans characters. However, Denise is viewed fondly by a lot of fans, and there's a lot to wonder about. How will David Lynch handle a character he never directed before? What about Frost, who created Denise but never wrote her scenes? Will the character present differently, not just given the intervening years, but the fact that she may have been through reassignment therapy since those episodes? Will Denise still be in the DEA? Will she work with Agent Audrey Horne? She caught the bouquet at the Milford wedding...is she married now?

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Blackie's sultry, sophisticated persona conceals a bitter fury toward the men who hold power over her, and a desire for vengeance.



Saturday, February 25, 1989
Black Rose O'Reilly makes a bold entrance, parting the red sea of her crimson-clad employees to emerge into the front room of One Eyed Jack's, a Canadian bordello. She greets Ben Horne, the owner of Jack's, and his brother Jerry at the bar. Ben recites William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 (contrasting her favorably to a summer day, for "thy eternal summer shall not fade...") but Jerry interrupts them to inquire after "the new girl." Blackie indicates a nervous young woman standing in the curtained hallway, Ben and Jerry flip a coin, and Ben - the winner - disappears with the first-time prostitute into the folds of the curtains. A bemused Blackie and disappointed Jerry return to the bar.

Thursday, March 2, 1989
Blackie notices a couple men in the casino and chats them up. One has a bushy moustache and big curly hair, while the other (whom she compares to Cary Grant) wears glasses and a tuxedo. They flirt and tease each other - it's evident they don't want to reveal their true identities, with one of them saying he owns a gas station but is also an oral surgeon. There's a fine line between suspicion ("you look like a cop") and attraction ("tonight might be your lucky night"). In Blackie's office, last weekend's new girl escorts the latest "new girl" in a black dress, another recruit from the perfume counter at Horne's Department Store. The girl introduces herself as Hester Prynne ("I read The Scarlet Letter in high school too," Blackie shoots back at her) and concocts a resume including time at Big Amos' in Calgary ("Big Amos is the name of my dog," Blackie chuckles after trapping the young woman). To rescue the interview, "Hester" retrieves a cherry from a drink on Blackie's desk, places it in her mouth and, after sloshing it around a little bit, removes a stem that has been tied into a perfect knot by her tongue. Blackie hires her on the spot. When she returns to the office, dressed in a frilly white outfit, Blackie asks her to choose a playing card to be sewed on the front. She selects the queen of diamonds and Blackie caresses her hand approvingly. When Ben Horne signs an important contract at One Eyed Jack's that evening, Blackie directs to him to the newest "new girl." Meanwhile, she's growing desperate for a fix; back in he office she asks Jerry why Ben is holding out on her. After some cruel mockery and intimidation he drops a little baggie of heroin on her desk and departs. She curses him while preparing her torniquet for injection.

Friday, March 3, 1989
The new girl visits Blackie while she is being massaged by two employees. Blackie scolds her for refusing a customer the night before, asking what "her type" is (with more than a little sexual interest) to which the snickering teenager responds, "Not you. No offense." Offended, Blackie offers a corrective while the guards grip the disobedient employee: "I don't want to hear another complaint about you. When you work for me, everybody's your type."

Saturday, March 4, 1989
Blackie hangs up the new girl's telephone right as she tearfully informs someone that she's in trouble. Behind Blackie is Emory Battis, the head of Horne's Department Store, who has just informed her that this disobedient prostitute is none other than Audrey Horne, the boss' daughter. Blackie offers a chilling, smiling threat: "You don't know what trouble is, not by a long shot."

Sunday, March 5, 1989
Blackie doses a gagged and bound Audrey with heroin as Emory videotapes. He's worried about the danger Ben presents, and wants to kill Audrey, but Blackie prefers a blackmail plot for vengeance as well as profit. She was hooked on drugs by Ben and wants to do the same to his daughter. Later, she and Emory look at a surveillance video from a few nights earlier. He recognizes the tuxedoed, bespectacled visitor as an FBI agent in town to investigate the death of local girl Laura Palmer (who briefly worked at Jack's). Jean Renault, a Canadian gangster, arrives with Blackie's despised sister Nancy. Blackie was Jean's lover once, but now Nancy has replaced her at his side. Blackie demands her sister "go back north or this deal goes south" but Jean refuses. He also confirms that Audrey must be killed when they've received the money.

Tuesday, March 7, 1989
Jean explains how he will kill Cooper (as vengeance for his own brother's death) and Audrey. Blackie leaves the room as Nancy enters; they scowl at one another. That night, Jean prepares the lethal dose and Blackie nearly tosses a drink in his face when he explains novelty as Nancy's appeal. Blackie is ready to leave but Jean asks for a kiss. As they embrace, he stabs her with the same knife he plans to use on Cooper. She slides to the floor, and her head rolls to the side, blood dripping from her mouth as Jean licks his smeared lips like a vampire. When he flees, she is left alone, sprawled out on the floor of the business she ran but ultimately couldn't control.

Blackie never enters the town of Twin Peaks (or even the U.S.) on the show, but she's intimately tied to its affairs (sometimes literally so). Blackie's introduction accompanies our first entrance to One Eyed Jack's and once she's dead we almost never see it again. Few characters are this synonymous with a single location. Blackie's Twin Peaks is a dark-but-not-too-dark, elegantly sexy noir, well-lit and brightly furnished but caught in perpetual night nonetheless. Greil Marcus has written that Twin Peaks is a fusion of the sylvan village and noir metropolis. One Eyed Jack's with its bustling traffic, libertine ethos, and sophisticated intrigue definitely leans toward the latter (although its wood furnishing and the occasional exterior of the blinking neon sign in the forest remind us that it's surrounded and penetrated by the former). The first season shows us the surface of Blackie's world: a bustling business involving contact with the outside society. The second season goes beneath this surface, and we seldom see Blackie interacting with customers or running her operation again - she's too busy struggling with addiction, desire, and revenge in the shadowy backrooms of Jack's. That second season also emphasizes the pulpy, crime-genre trappings of Blackie, One Eyed Jack's, and Twin Peaks as a whole (the kidnapping story has the most screentime of any subplot in the episodes between the premiere and the run-up to the killer's reveal).

As we move along in this series, we will be encountering characters who are in Twin Peaks long enough to undergo noticeable changes during two seasons. Blackie is one of them. Throughout season one, she seems self-assured, in control, elegantly bemused by the goings-on around her. This immediately shifts during her first scene in season two, even though it takes place within hours, even minutes, of most of her earlier scenes: she's desperate, dependent, and bitter. (Keith Phipps points out how sudden this is in his A.V. Club episode guide: "Blackie's a junkie and Horne's her dealer? Since when? Did we miss an episode?") Her power has been diminished (in our eyes) and she's eager to gain more however she can. This works in two ways, one more evident in the early episodes of the season (especially the premiere), the other as her arc winds to a conclusion. Seeing Blackie's vulnerability and insecurity deepens the character, adding an explicit psychosexual shade to the glossier image we got before. However, it also allows her to become a more pathetic antagonist at times, addled by heroin, driven by resentment, and double-crossed by everyone around her. Essentially, the effectiveness of this turn depends on the writers and especially the directors. Lynch's scenes with Blackie, especially the later ones, are her best, demonstrating the limits of her power and why she is so driven to exercise what she's got. When he's not directing, she slips more easily into cliche - the scene where she tells Audrey to "ride the white tiger" being a prime example - and we become nostalgic for the cooler character of season one (this kind of describes season two's issues in a nutshell: higher highs, but less consistent and cohesive than the first season). In the end, Blackie's death (stylish as it is) feels rather anticlimactic after her strong start, reinforcing the notion that she's become a clingy sidekick to Jean. If the execution is not entirely satisfying, the shape of her narrative does make some consistent sense. Ben's tribute to her mature beauty is redirected by his interest in the new girl, Jerry insults her as being a washed-up junkie, Blackie's treatment of Audrey is explicitly revenge for being exploited by her father, and Jean tells Blackie he's chosen her little sister over because she offers "something new." In her introductory scene, when she seems to have all the authority and bearing she lacks in her exit, Ben's Shakespearean serenade is cut off just as he says "Nor will death..." How appropriate.

Aside from her roles in several thrillers and horror films throughout the eighties, information on Catlin is hard to find. In fact, she's the most mysterious actor I've covered so far. I did run across an interesting anecdote in the 1990 book Twin Peaks: Behind the Scenes by Mark Altman. He quotes Todd Holland, who directed Blackie's penultimate episode: "Victoria Caitlin [sic], who plays Blackie, said to me, 'I don't die, do I?' I had read ahead to [Season 2] Episode 5 and I just sort of winced when she asked me. My face turned white; I didn't know what to say. She got really upset because she was having fun on the show and I said, 'I'm sorry, I feel like the Grim Reaper.'" Compounding the poignancy of the anecdote, Catlin has no screen credits after this point, save for a bit part in the show The New Adam-12 that aired a couple weeks after her character's death on Twin Peaks. If anyone knows what she's been up to since then, please feel free to share in the comments. (film pictured: Ghoulies, 1984)


Catlin was written by David Lynch, Mark Frost, Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, and Barry Pullman. She was directed by Lynch, Frost, Caleb Deschanel, Lesli Linka Glatter, and Graeme Clifford.

Blackie is onscreen for roughly fifteen minutes. She is in thirteen scenes in seven episodes, taking place over a week and a half. She's featured the most in episode 6, when she hires Audrey. All of her scenes are set at One Eyed Jack's. She shares the most screentime with Audrey. She is one of the top ten characters in episode 6.




• Blackie is one of the few bisexual characters on the show (as far as we know). Her attraction to Audrey is pretty clearly conveyed in the season two premiere, and Jennifer Lynch explores this idea even more openly in The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer in which she sleeps with Laura Palmer, declaring, "I'm going to teach you a thing or two about fucking right now." Instead Laura turns the tables: "By the time I left Blackie, she was on the floor, naked except for her jewelry, and was humiliated because I had been able to take total control and show her things she had never thought possible. I took her into a very dark erotic place ... but I left her there alone." The diary mentions Nancy too (which I should have noted in her entry), saying that she brought Laura's clothes to her house after she was fired and then told her something important. However, the page detailing what Nancy said is torn from the diary.

• Nancy was aware of Blackie's impending death beforehand and not only didn't warn her, but actively encouraged Jean to kill her. Jean killed Emory a day earlier, but it's not clear if Blackie knows about this.

• Unbeknownst to Blackie, Cooper and Sheriff Harry Truman are raiding One Eyed Jack's when she is killed (in fact Truman witnesses her death from just outside the room). Her killer will himself die within two weeks - Cooper shoots Jean after being taken hostage at Dead Dog Farm.

• Cooper is confronted with a photo of Blackie's corpse in episode 18, when he's accused of stealing drugs during the One Eyed Jack's raid. This is the last time we see her image or hear about her on the show.


SHOWTIME: No, Catlin is not on the cast list for 2017. Blackie joins the every-growing chorus of dead Twin Peaks characters as we make our way through these studies. There's not much left to wonder about her, but I do wonder if her sister felt guilty for colluding in her demise.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

In a town that buries so much of its truth, the Singer's voice provides a chorus that not only comments on the emotion of Twin Peaks but gives it form.


Sunday, February 19, 1989*
Laura Palmer enters the Road House where the blonde performer, clad in a white dress on a stage enveloped in red curtains, is singing "Questions in a World of Blue". Laura weeps as she sits down at a table. Donna Hayward enters the bar and watches her. The bartender Jacques Renault gestures toward her and two men approach, offering money in exchange for sex. She mocks them and Donna approaches, knocking back a drink to show Laura that she's ready to tag along.

Friday, February 24, 1989
The singer is dressed in a biker's black leather this weekend, singing "Falling" while Norma Jennings and Ed Hurley discuss their love affair and dream of dumping their spouses. As the singer moves into "The Nightingale", Bobby Briggs and Mike Nelson arrive, stirring up some sardonic interest among the bikers. When Donna walks in, Mike yells at her and first Ed and then the bikers come to her rescue. As Bobby and Mike administer and receive beatdowns, the singer keeps crooning. FBI Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry Truman can hear the tune from outside, but the never go into the Road House.

Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Hiking through the woods, discussing Laura's murder from the week before, Cooper, Truman, Deputy Hawk Hill, and Dr. Will Hayward hear music wafting through the trees. It's a vinyl record of the Road House singer's "Into the Night" stuck on repeat, as they discover when they finally kick in the door of the cabin where it's playing. Cooper removes the needle and remarks, "There's always music in the air..."

Thursday, March 9, 1989
Wearing a red dress, the singer joyously recites "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" as Donna and James Hurley discuss a sober subject: the death of local recluse Harold Smith. Donna feels guilty but James shrugs it off: "Everybody's hurt inside." Truman, Cooper, and Margaret "The Log Lady" Lanterman arrive and sit at a table, as if anticipating something. Donna mouths the words of the song to James and he smiles. Time passes, and the singer is deep in a much moodier number, "The World Spins". In Cooper's vision she disappears, and then a giant dissolves into her image once again. Stunned, he watches as she resumes the final verse of the song. An old room service waiter approaches to console him, and Bobby looks around from the bar, vaguely upset. A mournful mood is sweeping over several Road House patrons, including Donna who bursts into sobs as James embraces her. Cooper listens to the music as it fades away, staring at the singer as if she can articulate the secret he feels but cannot speak.

Well, that's just it, right? The singer both presides over interactions between the townspeople and gives them greater meaning. She's all about creating and reflecting impressions of Twin Peaks. When I first reviewed the series, I wrote, "As she sings the show's theme, with lyrics written by Lynch, it's as if the buried underworld of Twin Peaks has suddenly surfaced in all its mystical, oddly transcendent beauty. Angelo Badalamenti's score has lent a melancholy, mysterious underpinning to many scenes but now that this emotional and musical substream is out in the open, part of the fabric of what we're watching, it's quite disorienting. This is a reflexive moment, but one which actually strengthens the hold of that mysterious world onscreen." All of the singer's scenes seem vibrantly relevant to the core of the story: Laura has a crisis of conscience near the eve of her death; Laura's friends express their grief through violence while an older couple attempts to carve out a quiet, tender moment on this melancholy night; the police retrace the final night of Laura on a sunlit day, discovering a location that evokes the magical energy of Twin Peaks within its wooden walls; and finally the show's horrifying secret is surrounded by the disorienting awe and shock of central characters at the Road House. The singer's final appearance on the series marks the dramatic killer's reveal - when she fades away we are swept into Maddy's brutal murder at the Palmer house, and when she fades back up we are allowed to reflect on the violence we've just witnessed and linger over the effects of this realization that this trauma and (perhaps especially) its ripple effect on the community are the true subject of Twin Peaks. The singer bows her head with the weight of this knowledge and Cooper lifts his is a painful attempt to understand it.

The singer is not quite a "character" in the sense of the others we've met so far. Her entire performance consists of singing, and she might very well be the person who plays her. What does have an arc, and a very neat one, is what happens as she sings. The "Questions in a World of Blue" number from the film was of course the last performance to be shot - and it contains a subtle echo of the singer's first scene: two men at the bar notice Laura and approach her, just as Mike and Bobby notice Donna in the pilot. But if we place this scene first in the narrative, the symmetry really emerges. The singer's first appearance is preceded by Laura staring at her own reflection as the pain and sorrow wash over her, and the singer's last appearance is followed by Cooper, staring up at the ceiling as if trying to collect and comprehend the psychic energy released by Laura less than two weeks earlier. If we fold the narrative over itself, that wave of inexplicable emotion washing over the characters echos Laura's agony as she enters the Road House. The characters can feel this without being able to reach back across time and comfort her. The singer is the closest they have to a bridge.

Long before she was involved with Twin Peaks, Cruise appeared in several Minneapolis stage productions of children's classics, filmed and featured on television. Naturally, given the theatrical and Minneapolis connections, one might assume Cruise was linked Mark Frost. On the contrary, few Twin Peaks alums are more heavily intertwined with the career of David Lynch. Lynch met Cruise through Blue Velvet, his first collaboration with the composer Angelo Badalamenti. Lynch was looking for someone who could match the vocal quality of Elizabeth Fraser, whose cover (with This Mortal Coil) of "Song to the Siren" Lynch was unable to acquire for the film (he would later find a place for it in Lost Highway). Badalamenti turned to his old acquaintance Cruise for advice, but none of her recommendations panned out so she finally volunteered herself. Even though she was a show-stopping belter by nature, not a whispering crooner, she attempted the effect that Lynch and Badalamenti sought, and all three were amazed with the results: "Mysteries of Love", a hit song from the Blue Velvet soundtrack. Lynch, Badalamenti, and Cruise recorded a whole album, Floating into the Night, several years later. One of the songs, "Falling", became the instrumental theme for Twin Peaks and Lynch cast Cruise to sing the vocals onstage in the pilot. Later that year she starred as the "The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman" in Lynch's live stage show Industrial Symphony No. 1 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, performing a forty-minute stream of Lynch/Badalamenti compositions amongst surreal setpieces. The performance was released on video the following year during the Twin Peaks craze. Her association with the series led to fame and acclaim; "Falling" appeared on the pop charts while Cruise replaced Sinead O'Connor on Saturday Night Live (when that singer dropped out to protest the episode's guest, Andrew Dice Clay), went on tour, and was eventually incorporated into the B-52s. Meanwhile, she fell out with Lynch and Badalamenti during the production of their second album Voice of Love, eventually reconciling and discussing their turbulent collaboration in the documentary Secrets From Another Place. (performance pictured: Industrial Symphony No. 1)


Unsurprisingly, the singer was primarily directed by David Lynch - all of her visual appearances to be exact, while her one vocal needle-drop was handled by Lesli Linka Glatter. Mark Frost's teleplays (one in collaboration with Lynch, the others solo) always mention her in detail - the part was obviously written with her in mind, with the pilot script even name-dropping "The Nightingale." Cruise's role in the film was written by Lynch and Robert Engels.

The singer's music is heard for roughly sixteen minutes (including when the band plays but she's not singing). She is in four scenes in three episodes and Fire Walk With Me, taking place over a couple weeks. She's featured the most in episode 14, when she sings "The World Spins" for the grieving bar. Her primary location is the Road House. She shares the most screentime with Donna. She is one of the top ten characters in episode 14.



• There are a few other "lines" I wanted to choose but they didn't quite work. One evocative lyric "Moving near the edge at night/Dust is dancing in the space" (from "The World Spins") is partially cut off in the episode. My favorite Julee Cruise lyric of all is never featured on the series at all, nor is the song. "Floating" kicks off Floating into the Night when Cruise sings, "When you told my secret name, I burst in flames and burned..."

• *I'll probably have to address it again elsewhere, but the Fire Walk With Me timeline is a little hard to pin down. I'm locating Laura's Road House encounter on a Sunday night because in The Missing Pieces Lynch shows an establishing shot of a church with parishioners filing outside several minutes before a deleted scene from the Road House/Pink Room trip. Keep in mind too that the next day was historically a holiday (President's Day).

• In my Journey Through Twin Peaks series, I always bracketed each of the four parts with a Julee Cruise song that wasn't featured on the show. With the clips cued up to the appropriate spot: Part 1 kicks off with "Floating" and ends on "Up in Flames"; Part 2 stretches from "Mysteries of Love" to "Movin' on Up"; Part 3 opens with "I Remember" (picking up a different part of the song a few minutes later) before closing with "I Float Alone"; and Part 4 is launched by "She Would Die for Love" (whose lyrics eerily evoke the narrative of Fire Walk With Me) and concludes with "Until the End of the World".


SHOWTIME:
Yes, Cruise is on the cast list for 2017! (Apologies to the early readers; I initially got this wrong.) This is great news. She will be joined by later Lynch collaborators like Chrysta Bell but nothing will top seeing the original Road House muse, hopefully in her original haunts. She's been cloaked in red (framing violence), white (marking lost innocence), and black (on a day of mourning). How will she appear this time?

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

The Log Lady, eccentric, mystical, compassionate, is the heart and soul of Twin Peaks.


Sunday, February 19, 1989
Laura Palmer approaches the Road House and is surprised to see the Log Lady standing near the entrance waiting for her. This middle-aged woman, cradling a log in her arms, puts her hand on Laura's forehead as if she's a doctor offering a prescription, and poetically articulates her spiritual plight. Then she places her hand on Laura's cheek, clasps Laura's hand in hers, and quietly walks away. Laura is deeply moved.

Thursday, February 23, 1989
Standing outside her cabin in the woods, the Log Lady weeps. She overhears screams from the forest around her, but there is nothing she can do to stop them.

Friday, February 24, 1989
FBI Agent Dale Cooper peppers Sheriff Truman with questions about various Twin Peaks citizens at the town hall meeting, and eventually asks about the lady violently flicking the light switch. "Who's the lady with the log?" he asks. "We call her the Log Lady," Truman explains straightforwardly. She stands against the wall and listens as Cooper describes the murder of a girl named Teresa Banks a year earlier, linking it to the death of Laura that morning.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
The Log Lady notices Cooper and Truman watching her in the RR Diner. She approaches Cooper and aggressively tells him her log witnessed something the night Laura died. She demands he ask the log itself what it heard and when he hesitates she snorts, "I thought so," and storms away.

Monday, February 27, 1989
The Log Lady stands mournfully next to Father Clarence as he delivers the sermon for Laura's funeral. She holds the log with a handkerchief, as if to dry its own tears.

Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Cooper, Truman, Deputy Hawk Hill, and Doc Hayward approach a log cabin with guns drawn (except for Hayward of course) and are surprised to see the Log Lady emerge as if she was expecting them. She invites them inside, offering tea and cookies but no cake. Cooper almost declines but the others silence him and accept her invitation. Seated around the table, they listen as she recalls her husband's death (in a fire soon after their wedding) and slaps Cooper's hand away when he reaches for a cookie. Then the Log Lady lifts her log into her arms and Cooper asks it what happened the night of Laura's death. Hand placed sensitively on its bark, the Log Lady recalls that she heard two men and two girls moving through the forest. Later she heard another man passing by with the same two girls as they screamed. And then, she says, "the owls were silent."

Friday, March 3, 1989
The Log Lady sits in a booth at the RR Diner, chewing her pitch gum and eventually spitting it out onto the table before sticking her discarded wad on the wall and beginning to chew a new batch.

Saturday, March 4, 1989
The Log Lady enters the RR and sits at the counter next to Major Garland Briggs. Norma Jennings, the owner of the diner, approaches and warmly welcomes her before asking, politely but firmly, to spit her gum into an ashtray from now on instead of the counter or the booth. The Log Lady seems hurt, but after Norma moves away she focus her attention on the Major instead. A bit harshly, she informs him that her log has something to say. Can he hear it? Courteously, he answers, "No, ma'am, I cannot." She translates: "Deliver the message." The Major takes this to heart, knowing exactly what it means.

Wednesday, March 9, 1989
The Log Lady emerges at the Twin Peaks sheriff's station and tells Cooper and Truman, "We don't know what will happen, or when. But there are owls at the Road House." The trio arrives at the Road House and takes a table to watch the musical performance onstage. The Log Lady devours peanuts with gusto. A little while later, Cooper experiences a vision of a giant and it seems that the Log Lady, unlike everyone else at the bar, sees him too. When he disappears, an elderly waiter approaches the table and comforts Cooper by saying, "I'm so sorry." The Log Lady hears him and turns to Cooper with a pained expression.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
In a cheerful mood at Dougie and Lana Milford's wedding reception at the Great Northern Hotel, the Log Lady sits down with Pete Martell and Mayor Dwayne Milford, declaring "I just love Milford weddings!" Pete seems particularly perturbed by her as she praises the cake; when she watches Dougie and Lana cut it there is a slight melancholy to her appearance, as if remembering her own short-lived marriage.

Wednesday, March 22, 1989
The Log Lady approaches the counter at the RR and places her fingers on the Major's neck, which features a strange tattoo. They go to the sheriff's station together and Cooper draws the Major's tattoo on the blackboard. The Log Lady recalls a mysterious experience in the woods when she was a little girl and shows the tattoo on her leg. Cooper draws that too and listens as she recalls the incident: "I was seven years old. I went walking up in the woods and when I got back I was told I had disappeared for a day. All I could recall was a falsh of light and the mark was on my leg." She also heard the sound of an owl; the only other time she witnessed these two signs together was just before her husband died.

Thursday, March 23, 1989
Enjoying her pie at the RR counter, the Log Lady is agitated by an FBI agent with a hearing aid. Proclaiming his love for the waitress, saying that he can hear her and it's a miracle, he is forcefully reminded by the Log Lady that miracles happen every day: "This cherry pie is a miracle!"

Sunday, March 26, 1989
At the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, local scoundrel Tim Pinkle is groping the Log Lady and she's forced to shove him away. Bobby Briggs watches and then turns to see someone else dressed as the Log Lady. When he turns back to where she was, she's gone. Later that night the (real) Log Lady appears at the sheriff's station where Pete accuses her of stealing his truck (Cooper corrects him: a man named Windom Earle, apparently disguised as the Log Lady, stole the vehicle.) The Log Lady offers Cooper a jar of oil that her husband gave her before he died. According to him (via her), it's "an opening to a gateway." Cooper and Truman smell it and declare enthusiastically, "Scorched engine oil!" Then Ronette Pulaski, the other girl in the woods with Laura when she died, is welcomed into the conference room, where she smells the engine oil and recoils in horror. As the Log Lady (who heard their voices that night) listens, Ronette recognizes this scent from "the night Laura Palmer was killed."

It's hard to believe the Log Lady is forty-eighth on this list, so integral is she to the spirit of both Twin Peaks the town and Twin Peaks the show. She's a touchstone, someone we don't necessarily turn to all that often but who reminds us of the fundamentals whenever we do. Her first, most striking feature is her eccentricity. Who carries a log around everywhere? That's a very Twin Peaks thing to do, and it's no wonder her face (and upper torso - gotta have that log in there) became a short-hand icon for the show as much Laura wrapped in plastic or Cooper with his tape recorder. It's also significant that the object she carries everywhere is a piece of wood. Twin Peaks is largely defined by wood - the town is surrounded by trees, the primary industry (destroyed in the course of the series) is lumber, and the buildings are usually constructed and/or decorated with timber. That's key too: one of Twin Peaks' design strategies was to bring the outside inside and the Log Lady certainly does that, carrying a piece of the forest wherever she goes, to a town meeting about a serial killer, to the diner for a cup of coffee, to the Road House to crunch on peanuts and witness a spiritual visitation. That mystic ability is also crucial to her importance (she's even linked to electricity in the pilot, though the spiritual aspect of that association won't become overt until the prequel). The Log Lady always treats her log not just as a person, but one imbued with psychic abilities. When the authorities visit her home, she regales them with the mythology of the woods; later she delivers messages to both the Major and Cooper, helping them to express or witness supernatural forces at work. She eventually reveals her own contact experience (which is further explored in other Twin Peaks media) and appears in the final episode bearing one of the show's spirit world totems: a jar of oil that, according to her late husband, was "an opening to a gateway." The Log Lady has gone on to represent Twin Peaks in everything from magazine covers (she was the first cast member interviewed by the fan magazine Wrapped in Plastic, opening a gateway indeed) to merchandise to parodies to offbeat tributes. When John Malkovich portrayed a handful of Lynch characters for Sandro Miller's recent art project Psychogenic Fugue, they included such unforgettable figures as Dale Cooper, the Elephant Man, Lost Highway's Mystery Man, Lynch himself...and the Log Lady. Brad Dukes (who watched the series when he was just nine) has pointed out that the Log Lady's appearance was so sharp and immediately identifiable she could almost be a Sesame Street character. In fact, she was: in the spring of 1991, the show's Monsterpiece Theatre brought Cookie Monster to the town of Twin Beaks where he sipped coffee, munched pie, and ran into a bird carrying...you guessed it, a log. The Log Lady's iconographic quality is so strong that she's one of only two characters to be impersonated within the narrative of Twin Peaks itself (the other is Laura by her cousin Maddy). Windom Earle disguises himself as the Log Lady in the penultimate episode and this distorted version of the beloved figure was supposed to be the last time we saw "her" onscreen. However, David Lynch had other ideas. Because of his intervention, in the film especially, she becomes a key contact with Laura as well as Cooper and thus one of the important bridges in Twin Peaks. As one of the few individuals to actually break through and reach Laura in her last days, and the only one (aside from the killer and a catatonic fellow victim) to hear her final cries, she is a conduit for the energies that characterized and overcame Laura. And I haven't even mentioned the Log Lady introductions (don't worry, they're coming up). The Log Lady is Twin Peaks.

To trace the Log Lady's journey it makes sense to consider production rather than chronology, and begin with her cameo in the pilot. Actually, we could begin even earlier - fifteen years earlier to be exact - but I'll save that for the following section. In the pilot, the Log Lady is no more than a featured extra. She wasn't in the script, and most of the time she hovers in the background of the town meeting. She holds her log straight and horizontal in front of her, hands cupped underneath somewhat awkwardly (this may have been because, as the actress later reported, the log was freshly cut and still oozing sap). She's only highlighted, briefly, when hissing "Shhhh!" and flicking the light switch. She's given a more significant role in one scene of the following episode, including her first line: "For your information, I heard you speaking about Laura Palmer...one day my log will have something to say about this." He grouchiness and eccentricity are highlighted and the seeds are deftly planted for a later encounter. Her longest appearance of the whole series occurs after the midpoint of season one, when her importance to the town and the mystery is expanded; the bemused deference that everyone but Cooper pays her demonstrates the respect she commands from the townspeople even as they look at her a bit askance. We also learn her name, Margaret, for the first time (though her title always seems more appropriate). Throughout the second season, she alternates between comical glimpses (spitting gum in the diner, chowing cake at the wedding, fending off Pinkle's advances at the pageant) and crucial plot advancement (two rendezvous with the Major, and two rendezvous with Cooper - plus a sit-down for all three). When we finally see her with Laura in Fire Walk With Me, she isn't grouchy. She's not an outsider regarded with affectionate distance. Laura gets her, and she gets Laura, offering a gentle warning that is less judgmental than prophetic. And then the Log Lady departs with a compassionate gesture that chills Laura but also nudges her forward on her own journey, the most essential in all of Twin Peaks. What began as a goofy quirk woven into the texture of the town has emerged over the course of the series as a core value. The eccentricity has become the epiphany.

Coulson had a long, storied career in front of and behind the camera, as well as onstage. She was camera assistant on many films in the seventies and early eighties (a pioneer in the field, she was one of the first female camera assistants to break into the union). On films like Opening Night and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, she pulled focus, loaded magazines, and/or operated the camera herself, a craft she learned during her stint as "assistant director" (actually, jack of all trades) on Eraserhead. Because that film took years to make, her actual Lynch debut was the short experiment The Amputee, in which she plays the title character. Counting by date of completion, this makes her Lynch's longest collaborator, spanning forty-four years. On the set of Eraserhead, Lynch and Coulson would joke about making an educational series called I'll Test My Log With Every Branch of Knowledge in which Coulson would play a "Log Girl" who takes her log to various professionals and learns about their trade. When Lynch finally called Coulson up in the late eighties and told her it was time to put the "Log Girl" on film, she agreed but - no longer in her early thirties as she had been on Eraserhead - suggested they update the "Girl" to a "Lady". During her bout of pop culture celebrity in the early nineties, Coulson took on more TV and movie roles but eventually she focused mostly on the stage. She was a long-standing member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival right up until her death several years ago. That event shook the Twin Peaks community, because Coulson not only played a beloved character but had long been one of the most active participants in fan events and publications. (Coulson has given great interviews to Brad Dukes and Cameron Cloutier, among many others - check out this lengthy transcript from the early eighties for example: it's a must-read stuffed with anecdotes about living inside Eraserhead for a half a decade.) Coulson was a steward of Twin Peaks on and offscreen - and she kept that log for the rest of her life, taking it with her on plane flights, insuring it, placing it in a vault where it could be kept moist, and eventually passing it on to her friend Charlotte Stewart at the end of her life. The Log Lady is gone, but her spirit - and her log - live on. (film pictured: The Amputee, 1973)


The Log Lady was in all but one of David Lynch's episodes, and he directed nearly half of hers (and more than half her total screentime). She was also directed by Duwayne Dunham (twice), Lesli Linka Glatter, James Foley, and Tim Hunter. Lynch improvised her cameo in the pilot (probably in consultation with co-writer Mark Frost) as well as in the finale (at which point he wasn't consulting Frost much at all), and he co-wrote her role in another episode and in the film. Writers Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, and Barry Pullman also contributed to her characterization. For obvious reasons, Lynch tends to get the lion's share of attribution for the Log Lady. She was his concept, played by his close friend, and he directed her more than anyone else; he also placed her at the forefront of the show with his Log Lady introductions. However, Frost deserves a great deal of credit for shaping the Log Lady's persona and her place in the narrative, carving out the particular mythos that has been celebrated ever since. He wrote or co-wrote five of her episodes (not including the finale, since she was added later), and wrote her most sustained sequence in the series, full of artfully-crafted exposition and revealing character quirks. The log cabin scene places her on the vital periphery of Laura's tragedy and gives voice to the spirituality of fire, wood, and owls in ways that would echo throughout the rest of the series - in a sense, this sequence is Frost's Red Room. It's unknown to what extent this background was broadly worked out with Lynch during phone calls (the director was on the set of Wild at Heart at the time, while Frost was handling the day-to-day duties of Twin Peaks' first season), but it was Frost who wrote the dialogue and shaped the scene on the pages of his first solo script. The result has a distinctly Frostian feel, from the delineation of the town's spiritual motifs to its fascination with how "normal" characters interact with Margaret to her placement within a literary/folkloric tradition of wise hermits to the nod toward Great Expectations' Miss Havisham with her romantic life frozen at her wedding day (Frost has often referred to his conception of Twin Peaks as Dickensian, and at one point we even see Catherine reading a copy of Great Expectations). Frost was likely behind the character's other major interventions in the narrative and she has continued to mean a lot to him over the years - in 2016, he wrote a loving tribute to the Log Lady as part of The Secret History of Twin Peaks.

The Log Lady is onscreen for roughly sixteen minutes - about a third of an episode. She is in sixteen scenes in thirteen episodes (plus the feature film and deleted scenes collection), taking place over five weeks. She's featured the most in episode 5, when we visit her log cabin. Her primary location is the RR Diner (though the cabin is not far behind). She shares the most screentime with Cooper. Her appearances are so short (however concentrated their energy) that her character is never among the top ten characters of any episode. If we include the Log Lady introductions as part of the story, her total screentime leaps to forty-three minutes (ranking her at #31) and her primary location would be the log cabin by a long shot. The combined length of those introductions is ten minutes longer than her entire time on the series.



Occasionally during this series I'll add a bonus section addressing spin-offs that star a particular character. Off the top of my head, only two other characters will require this: Cooper and Laura. That's how vital the Log Lady is to Twin Peaks. In this case, David Lynch wrote and directed thirty short segments in which the Log Lady addresses the camera from inside her cabin. These passages were filmed for the Bravo network's re-airing of the series a year after Fire Walk With Me premiered in theaters. A new one screened before each episode, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes in length, and they were later attached to the episodes on DVD and blu-ray releases. They have been transcribed online. This is the Log Lady introducing the episodes, not Catherine Coulson: she is fully in character, existing somewhere between the in-universe world of the show and a recognition that this is all a story being told. She never uses the words "television" or "show" or "series," it's more like she is telling a story by a (boarded-up) fire and the images we are seeing are communicated telepathically. The monologues are usually cryptic, sometimes maddeningly so, although a few are on-the-nose ("There is a depression after an answer is given," she says in the episode where Cooper solves Laura's mystery. "It was almost fun not knowing.") Others remark on touchstones of the particular episode - creamed corn, a death mask, a drawer pull - but only to deepen the mystery rather than offer any answers. How could she, without inadvertently misleading us toward an overly literal viewpoint. As she says near the end: "There are clues everywhere - all around us. But the puzzle maker is clever. The clues, although surrounding us, are somehow mistaken for something else. And the something else - the wrong interpretation of the clues - we call our world." Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Log Lady introductions is the subtle way they change the overall shape of Twin Peaks, implying that there is an underlying cohesion to this messy series: it really adds up to something after all.


• Martha Nochimson writes eloquently about the Log Lady introductions in her book The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood: "The ordinary television narrator is a powerful illusionist device. His reality - and it is almost always a he - presents itself as more actual than the fiction it introduces, doing so by direct address to the camera and an appeal to the authority of reason not to the mythology of the story it introduces. The typical narrator adds to the typical fictional narrative even more logic than it already contains, a double dose of the dominance of rationality and social labeling. In contrast, by donning the authority of the narrator, Margaret unobtrusively turns the role inside out. As a part of the fiction, she doubles the dose of the nonrational and subconscious. Margaret does not offer a logical handle on Twin Peaks in the style of Alistair Cooke, the prototypical 'host,' who seeks to ground in logic the events of Masterpiece Theatre's dramatization with his user-friendly plot summaries and his historical contextualizations. In contrast, Margaret never gives us a summary of events- she typically avoids any reference to the story events on the show - or any conventional historical information bearing on the story. Nor does she give us the less formal historical handle - gossip about the making of Twin Peaks - to satisfy the obvious hunger for such detail. Rather, she asks us to come together in a social act of letting go of labels, handles, and formal contextualizations."

• The Log Lady made a surprise appearance during the 1990 Emmys when Twin Peaks was nominated for fourteen awards (she was nominated for two). To uproarious laughter, the camera reveals Coulson in character sitting with the audience, cradling her log and asking who was going to win the next award. "Really?" she says in response to an answer only she can here, and then, in typical Lynchian fashion, she simply moves on without revealing the secret. (As the show returns to commercials, the log tells her something else and she replies, "You should've thought of that before we sat down!")

• Between Fire Walk With Me and her intros for Bravo, the Log Lady appeared in one other piece of Twin Peaks media: Japanese commercials for Georgia Coffee. David Lynch created four quick advertisements that tell an interlocking mystery story using various Twin Peaks icons. In each of the spots, when Cooper proclaims the deliciousness of the product the Log Lady pops up to pronounce, "It's true." She also appeared in a promo a couple years earlier, when the show moved from Saturday to Wednesday. In a parody of The Wizard of Oz, she stands by Cooper's bed as he awakens from a terrible dream and learns that the series will be airing on a new night.

• In Brad Dukes' Reflections oral history, Coulson reports, "I remember some Japanese company wanted to buy [the log] at one time, because the show was very popular in Japan. I wisely said, 'No, the log is not for sale,' but my daughter just graduated from college, and I thought 'Oh gosh, we could really have used that money,' [laughs] but I could never sell the log." She also remembers details of the Test Your Log With Every Branch of Knowledge idea: "I would go to a dentist, and he'd clip a little blue towel on the log and the dentist would probe the rings and talk about dentistry as well as the wood. There would be a different expert every week and that was the idea for the series."

• Coulson first became involved with Eraserhead because she was married to its star, Jack Nance. They divorced later but remained friendly and had a couple scenes together on Twin Peaks, where of course Nance plays Pete Martell. In the first, the Log Lady annoys Pete by constantly talking about the food. In the second, he accuses her of stealing his truck. Both may be amusing plays on marital tensions that Lynch himself witnessed through his long friendship with both: in fact, the particular way that Pete groans "Caaaatherine" to his onscreen wife (played by Piper Laurie) was supposedly a reference to how he would intone Catherine Coulson's name when he was flustered.

• The Log Lady offers us one of our first sideways glimpses of Bob in this character series: when she passes through the door of the RR in episode 9, Andy is hanging up a "Have you seen this man?" poster with a sketch of Bob's face. (We did glimpse this poster very, very fleetingly when Roger and the Mountie arrive in Twin Peaks but it's covered in a quick pan and not the focus of attention as it is here. And of course, the Fire Walk With Me Jeffries sequence is intercut with footage of Bob, but I treated the Missing Pieces assembly as my guide for that entry.)

• Lynch's and Frost's treatment of the Log Lady - especially her relationship with Cooper - is one of the most telling indicators of the different sensibilities. Without Lynch directing, Frost usually cultivates a slightly antagonistic chemistry between the FBI agent and the rural prophet. It's there in an early scene they supposedly co-wrote, and very apparent in Frost's solo script for episode 5 when Cooper must be pressured to enter the Log Lady's cabin (and then she slaps his hand when he reaches for a cookie). In fact, this element is even present in the script for episode 14, but Lynch goes in another direction. As Frost writes the scene, Cooper is hesitant and uncomfortable when the Log Lady tells him something is happening at the Road House; once again Truman must cajole him into accepting her invitation. As director Lynch cuts this dialogue and shows Cooper responding with rapt attention and understanding to the Log Lady's gnomic "There are owls at the Road House.""The Road House," he repeats softly, "...something is happening, isn't it, Margaret?" Impressed by his comprehension, she whispers, "Yes." I explore this dichotomy between the creators in the first few minutes of "Cooper's Story", a chapter of my Journey Through Twin Peaks video series.

• Other directors tend to emphasize the reactions of other characters to the Log Lady. In episode 5, the sheriff and his companions are tolerant of her brusque manner and strange statements, but also a bit condescending with their bemused glances, sneaking smiles, and patient delivery. Lynch often allows the Log Lady act even more asocial - spitting gum on the counter, scowling at Norma, scoffing peanuts at the Road House - but when he directs, everyone else takes this behavior in stride, noticing with little more than a neutral gaze or, in Norma's case, a straightforward admonition that neither belittles the Log Lady nor acknowledges her sour reaction. This puts us in the uncomfortable position of not being sure how we're supposed to feel about what we're seeing, throwing our own reactions back in our face and forcing us to question them. In fact, this is one of Lynch's most distinctive traits (especially prevalent in Blue Velvet), partially explaining why it's so hard for many viewers to determine when his work is being "intentionally" funny, or if it's even funny at all. The normal cues are absent.

• If you want to witness the series' radical tonal shift (its mid-season two crisis) in a nutshell, watch the Log Lady's appearance in episode 14 back-to-back with her entrance at the wedding in episode 18. One moment she is turning slowly toward Cooper in a dark room, as Julee Cruise's music plays on the soundtrack, a deep sense of sorrow and confusion in the atmosphere...and the next moment, fast-paced polka music fills a brightly-lit room as the Log Lady rushes to a table and declares - in some of the most terrible overdubbing in the entire series (it doesn't even sound like Coulson's voice), "I just love Milford weddings!"

• There's a continuity error in the wedding scene - we cut back and forth between Pete at his table and the newlyweds cutting the cake, and the Log Lady is in the background of both shots (she's even eating a slice of cake, before it's been cut).

• About that cake-cutting...though she's unusually cheerful through most of this scene, the Log Lady looks melancholy when Dougie Milford shows off his young bride. Perhaps she's remembering her own short-lived marriage? (Ironically, Lana Milford will soon be a widow too).

• Over the years, there has been much fan speculation about the Log Lady's husband. Two of the most popular theories are that he's one of the woodsmen glimpsed above the convenience store in Fire Walk With Me and that his spirit is trapped inside the log carried by his widow. Is that his voice speaking to her? In what was probably her final interview, with Twin Peaks Unwrapped (begins at 17:36) in the summer of 2015, Coulson frowned on the idea. "Nah, I wouldn't read that much into it. I mean, he did die in a fire but I think we hold fast to totems that remind us of the people we love. I wouldn't say the spirit of him is in the log, I would say that she holds fast to the memory of her dead husband but really the log is just a log. And we never anthropomorphize the log, it's not a he or a she. It's a good log though!"

• In Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, a thirteen-year-old Laura encounters the Log Lady at an abandoned gas station after dreaming about this address the night before; to the teenager's shock, the older woman shared this same dream. They talk for a while and the Log Lady even hums her a song. Laura finds her presence comforting: "It made me feel safe, which I think she was trying to make me feel. I feel sorry for her, that people think she is strange and weird. She isn't at all." But Laura is also confused by some of her wisdom, confessing that "a lot of it seemed like gibberish" though she writes it down anyway: "She said that sometimes the woods are a place to learn about things, and to learn about yourself. Other times the woods are a place for other creatures to be, and it is not for us. She said that sometimes people go camping and learn things they shouldn't. Children are prey sometimes... I think that's how she said it. What else...I tried so hard to remember everything. Oh. She told me that she would be watching, and someday people will find out that she sees things and remembers them. She said that it is important to remember things you see and feel. Owls are sometimes big. There! That was the one I had forgotten totally. Owls are sometimes big." The Log Lady also tells her that she is very beautiful and will be loved. Later that day, Laura's mother tells her that the Log Lady's husband was a firefighter who tripped over a root and fell face-first into the flames he was battling. Laura hopes the Log Lady isn't lonely and wishes she had more to offer in return. That night, after a visit from BOB, she writes, "I don't know if the Log Lady was talking about the right Laura Palmer."

• The Log Lady appears relatively early in Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks as one of three children (including Carl Rodd) lost in the woods one night in the late forties. When the nine-year-old is discovered the next morning, she thinks she's only been gone an hour or so. She's rescued by Andrew Packard and examined by Dr. William Hayward, who discovers the tattoo we see on the series. The Log Lady is most prominently featured near the end of the book. Under the guise of journalist Robert Jacoby, Frost writes a touching tribute headlined "IF THESE WOODS COULD SPEAK, and, Trust Me, Sometimes They Do." It opens: "You might encounter her hiking one of the many paths she favors through our surrounding hills and forests - paths she helped create, you'll be interested to learn. You might recognize her from community meetings at the Grange Hall, a constant presence, flicking the lights on and off to make sure they start and end as scheduled. The rest of the time she's at her cabin in the woods - a bonus fire ranger, if you will - watching and listening like a wolf, alert to any dangers to our local environment, and - you would quickly realize - never shy to sound the alarm. You might find yourself sitting next to her at the counter of the Double R as she enjoys a late-night slice of Norma's pie - well, not right next to her, she's eating for two, as it were. There's a log on the seat next to her." The article runs several pages, recounting the Log Lady's entire life. We are reminded of her strange disappearance in the woods, and follow her into her life as a passionate conservationist. We learn more about Sam Lanterman, her hearty husband, who courted her for a year and then died on their wedding day, just before they were to depart on their honeymoon. And we witness her stoic acceptance of his death, as if it was something she sadly expected and could not avoid. At the end of the article, the author writes about his own mortality. For Frost, however, writing this in 2015 or 2016, the coda is likely a thinly-veiled meditation on both his own father's condition (Warren Frost was possibly in the early stages of Alzheimers; he passed away in early 2017) and Catherine Coulson's recent death.

"It seems not to matter how long you live because, near the end, everyone reports the same; that it all went by so quickly, water slipping through our hands. There's no answer for it. Live now, that's my only advice to you. I leave not willingly, and haunted by the thought that my job - writing down stories, bearing witness to our mutual journey through time and space - is far from done. But even in this dark moment I take some comfort in a truth I'm now forced to accept: Storytellers don't run out of stories, they just run out of time. It's someone else's job now."

SHOWTIME: Yes, Coulson is on the cast list for 2017. When she died of cancer in September 2015, there was an outpouring of grief from fans (I offered my own contribution) not only for her loss, but the near-certainty she would never be able to step back into the character she had so looked forward to reprising. After all, she had apparently been ill for several months and the production had only just started shooting a week or two before she died. Yet there were rumors that she had managed to shoot something beforehand, and when the cast list was finally released, there she was. And it makes sense. As noted above, Coulson was Lynch's longest collaborator, a close friend, and to so many fans (including herself) deeply attached to Twin Peaks. Perhaps she was able to record new introductions? Perhaps she makes a brief appearance in the town, registering her presence as a blessing for the series to go forward? Whatever the case, one of the most poignant moments in the new series will be when we see the Log Lady for the last time. But the fact that we will be able to see her again at all, that a year and a half after Coulson's death there is still a surprise waiting for us, is something we should treasure.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Andrew, far from presiding over the town he helped build, hides from the world to conduct a private revenge scheme and unlock a puzzle box.


Thursday, March 16, 1989
Catherine Martell, standing imperiously in her office in the Blue Pine Lodge, turns to see Andrew Packard emerging from a darkened corridor. The old patriarch, presumed dead in an explosive boating accident years ago, assures his sister that "everything is going exactly as we planned." They relish the thought of Thomas Eckhardt arriving in Twin Peaks to retrieve Josie Packard, Andrew's "widow."

Sunday, March 19, 1989
Catherine presents Andrew to her shocked husband Pete Martell. She explains that he faked his death after learning of Eckhardt's plot to kill him (planned for six years). Andrew explains his and Eckhardt's relationship: "[We] were business partners. I knew lumber, he knew Hong Kong. We made a lot of money. Had some fun. Then I got the better of him in a piece of business. And he tried to stab me in the back." He also explains that Josie worked for Eckhardt and they expect him to come back for her "like a rat for cheese."

Tuesday, March 21, 1989
Andrew presents his wife and brother-in-law with breakfast and the two men laugh uproariously at how Pete plated the pancakes, using eggs and bacon to form a comical face. Catherine is not amused. Pete leaves, and the siblings discuss business - Andrew has spoken with investors and a meeting is scheduled in Paris. Josie, forced by Catherine to dress and work as a maid, arrives with a bundle of sticks, passing out when she sees and hears her "deceased" husband. Andrew and Catherine find this greatly amusing. That evening, Andrew drinks champagne with a distraught Josie. He was furious when he first realized she tried to kill him; now, however, he understands that Eckhardt manipulated her. She tries to make herself appear a victim in agreement, but Andrew reminds her that she never actually returned his love. He advises her to go back to Eckhardt in order to escape imminent arrest. Despite telling Josie that Eckhardt doesn't know he's alive, Andrew shows himself to his old rival that very night, awaiting Eckhardt in an elevator. The Hong Kong businessman is perturbed, especially when Andrew tells him that Josie tipped him off about the murder plot. He also needles Eckhardt by mentioning Josie's romance with a local sheriff (Eckhardt gruffly claims to have dealt with this betrayal). Andrew warns him to be careful and as a still-stunned Eckhardt disembarks, Andrew closes the door behind him.

Saturday, March 25, 1989
Days later, Andrew is back from Paris. Josie and Eckhardt are both dead (facts which seem to neither disturb nor excite him) and Eckhardt's assistant left behind a departing gift, a mysterious black box decorated with pictographs. After some cursory discussion of business (the path is cleared for a golf course right next to the Great Northern, despite business rival Ben Horne's resistance), the siblings focus on the box. Andrew cracks the code by pressing buttons associated with his birthday, Eckhardt's birthday, and the day the gift arrived. Inside this box is another one, which Andrew makes quick work of: smashing it open with a rolling pin, he reveals a smaller steel box within.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Andrew and Pete struggle with this final box, squeezing it inside a vise without any luck. An infuriated Andrew shoots the box three times with his pistol and blows a hole right through it. They discover a key inside, with a little tag, and Catherine places it inside a cake saver until they know what to do with it. That night Andrew sneaks into the living room and switches out the real key for another. However, Pete catches him in the act.

Monday, March 27, 1989
The next morning, Pete and Andrew visit the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan. Aged clerk Dell Mibbler very slowly escorts them to the safe where they are confronted by a young woman who has handcuffed herself to the gate. Andrew admires her verve: "Waste no time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. Marcus Aurelius." He then proceeds right past her as she pushes back the door in accommodating fashion. When Mibbler finally finds the specific box, an excited Andrew opens it up to discover a bomb with a note attached: "Got you Andrew    love, Thomas." Andrew has just enough time to react with horror as the bomb explodes, destroying him while a flurry of bills floats down from the sky above the shattered bank.

Andrew Packard is certainly one of the central figures of the town. From a socioeconomic standpoint, one could argue he was the central figure for much of the twentieth century, and indeed someone does argue that: in the pilot, long before we've ever met him, Truman says "Andrew practically built this town." We are reminded of this throughout the first season every time we see the Packard Saw Mill, perhaps the town's most important business, which bears his name. How ironic, then, that when we finally meet Andrew he occupies two geographical extremes: hidden away in the corners of his own home and globetrotting to seal international business deals. As a steward of the town, he is guilty of malignant neglect at best and hostile intent at worst. We only see him in public twice, both times to address a deeply personal, even whimsical, need. I half-jokingly noted on Twitter than Andrew is a sterling example of the turn toward neoliberalism in the late twentieth century: after years of providing jobs and patronage to his community (albeit in his own self-interest, and in a top-down manner), Andrew becomes obsessed with global finance and individual pursuits while his industry literally burns to the ground and his town is thrown into chaos. Ben is perhaps the more obvious example of the eighties' rampant capitalism, but in a way Andrew is a more damning specimen: less obviously seedy, even more deadly. As for Twin Peaks the show, Andrew - like his sister - emphasizes its "nighttime soap" genre quality in several ways. His status and bearing present the series, at least the scenes he's in, as yet another portrait of the scheming upper classes like Dynasty or Dallas...or even Invitation to Love! And the gimmicky plot twist that introduces him - character you thought was dead isn't, surprise! - is a classic soap trope. His May/December relationship with Josie, with its betrayal and desire, also fits this form (while the complicated revenge plot he enacts carries shades of noir too). Andrew is amusing and charming, but one can't really call his character comedic; there is not a hint of supernatural horror in his storyline; and since we almost never see him interact with the community there is no sense of the rustic landscape or collective spirit of Twin Peaks. Hence, while he may be its most notable representative in theory, in practice there's very little Twin Peaks in Andrew Packard.

Andrew's grand entrance is a bit underwhelming, one of the series' least impressive cliffhangers. (He literally just turns away from Catherine and stares into space like, "That's it. Go ahead, fade to black.") The characters comes alive much more when we see him interacting with Pete: the chemistry sparkles between Andrew's jolly hauteur and Pete's simple delight. It's never quite clear how we should think about Andrew, and the climactic episode of the Josie/Eckhardt arc exemplifies this ambiguity. In any given moment, he appears blunt but eloquent, righteously judgmental of those who betrayed him yet benevolent enough to leave them to each other. Of course, he's actually setting them against each other with wicked manipulation. Is this justified, given their own actions? Other clues poke out here and there to subtly remind us that Andrew is not a good guy. When Eckhardt mentions "taking care" of Truman, Packard simply chuckles and never warns the sheriff. His involvement with the Packard Mill machinations implies his knowledge of the arson that destroyed his business and his many employees' livelihoods. With the Josie plot over, Andrew's attention is completely absorbed by the mystery box, and he seems more petty than ever. Due to this as well as his late appearance in the series, when the bank goes ka-boom it's hard to feel much pity for Andrew. Pete is a tragic goner, and we fear for Audrey nearby, but we can't help but sense Andrew got what he deserved. In a way, he's the reverse of Catherine: she's a cold-hearted villainess whom we grow to slowly admire as she tackles her challenges without apology; he's an appealing, patrician rogue whose flaws fester in shadow, a cold heart revealed only when we step back and see what he is, and isn't, doing.

O'Herlihy may be the first Oscar nominee in this character series, a finalist for Best Actor of 1954 as the lead character in Luis Bunuel's adaptation of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. (Bunuel's producers wanted him to cast Orson Welles, but their screening of Macbeth backfired when the director chose Welles' co-star O'Herlihy instead). With hundreds of credits on stage, radio, cinema screen, and television (including twenty-six episodes of the sixties show The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters), O'Herlihy's career stretches fifty years from a small part as one of Jean Simmons' brothers in Hungry Hill to an appearance as Joseph Kennedy (another dynastic patrician!) in the TV movie The Rat Pack. Other highlights include Fail Safe, Halloween III, and The Dead. O'Herlihy is buried under thick layers of makeup as the alien pilot Grig in The Last Starfighter and appears alongside other Twin Peaks alums Ray Wise and Miguel Ferrar in RoboCop. His son Gavin plays Mountie Preston King in Twin Peaks, debuting one episode earlier than the elder O'Herlihy. (film pictured: The Last Starfighter, 1984)


O'Herlihy is written twice by Barry Pullman, once by Scott Frost, and three times by Harley Peyton and Robert Engels in collaboration (with Mark Frost joining them for the finale). He is directed by Duwayne Dunham, Uli Edel, Lesli Linka Glatter, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and David Lynch. Andrew's scenes in the finale mark a sharp contrast with his earlier appearances, thanks to Lynch's direction. Even with imaginative filmmakers at the helm, the Packard scenes tend to be shot very conventionally, befitting the soap melodrama content (though there is a jarring cut to a mounted goat's head in Gyllenhaal's episode). However, even the most forgettable part of the whole Lynch episode, when Andrew removes the key from the cakesaver, has a different atmosphere than any previous moment with Andrew. The moody music, the dim lighting, even the mixing of the dialogue has a quality that's immediately apparent but hard to put one's finger on. It feels "live" in a way, less like we are watching reality filtered through a gauzy romanticized view: the effect is both more documentary-like and more theatrical. And of course the bank scene, with its painfully extended long takes and distanced wide shots with a wide-angle lens, feels even more startlingly offbeat. I'll have plenty of opportunities to discuss this later but here is one of the first entries where this difference really, really jumped out at me.

Andrew is onscreen for roughly sixteen minutes. He is in nine scenes in six episodes taking place over a week and a half. He's featured the most in episode 23, when he conspires against Josie and Eckhardt. His primary location is the Blue Pine Lodge (the Packard residence). He shares the most screentime with Pete, although Catherine is very close behind. He is one of the top ten characters of episode 23 as well as the series finale.



• My favorite quote was used to great effect by John Bernardy in his hilarious interview with the Sparkwood and 21 podcast. If you jump to 50:50 in that link, he offers a theory about Andrew's activities in the Packard house, assuming that he was hiding there the whole time. John actually provided me the text (he was reading a feedback letter he'd written), but I'd recommend you try the clip first because his delivery is so hysterical. (The text is also featured on his brand new Twin Peaks blog, which you should also check out.)

"My goofball idea for how that fish showed up in the percolator in Season One: it was Andrew Packard, sneaking around behind the scenes like Leslie Linka Glatter's hunchback seamstress character. As he puts the fish in the percolator he mutters quietly and gleefully to no one 'I'm aliiiiive'.
When the two ledgers turn into one ledger and the other goes missing, it was Andrew in the middle of the night.
Mink oil on Catherine's bed? After that argument we see between Pete and Catherine, every time since it's been Andrew doing it. He dips his fingers in Pete's bottle and flicks it gleefully all over her bed every time Catherine is on a rendezvous with Ben.
Oh--and that mysterious man in the woods who Leo tells Mike and Bobby not to worry about? That was Andrew, too. Listen closely and you can hear it muffled by the ski mask: 'I'm aliiiiiiive'"

• Aside from Laura, Andrew is one of the most-discussed unseen characters in Twin Peaks' first season. He's mentioned in the pilot, of course, as a town father, and in episode 1 when Cooper and Truman visit Josie they talk about his death. Josie suggests, in several of her rendezvous with Cooper, that Catherine and Ben may have killed Andrew, and in the season one finale, Hank confirms that Josie hired him set up the "accident." We first see a picture of him in season two, on Catherine's desk, a few minutes before he reappears, when she confronts Josie about her involvement in her brother's death.

• We get a bit more of Andrew's communal spirit in the 1991 spin-off book Welcome to Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town, a collaboratio between the writing staff of the show and Richard Saul Wurman and his researchers (Wurman is a fascinating figure who not only wrote hundreds of Access Guides but invented the TED Talks; make sure you check out his interview on Twin Peaks Unwrapped). A dedication from Andrew's will opens the book, declaring that some of his wealth should be used to fund "the production and distribution of a book extolling and promulgating the many virtues and points of interest of our beloved community." It also requests that Wurman himself - "a man of hardy industry and responsible fiscal management" - be assigned as editor-in-chief, making him perhaps Twin Peaks' only contributer to appear within its world as himself! Andrew goes on to declare, "I like to think of every last man, woman and child in Twin Peaks as a member of my family," going on to praise "civic pride and sense of community ... [and] God's great bounty of life," a far cry from the selfish financier we meet on the series (but then, he always did put up a good front). The book dates Andrew's life from 1926 to 1987, adding humorously "and 1926 -" ...suggesting that the authors aren't really sure what his mortal status is. (A few pages later the book claims Andrew disappeared in 1988, and decades later Frost's historical book will stick with 1987 as his boating accident, but hover between 1911 and 1912 for his year of birth.)

• In the Access Guide, we are told that Andrew took over the lumber mill in 1948 from his father Ezekial, modernizing the cutting by incorporating the chain saw in the fifties and computerizing the machinery in the seventies. We are also provided with a history of the Packard family, most of which I'll save for Catherine's entry. We do learn the Packards are Catholics, which might suggest French-Canadian origin although in fact they migrated from Boston in the nineteenth century (the name is of English derivation).

• Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks, while changing some details (such as Andrew's age), also builds on the Access Guide's Packard family history, while providing new personal details about Andrew. We first meet him through a newspaper account of a grinning adolescent boy in a Boy Scout uniform - Andrew, at age sixteen. He is in a troop led by Dwayne Milford, to be elected mayor many decades later, and they discover large footprints in the woods after hearing some strange noises. There is an account from his diary following the news stories, which suggests the article was censored and offers further details (not just about the mysterious encounter, but also personal drama involving Dwayne and Dougie which begins to set up the latter's character as the central figure of the book).

• A section of the book, collected by the mysterious Archivist but presumed to be researched and written by FBI Agent Dale Cooper, details Andrew's marriage with Josie and the intrigue surrounding the explosion of his boat. It is speculated that Andrew probably journeyed to Hong Kong after his "death" to figure out Eckhardt's involvement; then he and Catherine patiently waited for Josie to make a move before making theirs. There's a handwritten note from Truman explaining how Andrew manipulated Josie and Eckhardt (problematically, there is no indication on the show that Andrew has revealed himself to Truman; indeed, there's every reason to believe he hasn't). At one point, Cooper writes of Andrew's faked death, "Since we know human remains were found at the scene, a body was clearly in the boat at the time of the blast. One has to surmise that role was played by a bum or drifter whom Andrew drugged or killed and stashed in the boat the night before. Someone who wouldn't be missed; Andrew got all of it dead right." Given the tangled nature of the book and particularly this section (which contradicts some of the dates on the series), it's hard to know how seriously we should consider this within the official narrative. Are the contradictions evidence of an intentional hoax, an authorial slip-up, an alternate reality? That said, if we do take this passage at face value it confirms once and for all that Andrew Packard was a terrible person.


SHOWTIME: No, O'Herlihy is not on the cast list for 2017. He passed away in 2005. The Secret History confirms the obvious: Andrew died in the bank blast. There's not much left to speculate about his character, but I do wonder how his legacy - and its tangled relationship with Catherine Martell's and Ben Horne's various business maneuvers - continued to impact the town. What does the local economy of Twin Peaks look like in the twenty-first century? Is it completely dominated by tourism - was there ever even an attempt to rebuild the sawmill? Is the town in sharp decline or, if it has prospered, has it been gentrified, with many of the original working- and middle-class residents squeezed out? If Andrew abandoned the town he helped build, if the decisions in the last years of his life contributed to its downfall, is he one of its destroyers as well as one of its leading lights?

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Ernie is a nervous, lying coward who stumbles into the center of a criminal conspiracy.


Friday, March 10, 1989
Clad in loud plaid and carrying a state-of-the-art early nineties cell phone (the size of a brick), investor Ernie Niles enters the RR Diner to greet its owner Norma Jennings, daughter of his new wife Vivian. Ernie introduces himself to Norma with a grin, handshake, and instant request for coffee (she doesn't look particularly impressed by her new stepdad). Ernie's off in the corner making deals over his phone while mom and daughter chat, and when he returns to the counter he's ready to rush Vivian off to the Great Northern Hotel. He leaves his folded-up newspaper behind with Norma, forgetting that across the front of the sports page he jotted down some notes which reveal what he was really doing on the phone: "$1000 HOUSTON BY 3 POINTS!" That evening, Ernie and Vivian dine at the Great Northern with Norma and her husband Hank. Ernie appears more sullen and quiet, occasionally casting a peeved glance in Hank's direction. Once the women have excused themselves to go to the restroom, Hank chuckles knowingly and Ernie reveals the reason for his discomfort: "You're not gonna tell her, are you? If Vivian found out I'd been inside, she'd drop me flat." Turns out Hank and Ernie spent time in prison together; Ernie, addicted to gambling, stole funds from a Savings and Loan. Hank torments Ernie, who says he's gone clean, by hinting that maybe he'll tell Vivian what's going on. Unless...?

Wednesday, March 15, 1989
Hank and Ernie, dressed in camouflage, burst into the office at One Eyed Jack's, carrying prostitutes on their back. As the young women leave, and Hank begins aggressively wrestling his irritated companion, Ernie acknowledges lying to his new wife about his trip into the woods (though why she would even accept a hunting excursion in the middle of their honeymoon remains uncertain). Hank has brought his nervous father-in-law to the Canadian bordello to arrange a drug deal with Jean Renault and the corrupt Mountie Preston King. Ernie, as he's wont to do, lies through his teeth about being a big-time player, asserting that he can unload a kilo of cocaine. When Jean directs Ernie to the casino, Ernie tries to say he doesn't gamble anymore but Jean corrects him: "We all gamble here." He's easily convinced.

Thursday, March 16, 1989
Hank and Ernie return to the RR. When Norma asks Ernie, "Catch anything?" he misunderstands the question and murmurs, "I hope not." He quickly corrects himself, making up a story about a big buck, but Norma doesn't look fooled. She tells him that her mother has gone back to Seattle and he should join her. Hank reassures Ernie that this is for the best - it will make it easier to handle the coke deal without any distractions.

Friday, March 17, 1989
Having apparently ignored Norma's not-so-subtle hints to get out of Dodge (or at least out of her restaurant), Ernie is back at the RR munching on chicken. A woman sits across from him in the booth, identifies herself as DEA Agent Denise Bryson and reveals surveillance photos of Ernie meeting with Jean. She tells him he's guilty of a parole violation and if he doesn't cooperate with the DEA investigation, she'll make sure he's locked away for a long time. In FBI Agent Dale Cooper's room at the Great Northern, Denise and Cooper press Ernie for useful information, but he's too busy weaving an elaborate tall tale about how he was tortured, how his family was threatened, how he heroically resisted the criminals' attempts to bring him in. Finally he explains the arrangement, and Denise tells him she's going to pose as the male buyer in a sting.

Saturday, March 18, 1989
Ernie fidgets and begs for mercy as Denise and Cooper pressure him to make the call. Finally he rings One Eyed Jack's and tells Jean he's found his out-of-town buyer. That afternoon, Deputy Hawk Hill attaches a wire to his chest, a task made difficult by Ernie's prodigious sweat (he blames the condition on his experiences in the Korean War, launching into a melodramatic recap before Cooper cuts him off). Sheriff Harry Truman plans the operation and finally Denise arrives disguised as "Dennis." At Dead Dog Farm, a run-down abandoned property where the drug deal has been arranged, Ernie is as nervous as ever, even asking Jean and the Mountie if they can reschedule since Hank is absent. In fact, Ernie is so uncomfortable that he begins to sweat again, damaging the wire until his shirt begins to smoke. When the dealers discover they've been set up they take Ernie and Denise hostage, holding them at gunpoint outside the farm and demanding Cooper reveal himself. He does, stepping out from an overview nearby and offering to trade himself for the two hostages. Jean accepts, and Ernie - having likely bungled his honeymoon, his new marriage, and now this sting - is released.

Ernie is usually trapped in his own head, not appreciating his surroundings. I would imagine he and Vivian sightsee during their first weekend in Twin Peaks, but he's probably going over bets he's placed or anxiously wondering how Hank is going to blackmail him. To Ernie, Twin Peaks is not just a scenic tourist getaway, it's a dodgy trap set on all sides by ruthless ex-cons and merciless government agents. Hence we split our time between the diner and hotel on the one hand, and the bordello, sheriff's station, and drug den on the other. Twin Peaks the show is a not-especially-serious crime story when Ernie's present, with him playing the classically pathetic figure who can't quite be villainized like the more sinister characters, but certainly isn't one of the heroes (he's the sort of thief or kidnapper you might meet in a Disney film as comic-relief sidekick to the big baddie). In that sense, Ernie is definitely one of the more conventional characters in the series - which isn't to say he's not colorful or cartoonish - and his Twin Peaks/Twin Peaks fits more easily inside genre storytelling.

Ernie does not make a good first impression on Norma or on the audience. If anything, the more wretched he becomes, the more we may enjoy his company (though many don't): there is something entertaining, even sympathetic, about a character hounded by and exacerbating his own flaws rather than one who flaunts them while barely maintaining a thin veneer of respectability. A loser is more likable than a hypocrite. Ernie grows more ridiculous with every passing scene, moving from smug misrepresentation to absurd exaggeration to, finally, flailing, hysterical, compulsive dishonesty. He and his story have never been among my favorite parts of the series, but revisiting the character for this study I was probably more amused than I've ever been by his antics. As I write these "journey" snippets it's hard not to notice that most of these characters are on a downward trajectory - to quote the Log Lady, "Some of them are sad, some funny." Ernie fits this general pattern of the show in a decidedly unserious way, and I'll admit he made me laugh. His arc comes to an abrupt halt in his final scene, as the Mountie holds a gun to his head. We know that he is released in exchange for Cooper but never see him again; having fulfilled his utility to the main plot, the writers rather ruthlessly dispense with him.

Booth made a career of playing characters like Ernie; as Wikipedia notes, "Though considered handsome enough to play leading roles, and versatile enough to play a wide variety of character parts, Booth naturally projected a shifty, wolfish, or unpredictable quality that led inevitably to villainous roles and comedy, usually with a cockney flavour." If you listen closely, you can hear Booth hiding an English accent behind his odd Americanized voice, something the Twin Peaks Podcast (among other fans) has a good deal of fun with. His most famous part is Zulu's Private Henry Hook (a British war hero and, incidentally, an ancestor of Mark E. Smith of The Fall). Booth's portrayal, while celebrated (you can even find collectible figurines featuring a recognizable Booth in iconic poses), has also caused controversy (cited in The Daily Mail). The real Hook's daughter stormed out of the premiere, offended that her father - a teetotaling preacher - had been converted into disobedient drunkard for dramatic purposes and, one suspects, to fit inside Booth's particular wheelhouse. Booth was expected to break into lead roles in the sixties after much acclaimed character work, but instead he stumbled over several flops and personal crises and his acting career stalled. He became a screenwriter in middle age, keeping busy in Hollywood before eventually returning to the stage. (figurine by Brian Smith, representing the film Zulu, 1964)


Ernie is introduced by writer Scott Frost and also written by Tricia Brock, Barry Pullman, a Harley Peyton/Robert Engels collaboration, and Harley Peyton solo. He is directed by Caleb Deschanel (twice), Tina Rathborne, Duwayne Dunham, and Todd Holland.

Ernie is onscreen for roughly eighteen minutes. He is in nine scenes in five episodes, taking place in just over a week. He's featured the most in episode 15, when he arrives in Twin Peaks. His primary location is the Great Northern and he shares the most screentime with Hank. He is one of the top ten characters of episodes 15 and 20.



• Bobby Briggs is assigned by Ben Horne to follow Hank Jennings and take surveillance photos. One shows Hank meeting with Ernie, the Mountie, and Jean. Audrey gets these pictures from Bobby and offers them to Cooper, who is being set up by the Mountie. He and Denise are able to use this image to target Ernie as their informant.

• While Ernie is at One Eyed Jack's with Hank, Norma discovers her mother is the food critic who just wrote a bad review of the diner. She tells Vivian off and asks her to get out, not just of the restaurant, but her life. This is one reason Norma is so peeved at Ernie when he returns, and why Vivian isn't there.

• Ernie's reference to a "Savings and Loan" was likely inspired by the Savings and Loan scandals of the late eighties, in which a third of all of those institutions in the U.S. failed largely thanks to financial improprieties. Several politicians (including John McCain) were accused of intervening on behalf of S&L chairmen and President Bush's son Neil was sued for his role in the failure of one S&L (his costs from the lawsuit were paid by Republican donors). Notably, Ernie tells Hank that he met Vivian at a Republican fundraiser.


SHOWTIME: No, Booth is not on the cast list for 2017. He passed away in 2005. Ernie's spot on the show is unusual. As demonstrated by his ranking (above the Log Lady!!!), he has a decent amount of screentime without any real resolution. I imagine his marriage to Vivian won't last much longer - he must be in the news after that sting - and frankly I suspect the hapless Ernie eventually goes back in prison, ending his life either there or in the bungled execution of some criminal enterprise. Then again, he may find a venue for his "talents" in the sleazy backrooms of political fundraising. The character's fate is complicated for other reasons; in Mark Frost's book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Vivian is written out of Norma's life. Frost creates a new mother figure who bears no resemblance to the one we met onscreen (and who dies years before the events of Twin Peaks). She never divorces Norma's father, hence she never remarries. So the pitiful Ernie may be extinguished once and for all.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Jacques lives a life of indulgence, exploitation, and greed without regret or apology - even when it catches up to him.


circa February 1988
Jacques Renault, the Road House bartender, is getting ready for work before the tavern opens for the evening. The phone rings, and when he picks it up he's greeted by Teresa Banks, a young prostitute from the town of Deer Meadow. Teresa asks him about the fathers of two other teenage hookers, Ronette Pulaski and Laura Palmer, and when Jacques describes them she says she had somebody else in mind and says goodbye. Jacques hangs up, but he isn't so sure he believes her.

Sunday, February 19, 1989
A year later, Jacques gets another call relating to another shady enterprise. Bobby Briggs, a local high school drug dealer, is looking to score some cocaine. Jacques teases him: "How come you only call me when you're desperate?" Then he arranges a buy for several nights hence, telling Bobby "For $10K I have a friend who has what you want." Bobby is grateful but Jacques looks like he has something more devious up his sleeve. That night, Jacques is tending bar for a busy crowd and two loggers are looking for some companionship. Jacques notices Laura smoking a cigarette at a table nearby and she nods to him, so he sends the two men her way. Not long afterwards, Jacques is off-duty, partying at an extremely loud Canadian club known as the Pink Room (or Partyland). Shouting to Laura, her friend Donna, and their two male companions over the music, the drunken, probably stoned Jacques slurs non sequiturs like "There's no tomorrow. Know why baby? 'Cause it'll never get here," and "I'm not Jacques. I am the Great Went." As the girls and the men fall under a woozy, druggy spell, Jacques approaches Laura and Ronette, who has just arrived, calling them his "high school sandwich" ("Let's put some meat inside," he sneers). Ronette reminds him that it's been exactly a year since Teresa was murdered, saying that she had plans to blackmail someone before she was killed. Jacques nods, and remembers that phone call: "She called me right before. She even asked what your fathers looked like." Laura seems shocked by this admission, but Jacques brushes right past, inviting the girls to his cabin for a party Thursday night. As he slumps over in his seat a little while later, ready to pass out, Laura jars him awake and yanks him over to where one of the johns is groping a half-naked, extremely high Donna; Laura forces Jacques to take her in his arms and bring them home.

Thursday, February 23, 1989
Jacques, Leo, and Ronette hand out in the woods near the intersection of Sparkwood and 21, drinking beers while leaning on Leo's red convertible. Laura stumbles through the treeline to join them and they're off to Jacques' log cabin. Loud music plays, Jacques' pet bird Waldo squawks, cocaine is snorted by the lingerie-clad adolescents and an orgy unfolds. A woozy Laura shouts at Jacques as he ties her up: "Not tonight!" But he ignores her, eyes lit up in furious determination as she looks around her, seemingly startled by another presence. When he's finished, an extremely disheveled Jacques stumbles out the door for some fresh air and is immediately assaulted by someone else, who trips him, kicks him, and bashes him over the head with a bottle, knocking him out cold. He lies there immobile as Leo stumbles around him in shock and later a one-armed man passes by.

Monday, February 27, 1989
Jacques walks down the edge of a road, ready to tend bar, but stops in his tracks when he notices a red light flashing. He races to the closest phone booth and calls Leo, demanding a ride across the border because the red light signifies his brother Bernie is in trouble. An irritated Leo agrees.

Thursday, March 2, 1989
Tonight Jacques is working at his other job, dealing blackjack at the Canadian casino/bordello One Eyed Jack's. He's getting enormous tips from a card-counting high-roller and having a good time (despite the fact that Leo recently killed Bernie and threatened Jacques to keep him from returning to Twin Peaks). The stranger offers Jacques a poker chip with a piece missing, says "Leo told me about you," and invites him to have a drink. As they chat, the stranger tells Jacques that Leo works for him ("I'm the bank") and also that Leo has been screwing Jacques and Bernie over in their drug deals. Jacques is alarmed when this man explains the significance of the poker chip by mimicking Waldo - "Laura! Laura!" - but the stranger calms him down. Jacques is nervous because Laura was murdered that night in an abandoned train car, after she and Ronette were kidnapped from the cabin. When pressed, he tells the story of the poker chip, actually relaxing and enjoying the ghoulish absurdity of the anecdote: Leo had released Waldo from his cage and allowed him to peck on Laura's shoulder - as she screamed, Leo placed the chip in her mouth, making her bite it. While she did he shouted, "Bite the bullet, bay-be! Bite the bullet!" Jacques repeats this quote with grotesque relish. The man seems slightly disturbed but is more intent on other purposes: he wants to set up a drug run with Jacques, circumventing Leo and offering $10,000 cash, half up front, half on completion. They are to meet at the water processing plant on Black Lake in two hours. Jacques pulls up at the spot on time, only to be confronted by an armada of police cruisers. He's arrested by Sheriff Harry Truman for the attempted murder of Ronette and the murder of Laura, but as Truman walks away, Jacques grabs the arresting officer's gun and nearly shoots the sheriff down. Deputy Andy Brennan is a quicker draw, wounding Jacques in the arm. As he moans, Deputy Hawk Hill cuffs him and reads him his rights. That night Jacques is questioned by Truman and FBI Agent Dale Cooper (who was undercover as the stranger in the casino) about the night of Laura's death. Doped up on morphine, with his arm in a sling, Jacques smiles and chuckles: "They'd been up to the cabin before - they was no nuns." He thinks it was Leo who hit him over the head with a bottle, and remembers waking up to see that Leo's car is gone, forcing him to walk home fifteen miles. In the early pre-dawn hours of the morning, Jacques sleeps through a fire alarm until a pillow presses down on his face. His good arm is tied to the bedrail and he is unable to effectively resist, dying due to lack of oxygen as his EKG flatlines. The killer lifts the pillow - it's Leland Palmer (also the man who actually beat him up outside his cabin the night Laura died). His scream of rage ends with the alarm, at which point he turns and flees the room.

Friday, March 3, 1989
Jacques' very large corpse, enclosed in a big black bodybag, is wheeled into a hospital corridor as Truman, Cooper, Doc Will Hayward, and Lucy Moran look on. "Is that bag smiling?" Cooper wonders. "What's there to smile about?" a dejected Lucy asks.

Certainly no character so far has taken us deeper into the seedy underbelly of Twin Peaks; even Teresa existed on its periphery (geographically and otherwise). Jacques is no big gun - he's an employee of the Road House and One Eyed Jack's, easily bullied by his pal Leo and even jerked around by the teenage Bobby. Yet he doesn't seem particularly ambitious; greedy, sure, which is why he foolishly falls for Cooper's sting, but money for a good time seems more motivating than a hunger for power. Despite this lowly nature, Jacques is involved with every Twin Peaks vice, legal or otherwise: gambling, drinking, drugs (sale and use), and underage sex/prostitution/pornography (in his apartment Cooper and Truman find incriminating copies of Flesh World, for which he photographed Laura and Ronette soliciting rendezvous). Like many of the villains we've met so far, Jacques'"local" status is questionable. Unlike Eckhardt's crew, he's certainly no outside interloper, and unlike Cable or Malcolm, he actually operates within Twin Peaks, but like Nancy, Blackie, and the Mountie, he is rooted in Canada - still suggesting that the danger of Twin Peaks is fundamentally external. Jacques' novel attribute, in this course of this character series, is his abject sleaziness; even Emory, with his bizarre kinks and leering manner, seemed more a nebbishy businessman than an unapologetic hedonist. Jacques is both an operator and a consumer in the Twin Peaks underworld, reminding us that if money motivates the criminals themselves, the customers' desires fuel the business in the first place. This in turn leads us closer to Laura, who lived a life defined in many ways by her complicated sexuality and addiction. And indeed, no character thus far has had a life so deeply intertwined with Laura's, or spent so much time onscreen with her (Jacques is also the first person in this character series whom we see sexually involved with Laura). The Jacques of the series offers insight into Cooper's smooth, masterful manipulation as an undercover agent; Cooper appeals to Jacques' scheming, money-grubbing side as readily as Laura appeals to his animal urges. And of course Jacques is our second character in these studies to be murdered by Leland Palmer, whose presence at the cabin brings us closer than ever to the event of Laura's death. In the chronology of the actual show, he is also the first person to be killed onscreen, and only the third person to die in the course of the series after Laura and his brother Bernard.

Jacques' story can be cleaved neatly into two halves, one before Laura's death, and one after, and these two halves can be arranged either in narrative chronology (Fire Walk With Me followed by the episodes of the first season) or production chronology (the series followed by the prequel film). Perhaps the more interesting is the latter, demonstrating Jacques' development as a character and also his function as a guide into the Twin Peaks underworld. Few characters are set up as extensively without being seen (much of this exposition occurs before we've glimpsed more than a quick cameo, some even before we've met him at all). I'll discuss "the offscreen Jacques" more extensively in a new section below, but his legend is established through visits to two homes, investigations into his work and play, and interactions between other characters connected to him. Given all this preparation, our first glimpse - in episode 3 - feels almost premature, not just because his entrace as a dealer in episode 6 would have served more dramatically, but because Walter Olkewicz hasn't quite grasped Jacques yet. (Jacques' demeanor when he calls Leo is a far cry from the loutish, lewd pimp of Fire Walk With Me, and even his accent is a lot more dodgy, with barely a hint of the exaggerated French-Canadian intonation that will become his trademark.) The actual character of Jacques really takes hold in the first season finale, exhibiting a juicy decadence that makes a great foil for Cooper's sophisticated sheen (even disguised as a pusher Cooper is a gentleman). The film character is drunk and/or stoned most of the time, further dramatizing and deepening the fleshy decadence of the show's Jacques, following through on the hints of his offscreen reputation and his onscreen anecdotes by delivering us into the hypnotic hellscape of Twin Peaks' nightlife. His chronological arc, of course, tells a slightly different story. In late February, Jacques' life is going about as well as it probably ever has: the roundelay between legal work, illegal work, and (nearly always) illegal recreation, functions as an established routine. Starting on the night of Laura's death, everything heads south - not only are Cliff, Laura, and Bernie killed, but Jacques himself is battered, bruised, and abandoned outside his own cabin, chased out of the drug business, tricked into an FBI set-up, arrested for murder, gunned down, hospitalized, and finally murdered through suffocation. It's a brutal week for the lowlife lout, though the seeds of his downfall were all planted by him.

Olkewicz worked steadily in film and television for over two decades until persistent health problems complicated his career. He appeared alongside Dan Ackroyd, John Candy and John Belushi in Steven Spielberg's comedy bomb 1941; what was supposed to be a one-day cameo mushroomed into a twenty-eight-day supporting role. Olkewicz started out in improv and often worked in comedy; one of his most famous roles was on Seinfeld (joining quite a lot of other Twin Peaks alums) where he played the cable guy tormenting Kramer. His eighties/nineties resume reads like a checklist of iconic prime-time television, ranging from guest spots on Who's the Boss, Cheers, The A-Team, Taxi, The Love Boat, Newhart, Family Ties, Moonlight, Married...with Children and L.A. Law (among many others) to recurring roles as Bubba on Dolly Parton's short-lived variety series Dolly, Harmon Shain on thirteen episodes of Partners in Crime, Marko on eight episodes of Wizards and Warriors, and Zack Comstock in fifteen episodes of The Last Resort. Most notably, Olkewicz played Dougie Boudreau for three seasons of Grace Under Fire. He was also cast in a very memorable role in The Client as a mob lawyer whose suicide traumatizes the main character. Olkewicz has been interviewed by Twin Peaks Archive, Brad Dukes, and Obnoxious and Anonymous. (series pictured: Seinfeld, 1996)


Now here's an interesting situation. Unlike anyone else in this character series, Jacques is almost equally written/directed by Twin Peaks' two creators - Mark Frost and David Lynch. Frost writes and directs the bulk of his appearances on the series, which occur in the first season finale. He coaxes a rich, juicy performance out of Olkewicz, whose first couple cameos had been gruff and surly, less relaxed over all. The Jacques we all know and love to hate truly emerges in Frost's one episode (in some ways he's the star of that one-off venture), which also provides a glimpse of the laconic, colorful characterizations that would mark Frost's work in Storyville two years later (though the accents there would be Southern rather than French-Canadian). In Frost's conception, Jacques is observed entirely from the perspective of law enforcement: all of his scenes are with Cooper and/or Truman, and we're encouraged to explore his criminal life with curiosity but from a safe remove. Frost also writes episode 5, which spends a lot of time in Jacques' apartment and cabin (though we never see Jacques himself), helping to prep the character as the lawmen's peephole into the underworld. Lynch only met Olkewicz after shooting wrapped - and the character had been killed. He promised they'd work together and sure enough, a prequel film provided the opportunity. Fitting the M.O. of a film that takes us into the heart of Laura's mystery and dispenses with any protective distance, we are thrust right into the middle of Jacques' criminal world in Fire Walk With Me: we don't experience this milieu through the veneer of the "good guys". Lynch's Jacques is more gnomic than Frost's, delivering a half-dozen of the movie's most memorable, mystifying lines. There's also a sense of repetition - most notably as Leland attacks Jacques "again," further reinforcing the idea that the two halves of Jacques' story form two separate, almost parallel stories rather than one continuous arc. In addition to Frost's and Lynch's dominant contributions, just over a minute of Jacques' screentime is written by Harley Peyton (in two different episodes) and directed by Tina Rathborne and Caleb Deschanel. The second season premiere, in which Jacques' bodybag floats by, splits the difference between the creators since it is written by Frost and directed by Lynch. The film is co-written by Robert Engels.

Jacques is onscreen for roughly eighteen minutes. He is in fourteen scenes in four episodes (plus the feature film and deleted scenes collection), taking place over two weeks (plus one scene from a year earlier). He's featured the most in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces in which he participates in the decadence of Laura's last week alive (in the show he's featured the most in episode 7, the first season finale). We see him equally in two locations: the Pink Room and One Eyed Jack's. He shares the most screentime with Laura. Jacques is second only to Cooper in episode 7 - no previous character on this list has more screentime in a single episode.




Episode 1: Few names get dropped in a character's absence as often as Jacques in season one. We are introduced to him in episode 1, when Big Ed Hurley tells Truman that Jacques spiked his drink at the Road House the night before, knocking him out (Ed was keeping an eye on the known drug dealer for the Bookhouse Boys).

Episode 3: After Laura's funeral in episode 3, Truman tells Cooper about the Bookhouse Boys and their investigation of Jacques' cocaine ring. That night they visit a kidnapped Bernie Renault (who is also a janitor at the Road House); he denies being Jacques' drug mule.

Episode 4: In episode 4, Truman says Bernie has been released on bail and an APB has been put out for Jacques. Shelly tells Bobby that Leo is out with "his friend, that creepy Jacques ... that Canuck guy." Bobby decides to plant Leo's shirt at Jacques' apartment so that police will realize they're connected and perhaps finger both for the murder of Laura. Cooper, Truman, and Hawk arrive at Jacques' apartment just as Bobby hops out the back window; they're looking for evidence after discovering that Jacques owned the myna bird that bit Laura's shoulders. They discover the shirt right away. That same night, Ben Horne meets up with Leo in the woods and Leo shows him a body wrapped head to toe: it's Bernie. Ben scolds Leo for getting involved with "a couple glue-sniffing squish-heads," but Leo says he "broke up their act," adding, "Jacques' back in Canada. We had a long talk. He's staying in Canada. Jacques was the brains of the outfit."

Episode 5: Aside from his actual appearance in the season finale, episode 5 is the most Jacques-centric episode of the series. Inside his apartment, Cooper, Truman, Hawk, Andy, and Hayward dig up clue after clue. Truman offers some history of the character: "Jacques Renault's a Canadian national, worked the local lumber fields until he put on a little excess tonnage a couple seasons ago. That's when he started tending bar at the Roadhouse." The blood on the shirt is revealed as AB negative, which was Jacques' blood type. Cooper discovers an issue of Flesh World above a ceiling lamp, with a letter and envelope inside; this confirms that the magazine was a clearing house for sex work and that Jacques had a P.O. Box set up to receive letters for Ronette. Meanwhile, Andy goes to Leo's house where Shelly feeds him some false information to set up Leo and Jacques as the murderers (she says she heard them fighting the night Laura was killed, and that they mentioned her name before they left). Back at Jacques' apartment, the investigators discover a picture of Laura posing in front of red drapes, which match the drapes in a snapshot of Jacques' cabin. Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and Hayward go into the woods to find the location. They run into the Log Lady who tells them what she heard the night Laura died (including Jacques' voice, though she doesn't identify it as such). When they finally reach Jacques' cabin, a record of Julee Cruise's "Into the Night" is playing in a loop. Hawk finds film in a camera, Cooper discovers a spool of twine, and Truman unveils Waldo in his birdcage. Hawk identifies a bloodstain on the floor of the cabin and Truman opens a cuckoo clock out of which spills a bunch of poker chips. Cooper crawls under the couch to retrieve one and sees that it has a piece missing from it, matching the piece of a poker chip they discovered in an autopsy of Laura several episodes earlier. He identifies the markings: "One Eyed Jack's".

Episode 6: In the last couple episodes of the season, Jacques' plot comes to a head. Forensics confirm the identity of Jacques' last three guests in his cabin, and a photo from the film roll is developed, showing Waldo perched on Laura's shoulder. Hawk reveals that Jacques works at One Eyed Jack's and Cooper proposes a Bookhouse Boys operation (since Jack's is outside their jurisdiction). That night Waldo is shot from outside the sheriff's station; a voice-activated recorder caught his last words which Cooper will recite to Jacques. Cooper and Big Ed disguise themselves to uncover Jacques. 

Episode 7: Truman and Hawk eavesdrop on Cooper's conversation with Jacques from a surveillance van. Following their questioning of Jacques at the hospital, Cooper tells Truman that Jacques is "too stupid to lie" and suspicion recenters on Leo as the killer. At the sheriff's station, Andy boasts about shooting Jacques, which seems to impress his girlfriend Lucy. Leland bursts in asking about the man they've captured, and Truman lets it slip that he's at the hospital, which gives Leland all the information he needs to execute vengeance (if that's what it is).

Episode 8: Jacques' involvement with the narrative carries on long after he's dead, thanks to the continuing investigation of Laura's death and also the consequences of Leland's murder. In episode 8, Lucy tells Cooper about Jacques' fate. A few hours later, Cooper is fascinated with Jacques' body bag after he has been removed and the bag has been washed and unzipped; sagging from the wall where it has been pinned it looks like "a smiling bag" (one of the "signs" the Giant asked Cooper to look for as he hovered between life and death was "the man in the smiling bag"). That evening, Cooper and Truman visit Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, whose hospital bed is near Jacques', and ask him what happened. He was sedated at the time, and can only recall a smell: "scorched engine oil." (This is the first time this motif will be mentioned on the show, though it is later associated with Bob and Glastonbury Grove...the only fleeting connection Jacques ever has to Twin Peaks' supernatural elements.) Back at the station, Cooper lays out the whole case for Truman, Albert, Hawk, Andy, and Lucy, detailing everything they know, including Jacques' involvement.

Episode 9: Albert conducts Jacques' autopsy and reports to Cooper in episode 9: "Stomach contents revealed beer cans, a Maryland license plate, half a bicycle tire, a goat, and a small wooden puppet. Goes by the name of Pinocchio." More seriously, he adds, "If Jacques has any secrets, he'll be taking them underground."

Episode 10: From this point, references to Jacques are mostly linked to either Leland's murder charge or Jean Renault's revenge plot. In episode 10, Jacques' brother Jean, a much more powerful crime boss, arrives at One Eyed Jack's and lays out his plan to kill Cooper for setting up his brother (we also see surveillance footage of Jacques in the casino from the night he died). Later in that same episode, Cooper and Truman hypnotize Jacoby and we see a black-and-white slow motion flashback of Jacques' murder as Jacoby realizes who killed him. Cooper and Truman show up at Leland's house as he's comforting Maddy and arrest him for the murder of Jacques Renault.

Episode 11: Episode 11 opens with Leland's tearful confession to the murder of Jacques. Jean shows Ben surveillance footage of Cooper with his brother. Judge Clinton Sternwood arrives in town after this confession...

Episode 12: ...and in episode 12 he releases Leland without bail, pending an eventual trial (late episodes suggest Leland will cop an insanity plea, relying on the traumatizing death of his own daughter). Leland is never actually tried for the murder because he goes on to kill Maddy in episode 14 and is eventually captured.

Episode 15: When Cooper tells Leland that Ben has been arrested as a suspect in Laura's murder, Leland seems shocked, stammering "I thought that Jacques Renault..." Cooper shakes his head: "No."

Episode 16: Cooper notes that Leland's hair turned white after killing Jacques. He doesn't speculate as to Leland's actual motive for that crime (Leland dies soon after, confessing to the murders of Teresa and Laura before expiring).

Episode 20: Jean hangs around even after he's unable to kill Cooper in a ransom exchange as planned. In episode 20, Jean holds the FBI agent prisoner inside Dead Dog Farm, as police surround the drug den. He tells Cooper why he wants revenge: "Before you came here, Twin Peak was a simple place. My brothers sold drugs to truck-drivers and teenagers. ... My brother Bernard is shot and left to die in the woods. A grieving father smothers my surviving brother with a pillow. ... Maybe you brought the nightmare with you." I believe this is the last time Jacques is mentioned on the series; a few minutes later Jean is gunned down by Cooper (he may not have killed Bernie or Jacques, but ironically he is directly responsible for Jean's death).

Fire Walk With Me: Bobby is nearly shot by Deputy Cliff Howard, a corrupt cop from Deer Meadow, in the drug deal that Jacques arranged ("Jacques sent me," Cliff affirms, before reaching for his gun). Bobby manages to shoot first, killing Cliff and then hiding the body with Laura.

The Missing Pieces: In The Missing Pieces, Truman sets up surveillance of Bernie with Hawk and Andy after hearing that he has just crossed the border. Notably, he tells them to "stop watching Jacques"; by removing the focus from one brother to the other, he leaves Jacques unattended the night of Laura's death.


• The Renault family, Canadian or not, have long roots in Twin Peaks. The Access Guide traces them back to Dominick Renault, a trader whose search for the Northwest Passage was mocked by local natives. Rather bizarrely, the book reports that "he mated with owls, his anguished voice becoming a part of them in the endless and misty forests."

• Jacques, unsurprisingly, is mentioned frequently in Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer: "Jacques said that he used to play football, until he found out that you didn't have to ram yourself into a herd of huge guys all day to make good money. ... He's a big, fat guy, but he can really turn me on sometimes. He's the little-baby/big-man type, too, except that he knows a lot more about a woman's body than even Leo." Jacques encourages Laura to write down her fantasies and send them to Flesh World; he calls her at home all the time and if her parents answer, he says it's about a job application. The diary presents him more as lover and admirer than pimp.

• I've never heard any explanation of why Jacques wants to murder Bobby although evidently he sent Cliff to do just that (unless Cliff is acting of his own sloppy accord for some even more mystifying reason). Is this a first strike against Leo, suspecting the turn of events that will culminate a week later when Leo drives the Renault brothers out of his operation? And why have Cliff deliver baby laxative instead of actual cocaine, especially if he was planning to kill the customers anyway? The whole incident is befuddling, especially since Laura - knowing that Jacques arranged the deal that nearly ended her boyfriend's life (and presumably hers as well) - is unperturbed enough to spend the night with their would-be murderer a few days later. This may just be one of those situations where Lynch and Engels had their mind on one aspect (let's find out who Bobby killed, since it's referenced in the pilot) and completely overlooked all the other complications. Adding to the confusion, when Cooper asks Jacques if he knows who was distributing the cocaine, Jacques answers, "Nah, some high school kid, that's all I know." As the film demonstrates, he clearly did know about Bobby's involvement in the drug trade. Why lie?

• There are several discrepancies between Jacques' explanation of events of the show and how we see them unfold in the film. Most notably Jacques tells Cooper and Truman that Leo hit him over the head with a bottle and then they fought, after which he wandered outside and passed out. It's possible, given his state at the time of the incident, that he's misremembering and conflating events. However, one plot hole that can't be explained is Leo's shirt: Jacques never uses it to clean up his blood, despite that shirt being a major piece of evidence throughout season one.

• It's never entirely clear whether Leland or BOB was more responsible for Jacques' murder - even many who tend to sharply delineate between spirit and host often feel that this one was on Leland. I think a case could be made for both (and as usual, I like to think the two overlap). Leland, perhaps not remembering that he killed Laura either due to self- or BOB-repressed memory, wants to kill Jacques in revenge. BOB's motivations can be more calculating (as can Leland's for that matter): perhaps he wants to finish the job he started that night at the cabin, eliminating all witnesses (remember he goes after Ronette a few days later too, after she's awakened).

• The draft of the episode 8 teleplay available online must be a combination of two versions. The Giant's dialogue still reads, "a man in a smiling bag" but when Cooper actually sees Jacques' body bag, he mutters to himself "Shock in a big rubber bag" and later tells the Giant he was "right about the rubber bag." This suggests to me that the Giant was originally scripted to say "Jacques in a big rubber bag" (which Cooper mishears as "shock") and that Lynch changed this line to the more enigmatic - and apparently more personally resonant - "man in a smiling bag" (an image Lynch says is inspired by his work in a morgue as a young man). Also according to the script, Lucy was supposed to report, "This morning, at around 5:45 am, Jacques Renault was found dead in his bed. It appears to be cardiac arrest, which is what happened to my Uncle Walter after he had the accident with the lawnmower, but the cause of death is not yet officially known." (Frost probably embedded two playful references in this one line: to Walter Olkewicz's real name, and to Blue Velvet which opens with a character suffering a stroke while watering his lawn.) In the actual episode, Lucy simply cuts to the chase, saying, "Jacques Renault was strangled." 

• There are many unfortunate families in Twin Peaks, but only the Palmers can rival the Renaults' body count; within a three-week period all the brothers were wiped out. ...Or were they?


SHOWTIME: Yes, Olkewicz is on the cast list for 2017.

Wait, what??!

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.

Ronette bears not only her trauma but that of her best friend and indeed of the whole town - she carries this burden, without relief, in its overwhelming entirety.


circa February 1988
Ronette Pulaski and Laura Palmer, seventeen-year-old prostitutes from Twin Peaks, hang out in a room at the Red Diamond Motel in Deer Meadow. Clad in lingerie and crouching on the bed, they are waiting for their friend and fellow sex worker Teresa Banks to introduce them to her client. When Teresa appears, however, she says the guy got nervous and split (even though he paid her). "Looks like it's just us girls," Teresa says as the trio cuddle on the bed.

Sunday, February 19, 1989
A year later, Ronette greets Laura at the Pink Room nightclub in Canada. Loud music drowns out their words, forcing her to shout. She hasn't seen Laura in a while; they reminisce about getting kicked out of One Eyed Jack's, and as Jacques Renault embraces them Ronette remembers that it's been a year since Teresa was murdered. Ronette knew Teresa was planning to blackmail someone and Jacques recalls that she called him right before she died, asking about Ronette's and Laura's fathers. Then Jacques invites the girls up to his cabin Thursday night. Ronette moves to a booth with Laura where a man pleasures them under the table. As they moan in delight, Ronette turns to see her goody-two-shoes classmate Donna Hayward writhing topless on a table, groped by another man. Ronette bursts into laughter: "Oh my God, is that Donna Hayward?" Laura, who is good friends with Donna, leaps to her feet and runs screaming towards her.

Thursday, February 23, 1989
Ronette, Jacques, and Leo meet Laura in the woods and ride up to Jacques' cabin in Leo's red Corvette. They party long past midnight, into the early morning hours of the following day. Ronette applies makeup and lipstick in a mirror and then immediately smudges it all over her face by making out with Leo. The four of them drink, snort cocaine, and play sex games. When Jacques ties Laura up, she shouts "Not tonight!" but he ignores her, holding her down by force. A concerned Ronette rushes to Laura's defense but Leo pulls her back and she is tied up too. When they're finished, Jacques and then Leo disappear outside and don't return (when Leo grabs his boots, Laura pleads, "Will you please untie me?" and he yells in her face before stumbling through the door). Then another man enters the cabin and kidnaps Laura and Ronette, tightly gripping the twine that bind them as he marches through the woods to an abandoned traincar. Inside, he mostly focuses on tormenting Laura as Ronette sobs and offers a self-degrading prayer: "Father, if I die now...will you please see me? Look at me! I'm so dirty. I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." A bright light envelops Ronette; she sees Laura staring in disbelief before turning her own gaze upward to catch a blonde angel hovering overhead. When the light disappears, a stunned Ronette realizes her hands have been untied. She hears someone banging on the train car door and struggles to open it from her side as the other person pushes outside. The would-be killer attacks Ronette just as she cracks the door open, and she tumbles outside, unconscious. The man who opened the door with her wanders past her body and later the kidnapper, carrying Laura's corpse, kicks her body over and leaves her behind.

Friday, February 24, 1989
A railroad switchman pauses in his work to gasp at a figure crossing the metal bridge over a nearby river. Ronette, clad in her torn slip, twine still hanging from her wrists, body covered in burns, brusies, and dirt, stumbles in a daze across the bridge, clearly traumatized but moving forward through some lingering impulse for survival. Taken to Calhoun Memorial Hospital, she hovers between consciousness and coma - the doctor says a CAT scan is needed because Ronette is unresponsive and may have neurological damage, adding "this girl doesn't even know where she is...or if she is." An FBI agent and the local sheriff hope to question her, but Ronette is mostly uncommunicative (aside from repeating one mysterious phrase near the end of their encounter). The doctor says she was raped several times, and the sheriff notes that Ronette attended the same high school as "the dead girl" (Laura's murder has been discovered) but otherwise no connection is established. The agent holds a magnifying glass to her fingernails and seems disappointed to find nothing there.

Saturday, February 25, 1989
A sheriff's deputy questions Ronette's parents while she hovers in her near-comatase state behind a glass window.

Friday, March 3, 1989
Ronette murmurs to herself as images of the bridge-crossing flash through her mind. That night, her arms raise slowly and she jolts awake with a gasp. As she re-enters the waking world, she is also remembering the night of her trauma in visceral detail. She sees a long-haired man in a jean jacket running towards her - then he is stabbing a screaming Laura and hovering over her body inside the train car, before bellowing an inhuman howl of laughter, anguish, or some combination thereof.

Saturday, March 4, 1989
Ronette is awake, her eyes are open, but she remains silent and weary. The FBI agent and sheriff return to her room and, after struggling with the hospital stools, they sit down and begin asking questions. The agent shows her two sketches, asking if she recognizes the men who hurt her. The second picture, of the long-haired man Ronette saw in a vision the night before, agitates her, inspiring violent spasms as she barely manages to choke out the words, "Train! Train!"

Sunday, March 5, 1989
In the early morning Ronette is so agitated that she leaps out of her bed and must be restrained by nurses and orderlies. After she is sedated, two FBI agents and a sheriff observe that her IV was poisoned with blue dye. This time, one of the agents uses tweezers to retrieve a small slip of paper with the typed letter "B" from underneath Ronette's fingernail as she screams.

Sunday, March 26, 1989
Three weeks later, Ronette is out of the hospital. She is dressed in normal clothes and her hair has been cut. As a sheriff's deputy escorts her into the station, she looks healthy, physically fully recovered but still nervous. The familiar FBI agent greets her and asks her if she recognizes a particular smell (close to scorched engine oil). Ronette sniffs an open jar and leaps back into the deputy's arms, deeply shaken and upset. "Yes," she whimpers, "the night Laura Palmer was killed."

I've often noted that there are three essential elements to Twin Peaks: Laura Palmer, Agent Cooper, and the town of Twin Peaks. Ronette's connection to Laura is obvious, especially in the context of this character series - with this entry, even more than Jacques', we plunge into the experience of the "dead girl" who has flitted in and out of previous studies without establishing too much of a solid presence yet. Ronette's connection to Cooper - with whom she shares a majority of her scenes on the show - is also crucial: she's the reason he gets involved with the case at all, since she crossed state lines in her journey out of the woods and inadvertently made the case federal. But what of Ronette's relationship to Twin Peaks itself? If Laura is a haunting reminder of the town's dark side, Ronette is the living but not quite present physical embodiment of Twin Peaks' shadow. Laura's corpse looks peaceful in death, and her image as the pretty, pleasant homecoming queen remains a disorienting comment on the gap between public persona and private world. Even as they learn about her troubled life, or remember what they knew and kept to themselves, the townspeople can idealize Laura, romanticizing even her trauma as something not entirely of this world.

Ronette, meanwhile, is mostly forgotten or overlooked by the community. To start with, she is working-class - her parents are mill workers whereas Laura's father is a business lawyer. Ronette worked at a perfume counter in the downtown department store but otherwise we learn little about her social life and she certainly doesn't seem to have left the same impression on the town's "respectable" society that Laura did. Except for the doctor who shows concern for "Ronnie," Ronette Pulaski (an ethnic name which, with her more Eastern European features and dark hair sets her further apart from the blonde, blue-eyed, WASPish Laura Palmer) is mostly isolated in her hospital room, treated at best as a source of information for Laura. This tells us something about the priorities of the town, law enforcement, and to an extent Twin Peaks itself (although this is complicated - see the "journey" and "writers/directors" sections below).

When we meet Ronette again in Fire Walk With Me, we see the extent to which she shared Laura's lifestyle of drug use and sexual promiscuity with older men. We also glimpse her admiration and concern for Laura, and there are hints in the film, deleted scenes, and diary that there was a romantic spark between them (Laura definitely has feelings for Ronette). Ronette is a character who emphasizes an important point: while the circumstances of Laura's tragedy may have been unique, the larger pattern is not. While Ronette also serves as a touchstone for the supernatural (she is the first character in these studies to show us BOB), the investigation, and even the show's deft mixture of horror and humor (those stools!), above all Ronette demonstrates the hole where Twin Peaks' conscience used to be (or maybe never was). In their obsession with Laura, and also in their inability to fully grapple with what happened to her, the town doesn't want to recognize the even more troubling truth: there are many Lauras who are exploited, addicted, and traumatized by Twin Peaks' denial-based ecosystem.

The denial that obscures Ronette's presence is an important point to harp on. Her arc on the show is largely determined by Twin Peaks' willingness to focus on the visceral nature and clinical effects of sexual violence and psychological trauma. She's an important presence in the pilot who fades as the first season takes on a more playful, fun vibe in its investigation. She returns in season two to direct us toward an emphasis on BOB, initially less as an esoteric spiritual figure than as a harbinger of horrors that can't quite be named or pinned down in a human body. And when Ronette finally reappears at the end of the show, after a very long absence, it's explicitly to drag the terror of Laura's death center-stage for the first time in half the series (again, in a way that draws our attention to BOB, since he is associated with the scorched engine oil).

In the film, a new aspect of Ronette is revealed: she often functions in the narrative as half of a pair with Donna, two doppelgangers for Laura's split personality, one reflecting her "good" side, the other her "bad." Ronette is linked with Donna through several incidents - she steps into focus as Donna's point of view fades in the Pink Room, she's the one who tells Laura that Donna is being groped, and finally her fate bears an eerie similarity to Donna's. Both are rescued when different forms of violation appear imminent; Donna is clearly retrieved by Laura but is Ronette's angel, in a more subtle way, also an empathetic intervention by a concerned friend? (I explore this idea fully in my video essay "She Would Die For Love".) If so, it's also a nice reflection of Ronette's gesture a few minutes earlier, attempting to stop Jacques as he ties Laura up. And this in turn might be inspired by Laura's earlier action with Donna - all reinforcing the symbiotic relationship between Laura and Ronette.

The film ends with a glimpse of an unconscious, bloody Ronette. Without the series, we might think she's dead, rendering that angelic escape largely moot; only if we know her role on the show and especially her collected appearance in the finale do we see the light at the end of the tunnel. Observed chronologically, Ronette's arc is straightforwardly redemptive (and could even be read as a classically Christian hellfire-and-salvation narrative - a promicuous, drug-using teenager "scared straight" by rape and murder, rescued by her own guilt and divine grace, redeemed through weeks of suffering in a limbo-like coma and finally allowed to tidy up and live a normal life while still occasionally reminded of her dark past as a warning - though God knows I find such a reductive path neither dramatically rich nor morally edifying). Regardless of how one reads the implications, Ronette descends into a dark pit and slowly but surely crawls out.

Observed in production order, from the pilot to the prequel, Ronette's arc is redemptive in another way - it redeems the creators (particularly David Lynch), showing that they can develop and respect a minor character most other shows would simply cast aside. Viewed this way, Ronette moves from "secondary character used to illuminate the main victim for lawmen" to "crucial witness whose inner life takes us closer to Laura than any other character" to "fleshed-out person with a life of her own, who plays a central role in the narrative." This is especially true when you consider why Ronette was probably brought to the train car. If BOB intended for Laura to participate in a ritual murder of Ronette (he came prepared with the letter "R" after all) then her refusal - and perhaps even her direct rejection of this route by calling an angel into being - is the specific action that closes Laura off from BOB forever and forces him to kill her. (Keep in mind that the ring which incites the final stabbing only rolls into the train car when Ronette opens the door, and she's only able to open the door because the angel has untied her hands; one action leads directly to another in a chain both logical and esoteric.)

Ronette, Twin Peaks' forgotten girl, provides an opportunity for both Laura and Lynch to turn their own stories around, re-centering them on compassion instead of nihilism, transcendence instead of denial.

Augustine has remained very active at fan events, attending many festivals and Q&As where she talks about a role that clearly meant a lot to her. Her screen credits are sparse and mostly clustered around the time she made Fire Walk With Me: an appearance in a TV movie and two potentially big roles on very short-lived shows. One, The Elvira Show, was never aired; in the pilot, Augustine plays Elvira's long-lost niece who shows up to live with the famous horror goddess when she moves to Manhattan. The other, Frannie's Turn, was actually part of CBS' primetime lineup in 1992-93; Augustine plays the stubborn daughter of the main character. Set in a working-class household on Staten Island and produced by one of Roseanne's top writers, the show was cancelled less than a month into its run - around the same time that Fire Walk With Me was leaving its last theaters. Six episodes were aired and it's unclear, but probably unlikely, that any more were shot. (series pictured: Frannie's Turn, 1992)


Ronette is written by Mark Frost and David Lynch in the pilot (although in the draft available online she is named Sharon Pulaski). She is supposed to cross a busy highway rather than a bridge, but likely the scene was rewritten after the filmmakers visited the location and saw that striking image. Though Sharon/Ronette has the practical function of dramatizing the violence of Laura's death and drawing an FBI agent into the investigation, her characterization is humane and poignant (a single tear is described running down her cheek as she lies in the hospital). At this point it seems fair to assume she's the product of an equal collaboration between the co-creators, perhaps even with Frost contributing the most after years of deftly crafting such victims for Hill Street Blues. After the pilot, though, a funny thing happens to Ronette - and especially to Augustine as Ronette - and it's hard not to see Lynch emerging as her primary patron.

In episode 1, written by Frost and directed by Duwayne Dunham, Ronette is relegated to the background of a broadly-drawn interview with her parents. Most notably, her head tilted away from the camera, she's played by a different actress (there is an explicit note pertaining to this in the script: "do not show Ronette's face"). It makes sense; Augustine was a Seattle actress conveniently available, like Sheryl Lee as Laura, for a pilot shot on location. The producers weren't going to fly her down to Los Angeles for extra work. Her part may even have been over as far as they were concerned - at that point. Perhaps it was Frost's idea to bring her back for the second season after a long absence (after all, she was still alive, her situation unresolved: perfect grist for the narrative mill). Maybe that was always the intention. But given his later persistence, it's easy to suspect she returned thanks to Lynch's interest.

In the first few episodes of season two (written by Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels, and directed twice by Lynch and once by Lesli Linka Glatter), Ronette becomes something new: a visionary like the Log Lady or Cooper himself, but with a direct access to Laura's trauma that no one else shares. She's also a conduit to the increasingly supernatural aura surrounding the murder - a gateway to the terror of BOB, a character who, like Ronette, had faded in the latter half of season one. Yet after she is nearly killed, Ronette is dropped a second time, never mentioned for a full twenty episodes. In the series finale, we can say with certainty that it was Lynch's idea to bring her back: she's not mentioned in the teleplay at all. Lynch does two things with this appearance. He concludes Ronette's arc in a hopeful manner, showing that - while she's still traumatized by the memory of that night - she has physically recovered and looks healthy and well-composed. And he uses Ronette, again, to draw our attention to another character who has been forgotten for many episodes: in this case, Laura herself.

Ronette is one of many elements anchoring us in the early part of the series, emphasizing how important it is for Lynch to return the story to its roots even as it goes in new directions. That, of course, is the entire project of Fire Walk With Me, and while plot necessitated Ronette's involvement, by this point Lynch clearly felt a spiritual importance in including Ronette as well. He co-wrote her part with Engels but added new details during production, most notably the angel inspired by conversations with both Augustine and Lee, who felt the scripted ending was too negative. The process of Ronette's realization is one of the most revealing aspects of Twin Peaks' creation, indicating how unusual and generous its storytelling could be.

Ronette is onscreen for roughly nineteen minutes. She is in fifteen scenes in six episodes plus the feature film and deleted scenes collection, taking place over five weeks (with several flashbacks to a year earlier). She's featured the most in Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces in which she accompanies Laura on her harrowing death trip (in the show she's featured the most in episode 8, at least if you include the flashback/vision ostensibly from her perspective). Her primary location is Calhoun Memorial Hospital. She shares the most screentime with Laura.




The Pilot: If there's any reason to suspect that Ronette was always intended to return, it's her ubiquity in the pilot. Even after we've left the hospital for good, she keeps popping up. Cooper and Truman open Laura's safety deposit box at the bank and discover an issue of Flesh World, identifying a black-and-white photo of a lingerie-clad Ronette circled with green marker. Shelly Johnson watches a news program featuring a photo of Ronette as the announcer discusses her condition. And at the town meeting, Cooper mentions Ronette as the intended third victim of a serial killer.

Episode 1: Doc Will Hayward, following an examination of Ronette and an autopsy of Laura, confirms that the same perpetrator attacked both of them. He says he's unsure if and when Ronette will ever be able to talk to them, given the severe head wound she's suffered (so it isn't just shock sustaining her condition).

Episode 2: When Cooper asks about Ronette's condition, Hawk answers, "Body and mind are still far apart." He also reveals that Ronette quit her job at the perfume counter (which her parents apparently did not know).

Episode 3: Audrey Horne tells Cooper that Laura worked at the perfume counter and he admits that Ronette did too, to Audrey's surprise.

Episode 4: Audrey tells Donna that Ronette and Laura both worked at the perfume counter.

Episode 5: Searching Jacques' apartment, Cooper finds an issue of Flesh World with a letter and envelope marking the page where Ronette's picture appears. The P.O. Box on the envelope is where Ronette received her mail. When the cops visit the Log Lady's cabin, she tells them how her log heard two men escorting two girls through the woods and then a third man taking them away, as they screamed. It's assumed that the girls were Laura and Ronette.

Episode 6: Forensics confirms that Ronette visited Jacques at his cabin. Audrey opens Emory Battis' little notebook and discovers an entry for "Ronette" dated 2/3/90 (a continuity error since elsewhere, including Ronette's hospital chart, the year is 1989). Four hearts appear after her name, the highest score (only one other girl, the mysterious "Lois", shares it) and Audrey murmurs, "Ronette Pulaski." This confirms that Ronette, who worked at the perfume counter like Laura (and now Audrey, as part of her investigation) was also sent by Emory to work as a prostitute at One Eyed Jack's.

Episode 7: Jacques mentions Ronette several times in conversation with Cooper - first when he's being set up, then when he's being questioned as a suspect. He explains her photos on Flesh World - it was Laura's ideas to pose for snapshots and send them to the magazine to see if they got any responses. He also says that Laura and Ronette had been to his cabin plenty of times before: "They was no nuns."

Episode 8: Cooper lays out the everything they know about the death of Laura, including all the details involving Ronette. As he talks, we pan over an array of donuts and various images are superimposed, including the shot of a dazed Ronette staggering across the bridge. Albert says that Ronette was tied up for the first time in the train car which, from what we see in the film, is false. Cooper says that the killer hit Ronette with a hammer (which fits the film though it's unclear what he uses) and surmises that "he must have been so intent on killing Laura he didn't realize that Ronette regained consciousness and escaped," to which Albert adds, "Either he didn't know or he didn't care." That night, the Giant appears to Cooper and says, "One person saw the third man; three have seen him, yes, but not his body. One only, known to you, ready now to talk." This appears to be a reference to Ronette's imminent awakening.

Episode 9: When Cooper and Albert chat over breakfast, Cooper informs his colleague that Ronette has regained consciousness. "I'm thinking she's going to have quite a story to tell," he predicts, "once she regains the ability to speak.""So she's not talking?" Albert asks. "Waking but silent," Cooper responds. "Probably shock." He then describes his plans to show her sketches of Leo and BOB.  Emory admits to recruiting Laura and Ronette for One Eyed Jack's when Audrey strangles him and demands answers. That night, Cooper has a nightmare/vision which includes Ronette writing in bed, in slow motion.

Episode 10: Cooper charts the people who have seen BOB, including Maddy, Mrs. Palmer, himself, and Ronette who "saw him physically at the train car." Albert reveals that the "B" removed from Ronette's fingernail was cut from Flesh World, just like the previous letters. If not for Lynch's last-minute interventions, this would have been the last time anything was seen or heard of Ronette in Twin Peaks.

The Missing Pieces: The Log Lady weeps outside her cabin as she overhears Laura's and Ronette's screams in the distance.


• The Access Guide reveals that the Pulaskis (misspelled as "Polaskis," hopefully not on purpose!) are Catholics who attend Christ the King, the only stone church in Twin Peaks, with "a breathtaking Rose window intersected by delicate Douglas Fur mullions." The Hurleys and Packards are fellow churchgoers and Mass is presided over by Father Dunne and Brother Poplinski. This religious background provides an interesting context for Ronette's desperate, self-loathing prayer in the train car as well as the classically Christian image of the angel that appeared to her.

• Ronette is the second Catholic character to pray in Twin Peaks (or the first, chronologically); former nun Annie Blackburn recites a Psalm while Windom Earle drags her to Glastonbury Grove. In both cases, the specific lines were unscripted and presumably added by Lynch on set.

• Ronette is an important character in Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (although her name is written as "Ronnette", just as it is in the pilot's credits). The book reveals that Laura had a crush on Ronette (though it's not clear if the romantic feelings were reciprocated, they certainly shared a lot of sexual experiences). Classmates who once shared a friendly moment while changing their outfits during a pageant, Laura and Ronette connect outside of school at one of Leo's parties. Laura is impressed by Ronette's appearance: "...looking like she had given up junk food, and had started taking pretty good care of everything on her body except her nose." (She's high on cocaine when Laura spies her.) Laura is nervous about her feelings, joking, "All I need are rumors buzzing around that Ronnette and I are "seeing" each other every chance we get. Mom would have to be sent to the Haywards', if not the hospital itself..." Ronette shows kindness to Laura on a later occasion, taking care of her and getting her home when she escapes a near-gang rape while hitchhiking. At the perfume counter, Laura "adore[s] working with someone as cool as Ronnette. She always understands when I'm depressed and doesn't get down on me for it." She also grumbles about Emory not allowing her "a pat on Ronnette's ass." Laura and Ronette share a series of codes ostensibly about the perfume counter that actually refer to drugs and parties. In another entry, she convinces Ronette to pose for Polaroids they'll send to Flesh World. When she temporarily quits cocaine, she complains that Ronette doesn't invite her out or talk closely with her anymore. Laura starts using again when she and Ronette are invited to One Eyed Jack's. The last reference in the book underscores the film's linkage of Laura's two best female friends: "I told Dr. Jacoby I missed Donna and I wished that she and Ronnette would like each other. I wish that we could all be friends so I wouldn't have to hide anything from anyone."

• The incident in Teresa's motel room, shown as one extended sequence in The Missing Pieces, is split as a flashback into three scenes in Fire Walk With Me. In the first, Leland is watching Laura and Donna on the couch and has a sudden vision of Laura and Ronette in a similar position. In the second, Leland is sitting in the car with Laura when he remembers visiting Teresa and walking up to the motel room where he glimpses the two girls through an open doorway. In the third, Laura sits in her bedroom, reflecting back on one of Teresa's gestures, brushing her bangs aside to reveal a green ring on her finger (Ronette hovers behind her in this slow-motion close-up).

• In a deleted scene from episode 9, Audrey questions a One Eyed Jack's employee named Nancy (this is one episode before Blackie's sister shows up, and it's unclear if this is the same Nancy). She shows her a picture of Ronette torn from a yearbook and asks Nancy if she recognizes her. Nancy responds, "Just a summer girl. She didn't stay long."

• In deleted dialogue from episode 16, Truman asks how Ronette saw BOB in the train car. Cooper answers, "Maybe the head injury. The trauma opened some kind of perceptual window..."

• As dark as Fire Walk With Me is, the script was even darker, detailing what is left to our imagination in the movie: "Leland goes into the cabin. His smiling eyes are on Laura while he rapes Ronette. Laura watches as her fear drives her to hysteria."

• When I collected commentary from the Twin Peaks Usenet board of 1990, I highlighted one particular comment by a psychiatrist who was impressed by the accuracy of Ronette's depiction. You can find it by scrolling about a quarter of the way down this page to the entry dated 10/18/90 (or name search for "Fiona Oceanstar"). Here's an interesting sample: "Ronette's initial appearance, walking across the railroad bridge, was one of the first things about 'Twin Peaks' that made me sit up and say, 'Wow--this show may even be realistic!' Having seen lots of post-rape and post-trauma victims, I can vouch for her zombie-like expression, listless walk, and pale skin being consistent with a normal human response to an overwhelming psycho- logical (let alone physical) trauma. If she looks like she's on autopilot in that scene, that's because she *is*. It took considerable inner strength for her to get up and walk out like that. Many people in that situation might have died of exposure, just from being too psychologically blasted to find the will to move. But Ronette is young, and the young do have a strong sense of survival. My response, as a shrink, when I saw her walking across that bridge, was a) to be shocked by the trauma she'd obviously suffered, and b) to cheer for her--'All right! You can MAKE it!' Seriously."


SHOWTIME: Yes, Augustine is on the cast list for 2017. We shouldn't be surprised, given Lynch's devotion to this character, and his desire to bring her back time after time for important moments. I look forward to seeing where Ronette is at in her forties. Where does she work? Does she have a family? How does she remember Laura - has she formed any explanation of the strange things that happened to her in the train car? I'm particularly interested to see Ronette on her own, living life, since she served as an accessory to Laura's story for so long. While I am happy we'll be getting even a cameo, I think she could also play a larger role in the narrative too. Either way, it wouldn't be Twin Peaks without her.